The Widow's Club (48 page)

“What’s wrong with this house?” He lounged against the door jamb. “The drawing room windows are locked up tight as a safe, and who are these people? Leftovers from a party?” He flicked his plait of hair toward Butler. “Don’t I know him?”

“You are correct, sir.” Butler held the frying pan aloft on his fingertips. “I did a stint as a waiter at Abigail’s. Now if you’ll h’excuse me, I don’t ’ave time to converse. My
ladies get h’indigestion if they don’t eat breakfast at the appointed time.”

Freddy’s darting eyes reminded me of a ray gun. “Hey! What’s going on here? Even the doggywog”—he bared his teeth at Sweetie—“looks like it would go spewing if I pushed its belly button. Where’s Ben?”

The Tramwells’ faces had tightened. My mother-in-law’s lips moved in prayer. Butler stopped slicing bread and tested the knife blade against his finger, eyes on Freddy.

Arms and legs extended, my cousin’s body formed an X in the doorway. “I heard tell the pressure cooker backfired at the demo,” he mused, “but most of the chitchat at The Dark Horse last night was about Sidney pelting into his shop, shovelling the lolly out of the till and crying, ‘So long, it’s been good to know you.’ I do hope I didn’t drive old Sid into a flit.” Freddy’s body sagged. “I’d decided not to sue, and I keep telling myself there’s bound to be a simpler explanation, like he killed Mrs. Delacorte and the police were closing in.”

I had to get rid of Freddy. Picking up a stack of plates, I shuffled them. “Afraid I’m not going to ask you in because … Ben has gone away for a few days and I really”—one of the plates slipped—“want to be alone.”

Freddy yanked at the heavy chains around his neck, his eyes narrowing. “What’s wrong, Ellie, old sock?” He made another move to push past me. Butler took a measured step forward.

“There’s something going on here, but I know when to bugger off; I’ll just stay for breakfast and—”

“Freddy,” I said, “if you have any feelings for Ben and me, take care of Abigail’s until he gets back.”

I shut the door on him and leaned against it, trembling. I hadn’t felt so abandoned since Dorcas and Jonas left. Where was the bride who thought marriage meant never having to say I’m lonely?

“What a truly delightful young man!” Primrose said. “Concerned, thoughtful—patently he did not like us at all. And now I do think we should get down to making plans; we can’t continue to let the day slide away from us.”

It was agreed that I should go to morning service at St. Anselm’s. I usually attended so, if Mrs. Bottomly had
been quick off the mark, it was a possibility that The Founder might try some not very funny business as I went to or fro or even as I knelt in prayer. Hyacinth would trail me with her duelling pistol at the ready. Butler and Primrose would stay with Magdalene. My mother-in-law was very distressed at having to miss Mass at such a time, but did feel that under the circumstances Father Padinsky would continue to give her a pass.

I went to church. I returned. No hand reached around one of the elms to encircle my throat. No car tried to nose me over the cliff. No whisper from bodyguard Hyacinth that we were being stalked. The day wore on with no one telephoning and attempting to lure me to a false rendezvous. Every time I forced myself to cross the hall to go upstairs I shuddered. Not a sound could be heard from below, but my head still rang with the tortured cries of Ben and Poppa as they descended into the stygian darkness of their prison.

Butler prepared lunch. Afterward we gathered in the drawing room and he gave the Tramwells what appeared to be an ongoing lesson in picking pockets. Magdalene and I sat and read, or pretended to. Dinner. Supper. I went out to the courtyard to fetch Sweetie in from her romp, but I wasn’t tossed in the moat or shot through the heart. When the hall clock struck ten, Hyacinth rolled up her knitting, Primrose laid down her embroidery hoop, and Magdalene awakened from her nap.

“Ellie, should we not prepare for bed?” Primrose’s eyes brimmed with the eager fear of a child playing murder in the dark. “I will conceal myself in your wardrobe, leaving the door agap, and Hyacinth will remain with dear Magdalene. Butler will be on the prowl.” She turned to him. “Should you hear two screams at once, pray answer the loudest.”

“Certainly, madam.”

Lying between the silver grey sheets, I watched the shadowed pheasants on the wallpaper and counted the folds in the velvet curtains. What if all our hopes were in vain? What if The Founder did not act with dispatch, or at all? What if he/she decided to punish me some other way? Or worse, grant me a reprieve? Where could I hide Ben on a permanent basis?

*   *   *

Monday morning came. I was congratulated on having survived unmolested, but I sensed a growing impatience and began to wonder how long it might be before the others began to blame me, unconsciously, for my ineffectualness. When nerves are frayed, nothing soothes like a scapegoat.

Roxie stomped through the garden door at 8:00
A.M
. She did a double take on seeing the Tramwells and Butler.

“What ho, Mrs. H., taking in paying guests, are we?” She dumped the supply bag on the table and began popping open the buttons on her burgundy brocade coat. “Stands to reason it will be twice as hard on me, weaving the mop between all them extra legs, but I won’t charge you extra.”

I was about to say that I really didn’t need her today, but read Hyacinth’s eyebrow signals. Should Roxie, perchance, be the one, she must be given free rein to push me down the stairs, choke me with the Hoover cord, or hit me over the head with one of Magdalene’s statues. The sisters made a big production of sending Butler on an errand and saying they would walk in the garden and perhaps out onto Cliff Road, if Magdalene would accompany them. Minutes after the garden door closed, my hopes lurched when Roxie asked me to accompany her into the drawing room.

Since the curtains were still closed, it had a dim, unused look. “Over here, Mrs. H.” Roxie’s voice had an unmistakable gloat to it. “Now”—she flung out an arm—“if this isn’t going to
kill
you.”

An amazing calm enveloped me. My eyes followed her finger. Behold Sweetie, chewing on the leg of the bureau. Surprisingly, my heart and soul had not quite shrivelled away. A flame of fury leapt up in me. Thrusting open the French windows, I shoved a snarling Sweetie out into the garden. She might have remained planted in the flower bed had Tobias not shot out from under the bookcase and, like tabbied lightning, given chase.

“I’ll put some scratch-cover polish on that bureau leg. I have some upstairs,” I told Roxie. Out in the hall I listened to the deadening silence, then started up the staircase. I liked Roxie, but I wasn’t prepared to pick and choose villains anymore. Let her be the one. I knew the polish to be in the kitchen so I was elaborately enticing her. No sound.
I sat on the stairs and waited, maybe dozed.… A hand clutched at me, almost toppling me over backward.

“Rouse, my dear Ellie, I am most concerned,” trilled Primrose. “Magdalene went chasing through the grounds after little Sweetie dog, who was being pursued by the pussycat. Hyacinth went after them, and a minute later I dispatched Butler to follow, because we cannot discount the possibility of that dreadful Raincoat Man being about. And the outcome, alas, does look bleak. None of them has come back. Admittedly, it has only been about ten minutes, and Hyacinth does have the duelling pistol with her, but I do think—as nothing seems to be ripening here—that you and I should attempt to locate them.”

“No,” I said, eager to do something. “You stay here. I know the grounds and the places where Tobias may have cornered Sweetie. If your sister and the others come back to the house and find us gone, they will panic. I’ll be in no danger. The Founder isn’t given to impromptu murder.”

“Ellie, I think you should stay here and I … oh, dear me, no, that will never do; not if Mrs. Malloy is you-know-who.” I was dragging on an old raincoat. Primrose’s face crumpled. “I have an ominous feeling about this, my child.”

Out in the garden I called out the string of names: Magdalene, Hyacinth, Butler, Sweetie, Tobias. No answering shouts, no rustle of shrubbery. It had rained earlier and the daffodils shone yellow under the fruit trees, which had blossomed overnight into fragrant canopies of pink and white. Birds twittered. Bees hummed. Everything was coming alive. Dreariness clamped down on me and, at last, the fear I had been waiting—hoping—for. Where were they? Three people whose current mission in life was to protect me wouldn’t play silly games.

What was that scuffling noise near the iron gates? I began to run, feet skidding on gravel. As I drew level with the cottage, I saw Sweetie wriggle out from under the hedge and go hopping like a rabbit out onto Cliff Road. I raced after her.

She stayed barely ahead of me, but every time I was within reach of grabbing her, she would shoot ahead. Could it be that Magdalene, pursued by Hyacinth and Butler, had chased her this way? And the little wretch had doubled back? Sweetie dodged into the churchyard; so did I.

“Magdalene! Hyacinth! Butler!” What was that? The moan of the sea? The screech of a gull? Or a voice crying out, “Here! Here!” Sweetie had vanished behind a tombstone, but the sound had not come from that direction. I ran up to the church steps and lifted the iron handle. The door was locked. A branch grated against a stained glass window and I told myself I had certainly imagined the voice. Hands in my pockets, I descended the steps. I would go home where doubtless I would find everyone returned safe and sound. A deepening of shadow against the east wall of the church hall caught my eye. I crept forward in time to see the delinquent dog make a dive toward the door, which was propped open. I couldn’t go home without her, could I?

Memories of the aborted cookery demonstration crowded in as I stepped through that doorway. The place was thick with shadow and I could not find a light switch. Damn! I almost turned about and left, but a muffled noise convinced me that Sweetie was still in here, waiting to be caught. I felt my way along the wall, past the rows of chairs, stumbling into a table. At last. I was at the stage, hoisting myself up. Only a few yards now from a familiar light switch. My hand was on the curtain when I heard it again, unmistakably a human whisper. “Here … here …” A chill slid over me.

Something was wrong here. Something was missing.… And then it came to me. Bunty on the telephone telling me that there would be a rehearsal of the Aerobics Follies at 11:00
A.M
. on Monday. Today. It must now be a few minutes one way or the other of that time. That’s why the door had been open, but the hall should have been ablaze with lights and alive with the voices of my showmates. Instead, the emptiness and silence expanded until it seemed infinite. Almost. The whisper came from somewhere above me, or it might have been behind me.

“Here … Ellie.”

Either someone, pretending to be Bunty, had phoned the others and cancelled the rehearsal, or—I desperately needed something to hold onto, like a large bar of chocolate, was I the only one Bunty had contacted in the first place?

This was the moment for which I had been hankering. The enemy was at hand. My support troops were otherwise occupied. I must hide, play dead; such was my only hope.
I fought the urge to wrap myself in a fold of curtain—surely one of the first places The Founder would look. Forgotten was my conviction that life without Ben’s love was meaningless. I wanted desperately to survive this character-building experience. When push comes to shove, life in a parrot’s cage is better than nothing. I dropped to all fours and began crawling. My knees burned away the floor, until abruptly, my hands came to a full stop. Some obstacle was in their path.

“Here, Ellie …”

As the whisper came again, I frantically frisked the thing and felt a pinprick of hope. My cake. The one darling Poppa had made for me. If I could climb into it without making a breath of sound and draw down the wooden flap, I might be able to elude my persecutor until someone … say, the church hall inspector … came.

“Here, Ellie.”

A thin hope against a dead certainty. The lid lifted silently; a blessing on Poppa’s head for oiling the hinges. I was inside, huddled in a dark that was complete. I ordered my heart to slow down. If it kept up its present racket, it would either be heard or would set the cake walls to vibrating. The seconds stretched.

And then I heard footsteps and someone laughing—rather sadly, it seemed to me—before the hammering started. The hammering of my heart. The hammering of nails being driven into the carved icing of the cake top.

At first I struggled. If I could get my head back and my feet in kicking position … hopeless. Then I rationalized—there must be enough air in here to keep me in agonizing breaths for … minutes, after which my lungs and heart would explode. One second gone, two, three … Oh, God!

The horror seeped away, leaving me almost peaceful. I said my prayers. The Tramwells would rescue Ben from the dungeon and whilst he might not have been able to forgive me, had I lived, death would enshrine me in his memory, eternally angelic, eternally thin. The tragedy was that I was dying for nothing. The foul murders of the Chitterton Fells husbands would continue. The devilish Founder had escaped the snare. Stop it, Ellie. Focus in these last few moments on the good things. You could have died
single. Instead you have known the great joy of loving Ben, and you know that what you have shared will enable him to go on when you are but a name engraved upon a stone. He will mourn for a while, and then one day some lovely young woman will admire the elegant way he holds an eggbeater, and you … you, poor fish, will be forgotten, except when casually mentioned as “my first wife.” That apprentice wife who taught Bentley T. Haskell all the pitfalls of the first year of matrimony so he could avoid them the second time around.

It seemed I wasn’t going to die at peace after all. Breathing had become an impossibility, but my lungs filled up with something more vital than air. Willpower. Ben would not have a second wife. I was going to scream if it was the last thing I did. I was going to tear this cake to shreds if … I don’t think I had got past the planning stage, but such is the power of positive thinking that my prison was coming apart. Or was I dead and having one of those transcendental experiences?