The Widow's Club (9 page)

Through the wrought-iron gateway of Merlin’s Court we blasted. The motorbike hit a blemish on the surface of the drive, leapt two feet in the air, and flew like Mary Poppins onto the narrow moat bridge and under the portcullis.

“Aint much, but it’s home, right, El? The place has class—ivy-encrusted walls, turrets and battlements galore, whence the lovelorn can hurl themselves, and never forget the gargoyle doorbell. All mod cons, really! Except a comfy dungeon or two.”

“No house has everything,” I said stiffly. Ours was but a small-scale, nineteenth-century repro of a castle, but the dearth of dungeons with manacled skeletons crumbling to dust was rather a sore point with me.

“Ellie”—Freddy lurched to a stop—“how about spotting me a few quid so I can take Jill out tonight for a bang-up tofu dinner?”

“What’s a few?” I was struggling to flounce out my dress.

“A hundred?”

“Freddy.” Taking his arm, I moved us to the door. “Why don’t you get a job? A proper job instead of pinging a triangle in that dismal band.”

“Work?” He looked aghast. “The way I see it, cousin, if you have to be paid to do something, can’t be much fun, can it?”

“Wrong. Some people love their jobs. I do, and Ben can’t wait to begin another cookery book and open his restaurant in the village.”

Freddy reached for the doorknob. “My heart bleeds!
Inventing new ways to fry bacon. My! My! I’ll wager that when Ben opens that restaurant, he won’t lift his pinky to crack an egg. Eh, but it makes a chap glad to be born shiftless. About that two hundred nicker, Ellie?”

“After the wedding cake, I’ll look and see what I’ve got stashed under the mattress.”

Simultaneously, Freddy released the brass knob and I grasped it; the iron-studded door flung inward, almost sending me sprawling.

After these many months in residence, I still experienced a sense of embrace on entering Merlin’s Court. “Thank you, Benefactress Ellie,” the house would whisper, “for everything—these gorgeous Turkish carpets on the flagstone hall floor, the peacock and rose elegance of the drawing room, the Indian Tree china in the blackened oak dresser in the dining room. And, especially, thank you for loving me as passionately as Abigail Grantham once did.” But on this most venerable day, I didn’t get that sort of greeting.

A complete stranger stood beyond the threshold—a stocky man with a sallow-skinned pug face and an oversized mop of glossy black curls. He held a half-filled wineglass and his expression was one of extreme disappointment, like someone expecting the postman and finding a policeman on the step instead. The man started to close the door with his foot as Freddy and I stepped inside.

He tapped the wineglass to his forehead in a mea culpa of embarrassment. Wine slopped out. “A thousand pardons. For the minute I didn’t recognise you, Mrs. Haskell.”

Oh well, when a man used the two most beautiful words in the English language, I had to smile at him. “It’s the veil,” I said. “We brides all look alike.”

The man with the black curls and eyes like ripe olives was graciously stepping aside, but as the door opened wide, my smile shrank; I found myself looking into a madhouse. Could this bellowing uproar be a cheering for my belated arrival? Afraid not. There was no escaping the raw truth. The mob milling in and out of doorways, crowding the stairs, jostling the two suits of armour, was, in the main, drunk.

 … Hyacinth’s earrings swayed so fast back and forth, I feared they would nick her throat. “I must say, Ellie, had I been you, I would have grabbed the nearest broom and swept the lot of them into the garden and turned on the gardening hose. But where was Bentley?”

“He arrived at that very moment. He had thumbed a ride from Rowland, who had come driving up with Miss Thorn, the organist.”

“Pray tell me that Bentley swept you into his arms and carried you over the threshold.” Primrose sighed ecstatically. “I cannot think of anything more splendid.”

“It was, considering that one year earlier a crane could not have lifted me.…”

How could Dorcas and Jonas have let things get out of hand like this? The mayhem intensified as I gazed around from the blissful haven of my husband’s arms. A blue-haired woman, sporting more chins than I had owned in my heyday, went squealing past us up the stairs, the skirt of her paisley silk dress clutched in both hands.

“I’m coming to get you, my sugar plum!” A paunchy gentleman transporting two champagne glasses broke through the crowd in hot and heavy pursuit of the Paisley Lady, who was now peeping coyly through the bannisters; he collided heavily with Ben.

“Beg pardon, children!” A glass of champagne was thrust at me. The gentleman proceeded to elbow his way
onward and upward. He didn’t get very far. Freddy reeled out a hand and hooked a finger under his collar.

“Daddy, don’t be a tart,” he drawled, “you’re not cute with your brain sloshing around inside your skull.”

“Unfilial brat!” Uncle Maurice held the wounded expression for a full second, and then made a dive for the stairs.

“The man needs to have his mouth and his fly sewn up.” Whereupon, Freddy tipped my tiara over one eye, knocked his elbows sideways to clear a path, and went off to find Jill.

Ben having, I believe, enjoyed this vignette as much as I, now whispered, “Ellie, may I put you down?”

It seemed we said a kind of good-bye as he set me gently on my feet. My eyes clung to his, unwilling to disconnect, until I realised he was looking not at me, but at Miss Thorn. Had she been any other woman, I might have experienced a pang of jealousy. Instead, I fondled my wedding ring. Did this woman never tire of being always the organist, never the bride? Or was she resigned to her fate? She towered over Rowland, who was six feet; she made Ben look short. Many women turned height into an asset: Miss Thorn had succumbed to it. She wore horn-rimmed glasses, and her dreary brown coat drooped to her ankles. I was an ardent convert to thin, but Miss Thorn had carried a good thing too far. She caved in where she should have caved out. Her complexion was poor, her shoulders hunched, and her hair was lank and mouse-coloured, parted in the middle and clamped back from her forehead with two slides. Tucked into each of those slides was an artificial daisy. She collided with Ben and me and tipped her steamed-up spectacles down her nose to see who we were.

“Oh, do please excuse me. I kept seeing a lot of white, Mrs. Haskell, and thought you were a wall. I’m so glad of the opportunity to say how honoured I am at being included in these nuptial celebrations.” Here she did a little dip at the knees, something between a curtsy and a nervous tic. Ben and I hastened to assure her of our pleasure that she could come.

She tittered. “As a rule, I am not much of a social butterfly—I stay busy with my music, my tatting, and adding to my collection of antique telephone directories. But I
was very ready to be persuaded when the vicar insisted I would be welcomed today.”

There came a lull in the general hubbub, broken by a meowing from the staircase. I looked up, expecting to see Tobias, but it was the Paisley Lady. Skirts clutched in her hands, she came frisking down the stairs with Uncle Maurice close on her heels.

A voice to my right chirped, “I never saw anything like it! Have to be his decadent London friends.”

“Ellie, you were a lovely bride.” Rowland recaptured my attention.

I felt myself blushing; I’m not used to compliments. Ben was helping Miss Thorn off with her coat.

“It goes without saying,” Rowland continued, “that I wish both of you the best of everything. I think we have become friends and I value that.”

“So do we, don’t we, Ben?”

The noise level shot back up, and suddenly Rowland was hauled away by a female parishioner. Miss Thorn edged up close, her knobby hands clasped to her concave chest. “You may smile, Mrs. Haskell, but when I was a girl I used to lie awake at night and dream of being inside this house. So romantic a place! Exactly like those in Mr. Digby’s thrillers.” She peered round. “I don’t suppose he is here among us?”

“We may never know for sure; but I doubt it. Isn’t he known to be unsociable?” My voice was drowned out by the hubbub.

“Incredible as it may sound, I have never been here before. Unless we count the front steps. Years ago I came to ask if I might buy any old telephone directories”—Miss Thorn knotted her bony hands together—“but old Merlin Grantham threatened to drop the portcullis on me when I left. Such a colourful character, wasn’t he, like Mr. Digby or Smuggler Jim?”

The spectacles had cleared and her eyes were nice. A warm doggy brown.

“And then you came! So thrilling! The young heiress returning to the ancestral home”—a maiden-lady glance at Ben—“accompanied by a dark, handsome man from the big city. The village concluded you were cousins of sorts.”

“How charitable,” said Ben. Then, like an echo of our conversation, a voice drifted up from a leopard-skin hat.

“… Quite like a fairy tale—in every sense of the word; the best man a hairdresser.”

Miss Thorn was saying she would take her coat upstairs, pretty herself up a bit, and then (if we wished) be delighted to play for her supper. But she became another piece of human flotsam before I could tell her the harpsichord was stuck in the boxroom.

“Miss—Mrs. Haskell! Fancy meeting you again so soon! And Mr. Haskell!” The man with the oversized mop of black hair and jaundiced complexion, who had admitted us to the house, stalled in his tracks and affected a look of immense surprise and delight. He tucked two fingers into the pocket of his yellow waistcoat, then handed Ben a small white card.

“Vernon Daffy, estate agent. Five hundred houses sold in the past five years. My best wishes on this auspicious occasion. Should you wish to trade up, or down, remember we’re the best in town! Feel at liberty to phone day or night. Sometime in the near future you must tour our office—we offer free coffee.” All the while he was addressing my husband and me, Mr. Daffy was looking at Miss Thorn’s head, bobbing up the stairs.

“Thought I just heard that female say something to you about a thrill of a lifetime,” he said.

“Her first visit to this house,” I explained.

A burst of laughter from our rear. Mr. Daffy rubbed ginger-haired hands together. “Couldn’t for the life of me think what she could be talking about. Shouldn’t think her life is fizzing with excitement—ugly duck, isn’t she?” His eyes followed the sweep of the staircase. “A lot of charm these old places, wouldn’t lie to you on that score. But they don’t fetch what they did. Too much upkeep. Notice second bannister from bottom is loose. Now I concede that a certain amount of dilapidation may be complimentary to your antiques but …”

Mercifully, we were borne backward by the surging masses. Mr. Daffy’s voice drifted away like a man gone overboard. “Better find the wife—name’s Shirley, but I always call her Froggy.”

“I wouldn’t trust that man to sell me an egg timer,” said Ben. “Ancient proverb, Ellie, never trust anyone, male or female, when the hair on their hands doesn’t match the hair on their head.”

“Imagine,” I said, “a man calling his wife Froggy!”

I was talking to myself. Ben was gone. Attempting to follow, I was swept in the opposite direction.

Someone bumped into me. Dorcas! She was enveloped in one of Ben’s aprons and was holding my cat Tobias, looking a bit overdressed by comparison in his white satin bow.

“Thank God, you’re alive,” she rasped into my ear. She handed me Tobias, but taking exception to my veil, he leapt, hissing, onto her shoulder. “Where’s Ben?”

I explained.

“Never fear, Ellie, old chum, he’ll turn up.” Dorcas yanked at her apron straps. “Hell’s bells. Best say it and be done. I’ve bad news for you.”

I hate sentences that begin that way. Had a notice arrived from the Archbishop of Canterbury voiding my marriage until further notice? Or—I clutched an anonymous shoulder to steady myself—had Ben’s parents been fatally injured while speeding down the motorway in a rush to be with us after all?

“The temporary household help,” Dorcas continued, “has proved unsatisfactory.”

“Surely not,” I shouted, “the estimable bartender described by you as Lord Peter Wimsey come to life?”

Dorcas nodded bleakly. “His lordship sampled the gin. Found him in the pantry, face down in the lobster aspic. Sid Fowler put him to bed in one of the spare rooms.”

This was bad. That aspic was the culmination of months of experimentation. Ben might be so anguished he would be unable to function for the rest of the day—or night.

“It won’t be missed,” I lied. “What about the woman who came in to serve and do the washing up? Is she, by the good Lord’s grace, still on her feet?”

“Mrs. Malloy? She’s walking around, but not in a straight line.”

“From the general state of inebriation, I surmise our guests have been mixing their own poison.”

Dorcas shook her head and Tobias clamped a paw on it. “Jonas took over drinks, while Mrs. M. and I began getting the food out. He fixed a punch. Equal quantities of scotch, gin, vodka, brandy, and champagne. Can’t blame the old chap! Never drinks anything stronger than Ovaltine
himself. But I agree mightily, Ellie, either we get some food into these people to sop up the booze or offer overnight hospitality.”