Femmes Fatal (29 page)

“Ben,” I said, sinking down on the bed, “I really am not up to talking about it.”

“Sorry!” He stood over me, tenderness flowing from every pore until I was submerged in remorse and self-loathing. “I am an unfeeling brute to press you for details. Bed is the place for you, my love. As soon as I have you snuggled safe and sound under the bedclothes, I will go downstairs and fetch you some hot milk. Just what the doctor ordered.”

A shudder passed through my body as Dr. Melrose’s gaunt image rose up to haunt me. Assuring Ben that I wanted nothing to drink, I went through the motions of getting ready for bed, and five minutes later, he turned off the light.

“Good night, sweetheart.” He reached for my hand and I clung to his fingers until I felt him slip away into sleep. Lying on my back, staring into a darkness where the familiar shapes of daylight, the wardrobe and the dressing table, were transformed into hulking monsters from hell, I had never felt more alone. So how about it? Was I going to wallow or was I going to compose a file of suspects? Damn! Put like that, I squared my shoulders and waited for the lineup to parade before the window of my mind.

First comes Miss Thorn herself.
Look me in the eye, madam, and tell me whether you took your own life in a fit of remorse. Did you stick a cherry in your navel and drape yourself in plastic wrap in hopes that your beloved would always remember you as the ultimate dessert?

Away flits Miss T and in her place stands the ever-handsome Lionel Wiseman.
Did you, sir, have second thoughts about the engagement and decide to take the gentlemanly way out?

And who comes next but Mr. and Mrs. Jock Bludgett. He licks his moustache and she epitomizes the old saying, Beware the woman with the perpetual smile.
I haven’t forgotten that you, J.B., once engaged in an affair with the irresistible Gladys, providing you and your spouse with ample motives for murder. Yours is remorse, and Moll’s is good old-fashioned jealousy
.

Away with you both. Make room for the widowed Jacqueline Diamond.
Excuse the question, dear lady, but was your husband’s recent demise the embarrassing misadventure you described to me? Or did you punch out his lights in the heat of quarrel, and upon realizing he was dead, stage the Fully Female scenario with you tied naked to the bed and he a crumpled cape upon the floor? Yes, Jacqueline, I know you made much of withholding the lurid details from the police, but was I the ace up your sleeve, to be produced in the event your story did not go over as planned? And what if Miss Thorn proved to be an unexpected fly in the ointment? I know she also resided on Rosewood Terrace. And I remember on the fateful evening noticing a light present in an upstairs room of the house across the road from yours. What if that were Miss Thorn’s house and she just happened to be doing some bird-watching from her window at precisely the wrong moment and casually mentioned sometime later that she had seen you bump off Norman?

Fade out Jacqueline. My goodness, it’s Mr. Walter Fisher!
I suppose it is stretching things a bit to suggest that you were having a slow week and decided to drum up some funeral business. What’s that you say? I’m the one guilty of stalling for time because I am not ready to face my chief suspect?

Deep breath. Bring on Mr. Gladstone Spike.
Yes, sir, I know it goes against everything most British to suspect a man who wears grey woolies and bakes the perfect madeira cake of being a cold-blooded killer. But I don’t see how I can let you off the hook. Not after the salmon. My contention, sir, is that you first attempted to murder your wife because you wanted to be free to take up where you left off
years ago with Miss Thorn. Happily for everyone but Tobias, circumstances neutralized that endeavour, but tonight you succeeded in doing away with the femme fatale. Why the change of victim? Simple. You discovered that Miss Thorn was going to wed Lionel Wiseman. If you couldn’t have her, neither would he
.

Getting drowsy. A yawn split my face in two, and for a brief instant I thought Mr. Spike had reached out from behind the doorway of my mind to make sure I never opened my mouth again.

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Mrs. Haskell.”
Gladstone’s voice whispered its way down, down, into the very depths of sleep, where Miss Thorn sat on a clay pot by a waterfall, playing “Abide With Me” on the organ, while off to the side, robed in shadow, stood the Reverend Eudora Spike—reading from a black book that was either the Bible or the Fully Female manual.
“The first shall be last, Ellie, and the last first!”
How dear, how professional of her to point out that she should have topped my list of suspects. And how I wished for her—and all my Fellow Females—that love could be one long bubble bath.

Morning turned up like a bad penny.

“Ellie, tell me I am not abandoning you in your hour of need?” Ben bent over the bed, a quizzical smile on his lips and a glimmer in his eyes that made me think of sunlight taking a peek into a pirate’s treasure trove. “I would take the morning off but we are expecting a large luncheon crowd.”

“Excuses!” I coiled my arms around his neck and held on to him for as long as I dared. “Off with you. The children and I have a full day planned.”

At the doorway he looked back and I knew he
wanted to pocket the moment and take it with him. But then he said, “I wonder how Flo Melrose is doing?”

“She was at the party last night,” I replied, “and seemed fully back from the dead.”

“Good.” Pensive look. “See you tonight, sweetheart.” The door closed on a final glimpse of his heart-stopping profile, and I climbed out of bed all fired up to catch Miss Thorn’s killer, before celibacy did me in.

But half an hour into the routine of getting the twins up and fed, the flame petered out. Spread out in daylight, last night’s convictions seemed a sorry lot that didn’t amount to a handful of coffee beans. What horrible irony if Miss Thorn had legitimately died of a heart attack and Bunty and I had placed ourselves in the insidious position of hushing up a murder that wasn’t. As for that guff about Gladstone Spike, it was surely my imagination that was poisoned, not the fish.

“What do you say?” I appealed to Abbey and Tam who sat in their feeder chairs looking like the offspring of Apollo with their sunbeam hair and sunshine smiles. “Tell me the honest truth, my darlings. Do you think Mummy should phone Bunty Wiseman and try and talk sense into her? We could then go to Dr. Melrose and ask him to tear up the death certificate. With luck no one need ever be the wiser.”

Straining at their straps, the twins goo-gooed words of wisdom.

“You think I’m copping out because I don’t have a clue how to trap the murderer?”

No response to that one. And dogged by indecision, I plodded through the morning. By noon I was still as much at sixes and sevens as the kitchen, which was once more stacked to the ceiling with washing that wasn’t getting done because the washing machine had grown hardened to the thumps and kicks that were supposed to make it go.

“Masochist!” I taunted to no avail, finally throwing up my soapy hands and heading into the hall to telephone Mr. Bludgett.

“Good morning, this is Mrs. Haskell of—”

“Ellie,” the voice shrilled in my ear. “What a thrill to hear from you on this glorious April day.”

“Excuse me?”

Squeals of laughter. “Now don’t go pulling my leg and pretending you don’t know who this is. We Fellow Females stick like glue, right?”

“Moll?”

“My Jock’s one-and-only.” Some of the fizz went out of her voice, but not all of it. “Have you spoken to Bunty?”

“Not this morning.”

“Then you don’t know it’s flags at half-mast?”

“What?” Sometimes I think I have a natural aptitude for playing stupid.

“Gladys Thorn is
dead
!”

“That …”—I paused to take a deep breath—“I did know, but I’m afraid I can’t talk about it right now. My babies are alone in the playpen, so if you would ask your husband to come back and look at the washing machine …”

“Will do!” Not a hint that she felt rebuffed. Could any woman be that unfailingly cheerful and never come apart at the seams or keep from driving other people bonkers? “Just one thing more, Ellie?”

“Yes?”

“Be happy for Gladys. Think about it, what could be lovelier than to die when you’re bubbling over with happiness?”

“Moll,” I said, struggling to keep all traces of acid out of my voice, “you do deserve a medal for looking on the bright side.”

“Thanks!” Her merry laughter drilled a hole in my
head. “It doesn’t hurt, does it, that the lady was a thorn in my flesh. And I don’t suppose Bunty will be putting on black.”

“I suppose not.”

“She said Lionel was devastated. Spent half the night crying in her arms, which isn’t all bad.”

“No.”

“Oh, one last thing, Ellie! There’s a little prayer service scheduled for six tonight at Fisher’s Funerals.”

“Lovely,” I said before I could help myself. It was as though Gladstone Spike were hiding inside my head.

Something was missing at Merlin’s Court and it took me until midafternoon to figure out what. Mrs. Malloy. The twins kept cocking their heads as if listening for her step in the hall. And even Tobias had a droop to his tail that suggested he missed the saucer of milk she would slip down for him when my back was turned. Last night, when I dropped her off at home, she hadn’t said anything about coming in today, so to worry about her absence was really quite presumptuous. I could almost hear her voice. “Is this the thanks I get, Mrs. H, for giving you extra of my valuable time? Can’t call me bloody soul me own!”

“Quite right, Mrs. Malloy,” I said, and kept saying, all the way down the hall to dial her number. But I needn’t have worried about getting one of her earfuls. Is there any lonelier sound on earth than the ringing of an unanswered telephone? And is there ever a less welcome sight than someone walking into your house unannounced and uninvited, when your mind is already a cellar peopled with all sorts of bludgeoners and riffraff? Pardon me while I say the F word.

“Freddy!” The receiver leaped from my hand. “You
really must pop in and scare the wits out of me more often.”

“Save your raptures, cousin! And spare my blushes!” Before I could blanch twice, he dropped down on one knee like some Shakespearean trouper in doublet and hose and smote his breast once, twice, thrice, before tottering toward me at horrible speed, still on his knees, hands outstretched. “Ellie, lend me your ears!”

Ridiculous, but it was the scruffy beard that got to me. “Freddy, what would I do without you? I’ll listen to your lines … and afterwards, even if it puts me in your debt forever, will you watch the twins for me for a little while?”

Mrs. Malloy didn’t answer my knock. The house on Herring Street looked back at me as snooty as you please from its tight-lipped letter box to its wary lace curtain eyes.
Who do you think you are, Mrs. High and Mighty Haskell, to come poking your nose round here?

“I’m a friend, that’s who!” My whisper went spiralling up into the sky like smoke from some of the chimney pots round about. There was no smoke coming from Mrs. Malloy’s chimney and suddenly I got the absurd idea that this was because the house had stopped breathing. And what I had taken for awareness of my presence was in fact the fixed stare of rigor mortis. Returning to the car, I realized I had time to kill—lovely expression—before turning up at Fisher Funerals for Miss Thorn’s prayer service. And like pulling a rabbit from a hat, I came up with the bright idea of going to visit Flo Melrose. I’m not sure what I hoped to glean from her, but I felt there might possibly be something.

I had been to her house once a couple of years before, for a workshop connected with the St. Anselm’s
bazaar, and I found my way back to it now with the almost spooky ease I had encountered when driving to Jacqueline Diamond’s home on the night of Norman’s death. Goodness, was that only a couple of days ago? Traumatic events certainly stretch time out of all proportion. Ah, here was the familiar drive leading to the building that looked more like a school or a fire station than a house. No lace curtains here. No curtains at all from what I could see.

The front garden was a concrete parking lot dotted with fir trees like cones to be maneuvered in a driving test, and I crossed this expanse with quaking footsteps, convinced I would somehow fail to pass muster before reaching the front door. Guilty conscience, Ellie! If Dr. Melrose is struck off for falsification of medical documents you will never forgive yourself. And that’s so silly. You’re a victim of circumstance. An innocent bystander caught up in events bigger than yourself. A pawn in the cosmic scheme of things.

What a picture! There I stood on the Melroses’ doorstep, flushed with an overwhelming sense of unimportance. I didn’t so much as lift a finger to ping the doorbell before it was opened by Flo, looking like Friar Tuck in a brown robe, which, from the way it moulded her free-flow form, hid not so much as a hair shirt.

“Ellie Haskell!” Her stare was as blank as the unadorned walls of the hall, even as her outstretched hands, made monstrous by reddish-brown stains, beckoned me over the threshold. “What brings you here?”

“I …” I dug my hands in the pocket of my beige linen coat and took them out again. “I … was in the neighbourhood and wondered if you might need a ride to Miss Thorn’s prayer service.”

“That was dear of you.” Flo’s smile seemed to slide over her shoulder. I realized that even though she was looking directly at me, her attention was fixed somewhere
behind her. Fair enough! I had trouble dragging my eyes away from those hands and focusing them on … the trail of spatter spots … of that same grizzly brown … leading from where Flo stood, across the pale green linoleum to one of the rooms off the hall. “Yes, very kind indeed, Ellie, but I am not going to the prayer service.”

“Oh!”

“But one of these days”—the Friar Tuck hair bobbed against her cheeks—“you and I must meet for coffee or lunch.” No doubt about it, her voice was shooing me out the door, which she had left strategically open. The woman couldn’t get rid of me fast enough, which meant she was hiding something. Which meant I had to play dense—a role, Freddy would say, which I perform to perfection.