Mum's the Word (13 page)

Hitching up my smile, I smoothed my sailor collar and declined the dish of cashews Solange offered. Not another gained ounce until I could get into maternity clothes.

“Anyone for bridge?” Ernestine Hoffman clashed horribly with the ruby lamp standing next to her. But I liked her bellbottoms and the way her pudding basin hair gave fashion the go by. Here was a woman who wouldn't consider it a
social requirement to flirt with the handsomest man in the room.

“Zat is fine wizz me, but what of you,
ma petite
?” Solange tapped me on the cheek with a cerise nail.

“I only play a little, by ear.”

“And how thinks you,
monsieur
, who sit so quiet under the tall lamp with shade like a
grandmère's chapeau
?” She crossed toward Henderson Brown. But not as a predator. Her black and white chic was not dependent on wearing her sensuality as a silk scarf around the neck.

Not that Mr. Brown would have noticed had she thrown herself across his lap and begun undoing his waistcoat buttons. Was it my imagination or had he grown greyer since I first met him?

“Forgive me.” He gripped his knees gloomily. “I don't play any card games.” His eyes strayed to a wall clock, with wooden leaves garlanding the birdhouse face; he flinched as if pecked when out popped a cuckoo, who proceeded to sound off ten times. I found myself remembering Hyacinth's birdcage earrings, swaying against her neck as she recounted the dire sayings of Chantal:
writing not on the walls … in the book
.

Ernestine had picked up the copy of
Monster Mommy
and was leafing through it, her expression grimly rapt.

Mr. Brown kneaded his brow. “What is going on at that meeting?”

The urge to put him in the corner was strong. His worries were popcorn compared to some. The comtesse patted his arm. “Relax, my turtle! The
bonne femme
talks about zee placing of the cherry on the
gâteau
. She does not place one in a man's navel when dancing zee seven veils.”

He pried himself out of his chair. “My Lois was always a good woman, a regular churchgoer. She never went to Tupperware parties. Why has this madness seized her? I haven't looked at another woman since the day I walked into Smart Mart to buy an engagement ring for another girl. Lois was the salesgirl. She smiled and that was it. We married six years later.”

“You old romantic you!” Ernestine continued to leaf through
Monster Mommy
.

“Gave her everything including seven kids.”

“Très bon!”
Solange moved to the piano, then back.

Standing under the portrait of the Cat Cadaver, Mr. Brown appeared also to suffer from rigor mortis. “Always tried to appreciate her. When she'd clean out the linen closet, I'd go take a look at it. Always told her she was the best cook in town. Why wasn't that enough? Why must she go join some damn, pardon my French”—there was a pardoning smile from Solange—“secret society?” He thumped a fist into the palm of his hand. “That Valicia X female—I wouldn't trust her any further than I could kick an elephant.”

On second thought, I liked this man. “Women have needs,” I said sadly. “That doesn't mean we get the urge once a week to run naked through a department store chewing on a piece of red meat, but we can't always find ourselves in the linen closet.”

But my words of solace were wasted on the stuffy air.

“I don't know how Lois can be taken in by all this.” Throwing out an arm he caused a candlestick to do a jig on the mantel shelf.

Ernestine looked up, marking her place in the book with her finger. “My Bingo said when we came in, ‘Mom, the room looks like it's waiting to murder someone.' ”

“
Mais oui
, was that not so for zee evil butler in
Melancholy Mansion
? Was he not found stabbed through the heart on that very window
embrasure
?” Black eyes flashing, the comtesse pointed toward the red velvet curtains.

A gurgle of alarm from Ernestine. Her plump cheeks ballooned out in a sudden unbecoming likeness to son Bingo. But let it not be said our conversation was the cause. “Merciful God, this dreadful book!” She suffered through several more pages of
Monster Mommy
read at a flip. “As a child Mary Faith suffered the ‘torment of the damned'—her very own words—being raised by that depraved woman. She tells here how for years she thought Begita the maid was her mother. She had to address Theola Faith as Miss Faith until her eleventh birthday, when, for her present, she was allowed to call her Theola.”

“Did they spend much of their lives here?” Interested, Solange perched on the sofa arm, black skirt brushing her ankles.

Rustle of pages. Ernestine crossed her pumpkin legs and
took a breath which popped a button off her jacket. “ ‘My mother attested that Mendenhall was a gift to her from Richard Greenburgh, who had purchased it for the filming of
Melancholy Mansion
. On her rare excursions to the house she always refused to let me accompany her. Her reason? She was afraid I would get sick from having a good time! Her spaniel, Vanilla, got to go in my place, dressed up in my clothes. My tears and pleas moved her not at all. I still see her throwing back her silver-blonde head and laughing that manic laugh.' ”

“Mon Dieu!”
Solange clenched her hands against her forehead. “A devil woman! If theese Theola Faith were in the house now, I would murder her with these naked hands.”

Henderson Brown shot up from five foot eleven to six foot six. “Lois does not belong in this evil place. I'm going to phone the kids and get their input.”

“Not from here you're not.” Ernestine stopped his rush to the door. “When I wanted to call Frank, I was told by that Jeffries person there isn't a phone.”

“Damn!” Without a word of apology Mr. Brown stormed from the room. You may be too late, John Wayne, I thought. Undoubtedly you tried your best to bring your wife up to be a credit to you. But somewhere down the years you accidentally left the front door open. Was I guilty of shackling Ben's ankle? Was our marriage destined to become a three-legged shuffle? Would the baby's arrival improve, or make worse, the situation? These and other earth-shaking questions must wait. As Aunt Lulu is wont to say, We do not live in a vacuum cleaner.

“Poor leetle Monsieur Brown!” Solange consoled herself with a cashew.

“Poor little Mary!” Hair sticking out in tufts, two more buttons gone from her pumpkin jacket, Ernestine was halfway through
Monster Mommy
. “My Frank would kill me if I let Bingo get his hands on this! So what, if I don't let him away from the stove until he's done his practice! So what, if I tell him baseball's for kids who don't know their
pâté de foies de volaille
from their
chou farci
! Being a genius is an opportunity not given to most. Did Mozart's mother let Wolfgang goof off?”

A sigh wrenched from the maternal bosom. “My Bingo,
he's never gone to school unless I've driven him. This poor tyke”—sound of pages frantically turned—“she's sent God knows how many miles to stay with some nutso grand dame in the backwoods of nowhere. Listen: ‘At the tender age of nine or ten I was sent to stay with Guinevere DeVour at Tottery Towers. Her connection to my mother remains a mystery to this day. All I knew then was that Theola Faith wanted me out of the apartment because she had an orgy planned for over fifty people and was beside herself deciding what not to wear.' ”

“
Très
witty!” Solange moved toward the velvet curtains. “Permit that I open a window. I am all over stuffy.” Her rouge did stand out on her cheeks like pox marks and I too was wilting. Kicking off my shoes, I eased my swollen feet onto the brocade-covered sofa.

“Read on, Ernestine.”

“ ‘Begita, the maid, wept and pled for me. She swore to keep me out of the way in a cupboard, but Theola would have none of it. She was terrified I would catch the eye of some Hollywood hotshot. She was phobic on the possibility that I might be offered the part of Little Lucy Lamplight in her current film,
While the Mouse is Away
. I was shoved onto a bus late at night, Guinevere DeVour's address clenched in my timid hand, and told not to return under two weeks—unless I wished my parakeet to sleep on a bed of wild rice. Theola threatened me with other terrors, if I talked to anyone on the bus, even to ask directions.

“ ‘Twenty-four hours later I was a frightened child on the steps of Tottery Towers. No answer to my frantic knocking! Was I totally abandoned? In desperation I tried the door, discovered it unlocked and found myself in a nightmarish hall. What I took for unwashed curtains were giant cobwebs. Animal heads grinned a welcome from the walls. I was fighting down panic when Guinevere DeVour materialized on the stairs, wearing a shroud nightgown and emitting a piercing scream.' ”

“Mon Dieu!”
Solange sank down on the window seat. “You make me hear that pig squeal.”

Ernestine let
Monster Mommy
fall in her lap. “Frank always does say I read well.”

“I think that was a real scream,” I interrupted. “Coming from upstairs.”

“Zee tragic Monsieur Brown. We are criminals to let him go off alone, up to his nose with worry. He may have leapfrogged out zee window. No,
ma chérie
,” Solange pressed me back down. “You stay. Madame Hoffman and I go see.”

And poof! There I was alone in that devilish red room. Surely nothing too dreadful had happened or there would have been a scurry of congregating feet out in the hall. Even were the Mangé candidates and their luscious leader out of earshot, Pepys and Jeffries would not fail to pounce on any unorthodoxy. Perhaps Mr. Brown had stepped on a mouse.

Crossing to the drinks table, I poured myself a gargle of red wine, brought it to my lips, then came to my senses. I had not touched a drop of anything stronger than tea since the baby. And I would not let this house turn me into a health hazard.

A bell rope hung on the wall to my left; I gave it an authoritative yank. Minutes passed. The cuckoo shot out of the clock and counted to eleven; the tiny door clapped shut. I myself was ready for darkness and shut-eye.

“You rang.” Jeffries bundled into the room, frilly cap down on her eyebrows, nose down on her chin. Best not to mention the scream in case she took it as criticism of her housekeeping.

“Hello!” I gushed.

“What you want?”

“Only a glass of water, but if it's any trouble …”

“Might be and might not. My psychiatrist tells me not to make hasty decisions. Which tells you why Pepys is still alive. That man's three-quarters crazy and one-fourth mad. He hates that woman.”

A man who did not fall under the spell of Valicia X was a man after my own heart.

“Last night he hid an escargot in her bed.”

“Good for him!” Warming as we were toward civility, I decided to stick out my nose. “Jeffries, does Theola Faith come often to Mendenhall?”

Her face squeezed shut. I had crossed the line drawn by her psychiatrist. “I'll go think about that glass of water.”

Alone again, I suffocated in the room's silence. The mahogany, the red flock wallpaper and the bobbled velour were oppressive. I don't like rooms that play games and this
one was still pretending to be a movie set. Sinking down on the only comfortable looking chair, I immediately felt trapped in a quicksand of cushions. Worse, my back was to the door.

Time fell away like a stripper's clothes. I was Child Ellie again on that first fateful visit to Merlin's Court. Aunt Sybil had left me alone with instructions to sit and not move a muscle, an easy enough task, until I heard the drawing room door pounce open behind me. My stout legs had begun thrashing in a vain attempt at reaching the floor, as the rest of me sank deeper, deeper into the bottomless pit where the springs should have been.

Back in the here-and-now I reclaimed my courage with the silent admonition that I was frightening the baby.

“Ahoy there!” Rasping whisper.

The door hadn't opened. My ears being all atwang, I would have heard.

“Anyone there, m'hearties?”

I stopped breathing. The voice came from the window—which the comtesse had left in open invitation to the arm and knee now putting in an appearance.

“First bloomin' bit of luck all day.”

Relief poured over me. Whoever this was, it wasn't the enemy. That voice was British.

By the time I had fought my way to my feet, a stout, white-haired woman with a St. Bernard dog face, wearing a flower seller hat and—of all improbabilities—my dressing gown, was sitting on the window seat.

“Foiled!” Face sagging, she lumbered over to the sofa. “Knew I was crackers to hope, but that's the way Marjorie Rumpson was reared. Neither a bawler nor a loser be. Entering the house unnoticed was asking for miracles. Ah, woe! The world won't be the poorer if I don't get to be a Mangé.”

“You're a candidate?” Coming up close to her I caught the unmistakable whiff of
eau de river
.

The black hat nodded; a tear coursed down Marjorie Rumpson's cheek.

“So is my husband. Did you make a mistake about the time?”

“Never! The day, the hour are tattooed on my heart. But
this morning my dear old mum took one of her queer turns and I couldn't bring myself to leave her until the doctor came and said it was just a matter of prune juice. The old sly puss had been pouring it into the plant pot beside her bed.”

“Your mother must be getting up there.”

“Ninety-seven.”

“Remarkable. No wonder you seem so fit.”

“Couldn't have reached here otherwise, my love. Borrowed a friend's plane to fly down from Canada (lived there, have Mum and me for the last thirty years), landed at Chicago, hitchhiked from there—ever such a nice motorcycle chappie. Then when I got to Mud Creek—”