The Thin Woman (29 page)

Ben yawned wide enough to swallow half the room. “Because, as aforesaid, the ubiquitous party under discussion knows all there is to know about our little peccadilloes. He could feel perfectly secure in the knowledge that Jonas, with his snoopy employers off the premises, would be holed up in his loft with a book and that even the Judgement Day roll call would not bring him outside.”

Fatigue was making me edgy. “Ben, please stop prancing about the kitchen in circles, my head feels like a boxing bag. Vanessa will always retain her place in my affections as prime suspect. I know you don’t think that a girl so lovely can be all bad, but she would slice up her own mother and serve her between slices of bread if she was short of roast beef for a sandwich.”

“A personal antipathy”—Ben tumbled into his chair and closed his eyes—“is not constructive, neither is it evidence. They all have the same motive. Now I am not swayed by prejudice, I like Freddy but I still have to point the finger at him as my first choice. If I’m wrong I will be delighted, but he is the only one who has made contact in the last months, and what’s more—” he hesitated and looked down at the table—“we only have Freddy’s word that he did not see Aunt Sybil that morning before he left. The person who invited us for lunch knew not only that Aunt Sybil was gone, but that she was staying with a friend.”

“Not such a brilliant guess, where else would she be? If you had ever been apprenticed to Perry Mason you would know that the person most recently on the scene of the crime
is always innocent. Whatever else he is, Freddy is not a fool. If he were the one, he would lie low.”

“Oh, come off it.” Ben yawned again. “We are talking about someone desperate, and we had better be talking about someone who makes a few mistakes or you and I are in big trouble.”

“Okay.” I nodded wearily. “Let’s not you and I bicker over whom we most want it to be. We should at least consider all the possibilities. I have a bit of trouble picturing Aunt Astrid or Lulu chasing Tobias all around the house and up and down the garden path, but each in her own way is a very ruthless woman.”

“I’d say they are rather alike,” said Ben, “in one very important area—their obsessive devotion to their children, and then last but not least we have Uncle Maurice.”

“Who is I think basically a very acquisitive man.” I yawned.

Daylight was beginning to outline the trees beyond the window. Somehow Jonas managed to look more chipper than the rest of us. He reached over and took Tobias from me. “Here’s the fellow who could tell a rare tale if he had the words. Have you thought, Miss Ellie, that the attacker may still ha’ been in’t grounds when you and Mr. Ben went looking for the old tiger? The poor chap could’na ha’ been in that water above ten minutes, I reckon, or he’d ha’ been a gonner, knotted up in that there sack.”

Dorcas tried to flatten her hair behind her ears and stifled a yawn. “Horrid to think he or she was out there lurking in the dark. You couldn’t have seen an elephant if you’d met it in that rain, Ellie. Blighter will have got a thorough drenching, hope he catches pneumonia.”

“What we should do”—Ben lifted his head briefly—“is to stage another family reunion—invite everyone back here, and note which one has suddenly developed a severe cold.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” I said. “Reassemble the suspects and see what information we can pry loose; try and turn
one against the other. How about it?” But Ben was snoring. Another illusion shattered.

Jonas gamely offered to assist the master of the house up to bed. Dorcas and I shuffled the dishes into the sink. Memories of Aunt Sybil’s grimy reign forbade me leaving them overnight.

“I’ve been thinking about that phone call.” I rinsed off a cup and handed it to Dorcas. “He or she must have used that public call box halfway down the hill on the coast road.”

“Why?”

“Elementary. If Jonas is right, and I suspect he is, that the attempt on Tobias’s life was made only minutes before we found him, the assailant could not have gone far. Even if the getaway car was parked, and hidden reasonably close by, getting to it in this driving rain would have eaten up at least five minutes—and the phone was ringing when we came into the house.”

Dorcas set the cup down carefully on the counter. “Have you thought,” she said, “that the unknown might have used the one in Aunt Sybil’s cottage? No secret, that key hidden on the ledge.”

“You may be right,” I said. “When I checked at the cottage tonight I had the sneaking feeling that someone was there, pressed up against a wall, watching through a chink in the curtains. Or that’s what I now think that I thought. Aunt Sybil has that old lady habit so I had the feeling that she might be back, until she did not answer my knock.”

“Lucky for the unknown, Aunt Sybil being gone. Almost makes one wonder.… As you say, notorious habit of women her age, peeking out from behind their lace curtains … those middle of the night promenades of hers, wonder if the enemy has noticed, and found them a nuisance. Now Jonas I can understand being disregarded as a threat by any member of your family. No offence, but, if anything, like Sybil they would consider gardeners a breed below their notice. Housekeepers too, I would have thought, but then I am living in the house.”

“Returning to Aunt Sybil.” I wiped a smudge off the counter. “You don’t think that someone might have threatened her and that is why she left?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me. Perhaps not an actual threat, merely a suggestion that her health would benefit from a few weeks away. She may have refused till that row with Jonas made the idea more tempting.”

“We’re getting rather carried away by our imaginations, aren’t we?” I folded my damp cloth and kicked off my shoes. I was beginning to feel as though I had been up since the dawn of time.

Dorcas was still full of beans. “If someone did persuade Sybil to go away, they could have asked her to keep their involvement a secret, you know.”

“And Aunt Sybil would enjoy knowing we were worrying about her.”

“Pity in a way, her being offstage. Because otherwise would have said she was most likely candidate for a junior partnership in the conspiracy. Don’t see her in the starring role—motive not strong enough, unfortunately. Didn’t come out of that will smelling like a rose, but didn’t do too badly.”

I had wondered about Aunt Sybil’s possible involvement before. As the person most deserving of consideration, I felt she had been the one most shabbily treated in the will. Uncle Merlin should not have made those cracks about her loyalty and her cooking. She had reason to dislike me. My opinion of her housekeeping had been implicit in my prompt assault upon the cobwebs and grimy accumulation of years of neglect. Under the circumstances she might well feel an allegiance with the cast-offs. And Aunt Sybil did not like cats.

“But to understand Aunt Sybil you have to understand how she felt about Uncle Merlin. To the outside world he may have been a scurrilous old curmudgeon, but Aunt Sybil’s entire mission in life was to trot after him with his slippers in her mouth. Merlin may have had a difficult childhood which warped his outlook on life, but even that doesn’t excuse his condemning Aunt Sybil to a life of emotional serfdom.”

“The woman could have upped and left.” Dorcas did not sound too sympathetic. “Enjoy being martyrs some people—no guts.”

“Aunt Sybil certainly had none where Uncle Merlin was concerned, but in other areas she is tough. Look how she has developed new interests, and is plunging forward with her life. People are so complex. Aunt Sybil’s weakness where Uncle Merlin was concerned would be her strength against anyone who might wish to thwart his final decree. If the old man had deemed it fitting that she be entombed alive alongside him she would have telephoned the undertaker, ordered her coffin, climbed in, and pulled the lid down. They weren’t just cousins, circumstances had made them closer than the usual brother and sister. No—Sybil would not support these attacks.”

“Then it has to be Jonas,” Dorcas chortled. “Looks the part, foul temper, fanatical devotion to his late master, what more could you want?”

I gave her a laughing nudge towards the door. “Lack of sleep is getting to you. Jonas is the one who saved Tobias. I would no more suspect him than you, old stick.”

Dorcas looked thoughtful. “Don’t be too trusting, Ellie. Suggest you keep a sharp look over your shoulder from now on. Tobias has more lives to risk than you do.” Sleepily I agreed to be careful. Not until later did I realize that in peering behind, one often steps right into the snare, laid ready and waiting.

Rain was still falling when we rose late the following morning, and the temptation to return to bed with a good book and a cup of hot chocolate was strong, but a walk to the vicarage would blow the cobwebs out of my head. Dorcas was unusually quiet during breakfast, finally admitting to the return of her headache, so I saw no point in asking her to take a walk with me. Instead she volunteered to take Tobias up to her room and watch him until my return. After fetching my raincoat and scarf, I decided it would be only polite to let Ben know my whereabouts for the next hour or so. I found him in the loggia wrestling with a ball of string and a brown paper package. Removing a pair of scissors clamped between
his teeth, he informed me that I was in time to say goodbye. The cad! He was bunking off, leaving me to the mercy of cutthroats and kidnappers!

“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “I am not leaving. The book is. This household work of art goes into the pillar-box today. I’m not taking any more chances with its safety.”

“Congratulations! You finished it.” I almost hugged him, but he backed away and perhaps it was just as well, as he had those scissors back between his teeth.

“Will you restrain yourself,” he mumbled through his metal fangs, “or at least be of some use.” Thrusting my finger down on the string to hold it in place, he proceeded to tie a knot which threatened to cut off my circulation.

“Ouch! Ben, don’t be such a grump, it gets monotonous. You must be excited about this.”

He spat out the scissors and continued working on the string. “In a way, but in another I feel I have sold out—same as you.”

“Me?”

“Sure. You have conformed to other people’s ideas of how you should look, all for monetary gain which is not likely to be forthcoming.”

And this was the man who had fed me all those salads until I began to see green? Crumbling a piece of brown paper into a ball I tossed it across the room. “Ben,” I said, “you have skirted around the issue of my new image several times, why don’t you come straight out and tell me what really bothers you about the way I now look.”

“Nothing.” Ben gave the string another yank. “You look great. But you don’t need my round of applause. You’ve done as superb a job of making yourself over as you have with the house. In both instances, however, you had the raw material with which to work. All Merlin’s neglect and Aunt Sybil’s rotten housekeeping couldn’t kill the charm of this house. That’s what I remember when I think of that night we met, the house hidden under a mantle of dirt and decay and you hidden under that appalling purple shroud, and me being intrigued by you both.” He was concentrating very hard on the string.

I had to put both hands on the table to steady myself. “You were—intrigued by me?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “I thought you were the funniest, gutsiest person I had ever met.”

“Thanks.” Completely deflated, I scrunched up another piece of paper. Why couldn’t he have said bewitching, breathtaking, wildly sensual? “Fat people often shine in the areas you mention,” I agreed. “They’re part of the package like being light on one’s feet and having beautiful skin.”

“You see why I liked you better the old way, when you weren’t quite so bitter?”

“Or when my emotions were better hidden. What I do see is that you resent my being thin because you can no longer consider me inferior.”

Ben deliberately strangled an innocent piece of string, then glared up at me. “You’re the one who doesn’t put a proper value on yourself. When I tell you you have a fine mind you are insulted—you only want to be told you have a body to rival a film star’s!”

“Only because this is all so new to me,” I threw back at him. “I feel like a child who had just received a fabulous toy. I want everyone to admire it.”

“Careful! You may find everyone wants to play with it!”

“You’re revolting. It is true that but for Uncle Merlin’s will I might never have lost the weight, but I don’t think that means I have sold out. If it does, I don’t mind. I am much happier with myself than before so why can’t you and I say ‘happy endings.’ ”

“Or beginnings.” Ben pushed down a curly strand of hair which had got poked up in the air. “In our case they’re one and the same, aren’t they?”

“Meaning?” I asked on bated breath.

“Meaning that in a very short time you and I will pick up our separate lives where we left them before good old Eligibility took over.”

“I suppose so.” I bent a stray paper clip into a perverted shape. “What are your plans, another novel?”

“I have been toying with the idea of opening my own restaurant, using an Edwardian theme and …”

“Ben, what a tremendous idea. And what a way to promote your cookery book! Perhaps you could find an old inn, think of the fun in renovating such a place—we could use some of the furniture from the attic and we could call it Abigail’s.”

“We?” Ben’s voice came out hoarse and I wondered if he had suddenly developed a cold; his eyes looked … strained. Poor man, just look what he had done to that string—he had practically crocheted it. He glanced away from me and all sympathy vanished as he said, “I imagined you were bent on returning to London and taking the swinging set by storm.”

“I don’t think so,” I said as evenly as I could manage. “This place has attractions of its own for me, quite unconnected with the house.”

Ben tossed his parcel down on the table, scowling at it in disgust. A tear had appeared on one corner and he began picking at it irritably. “If that is the case I suggest you start practising your singing, immediately. I am sure your beloved vicar will not mind your being off key and a verse behind everyone else. Some people might think your other talents wasted, but I know you will be a great credit to the Ladies’ Circle.”