The Thin Woman (37 page)

As he sat up in bed in the early hours of the morning, sipping his favourite Ovaltine, he told me he had decided to continue on as Jonas Phipps. “He was a great friend,” he said, “and in bequeathing me his name he gave me a new beginning, a new life. God bless you, Jonas.” He lifted his mug and looked upwards. “I’ll try and do you proud.”

“Well, it looks like you may have plenty of opportunity.” I bent forward and kissed his still pale cheek. “Dr. Melrose spoke to us after examining you and he says your constitution is remarkable. You should live to be a hundred.”

“I wouldn’t mind having a crack at it, if you and Ben and Dorcas would agree to stay on here.” He looked at me
sheepishly over the rim of his cup. “Sybil was right. I have been a blind wilful old fool, playing games with life and death. I should have known. She was peculiar even as a child. Dorcas tried to warn me last night. Seems she had begun to remember things my mother had told her about Sybil.”

“The future is what counts. One of the first changes we are going to see around here will be officially naming this house Merlin’s Court. I think your mother would like that.” The old man smiled. “You brought her home, Ellie. Everywhere I look there are reminders of her, and now Dorcas can talk to me about her and fill in all those lost years. When she left, the only things I had of hers were the portrait and the journals. I hid them so my father would not destroy them along with everything else. He had already ripped out the soufflé recipe because he knew my mother regarded it as her highest achievement as a cook, but I rescued those pages from the fireplace, and a few months ago—well, you know the rest.”

“Admit it,” I said, “you’ve had a lot of fun. Dorcas and I thought Aunt Sybil had planted the clues, but you did that yourself, didn’t you? Well, the fun and games are over. I’ll be here to watch over you and keep you on the primrose path, with occasional time off for good behaviour.”

“Sounds like I’m in for a rough time,” he grumped, almost back to his old self, “but I’ve done my share of watching, too. That day you went into the churchyard I was right behind you. I was having some doubts about that will. I tried to look after you, but it’s true there is no fool like an old fool. Going down to Sybil’s cottage and tackling her about Dorcas’s disappearance nearly cost all of us our lives besides what being bumped over to the vault in a wheel barrow will have done to my lumbago.”

I bent and kissed his cheek, which was beginning to show a little more colour. “For all your wicked ways, I do love you. Goodnight, Jonas.”

Neither Freddy nor Jill was in the kitchen when I went down stairs. They had gone for an early morning jog, but I had
already thanked them for our rescue. As they had explained it to me, they had both felt restless and decided to take a browse outside. They had met in the garden and Freddy had told Jill that he was worried about the whole situation, especially about Sybil. When they reached the churchyard, they heard the hubbub and took action. What surprised me was that lethargic Freddy had cared enough to get involved—another of those groundless assumptions based on the way people look. I was as guilty as all the rest and I should have known better. Freddy had told me that he had come down for the luncheon with Aunt Sybil and the others, that day just before my birthday, but before it was time to go to the Hounds and Hare he had walked through the marketplace, seen me happily chatting with Dorcas, and decided he didn’t want to spend an hour listening to people gripe about my manipulative powers. I remembered now I had Dumped into a tall person with a pony tail, and the vague uneasy feeling I had experienced. Somehow I had always hoped Freddy was not the one, and now it was time for his reward. Ben and I would pay off his father’s debts, and if Freddy should ever get married, we’d see he was all right. As I went through the kitchen door I wondered if Jill could get him to cut his hair.

Dorcas was administering a potent brew of hot whisky and spices to my favourite casualty. Ben was looking very rakish in the bandage supplied by Dr. Melrose and assured me he was well on the road to recovery. Sitting chummily at the table it was hard to believe that the night’s terrifying events had ever happened. It was time for Dorcas to tell her story. When she had read the advertisement for housekeeper she could not resist returning to her grandmothers old home, but fearing that due to the old scandal she might not have been welcome, she had kept her identity a secret.

“Wasn’t easy though. Hated deceiving you and Ben, but couldn’t switch mid-stream once I knew the treasure was connected with Grandma. You know my convictions about always playing the game fair and square. Telling you who I was would have seemed like cheating. Once you knew Gram
hadn’t died here you’d soon have put two and two together. Can’t tell you the moral battle I fought, wanting to speak out but knowing you’d want to play by the rules. Felt horribly uncomfortable when the portrait was unwrapped. Thought you might recognize the likeness, said it reminded you of someone, didn’t you, Ellie? And me sitting not two feet away. The living image of Abigail, I am, so Gramps used to say. Then Ben told me I was to be treated like one of the family—felt such a fraud.”

“But you saved us.” I reached across and held her hand. “Dorcas, don’t leave us. We need you, don’t we, Ben?”

“We certainly do,” he said. “With Ellie and me floating on clouds we need someone with her feet on the ground to look after us.”

“I suppose,” Dorcas replied, eyes blurring, “that the village school could do with a games mistress, and if the cottage is vacant, and if Uncle Merlin agrees …”

“He wants you here. He can’t wait to talk with you about his mother. Dorcas, what did happen to Abigail?”

“She and my grandfather, Miles, had a good life. They never were having an affair under her husband’s nose. He admired her, and one day when Arthur ill-treated her, Miles put his arm round her and got caught in the act. For her birthday he had given her the locket. Silly thing to have done, I suppose, but as Gramps told me, he looked upon her as the finest lady that ever lived. Gram didn’t want to hurt his feelings by returning it, but knew what Arthur would think if he found out, so she buried it in the herb garden.”

“So the ‘M’ was for Miles, not Merlin,” I said. “Another clue we walked right past. Dorcas, your grandparents were happy, weren’t they?”

“Gram said she never got over losing her son, but in every other way her life was good. Gramps, I suppose, deep down already loved her and she grew to care for him very deeply. Remembering her and Gramps walking arm in arm in their garden on a summer evening …” Dorcas pulled out one of her enormous handkerchiefs and blew loudly.

“Uncle Merlin will want you to have the locket,” I said.

“Would like that, but mustn’t get mushy. They had my mother and started a business, very prosperous, too. Mrs. Biddle’s Best Jams, everyone knows the slogan, ‘I’d Walk Miles for a Pot of Mrs. Biddle’s Jam.’ ”

“Do we have some?” I asked eagerly. “Strawberry is my favourite on a crusty slice of bread with lashings of butter.…”

“Nothing doing,” frowned the man from Eligibility Escorts. “You have better things to do with your time than stuff your face—helping Dorcas refurnish the cottage, writing to my parents and your father, sewing your wedding dress.”

“Don’t be silly, darling, I can’t possibly finish a dress by the end of the week, even if I could learn to thread a needle. Dorcas and I will go shopping, and what will you be doing, my hero?”

“Checking into starting that restaurant I spoke with you about. I hear the Hounds and Hare is up for sale. Then I may tackle another book. What do you think about a gothic horror with an overweight heroine, a devilishly handsome hero, and …?”

“You stick to your cooking,” I said, leaning forward and kissing him to soften the chauvinist sting. “I’ll write the story of Merlin’s Court.”

For my parents Charlotte and Ashley Reddish
who gave me a childhood filled with love and books.

OTHER BANTAM BOOKS BY
DOROTHY CANNELL

God Save the Queen!
The Widows Club
Mum’s the Word
Femmes Fatal
How to Murder Your Mother-in-Law
How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dorothy Cannell is the author of seven mysteries, including
The Thin Woman, The Widows Club
, which was nominated for an Agatha Award as Best Novel of the Year,
Mum’s
the Word, Femmes Fatal, How to Murder Your Mother-in-Law, God Save the Queen!
, and
How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams
. She is also the author of
Down the Garden Path
. She was born in Nottingham, England, and currently resides in Peoria, Illinois.

Here is a special advance preview
from Dorothy Cannell’s latest
Ellie Haskell mystery:

HOW TO
MURDER THE MAN
OF YOUR DREAMS

Look for it in your local bookstore!

I plucked a book from my pile and held it out to the bewildered brigadier as he drew the library door shut behind us. “Behold the face that has launched billions of romance novels.” Being a woman of some refinement I did not draw attention to the way Karisma filled out his loincloth.

“You’re saying he and the woman in that extraordinarily convoluted embrace are real people, not some artist’s idea of what the characters in the book look like?” Brigadier Lester-Smith looked awestruck, as he well might. The heroine of
The Last Temple Virgin
, by Zinnia Parish, was clothed in little more than her virtue as she swooned in the arms of the gods’ gift to women. Her breasts were round and smooth as wine goblets, her lips soft and dewy as rose petals after a rain storm, her hair a rippling waterfall, her eyes smoky with desire. But who wouldn’t look like that, including Ellie Haskell, if given the opportunity to recline upon Karisma’s sun-bronzed chest and gaze enraptured upon his glorious physiognomy? So close that one’s eyelashes entwined with his! So near that his heart pumped the lucky female’s life blood and set her pulses throbbing with forbidden passion.

“We all have to make a living,” the brigadier said doubtfully as we stood in the shadowy vestibule, lit by one minuscule light bulb dangling from a cord high above our heads.

“There is more to Karisma than raw sex appeal,” I
assured him. “My husband, if you will excuse the boast, has the kind of dark good looks that turn heads in Marks & Spencers. But never in a million years could I picture Ben on a book jacket. He lacks that untamed
unmarried
look for starters.” I shuffled through my stack of books while my companion completed the all-consuming task of sponging the raindrops from his briefcase. When he was done and his handkerchief refolded and hung neatly over his belt to dry, I held out
Where Eagles Fear to Fly
. “Karisma has such incredible versatility. He can be anyone, anything the camera asks him to be!” I knew I was babbling away like a mindless brook, but a stay-at-home Mum is occasionally overwhelmed by the need to show herself conversant with current events. “See for yourself why the tabloids hail him as the king of the male cover models!” I held out another book, a paperback this time, brilliantly packaged with foil and raised letters.

The brigadier made a well-bred endeavor to show interest. “Fascinating, Mrs. Haskell! The castle in the background puts me very much in mind of Merlin’s Court.”

I accepted the compliment and kept to myself the belief that my home had far more going for it by way of turrets and battlements than the one on the cover. “Here we have Karisma,” I said. “Behold him at one with the elements. He is the uncharted sea, the unbridled wind, the promise of sunrise upon the horizon. He is the Earl of Polmorgan—his hair streaming like victory’s banner. A nobleman ousted from the ancestral home by the cruel machinations of his impecunious stepmother and forced to turn smuggler
along the Cornish coast. His innate gallantry dictates that he provide for the lovely young virgin who is his ward. She has gone into a decline after being forced into marriage with an obvious man who terrified her on the wedding night by unsheathing his sword and …”