The Trouble with Harriet (18 page)

From photos I had seen of her as a child, Aunt Lulu had been a very pretty little girl, and at fifty-something she still looked like Shirley Temple. Which isn’t to say that on a good day she didn’t show her age. When in the company of her husband, Maurice, not even her dimples or wide eyes could perk up her bewildered expression. But today, in the drawing room at Merlin’s Court, she had another man in tow, and she couldn’t have been bubblier as she tap-danced her way around the coffee table. “Ellie, dear, wasn’t it just lovely of nice Mr. Price to give me a lift here from the station? We were on the same train, although not in the same carriage.” This said in the virtuous, piping voice of one who knew how to comport herself even when away from Mummy’s eagle eye. “He heard me asking the ticket collector about the availability of taxis. I really couldn’t walk all the way to Merlin’s Court on these short legs. You know how I always tell my life history to everyone, Ellie, when Maurice isn’t there to say, ‘That’s enough, Lulu!’ But Mr. Price was so sweet. He very kindly said he would be delighted to take me in his car.”

“That was thoughtful,” I told the portly man in the pinstriped suit and round spectacles who, through no fault of his own, closely resembled the portentous Maurice.

“No trouble at all.” Even the voice was similar.

“Well, just a little.” Aunt Lulu giggled. Mr. Price couldn’t remember which car was his because it was a rented one, and he had to try lots of doors before finding one that opened. Luckily, that was one thing he did remember—leaving it unlocked. He had been worried about it all the time he’d been gone. And when he tried the key they had given him, it didn’t fit, and he had to use a tiny little screwdriver from one of those repair kits, the sort that you sometimes get in a Christmas cracker. I remember the year Freddy got one like it. He wanted the plastic ring that squirted water in people’s eyes, but Maurice wouldn’t swap with him.

“I shouldn’t have dealt with one of those economy-car places.” Mr. Price removed his specs and polished them with a handkerchief produced from his breast pocket. “As my dear wife often reminds me, we get what we pay for in this world.”

“You have a wife?” Aunt Lulu stopped tap-dancing.

“She’s an invalid; has been for many years.”

“Oh, how sad,” I said.

“Martha is the reason I went back up to London last night.” Mr. Price refolded his handkerchief and poked it back into his pocket. “I often have to cut short a business meeting to return home when she has one of her spells.”

“What business are you in?” It seemed a good time to be nosy.

“Toothbrushes.”

“What fun!” Aunt Lulu perched on the arm of a chair and spread her gathered skirts just a little above her plump knees. “I still have the pink one with the duck handle that I had when I was five. I keep it in a box in my bedroom with all my other childhood treasures. There is nothing like a toothbrush, is there, for bringing back memories.”

“I supply them to hotels for complimentary use.” Mr. Price paraded over to the windows, took a peek out of them, and returned to the central grouping of sofas and chairs. “And just recently I have begun offering the little travel kits.”

“Like the one he used in the car.” Aunt Lulu’s eyes grew big with admiration.

“Holidaymakers must find them very handy,” I said.

“That was Mary’s thought.”

“Mary?”

“My wife.”

“I thought you said her name was Martha?”

“So it is.” Mr. Price gave his spectacles another polish. “Mary is my pet name for her. You know how husbands and wives have these little games they play. All very silly, of course, and making no sense at all to outsiders.”

“That sounds so sweet.” Aunt Lulu sat on her armchair perch, swinging her short legs. “The only game Maurice plays is watching golf on television. And his pet name for me is Twit.”

“How about a drink, Mr. Price?” I suggested. “Or would you rather not as you have to drive?” He had been looking at me with diminished enthusiasm, causing me to reflect sadly that this had not been my day for keeping in people’s good graces. But he did smile now. A small, well-tailored sort of smile.

“Perhaps a very small one. Gin, if you have it.”

“Tonic water?”

“Just a splash.”

“And what about you?” I asked Aunt Lulu.

“Not just now, thank you, Ellie.”

“I’m not much of a bartender,” I apologized to Mr. Price. “My husband is better, but he’s taking Aunt Lulu’s suitcase down to her son’s cottage.”

“What about my handbag?” she asked a shade quickly.

“I expect Ben put it on the trestle table out in the hall.”

“Then I’d better go and get it,” she said with a breathless little-girl laugh. “I’m one of those silly women who can’t bear to be parted from her bag for long. Usually I don’t let it get away from me. But in all the excitement of seeing you and Ben again, Ellie, and even more thrillingly your father after all these years, I just put it down without thinking.”

Oh, Aunt Lulu! She was typical of a person who cheerfully helped herself to other people’s property and lived in fear of having the nose pinched off her face.

“I think I should get it,” she was telling Mr. Price as one of the latticed windows opened, a long leg descended over the sill, and a moment later the rest of Freddy entered the room. Upon spotting his mother, however, he appeared ready to beat a hasty retreat.

“No you don’t,” I told him.

“Hello, Mumsie.” He stood looking like every mother’s nightmare, with his ponytail and earring and his knees out of his jeans. “Had a good journey down? Pigged out in the buffet car on the train, I hope, because there’s not a thing to eat at the cottage. Where’s the pater?”

“He decided at the last moment not to bring me down. He said his secretary had complained that he had been taking too many days off lately. Apparently she burst into tears and said that life in the office was meaningless without him. And you know how he can’t bear to have a young girl sob in his arms.” There was not a trace of sarcasm in Aunt Lulu’s voice. “But Freddy, dear, you must let me introduce you to nice Mr. Price. He picked me up at the station. And we’ve been having such a fun time.”

“Hello.” My cousin eyed the portly man in the pinstriped suit without exuberance.

“Freddy was born when I was little more than a schoolgirl, Mr. Price.” Another of Auntie’s giggles. “Isn’t he a big boy for fourteen?”

“A credit to you, I’m sure.”

“When I was pregnant, his father and I were sure he was going to be a girl. We had our hearts set on the name Frederica. So when he was born, we had to rack our brains for a masculine equivalent.”

Freddy looked from me to the yellow Chinese vases on the mantelpiece. “If I threw something, something very expensive and easily breakable, do you think she would behave like a normal mother and send me to my room?”

“How about a drink?” I asked while walking over to hand Mr. Price his gin and tonic. Ben and Daddy will be here in a minute, and even though it’s a little early in the day, we could probably make it into a real cocktail hour and open a tin of peanuts.”

“Yes, isn’t it wonderful about Morley?” Aunt Lulu enthused. “Home after all these years of traveling the world.”

“His job kept him on the move?” Mr. Price sipped his drink.

“Not really,” I hedged.

“Morley has made a successful career out of not working. Such a credit to him.” Aunt Lulu’s voice held sincere admiration. “After all, that’s something most men can’t claim in this day and age. And it’s not as though that trust fund of his can be all that big. At least that’s what Maurice says. He’s always believed that Morley must have had other irons in the fire. But I think that’s unkind. Your father is just awfully good at doing nothing, Ellie.”

“Does he plan to make a long visit with you?” Mr. Price asked me as he went to sit down on the sofa facing the window, only to find that Freddy had already accommodated himself full-length and appeared unlikely to budge.

“He hasn’t said,” I replied coolly.

“Uncle Morley is here on a sad errand.” My cousin obviously felt compelled, despite his lethargic appearance, to spill the beans about things that could surely be of no interest to a total stranger. “Harriet Brown, the woman he loved, was killed recently in a car accident.”

“Driving in this country has become a nightmare.” Mr. Price shook his head sadly, and Freddy quickly put him right on one point.

“This accident occurred in Germany. And poor Uncle got stuck with the rotten task of bringing her ashes home to her family.”

“He has my deepest sympathy, living as I do in daily dread of something happening to Mary Martha.” Mr. Price studied his drink as if seeing in its depths the bitterest of eventualities. “Naturally, the subject comes up every now and then about the choices to be made when she does pass away, and she says she would prefer cremation. The dear woman believes it might bring me some small comfort if I were to have her scattered among the rosebushes in the garden. And I think she’s right. I’m sure I don’t know how your father”—the widower-to-be was now looking at me— “your poor father, got through the business of handing over those ashes. Was he able to stay composed in the presence of his lady love’s family?”

I wanted to say: Aren’t we inquisitive? But Freddy, still lying flat on the sofa with his eyes closed, got his jaw working first.

“Uncle Morley hasn’t performed his promised task yet. The relatives will be here any minute. But there’s been a hitch. Someone’s made off with the urn.”

“It wasn’t me,” protested Aunt Lulu as my mouth dropped.

“Mrs. Ambleforth told you?” I looked at Freddy.

“As I was trying to escape the church hall before her pie-faced niece could ask me if kissing her in the third act had meant as much to her as it had to me. And should her uncle Dunstie post the banns next Sunday.”

Mr. Price had been looking up at the ceiling during most of this pathetic confession, but the moment Freddy flopped back on the sofa, he fixed spectacled eyes on me.

“Your father must be beside himself. Does he know who stole the urn? Has he set about getting it back?”

“It wasn’t stolen.” My reply was curt. “It was all an unfortunate mistake. I’m sure the person who inadvertently went off with it will return it very soon, safe and sound in its canvas bag. Either this afternoon or later in the evening.”

“And who is this person?”

“I’d rather not say, Mr. Price,” Perhaps some of the ill-concealed irritation in my voice got through to him, because his faced flushed. And I couldn’t see any reason for
him
to be annoyed. Not unless he was terribly thin-skinned.

“Do you know, I really believe I should be going.” He swallowed what was left of his gin and tonic and set the glass down.

“Must you really rush off?” Aunt Lulu pouted—something my mother once said a woman of a certain age should avoid doing at all costs. “I was hoping you could stay for tea, Mr. Price. Ellie’s husband is a chef, and Freddy works with him, so I’m sure they could rustle up something quite wonderful between the two of them.” Her demure gaze hinted at the possibility that she herself could rustle up something even more tempting. But perhaps with thoughts of his invalid wife prevalent in his mind, Mr. Price was bidding us a firm good-bye when Ben walked into the sitting room.

My one and only husband was wearing his navy blue sweater and looked both handsome and admirably domestic carrying a tray loaded with cups and saucers, a milk jug, sugar bowl, and teapot. Strangely, something about Mr. Price’s bearing immediately changed. He stood straighter; even his features seemed to alter, his expression becoming at once austere and deferential.

“Allow me to take that, sir!” Gliding forward, he removed the tray from Ben’s hands and bore it away to a side table, where he deposited it as if it were the coronation crown being lowered onto the royal head. Whereupon he adjusted a couple of cup handles, lifted the teapot lid to inspect the brew, and with an inclination of his head, said: “If that will be all, sir, I will leave you and your family to your afternoon tea.”

“Thank you.” Ben’s black brows went up, and by the time they had come down again and I had stopped blinking, Mr. Price had padded across the room and out the door.

“We’ll have to see him off,” I exclaimed, and latching on to my husband’s sweater sleeve, headed out into the hall. But it was too late for adieus. We were barely in time to see the front door close. Then we proceeded to waste time eyeing each other like two people who had just been redeposited on earth by a Martian man in a spaceship. A moment later, we heard a car being driven off in a flurry of gravel.

“Just who was that man?” Ben leaned against the trestle table and folded his arms.

“The one who brought Aunt Lulu up from the station.”

“I know that, but what else did you find out about him?”

“He’s a toothbrush salesman.”

“Is that what he told you?”

“Why would he lie about it?”

“I don’t know.” Ben plucked a chrysanthemum from the bronze vase and began depleting it of leaves, just as I had with a similar bloom when we had been in the hall the previous afternoon. “But that business of his taking the tea tray ... Surely you thought the same thing I did, Ellie.”

“What?”

“The man has to be a butler.”

“Now you mention it, he did have the manner. But he could have recently changed jobs.”

“Where’s Daddy?” I asked.

“Upstairs in his room. He’s very upset about the missing urn. It could be making him paranoid. He said he recognized that man.”

“Mr. Price?”

“Morley thinks he was one of the men on the escalator at the underground.”

“The one who pushed him?”

“No, the one who picked up his suitcase.”

“I wonder if Daddy is cracking.” I stood hugging my arms. “He also thought he recognized Mr. Jarrow, Sir Casper’s secretary. But what if he’s right. Aunt Lulu blabbed that Mr. Price couldn’t find his car parked outside the station. It was a rented one, or so he said, and he had to hunt around for one with an open door; some story about remembering he had left it unlocked. And then, because he didn’t have the right key, he had to start the ignition with a little screwdriver.”