The Trouble with Harriet (23 page)

“Maybe the boss is as much a burglar as Mr. Price.” Ben gave me a rueful smile. “Could we be dealing with rival gangs both after the same pot of gold?”

“The clay pot,” I reminded him.

“Or what’s inside.”

“Whatever,” I said. “Harriet was afraid to bring it through herself for fear of being recognized by the authorities. But she could be reasonably confident of Daddy getting the goods out of Germany and into England without incident. Even his loquaciousness on the subject of Harriet and her final wishes had the potential of being more beneficial than risky. He would be so blatantly genuine and so clearly capable of waffling on indefinitely that the customs people would be eager to push him along and shout: ‘Next!’ “

“We could drive ourselves up the wall trying to fill in all the pieces.” Ben got up and started to pace. “What we should probably be focusing on is how to convince your father that Harriet is indeed alive.”

“Then you believe me?” I would have jumped up and thrown my arms around him if the sofa hadn’t held me down, as if having grown a little possessive about having me on its lap.

“It’s so obvious, isn’t it?”

“I love it when you give me credit for being brilliant.”

“And I’m grateful when you don’t ask me how I could have been so thick as not to have seen it for myself. I suppose you wouldn’t consider taking this mutual admiration upstairs and making an evening of it?” He raised an enticing eyebrow. “That wouldn’t be fair to Aunt Lulu, would it? Not after she’s gone to all the trouble of hefting that casserole out of the fridge and putting it in the oven.”

“Don’t count on it,” I said. “She’s probably put it in the washing machine.”

“Then I guess we’ll have chicken-and-wild-rice soup. But back to Harriet.” Ben resumed his pacing. “Your father only had Ingo Voelkel’s word for it that she was killed in that car accident. If she had died of natural causes Morley would very likely have asked to see the body. This way he could be persuaded her injuries were so severe she was unrecognizable. It was clever to have set him up with the talk about her mysterious illness so that he was programmed to believe, however much he might rant and rave, in the tragic inevitability of her death. But there could have been another problem in Voelkel telling him that she had succumbed after fighting the good fight. Morley might have insisted on talking to her doctor to reassure himself that nothing could have been done to save her.”

“The accident story was definitely better.” I hugged my arms around myself because I had grown cold. “And the delay in notifying him would throw Daddy sufficiently off balance so that he would be even less likely to make any difficulties. Saying that Harriet had gone to get the car as a surprise for him was also a nice touch. Pile on the emotions. Turn him into a zombie with only one thought lodged in his head. To get that urn to England and the Hoppers.”

“I wonder if Harriet and Ingo Voelkel were lovers as well as accomplices and whether there was even a Mrs. Voelkel. She was conspicuous by her absence, wasn’t she? And what about the elderly housekeeper? Was she an accomplice?” Ben had completed his ramblings around the room and returned to place a glass in my hand. “I do seem to keep administering brandy.” He leaned forward to kiss me. “But you look like you need to get a little fire going inside you.”

“I’ve been wondering about something else.” I answered him after taking a few dutiful sips of what the husband ordered. “It’s about that button.”

“What button?”

“The one Aunt Lulu took from Doris or Edith’s handbag.” Putting down the glass on the lamp table, I got up and went over to the mantelpiece. Then, without saying another word, I left the room and crossed the hall to the cupboard under the stairs, where I usually hung my handbag upon returning to the house. A few moments later, I was back, standing in front of Ben with a button in each hand.

“Do these look alike to you?”

He bent his head for a closer look. “Yes.”

“Would you say that they are a match?” I persisted.

“If you’re asking me, Ellie, if they look as though they came from the same garment, my answer stands. Yes.”

“What will you say if I tell you that one of them was given to me by the Gypsy who stopped me in the town square yesterday to tell my fortune?”

“Why did she do that?” Both Ben’s eyebrows went up.

“She tugged it off a loose thread and told me to keep it as a lucky charm. I think she wanted to drive home the point that it would be a big mistake for us to go to France. She may have been afraid that if Daddy showed up all brokenhearted, we might persuade him to come with us on holiday and that would have delayed things.”

“And how do you think the Hoppers came by the other button?”

“From Harriet.”

“You’re thinking ... ?”

“That she was the Gypsy?”

“It fits, doesn’t it? Harriet arrived in Chitterton Fells ahead of Daddy. When she spotted me crossing the square, recognizing me from that photo he had given her, she jumped at the chance to size up whether I was as gullible as my father or to have a bit of malicious fun with me.”

“Did she—the Gypsy—look anything like that photo of Harriet; the one Aunt Lulu stole from the Hoppers?”

“I can’t say I spotted any resemblance.” I stood fingering the buttons. “But I didn’t have a chance to study the photo, and now Daddy has taken it up to his room. Anyway, there’s a big difference from looking at a snapshot to seeing someone in person. Also, hair and clothing make an enormous difference. Harriet was a platinum blonde, although that could have been a wig, and I’m sure she was always exquisitely made up for her meetings with Daddy. The Gypsy’s hair was in need of a good wash, and her complexion wasn’t anything to write home about.” I could suddenly see her so clearly. “But she did have brown eyes. As did Harriet, although sometimes Daddy described them as hazel. And there’s something else. The Gypsy was puffing away on a cigarette the whole time she was talking to me.”

“I don’t remember your father saying that Harriet smoked.” Ben looked as though I had lost him a mile and a half back.

“No, he didn’t.” I slipped the buttons into my shirt pocket.

“I’m missing something here.” Ben was now rubbing his forehead.

“That’s because you’ve forgotten what Daddy told us about that depressing room in Ingo Voelkel’s house.”

His blue-green eyes narrowed. “Was something said about the dead cat in the picture having died of secondhand smoke?”

“It’s not likely you would remember.” I reached up to smooth the curls back from his furrowed brow. “The only reason I do is because houses and how they are decorated is my business. I can see that room as clearly as if I had been in it. I can sense the dark weight of the furniture and the carved wooden ceiling, feel the gloom of that horrible picture, and smell the stale fireplace ash and the stink of cigarette butts in the ashtrays.” I shuddered. “It’s unpleasant, isn’t it, to think of Harriet coming back to that house after an evening with my poor, besotted Daddy and sitting smoking one cigarette after the other while gloating to her real lover about how well things were progressing?”

The telephone rang out in the hall, but before Ben got halfway across the room, it stopped. Whoever had answered it would either take a message or come to tell us who was calling. I didn’t go into a panic that it was bad news about one or all of the children. At least I was getting more realistic in that regard. My in-laws might be in their seventies, but they still had remarkable energy and would not be dozing in their easy chairs while Tam and Abbey got up to dangerous tricks or Rose decided to crawl off home.

I reached for Ben’s hand, and we were about to go into the hall together when the door bounced open and Mrs. Malloy stood eyeing us balefully from the threshold. And I’d thought she’d gone home hours ago.

“Well, if this isn’t a pretty state of affairs, both of you here and neither one could get your legs moving to answer the phone. “There I was just about to take a break from studying me script when I smelled the lovely aroma of burning chicken and fancied I could just about swallow a mouthful. If it went down quick with a glass of gin. Then there it goes—that bloody ting-a-ling-a-ling. And not another soul in the hall to say, Mrs. M. you didn’t ought to go straining yourself lifting that receiver.”

“Who was it?” I asked.

“Oh, now you want to know!” Mrs. Malloy teetered forward on her ridiculously high heels and encamped in the nearest chair. “And never a word said about it being written all over my face that I’ve just suffered the most terrible shock.” Ben and I both opened our mouths, but she steamed ahead. “Some of us is more sensitive than others, Mrs. H., and being who I am, I’m going to fall right to pieces if someone don’t put a drink in my hand this minute.”

“Give her the gin bottle, forget the glass,” I told Ben.

“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” he countered. “Mrs. Malloy, pull yourself together and tell us about that phone call.”

“You’re wonderful when you’re being masterful.” She smiled dreamily for a split second before pulling her frown back together. “Well, if you’re going to drag it out of me without a thought to how I’m feeling, I’ll tell you. It was Mrs. Potter ringing up to say she’d just been talking to her sister, Mrs. Blum, that runs Cliffside House, that B and B right near the Old Abbey. And there’s been a terrible accident. A car went off the road. Right down to the beach. That’s not something anyone walks away from with a sprained wrist.” Mrs. Malloy looked at me with real terror in her eyes. “It’s a terrible thing, and don’t think I’m not sorry for whoever was in that car. But, Mrs. H., what if it was Lady Grizwolde and I have to take over the role of Malicia Stillwaters for the entire run
of Murder Most Fowl.
Could be I’m just feeling peaky, but what if I’m coming down with a bad attack of stage fright?”

Poor Mrs. M.! She wasn’t destined to receive our undivided sympathy, for the moment was shattered by a blood-curdling scream from outside the house.

Ben drew a woman into the hall and closed the door.

“Ellie, this is Frau Grundman, and she’s urgently in need of a glass of brandy.” He had insisted I stay inside while he went to investigate.

“I’ll get it,” I said, and moved like a robot. “Bring her into the sitting room.”

“Who did he say she was?” Mrs. Malloy stage-whispered in my ear.

“I think she’s my father’s German landlady. Would you please go into the kitchen and try to prevent Aunt Lulu from burning the chicken casserole to a turn? It looks as though we could be having one more for dinner.”

“That’s how it always is, Mrs. H. Just when things start to get interesting, I’m got out of the way like one of the kiddies.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” I was now at the drinks table, trying to find a glass that didn’t appear to have been drunk from and not washed up. “You can listen at the keyhole the way you always do. And take notes if you like.”

“It’s just that I’ve got me pride, Mrs. H.!”

“Well, chug it down with a G and T.”

“I should be in a white pinny.” Mrs. Malloy tilted her chin and risked scraping her nose on the ceiling. “I should be weaving me way round the room with a plate of nibbles. That’s the way things is meant to be done in proper run houses when the Mr. and Mrs. is receiving guests.”

“Well, most people’s guests don’t look as though they’ve had someone jump out of the bushes at them shouting, ‘Boo!’ ”

“I’ll give you that,” Mrs. M. admitted, “but then again, there is that old saying about sticks and stones. Still, not everyone is as tough as you and me.” An acknowledgment that all was forgiven and we were back to being friends. “And foreigners are a funny lot. Taking offense where none’s intended. Of course, a conk on the head’s the same in any language. There’s no
parlais-vous
ing your way around that. But she didn’t look like she was hurt, did she? On the other hand, you and I aren’t doctors, Mrs. H….”

“No, but you’re going to be needing one in a minute.” The words slipped out before I could bite them back, and she stalked to the door just as Ben came in with our visitor. A collision was narrowly avoided, and I hurried forward to press a glass of sherry (we seemed to be out of brandy) into Daddy’s former landlady’s hand. “Please sit down,” I begged her. “My husband can tell me what happened.”

“Frau Grundman glimpsed a man lurking in the shrubbery.” Ben helped her over to one of the sofas and shifted a table forward for her drink. “She thought he was about to jump out at her, so she screamed.”

“As loud as my lungs could do it, to scare him away.” Frau Grundman sat nodding her head at me. “But now I think I have been making nonsense. Herr Haskell tells me you have a male cousin staying here at your house.”

“Actually he lives in the cottage at the gates, but I can’t think of any reason for him to be crawling around the garden at this hour.” I looked from her to Ben and back again. “Unless he was trying to catch our cat, Tobias, and bring him in for the night. We don’t like him out if it looks like rain. And then, of course”—I wrinkled my brow— “my father is here.”

“But I would have known if it was Herr Simons.” Frau Grundman lowered her head to her drink. She was very much the way I had pictured her, with blue eyes, graying hair, and a matronly figure. But she was also prettier. Her complexion was one that a girl might have envied, and when she smiled, as she did now, her face lit up like a lamp. “Your father is so big, there would be no hiding him under a bush. Such a good, dear man. It was terrible what happened to break his heart. He so much loved his Harriet Brown, who was too soon to die.”

“I upset him tonight.” I sat down on the sofa opposite. “He went up to his room, but maybe he came down again and went outside to clear his head.”

“Or to scare you into thinking he’d walked out.” Ben stood behind me, his fingertips kneading my shoulders. “You’re right about Morley being a decent bloke, Frau Grundman, but he does tend to be a shade theatrical.”

“It is what gives him his charm and softens a woman’s heart to him. He is the enormous teddy bear that needs to be told he is strongest and bravest of all the other teddies. The first time he is in my house I want to put a ribbon around his neck. When we get to know each other a little more better, I tell him he would look good in the bow tie. The other kind sit too short on him. So I give him a blue-and-white bow tie that was once belonging to my husband that died long years ago. And Mr. Simons, he was very pleased!”