The Trouble with Harriet (25 page)

“That was the rust.” I refrained from raising my voice or adding, You nitwit!

“I’d say the best description of that car would be piebald.” Ben took hold of my hand. “But whatever the color, aren’t we putting too much credence in a second- or third-hand report? We’re panicking, I’m sure for no good reason at all. I wish I remembered the car’s license-plate number, Ellie. Damn it, I drove it into the garage. But there’s no good in kicking myself now.”

“Very true, Mr. H.” Mrs. Malloy, entering the room, nodded wisely. “Having you hobbling around with a pair of cracked shins isn’t about to help no one, Mr. H. There’s them that might say you was just trying to make yourself the center of attention. Which I wouldn’t take kindly to, seeing as I’ve always thought you a cut above most of the buggers that call themselves men. What’s needed here is some common sense. Which is something that don’t get better for being kept corked and saved for special occasions, you know. So there’s no point in being afraid to use what little God gave you.” She eyed each and every one of us sternly. “Even supposing Mr. Simons did go near where that accident happened, there’s usually more than one car on the road at any given time. And like as not, he went clear the other way. Down to the pub in the village would be my guess.”

“That I can think is so.” Ursel looked like a woman clutching at a straw to paddle with as her canoe went over the rapids. “This pub, it would remind Herr Simons, perhaps, of the biergarten in Schonbrunn where he met Harriet Brown. Yes, this is a good thought. I find it not hard to see him there.”

“Neither do I.” Ben attempted a smile. “Morley with a pint in one hand and the photo of his beloved Harriet—the one Aunt Lulu took from the Hoppers—in the other. Asking the regulars if they would kindly throw darts at him to put him out of his misery.”

“I never thought to phone the Dark Horse Pub,” Freddy confessed.

“Or it could be that Daddy ...” I got no further because Aunt Lulu appeared in the doorway. She looked like a child who had spent an unsupervised half hour playing in the flour bin. But that could have been because she had taken time to distractedly powder her nose after slogging in the kitchen.

“Dinner’s ready,” she announced in a disconsolate little voice. “If that chicken wasn’t dead before it went in the casserole, it is now. I tried to make a cream sauce to pour over some peas. But it went Jumpy. And when I tried to give it to the cat, he attacked me. So I had to hole up in the pantry. I’d be there now if Morley hadn’t come in.”

“Uncle Morley’s back?” Freddy gave voice to the jubilation that flooded the room.

“Don’t jump about like that, dear,” scolded his mother. “You’re getting too big a boy to leap into my arms, especially when I’m feeling horribly frazzled.”

“We have been so much afraid that Mr. Simons is killed in the car accident.” Ursel was trembling, but the color had returned to her cheeks, and her eyes were now the brightest of blues.

“Aunt Lulu, this is Frau Grundman,” I said. “Daddy stayed at her guest house when he was in Germany, and she’s going to be paying us a visit for a few days. Isn’t that lovely?”

This gained me a look from Mrs. Malloy, the one that always made it plain that her nose was out of joint at not having been consulted on matters she believed required her stamp of approval. As we all filed out into the hall, on our way to the burned offerings awaiting us in the kitchen, she drew me aside, pursed her damson lips into a smaller bow, and planted her fists on her hips.

“I’ve nothing against that woman. Not everyone gets to be English when all is said and done. And it can’t be easy being stuck speaking a foreign language your whole life. She looks a decent sort, although between you, me, and those banisters, she could do with coloring her hair and frilling herself up a bit if she hopes to catch your Dad on the rebound. Which is why she’s come, as a blind man could see a mile off. And to show where my heart is, Mrs. H., I don’t intend to put a spoke in her wheel, though it would be easy as wink, given that I’ve got more sex appeal in me little finger than most women have where men do the looking.”

“Then what’s the problem?” I watched the others go into the kitchen.

“I won’t be turned out of my room for her.” Mrs. Malloy had taken to occasionally staying the night since we had Rose.

“I wouldn’t suggest such a thing.”

“Well, but I wouldn’t put it past you to have thought about it, Mrs. H. It’s a nice room, with a lovely view of the sea. Now that I’ve got it all set out with my bits and bobs, who wouldn’t want to sleep in it? And it’s plain as can be you’re out to make a good impression on Frau Grundman in case she does end up in the family.”

I refrained from saying that Ursel might not be wildly fond of china poodles and pictures of Elvis Presley painted on black velvet. Nonetheless, I was upset. Just what did she take me for? A person of no loyalty or sensitivity?

“There’s no question of your moving, Mrs. Malloy.”

She sized up my expression. “In that case, you could put Frau Grundman in the tower.”

“She’s not Anne Boleyn,” I countered. A silly reaction. The tower bedroom was charming. It was the one my in-laws always used when staying with us. It was reached by a short flight of steps leading from the gallery, and we had recently converted an alcove into a tiny bathroom. The reason I hadn’t offered to install my father en suite was because of his size. He wouldn’t have looked as though he were occupying a round room. He would have looked more as though he were wearing a baggy suit.

“Sometimes I’m surprised we don’t have words more often.” Mrs. Malloy’s voice made it clear she was extending the olive branch. “There’s always something going on to make us both touchy. I’ve worn myself out reading over the play till I could recite every line forwards and backwards. You’ve been having to deal with your father and everything that goes along with his troubles. And now there’s this terrible car accident.” She shuddered most effectively. “I can’t shake the feeling that there’s a dark shadow about to cast its nastiness over Merlin’s Court.”

Before I could say anything comforting, Ben crossed the flagstones toward us. He explained he was going outside to collect Ursel’s suitcase from the bushes and that he wouldn’t be a minute because dinner, a makeshift alternative for the chicken
casserole, was almost ready. Feeling like a poor excuse for a wife, I preceded Mrs. Malloy into the kitchen. Here we found Freddy leaning up against the Welsh dresser like a broom that had been left there to get knocked over, Aunt Lulu seated at the table, and Ursel over by the Aga shaking pepper into a saucepan.

My father stood in front of the fireplace dwarfing every object in the room. His jowls dropped, his nose was reddened, and his pale blue eyes protruded. He did not look at me. It was as though I had come home from school dragging my satchel up the stairs to our fourth-floor flat and he was there. My father, who wasn’t like anyone else’s father. I had loved him then, as children do, without thought or reason. It had taken me a long time to realize that he wasn’t perfect. Only now, as something knotted and hard inside me dissolved into tenderness, did I see this as a gift. Saints should be named Ethelwort and live in eleventh-century monasteries. Children need to know that their parents can be foolish and fallible in order to understand that sometimes it is how well we fail that counts more than all the successes. So that one day they can take the risk of stepping out onto the tightrope, with only the memory of a hand to hold on to, and take the wondrous risk of falling into the real world below.

I didn’t rush up to Daddy and pour my feelings over him like a jug of warm milk. I could tell by the way he kept right on not looking at me that he had neither forgiven nor forgotten what he considered my unconscionable attack on Harriet’s memory. It was Freddy, bless him, who spoke up to break the ice.

“I was saying to Uncle Morley, Coz, that it was a shame that he was out when Frau Grundman arrived.”

“Especially when she was so shaken up after her fright and could have done with a strong man’s shoulder to sob on. Or one with a cough sweet in his pocket to help soothe her poor throat after that scream she gave.” It was Mrs. Malloy, revealing that she had indeed been listening at the drawing-room door.

“What’s this about?” Daddy roused himself to register glassy-eyed surprise.

“It was nothing.” Ursel began ladling steaming soup into earthenware bowls. “It is better that you do not hear of my foolishness or you will stop thinking of me as the sensible woman. And not anymore trust that I bring you good pickled cabbage.”

“She saw a man lurking in the bushes,” I began, but Daddy wasn’t listening.

“You came all this way to bring me pickled cabbage, Frau Grundman?”

“Not so much that.” She allowed the ladle to dangle, dripping soup onto the working surface. “I worry for you, Herr Simons. You are so sad when you leave my house. I want to make sure that things go better once you reach England.”

“But to go to so much trouble.” He frowned quite fiercely at her. “It was unnecessary and really very foolish of you, Frau Grundman.”

“She could hardly have expected men to come popping out of bushes at her,” Freddy argued reasonably.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Aunt Lulu cheerily piped up. “Life is full of its little surprises.”

“None’s ever done it with me.” Mrs. Malloy’s disappointment was evident. “Except, that is, for the milkman, the one time I’d got behind paying him on account of losing big at bingo and having to pretend I was out when he came to collect.”

“Any idea who this creep was?” Freddy pried himself away from the Welsh dresser and sniffed longingly at the soup.

“Course I do; he’s been delivering my milk this twenty years.”

“I think he means the man in the bushes, Mrs. Malloy,” I said. “And if I’m any good at guessing, that was Mr. Price.”

“Who?”

Luckily, before I was put to the trouble of explaining, Daddy readdressed himself to Ursel. “It was foolish of you to come, because you are not a seasoned traveler. By your own accounting, you have led a quiet, sheltered life in Schonbrunn, rarely venturing farther than Loetzinn. And your visits there were hardly of a gallivanting sort, your time being spent with your sister at the parsonage at the Christ Kirche. To think of you braving the terrors of the London underground, to be trampled underfoot by the madding crowd, or crushed in the closing doors of a train heading for Epsom brings chills to my heart, Frau Grundman, even though I see you standing whole and robust before me.”

“I’ve remembered something.” I took a couple of steps toward Ursel. “It nagged at the back of my mind when you mentioned the church where your sister Hilde is housekeeper to the priest. But I couldn’t pull it into focus. There’s been so much going on today. And this was such a small thing. When I was over at the vicarage earlier to talk to Mr. Ambleforth, his niece told me he was out but that I could wait for him in his study. He didn’t return. But just before I left, I picked up an envelope that had dropped to the floor. It was addressed to Fader Bergdorff, the Christ Kirche, Loetzinn.”

“Don’t speak to me of that villain in a dog collar,” Daddy roared.

“But you have never met Fader Bergdorff.” Ursel had turned deathly pale.

“I’m talking about that rogue Ambleforth.” He lowered his voice a notch the width of a thread. “Spouting on about this St. Ethelwort one minute and stealing Giselle’s car the next! Can you guess, Frau Grundman, what precious entity, what peerless treasure, this motoring maniac abducted as he roared off into the daylight?”

Ursel stared at me, and nodded.

“Harriet’s urn was in the car in a canvas bag just like the one in which you brought the pickled cabbage.”

Ursel answered soberly. “I gave Herr Simons his bag.”

“It was sturdy and wrapped snugly around the urn when I put it in my suitcase. Needless to say, Frau Grundman, I was not aware that you had one like it for the conveyance of such items as pickled cabbage.” Daddy winced. “But I know you too well to conceive that any slight to my Harriet was intended. To return, however, to that felonious clergyman, after retiring to my bedroom earlier this evening”—Daddy directed a darkening look my way— “I was seized with such rage against the fellow that I went down to my car and drove to the vicarage, wasting several minutes due to turning left rather than right at the gates. Once there, I pounded on the door to no avail. But determined not to be denied the opportunity to plant my fist in his face, I camped on the front steps until I decided he was never coming back and then I headed back here.”

It was what I had been about to suggest when Aunt Lulu came into the drawing room to say that dinner was ready.

“We were worried about you, Uncle Morley, old cock.” Freddy gave him an affectionate grin.

“Very worried,” Aunt Lulu agreed.

“Extremely worried.” I realized that we were sounding depressingly like the Hoppers and hastened to explain. “You see, Daddy, while you were gone, we got word that there had been a terrible car accident on the cliff road near the Old Abbey. Very probably from the sound of it, at the same spot where you and I almost went off the road this morning.”

“And you thought it was me?”

I could only nod.

“But here I am safe and sound, Giselle.” He finally looked at me, and his voice was the one he had used when I would wake from a nightmare and he would be there before I thought I had called out, driving the monsters down into the dungeon, where they belonged, and telling me he had the magic key in his dressing-gown pocket. “And you don’t know yet whose car it was?” he was asking as Ben came into the kitchen and Freddy and Mrs. Malloy passed out the bowls of tomato-and-basil soup.

“No,” I said. But another memory had come, swift and sure this time, of standing with Daddy and the old gardener, Ned, outside Sir Casper’s secretary’s office and hearing Mr. Jarrow talking to someone on the telephone and, in the course of the conversation, confirming an appointment between that person and Sir Casper for this evening. I was about to say something, then changed my mind. We were all exhausted. What we needed was food and bed.