The Trouble with Harriet (6 page)

But she was marvelous in all the important ways. She never nagged Daddy to get a job. She was great at making paper dolls and doing animal silhouettes on the walls. She thought books were the best place to live. She adored Mozart and the Beatles. And she never let other people’s peculiarities bother her. Even when Freddy’s mother’s kleptomania was out of control between treatments, my mother didn’t make a fuss when the Staffordshire dogs disappeared from our mantelpiece. She explained that Aunt Lulu wasn’t well, probably because she hadn’t received enough love as a child. And if she had to steal from anyone, it was better that she did it from us rather than from people who would have had her arrested, because there was Freddy to think of and Uncle Maurice, even if he was a pompous pain in the neck.

Something soft and furry landed at my feet. Tobias, despite his peculiarities, always knew when I needed him most. You can’t use your children for weeping posts. And husbands may have their minds on things like hollandaise sauce. But cats are meant to be picked up and nuzzled during life’s most delicate moments.

Ben wiped away a tear from my cheek and popped a piece of cheese into my mouth. I found myself feeling less like a soggy handkerchief. “Thanks,” I mumbled.

“Ellie, you always told me that your father adored your mother.”

“I thought he did, but I’m beginning to wonder if the reason he seems such a stranger is that I never really knew him.” I stood stroking Tobias between the ears as Ben edged back toward the Aga and reached for his double boiler. “Doesn’t it strike you that there’s a lot more to Daddy’s late-summer love affair than meets the eye?”

“In what way?”

“I didn’t become a daughter to see my father caught up in something sinister.”

“How, exactly, did you come up with this bizarre twist on the facts?” Ben now sounded seriously worried.

“Has the hollandaise curdled?” I asked stiffly.

“No, sweetheart, it’s my blood you’re curdling.”

“That’s right! Pooh-pooh my instincts!” Throwing my arms wide, I dropped poor Tobias, who understandably looked wounded to the quick and retreated under the table. Consumed with remorse, I filled a saucer with milk and put it under his nose. I also made an effort to get a grip on myself. How could I expect Ben to understand why I was so upset when I wasn’t sure that I did myself?

“I didn’t like what Daddy said about the Gypsy.”

“The one who told Harriet’s fortune? Sounded like the usual spiel to me.” Ben was squirting lemon juice into the sauce with one hand and stirring vigorously with the other. “Water and black cats! You’d think she could have done better than that.”

“She also said some things that Harriet indicated to Daddy were right on the mark.”

“Anyone can make a few lucky guesses.”

That was just what I had told myself that afternoon in the market square. The image of the woman on the stone bench came back to me so powerfully that I felt I was looking into her brown eyes and inhaling the smoke from her cigarette. I went back to making the cheese-and-tomato sandwiches, hacking off so much crust that there wasn’t much left.

“She also told Harriet that she was a true Gypsy.”

“So?”

Ben had finished with the hollandaise and was now adjusting the lid of the steamer, squinting an eye at the wall clock to time the asparagus. It took him several long-drawn-out moments to reply; when he did, it was clear he wasn’t picking up on my increasingly uneasy state of mind. “She probably belonged to a Gypsy trade union, Ellie, that required its members to make it clear to customers that they weren’t dealing with scabs offering palm readings on the cheap.”

“She wasn’t cheap.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m talking about the one who spoke to me this afternoon.” I pushed away the plate of sandwiches and sat down, elbows on the table, face cupped in my hands. “That’s what I’ve been working my way up to telling you. About what has me so spooked, I mean. She used those same words: ‘I’m a true Gypsy’. And she told me a number of things, about my mother’s death and how many children I had, even mentioning a third one that she couldn’t quite fit into the family structure. So that as much as I tried to tell myself it was all guesswork, I was unable to believe it.”

“Then she got the information from someone who knew you.” A chair scraped back on the other side of the table, and Ben sat down.

“That’s what I thought, especially after I remembered narrowly avoiding colliding with Mrs. Potter, from the Hearthside Guild. You know what a talker she is. And even though I don’t think I’ve ever said much to her about Daddy, she could have picked up bits and pieces from other members of the guild. Or more likely from Freddy. I’ve seen him carrying her shopping bag for her a couple of times in the High Street. Anyway, the most pertinent thing my Gypsy had to say about Daddy was that he was going to show up on my doorstep in the immediate future. Now what do you think of them apples?”

“Now hold on a minute.” From the gleam in Ben’s blue-green eyes, I sensed that he had forgotten all about the eggs Benedict. “You say ‘your Gypsy,’ but aren’t you really suggesting that she and the one who spoke to Harriet are one and the same person?”

“I hadn’t gone quite that far. I was thinking more along the lines that the two of them might be in cahoots.”

“That’s some stretch, Ellie, given the fact that they popped up in different countries. And what would be the motive?”

“If I knew that, I’d be a fortune-teller, wouldn’t I? But can’t you see it’s a peculiar coincidence, to say the least? And there’s more.” I got up and poured myself a stiff glass of milk. “My Gypsy stopped telling me that my life was going to be smooth sailing and I’d live to be ninety-three when I mentioned that you and I were leaving for France tomorrow morning. She told me, in no uncertain terms, that if we proceeded with the trip, something dreadful would happen. Ben, I couldn’t shake off a feeling of doom as I drove home. It wasn’t so much when I was talking to her ... perhaps because she smiled some of the time, but afterward I had the feeling that I’d had a brush with evil. I was sure you would laugh the whole thing off. I was afraid I’d end up agreeing to go. Then what if something happened to you or the children while they are with your parents?” Having drained my glass, I set it down in the sink with a rattle and waited for Ben to speak.

He rose slowly to his feet and rumpled his fingers through his black hair. “Do you now think this Gypsy woman may have had some reason, other than second sight, for trying to put the wind up you?”

“Don’t you?”

“It all seems so incredibly far-fetched.”

“Exactly. My father meets a women in a biergarten in Germany. A woman he knows nothing about apart from what she tells him. She won’t even let him meet the people she is staying with. And within a very short time he returns to England and lands on our doorstep with her ashes.”

“Ellie, surely you don’t think she was murdered?”

“I haven’t a clue what I think, but I’m curious to know how Harriet died.”

“Then we’d better get back to the drawing room with your father’s eggs Benedict. Why don’t you go in to him now while I finish up?” Ben didn’t sound as though he were humoring me, and I gave him a grateful kiss, which was cut short when the telephone rang.

Hurrying out into the hall, I picked up the receiver, expecting to hear my mother-in-law’s voice announcing that the twins wanted to say good night.

“Hello?” The voice sounded as though it had been sucking on a helium balloon. “Is this the right number?”

“What number did you want?”

“The one for Mr. Morley Simons.” The voice became the merest whisper. Something else was said, but I couldn’t catch the words. My aunt Astrid, Vanessa’s mother, asserts that people who speak in baby-soft voices are extremely controlling because they force the listener to ask them to speak up.

“Could you speak up?” I said.

“Has he arrived yet?” The volume rose a fraction of a decibel point.

“Yes.” I resisted the urge to shout.

“Then would you tell him that me and my sisters will see him tomorrow.”

“And who shall I say rang?”

“Just”—I could hear voices murmuring in the background— “just tell Mr. Simons we’re Harriet’s relations and we’re coming for her like he requested in his letter.” There followed a squeak, as if someone had pinched the speaker on the bottom. “And could he please wear a red rose in his buttonhole so’s we’ll be sure and recognize him?”

Among all the generously built gentlemen swarming through the house as though it were Waterloo Station? I didn’t pose the question because she or he had hung up, leaving me to wonder anew what madness had invaded my life.

There’s one thing I can say about my father. He wasn’t one of those tiresome people who request something to eat and then, when it is placed before them, complete with a linen tray cloth and a chrysanthemum in a bud vase, announce that they are too tired to take even a bite. Daddy hopped all over those eggs Benedict, the steaming stack of al dente asparagus, and the accompanying rasher of crisply, curling bacon. Freddy, having been stuck with the cheese-and-tomato sandwiches, leaned over him to inhale every last whiff. But he was on sufficiently good behavior to refrain from mentioning more than once that he felt like Little Orphan Annie.

I waited to tell Daddy about the telephone message until he had mopped up the last smears of egg yolk and Ben had removed the tray to a safe distance. I was afraid he would go into a swoon that would flatten the sofa into a stretcher. But he was surprisingly heroic in contemplating his final parting from Harriet. He did sigh gustily and buried his face for a moment in his linen napkin, but he forbore staging a scene out of one of Mrs. Ambleforth’s melodramas.

“My beloved would wish me to be brave.” He intoned the words with mellifluous dignity.

“Want a bite of my cheese-and-tomato sandwich?” proffered Freddy.

Daddy’s Roman nose twitched, either from revulsion or because the flesh (and there was a lot of it) was weak. Whatever the case, he mastered himself and declined the offer.

“And now,” he said, “I shall adjourn to my bedroom. It matters not, Giselle, if it is a cramped cubbyhole at the back of the attic where rain seeps in through the broken windowpanes and death roosts upon a lampshade.”

“I don’t think we have anything quite that atmospheric.” I got to my feet.

“Perhaps you and Ben should give Uncle Morley your room.” Freddy was always the perfect host in someone else’s house.

“No, no! I wouldn’t hear of it,” Daddy was quick to respond. “I can’t imagine that Benson would wish to sleep with me. I tend to hog most of the bedclothes. At least that’s what your mother used to say, Giselle.” This mention of my mother was touching, but he had to ruin it. “Harriet, of course, was never one to complain.”

A saint before she even passed over to the sound of trumpets, I thought nastily as I watched Ben assist Daddy to his feet. A job that really required a couple of cranes. Freddy could have done his bit by saying he would take himself off to the cottage. Instead, he opened the drawing-room door and stood there as if he, too, aspired to canonization.

“All I require is a bed,” Daddy was saying to Ben in the mournful tones of one who heard the Raven whisper, “Nevermore.” “I have no need of wallpaper or perfume bottles on the dressing table.”

“Would you like a nightcap?” I asked, looking at the brandy.

He shook himself as if adjusting the mortal coil. “Perhaps Freddy would be so kind as to carry the decanter and a glass upstairs.”

“Happy to oblige, Uncle.” The tenderhearted fellow unpinned himself from the doorknob.

“I can do it,” I said.

“But I was hoping you would bring Harriet.” Daddy looked at me with anguished appeal. “Much as I would wish to do the honors myself, I am afraid these hands would shake. And it would be adding appalling insult to tragedy to spill her on the stairs.”

“Sound thinking, old cock—I mean Uncle,” piped in St. Freddy. “You have yet to meet the redoubtable Mrs. Malloy, but I can tell you she wouldn’t appreciate the extra vacuuming.”

“I’ll bring Harriet.” Ben headed for the coffee table.

“Why don’t we leave her where she is?” I whispered when he came within inches of me. “Call me a prude, but I don’t like the idea of Daddy cohabiting with an urn under my roof.”

“Sweetheart,” he mouthed back, “the children aren’t here to be shocked out of their little socks. If it makes your father happy, who are we to judge? Besides, it won’t be the first time they’ve slept together.”

Men! I turned away before he could make matters worse by imparting the information that my father had undoubtedly also had sex with my mother. What Ben hadn’t grasped, although it should have stood out a mile, was that I had an ulterior motive for wanting Harriet to stay put. Call it superstitious, call it nonsensical, but I had bad vibes about that urn. And although I was somewhat put out with Daddy, I didn’t want it casting some nasty spell on him while he slept. I was still fixated on Gypsy women popping up in Germany and Chitterton Fells, spouting off inside information along with the well-chosen, dire threat. Had Harriet been deathly afraid of either black cats or water when it didn’t come in a glass?

Daddy’s suitcase was no longer in the hall, but this small matter was cleared up when Freddy took us through a step-by-step account of how he had carried it aloft. Not that, he insisted, he was complaining about the weight. Trooping upstairs at an appropriate funeral pace, I mulled over the problem of how to ask my father if anything untoward, other than the obvious, had occurred in Schonbrunn during his stay.

It had been a long day, and my thoughts kept slithering off in different directions. One minute I was picturing scenes out of spy novels. The next it was hit men who had been paid by a spurned lover or an ex-husband to get rid of Harriet for what he considered good and sufficient financial reasons. Had she latched on to Daddy because she felt safer with a man in tow? And what if—I stumbled on taking the last stair—those creeps were now after him because he knew something he didn’t realize he knew that would land them in the soup? I was suddenly thinking about that man who had given Daddy a push getting on the escalator at the airport. And how his companion had picked up Daddy’s suitcase. Talk about losing my fragile grip on common sense! Did I need to remind myself that such accidents happened? Hadn’t my mother died from a fall down a flight of stairs at a London railway station?