The Trouble with Harriet (9 page)

“ ‘Oh, my God!’ I fell back against a piece of furniture.

“ ‘I only wish there had been a way to break this to you gently. May I offer you a drink, Mr. Simons?’

“ ‘Nothing!’ I shook my head violently.

“ ‘Then do please take a seat.’ He was beside me, and I found myself being lowered onto the sofa. ‘You will of course want to know how it happened.’

“ ‘She was always loath to talk about her illness,’ I moaned from the depths of the horsehair cushions. ‘But when she did, she was optimistic; indeed, she assured me there was every indication that she was cured.’

“ ‘You need a drink, Mr. Simons.’ A glass of sherry was pressed into my hand.

“ ‘Her doctors were mistaken or untruthful?’

“ ‘Neither. Harriet was well on her way to full health when misfortune struck.’

“ ‘It is what  I  feared,’ I  said,  shaking sherry all over my trousers. ‘She was brought low by a cold after being caught in the rain when out walking with me the other day.’

“ ‘My dear man, you wrong yourself.’ Herr Voelkel stood over me, his reddish brown eyes boring into mine. ‘Harriet was killed when the car she was driving on her way back here from Koblenz ran off a country road along the Moselle River and plunged into the Elzabach, a creek in the area of Metternich and Zell. There was a heavy fog. It was, tragically, one of those things. A terrible, unforeseeable accident.’ ”

The salmon pink satin nightdress lay across the bedspread, looking inappropriately optimistic. It was a lovely thing with a tucked bodice and a handkerchief hem. Not at all my usual sleepwear. I had bought it earlier in the week with blissful thoughts of the trip to France in mind. That afternoon, before going into Chitterton Fells, I had been about to put it in my case when I decided that there was no good reason why my second honeymoon with the husband of my dreams should not begin that night. So I had sprayed it with my very best perfume and left it out, picturing how it would look when moonlight silvered its folds. Now I rolled it into a ball, stuffed it in the top drawer of my dressing table, and got into my flannel pajamas with the Peter Pan collar. I was sitting up against the four-poster headboard when Ben came into the room with a cup of hot milk that he handed to me before shedding his dressing gown and getting in beside me.

“This beats champagne any night of the week.”  I  took a comforting sip and smiled at him. His pajamas were of the same burgundy shade as the velvet curtains, and his hair looked very black against the white pillowcase. The selfish part of me wished that Daddy hadn’t shown up with Harriet. At least not until we had returned from our holiday, complete with new T-shirts and enough renewed energy to support him as he worked through his grief.

“I wonder what she was really like?” I set down my empty cup on the bedside table.

“Your father painted a pretty clear picture.”

“He gave us his impressions and told us what Harriet told him.”

“That’s all he could do.”

“I know.” I watched Ben turn off his lamp, did the same with mine, and lay back, staring up at the shadowy ceiling. “It’s that Gypsy business that still has me unsettled. The one in Germany warned Harriet to be careful of water.”

“They always do.”

“Her car went into the river.”

“Accidents happen all the time.”

“If it was an accident.” I sat up and poked at my pillow.

“Why wouldn’t it be? Visibility was poor, and she probably didn’t know the road. Also, her mind may have been filled with Morley’s pleasure when she showed up with her surprise. She was probably planning the trips they would take together. Voelkel told him that Harriet had gone to considerable trouble to find a big old American convertible because your father had mentioned that he had always wanted to drive one.”

Moonlight pierced the curtains. “Maybe it was so old that the sleeving was gone,” I conceded. “Or just maybe Harriet was mixed up in some sort of shady business that led an interested party to follow her and drive her off the road.”

“Ellie!” Ben, never at his most patient late at night, was sucking in a breath and holding his head.

“I didn’t at all like the sound of the foxy-faced Herr Voelkel,” I continued relentlessly. “It seems awfully fishy to me that there was no telephone. And nice people,” I added as Tobias’s furry form settled at the bottom of the bed, “do not have pictures of dead cats above their mantelpieces.”

“What sort of shady business?” Ben chomped down on a yawn.

“How should I know?” I turned on my side and tucked a hand under my pillow. But I kept my eyes open. As sleep crept closer, so did the image of Harriet’s car swerving off the foggy road and taking a nosedive into the Moselle. How long did she remain conscious? How fiercely did she struggle to free herself? Did she have a moment of false hope, thinking she could open the door? Did she think of my father as she gasped her last breath? It was time to think of something else. “What did Freddy have to say when you saw him off the premises?” I asked.

“He didn’t support your outrageous theory, if that’s what you mean.” Ben sounded very much the long-suffering husband.

“I don’t have a theory.”

“Then let’s say Freddy’s only mention of murder plots was when he talked about his role in the St. Anselm’s play. He asked me if I could spare an hour or two to hear him run through his lines. I told him that he should go home and lie awake all night anticipating his mother’s visit. So he slunk off, but only after I promised not to bolt the front door in case he took fright and decided to come back here with his teddy bear.”

“That was kind,” I said.

“Thank you, sweetheart. And now, if you won’t think me a spoilsport, I’ll snuggle down and think about what a wonderful time we could be having if your poor father weren’t three doors down with only a funeral urn to take into bed for a cuddle.”

“Now who’s displaying a penchant for melodrama?” I moved closer and stroked his hair, but the moment I guessed what he was thinking—that Merlin’s Court was built in the good old-fashioned way, with walls several feet thick—I popped a kiss on his ear and turned over. Who could even consider the possibility of romance under the present circumstances? Like it or not, we had become a house of mourning. At least until Harriet’s relatives arrived to claim her remains.

It took a while and the counting of many sheep on my part, but at last Ben fell asleep. I looked at the face of the illuminated clock, closed my eyes, and looked at it again. Almost midnight. Maybe I dozed, because the house seemed to shift, and I felt myself falling and sinking deep into rolling shadows. Jerking upright, I gulped down deep breaths that got forced painfully back up into my throat by the frantic beating of my heart. Afraid to lie back down, I slid out of bed, felt around for my dressing gown, and picked up the empty milk cup before tiptoeing from the room.

As I was descending the last couple of stairs, I noticed that Ben hadn’t put the bolt on the front door. A closer inspection, while standing with shivering feet on the flagstones, showed that he hadn’t even locked it. I hadn’t taken his promise to Freddy seriously and now decided that he had probably just forgotten. Ben tended to be a little cavalier in making his nightly round of securing doors and windows. (Hence, my cousin’s remark earlier in the evening, upon climbing through the sitting-room window, that Merlin’s Court was a burglar’s paradise.) Shaking my head, I remedied matters before nipping down the hall into the kitchen, where I found the light left on. Well, we had all been pretty emotionally drained by evening’s end, I thought, while pouring milk into the saucepan that Ben had left beside the sink. He had also left out a tin of cocoa and a half-opened packet of digestive biscuits. Or was it possible that Daddy had come downstairs for a nightcap?

Deciding that I preferred the sofa to sitting on a hard kitchen
chair, I put a couple of the digestives onto a plate, which I carried along with my steaming cup back out into the hall. As I reached the drawing room, I saw a light in the crack under the door. Fully expecting to see my parent installed within, I shifted everything to one hand and turned the knob. And immediately realized I should have done a better job of balancing cup and plate, because I almost dropped the lot.

I had not previously seen the Reverend Dunstan Ambleforth attired in anything other than a cassock and surplice, but even in his present baggy trousers and elderly cardigan he was every bit the cleric. He was a man with one foot firmly entrenched in a bygone century and the other planted on the path to the heavenly kingdom above. His white hair stood away from his head as though he were perpetually being caught by surprise. A false impression. At our first meeting, I had been convinced that had the church organist parachuted off the balcony, Mr. Ambleforth would have gone right on announcing that the next hymn would be 342. Certainly he did not look one whit discombobulated when he now raised his watery blue eyes and saw me standing three feet away.

“Ah, there you are, my dear.” He smiled in a kindly if somewhat abstracted manner. “I’ve been sitting here contemplating the effect of the tonsure upon monastic life. As you know, the good St. Ethelwort opposed the practice and had quite a spat with Rome on the subject in 1031. I am surprised that his bishop did not give him the boot”—Reverend Ambleforth chuckled softly— “or perhaps I should say the sandal, and order him to take the next boat back to the principality from which he came, in what we now call Germany.”

“Excuse me,” I began.

“One can appreciate, my dear, why the Barbers Guild would not have him for their saint.”

“I’m just not sure why you’re here,” I floundered on.

“I have no doubt, however, that its members flocked to his shrine along with the multitudes of goldsmiths and stonemasons and so on when word of his miracles made it clear he was a saint for all men.”

Mr. Ambleforth’s eyes were now fixed on the days when hair shirts were the height of fashion. I could see I was about to lose him completely. But all I could do was stand there clearing my throat.

“Yes, what is it, Kathleen, my dear?” he murmured dreamily.

“Kathleen?” I exclaimed. The man actually blinked at me.

“My goodness!” He sounded mildly perplexed. “You’re not my wife.”

“No, I’m Ellie Haskell.”

“So you are.” He rose from his chair and extended a courtly hand way off to my right. “How very good of you to drop in for a chat. Do have a seat and unburden yourself. Be assured, my dear child, that nothing you say, of however private a nature, will shock me. Think of me only as your confessor. A vicar hears it all. You are not the first remorseful soul to come to me in need of guidance. Indeed, you are not the first to have helped yourself to the contents of the Missions to Defrocked Clergy fund.”

“The what?” I sat down with a bump on the arm of the sofa.

Again he blinked, this time with more emphasis. “What did you say your name was?”

“Ellie Haskell.”

“Ah, I’m afraid I was thinking of an Edie Hubbell from my previous parish. Sometimes one’s mind goes back in time . . .”

I had to halt him before he reached the Middle Ages. “I’m afraid, Vicar, that you’re a little confused. You see— “My voice was cut off by the clock striking one.

“Perhaps you’re here about the girl guides,” he suggested hopefully while resuming his seat. “In which case it is my wife you
should see. Kathleen still has her own guide’s uniform and will thus be delighted to welcome you to the vicarage.”

“But this isn’t the vicarage.”

“It isn’t?” He got up again and peered around him like a man slowly defrosting after being frozen for fifty years. His eyes took in the portrait of Abigail above the mantelpiece, the turquoise-and-rose Aubusson carpet, and the ivory damask on the Queen Anne chairs. His forehead creased in deep perplexity as he contemplated the yellow Chinese vases on the mantelpiece and the decanters on the drinks table. But I could tell he wasn’t entirely convinced that he had wandered in through the wrong front door.

“This is Merlin’s Court,” I was saying when the doorbell rang. After hurriedly excusing myself to Reverend Ambleforth, I raced out into the hall to find out who else thought our household never slept. I opened the door just as our visitor was about to punch the bell again. As I stepped back, she advanced into the hall as if leading an expedition to the Arctic Circle. The twin suits of armor quaked in their metal boots as if expecting to be ordered to brave polar bears for the glory that was Britain.

Confronting Kathleen Ambleforth, or Mrs. Vicar, as she liked to be called, for the second time in one day, I was struck anew by the fact that she was a woman who had undoubtedly taken life by the throat from the moment she emerged from the womb. Her boundless energy made the average person look in need of an immediate blood transfusion. Upon her arrival in Chitterton Fells, she had unloaded the moving van while two strong men in cloth caps sat drinking the cups of tea she provided for them. Within an hour she had the furniture in place, the pictures hung, and the ornaments arranged to her satisfaction. Whereupon she settled her husband in his study, made a batch of cheese scones, and went back outside to dig up most of the garden.

I’d heard all this from Mrs. Malloy when she was sitting in my kitchen trying to get the point across that coming to clean for me three mornings a week would be a lot more fun if I would only get everything shipshape before her arrival. She had become an even greater admirer of Mrs. Ambleforth after auditioning for a role in
Murder Most Fowl
and being given a walk-on part, along with the opportunity to understudy the lead. Her only criticism being that Mrs. Vicar had no fashion sense. This said while Mrs. M. was wearing purple velvet that allowed for more cleavage than the San Andreas Fault. Tonight Kathleen was wearing a tweed coat with inches of pink nightie showing below the hem, a curler above each ear, and a pair of brogues on her bare feet. As usual, she exuded the desire to get life sorted back to her satisfaction.

“I’m sorry to knock you up at this hour.” She closed the front door for me and looked around as if searching out pictures that needed straightening. “But the thing is, Ellie, Dunstan has got himself misplaced again. I left him in his study while I went into the kitchen to whip up half a dozen sponge cakes for the Women’s Institute tea, and when I got back, he was gone. At first I didn’t worry because he often goes off on a walk to sort out St. Ethelwort in his head. But when he didn’t come back after a couple of hours, I said to Ruth, ‘If I know your uncle Dunstie, he’s gone wandering into the wrong house. And the one closest to us is Merlin’s Court.’ “