The Widow's Club (37 page)

I sat down.

Primrose touched my hand. “My dear Ellie, Charles Delacorte
had
to die that evening at Abigail’s. The occasion was too ideal to be missed. But, small consolation that it is, someone regretted the necessity of involving you. Someone
who knows you, likes you, and quite possibly admires you.”

“The signature could have easily been omitted by mistake,” I protested. “But how did you know about the roses?”

“Our discovery of the flowers sent to you was fortuitous.” Primrose stretched the edges of her shawl over her arms. “We thought it might be of interest to know who sent wreaths to the funeral, so we instructed Butler to check the florist’s order book, which he did last midnight—” Primrose coughed behind her hand—“not wishing to intrude upon working hours.”

“Most considerate.” Belatedly, I picked up my scattered possessions off the floor and replaced them in my bag. Would that I could collect my scattered thoughts that easily. The analysis of the suspects, my supposed connection with The Founder, was leading straight as a homing pigeon to the moment when the Tramwells would reveal what they wanted from me. Part of me determined that whatever it was, the answer was NO! Another part kept stuttering, but think—this may be your one chance to put things right for Ben and Abigail’s, to say nothing of saving the lives of countless erring, unsuspecting husbands. What was a little danger, a little terror, in so good a cause? If only I were the stuff of which heroines are made.

“If there is a Founder,” I said, “I’ll put my money on Dr. Simon Bordeaux. He must know what is behind all those nervous breakdowns at the Peerless. He cannot be totally evil because he is taking care of Jenny Spender and her mother, but he is creepy.”

Hyacinth squared her shoulders. “Ellie, the most vital thing we have learned concerning The Founder is that he or she is diabolically clever. Dr. Bordeaux may be diabolical, but clever—no. Otherwise he could have managed to bump off a few helpless old women without causing a ruckus.”

“He was never brought to trial on any charges,” I reminded her.

“He may not have been guilty of anything. Those women who remembered him in their wills may have done so by desire. To earn an undeservedly sinister reputation doesn’t smack much of cleverness, does it?” Hyacinth closed the green book and laid it on the table.

My heart thudded. My hands felt as though they were smeared with cold cream. The sisters were bracing themselves to appeal to my nobility of character. They were going to ask me to risk everything that mattered most to me. Grabbing at the first thought that came into my head, I said, “What about Miss Gladys Thorn? Isn’t she as suspect as any?”

The parlour door opened and closed; I heard Butler’s tentative cough, but kept talking. “
The Maiden Voyage
, a book on the subject of repressed feminine sexuality, strongly suggests—”

Primrose smiled gently. “Dear Ellie, why not talk to Miss Thorn herself?”

I could not move my eyes, let alone anything else. Butler was walking Miss Thorn across the room. Now he drew out a chair for her. She twitched a smile at me and I strove to indent my face in response.

“Tea, madam?” Butler spoke through his nose.

“Oh, that would be nice, thank you so terribly much.”

As the door closed behind him, Miss Thorn straightened her glasses, fumbled with the tablecloth, then locked her bony hands together. “Mrs. Haskell, you now know all. I do beseech you—if you feel some particle of charity in your heart—not to tell the dear vicar. He would be so grieved.”

“I imagine he would be aghast,” I said hoarsely. “To know that men of his parish are being murdered in record numbers—”

Primrose coolly interrupted me. “Quite, my dear Ellie. Mr. Foxworth might feel that his sermons weren’t getting through.” She patted the church organist’s hand. “Do you recall, Ellie, our telling you that Flowers Detection was brought into this investigation through the efforts of someone personally affected by the number of men in this locality meeting untimely deaths?”

I responded a little impatiently. “Absolutely. You described her as the Other Woman in so many ill-fated affairs that she had contacted an insurance company—” My eyes met Miss Thorn’s. She was blushing.

“I fear, Mrs. Haskell, you are looking at her.” Her mushroom eyes swam behind the glasses. “How can I hope to make you, an ordinary woman of pure impulse, understand the curse of one born with an animal magnetism, a
musk, if you will, which draws men willy-nilly? My reason for not marrying—although I have had more proposals than I can count—is that I know”—she touched her forehead, now glistening with perspiration—“that it is physically impossible for me to confine myself to the passions of one man. Those others out there wouldn’t let me. And does not the dear vicar so often say we must use our unique gifts for the enrichment of others?”

She was wringing her hands so tightly I thought they would start dripping. The nerve of her. Speaking about marriage that way as though it, and people like me who settle for it, were incurably dull. And yet … hadn’t Ben awakened on our wedding night shouting out Miss Thorn’s name? I had thought he was having a nightmare.
Et tu
, Jonas. Hadn’t he once said he got all hot under the collar when looking into Miss Thorn’s eyes?

“Can it be true, Mrs. Haskell, that you never suspected?” Miss Thorn’s eyes shuddered away from mine. “Vernon Daffy, may he rest in peace, refused to leave me alone. At your wedding reception he followed me upstairs, and after we had … delighted in each other, he begged me to play the piano for him, and I was so transported that I didn’t notice that his wig had come off until the cat started playing with it. The next moment you entered, and Vernon hid under the bedclothes.”

Hyacinth thumbed through the green book. “Mr. Vernon Daffy made the fatal mistake of asking his wife for a divorce, so he could marry another woman.”

“My men, God bless them,”—Miss Thorn closed her eyes—“have always respected me too much to reveal my name, but some suspicions must have been aroused because—” She stopped, digging her fingers into the edge of the table. “I heard rumours, shocking, unfounded rumours, that I was having an affair with a gentleman whom—although I never disliked him as much as many people did—I was never once tempted to visualise … naked.”

Primrose closed her eyes.

“Ellie,” said Hyacinth. “Miss Thorn is speaking of Charles Delacorte. Granted, he may have been having an affair with some unknown woman and used Miss Thorn as a scapegoat. But, what if he were guiltless of all wrongdoing, other than being an extremely unpleasant human
being?” She paused for emphasis. “Something tells me we may have encountered a motive for murder different from the norm here. In other words, Mrs. Delacorte’s reason for wishing to be a widow may differ from that of the other club members.”

I tried to grip the seat of my chair, but my hands kept slipping. “You’re thinking Ann may have wanted Charles out of the way because of what I told you about her feelings for Lionel; but that doesn’t add up.” We were talking about a friend of mine. The sisters nodded and Gladys Thorn’s mushroom eyes magnified behind her glasses.

“Bunty’s still in the picture, you mean?” Hyacinth stood, paced for a few seconds and sat back down. “A stumbler, but Ann Delacorte may be banking on her allure as a heartbroken widow. And Flowers Detection must bank on her loyalty to the club not equalling that of her sisters, making her a little more approachable, a little less guarded if someone—”

She stopped significantly. I finished for her. “If someone attempted to infiltrate the group.” I picked up Edwin Digby’s book,
The Merry Widows
, then dropped it, as if it were white-hot. “I can’t do it; I can’t phone Ann and tell her I’ve just begun to realise how much we have in common—that I, too, want to murder my husband. What if something went wrong? What if I got in too deep and couldn’t get out?”

The pink bows in Primrose’s silvery curls and the Mickey Mouse watch were suddenly at odds with the sternness in her blue eyes. “Ellie, men are being
murdered
. Can you live with yourself knowing that?”

“I’m not at all sure that they are,” I flashed back.

“Then, my dear, nothing terrible can happen, if you just have a little chat with Ann about your unhappy marriage and how you are desperately seeking a way out.”

I couldn’t answer her. I didn’t have any words left. I opened up
The Merry Widows
and continued reading from the jacket where I had left off.

The heroine of this macabre tale is a foolish female who eventually gets what is coming to her
.

“And now, my dear Ellie,” said Primrose, “it’s time to assign Bentley a paramour. Remember, to meet the eligibility requirements of The Widows Club, you must accuse him of conduct unbecoming a married gentleman.”

Miss Thorn raked fingers through her hair. “Anything I can do in the line of duty?”

Hyacinth froze her with a smile. “Without doubt, cousin Vanessa is the ideal choice. Her attentions to the vicar can so easily be made to look like camouflage. Now, Ellie, as to contacting Mrs. Delacorte and requesting she put you up for membership in The Widows Club, I suggest you allow a decent interval to elapse, say, a few days. Perhaps you could use the interim period to do something about eating sensibly?”

Miss Thorn twitched agreement. In addition to her other shortcomings, she undoubtedly ate like an elephant and lost rather than gained.

At midnight, after that marathon talk with the Tramwells, I crept into Merlin’s Court like a thief.

“Ellie.” Ben came out of the hall shadows and crushed me in his arms. “I thought you had left. And I was desperately worried about you; I didn’t think you would like being a nun.” He attempted a laugh. “I couldn’t blame you though if you’d had enough. I’ve failed you miserably.” He kissed my neck, my weakest spot. “My illness is no
excuse.…” Something in his voice told me he hoped it could be. “My treatment of you has been unforgivable.”

I wasn’t the innocent I had been when we married. I knew now that unless one chooses to join the ranks of the divorced—or worse—a spouse has, at times, to forgive the unforgivable. And Ben was compounding all the horrors of my situation by being utterly desirable. I stood there, my nose against his ear, arms rigid at my sides.

“Ellie, I know that even without what happened to Charles Delacorte, this has been a time of adjustment for you. First Mum, then Poppa descending on us with their problems, but in the end nothing counts but our love for each other. That is still so, isn’t it? We would have married even if so doing had cost us the inheritance. The house, and the money is just the
fondant françois
on the cake.”

This from the man I was plotting to murder! That I was doing so in a just cause and did not plan to bring the matter to fruition seemed, as the shadows in the hall stealthed the walls, to be splitting hairs. Ben had every right to know about my involvement with Flowers Detection; he was crucially involved. But if I told him everything … anything, he might be consumed by guilt, thinking that he had reduced me to this state of lunatic credulity. And … he might respond with heavy-handed chivalry and demand that I stop. A big chunk of me wanted to stop. But what if no one combatted the widows? What if they expanded their horizons? Did I want to raise children in a world where it was off with the heads of grannies who wouldn’t babysit every other Saturday or teachers who didn’t give all A’s?

In such a frame of mind, how could I go freely into my husband’s arms? That night I did not worry about the absence of violins; my head was filled with bells knelling. That sort of thing makes a woman frigid in a hurry.

There was, however, a glimmer of help for me. Ben blamed my abstraction upon his mother, who spent half the night pacing in her turret room. Even now we could hear every step, every chink of the rosary beads.

Poppa, on the other hand, caused us daytime audio problems. The next day and the next, the sound of his saw was enough to send anyone into orbit. He had turned the loggia into his workshop, and sawdust rose like a Sahara sandstorm. I tried to look pleased. He was, after all, engaged in making the cake from which I was to leap the
night of Bunty’s Follies—now only a few weeks away. I had expected something disposable, but this was a magnificent edifice, good for the wear and tear of the next three generations. Not that my crystal ball showed any future generations.

Monday morning, three days after Charles Delacorte’s funeral, I determined I could do something about my marriage. I could eat the attractive, delicious, well-balanced meals Ben prepared. And if in so doing I gained a pound, so be it. Somewhere along the pathway to becoming the perfect wife I had forgotten that I had needed Ben’s help to keep trim; I had stopped letting him support me in this very important area of my life. We had been more of a team, more married, in the days when we were friends.

If only … if only we could have a second chance. I made a second determination. At nine-thirty, give or take an hour, I would pick up the phone and dial Ann’s number.

Magdalene and I were alone in the kitchen, but I was barely aware of her until she said, “If it’s something I’ve done to upset you, Giselle, I’d rather you told me straight out. Don’t worry about hurting my feelings, I’m not as frail as I look.” She picked up the milk jug with both hands. “I draw strength from doing for others.”