The Widow's Club (5 page)

My tea cake buckled when I stuck a knife in it. “Do I know this Venus?”

“According to our records, you do.” Hyacinth waved the cognac bottle over my cup.

I nodded assent. “Who could this inflamer of male desire be?”

Primrose looked smug. “I fear it would be a breach of professional confidentiality for us to reveal her name. We prefer to wait and let her speak for herself.”

I held up my hands. “That’s quite all right. If you were to divulge it now, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on what it is you want from me.” The brandy tasted good now that it was no longer diluted by tea, but it wasn’t responsible for the small hopeful flame that lit within me. If what the Tramwells said were true, then maybe in helping them I could make some small reparation to Ben.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Before we proceed, I must make a phone call.” Going out into the foyer, I found Butler dusting the chocolates in the dish on the library table. I asked him to fetch fresh tea, and as he headed for the kitchen, I picked up the telephone and quickly dialed my own number. My father-in-law answered at the third ring. After a brief conversation, I returned to the coffee parlour and closed the door behind me.

I sat down. “Ready.”

Primrose pressed a scented handkerchief into my limp fingers. “We wish you to give us a history of the events leading up to the tragic event which occurred on these premises one week ago tonight.”

“How much do you need to know?” The steadiness of my voice startled me.

“Everything.” Hyacinth uncapped a fountain pen.

“All right,” I began. “On the day of Abigail’s premiere, I woke at a little after six o’clock feeling totally exhausted because all that night I had dreamt I was preparing food for the party. Ben, you see—”

“No, no! Mrs. Haskell. That is not what we want at all.” Hyacinth dabbed at a splutter of ink.

“Dear me, indeed not!” piped up Primrose. “We wish you to go back to the beginning. Start, if you will be so good, with the day you and Bentley came to Merlin’s Court. Your views and impressions since coming to this area are as important to us as the climax.”

“Why don’t I begin with my wedding? Ben and I hadn’t done much socialising with the locals before then; but that day the church and later the house teemed with people. I remember hearing one of the guests say that everyone was there except Chitterton Fells’s three most famous: Edwin
Digby, the mystery writer; Felicity Friend, the advice columnist; and the wicked Dr. Simon Bordeaux.”

“You had sent out a great many invitations?” Hyacinth was making notes.

“None.”

The pen stopped moving.

“Ben and I had a very short engagement and wanted a quiet wedding. But, then again, we didn’t want to offend the people we didn’t invite. So we phoned the people we really wanted there and put a small squib in the Coming Events section of
The Daily Spokesman
. It appeared right at the bottom of the page and was headed ‘All Welcome’, giving time, date, and place. The response was horrifying. The phone buzzed day and night with acceptances to our gracious invitation.”

“I am sure it was a lovely wedding.” Primrose pulled out her handkerchief again.

I hesitated. “The day—it was the first of December last year—was marred by some unfortunate circumstances. The best man, Sidney Fowler, found weddings depressing. He had only agreed to do the honours in hopes of combatting his phobia. The weather was less than perfect and we were about to get the dreadful news about Ben’s mother.…”

… “My dear Ellie, I am sure you were a breathtaking bride!” Primrose sighed sentimentally.…

Organ music wafted through the open church doors as I stumbled through the lich-gate and down the mossy pathway flanked by ancient tombstones. I clutched the skirt of my white satin gown and my bouquet of yellow tea roses in one hand and Jonas’s arm with the other. Late again. I am always late—for dental appointments, theatre performances, jury duty—but I
had
planned to make an exception for my wedding.

“Hurry, Jonas!”

The sea breeze lifted my veil, snarling it about my face. My seed pearl tiara slipped over one eye, giving me the look of a demented fairy.

“I
am
hurrying.”

Jonas was over seventy. What if he dropped dead at my feet? I would spend the rest of my life consumed by remorse. Some people might think it odd that I had chosen to be given away in marriage by my gardener. But he and Dorcas had been my mainstays during my struggle along the byways to Ben’s affection.

If Jonas were taken ill, the wedding would have to be postponed, and that would be the end of me. Women have come a long way from the days when growing up to be an old maid like great-aunt Clarissa was considered a fate worse than death. Today’s woman knows that the word spinster is
not synonymous with pebble glasses, a long beaky nose, and button boots. The glamourous, sophisticated single woman has risen—a triumphant phoenix—from the ashes of a dying breed. But the world still harbors pockets of spineless, jelly-kneed females who believe the quality of their lives will be immeasurably improved by the acquisition of a husband. I am such a woman. Do I deserve to be stoned?

When I was six years old and was asked what I wanted for Christmas, I replied, “Something simple in gold for the fourth finger of my left hand.” Nothing, nothing must spoil this day. Or better said: no further blight must be cast upon it. My mother was dead, my father was a nomad last seen hitching a camel ride across the Sahara, but I had naively hoped Ben’s parents would wish to share our joy. Wrong. His Roman Catholic mother had sent love and best wishes but declined attending because the service was to be Church of England. His Jewish father spurned the invitation because three years previously he had taken a vow (on his mother’s photograph) never again to speak to his only son. Ben had been stoic and I had been snarly about their childishness. And that morning had brought fresh tribulation. I had awakened to find my veil lying in a tattered heap upon my bedroom floor.

Jane Eyre
revisited, except that in my case the vandal was not a madwoman, but my cat Tobias. A desperate hunt through the attic had procured a replacement. An antique lace tablecloth. Really, it looked fine and would be a conversation piece at many a future dinner party. I had then waited placidly for the arrival of my white-ribboned taxi. And waited. Jonas and I had met its driver, puffed and purple-faced, outside the churchyard only a moment before. The ancient vehicle had stalled halfway up Cliff Road; there would be no charge.

So we walked. We were but a stone’s throw from the church doors when Jonas’s top hat blew off. The organ music petered out as I sidestepped a freshly dug grave and pelted after that wretched hat.

“Let it go,” bellowed Jonas. “Like as not there’ll be a beret or two in the lost-and-found box.”

A beret! A fine figure I would cut being escorted down the aisle by a man holding a beret in his white-gloved hand. I scooped up the top hat as it skimmed over a ground
monument lined with that green bath-salts stuff and hobbled back to Jonas.

His heavy walrus moustache twitched in irritation. “Ellie girl, why are you pegging along at the tilt?”

“Twisted my ankle.” Setting the hat back on his head, I cast a saddened glance at the stains now rimming the hem of my gown, hoisted the skirt up, and grabbed his arm again. As we mounted the crumbling stone steps, the organ music swelled once more into a joyous flood.

“A mite early for carols, isn’t it?” Jonas muttered. “Close on a month till Christmas.”

“The organist must have started taking requests,” I whispered as the cool mustiness of the entrance surrounded us. “Poor darling Ben: He’ll think I’ve changed my mind, that I’m not coming. Hurry, Jonas!”

“Damned lucky to be getting a rare girl like you,” came his muffled comment.

“Jonas, I will not have you swearing in church.” I kissed his weathered cheek. “Bless you for everything.”

Past the poor box and the pamphlet table, then through the archway, to the tune of “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” The pews were lined with people. I was sure my nasty relatives, having betted heavily against this day, were chuckling at the possibility of a no-show. I wanted something to eat, nothing fattening you understand, just a low-cal cracker or two.

A schoolboy standing inside the nave looked, saw us, and ran backward a few paces down the aisle. Eyes raised heavenward, he jerked a thumbs-up sign toward the choir loft. The carol tapered away and “Oh Perfect Love” surged forth.

“I never really believed this day would come. Now I’m scared witless that even at this the eleventh hour something will happen to snatch Ben away.”

An elderly woman in a pink voile hat leaned out from the back pew and touched my arm. “Didn’t I know he was Mr. Right?”

I knew that voice … Mrs. Swabucher, owner of Eligibility Escorts, the woman who first introduced me to Ben.

With a whispered “Talk to you later,” I dragged Jonas past an unfamiliar female voice sighing ecstatically: “My word, don’t she look a picture. Love the veil. Real Victorian.”

A rumbling male voice replied, “I dunno. For all her money she’s not a patch on our Beryl.”

On my left, a tall woman in a fruit-laden hat jostled a grizzly baby against her hip.

Voices, faces—a moving haze swamped by the scent of centuries, incense, and freshly cut chrysanthemums. I hate chrysanthemums, but we had an abundance of them at Merlin’s Court and Ben had wanted to use them. He said they were jolly flowers. Jolly depressing, I called them.

A hand brushed my hip and I squinted round to see portly Uncle Maurice winking at me. Jerking on Jonas’s arm, I almost missed seeing lovely, loathsome cousin Vanessa stick out an alligator-shod foot. But I saw it just in time and trod down hard in passing. A small triumph but a foolish one.

My eyes adjusted to the dim light provided by the narrow stained-glass windows and the flickering candles upon the altar. The three men standing on the chancel steps looked like they had been embalmed. The one in the middle was the Reverend Rowland Foxworth and on his left stood the best man. Sid Fowler had grown up a few doors down the street from Ben’s family, and recently we had discovered that “Sidney,” the posh hairdressing salon on Market Street, was his place. But I had eyes for only one man. The one tapping his foot, arms akimbo. My husband-to-be.

That stance signified not so much impatience as pent-up fury. I could see his jaw muscles working as he ground his teeth. Poor darling Ben! Who could blame him for being angry?

Hitching up my gown and crushing my bouquet against my side, I ran the remaining few yards down the aisle, leaving Jonas completely behind.

“What peasantry!” Aunt Astrid’s voice bounced off the rafters and echoed through the church amid splutters of laughter. I didn’t care a farthing. Elbowing Sid off the steps, I whispered in my beloved’s ear.

“Darling, I’m sorry. You can’t imagine all the things that have gone wrong. I couldn’t reach your parents on the phone to beg them to change their minds. And those men who were supposed to come last week to move the harpsichord down from the attic—they arrived, but one of them sprained his back so we had to shove it in the boxroom; meaning we are stuck with records for the reception.” My
voice was coming out in strangled gasps; I realised I was standing on my train.

Ben’s voice broke through his clenched teeth. “I thought you had stood me up, and for the devil of me I couldn’t think of a way to make it look as though I had jilted you. Fifty million pairs of gloating eyes pinned on one is not conducive to quick thinking.”

My dark handsome hero. I smiled worshipfully at him.

Sid fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and Rowland Foxworth turned a page of his little black book with a silvery rustle. Footsteps sounded behind us. Dorcas, wearing a brown velvet jockey cap and plaid cape, stepped forward and removed my bouquet.

“Sat on it, did you? Not to worry. I’ll tweak those petals right back to shape.”

Jonas, with an austere nod at Ben, muttered, “Treat her like a queen, boy, or I’ll wring your scrawny neck.” He stepped back to stand beside Dorcas.

Aunt Astrid’s voice rang out again. “Can you credit it? Those clodhopping boots all caked with mud. Only Giselle would have the gardener give her away.”