How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams (5 page)

A foreigner? Perhaps from some village in Transylvania where phantom dogs routinely set upon unwary travellers? My mind raced from this possibility to the realization that the poor woman might have come to serious grief. In her panic she could have blundered off the road and over the cliff, which in places sheered down to where the sea came slathering up over the rocks. Thank God she had made it safely to our gates and had reached the house before expiring of terror.

“He is the devil in dog’s fur.” The woman resisted my attempt to raise her to an upright position.

“We mustn’t jump to conclusions.” I went to stand over the dog, who cocked a hopeful ear and looked at me with the eyes of one ready and eager to be redeemed from a life of frightening helpless females out of their wits. I’m not a doggy person, mainly because Tobias Cat wouldn’t have approved, but I’ve never been unduly nervous around dogs. “Look, he’s wearing a collar with a tag. Hold tight a minute.” I smiled reassuringly over my shoulder before bending down to lift the brass disk away from the furry throat and read the inscription.

“My goodness!” I exclaimed.

“His name is Lucifer?” The woman pressed a hand to her mouth.

“No, Heathcliff!” I said. “Which means …”

“What?” she demanded fearfully.

“That he belongs, or, I should say,
belonged
to our local librarian. Poor Miss Bunch died of a rare virus that shuts down the heart. Sometimes the victim suffers flu-like symptoms, but just as often there are no warning signs. It
was a shock, particularly, I am sure, for Heathcliff here.” I went on softly, very much aware that the dog had lowered his head onto his paws and was uttering a series of infinitely sad woofs like a dirge. “Miss Bunch was buried today in St. Anselm’s churchyard, and this sad little orphan must have escaped from the people who were temporarily housing him and followed his mistress to her final resting place.”

“Her ghost! I saw it, walking on feet that do not touch the ground, between the tombstones. A woman—dressed in black from the head to the feet. She wears a veil that flutters like a big cobweb in the wind. And she twists her bony hands and she talks to herself.” My female visitor was pallid with terror.

“A tall, thin woman with stooped shoulders?” I asked.

“This is so.”

“That wasn’t Miss Bunch. She was only of medium height and quite stout. I think you must have seen Ione Tunbridge, one of our local characters. She’s close to eighty now and has haunted, in a manner of speaking, St. Anselm’s since the day her bridegroom failed to turn up at the church for the wedding ceremony.” While speaking, I began to wonder if I had somehow become trapped within the pages of
Her Master’s Voice
as a punishment for scoffing so many digestive biscuits. Was I doomed to wander from one melodrama to another throughout eternity?

“Miss Tunbridge hasn’t left her house in daylight in nearly sixty years,” I bumbled on, “but every so often she is spotted, between dusk and daylight, wandering around the churchyard. These days St. Anselm’s is locked at night, so she can no longer get inside to kneel before the altar … waiting for the sound of her bridegroom’s footsteps hastening down the nave to explain what had caused him to be more than half a century late showing up with the ring.”

“Men! They are a bad kettle of apples.” The woman was finally getting to her feet and I was relieved to see the physical damage done to her by Heathcliff was not as bad as she had made out when pounding her fists through my front door. Her handbag appeared to be intact apart from the broken strap, and she wasn’t minus either of her legs.
The dog did rise up on his haunches when she stood, but there was nothing bristling about his posture. Instead, he extended a conciliatory paw while assuming an expression of tongue-lolling meekness worthy of a much-misunderstood canine, one fully prepared to let bygones be bygones.

“I behave like a chicken with three heads, Frau Haskell,” said the woman. “It is a miracle I do not wake up your husband and set your entire household on its ear hole.”

“You were in fear of your life,” I assured her. Until that moment I had seen her in bits and blobs—a face blurred by terror, a pair of hands warding off the inevitability of annihilation. Now that the hall had changed back from one of the chillier chambers of Darkmoor House to its old friendly self, I was rather surprised by what I saw. Here was a plumpish woman who appeared to be approaching sixty, whose salt-and-pepper hair was braided into shoulder-length plaits, tied at the ends with ribboned bows as big as poppies. She wore a Swiss miss costume complete with dirndl and embroidered apron, white stockings, and buckled shoes. Hoping she hadn’t noticed my rude stare, I added hastily, “You have the advantage of me. You know my name, while I …?”

“Me?” Our midnight intruder gripped her handbag with both hands and her knees gave way so that she appeared to wobble a curtsy. “I am Gerta, your new au pair girl.”

“I refuse to have that creature in this house!”

My husband leapt out of bed before I had added the finishing touches to my explanation of the situation. Ben is rarely at his best at two in the morning, but even so there was no need for him to pace up and down in front of the bedroom fireplace, his eyes blazing, his black hair tousled from repeatedly raking his fingers through it. Any minute now he would be demanding to know who was the master of Merlin’s Court! Meanwhile the pheasants on the wallpaper were all aflutter.

“Darling, you’re being unreasonable!” I trotted around him as he circled the hearth rug. “We agreed …”

“We did indeed!” Ben stopped dead in his tracks. In turning to face me, he almost tripped over his pajama legs, which were a couple of inches taller than he and which, having perversely refused to shrink in the wash, needed hemming. Yanking on the cord, he tied it into a ferocious knot. “I told you, Ellie, in no uncertain terms this evening that I am not prepared to provide a home for Miss Bunch’s orphan dog!”

I sat down on the bed with a bump and pressed a hand to my throbbing head. “He’s the sweetest little pup in the world, although timid to a fault! But I thought we were talking about Gerta!”

“And she’s not the German shepherd?”

“No! She’s the au pair!” There was no point, I decided, in further complicating matters by explaining that Heathcliff had made no bones about his lack of pedigree. “You really are the limit, Ben. Have you paid any attention to what I’ve been saying for the last five minutes?”

“To every word, give or take a few, of the woman’s heartrending story.” Striding over to the window, Ben pulled the wine velvet curtains more tightly closed, either to relieve his feelings or to prevent the moon getting up to any peeping Tom tricks. “The woman came to this country from Switzerland some ten years ago, in the company of her husband. The two of them owned and operated a café in Putney, one of those places specializing in mango-flavoured cappuccino and hand-churned yogurt. Two days ago the husband announced he had fallen for the sloe-eyed harpy who runs the used-clothing shop down the street—”

“The harpy,” I reminded him sternly, “is a six-foot ex-rugger player by the name of Robert Meyers and, as Gerta tearily explained it, she never stood a chance when Robert offered to arm-wrestle her for the man in their lives. The result was the poor woman found herself out in the street with nothing to show for her married life but the clothes on her back—which happened to be her alpine work uniform—and a packet of mocha deluxe coffee beans to go. Not a pretty story.”

“Love can be a cutthroat business.” Ben pried himself away from the mantelpiece and came to sit beside me on the bed. “It was fortunate Gerta had enough loose change in her purse to ring up her friend Jill, who, in addition to taking her in for the night, mentioned that her former flatmate, one Ellie Haskell, was looking for an au pair.” Cupping my face in his hands, he pressed a kiss against my lips, which were by now pretty much numb with exhaustion, and murmured, “Do I get top marks for paying attention?”

“Yes, dear; but I’m not handing out any prizes tonight.” Flopping back against the pillows, I did wonder if I might be leading my husband on by permitting him a glimpse of leg as he rolled me, like an unwieldy strudel, under the bedclothes. Even so, I’m ashamed to say it was the possibility of eating lots of hand-thrown apple strudel
in the days ahead that quickened my pulses as Ben climbed in beside me and switched off the table lamp.

Turning on my side and repositioning Ben’s hand around my waist, I thought about Jill, who in addition to being my ex-flatmate was also Cousin Freddy’s girlfriend when they remembered to get in touch with each other. It was typical of her to extend a helping hand to Gerta. It was also typical that Jill had waited until midnight to telephone and inform us she was sending along an au pair who desperately needed the job, was of sound moral character, and could yodel like a dream. Jill’s was the phone call that had sounded while I was in the throes of Sir Gavin’s expert seduction.

I swallowed a yawn. If Gerta had shown any signs of being a homicidal maniac, Jill—who not only refuses to smash bugs but endeavours to find good homes for them—would not have landed us with the woman. Naturally, it would be wise to check out the references Gerta had provided. But I was optimistic that she would prove to be a treasure. She had been determinedly cheerful when Heathcliff trailed after us up the stairs, appeared delighted with her room, was eager to take a look at the twins, but understanding when I suggested we defer the introductions till the morning. Having lent her one of my nighties and a dressing gown, I had bidden her good night without wondering once if I should lock her door from the outside.

Our doggy visitor, however, was another matter. After feeding him two bowls of cat food under the watchful eye of Tobias Cat, who had scaled the Welsh dresser in the kitchen and was threatening a nervous breakdown, I had let Heathcliff out into the garden and, shortly thereafter, shut him away in the cupboard under the stairs. So far we had heard no howls of protest or sounds of his body slamming against the door with the reckless disregard for property typical of a policeman on a drug bust.

“That dog’s being awfully quiet.” Ben shifted up onto his elbow to lean over me just as I was sinking into soft clouds of sleep.

“I’m sure Miss Bunch had him well trained,” I murmured while stuffing my head under the pillow.

“Well, don’t go getting any ideas of using your feminine charms to get me to change my mind about keeping
the hound.” My husband lay back down and wrapped an arm and a leg around me. “It’s true that I am at times unable to resist the soft touch of your hands upon my quivering manhood but …”

There it came again, the suspicion that he had been secretly leafing through my stash of romantic fiction. But that was ridiculous. Ben’s idea of a real page-turner was a cookery book featuring an unexpurgated account of how to debone a chicken with one hand.

“Darling,” I mumbled from under the pillow. “We both need to get some sleep.”

“You’re right,” agreed my spouse, taking back his arm and his leg, “what else do we go to bed for?”

“Pleasant dreams!” Finally coming up for air, I settled myself for four or, optimistically, five hours of shut-eye. It was my understanding that people require less sleep as they grow older, and with another birthday looming up in a couple of days I could doubtless get away with burning the candle at both ends. Even so, I wouldn’t be worth much in the morning if I didn’t nod off soon. Within minutes Ben’s rhythmic breathing told he had drifted into slumber, but there went my mind—chasing its own tale in the dark.

I went from thinking about Miss Bunch cooped up in her coffin with little or no elbow room, to wondering if Bunty Wiseman would ever get back with her ex-husband. Was Brigadier Lester-Smith a bachelor by choice or had he suffered a disappointment in love? And then there were those other members of the Library League—Sir Robert Pomeroy and Mrs. Dovedale, both of whom were recently widowed. Once or twice at our meetings I had wondered whether there was anything significant in the way their eyes would meet during the reading of the minutes. As for crotchety Mr. Poucher, it was hard to imagine any woman raking her fingernails down his back and begging him to walk out on his mother. Other than myself, the only married member of the league was Sylvia Babcock, who a fortnight previously had tied the knot with our milkman. That prophetess of doom—otherwise known as my faithful daily—Mrs. Malloy had declared the Babcock union would never last. For one thing Mr. B. was a passionate lover—of dogs, that is. And Sylvia, a nervy type, had stipulated
that there would be no four-legged creatures bringing germs into her tidy home.

I must have fallen asleep without realizing how I got there, because suddenly I was in a chaise and four, being swept away into the night by a cloaked driver.

“Karisma!” The cry came from deep within my soul.

“I thought I was Sir Gavin.” His laughter was at once sardonic and deeply sensual.

“Sometimes you are,” I whispered. “You appear on the pages of romance novels in many guises, but it is always you I see—your face, the incomparable cheekbones, the dizzying depths of your eyes, the heroic nose, and that perfect mouth, so exquisitely tender even at its most predatory! I could rhapsodize all night about your tawny hair that I yearn to unleash in all its voluminous splendour, your magnificent body unequaled since the Greek gods ceased parading around in little more than their laurel wreaths.…”