How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams (6 page)

I reached out my hands to him and found myself alone in a whirling blackness, the only one to hear the demonic chortling that I knew emanated from the ghost of Hector Rigglesworth. He who had put the coffin lid on Miss Bunch’s career was there on the outskirts of my dream. And he had brought with him the hound of hell, a beast who, with fangs bared, leapt through the window of the phantom carriage to knock the breath out of my body.

“My God!” Ben bolted up in bed, fumbled for the bedside lamp, and, in the blaze of light that flooded the room, sat blinking down at the two-ton bear rug that had spread itself over me from toes to chin. “You told me you had shut that damn dog in the cupboard under the stairs.” My husband’s accusing finger vibrated between me and Heathcliff.

“I forgot we were dealing with an escape artist.” I struggled to sit up and got half my face licked off in the process. “He wouldn’t be here if Miss Bunch’s neighbours, who took him in originally, had been able to prevent his making a bolt for it.”

“Lucky them!” Ben yanked at the bedspread, which gave a mighty rip under the weight of the unbudgeable Heathcliff. “Why don’t you open the window, Ellie, and pretend to look the other way while he makes a leap for
freedom? If it will help, I’ll knot the sheets into a rope and attach it to the ledge; or you might point out to him that there is a perfectly good drainpipe he could shin down.”

Far from taking offence at these remarks, Heathcliff smiled broadly, in appreciation of what he clearly took for a jest. Unreeling his bottomless tongue, he slopped a series of licks on Ben’s clenched hand.

“Look how he’s taken to you!” My benign response to the intruder was due to an overwhelming relief that he was real, not some figment of my dream. Perhaps in future I would have to give up my late-night reading if, like cheese, it provoked a tendency to nightmares. But for now I must focus on getting massive Heathcliff off the bed before the springs flattened out and Ben threatened him with vivisection.

“I don’t care what you do with the beast, Ellie, so long as he isn’t here when I get home from work.”

“Yes, dear!” In endeavouring to drag the dog off the bed, first by the collar, then by the ears, I sent my husband slithering onto the floor in a cacophony of curses that would have been the death of his Roman Catholic mother.

“If he eats one of the children, I will be extremely upset.” So saying, Ben struggled to his feet and took out his annoyance on the poor alarm clock, which was only doing what it was supposed to do in giving a raucous buzz to inform us that it was now six
A.M
. precisely. Sucking on the fist he had used to pound on the button, the man who hated anything on four legs stomped off to the bathroom.

I looked unhappily down at Heathcliff. The dog had seen fit to climb off the bed and attack the cord of my dressing gown while I attempted to slip into the garment that had seen better days. “I’m sorry, but you will have to go!”

My heart ached. But duty to my husband and children was brought home when, with you-know-who trailing behind me, I descended into the hall to find the vacuum cleaner had been dragged out from the cupboard under the stairs. The hapless victim (showing signs of having put up the fight of its life) lay sprawled on its back, for all the world like a victim of Jack the Ripper, a gaping hole in its cloth stomach and its dusty innards scattered across the flagstones. And if that weren’t bad enough, a chair had
been knocked sideways and one of its legs chewed off to the knee. The vase that once stood on the trestle table was now a handful of mosaic shards which Heathcliff sidestepped without an embarrassed glance as he followed me on lighthearted paws into the kitchen.

Luckily he had failed to open this door. And I will say he acceded with good grace to my frowning enjoinder that he endeavour not to destroy anything else in the next five minutes. Stretching out in front of the fireplace, he assumed the prayerful pose of a Buddhist monk. But I kept a watchful eye on him as I filled the kettle and set it on the Aga. It soon hissed to the boil in perfect imitation of Tobias, who, still perched atop the Welsh dresser, fixed the invader with a laser stare aimed to annihilate. I had just heated the teapot and set out cups and saucers, when a knock sounded at the garden door.

Ever eager to be of service, Heathcliff took a ten-foot leap, got the handle between his jaws, and would have yanked the door off its hinges if it had not at that moment opened inward, effectively knocking him back on his haunches.

“Morning, Mrs. Haskell.”

“Why, good morning, Mr. Babcock!” I stood clutching the teapot, quite taken aback—not by the milkman’s informality in walking into the kitchen, he quite often behaved in this chummy way—but because I had believed him to be still on his honeymoon with Sylvia from the Library League.

“Six pints same as usual?” Mr. Babcock was a big, beefy man with a stomach that would have done a pregnant woman proud. He went jangling past me with his hand crate and deposited the bottles on the kitchen table. “Got yourself a new dog, I see.” He looked down at Heathcliff with an admiring eye that did not dim when the cur gave a lunge, accompanied by a leonine growl, and began tearing at his shoelaces. “He’s a caution, all right! What do you call him?”

“Ivan the Terrible.”

“That’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?” Whether Mr. Babcock was speaking to me or the dog, who was now chewing on his trouser legs, was unclear, but I quickly explained that the sad little orphan had belonged to Miss
Bunch, who had christened him Heathcliff, and that he wouldn’t be with us long.

“Are you saying the poor lad’ll try and do away with himself?” Mr. Babcock made a gallant attempt to bend down and pat the bereaved, but was prohibited by the rolls of fat holding up his trousers.

“What I meant to say”—I got busy pouring Mr. Babcock a cup of tea and trying to remember if he took four or five spoonfuls of sugar—“is that it is impossible for us to keep Heathcliff. He would be forever bowling Abbey and Tam over and otherwise upsetting the applecart. But let’s talk about you, Mr. Babcock. I was expecting to have to make do with your temporary replacement for another few days. Aren’t you still on your honeymoon?”

“You could say I am, officially speaking.” The milkman accepted the cup and saucer I handed him and stood fiddling with the spoon. “But as they say, a bloke can take only so much of a good thing. So this morning I tells the new missus that I’m off for a breather—of fresh air.”

“Yes,” I said, “well, do sit down, Mr. Babcock, and enjoy your tea, if you can spare the time.”

“Don’t mind if I do, thanks very much.” He settled himself on a chair at the kitchen table and held up his cup in salute. “Bottoms up, Mrs. Haskell … as the actress said to the bishop!”

Accepting this little joke from where it came—a man still officially on honeymoon—I was about to ask if Mr. B. would like a digestive biscuit, when I remembered I had left the nearly depleted tin in the drawing room the previous night. If I knew Heathcliff, he had polished off every last remaining crumb. Watching Mr. Babcock take a deep swallow of tea, I was horrified to see his lips constrict in a paroxysm of pain.

“Too much sugar?”

“It’s not that …” He drew in a sharp breath that made his pale eyes bulge.

“Then it’s Heathcliff!” Already I was picturing the court case wherein his lordship the judge listened unmoved to my panicked attempts to explain that I was not responsible for the foibles of the canine in question and sentenced me to a lifetime behind bars. “Has he helped himself to a bite out of your leg, Mr. Babcock?”

“No, it’s naught to do with this little fellow.” The milkman attempted a smile that turned into a grimace. “It’s just that I get these pains in my chest sometimes. Nothing but a bit of indigestion that goes as quick as it comes. A spoonful of bicarbonate mixed in with half a cup of milk always fixes me up a treat.”

“Are you sure you haven’t been overdoing things, Mr. Babcock?” I immediately realized the impertinence of posing such a question to a brand-new bridegroom.

“It’s more likely I haven’t been getting enough exercise,” he informed me valiantly.

“Oh, dear!” I buried my face over my teacup.

“Ever since my old dog, Rex—a real corker Rex was—died on me last spring, I haven’t been getting out for walks like I once did, and that’s a fact, true as I’m sitting here, Mrs. Haskell.”

“What a shame.”

“And I’m the sort that’s not myself without a dog at my heels.”

“Really?” I was glad to see that Mr. Babcock appeared to have recovered from his little bout, but uncertain how to respond to the hopeful look he was now bestowing on our Hound of the Chittervilles.

“As I understand it, Mrs. Haskell, you’re on the lookout for a permanent home for Cliffy here.”

“I’d certainly hate to think of him panhandling on the street,” I agreed warily. “But I can’t foist him on you, Mr. Babcock. For one thing, he’s a walking demolition squad, and secondly, in talking to Sylvia at the library, I got the distinct impression she doesn’t like dogs.”

“Don’t you believe it.” The milkman poured some of his tea into the saucer and held it out to the animal with a besotted smile. “Women talk that kind of rubbish, but I’ve never known one that wasn’t a softie for a hard-luck story. Believe you me, the missus will be dotty about this young man here five minutes after I walk him in the door.”

Remembering his new bride, I had my doubts. “You’re not afraid Sylvia will order you both out of the house and be on the phone to a locksmith before you can start apologizing?” This scenario appeared tame to me as I watched Heathcliff crunch down on the porcelain saucer.

“Don’t you worry, Mrs. Haskell!”

Easy for Mr. Babcock to say! I couldn’t help but worry about my next meeting with Sylvia. She was the sort who burst into tears if a fly buzzed in her vicinity, who was forever poking at her hair to make sure that every pin curl stayed in place. But on the other hand, it would be marvelous to greet Ben with the news that Heathcliff was already on his way to a new home.

“Are you sure, Mr. Babcock, you’re doing the right thing?” Even as I spoke I was rummaging around in one of the drawers for a piece of cord to tie around the dog’s thick leather collar.

“We’ve got some good years ahead of us, him and me.” Draining his cup, Mr. Babcock took the makeshift lead from my hands and tied a solid knot before picking up the milk crate with his free hand and heading with his new soulmate for the garden door. “I feel like a bit of a grave robber, I do. But I hope that librarian woman, if she’s looking down from above, knows this little lad will be well looked after.”

“You’re a life-saver, Mr. Babcock,” I gushed heartily.

Thus I stood waving as man and dog set off across the courtyard. Just before climbing into the milk van, Heathcliff looked back at me, cocked his head as if to say “So long, chum” (or was that
chump?
), bared his teeth in a smile and … that was that. Closing the door, I collected the dustpan and broom and had just finished sweeping up the broken vase in the hall and setting the chair back on its remaining three legs, when Gerta came downstairs with the twins tugging on her alpine skirts.

“Good morning to you, Frau Haskell.” With the sunlight bursting in through the windows to gild the hair plaited around her head, our new au pair looked like a conventional nanny. I guessed her age to be between fifty and sixty, with a strawberries-and-cream complexion that any young girl might have envied. “You see, I meet the little lambkins?”

“Why we got a new mummy?” Tam came trotting across the flagstones to grasp me around the knees and peer up at me with a face that was growing uncannily like his father’s. The same blue-green eyes, the same silky thick lashes and tumbled dark hair.

“She’s not your new mummy, darling!” I scooped my
son up into my arms and pressed my face against his peachy-soft cheek. “Her name is Gerta and she’s going to help me look after you.”

“We like him. Don’t us, Tam?” Abbey’s curls shone like sunbeams as she took hold of the other woman’s hand and jigged up and down.

“Her, darling,” I said. “Gerta is a ‘her,’ and I’m so glad you’re pleased she’s come to stay with us for a while.”

“This morning, Frau Haskell, I give you names and addresses of the references you contact, does that satisfy!”

“There’s no rush,” I said, “seeing that our mutual friend Jill recommended you so highly.”

“You must check me up!” Gerta shook her head with enough vehemence to knock one of her plaits down and set it swinging like a bell rope. “These days it does not do to be too trusting. For all you know, I could be a bad can of worms.”

“I doubt that.” Ben’s voice broke in upon us as he came down the stairs. He looked like a study in black and white in his dark suit and crisply starched shirt.

“You are one of the few kind men in this world, Herr Haskell!” Gerta’s gratitude showed in her glowing eyes as she pinned up the errant plait. I was immediately flooded with a profound satisfaction. Two lives salvaged as the result of the Haskells’ intervention. Ben and I were undoubtedly quite a team.

And moments later I was assured of our domestic bliss when he bent to kiss my lips as I finished telling him how Heathcliff had landed on all four paws in finding a new home. “You’re a miracle worker, Ellie. Why don’t you walk out with me to the car and we’ll talk about how you would like to celebrate your birthday tomorrow?”

“Darling, I would love to”—I handed Tam into his arms—“but I think I just heard Mrs. Malloy coming in the back way. Gerta will go with you so the twins can say bye-bye to Daddy. See you tonight, Ben.”

Typical husband! He stood rooted to the spot in mute reproach as I whisked around and headed down the hall. Even as I entered the kitchen, I knew he still hadn’t moved and that Abbey, sensing the moment was less than idyllic, had stopped jigging up and down. What Ben didn’t understand was that I had to explain Gerta to Mrs. Malloy. My
faithful daily was liable to get her powdered nose out of joint upon learning I would now have less need to impose on her good offices.

“Morning, Mrs. H!” The words were dourly spoken and I immediately jumped to the conclusion that I had been found out already.