How to Murder Your Mother-In-Law (33 page)

“You’ve me to thank for him being that way, Ellie! It was too much to hope the man would take us seriously after catching me in the altogether the other night. He’d obviously written the entire Haskell family off as a bunch of lunatics.”

“You’ve been wonderful,” I told him, “hearing out my story without a word of condemnation for the part I played in this sorry saga.” Tears continued to puddle the lap of my frock which happened to be dry clean only.

“Watch the road, there’s a good girl.”

“What road? I feel like I’m driving a submarine.”

The rain was coming down faster than the wipers could keep up with it, and the sky was black as night and so low to the ground I was afraid I would run smack-bang into it. And, talking of waters that ran deep, we were at that moment passing the Chitterton Fells Leisure Centre, with its swimming pool capable of floating the
Titanic
. The pool had been opened the previous year by Lady Kitty, with all due pomp and circumstance, when she cut the ribbon between the shallow and the deep end. Now she had been cut down in her prime. The reminder was enough to make me start blubbering again.

“Ellie,” Dad said for the fifth time, “you are not to blame because someone is making a dent in the local mother-in-law population. Good grief! If we had to worry about every single conversation we ever had among friends, we’d never know a moment’s peace.”

“Or say an unkind word about anyone.”

“And a fine state of affairs that would be.”

“I’m so relieved you believe my incredible story.”

He patted my hand. “You meet a lot of ugly customers in the greengrocery business.”

“What are we going to do?” I wailed.

“You’re going to drop me off at the Dark Horse, Ellie, so I can pack my bags and settle the bill. Then I’ll come over to Merlin’s Court, tuck Magdalene under my arm, and off we’ll go back to Tottenham.”

“If she’s fit to travel after being out on the motorbike with Freddy in this weather.” I leaned forward to wipe a patch of window clear with my sleeve and saw the pub sign flapping to and fro like a hearth rug hung out on the line for a poorly timed airing. “Do you want me to wait outside for you?”

“No, you go home.” Dad had the car door open before I had us properly parked. “After what you’ve been telling me, I don’t feel comfortable leaving Magdalene unattended one minute longer than necessary.
There is a time in the life of man when he doesn’t count the cost of a taxi.”

He waved me off. And I proceeded up Cliff Road with my eyes glued to the peephole that was fast fogging up again; my mind was spinning faster than the wheels of the car. If Mum was already back and had found Dad’s bouquet, she might require no persuasion from me that Merlin’s Court lacked sufficient privacy for the sort of reunion he had in mind. Determined to be optimistic, I drew up in front of the stable, wiped my eyes, turned off the ignition, and dashed across the drenched courtyard to the garden door.

The moment my hand touched the doorknob I was assailed by a panic every bit as blinding as the rain. What good were my plans for giving Mum the boot if the killer among us had finished her off in my absence? My knees were wobbling as I entered the kitchen. Damn! I let out a gasp when the wind snatched the door out of my hand and slammed it shut behind me.

Oh, the mercy of the mundane! Mum was seated at the table with both Sweetie and Tobias on her lap.

“What a picture you make!” I was tempted to take a flying leap and join them.

“A certain doggie is petrified of storms.” Her lips twisted into a smile. “Tobias has been quite a comfort to her, so much so that I’ve been thinking about getting Sweetie a kitten for her birthday.”

“What a lovely idea.”

“And now, Ellie, for the bad news.…”

“What’s wrong?” I stammered.

Her face grew grim. “It’s going to come as a shock.”

“Tell me?”

“Elijah has been here.” Mum spoke in the strictly neutral voice of a television commentator announcing purported sightings of the great prophet. “From the muddy footprints leading from the window to the bed, he must have come up that ladder abandoned by your window cleaner. Anyway, he left some flowers and a
letter for me and … all things considered, Ellie, I have decided to go back to him.”

“That’s wonderful!” I exclaimed.

“I expect you think me very weak.”

“No,” I assured her firmly, “I think you are doing the Christian thing.”

“This has absolutely nothing to do”—Mum closed her eyes—“with sex.”

“Of course not.”

“Elijah has a shop to run and I will be way behind with my dusting when I get back, so if he should show up here in the next little while, I think we ought to make tracks for home tonight.”

Things couldn’t have worked out any better, or so I thought for all of ten seconds. Mum had just put the dog and the cat on the floor and was in the act of getting to her feet, when the door opened and Jonas came stomping into the kitchen.

“So you do be back, Ellie girl.” His shaggy brows met in a frown over his nose. “I just got off the telephone from talking to that there Beatrix Taffer’s granddaughter. Seems the old lady’s eaten or drunk som’mat that disagreed with her and she’s in a bad way.”

“No!” I cried while Mum opened and closed her mouth without making a sound.

“She’s been asking for Magdalene,” Jonas said.

“Where is she? At home or at the hospital?”

“At home as of now.”

“Beatrix always had a dread of hospitals.” Mum was turning in ever-narrowing circles until she was in danger of colliding with herself. “I’ll have to take Sweetie with me; the poor little scrap is terrified of being abandoned during storms.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” I grabbed up a raincoat from the row of pegs in the alcove by the garden door and tossed it over her shoulders.

“Sweetie won’t be any trouble. She never barks unless spoken to.”

Jonas followed us down the steps into the courtyard.
“There’s som’mat else I need to tell you, Ellie. A policeman rung up just afore the kiddie did, and he left a message for you. Some rigmarole about him bringing a certain party down to the station for questioning.”

Incredible! Sergeant Briggs must have taken my fears far more seriously than I realized. And to have acted so quickly! Much good it did Tricks, I thought bitterly.

“What’s all that about the police?” Mum asked as she hurried after me through the rain to the car. “It doesn’t have anything to do with Ben, does it? He hasn’t been serving crème de menthe over the ice cream during nonlicencing hours?”

“No, nothing like that—” I reached for the car door at the moment Mum tripped over a rock … or whatever … on the ground and narrowly saved herself from pitching forward.

“It’s St. Francis!” She picked him up with the hand that wasn’t holding on to Sweetie, and held him aloft like a beacon to light our way, which given his phosphorescent nature, he did quite handily. “That he should turn up now, after being lost for days—don’t tell me it’s not a sign from above.” Mum tucked the statue into her raincoat pocket. “It must mean Beatrix is going to be all right; even you must see that, Ellie.”

“Absolutely!”

“You don’t think”—Mum was having trouble getting the words out—“that Beatrix did something silly—like make an attempt on her life because of all the trouble there’s been, between her and me over that swimming business and Elijah?”

“This was not a suicide attempt.”

Neither of us spoke again throughout the ten-minute drive that seemed more like an hour to the Taffer house. Sweetie likewise appeared lost in thought, and did not so much as blink when lifted from the car. The rain had slackened, although the sky remained so black, it was impossible to see where it ended and the
roofs began, and the Taffer house was forbiddingly dark. Not a crack of light showed as we scurried down the narrow garden path to the front door. But for the sounds of life in the form of rock-and-roll music coming from inside, I would have concluded no one was home.

“You did ring the bell?” Mum held Sweetie tightly in her arms.

“Yes,” I said, and rang it again.

“Whatever’s taking so long?”

“I’ve no idea.” My voice came out in a croak. I pictured the entire Taffer family rallying round Tricks’s deathbed for one last sing-song. Moment by agonizing moment, the fear had grown inside me until it was the size and weight of a cannon ball. Realizing this was no time to “come over queer,” as Mrs. Malloy would have put it, I was forcing myself to take slow, deep breaths when—at long last—we heard footsteps approaching the door.

Mum looked as surprised as I felt when it was opened in slow motion by Mrs. Pickle. She wore her coat and a woolly hat jammed down over her curlers.

“Why, it’s you, Mrs. Haskell, and your mother-in-law too! Would you believe I was in the kitchen doing me last rounds, when I thought I heard the bell.” Her currant-bun face was flushed—presumably from the exertion of her walk down the hall. “But what with all that racket from young Dawn’s radio, I thought me ears must be deceiving me.” She stepped aside an inch at a time, for us to enter, then closed the door. “And you brought the little doggie too, that’s nice, isn’t it?”

“We came to see my friend Beatrix,” said Mum in quite a cordial voice.

“Oh, dear! Coming all this way for nothing!”

“You mean …?” Mum dropped poor Sweetie on the floor without a word of apology.

“She went fifteen minutes ago,” Mrs. Pickle informed us without taking the half-smile off her bland
face. “And you do have to say as what it was for the best.”

“Do we?” I whimpered.

“Hospital was the place for her is what the doctor said when he finally got here. He’d had a couple of other emergencies so no one’s blaming him; well, it wouldn’t be fair, would it?”

“Is she very bad?” I asked.

“It don’t look hopeful is what Doctor told the family.” Mrs. Pickle undid a couple of coat buttons to show we weren’t keeping her. “Mrs. Taffer—Frizzy, that is—promised to give me a ring here, seeing as how I don’t have a phone of me own, as soon as she knew something one way or the other. I only put on me coat because the house got downright nippy with the weather being so bad and all. So if you’d like to stay and wait for word, it shouldn’t be very long, and I’ll be glad of the company.” She looked down at the floor. “Then again, could be you’d rather not, after that bit of bother this morning.”

“At a time like this, nothing matters but Beatrix’s full recovery.” Mum’s lips stiffened into a forgiving smile, for which she received a woof of approval from Sweetie, who apparently forgot doggies are meant to be seen and not heard.

“I’ll take you into the back room.” Mrs. Pickle went flip-flapping down across the hall in the down-at-the-heel plaid slippers that didn’t do much for her coat. “It’s not so cluttered with the kiddies’ toys as is the front room.” Her words were barely audible above a renewed burst of rock-and-roll music descending upon us from one of the upstairs rooms. “They left in that much of a hurry, young Dawn didn’t bother to turn off that ruddy radio.” Mrs. Pickle shook her head as she pushed open the door to the back room. “I’ve been meaning to go and see to it like, but it’s a bit of a climb up those stairs.”

“I’m surprised she wasn’t made to turn it off earlier,
with her grandmother so ill.” Mum gave one of her signature sniffs.

“The family’s so used to the racket, they don’t even hear it. And if the doctor told the kid to lower the music, I doubt as how she would have listened to him. She’s a willful one, that Dawn, and no mistake. Surprises me she even bothered going to the hospital; she wasn’t much of a one for her gran. I kept out of the way when they was leaving so as not to intrude, and I can tell you I wasn’t sorry to miss one of her tantrums.”

Mrs. Pickle plowed a path across the box-size room that barely offered a place to stand despite the table being pushed flush against the French windows and stacked high with the dining chairs, a couple of ottomans, and a television set.

“I was thinking of giving this place a good top and tailing, when Mrs. Taffer took bad.” She lifted a couple of light bulbs, one at a time, and a box of crayons from one of the two easy chairs, while Mum removed her damp raincoat and laid it cautiously over the empty clotheshorse in front of the fireplace. “One good thing about Frizzy Taffer, she don’t never rush you. She says if she gets the place halfway shipshape by the time the kiddies is all grown, that’s soon enough for her.”

“Frizzy’s a gem.” Trembling, I sat and inadvertently put my hand on the little table between Mum’s chair and mine. I watched it topple over, catching Sweetie on the tail before she could streak for safety.

“One of the legs is wobbly.” Mrs. Pickle came forward at what for her was a rush. “Here, I know as how I can fix it.” She reached into her coat pocket and brought out a piece of paper already folded in two, and proceeded to wad it up until it was a couple of inches square. “There!” She righted the table and stuck the paper under the peg leg. “That should help keep it steady. Now, how would it be if I poured both you ladies a glass of me rhubarb wine. I brought it over this afternoon as me way of showing I wasn’t upset about Dawn accusing me of pinching her dolls.”

This not seeming the time to point out that Mrs. Pickle was indeed guilty as charged, I smiled politely as she poured a couple of glasses from the bottle on the sideboard.

“I’m not much of a drinker.” Mum watched Sweetie take a charge at the clotheshorse, sending it and her raincoat flying. “But if you think it will do my nerves good, I’ll take a couple of sips.…”

“There’s nothing better, and everyone that’s tried it says they don’t mind the iron taste none.”

Upon this glowing recommendation, Mrs. Pickle handed us our glasses and said she would go out to the kitchen and make up a plate of sandwiches.

“Don’t go to all that bother,” Mum told her.

“It’ll give me something to do to keep me mind off poor Mrs. Taffer. Now, just you sit tight and I’ll be back in a tick.”

“That means half an hour,” I said when the door closed behind her.

“The woman means well, Ellie.”

“That’s true.” I took a sniff of my wine and wasn’t very keen on the bouquet, possibly because it smelled like very old rhubarb.