The Trouble with Harriet (30 page)

“The what?” I almost slid off the sofa.

“Perhaps I do not have the word right?” Ursel spread her hands.

“Yes, you do, it’s just that I hadn’t thought ... But of course. That’s why the urn was so ugly. It had been camouflaged in clay, but they are often of odd shapes, which explains the lumps and bumps and why Mrs. Malloy said it looked like something a child might have made in play group. My goodness! It has to be incredibly valuable.”

“That is so.” Ursel’s face had more color and life to it now. “It once had in it the relic of another saint. Such things get lost over time. This is what Hilde tell me. But the reliquary has been in the Christ Kirche for many years, before St. Ethelwort was given back to his birthplace. Fader Bergdorff does not want to notify the police because the word of the theft will be in the newspaper. And he does not want the men to stop coming to mass. He cares always first for the souls of his people. It is why I get upset last night when you talk about telephoning the police. I must keep faith with him. When I tell Hilde about the empty house on Glatzerstrasse, we think we begin to see. And when we talk to Fader Bergdorff, he tell me to come and see what I can find out but not to put my life in danger or the Christ Kirche in the papers.”

“But I don’t understand about this morning.”

“It is simple.” She was actually smiling at me. “Herr Simons was determined to fulfill his promise to Harriet, but he worries that the urn is ugly. Your Aunt Lulu, she happens to have a silver powder box in her pocket; I say I will put the ashes in it. And so it is I do. I take them from the fireplace.”

“Oh, Ursel!” I said. “Where is the reliquary?”

“I put it on a shelf in your Ben’s study, where it is hidden behind books. Old ones that I think no one would often pick up.”

“Let’s go and get it!”

And so we hurried like a pair of excited schoolgirls across the hall. But there was no joy ten minutes later after we had pulled every book off the shelves. The reliquary was gone. So, we soon discovered, was Mr. Price’s gun, which Ben had also thought to conceal behind a volume entitled
How to Safeguard Your Home,
chapter one of which dealt with the importance of securing doors and windows even when at home. Something we had failed to do. Sadly, I remembered noticing the curtain stirring in the breeze at the drawing-room windows when Ben was talking to me about his visit from Mr. Ambleforth. But it was too late to kick myself; besides which, I preferred to save my energy for the next time—if there should be one—that I saw the obnoxious Mr. Price.

“Now guess what’s missing?” I threw myself back on the bed and eyed Ben with utter hopelessness when he entered our room at around ten that evening. Hair damp from his shower, he looked dashingly debonair in his black-silk dressing gown.

“I dread to think.” He bent to stroke one of my dangling feet. “But at least it isn’t your father. I just checked on him, and he appeared to be asleep.”

“That’s good.” I stared dully up at the ceiling. “He has to be all in after what this day has put him through. I’d feel easier about him if he’d got some of his feelings off his chest instead of refusing to talk about Harriet’s second passing. I suppose it’s not surprising that he didn’t respond when I told him about St. Ethelwort’s mummified finger or so much as blink on hearing that Mr. Price had called to collect the reliquary while we were at Cliffside House. What can any of this matter to him? This morning he lost all that was left to him. His faith in the woman he loved. But even so, I’m beginning to wonder how long he’s going to stay this way—shut up inside himself, not rousing himself to do more than sniff at his dinner? What if he never comes out of it? What if he ends up spending the rest of his life in a hospital staring glassy-eyed at four walls year in and year out.”

“Ellie, now you’re the one going off the deep end.”

“Thanks a lot,” I told the ceiling.

“All I’m saying, sweetheart, is that you’re overtired and stressed out.”

“You’re right.” Sitting up, I began unpinning my hair from the squashed bird’s nest it had become after being retucked into place during the day and finally lain on in weary despair. “It just seemed the last straw when I came in here after having my bath and found that someone has made off with my brand-new pink nightie and negligee. The ones I bought for going to France and left off packing until the last possible moment. Because looking at them lying on the bed, in all their lovely gossamer perfection, was enough to make me feel Parisian.”

“So that’s what’s gone missing.” Ben did not sound particularly devastated as he shrugged out of his dressing gown and tossed it on a chair. He was wearing a rather nice pair of claret pajamas with turnups on the legs and double-buttoned cuffs. And it was wrong of me to feel a flicker of resentment. It wasn’t his fault that there I was in faded flannel after deciding that pink nylon and lace might provide the emotional lift I needed at the end of this extremely trying day. But did he have to look quite so much the suave man about the bedroom, contemplating a final cigar before his valet materialized to tuck him into bed?

“I expect Aunt Lulu helped herself.” I went over to the mirror and began brushing my hair until the electricity sizzled.

“But they—the nightdress and negligee—wouldn’t be her size.”

“True, if hardly tactful.”

“Ellie!”

“Sorry. I know I’m being difficult.” Discarding my brush, I began slapping night cream on my face as if it were cake topping.

“It doesn’t matter if it fits. We both know Aunt Lulu didn’t take it because she traveled light and forgot to pack anything to sleep in. To her it’s all about the thrill of being a naughty little girl pulling something over on the grown-ups.”

“You’re still angry about the silver powder box.” Ben came up behind me and nuzzled the top of my head with his chin.

“Of course I am. It was lovely, and more important, you gave it to me for our anniversary. It really would have served Aunt Lulu right if she’d poked around inside and found St. Ethelwort’s nasty old finger. She’d have thought it was a piece of Harriet that hadn’t been reduced to ash; but even so, it might have brought her up short. Now nasty Mr. Price has both the ashes and the reliquary, and poor Frau Grundman has failed to recover them for that nice-sounding Father Bergdorff.” I rubbed in the last dollop of night cream and replaced the lid on the jar.

“You know, we really can’t be sure it was Price who broke into the house.” Ben paced away from me and, after circling the room a couple of times, turned back the bedcovers. “We zeroed in on him because he wheedled his way in here yesterday.”

“And he was the man with a gun,” I pointed out.

“I know.” Ben lay down and tucked his hands behind his head. “But let’s not forget we’re dealing with a whole bunch of questionable people. Lady Grizwolde, for instance. Don’t you think she would have stopped at little to prevent Sir Casper from testing his faith in miracles by climbing into bed with her at night?”

“Yes, but she’s got an injured leg.”

“Or so she claims.”

“I’ve been picturing her doing it pushing that car over the cliff.”

“Then maybe she sent Mr. Jarrow over here this morning.”

“There is that.” I finished tying my hair back with a rubber band and snuggled in alongside Ben. “All that chilly animosity of his toward her strikes me as a ruse to hide the fact he’s madly in love with her and suffers the pangs of the damned every time she’s within a mile and a half of him. And when she asks him to do something for her, even something illegal, he sobs with delight into his hanky. But maybe I’m just an old-fashioned romantic. Maybe what motivates Mr. Jarrow is all about economics—keeping his employer happy in hope of a sizable inheritance when the time comes. He could have showed up here at Sir Casper’s request. And let’s not forget Timothia Finchpeck, although the idea of her climbing through our drawing-room window does rather boggle the mind.”

“If we went to the police, we could let them sort all of this out.” Ben screwed up his eyes and smothered a yawn with the top of the sheet.

“We’ve been all through that. We can’t talk to them for the same reason that I’ll bet the Hoppers are still dithering about whether to go down to the station and report that the car that went over the cliff was owned by their cousin Harriet. They’ll be afraid of being roped in as conspirators. Which they are, poor things, after their sad fashion. And I’m afraid for Daddy’s chances if he owned up to bringing the reliquary out of Germany into England. Can we really count on the police viewing him as an innocent pawn? Especially now, when there’s a death here in Chitterton Fells to be cleared up and he can’t produce the stolen object. They might even think he went out last night and engineered the car crash after a row among thieves with Harriet. There’s only our word for it that he was here at the time. For that matter, can we even be sure that he didn’t slip out for a while when we thought he was in his room? And then there’s Mrs. Ambleforth.”

“What about her?”

“She might feel morally obliged, if questioned, to tell the police about Daddy’s behavior that night she came looking for her husband. She obviously thought it very odd, because she told her niece Ruth about it.”

“I would think she’d be used to odd behavior after being married all the years to the vicar. Your father’s not half the crackpot he is.”

“Yes, but we all have blind spots when it comes to our mates.”

“Thanks a lot.” Ben patted my hair while giving vent to another yawn.

“I’m saying that what passes for charming eccentricity in a husband could scare you up a twelve-foot wall in a stranger. I think Kathleen was afraid Daddy was going to ravish her on the spot that night, with me watching, and it could have set her against him. I get the feeling from the way she keeps trying to find a husband for Ruth that she’s got some rather outdated ideas about marriage—that women need it to make themselves respectable and men need someone to cluck over them. And it isn’t just Kathleen who could put in a bad word for Daddy,” I sighed. “If push comes to shove when it comes to saving their own necks the Hoppers could truthfully say that I had admitted to them, when saying Daddy wasn’t ready to give up the urn, that he could turn violent. Are you listening, Ben?”

“I’ve been thinking,” he murmured drowsily.

“About what?”

“Maybe it wasn’t Aunt Lulu.”

“What wasn’t?”

He struggled to open his eyes, but he words grew slurred. “I mean, perhaps she didn’t take your nightdress and that thing that goes over it. Couldn’t they be in a drawer or on a hook somewhere?”

“No. I looked everywhere. Practically ransacked my dressing table and the wardrobe. It is nice of you to try and get her off the hook, and I’m fond of her, too, but she really is the limit. She wasn’t more than politely contrite about the silver box. Freddy was the one who was upset. I really think he’s ready to get hold of his solicitor and put himself up for adoption. But I told him to hold out and hope that something does happen to scare her into her senses.”

A muffled snore informed me that I was talking to myself. And as women tend to do, I blamed myself for not being able to hold his attention. Even in a crisis I was boring. But then we can’t all be born fascinating like Harriet. I turned with as much eloquence as I could muster over on my side and even gave the pillow a couple of thumps without getting so much as a drowsy, incoherent mumble in response. There was nothing for it but to try and get some rest myself, so that in the morning I would be up to coming up with some ideas on how to save Daddy.

To that end I switched off the bedside lamp. But sleep wasn’t easily come by. I started wondering if Harriet and Herr Voelkel had been lovers and whether his wife, Anna, had minded. Or were they, and the black-garbed housekeeper, all just longtime business associates hired by rich people to acquire treasures for their private collections? Presumably, Sir Casper hadn’t got Harriet’s name from an employment agency, but he was, or had been, a man of the world, and I imagined that there are always people who, when asked, know someone who knows someone who for the right price would steal the Taj Mahal. And gift wrap it before handing it over.

It was impossible; I was never going to get to sleep. Slipping out of bed as stealthily as possible and feeling my way into my slippers, I crept across the shadowy room and lifted Ben’s dressing gown off the chair before tiptoeing out the door. I stopped at the top of the stairs to tie the silk sash around my waist. It would have put the lid on a difficult day if I had tripped going down and broken my neck, creating more heartache, along with another accident, for the police to investigate.

While standing there, my eyes went to my father’s bedroom door. It stood just a little ajar. Ben, I decided, must not have closed it properly after peeking in to check on Daddy. It never occurred to me as I crossed the gallery that he wouldn’t be in his bed. But one look told the story. The covers were thrown back. His clothes were gone from the chair; his shoes, from beside the bed.

Something drew me to the window. It may have been the memory of thinking after putting him in here that it might not have been such a bright idea to give him a room with such an excellent view of the sea. Had the sound of the waves spoken to him in his sleep? A soothing, seductive voice—something between a summons and a plaintive wail—urging him to drown his sorrows once and for all? With trembling hand, I pushed aside the curtains. The moon was sitting among the trees like a ghostly canoe, and there, standing in the drive like a lost soul, was my father.

I’m not sure how I got down the stairs or out the door, but suddenly I was holding on to his arm and walking with him in the near dark toward Freddy’s cottage and back again. It was cold and damp, but I didn’t shiver. Relief warmed me as nothing else could.

“I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep, Giselle.”

“That’s understandable,” I soothed, wondering when the moment would be right to suggest that he come back inside and have a hot drink.

“So I came outside to talk to your mother.”