Angela watched Trixie with admiration. Trixie was wearing a sort of white linen smock with large pockets over blue jeans and sneakers. Her sneakers were snow white without even a grass stain on them. Angela tugged miserably at her crumpled blouse, which had ridden up over the waistband of her baggy skirt, and felt messy and grubby.
“Now, for the cake,” said Trixie, bringing out a knife. Paul hunched over the table, waiting eagerly.
The knife sank into the cake. Trixie tried to lift out a slice. It was uncooked in the middle. A yellowy sludge oozed out.
“Oh, dear,” said Angela. “You can’t eat that. I don’t know how that could have happened. I followed the instructions on the packet so carefully.”
“It’s all right,” said Paul quickly. “I’ll eat it.”
“No, you won’t,” said Trixie, giving Angela a conspiratorial ‘men!’ sort of smile.
“I’m hopeless,” mourned Angela.
“Don’t worry. I’ll show you how to make one. It’s just as easy to make a cake from scratch as it is with one of these packets. And it was a lovely thought.” Trixie moved the cake out of her husband’s reach. He gave a sigh and lumbered to his feet and went back to work.
“I can’t do anything right,” said Angela. “I am utterly useless about the house. It’s like a rubbish bin.”
“You’ve probably let it go too far,” said Trixie with quick sympathy. “Why don’t you get someone in to clean?”
“Oh, I couldn’t. You see, it’s so awful, I’d need to make a start on it myself before any cleaning woman could see what she was doing.”
“I’ll help you.” Trixie smiled at Angela. “I feel we are going to be friends.”
Angela coloured up and turned briefly away to hide the look of embarrassed gratification on her face. She had never fitted in very well with the women of the village. In fact, she had never talked to anyone before about how she felt about her dirty house. “I really couldn’t expect you to help me, Trixie,” said Angela, feeling quite modern and bold because people in the village called each other by their surnames, Mr or Mrs This and That, until they had known each other for years.
“I’ll strike a bargain with you,” said Trixie. “I’ll nip back to your house with you and if you can let me have any old sticks of furniture you were thinking of throwing out, I’ll take that as payment.”
“Lovely,” said Angela with a comfortable feeling she had not experienced since a child of being taken in hand.
But as they walked to the doctor’s house, Angela began to wish she had not let Trixie come. She thought of the ash still spilling over the hearth on to the carpet and of all the sinister grease lurking in the kitchen.
Angela strode in, rolling up her sleeves. She walked from room to room downstairs and then said briskly, “Now, the best thing to do is just get started and don’t think about anything else.”
And Trixie worked. Her hands flew here and there. She was amazingly competent. Grease disappeared, surfaces began to gleam, books flew back up on the shelves. It was all magic to Angela, who felt she was watching a sort of Mary Poppins at work. She blundered around after her fiew mentor, cheerfully doing everything she was instructed to do as if the house were Trixie’s and not her own.
“Well, we’ve made a start,” said Trixie at last.
“A start!” Angela was amazed. “It’s never been so clean. I just don’t know how to thank you.”
“Perhaps you’ve got an old piece of furniture you don’t want?”
“Of course.” Angela looked about her helplessly. “There must be something somewhere.”
“What about that old chair in the corner of your living room?”
“You mean that thing?” The chair was armless with a bead-and-needlework cover.
Angela hesitated only a moment. It had been her grandmother’s but no-one ever sat on it and her gratitude for this new goddess of the household was immense. “Yes, I’ll get John to put it in the station wagon and run it over to you this evening.”
“No need for that.” Trixie lifted it in strong arms. “I’ll carry it.”
Despite Angela’s protests that it was too heavy for her, Trixie headed off. Angela followed her to the garden gate. She wanted to say, “When will I see you again?” and felt as shy as a lover. Dr Brodie was often away on calls and she spent much of her life alone. She had never worked since the day of her marriage to the young medical student, John Brodie, thirty years ago. They had been unable to have children. Angela’s parents were dead. She felt she had somehow only managed to muddle through the years of her marriage with books as her only consolation.
Trixie turned at the gate. “See you tomorrow,” she said.
Angela grinned, her thin face youthful and happy.
“See you tomorrow,” she echoed.
Constable Hamish Macbeth was leaning on his garden gate as Trixie went past, carrying the chair.
“Need any help?” he called.
“No, thanks,” said Trixie, hurrying past.
Hamish looked at her retreating figure. Where had he seen that chair? His mind ranged over the interiors of the houses in Lochdubh. The doctor’s! That was it.
He ambled along the road to the doctor’s house and went around to the side, no-one in the Highlands except the Thomases bothering to use the front door.
“Come in, Hamish,” called Angela, seeing the lanky figure of the red-haired policeman lurking in the doorway. “Like a cup of coffee?”
“Yes, please.” Hamish eased himself into the kitchen, and then blinked in surprise. He had never seen the Brodies’ kitchen look so clean. Angela bubbled over with enthusiasm as she told him of Trixie’s help.
“Was that your chair she was carrying?” asked Hamish.
“Yes, the poor things have very little furniture. They want to start a bed-and-breakfast place. It was just a tatty old thing of my grandmother’s.”
Hamish thought quickly. Someone setting up a bed-and-breakfast establishment usually wanted old serviceable stuff. He wondered uneasily whether the chair was valuable. But he did not know anything about antiques.
Flies buzzed about the kitchen.
“I should have kept the door shut,” said Angela. “Wretched flies.”
“You’ve got a spray there,” pointed out Hamish.
“These sprays make holes in the ozone layer,” said Angela.
“I suppose so. But it’s hard to think of the environment when you haff the kitchen full of the beasties,” said Hamish whose Highland voice became more sibilant when he was upset, and somehow he felt that that remark about the ozone layer originally came from Trixie. And yet Trixie was right, so why should he feel so resentful?
After some gossip, Hamish got up and left. A thin drizzle was falling. The sky was weeping over the loch, but the air was warm and clammy.
And then he saw a Volvo parked at the side of the police station and Priscilla just getting out of it. He broke into a run.
∨ Death of a Perfect Wife ∧
2
O Love! has she done this to thee?
What shall, alas! become of me?
—John Lyly.
He slowed his pace as he neared the police station and tried to appear casual although his mouth was dry and his heart was thumping against his ribs.
Then just before he reached her, his pride came to his rescue. He, Hamish Macbeth, was not going to run after a woman with such abysmal taste that she could become starry-eyed over a man who looked like an ape.
“Evening, Priscilla,”he said.
“Open the kitchen door quickly,” said Priscilla. “I’m being eaten alive. Why do the midges leave you alone?”
“I’m covered in repellent,” said Hamish. “The door’s unlocked anyway. No need to wait for me. What brings you?”