“Do you perchance recall,” queried Primrose avidly, “any of those ladies wearing a bar-shaped brooch, rather pretty, with a row of enamelled blackbirds?”
Her pansy blue eyes held me. “Many of them did.”
Hyacinth compressed her lips. “Let us not digress. The scheme has worked splendidly, so far, because the perpetrators are those people one meets everywhere. One doesn’t see the woods for the trees or the members for the club. Men especially would not sense anything amiss. The male sex never has appreciated the marvelous contribution made by female organisations providing volunteer service. The masculine mentality perceives them as social playgrounds whence the little woman can amuse herself after the housework is done, his mother visited, and the dog walked. Tragic, but perhaps it is as well that the victims do not sense their peril.”
I stopped playing with my tea cake. “What of female friends and acquaintances of the widows? Wouldn’t they ask questions, express interest in the club’s activities?”
“Widows, I fear, tend to be the forgotten species and not nearly as amusing as spinsters.” Primrose straightened out one of the pink bows on her hair. “People are relieved when they don’t want to keep coming to dinner. I imagine that acquaintances of our widows merely think how nice that Maude or Cynthia keeps so busy-whist, Tuesday afternoons; committee work, Thursday evenings; out selling homemade fudge for charity on weekends.”
“Mrs. Haskell”-Hyacinth drew her chair closer, setting the earrings off again-“please understand we are not here to cast stones. The Widows Club does raise a sizeable amount annually for charity. But can good works mitigate the fact that its primary function is deadly?”
I shivered, mainly because I was becoming interested in this nonsense. “What about conscience-don’t any of these women break down after the deed is done? Killing a husband is-is unnatural!” A bitter pang swamped me as I recalled the first time I had felt the urge to murder my brand-new husband.
Primrose sighed. “Murder is always nasty. But unnatural? I am not so sure. Murdering one’s child or parents, that indeed flouts nature. Disposing of a husband?” She shook her silver head. “My dear, you will point out that neither Hyacinth nor I have ever married, but I can readily conceive that even the most devoted wife might be faced with the temptation to lay out her spouse rather than his clean underwear.”
“Quite so, Primrose! However, we are not put on this earth to give way to temptation.” Hyacinth lifted her painted black eyebrows at me. “Mrs. Haskell, you inquired whether, despite everything the support group can do, any of the widows falter under the burden of remorse. We have spoken to such a woman. Since our arrival in the area, Butler has held several positions other than the post he occupies here. He has been a barrow boy, a telephonist, a dustman. While engaged as a window cleaner, he made contact with a Mrs. X, a patient at The Peerless Nursing Home. Unfortunately the interview was hampered by its taking place in a broom cupboard, added to which Mrs. X was only partially coherent as a result of the medication she had been administered during her sojourn there. But we did make some gains. Mrs. X claims to be one of several women presently occupying the third floor, all being treated for the same problem-loose lips.”
“The Peerless is run by Dr. Simon Bordeaux.” Mine was a statement, not a question. I had reasons for not wanting the doctor to be a villain, but I had seen that nursing home, locked in the center of a dense wood. My heart went out to Mrs. X, whatever her sins. I grew calm, numbed by the draft from the window and the conviction that the Tramwells were not senile. Eccentric without doubt, but eccentricity was in my blood.
“Yes, my dear,” said Miss Primrose Tramwell, “we know the doctor-by reputation. We have ardently endeavoured not to prejudge him, but at our ages Hyacinth and I cannot take lightly the notion that the good doctor may have curtailed the lives of elderly females for pecuniary gain. And, it must be said, it is repellent to us that he purchased a proud ancestral home (the Peerless family is almost as old as ours) and turned it into an antiseptic facility and at such cost to that hapless Lady”-she reached for her sister’s green notebook-“ah, yes, Lady Theodora Peerless. A fellow woman, cast out upon the world, if not as a governess, as a typist-which is rather worse, one fears.”
“Mrs. Haskell, how well are you acquainted with Dr. Bordeaux?” asked Primrose.
“We’ve met a couple of times. He attended the… our fatal affair.”
Primrose looked down at her lap and Hyacinth avoided my eyes. “We had certainly planned to gate-crash the event but were forced to return to Cloisters that day. Our dog Minerva was indisposed.”
My hair had loosened at the back of my neck. I pinned it back up to hide the trembling of my fingers and ate another small raisin. Dr. Bordeaux’s pale, aesthetic face wove itself out of the shadows in the room. I was remembering things, incidents, conversations with people, especially Ann Delacorte. The clock in the hall struck six times. I retrieved a hairpin that had slipped under my collar.
“What information do you have about this Widows Club?”
Hyacinth picked up the green notebook. “Current membership comprises approximately thirty-five women, including eight board members and the current president. Each member is obligated to remain active for one year following initiation. Board members must retire after a one-year term of office. This, as Primrose and I understand the matter, is because these are the women who actively participate in the murders. Too much-buttering of the stairs-could take its toll. Or become addictive. Presumably The Founder would not wish any one person gaining an ascendancy.”
“And you suspect that Dr. Bordeaux is The Founder?”
“My dear, we certainly do not discount him because he is a man.” Primrose fussed with her silvery curls. “But, we are well nigh convinced he is merely an accomplice, not the brains.”
I finally asked the obvious. “Why did this insurance company call you in, rather than going directly to the police?”
Hyacinth used her finger as a bookmark. “Not one ounce of real evidence to drop in the lap of Scotland Yard. One of the difficulties we have encountered is that the charter members, who must surely know The Founder’s identity, have long since dispersed, gone on to new-and one can only trust-single lives.”
“How long has the club been in operation?”
“As near as we can gauge, five years.”
“Think me a flea-brain,” I said, “but if you are sure of Dr. Bordeaux’s involvement and Mrs. X is only one of several widows he is treating for acute attacks of remorse, what is the difficulty in substantiating your claims?”
“I very much doubt that our long-suffering constabulary would put much stock in the ramblings of bereaved women suffering from their nerves.” Primrose pensively added more cognac to her tea. “And, my dear Mrs. Haskell, as we informed our insurance company employers, these unfortunate women cannot give us the one name we desperately need. They don’t know it. What happens, we ask, if The Founder slips through our net? What will be achieved even if we do put this club out of operation? Chitterton Fells will become a less eventful place to live; but The Founder may simply start a similar service organisation somewhere else.”
Hyacinth’s ebony eyes bored into mine. “Which is why we have approached you, Mrs. Haskell. We ask that you help us unmask our villain.”
“Me?”
“My dear child”-Primrose caught at me with her small fluttery hands-“recall the old saying: ‘In the midst of life there is death!’ How true… as is its reverse.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“Why shouldn’t you?” chimed the sisters.
I could think of a dozen responses to that, but I had succumbed to my tea cake and my mouth was full of flavoured rubber cement.