“Really, mate, I don’t know why you are lowering yourself.” Freddy rolled over on the sofa and hung face down over the edge. “I can’t credit the gross insensitivity of those women, asking you to create a stew á la difference in a pressure cooker! Where’s the magic? Where’s the mystique? Aren’t those the things where you just bung everything in and cover your ears?”
Ben scowled. “Will you lay off? The spokeswoman for the group didn’t ask me what I wanted to do, and I didn’t want to be temperamental. I thought myself lucky not having been struck off the list of coming events.” He halted. “Ellie, I didn’t mean-”
“Yes, you did,” I said, “and it’s all right.”
A smile crept into his eyes, then vanished. “I would have liked to have done something more challenging, especially as”-his voice picked up speed-“Angelica Brady, the editor from Brambleweed Press, indicated she might come down for the demonstration. She thinks the book’s appeal may be enhanced if the jacket contains a spiel about the charming little doings of charming little Chitterton Fells. She had me send her some copies of The Daily Spokesman and claimed to be enchanted by our rusticity.” Ben looked down at his plate of cake, then came and sat on the arm of my chair. “Ellie, is something wrong?”
I thrust the thought of my engagement ring out of my head. “No. I’ll enjoy meeting Miss Brady.” I picked crumbs off his plate, then put them back. “I was just wondering about Abigail’s.”
Freddy sat up, blew on his fingernails, and rubbed them against the lapel of his suit jacket. As usual, he wasn’t wearing a shirt. “Yours truly will manage alone and undaunted, even if we are mobbed by more than six customers.” He shook back his hair. “Business, Ellie, has been picking up by leaps and bounds this week. We had four people today, if you count Mrs. Bottomly as two.”
I hardly slept that night. I lay looking into darkness, afloat with wide-open eyes. I spotted those of Charles Delacorte, Vernon Daffy, Ann Delacorte, and-I had to squint to be sure-Poppa’s dark brown ones. What if some of the husbands, dead or soon to be dead, were one-time sinners like Poppa? I turned over all in one movement so as not to disturb Ben and buried my face in the pillow. Had I lowered my moral standards to the point where I was prepared to concede that in some cases the crime merited the punishment? I wanted so much to shake Ben, wake him up, tell him that I was an accessory before and after the crimes. Moonlight washed into the room, showing me his face-peaceful, unsullied. I had to get up, pace around, think. The illuminated face of the bedside clock said four-fifteen. Shifting silently off the bed, I grabbed some clothes, including a sheepskin jacket, and stole into the bathroom to dress. A brisk walk would either clear my brain or numb it.
The night was like a jeweller’s window; the moon a silver salver displayed on black velvet studded with diamonds. Spring, it would seem, had come in on the back of a snowbird. The air was filled with innocence. I didn’t think about where I was going. I was doing battle with the demon. Me. Why is the easy way out never all it is cracked up to be? When my feet brought me to the churchyard railing, all I had settled upon was that I would talk to the Tramwells again… sometime soon. I was coming through the lich-gate when it suddenly struck me that Sweetie hadn’t set up the alarm when I left. I would have expected her to drag me back upstairs by the cuffs of my slacks and deposit me like a trophy outside Magdalene’s door.
Speak of the dear little doggie, a yap shrilled the air and a splodge of shadow leapt at my leg. I started to shake it off, then let it hang. Coming toward me through the purple haze was either a ghost or my mother-in-law. She was wearing the damson beret that made her ears stick out and she showed neither surprise nor pleasure in seeing me. Her eyes were those of a ghost. She reached out and curled her fingers around a tombstone, but she didn’t speak. Sweetie, on the other hand, was making enough noise to disturb the dead. I moved my palm in front of Magdalene’s eyes. Could it be?
Her voice startled me. “Giselle, I won’t think you’re interfering if you tell me I’m sleepwalking.”
“It runs in the family.” I put my arm around her. “Let’s go home.”
Magdalene spent most of Friday in her room. When I passed her door, I heard Poppa reading to her, something about the power of faith. I couldn’t tell how far their reconciliation had come; they still spoke little in my presence. So many half-knowns. So many loopholes for fear.
Roxie arrived Friday morning and was bringing out the all-purpose bottle from the supply bag when I noticed, snagged on her sleeve, a brooch. A blackbird brooch. To stop my hands shaking I unsnagged it. Roxie was not one whit abashed.
“Like it, Mrs. H.?” She slopped liquid onto a rag. “Keep it.”
Three-or was it four-husbands she had gone through?
“No, really I couldn’t. These are crows, aren’t they?”
“Are they?” She dusted Sweetie off a chair. “Well, suit yourself. I like a nice brooch but these are a bit on the common side, aren’t they? You see them everywhere. I picked this one up on the street.”
A likely story. So likely it could be true. I escaped with The Daily Spokesman to the drawing room. Nothing about Ann today. My hands took me directly to the Dear Felicity column. Edwin Digby’s face loomed in my mind’s eye. Was he the evil force or the dupe of the evil force? Unwillingly, my eyes scanned the column… Dear Heartbroken, your problem will soon die a natural death. I could not breathe. It couldn’t be… but Heartbroken was the code name I had used on that damning note.
I began to pant and then, miraculously, euphoria burst upon me. Not only had I retrieved that note, but Ann had explained to me that it represented only an application for membership. A woman wasn’t admitted to the club until after a telephone call, asking-in so many words-do you want your husband murdered? And I hadn’t received such a telephone inquiry. I would have remembered.
Saturday. Ben’s big moment before the Hearthside Guild. The church hall was a long room with plank flooring, brick walls, a stage at the north end, and a kitchen at the south, behind whose green accordion doors Ben was now making ready. He had brought all his equipment from home except the pressure cooker. He didn’t own a pressure cooker.
Magdalene, wearing a little brown hat with a feather, and I, in a black leather coat and boots, had accompanied him. We were now trying to get out of the way of the women who were either setting up rows of folding chairs or sticking Reserved labels on them. I glimpsed the back of Millicent Parsnip’s head, got a side view of Mrs. Hanover, and a full view of Mrs. Daffy’s rear end as she unfolded a wooden seat. A huddle of men stood against one wall, voices a little too loud, making it clear the speakers weren’t the least embarrassed at being dragged to this sissy affair by their wives. My heart began knocking. Could that be Dr. Bordeaux on the edge of the group? A chair was lifted in front of my face, and when I looked again, none of the dark-haired men resembled the doctor. It was Sidney I saw standing on the fringe. He had a red rose in his lapel and his hair appeared to have been set in rollers. He still looked like a caveman, but one considerably ahead of his time.
“Eli never could face any of the little plays Ben was in at school. It was always the same. He would come down with stage fright just as we were leaving the house.” Magdalene had her hands on two chairs as if restraining them from walking away. She looked better for her day of rest yesterday. Still perhaps a little shadowed under the eyes, but otherwise recovered from the shock of her sleepwalking experience.