Bridesmaids Revisited (30 page)

“We can try.”

“Exactly.” She squared her shoulders. “Thank you for coming back, Ellie. Now, why don’t you go and rest.”

“What I’d like to do is move some of the plants in the conservatory out into the garden if you wouldn’t mind, to allow for more space, especially the ones around the staircase.”

“I’ll have Thora see to that.”

“And the candles?” I asked.

“Jane will set them out and light them just before seven.”

“Not too many,” I said, “just sufficient to create the mood. And there mustn’t be any outside light coming in.”

“The lack of curtains in the conservatory will not present a problem.” Rosemary looked as if she were making a mental list of all the things to be done. “I’ll hang sheets at the windows.”

“Then, if you don’t mind, I will lie down for a little while.”

“What about something to eat first?”

I told her I wasn’t hungry and that I shouldn’t be expected down when Hope arrived. Because I wasn’t one of those immediately connected with the day of Reverend McNair’s death, she had asked me to remain out of sight until summoned. Rosemary accepted this readily, saying she would come up for the bridesmaid dresses shortly. Once in my room, I set my suitcase and handbag beside the bed and took off my raincoat. Then I went up the spiral staircase into the attic and returned with an armload of material. After hanging Sophia’s wedding dress, veil, and circlet of orange blossom in the wardrobe, I laid the bridesmaid dresses on the bed. Next I checked to make sure that the trunk that had been at the foot of the bed was still on the blanket chest. Finally, having locked the door, I sat down to wait. I wasn’t in any mood to lie down, nor was I about to risk falling asleep. It was now four o’clock. In two hours I would start getting ready.

I picked up
Secrets of the Crypt,
but after only a few paragraphs I was sick of Phoebe and her undaunted courage in the face of the unspeakably gruesome creature of the black bog and I wondered if I should take my shower now. I was about to get undressed when Rosemary tapped at the door and said that she hadn’t come up only to collect the bridesmaid dresses; there was a Mrs. Malloy in the hall wanting to speak to me.

Bother! But as I headed downstairs in Rosemary’s wake, I grew worried. Had something worse than a visit from Leonard befallen Mrs. M.? With all that had happened since I last saw her, I hadn’t given much thought to her suspicions of Gwen. I couldn’t remember whether I had mentioned them to Hope. There had been so much else to say. Had a row erupted? Had Mrs. Malloy been forced to flee that terrifyingly overfurnished house?

“About time, Mrs. H.!” She glowered at me as Rosemary disappeared down the hall. “The time it took you to get down here, you could have flown in from Japan. And me with nerves all shot to pieces and worn to the bone lugging them cases in and out of the taxi.”

“Where are they?”

“Out on the doorstep. That old girl that opened up didn’t seem to notice them, let alone offer to bring them inside.”

“She’s got a lot on her mind. We’re having a séance tonight!”

“Well, if that isn’t something.” Mrs. Malloy looked ready to cut herself in half with the belt of her cherry-red raincoat—the European equivalent, I imagined, of committing hara-kiri. “A séance and me not invited! After all the times I’ve told you I’d give up going to bingo if I could attend one of them things just once in my life. Never know who you’ll end up holding hands with at a séance. Could be me very own Prince Charming.”

“It won’t be tonight,” I told her. “The only man who’ll be here has his own Prince Charming at home.”

“That’s no excuse for not inviting me. And you still haven’t asked why I’m here,” Mrs. Malloy huffed. “But I suppose you’ll go trying to make it up to me by bringing them suitcases inside and carrying them upstairs for me.”

“I’ll take two,” I told her, “you’ll have to manage the other one. I can’t grow an extra arm at the drop of a hat, you know. And I’m not about to make an extra trip.”

“Oh, well, if that’s the way it’s got to be, Mrs. H., and don’t go thinking I’m thrilled out of my noggin at having to share your room; but I don’t suppose the old ladies thought to get one ready for me. And, truth be told, I don’t expect to get a wink of sleep and you won’t either when you hear what I’ve got to tell you.” She was still talking when she reached the bedroom.

“I’ve got a good idea what it entails,” I said.

“There you go, showing off—using them fancy words. And this time you didn’t even get it right. Entails is what they took out of them poor sods they used to draw and quarter back in the days when just telling the king he took a bad photo got you hauled off to the Tower.”

“That was the first clue.” I put down my two cases and added hers to the group.

“What was?”

“The photograph. But your story first, Mrs. Malloy.”

“It’s not a pretty one, but then murder and blackmail rarely is.” She took off her raincoat and tossed it on the bed as if it were one more burden too heavy to bear. Then she sat down and told me everything Gwen had told her. Pausing every now and then with just the right amount of melodramatic emphasis to incur my exclamations of horror. Which weren’t up to snuff because I’d already figured out the gist of it. “So what do you think of them apple dumplings?” she finally asked.

“Let me fill you in on what I uncovered at this end.”

She listened attentively but I began to sense by the time I was halfway through that she was a bit miffed that not only did I have the bulk of the story, but my experiences at the Old Rectory had been more harrowing than hers at the Fiddler residence.

“Well, that’s life!” She crossed her legs in their black fishnet stockings and tapped a high-heeled foot, but then her finer feelings emerged and she said it was terrible about my dear mother as well as not having been much of a treat for Reverend McNair. And she didn’t know what she could have been thinking to have contemplated spending a night in this house.

“It was just that I know how obstinate you can be, Mrs. H., about seeing things through and I couldn’t go leaving you here unprotected. But now it’s as clear as a pikestaff up the bum—as Leonard would say in that common way of his—that we need to forget all about this séance business and get in your car and be off to Merlin’s Court before someone slashes the tires.”

“That’s already been done.” I was pleased to note that this time away from home seemed to have cooled her fond memories of Leonard and spent the next five minutes talking her around to the fact we couldn’t bunk off, leaving a murderer plotting the next move. “And talking about moving, that’s what I need to be doing if I’m to be ready in time. Would you help me get the trunk off the blanket chest and back at the foot of the bed?”

“Why not leave it where it is?”

I explained and she began to grow visibly into her role of conspirator. Her bust grew at least three inches, which mine hadn’t done since I was ten.

“Well, I’ll have to take off me shoes for fear of breaking me neck. But as I’m always telling you, mostly around Christmas time and me birthday, no sacrifice is too small. But why don’t we wait till you’ve got yourself all fixed and ready before moving the thing. Just to be on the safe side. You go ahead and take your shower while I lie back and think what I’m going to wear. Wish I’d got one of them black shawls with the tassels. I don’t suppose you thought to bring one, Mrs. H.?”

I apologized for the oversight and suggested that she get ready first. It was now close to six and I would—no offense intended—move more quickly once she had gone downstairs. She agreed to this without demur, saying she understood I would need solitude in which to think myself into my role. She only hoped it wouldn’t prove to be my swan song. With unaccustomed speed she completed a change of outfit, from one back taffeta frock to another, redid her makeup, helped me move the trunk, and, stepping back into her shoes, headed for the door.

“But don’t expect me to come off chummy, Mrs. H., I’ll keep to meself and not accept so much as a thimbleful of gin, unless of course it’s forced down me throat.”

“Just tell Rosemary I asked you to stay, let her introduce you to the others, and then pretend you’ve lost your voice.”

As soon as I had the room to myself I began feverishly to get ready. The water trickled out of the showerhead, the skimpy towels wouldn’t dry me fast enough, and my hair didn’t want to stay in its coil, so that my head ended up feeling like a pincushion. Luckily I didn’t have to bother with makeup. The more washed-out I looked, the better, I thought, as I pulled Sophia’s wedding dress over my head. The doorbell had rung several times. I had lost count by the time I had put on the veil so that it covered my face, and added the circlet of orange blossom. Then I looked at the clock, noted the time, and waited for ten minutes, as arranged with Hope.

Now! I drew a deep breath and went down the steps to the lower landing, past Rosemary’s and Jane’s rooms and the bathroom, towards the plant-screened balcony leading to the spiral staircase that descended to the conservatory. I stood looking down into a room of shadows, the forms and faces of those grouped there palely illuminated by the sparse scattering of candles. Hope was the only person standing and I could hear the muttering of her incantations. They grew steadily in volume until she cried out the words for which I had been waiting.

“Sophia, we await your return! Cross over, Sophia! There are none but friends here!”

I heard Mrs. Malloy pipe up that she couldn’t go so far as to claim that sort of acquaintance, but she was sending the right sort of vibes and would be pleased as Punch to make her acquaintance. When she stopped talking, possibly because someone had poked her in the ribs, I felt a presence behind me and froze as I had done at the entrance to the underground steps. But a moment later I was stepping slowly down the spiral rungs. A series of gasps drifted up to me but they were instantly blocked out by the voice that wasn’t mine.

“Yes, it is I, Sophia. I have come to name my father’s murderer.’’

It wasn’t my voice speaking. It was that of my grandmother, whom Hope had promised to fetch from the convalescent home after leaving me in Rilling. She had been due to leave in a couple of days anyway, the function of her leg being fully restored. It was her presence I had just now felt behind me. And her voice continued to float down from the balcony where she was screened from view by the foliage.

“I have come to name the one who added those sleeping tablets to my father’s cherry brandy. Not because she hated him”—her voice grew in power—“but because she wanted the man I loved for her own. She wanted me to take the guilt upon myself so that I would see no other option than to marry William Fitzsimons. She pretended to be my friend. She alone knew I kept a diary because she saw me tear the pages from the back of it to write the notes that she agreed to deliver for me. And when I drew a picture of her that showed something not quite so nice lurking behind that pretty smiling face of hers, she tore it out. But even then I never thought, not even after Father was found dead, that she was evil. Year by year, she has come, mask in place, to this house, hating the man she had married, hating my daughter so much that she killed her rather than let her have those drawings of the man she had never stopped wanting. No one was going to have any part of him, if you could help it. Isn’t that so, Edna?”

The scream that erupted almost sent me toppling down the remaining stairs. There was a lot of scurrying about and suddenly the lights went on. The conservatory looked almost vulgarly naked without its foliage. I could see Rosemary, Jane, and Thora sitting as if turned to stone.

Richard Barttle and Mrs. Malloy were standing so close together that they seemed to merge into one person. Hope was coming towards me, but I knew she would go on past me up those stairs to her mother. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Edna; instead, my eyes finally fixed on Sir Clifford Heath. He was staring upwards, his face alight with wonder and disbelieving joy. My grandmother had stepped out from the balcony. She was standing on the top rung. And it was as though the years fell away and there were no silver in his hair. No lines on his face. He looked twenty again and the woman now coming down the stairs looked about seventeen.

“Sophia,” he whispered as he went to her.

“Thorn,” she breathed as she went into his arms.

“Well, I’d say that was a bit of all right,” said Mrs. Malloy.

“Sophia, we thought you were dead!” The bridesmaids were falling over themselves, all babbling at once.

“Thank God!” Rosemary cried.

“We don’t understand,” Jane sobbed, “but it doesn’t matter!”

“Just so long as we’ve got you back!” That was Thora. And there might have been a consensus of agreement if Edna hadn’t straightened up and dragged a knife out of her apron pocket.

“Everyone stay away.” She brandished the knife in my direction. “I should have killed you when I had the chance that night in your room. Scaring you wasn’t good enough. You were too stupid to leave. And then some other busybody went and slashed your tires.”

“Edna, I’m shocked,” Jane gasped. “But not cross, because it’s clear Ted’s death has unhinged you.”

“I had to kill him”—Edna’s face was now a mask of maniacal glee—“the louse had seen me push your mother down those steps. He’d followed me that time, like he was always doing on Thursdays—them being my days off. Always thinking I was sneaking away to see another man! Well, he found out different that time, didn’t he?”

“That’s right,” Richard said kindly, “get it off your chest. We all understand that the man got what he deserved.”

“When he heard Mina’s daughter was coming, he kept on saying it—‘I’m telling! I’m telling!’ Couldn’t let that happen, could I? And it was exciting playing out the role of the grieving widow. Pretending to sprain my foot running in with the bad news. Saying it was an odd sort of accident, so that if suspicions were raised it would be remembered how I’d said it and how I’d always loved my dear hubby to the point of distraction. They’d probably have thought it was you.” She now brandished the knife in Thora’s direction. “Had a row with him over the garden that morning, didn’t you?”