How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams (11 page)

“Stop!” I struggled to sit up and immediately fell back down, cracking my head on the wine bottle that had inconsiderately rolled off the tablecloth. “Ben, we can’t do this!” I was making frantic attempts to button my cardigan back to respectability. “We are being watched.”

“Nonsense!” He made a grab for me, but I managed to elude him and stagger to my feet.

“I tell you”—I pointed a finger at the upper portions of Tall Chimneys showing through the trees—“I can see someone at the top window. It’s … it’s a woman in a black frock, with long hair—or maybe she’s wearing a veil.”

“Then it’s not the ghost of Hector Rigglesworth. Or did you forget to tell me that he was a transvestite?”

“Legend does not say anything to that effect.” I took a couple of steps towards the thicket separating us from the house, hoping for a clearer view of the apparition. “Besides, as far as I know, he restricts his hauntings to the Chitterton Fells library. Doesn’t it seem more likely that this is one of the seven daughters watching from the window for the man of her dreams to come driving up in his curricle?”

“What I think is that you’re not making any sense.”
Ben spoke with ill-concealed irritability while making no attempt to get to his feet. “It is either a real live woman at that window, or you are seeing a shadow caused by the way the curtain is looped.”

Indeed, when I looked again, the figure at the window was gone. Perhaps I had imagined her, or perhaps she was one of the present-day occupants of Tall Chimneys. It did not matter. There was no way for me to recapture the moment of passion with my husband. And he was, I thought defensively, partly to blame for continuing to lie prone on the grass, hands folded on his chest, as if awaiting interment. Suddenly I could not think of a more unsettling spot for a picnic, let alone lovemaking. It was clear to me that an unspeakable evil lurked within the walls of Tall Chimneys. An evil that reached out to permeate the thicket and even the island of green grass on which I stood shivering.

“I have the creepiest feeling that beech tree could tell some harrowing stories of what it has seen and heard in its time,” I told Ben. “Who knows? Perhaps one of the seven Rigglesworth daughters occasionally interrupted her reading of romance novels to trudge out into the gloom of night and bury an unsuitable suitor? One who tried to make a virtue out of his warts and the fact that he never took a bath. There are men who won’t take no for an answer—even when a slammed door is staring them in the face.”

“I think I get the message.” Ben shot to his feet and began repacking the basket with a ruthless disregard for the life span of china and glass. “All it will take to put a lid on this ill-fated adventure”—he banged one down on the butter dish—“is for us to hear a spectral hound howling among the trees.”

Foolish man! It was made hideously apparent that one did not sneer at the forces present on this unhallowed spot, for we immediately heard a series of unearthly woofs. Before I could grab up the two broken pieces of twig that Ben had used in his attempt to uncork the wine and form a cross with which to protect myself, a huge animal—more wolf than dog—came careening onto the grass. Fur bristling, stalactite fangs exposed, the monster rushed towards
us in a blur of black—and attempted to crawl, whimpering, under the tablecloth.

“Why, blow me down!” Mr. Babcock stepped out of the lane and onto the grass. “If it isn’t Mr. and Mrs. Haskell!”

“And isn’t that Heathcliff?” Ben glumly addressed the tablecloth that was lumbering around his feet.

“Your missus very kindly gave the dog to me this morning.” The milkman sounded decidedly nervous. “And already we’ve become such mates, you wouldn’t believe! You don’t want him back, do you?”

“You must be joking!” My husband was looking at me with rekindled affection.

“Speaking of spouses … is Sylvia happy about the new addition to the family?” I inquired.

“That’s one I can’t answer.” Mr. Babcock scratched his ear. “To tell the truth, I got the wind up thinking about how she might react to Cliffy here, so when I finished my rounds I decided to take him on a bit of a walk. And believe you me, he was walking to heel as nice as you please, when all of a sudden like he went all to pieces. It happened just when we came up to that house back there—the one that looks like it’s haunted. And spooked he was all right. The poor lad!” Mr. Babcock’s beefy face looked the worse for worry as he puffed across the grass towards the tablecloth that was chasing its tail in increasingly frenzied circles.

“Heathcliff was Miss Bunch’s dog,” I reminded Ben. “Surely, my love, that must make even a skeptic like you stop and think that there may be more to Tall Chimneys and the Rigglesworth legend than meets the mortal eye.…”

When Ben dropped me off at the vicarage some ten minutes later, I experienced the rapturous relief of being returned to the sanity of the everyday world after journeying to the dark on the other side. Whether Ben was in equally good spirits was questionable. But I hoped that his soul would be restored when he entered the kitchen at Abigail’s and saw the last of the picnic basket.

As I entered the churchyard gates I made a vow to unearth my lacy sea-green nightie when I got home, and to brush my hair a hundred strokes before getting into bed for the night. A husband deserved to be pampered, and I would not succumb to the temptation of sitting up till the small hours to finish reading
Her Master’s Voice
. My aunt Astrid, Vanessa’s mother, was known to say grimly that she had never once refused her husband. I could only imagine what she would think of my slipshod approach to marital duty.

I had to laugh at myself as I wended my way down the mossy path that angled left towards the Norman church with its narrow stained glass windows, and right towards the early Victorian vicarage. Making love with Ben could never seriously be viewed as a duty—it was just that I was always hoping for the perfect moment, when I would be several pounds thinner, and the children would be older
and less likely to interrupt at the crucial moment, and I would finally he caught up with the ironing.

Perhaps, I thought, nipping along faster so that the wind wouldn’t catch hold of me and spin me around like a top, perhaps I would have a word with Eudora and see if she thought my fondness for romance novels bordered on an addiction that might have a negative impact on my marriage, and whether I should attempt to quit cold turkey or just try to cut back.

What I didn’t think about was Miss Bunch’s freshly dug grave, lying in the dark green shade of the weeping willow.

“Hello, Ellie!” Eudora opened the front door as I mounted the last of the stone steps which the wear of countless footsteps had scooped out to resemble a headsman’s block. “I saw you from the sitting room window and thought I’d save you ringing the bell. Gladstone is in the study working on the
Clarion Call
, otherwise known as the parish bulletin, and you know how men are,” Eudora laughed fondly, “it doesn’t take much to break their concentration.”

“I certainly wouldn’t want to disturb him!” Smiling my understanding, I tiptoed into the hall with its dark brown varnish and pictures of various Archbishops of Canterbury on the walls, and closed the door as silently as I could behind me. “Gladstone has done a marvelous job since he took over the bulletin. Quite honestly,” I whispered, “before his day I never got much further than the first paragraph, but he has made it into a real page-turner. His reporting of the Babcock wedding in last week’s issue brought tears to my eyes. The description of Sylvia wafting down the aisle on a rose-scented cloud, with the sun framing her radiant face like a golden halo …”

“Yes, well, I did think Gladstone might have done better to leave that last bit out.” Eudora led me into the sitting room. The painting mounted above the fireplace was of a sailing ship glued on top of an unbudgeable wave. The china in the glass-fronted cabinet was a common-or-garden rose pattern. The brown sofa and fireside chairs sagged comfortably like women with middle-age spread who breathed sighs of relief at being finally, and irrevocably, freed from their corsets. It was a room where nothing
matched and harmony was the result. And it suited St. Anselm’s clergywoman perfectly.

Eudora was a substantial woman—not fat or even plump, just solidly built. A woman inclined to beige twin sets and a single strand of pearls with her tweed skirts and good shoes. Recently our vicar had begun to wear her greying hair in a softer style, emphasizing the natural curl, so that it no longer resembled a serviceable felt hat. And I noticed that today Eudora was wearing a new pair of glasses whose speckled frames picked up the colour of her hazel eyes.

“It really is nice to see you, Ellie.” She plumped up a cushion and arranged it at a more inviting angle on the easy chair to the left of the fireside. “Make yourself comfortable and we’ll have a good chat.” Turning away from me, she shifted a sheaf of legal-looking papers to the middle of the coffee table and set the Delft vase of daffodils on top of them. “There! That gives you more elbow room …” She laughed a little self-consciously. It was unlike her to fuss. There had been only one time when I had seen Eudora seriously discomposed, when her mother-in-law came to visit for several weeks with dire results. “So tell me, Ellie”—she sat down across from me—“are you here to help me redecorate?”

“That sounds a bit drastic,” I faltered. “Weren’t you just thinking about a new bedroom wardrobe?”

“Originally, yes. But you know how one thing leads to another. And now that spring is here”—she looked around the room—“everything suddenly looks so shabby. The wallpaper has faded so badly, you can hardly see the pattern, and the furniture, well—you can see for yourself, Ellie.”

“I don’t see too much wrong.” I shifted to the edge of my chair and the springs gave a heartfelt groan as if fully aware that their end was near.

“Perhaps I’m just ready for a change.” Eudora seemed to be eyeing the paperback novel on the coffee table with Karisma on the cover. It was impossible for me not to recognize those torrents of windblown hair and bulging biceps, even when viewed from the wrong way round. “Life doesn’t stand still, and if we don’t make some effort
to keep up—” She broke off. “Well, I certainly don’t want to turn into a fuddy-duddy.”

“You could never be anything of the sort,” I said fondly. “You’re an extremely up-to-date woman.”

“Obviously I am in some ways.” Eudora’s smile was unreadable as she turned the novel facedown on the table and then pressed her hands, as if to steady them, on her tweed skirt. “My work has for a long time left Gladstone saddled with the traditional ‘wifely’ role. The cooking and the shopping, that sort of thing! Such a dear! So often in my shadow in our parish life! Is it any surprise that he wants his own identity? That he should branch out in a way that might strike some of the good people of St. Anselm’s as somewhat shocking?”

“You mean that he wants to redecorate the vicarage?”

“No!” Eudora sounded thoroughly flustered. “That was entirely my idea. I was talking about Gladstone having taken up knitting. People can, even the best of them, be a little catty. And it would hurt his feelings terribly if, for instance, the members of the Library League were to make little jokes.”

“I’m sure no one thinks anything negative,” I said. “The fact that a man likes to knit or embroider hardly implies he has a hormone imbalance. If I knew how to do either, I would certainly teach Tam and Abbey.”

“You’ll have to send them over to Gladstone for lessons.” Eudora’s smile looked frayed around the edges, and I began to be a little worried about her, especially when she continued. “I sincerely trust, Ellie, that no one will consider him an unsuitable influence, when word gets out that he …” Her voice cracked, “That he also enjoys darning.”

I started to speak, but my eyes were drawn to the window and the view of the graveyard, with its weary regiment of tombstones waiting for the Last Judgement’s trumpet call to relieve them of their posts. Did this ever-present reminder of the grim implacability of death breed dark fancies? Was Eudora in need of a change of scene rather than a change of furniture? I was wondering how to approach the subject, when she sat back in her chair and readjusted her glasses so that immediately her face was her own again. Sound and cheerful. Could it be that I was the
one who was off balance and therefore getting a distorted view of things? Had I been more affected than I realized by the shock of practically stumbling over Miss Bunch’s body in the library?

“So, Ellie!” Eudora seemed at ease now with me and life in general. “Before we start discussing the decorating, you must tell me how things are with you.”

It was tempting to spill the beans about Vanessa’s engagement to George Malloy, but I managed to exercise heroic restraint. My cousin’s imminent arrival in Chitterton Fells was not in the scheme of things a major tragedy. Knowing Vanessa, she would breeze into Merlin’s Court on a cloud of expensive perfume, warn me not to look at her diamond ring with the naked eye, while bragging about her latest modeling assignment for Felini Senghini. And say she noticed I had taken to wearing a size forty-long bra since the birth of the twins. I would adjust. Besides, it should be Mrs. Malloy’s privilege to make the gladsome announcement.