How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams (14 page)

The reason I hadn’t wanted to leave Abbey and Tam for the evening was that with Gerta assuming the responsibility of getting them up and dressed in the mornings, I was beginning to feel I was missing out on huge chunks of their day, including my role as keeper of the twins’ bath. Would Gerta understand the importance to Tam of sitting at the tap end? And would Abbey hesitate to explain that the rubber duck got a dusting with baby powder after being dried with the towel?

Part of my problem, I reflected as I stirred the orange juice I had taken from the fridge, was that as of yet I had only two clients interested in my services as an interior decorator. Or could it be that I liked being a full-time, hands-on mum, one who really didn’t relish someone else taking a prominent role in raising my children? I certainly wasn’t worried about Gerta’s competence because she had mistaken Vanessa for a burglar and in the upset of that
moment pictured herself caving in her husband’s head with the statue of St. Francis.

Lots of perfectly nice women fantasize about murdering their errant spouses, and no one could have looked less homicidal than Gerta when she now appeared in the kitchen, still wearing her alpine outfit, with Abbey and Tam toddling in her wake. I had offered to lend her some clothes, but she’d told me there was no need. She had washed her undies in the bathroom basin and dried them with the hair dryer.

“Please, Gerta,” I told her now, “make as much use as you wish of the washing machine and tumble dryer. Ben and I want you to treat this as your home.”

“You are good, Frau Haskell. It is the wonder you don’t throw me out the house on both ears because of the mistake I make with your beautiful cousin.”

“She should have knocked instead of walking into the house and scaring you out of your wits.” I did not add that I myself had often wished to give Vanessa a conk on the head. My heart was full, along with my arms, when Abbey and Tam rushed up to me as if I were their long-lost mother. “You deserve a bonus, Gerta, for risking your life to protect the children. And I’m going to write you a cheque so that you can go shopping for a change of clothes.”

“No, Frau Haskell!” A tear slid down her plump cheek and she dabbed it away with the back of her hand. “I don’t deserve for you to be so good to me.”

“Now, don’t argue.” I sat and lifted first Tam, then Abbey onto my lap. “Why not go into Chitterton Fells this morning and rig yourself up? I won’t have to leave for my meeting at the library until around twelve-thirty.”

“My husband can send my clothes,” she sniffed, “if he is not too busy making the kissy-face with the new love of his life, Mr. Meyers.”

“In the meantime”—I smiled at her—“you are to go shopping. There is a bus stop a few yards from St. Anselm’s Church.” For a moment I thought I had put her off by bringing back memories of her first night here, when she had seen the spectral figure of the Virgin Bride in the churchyard and had been chased by the black dog to the front door of Merlin’s Court. But it appeared that Gerta
had either blocked out the memory or that a bright blue sky made for a daylight world in which further meetings with evil incarnate seemed unlikely.

Mr. Babcock had deposited the usual six pints of milk before I came downstairs, so I was still left guessing as to how his new bride had reacted to the arrival of Heathcliff. While Gerta and I were getting the twins into their booster seats at the table, I wondered whether I should take the Babcocks’ wedding present with me this afternoon and give it to Sylvia at the meeting, but decided it would be more appropriate to take it to their house tomorrow. She had been pressing me to stop by for a cup of tea, but until now it had been difficult on account of the twins. Sylvia, who was afraid of the air she breathed, might have leapt onto a chair and screamed bloody murder if she saw a child in her front room.

The morning passed at a happily plodding pace, with Abbey and Tam playing peaceably with their toys and Gerta insisting she would not leave until she had helped me tidy up, this not being one of the days when Mrs. Malloy came to rule the roost with her iron mop. But when ten-thirty rolled around, Gerta admitted she would need to catch the next bus into the village if she were to have enough time to buy a deodorant at Boots, let alone anything else, and be back in time for me to keep my appointment at the library.

Just as the hall clock began to strike eleven, in came Vanessa looking like the goddess of spring in my sea-green peignoir set. My cousin has always been one of those horrid females who, although half-dead from getting only ten or eleven hours’ sleep, manages to look utterly ravishing. It’s the fault of all that titian hair, the creamy skin—with the blush of rose on the perfect cheekbones—and those marvelous sherry-coloured eyes that look all the more sultry when smudged with sleep.

“For pity’s sake, Ellie.” She pressed her pearl-pink fingertips to her forehead. “Can’t you shut up that blasted clock? I’m too exhausted to have a headache this early in the morning.”

“Here, have a cup of tea.” I stepped around Abbey and Tam to hand her the one I had been about to drink. “It’s not quite time for anything stronger.”

“Such as poison?” My cousin smiled sweetly at me as she trailed, in drifts of green gauze and lace, to sink gracefully onto a chair. “Yes, darling, I can read you like a book. The sort with the foot-high letters that little what’s-his-name is looking at.” She pointed gingerly at Tam, as if afraid he would leap up from the floor and bite off her finger. “I know you positively loathe having me here, disrupting all this charming domesticity.
My God!
What is that nasty-looking contraption? Some new gadget to let you take your own blood pressure if you get a bit worked up when you’re making jam and it won’t jell?”

“It’s a coffeepot,” I said frigidly.

“And I suppose darling Bentley gave it to you for your birthday or for some equally special reason.” Vanessa turned her chair away from Abbey, who stood staring at her with blue eyes wide in her cherub face. “I don’t blame you, Ellie—really I don’t, for wishing I were anywhere but here. I actually feel guilty because that army tank of a woman didn’t finish me off! You’ve always been just the teensy-weeniest bit jealous of me, and who can blame you?” She smoothed the lace at her peerless throat. “And I suppose at times I have rubbed it in a bit that I got
all
the looks in the family. But,” she added kindly, “I have always admitted that you have the nicer nature.”

“Thank you!”

“And that is why, darling, when Mummy threw the most awful fit about my marrying George Malloy, screaming herself into hysterics and turning violet, I thought okay, I will go down to Merlin’s Court. Ellie will forget the past when she learns that my one remaining parent has cast me off. Ellie will take me to her matronly bosom. And I will know that I am not without a family.”

“You have George,” I reminded her.

“Yes, and see how he adores me!” Vanessa held out her left hand to dazzle me again with the brilliance of her obscenely sized diamond solitaire. “Big as some mirrors, isn’t it?”

“You can use it for touching up your makeup,” I said with my eyes on Abbey, who was still standing immobile, a scant six inches from my cousin.

“Did God turn that child into a pillar of salt”—Vanessa drew in her shoulders—“or did she come that way?”

“Pretty lady.” Abbey took an entranced step closer and placed a chubby hand on my cousin’s gauzy knee. “Is you a fairy?”

“Oh, my goodness!” Vanessa amazed me by reaching out her arms and gathering my daughter onto her lap. And when she looked at me, her eyes were made the more lustrous by the shine of tears. “What a precious, priceless little creature! Why didn’t I realize before that she looks like me? When I was a child, my hair was just this shade of gold as little Ashley’s. Or is it Allison? Whatever! She most definitely has my divine nose!”

Tam, determined not to stand in his sister’s limelight, immediately dropped his picture book with a plop and raced over to Vanessa, crying “Me loves you too!”

“Dear, intelligent little boy!” Vanessa sat with chiffon arms wrapped around my children. “Oh, I was right to come where I can recover from the turmoil of Mummy’s tirade.”

“And get to know Mrs. Malloy.” I tried not to look at my offspring as if they were a pair of turncoats.

“Oh, yes! My future mother-in-law!” Vanessa kissed the tops of the twins’ heads. “But there doesn’t have to be any rush. I’m sure I’ll see her when she comes here to clean, and we’re bound to have a little chat, especially if she starts vacuuming outside my bedroom door at some ungodly hour. I’m certain she’s a lovely woman, just thrilled out of her simple wits to know that her son is going to marry”—Vanessa tapped Abbey coyly on the cheek—“a fairy princess.”

This called for a strong cup of tea. Pouring myself one, I banished the evil thought that my cousin might no longer be getting the plum modeling jobs, making marriage an excellent career move. “You must be very much in love with George Malloy,” I ventured kindly.

“Darling, you’re such a romantic! I’m enormously fond of him. He’s well-off and really quite presentable. I like being with him. We have good times. And he came along in the nick of … I mean at the right time. But as for my being madly, agonizingly nuts about George Malloy, good heavens no! And don’t look at me like that, Ellie. I wouldn’t be doing the man any favours by being all goo-goo-eyed
in love with him. That sort of full-blown emotion can’t ever last. Not if you intend to stay married.”

“You’re wrong.” I took a sip of tea, but it was so stewed, I couldn’t take the bitter taste and poured it down the sink.

“Look at you and Ben.” Vanessa spoke over the top of Tam’s dark head as he stood on her knee to kiss her damask cheek. “He has to be one of the handsomest, sexiest men alive, but are you floating around in a state of permanent rapture, counting every moment lost that you cannot be in his arms? No! Your mind is mostly on higher things, like being the perfect mummy to these adorable kiddies and keeping the wheels of dull domesticity turning. And that’s just as well, Ellie, because one day Ben will be old and grey and it will be hard for you to remember what there ever was about him to set your pulses racing.”

“Thanks for the warning,” I said.

“Don’t mention it.” Vanessa, looking like the Madonna with an extra child, smiled angelically. “With dear George I’m not setting myself up to wish him underground when he gets the gout and can’t get up the stairs without puffing. I realize that romantic love should be reserved for the men one has loved in days of moonlight and roses. ‘Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn,’ or whatever the mournful saying is! The men we once thought we couldn’t live without remain enshrined in our hearts, never growing a day older or steadily more tiresome when they can’t remember where they put their dentures.”

“Well”—I held my empty teacup aloft—“here’s hoping you and George will be very happy in your own special way. When may I hope to meet your fiancé?”

“Goodness only knows, darling!” Vanessa put the twins down on the floor, stood up, and stretched her arms in lovely languor. “I telephoned Georgie Porgie last night and he felt quite wretched about Mummy being so beastly, but he can’t come rushing down here today because he’s up to his eyes with work at his factory.”

“And what is it he manufactures?”

“Exercise machines. That’s how I met him.”

“You collided with him on your stationary bike?”

“George needed a model for his advertising campaign.”
Vanessa studied a fingernail that would appear to have disgraced itself by acquiring a chip in its pearl-pink varnish. “I applied for and got the job. Simple as that.”

“It certainly beats working for
Vogue
,” I replied with my eyes on the clock. It was almost time for me to get the twins’ lunches prepared, after which I would have quite a rush getting myself ready to go to the library meeting. It wouldn’t do to keep Brigadier Lester-Smith and the rest of the league members drumming their pencils on the table. We would need every ounce of available brain power to come up with a means of raising the necessary for Miss Bunch’s memorial.

“It suddenly strikes me, Ellie”—Vanessa drifted about the room with the twins each holding up their end of her peignoir train—“something, or, I should say,
someone
is missing in this house.”

“Gerta went shopping for some odds and ends.”

“I wasn’t thinking about her.” My cousin pressed a hand to the back of her head, where no doubt the bump she had received from her assailant still lingered. “What’s lacking is that old curmudgeon—Judas the gardener.”

“Jonas is off on a camping trip with Freddy.”

“Our cousin with the ponytail and the tattoo and the skull-and-crossbones earring?” Vanessa swayed artistically. “Would you believe I get amnesia where he is concerned.”

“He remembers you.” I took another look at the clock that appeared to be chasing its tail in ever faster circles. “When Freddy telephoned last night and I told him you were here, he promised that he and Jonas would forget about their nettle rash and lie low in the woods for a while.”

“How sweet, considering I may be here for
ages
!” Vanessa swung around to face me, with the result that Abbey and Tam released her skirts and sat smack down on the floor. “I’ve been thinking that it would work out perfectly for me to be married at St. Anselm’s.”

“Really?” I almost landed on the floor beside the twins.

“Ellie, I don’t have a church of my own, so why shouldn’t I borrow yours for the day?” She might have been talking about the nightie she was wearing. “It would
put Mummy’s nose out of joint. We would have the reception here at Merlin’s Court, with Ben doing the catering, and Gerta, the human hand grenade, getting stuck with all the washing up. What could be more heavenly than me in miles and miles of white satin and French lace, sweeping down the stairs of the ancestral home? A vision of misty-eyed beauty to be witnessed only once in a dozen lifetimes.”

With a bedazzled Abbey and Tam clapping their hands in time to the wedding march playing inside their heads, it was perhaps unnoticeable that I was not one hundred percent enthusiastic. “There is one thing you need to know, Vanessa. St. Anselm’s Church has rather an unhappy history in the nuptials department.”