How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams (19 page)

“How sad,” Vanessa said insincerely, standing impatiently at the church door as I blinked away my tears and gave the tiny black-gloved hand a consoling squeeze before following the trailing skirts up the steps.

“Would you?” The Lady in Black gave me the key. Her forlorn sigh echoed the heavy groan as the door swung inward and the three of us stepped into the musty gloom.

“Let there be light!” My cousin pressed a hand to the wall and was miraculously rewarded for her irreverence by immediately locating a switch. Forbearing to loiter in the entryway, with its long table stacked with inspirational booklets and several collection boxes posted prominently on the walls, Vanessa entered the nave as though she knew exactly where she was going. And that was another miracle, considering there wasn’t a tour guide at her elbow.

“Oh, God!” she exclaimed, taking Him to task. “You really need to think about moving. Or at least doing some major redecorating.”

“I think St. Anselm’s is perfect.” I stood behind her in the aisle, flanked on either side by rows of time-worn pews. “Some of these windows date back to the fourteenth century and even the Victorian stained glass is less garish than most of its kind. And look at the altar rail! The carving is exquisite.”

“How well I know!” The Lady in Black spoke over my shoulder. “I remember how on that fateful day my eyes remained riveted for what seemed an eternity on a wooden rose with a chip in its heart.”

“Would anybody mind frightfully,” Vanessa said, “if we try to remain focused on my wedding? I don’t want to be selfish,” she fibbed, “but at any moment horrid hordes of schoolchildren could burst in upon us intent on making brass rubbings for Christmas cards and I won’t be able to think straight. You understand, don’t you?” She smiled sweetly at the Lady in Black.

“Absolutely, my dear,” came the sighing reply. “I
haven’t been able to keep anything straight for sixty years, a sad price to pay for girlish hopes and dreams.”

Vanessa shot me a glance that dared me to produce a hankie from my raincoat pocket and dab at my eyes. Then she paraded down the aisle as if it were a modeling ramp. The sun paid suitable homage by providing her with a gossamer train of gold upon which the Lady in Black and I trod as gingerly as if it cost eighty pounds a yard.

My cousin spun around.

“These pews will have to be moved!”

“Why didn’t I think of that?” I said.

“The aisle is far too narrow. I won’t be able to take a step without scrunching my dress or snagging my veil when someone sticks his nose out of the pew.” Somehow Vanessa managed to resemble one of the titian-haired angels on the stained glass windows while uttering this snippy remark. “And I don’t much care for those brass vases on the altar. They look like something Aladdin’s mother would have bought for a song from the bazaar.”

“Perhaps we should also get rid of the baptismal font,” I suggested, “unless you think it might come in handy as a punch bowl. And”—my eyes roved the stone walls—“I’m sure Reverend Spike would go for a Laura Ashley paper with matching curtains at the windows.”

“There’s no need to be snide, Ellie.” Vanessa shook back her luxuriant hair, swayed gracefully, and reached for the edge of a pew. “I’m feeling a bit off colour. This getting up early is for the birds, and I’d think even they’d get tired of it.”

Before I could profess sympathy, however, she glided away in the direction of the vestry, where I guessed she would spend a soulful few moments picturing herself signing the registry while George Malloy hovered beside her, giving thanks to God for blessing him with amazing good fortune.

The Lady in Black tugged at my sleeve. “I haven’t told you my name,” she said. “I am Ione Tunbridge, and you”—she leaned closer as I started to speak—“you are Ellie Haskell. I have my ways of knowing such things. And I’ll tell you a little secret, dear: I was in the churchyard on your wedding day. Even though I am in the main a recluse, I can never resist hovering among the tombstones on such
heart-stirring occasions, and I saw the look of abject despair on your face as you came through the lichgate.”

“I was late,” I said, resisting the urge to take a step back from her clutching hand and the smell of mouldy face powder that was making me feel queasy. “I was thirty minutes late for my wedding,” I continued in a rush reminiscent of the day in question. “The cat ate my veil and the taxi didn’t turn up and I was terrified that Ben would get tired of waiting for me and I’d end up at the altar all alone.…” My voice petered out as I realized I’d been tactless in the extreme.

But Miss Tunbridge’s expression was all sympathy. “Men!” Her breath came in an almost visible wisp of stale air escaping under a door that hadn’t been opened in half a century. “I felt a bond with you, Ellie Haskell, on your bridal morn. And then the other day, when I looked out of the attic window and saw you being forced to picnic on the wet grass with your dark, forbidding husband, my spirit cried out to yours: Hit the insufferable tyrant over the head with the wine bottle. Spear his heart with the butter knife. Free yourself for a life of unwedded bliss.” Her face was ashen with fierce emotion.

If I’d been a wife worthy of my wedding ring, I would have protested fiercely that Ben was an angel equal to any of those carved on the altar rail, and that I loved him madly, but true to form, I fastened on the fascinating discovery.

“You live at Tall Chimneys!” I exclaimed. “The house that was once the residence of Hector Rigglesworth and his seven daughters. Excuse my curiosity, but do you believe the stories that he haunts the Chitterton Fells library? Have you ever sensed his repressive presence prowling around your home?” I might have gone rambling on in this fashion if Vanessa had not returned at that moment from scouting out the vestry to stand inches away from me and lone Tunbridge. Her pensive eyes were on the magnificent crucifix mounted behind the pulpit.

“That’ll have to go, Ellie! Call me shallow, but it is a bit of a downer!”

My appalled gasp wasn’t the only reaction to my cousin’s blasphemy. For at that instant the lights went out, indicating God had moved swiftly to cast my cousin and
those unfortunate enough to be standing in her presence into outer darkness. In the midst of a squeal I backed clumsily into a pew. A hand brushed mine; Ione’s whisper trickled inside my ear: “You must come and see me, Ellie Haskell. You remind me of a dear friend I had when I was a young girl and the world was my meadow.”

Her icy breath was gone from my ear, and when the lights came back on there was no sign of Ione Tunbridge. Coming down the aisle was Gladstone Spike wearing a hand-knitted cardigan and dusky grey trousers. His silver hair was tousled.

“Good morning,” he said over steepled fingers, his voice a little higher than I remembered it. “I saw the lights and thought they had been accidentally left on last night, so I came in, switched them off, and then heard movements. Are you ladies waiting to see my wife?” He glanced at his pocket watch and looked momentarily perplexed before returning it to the breast pocket of his cardigan. “Could it be, Ellie, that you misunderstood Eudora, not realizing it was her intention to meet you here at five in the evening?”

“We didn’t have an appointment.” Vanessa favoured him with a bewitching smile, something she might not have done if she had known Gladstone Spike was soon to become one of the girls. “When I told my cousin Ellie that I couldn’t sleep and was dying to take a look inside the church where I plan to be married, she suggested we walk over here on the chance that the door would be unlocked. Luckily, that proved to be the case.”

She told this outrageous lie without a blush. Indeed, she looked decidedly pale as she eased down onto the edge of a pew. Bother! Ione Tunbridge was nowhere in sight, and I wasn’t up to denouncing my cousin as a crafty minx who’d always enjoyed watching me squirm. My stomach was rumbling, and all I wanted to do was get home and make some scrambled eggs and toast before Gerta—who, sad to say, had proved to be an even worse cook than Mrs. Malloy had indicated—got busy on a batch of scones that would have done for doorstops.

“I also was unable to sleep the night through,” Gladstone Spike confessed. “It’s a problem that’s been plaguing me for several weeks, and I often spend the small hours
doing a bit of knitting or whipping up a sponge cake. But on this occasion I decided upon taking a walk around the grounds. I am, or, rather”—he cleared his throat—“Eudora and I are expecting a guest this weekend, someone of particular significance to our future, and it did occur to me, Ellie, as I passed the blackcurrant bushes, that Ben might be willing to share with me his recipe for summer pudding.”

“He’ll be delighted,” I said. “Seriously, Gladstone, it’s a pity Ben couldn’t have married
you
, considering the two of you share this grand passion for cooking.” My mind, in shying away from the suspicion that the Spikes’ weekend guest would be the doctor who had something to do with the surgery that would make most men wince, had blundered into making this grotesquely stupid statement.

“We would make quite a team.” Gladstone’s eyes twinkled, suggesting he took the joke at face value, unless … My heart missed a whole string of beats as I followed his gaze and saw my husband striding down the aisle towards us. Instead of wondering what brought Ben here, I reassessed that twinkle and thanked God that Eudora was not present to witness it and possibly misinterpret.

“Ellie!” My spouse had eyes only for me. Reaching me in full stride, Ben growled menacingly, “Do you deliberately set out to drive me to distraction? I woke in a cold sweat to find you weren’t in bed. After ransacking the house for any sign of you, I was forced to invade the privacy of Gerta’s bedroom and after quieting her hysteria, I asked her to take care of the twins for as long as it took me to return with or without you.”

“You shouldn’t have panicked …,” I faltered. Vanessa was watching us with great interest.

“The least you could have done was leave a note pinned to my pajamas. I was convinced you’d left me because you’ve been seeing another man. You haven’t been your usual affectionate self lately, Ellie, and there was that business of your being late for your birthday party. Something fishy there. Could it be you have a thing for Brigadier Lester-Smith—the urbane older man?” Ben drew a furious breath. “That’s what I was asking myself as I dashed over to the vicarage to have a word with Eudora in case you
had confided in her as your spiritual advisor. And then I saw the lights in the church. What’s going on here?”

He now directed his fiery gaze upon Gladstone Spike as if suspecting the man of luring me to the church with the intent of using foul means to pry a recipe from me.

But before either the vicar’s husband or I could explain matters, Vanessa rose unsteadily from the pew on which she had been sitting, pressed a hand to her ivory brow, took a couple of faltering steps, whispered that she felt faint, and proceeded to pitch gracefully into my husband’s arms, which had opened to receive her.

Before I could blink, Ben lifted her up so that her face was cradled against his shoulder and the rippling river of her hair spilled in tawny torrents over his jacket sleeve. What a picture they made—he darkly handsome and appropriately impassive, she a wilted lily powerless for the moment to determine her own fate. A picture worthy of being reproduced on the cover of a romance novel. And I was not the only one to be both stunned and captivated by the image. Gladstone Spike was staring at my husband as if he had just seen the man of his dreams.

The devil made me do something really wicked. When I got home I abandoned Abbey and Tam to Gerta’s care, went upstairs, and climbed into my bed that was neither too hard, nor too soft, but just right. The clock on the mantelpiece pointed out that it was six-thirty
A.M
., far too early in the day for a nap. And my conscience did its best to make me feel guilty by reminding me that Ben had left for work immediately after carrying Vanessa up to her room and gently depositing her on the bed. I could hardly expect him to toss her one-handed through the doorway, could I? Women don’t faint at the drop of a hat these days, so naturally he had been concerned about her, even though she insisted it was nothing and did not need to see a doctor.

Pulling the sheet over my head, I snuggled into the downy softness of the pillow, Forty winks would set me up for the day. I’d be a better mother to the twins if I made up for the night’s lack of sleep. And this evening I would cook a special dinner for Ben. It would be just the two of us … and Gerta, seeing it would be positively Gothic not to include her, I decided as the wallpaper blurred and the wardrobe drifted upon the horizon like a lighthouse swathed in fog. What horrible weather for May, I thought fuzzily as hailstones pelted the window.

I would have been able to ignore them if the telephone had not started ringing with inconsiderate persistence. Stuffing a pillow in each ear did not save me. By the time the great communicator had finally shut up, I had staggered to my feet and saw a shower of pebbles hit the window. The sun blazing through the window ridiculed the possibility that God had decided to enliven His day by intoning “Let there be hail!” No! Someone, some oafish person, was outside the house, scooping up gravel from the drive and tossing it heavenward by the fistful in hopes of rousing me from slumber. Gerta, I thought crossly, would prove to be the culprit. She undoubtedly had the twins outside and wanted to know if it was all right to let Abbey undress her doll and expose Sunshine’s plastic bottom to some passing sex offender.