How to Murder Your Mother-In-Law (10 page)

“Exactly! Rather than dwell on the past, we must focus on getting the two of them back together. Their story
must
have a happy ending.”

“They can both be extremely obstinate.”

“Can’t we all?” I moved away from him to get undressed. “But there has to be a way to sort them out.”

“For their sakes and ours,” he said. “Because much as I love Mum, Ellie, I don’t know how well it would work if she were to stay on here indefinitely.”

“I see your point.” My hollow accents were muffled by my pulling my nightdress over my head.

“You don’t think I should saddle up and go after Dad tonight?” Ben paced to the door.

“No. They need time away from each other. And tomorrow we will come up with a plan. At the moment all I can suggest is that tomorrow we start telephoning around to see if we can get a rabbi and a priest to perform a joint ceremony.”

“My darling!” Ben swung me up and carried me over to the bed. Lying down beside me, he took my hand and raised it to his lips. “If you could only cook worth a damn, I would be putty in your hands.”

“The dinner was a flop, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but being the typically insecure male, I would hate it if you could cook half as well as I do. May I suggest you concentrate on your other talents, which are infinite in their variety and”—he kissed me—“excellence.”

“You know what I was just thinking?”

“Tell me, my angel.” He was leaning over me, hands moving up my arms to draw down the shoulders of my nightdress.

“William the Conqueror was a love child.”

“As are all he-men.”

“Are you telling me that you have made a full recovery and will not have to work through the five stages of grief, or however many there are?”

“I’m afraid not, Ellie. Given the way I’m feeling at this moment, I’m going to need a
lot
of therapy.”

He reached out a hand to turn off the bedside lamp, and even that momentary withdrawal seemed unbearable. After the day I’d had, nothing could have been more blissful than being with Ben on our own little island. He kissed my eyelids, then my cheeks, before taking possession of my parted lips. I inhaled the tantalizing scent of the he-man soap he used. I felt the tension seep out of my pores as his body came down lean and hard on mine. With trembling hands I parted the silk of his dressing gown and let the delicious lassitude overtake me. His supple fingers were woven into my hair, which was unfortunate, because when he suddenly sat up he almost yanked my head off my shoulders.

“Ouch!” I yelped—seductively, I hope.

“Shush!”
Pressing a macho finger to his lips.

“The twins?” Sitting up, I snapped on the light and tossed back the bedclothes, ready to race out to the nursery. I hadn’t heard a peep out of the intercom, but Ben’s ears do tend to be sharper than mine.

“It’s not them.” Ben thumbed towards the ceiling. “It’s Mum walking the varnish off her bedroom floor.”

“You told me you saw her asleep.”

“I know! But I didn’t drug her milk!”

“She’s probably looking for her watch or something,” I said as the footsteps trudged back and forth, within inches, it seemed, of our heads. A lifetime of misery was stamped in every step. But, even more unsettling, she was talking to herself in a sort of rhythmic drone.

“She’s saying the rosary!” Ben said. “The sorrowful mysteries, I expect.”

“Seek ye comfort where ye may.”

“She’ll go on all night.”

I was about to say I would find him a set of earplugs, when there came a shrill yip from Sweetie.

“Great!” My husband made a heroic attempt at
sounding chipper. “Now we have the dog saying the amens.”

“And if we can hear them, they can hear us.”

“No need to spell it out.” He grimaced, and together we gripped the bedclothes so as not to make a rustle. Silently we slid back between the sheets, only to be bounced back upright by a series of full-scale barks.

“What now?” I lamented.

“Listen!” Ben held up a hand, and then I heard it too, the throb of a car motor and the sputter of gravel as the vehicle pulled to a stop not more than two inches from the front steps.

“The Prodigal Father returns,” proclaimed the dutiful son.

“You see, Mum’s prayers have been answered!” With a joyful heart I leaped out of bed, whipped on a dressing gown, and followed my husband down the gallery, flipping on lights as we headed downstairs. Was my mother-in-law in a flutter too, with her ear edged up against the keyhole of her turret room?

Ben was crossing the hall, when the bell buzzed with sufficient vigour to announce a fire drill. It would seem our prodigal was not returning in a particularly chastened mood.

“Hold on!” Ben scraped back the bolt. Horrors! He opened up to reveal a policeman standing on the step in the glare of the exterior lanterns. Uniform, helmet, the works.

“Mr. Bentley Haskell?”

“That’s right.”

Oh, my God! There had been an accident! A bad one, from the man’s bleak expression. It was one of those moments when everything comes into heightened focus. I was aware of footsteps moving along the upper gallery and knew without turning my head that Mum was stationed at the banister rail, wearing the dressing gown that had seen better days. I knew that her mousy hair was poking out of the net she had crocheted from embroidery silk. I knew that Jonas was with
her and that the kitchen door had peeked open to give Freddy and Mrs. Malloy a view of Ben’s rigid back.

“It’s my unpleasant duty to bring you some disturbing news.” The policeman produced a notebook but did not look at it. “Approximately one half hour ago I was patrolling the footpath leading from Cliff Road to Smugglers Cove Beach, when I came upon a stationary vehicle, which I subsequently ascertained to be your registered property, sir.”

“I lent the car to my father and a friend of the family.” Ben reached for my hand as I moved to stand beside him. “Is he … is my …?”

“We’ll get to that, sir.” The policeman, whose demeanour was that of a man who had been on the job for thirty years without once requesting a day off, was not to be budged from going by the book. “I proceeded over to the aforementioned conveyance, and was attempting to determine what the make might be —it being something of a patchwork jobbie—when I was approached by two persons who claimed to have left the keys in the ignition and subsequently locked themselves out.”

“I’d like to know why they got out of the car in the first place.” Ben shook his head over the vagaries of the older generation. “But you’ll be here for the spare key. Much appreciated, and if you’ll be so good as to step inside, I will get it for you at once, Constable …?”

“Sergeant Briggs, and I’m afraid there’s a bit more to the matter than I have heretofore indicated.” Not budging from the step, the sergeant lowered his eyes to his notebook and folded back a couple of pages. Was he about to tell us that he had booked Dad and Tricks for unlawful parking on a public footpath, or for abandonment of a motor vehicle?

“So what’s the upshot?” Ben asked without fear or trembling.

“It’s not a pretty story, sir, but I will try to make it as straightforward and painless as I can.” Our man in blue stood eyes forward, helmet held high. “When I
was approached by Mr. Elijah Haskell and Mrs. Beatrix Taffer, neither party was wearing any clothes.”

“You’re joking!” Ben’s hand gripped my fist so tightly, I was afraid he would inadvertently arm wrestle me to the ground.

“I’m not paid to amuse the public, sir” came the wooden response. “According to Mr. Elijah Haskell, he was invited by Mrs. Taffer to take a moonlight dip in the altogether. And when the parties returned to the beach they couldn’t find their clothes left by the water’s edge, and reckoned they must have been washed out to sea.”

“No!” I wrapped my arms around Ben for fear he would swoon and crack his head on the floor. It was imperative that he keep his wits intact for his mother’s sake. A gasp was heard from the gallery above, and I feared tears would come raining down on us at any second. Stifled laughter, sad to say, was the contribution from the onlookers at the kitchen door.

“Where are our Adam and Eve?” Ben inquired through gritted teeth.

“I was able to open your car, using a little police know-how, and drove the parties over here after issuing a verbal warning about public indecency. If they’d been a couple of kids I’d have marched them down to the station”—the sergeant did have a heart beating under that uniform—“but having parents myself, sir, I know how it is.”

“You need have no qualms about remanding Mr. Elijah Haskell to my custody.” Ben’s eyebrows came down over his nose like an iron bar.

“I get you, sir, no hope of leniency from this end.” The notebook got clapped shut and tucked away. “I told the lady and gentleman to remain in the car while I had a word with you—let them sweat a little, was my idea.”

“Come on now, love! You couldn’t expect us to stay cooped up while you dillydallied!”

That was Tricks’s voice. For shame! A bundle made up of two people wrapped up in one blanket hobbled
out of the shadows to mount the steps with the gait of participants in a three-legged race. I recognized the blanket. It was the one Ben kept on the backseat of the car to disguise the rips in the upholstery. “Wasn’t it lucky finding this?” Tricks enthused. “Elijah was getting goose bumps all over.”

Poor Mum! It was a wonder she didn’t jump over the railing. The brazenness of the Taffer Woman! There she stood in the doorway, fairly bubbling over with merriment. She even risked her hold on the blanket to raise an obscenely naked arm and poke the sergeant in the ribs.

“My knight in shiny silver buttons. We were never so glad to see anyone in our lives, were we, Eli?”

Dad didn’t answer her. Shuffling over the threshold with his Siamese twin, he put his case to Judge Bentley T. Haskell. “Don’t stand there, son, like you’re looking at some two-headed freak straight out of the circus. All men make mistakes in their time, and there’s lots of excuses for me. You have to give me that!” His brown eyes were certainly soulful, and it was apparent his bald head had paled along with his face. “That dandelion wine I drank, at your request, was powerful stuff, and then there was that business with your mother. After thirty-eight years she drives me out of the house, drives me to ruin and public disgrace.”

“Threw him right in my arms.” Tricks’s sigh ruffled the blanket. “But bless her heart, Mags doesn’t have anything to worry about. We were just having a bit of fun is all, going skinny-dipping like a couple of kids.”

“Speak for yourself!” Dad roared. “I felt a hundred years old getting into that water, and I aged a couple of hundred more when I got out.”

“I don’t have time to suffer with you, Dad.” Ben patted his dressing gown as if expecting the spare key to the Heinz to materialize inside the pocket. “If Sergeant Briggs will kindly wait while you and Mrs. Taffer put on some clothes, you can drive him back to the
police station, preferably after taking Mrs. Taffer home, then book yourself in at the Dark Horse. While I’m trusting you to stay out of jail, I will be looking in on Mum to see if by some miracle she hasn’t gotten wind of what’s happened.”

My poor darling. Little did he realize she had heard every word. Ah, how my heart ached for him, as well as for Mum, when she made her presence known.

“Thank God for you, son, At least something good came out of my unholy union with that … Judas!” We all looked up to see her standing at the bars, this woman for whom love’s song had turned into a dirge. “But don’t anyone go thinking I’m upset. Far from it! Elijah and Bea can carry on to their wicked hearts’ content. After all, they’re both free as the wind. So if you’ll all excuse me, I’ll go back to my bedroom and rearrange the furniture. I could put up with it the way it was for a few nights, but now it’s settled that I’ll be living here permanently, so I’ll want the place looking halfway decent.”

A hush descended upon the hall when she vanished from the scene. For several moments Sergeant Briggs stood with his helmet clapped over his heart, and then Jonas—a sight to behold in his nightshirt and Wee Willie Winkie cap—leaned over the railing to proclaim the words that brought tears to my eyes and a sob to my throat: “It is a far better thing that she does than she has ever done, it is a far better rest she goes to than she has ever known.”

“D
on’t go asking me to weep buckets for her.” Mrs. Malloy stood her ground in the middle of the kitchen. “Some people earn every hard knock they get.”

“How can you be so callous?” Still in my dressing gown, my hair piling down my back, I staggered over to the sink and poured myself a strong slug of water. After a sleepless night I was as bleary-eyed as the morning, which was as close to rain as I was to tears. “What,” I asked, “did my mother-in-law ever do to you?”

“She came into my bedroom last night and ordered me to turn down the radio. What’s more, she brought that dog of hers along, for intimidation purposes, and it cocked its leg”—Mrs. M. sucked in an outraged breath—“on the chair where I’d put me undies.”

“Sweetie’s been taking male hormones to help her through a difficult menopause.”