How to Murder Your Mother-In-Law (15 page)

“Amazing!” I said.

“What is?”

“Pamela. Have you ever met her, Freddy?”

“Don’t think so.”

“She’s like a frightened puppy! I can’t picture her getting up the nerve to enter that contest.”

“Still waters run deep.”

“You can say that again,” I replied. We had Mum,
the all-time altar girl, living in sin for thirty-eight years. Dad going skinny-dipping. Reverend Eudora Spike looking ready to commit murder. The list went on.… But Merlin’s Court had come racing into view, its gates flung wide in welcome. Consumed with impatience, I was halfway off the bike before Freddy brought it to a sputtering halt outside his cottage.

“We must do this again sometime.” I gave my cousin a hug to help steady myself. “You’d better get going if you want to fix yourself a decent lunch.”

“What did you say?” Freddy tends to feign deafness when told to grub for himself. He was staring at the house. And, raising my hand to part the misting rain like an organdy curtain, I saw what had attracted his attention. Someone was standing on the corner balcony.

“Help! Somebody help me!” The wind batted the cry to us.

“Hold tight, old sport!” Freddy shouted through cupped hands as he raced down the drive, his ponytail in full flight.

Unfortunately I have never been able to accomplish two things at one time, such as run and see straight. Even when I closed in on the house I couldn’t put a face to the person on the balcony. Mum? Jonas? Mrs. Malloy? Oh, God! What was wrong?

Another shout from on high brought me into collision with Freddy, who had leaped the mini-moat to reach the courtyard a good half dozen steps ahead of me. Such is my faith in the male sex, I expected my cousin to claw his way up the brick face without the aid of so much as a toothpick. But all the slowpoke did was place his hands on his hips and sing out, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel! Let down your hair!”

A shaky laugh drifted down and I looked up to see Mr. Watkins. His rain-darkened beret was tipped over one eye, his cheeks were deflated, and he gripped the balcony railing as if he were the captain of a ship about to go down. Stupid me! His van was parked smack in
the middle of the courtyard, but I hadn’t put the window cleaner on my list of suicidal possibilities. Even allowing for two or three lunch breaks, he should have been long gone.

“Whatever’s wrong?” I quavered.

Mr. Watkins managed a brave smile that stretched his thin moustache to the limit. “I can’t get down. The windows are locked and I cannot reach my rungs.”

Freddy and I did an about-face, and lo and behold there was the ladder, propped up against the wall six feet away. A mere skip and a jump for Superman but an impossible stretch for Mr. Watkins, who was not known to exert himself.

“Took a hike, did it?” My cousin gave his infamous smirk.

The prisoner spread his hands in a flourish. “I went round the corner of the balcony to do the windows on the other side, and when I got back someone had moved the ladder.”

“Cheer up, old cock,” Freddy said. “It’s a beautiful view.”

“That it is, sir! I’m not one to complain, but I’ve been up here for hours.” Mr. Watkins hacked a consumptive cough. “I shouted for help till my voice gave out.”

“This house is built like a fortress. Sound bounces off the walls.” Freddy flung a damp arm around my shoulders and whispered chummily in my ear, “That blighter’s going to sue you for
everything
you’re worth, coz.”

“Rubbish!” I elbowed him towards the ladder. “We’ll have you on the ground in a jiff, Mr. Watkins.”

“Much obliged!” Pressing a trembling hand to his beret, he swayed against the railing. “There were moments when my life flashed before my eyes.”

“Freddy will get you down while I go inside and make a pot of tea.” So saying, I did a bunk towards the back door and let myself into the kitchen.

No scene could have been easier on the eyes. The
Aga cooker shone, the copper bowls gleamed, Tobias Cat was taking a siesta in the rocking chair, and Mum and Jonas were seated at the table, she crocheting away for dear life while he looked on in admiration.

“There’s magic in your hands, Magdalene.”

“That’s kind of you to say, Jonas.”

So this is what they had been up to while my back was turned! Getting on a first-name basis while leaving the window cleaner playing the balcony scene from
Romeo and Juliet
!

“Are you two having a nice chat?” I asked brightly.

“It were time for a bit of a sit down, after the morning we’ve had”—Jonas scuffed back his chair and stood—“isn’t that right, Magdalene?”

“Are the twins all right?” My eyes went from one elderly face to the other.

“Would I neglect them?” Mum rolled up her crocheting. “They’ve been fed and are down for their naps.”

“So what’s wrong?”

“For starters, Sweetie refused to come out of her room. Poor little mite! She still feels in the way. Then we couldn’t find St. Francis. Too much clutter everywhere you look, but if it doesn’t bother you, Ellie, and my son has adapted himself, far be it from me to criticize. We all have different standards.” Mum paused for breath. “About half an hour ago I did have a very unpleasant experience, but if you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about that right now; I’m still far too upset.”

Had Dad telephoned? It was hard not to pry; but I focussed on the moment at hand. “Do either of you know how the window cleaner came to be marooned on one of the balconies?”

“What’s that?” Jonas’s wintry eyebrows shot up.

“Someone moved his ladder.”

“He’d stuck its legs in the flower bed.” Mum sniffed “In this rain! Maybe
you
wouldn’t have minded the horrid holes that would have been left, Ellie, but I brought up Ben to be particular. It took some doing,
let me tell you, to drag that heavy ladder onto the courtyard. Not that I’m asking for sympathy. No, that must all be saved for another.”

“Serves Watkins right!” Jonas put in his twopenny worth. “Always expecting to get paid for doing nowt. It do tickle me pink, as how this time he got his wish.”

Mum favoured him with a compression of the lips that was as close as she ever got to a smile.

“Born doing nothing and done nothing ever since, that’s him!” Jonas ranted on. “Parading around the place in that daft beret and silk cravat like he just got out of France in a cartload of cabbages. I do be telling you there’s people as what get locked up for a lot less.”

At this opportune moment Mr. Watkins entered the kitchen. And if he couldn’t be counted upon to seize the moment and make it worse, Freddy came in behind him.

“Feeling better?” I asked the walking wounded.

“He’s in a bad way,” Freddy said with a gloat.

“I’ll say three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers, seeing I’m the one to blame.” Mum stood, arms straight at her sides, ready and willing to be pierced through with the arrows of reproach. The look Mr. Watkins gave her was not sweet as honey, but he was clearly not up to a showdown. Pressing a hand to his beret, he swayed in the breeze stirred up by all the heavy breathing in the room.

“If I could just sit down for a moment, Mrs. Haskell.…”

“Of course!” I hurried over to the rocking chair, and when Tobias Cat refused to budge fluffed him up like a cushion. “How’s that?”

“Thanks ever so.”

Freddy, every inch the thwarted thespian, helped lower Mr. Watkins to his seat. “Don’t you have a footstool for him, Ellie? The man fainted three times getting here.”

Life had its moments. I managed to get rid of Jonas, who was rolling his eyes and making rude grunts,
by asking him to go and fetch a hassock. Confident that he wouldn’t hurry himself, I focussed on the next order of business: sending Freddy on his merry way. When he didn’t take the hint that his lunch break had to be well and truly over, I held the garden door open and told him to scram.

“But Ben would want me to stay.” My cousin gave me his most winsome smile. “My boss—alias your adoring husband—instructed me to buzz by the old homestead and see how things were going.”

Mum had tears in her eyes, but I managed to restrain my emotion. “Then you had best hurry back and report.” Before I finished counting to ten, Freddy ambled off down the steps to my amazement, and when I turned back into the kitchen, Mum, every inch the martyr, was making Mr. Watkins a cup of tea.

“Feeling any better?” I asked him.

“They say time’s a great healer, Mrs. Haskell, but I doubt I’ll ever be able to climb that ladder again.” He gripped the arms of the rocker as it swayed backwards, his eyes brimming with terror. “You see how it is! I don’t feel safe
this
far off the ground. So what’s to become of me? That’s the question going around and around in my head. I’d been thinking of late that it might be nice to be married. But what woman in her right mind would take on a wretched invalid?”

“I’m sure you’re painting too bleak a picture.” I couldn’t look at Mum for fear she was bracing herself to make the ultimate sacrifice. Then again, that might be just what was needed to return Dad to his senses.

“Between you and me and the kitchen sink”—Mr. Watkins burrowed back in the chair to the vocal displeasure of Tobias—“I’ve always hoped that me and Roxie Malloy could make a match of it.”

“That might be a way out for her,” Mum said.

“What do you mean?” I asked without fear or trembling. My mother-in-law looked so harmless standing there by the stove. She didn’t drop the kettle, which in
her hands acquired the magnitude of a ten-gallon watering can; instead, she dropped her bombshell. “I gave the woman the sack.”

“I don’t believe it!” After all the horrors of the past twenty-four hours, I was still a babe in the woods, but I did not give way to the childish impulse to flood the floor with my tears. For starters, I had no idea what Mrs. Malloy had done with the mop, unless she had cracked it over my mother-in-law’s head before marching upstairs to regale the twins with the dreadful news that she was lost to them.

“What I’ll never understand, Ellie”—Mum handed Mr. Watkins his cup of tea without spilling a drop—“is why you put up with that dreadful woman. I would say to Dad—in the days when we were speaking—that it stood out a mile that she
drank
.” Lips on the straight and narrow, she got on with the business of wiping down the stove, as calm as you please.

“We all
drink
! The intake of liquid is part of the human condition.” I flapped a hand towards Mr. Watkins, who was downing his cuppa as if a return to full mental and physical health depended on it.

“
Gin!
That’s what I’m talking about.” Mum folded her dishcloth and set it aside, for future darning, I suppose.

“Mrs. Malloy does not imbibe on the job!” I had to fight to keep my feet on the floor so as not to hop up and down with rage, an activity which in addition to making me look ridiculous would have jarred Mr. Watkins out of his chair. All I needed was to have him add a slipped disc to his list when suing us for damages. “Do you really think, Mum, I would leave the twins with Mrs. Malloy if I thought she would be under the sofa with a bottle? She’s a changed woman since she signed up for brass-rubbing classes at St. Anselm’s.”

“A pity she doesn’t do a bit more of that here!” Mum gave her signature sniff, but wasn’t finished. “And that
hair
!”

I was on the very edge of saying that Mrs. Malloy was blessed with a full head of the stuff, albeit in two colours, but I bit my tongue. Standing before me, I reminded myself, was the woman who had brought Ben into the world.

“She looks like a prostitute.” Mum screwed up her face. “Those taffeta frocks with the necklines down to the knees!”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a tube of liniment handy?” Mr. Watkins piped up. “I’m beginning to ache all through my joints.”

I would gladly have thrown one at him. But first things first. I mustn’t miss a word of what Mum was saying.

“I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when I caught her …” She dangled the unfinished sentence under my nose.

“When you caught her doing what?”

“Reading that filthy book!”

Following her sparrow-eyed gaze towards the row of instructional volumes in the art of cookery, I thought bleakly, so that’s it—the one thing I missed, sponging off the batter-spattered pages of
The Way to a Man’s Stomach
,

“Admittedly, there are a few dirty spots here and there.…”

“A few spots here and there!” Mum was in full flood. Marching over to the shelf, she pulled out a volume as if afraid of catching a venereal disease. “Every page, every line full of
smut
. I almost had a heart attack when I opened it up looking for a recipe for pork loin. There were
loins
all right, writhing and throbbing and generally carrying on in the
most
disgusting way.”

Mr. Watkins was on the edge of his seat, tipping Tobias onto the floor in the process.

“Oh, heavens!” I pressed my hands to my cheeks.

“There’s the most awful bit about stoking the boiler.” Her face working, Mum stared me down.
“Don’t think for one moment, Ellie, that I am criticizing. You know that has never been my way! But how you could let Mrs. Malloy bring a book like this—with
twenty-eight
references to ‘her ripe red strawberries’—into the house when you have an impressionable young husband, I will never understand.”

“I’m coming over all hot and cold!” Mr. Watkins did indeed look feverish. But who had time to worry about him?

“Honestly, Mum, you’ve got everything back to front.” I attempted a shamefaced laugh. “
Lady Letitia’s Letters
is my book.”

“I
knew
it!”

“Well then …”

“I
knew
you would defend that woman. But it’s not a bit of good, Ellie. She owned up without so much as a blush the moment I showed it to her,”

“Of course she did!” I had tears in my eyes. “That’s the sort of person she is—loyal to the death.”

Wasted words. My mother-in-law wasn’t standing still for my defense of Mrs. Malloy. She marched over to the Aga, and before I could let out a howl of protest ripped the book down the middle, lifted the cover of the hot plate with the iron hook, and crammed
Lady Letitia’s Letters
down onto the coals.