How to Murder Your Mother-In-Law (27 page)

“You go and have a good time, Ellie!” Her eyes followed me to the door. “Don’t think about me sitting here by myself.”

“Jonas is in the garden,” I offered.

“I know, but I’m trying to keep my distance until I decide about marrying him.”

“What about patching things up with Dad?” I tried not to sound panicky.

“That’s not going to happen.” Mum’s nose twitched right along with her crochet hook. “If Beatrix can make him happy, who am I to stand in his way? Let her have him. Marriage to a busker isn’t for me, thank you very much. My parents would turn in their graves.”

What stick-in-the-muds!

While backing the car out of the stable, I considered buzzing down to the village square to see Dad and give him a piece of my mind. My confidence in my ability to meddle was undaunted, but a glance at my watch suggested I might be wise to go straight to Pomeroy Manor. Once through the iron gates and heading down Coast Road, I fixed my mind in a straight line, refusing to let it veer left or right. The morning had been clear, if not exactly bright and breezy. Now a mist was creeping up from the ground in trailing wisps—as yet no bigger than puffs of smoke from a cigarette but promising bigger and better things to come. I was thinking, as I turned onto Market Street, that we hadn’t had a good healthy fog in some time, when who should I see standing on the near corner but Frizzy Taffer, complete with headscarf. Her hands were laden with shopping bags so that it seemed unconscionable to pass by with a toot and a wave. What could Lady Kitty do to me if I arrived at Pomeroy Manor ten minutes late? Order that I be put in the stocks? Besides, it might not be a bad idea to ask Frizzy if she, too, had heard from the blackmailer. Which reminded me—Clutching the handbag at my side, I had to stop by the hollow tree on my way to the manor and make my deposit.

Pulling up alongside the curb, I rolled down the window and asked, “Want a lift?”

“Are you sure it’s no trouble?” Was it only the shopping that made Frizzy look as if she had the weight of the world in her hands?

“Hop in!”

“This is nice of you, Ellie.” Arms cradling her bags, she leaned back in her seat as the car took off. “Tricks says she had a wonderful time at your house yesterday. Nonstop laughs is the way she put it.”

“There were some fun moments.” I struggled to remember what they were.

“I hear your cousin Freddy is a scream.” Frizzy
swayed towards me as we rounded a curve, and I caught a good look at her face.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “And don’t tell me nothing, because it’s written all over you. Has Tricks poached any more goldfish, or …?”

“Oh, Ellie, it’s my aunt Ethel. She’s really a lovely person and the children are ever so fond of her, really they are—even Dawn, for all she sometimes calls Ethel a nasty old cow. Auntie almost had a fit when Tricks went and blabbed about your cousin wanting to do the tea leaf readings at the fête.”

“He was doing a leg pull.” I turned on the windscreen wipers to get rid of the mist.

“That’s what it sounded like to me, but Auntie was already in one of her tempers over what happened with my hair. Tom was really worried that she would knock Tricks out cold and”—Frizzy pressed a hand to her headscarf—“who needs that sort of thing in front of the children? It took me a good hour last night to get Auntie calmed down and afterwards … well, it couldn’t be more awkward; she’s decided to move in with us until Tricks moves out.”

“If it doesn’t rain, it pours,” I said, looking up at the rapidly darkening sky.

“Really, Ellie, under normal circumstances I’d be glad to have her. Auntie practically brought me up, so I’ve learned to make allowances when she flies off the handle into one of her shouting fits, but what with children, and the neighbours being so difficult, and the upset with Mrs. Pickle …”

“What was that about?” I turned onto Robert Road.

“It was all Dawn’s fault, the naughty girl. Would you believe she stamped and screamed—just the way Auntie does—and accused Mrs. Pickle of stealing her Barbie dolls. As if the woman would want them! Honestly, I didn’t know where to look. My face must have gone as red as my hair … what there is of it.”

“Was Mrs. Pickle upset?”

“She took her time—the way she does everything else, but when Dawn suggested we search her bag, she did flare up. And who could blame her? I didn’t think I would ever stop apologizing. And I felt so sorry for the poor woman, knowing she had to go straight from our house to work at the vicarage.”

“And you didn’t look in the bag?”

“Of course not!”

“Mrs. Pickle didn’t insist?”

“If she had, I would have died on the spot.” We were now on Kitty Crescent. As we closed in on Frizzy’s house, she exclaimed, “Look, there’s Aunt Ethel at the gate, waiting for me. At least Tricks doesn’t make me feel like a kid. In fact, most of the time I feel years older than her.”

I pulled the car up against the curb. “I’m sorry you’ve been having such a difficult time.”

“I deserve some sort of punishment for being a bad girl at the Dark Horse the other night.”

Here was my cue to talk to her about the blackmailer. But surely if the money-grubber had put the squeeze on Frizzy, that would have topped her list of today’s problems. And what was the point of scaring her on the off chance that he—or she—might phone? For all I knew, whoever it was might not even be aware of Frizzy’s involvement in the mother-in-law plot. Or the villain could have decided it wasn’t worth the cost of a phone call attempting to get money out of someone who didn’t have it and who might in a state of desperation turn around and go to the police.

Whatever, it was too late to say anything. Aunt Ethel had the car door open and her arms halfway across the seat, scooping up shopping bags. “There you are, Frizzy!” Her voice was piercing. “I’ve been that worried, you wouldn’t know. Up and down the streets I’ve been, asking everyone if they’d seen my little girl.”

“You shouldn’t have worried.” Frizzy got out of the car. “My friend Ellie Haskell gave me a lift home from the shops.”

“Now, isn’t that kind!” Aunt Ethel had to bend almost double to loom in the car doorway. She had a face that looked as though it had gone sixteen rounds in the boxing ring. Her right eyelid didn’t open properly and her nose looked as if it had been broken so many times, she had given up trying to fix it. She held those hefty shopping bags as if they were filled with candy floss.

“How do you do?” I stammered.

“Any friend of my little girl’s is a friend of mine.” Auntie gave me a smile that sported several missing teeth. “An awful time she’s been having, as she’s probably told you, and did I ever foam at the mouth when I found out about her lovely hair. But never you worry, if I don’t get to black both Beatrix Taffer’s eyes, I’ll find another way to get even. And when I’m done with her, I’ll lick young Dawn into shape, see if I don’t! If there’s one thing I won’t stand for, it’s anyone running roughshod over my little girl. She’s never been what you could call strong, has our Frizzy.”

“It’s been lovely meeting you.”

Aunt Ethel must have taken to me, because she did not ram my smile down my face, but when she closed the door with a slam that sent the car halfway across the road, I was relieved to be off. Frizzy and her aunt were still waving as I drove around the corner. I picked up speed despite the mist that was now billowing up like steam from a witch’s cauldron. That reminded me. Poor Mrs. Pickle, I thought. The life of a daily help is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Knowing that Lady Kitty would be very cross with me for being late, I still searched for the hollow tree as I turned off the road onto the wooded lane that looped its untidy way outside the walled grounds of Pomeroy Manor. Yes, there it was—a lofty oak, around which a cluster of scrub trees hovered, like courtiers waiting upon the orders of his majesty.

I had to hand it to the blackmailer, he or she could not have chosen a better place for the dropoff. In less
time than it would have taken me to make a deposit at the bank, I knelt on the mossy ground and shoved the envelope containing four fifty-pound notes into the elf-size opening at the base of the trunk. What took up time was dusting off my skirt; I had to make a production of the business in order to rid myself of the feeling that I had been contaminated by an evil embedded in every stray blade of grass. Getting back into the car, I was glad I had left the motor running, because there was no way I could have grasped the ignition key, let alone turned it.

As I proceeded down the lane and turned through the brick pillars onto the drive that ran between an honour guard of trees for a good half mile up to the hall, I kept telling myself that I no longer had anything hanging over my head … until the next phone call. At which time I would talk tough to the blackmailer, explain that he had caught me on the hop the first time, but never again. Let him go to the police with his tittle-tattle and have them laugh in his face. Mum was alive and well and the bodies of the other mothers-in-law had certainly not started piling up.

Pomeroy Manor stood in the sort of leafy setting that might have welcomed Henry VIII on one of his trysts with Anne Boleyn. The house was a proud but friendly old-timer with a ruddy brick face and twinkling window eyes. But on closer inspection, the gardens were a disappointment. Every tree and shrub had been given an army haircut, and what flowers there were stood shivering in the grey mist as if afraid to put a petal wrong. Parking the car on a stretch of asphalt that would have put the average dinner table to shame, I went up the bleached white steps to ring the gleaming doorbell.

Before I could smooth a hand over my windblown hair, Lady Kitty opened the door. She ushered me into the wainscotted hall that must have seen many a baronial bash.

“Here you are, Ellie, at long last.”

“So sorry I’m late,” I babbled, “but on my way here I saw someone I knew and gave her a lift home.”

“If you rode a bicycle, dear”—Lady Kitty closed the door with a thump—“you wouldn’t get asked for rides. We have to think about the choices we make … and take the consequences.”

“How true.”

“Come along, then.” She bustled me down the hall at a pace that allowed no time to gawk. “It’s Hobson’s choice, so I hope you like blood pudding. Pick up your feet, that’s a good girl.” Shoving open a door, she said, “This is the dining room, and as you see, Bobsie Cat and Pamela are sitting waiting to tuck in their bibs. Now, if you’ll take your place, Ellie, I’ll dish up.”

“Hullo. It’s nice to see you again.” Pamela’s smile gave no indication that we were anything other than mere acquaintances. Our tipsy evening at the Dark Horse and our phone conversation yesterday might never have happened. Today Pamela wore her hair loose with a headband. She looked disarmingly young as she turned to her father-in-law. “Bobsie Cat, this is Ellie Haskell from Merlin’s Court.”

“Is it, by Jove?”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sir Robert.”

“Likewise, m’dear!”

He was a large, red-faced gentleman with a bald head and a tic to his left eye that gathered speed when Lady Kitty, armed with a huge spoon,
plonked
a chunk of pudding onto his plate, along with a goodly helping of vegetables. Hers were the ways of a woman who always served “Father” first, so he could hurry back to his plowing the moment he had wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. It mattered not that Sir Robert looked incapable of doing anything more strenuous than cleaning his duelling pistols.

A serving of pudding and vegetables landed with a thud on my plate. And after dolloping out portions for herself and Pamela, Lady Kitty took her seat at the head of the table.

“Tuck in, everyone,” she ordered.

I opened my mouth to lie bravely and say I adored blood pudding, but all heads were down as the knives and forks sliced their way down to the bare bone of the china. Were mealtimes always this way at Pomeroy Manor? Sir Robert struck me as the quiet type who, at least in the presence of his wife, rarely risked saying anything more controversial than “What! What!” But Lady Kitty definitely had a voice of her own. And Pamela could be quite a chatterbox. Was I the reason for this constraint? Or had the family taken a vow of silence at table, to be broken only in direst need of asking for the salt and pepper?

Toying with my food, I took stock of the dining room. It must once have been very handsome with its cathedral windows and lofty timbered ceiling, but some nameless person had created the marvelous illusion of reducing it in size to a council-house boxiness, where all the furnishings had been bought with more thrift than taste, on the never-never.

“Anyone for seconds?” Lady Kitty raised her serving spoon on high, and when Sir Robert and Pamela shook their heads, I felt emboldened to do likewise.

“You can go ahead and speak now, Ellie.” Her ladyship’s smile could have been a frown—they would always be interchangeable. “I don’t allow conversation during meals because it interferes with digestion, but when you’ve cleaned your plate you’re free to chatter on as you like, isn’t that right, Bobsie Cat?”

“Yes, m’dear.”

“And I don’t allow comic books at the table, do I?”

“No, m’dear.”

“We’ll save our talk about the fête, Ellie, until we’ve had our apple charlotte.” Lady Kitty rose to her feet and began gathering up plates. “Who’s ready for a nice big helping?”

“I’m full,” said Pamela.

“That’s not a proper excuse, is it, dear? You know you have to keep your strength in case the day ever
comes when you find yourself in the family way with our little heir.”

“Yes, Mumsie Kitty.”

“That’s better.”

Lady Kitty took out the empties and brought in the apple charlotte and a jug of custard. Both were delicious, but we were not allowed to sit back and relish the memory. The moment we laid down our spoons, Lady Kitty was back on her feet, pouring out large tumblers of milk to be placed with no ifs, ands, or buts in front of each of us.

“I don’t allow tea or coffee after meals, do I, Bobsie Cat?”

“No, m’dear!”

“Too strong for the tummy.” Lady Kitty patted her own affectionately before sitting down and removing a sheet of paper from under her place mat and passing it over to me. “Here’s the list of equipment we’ll be needing for the fête and the estimated cost of purchase or rental. You’ll see that the most expensive item is the hoop-la stall, but there’s no getting around the fact we must have a new one this year. We don’t want to be shown up in front of Bobsie Cat’s cousin—the Honourable George Clydesdale—when he presents the Martha. Georgie is a remarkable man.” Lady Kitty paused to draw breath. “Not only has he done a very nice job with his vineyards in France, he has also managed to hold on to all his hair.”