How to Murder Your Mother-In-Law (6 page)

Shading my eyes against the brassy sunlight that came tracking in with him, I inquired: “Who are you?”

He bore down on me with imperative strides and fixed me with a fearsome stare. “My God, Ellie! Have you lost your mind or your eyesight?”

“Oh, it’s you!” I sagged against his husbandly chest. “It seems an eternity since I last saw you, and I couldn’t be quite sure you weren’t an insurance agent. And I did find a tea leaf floating in my cup this morning, which indicated I was destined to meet a dark, handsome man eager to take advantage of me.”

Ben silenced my folly with a kiss that would have done Sir Edward proud, and we didn’t jolt apart until the grandfather clock, working overtime as overseer, gave an almighty
bong
. “You’ve been focusing too hard on the teacup readings for the fête.” My spouse took the last doily from my pliant hands and placed it on my head. “How are things going in our castle by the sea?”

“Not too badly.” I smiled bravely. “Your mother almost walked out seconds after walking in the door, but unless she’s knotted the bed sheets and climbed out the window, she and Dad are still here.”

“It is possible,” my love said as gently as he could, “that they weren’t too excited about this visit in the first place. I did tell you, dear, that they always made rather a point of not making a … point of their anniversary.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” I admitted, “and wondering if the reason might be that their wedding day does not hold the happiest of memories. But
Mum’s being upset with me was very specific. It had to do with my little surprise.”

“Beatrix Taffer?”

“Seems she and Mum had an awful dust-up years ago.”

“Let me get this straight.” Ben raised an interrogatory eyebrow. “They aren’t on speaking terms?”

“Haven’t been for forty years.”

A chuckle escaped my husband’s lips. “Do you think we can get them to communicate through knocks on the table?”

“It really is no laughing matter,” I said primly.

“Sweetheart”—the mischievous twinkle vanished on the instant—“I will not have you castigating yourself. What you’ve done is provide everyone with a chance to kiss and make up.”

Amazing how he could make me melt like candle wax so that I was molded by his hands into a woman who bore no resemblance to the externals of rag bag shirt and shorts.
Call me Lady Letitia!
my soul cried. All this because he looked at me with those Mediterranean-blue-green eyes of his, so that I was sinking several fathoms deep, to where all the wonder of a lost galleon’s treasure shimmered in their depths.

“I want you …” he whispered in thickened accents.

“That’s awfully dear of you”—I caressed his cheek—“but there are certain time constraints.” No doubt I looked bewitchingly cross-eyed with half my gaze on him and half on the unrelenting face of the clock.

“Ellie, I insist!”

“Well, in that case …” Surely even his mother would not disapprove, it being one of the tenets of the Faith that a wife never refuse her husband.

He placed his hands commandingly upon my shoulders. “I want you to go upstairs and get into the bath. You deserve a relaxing soak after all your hard work.”

“Thank you.” My voice came out of my boots. The
clock gave another
bong
, tempting me to throw the doily at it. Ben marched me inexorably to the stairs. I ventured to ask him why he was talking in that muffled, sexy voice.

“I must be allergic to that damn dog.” He dragged a tissue from his pocket.

“That’s ridiculous. Sweetie had barely put her paw inside the door, when she went back outside.”

Ben’s dark brows came down over his nose in the scowl he had inherited from his father and bequeathed to his son. “It may well be that my problem is psychosomatic, Ellie, born of a deep-seated resentment of an animal who has usurped my place with Mum and Dad.”

“I understand that it wasn’t easy for you when you found out they had given Sweetie your old room. But you can’t take out your feelings on a helpless animal,” I soothed with my usual hypocrisy.

“You’re right.” He stuffed the tissue back in his pocket and quirked a smile that informed me he had been kidding. “After all, if Mum can put up with Tobias, I can do my best to be hospitable.”

“Now, just a minute! Tobias happens to live here. And residence provides certain privileges.”

“Yes, sweetheart!” Ben kissed the tip of my nose. It didn’t matter that his husky voice was the result of some imagined allergy. I was a weak vessel, perhaps because I had eaten only one box of chocolates after lunch. When his lips came down on mine I felt my soul soaking up the sunshine, my split ends resealing, and my fingernails turning to pearl. The chandelier was spinning very nicely on its own axis when he turned me around and once more prodded me towards the stairs. “What you need, my sweet, is to cast your cares upon the waters.”

“Anything you say.” I leaned dreamily against him.

“Want me to join you”—I heard the smile in his voice—“just so I can do your back?”

It was a moment as fragrant with promise as the pink flowers on the trestle table and as fragile as the
vase in which they were arranged. Then a scream from somewhere above us shattered the moment and sent me spinning across the hall as Ben thrust me from him to grasp the banisters, preparatory to hurling himself up to the second floor.

“Hold on, Mum! I’m coming,” he yelled.

Before I could think, let alone move, there stood Mrs. Malloy, hands on her outraged hips. “Typical man,” she said indignantly. “All it takes is one scream from his mother, and he’s off.”

Shame on her! The words had barely left her purple lips when I saw Mum race towards the stairs as if all the demons of hell were after her. What happened then was too quick to see, but somehow she lost her footing and, arms outstretched, pitched forward with a hair-raising scream. Sick with horror, unable to watch her vain attempts to save herself, I retreated into the darkness behind my closed lids and prayed that this day would go back where it came from.

I
don’t like to boast, but a well-ordered household can survive the occasional mishap. Death had unleashed its claws but, cheated of its prey, had slunk away empty-handed. The evening found us gathered in the drawing room, a merry little group if ever there was one. My hair was almost dry, and I had stopped worrying whether I had put liner on only one eye and if my frock would stay zipped were I to breathe and talk at the same time. Jonas was ensconced on one of the Queen Anne chairs, nose buried in his well-worn copy of
A Tale of Two Cities
. And Mum and Dad sat on one of the ivory sofas, a full cushion apart, as if told to face the camera and not move, while Ben prowled before the marble fireplace, the better to model his cranberry smoking jacket. Unfortunately it clashed horribly with his father’s fire-engine-red cardigan.

Who could blame Mum for being miffed that her spouse had not changed into something more subdued for the occasion of her survival? She had attired herself
in a stiff little suit whose hem, from the telltale stitches, had been turned up almost to the waist in order to accommodate her pint-size figure. My heart was touched when I saw she had set her skimpy hair in curls that stuck out around her head like twisted paper clips.

“I couldn’t persuade Sweetie to come downstairs,” she informed the wallpaper. “She’s in shock, poor little thing, and who can wonder after nearly being orphaned?”

“Mum,” Ben said, “we all know you had a bad scare, but I was right there on the stairs to catch you when you tripped.”

“My life flashed before my eyes! But don’t think I am blaming Ellie for polishing those steps to a dangerous sheen. I’m only thankful that I was the one to be almost killed. At my time of life I don’t have a lot of years left. I know full well that old people get to be very much in the way.”

“Speak for yourself,” Dad roared.

Realizing it was useless to protest that I had not polished the stairs when Mum had complained upon her arrival that the house reeked of Lavender Wax, I murmured I was glad she wasn’t hurt.

“If you asks me, I do be the one as ought to be suing for’t damages!” Jonas lifted his head from his book to eye Mum coldly. “There was I, fixing your bedroom window, just like I’m told for to do, and up you comes behind me screaming fit to stop an army in its tracks. If it b’aint a wonder I didn’t drop dead on the spot, I don’t know what is! My heart being none too sound in my chest.”

Mum shrank almost to the vanishing point, but managed to rally with “I might have guessed I’d be the one to blame!”

“In future”—Jonas’s voice plowed into the thick silence, breaking it up like clods of earth—“why don’t you post a sign on your bedroom door saying ‘Trespassers will be persecuted’?”

“Anyone would think,” Mum huffed, “that I almost got myself killed on purpose!”

Ben and Dad did their part in egging the situation to a standstill by exchanging raised eyebrows. And Jonas, his moustache bristling with ill usage, slumped artistically back in his chair, compelling me to hurry over and prop his mud-caked boots on a footstool: whereupon Tobias Cat appeared out of nowhere to drape himself like a furry rug across the would-be invalid’s knees.

“Perhaps it would behoove us all,” I addressed the room at large, “to remember what St. Francis might say under the circumstances:
‘Where there is anger, let us sow love. Where there is injury, pardon …
’ ”

The doorbell buzzed.

“That can’t be Beatrix Taffer! She’s not due for another five minutes.” Am I the only idiot on the face of the earth who thinks that if she says something loudly enough it makes it true? That wretched mantel clock! The sundial in the rose garden was a hundred times more reliable. Given the glum state of Mum’s face, I was tempted to ring for Mrs. Malloy and send her to greet Mrs. Taffer with the news that the Haskell family had not finished quarrelling. And if madam would kindly repair to the winter parlour to admire the wallpaper, or perhaps chew on a piece of celery, we would be with her momentarily.

“On your marks, get set, smile,” I begged as the doorbell buzzed again. “This little outing undoubtedly means the world to Mrs. Taffer.”

“I doubt that!” Mum sniffed.

“Quiet!” Dad roared at the moment the drawing room door pounced open to reveal Mrs. Malloy in all the glory of her two-tone hair and cranberry apron.

“We rang?” Ben raised a dark, inquiring eyebrow.

“All right, you lot!” When Mrs. M. forgets her place, she does so with style. “Stop that gawping and say a nice hello to your guest.”

Lo and behold, Beatrix Taffer was right behind
her. And what a shock! This was not the frail lady I had pictured in my mind—the one suffering through her geriatric exercise when I spoke with her daughter-in-law on the phone. This elderly woman did not hobble into the room on two canes, wheezing with every breath. She elbowed Mrs. Malloy out into the hall and rushed forward, throwing her arms wide open, in palpable eagerness to hug everyone and everything in sight. My heart sank. Here was a seventy-year-old harum-scarum if ever there was one.

“Mags! Elijah! You haven’t changed a hair!”

Neither one of them moved or spoke. Indeed my in-laws looked as incapable of action as the twin suits of armour out in the hall. Thank heaven for Ben. His smile was every inch as suave as his smoking jacket as he strode towards Mrs. Taffer, looking deep into her eyes. “Welcome to Merlin’s Court.”

Inspired by her son’s good behaviour, Mum got her act together. Extending a stiff hand, she said in a voice guaranteed to cause freezer burn, “It’s been a long time, Bea!”

The newcomer beamed. “Well, if that don’t turn back the clock! No one calls me Bea anymore; I’m known to young and old as Tricks.”

“Suits you!” Dad stood up, looking in his white whiskers and red cardigan as if he would be quite happy to come down Mrs. Taffer’s chimney any time. Not to be outdone, Jonas scrambled out of his chair with more speed than befitted an invalid.

“Pardon me muddy boots, m’lady! I just come in from digging up the veggies for your dinner.”

Suppressing a quiver of unease, I said, “It’s lovely to have you here, Mrs. Taffer.”

“Love-a-duck, Mrs. Haskell! I’m over the moon at being invited.”

Tricks was certainly something to behold. She was on the short side of five foot. Her roly-poly figure was augmented by a bosom that quite cast Mrs. M.’s into the shade and made Mum look as if she had only just
graduated to a training bra. Her frock was an Indian muslin affair with three dozen dancing tassels. She vibrated energy that sent the standard lamps swaying like palm trees and the chairs scuttling out of her way.

Amazing! Her face, for all its wrinkles, belonged on a schoolgirl. A mischievous, funky schoolgirl whose ultra-red hair stood up all around her head in porcupine spikes reminiscent of a punk rocker. And … a thrill of shock and admiration shot through me … her ears were triple pierced.

When Ben’s eyes met mine, I knew exactly what he was thinking. This live wire could not be a contemporary of his mother’s! The very idea was idiotic. Almost as idiotic as Jonas clumping to the forefront to inform our guest that meeting her was the thrill of a lifetime.