The Trouble with Harriet (21 page)

“How about dinner?” Ben stood up, smothered a yawn, and stretched so that the rib of his navy blue sweater rode halfway up to his chest.

“Not for Freddy and Aunt Lulu,” I said. “And not for me just now, darling. I think I’d like to take a walk down to the vicarage to see if Mr. Ambleforth has returned home.”

“Why not phone?”

“I could use a breath of air to blow away the cobwebs.”

“Let me go with you.”

“I’d rather you stayed in case Daddy wakes up.”

“I’ll walk her down,” said Freddy.

“There’s no need.” I really wanted time alone to think.

“Yes, there is,” Ben disagreed. And I could hardly argue with him when I was the one who had put it into his head that evildoers had placed Chitterton Fells on the map. Where once there had been a dot, there would now be a blot. Besides, Freddy needed to walk off some of his irritation with Aunt Lulu. Hostility was too strong a word. I knew he was fond of his mother despite her foibles and would have done anything for her short of cutting his hair, shaving off his scraggly beard, or moving home. And that landed us in the same boat. My father was no longer the stranger who had walked through the door last night. He seemed to have been back for years, and I had rediscovered that love is a very mixed bag.

“You should have worn a jacket,” Freddy said as we went through the iron gates and turned left toward the vicarage.

The afternoon was misting into twilight. There was a sharp wind coming in off the sea, and he must have noticed that I was shivering, although not as badly as the trees that stood in clumps on the rocky rise beyond the hedgerows. One group in particular appeared to be shaking all the way down to their roots. Brown, yellow, and russet leaves came flying our way, and I had to pluck a couple out of my hair.

“My cardigan’s warm enough,” I lied.

“You could have fooled me.” Freddy broke stride to eye me askance. “You’re shivering.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulders.

“You’re not exactly dressed for the weather.” I looked pointedly at his ripped sweatshirt and jeans.

“I’ve always liked my clothes well ventilated.” His grin lasted a split second before edging into a scowl. “Besides, if I’d got myself done up in a sports jacket and, God forbid, a tie, Ruth might get the wrong idea.”

“That I had marched you down to propose?”

“There’s no need to sneer, Ellie.” Now it was Freddy’s steps that faltered. “I tell you, that girl seriously wants me.”

“And whose fault is that?” I asked him as we passed the bus stop. “You can’t go through life being an irresponsible charmer and not expect impressionable females to fall all over you.”

“Sometimes I feel like a pound of bacon during wartime rationing,” he said with a deep sigh.

“Then you must only be nice to Jewish girls and vegetarians.”

Freddy walked on for a few moments in silence and then confessed: “Actually, Ellie, I think almost any man would do in this situation.”

“Ruth is pregnant by the verger?”

“Nothing that simple. She’s desperately afraid she may shortly be forced into getting a job.”

“I thought she had one, typing the vicar’s manuscripts.”

“So she does, but that’s hardly employment as most people know it. And she confided in me during a weak moment—”

“I don’t think I need to hear this,” I told him sternly as we crossed the top of Hawthorn Lane and came to the iron fence with its sign reading St. Anselm’s Church and in smaller lettering the times of services.

“After I knelt dripping tears over her lifeless body.”

“As Clarabelle in the play?”

“The trouble is, I’m just too good an actor.” Freddy shook his head, or it could be that the wind did it for him. It had already spun mine around a couple of times. “But to get back to Ruth’s problem,” he said. “The vicar’s close to finishing up the latest volume of his life of St. Ethelwort, and he’s been making noises to the effect that if the final chapter comes out the way he hopes, he’ll have written the final definitive word. At which time he and Kathleen will tip Ruth out of the nest. It seems they’ve got the loony idea that she’s itching to get out in the world and make a name for herself typing on a word processor.”

“But she’s an old-fashioned girl?”

“And in this modern world, Coz, there just aren’t enough curates or chaps in boaters showing up to play croquet on the vicarage lawn. So the likes of Ruth now have to scramble for the prize catch.” Freddy tried without success to grimace away a smug smirk. “So where does that leave me?”

“Running away with your tail between your legs?” I suggested as we went through the litchgate.

Freddy stopped in his tracks when we were within a few yards of the Victorian house. “A man is never a hero to his cousin, so I know you won’t be disappointed, Ellie, if I lurk out here while you go in.”

“Suit yourself.” I waved a dismissive hand and watched him dodge behind a fir tree as I mounted the step and pressed the doorbell. It would serve him right, I thought crossly, if it started to rain.

But I didn’t get to indulge myself in picturing him being nursed through pneumonia by his mother, who would realize how much she loved him and promise never to leave his bedside. A dreadful howling pierced my eardrums, and when the door opened a crack, a black bundle of terror unleashed itself into the twilight.

“Bad dog,” said a plaintive voice, followed by a sigh. I saw a shoulder shrug before a face appeared in the widening wedge, and somehow I found myself in the vicarage hall.

“We met, but you may not remember. I’m Ellie Haskell,” I told Ruth. Freddy had described her as a pie-faced creature, and it was true that Mother Nature had not been particularly generous in her case. She was pale and bleary-eyed, with too much hair and not enough eyelashes.

“He’ll be gone for hours.” She closed the door with a snap.

“Oh, no!” I couldn’t hide my distress.

“He’ll race around in circles like a mad thing until he finds something to chase up a tree.”

“You’re talking about the dog.” My relief was such that I was able to spare a pitying thought for Freddy’s trying to escape with both ankles intact. “I thought you meant the vicar.”

“You came to see Uncle Dunstan?”

“Is he here?”

“No, he’s been gone most of the day, and Aunt Kathleen left after rehearsal to go to her gardening club. Did you say your name’s Ellie?” The pale face became a little less blank in response to my nod. “Mrs. Potter told me about Uncle Dunstan making off with your car. I met her when I was out walking Blackie. You can wait if you like.” The offer was accompanied by a glance at her watch. “There’s no telling when Uncle will be back, but Auntie shouldn’t be too much longer.”

I hesitated. “Perhaps for ten minutes.”

“Come on, then; we’ll go into the study.” Ruth pushed open a door to our left. “The sitting room is kept for tea parties and visits from church bigwigs. I suppose you’ve noticed already that Auntie has rules for everything. It’s how she keeps sane, I suppose, being married to Uncle Dunstan. But I guess you know all there is to know about living with someone who’s a little off.”

“What do you mean?” I walked smack into a leather armchair.

Ruth blinked her pale lashes. “Auntie told me about your father coming downstairs last night babbling away about tortured love, with his arms outstretched and eyes all glassy, and how she was so startled when he went to grab her that she jumped on Uncle Dunstan’s knee.”

“She said that?”

“Yes.”

“And did you tell anyone?” I now collided with the desk, and a pen rolled off a pile of papers onto the floor.

“Only Mrs. Potter. She’s such a talker that you have to say something back. And I’m sure she brought your name up first. Something about seeing your children being driven off in a car with an elderly couple. And how she wondered where they were going and why.”

“Why don’t you tell her next time you see her that I had to give them away because they were impossible to house-train and kept chewing on the furniture?” I tried to put a laugh in my voice but clearly failed.

“I don’t know much about children,” said Ruth. “And I probably never will. I’ll end up in an office with hard seats and a water cooler outside the door. But I’d rather that than to be like Lady Grizwolde, married to a dreadful old man of sixty-five just for the security.”

“Oh, I think you have to be wrong about his age!” I knocked another pen off the desk. “I saw Sir Casper today, and he has to be at least eighty.”

“He isn’t.” Ruth shook her head vehemently. “I’ve got to know Sarah, who works as a maid at the Old Abbey, and she told me he’s sixty-five. He looks like he does because his health is shot as a result of smoking his whole life.”

“I can’t believe it.” I sat down on the edge of the desk. And an envelope dropped to the floor to join the pen.

“Unfiltered cigarettes.”

“Even so ...” Sir Casper’s cadaverous face and octopus gait rose up before my mind’s eye.

“Sixty to eighty a day.”

“His face should be on every packet sold!”

“Sarah says that his mother caught him smoking when he was nine years old and made him kneel in the chapel all day praying for forgiveness. She was a very religious woman.” Ruth was warming to her story. “She was German, and she never adjusted to living in England. It made her bitter. That’s according to Sarah’s grandfather Ned. He’s still the gardener at the Old Abbey. And he’s over eighty.”

“You don’t happen to know whereabouts in Germany?” I asked, staring down at the envelope I had picked up with the pen.

“That Sir Casper’s mother came from?” Ruth opened her eyes wide under her pale brows. “Yes, I do. I’ve a good memory. Aunt Kathleen didn’t pick me to play Clarabelle in
Murder Most Fowl
because I’m her niece or because I have the range to play a downtrodden woman. Auntie knew I would only have to read my lines a few times to have them down pat, even though it’s a big part. Sir Casper’s mother came from a small town in the southern part of Germany called Schonbrunn.”

Ben met Freddy and me in the hall when we got back.

“What’s wrong?” Freddy eyed my husband with concern while jogging in place on the flagstones. “Did the mater walk off with the grandfather clock?”

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “You can see it’s still there.”

Ben took hold of my hand. “Your father’s got himself worked up, that’s all. He came downstairs about ten minutes ago, and when I asked if he felt better after his nap, he railed against fate and said he was a worm and should be tossed out to the birds. Since then, all he’s done is sit with his head in his hands.”

“In there?” I pointed to the drawing room.

Ben nodded. “Aunt Lulu’s with him.”

“Isn’t that great?” Freddy tugged at his beard. “She can pick his pocket while patting his arm and saying: ‘Cry it all out. You’ll feel as though a weight has been lifted.’ ”

I pushed open the door and saw my father seated in a chair that was too small for him, his jaunty bow tie at pathetic variance with his reddened eyes and wet cheeks.

“Ah, there you are, Giselle.” He signaled to me with his handkerchief as if flagging a train without much hope of staving off its deadly rush. “I am glad you went out for a breath of fresh air, but perhaps I would have been better able to control my anguish if you had been here to offer a daughterly word of counsel.”

“He’s been trying so hard to be brave.” Aunt Lulu stopped tap-dancing around him and looked at us with misty baby-blue eyes. “And I’ve been trying to think up ways to cheer him up. But when I was telling him about the marvelous time I had at Oaklands and mentioned that the Hoppers had said Harriet worked there years ago, he burst into more sobs.”

Daddy groaned, and his chair did one of its marvelous imitations. “There’s so much I didn’t know about her!”

“I think you may be right about that.” My heart ached for him.

“She concealed her light under a bushel!”

“A marvelous attribute in a woman.” Freddy ignored my disgusted look. “Come on, Uncle Morley old cock, tell us what’s set you off again.”

“You had seemed to be doing better today, even with the urn going missing.” Ben pressed a glass of brandy into my father’s hand.

“I have failed her.”

“That’s nonsense, Daddy.” I knelt by his chair and patted his knee. “It’s not your fault Mr. Ambleforth is an absentminded clergyman who wouldn’t know his own car if it ran over him.”

“I should have gone after him, chased him down like the dog he is, cornered him in a field if necessary, and not offered him a choice of weapons. I should have fought it out with him man to man, with balled-up fists and fire in my eyes.”

“A lovely fantasy,” I said soothingly, “but how could you have gone after him? On his rickety old bicycle? Oh, I know Lady Grizwolde lent us the Honda, but by then he was probably in the next county, if not back in the eleventh century with St. Ethelwort. And we couldn’t notify the police. They might have arrested him.”

“Please!” Aunt Lulu covered her ears. “You know how I hate that word!”

“Ellie’s right, Uncle Morley.” Freddy stepped up to the hearth rug. “It wouldn’t have been right to set the law on the vicar. He’s a crackpot, not a crook.”

“I fear I have failed properly to express myself.” Daddy tucked his hanky into his shirt neck like a bib and sipped his brandy. “The brutal truth is that I was torn between alarm at Reverend Ambleforth’s misappropriation of the urn and relief that in doing so he had prevented me from handing it over to the Hoppits.”

“And now it looks as though the vicar may have done a bunk.” Aunt Lulu’s lips quivered.

Freddy scowled at her. “Don’t talk rot, Mumsie.”

“You can’t always think the best of people, dear.” She looked tenderly back at him. “It’s naive.”

“I don’t believe what I’m hearing!” Her son tugged wildly at his beard. “Who was it making goo-goo eyes at that Mr. Price? A man who is probably the genuine article when it comes to car thieves? Do you really think that anyone but you bought that story about the wrong key?”

“Darling, of course I realized he was a bad lot.” Auntie tried to hide a smirk behind her fingertips. “That’s why I found him charming. Especially so,” she mused aloud, “because he really was rather sweetly inept. Not even able to keep his wife’s name straight. My guess is that he’s new to the criminal life or has been forced to take a more active role than is usual for him. No wonder it was such a piece of cake....” She squinted a look at Freddy and shut up.