The Widow's Club (26 page)

Leaning forward to find the preceding page among the flotsam, the towel slid off my neck, sending an avalanche of paper swishing out in all directions. My aerobic conditioning came in handy. I was two feet in the air, hands grabbing, when Mr. Digby reentered. And strange as it may seem, even in that moment of awkwardness I noticed he did not look as well as when he had left me. The beard could not hide his purple-veined pallor.

“Yes, Mother”—he bent his head—“I know you are not overly excited at the prospect, but she …” He espied the spill of manuscript on the floor; I dropped to my knees, scooping as I crawled.

“Sorry, you startled me when you came in and … I collided with the desk. Nice goosey!” Stuffing paper back on the desk, I struggled to rise and back up all in one un fluid movement.

While Mr. Digby appeared to accept my frail excuse, clever Mother kept her beady eyes upon me.

Mr. Digby’s face cracked into a smile. “Mrs. Haskell, I do believe Mother has taken to you. Perceive—she is heading toward you.”

“Mmm!” Mother, the Persil-white goose, had indeed
fanned out her wings and was ominously waddling toward me, guttural squawks rising above the whir of feathers.

I dodged behind the curtain. Hopefully the colour red did not have the effect on geese that it did on bulls. Craving contact with something nonthreatening, I reached out toward a nearby shelf and heard a dull thud as something—a book—toppled to the ground. Mother swung her beak in an arc, snapped at the air and responded reluctantly to Mr. Digby’s command. “Heel!”

“Mrs. Malloy did understand that you needed your key today?” Mr. Digby was back at the decanters. Mother gazed hopefully at him. What did she crave—a drink or the pleasure of booting me out of the house?

“How did you and Mother team up?” I asked; the silence would have buried all of us.

“She was a Christmas present. Came decorated with a red bow, cooking instructions attached. Needless to say, she is emotionally scarred for life. Hates Christmas and has absolutely no sense of humour.”

Probably fiction, but my heart was touched. “Poor person!” I looked down at Mother, and surprisingly, she toddled toward me like an open-armed child. She skipped over the book I’d dropped and I picked it up. Stroking her with one hand, I noticed the title,
The Merry Widows
by Mary Birdsong. Intriguing, but I had to put it down because Mother was pestering for attention.

“Her feathers are—like clouds.” I chucked Mother under the chin the way I did Tobias, and it seemed to me that the sound vibrating up from her throat was very like a purr. Of course, I know almost nothing about birds, which reminded me that Mr. Digby did. “As an ornithological enthusiast, can you tell me the significance of a line of blackbirds? Since coming to Chitterton Fells I have seen several women wearing brooches with—”

Something slammed; it was the decanter. My host’s voice came out in angry jerks. “Blackbirds in a line are blackbirds in a line. The women you mention are indubitably members of some egg-stealing club. Soulless individuals who go clumping up the cliff faces, brandishing binoculars. Let them but trespass on my turf and I will throw rocks at them!”

He was enraged. Wishing I had not set him off, I apologised. “Sorry about knocking stuff off your desk.”

“It makes no difference. None of it has either end or beginning.” He didn’t pretend to look at me. Silence smothered the room. I buzzed around in my mind for something to say and came up with:

“That’s what happens when you do your own typing. You should have a secretary.”

“I did indulge in that luxury once. The result was disaster.” His words were chilly. “Speaking of hired help, I saw Whatsit when I fetched Mother. Have a word with him as you leave.
If
you ever leave.”

That last word was severed by the chiming of the doorbell. The air positively hummed with joy. My host sucked in his lips, flung open the library door and with Mother gusting ahead we went out into the chilly hall.

“One moment, if you please, Mrs. Haskell. I must put Mother in the cupboard under the stairs. She can be most unwelcoming, and we would not wish your Mrs. Malloy to leave without you.”

Mrs. Malloy crossed the threshold of The Aviary on waves of arctic cold and Attar of Roses. At a glance I saw why I had been kept waiting. Enormous pains had been taken to do justice to this impromptu meeting with Chitterton Fells’s most famous. Roxie wore a three-quarter-length black astrakhan coat, below which extended several yards of emerald taffeta skirt. Her hair was capped by a velvet bandeau, sprouting veiling down to her painted-on eyebrows. Even her makeup was unusually lavish; a couple of charcoal beauty spots had been added.

“This, sir, is an honour I never expected were I to live to be a thousand.” Roxie clutched a sequined handbag in her work-roughened hands. Affection for her welled up in me. I ignored Mr. Digby’s hand at the ready on the doorknob.

“This is very kind, Roxie, considering my stupidity in getting myself locked out.”

“I’m never one to cast stones, Mrs. H.” Roxie’s face was tilted rapturously sideways. “And I’ve made up me mind only to charge you the usual hourly rate, unless you absolutely insist on time-and-a-half, along with the bus fare, of course.” The rainbow lids fluttered. “The privilege of being here in this house, breathing in that … smell.” She gazed worshipfully toward Mr. Digby.

“I would have you know, madam”—he had his eyes
closed—“that when Mother heeds that particular call to nature, she does so in the rookery.”

Roxie wrung the sequined bag between her hands.

“I meant the smell of genius. I wonder, sir, would you do me the immense honour of signing me autograph album? I can’t count the times I have wanted to speak when I saw you coming out of the Gentlemen’s at the—” She stopped and gave a fluting laugh. “Oh, I am sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned—”

Mr. Digby dismissed her splutterings with a wave of his hand. “I will sign your book upon the condition you swear on the name of Booth’s Dry Gin that you will not presume upon my good nature the next time you perceive me at The Dark Horse.”

Roxie hovered like a star-struck teenager as Mr. Digby plunged a pen across her album page.

“I’ve read every word you’ve ever written, Mr. D.! My favourites are the ones you did early on and can’t buy for love nor money anymore, but, believe you me, you don’t owe no apologies for none of them.”

He shoved the album at her. “My good woman, do not verbally cavort as though my tired little penny dreadfuls are works of great literature.” He screwed the cap on his pen and stomped up the stairs.

“Let’s take the hint,” I urged, “and scoot.”

Roxie ignored me. She blotted the signature with her hanky (that way she had two souvenirs), then called after Mr. Digby’s vanishing figure. “Great literature, Mr. D., is those books that regular people like me and Mrs. H. can enjoy without needing a dictionary every second word. That includes your stuff”—she gave the album a pat and dropped it into her bag—“and even cookery books.”

Mr. Digby’s voice came floating down. “Do not think of me and Mr. Haskell in the same breath. His objective is to take the mystery out of the sauce; mine is to put sauce in the mystery.”

“A very strange man,” I said as Roxie and I plodded down the sloping walkway toward Cliff Road. Snow stung our faces. My companion didn’t answer. Mrs. Roxie Malloy was a woman touched by greatness. Henceforth she would sit at her beer-spattered table at The Dark Horse, holding
the other regulars spellbound with the story of how Mr. Digby had spoken to her with magnificent contempt and signed her autograph book. Needing to move my lips to keep warm, I tried again. “A man carved out of tragedy.”

“Did he speak to you of
it
, Mrs. H.? All about how his wife took the notion he was carrying on with someone else …”

Roxie paused, either for effect or because the wind had blasted her breath back into her lungs. What woman would want to make love to Mr. Digby, I thought, unless compelled by a sense of wifely duty? I recalled those purplish fingers with distaste. “Was this other woman his secretary?”

“Couldn’t say, Mrs. H. All I know is the wife stuck her head in the gas oven.”

Was that when he stopped writing books? Was he punishing himself? I should have felt sorry for Mrs. Digby. Loyalty to fellow wives. I told myself that should Ben ever betray me, I wouldn’t stick my head in the oven. I’d put
him
in the oven and insert a thermometer. “Well, at least he gets some company at The Dark Horse,” I said. “A chance to despise other people’s chatter and listen to a singsong.”

Roxie looked at me as if to say, What do you know? “He hates singing! Leaves the minute Mrs. Hanover starts sashaying her skirts and belting out ‘Charmaine.’ ”

“Come into the house for a hot drink,” I urged Roxie. But she refused, and when we reached the gates of Merlin’s Court, she handed me the key. “Then I’ll walk with you to the bus stop.”

“I’d much rather you didn’t.” She slid the handle of her bag up her arm. “I want to be alone with me thoughts.”

I should have insisted. Instead I hovered near the gates, arms wrapped around Mr. Digby’s three-piece suit, until the last splotch of astrakhan coat disappeared around the curve. A gull screeched overhead. Steady—if I fell down I might go into a skid. Another screech found me clutching at the gate post. But did the sound come from the gull overhead? Gripping the post with my feet, I peered back in the direction of The Aviary. The man was trotting, sending up billows of snow. Mr. Digby! He must be desperate not to see me again if he’d come after me with my dressing gown. Cupping my hands around my mouth, I yelled an apology. It blew away in a frozen whisper. No matter … a pulse beat in my neck and I lifted a finger in slow motion
to make it stop. The man wasn’t Mr. Digby. Oh, that it might have been! Whatever his physical failings, Mr. D. didn’t have greasy black hair and rotten spiky teeth.

“Hey, you—Mrs! You wanting a gardener?”

I stood there perched on the top of that cliff, like a bride on a cake, within easy shoving distance of certain death. Alone with the elements and the Raincoat Man.

“I’m … not sure.” As he drew closer, I could count the pores in his skin. But it was his black-currant eyes that goaded me to action. Diving down, I grabbed an armload of snow, clamped it into a ball, and flung it. Then I stepped out of my boots and was off at a skidding run, through the gates and past the cottage. The thought did traverse my mind that should he go over the cliff edge, I might be guilty of something—murder, manslaughter, or at the very least, killing a man in self-defense. One doesn’t want that sort of thing on one’s resumé, but neither did I want the Raincoat Man so quickly recovered he could crawl at a fast pace after me. Thank God for the wind. It pushed from behind, forcing my legs along at unnatural speed. The snow was coming down half-heartedly as I passed the stables and barrelled into the courtyard.

But I wasn’t home free yet. I heard a noise. Something, someone came moving behind me. A scream began percolating in my throat. And then, in a snap, I realized I was a fool. The Raincoat Man couldn’t have leapt over our high fence and sprinted here ahead of me. Either Freddy had returned from Abigail’s and hoped to cadge lunch or Tobias had something similar in mind. Ah yes—here he was, creeping out from behind the rainbarrel, snow glistening on his fur.

“There, there,” I crooned, as Tobias landed, hissing, spraying snowflakes, in my arms. “Poor baby, you got locked out, too. How about some nice Ovaltine?” My panic was gone. Stuffing him inside my coat, I rubbed my frozen feet against each other, took a step forward and saw the figure standing by the back door.

Not the Raincoat Man. This was an elderly female person in a grey flannel coat and a damson knitted beret dragged down over her ears. She was small and the black holdall she grasped with both hands, the way Roxie did, was pathetically big.

“Mrs. Bentley Thomas Haskell?” Her feet, laced up in brogues, were pressed tightly together; wisps of dust-colored
hair escaped from the beret. Who was she, an elderly orphan? A terrible thought occurred.

“Yes, I am Mrs. Haskell. Do please come in and have a hot drink. I feel awful—your coming all this way in the cold and snow. You have every right to be furious, but what with one thing and another, I quite forgot to take the advert for household help out of the paper and we have already hired someone.” Tobias slithered down to my waist and jumped to the ground, as I stabbed the key into the lock. The woman in the beret hadn’t opened her mouth. Perhaps it was frozen shut. “I do hope you haven’t been standing here too long.” I pushed open the door. “As soon as I have heated you some soup and fixed you a sandwich, I will make some phone calls on your behalf.” I stepped aside to let her enter. “Or better still, I will talk to my cousin Freddy (my husband is in London) and see if there are any vacancies in the kitchen of our new restaurant; the work wouldn’t be too arduous.” I stopped and, when she didn’t budge, added desperately, “This way, please.”

“Did you say
our
restaurant?” the woman asked in a tight little voice.

“Yes, I—”

“Do you work there?”

“Well, if by that you mean—”

“I see. In other words, the decision doesn’t rest with you, and naturally I won’t wish to be a burden.”

Frostbite of the brain, and we knew who to blame. Me.

“Do please come into the kitchen and I will get the kettle going.”

Still she hesitated. Tobias was lending his howls to the wind. Snow blew around the woman in silver eddies. She clutched the holdall tighter.

“I’m sorry, but I cannot set a foot over your threshold until I’m given the assurance I am welcome.” She looked down at her hands. “Certainly I’m used to hard work and it’s always been in my nature to keep the peace, but as we both know, there are a lot of very nasty jokes about mothers-in-law and it’s not as though you and I are likely to have anything in common, saving my dear boy, and from what you say”—she tugged open the bag and dragged out a hanky—“he’s off in London, not here to greet his mum.”