The Thin Woman (28 page)

“Hell and damnation! Who’s blundering about down there in the middle of the night, can’t a man get a mite o’ sleep?” Jonas came strumming down the steps, moustache bristling, grey hair rumpled aggressively. When he saw me he paused, but didn’t look any too pleased. “If you’ve come running round to see if I’m still alive and kicking you can about turn and go home. A bolt or two o’ lightning don’t bother me none. Like it, I do. Always have, and I don’t need to be mollycoddled by a young thing who sees herself as Florence Nightingale.…”

“Why, you conceited old prune.” I am ashamed to say I lost my temper completely and insulted a defenceless old man. “I’m not here to see you, but to ask if you have seen my cat, who let me tell you is worth a dozen men like you or Ben or …”

Jonas’s eyebrows leapt up into his forehead. “Tobias? Missing, is he? In this weather?” As I nodded miserably, Jonas went spryly back up the stairs shouting abruptly over his shoulder that he would fetch his boots and jacket and be right down. He had reached the top step when the stable door blew in. At first I thought it was the wind, but then I
saw Ben, and I knew from his eyes that there was no need to continue the search party. I knew even before I looked down and saw the sodden bundle he carried.

“You found him,” I said almost matter-of-factly.

“In the moat.” Ben’s voice was wretched, and I was calm enough to feel sorry for him. I couldn’t think about Tobias, my furry pal, the warm body snuffling onto my lap on cold winter nights. The sobs started and wouldn’t stop. Jonas was beside me, patting my shoulder.

“Hold tight, girl. I know this is rough, but …”

“Ellie, I’m sorry,” stammered Ben, not moving from the open doorway. “And the worst of it is this wasn’t an accident. Someone deliberately set out to get Tobias out of the way. He was tied inside a sack. With all the debris floating in that moat, I didn’t see him at once. If I hadn’t dragged you back into the house earlier … if I’d helped you search …”

“Enough of that,” growled Jonas. “If we stand here up’n till Doomsday chastising ourselves, we can’t bring the little fellow back. Ye’re sure he’s dead then, Mr. Bentley?”

“Damn it, Phipps,” muttered Ben, “I’m not a coroner, but if something doesn’t move, is stone cold and …”

I started to shudder again and Jonas told Ben to get me back to the house. He would take care of Tobias.

The telephone was ringing when we entered the kitchen. Ben refused to answer it. “I’m not leaving you, even to go as far as the hall,” he said. Having put the kettle on to boil, he sat me down at the table, and after a while the phone stopped buzzing. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered. Tobias my chum was dead Ben was just being kind. People treat total strangers like blood relatives in times of tragedy. Ben hadn’t even liked Tobias. But he hadn’t hated him. Someone else had, though. Here was a question that did matter: Who?

Ben ladled sugar into a cup of strong tea and stirred it around. “Ellie, I want to do something, but I don’t know what. I wish I could make you understand how sorry I am.” Leaving the cup he came up behind me and placed his hands gently on my shoulders. “If I could get hold of the person who hurt you this way—you loved Tobias so much.” Ben stopped speaking,
perhaps sensing I was not really listening. The pressure of his hands tightened and he pulled me back against him. He was trying to comfort me the way he had after the obscene phone call, but this time my body did not respond. I didn’t want to be comforted and pulled away. With a wry half-laugh in his voice he continued, “The fuss you made of him, sometimes I’ve felt quite jealous of Tobias.”

“Don’t make jokes now,” I said, reaching for the cup of tea.

“I’m sorry, Ellie, that sounded flippant and it wasn’t meant—I’m not helping, am I? What I want to do is stop you from thinking.”

“But I must. Don’t you see that we are dealing with the same evil person who destroyed your book and sent the chocolates? This is infinitely more sadistic but it’s the same type of sickness. What could be gained by murdering my cat?”

“Fear,” said Ben.

The kitchen door opened from the hallway, and Dorcas came in, her hair spiking up all over her head and her face drawn. “Thought I might find you down here, Ellie, tapped on your door and no response.”

“Dorcas, you should have stayed in bed.” I looked down at my hands, hoping she’d go back upstairs so I wouldn’t have to tell her tonight. I also wished Ben would let go of my shoulders. I wanted to be alone, removed from any contact with this horrid wicked world.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Dorcas stated baldly. “Just received an unpleasant phone call—rather frightening. Never have considered myself the nervy sort, but felt as though a hedgehog were crawling down my spine. Kept reciting nursery rhymes this voice did, sort of snuffled. Remember thinking adenoids needed removing, kept chanting Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet. Was on the brink of asking to speak to the brat’s mother and telling her what I thought of children babbling into telephones, when it giggled and whispered in a husky, unmistakably adult voice, ‘Ding dong bell, Pussie isn’t well.’ That’s when I got the prickles.
Heard people speak about evil—always said I’d never seen it Tonight I heard it.”

“Ben, tell Dorcas,” I said, rising and pulling out a chair for her. I gripped it hard to steady my hands. Before he could comply, a thunderous knocking jarred the back door, and he went to open it.

Jonas stood in the glare of light thrown from the small outside lantern. He reminded me of an old walrus, grey moustache dripping rain and matted tweed coat. The only humanizing effect was the striped pyjama legs stuffed into the inevitable muddy boots. “Can’t stand here all night.” Moustache twitching fiercely, he scowled into the kitchen. “What is this, a wake—sitting about idly sipping tea? Where is the warm milk and rum?”

“Warm milk?” Ben said as he closed the door. “Have you changed your drinking habits? I thought you were addicted to Ovaltine.”

“So I am,” came the surly reply. “But this fellow likes his milk.” Folding back his coat collar, the old man looked down, his face a concertina of wrinkles. Jonas was smiling into Tobias’s glazed but watchful amber eyes.

None of us saw our beds before dawn. Jonas was not modest. Assuming the dignified mien of an ancient prophet who neither cultivates nor abjures the adulation of the masses, he told us about his successful attempt at artificial respiration, which had probably worked because Tobias was suffering more from shock and cold than drowning.

“Seems to me the old fellow must have kept pretty much afloat, probably landed on a piece of junk floating around in the water. That mud puddle moat is awash with dead branches broke off trees. But more like it were that old bicycle tyre that must have belonged to Mrs. Abigail.”

“The would-be killer is not going to appreciate being foiled by a floating bicycle tyre.” Ben poured another round of tea.

The centre of all the attention was curled up on my lap, warm and safe—apparently emotionally unscathed. “Ben,” I asked, “what did you mean when you said earlier that the motive might be fear?”

“Ours, not the assassin’s. I don’t suppose he’s suffered a qualm—quite the contrary. The enemy wants us to squirm—to start looking back over our shoulders into the shadows. What happened to Tobias is a warning. The next victims will be us.”

“You mean …” I was afraid to finish the question.

Ben continued to scratch behind Tobias’s ear. “Don’t panic. I’m not seriously suggesting we will all set bundled into sacks and dumped into the moat.” He looked up, his eyes deadly serious. “But I think we can expect a threat so menacing that the temptation to leave this house will begin to seem irresistible. Another thing, I don’t think we will have too long to wait before this next move is made. Remember, the six months will be up in just under two weeks.”

Jonas grunted. “You’ve been seeing too many Alfred Hitchcock movies, young man.”

“That’s fine coming from you.” I forgot temporarily that this was the hero who had saved my baby’s life. “What was all that stuff you fed me the other day after Freddy left? All your talk about vultures swooping down to pick our bones.”

“Aye, lass, but that were just to put you on your guard when your relations come tapping you for money. They are a parcel of vultures, but they’ve not the courage to do you or Mr. Ben bodily harm as them murder yarns phrase it.”

“I wish I could agree with you.” Ben rubbed his fingers across his eyes as though struggling to see more clearly. “My view is that we are dealing with a sadist who has moved beyond the bounds of simple greed. One of your relations, Ellie, no longer falls under the heading of lovable eccentric. Foisting those chocolates on you, laundering my manuscript, attempting to execute your cat, and then calling to gloat by reciting some perverted nursery rhyme. These have to be the actions of someone who is more than a little mad.”

“Afraid you may be right.” Dorcas jammed her hair behind her ears, obviously positioning herself for the fray ahead. “I say we rally the team, pull up our socks, and plan our strategy. Hate to be a pessimist, but have a feeling if we lose this match we may all wake up one morning with our throats cut.”

Three pairs of eyes looked steadily at her.

“Sorry about that! Well, it would be one way of making medical history.” She stood up, headache forgotten, and went to fill the kettle. “More tea anyone?”

CHAPTER
Fifteen

“The trouble with this family,” I sighed in exasperation as I stirred milk into my tea and refused another helping of the pale and weeping omelette Dorcas had rustled up in an attempt to restore our shattered nerves, “is that no one person stands head and shoulders above the others as an obvious candidate. Most people can produce one weird relative but not a single member of the Grantham clan is normal. So where do we start?”

“Hate to shove my nose in where it may not be wanted.” As if to give lie to this protestation, Dorcas’s jutting appendage began to throb like an antenna. “But if they are indeed a bunch of oddballs, all tarred with the same brush, so to speak, how about the possibility of conspiracy?” Anticipating a veto from one member of her audience she hastened to add, “Wouldn’t alter Ben’s theory that one of the group is completely bonkers. Madness usually is diabolical, to the point of genius. Been thinking, odd Sybil not showing up for lunch and still no phone message. What if our unknown foe faked that conversation with Ben, the one inviting you to lunch?”

“I can’t be sure,” said Ben, “the line was bad.”

“Was it?” Dorcas grimaced. “Seem to remember Ellie
saying something of the sort regarding her little natter with enemy over the chocolates. Suspicious. As suspicious as Sybil inviting me to tag along today, didn’t quite ring true at the time. We’ve been a gullible lot. Another thing—that headache of mine, told you it came on minutes after I drank a cup of tea.”

“What of it?” Jonas wiped a smear of omelette off his moustache. “Aren’t telling us you’d tippled it up, are you?”

“Not booze,” snorted Dorcas. “Something even stronger. I’m saying our secret pal put some shut-eye medicine in my flask. When, you ask? Got that figured out, too. Remember that phone call I told you about, Ellie, unidentified person asking for you?”

“Say no more,” I sighed. “While you were in the house answering the phone, someone was drugging your tea. That lousy telephone certainly seems to have thrown in its lot with the enemy. And speaking of team efforts, we are talking about two people here: one behind the herb garden wall and one keeping you occupied. This is giving me the creeps. We are dealing with organized crime.”

“We have all been closely watched.” Dorcas nodded. “All our habits noted, right down to my taking a flask of tea with me when I work in the garden.”

“Have to hand it to you, you’re a shrewd woman, Miss Dorcas,” conceded Jonas. “Which happens to be just as well. Ye’ll never catch a husband with your cooking. One thing: Tobias weren’t dropped in that there moat while you was lying on your bed in a drugged stupor and Mr. Bentley and Miss Ellie at the seaside eating snails for lunch what I could have got ’em a lot cheaper from the garden, like I used to do for Miss Sybil, very fond of them she is with vinegar …”

“Will you kindly get to the point about Tobias.” Ben sounded more asleep man awake.

“Elementary, Mr. H., as in Holmes, if you ’aven’t read the books, Tobias couldn’t have been in that water more than half an hour, tops. If he had been I’d be out making a wooden box for him right now. What do you say to them apples? Why go to all the trouble to rid you people from
the house when the deed weren’t done till you was home agin?”

“He had to be caught before he could be put in the moat,” I said, “and on a good day that could take our secret foe all afternoon. You gave him/her a good run for their money, didn’t you, precious?” I reached down and gave the hero of the hour an approving stroke. “Besides, if the execution had been carried out in daylight the chances of discovery would have been greater. And by the way, why didn’t the enemy take steps to remove Jonas from the premises this afternoon?”