The Thin Woman (35 page)

“The word is panic. Is this universally important discovery still in existence, is it …?”

“Safe? Naturally. I only found it today, but it is safely hidden from all prying eyes. You shall have it, my boy, never fear. Next question. Who is Laura Wallingford-Chase? Again my computer brain has the answer stored away. And in knowing who she is, I think I also know what the treasure is.”

“But, my dear Ellie, where is the treasure?” asked Rowland and Ben like twin parrots.

“In the sewing box, I would think. It looks about the right size. Why don’t you open it up and have a peek?” He did as he was told and sure enough let out a whistle of disbelief.

“Stop gawking and hand it over.” I made a grab for the box, looked inside, and tightened my grip. What if I sneezed and dropped the sewing box with this inside? “It is so exquisitely fragile I’m afraid to touch it. If I breathe too hard it may shatter like …”

“An egg,” supplied Ben, “like all the eggs Abigail had to shatter to perfect her recipe. But this egg is solid gold, less a few emeralds here and there. Laura What’s-her-face must have been related to Midas if she considered this a trinket. You say you know who she was, computer brain, tell.”

“Rose, Abigail’s former maid, was the one who told me. At the time, being a bit slow on the uptake, I didn’t quite put two and two together but now … Rose told me that once upon a time, a wealthy, aristocratic lady got stuck outside Merlin’s Court during a storm and that Abigail entertained her in the kitchen very simply but hospitably and that she gave her ladyship one of her recipes. For which kind favour Abigail later received a warm thank-you letter and an Easter egg. Rose thought it was for the little boy, but she must never have seen it.”

“Being a man of simple tastes,” said Ben, “I must say I would have preferred chocolate but … this ornithological offering must be priceless, though not as valuable to me as the soufflé, should I ever open my restaurant.” He looked down at the egg glowing in golden oval splendour like a sun sprinkled with tiny emerald stars. “I’m sorry the secret is not ours alone. Her ladyship’s descendants must have been in the know for sixty years. I wonder if they are the kind of people who can be bought off.”

“Be quiet,” I said. “Look, the egg is in two halves like a
locket, careful—don’t shove while I open it; we don’t want to scramble the insides.”

What was inside was a delicately wrought platinum branch on which perched a shimmering blue bird, wings spanned for flight, amber beak lifted as if in song.

“That bird,” I explained patiently to the men, a species not reared to appreciate the finer things in life, “that there bird is sapphire and the eyes emeralds.”

“Your engagement ring is going to look pretty chintzy after this,” sighed Ben.

“I don’t think I want to talk about rings right now.” I shut the bird away inside the egg. To think that Abigail owned this magnificent piece of art and she was forced to sell her mother’s garnet ring to start a new life.” I turned to Rowland. “You may mink poorly of her going off with another man, but she was a remarkable woman. Even when her situation was desperate she took the time to make the notation in her housekeeping ledger that she had sold that ring. When items went missing in those days, one of the maids usually took the rap. Abigail didn’t take any chances.”

Rowland smiled, and I thought again what an incredibly nice man he was. He deserved a loving, helpful wife, someone with plenty of energy. Jill—he would meet her at the wedding, and who knew what might develop with a little help from his friends? “How about a brief prayer for her, that whatever became of her, Abigail Grantham may rest in peace?” he suggested.

And Bentley T. Haskell, atheist, agreed.

“An attempt on your lives, and who, may I ask, are the culprits?” shrilled Aunt Astrid, when Ben informed her and the others why we were late for tea. “Police surrounding the house! I have never been so mortified in my life! Fetch my coat, Vanessa, we are leaving. I refuse to remain another minute in a place where I am accused of murder.”

“But not single-handedly,” Freddy comforted her. “We
are, I presume,”—he winked grotesquely at me—“all in this together? What a lark. I’ve always wanted to be involved in a conspiracy. Will someone fill me in on what I have missed so far?”

Uncle Maurice snorted. “Shut up,” he ordered his son, “and stop snivelling, Lulu. If what Ellie and Ben claim is true …”

“Do you want to see my bruises?” I asked irately.

Vanessa feigned shock. “Darling, a lady never taxes her knickers down in the drawing room.”

Uncle Maurice spoke over her. “I was not doubting your veracity, simply weighing the facts. Here, sit down, Ellie. You should be off your feet.”

“She’s not having a baby,” mocked Freddy.

“No,” agreed Aunt Lulu, drying her eyes, “babies take nine months, and from the sound of things, she may not have that long to live.”

“That’s an unnecessarily pessimistic view.” Uncle Maurice patted me on the shoulder and helped me heavily into a chair. “Ben, hope you won’t think I’m nitpicking when I say the word murder has a damned nasty ring to it. I prefer to think of these admittedly unfortunate espisodes as practical jokes that went rather too far. Now, if the perpetrator would sportingly own up, I am sure we can keep all this unpleasantness within the family.”

He looked around hopefully. No one blushingly raised his hand or lowered guilty eyes. “Very well,” continued Uncle Maurice as though speaking to children in a classroom where the blackboard eraser was missing, “no purpose will be served in any of us walking out tonight. In fact, quite the opposite. While we remain together we all have alibis. Astrid, if you wish to stage a tantrum, that is your business. I for one have no desire to paddle my car through a rainstorm—at two miles an hour I’d be lucky to reach home by tomorrow afternoon.”

“I take it, then”—Ben smiled affably—“that we can count on all of you for dinner tonight?” Receiving the nod of assent, if not approval, he and I went out into the kitchen.

“I do hope,” he said, kissing me, “that the old saying
about marrying the family isn’t true. Uncle Maurice was the only one who offered even a backhanded word of sympathy for our ordeal.”

“Too busy worrying about their own necks.” I pressed my face against his, men drew away, watching him carefully. “You seem remarkably sanguine. Is there something you’re not telling me? I get the feeling you are not so worried about our shrinking life expectancy any more.”

“Are you beginning to read my mind already? I thought that only came after years of marriage.” He caressed my cheek. “There is someone I must talk with, then if my theory is correct, I will tell you why we are no longer in danger—if in fact we ever were—–except through bungling error.”

“What?”

“I don’t think you and I were ever the intended victims of this plot. We just kept getting in the way. So many aspects did not make sense because we were looking at this business from the wrong angle. This afternoon I realized where we had gone wrong in the first place, which changed everything.”

“Does this have anything to do with Dorcas?”

“No,” said Ben. “I am worried about her, too; where she fits in I don’t know, so we have no idea whether she may have placed herself in some kind of danger. Keep hoping that Rowland has some news for us soon.”

“If you would only tell me what you suspect,” I urged.

“Not until we have fed the mob in the drawing room, got them tucked away in bed, and not before I have spoken to my source. Chances are that I could still be wrong. I haven’t been right often—so far.”

The doorbell buzzed, and we both raced out into the hall, hoping desperately that this would be Dorcas, or Aunt Sybil at least. Freddy was ahead of us and he had the door thrown open against the wild wet night and was inviting someone in—a short, skinny female, someone with spiky greenish hair.

“Jill,” I cried, rushing to hug her.

“Gosh, you look fab.” She started patting me down the sides as if to see if I had the missing parts stashed
somewhere on my person. “Hi, Ben, sorry I didn’t get back to you and Ellie about the hypnosis bit. I’ve been off meditating with my guru in the Scottish highlands—Tibet is financially out these days—but he turned out to have a disgustingly physical mentality, besides he said he was a vegetarian and I caught him eating flies. But the spider did teach me something—hypnotism; I had already taken a correspondence course on the subject, but anyway that is principally why I am here, to help. I’m not too late, am I?”

How could I tell my sweet guileless friend that she had entered a house of murder? As it happened I didn’t have to say much to her at all Freddy seemed to have fallen victim to her mesmeric powers. He couldn’t take his eyes off her and she seemed equally smitten with him. Talk about One Enchanted Evening. One mutual gasp of spiritual recognition and they both went into the trance state, which did not help the social aspect of the evening. They neither spoke to each other nor to anyone else. The evening dragged on, I almost said at funeral pace, but lately I had felt that the march to the grave was a hurried affair. At last everyone began yawning in unison, and they all, except Aunt Astrid, said they would seek their beds. Freddy did return to the world of reality at that point to tell her that if she sat up armed with her needle and thread after everyone had retired people might wonder what dark thoughts kept her from sleeping.

“I will never”—Aunt Astrid lifted her head and swooped out into the hall—“darken these doors again.”

Things were looking up. Ben and I, alone at last, went into the kitchen. What a day this had been—beginning with that question regarding Dorcas’s true identity. Had she taken off because she felt my faith in her was shaken beyond repair?

Ben was putting on his coat. “Stay here,” he ordered. “I’ll be back in a flash. Put the kettle on, I’m bringing Jonas back for a cupper.”

So our trusty gardener was the source. What could Jonas tell us? I had barely set the kettle on the Aga top when Ben was back, alone, eyes blazing grimly in his rain slick face.

“Hurry,” he yelled. “Grab a coat. We may already be too late. Here, take mine.” He yanked it off, throwing it over my shoulders. His panic was contagious.

“Where are we going? Where is Jonas?”

Ben grabbed my hand and dragged me through the garden door into the driving rain, hurtling me across the sopping lawn. “Another farewell note—this time saying Jonas has gone to visit his mother.”

“But that’s ludicrous. Jonas doesn’t have a mother. She’s dead.”

“Exactly, her address is Tombstone Villa.”

“Then, oh God, Ben—those other notes!” I wasn’t running. My feet were sliding along under me as Ben dragged me behind him.

“No time,” he cried. “We may already be too late. What a fool I have been. I guessed this afternoon, but I thought we were safe to wait a few hours, until I could talk to Jonas without interruption.”

We had turned right through the iron gates onto the coast road and had now entered the churchyard, weaving in and out among the stones. “Here,” said Ben, and my feet stumbled to a standstill. We were at the family vault.

“Here? But Jonas’s mother is not …” I stopped because I knew Ben was right. We had reached our destination. Evil was all around us.

“Ellie,” said Ben curtly, “I want you to leave me here and run to the vicarage. Rouse Foxworth and get the police out here.”

“Sorry.” I refused through clenched teeth, trying to still their chattering. “I’m coming with you. Two of us have double the chance. You know who the killer is, don’t you?”

“Yes, but you are not coming.”

“Try to stop me.” I kissed him quickly and hand in hand we went into the vault I expected total darkness. Ben had a torch with him, but he did not need to turn it on. The icy stone room was flickeringly alive with shadowed candlelight. We saw Jonas at once—laid out stiffly on top of Abigail’s tomb. Feet together, hands folded on his chest. Oh God,
I thought, he’s already dead. I loved Jonas. A distended shadow moved in the corner of the room. As we watched, a woman stepped out into the shivering light, carrying a lifted spade.

“Aunt Sybil!” I must have said the words out loud for she looked up, mildly irritated as she had seemed sometimes when I arrived unannounced at the cottage. “I did hope,” she said reprovingly, “that I would be able to finish up here before you two turned up. I should have known you would come poking your noses in. That’s why I left that note on Merlin’s door. I hoped that if you found him gone you would run around like chickens with their heads cut off, but you smarty-pants had already guessed. I saw you go in here with the vicar this afternoon, after your little accident, but I could not wait to see you come out. I had to make my plans for Merlin here.”

“Merlin?” I said, “Auntie dear, this is Jonas, not Merlin. You are just a little confused.”

“No, she’s not.” Ben spoke up calmly as though this were a cocktail party. “Jonas is the one who died six months ago, not Merlin. It must have been quite simple really, two old men whom no one ever saw, both with a macabre sense of humour, deciding that when the gardener with his serious heart condition died his master would step into his muddy boots. That way Merlin could watch the outcome of his Last Will and Testament. The doctor signed the death certificate in happy ignorance, and Mr. Bragg admitted he had only seen Merlin once, for the writing of the will, and that he was all muffled up in thick scarves.”

“Do we really see old people as all alike?” I asked sadly, looking at Uncle Merlin’s rigid form. “Of course he grew the moustache, and when we saw him that night in the kitchen he had his teeth out and was wearing the stupid night-cap, but I should have known. Even with the lights turned down and meeting Jonas outside with the snow blowing.”

“Now, Ellie, don’t go on so,” said Ben in an inane voice. “We must apologize to Aunt Sybil for this untimely intrusion. What exactly are we interrupting?”

“I decided that in view of his devotion to his mother, wicked adulteress that she was, I would set him over her tomb and make an effigy out of him. Not that Abigail is buried here as you already know.” Aunt Sybil smiled slyly. “She was carrying on with that weak-kneed artist boy, little more than a teenager he was and she over thirty. Poor Uncle Arthur, he was so mortified. But I helped make things up to him. When I came for the funeral I found her dog and killed it for him. Even the nicest men tend to be a bit squeamish but it wasn’t the first time for me. I had a cat once, and it wouldn’t let me dress it up in a bonnet and shawl so I drowned it. Merlin was staying with us at the seaside at the time, and oh, the silly tears! He wasn’t quite certain—whether it was an accident, I mean. Boys are so dense. I hoped he would remember when I sank that horrid old torn of yours in the moat, but there are none so blind as those that will not see. He never even knew his mother tried to contact him all those years. I took care of that. I sent all the letters back marked ‘Refused’ and after a while they stopped coming.”