Prompt on cue, the front doorbell rang and Ellie wafted herself out of the house, leaving Diana to clutch her head and pace the floor.
‘I’m glad someone can find something to laugh at,’ said Bill, ushering Ellie into his car. ‘What a day! You’re looking very chipper, Ellie.’
She had hoped that Bill would take her somewhere quiet and expensive, where they would run no risk of being recognized. Instead, he took her to the local carvery, which, though good in its way, was also frequented by Archie and Roy. As his guest, however, Ellie felt she must be appreciative and keep her misgivings to herself.
She had roast lamb with four different vegetables, and when she was offered a Yorkshire pudding with it, she only hesitated for a moment before accepting that on her plate as well. In the old days, it would have been a social solecism to have pudding with anything but beef, but nowadays, apparently, anything goes.
‘… so I called my partner in, and we got Melanie to cancel all our appointments and tried to get to the bottom of the matter. I don’t know that we succeeded completely, but we did get Harriet to write out a confession in the end. I had to call a taxi to take her home; she was too upset to drive her own car. After all these years! I can still hardly believe that Harriet could do such a thing.’
‘Did she say who else was involved, apart from poor Sue?’ ‘No. She denied even knowing Sue, in spite of having tried to destroy the evidence against her.’
‘Did she admit to making threatening telephone calls to me? And sending the wax figures?’
‘No. She said you were imagining things. We pressed her hard, but … she was so distressed, begged me to forgive her for not putting your calls through, said the letters she had written were only meant to be a joke, reminded me of her long years of service. Said she needed a holiday, that she’d been under a great deal of stress at home – she looks after her aged mother, you know. She offered to get some pills from the doctor, go for counselling, anything, so long as she could keep her job. But my partner, sound sort of chap, he said we’d never be able to trust her again, and that’s true, of course. Still, it’s a wrench, parting with someone who’s worked for you for so long. We had to stand over her while she cleared her desk. Nasty.’
He sighed, and selected a sticky toffee pudding for afters.
Ellie said, ‘So she’s gone, and we’re no nearer clearing up the last of the mystery.’
‘She wouldn’t talk about it. Believe me, I tried, but she turned obstinate, wouldn’t listen, said it served you right. Floods of tears throughout.’ He shuddered. ‘Luckily I remembered she always used to complain about her mother being able to cry at will in order to get her own way. Even so, I wouldn’t wish to go through that again. Just as she was going, she turned on us. Said she’d sue the pants off me for wrongful dismissal, etc.’
‘She can’t, can she?’
‘Not after signing that confession, no. And before you ask, my partner took all the evidence in the case to the bank and lodged it in a safety deposit box.’
Ellie tackled her cheese and biscuits. ‘I feel sorry for her, a little. I had no idea she felt like that about you.’
Bill looked self-conscious. ‘I just hadn’t noticed. Or rather, I suppose I had noticed at one level, but … I suppose I was flattered, but I didn’t do anything about it because … well, I’d never thought about her that way, and I didn’t realize I was so desperately important to her. I blame myself for that.’
‘Like Gilbert, our vicar. He realized Nora was dependent on him and I suppose he was flattered, too, in a way. He certainly didn’t take it seriously enough. I don’t think he had any idea at all that Sue was a grenade with a loose pin.’
‘Coffee? Liqueur?’
An angry voice broke in. ‘So there you are!’ Archie, flushed with wine from having dined in an inner room. ‘You can’t find the time to come out with me, but you will eat out with anyone else!’
Bill stared. Ellie tried to retrieve the situation. ‘Archie, this is Bill, my solicitor. Bill, this is Archie, a very good friend of Frank’s from the church, you know. Do you think we could all have coffee together in the lounge? Archie, Bill here has just been telling me that he’s solved the mystery of the poison-pen letters. We should all be able to sleep better tonight, don’t you think?’
Bill understood that Archie was to be mollified by being Told All, and was ready to oblige. They all had coffee while Bill and Ellie explained what they had discovered, without naming any names.
‘No, Archie. We won’t name names. They’re two very sick ladies with desperate lives and I don’t want them to suffer any more than they do already. I know you have such a kind heart that you will want to keep their names out of the gossip, and it’s probably best we don’t tell you who they are. You have such an expressive face, you might give them away without realizing it.’
Archie beamed under the influence of this delicate flattery and agreed that Ellie knew best, but he still shot wicked looks at Bill, and said pointedly that he hoped to speak to Ellie about church affairs when she had a minute. Ellie remembered the difficulty she’d been having with the church notices. She really didn’t know what to do about them. She said she’d have a look at them tomorrow morning and would ring Archie as soon as she’d got them sorted out.
Bill drove her home. Ellie was tired, holding back a yawn. ‘You know, Ellie, you’re a honeypot. You don’t mean to be, but that’s what you are. I remember when Frank first met you, he said to me that you were a honeypot with lots of men buzzing around you, but that he thought he could capture you for himself.’
‘Goodness! I thought the men were all over me now because of my money.’
‘That, too. But there are lots of women with money who don’t attract so many followers. Me, too, I shouldn’t wonder.’ He said this so lightly that Ellie realized he meant it, but was not proposing to embarrass her with a declaration.
She gave him a feather-light kiss on his cheek. ‘Dear Bill. I adore you, and I’ve loved our evening out. We must do it again sometime. Which reminds me: I’m going to need some help sorting out a lease on a flat for Diana, and advice about helping a young man set up as a jobbing gardener, and oh, lots of things. Don’t laugh, but my neighbours want to commission me to redesign their garden for them, and I haven’t a clue about costings.’
‘Mm. I have a client who does landscape gardening. You might find it worthwhile to meet him. Ring me, any time, and we’ll discuss things.’
She waved him goodbye, thinking: And this time there’ll be no Harriet to divert the call. Oh dear, poor Harriet. And now I suppose I have to puzzle out how Sue and Harriet are connected, and who the third person might be.
17
Ellie woke slowly, with a feeling of impending doom. Little Frank was wailing. She’d been up to him twice in the night and was feeling distinctly off her grandchild. She wondered if Diana was perhaps feeling the same way about her offspring. Oh dear.
Midge nuzzled her ear. He had slunk into the house on her return and hightailed it up the stairs to her bedroom to sleep at her back. Dear Midge. What a comfort he was. She informed him that he would be wisest to stay where he was until Diana had left the house, and he seemed to understand.
Breakfast was a silent meal, with Ellie trying to coax Frank to eat and Diana immersed in The Times. As soon as Diana had gone, Midge appeared for his breakfast, only slipping out through the cat flap as Stewart descended, looking washed out. Ellie cooked him breakfast, but he could hardly face it. ‘I’m dreading this interview,’ he said.
Ellie tried to be bracing. ‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll sail through it.’ ‘I love my job up north. I really don’t want to be tied down to an office job, and that’s what promotion would mean. If only Diana weren’t so set on moving.’
There was no answer to that, so Ellie just smiled, patted him on the shoulder, and waved him off as young Betty arrived to collect Frank for the day. Ellie let Midge back into the house and made much of him. Nice to have him around th
e place again – although Midge evidently disapproved of the stains on the carpet in the living room.
Ellie wondered whether she should get down on her hands and knees and scrub at the pile, but decided to get a professional carpet-cleaner in instead. Let the Yellow Pages take the strain, or something. What to do next?
First she rang Gilbert and told him what had happened when she had confronted Harriet.
‘I don’t think I know this Harriet,’ said Gilbert. ‘Maybe by sight? All these middle-aged women with hormones spinning out of control! You won’t believe it, but I’ve already got a couple of them here in my new parish, calling round at all hours with problems that only the vicar can solve.’
‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘Liz suggests I appoint a couple of older women as pastoral assistants to visit and report back to me. That should do the trick.’
‘Knowing you, you’ll soon be keeping a complete harem going. You’re a sucker for a sad story. Now Gilbert, I’ve discovered the identity of two of the ladies, but there’s still one to go. Any ideas? Someone you counselled in the past? Someone who went through a bad patch?’
‘Have you got all year to listen? No, Ellie. I don’t think I can give you any names. Confidentiality, you know. Besides, if I don’t know this Harriet, I might not know your third lady. There’s no one who springs to mind exactly … or is there?’ He sounded puzzled.
‘A name did spring to mind? Can you give me a clue?’
‘Animal, vegetable or mineral? No, I’m not going to say. The person I was thinking of … absurd. Not one of your weepy-wailies.’
‘Then what do I look for?’
‘Perhaps, a mischief-maker? No, it’s I who am guilty of mischiefmaking now. Can you not let it drop? You’ve found and dealt with those two sad cases. The third member of the team – if there is a third – will surely hear that their cover has been blown and quietly fade away. Let it lie, Ellie.’
‘Leave it in the hands of the Lord?’
He laughed. ‘You sound sceptical, but it does work.’
‘Hmph! Oh, someone’s at the door. Speak to you later.’
It was a messenger with the keys to the flat for Diana, plus a standard rental form for Ellie to fill in. Good.
The phone rang and it was the doctor’s surgery, saying that Ellie’s blood-test results had come through. The doctor would like to see Ellie and could fit her in at the end of the day. Was that all right?
‘You can’t give me the results now?’
‘Afraid not. Can you make it, then? Half-past six; it’s our late surgery. All right?’
‘Yes,’ said Ellie, thinking that this meant bad news. Something had shown up on the blood tests, which she had forgotten all about. It would be just her luck to have all this on her plate and to go down with something nasty.
The doorbell. This time it was Neil, needing payment for clearing out her bits and pieces the other day and wondering if there was any more work she could recommend for him to do. Midge pranced out of the living room and started playing with the laces on Neil’s trainers. They had a mug of coffee and talked gardening, and discussed how to make a stream run downhill and then get the water pumped back up again.
Ellie settled down at last to make a start on the church notices, but then Stewart arrived back, looking despondent. Ellie abandoned her own work, made him a coffee and let him talk. As she had half-anticipated, he had been turned down for a transfer to London. He said Diana wanted him to give up his job altogether if he didn’t get it.
‘Of course she’s right,’ said Stewart, looking miserable. ‘We can’t afford that big house and there’s so much more opportunity down here. It’s silly to think I can stay on up there in a dead-end job.’
Ellie dangled keys in front of him. ‘Let’s go look at this flat, shall we?’ So they looked at the flat, which was spacious, light and clean, with modern furniture, kitchen and bathroom. Stewart was gloomy about it, though. ‘She’ll gripe because there isn’t a bidet. Or a garage.’
‘Remember it’s rent free for six months.’
‘I feel such a failure! Diana deserves better than this. I feel I’ve let her down.’
Ellie reflected that it was impossible to help someone who believed Diana was always right. She suggested she took Stewart out for lunch, but he was too dejected to be good company. It was the busiest time of the lunch hour, so Chloe was not free to talk, either – something which proved to be unfortunate.
Ellie suggested that Stewart take himself off for a good long walk while she did some work of her own. Stewart blinked at the notion that his mother-in-law might have something to worry about apart from him, but, good-natured as always, he did as she suggested. Ellie turned her attention back to the wretched church notices. And there it was.
As soon as she leafed through the notices, she saw it.
ST SAVIOUR’S SPRING FAIR
St David’s Day
1 March
11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Refreshments – Face-painting – Story-telling Crèche – Parachuting
CRAFT STALLS
Needlework – Glass-painting – Candles Home-made cakes – Plants
Candles. Who at church made candles for sale? Gwyneth did. Oh no. It wasn’t possible that bossy Gwyneth could have been responsible for making those wax figures. Or was it? Gwyneth, the waspish, bosomy soprano who thought herself God’s gift, worked parttime as the doctor’s receptionist and so would know all about Sue and her ‘difficult’ times. Nora had been a patient at the same surgery, and probably Mrs Guard was too. Gwyneth could easily have read their notes and played upon their fears.
Was there a connection between Gwyneth and Harriet? Ellie couldn’t think of any. Besides, why should Gwyneth, respectable pillar of the church, on every important committee, stoop to sending anonymous letters and wax figures? It was so out of character, it was ridiculous.
Hang about. The letters had all been accounted for by Harriet and Sue. The phone calls, the killing of the cat and the wax figures were something else. A different sort of mind. A mind that had septic corners in it.
Mrs Dawes had once told Ellie that Gwyneth’s husband had deserted her years ago, which might make any woman bitter. Where had Mrs Dawes got her information from? One of her cronies? Mrs … can’t remember her name, who walks with a zimmer … and is an aunt of Gwyneth’s. Why hadn’t she remembered that earlier? Hadn’t there been something, ages ago, about Gwyneth making eyes at Archie? What a giggle.
A mischief-maker, Gilbert had said. Gwyneth was certainly that. But no. It was surely out of the question.
Ellie could ask her at the surgery tonight, if she were still there when Ellie arrived. She probably would have gone home long before. Perhaps Ellie might sound the doctor out, tell her in confidence what had been happening, check that someone was attending to Sue. Yes, that would be the best thing to do.
Meanwhile, Ellie decided that she would not worry about the bloodtest results. No. She would occupy herself in preparing supper for the three of them, and playing with Midge. What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to play with a cat?
Diana, Stewart, Betty and little Frank all arrived back late, just as Ellie was putting on her coat to set off for her doctor’s appointment. As the front door opened, so Midge made his exit. It’s a wise cat that knows his friends.
‘Sorry, darlings; must dash. Back in half an hour, I should think. A nice beef stew in the oven, veg ready to put on.’
‘Really, mother … !’
But Ellie had fled.
The waiting room at the surgery was empty, but there was a light on in the doctor’s room. She must be the last patient to be seen that night. Ellie thought her watch might be a trifle fast. She picked up a magazine and sat down to wait. Gwyneth came out of the doctor’s consulting room, turning off the light behind her and locking the inner door. She was wearing a heavy black car coat over black trousers. Her eyes protruded slightly.
Ellie frown
ed. ‘Has the doctor gone, then? I didn’t think you were on duty today.’
‘I do half-days, Wednesdays. I noticed in the appointments book that you were coming in, so when the doctor had to leave for an emergency, I volunteered to stay on and clear up. There was another patient supposed to be coming in tonight for an urgent prescription, but he hasn’t turned up, so we won’t be disturbed.’
Ellie put the magazine down with hands that shook. Gwyneth was unsmiling, focused on her. And much, much larger in every way. Ellie tasted fear. She stood up. ‘I’d better ring tomorrow for another appointment about the results of the blood tests.’
‘No need. The results were all within the normal parameters. It’ll be easier for you if you just sit down again and keep still. That way it won’t hurt too much. I promised I’d get you, and I always keep my word.’
Ellie tried to slow her breathing down to normal. ‘It was you who encouraged Sue and Harriet to target Nora and then me? It was you who made the wax figures and killed the cat? But why, Gwyneth? Why?’
‘Nora lost us our vicar. She deserved to die and so do you, flaunting yourself with all those men. Archie would have married me if you hadn’t made eyes at him.’
‘I didn’t …’
‘And now you’ve upset Sue so much that she’s had to go back into hospital …’
‘Oh, dear. That’s awful.’
‘… and you’ve lost Harriet her job!’
‘She lost it for herself. Why did you hate Nora so much?’
‘I didn’t hate her. I despised her. I tried telling her, face to face, what people thought of her, but she wouldn’t listen, and Gilbert told me I was meddling! I wasn’t meddling. I was telling her – as it says in the Bible, if one of your members sins, you should go to her and rebuke her.’
It was hardly a sin to cry out for help, thought Ellie. And you did it without the necessary love. She said, ‘Tell me, how did you three get together?’
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