Mum's the Word

by Dorothy Cannell

  Light, breaking through the stained glass door panel, made a mosaic on the ceiling; otherwise the mahogany hall was as dark and stuffy as a sealed up church. The closed doors had the look of confessionals. Had Theola Faith confessed yet? The sour puss face of the blackened grandmother clock said ten thirty. How long before the sheriff brought news? Or was he here already? Hands shaking, I plunged into the dining room. Back out again ten seconds later and pounds thinner, having delivered the knives to the closest drawer. I’d buffed them off and done the final handling with the front of my smock, but after taking only a couple of steps I came to a dithering halt. What about my fingerprints on the sideboard? Could I explain them away by saying I must have touched the drawer when helping myself to breakfast? There had been some very handsome croissants and rhubarb buns between the coffee pot and fruit bowl.

  “God, according to the Book of Enoch, is gonna punish you, Miss Interference.” The voice popped up behind me.

  “Pepys!” Was that silly squeak me? Or a canary being trodden on by a cat? I backed toward the staircase wall. “You really shouldn’t speak of God that way as though he’s some sort of bogey man. And you shouldn’t scare me like that. You might give me triplets!”

  “Good!” His bald head shone smooth as marble. His eyes were chipped ice as he let loose a laugh, convincing me a neon sign flashed the word knives from my forehead. Naturally I didn’t expect to be in high favour after last night. And I couldn’t blame Pepys for favouring his own skin over that of his employer. My mental babbling was cut short by the bell. The door bell.

  “Tarnation! Here comes the sheriff dropping by uninvited. Man should read Ann Landers on that subject!” Pepys’ eyes let me go. Off he shuffled down the centre of the hall, leaving me feeling small and feathery and chewed. I couldn’t tell if that was the sheriff’s head behind the glass, although the set of the shoulders looked decidedly official. Could I make it up the stairs before he entered? No, I couldn’t. But neither could I face the law until I had taken something to settle my conscience. Should I make a dive back into the dining room or—my heart was trying to break through my ribs—take the lift?

  Pepys is about to admit the caller; he turns and looks my way as I open the outer wooden door and shove back the accordian-pleated brass one. I feel cornered again, which is stupid. My finger is on the button; I am lurching upward. The concrete walls, seen through the fenced sides of the lift cage, don’t exactly flash past. There being no ceiling, I do feel rather as though I’m a skier in a chair lift. But how long can it take to go up one floor? That depends I suppose on whether or not … you come to a full stop. I heard a faint wheezing sound as though the contraption were out of breath. And then nothing. Sorry, I’m exaggerating—something did happen. The overhead light went out.

  This is not a good time for panic. Panic is only fun when you get to share it with someone. If Ben were only here, we could turn this into a romantic interlude—pretend we were a couple of Victorian chimney sweeps. Scratch that! He would be dead by now from claustrophobia. This was much better, I could think of myself, feel free to fall luxuriously apart. But should I? Pause, Ellie. You can redeem yourself in the eyes of all who resented your theory: Theola Faith did not kill her daughter, ergo someone else is guilty. Here is your chance to prove yourself fit to be a Mangé wife. Come through this crisis with flying colours and you may one day rise to some influential position in the Auxiliary. Groping left, I found the buttons and punched away. Does a passenger on a high-jacked plane care whether he is going to London or Istanbul?

  The lift budged neither up nor down. Sweat broke like morning dew on my forehead. I no longer cared to be the sort of wife who held up well under tough conditions—like the pantyhose in the advert that could have danced all night. I began jumping up and down in what probably looked like a crazy dance; luckily I couldn’t see myself. Halfway into a leap there came a dreadful thought. What if the lift had stalled because a cable had snagged on a roller, and what if all this vibrating caused the cable to slip, sending the cage smacking down through the shaft, straight through the cellar floor to the rocks on which Mendenhall was built? I knew nothing about the mechanics of lifts, but nothing is more convincing than an imagination fueled by terror. Moments dragged by before I dredged up a more comforting possibility. There might be nothing wrong with the lift at all. What if Pepys had left Sheriff Dougherty on the step and nipped after me? What if he had done something—opened the outer door for instance—to stop the lift in its tracks? How long would the crazy man keep me imprisoned here? How long before he thought I had learned my lesson?

  A shadow moved—my arm, as it turned out. Would screaming be in my own best interests? I yelled until my ears rang. No answer. Paranoia set in. A conspiracy was afoot below. Sheriff Dougherty had persuaded the household, including Ben, that I was a threat to the happy solving of the Mary Faith case. Best that I was to be put out of everyone’s misery for a while.

  The Black Cloud had descended. I found myself huddled on the floor of my cage. Time was a circle always bringing me back to right now. Never had I felt more alone.

  And then something magical happened. I remembered the baby was with me, and that if I didn’t mind being stuck here, my friend might have other ideas. Hard on the heels of that insight came something else, a wild craving—similar to that which had caused me to pirate a rowing boat and head over to Mud Creek. This time I didn’t want tacos—indeed, the very idea of spicy hot food revolted me. No, I wanted—needed—plain ordinary toast with an inch of butter accompanied by a steaming, soothing cup of that herbal brew described in Primrose Tramwell’s letter. Balm, horehound, pennyroyal … I could almost taste them, although I never had. Sound good, baby? And to think there’s an herb garden outside and we’re in here! ’Tis enough to make you start climbing the walls!

  The silence spoke loud and clear. “Finally, Mum, you are making sense.”

  I was on my feet in a trice. “Yes, my dear! I imagine your average athletic mother could climb that checkerboard iron siding. But this is me. I never met a gym teacher I didn’t hate, or one that could get me to climb an inch of the rope without using an electric cattle prod. And think, even if we do this brave thing I don’t know how far we are below the second floor. Or if I could manage to get out.”

  Stuff and nonsense. The Craving was in control. I was already hanging on to that railing like a monkey in a blackout at the zoo. I would have toast or die in the attempt. Common sense told me this part wasn’t dangerous. No more difficult than climbing a ladder—with very narrow rungs. I went up a slow hand hold at a time. The dark became a blessing; I couldn’t look down. If I was the least bit dizzy it was with excitement at the hope of getting us out of here, until—suddenly I had gone as far as I could go. Either the grating swayed or I did … a feeling similar to being on the deck of a ship and leaning too far over the rail. My hand made a desperate grab upward and grasped a door lever. Freedom.

  Not yet. The door wouldn’t open. Curses! Outwitted by a safety feature. I tried to be happy for all those people who had been saved from plunging down the shaft when they thought they had dodged into the bathroom; but it was a bleak moment. At least when people conquer mountains they get to stick a flag on top. Drearily I took my first step back down and a light went on inside the lift. And there it was, that glorious rusty hum! “Baby, we’re moving!”

  Wrong. It was the floor that travelled. The wrong way. Down it went, leaving me a prisoner perched on the wrong side of freedom’s fence. Ellie, if you ever want to see Ben again, so you can kill him for bringing you to the good old U.S.A.—Don’t look! Don’t think! And whatever you do, don’t scream! The least tremor and you’ll go hang gliding for the first time. But it was no good, my lids were fixed, my eyes frozen in horror. My arms were giving way. The urge to jump, to make this quick, was tugging at me … The floor had stopped well below the bottom of my grill, but what was this …? Oh, miracle! It had remembered me, it was coming back to the rescue. Ready, set—just s
tep down as though you are getting onto an escalator. That’s it and now—the great moment. Only when the door opened did I wonder who would be waiting for me on the other side.

  “Sweetheart.” Ben’s voice enclosed me, holding me safe. “How do you feel?”

  “Wonderful.” I felt not only free of the lift, but of so much that had gone before. When the doors had opened and he lifted me out, every member of the household had crowded around. And the most worried of all was Pepys.

  “My fault, I done it.”

  Too shaken to feel animosity, I thought the skeletal Mangé was confessing to having deliberately, and with malice aforethought, set the trap, but no—he was explaining that he had failed to fuel the generator.

  “You’ve had a lot on your mind.” Forgetting he was Pepys and not Jonas, I patted his head, before sagging back against Ben.

  “Too blooming horrible for words! She could have lost the baby!” That was Marjorie Rumpson.

  “She’ll be all right, won’t she, Mum?” Bingo stood close to his mother, clutching a bag of potato crisps.

  “Sure, hon!” She didn’t look convinced.

  “She should be off her feet.” That was Jeffries.

  “Should I boil water—for tea, I mean?” Was that Valicia X speaking? Looking more beautiful than ever because she was misty-eyed.

  “How was I to know she was having a baby?” Pepys definitely looked in worse shape than I. “Thought she was buxom. She did say something about me scaring her into having triplets, but thought it was an expression. Same as having kittens.”

  Suddenly I was floating on air. My husband had swept me up in his manly arms. When we entered the bedroom, Jeffries was already smoothing back the bedclothes; Pepys skedaddled past to close the curtains while the rest milled around doing nothing, but looking as though they couldn’t do enough. As Ben eased me back against the pillows, fear did return like a familiar friend. Was Pepys lying about the generator? Or, I remembered Ernestine was upstairs when I got into the lift. Perhaps she heard it coming and managed somehow to jamb it.

  “A baby!” Bingo approached the bed as if it were a board room table. “A member of the most unproductive segment of society and yet … kinda neat.”

  “Nicer even than a puppy.” Marjorie Rumpson put a stout arm around him.

  “I’m jealous!” Valicia’s bountiful smile divided itself between Ben, seated on the side of the bed, and me. “Waiting for new life to begin. I can’t think of anything more incredible.”

  “Yes!” The word went up as a collective sigh. And I got the strangest feeling that right here and now this was everyone’s baby. Searching the circle of faces I felt cocooned in warmth, and certainty surged through me. What had happened in the lift was an accident. I was no longer on the Most Hated list. How sad that Mary Faith’s death had brought us together like this—almost as a family. There couldn’t be a murderer in this room …

  “Darling …” I asked Ben when we were alone. “Did the sheriff come with news? I sensed that the others were holding something back.”

  He straightened the tray on my lap and tweaked the rose in its jam jar vase. “Ellie, I want you to finish that last piece of toast and drink your herbal brew.”

  “Yes dear!” How could I refuse? Valicia X, Pepys, and Jeffries had all offered to fetch me whatever I wanted, but Ben had fought for a man’s inalienable right to cook for his wife when she was having the vapours. In the manner of a priest regretfully renouncing celibacy for a higher calling, he had informed Ms. X that he wished to be released from his sacred commitment not to engage in any and all cookery practices prior to his assigned role in the Inaugural Dinner. Even more amazing, Bingo had seconded the motion, with the result that here I was fifteen minutes later, the cravings that had attacked me in the lift assuaged. A pity the same could not be said of my curiosity.

  “About the sheriff …?” I gazed hopefully into my love’s brooding eyes.

  “Yes, I blame him for your not being found sooner. I don’t suppose he gave Pepys a spare moment to think about the generator, but doesn’t do to dwell.” Turning my cup around so I wouldn’t have to expend energy reaching for the handle, Ben settled himself more comfortably on the edge of the bed and drew a paper from his pocket—Primrose Tramwell’s letter, as it turned out. “Sweetheart, I have to be honest with you; I made some substitutions with this recipe. The herb garden was out of several ingredients and I used apple cider instead of ale because there was some in the refrigerator. Although there are two schools of thought on the matter, I believe it preferable for a woman in your condition. As for sun brewing, you understand there wasn’t time; however, I am convinced that by warming the sides of the coddle cup with a match—”

  “Ben!” I gripped the tray. “Has the sheriff arrested Theola Faith?”

  His face was grim.

  “Yes.”

  “Well … that’s that then.”

  “Sweetheart …”

  “I’m relieved really.”

  Removing the tray to the bedside table he stroked my hair. “You don’t have to pretend. This morning during the meeting my mind wasn’t on the subject at hand: whether or not scrambled kidneys should be served with a slotted spoon. I was thinking about how I had let this business come between us, and I remembered Chapter Seven of Mommy, There’s a Strange Man in the House.”

  “Oh, yes, exercises an expectant father can do to build up his parenting muscles. You’re supposed to imagine that you’re the one carrying the baby.”

  “That’s it! Ellie, suddenly I was you for a split second; I knew why you wanted the bad guy to be anyone other than Theola Faith.”

  “Thank you.” The words came out in a sigh in which sadness and joy were all mixed up together. Pressing tight against him, I breathed in the wonderful safe herbal smell of him; my fingers moved through the crisp silk of his hair, then found the beat of his heart under his shirt. What riches! We were alive, the three of us! “Ben, did they find Mary’s body?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then how”—I drew away from him—“how can they be sure she’s dead? What if she were thrown overboard by the force of the explosion and was swept downriver? What if she is still alive? She could have been washed up on a beaver dam or—”

  “Ellie—”

  “I know.”

  “Pepys fetched all of us—other than Ernestine and yourself—into the Red Room to hear what the sheriff had to say. An alarm clock used as a crude timing device has been recovered and Laverne Gibbons who is living-in as Mary Faith’s housekeeper had refused to discuss what she knew of Miss Faith’s whereabouts yesterday until she consulted an attorney.

  “What did Miss Faith have to say for herself?”

  “A lot of bravado, according to the Sheriff.”

  “Well how does Miss Manners say one should act when accused of murder?” I’ll confess I sounded a little tart.

  “Ellie, he’s not trying to railroad her. You should have seen him, the poor chap looked grey. Mud Creek can’t be a river bed of crime! Don’t suppose he does have the Miranda warning memorized. He said several times that, whilst Theola Faith had been arrested and charged with the murder of her daughter, she gets a preliminary hearing before being bound over for trial.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “At the police station until bond is set, which should be tomorrow by the sound of it.”

  “Well.” I sat up and shook back my hair. “I can’t lie here glooming. Shouldn’t you be downstairs getting revved up for the final lap of the competition—the Dinner?”

  “I suppose so.” He stood.

  “You don’t sound too excited. Nervous?”

  “When I think of what the shock of being stuck in that lift could have done to you and the baby, I realize that as long as you’re all right, I’m a winner.”

  I smiled up at him. “We love you, Daddy.”

  “And nothing hurts?”

  “Of course not.” No point in mentioning the stitch in my back. I
knew how I’d got that—from leaning against the door knob in Marjorie Rumpson’s room when talking Ernestine into handing over those awful knives. But to please Ben I agreed to stay put and rest for a while.

  When he left the quiet felt good, as though I were snuggling down inside the comfort of Ben’s love. Sleep drifted close then ebbed away—the tide playing catch-me-if-you-can games with childish feet planted in the sand … the ticklish delight of gooey silt oozing up between the toes. I’d had some lovely hours on the beach during my first visit to Merlin’s Court. My time there hadn’t been one horror-packed moment after another as with Mary’s visit to her gruesome Great Aunt Guinevere.

  And suddenly the quiet turned into waiting. For what, I had no idea; but I knew—from the way the shadows stood to attention and the furniture shrank against the walls—that the room felt it too. The curtains being closed didn’t help. I had this crazy feeling that outside the window a flock of questions and answers was whirling about in a storm of feathers. I could hear the beat of their wings, the chipping of their beaks on the glass. Was this the result of drinking that herbal bev? Primrose Tramwell had stressed the calmative effects but had said nothing of ensuing flights of fantasy and Ben had, from the sound of it, reduced whatever potency there was.…

  “Look,” I told the window, “the important questions have been answered. Theola Faith murdered her obnoxious child to put an end to all that horrid publicity. And I am not the least bit worried about our departed candidates. The Groggs and Le Trompes were told to leave, and the Browns opted for romance over gourmet meals. How they got off the island only constitutes a mystery because I don’t know the answer.”