Mum's the Word

by Dorothy Cannell

  Who … what was that knocking?

  “Ellie?” Ernestine pushed open the door. “How are you feeling?”

  “Glad to see you.” The pumpkin trouser suit turned her back into the woman I had met and liked on our first evening here, not the one I had caught snooping in Miss Rumpson’s room that morning.

  “I won’t stay above a moment, but wanted to tell you I talked to Bingo a short while ago. You were right, he did take the knives and hid them first under the floorboard in his room—and again last night in Marjorie’s room. That last was panic, he sure never wanted her blamed; he was going to move them later.”

  Her face had a naked vulnerability. “He wanted to create a scare. He wanted me to decide this was no place for him and get him out of here. You won’t believe it, Ellie, but Bingo doesn’t want to be a Mangé. He says he wants to be a kid. What I don’t understand is why he couldn’t come straight out and tell me. His dad and I only want what’s best for him.”

  “I’m sure.” I thought about Bingo trying to move his treasure trove of snack foods to the bird’s nest for greater safety; had he hoped the knives would be found—before murder entered the picture?

  “Bingo’s with Ms. X now, telling her he wants to drop out as a candidate, which means”—she put her glasses back on—“the battle’s on between your husband and Marjorie Rumpson.”

  Rubbing my back where it still ached, I swallowed hard on this piece of news, when there came another knock on the door and in came Jeffries and Pepys. Her cap was askew and her bunchy curls lopsided. She was wheeling a television. He was carrying a small cardboard box atop a large plastic one.

  “Visiting hours ain’t over, I hope!” She executed a swivel and a run around Ernestine. “Baldie and me decided as how you might like to watch a film on the VCR.”

  “How kind! But really you mustn’t pamper me.”

  No answer. They were busy plugging in and setting up. Seconds later the TV was angled toward me and I was sitting up straight. No slumping shoulders! I would have preferred to take a nap. But this was a wonderful treat.

  “There!” Pepys tottered over and placed the remote control in my hand. “Press the red button, that’s all!”

  “Thank you.”

  I didn’t get to say any more because Jeffries’ face squeezed into a frown, and she was across the room, flinging open the window. And in hopped a pigeon. So I hadn’t been fantasizing! I had heard that fluttering and pecking at the glass.

  “Sometimes he’s like the rest of us, forgets his place and refuses to come by the tradesmen’s entrance.” Jeffries scooped him up. “I’ll get him out of here.”

  “Please,” I said, “Leave him! We can watch the movie together.”

  At the press of the red button … A surge of surflike music holding under currents of tidal terror. A swirl of mist, twitches away in moments—in the manner of a magician’s hanky—to reveal a full moon, hovering above a house of finest Gothic Horror design, rising up out of a dark body of water. A crashing of cymbals, the front door lunges open, and the viewer is swept into a wainscotted hall of magnificent gloom. All in glorious black and white.

  My breath caught when the imperious butler, complete with patent leather hair and penciled moustache, descended the stairs, a candle held aloft.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he intoned, his voice dripping gore, “I regret to be the bearer of inclement tidings …”

  Melancholy Mansion! The feeling was most peculiar. To be here in this bedroom while at the same time downstairs in the Red Room with Theola Faith as she comes upon the bespectacled schoolboy busily finger painting.

  “Gerald, sweetie! Have you been playing pirates again?”

  A boyish pout. “How’d you know?”

  Bubbly soft curls, dimpled cheeks—she really is enchanting. “Gerry, you are the most exasperating child! For mercy’s sake, you’ve dripped blood all over this nice clean rug! You can’t keep knifing people to the wall like you’re posting them on a bulletin board. Soon there won’t be any room for pictures.”

  “You don’t want me to have any fun.”

  “What a tall story! You know I don’t want to come on like the heavy-handed stepmother, but you’ve got to stop this acting out—we’re not going to have any friends left at this rate. And all because your darling daddy cut you and me out of his will.”

  “You got any better ideas?” A boyish grin.

  Coming up behind him, she popped a kiss on his head. “I think it’s time we go pay a visit to that nightclub where I used to work. Used to be a bouncer there name of Joe who may have some interesting ideas on how we can torch the boat.”

  I felt sick, but I had to keep watching. Here was the nightclub scene I had waited all my life to see. A room thick with tables and smoke and fleshy-faced people in flashy clothes. The music got louder and fuller; it drew me towards a round, rotating stage, where on was a chorus line of high kicking lovelies with plumes in their hair. The young woman third from the end on the right—her leg going the wrong way in an arabesque and her arms doing a Swan Lake float—was my mother.

  I couldn’t believe that I was seeing her again. I wanted her to look at me. I wanted to tell her that being out of step could be wonderful, but she had gone around. And I didn’t know how to stop the damn video and I … had felt something move inside myself. I heard myself cry, “Mother, the baby moved! I’m sure of it, even though it wasn’t what I expected at all. So delicate, so sweet. More of a flitter than a flutter, like a butterfly imprisoned in my hand.”

  She hadn’t come around again, but something else had—the memory of what someone had said. Which meant I had to be wrong … unless Chantal the soothsayer had been right all along! Sitting bolt upright, I was staring at that video stage and my mother finally looked straight at me, before the scene switched. And the truth came crashing down on me in a frenzy of orchestral music, while wind and rain beat against the walls of Melancholy Mansion. For a moment, excitement was like helium filling my bones, I could have floated to the ceiling; but quickly I sobered. This wasn’t some crossword puzzle. I must think what was best to do.

  Lying back, my mind was like the film, moving from scene to scene and back again and it was getting to the point where I couldn’t make head nor tail of either when the pigeon strode onto the television set. He fixed his beady eye on me, I fixed mine on that small cylinder attached to his leg. A homing pigeon! And if his home is where the heart is … Suddenly I was fully fifty percent convinced that my best cause of action was to send a message to Theola Faith. Bother! I could hardly expect our feathered friend to track her down at the police station. Oh, well! I would have to hope for the best—that Laverne or Jimmy from the bar would spot his arrival, check his leg for mail, and deliver it to the proper party. Because of the uncertainties involved, I must write something whose hidden meaning Theola Faith alone would understand. Finding pen and paper, I wondered if I was being too cryptic, but I couldn’t think of anything else that said it all. And, as she had said, her memory was her stock in trade.

  Chasing a pigeon around a room is excellent exercise for the pregnant woman. I forgot my backache the moment I cracked my knee into the dressing table and scraped my shin on a drawer handle. At last! My hands closed on his bulgy feathery form. Into the cylinder with the message and it’s over to the window with him. Over and out.

  “Good-bye!” I called. “I’d feel a lot better if you were wearing a St. Christopher medal, but my chances of achieving a result can’t be any worse than if I were to cork up a bottle and toss it into the river.”

  Drawing in my head I rammed down the sash. Yes, I was a little emotional but what had almost knocked me off my feet was the heat. My arms were broiled medium rare from those few moments of exposure and the hair close to my forehead had singed into a frizz. The bedroom was suddenly stifling. Could that waiting feeling I had experienced earlier have been due to a buildup of atmospheric pressure—the meteorological, not the human kind? Were we in for another storm?r />
  The English preoccupation with the weather! We like murder, too, between the pages of a book or on the stage, but I wouldn’t think about any of that now. The dinner hour would soon be at hand. Would my red top look a little too optimistic of Ben’s chances? Perhaps the black dress … No, mustn’t appear to be anticipating the worst.

  The dining room positively beamed with festivity. A table set with purest white linen and china and glass completely free of those embarrassing dishwasher spots. Cutlery laid out with geometric precision, subdued lighting softening the heavy featured furniture. And that sense of refuge, brought into play by the dun-coloured curtains hanging open to reveal dark clouds herding across the sky. The six deadly knives gleamed again on the wall. As for the assemblage—every hair, every smile in place—we graced the thronelike chairs around that tribunal table and waited for Valicia X to call the fateful dinner to order.

  Lovely as an air conditioned summer’s day, she clinked a spoon against her wine glass and rose to her feet. “Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Mangés!” Her smile reached to include Pepys and Jeffries positioned at the sideboard, guarding the chafing dishes and soup tureens. Two vacant place settings indicated they would soon join us. “We are regrettably depleted in number. Three of our candidates are gone from this house and Mr. Hoffman this afternoon informed me of his decision to withdraw.”

  Bingo and Ernestine, wearing mother-and-son navy blue ensembles, beamed back smiles. Hers was a little too bright not to conceal some regret.

  Valicia slid a thin gold bangle higher up her arm. “And so, only two candidates remain tonight competing in the final segment of the admission process. Let us salute Miss Marjorie Rumpson and Mr. Bentley Haskell with some well-deserved applause.”

  Staunch clapping from Ernestine, polite stuff from the rest, while the candidates sat royally across from each other. Ben was magnificent in basic black, Marjorie splendid in a plumed evening hat. Its electric blue matched her satin gown, which, with its front planted with seed pearls, could only have come from a rummage sale at Buckingham Palace.

  “The scores accumulated over the last few days,” Valicia X was saying, “have been tallied and we have an interesting situation.” I couldn’t look at Ben. I couldn’t breathe. The entire room stopped breathing.

  “A tie. Which means that this”—she gestured with an impeccably manicured hand to indicate the silver condiment set and other accoutrements of feasting—“the hands-on portion of the program, will decide who of these two fine people is to be the next …” For a moment I thought she would slip up and say the next Mr. or Ms. America “… the next Mangé.”

  Someone let out a long shaky breath and two candles went out. Jeffries stepped forward and flagged Pepys to follow. “Call me a butinsky, but if we don’t get the show on the road and the food on the table, Most Honoured Leader, the hot will be cold and the cold hot. For Mrs. Haskell and Mrs. Hoffman who don’t have the inside scoop, here’s how we work the cookery comp. Knowing that gourmet is kiddy play to any of the candidates. In other words Boring for all of us. So we pulled a fast one. We instructed the candidates to prepare a dinner using only Convenience Foods.”

  A gasp from Ernestine. I remembered Ben’s fear that if he should in the midst of nerves slip up and use the dreaded C word, he would instantly be damned.

  Tenderly stroking a soup ladle, Pepys explained that had all the candidates stuck it out to the end, each would have been assigned one course to prepare. “But seeing as how we wasn’t left with enough chefs to go round, Miss Rumpson and Mr. Haskell divvied up the meal between them.”

  “Using the scientific selection process of drawing numbers from a hat.” Jeffries flounced her curls. “Mr. Haskell, if I do remember correct, picked numbers two, three, four and seven—meaning he got to prepare soup, salad, bread, and entree.”

  “Whilst I got the jolly old appetizer, fish course, vegetable and the pud. I mean,” Miss Rumpson cleared her throat and barked, “dessert.”

  “And now,” Valicia X resumed her seat, “let the games begin!”

  With the speed of Greek runners bringing word that Hercules was on steroids, Pepys and Jeffries went into action. Wine was expertly aimed into our glasses, a platter of rolls took centre stage, and small glass dishes brimming with fruit, and rimmed with sugar appeared at each place. Panting, P and J dropped into their seats and assumed the ready positions with their spoons.

  So instructed by Ms. X, Marjorie Rumpson named her contribution as a Gingered Fruit Compote with a marmalade base. Oh, my aching back! With feelings of greatest trepidation, avoiding Ben’s eyes, I took a minute sip. My darkest fears confirmed. Delicious.

  Heart pounding, I saw my empty dish whisked away and a salad appear. A stunning mix of endive, broccoli and red onion rings, accented with sesame seeds and crumbled bacon, the colours polished to vibrance with a thin coating of Belgian dressing. Ben stressed the use of frozen broccoli, while keeping an eye on the Herbed Crescents coming around. Hard to believe that my love had cracked open a cardboard tube to produce these little wonders. The only egg cracked had been used for glazing.

  “Blooming wonderful!” The magnanimous Miss Rumpson was immediately abashed. “Shouldn’t have spoken up, I know—but when you love this work and get to witness creativity of this calibre, it knocks you back.”

  Ernestine and Bingo raised sceptical eyebrows at me, but I didn’t believe for a minute that Marjorie was trying to win points as Miss Congeniality. She was a dear. As for Ben, it bothered me that he looked so cool. I would have preferred him on the edge of his seat, choking on his collar. I don’t like smugness in my husbands. Pride cometh before a fallen soufflé … And here cometh the soup—rich with cream and fragrant with tomatoes and sherry. Mr. Campbell could be proud. Several belt notches later—the Salmon (fresh from a tin) with Cucumber Sauce. Score more points for Marjorie.

  Would this meal out-last my pregnancy?

  Roast Beef Marinara, basted with candlelight. Bentley T. Haskell forges ahead.

  Artful Artichokes—Marjorie Rumpson is neck and neck with him coming down the straight. I can read indecision in the Mangés’ eyes.

  Tension mounts as we face the final curtain. Dessert. Pepys totters away to fetch it from the kitchen, while Jeffries makes the rounds with the coffee pot. No one speaks. No one looks at anyone. We could be an advert for antacid tablets. Out the corner of my eye I see an amber glow beyond the window … must be a reflection of the candlelight. I wish I could kick off my shoes, but my feet had gained several pounds. The door creaked open. In came Pepys, a tin foil pan balanced on one hand … his expression one of … pity.

  “Miss Rumpson’s Frozen Daiquiri Pie.” His skeletal hands shielded it. “Only it ain’t froze.”

  “Couldn’t pour it out and have milkshakes?” Desperately I signaled Ben with my eyes, but he wasn’t taking messages. Marjorie’s homely face was dissolving, caving in, as if it too were underdone. Unbearable—that it should come to this, for the woman who had flown the unfriendly skies, swum the raging river and survived a schoolboy’s lethal plot and a mother’s infernal machinations!

  A scream ripped through the room. But Jeffries quickly got a grip on herself and snatched the pie away from Pepys. “You saying there’s been foul play?”

  Valicia X was staring at Ben, who was sipping water, as though seeing him for the first time. “Someone sabotaged the pie.”

  Bingo shifted uneasily in his seat, his face red, his glasses sweaty; his mother’s eyes were squeezed shut, her hands locked in prayer.

  “I don’t believe anybody did any such thing.” I was on my feet, my voice raised in futile hope of deadening the sound of Marjorie’s tears plopping on the table. “There has to be some explanation, other than ambition or spite. Perhaps the freezer didn’t kick back on after the generator went out.”

  “That’s not it.” Marjorie lifted her head and made a noble attempt at steadying her features. “Nothing nor nobody’s bloomin’ fault but my own. I’m not used to t
hose side-by-side freezer refrigerator jobies and I was all right to left when I opened that door and shoved in the pie, but you know how it is—you see things without noticing them. There was a bowl of fruit on that same shelf and some jars—of pickles and jam. So you see m’hearties,” mighty sniff, “this old gal’s got no one to blame but herself.”

  “Miss Rumpson, I am sorry.” Valicia sounded crisp, but her lovely eyes had the shine of tears. “And Ben … Mr. Haskell, I never suspected for a moment that you … but none of that matters, does it. The important thing is that the Contest is over. And in accordance with paragraph E, Section Two Nine Seven of the Mangé Code, I am authorized to forego discussion with my fellows …” Pepys and Jeffries, having reverently covered the pie with a cloth, each creaked a bow. “… And name you, Mr. Bentley T. Haskell, our new member.”

  Amazing, but at that heart-searing moment, I wasn’t looking at my husband, but at the window. Outside I could see a gathering of yellow lights and shadow people. What tricks our reflections play … And our minds too. For surely Ben couldn’t be saying what I heard him saying—that he was, with regret aforethought, refusing membership in the Mangé Society?

  “You can’t be serious!” Ms. X cried.

  “He’s out of his gourd.” Pepys and Jeffries spoke as one.

  “Ben …” I whispered.

  He didn’t look at me. The table divided us but I knew he was drawing me to him, holding me tight with his mind, because it took both of us for him to get through this. Rising, he spoke to a space just below the iron chandelier. “Honoured Mangés, I ask to be disqualified on the grounds that I have on several occasions fallen short of the standards set for candidates. You will remember,” he now addressed Ms. X, “that I requested permission to leave the island on one occasion.”