How to Murder Your Mother-In-Law

by Dorothy Cannell

  Instantly I was trembling with relief. “You’re right, I polished with Johnson’s Lavender.”

  “I always use Lemon Pledge.” Mum drew herself up straight and somehow managed to look tinier than ever. “But we all do things our own way, and you’ll get no interference from me, Ellie.” She looked around for a place to stow her handbag. The place looked obscenely naked without a doily in sight, and I couldn’t have been more embarrassed if I had been caught in the bath by Mr. Watkins, the window cleaner, without so much as a couple of washcloths covering strategic parts.

  Talk about heaping coals of fire upon my head! Mum didn’t mention the doilies. She handed Dad her handbag. He in turn handed it to me exactly as if we were playing Pass the Parcel. I added it to the pile of luggage by the stairs.

  “As I said to Elijah the other night, the last thing we need is to make work for the young people. Every night I pray to St. Francis that we won’t be a burden.”

  Be still, my thumping heart. The empty niche on the wall yawned huge as the gateway to hell. Any moment Mum’s eyes would swivel right and I would be out of the family.

  “Don’t be daft, woman, Ellie doesn’t find us a burden.” Dad’s eyebrows came down in a scowl that reminded me heart-wrenchingly of Ben.

  “That’s what I hoped.” Mum aged before my eyes. “But when we walk in here to find she has been putting up tents on the lawn that she doesn’t want, and that she’s been spring-cleaning in June, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that she’s turned to the bottle.…”

  My mouth hung open.

  “The thing is, it takes all the pleasure out of coming.” Mum continued on like an express train. “Mrs. Brown at the corner shop always says that if you pick up and polish as you go along, there’s never any need for turning the house upside down. But those are her words, not mine. What I say, Elijah, is that we should take the next train home. The last thing we need at our time of life is for Ellie to end up in one of those rehab places on our account. Ben would never forgive us. Our one-and-only is like a lot of young people these days. He puts his wife first.”

  Dad rolled his eyes. “You’re getting better, Magdalene. Usually it takes you a full half hour to get up to speed.”

  I was tempted to defend myself by saying Mrs. Malloy had done most of the work while I sat around all day chomping on Choco-Lax. And that the reason I wasn’t dressed for company was because the cleaners had lost all my designer frocks. But I was saved from this cowardly display when Mum turned her attention to Sweetie. The little canine was stalking up and down the hall, giving the white-paw test to the furniture. Her muzzle wore a Bette Davis “What a dump!” smirk.

  “Elijah! All this commotion isn’t good for the dog.”

  “Now, don’t go pampering her, or she’ll insist on breakfast in bed.” Pa sounded gruff, but his whiskers twitched fondly.

  “This clinches it.” Mum dropped to her knees with the speed of one who has spent a lifetime on church pews, and cradled Sweetie in her arms. “We shouldn’t have come. The train journey was too much for her, and now we’ve walked in here to find Ellie in a state, and Ben and the babies are nowhere to be seen. Well, I’ll say it again, the best thing we can do for everyone concerned is turn right around and go home.”

  So much for my grand hopes that this visit would be one of unruffled familial calm. Had there been a violin handy, I might have tucked it under my chin and scraped out a mournful melody with the bow. But that would have been playing directly into Sweetie’s paws. Her presence certainly demanded music—preferably an entire orchestra with Mozart himself at the helm. Wriggling away from Mum, she stood with her furry face tilted left, either to show off her best profile or to catch a whiff of Tobias Cat, who was lurking under the trestle table. To give the canine Lizzie Borden her due, she was no longer the moth-eaten scrap my in-laws had rescued from a wretched life on the streets. This dog looked as though she had been crocheted by Mum and hand-washed in Fairy Liquid. My guess was that her favourite perfume was Très Chic, her nails were acrylic, and that she now informed her pooch friends her name was Anastasia and her family had been forced to flee the royal kennels during that nasty revolution.

  “How about a nice cup of tea?” I coaxed as Mum got to her feet. Unfortunately, you would think I had suggested poison. Her sparrow eyes darkened to a terrible black. Her hair stuck out around the rim of her beret as if raised from the scalp, and she crossed herself with a trembling hand before directing a quivering finger in the direction of the kitchen.

  Sometimes I am shockingly slow on the uptake. When I looked the way of Mum’s accusing finger, I didn’t see anything to rock the old house on its foundation. To be honest, I would have expected any red-blooded grandma to be smiling. For my adorable Tam looked like a story-book child as he toddled into the hall. His face was as sweet as his cherry-red sweater and his gait was a little off kilter because he was holding a dolly above his head as if afraid it would be snatched away at any moment. Oh, heavens! Say it wasn’t so! My heart started to bong in time with the grandfather clock. That dolly was St. Francis!

  “Let me explain,” I began.

  “No need to go off the deep end, Magdalene!” Dad broke up the ghastly tableau by chugging over to Tam with his hand extended. “There now, son, give it to Grandpa.”

  Bless my big boy, he held out the statue. But when Dad reached for it, Tam said no with hideous clarity. Then he gurgled a laugh and stuck the plaster head in his mouth.

  “How can you smile, Elijah!” Mum snapped. “You’d be singing a different tune if Ellie had given that child Moses to suck on like a lollipop.”

  “But I didn’t give Tam St. Francis! As an animal lover …” I dragged my eyes away from Sweetie. Her smirk said louder than words, “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” I blundered on. “As a lover of animals, I have always admired St. Francis. I took him down only to dust behind his ears—”

  There are none so deaf as those who will not listen. Mum’s hands were knotted in prayer, her pinched face was tilted towards heaven. “I gave that statue to you and Ben for a wedding present.”

  “Very kind of you, I’m sure!”

  The kitchen door slapped wide open, revealing Mrs. Malloy in all her glory. “One more knicketyknack for poor Mrs. H. to dust!” she fumed. “Because as I made plain as daylight when I first set foot in Merlin’s Court, I don’t do drains, I don’t do ceilings, and I most certainly don’t do graven images.”

  This blasphemy turned Mum into a pillar of salt. Not so Dad, however. He looked rather taken with Mrs. Malloy, but whether because of her heaving taffeta bosom or because his faith also prohibited plaster-of-Paris idols that glowed in the dark, only he knew.

  He didn’t, however, get to feast his eyes or ears for long. My cousin Freddy loomed around Mrs. M. with Abbey in his arms. My little girl looked good enough to eat, with her barley-sugar curls and rose-hip smile, whilst Freddy himself looked like something the cat had refused to eat. His ponytail had come unravelled, his beard was in disarray from being tweaked by his young charges, and there were food stains on his torn sweatshirt.

  “Sorry about Tam.” Freddy favoured the world at large with his most ghoulish grin. “The little blighter jumped ship.”

  It was hard to protest his veracity with my son and heir trying to climb Dad’s leg as if it were the rigging of the H.M.S. Victory. Mrs. Malloy threw up her hands and vanished into the kitchen to restore her soul, probably with a nip of Mrs. Pickle’s dandelion wine.

  “Who is that awful man?” Mum’s finger gyrated between me and Freddy like a gun about to go off.

  “My favourite cousin.”

  “Oh! Well, it takes all sorts to make a family, as Mrs. Jones down the road would say.”

  Dad hid any embarrassment he may have felt by picking up Tam, who had lost interest in St. Francis and abandoned him on the floor.

  Far from taking offence at Mum’s words, however, Freddy looked positively chuffed as he bounced Abbey in his arms. “Gosh, that’s the
most sensitive thing anyone’s said about me in ages. Makes me feel so wanted.” My cousin batted his eyes. “Thanks, Auntie Mags. You don’t mind me calling you Auntie, do you?”

  Mum was speechless.

  “Want me to carry those cases upstairs?” Freddy’s gaze roved to where the herd of luggage was taking its ease in the dappled shade of the banister rail.

  “That’s awfully kind, Freddy,” I interposed, “but I am sure we can manage.”

  “Don’t get up on your high horse, coz,” he soothed. “I won’t charge them above a fiver. They’re family.”

  Mum managed a gasp. “Elijah, we have lived too long. I want you to take me back to London so I can make an appointment with Father O’Grady.”

  To see about getting her son’s marriage annulled? Had I been one of those women who cry exquisitely, now might have been the moment for a good sob session. As it was, I watched dry-eyed as Dad handed Tam over to Freddy, who said that if he wasn’t needed, except as an ornament, he would take both kiddies upstairs for their baths. And no sooner had he disappeared with my darlings in tow, than Sweetie decided to hog the limelight. Fed up with being upstaged, she squatted down on the flagstones and, putting her best furry profile forward, made a puddle the size of the Atlantic Ocean.

  “Damn dog!” Dad roared.

  Mum immediately went on the defensive. “She’s just marking her territory. You do”—she made it clear her pet’s lapse was my fault—“you do still have that cat?”

  “We’re fond of him.” I edged around the accusation while sidestepping the flood, which caused me to fear we would all be forced to seek higher ground on the stairs. No hope of Mrs. Malloy magically appearing with bucket and mop. Her job description did not include canine clean-up. Regrettably, membership in the local mothers’ union did not accord me such protection.

  “Sweetie doesn’t hold with cats.” Dad’s voice, soft as his white beard, indicated he had relented towards the little snot, who was mistress of the hangdog expression and, unlike some of us, probably did cry exquisitely.

  “It’s not that she doesn’t like them.” Mum fixed me with her sparrow eyes. “She’s allergic.”

  “What a pity.” I floundered. “But let’s look for the silver lining. The little … dear obviously feels at home, or she wouldn’t have taken the trouble … to mark her territory, so you see you have to stay for her sake and because”—I paused to heighten the moment of anticipation—“because Ben and I love you and … I have a special surprise for you both. Mum, I have invited your old friend Beatrix Taffer to join us for dinner tonight!”

  I should have broken the glad tidings more gently, for Mum proved to be allergic to surprises. Far from being wreathed in smiles, her face now resembled a deadly bomb about to explode.

  “You did what?”

  “I told you …”

  “And I told you, Ellie, when we spoke about Beatrix, that I had lost touch with her nearly forty years ago.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, what you don’t know”—Mum looked ready to shoot up in the air like a Roman candle—“what you don’t know is that the reason we stopped seeing each other is that we ended on a terrible row.”

  “Oh, dear!” Out the corner of my eye I noticed that Sweetie had cornered Tobias Cat under the trestle table and that they were engaged in a holy war of sorts over St. Francis, who at least one of them thought was a bone to be carried off and buried where no human agency could find him. Damn! It said much about how upset Mum was that she didn’t look once in the direction of the animal altercation.

  “Magdalene’s row with Beatrix was a real humdinger.” Dad was stony-faced, but I thought I detected a smile in his voice. Past experience had led me to suspect my father-in-law thrived on contention. But I didn’t. My stomach had tied itself in knots.

  “After all this time Mrs. Taffer has probably forgotten the entire incident,” I babbled. “From little things her daughter-in-law let slip, I got the distinct impression that your old friend is failing. So wouldn’t it be nice to let bygones be bygones?”

  “Not on your Nellie,” Mum said.

  By way of consolation, Mum was now too despondent to stage an exit. But the moment she and Dad disappeared upstairs and Sweetie absconded with St. Francis to parts unknown, I was tempted to cast myself upon the breast of one of the suits of armour and sob out my tale of woe. Being made of sterner stuff, however, I decided to go and cast myself upon the well-padded frame of Mrs. Malloy instead.

  Freddy, who thrives on histrionics, would have enjoyed the show, but he—bless his tattoos—was still upstairs, seeing to the twins’ nighttime ablutions. And when I entered the kitchen after mopping up Sweetie’s Atlantic Ocean, it was to discover that Mrs. Pickle had bunked off home and thus was not available to ply me with dandelion wine. Never mind. Mrs. M. was a picture to warm the cockles of your heart. Seated in a chair with her feet on the fender of the open hearth, she had a book on her lap. By no means did I object to her reading on the job. We all need time out from the rigours of the day.

  Here in this room that was the heart of the house, I would unburden myself of my sorrows, along with the doilies stuffed inside my bra.

  “Ah, there you are, Mrs. H.” Mrs. Malloy raised her rainbow-lidded eyes but kept her nose in the book. “So what have you done with our guests?”

  “They’re up in their room.”

  “Did you lock them in?”

  “No jokes, please!” I tried to smile, but felt my face crack. “Mum wouldn’t even let me help with the luggage. She seems to think I’ve done enough already.”

  “A little appreciation at last.”

  “You don’t understand. She’s furious with me for inviting Beatrix Taffer to dinner.”

  “Well, they do say as how no good deed goes unpunished.” Mrs. Malloy rustled a page and I excused her indifference on the grounds that the Aga cooker could blow up and I, too, would have been unable to put aside a really good book—such as The Wind in the Willows, had I reached the part where Ratty goes into the Wild Wood to rescue Mole.

  “She wanted me to phone and uninvite Mrs. Taffer, but I couldn’t do that to the poor old lady.”

  “You’re bloody well breaking my heart, but could you stuff a sock in it, Mrs. H.? I’m just getting to the good part.”

  “Heaven forbid I disturb you.”

  “How would it be if I read you a few paragraphs?” Mrs. Malloy suggested kindly.

  Immediately I thawed. There is always something uplifting in hearing the written word spoken aloud. Perched on the table, I embraced the entire room with my smile and said, “Go ahead, I’m listening.”

  Mrs. Malloy smacked her lips and intoned with a gusto worthy of the classics: “ ‘Lying upon the rumpled sheets beneath the mosquito netting, Sir Edward moaned the name of his lost love through passion-parched lips. “Letitia! Letitia!” The memory of how she had looked stepping out of the harem pool made him writhe with exquisite torment as he clutched his throbbing manhood to his chest.’ ”

  “His what?” I slid off the table.

  “And to think,” Mrs. Malloy mused, “here’s me with four husbands, give or take, and I never knew I’d been short-changed.”

  “You have to allow for poetic license.” I moved to peer over her shoulder. “What is the title of that book?”

  “Lady Letitia’s Letters.” She clapped it shut. “And don’t go pretending you didn’t know, Mrs. H., seeing as you’re the one what borrowed it from the library.”

  “You’re right,” I admitted. “But what a fooler! That cover looks so demure with the single riding crop.” As I spoke I was quickly stashing the vile volume among the cookery books on the shelf, where it stood out like a lady of the evening at a Sunday school picnic. “I’ll think of a better hiding place later,” I told Mrs. Malloy.

  “Afraid Mr. H. wouldn’t approve?”

  “Hardly! When I first met Ben he was trying his hand at a novel whose purple prose would have made even the satyric Sir Edwa
rd blush. No, it’s my mother-in-law I’m worried about. Magdalene considers Jane Austen racy and, after the set-to we just had, I would prefer not to make any more waves.”

  My words brought a glum look to Mrs. Malloy’s face. “Seems to me you’ve changed some since she”—eyes raised to the ceiling—“walked through the front door. It’s bad enough when a woman can’t call her home her own, but when it’s your mind what’s being taken over—” She paused meaningfully.

  I had to protest. “What’s wrong with trying to keep the peace?”

  Mrs. Malloy shed a benevolent smile on me. “That’s not the real you talking. Possession, that’s the medical term for what’s going on here. And Edna Pickle could tell you a thing or two on that subject, seeing as how her great-great-granny was a witch.”

  “So you told me.” A shudder passed through me, which couldn’t be blamed entirely on the grandfather clock in the hall bonging the hour. It was the silliest thing, but suddenly I had the feeling that I was one of those little voodoo dolls and fate was sticking pins in me to ensure that something worse than a run-in with my mother-in-law was in store. Ridiculous! My nerves were on edge. I hastened to ask Mrs. M. if she and her friend had made up their quarrel.

  “We’re all called upon to forgive!” Mrs. M. was given to these pious moments since joining St. Anselm’s choir. “A blinking nuisance, but there it is. And when it comes down to it, I’m the only friend Edna has in this world. I keep telling her that her obsession to win the Martha gets on people’s nerves. But it’s like talking to the wall.” Mrs. Malloy teetered onto her high-heeled feet and stowed one of the babies’ squeaky toys in the Welsh dresser.

  “Really?” The notion of the tortoiselike Mrs. Pickle being a woman possessed of a raging ambition seemed to me about as likely as the possibility of Mum dancing nude on a piano. But what did I know?

  “To tell the truth,” my faithful daily mused, “I did get to wondering if the reason the competition for them ribbons has thinned out this year is due to some of Edna’s havey-cavey tricks.”