In a spirit of determined optimism I turned left onto Kitty Crescent. Would it be out of line to tell Tricks that if she had designs on my father-in-law, she had best forget them? Surely it wasn’t too much to ask that she do something productive—encourage him to return to Mum, get down on his knees, and beg forgiveness. And while he was down there—no point in wasting energy at his age—pop the question. Or should I stick to the letter of Eudora’s advice and simply ask Tricks to apologize to Mum on her own behalf?
Speculation was getting me nowhere fast. I had passed Number 18 and now had to retrace my steps along the row of semi-detached houses that looked as though they had been cut out of cardboard and put up in an afternoon. Ah, here we were again. Unlatching the gate, I walked up the narrow path, negotiating the rusty tricycle and bits and bobs of hopscotch chalk, to stand on the step beneath the corrugated porch. There and then, quite on the spur of the moment, I became so churned up, my knees turned to butter.
Frizzy Taffer could hardly be expected to welcome me with open arms after the havoc my dinner party had caused. The knocker fell with a trembling thud, and before I could pry my nose away from the side window, the door flew open and a weary voice demanded: “What now, you little pest?”
“I—”
An arm that must have been a mile long shot out to drag me over the threshold.
“Oh, crikey! I am sorry!” The one-woman welcoming committee stepped back with her hands clapped to her cheeks and her eyes brimming with embarrassment. “I thought you were Barney, my seven-year-old, he’s been in one door and out the next all morning.” Frizzy Taffer needed no introduction. Her reddish-brown hair was wider than it was long and positively bristled with static electricity.
“I’m Ellie Haskell,” I babbled. “But if this is a bad time, I could go away and not come back.”
“No.” She grabbed me again, this time by the hand, and I was afraid to flinch in case it came off in her grasp. “Don’t go!” she cried. “I’ve been hoping all morning that you would phone.”
“I should have done so before barging in here.”
“This is better. It’s so much easier to talk face-to-face.” She released me and shoved the door shut. “Believe me, I am glad to see you.”
The narrow hall had that stripped-down-to-its-underwear look. The paint was a washed-out beige and there wasn’t one stick of furniture, for utility or display. Which was just as well. As it was, it would have been difficult to take a step without treading on a pile of colouring books and broken crayons or mounds of building blocks or choo-choo trains. Toys on the stairs, more toys on the windowsill. And, to get the message across that Frizzy Taffer’s life wasn’t all fun and games, the Hoover was dragged out by its cord to stand on the threadbare strip of carpet.
“I’m afraid I stirred up a bee’s nest,” I said.
“You’re the one I feel sorry for.” Frizzy stuffed her hands in her skirt pockets and looked towards the door to our left, which had been ajar and was now inching open. A baby of about eight months came crawling, pat-pat, on its fat little hands across the hall floor. A sticky-faced baby with a riot of red-brown curls. Shrieking up behind her came a scruffy-haired boy of four or five.
“Mummy! Laura broke my puzzle.”
“I’m sure it was an accident, Dustin.” Frizzy scooped the baby up into her arms.
“Wasn’t!” The boy bounced down on his bottom and began drumming his little army boots on the floor. “I don’t want her anymore. Let’s give her away.” His legs stopped pedaling and the freckles on his nose seemed to light up as he spotted me.
“Are you the ice cream lady?”
“Mrs. Haskell is a friend of Mummy’s.” Brown eyes weary, Frizzy settled her bundle of joy on her hip. “She has twins, not much older than Laura. And I’m sure you want to tell her that you love your sister.”
“No, I don’t.” Dustin hauled himself up to stand, toes turned in, scowling at the floor. “And I don’t like that grandpa man who slept in my bed last night.”
Did my ears deceive me? In a daze, I watched Frizzy brush back the baby’s hair. “That’s enough, Dustin! You know you liked going in the top bunk with Barney. It was fun, wasn’t it?”
“Until I fell out.” Understandably disgusted, Dustin stomped off upstairs.
“Did my father-in-law spend the night here?”
“Believe me, I wasn’t keen on the idea.”
“He was supposed to go to the Dark Horse.”
“Tricks told him she knew for a fact that they were all booked up.”
“He didn’t bother to check?”
“You know my mother-in-law; she can be quite convincing. Don’t get me wrong, any other time I would have been glad to have him”—Frizzy tried to make a joke of it—“like when the kids are grown and gone. I’m sure your father-in-law is a perfectly lovely man. But Tom and I don’t have any privacy as it is. You only have to take a look at this place to see the walls are paper thin. We can hear every word the people next door say. We can hear them breathing. We can hear the towels drying on the rail in their bathroom.”
“I understand.” She didn’t have to paint a picture of the mother-in-law in the bedroom just across the landing. “Where,” I asked, “is Dad now?”
“At the Dark Horse. There was a bit of a rumpus this morning between Mum and me when I insisted he phone them and see about a room. But he was all right about it.”
“I should think so.”
“And I was hoping you might have a word with Tricks and try to get her to realize she’s caused enough trouble for one week. I think she’s in the kitchen, because she offered to fix a bite of something for Dawn—that’s my oldest daughter. She always comes home to eat around twelve-thirty, because she doesn’t like the school lunches. And I think”—Frizzy gave the baby a hoist—“that’s her now.”
A scream had erupted from the kitchen, and a girl in a bottle-green skirt and white blouse came hurtling through the door, auburn plaits slapping against her shoulders and eyes blazing with fury.
“Mummy, do something! Gran just committed a murder!”
“I’m sure it was an accident.” Frizzy appeared in no immediate danger of dropping the baby.
“She’s destroyed the only thing I’ve ever loved.”
“Oh, dear—not Goldilocks!”
“I want to die too.”
“Yes, dear! But don’t you think you could first say hello to Mrs. Haskell?”
Ignoring this request, young Dawn stood with her chin out, arms folded, panting like a locomotive. “You don’t care, do you, Mummy? It’s not your goldfish that’s been horribly done to death. She didn’t even get to die in her own bowl.”
“I know this is hard on you,” Frizzy risked a step towards her daughter, “but I don’t think you should be too hard on Gran if she accidentally dropped the bowl or rinsed Goldie down the sink in changing the water.”
“I knew you would take her side.” Dawn’s voice dropped the temperature ten degrees. “Mummy, when will you grow up? Last night when I was putting more water in the bowl I banged it against the sink and it cracked, so I put Goldilocks in the egg saucepan and before I got home just now Gran went and got it down from the cupboard without bothering to think why it was full of water, plopped in an egg without looking, and … Mummy, she cooked Goldy to death for three and a half minutes!”
Frizzy winced. “I’m sure she was sorry.”
“Gran’s a wicked old hypocrite!” The girl kicked aside a toy car and watched it slam into the staircase wall. “She’s always going on about not eating this or that, because even apples and oranges are entitled to live out their lives in peace.”
“Now, Dawn, you know you love Gran.”
“Mummy”—stamp of the foot—“I was very committed to that goldfish.”
The kitchen door opened and out came Tricks in tie-dyed muslin, her hair spiked up all over her head, her triple earrings glittering, and her elderly schoolgirl face as equable as ever. “I’m every bi
t as upset as you are, love,” she told her granddaughter, “but we have to remember that tragedies of this sort are a necessary evil on the road to spiritual enlightenment.”
“Thanks a lot!” Dawn was almost bursting with fury.
“Think how nice it would be if as a result of this little accident you started a campaign to save the lobsters. People drop them in boiling water all the time, and no one calls out the R.S.P.C.A.!” Enough said on the subject, Tricks focussed her attention on me. “Ellie my love! Oh, Elijah will be sorry to have missed you. Frizzy couldn’t talk him into staying, but I know without a shadow of a doubt that he enjoyed his visit. Him and me took a walk down to the greengrocer’s on the corner first thing this morning. And you know, I think he might like to do some volunteer work. You should have heard what he had to say about the way the fruit and vege were set out in the window.”
“I’m hoping,” I said, “that he may volunteer for active duty on the home front.”
“Whatever makes him and Mags happy!” Tricks radiated good nature. “But, as I told Elijah, if things aren’t meant to be, it’s best to find out now, while he still has his whole life ahead of him.”
“There you go!” Dawn looked ready to chew on her pigtails. “Interfering again. That’s what you do best, Gran—interfere and ruin lives.”
“That’s enough!” Worn to the bone, Frizzy set baby Laura down among the puffer trains and jigsaw puzzle pieces.
“Go ahead, take her side!” The girl took a couple of outraged steps before letting loose a piercing scream. “No! This can’t be happening to me!” Pouncing down into a crouch, she fanned her hands across the floor. “Who let the kids play with my Barbie dolls?”
“Guilty!” Tricks shot up her hands. “But don’t you fret, love, their hair will grow back.”
“Gran, don’t ever, ever speak to me again!” Leaving the four dolls where they lay, Dawn leaped to her feet, flung her arms wide, and cried, “Is nothing sacred?” before thundering, sobbing, up the stairs.
“Oh, to be young again!” Tricks hunched a tie-dyed shoulder.
“It is a pity about those dolls,” Frizzy said. “My cousin Alice sent them all the way from America.”
“Well, I’m sure she can send some more. Meanwhile, I’ll get back to the kitchen and open a tin of sardines for the child.”
A scream descended on us from the landing. Poor Dawn! Who could blame her for fearing that the late Goldilocks would turn up on a toast point?
“On second thought”—Tricks was still all smiles—“I think I’ll get back to the garden and have a natter with the runner beans. Never any back-chat from them. Always a treat to see you, Ellie, and I send lots of hugs and kisses to Mags.”
Away she went through the kitchen door, leaving me with the realisation that I hadn’t said a word to her about contacting Mum in an attempt at healing their rift. Just as well! Dawn’s outburst against interference had sounded the alarm that I hadn’t learned my lesson. Once again I had been motivated by only the best of intentions when sticking in my oar, instead of leaving my in-laws to paddle their own canoe.
“The first thing Tom will ask when he gets home is what I’ve been doing all day. Dawn’s a lovely girl, but she’s got a wicked temper, like my aunt Ethel.” Frizzy dredged up a smile when we had the hall to ourselves.
“I’ll get out of your hair,” I said.
“You don’t have to rush off.” Frizzy made the token protest as she picked up baby Laura and escorted me towards the front door.
“Thanks, but I should be getting home.” The words were hardly out of my mouth when Frizzy gave a squeal and backed smack into me. A shadow blocked out the light from the side-panel window, and I saw a face, framed in a headscarf before the knocker came down with a plonk.
“Lady Kitty Pomeroy!” Frizzy pressed a hand over the baby’s mouth before dropping cumbersomely to her knees and signaling for me to follow suit. I obeyed. “I don’t believe this!” she hissed. “Yes, I do! She of all people was bound to show up on this of all days. Quick!” The knocker landed with two thuds this time. “We have to hide. I can’t have that woman catching me in this muddle. This estate was built on land that used to belong to Sir Robert’s family. When the first house was built her ladyship was present to stick in the ceremonial fork. And she’s been sticking it in ever since.”
“Of course,” I said, “Robert Road, Kitty Crescent!” The three of us—baby Laura had accepted the call to action—were engaged in a crawling race worthy of the St. Anselm’s Fête, over the Snakes and Ladders board and around the Noah’s Ark.
“In here!” Frizzy yanked open the door to the cupboard under the stairs and hustled her offspring and me into the cave where mops and brooms gawked at us out of the shadows. Laura gave a snuffle of delight as I popped her into the clothes basket full of sheets and towels. And people say housewives lead humdrum lives! Frizzy shoved in behind us and was drawing the door shut, when Tricks provided a delightfully heart-stopping moment by appearing in the wedge of light. No room in the air raid shelter; but Frizzy was in quivering command.
“Lie down and play dead,” she ordered.
Tricks was nothing if not a sport. Down she went flat on the floor, arms at her sides, only her hair sticking up.
“Is it the insurance man, love?”
“Lady Kitty.”
“Ah!” The syllable held a wealth of comprehension.
“Don’t get me wrong.” Frizzy spoke into the fog raised by her panicked breathing. “I don’t think Lady Kitty’s some sort of monster. She does no end of good with all her charity work, and no one could accuse her of being a snob.”
“Well, I don’t see how she could be, love!” Tricks piped up from her foxhole. “Everyone knows her mum was chief cook and bottle washer up at Pomeroy Manor and her dad was the handyman. Talk about one for the book—the lucky ducks having that windfall on the pools just about the time Sir Robert inherited the manor and all its debts. Don’t have to be brainy to see why he married the meddlesome Minnie, do you?”
I fully expected Dawn’s voice to screech from above stairs, “Hark, who’s talking?” But we didn’t hear a peep out of her.
“Aren’t you worried about the children giving the game away?” I inquired into the gloom.
Frizzy shook her head which, given the breadth of her hair, put a crimp in our cramped space. “What with the mood Dawn’s in, she wouldn’t answer the door if her life depended on it. And, awful as it sounds, we have Lady Kitty alarm drills. If Barney’s out front, he’ll have ducked out of sight and Dustin will have taken a peek out the window and taken cover behind a chair. As I say, she’s not a bad sort but …”
Silence, so thick it threatened to smother us, sifted up through the floorboards. It took me a moment to realize that, in a manner of speaking, the all-clear had sounded. The knocker had not come walloping down again. I heard the baby gurgle, I heard Tricks lift her head from the floor, and I was joining Frizzy in exhaling a relieved breath when I heard a woman’s voice inquire, “Anyone home?”
My knees turned wobbly. And I was only an innocent bystander. What must the woman of the house be feeling? We hobbled out into the hall, Frizzy treading on my heels and both of us stumbling over Tricks, who was still facedown on the floor. Only baby Laura escaped the humiliation of the moment. She was left asleep in the clothes basket, like Moses cast adrift in the bullrushes.
“Your ladyship!” I stammered.
“What an unexpected treat!” Frizzy’s smile kept sliding off her face.
“I was writing a note to put through the door, when I thought to try the knob.” Lady Kitty gave a self-congratulatory laugh. She was wearing a fur coat which didn’t go with the month of June or her headscarf. A law unto herself, this woman. Her snapping black eyes moved to Tricks lying flat out by the staircase. “A simple curtsy would do, Beatrix.”
This jest, if such it were, produced a puckish grin from Tricks. “I was doing my daily meditating.”
“She goes in
to a sort of trance.” Frizzy helped her mother-in-law to her feet. “Sometimes it takes us hours … days to bring her out of it. And Mrs. Haskell”—she nudged me forward—“she and I were just checking the fuse box. The fridge keeps turning itself off.”
“What?” Lady Kitty’s voice conveyed disapproval. “That won’t do, will it! We can’t have appliances getting above themselves. And you, Frizzy, can’t go sticking your head in the cupboard under the stairs every time something goes wrong.”
“No, your ladyship.” This response was made in a junior-housemaid voice.
“The fuse box has nothing to do with it. I’ll send around my electrician. And you be sure and tell him that if he doesn’t do the job in record time, I’ll take his name out of the hat.”
Perceiving our blank expressions, Lady Kitty was so gracious as to explain herself. “My father used that method when paying his bills. He’d put the names of the people he owed money to in the hat he wore to funerals and weddings. Every Saturday night he’d hold a drawing to see who would get paid that week. If someone annoyed him, he took that person’s name out of the hat. And that went for me and my sixpence pocket money.” Her eyes gleamed at the memory. “I wasn’t brought up soft. And I’ve never taken the easy way since Father’s win on the pools made me mistress of Pomeroy Manor. But that doesn’t mean I look down my nose at those who never quite seem able to cope.”
“I do apologize for the muddle.” Frizzy’s hair had lost most of its oomph.
How to Murder Your Mother-In-Law Page 10