by Tamar Myers
‘Now then, people,’ Gabe said, giving Sebastian and Celia stern looks as well, ‘I am going to give you back your torches – only we call them flashlights here in the States – and we shall all return to the scene of the crime. Oops, bad choice of words. We’ll go to where this young man says that Perry disappeared.’
‘His name is Peregrine,’ Sebastian said, and practically without hissing too. Believe me, there is no man quite as virile as an Englishman.
‘Shouldn’t you call the constable, so that he can organize a search party?’ Aubrey said.
That’s when Agnes came to life and began to wring her plump, although perhaps not tender, little hands. ‘Unfortunately, the search party would be Magdalena’s bailiwick.’
‘Et tu, Brutus?’ I said. ‘Why “unfortunately”?’
Quite fortunately, the Babester stepped in again. ‘Hernia is a small village, mostly populated by Mennonites and surrounded by Amish farmers. Both sects are extremely peaceful and law-abiding. For instance, in their religion it is forbidden to take a human life, even in self-defence. It is also a rather poor community, and whereas it once had a two-person police force, it is currently down to just one person, whom Magdalena pays out of her own pocket. Incidentally, Magdalena is the mayor, for which she receives no salary, and she is also the captain of the all-volunteer Hernia Search and Rescue Squad – again, without compensation. If it wasn’t for my wife’s largesse, this community would be without most of its vital services. As for what Agnes might mean by her remark, I have absolutely no idea.’
‘Yeah?’ Sebastian sneered. ‘Is that so? Well, I remember reading about several murders happening right here at this very inn. They were written up in that brochure Mother received in the post.’
At that dear Aubrey came around the table and lightly touched my shoulder in what I was to later learn was the English equivalent of a full-body embrace. In all honesty, had the Good Lord created me with other proclivities, and had Aubrey actually embraced me – well, who knows just how many sins that kettle of fish might have contained.
After all, just because God made you a certain way, that doesn’t mean that you get to act that way. Au contraire: clearly the Almighty wishes homosexuals to suffer, or else he wouldn’t punish them by all His prohibitions against what He calls ‘abdominal’ behaviour. Someday when I get to Heaven I shall ask the Dear Lord why he bothered to create these painful hurdles for these dear folks to begin with. After all, it isn’t their fault that they were born with these urges.
My word, there are times when I do digress! ‘Yes,’ sweet Aubrey said, ‘it is true. On the internet there are numerous articles about the murders that have taken place here. Frankly, that is the reason why I chose your charming inn, Magdalena.’
‘You don’t say!’ I said.
‘Ah, but I do say. It was Chambers – she’s my secretary – who discovered your advert in the back of the beauty magazine. Frankly, it wasn’t the Amish angle, or the little bit of history that you Americans have that attracted us, but the uncanny number of murders that have happened under the watch of one woman. Magdalena, your life really is stranger than fiction.’
Well, that got my knickers in a knot – pardon my French. I slowly and quite obviously brushed my shoulder where Aubrey’s shapely fingertips had momentarily rested.
‘You would think it even stranger, dear,’ I said, ‘if you could have read my mind a minute ago.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Never mind. But since you have brought the matter up, most of these murders were solved by yours truly, and were it not for them I would not be the wealthy woman that I am today.’
‘Wealthy and generous,’ my loyal husband said. ‘She single-handedly supports all the public services in the village. She even brings in a doctor once a week to hold a clinic in the jail.’
‘Saint Magdalena,’ Sebastian sneered.
‘Shut up,’ Celia said. ‘I don’t suppose you need to be rude all the time, do you?’
‘That’s telling him, isn’t it?’ said Aubrey. She turned back to me. ‘I loved how the press gave each of the murders a title, almost as if they were books. ‘Too Many Crooks Spoil the Broth, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Crime – the list is endless, and each one more clever than the last.’
‘What did the papers call the last one again?’ Celia asked. ‘Mother particularly liked that one.’
‘The Death of Pie,’ Sebastian interjected just to be mean.
‘Listen, dear, you needn’t worry about any murders taking place while you’re here on holiday. Nobody here knows you, therefore nobody dislikes the admittedly unlikable personality of one of you notable nobles, so the only motive could possibly be to keep you from talking after an armed robbery, seeing as how you’re filthy rich, but an armed robbery is simply out of the question because first your presence in Hernia and environs has got to even make it on our radar screen – so to speak. So far I haven’t told a soul about you titled la-dee-dahs or your valises bulging with tiaras, coronets, ermine capes or what have you – well, except for the two hundred and forty-three members of my church; the eighteen ladies of the Mennonite Women’s Sewing Circle; my double first-cousin once removed, Sam Yoder, who owns Yoder’s Corner Market; the cashiers at Miller’s feed store; and possibly my banker up in Bedford whom everyone calls Mr Busy Lips.’
Although Agnes is a kind, Christian woman and my best friend, that didn’t stop her from giving me the evil eye. ‘Magdalena, how could you!’
‘It’s actually fairly easy,’ I said. ‘Although all that talking did get me a little bit hoarse, but, oh my dear, it certainly is satisfying. At the moment, I am the envy of virtually everyone in the county.’
Agnes made ripping motions above her head, which was not a good sign. Not every woman is blessed by good hair after a certain age, and Agnes, I hate to say, falls into that category. Heaven forefend that the dear girl hastens the day when, like her nudist uncles, she fails to sport any hair at all. I am not gossiping, mind you, merely reporting the facts: given the rather odd shape of Agnes’s head, and her peculiar colouring when aroused by food, there was a good possibility that Agnes, while at a church potluck supper, would have her head mistaken for a peeled cantaloupe by myopic Irma Berkey, who would then attempt to stab it with a plastic fork.
Again, the Babester, the ‘big’ man in my life, came to my rescue. ‘What about you, Miss Goody Two Shoes? How many people did you brag to? We wouldn’t have royalty staying here if it wasn’t for you, so I’d bet that half the county knows. I’m surprised there wasn’t a news crew here to film their arrival, or do you have them scheduled to do a morning talk show in Pittsburgh?’
Agnes dropped her hands and slapped her cheeks; she probably wanted to slap Gabe’s cheeks for being so cheeky. ‘How many times do I have to explain to you, Gabe, that the Grimsley-Snodgrass family are not royalty, they are merely aristocrats?’
‘Whatever you say,’ the Babester said, and slipped into the kitchen to answer his cell phone.
Aubrey surprised me by raising her slim pale hand like a tentative schoolgirl. ‘You are correct, Agnes; however, I dare say that both Peregrine and I have more English royal blood flowing through our veins than our beloved reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth the Second does.’
‘Harrumph,’ Agnes said, proving that she is, if anything, a quick learner.
‘Never mind the bloodlines,’ I said somewhat impatiently. ‘You’re not horses. Agnes, how many people have you blabbed to?’
‘Harrumph,’ Agnes said again, ‘a bump and a horse’s rump. I did all the work arranging this visit, so why shouldn’t I brag? And yes, I did brag: I bragged on my blog, I tweeted, I wrote about it in my church newsletter, and you can expect Good Morning Pittsburgh, Special Edition to show up here tomorrow at ten.’
‘Jolly good,’ Sebastian said with a grin. ‘I’ve never been on the telly before.’
‘Mother,’ Celia said, ‘will you help me fix my hair? That adapter for my hairdryer be
tter bloody well work, or – or—’
‘Or what, dear?’ Aubrey asked sweetly.
‘Or else!’
Aubrey turned her gentle gaze on me. ‘Magdalena, just in case, do you have a hairdryer that we might borrow? They don’t seem to come with the rooms.’
I smiled, eager to help. ‘Yes and no. I don’t have any fancy-schmancy electric hairdyers, if that’s what you need, but since you are here to experience the old-fashioned ways, why not use the Amish hairdryer?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Aubrey said.
‘She means the sun,’ Agnes snapped.
‘Tres amusant,’ Sebastian said.
‘Sarcasm does not become you, dear,’ I said graciously. ‘And I wasn’t being facetious about using the sun to dry your hair. Just slather on sunscreen and then take a folding chair out into the driveway about nine in the morning. Your hair will be dry in twenty minutes. That will leave you plenty of time to finish getting dressed, Celia, especially if you wise up and leave all that other gunk off your face. Too much black around your eyes makes you look like a raccoon – either that or a nineteenth-century bank robber.’
‘I say there!’ Celia said, rearing back like a startled colt.
Aubrey’s laugh brought to mind tiny crystal bells. ‘Magdalena, you are so refreshing – in that American sort of way.’
‘She means “rude,”’ Agnes said.
‘Nonsense,’ Aubrey said. ‘But rally, shouldn’t we be putting more thought into searching for Peregrine? According to the research that I did before coming here, there are bears in these woods, and animals called coyotes. No offense to you Americans, but it seems as if everyone here has a gun, and if someone looks at someone else just a wee bit wonky … Well, I’m just saying that Peregrine wandering around the woods late at night might well appear to be threatening.’
‘It’s that d— monocle,’ Sebastian said. ‘He won’t listen to reason and get a proper pair of specs.’ Sebastian actually said a four letter word, which I refuse to repeat!
At that moment my hero burst through the swinging kitchen doors like the sheriff in an old-timey saloon. ‘No need to stress yourselves further, folks. Missing Peregrine is no longer missing! He is safe, if not sound of mind, and shall return here momentarily.’
Then, lo and behold, the doorbell rang.
EIGHT
‘No proselytising here,’ I said when I saw who was standing on my veranda. I started to close the door.
For the record, I knew ding-dong well that the waist-high woman in a nun’s habit was Gabe’s Jewish mother. Standing next to her, looking a bit chagrined, was the heretofore missing Peregrine. For the record, Gabe’s mother’s birth name was Ida, but her spiritual name was Mother Malaise. She was the founder and self-appointed head of a made-up religion called the Sisters of Apathy. These so-called nuns were cloistered in a convent that had been converted from a farmhouse that was located directly across the road from the PennDutch.
Although she has vehemently denied it on many occasions, Mother Malaise had created her cult for the sole purpose of causing her Jewish son to feel guilty for having taken a Christian wife. It began as a way of showing her son how broken-hearted she was that he had abandoned four thousand years of tradition to marry a shikse – which is a not very nice way of say ‘a gentile woman.’ However, Gabe has never felt guilty about anything, and since he couldn’t even bring himself to act guilty, things quickly went downhill from there.
Soon Ida, aka Mother Malaise, invented the bizarre theology of disparagement. This consists of one religious tenet broken into three parts: despair in all things; despair at all times; despair everywhere. The adherents to this whackadoodle concept have the chutzpah to refer to themselves as Trinitarians, although clearly three sandwiches shy of a picnic hamper is what they really are.
‘Shtop!’ Mother Malaise barked. ‘Eets me, your mudder-in-law und a duck of some kind.’
‘I am an earl,’ Peregrine said, ‘not a duke, and most certainly not a duck.’
‘Yah? Und I’m zee Queen of Sheba.’ Mother Malaise laughed; something which certainly wasn’t in her favour. That woman has been the bane of my existence, starting with the day that Gabriel told her that we were engaged. There was room for only one Mrs Rosen in her world, a fact which she soon made very clear by sending her son a one-way airline ticket from Pittsburgh – our nearest airport – back to New York City, where she lived at the time.
When Gabriel returned the ticket, unused of course, his precious ‘mama-leh’ moved to Hernia; lock, stock and barrel. Hernia is not New York City; it has no public lodgings. Guess who had to move in with me for a while, because you-know-who couldn’t bear the embarrassment of being a bachelor living with his mom? So what if it was the other way around? Many was the time I’d find them both in their pyjamas, and she happily cutting his toenails, or combing his hair like he was a little kid, which I guess makes perfect sense, since she still cuts his meat for him! And him a heart surgeon! Oh, well, who am I to tell tales out of school?
I have learned from my younger sister Susannah and my daughter Alison how to emit world-class sighs. That said, I gave birth to the mother of all sighs, one that raised the tides along the coasts of Cornwall and Devon.
‘All right then, come in if you must,’ I said, stepping aside. ‘But not you, dear.’ I meant, of course, that ‘none dressed as a nun’ should enter my inn at that late hour. In the event that she did, it would raise my hackles so high that I would have to sleep clinging to the ceiling in order to keep my blood pressure company.
‘Vhat you say?’
Trust me; Mother Malaise was anything but apathetic.
‘I want you to go home, Ida. Go back to your misguided Sisters of Apoplexy or whatever you call yourselves. There is no more room at this inn.’
I could smell my sweetheart’s earthy manliness before I heard his voice. ‘Hey, what’s going on here?’
‘Your vife!’ his mother said. ‘Like alvays, yah?’
‘Peregrine!’ my darling husband said, for once ignoring his mother. ‘There you are.’
And for once, as he eschews public scenes, the man who shares my bed dared to slip his arm around an English-Englishman’s shoulders, as if he were a regular person, and lead him to the dining room. This left his precious ‘host womb’ in the most hostile of moods. Ida Rosen, aka Mother Malaise, may be built like a badger on steroids with a gym addiction, but when properly riled she is virtually unstoppable. Or, as she would say: ‘unshtoppable.’
‘Out of my vay!’ she roared, sounding like a jet engine.
The next thing that I remember I was lying flat on my back. I could hear Ida’s Yiddish-Russian-Ukrainian, and sometimes just plain what-have-you accent, assaulting my ears all the way from my dining room.
Perhaps I should explain that when the Good Lord created me, he implanted within my brain a fertile imagination. I have always threatened to write a book one day, but as anyone who has ever said that knows, who on earth has the time to actually sit down and do that? Oh, and don’t give me that hogwash about discipline and talent. Writing skills can be taught in any number of venues, and as for discipline, that wouldn’t be an issue for me, just as long as I had the time.
My point is: my fertile imagination sometimes leads me to think up scenarios that are more likely to take place on the so-called silver screen than within my beloved family. Then again, having only been to see one movie in my entire life – The Sound of Music – what do I know about movies? I had to drag Mama to see that show all the way up in Pittsburgh where nobody knew us, but she was so scandalized by the scene in the gazebo where two teenagers kissed that she dragged me out of the theatre and wouldn’t stop shaking until we got home two hours later.
So what scenario might I create for Ida Rosen, a reasonable person might ask? My answer, of course, is reasonable as well: Ida Rosen, aka Mother Malaise, Mother Superior to a convent of forty-four habit-wearing nuns, would be the head of a drug cartel. That is not farfetch
ed. No siree, and Bob’s your uncle! Hers is not a religious order, mind you. These women – four of them are men – do not don the long grey robes and wimples for reasons of modesty. If that were the case, then they wouldn’t hold an annual Run Through Hernia Nude Day, which, thank God, has been rained off two out of the three years since its inception.
I ask you, what better place to hide drugs than in the folds of yards and yards of loosely hanging cloth? And who is going to suspect people with names like Sister Dispirited and Sister Disenchanted of being ‘players?’ With the exception of my combative and excessively jealous mother-in-hate, every time I run into one of those folks I have a strong urge to lie down and take a nap.
And yes, it has even occurred to me that the old biddy packs heat. In layperson’s terms, that means that she carries a firearm – a gun. Given that she is only four feet and two inches, it would have to be a very small hand gun, but then again, her bosoms enter a room a full two seconds before she does, so it could be a Colt 45. Any rate, after being run over and having gathered my wits, I staggered to my feet, took a few cautious steps and then flew like the witch that I supposedly am into the next room.
I can tell you that Ida was genuinely surprised. Perhaps she thought that she’d at last been successful in grinding me into chopped liver.
‘Nu?’ she said calmly. ‘Vhat took you so long? Vee vas having a family meeting.’
‘Oh, is that so, dear? With all my cousins in attendance?’
‘Vhat? Da duck, and da duckess, dey are your cousins?’
Gabe groaned. ‘Come on, Mags, I know that Ma can be a pain in the tuchas, but she’s an old lady for crying out loud.’
‘Oy,’ Ida cried as she struck a surprisingly large fist against her gigantic bosom. ‘So now your own mudder, who gave you life, is a pain in the tuchas? It vasn’t my tuchas dat hoit so much da day vhat you vas born – und for tearty-tree hours. Alle dis because you haffe such a beeg head. Like a ten-gallon vater bottle da doctor tell me. So, he has to make wiz de surgery—’