by Maddy Hunter
Alice looked aghast. “In the department store?”
“There must have been a mattress sale,” said Margi.
“Helen and me could use a new mattress,” said Dick Teig. “Can you remember what kind of discounts they were offering? ’Course, it might not be worth our while if we have to drive all the way to Canada.”
“I caught them in my own house,” Jackie wailed. “In my own bed!”
“I’m sorry to hear that, dear,” lamented Nana. “That husband of yours seemed like such a nice fella when the two of you was travelin’ in Ireland with us. He gave me the most glamorous haircut of my life the night we didn’t have no lights. Called it a choppy cut.”
He’d given her the worst haircut of her life. She’d ended up looking like a rabbit who’d barely survived a near-death encounter with a weed whacker.
“That was then,” Jackie whimpered. “This is now.” She swept her hand the length of her body to indicate her attire, her bottom lip quivering. “This is my homage to the death of my marriage. The woman you see before you is a mere shadow of the person she once was—her spirit broken, her iconic sense of style replaced by funereal dullness. You’ll never see her wear hot pink or spandex or miniskirts ever again.”
Dick Teig’s eyes lit up. “Uhh…you remember that corset thingie you wore in Italy? It was like a strapless gown, only without the skirt, and it hiked your software halfway up to your chin?”
Jackie clasped her hands and bowed her head in a prayerful gesture. “My bustier. I loved my bustier.”
“Well, if you’re getting rid of it, would you throw it Helen’s way? She’s been on my case about doing something to add a little zing to our—”
Helen’s forearm thwacked him in the gut like a metal turnstile.
“Eww.” Bernice made a gagging sound. “Would you give us some warning before you decide to creep us out with any more Teig family fantasies? As if the thought of Helen squeezing herself into a bustier isn’t disturbing enough.”
“In Regency England, a woman referred to her mourning garb as widow’s weeds,” an officious-sounding female voice informed us.
Heads turned left and right searching out the voice’s owner.
“Thank you for that tidbit, Mrs. Crabbe,” I said, nodding to the handsome woman with the glorious cap of silver hair who’d commandeered the best seat in the house: the armchair with the ottoman, reading lamp, and candy dish brimming with expensive truffles wrapped in gold cellophane. She was tall and heavy-boned, with broad hips and hockey player thighs, more Clydesdale than racehorse, but she sat in her chair with regal calm, chin elevated and spine straight, like a queen sitting on her throne.
“If we can put aside bustiers and mattress sales for a moment, I’d like to introduce Kathryn Crabbe, who plans to focus her blog on the literary significance of the places we’ll be visiting. Kathryn is a Jane Austen aficionado, popularly known as a Janeite, so with our itinerary including a visit to Austen’s ancestral home in Chawton, I thought it would be a great idea to have Kathryn serve as our literary guide at some of the actual sites that Austen describes in her books, like the seawall in Lyme Regis and the assembly rooms in Bath.”
“Who’s Jane Austen?” asked Dick Teig.
Snickers. Snorts. Chuckling.
“Jane Austen happens to be one of the foremost English novelists of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century,” Tilly said, aghast. “Surely you’ve heard of her novels. Pride and Prejudice? Sense and Sensibility? Persuasion? Emma?”
Dick crooked his mouth to the side. “They sound like girlie books.”
“She wrote about the mannered class,” Tilly continued. “Six novels of romantic fiction that are literary classics.”
Dick wrinkled his nose. “Girlie books. I don’t read girlie books.”
“He doesn’t read any books,” corrected Helen.
“For those of you who haven’t lived your entire lives under a rock,” Kathryn Crabbe commented with obvious snark, “my blog is entitled Pride, Prejudice, and Beyond, and in it I discuss all things Austen-related. I write it under my nom de plume, Penelope Pemberley.”
“Oh my God! You’re Penelope Pemberley?” The last of our blogger fill-ins leaped to her feet with excitement. She was a twenty-eight-year-old computer expert with a mane of long, spiral-curled blond hair and a rhinestone-studded eyebrow ring. “I’ve been reading your blog for, like, forever! It’s because of you that I discovered the magic of Jane Austen and became a Janeite. You…you changed my whole life. You have to read her blog,” she entreated the rest of the room. “It’s so inspiring. She draws you into a world where civility is the rule of the day and proper manners are valued more than…than winning the Powerball jackpot!”
“Folks were playing Powerball way back then?” Margi furrowed her brow. “How do you suppose they got those little balls to pop up in the drawing machines before they had electricity?”
“I’m honored beyond words to meet you in person, Mrs. Crabbe,” the young woman gushed. “I’m Heather Holloway, last of the six bloggers, and, like you, a Jane Austen devotee.” She clasped her hands together and extended them toward Kathryn with unfettered delight. “But to be honest, meeting you is even more exciting than meeting Jane Austen herself. Can you imagine how thrilled I am to be face-to-face with my idol?”
“You’re much too kind,” Kathryn demurred, seeming rather accustomed to the hero worship.
“I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Heather enthused. “Wait ’til my readership checks out my blog tomorrow. They won’t believe it. I’m traveling through Cornwall with the Penelope Pemberley.”
“For those of you who are interested,” I added, “Heather writes an unusual but progressive blog using the pseudonym Austen Zombie Girl, so I’m hoping that between her input and Kathryn’s, you’ll get a great impression of what Regency England might have looked like and how specific historic sites might have changed drastically or not changed at all.”
Kathryn gasped. “Austen Zombie Girl? You’re Austen Zombie Girl?”
“Omigod.” Heather cupped her hands over her mouth in disbelief. “Have you read my blog?”
“Once.” Kathryn elevated her chin to an imperious angle. “And once was quite enough.”
“Oh.” Heather’s burst of excitement popped like a too-big bubble. Her voice grew very small. “You didn’t like it?”
“No, I didn’t like it. No one with an ounce of good taste could ever like the tripe you circulate on the internet and misrepresent as a blog,” Kathryn accused. “The word bilge is a more accurate description.”
Heather stood motionless, seeming to shrink before our eyes. “Well.” Her bottom lip quivered as she processed the insult. “That was unexpected.”
“Surely I’m not the first person to tell you how appalling your entries are.”
“Actually…you are.” Heather hardened her jaw and narrowed her eyes. “I have over ten thousand followers who hang on my every word.”
“Of course you do. We’re witnessing the collapse of western civilization and people like you are in the vanguard, encouraging the disintegration of our literary classics by taking advantage of their public domain status and reworking the stories to include atrocities like…invading armies of otherworldly creatures.”
“They’re fresh storylines for contemporary readers,” Heather said matter-of-factly. “All that literature stuff doesn’t play to millennials, but the mashups do. So I’m not going to apologize for including Austenesque pop culture in my opinions and reviews, even though my doing so makes some intolerant members of our society want to light their hair on fire.” She arched her brows at Kathryn. “I don’t want to be rude, so I won’t name names.”
“Have you ever bothered to read a Jane Austen novel?” Kathryn challenged.
“You mean one of the books Austen actually wrote herself?” Heather lifted a shoulder
in a casual shrug. “I tried once, but the style didn’t grab me. It was so old-fashioned. Long passages of prose that went nowhere. Vocabulary no one uses anymore. Endless scenes with characters attending balls. But I’ve read all the mashups: Emma Versus the Undead. Emma and the Frankenstein Monster. Northanger Abbey and Werewolves. Mansfield Park and Zombies. And I adore the movies. The language doesn’t seem so stilted with actors reciting the dialogue.”
“The movies destroy the very soul of Austen and turn her literary masterpieces into romantic drivel,” taunted Kathryn. “And as for your taste in novels, you freely admit to having read every modern bastardization of truly great literature. How do you manage to hold your head up at book club meetings? You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Heather regarded her, deadpan. “So what’s your point?”
“My point is that the Jane Austen Society should revoke your membership immediately. Never call yourself a Janeite in my presence. You’re a disgrace—not only to Janeites specifically, but to the blogosphere in general. I wouldn’t be surprised if you decided to skip the tour of the elegant assembly rooms in Bath in favor of a zombie pub crawl.”
Groaning with impatience, Jackie raised her hands in a gesture of surrender. “When the two of you have finished hogging the spotlight, could we go back to me and my impending divorce again? All those in favor, say—”
“Listen!” ordered Tilly, thumping her walking stick on the floor for quiet. She shushed the room with a finger to her lips. “Do you hear that?”
We listened intently for several seconds before Nana stated the obvious. “I don’t hear nuthin’.”
“Exactly,” said Tilly. “The civil war in the kitchen seems to be over.” And as if to press home the point, we heard a muffled clatter that brought to mind images of broken dishware being dumped into rubbish bins.
Enyon swept into the dining room as if he were floating on air, showing no ill effects from the battle that had been raging in the kitchen. “Good news, my pets.” He paused to realign the picture frames on the wall before proceeding into the lounge. “Your coach has just pulled into the car park, so you can look forward to being reunited with your luggage shortly.”
Our coach had experienced a major windshield wiper problem on our trip from Heathrow, so our longtime tour director, Wally Peppers, had opted to accompany our driver to the local garage to have repairs done immediately rather than off-load the luggage in a torrential downpour. It seems he made a good choice because, from what I could tell, the rain had practically stopped.
“I’ll escort you to your suites once your luggage has been delivered,” Enyon continued, “and then at promptly seven o’clock this evening we’ll serve the first of several exquisite meals in the dining room.”
A frisson of unease drifted through the lounge.
“This evening’s fare will include a starter of Cornish wild garlic yarg, wrapped in nettle and served bruschetta-style, and for our entrée, Lance’s famous stargazy pie. I hope you’ll appreciate our efforts to feed you sooner rather than later. I know you Yanks enjoy eating your meals ridiculously early.”
“We’re having pie as a main course?” trilled Margi, her eyes lighting up.
“I’ve got a question,” asked Dick Stolee. “Can we eat this pie the way we want? Or are there gonna be rules?”
“Oh, my goodness.” Enyon fanned his face as if to ward off the vapors. “You’re referring to Lance’s rather unnatural obsession with clotted cream and jam. No, no. No more rules. And I can assure you he won’t start another argy-bargy for the remainder of your stay. You might have noticed that he’s a bit shirty, but I’ve got that all sorted. So”—he folded his hands over his rounded tummy and beamed at us—“look at all you happy people.”
“Someone looks happy?” Bernice affected surprise as she glanced around the room. “Who?”
Enyon threw his head back with laughter. “My dear woman, your sense of comic timing is flawless. I should arrange to keep you here after your tour group leaves so you can provide entertainment for future guests.”
“All those in favor, say aye,” whooped Osmond.
The room exploded with enthusiastic ayes.
“Opposed?”
Silence.
Bernice corkscrewed her mouth into a menacing sneer. “Morons.”
Enyon pattered around the room, urging people to their feet. “So, while you’re waiting for your luggage to be carried in, why don’t you help yourselves to more scones? I’ve confined Lance to the kitchen to finish up dinner preparations, so it won’t matter how you eat the things because he won’t see you. It’ll be our little secret. Up-up!”
As he herded guests toward the dining room for a second helping, I slipped into the foyer to meet Wally at the front door. Enyon might be worried about the roof caving in, but Wally and I had a much bigger problem on our hands.
We’d arranged for Kathryn Crabbe and Heather Holloway to be roommates.
three
“Trust me.” I scurried behind Wally as he rolled Kathryn Crabbe’s spinner down the long hallway, my fist secured around my copy of the inn’s floor plan and our roommate assignments. “It’s not going to work out. She needs another roommate.”
Wally stopped outside the Sixteen String Jack suite and spun the suitcase against the wall. “So what’s our plan?”
“I’ll let Kathryn have the double room all to herself at no extra charge, and then I’ll move Heather in with Caroline Goodfriend, who was originally paired with our no-show, Marianne Malec. Heather and Caroline should be fine together, and Kathryn might be better off by herself.”
“You’re the boss.”
I consulted my paper. “So Heather’s and Caroline’s luggage should be delivered to the Galloping Dick suite down the hall.”
“Old Galloping Dick Ferguson.” Wally laughed. “I’ve gotta hand it to the owners, naming the suites after infamous highwaymen was sheer genius. Certainly adds an element of intrigue to the whole operation. And with the inn being so close to Bodmin Moor, you have to wonder if any of these legendary thieves ever walked these very halls in their jackboots and tricorne hats.”
“The inn website says this place was a working farm for a few centuries, so I doubt it had any appeal for the criminal element.”
“You didn’t dig deeply enough. The dwelling started out as an inn in the early 1700s, was converted to a farm in the latter part of that century, then became an inn again. I couldn’t pinpoint the year when the most recent conversion took place, but from what I can tell, they did a crackerjack job. Who’d ever guess that the Stand and Deliver Inn had once been a farm? I can hardly wait to check out the hot tub in the outbuilding. That’s a recent addition, too.”
When the last of the luggage had been delivered, Enyon handed out our room keys so we could unwind, unpack, and freshen up before the evening meal. I was booked into a single room on the cliff side of the inn. It was about the size of a cruise ship cabin but was decorated with far more charm. My bed sported a floral bedspread accented with ruffled throw pillows and a resident teddy bear that was nestled among them. An upholstered cornice with matching drapes dressed the window, although so much sea brine had accumulated on the outside panes, the glass looked as if it were glazed with an impenetrable layer of ice. No way I’d be enjoying my ocean view until someone called a window cleaner. An electric kettle with an auto shut-off feature, a china teacup, and a basket of teabags and biscuits perched atop the dresser. A pedestal sink and mirror occupied a little alcove, and a commode and enclosed shower filled a small compartment opposite the sliding doors of the closet.
I hefted my suitcase onto the luggage jack and put all my clothes away in ten minutes flat. We’d be here for five nights so, happily, I didn’t have to live out of my suitcase, where I tended to lose track of everything. After freshening up a bit and changing my clothes, I grabbed the electric kettle and turned on th
e faucet in the pedestal sink.
ERRRRRRRRGG! Water rattled from the spigot in erratic fits and starts, rushing out with a final splat that caused the entire sink to shake. I turned it back off, staring at the graceful high-arc faucet with some trepidation. What the—?
I turned the faucet on more slowly this time, allowing only a trickle to escape.
Errrrrrggg…spishspishspish…errrrrrggg.
My knowledge of plumbing begins and ends with the fact that sometimes air gets caught in the pipes, so to tease it out I turned the faucet on full blast.
BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM!
Water jack-hammered through the pipes with such violent force that it sounded as if cannonballs were exploding against the wall. An ear-splitting creeeeak, a jarring groan, and then…
Poof!
The water began to flow in a calm, steady stream unaccompanied by sound effects or drama.
I exhaled a sigh of relief as I filled the kettle, hoping that I didn’t have to contend with this annoyance every time I turned on the faucet. Had I drawn the short straw—the single room with the dodgy plumbing? Or…a troubling notion crowded my thoughts as I plugged the kettle into the wall socket. Were all the rooms experiencing the same problem?
A shriek rang out from somewhere down the hall.
Guess that answered my question.
I rushed into the hallway to find doors being thrown open and Iowans and bloggers alike crowding the narrow corridor to investigate what the commotion was about.
“It’s the roof,” Bernice yelled in a triumphant voice. “Told you it was gonna collapse.”
“Who screamed?” I called out, but they were too busy stampeding toward the far end of the hall to pay any attention to me.
Another shriek pierced the air.
“Bust the door down,” ordered Dick Teig as the troops pulled up outside Kathryn Crabbe’s suite, cell phones in hand.
Dick Stolee, George, and Osmond exchanged skeptical looks.
“What are you waiting for?” Dick urged in panic mode. “Knock the thing down. On the count of three. One…two…”