The Widows Club

by Dorothy Cannell

  “I hear the transvestite who threw himself upon your bridal altar has, in essence, moved in with you.”

  Would Roxie never get here with that key! “My cousin Frederick is an estimable young man with an exuberant sense of humour, which I adore. He is of invaluable assistance to my husband.”

  “Relieving you of certain duties, no doubt.” Mr. Digby swigged his second Madeira and poured another. “Does rumour lie or is your husband about to foist a new restaurant upon this community? One which specialises in unpronounceable food at unaffordable prices.” He watched me nastily over the rim of his glass.

  He circled the buffet, twirling the glass slowly between the fingers of both hands. “Your husband, in addition to his other peccadilloes, appears to be a man of industry. I hear he has recently authored a cookery book, laced with herbal nostalgia. One would have thought the world already harbors sufficient recipes for tomato soup, but I surmise that you, in your blind, wifely devotion, believe Mr. Haskell is now in my league?”

  “Not at all.” Flexing my lips into a smile, I stood. “Ben makes no claim to be a literary genius, and he is certainly not in competition with you. His professional reputation depends on nobody dying.”

  Again the eyebrows twitched. “You did assure me, Mrs. Haskell, when I admitted you over my threshold, that unlike your Mrs. Malloy, you are not a besotted fan.”

  What a childish manoeuvring for praise! Unwrapping the turban, I rumpled my soggy hair down about my shoulders, sat down, and plumped my cushion. A dazzle of sunlight broke through the curtained windows. The decanters on the buffet glowed red, gold, and bronze. “I know you don’t care one way or the other, Mr. Digby, but I have read two of your books.”

  He thumbed the wineglass. “Which ones?”

  “At the risk of offending you, Mr. Digby, I have to say that I found both extremely…”

  The glass came to a standstill.

  “… extremely enjoyable.”

  “Trite of you, Mrs. Haskell.”

  “Thank you. That last scene in The Butler Didn’t Do It almost did me in. I came out in goosebumps the size of gnat bites. Do you know that right up until Hubert Humbledee swung down from that chandelier, I was certain the bishop’s niece was the one embalming the bodies in the attic?”

  Mr. Digby set his glass down on the nest of tables beside his chair and closed his eyes. “The Butler was one of my better efforts, not up to the standard of”-he paused-“some of the others, but I was fairly well pleased.”

  I felt a pang of pity for him, goodness knows why. “My husband and I are staging a premiere performance on Friday in honour of the opening of Abigail’s. Would you come?”

  Mr. Digby opened his eyes. “I have told you, madam, I go nowhere except The Dark Horse.” He intercepted my glance at the decanter. “You wonder, Mrs. Haskell, why, being such an assiduous hermit, I do not drink here in privacy of an evening. The answer is regrettably prosaic. I am a man haunted by demons. And at night this house spills forth an ambience of gas-light horror.”

  I could believe it. There was a desolation to this room, buried under the red plush, which could not entirely be blamed on my damp clothes.

  “Perhaps if you were to redecorate?” I suggested brightly. “Danish modern tends to have a dispiriting effect on ghosts.”

  His smile was bleak. “Mine are made of sterner stuff.”

  I persisted. “The ghosts who prowl the night, are they of any great local interest?”

  Mr. Digby brushed a slightly tremulous hand down his yellow waistcoat front and headed back to the decanter. “Of possible interest to you, Mrs. Haskell.”

  I had the feeling the subject had been subtly changed. He handed me a glass. “Rumour, borne upon the fumes of slopped bitters at The Dark Horse, Mrs. Haskell, credits the gentleman who built your house with misconducting himself, while in his late seventies, with the two elderly spinsters who inhabited this very house in the latter part of the nineteenth century.”

  “Good heavens!” I slopped my Madeira. “That would be my forebear, Wilfred Grantham. His building a house like Merlin’s Court does rather suggest that he dwelt within the enchanted forest of the mind.” I held my glass steady with both hands. “Did you say he was having a fling with both these women?”

  The beard creased into a mocking smile. “Spare your blushes, Mrs. Haskell. Unless legend lies, your antecedent did not indulge in orgies. On Monday nights Miss Lavinia was favoured. On Thursdays Miss Lucretia got her turn. And neither sister ever knew about the other.”

  “Remarkable.” I rolled up my trouser legs, walked over to the buffet, and refilled my glass. “How-even under the cloak of night-did great-grandfather Grantham enter this house and the allotted bedroom undetected?”

  “Ah, Mrs. Haskell”-my host reached behind him and tapped upon the panelled wall, his face reflective-“that is a mystery.”

  “Did the sisters ever find him out?”

  I thought that he would never answer, but finally he spoke. “You will be pleased to learn, Mrs. Haskell, that I have talked myself out of any growing enthusiasm for you.”

  I pushed back some typing paper hanging over the edge of the overloaded desk. “Does this mean you won’t be coming to the party on Friday?”

  To my surprise he countered with a question. “Who attends this free-food binge? The ex-chorus girl and the silver-haired, silver-tongued lawyer. The arctic antique dealer and the wife who dreams of being a nightclub singer. And what of the estate agent who refuses to die and his froggy-faced wife? And, yes, the Reverend Mr. Foxglove!”

  “Foxworth.”

  The liverish lips curled. “I understand, Mrs. Haskell, that a sigh of disappointment swept the county when it was learned you were to wed another.” I could feel him savouring my intake of breath. “But I imagine the church organist didn’t make herself ill crying.”

  “Miss Thorn is a very nice woman.”

  “Ah! Nice: the ultimate disparagement from one female to another.” Mr. Digby fingered the red velvet curtain. “Speaking of spinsters, will Lady Theodora Peerless adorn your little gathering?”

  “I hope so.”

  “It seems you will be extremely crowded.” He let the curtain fall. “Hence, I am not interested.”

  I looked through the window. The snow edging the glass was like ermine against the red velvet. Five bird feeders dotted the swath of white lawn. “The Aviary is the right name for this house.”

  “Originally it was called Rocky Meade. Sort of name Lavinia or Lucretia would pick.”

  “Have you lived here long?”

  Mr. Digby was back at the buffet. “Five years.”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “A foolish nostalgia. As a boy I was fond of the place; my family spent several summers here.”

  He was driving me into nosiness. “Do you have any family now, Mr. Digby?”

  “A daughter… Wren, aged twenty-seven.” Was the tremor of his hands more pronounced? “And to alleviate the necessity of your having to ask where she is, I will tell you-off living with some man who has nothing to recommend him. The old story of the new generation.”

  I restrained myself from scanning the room for photographs. To ask what had become of Mrs. Digby struck even me as unconscionably rude.

  A sound somewhere outside the room made me forget all else save the hope that Roxie was at the front door. Mr. Digby half-turned.

  “That must have been my… my gardener, Mrs. Haskell, come in to make himself a cup of tea. He’s nothing to rave about, but whatever my other sins, I am not a putterer.” He was puttering now, toward the door. “I understand your own gardener has deserted, Mrs. Haskell.”

  “Only temporarily. Ben and I have raked the leaves around a bit, but we are going to need someone to bridge the gap. Is this man who works for you fully booked?”

  “I doubt it. Whatsit is new in the area and you well know, Mrs. Haskell, how long the natives take to accept anyone whose antecedents don’t date back at least to
the days of smugglers in the bay. As for his capabilities, I can attest that he is reliable. He turns up even on days such as this when all he can do is pick up his wages. Your Mrs. Malloy could learn a thing or two from him, but since you continue to be here, perhaps you would like to meet Mother?”

  “I would be delighted.”

  As the door closed on him, a weighty hush settled on the room. Then I heard voices. Distance made Mr. Digby sound unduly caustic, and the gardener effeminate. My eyes nipped from the desk to the door and back again. A piece of thin yellow paper protruded from the typewriter. Straightening the towel around my shoulders, I rehitched my trousers and tiptoed forward. Just one quick peek to see what Mary Birdsong had in store for her patient readers. Technically it wouldn’t be snooping if I kept my hands behind my back. Chin up, my dear. You did nothing wrong in borrowing your best friend’s earrings. Losing the pawn ticket was the only naughty part.

  Leaning forward to find the preceding page among the flotsam, the towel slid off my neck, sending an avalanche of paper swishing out in all directions. My aerobic conditioning came in handy. I was two feet in the air, hands grabbing, when Mr. Digby reentered. And strange as it may seem, even in that moment of awkwardness I noticed he did not look as well as when he had left me. The beard could not hide his purple-veined pallor.

  “Yes, Mother”-he bent his head-“I know you are not overly excited at the prospect, but she…” He espied the spill of manuscript on the floor; I dropped to my knees, scooping as I crawled.

  “Sorry, you startled me when you came in and… I collided with the desk. Nice goosey!” Stuffing paper back on the desk, I struggled to rise and back up all in one un fluid movement.

  While Mr. Digby appeared to accept my frail excuse, clever Mother kept her beady eyes upon me.

  Mr. Digby’s face cracked into a smile. “Mrs. Haskell, I do believe Mother has taken to you. Perceive-she is heading toward you.”

  “Mmm!” Mother, the Persil-white goose, had indeed fanned out her wings and was ominously waddling toward me, guttural squawks rising above the whir of feathers.

  I dodged behind the curtain. Hopefully the colour red did not have the effect on geese that it did on bulls. Craving contact with something nonthreatening, I reached out toward a nearby shelf and heard a dull thud as something-a book-toppled to the ground. Mother swung her beak in an arc, snapped at the air and responded reluctantly to Mr. Digby’s command. “Heel!”

  “Mrs. Malloy did understand that you needed your key today?” Mr. Digby was back at the decanters. Mother gazed hopefully at him. What did she crave-a drink or the pleasure of booting me out of the house?

  “How did you and Mother team up?” I asked; the silence would have buried all of us.

  “She was a Christmas present. Came decorated with a red bow, cooking instructions attached. Needless to say, she is emotionally scarred for life. Hates Christmas and has absolutely no sense of humour.”

  Probably fiction, but my heart was touched. “Poor person!” I looked down at Mother, and surprisingly, she toddled toward me like an open-armed child. She skipped over the book I’d dropped and I picked it up. Stroking her with one hand, I noticed the title, The Merry Widows by Mary Birdsong. Intriguing, but I had to put it down because Mother was pestering for attention.

  “Her feathers are-like clouds.” I chucked Mother under the chin the way I did Tobias, and it seemed to me that the sound vibrating up from her throat was very like a purr. Of course, I know almost nothing about birds, which reminded me that Mr. Digby did. “As an ornithological enthusiast, can you tell me the significance of a line of blackbirds? Since coming to Chitterton Fells I have seen several women wearing brooches with-”

  Something slammed; it was the decanter. My host’s voice came out in angry jerks. “Blackbirds in a line are blackbirds in a line. The women you mention are indubitably members of some egg-stealing club. Soulless individuals who go clumping up the cliff faces, brandishing binoculars. Let them but trespass on my turf and I will throw rocks at them!”

  He was enraged. Wishing I had not set him off, I apologised. “Sorry about knocking stuff off your desk.”

  “It makes no difference. None of it has either end or beginning.” He didn’t pretend to look at me. Silence smothered the room. I buzzed around in my mind for something to say and came up with:

  “That’s what happens when you do your own typing. You should have a secretary.”

  “I did indulge in that luxury once. The result was disaster.” His words were chilly. “Speaking of hired help, I saw Whatsit when I fetched Mother. Have a word with him as you leave. If you ever leave.”

  That last word was severed by the chiming of the doorbell. The air positively hummed with joy. My host sucked in his lips, flung open the library door and with Mother gusting ahead we went out into the chilly hall.

  “One moment, if you please, Mrs. Haskell. I must put Mother in the cupboard under the stairs. She can be most unwelcoming, and we would not wish your Mrs. Malloy to leave without you.”

  Mrs. Malloy crossed the threshold of The Aviary on waves of arctic cold and Attar of Roses. At a glance I saw why I had been kept waiting. Enormous pains had been taken to do justice to this impromptu meeting with Chitterton Fells’s most famous. Roxie wore a three-quarter-length black astrakhan coat, below which extended several yards of emerald taffeta skirt. Her hair was capped by a velvet bandeau, sprouting veiling down to her painted-on eyebrows. Even her makeup was unusually lavish; a couple of charcoal beauty spots had been added.

  “This, sir, is an honour I never expected were I to live to be a thousand.” Roxie clutched a sequined handbag in her work-roughened hands. Affection for her welled up in me. I ignored Mr. Digby’s hand at the ready on the doorknob.

  “This is very kind, Roxie, considering my stupidity in getting myself locked out.”

  “I’m never one to cast stones, Mrs. H.” Roxie’s face was tilted rapturously sideways. “And I’ve made up me mind only to charge you the usual hourly rate, unless you absolutely insist on time-and-a-half, along with the bus fare, of course.” The rainbow lids fluttered. “The privilege of being here in this house, breathing in that… smell.” She gazed worshipfully toward Mr. Digby.

  “I would have you know, madam”-he had his eyes closed-“that when Mother heeds that particular call to nature, she does so in the rookery.”

  Roxie wrung the sequined bag between her hands.

  “I meant the smell of genius. I wonder, sir, would you do me the immense honour of signing me autograph album? I can’t count the times I have wanted to speak when I saw you coming out of the Gentlemen’s at the-” She stopped and gave a fluting laugh. “Oh, I am sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned-”

  Mr. Digby dismissed her splutterings with a wave of his hand. “I will sign your book upon the condition you swear on the name of Booth’s Dry Gin that you will not presume upon my good nature the next time you perceive me at The Dark Horse.”

  Roxie hovered like a star-struck teenager as Mr. Digby plunged a pen across her album page.

  “I’ve read every word you’ve ever written, Mr. D.! My favourites are the ones you did early on and can’t buy for love nor money anymore, but, believe you me, you don’t owe no apologies for none of them.”

  He shoved the album at her. “My good woman, do not verbally cavort as though my tired little penny dreadfuls are works of great literature.” He screwed the cap on his pen and stomped up the stairs.

  “Let’s take the hint,” I urged, “and scoot.”

  Roxie ignored me. She blotted the signature with her hanky (that way she had two souvenirs), then called after Mr. Digby’s vanishing figure. “Great literature, Mr. D., is those books that regular people like me and Mrs. H. can enjoy without needing a dictionary every second word. That includes your stuff”-she gave the album a pat and dropped it into her bag-“and even cookery books.”

  Mr. Digby’s voice came floating down. “Do not think of me and Mr. Haskell in the same breath.
His objective is to take the mystery out of the sauce; mine is to put sauce in the mystery.”

  “A very strange man,” I said as Roxie and I plodded down the sloping walkway toward Cliff Road. Snow stung our faces. My companion didn’t answer. Mrs. Roxie Malloy was a woman touched by greatness. Henceforth she would sit at her beer-spattered table at The Dark Horse, holding the other regulars spellbound with the story of how Mr. Digby had spoken to her with magnificent contempt and signed her autograph book. Needing to move my lips to keep warm, I tried again. “A man carved out of tragedy.”

  “Did he speak to you of it, Mrs. H.? All about how his wife took the notion he was carrying on with someone else…”

  Roxie paused, either for effect or because the wind had blasted her breath back into her lungs. What woman would want to make love to Mr. Digby, I thought, unless compelled by a sense of wifely duty? I recalled those purplish fingers with distaste. “Was this other woman his secretary?”

  “Couldn’t say, Mrs. H. All I know is the wife stuck her head in the gas oven.”

  Was that when he stopped writing books? Was he punishing himself? I should have felt sorry for Mrs. Digby. Loyalty to fellow wives. I told myself that should Ben ever betray me, I wouldn’t stick my head in the oven. I’d put him in the oven and insert a thermometer. “Well, at least he gets some company at The Dark Horse,” I said. “A chance to despise other people’s chatter and listen to a singsong.”

  Roxie looked at me as if to say, What do you know? “He hates singing! Leaves the minute Mrs. Hanover starts sashaying her skirts and belting out ‘Charmaine.’ ”

  “Come into the house for a hot drink,” I urged Roxie. But she refused, and when we reached the gates of Merlin’s Court, she handed me the key. “Then I’ll walk with you to the bus stop.”

  “I’d much rather you didn’t.” She slid the handle of her bag up her arm. “I want to be alone with me thoughts.”

  I should have insisted. Instead I hovered near the gates, arms wrapped around Mr. Digby’s three-piece suit, until the last splotch of astrakhan coat disappeared around the curve. A gull screeched overhead. Steady-if I fell down I might go into a skid. Another screech found me clutching at the gate post. But did the sound come from the gull overhead? Gripping the post with my feet, I peered back in the direction of The Aviary. The man was trotting, sending up billows of snow. Mr. Digby! He must be desperate not to see me again if he’d come after me with my dressing gown. Cupping my hands around my mouth, I yelled an apology. It blew away in a frozen whisper. No matter… a pulse beat in my neck and I lifted a finger in slow motion to make it stop. The man wasn’t Mr. Digby. Oh, that it might have been! Whatever his physical failings, Mr. D. didn’t have greasy black hair and rotten spiky teeth.