“It is a terrible thing to be deceived,” my father murmured into his orange juice.
“Well, the reason I brought Gerry up,” Mrs. Malloy explained, “is that when he died, his wife—the one that he married after him and me parted ways—she went and had him cremated. Said it was more hygienic. Silly cow! It’s not like most people leave the body in the front room, sat up in the easy chair, looking at the telly, now is it? What she wanted was to do things on the cheap. Just like I would have expected, she bought the urn at a going-out-of-business sale. So what was there for me to do but put our differences aside and go out and get one that looked like something? Solid brass, it was, and I hope that every time she looks at it up there on her mantelpiece, the bugger realizes that Roxie Malloy saved her from being labeled the world’s worst cheapskate.”
“And I don’t see anything wrong with Harriet’s urn.” I put Daddy’s breakfast in front of him.
“I’m sure I’d be proud to be in one just like it.” Ben flipped out the last two eggs; one for him and one for me.
“Why don’t you tell my father about the play,” I suggested to Mrs. Malloy. “It might help take his mind off things.” Truth be told, I was feeling just a little bit spooked. Hour by hour Harriet was becoming more of a presence in the house. Before much longer I would be laying a place for her at the table and smelling her perfume when I went into the bathroom. Oleander, I thought; that’s what it would smell like. Just like in the biergarten in Schonbrunn.
I opened a window to let in some fresh air, and the sharpness of the breeze, coupled with the fact that what I smelled was damp earth and chrysanthemums—flowers typical of autumn funerals—snapped me back to my senses. Harriet’s relatives would be back this afternoon. They would take the urn away. And Daddy, having fulfilled his promise, would be able to get on with his life. Perhaps one day he would even meet someone else. Someone kind and sensible. Named something like Agnes or Mary. Who would cook him wholesome meals and remind him to wear his nice woolly scarf in bad weather. Taking my place at the table, I again encouraged Mrs. Malloy, who might not have heard me the first time, to fill my father in on Murder Most Fowl.
“I hardly think that’s likely to help cheer him up.” Ben scraped back the chair alongside mine and sat down with his plate. “It’s far more liable to put him off chicken for life. And I would be sorry about that because I woke in the middle of the night with the most marvelous recipe, with pictures included, spread out in my mind. It was all there, right down to the quarter of a teaspoonful of white pepper. It even had a name. Chicken a la Marie Antoinette.”
“That sounds fabulous!” I was tucking into my bacon and eggs with renewed good cheer.
“And this morning I still feel inspired.”
“I can’t wait to read it when you get it down on paper.”
“I must have fallen asleep thinking about our not going to France.”
“Always the silver lining.”
“I think I’ll use Madeira cake crumbs instead of bread for the dressing.” Ben fetched the coffeepot and returned to fill all four cups. “I’ll season it with orange rind and freshly grated ginger. And while it’s roasting the chicken will be basted with Grand Marnier and sesame-seed oil.” Ben sat back down and pronged a piece of bacon. “Would you think me selfish, sweetheart, if after we’re through with breakfast I go and hole up in the study? I really do want to work on this recipe while it’s white hot in my mind.”
“Of course you must.” I was about to tell him that I would be going out shortly to the Old Abbey, but Mrs. Malloy’s voice caught my ear. She had finally picked up on my suggestion and was filling Daddy in on the play.
“As things stand, Mr. Simons, I don’t have a huge part. But it’s all what you make of it, is what I say. And I’ll get to play Malicia Stillwaters should Lady Grizwolde come a cropper between now and opening night. So we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed, won’t we? That nothing nasty happens to her,” she added piously. “Of course, I’m of a more mature age than her ladyship. Although there’s many that wouldn’t notice. Seeing I’m often taken for twenty years younger than me proper age. And as Mrs. Vicar says, me and her ladyship are both dark, stunningly good looking women, with an air of mystery about us that’ll set the audience back on its ears. She picked me for the understudy, Mrs. Vicar did, because of how well I do the cat meowing offstage. I put a lot into that meow. Would you like to hear me?”
Unfortunately, she demonstrated before my father could respond, and Tobias came prowling out of the pantry to register his disgust. Mrs. Malloy ignored the flinching going on all around her. “The cat knows, you see, that Malicia has poisoned Clarabelle, just like she did Major Wagewar, and is trying to put her in the trunk, where she’s got him hidden. But she’s having trouble —”
“I’m not surprised.” Ben poured more coffee. “From what you have told me about poor Clarabelle, she isn’t at all the sort of woman to cohabit with a man outside of marriage inside a trunk.”
“That’s not the problem, Mr. H.” Mrs. Malloy eyed him austerely. “And it isn’t that the trunk isn’t big enough for two. It’s the one Malicia used for packing her household stuff when she moved to Chatterton Dells. But something’s gone wrong with the lid, and every time she lifts it up, it comes banging down. So she has to put Clarabelle in the wardrobe. But as it turns out”--Mrs. M. was back to addressing my father— “the woman isn’t dead at all. She’d poured most of the poisoned milk into a saucer for the cat.”
“Poor cat,” I said.
“Anyway,” Mrs. Malloy informed Daddy, “Clarabelle comes back to life in the last scene.” She didn’t get to add that this was only a brief reprieve before Reginald Rakehell’s hapless wife shot herself because my father spoke up in his most mournful voice.
“I only wish such could be the case with my Harriet. Ah, to hold her in my arms once more! Alas, I hardly know how I will find the courage to part with her when the dreadful hour arrives. Will my hands falter when I am forced to hand over her sacred remains?” He picked up his serviette to mop up the tears flowing like the Nile down his full cheeks. “How, I ask you all, am I to get through the hours until three o’clock. That is when the relatives are to return?” He eyed Ben, who nodded.
“You could come with me to the Old Abbey,” I suggested. “Lady Grizwolde is a new client of mine. She rang up just now to ask if I could stop by this morning, and when I mentioned, Daddy, that you were here on a visit, she urged me to bring you along. We’ve been invited to stay for lunch. She and Sir Casper have a cook, so we might get served something quite delectable.”
I saw him moisten his lips and nibble on the idea. But then he wrapped his hands around the urn and shook his head.
“You’re a good daughter, Giselle! Always so quick to try and lighten your poor father’s load, but in my present state I can hardly be acceptable to these lofty-sounding people. Tis better by far that I remain here with Bentwick and while away the dreary hours talking to him.”
“That’s fine with me.” Ben responded cheerfully, as if chicken a la Marie Antoinette were the furthest thing from his mind. Without glancing at me, he settled back in his chair and folded his arms for the long haul. I was thinking that Mr. Ambleforth’s revered St. Ethelwort had nothing on my husband when Mrs. Malloy came to the rescue as well as to her feet.
“No need for you to take time away from your cookery book, Mr. H. Your father-in-law can sit with me while I do the dusting. Being the sympathetic soul I am, it will thrill me no end to hear more about his troubles.”
“That’s awfully good of you, Mrs. Malloy,” I said. “But now that I think about it, I can’t be sure how long I’ll be gone, and I wouldn’t like to rush the visit and give Lady Grizwolde the feeling that I’m not fully committed to the job.”
“You mean we might not get back until well into the afternoon?” Daddy looked slightly more animated than I had yet seen him. “It would certainly be unfortunate if Harriet’s relatives were to arrive ea
rly and not be able to wait for our return. But surely they would understand that I needed to get away for a brief change of scene. They can always come another day.”
“But, Daddy, you wouldn’t want them to show up for the second time to find you gone.” Seeing that he would, I sighed. “Let’s plan it this way. If we’re still at the Old Abbey when they arrive, Ben can telephone. Lady Grizwolde is bound to be understanding under those circumstances, and it won’t take us ten minutes to get back.”
“Off you go, then, and enjoy yourselves.” It was clear from the way Mrs. Malloy rattled together the breakfast dishes and banged the cutlery on top that her nose had been put seriously out of joint. Daddy, bestirring himself to notice, thanked her for her kindly overture, but I knew what he was thinking. She had a fatal flaw as a listener. She enjoyed the sound of her own voice. For every three words he might get out on the subject of Harriet, she would have six to spill about the play. But, she was far too magnanimous by nature to allow resentment free rein. “So,” she asked him, “do I take the urn around with me while I’m doing me hoovering?”
Understandably, my father blanched, but he recovered most of his voice to say he would take Harriet with him, adding that he was sure that Lady Grizwolde would have no objection to one more at, or perhaps it should be said on, the luncheon table.
“Maybe not,” I said as Ben busied himself at the sink. “But, Daddy, wouldn’t it be best to leave the urn here?”
“Giselle, I’m surprised at you. Harriet so enjoyed an outing.”
“I know, but—”
“And when I think of how happy she was at the prospect of surprising me with that car, it breaks my heart all over again.” Daddy murmured something about putting on his ascot and navy blue blazer and disappeared into the hall.
“Oh, I do love to see a grown man cry,” Mrs. Malloy positively simpered. “It gives you hope, doesn’t it, that they’re not all beasts only interested in getting their Sunday dinner on time? So’s they can be off to the pub with their mates. Sensitive and sexy all in one package. You don’t get to see that every day of the week.”
“My father? Sexy?” I gaped at her.
“Why not?” Ben inquired without turning around from the sink. “I plan to go on being wildly desirable after I turn sixty.”
“I can see why Harriet fell for him like a ton of bricks,” Mrs. Malloy murmured dreamily, “and I could just sob me eyes out to think the two of them didn’t get to live happily ever after. Or,” she said, trudging into the alcove, where we kept the buckets and mops, “I could get a grip and think about putting the moves on him meself.”
Half an hour later, her languishing sigh replayed itself in my head as I drove through our wrought-iron gates with my father beside me and the urn in the canvas bag on his knee. It wasn’t that I thought it impossible for a man of over sixty to still be attractive to the opposite sex. And I didn’t doubt that a woman could develop a fondness for Daddy over time. But to think of him as a man who would make female hearts beat like drums and their legs turn to jelly was an adjustment!
The sky was overcast, and as the cliff road narrowed, I had to concentrate on its twists and turns. There were rocks and shrubs on one side and the drop-off to the sea on the other, with only the occasional strip of iron railing to mark the most dangerous places. Even so, the thoughts kept coming. Had I really heard anything about Harriet that justified my disliking her? Was it only the jealousy on my mother’s behalf that had sparked my suspicions that there had been something fishy about her relationship with my father?
Daddy hadn’t said a word as we drove along. But suddenly he gave a strangled gasp and cradled the canvas bag to his chest in the manner of a mother protecting her newborn infant from a pack of advancing hyenas. We had just passed the rather spooky old inn, now a B and B operated by Mrs. Potter’s sister, and were within yards of the Old Abbey’s gates when we saw a bicycle wobbling along just ahead of us, smack in the middle of the road. I saw a flash of rounded back and a flutter of white hair before I spun the steering wheel to the left, grazed the brick wall, and felt the car slide around in slow motion to face the cliff’s edge, as if hoping for one final glimpse of the sea.
Chapter 11
The moment I had the car safely back on the appropriate side of the road, Daddy changed his tune about wanting to live and began talking about how there would have been something sublimely apt about meeting his end in the very same manner as had his beloved Harriet. Luckily, my hands were laminated to the steering wheel or I might have been tempted to strangle my own father. Every part of me was shaking, including my teeth.
“Look, Daddy,” I croaked as my foot hit one of the pedals, killing the engine. “I’m really not in the mood for this. Heaven may be a very nice place to visit, but I really don’t want to live there right now. I wouldn’t get to see Ben or the children. So if you don’t mind, I would like to savor this reprieve instead of wallowing in regret that I’m not in a watery grave.”
“Forgive me, Giselle.” He studied my face somberly. “Your continued existence means a great deal to me. Such being the case, I must endeavor to temper my grief with more awareness of your feelings. I shall strive to be cheerful.” He spoke with resolution and nobility. “Harriet would have wished it.”
“I hope our near miss hasn’t shaken her up too badly?” My voice verged on the hysterical as I looked at the canvas bag he was still clutching as if it were a baby yet to be weaned. “But is it too much to ask that just this once you think of the living?”
Before he could reply, a face appeared at the open car window. The face of a man holding on to a bicycle that was almost as elderly as he.
“Having car trouble?” he inquired kindly. “Not that I can be of much help, I’m afraid. No mechanical knowledge whatsoever. But I couldn’t pass by on the other side of the road without at least offering you a blessing.”
“That’s awfully nice of you, Mr. Ambleforth.” I produced a smile and refrained from mentioning I had narrowly missed running him over and killing my father and myself in the process. To have disturbed the tranquility of his expression would have seemed truly wicked. “I do hope,” I continued, “that you and your wife have recovered from your late night.”
“Which night was that, my dear?”
“Last night,” I said, wishing I hadn’t brought up the subject. I was about to introduce Daddy to him when the vicar nodded his venerable white head.
“Ah, yes. So kind of you to have invited us to your home for an evening of chamber music. We appreciate these overtures to welcome us into the lives of our parishioners. My wife,” he said, recalling himself with commendable effort to modern times, “is very partial to the cello. Or am I thinking of compost? Kathleen has always been an extraordinarily keen gardener. She’s won a great number of prizes at flower shows for her daffodils. No, I do believe—am indeed quite sure—it was for her marigolds. It is a great blessing to have a green thumb. One remembers, of course, what Jesus had to say about the lilies of the field. Or was it the ... ?”
I seized the pause to say that my husband and I would love to have him and his wife over for dinner one evening soon while my father was staying with us. And Daddy, assuming his most lugubrious expression, leaned around me to extend his hand out the window.
“Morley Simons, not of this parish.”
“A sheep from another fold,” Mr. Ambleforth murmured.
“I have, in fact, never been much of churchgoer, Vicar.” Daddy addressed the clerical collar. “But one reaches a time in life when the attractions of the hereafter are undeniable. It occurs to me that perhaps I have been remiss in not warming a pew on the occasional Sunday morning.”
“He who is last shall be first, my son.”
I had always thought that concept just a little bit unfair, and now, being already peevish, I wished the two men would go off to the nearest pub for a beer and a word of prayer. That way I could go on alone through the gates of the Old Abbey.
“Perhaps
I could call in and see you during office hours, Vicar,” Daddy suggested. “My spirit is much in need of the soothing balm that you men of the cloth are paid to administer. My dear daughter Giselle may have told you of my recent agonizing loss ...”
Hearing the sound of approaching traffic, I suggested, somewhat belatedly, that Mr. Ambleforth step onto the verge. He did so without appearing to be in fear and trembling for himself or the bicycle. After a couple of cars had gone whizzing past us, he wisely announced that he would proceed to the Old Abbey, where he intended to repose among the monastery ruins and commune with the spirit of St. Ethelwort.
“We’re going there ourselves,” I told him. “Up to the house, I mean. I have an appointment with Lady Grizwolde.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Ambleforth, “a most charming young woman. Such a very great pity that she and Sir Casper have not been blessed with offspring. One cannot but suppose that the legend holds true.” And on this tantalizing tidbit he pedaled off and soon passed through the gates in the brick wall.
“What a decidedly odd sort of chap,” my father remarked, clasping the urn in its canvas bag more tightly as I turned the key in the ignition and we followed at a cautious pace in the vicar’s wake.
Within moments we were on a tree-lined drive, the house rising up before us. Built in the reign of George II, it appeared at first glance to be the sort of house that a child would draw. Its beauty was all about purity of line and exquisite proportion. The brick had weathered to a buttery yellow, and the roof was the color of a pair of moleskin gloves, changing to lavender in places where brushed with shadow. I was breathing a sigh of relief that the Victorians had not done terrible things to it with factory-sized additions when I almost ran over Mr. Ambleforth’s bike, which had been abandoned smack in my path. Hitting the brake and killing the engine for the second time that morning, I glanced to my right and saw the ruins of St. Ethelwort’s monastery.
The Trouble with Harriet Page 10