The Trouble with Harriet

by Dorothy Cannell

  I wanted to say: Aren’t we inquisitive? But Freddy, still lying flat on the sofa with his eyes closed, got his jaw working first.

  “Uncle Morley hasn’t performed his promised task yet. The relatives will be here any minute. But there’s been a hitch. Someone’s made off with the urn.”

  “It wasn’t me,” protested Aunt Lulu as my mouth dropped.

  “Mrs. Ambleforth told you?” I looked at Freddy.

  “As I was trying to escape the church hall before her pie-faced niece could ask me if kissing her in the third act had meant as much to her as it had to me. And should her uncle Dunstie post the banns next Sunday.”

  Mr. Price had been looking up at the ceiling during most of this pathetic confession, but the moment Freddy flopped back on the sofa, he fixed spectacled eyes on me.

  “Your father must be beside himself. Does he know who stole the urn? Has he set about getting it back?”

  “It wasn’t stolen.” My reply was curt. “It was all an unfortunate mistake. I’m sure the person who inadvertently went off with it will return it very soon, safe and sound in its canvas bag. Either this afternoon or later in the evening.”

  “And who is this person?”

  “I’d rather not say, Mr. Price,” Perhaps some of the ill-concealed irritation in my voice got through to him, because his faced flushed. And I couldn’t see any reason for him to be annoyed. Not unless he was terribly thin-skinned.

  “Do you know, I really believe I should be going.” He swallowed what was left of his gin and tonic and set the glass down.

  “Must you really rush off?” Aunt Lulu pouted—something my mother once said a woman of a certain age should avoid doing at all costs. “I was hoping you could stay for tea, Mr. Price. Ellie’s husband is a chef, and Freddy works with him, so I’m sure they could rustle up something quite wonderful between the two of them.” Her demure gaze hinted at the possibility that she herself could rustle up something even more tempting. But perhaps with thoughts of his invalid wife prevalent in his mind, Mr. Price was bidding us a firm good-bye when Ben walked into the sitting room.

  My one and only husband was wearing his navy blue sweater and looked both handsome and admirably domestic carrying a tray loaded with cups and saucers, a milk jug, sugar bowl, and teapot. Strangely, something about Mr. Price’s bearing immediately changed. He stood straighter; even his features seemed to alter, his expression becoming at once austere and deferential.

  “Allow me to take that, sir!” Gliding forward, he removed the tray from Ben’s hands and bore it away to a side table, where he deposited it as if it were the coronation crown being lowered onto the royal head. Whereupon he adjusted a couple of cup handles, lifted the teapot lid to inspect the brew, and with an inclination of his head, said: “If that will be all, sir, I will leave you and your family to your afternoon tea.”

  “Thank you.” Ben’s black brows went up, and by the time they had come down again and I had stopped blinking, Mr. Price had padded across the room and out the door.

  “We’ll have to see him off,” I exclaimed, and latching on to my husband’s sweater sleeve, headed out into the hall. But it was too late for adieus. We were barely in time to see the front door close. Then we proceeded to waste time eyeing each other like two people who had just been redeposited on earth by a Martian man in a spaceship. A moment later, we heard a car being driven off in a flurry of gravel.

  “Just who was that man?” Ben leaned against the trestle table and folded his arms.

  “The one who brought Aunt Lulu up from the station.”

  “I know that, but what else did you find out about him?”

  “He’s a toothbrush salesman.”

  “Is that what he told you?”

  “Why would he lie about it?”

  “I don’t know.” Ben plucked a chrysanthemum from the bronze vase and began depleting it of leaves, just as I had with a similar bloom when we had been in the hall the previous afternoon. “But that business of his taking the tea tray ... Surely you thought the same thing I did, Ellie.”

  “What?”

  “The man has to be a butler.”

  “Now you mention it, he did have the manner. But he could have recently changed jobs.”

  “Where’s Daddy?” I asked.

  “Upstairs in his room. He’s very upset about the missing urn. It could be making him paranoid. He said he recognized that man.”

  “Mr. Price?”

  “Morley thinks he was one of the men on the escalator at the underground.”

  “The one who pushed him?”

  “No, the one who picked up his suitcase.”

  “I wonder if Daddy is cracking.” I stood hugging my arms. “He also thought he recognized Mr. Jarrow, Sir Casper’s secretary. But what if he’s right. Aunt Lulu blabbed that Mr. Price couldn’t find his car parked outside the station. It was a rented one, or so he said, and he had to hunt around for one with an open door; some story about remembering he had left it unlocked. And then, because he didn’t have the right key, he had to start the ignition with a little screwdriver.”

  “You listened to that with a straight face?”

  “No.” I walked up and down the Turkish rug. “But it could have been true, I suppose. Getting to know our new vicar has caused me to take wackiness somewhat more in stride. “But I might have smelled a rat if”—being a wife I had to point the finger of blame at the ever readily available source— “you hadn’t done such a good job last night of convincing me that I was letting my imagination run riot.”

  “That was when you were harping on about the Gypsies.”

  “I still say they have to fit into what’s going on somewhere. But let’s not squabble, darling.” I sat down on the bottom stair. “If we take the appearance of Mr. Price on the scene as too big a coincidence to be ignored, we have to figure out just what Daddy has got himself mixed up in.”

  “And what was Harriet’s role before she got herself killed?” Ben was now the one pacing the carpet.

  I sat looking wishfully up at him. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful, Ben, if the whole thing was my stupid imagination? That way we could hand Harriet over to her kith and kin with clear consciences, and Daddy could get on with his life without additional turmoil. But somehow I didn’t think things are about to get that simple.” It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that Mr. Jarrow was supposed to have been in Colchester in recent weeks and that the atmosphere at the Old Abbey had been decidedly murky. But, there went the doorbell! It would be Harriet’s relatives, and I dreaded to think what we would tell them!

  Chapter 15

  “I’ll let you answer it. A good wife doesn’t hog all the unpleasant tasks,” I was telling Ben when Freddy came out of the drawing room.

  “You’re angry with me, aren’t you?” Freddy looked at me with mournful eyes. “For running off at the mouth to that bloke Price.”

  “I wasn’t thrilled,” I told him.

  “This whole business of Mumsie and how to get her back on the straight and narrow has me hopelessly rattled, Coz.”

  “Sorry, now isn’t the time for me to cradle you in my arms. I have to save my strength to calm down Harriet’s people when they go into hysterics.”

  “That’s them?” He watched Ben head for the front door.

  “I’ve got that sinking feeling.” I grabbed hold of his arm and fast-trotted us across the hall.

  “At least the children are gone, so Mumsie can’t stuff them in her handbag.”

  “Very true,” I agreed as I dragged him back into the sitting room, only to have him wiggle free, duck back around the door, to then reappear seconds later with Aunt Lulu’s bag, an innocuous-looking brown one. Not big enough to hold more than a lipstick and a packet of gum, or so I would have thought.

  “That’s why I came out,” Freddy whispered to me. “Mumsie would have gone and fetched it herself, but I didn’t want her interrupting you and Ben while you were having a heart-to-heart.” His spirits had recover
ed sufficiently for him to produce a virtuous look with impish overtones. Sad to say, I really wasn’t all that interested in his state of mind.

  My ears were pricked for the sound of voices out in the hall. I could hear Ben without being able to make out the words and caught fragmented murmurs from a woman—or women—and then a man speaking. Other than that, all I could be sure of was that Kathleen Ambleforth was not among our visitors. She wasn’t the sort to take a backseat in any conversation. And hers was a voice that carried. Even standing as I now did between the two sofas, I would have been able to make out every word of what she was saying. Not so her husband. His voice was soft, in the manner of one who doesn’t like to disturb his train of thought by his own noisy interruptions. And it tended to fade even lower when he retreated to the eleventh century. Could it be he out there, accompanied by his niece Ruth, come to return our car and apologize for the inconvenience?

  I was torn between hoping this might be the case, for I was eager to take a look inside the urn before meeting Harriet’s relatives. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked like a bomb about to go off. I flinched when Aunt Lulu piped up within inches of me.

  “Freddy, why are you holding my bag?”

  “Because I said I would fetch it for you, Mumsie.” My cousin sounded like an increasingly recalcitrant child.

  “Do give it to me.” His mother could also have passed for six. “If anyone should walk in and see you holding it, they’d very likely take you for a cross-dresser, and that would be something else for your father to blame on me. Ellie, make him give it to me right now.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” I moved to take the bag from Freddy, but he scooted away from me with a swish of his ponytail and a twitch of the skull and crossbones earring. Meanwhile, the voices out in the hall were coming closer. The ticking clock sounded ready to explode.

  “Just what are you hiding in here?” Freddy jiggled the brown leather strap as he bore down on his little Shirley Temple mother, who retreated behind one of the Queen Anne chairs.

  “Nothing!” Her pout was as adorable as it was irritating.

  “I don’t believe you.” Freddy tossed the bag down on the chair. “Do you really think I don’t know when you’ve been up to something? That little stay at Oaklands didn’t teach you a thing, did it, Mumsie?”

  “There you’re wrong, dear.” Aunt Lulu smiled in a dreamy-eyed way as she stood touching the tightly fitted cuffs of her wide-sleeved pink sweater. “It was a marvelous educational experience, so emotionally stimulating and mind expanding. Honestly, I can’t thank your father enough for making me go.” She was curtailed from further enthusiasm when Ben entered the room, with Harriet’s relatives clustering along behind him.

  “There you are, sweetheart.” He beamed a smile my way as if suddenly spotting me paddling upriver in a canoe. “The Hoppers are back and eager to meet your father.” He stepped sideways, and the man and two women emerged into full view.

  “We’re so sorry you’ve had to make a second trip.” I moved forward and extended my hand.

  Ben completed the introductions, growing in handsome, debonair charm with every syllable—in such contrast to the Hoppers, whose responses were produced in wooden tones. Fittingly so, because they still reminded me strongly of dolls—those brightly painted Russian dolls, without arms and legs, that come in descending sizes and fit one inside the other. Cyril, the man, and the two women, Edith and Doris, weren’t missing any limbs, but they stood so stiffly that they each appeared to have been manufactured in one piece. All three had very flat black hair, cut in the same rounded shape, and identical blank-eyed stares.

  “Do please sit down.” I waved a hand that felt as though it belonged to someone else while avoiding Freddy’s wicked grin.

  “Oh, yes, do make yourselves comfortable.” Aunt Lulu disported herself little-girl fashion on the chair where her handbag reposed like a brown leather cushion. Reaching out a hand, she patted the arm of the sofa. “Why don’t you come and sit next to me, Edith.” Actually she was talking to Doris; at least I think she was, but it didn’t matter. The woman in the red blouse atop the black skirt meekly did as she was bidden and placed her bag, which wasn’t dissimilar to Aunt Lulu’s, on the floor. The woman in the yellow blouse and black skirt (who I thought was Edith) and Cyril, in the royal blue shirt and black trousers, took their seats.

  “Well! Well! Here we all are!” Freddy clapped me on the shoulder; no doubt hoping to provide some desperately needed moral support and causing my knees to buckle in the process. His voice was so falsely jocular that it wasn’t surprising that his mother leaped to an erroneous and, to her mind, ghastly possibility.

  “Who are these Hoppers?” Her eyes grew big with horror, and she recoiled into the depths of her chair as if about to cross herself. “They aren’t social workers, are they?”

  “Of course not. They are here to see Daddy,” I said firmly. “They’ve come on a distressing errand, and we don’t want to make it any harder for them than necessary, now do we?”

  “Would you like Mumsie and me to clear off?” Freddy made this offer with all the fortitude of a man offering to reboard the Titanic. But given the awkwardness of the missing urn, I wasn’t averse to the occasional distraction of Freddy or Aunt Lulu.

  “Do you mind my aunt and cousin staying?” I asked the Hoppers.

  “No, I don’t mind,” responded Cyril. “Do you mind, Edith?” he said, turning his round black head an inch to the right.

  “No, I don’t mind; do you, Doris?” Yellow blouse addressing the red blouse.

  “Not if you don’t mind, Edith.”

  They all spoke, without moving their lips, in identical wooden voices, and I could not prevent the thought that it would be a kindness to reassemble them into one doll and drop it into the children’s toy box.

  “Would you like me to fetch Uncle Morley?” Freddy whispered to me.

  “There’s no getting around it,” I murmured back. “He has to be here. Try and fortify him with a glass of brandy; the decanter should still be in his room.”

  “Righty-ho!” He went out the door, and before he could close it behind him, Tobias came stalking in, his tail sticking straight up as if daring anyone to meow at him the wrong way. Ben and I both went to pick him up, and under cover of this momentary confusion I was able to ask the big question.

  “Did you tell them that we don’t have Harriet?”

  Ben talked into the cat’s fur. “I thought we should soften them up first; let them think we’re salt-of-the-earth people.” His eyes met mine with rueful tenderness. “Sorry. I know you’re not fond of that phrase.”

  For a couple of seconds I couldn’t think what he meant, and when I remembered Daddy’s reference to my adored mother, I couldn’t reconnect to my wounded anger of last night. Too much had happened, including that moment at the Old Abbey when I had looked at him and found him the most comforting thing in the room simply because he was my father.

  “I’m sure my husband has offered you his condolences, and I’d like to add mine on your sad loss,” I told the Hoppers while taking the chair next to Aunt Lulu, who was bent down picking up her handbag, which she must have dropped while I was engaged in my rude, whispered conversation with Ben. “How, if you don’t mind my asking, were you related to Harriet?” I was growing a little flustered at getting no response from the Russian dolls.

  “She was our cousin,” said Cyril.

  “That’s right, our cousin,” put in one of the female dolls.

  “Our very dear cousin,” offered the other.

  “The Hoppers are brother and sisters.” Ben tossed me a lifeline.

  “Did you have a long journey getting here?” I asked them.

  “We’re staying at Cliffside House.” Cyril fixed his polished black eyes on my face.

  “You know it, Ellie.” Ben stood behind the drinks table, with Tobias draped over his shoulder. “It’s the B and B run by Mrs. Blum.”

  “Yes, it’s at the bend in
the road just before you come to the Old Abbey. Mrs. Blum is Mrs. Potter’s sister.” I could feel myself turning into a parrot. Any moment now I would start sprouting green and red feathers.

  “Is that so?” Ben raised a convincingly interested eyebrow.

  “Did someone from Cliffside give you a lift here?”

  “We came by taxi. Like this morning.” Doris gave up this information after looking down at her black lace-up, patent-leather shoes, which matched the ones worn by Doris and Cyril.

  “What a pity you didn’t have a Mr. Price to rescue you!” Aunt Lulu, who had been sitting looking smug for no apparent reason, gave one of her infantile giggles. The Hoppers responded with blank faces; but as blankness had heretofore been their collective expression, it was impossible to tell if they were puzzled by her remark.

  “Mr. Price is a traveling salesman who gave Aunt Lulu a lift here from the station.” I tugged at my camel cardigan, wishing that Freddy would appear with Daddy in tow. It should have surprised me that the Hoppers hadn’t asked about him, but it had crept in upon me that they were incapable of initiating any part of this trying conversation. Or, for reasons of their own, were being intentionally guarded. Had Cyril misunderstood my question about how far they had traveled to reach Merlin’s Court? Or were he, Doris, and Edith disinclined to say where they lived for fear that Daddy would attach himself to them as a means of keeping Harriet’s memory alive in his heart? If so, they had a point, but somehow I didn’t think any of this was simple. Could we even be sure that the Hoppers were who they claimed to be? Harriet’s bereaved relatives intent on fulfilling her final wishes?

  “Such a lovely man, Mr. Price!” Aunt Lulu smiled dreamily. “And so clever at breaking into his own car. How I wish my new friends from Oaklands could meet him. That’s what Maurice doesn’t understand. The fun of sitting around with people who share the same hobby, dishing out little tips and analyzing intriguing problems. I don’t see why he can’t see that he would be worse off married to one of those obsessive bridge players. We all know how vicious they can be. Harping on forever about how someone false carded one Tuesday afternoon in 1954 at Mrs. so-and-so’s house and to make matters worse her luncheon was pitiful. A total embarrassment to the club.”