The Trouble with Harriet

by Dorothy Cannell

  “They’re nothing alike,” I said while he again attacked the knocker. “Mrs. Blum is a very dour woman. It may come from living in a house that was a smuggler’s den of iniquity.”

  I realized that I was carrying on in a way that would have tried the patience of St. Ethelwort. But I couldn’t stop myself. The suspense of waiting for someone to open the door was killing me. Even Ben conceded that it seemed to be taking ages. I was about to suggest that he go down the steps, come back up them at a run, and kick the thing in when we heard the groan of hinges that must have needed oiling for at least twenty years. We were suddenly looking at Mrs. Blum. She was a tall, gaunt woman with a face that would have frightened away children willing to brave green slime monsters rising out of swamps for a bag of sweets on Halloween night.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Haskell? Come in,” she urged in a voice that reminded me of a Hoover with something caught in the works. “I was wondering when you’d get here. Wipe your feet on the mat. No need to bring in half the outdoors. That’s right.”

  Ben and I knocked heads in obeying. She stepped around us to close the door and then proceeded on down the hall. The sloping pine floor creaked with every step, and under the faint smell of mildew I thought I caught a woody whiff of seawater-soaked brandy kegs rolled ashore in response to a lantern signal. But I didn’t obsess on the Old World charm.

  “What did you mean, you were wondering when we would get here?” I inquired of Mrs. Blum’s back as she glided past the table with the visitors’ book lying open next to a vase of flowers that might have wilted more from fright than a lack of water.

  “Didn’t you get my phone message?” She turned a corner into a narrow passage with only a couple of low-wattage wall lights to make it possible to walk without hoping a ghostly guide dog would materialize out of the gloom.

  “What message?” Ben’s voice had a hollow sound to it.

  “The one I left for you with Mrs. Malloy.”

  “We left the house without seeing her.” My heart was now pounding as if a dozen of the king’s men were demanding admittance at the old inn door. “What was it you wanted to tell us, Mrs. Blum?”

  She didn’t ask what had brought us to Cliffside House if not for her message, but she did slow her stride, although without turning her head. “Mr. Simons showed up here about an hour ago. When I opened the door, he practically fell into the hall. There was no getting anything coherent out of him. I couldn’t smell alcohol on his breath, but I’m sure he had to be drunk from the way he was staggering about and bumping into the walls.” She stopped to place her hand on a doorknob. “Knowing my Christian duty, I brought him down here, where I wouldn’t have to explain him to the other guests. This isn’t that sort of establishment, you know. I left him to sleep it off on the sofa while I went to phone you. When I returned to check on him, he tried to sit up and babbled something about wanting to see the Hoppers, who are staying here. But I didn’t go and get them. They’re perfectly respectable people. I couldn’t subject them to any unpleasantness, whatever their connection, if any, with him. My guests come here for peace and quiet.”

  “I’m sure my father-in-law did not show up here drunk.” Ben returned her look for look.

  “He has the nose for it.” Mrs. Blum’s lugubrious face revealed a resigned acceptance of the medical evidence as she saw it. “An uncle of mine had a red nose like that, and it didn’t come from the tomato sauce he poured on his bacon and eggs.”

  “It’s a cold day,” I responded stiffly. “I expect my nose is red, too.”

  “With Uncle George’s, it was the brandy. And in the end it was the death of him.”

  I was about to make another protest, but then I remembered that we did seem to have been pouring that particular substance down Daddy’s throat at regular intervals since his arrival at Merlin’s Court. Catching Ben’s eyes, I realized he was thinking the same thing. We followed Mrs. Blum meekly into a small room. Its paneling was darker than that of the hall. There were dusty red-velvet curtains at the windows, and the scattering of furniture looked as though it had been relegated there when chair and table legs wobbled and springs began poking through the upholstery. Daddy’s legs extended over the foot of the beige sofa that was three sizes too small for him.

  “I’ll leave you to him.” Mrs. Blum turned to go but remembered her Christian duty. “I suppose I could bring you some coffee. It’ll have to be instant. I still have some beds to make and the bathrooms to do.”

  Ben and I thanked the closed door, and I scurried over to kneel beside Daddy and pat the hand that trailed the floor. Until that moment I hadn’t allowed myself to focus too desperately on what could have happened to him. I had clung to the fact that Mrs. Blum hadn’t thought his condition merited sending for a doctor. Such reasoning was, of course, nonsense. She had made an instant diagnosis, based on Uncle George, and had never considered any other possibility.

  “Where am I?” Daddy opened an eye just as I had decided he was in a coma from which he would never awaken.

  “Cliffside House,” I whispered, afraid to shock him back into retreat.

  “What am I doing here?”

  “You came to see the Hoppers.” Ben spoke from behind me.

  “Never heard of them,” he said, sending my mind leaping to thoughts of amnesia.

  “Harriet’s relatives.” I fought back tears. “You came to bring them the urn.”

  Daddy struggled to sit up, winced, and eased back down. For a few moments he lay rigid; then his lashes flickered, and as if drawing upon every ounce of his strength, he opened both eyes and looked at me with bleary recognition. “It is coming back to me by painful degrees, Giselle. The vicar must have returned the urn, because when I went down to the kitchen this morning, it was on the Welsh dresser in the canvas bag. I remember Lulu and Frau Grundman coming in, and after that”—his voice faltered— “everything is fuzzy.”

  “Give it time; it will come back to you,” Ben consoled.

  “My confounded head!” Daddy moaned. “I feel as though I’ve been hit with an iron bar.” He lifted a hand, let if fall, and lay as if he were slipping back into unconsciousness. Then suddenly he gave a convulsive jerk. “I do remember. Light pierces the wayward darkness. I was in the car, and then I wasn’t. I was standing gathering my courage to fulfill my promise to Harriet when I heard something behind me, the crunch of a footstep on gravel. I started to turn, caught a glimpse of a face I recognized, and then, alas, oblivion.”

  “Daddy,” I leaned over him. “You’ve got a bruise the size of an egg on the side of your head.”

  “Who was it you saw, Morley?” Ben was sticking to the basics.

  “I appreciate your interest, Bentwick. It was that man. The one from the airport and then again at the house yesterday.”

  “Mr. Price.” I ground out the name. “I think we are now entitled to assume he made an unsuccessful attempt to get the urn from Ursel last night. And this morning he lay in wait and followed you here.” I could not keep the sigh out of my voice. “I suppose that this time he got it, Daddy.”

  “No, Giselle. I can at least reassure you in that regard. You may rejoice in the knowledge that the miserable miscreant did not lay hands on the urn.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful!” I would have hugged him again if I hadn’t been afraid of inflicting permanent injury. “I suppose he must have been scared off by someone going in or out of the house before he could grab it. Where is it?”

  “Still at Merlin’s Court.”

  “You forgot to bring it with you?”

  “Indeed not.” Daddy rallied to look at me askance. “I do not suffer from the vicar’s deplorable absentmindedness. It has come back to me now that conversation with Lulu and Frau Grundman in the kitchen. I was telling them that Herr Voelkel had selected the urn, and loath as I was to criticize the man in the performance of so anguishing a commission, I did believe he could not have done worse by Harriet. Both ladies were intensely moved by my impassioned rhetoric and the tear
s that I failed to stem. It was Lulu, whom I had intemperately taken for a foolish woman wallowing in self-absorption, who most generously provided a solution. She offered me a beautiful antique-silver powder box which she happened to have in the pocket of her skirt. The thought had crossed her mind that you might wish to have it, Giselle, and she was going to give it to you when you came down for breakfast.”

  “How extremely kind of her.” This was no time to think about what I would like to do to Freddy’s mumsie.

  “An understatement, if I may say so, Giselle. However, Lulu said she now saw that the powder box would make the perfect receptacle for Harriet’s ashes, and she was sure you would agree without a question. Her generosity moved me deeply. As did that of Frau Grundman when she said that the task of transferring the mortal remains from the urn might be more than my fragile emotions would bear. And she would be honored to perform the task for me.”

  “But, Morley, don’t you see that the bad guys could still have won? It may not have been the urn they wanted, but the contents.” Ben’s brows came down in a black bar as he studied my father’s face. “No, of course you don’t; you’ve been hit on the head.”

  Before I could say a word, Mrs. Blum entered the room with a tray of coffee cups and a plate of biscuits that even from a distance looked stale.

  “I see you’re looking better, Mr. Simons.” She imparted all the cheer of Death come calling. “I just saw Mr. Hopper, and he asked if perhaps you had telephoned. When I told him you were here, he said he would fetch his sisters and join you in this room. That’s if you’re up to it, of course.” She didn’t add that she wouldn’t want to interrupt his hangover, but there was condemnation in every rustle of her skirt as she handed him his coffee cup.

  “I think my father-in-law should go to hospital to be checked over,” Ben told her. “He’s got a bad bump on his head.”

  “My uncle George used to fall down when he’d had one too many. The wages of sin, Mr. Haskell, are not an extra five pounds in the pay packet.”

  Leaving Ben and me to pick up our own cups of coffee, which was every bit as weak as he had anticipated, Mrs. Blum departed. Daddy was just saying he was glad we hadn’t mentioned he had been attacked, because there was no point in raising questions he wouldn’t have wished to answer, when in came the Hoppers. Today they wore matching red sweaters. Cyril wore black trousers, and Edith and Doris had on black skirts. Three roly-poly figures that didn’t look as though they had a brain to divide between them. But what did I know about anything? I had taken an immediate liking to Ursel Grundman, and where had that got me or, I should say, Daddy?

  The Hoppers sat down on a wooden bench, placed their plump hands on their knees, and peered at us with black eyes that looked as though they had been painted and varnished to match their slicked-down hair.

  “Did you bring the urn?” Cyril asked in his wooden voice.

  “Yes, the urn,” said Doris.

  “Harriet’s urn,” said Edith.

  “Mr. Simons did bring it.” Ben spoke before Daddy opened his mouth. “But unfortunately for him and all of you, he was attacked and robbed before he could reach the door. We want to know why. In other words, what are you prepared to tell us about the urn, because what we do know for damn sure is that Harriet isn’t in it.”

  All three Russian dolls blinked. They looked at each other. They inhaled and exhaled in unison, and again Cyril spoke first.

  “We don’t know anything.”

  “All Harriet told us was that we were to collect the urn,” said Doris.

  “And not talk too much in case we let something slip,” said Edith.

  “But you just said you don’t know anything,” I pointed out.

  “Not about what is really in the urn or who it’s for.” The merest flicker of intelligence strayed across Cyril’s features. “Harriet didn’t want us to say anything personal that might be different from what she’d told Mr. Simons or that might help him track her down if he ever realized he’d been scammed.”

  “She said she knew how to mix the truth with the made-up stuff to be convincing.” Edith lowered her head. “But she said it took lots of practice. And she was right. We shouldn’t have let slip that she’d worked at Oaklands because that’s where, after listening to the patients talk about how well crime paid, she decided to go into business for herself.”

  “It was after her husband left her.” Doris raised her chin. “She needed money to look after us. We’ve always needed a lot of taking care of. We didn’t always look like this. It’s been one operation after the other for each of us. That’s why Cyril was beaten up as a kid. Edith and me didn’t have it quite so rough. We only got laughed at and called names.”

  “So Harriet really is your cousin?” I sat on the floor and held Daddy’s trailing hand.

  “Of course,” said Cyril.

  “This was going to be her last job,” said Edith. “It was going to give us the rest of the money we needed to buy a house in Dawlish. That’s in Devon. We went there on a caravan holiday once when we were kiddies and always dreamed about going to live there.”

  “What about the Voelkels? Where do they fit into the picture?” Ben asked. Daddy sat looking only semiconscious.

  “Who?” Doris’s face went blank. The other two black heads bent toward hers, and she sat nodding as if it would take the tug of a switch to make her stop. “Now I know who you mean. That’s not their real name. It changes with every job. They sometimes worked together. The man and the woman and his old mother and Harriet. But it got that Harriet didn’t like them so much. He kept pushing her to get into the big time when all she wanted was what she called honest pay for a dishonest job. And this time, she told us, he didn’t like it because she started to have feelings for Mr. Simons.”

  “Harriet fell in love with you.” Cyril looked with eyes that had lost their varnished look at Daddy.

  “She didn’t mean to,” said Edith.

  “It broke her heart,” said Doris.

  “Why are you saying all this?” Daddy finally spoke as if from somewhere far away.

  “Because it doesn’t matter anymore.” Cyril’s voice cracked like a piece of dry wood. “We thought there had to be something wrong last night when she didn’t show up to collect the urn like she had written and told us she would. Then, when we heard about the accident, we knew that had to be why. It didn’t take hearing from Mrs. Blum that it was a brown Vauxhaul that went over the cliff or for her to tell us the license-plate number. We already knew deep inside us that our Harriet was dead.”

  Chapter 23

  “Dead! Do I not already know that?” My father rose up like a wounded lion roused from fitful slumber by someone treading on his tail. “Have I not already faced the unassailable truth that sweet Harriet’s mortal being is gone, never to return?”

  “Daddy, I don’t think you can have been listening to what the Hoppers have been saying.” I hurried forward to place a soothing hand on his arm but stepped smartly backward when he snarled at me, showing more teeth than I had thought he possessed.

  “It has to be hard for you to accept.” Ben wisely kept at a safe distance. “You’ve been cruelly tricked, Morley. Not too many people are ever likely to find themselves in your position—having to deal with the death of a loved one twice over. But that’s how it is. There was no car crash in Germany. Ingo Voelkel lied to you. His meeting with you was staged. The entire, unhappy Harriet episode was a ruse to get you to bring that urn into England. Only now she is dead and—”

  “A terrible fear smites me, Bentwick.” Daddy’s roar shook the timbers of the old inn. “It is that you and my daughter are in league with these paltry specimens of humanity.” He swiveled around one of the Hoppers, who squeaked piteously before ducking behind a table. “Perhaps, God knows, you believe yourselves to be acting in my best interests,” he roared, clasping a hand to his heaving chest. “Defame my Harriet and I may the more quickly rebound from her loss. Yes, I can see that may be your thinking.
But I tell you, nothing anyone says will weaken my faith in her goodness or tarnish my memories of our days together.”

  “We did say she loved you,” whispered Edith.

  “That’s right,” Cyril agreed.

  “Indeed we did,” said Doris.

  Something in their unblinking black eyes must have gotten through to him because Daddy covered his face with his hands and began to sob. In great gulping gasps, as if he no longer believed in hope or comfort from this world or the next. I was thinking that my own heart would break when Mrs. Blum thrust open the door and informed us that we were disturbing the other residents.

  “I think you’d best leave, Mr. and Mrs. Haskell, and take the old man with you. Cliffside House is a respectable establishment. A woman came looking for a room yesterday morning. A shabby, unkempt sort of person. Not at all our usual sort of clientele. And I was put to the trouble of getting rid of her.”

  “No need to worry about us,” Ben said coldly, taking Daddy’s arm. After murmuring some sort of good-bye to the Hoppers, I followed my two men through the maze that led us back to the depressing hall and outside, where the air didn’t smell as if it were two hundred years old and the wind hopefully would put a little color into Daddy’s cheeks.

  Moving woodenly across the parking area my father insisted, with a pitiful disregard for common sense, that he didn’t need medical treatment for the bump on his head. So we agreed that Ben would drive him home and telephone our wonderful family doctor to request a house call. Meanwhile, I would go on to the Old Abbey, return the Honda Prelude, and come home by taxi.

  It made my heart ache to see the misery in Daddy’s eyes as Ben helped him into the passenger seat, where he sat looking vacantly out the window. This was a different kind of grief than we had seen before, quieter, less close to the surface from which tears flow. His devastation was such that I feared it would be a while before he could rouse himself to again parade his grief in public. Was this how he had been after the immediate shock of my mother’s death had worn off? Had he thus wandered in the desert of his soul until he met Harriet? I found myself wishing sadly, as I drove to the Old Abbey, that things might have been different, that they could have met as two people with no hidden agendas, eager to embrace the autumn of their lives, safe in the assurance of a steadfast love.