The Thin Woman

by Dorothy Cannell

  The clock in the hall struck noon as I returned to the house, just before a storm broke loose. I found Uncle Maurice and Aunt Lulu at the card table. None of them had seen Vanessa, Aunt Astrid was upstairs putting away her embroidery, and Ben had gone to make lunch. Saying I would check up on that meal I went to the kitchen, eager to tell Ben my news and show him … but he was not at his usual place of business. On the table lay a note from Dorcas saying she was leaving for a while, and would be in touch when she had thought matters over. How could she? Had Ben seen this?

  I found him in the dining room. Vanessa was with him. They were sitting very cosily together. The vamp was fingering one of his shirt buttons and I caught the throaty gurgle of her laughter. And I thought I had ceased being a joke.…

  I left the door hanging open and backed into the hall. This day was turning into a crash course in betrayal. Where did I go from here? Six months earlier I would have dived straight for the refrigerator. If ever a girl needed half a dozen chocolate éclairs and a hunk of Gorgonzola, this was it. Why bother telling Ben about my discovery of what must be the final clue? My only hope of retaining my sanity was to get out of this house. Unfortunately my paralysed limbs refused to heed the call to action; I was still standing in the hall when Vanessa burst out of the dining room, almost knocking me over. “Horrible!” she screamed.

  What had Ben tried?

  “A man’s face pressed against the window, all contorted and flattened, squishy eyes, no nose, ugh!” Shuddering wildly she fled upstairs.

  Why wasn’t the gallant lover galloping in hot pursuit? Not waiting for an answer, I charged out into the rain. Like Vanessa, I wasn’t watching and went sprawling into Jonas. Slouched hat pulled over his eyes, water spouting off his bushy eyebrows, he was a sight to unnerve even the undistraught.

  “You!” I accused. “You were the face at the window.”

  “Only doing me job.” Jonas tried to look guileless but the unholy glee dancing, behind his eyes betrayed him. “Thought them window frames might warp in all this damp, best check ’em out, I says.” He sobered suddenly, “Hey, lass. Nowt’s tha’ bad. Thought you had a mite more pluck than to bolt the burrow over some dippy female making fish eyes at …”

  I made to brush past him. “Please, Jonas. I no longer believe in Father Christmas. Ben is a monumental rat. Heaven only knows who Dorcas is, or where she is. The way this day is going, I’ll find you’ve posted a notice in the personal column of the local newspaper announcing you’re the son of Jack the Ripper.”

  Jonas caught hold of my arm. “Dorcas gone? I think you’d best come inside, girl.”

  “And do what, drink a cup of Ovaltine?” I yelled. “To hell with Ovaltine. To hell with the lot of you. And Jonas”—I wrenched my arm away from him—“if you are thinking of leaving my employment, I hope you will have the decency to give notice, not leave a bread and butter note.”

  The going wasn’t easy, Like the small child who runs away from home, I had no clear destination in mind. My feet slipped, sloshing through mud puddles as I crossed the grass to reach the driveway. I never paused to wonder if anyone was watching me. The rain was pelting down. I passed the mound of cement by the gates, which was beginning to look like a permanent monument. Where could I go? To the vicar? He had promised to be in touch—another man who had failed me. I had reached Jonas’s refuse heap, the iron wheels of his wooden cart still tilted up against the mound of soaked mattresses and worm-eaten wooden chests, and I knew that I could not face a trip through the churchyard even to sit in Rowland’s warm study. Staring miserably down at that pile of discarded junk, my life in abstract, one rain-darkened scrap of pink and yellow stripe caught my eye. Flashback, Jonas poking this into place on the heap the last time I saw him here, and that vague, ticklish feeling of something wrong, something where it should not be. Bending now, I pulled the striped rubber thing out with my hands, and with strangely thudding heart looked down at the false cheer of its bright colours. “Loud” was the term Aunt Sybil had used, but she had been fond of her water wings, too fond to have tossed them away, unless they had acquired a puncture. Testing. I blew, and they ballooned into gaudy shape. I moved the stopper on its rubber string and plugged it into place. So? what had I proved? Aunt Sybil could have tired of them, thought they made her look too young. But she had said she could not imagine why anyone would swim without them. Calm down, I ordered my jangling nerves. Nothing has happened to Aunt Sybil. What reason would anyone have to harm her? We’d had that postcard from her. Sure, and we had also had that phone call. No, no! I was taking something perfectly ordinary—water wings owned by an elderly woman—and turning them into a murder clue. I was sick of clues, I was sick of my own hysteria. Staring down at the surging waves below me, I decided to go home, if I didn’t get blown over the cliff first. What if …? But no, if someone had wanted to be rid of Aunt Sybil they would simply have removed her wings and … I had to stop these gruesome thoughts.

  A footstep sounded close by and instinctively, I stepped backwards. Heart skidding, I turned. At first I thought it was Jonas. He was wearing the slouched hat and long shaggy tweed coat, but Ben was underneath. “Ellie,” he said.

  I held up my hands, warding him off. “Stay away from me, you lecher!”

  “Watch out, idiot, do you want to go over the edge?” He grabbed hold of me, hands pinning my waist. His face gleamed with rain—and something I couldn’t place. Whatever it was, it wasn’t guilt. Bentley T. Haskell didn’t know the meaning of the word. I wanted to wrench myself away from him, but those fine blue-green eyes held me even more securely than his hands. There were some holds that even judo experts like Jill did not know about. A man had no right to eyelashes that long. But life was looking up. I had perfected the trick of hating this revolting creature just as he deserved.

  “What is this?” asked the man in frustrated exasperation. I had to admire his rendering of innocent perplexity. “I feel as though I’ve walked into an excerpt from Wuthering Heights. Tortured, lovesick maiden throwing herself upon the mercy of the raging elements, in hopes that Heathcliff will come charging to the rescue.”

  “Heathcliff!” For once my voice did not cave in under pressure. “You megalomaniac, is that how you envision yourself?”

  From the sudden blaze of blue-green fire behind those lashes, I saw I had shocked him. He released his hold of me, his hands falling awkwardly to the sides of his trailing coat. I was free, and immediately realized how cold I was. I would die from pneumonia and save our apprentice killer a lot of trouble.

  “Me?” said Ben in a voice that managed to sound genuinely surprised. “We’re not talking about me.” He kicked a pebble aside and watched it go thumping over the cliff edge like an erratic heartbeat, then looked at me from under the brim of that terrible hat. “We’re talking about you and the noble vicar—your boy friend.”

  “Rowland!” Stunned, I took another of those instinctive steps backwards. Had he called to make a formal offer for my hand while I was gone? Quickly, Ben grasped hold of me and pulled me onto safer ground. Were his hands trembling or was it me? Looking up I decided it was Ben. He was not his usual arrogant self; perhaps Vanessa had turned him down. Maybe there was a spark of goodness under all that superfluous beauty.

  “Who else but Rowland?” Ben answered in his morbid monotone, rather like someone practising for a foreign language exam. “If you only knew, Ellie, how I have come to hate that man.” Here his tone did perk up a little. “I have even toyed with the idea of taking a series of private lessons from the killer in our midst when we finally unmask him. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to put dear Rowland away.”

  “Why?” I asked loudly so Ben would not hear the roar of my heart.

  “He’s taller than me, and …?”

  “Don’t stall.” The rain was coming down more heavily, dripping down my neck, stinging my face. But I could not have wiped it away even if Ben had released my hands.

  “Okay,” snarled Ben, “make
me grovel at your feet—you love the man, damn him. Case closed. The fellow is a cheat and a thief, but I’m worse. I am the fool who left the door open for him. But don’t worry, Ellie darling, I may not be a pedigreed gentleman like your Rowland, but where your happiness is concerned I’ll behave like one—even if it kills me. I’ll even bake the wedding cake.”

  “Very sporting of you.” Moments earlier I had been frozen to the marrow, now I was warm all over, deliciously so. An emotion totally new to me was searing molten blood through my veins. Power. A thousand chocolate éclairs could never have made me feel like this. I was sorry Ben was suffering. But the man had brought this upon himself. “Perhaps we should make it a double wedding?” I suggested, tilting my face up so my lips brushed his chin. “You and Vanessa would make a charming background for Rowland and me.”

  “Vanessa?” Ben shook his head in bewilderment, almost sending that dilapidated felt hat flying; poor Jonas had already lost one that way so I reached up and patted the monster firmly down on Ben’s head. “How did Vanessa get dragged into this?” he scowled. “The last I heard she was your chief suspect. I may feel vaguely suicidal right now but I can think of easier deaths than permitting Vanessa to kill me with boredom—should she have nothing worse in mind.”

  “Boring?” My sophisticated sneer lacked something but my squeak had the ring of fury to lend it eloquence. “I saw you and my boring cousin snoogling away in that disgusting way.”

  “What?”

  “Surprised, ha? I saw the two of you not half an hour ago in the dining room. Try a denial.” The wind chose that moment to let forth an anguished wuthering. If this had been a film the sound effects could not have been better.

  “I have no intention of denying anything. I was performing my duty as instructed, infiltrating the enemy.”

  “And loving every minute of what secrets you could uncover.”

  “Nothing of the sort; if Vanessa happens to find me attractive …”

  I cut him short. “You never fail to amaze me. I recognize that vanity is a genetic male flaw, but you have a terminal case.”

  “You’re wrong about that.” Ben’s face came back into focus and I saw him with a clarity that comes when a light is turned on in a dark room. “I know I appear somewhat conceited but, Ellie, you of all people should know it is just a cover. And from where I stand now”—he looked so pathetic and vulnerable in that dreadful hat my heart ached for him—“they’re all justified, every one of my neuroses. Can you wonder that my parents disowned me? They were right—I’ve never accomplished anything worth a damn.”

  He was undeserving, but somehow my hands had moved and were pressed against the sodden roughness of his coat. I could feel the jolting of his heart against my fingers and the next moment his hands came up and moved through my streaming hair. I remember thinking what a blessing I had kept it long—romance demands long flowing locks of its heroines. And then everything stopped. Everything went quiet.

  “You’re a superb cook,” I said.

  “So are most of the housewives in England, and all they ever get is ‘the grub’s not bad.’ ”

  “They haven’t all written books on the subject.”

  “Neither would I have done, but for Uncle Merlin and his majestic will.”

  “So? I know you said once that you and I had both sold out, but the motive does not diminish the achievement. You are the one who turned a collection of forgotten recipes into a book and I am the one who killed off all those superfluous pounds. And you are wrong about something else, Ben. I never saw you as insecure. To me thin people never had any meaningful problems, I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry. Oh, Ellie!” The pressure of his fingers tightened on my hair. “I’m the one who is sorry, now when it is too late.”

  Too late? Where had I got the warped idea that something spectacular was beginning for us, that Vanessa and Rowland and the London financée were bit players soon to be ushered off into the wings? Now he was going to tell me that he was suffering from some rare incurable disease and had three months to live. Fear made me clutch at the collar of his coat. Why had I never realized before what a beautiful chin he had, so strong yet tender?

  “Much too late,” he repeated, and the misery surging through the words flowed into me and settled like an ice cube in the pit of my stomach. “If I were to tell you now that I love you, you would never believe me, Ellie.”

  The ice melted. “Oh, but I would,” I insisted and to minimize the belligerence of my tone I stroked his wet cheek comfortingly. “So long as you swear on Uncle Merlin’s grave that you did not say the same thing to Vanessa within the last hour. You didn’t, did you, darling?”

  “Of course not,” answered my hero with magnificent repugnance. “But, Ellie, lovely, wonderful witty Ellie, you’d have to be out of your mind to believe me when I tell you that I am wildly, madly crazy about you.”

  “Fortunately, as you well know, insanity seems to run in my family,” I said as my arms crept up around his neck, and with the traditional half-stifled moan of impassioned love scenes everywhere, his lips came down on mine, warm, possessive, and tasting of rain and sea air. The sun must have come out for my whole body was burning with a fierce golden light, sending delicious spirals of pleasure all the way down to my cramped feet. Our coats slapped around our legs and the brim of Ben’s hat scraped my forehead, but the annoyances were incidental. Alas, too soon joy ended. Ben lifted his head and looked at me sadly. “This is how it could have been if only I had confessed my love before you went and got so skinny.”

  “You don’t think less is more?” Even as I spoke I was doing rapid mental arithmetic wondering how long it would take me to put all those pounds back on, and was I prepared to make this sacrifice even for Ben? “I know that recently you have thought me too caught up in appearances, but already I am …”

  “That was nonsense, you’re fine,” he replied with an unflattering lack of enthusiasm. “But you must be asking yourself if your new body is what I am after, and to be perfectly honest, it is sort of a bonus—I love the way you look in that fiery-coloured dress.…”

  “But?”

  “I knew that first day we drove down here to Merlin’s Court that you were rare, that I would never again meet anyone like you. The inheritance was never the attraction-lust for wealth, believe it or not, was never one of my vices. I told myself it was the challenge that appealed. But I wasn’t honest with myself about the nature of the challenge. Like a lot of other fools I have always gone for women like Vanessa to boost my ego. Before you lost much weight I discovered that the image no longer mattered a damn, that to me you were beautiful. But being the insecure person I am and not having any idea how you felt about me, I decided it would be better to wait until the six months were up before telling you that I loved you. That way if you turned me down flat we could both have walked off into the sunset without too much embarrassment.”

  “Wonderfully eighteenth century,” I said, pulling the horrible hat down to warm his ears.

  “Sure. And then you had to complicate matters by turning into a sylph with the vicar languishing after you all over the place. The man positively oozed integrity. You’d believe him when he told you it was your soul he loved. So what hope was there for me? Restraint now read as indifference, until the packaging changed.”

  “I get it.” The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to slot into place. “You deliberately set up a wall between us so I would not guess what passion lurked behind your dark inscrutable gaze.”

  “But I did have my relapses. I even copied Rowland’s pipe, but it never provided me with the honest, stable authority it gave him, so I went back to ignoring you in the hope that emotional distance would cure me of my craving for you.”

  “I understand all about cravings,” I said, leaning my face against his wet shoulder. “Part of me will always hunger for the wrong foods but I have to tell you that I am not prepared to eat myself back to my old proportions so you can prove the integr
ity of your love.”

  “I knew this was hopeless,” sighed Ben, drawing me back into his arms for one long anguished kiss.

  “No, it isn’t,” I contradicted when I came up for air. “You and I both have a lot to learn about love and I think we had better start with trust. I am going to accept your word that you would love me whatever my dress size, and you have to believe that I view Rowland Foxworth as a very kindly, not unattractive, purely platonic friend. Agreed?”