The Widows Club Read online

  The Widows Club

  Dorothy Cannell

  Agatha Award (nominee)

  Stylish, amusing, and deliciously wicked, the Misses Hyacinth and Primrose Tramwell are hired to investigate a woman's organization whose members choose widowhood over divorce. With the help of a newlywed friend, the spinster sleuths stalk the mastermind of matrimonial murder.

  Dorothy Cannell

  The Widows Club

  The third book in the Ellie Haskell series, 1988

  To my husband Julian,

  who need have no fear.

  Prologue

  From the Files of

  The Widows Club

  President:

  Ladies, dear friends: Our monthly meeting having been called to order, let us offer a generous round of applause for today’s pianist, Mrs. Edwina Grouse, and her rousing rendition of “All Things Bright and Beautiful.” Edwina is a charter member, now living in Spain, and we are delighted to welcome her back to Chitterton Fells, if only for a short visit.

  Membership:

  Applause.

  President:

  And a big thank you to the Gardening Committee, who provided the charming centerpieces. Ah ha! I see hands waving. Yes, yes, all you horticultural enthusiasts-the chrysanthemums will be raffled off after lunch. Proceeds go to the Policemen’s Benevolent Fund. Now, as always, the moment of solemnity: Everyone please rise for the recitation of our club pledge.

  Membership:

  Sisters in sorrow, we pledge eternal loyalty to our Founder and to each and every member of The Widows Club, past and present. Together we will mourn, console, laugh, work, and heal. We pledge to open our hands and hearts to other women soon to be likewise bereft of a life partner. And always we will bear courageous witness to The Widows Club motto: Mors Magis Amicior Quam Inimicor. [1]

  President:

  Well done. Ladies, please remain standing. We will shortly be served kedgeree, followed by gooseberry tart and custard. Not gourmet! But the best The Dark Horse can offer. And Ways and Means has provided a treat for us today-a taste-testing of their new hazelnut fudge! Ways Chairwoman, Betty White, tells me that if we all pull our weight and sell one hundred boxes each, the proposed day trip to the Tower of London is distinctly feasible; please hold your applause, ladies.

  I now have the pleasure and privilege of asking you to raise your wineglasses and offer a toast. To a new member whose husband has recently been called to his just reward. The Welcoming Committee has already introduced her. But to us she needs no name other than Sister.

  Membership:

  Cheers! All the very best! Welcome to The Widows Club!

  Part One

  1

  Funerals are heaps more fun than weddings. My mother told me so when I was a little girl. More flowers, wittier conversation, superior food, and invariably better liquid refreshment.

  Her words were, “Ellie darling, any household bubbly is adequate for toasting health and happiness, but the drowning of sorrows demands the best dry gin.”

  My mother, who met with a fatal accident in a railway station when I was seventeen, would have been delighted to know her funeral was the bash of the season among her intimate circle. I failed to enjoy myself, but everyone else, including my father who adored her, was still swigging back the neat gin and doing “Knees Up, Mother Brown” at 3:00 A.M. on the morning after, despite complaints from the neighbours.

  More than ten years later, as I stood in the windswept churchyard of St. Anselm’s on that chill afternoon of the 8th May, my mother’s edict was a gramophone needle grinding circles inside my head. Funerals and weddings… funerals and weddings.

  Only a few months ago, Ben and I had been married in this small Norman church. And now I stood under the elms, abject with misery, waiting for the Reverend Rowland Foxworth to begin the burial service.

  I was living a nightmare. Once I had been Miss Ellie Simons, resigned (if not content) with my lot as an overage, overweight virgin. Tipping the scales at thirteen stone wasn’t so bad. I had my work as an interior designer, my cat Tobias, and my motley kith and kin had reduced social contact to the annual Christmas card. Then, fate had struck in the form of an invitation to a family reunion at the home of Uncle Merlin, an ancient eccentric, who had spent the last half century walled up in his castle on the cliffs above the village of Chitterton Fells. To go or not to go? Was it worthier in the mind to spend two days being the butt of familial fat jokes or to send a gracious decline, knowing full well that Aunt Astrid and her flawless daughter Vanessa would be snickering up their mink cuffs at my refusal to show my face and attendant chins? Impetuously, I telephoned Eligibility Escorts, and before I could rethink my pride and principles, its proprietress, Mrs. Swabucher, had rented me Bentley T. Haskell, darkly handsome, one-time chef, now aspiring writer of porno prose, to accompany me for the fateful weekend.

  And what a weekend! Uncle Merlin was a toothless personage in a Wee Willie Winkie nightcap; the other relations were at each others’ throats from sunrise to sunset. As for Bentley T. Haskell, I swiftly came to feel I had grossly overpaid for his escorting services. The man was snotty, defensive, irreligious. He immediately turned his lascivious eyes on cousin Vanessa and had the effrontery to turn nasty, when, under the extreme provocation of mounting tension, I made a little slip and hinted-okay, announced-that he and I were engaged to be married. Naturally, I had every intention of doing the decent thing and setting him free. A few weeks later, however, events took a tortuous turn. Word came that Uncle Merlin had died. Haskell graciously returned with me to Chitterton Fells for the funeral, and at the reading of the will we were stunned to discover that my capricious great-uncle had left the entire estate to us, jointly, upon the fulfillment of certain conditions. One was that I lose approximately one third of my weight, and another that Ben write a book containing not one naughty word, and… oh yes, we had to reside together in that derelict house for a period of six consecutive months. After judiciously weighing the pros and cons, we leaped at the golden ring. I thrilled to the challenge of tearing down cobwebs, sweeping out half a century of dirt, seeing Merlin’s Court live again, as it had in his mother Abigail’s day! We hired a housekeeper, Miss Dorcas Critchley, who became my dearest (female) friend in the world. Jonas the curmudgeonly gardener metamorphosed into Jonas the Faithful Unto Death. And Ben came to write the most scintillating cookery book ever to set sail through the post in hopes of landing a publisher. Of course, I never dared hope that he and I would experience a fairy-tale love story utterly in keeping with our turreted, moat-endowed residence; but we did. And, at age twenty-eight, I was reborn. I shed four and a half stone. The hair, the eyes, ears, nose were the same, but I got a new body.

  Oh, God, why did you dangle happiness in my face only to snatch it away?

  Ben had helped me end my tragic love affair with eating. Ironic, considering his profession. Because of him, I stopped feeding myself like a refrigerator, lost the stipulated poundage, learned to like myself a bit better, and at long last had the sweet knowledge that a real live man loved me. We were going to live happily ever after.

  The one thing I overlooked was that I was the sort of woman who bred disaster the way hamsters breed hamsters.

  A seagull uttered a plaintive cry as it skimmed aloft, over the crooked tombstones; the vicar opened his book; the buzz of voices dwindled.

  The air was permeated with the mildewed sweetness of the wreaths. A tear slid down my face. Here was a funeral with even more to offer than usual. Here was the grand finale to Sudden Death, Police Inquiries, Headlines in the Newspapers, and, best of all, the Questionable Involvement of a Wealthy Young Woman.

  Me.

  How unfair, how wrong, that I, more than the man lying at final rest, sh
ould be the focus of the crowd’s interest. I was certain I was being watched.

  “Really, Ellie!” I could almost hear Mother’s voice. “What can you expect? You are the star turn in a drama where the only price of admission is a wreath. You alone can provide the updated, unexpurgated details of the Event.”

  I am not a killer. Didn’t the coroner’s report clear me of all blame? No matter what people may think or say, I was only guilty of trying too hard to be the perfect wife. Biting my lip, I looked out furtively from under the brim of my black hat. Was it surprising I had gone a little mad after all the anguish of this past week? If only Ben’s father had come with me, I might have done better. But he didn’t believe in funerals.

  I trembled and clutched the icy foot of the marble angel I was hiding behind as two elderly ladies clad in rusty black crunched by. Late arrivals. One brushed my arm and, apologising in a quivery voice, moved hastily past. I got a whiff of a sweet, primrose scent. Did she wish to be near the front in order to get a better view? Or did she shrink from the idea of being close to me?

  Let people talk. Perhaps I did not deserve any friends. All that week I had refused to see anyone except Ann Delacorte. I had been unable to say no when she pressed me to visit her at the flat above her antique shop, so she could comfort me. Comfort! Nothing could comfort me!

  There was a serenity to Ann that had drawn me from the first. But glimpsing her now, I thought her heavy black veil overly dramatic. Ann had an enthusiasm for the fashions of the forties, but was she basking in the poignant figure she presented as she clutched the arm of Lionel Wiseman, our solicitor? Lionel plucked a handkerchief from his breast pocket and pressed it into her hand. Death makes hypocrites of us all.

  The day was the kind that has had all the color washed out of it. The grass between the headstones was sparse and coarse; the naked branches of the clustered elms were inked against a cobwebby sky. The wind carried a fine misting rain, and from far below (St. Anselm’s was also known as The Church on the Cliff) came the seething whisper of the sea.

  “I am the Resurrection and the Life…”

  Dear Rowland. Ben had always been rather jealous of this good-looking clergyman with his public school background and quiet charm. My fault again. A year ago, despairing of Ben ever falling in love with me, I had encouraged him to think that Rowland harbored a restrained but abiding passion for me.

  “Ashes to ashes…”

  The brass plate on the coffin flashed in the watery sunlight. A bluster of wind shook the trees and carried a woman’s voice straight to me.

  “Wish vicar would get his bustle moving! I wouldn’t have missed this one for nothing, but I’ll have to stop coming regular if I’m like to miss the five o’clock bus. People keep saying it was the chicken that did for him but I says the mushrooms. Usually is the mushrooms, in’t it?”

  A muffled voice answered. “Papers said natural causes; but we all know what a softy Dr. Melrose is. Couldn’t bear thinking of her in the dock, that’s my bet. Not bad looking, is she? And a decent figure. Hard to believe she was fat as butter when she first come here.”

  “Dust to dust…”

  He was inside that coffin. Dead by my hand. Dead of eating food I had prepared. Adequate to the grandeur of the occasion. The gala opening of Abigail’s, Ben’s restaurant. For months he and I had dreamed of the great day, but when it arrived, fate intruded, and I became chef for a day.

  “And to dust thou shalt return…”

  My mouth was filled with dust and ashes. If only I had some chocolate, preferably Swiss, loaded with almonds. Oh, how despicable I was.

  Reverend Rowland Foxworth closed his book. Wind ruffled the hem of his cassock and he stood motionless in the increasing mist while two men in black coats stepped forward and lowered the coffin down into the grave. My throat closed. People were bending, picking up moist handfuls of earth and letting them fall with sickening thuds onto the gleaming coffin lid. Ann Delacorte was looking over at me. And she wasn’t the only one. The crowd was spreading out. As soon as Rowland indicated the obsequies were officially concluded, I would be mobbed.

  Sorry, but I couldn’t give them that pleasure. Slipping the strap of my bag onto my shoulder, head bent, I hurried past the two elderly ladies who had arrived late. They were standing beside Gladys Thorn, the immensely tall, immensely thin organist of St. Anselm’s. And I kept going-past drunkenly postured tombstones and unmarked grassy mounds, almost running as I reached the lich-gate.

  It would take me less than ten minutes to walk along the Cliff Road to the sanctuary of Merlin’s Court, away from these prying eyes. I would cross the moat bridge. I would open the heavily studded front door and enter the immense hall with the two shining suits of armor standing on each side of the trestle table against the staircase wall. My eyes would look toward those stairs, and I would fight for the courage to take that sweeping curve up to the master bedroom.

  No, no! I could not do it. Not yet. I stood motionless. To my left, the battlements of Merlin’s Court rose as if painted in watercolors on grey parchment. Below, the sea crashed.

  “Contemplating nature, Mrs. Haskell? Or suicide?” The voice crept eerily through the mist. Seconds later, the stoop-shouldered figure of Mr. Edwin Digby materialized. Mother waddled alongside. Mr. Digby lived in The Aviary, a Victorian house situated a quarter of a mile beyond Merlin’s Court. He was a man in his sixties, a man of mystery in the literal sense, being a famed writer of suspense novels. Mother, plucking at his coat, was a matronly goose with feathers of Persil whiteness.

  “Please assure me that you are all right, Mrs. Haskell, and not seriously deliberating a leap into infinity. Alas, that ending has been wantonly worked to death by myself and others.”

  I tore my eyes from the yawning drop at my feet. “Don’t let me detain you, Mr. Digby. I’m fine, really.”

  “Word reached me that there is to be no funeral feast. Doubtless such an assemblage would be too reminiscent of the fatal evening.” He frowned down at Mother. “I regret, Mrs. Haskell, I was unable to attend the service. However, I am not sorry to have met you. Poisons being in my blood, professionally speaking, I was intrigued by your husband having been struck down at so inopportune a moment. Which is not to say I don’t feel for you, Mrs. Haskell. Good afternoon!” Upon which, he and Mother waddled into the mist.

  I started walking. I needed to go where I might sit quietly and sort through the debris of my life. But before I had taken a dozen steps, a bus came lumbering around the curve and drew up a few yards beyond the churchyard gates. A dozen giggling teenagers, some in school uniforms, some in ankle-length coats, with electrified purple hair, emerged. Of course-the youth group met in the church hall on Friday afternoons.

  It became expedient to step out of the way. Three boys (one with a gold stud through his nose) took flying leaps off the bus. Then they plunged in among the others, who had formed a dancing figure of eight, and screeching out some current hit song, rocketed past me. None but the girl at the end looked at me. A small girl with sandy-colored plaits flying away from her shoulders and eyes too big for her face, a face too old for a girl of thirteen or fourteen. Eyes that didn’t smile. But her mouth did, in a curve of shy, almost secret, recognition. I forced myself to smile back. She was Jenny Spender. A girl who knew a lot about the unfairness of life. Whenever I thought about my wedding day, I thought of Jenny.

  They were gone. Their voices thinned to a wordless howl. I brushed away a dead leaf that blew against my cheek and went on. Every time I came to a dip in the road a swath of mist would engulf me and I hugged close to the right. Rocks and briar scratched my legs, but it would have been fatally easy to stray too far across the road, as a Mr. Woolpack, a local locksmith, had regrettably done the previous year. Chitterton Fells had been stunned by the tragedy. I remember showing the headlines to Ben…

  A car motor shattered my reveries. Turning, I peered back up the hill. Out of the mist, a long dark car was nosing around the bend. Only it wasn’
t a car in the usual sense of household vehicle. It was a hearse.

  Odd! Shouldn’t it have left the cemetery much earlier? It stopped about twenty yards from me. Backing even farther onto the verge, I flagged the driver on. But the hearse stood motionless. I wished I had not read that book about the car with a mind of its own.

  The mist had thickened and a pulse began to beat in my head. If the hearse would not get going, I would. There could be no question of its driver being inextricably lost because the road led directly down into the village, and its motor was running at an even purr so the hearse wasn’t stalled. Ignobly, I turned. One foot in front of the other. The road twisted. The hedgerow ended and a cobbled wall began. Once or twice I was tempted to look back over my shoulder, but I experienced a growing certainty that if I did, the hearse would be stopped and sitting, looking at me.

  My pace quickened. I craved the comfort of a cup of tea. Lights. At last. Street lamps gleamed palely ahead, like illuminated dandelion puffs. I could discern the crumbling Roman archway which divided Plum Pretty Lane and The Square. I pelted toward it.

  A youth on a bicycle slammed to a halt smack in front of me, face livid in the glare from his lamp. Flipping an obscene gesture under my nose, he sucked in a fetid breath.

  “Lady, you shouldn’t be let out without a bloody seeing-eye dog!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Bleeding right you are. When did Her Majesty give you the flaming right of way, Miss?”

  “Mrs.,” I said automatically. “Mrs. Bentley T. Haskell.” The hearse was pulling to the curb in front of Pullets Jewelers, where six months ago Ben had bought my engagement ring.

  Kicking down on a pedal, the youth let out a low whistle. “What! The woman with the recipes men die for! Reckon I should count meself lucky to have crossed your path and lived!”