The Importance of Being Ernestine Read online

  “Or into taking it.”

  Mrs. M. gave one of her most condescending smirks. “The way I sees it, sitting this side of the table, is that if her ladyship is up to no bloody good, wanting to find Ernestine to make sure she’s got rid of permanent, there’d be no need for all that stuff about deathbed curses and such. Now I’m a believer in such things, but I’m not fool enough to think most people, including yourself feels the same. So why make it up? Wouldn’t it have done better for her to keep things simple-tell us what happened between Sir Horace and Flossie Jones and how she kept him from helping the girl out?”

  “You’re right,” I admitted.

  “You don’t have to sound so snippy.”

  “Why not? You just ate my teacake.”

  “Oh, go on! Have the crumbs.” Mrs. Malloy pushed the plate my way and eyed me kindly. “There’s no need to sit there feeling silly. What you’ve got to realize is you’re a newcomer to this business. I’ve a whole three weeks experience on you working for Milk. And let me say this, I’ve nothing against the upper classes so long as they knows their place and keeps to it, but I can’t fault you for being cautious where her ladyship is concerned. It wouldn’t be right for us to go looking for Ernestine if we thought we was handing her over to be murdered. I’m sure there’s a rule somewhere in the private detective’s code book about that sort of thing. Now how do you suggest we set about this job?” It was clear she was asking mainly to help give my morale a lift, and I almost forgave her for eating the teacake.

  “We’d better start by going to Moultty Towers to see what we can sniff out. We might even find someone that was there at the same time as Flossie Jones who might give us a tip as to who handled Ernestine’s adoption.”

  “Just what I was going to suggest meself. Like that woman as lives in the cottage by the well. Give me a minute, her name’s coming to me… Mrs. Hurry.”

  “Hasty.”

  “Right. But will she or anyone else be falling over their selves to talk to a pair of private detectives? Even them as have nothing to hide, Mrs. H., could shut up tight as the shops on early closing day the minute we open our mouths.”

  “Also, Lady Krumley will undoubtedly wish us to be as discreet as possible, which means we need to go in undercover.”

  “Now you’re talking.” Mrs. Malloy positively beamed at me. “Who should we pretend to be? How about electrical inspectors? I rather fancy meself in a pair of overalls with a cap on me head.”

  “I thought, and it’s only a suggestion, that the simplest thing would be to say we were interior designers, hired by her ladyship to redecorate Moultty Towers.”

  Mrs. M. stopped looking thrilled. “That’s all well and good, seeing as how that’s your line of work. A nice chance for you to show off. And boost your ego back up after that upset with Mr. H. over his study. But what am I supposed to do while you’re preening about? Stand around holding the tape measure?”

  “We’ll be the firm of Malloy and Haskell. You’ll be the expert in wall and window treatments.”

  “Treatments?”

  “That’s one of the buzzwords in the business. You’ll also need to talk a lot about maintaining the integrity of the structure.”

  “You did say Malloy and Haskell?”

  “You think it might sound better the other way round?”

  Mrs. Malloy picked up the bill the waitress had deposited on the table and made a pretense of opening her handbag. “Look, I’m not daft. I can tell when you’re trying to butter me up. My question is what if someone got suspicious and went and looked us up in the telephone directory, or checked with some independent business group?”

  “That’s what’s so good about the idea. I am listed and all I have to say is that I’ve recently taken you on as a partner and that Lady Krumley consulted with us yesterday. As for Niles seeing us at the hospital today and our allowing him to think we were social workers, we can get around that by saying we didn’t feel free to discuss her ladyship’s plans for redecorating without her permission.”

  “No rest is there in this business? Still, it’s hard to complain when there’s that five thousand pounds.”

  “Think how grateful Mr. Jugg will be when he returns-if we’re successful, that is.”

  “Fancy! I’d forgotten all about him.” Mrs. Malloy looked suitably shamefaced. “Course, I’m sure he’ll be all broken up with gratitude. And if he don’t make me his Girl Friday on the spot it’ll shock me back to me old hair color, sure as my name is Roxie Malloy.” She was so moved by this image that she left a twenty pence tip on the table, insisting I was doing my share by paying the bill.

  Upon venturing out into the gray chill of the afternoon she looked up and down the street, saying that we needed to get to a telephone kiosk in order to give Lady Krumley a ring and explain the setup before we set out for Moultty Towers.

  “We can’t go now,” I said. “I don’t have a notebook or my measuring equipment in the car. More importantly the best part of the day is gone, and we don’t want to be urged off the premises before we’ve got properly started wheedling information out of people. We’ll go early tomorrow morning.”

  Mrs. Malloy continued to look miffed as we drove home under stormy skies. It was with the promise of picking her up at 8:30 the next morning that I dropped her off at her house in Herring Street and breathed a sigh of relief. I was eager to get home. By now Ben would have collected the children from school and would very likely have dinner started. Perhaps it would be possible for us to sit down with cups of tea and have a good talk that would banish the lingering atmosphere of constraint between us.

  When I reached St. Anselm’s I spotted Kathleen Ambleforth crossing the gravel space between the church hall and the vicarage. Rolling down the car window, I waved at her and saw her start toward me with a beckoning gesture. A moment later I was parked alongside her and sticking my head out into a wind that blew my hair around my face.

  “I won’t keep you.” She stood tugging the brim of her hat down over her brow, with her coat flapping about her legs. “Looks like we’re about to get another downpour and, unfortunately, I don’t have much to report about your furniture. I did find cousin Alice’s dispatch list, but as there were a number of duplicated items, it’s impossible to be sure which ones were yours, or if they all went to the same place. Let’s hope Alice will remember, but she’s not always easy to get hold of; she plays a lot of bridge. I never could understand why people get so worked up about card games. But to each his own.”

  “You weren’t able to narrow it down”-the wind tore the words out of my mouth-“to a few charitable organizations where the stuff might have gone?”

  “There are half-a-dozen possibilities.”

  “Look,” I said, “I’ll pay-more than it’s worth-to buy it all back. Don’t you think that would soothe any ruffled feathers? If you give me a list of the places, I could start ringing them up?”

  “I think that could make a great deal of unnecessary work for a lot of people. My dear,” Kathleen, who tended to throw those two words in when her patience was wearing thin, said, “try to be patient. I may have the information you want by tomorrow.” With that she waved me off in a resolute fashion, and I watched her battling her way through the wind to the vicarage before I reversed the car out onto the Cliff Road and drove the short distance home.

  Ben wasn’t in the kitchen when I entered through the garden door. Neither were the children nor Freddy for that matter. They could, of course, have been anywhere in the house. It was foolish of me to take it as a bad sign that there was not a whiff of dinner in the air. Stripping off my raincoat and hanging it on a hook in the alcove by the door, I allowed myself the luxury of self-pity. In the course of the day I had gone from being a housewife and interior designer, pretending to be a private detective and social worker, to end up pretending to be my very own self. Was it too much to expect to be greeted at the door by a husband who had been counting the minutes until my return?

  Be
n came into the kitchen when I was in the middle of telling him just what I thought of his ability to harbor a grudge. He didn’t hear a word because the entire conversation had taken place inside my head, but it was heartening to see that he looked suitably shamefaced.

  “Sweetheart,” he said, standing and rumpling his fingers through his dark curly hair, “are you back already? I took it from what Freddy said that you would be gone until late afternoon. The children, all three of them are at the Thompson house playing with young Julian and Trevor.” His blue green eyes, always his strongest weapon in making me want to let him off the hook, stared at the wall clock. “Good grief! It’s gone 5:00. I don’t know where the time’s gone.” He came toward me with the quick stride of an impatient lover and drew me into his arms. The rasp of his bristly cheek against mine made me suspect that he had hurried shaving that morning. But then all other thought was lost in his kiss, which was long and deep and made me forget all about the cup of tea I had been aching for a moment ago.

  “Oh, darling.” I gazed lovingly into those eyes. “You have forgiven me!”

  “For what?” He sounded completely at sea.

  “The study, of course. My insensitivity to your feelings. My manic desire to make the house over into my ideal, ignoring the fact that you loved that lumpy old chair and that dear little typewriter.”

  “Hush!” He kissed me again. “Did I really make you feel that wretched about it? God help me, I’m becoming my father! Irascible and set in my ways. Have you been worrying about this all day?”

  “I know it’s silly,” I said, cuddling in even closer, “but I let my imagination run away with me to the point where I wondered if our marriage was on the rocks.”

  “Over some furniture?”

  “I know. But when I was at the vicarage this morning to speak to Kathleen about the… upcoming meeting of the Hearthside Guild, Reverend Ambleforth came in and began talking about how you had been to see him, wanting advice on reading materials dealing with divorce. He said that you wanted it for a friend who had a controlling wife. Someone called Smith or Jones… one of those really common names. Or maybe he thought that was you. I should have realized that he had the whole thing wrong. He gets so hopelessly muddled when he’s got a nose in one of his books about St. Ethelwort.”

  “I did go to see him.”

  “Him being the vicar?” It was crucial to be absolutely clear on this.

  “The one and only Reverend Ambleforth.”

  “But not to ask for books on divorce?”

  Ben cupped my chin in his hand so that his tender smile was just a breath away from my lips. “I’m afraid so, Ellie.”

  My heart slowed to a dull painful thud. “What are you telling me?”

  “Are you sure you’re up to hearing this?”

  I could only gaze at him mutely.

  “Sweetheart, don’t take it too hard.” His voice had deepened to a throb. “These things happen sometimes to people who once loved each other very much, and I’m close to certain that Ralph Brown does still love his wife. It’s her need to check up on him every fifteen minutes to make sure that he hasn’t stepped outside without his coat or forgotten to eat his packed lunch that he has begun to find intolerable.”

  “Ralph Brown?” If there had been a rolling pin handy, I would have clobbered the husband now gazing soulfully into my eyes. I showed my remorse by making a pot of tea and sitting down to a roast beef sandwich with plenty of horseradish. “The upstairs tenant at Abigail’s. The man in Edwardian dress with the art shop.”

  “It could be that his wife has to do something to keep from being frightened to death by his pictures of nasty-looking owls. You know the old saying: never trust a bird with eyes that are too close together.”

  I stood for a moment mulling things over before saying, “I hope Mr. Brown appreciates all the trouble you’ve taken on his behalf. I suppose those books I saw you hauling out of the library when I drove past this morning were for him.”

  “No, Ellie, they were for me.”

  There was nothing in this reply to unsettle me. And I would have asked Ben why he had that guilty look on his face if Freddy hadn’t chosen that moment to walk into the kitchen with the children in tow.

  Eleven

  After dropping Abbey and Tam off at school and Rose at her play group, I picked up Mrs. Malloy at one minute past the time arranged and then headed toward Biddlington-By-Water, which Mrs. Malloy proceeded to remind me was a proper dead-in-a-live-hole.

  “But you were only there once to play bingo,” I pointed out.

  “So?” She sat looking the picture of some Hollywood costume designer’s idea of an interior decorator in a black velvet toque trimmed with faux leopard to match her coat and a pair of doorknob-sized earrings. “As I’ve been known to say time out of mind, the people you sees at bingo is a micro-cousin of what the rest of the place is like.”

  “You did get in touch with Lady Krumley? And explain our plan?”

  “Course I did. And she said she didn’t mind what sort of cover we used if it helped us pick up some clues about how to find Ernestine. Poor duck! Can’t be easy lying on that hospital bed, hoping and praying that she’ll live to see the day she can put things right with her hubby’s love child after all these years.” Mrs. Malloy heaved a sentimental sigh before telling me I was driving in circles.

  “I’m on the roundabout.”

  “You’ve been round it three bloody times.”

  This was true, but I was having trouble figuring out which exit would get me to Biddlington-By-Water. Pressed into making a decision by Mrs. Malloy’s nudge in my ribs, I took the sign to Swayford, because it sounded vaguely familiar, and relaxed into my seat. It wasn’t as though we were in a rush to arrive at an appointed time, but I did hope that her ladyship had warned her nephew Niles or his wife to expect us sometime during the morning.

  “She said she’d phone the moment she hung up after we’d done talking.” Mrs. Malloy opened her handbag and popped a lemon drop into her mouth. “Now let’s get ourselves clear, Mrs. H., about what we’re really up to in going to Moultty Towers. Is it just about Ernestine? Or are we going to have a nose round and see what we can’t sniff out about all them deaths in the family, including the fellow that just got murdered down that well? Now what was his name?”

  “Vincent Krumley. And for all we know it was an accident, plain and simple.”

  “And I’m the Queen Mother!”

  “All right!” I said. “We have our suspicions. But we’re not the police. We’re not even proper private detectives. And I’m not all that keen on being tossed over the cliffs for sticking my nose in where it isn’t wanted.”

  “There aren’t any cliffs at Biddlington-By-Water.” Mrs. M. could nitpick with the best when she chose. “It’s not a seaside place. Got nothing going for it, as I told you.”

  I had to agree when we reached High Street that Biddlington-By-Water did not abound with charm. The buildings mostly looked as though they had been erected in the 1950s. There were a couple of banks, a cinema and what appeared to be a local department store. Even the cakes in the bakery window might have been there for half a century, with the cherries on top being replaced periodically as the proprietor saw fit. The Pizza Hut and McDonald’s on opposite corners looked as though they had been put up in the night when nobody was looking.

  “There!” Mrs. Malloy pointed at a block of concrete with a door stuck in the middle. “That’s the hall where I played bingo. And if I remember Lady Krumley’s directions rightly, we need to turn left at the next traffic light, go down to the post office and take a right. That should bring us onto a road that narrows into a lane about half a mile down. Right after we come to a field with a sign saying ‘Free Range Eggs,’ we’ll round a corner and see Moultty Towers on our left, or it could be right.” She continued to vacillate on this point for the next two-and-a-half miles, at which point we could see the house, for surely there could not be two of such size in close proximity.<
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  “Looks the right sort of place for a murder!” Mrs. Malloy had her nose pressed to the windscreen.

  “What a monstrosity!” I was truly appalled. “All those towers stuck up on the roof like a bunch of cannons, and the whole thing looking like a boys’ reformatory school in some black and white film from the 1920s. Probably at some point in its history it was a perfectly charming house-until some fiend decided to modernize it and then not being happy with the results glued the towers back on and hammered big iron nails in the front door.”

  “Okay! Okay!” Mrs. Malloy climbed out of the car to stand beside me. “I can see for meself it needs to be knocked down and put out of its misery. Now tell me again,” she was looking uncharacteristically nervous, “what sort of things I’m to say to show I knows what I’m talking about.”

  “You could suggest that the fireplace needs merchandising.”

  “Meaning they should sell it?”

  “That,” I said, hoisting the bag containing furniture catalogues and fabric samples onto the curve of my arm, “it should make a decorating statement. Look, follow my lead and you’ll be fine.”

  “That’s right, let you queen it while I walk three places behind like poor Prince Phillip!” She was still grumbling as we mounted the broad sweep of steps to the front door, and would undoubtedly have gone on indefinitely if it had not been opened almost immediately by a man in a dark jacket and sober tie. He was short and almost completely bald. His age appeared to be in the sixties. His expression intimated nothing more than a mild inquiry.

  “Good morning.” One of his eyebrows shifted a hair or two.

  “Haskell and Malloy, interior designers.” I tapped the bag and beamed at him. “Lady Krumley did say to expect us?”