The Importance of Being Ernestine Read online

  “I’m so sorry, Ben! I was completely out of line in bringing in all that new stuff and getting rid of the old. You were quite right in saying I was thinking about how I wanted your study to look. I didn’t see that at the time, but I should have done if I’d taken the time to consider how you felt about that dear old typewriter and the easy chair and the…”

  “Darling, don’t give it another thought!” He interrupted his circuit to place a hand on my shoulder and kiss the air two inches above my head. “I went off the deep end without appreciating all the time and effort you put into surprising me. I’m a monster and I don’t know how you put up with me.”

  “You really mean it?” I was enormously relieved by the throb of sincerity in his voice and the fact that he lingered beside me, even holding my hand for a moment or two before pacing off again.

  “Absolutely!” He gave me a sideways smile. “How was Mrs. Malloy?”

  “Intent on turning private detective.”

  “For that outfit where’s she been working?”

  “Her boss went on holiday this evening, and one of his clients showed up too late to see him. And you know, Ben, how Mrs. Malloy is inclined to take over. This time she’s all fired up to impress Milk.”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Jugg. And because he wasn’t there and I was… well, you can imagine how things went. I got roped into listening to the client-Lady Krumley’s story and writing it all down in shorthand.” I took a breath and made up my mind to tell him the rest, including the arrival of Have Gun. There must be no more secrets between us. If Ben told me to keep my nose out of the situation so be it. Feeling confident and virtuous I was about to expound when he stood stock still, before leaping a foot in the air and clutching at his head as if about to rip out every wavy black lock.

  “What’s the matter?” I shot off my chair.

  “I forgot to turn off the computer.” He was already halfway out the door. “I spent the evening figuring out how to turn it on. And now what happens if it burns itself out? It’s not like I have my typewriter to fall back on till we get it fixed. Just give me some quiet time, Ellie, to work through the manual.” The door swung closed behind him, and I saw that Freddy’s eyes were open and his ears on the flap.

  “Men and their computers,” he murmured consolingly.

  I fell back in my chair. “That’s why Ben was in the study all evening. He wasn’t staring into space. He was scowling at the screen trying to blink it into life. I have to get his typewriter back.”

  “Not in the middle of the night, coz.” Freddy wagged a remonstrating finger. “Neither,” he added, as I inched forward, “should you go blundering into the study offering unwanted advice.” He locked his hands behind his head, shifted his lanky legs to get a better foothold on the stool and leaned back. “Far better, Ellie, to tell me all about your evening with Mrs. Malloy leading up to the man with the gun.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” I sighed. “A little lighthearted chatter to help me forget my troubles.” Clearly there was no hope Freddy would remember that he had left the iron on or that he needed to leave a note for the milkman, so I rambled away about Lady Krumley. Tobias appeared out of nowhere to land on my lap as I was detailing Flossie Jones’s deathbed curse. Freddy heard me out with only one or two gurgles of rude mirth and even wrinkled his brow in concentration when I spoke about having seen Have Gun in the café and his mercifully brief visit to Jugg’s Detective Agency.

  “Although it didn’t seem all that short at the time. And perhaps it wasn’t as comic as I’ve made it sound with him waving that gun around and talking like someone…”

  “In a bad play?” Freddy shifted out of position so suddenly that Tobias let out an infuriated meow and disappeared under the bookcase.

  “It was rather like that,” I conceded. “He seemed to grow more confident as he went along.”

  “Getting into his part.”

  “You could say that.” For the moment I had forgotten Ben.

  “What sort of a gun?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not up on the different kinds. But, now that you ask,” I stood up and sat back down, “it was rather like the one you had when we were children and played cowboys and Indians. But it could have been a real gun. It must have been…” I sat biting my lip, remembering how for a moment in time I had been taken in by the gun-shaped cigarette lighter Mrs. Malloy had tossed at me. It had been that sort of evening.

  “Explain something to me, Ellie.” Freddy’s eyes narrowed, just as they had done when he was a ten-year-old Wyatt Earp pacing toward me with his hand at his holster. “Why would this bloke in the sunglasses try to frighten you into giving up on a case that no one in their right minds would have given the time of day if he hadn’t shown up?”

  “Not a bad question.”

  It was one that had been nagging at the back of my mind as I drove home.

  Seven

  I awoke to find another question staring me in the face: What about Ernest, the under gardener who fathered Flossie Jones’s baby girl? There had been no mention of him when Lady Krumley talked about Flossie living out her last days in a miserable bed-sitter. Was he a rotter who had bunked off rather than face up to his responsibilities? Or had Flossie shut him out of her life? Did he even know that the baby had been put up for adoption?

  A moment later I lost interest in these speculations. Ben was not in bed beside me. A distant bonging of the grandfather clock let me know that it was 8:00 and that I had overslept by an hour. There was no reason for me to panic. He would be downstairs giving the children their breakfast after getting them up and dressed. We usually did this together and had become quite good at speeding things along without making anyone feel rushed. But if I didn’t wake with the alarm clock, he would let me sleep on before bringing me up a cup of tea. Usually on those days he would take Abbey and Tam to school and Rose to her playgroup. Even so, as I dragged on my dressing gown and headed barefoot for the stairs, I couldn’t stop myself from feeling abandoned. I had dozed off in the drawing room the previous night while still talking to Freddy. He was gone when I came drowsily back to my surroundings at 3:00 in the morning. And Ben was in bed and asleep when I climbed under the covers. The sensible thing would be to take him at his word that he had forgiven me, but I couldn’t. The mad idea crossed my mind that if I looked in the study I would find a note propped up on the mantelpiece, saying that he had gone away for a while because he needed time to think, the classic words to end a doomed relationship. I reminded myself, even as I pushed open the door, that Ben loved me, that our marriage was solid and he would never abandon his children, especially over something so trivial. The study was exactly as it had been when I showed it to him last night, except for a cold cup of tea sitting beside the computer. Really, I did need to get a grip on myself. But to be fair a lot of women might go to pieces after having a gun pointed at them, real or not. Shaking my head so that my hair, which I hadn’t combed, tumbled out of its pins, I entered the kitchen, which didn’t look as inviting as usual.

  On chill, gray mornings such as this it helped to have a small blaze going in the red brick fireplace, but Ben hadn’t got one started. Nor was he there. Freddy was the one wandering around the table urging the children to eat up their cereal.

  “I want porridge,” Tam had his elbows on the green and white check cloth and was blowing bubbles in his juice glass.

  “Daddy always makes us porridge,” Abbey contributed wistfully.

  “Love Daddy.” Rose dropped her spoon in her cornflakes and giggled with delight when milk splashed everywhere. Tobias sat happily licking his whiskers while Freddy appeared ready to tear his out. Indeed his beard already looked extra mangy.

  “We all love Daddy,” I said, stepping up to the table, “but it seems we’ve got to manage without him this morning.”

  “Mummy! Mummy!” squealed Rose.

  “Your hair is so pretty.” Abbey reached up to stroke it. “Will I have to be all grown up before mine
gets long down my back?”

  “Can I have a boiled egg?” Tam asked.“With the army?”

  “He means he wants his bread and butter cut up into soldiers,” I explained to Freddy while getting down a saucepan from the hanging rack above the Aga. “Where is Ben?”

  “Gone down to Abigail’s. He said that if he stayed here he’d waste the whole morning at the computer. Obviously, he would have waited until you got up if I hadn’t done my cousinly duty in showing up to forage through the fridge. I’ve nothing in mine except a bottle of tomato sauce.”

  “There are such places as supermarkets,” I replied, popping eggs into the boiling water.

  “I’ve heard they charge money”-Freddy stood eating cereal out of the box-“and I don’t think that sort of thing should be encouraged. Call me an idealist, but someone has to make a stand.” He elbowed past me to munch on the slice of bread I had buttered for Tam.

  “I suppose it’s a matter of principle with your mother,” I said before I could stop myself. “Enjoying getting things for free, I mean.”

  “You mean pinching stuff?”

  “It was wrong of me to bring it up.”

  “A girl at school pinched me,” Abbey’s mouth trembled.

  “She’ll go to hell for that.” Tam was gobbling up his egg, and Rose was looking around for hers. Abbey did not eat eggs. She said they gave her indigestion just like they did Mrs. Malloy. All three children were devoted to Mrs. Malloy, cheerfully believing that she had magic potions in her bag and flew around on the Hoover when they were in school to speed up the cleaning.

  “Your mother’s a dear,” I said, handing Freddy a cup of tea. “And we all have our little foibles. I know you worry about her, but look on the bright side. She doesn’t smoke or drink…”

  “People that smoke go to hell.” Tam licked egg off his face.

  “Who told you that?”

  “A boy in my class. His father says he hopes they all fry. Like a pan of chips. And choke on the smoke.”

  “Did you ever smoke, Mummy?” Abbey clutched my hand in blue-eyed terror.

  Freddy saved me from answering. “Some ghoul, that father! Puts the point across that there are worse things in life than dear old Mum’s little problem. Although I’ve got to admit, coz, that I do occasionally worry that it’ll all catch up with her, and she’ll end up in the clink.” He sighed heavily. “The thought of Dad cooking Christmas dinner for the next thirty years is not a happy one. I’ll be lucky to get a poached egg. He was fixing himself one last night when I phoned. And was in a very nasty temper about it. You’d have thought Mum had left him to fight the Battle of Waterloo all on his little lonesome.”

  “Where was she?” I was gathering up plates and putting them in the sink.

  “Down at some pub.”

  “She’s entitled to a little outing.”

  “Dad said she’d been there for three days.”

  “That’s odd, considering as I was just saying that she doesn’t drink.” I spoke lightly, hoping Freddy wouldn’t see that I was worried. I was fond of Aunt Lulu and couldn’t believe Uncle Maurice hadn’t got off his rump to go and look for her. She could have taken a knock on the head during a brawl and be wandering the London streets senseless or gone off with the Guinness deliveryman. Or something worse, too terrible to contemplate, might have happened. “What exactly did your father say, Freddy?”

  “Not much. He was in a state trying to get the poached egg out of the saucepan. To hear him shouting, you’d have thought it was a fish that kept leaping back into the water. I told him to calm down, and he said that if I couldn’t stop making silly suggestions I could hang up. The thing is, Mum doesn’t know how to cook, but she knows how to send out for a curry. So I imagine he was taking her absence harder than he was prepared to admit. All I got out of him was the name of the pub.”

  “And what was it?” I was wiping Rose’s face and hands.

  “That’s just it!” Freddy thumped his forehead with a fist, sending his skull-and-crossbones earring into a wild spiral. “I can’t remember. For some reason I keep thinking Long-fellows… but that’s not it.”

  “Phone again and ask your father.”

  “I did this morning, risking getting an earful about my lack of fiscal responsibility-two of his favorite words-in making back-to-back calls. But there was no answer.”

  “Try his office.”

  “He told me he was taking a few days off to get his shirts washed and ironed. Mum always pinches a couple of new ones for him each week. So it’s understandable that he’s at sixes and sevens without her.”

  “I expect she got tired of spoiling him and has gone somewhere to relax.” It was a logical explanation, and I reminded myself that Aunt Lulu had proved well able to take care of herself in the past.

  “Mummy we’re going to be late for school.” Tam eyed me sternly.

  “Oh, my goodness!” I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece above the kitchen fireplace. “So you are! And I’m not even dressed. But I promise you no one goes to hell for arriving two minutes after the bell rings.”

  “I’ll take them if you’ll let me use your car,” offered Freddy, whose only vehicle was a motorbike.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind, with this business…”

  “Of the missing Mum?” He grinned at me. “She’ll turn up. Come to think of it this isn’t the first time she’s done a bunk. A spirited lass, my mother. Dad isn’t easy to live with. Remember how I was forced to run away when he stopped my pocket money after finding me playing ‘doctor’ with that girl next door?”

  “Freddy you were twenty five at the time. And she was married.”

  “Picky! Picky! Come on gang!” He marshaled the children toward the alcove, where their coats and schoolbags hung, and had them out the door before I had completed my second round of hugs. “Back in half an hour, Ellie.”

  Usually I enjoyed a little time on my own, but the house seemed too quiet after they had gone. Almost as though it had taken Ben’s side and was giving me the silent treatment. Tobias, who usually came slinking out of hiding when it was just the two of us, was conspicuous by his absence. Even the twin suits of armor appeared to avoid my gaze as I headed for the stairs. Telling myself that I had to snap out of this silly mood, I took a quick hot shower, washed my hair and after blowing it dry got dressed in a pair of brown corduroy slacks and an olive green sweater. There, that was better! Rather than waste time pinning my hair into a chignon I tied it back with a rubber band. A dash of lipstick, a brush of mascara, and I would be ready to march down to the vicarage and beard Kathleen Ambleforth in her den.

  Freddy wasn’t back with the car when I left the house, but I didn’t mind walking even though it was pouring down rain. My umbrella sprang a leak before I reached the end of our drive. All to the good. It couldn’t hurt my cause to arrive looking pathetically drenched. Kathleen, I reminded myself as I rang the bell, had a kind heart under her forthright manner. She took a few moments to answer the door and usher me into the dark hall, crammed with enough cupboards, chests and sideboards to hide a dozen members of the clergy escaping persecution in foreign parts. Donations to her charity drive, I concluded. But although I peered into every corner I couldn’t spot any of the items from Ben’s study. Hope leaped in my damp breast. Perhaps Kathleen had decided they weren’t worthy of being delivered even to the most needy, and they were already on their way back to Merlin’s Court with a sensitive little note of apology.

  “Sorry to barge in without phoning first,” I said, as she took my umbrella and shook it out the door before propping it up against a chair with three legs.

  “Don’t give it a thought, dear. You know I’m always glad to see you, even when I’m just walking out the door.”

  “Oh, are you?” It was a stupid thing to say given the fact that she was wearing a rain hat in addition to her coat and a long wooly scarf. But Kathleen had a way of rattling me. She was an imposing figure of a woman, with a commanding voice and brown
eyes that missed very little. Freddy said she scared him most when she was being jolly, but I would have been thrilled at that moment to see a glimmer of a smile. “I promise not to keep you more than a few moments.” My voice came out in a pitiful stammer. “It’s just that I’ve got this little problem.”

  At that her eyes did light up. Kathleen thrived on setting people’s lives to rights. All she asked was that they take her advice to the letter and not waste her time dithering on about what someone else had to say on the subject.

  “You’d better come into the sitting room.” She maneuvered her way toward a door to our right, and I skinned both legs climbing over a chest of drawers in her wake.

  “I hate to delay you.”

  “First things first, I always say, Ellie.” She waved me toward an elderly sofa with a couple of cushions that looked as though a six-year-old child might have embroidered them. It was a shabby room with oatmeal-colored wallpaper and faded red curtains. Books and magazines were scattered over almost every surface, an old cardigan and a floral apron were tossed over the back of a chair and the mirror above the fireplace needed resilvering. Kathleen wasn’t the house-proud sort. She didn’t have the time, or the interest. I shifted my feet, so as not to knock over a cup and saucer that had been left on the floor, and sat back and admired the cozy muddle. I couldn’t have lived with it, but I envied Kathleen’s ability to do so.

  She sat opposite me in a chair with mismatched arm covers. “No call to worry, Ellie, I’ll explain to the parishioner I’m to visit that I was unavoidably delayed.”

  “That is kind.”

  “Now tell me about this problem.”

  Before I could do so, the Reverend Dudley Ambleforth wandered into the room by way of the French doors that opened onto the back garden. The white hair that normally stuck up around his head like a dandelion clock was flattened to his head by the rain. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, let alone a coat-just a thin gray cardigan. Impervious to his drenched state he had his nose in a book-probably one he had written himself of the life of the venerable St. Ethelwort, founder of a monastery whose ruins were located a few miles along the coast. The vicar was his own favorite author, which was a good thing because most people had trouble wading through even one of the thirteen volumes he had produced on his beloved subject.