The Thin Woman Read online

  “Ungrateful old.” Unfortunately I was not done with my relatives. Vanessa rang. She knew I would be ecstatic to learn she had won another fabulous modelling assignment, and why had she not seen an announcement of my marriage in The Times?

  That telephone call clinched my need to escape the pressures of life in the big city. The next morning I invited Lady Witherspoon to the showroom and suggested that her new drawing room might benefit from the Italian influence. Would she like me to make some purchases for the room? In Rome?

  Dabbing her moist eyes with a lace handkerchief, she breathed, “And to think one’s acquaintances are always complaining about slackness among the work force.”

  Professional integrity would not permit me to accept Lady Witherspoon’s offer to defray all expenses, but her cheque—for which I put in many hours casing the fabric houses—did permit me to travel in more style than usual. Once arrived in that city of fabulous antiquity and sunshine, I settled into a small but charming hotel where the view was excellent and every meal a sonnet. With so many double chins bobbing over their fettuccine Alfredo, I began to feel that my proportions were quite reasonable and ordered thirds without a pang. What was even better, Ben slipped back where he belonged, within the pages of paperback romance, chapter—and book—closed. With only the merest tinge of regret—a girl likes to have her memories—I put the book on a high shelf in some inner corner of my mind and let it gather cobwebs. I called the airline and was on my way home.

  London in early April was wet and grisly, the pavements dark and slick. The tall narrow house on Queen Alexandra Place stood hunched and indignant with cold. Grabbing his tip with fingers poking through the holey fingers of his knitted gloves, the taxi driver spun off into the fog. Jill was out, but I found Tobias looking well-fed and dapper on the bottom stair.

  “The one person in the world who really loves me!” I cried, bending to clasp him in a fond embrace. With a curl of his lip, the ungrateful feline lifted his tail, gave it an arrogant flick as if to say, “Don’t come crawling back to me, you cat deserter,” and marched upstairs.

  I respected his grievance. After three weeks of Jill’s cooking I might, not be speaking either. Fitting my key in the lock, I shoved my suitcase over the threshold with one foot just as the phone rang.

  “Have you been wetting on Miss Renshaw’s doormat again?” I yelled after Tobias as he scooted into the kitchen. “If I have to listen to any more complaints from that old biddy …” I informed his hindquarters. “Hallo,” I said, snatching the receiver and speaking in the tones of weary world traveller.

  “Ellie, where the devil have you been?” snarled Ben. “I telephoned Jill and she said you were due back two days ago. I got this number from her and …”

  The colossal cheek of the man coming back to haunt me when I had finally laid his ghost to rest! I cradled the phone in my hands and did an on-the-spot tap dance. He was grinding his teeth, those dear, small pearly teeth that had nibbled my ear in all those banished dreams.…

  “Look,” he said with exaggerated slowness, “I do know the sound of my voice leaves you breathless, but would you come out of your coma for one minute—just long enough for us to hold a rational conversation?”

  Rational? I didn’t like that word. I stopped tap dancing.

  “You lost the cheque?”

  “Must you keep harping on about money? I hate to criticize at a time like this, but I find it extremely vulgar. If you ever checked your bank statement, but of course women don’t, you would have seen that I never cashed the pittance.”

  “Back up a minute.” I sat down heavily on the arm of the sofa, almost crushing Tobias, who had crept up silently. Needle-like claws shot into my posterior and I stood up abruptly. “What do you mean, at a time like this?”

  Now he was the one to be silent.

  Shoving Tobias rudely aside, I sat down again. “Break it to me gently.…” My voice came out in the uneven gasps of a ninety-year-old woman running the marathon. “You and Vanessa have been seeing each other on the sly, and now you’re getting married?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, well in that case.…” I swung poor Tobias over my shoulder and nuzzled my face into his soft warm fur.

  “Ellie, I get the crazy feeling that you don’t know.”

  “Mm?” I tickled Tobias under the chin.

  “Uncle Merlin’s dead.”

  “He can’t be!” I expostulated. “The man is immortal—he predates the flood.”

  “Obituaries printed in The Times do not lie. Look,” said Ben, “I’m sorry to be the one to break the news, but I …”

  “Don’t turn this into a Greek tragedy.” My voice was muffled by Tobias’s fur. “The man was a stranger to me. That weekend was the first time I had seen him for years.” I paused to take a deep breath. “And he behaved in the most foul fashion—maybe that is why I felt sorry for him … afterwards.”

  “You’re not snivelling, are you?” asked Ben accusingly. “Hang it all, Ellie, you’re just like a big slobbering kid. I’m coming over.”

  “Thanks,” I sniffed.

  Persuading Ben to accompany me down to Merlin’s Court was not all that difficult. Actually, I think the suggestion was his—after I had encouraged Tobias to be nice to him and had stressed the difficulties of travelling by public transportation. Ben was back in the escort business.

  “About that business of our engagement?” We were standing in the hall saying goodnight when I brought up this ticklish subject. “So far I haven’t done anything about breaking the news to the family that we are no longer a couple.”

  “Then we will have to continue the charade.” Ben was wrapping a long striped scarf which looked like a souvenir from his schoolboy days around his neck. “We don’t want to upstage the funeral by denouncing our relationship as a fraud. But I do expect you to do the right thing and throw me over the minute this family crisis is over, understood?”

  “Absolutely! Cross my heart and hope to die.” Such lighthearted foolish words.

  “I wonder if Merlin shared your sentiments!” said Ben succinctly as he went out the door.

  When we drove through the sagging iron gates up the weed-ridden gravel driveway just before noon the next day, Merlin’s Court looked more than ever like an enchanted castle with a curse laid upon it by a belligerent fairy.

  Someone had been watching for us. Aunt Sybil met us at the door, dressed in black. Her lips were drawn down at the corners, but her face was otherwise expressionless.

  “Auntie, this must be so hard for you.” I tried to hug her but she backed away.

  “No fuss, dear, please. In Merlin’s and my young days, grief was always considered a very private matter.” Her broad hand smoothed one of the many ripples in her silk dress, and I thought she looked more like a rhinoceros than ever with her muggy skin and sagging jowls. And then her lips quivered. Poor old girl, with the possible exception of the gardener, she might well be the only friend Merlin ever possessed.

  “Was the end very sudden?” I asked, handing Ben my coat so he could add it to the pile of other garments on the trestle table.

  “Very. The doctor came in the morning and Merlin was gone in the afternoon. Pneumonia, it was. He went quite peacefully.”

  “I’m surprised. I would have expected Uncle Merlin to go out cursing the fact that he had been forced to see a doctor for the first time in, what was it, forty years?”

  “Forty-five.” Aunt Sybil registered restrained pride. “Merlin never was a man who fussed about his health, as I think I told you when you finally managed to come down and see him.”

  Unjust! This was no time to argue with a bereaved elderly woman, but Uncle Merlin had made his own choice when he marooned himself in this house like a hermit. He had never acknowledged my Christmas cards or shown the least interest in seeing me. Ben interpreted the sparkle in my eyes and silently gestured a memo to stay cool.

  The other members of the clan had already gathered in the drawing room and w
ere once more clustered around an inadequate fire.

  “Darling, let me see your ring.” Vanessa held out her hand for mine like an eager child, but she was looking at the man standing beside me, her delicate winged brows lifted enquiringly.

  To give Ben his rather begrudging due, he did rise to the occasion and protect me from the enemy. “Ellie and I have had our share of arguments over an engagement ring,” he said smoothly. “She insisted that the money could be put to better, more practical use. What was it you wanted?” He turned toward me and grinned to imply the sharing of an inside joke.

  “A battery-operated electric blanket, sweetheart, so we can snuggle up and stay warm on our little jaunts in your car.”

  “Isn’t she a sport,” Ben beamed.

  The words were not loverlike, but the man was trying. Freddy, who had been lounging on the floor looking shaggier than ever, stood up and made a strangling gesture around his mother’s neck. “Lay off, Ma,” he said. “That sherry’s weak enough without you diluting it with your tears.”

  “He was too good, too good to live,” whimpered Aunt Lulu. “His kind are always the first to go!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Aunt Astrid. “The man was over seventy. He’d been here quite long enough.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Freddy, “cut the cackle, Ma. You’ll be singing a different tune a couple of hours from now when the will is read and you discover the old screw didn’t leave you the bundle you’ve been expecting.” Freddy swigged down his mother’s sherry and reached for the decanter. “I wonder who will get the lolly.”

  Aunt Astrid drew herself up in her chair. “I wouldn’t put it past the old fool to have left everything to charity, but if he had any sense he will have bequeathed his fortune to those who know how to spend it well. Vanessa and I have always appreciated the finer things in life.” Aunt Astrid cast a disparaging glance at Freddy and me.

  Vanessa twisted a stray curl around a long slim finger. “I’m sure I don’t expect a penny,” she demurred gently.

  Freddy said something very vulgar.

  Aunt Astrid rose out of her chair. “How dare you, you disgusting unkempt creature, how dare you insult my beautiful daughter?”

  “And how dare you insult my tall, handsome son?” Aunt Lulu banged down her glass on top of a pile of old newspapers littering a fireside table. She seemed to sprout feathers like an angry chicken. “Who do you think you are, Lady Muck? Don’t put on airs and graces with me! My mother remembered the day when your father drove a rag-and-bone cart through the streets of Bethnel Green. To hear you talk, he was in textiles! Ha! For all the fancy finishing schools and your la-de-da ways you and that daughter of yours are nothing but a pair of jumped-ups!”

  The victims of this onslaught looked staggered, while the rest of us had trouble hiding our enjoyment. Uncle Maurice made a token protest, but we could all see his heart wasn’t in it. “Now, now, my dear. Enough said, don’t get yourself het up.”

  “I will not be quiet!” shouted Aunt Lulu, getting her second wind. “If that woman had one ounce of breeding she would know that in the better families, an inheritance always passes through the male line.”

  “I’ll drink to that!” smirked Freddy, pouring himself another glass.

  “Insolence,” gasped Aunt Astrid.

  “Calm down, Mummy.” Vanessa poured a glass of brandy and handed it to her trembling parent. “You are upsetting yourself over nothing. I am sure Uncle Merlin possessed enough of his faculties at the end to leave his fortune to the most deserving family members.”

  Uncle Maurice tucked his pudgy fingers into his waistcoat pockets, puffed out his chest like a penguin, and frowned. He was obviously about to say something remarkably astute. “Over the years,” he intoned, “I have on a variety of occasions offered Merlin the benefit of my investment experience. True, he was at times inclined to be testy, but that was his manner. And as, in my opinion, Merlin would have selected as his legatee someone of financial background, I do think myself a likely candidate for the bulk …”

  “Fiddlesticks!” Aunt Astrid swept out of her chair in one majestic movement. For a moment I cherished the exciting notion that she would fling her brandy glass in Maurice’s face. Ben, too, I could see, was having a whale of a good time. Our eyes met and he lowered one lid in a discreet wink.

  “I gather you are not even in the running,” he whispered. “Pity! I always find heiresses so attractive.”

  “Come, Vanessa.” Aunt Astrid had unfortunately decided not to make a vulgar scene. “We will not remain in this room any longer listening to such complete folly. Sound investment advice from you, Maurice? How singularly amusing! I think you had better put your own house in order. From the rumour I happened to overhear at my dressmaker’s last week, your financial expertise has reduced you to dire straits.”

  “Don’t you think,” I said, “that everyone is being a trifle premature, not to say greedy? Remember, Aunt Astrid, you are the one who suggested that Uncle Merlin would probably leave everything to a cat home. Maybe he liked your idea, although I think it far more likely that he left his money to the one person who has stood by him all these years, Aunt Sybil.”

  Right on cue she came through the door. In her black felt hat with the shadowy brim elamped down over her grey hair, and her dark coat reaching almost to her lace-up shoes, Aunt Sybil looked like the nanny in a melodrama—the kind where all the children turn into ghouls and the parents have to run away from home. “I think”—she glanced at the clock above the mantelpiece—“that we should be leaving for the service. Those who wish to drive may, but I shall walk. The church is only five minutes away, and Merlin abhorred motorcars. His remains are being conveyed from the undertaker’s in a horse-drawn carriage.”

  She added, “I believe the means of transportation chosen was not only because of a distaste for motor vehicles, but a matter of sentiment expressed in a written request to his lawyer. Mr. Bragg will be returning with us after the funeral so you will have a chance to talk with him.”

  “Won’t that be fun!” gloated Freddy in my ear.

  A heavy mist had descended over the area since our arrival at the house. Our little party clustered close together as we manoeuvred our way down the narrow cliff path, which was rutted with crevices and pockmarks. A railing strategically placed where the sharp drop-off to the sea was dangerous would have given some feeling of security, if I had been able to see clearly three feet ahead. Before long I had wrenched my ankle, and Ben took my arm.

  “If you keep dragging on me like this,” came his disembodied voice, “you’ll have us both down, and we will go rolling over the edge to find ourselves impaled on the rocks below.”

  “What a misery you are, seeing gloom at every turn.”

  “You’re damn right,” he agreed amicably. “I see something very gloomy coming around the curve at this very minute, a vapourish chariot pulled by two snorting stamping horses, driven by a phantom driver.…”

  “He’s there; we can’t see him because of the mist,” I explained patiently and almost tripped again—this time over Uncle Maurice, who had stopped short. “Can’t you visualize the coffin rattling around inside the carriage?”

  Ben did not return my friendly squeeze. “I’d much rather not,” he said.

  Uncle Merlin was buried in the family vault, a small chapel-like building standing close to the church.

  I hated the raised tombs, the older ones topped with marble effigies, the newer ones by brass plates. The coffin was carried in, high on the undertakers’ shoulders. No friend or relation rose up to share the burden. Uncle Merlin was dead and nobody, including me, really gave a hoot. Why couldn’t he have been buried out in the churchyard where the grass would blow above him in the wind? I turned to see the old gardener standing hunched and somber, separated by polite distance from the family. A tear sneaked out the corner of one eye and slid in slow motion down his wrinkled cheek. Was he wondering how soon his turn would come—another name ticked off t
he list? “I’m leaving,” I told Ben.

  I made myself useful back at the house tidying the drawing room, removing all the dirty cups and traces of stale food, and making tea. I had finished dusting the mantelpiece with a wad of scrunched-up newspaper when I heard a tramping in the hall. In addition to the family, we were joined by Dr. Melrose, who had attended Uncle Merlin on his deathbed. He went around shaking hands and apologizing for not arriving until the funeral was almost concluded. “I’m sorry I was unable to better assist Mr. Grantham,” he remarked to Uncle Maurice. “Pneumonia was the crunch, but the man had a very serious heart condition. Very foolish of him not to have sought medical assistance sooner. He must have guessed.”

  “But if nothing could be done,” said Aunt Astrid, “and bearing in mind that even with National Health, there is always some expense …”

  The vicar, Mr. Rowland Foxworth, arrived and offered condolences in his charming voice. He was a very attractive man with prematurely silvered brown hair, strong eyebrows, and warm grey eyes. He was much taller than Ben.

  I cast a considering eye over Ben and went on pouring tea. Mr. Foxworth and the doctor had barely left when the doorbell chimed, announcing the man we had all been waiting for, Mr. Wilberforce Bragg, solicitor at law from the firm of Bragg, Wiseman & Smith.

  To do the family justice, I think we presented quite a charming drawing room scene. No one was sitting sharpening his claws or ostentatiously smacking his lips. Mr. Bragg was a man in his sixties, with a squashily plump figure, like very soft dough. His complexion was a ruddy network of purple veins, his hair did not look as though it had been combed for a week, and his jacket and trouser legs were an inch too short.

  “I don’t think his mother allowed enough room for growing,” whispering Freddy as he cast a regretful eye on the sherry and helped himself to a cup of tea.