Femmes Fatal Read online

  “Good evening, Mrs. Pickle.” I spoke without thinking, without seeing, programmed by other visits to expect the vicarage daily to do the honours of admission.

  “Sweetheart”—Ben resumed his pose of devoted spouse—“I know I’m not wearing my glasses but …”

  Say no more. The woman eyeing us from under neon-painted lids was not Mrs. Pickle, but our very own Mrs. Roxie Malloy. A scarlet organdy apron added a splash of colour to her black taffeta ensemble with its rat fur collar.

  “Mr. and Mrs. H, what a treat!”

  This was tantamount to going to get my teeth checked and finding the dentist in the chair. Following Ben into the hall with its twisty turny staircase, porridge wallpaper, and chocolate-brown radiators, I said, “Mrs. Malloy, I had no idea you worked here. What happened to Mrs. Pickle?”

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard!” Her voice rich with reproof, Mrs. Malloy bumped the door shut with her rump.

  “Dead?” Ben had given up euphemisms, along with saturated fats, when the twins were born.

  “Now you know me, Mr. H, I don’t do drains, I don’t do chimneys, and I don’t gossip.” The butterfly lips were sealed.

  “She’s … pregnant?” I backed into a portrait of the Archbishop of Canterbury. “At her age? Why, she must be close to seventy!” The absurdity of the accusation dawned, but then again we are forever reading about such things in the scandal sheets … and the Bible. Just look at Sarah! All those chaps patting Abraham on the back and telling him he’d never be bested in the Guinness Book of Records, while his poor wife was coping with night feedings at ninety.

  Mrs. Malloy scoffed a laugh. “What, Edna in the family way? You must be joking. Her Albert’s been gone thirty years. And if a man so much as put his hand where he shouldn’t, he’d be singing soprano in the boy’s choir. Anyone but old Jonas that is; Mrs. P’s had a crush on him since she was a young chick of fifty. Ah well,” she said, checking herself out in the hall tree mirror, “since you’ve twisted me bra strap, I’ll tell you …”

  “Yes?” I prodded. Ben was eyeing the closed door across the hall. From the murmurings wafted our way, the meeting of the Hearthside Guild was in full swing.

  “At six-thirty-seven this evening, Edna Pickle threw down her apron and walked out.”

  “Left Reverend Foxworth?” I couldn’t take this in. “There must be some mistake. She was devoted to him; no polish was ever good enough for his floors, no starch ever crisp enough for his collars.”

  “Where’ve you been living? In an igloo?” Mrs. Malloy folded her arms, forcing her bosoms upward, so that they resembled a pair of balloons bound to pop at any moment. “The Reverend Mr. F moved on to greener pastures yesterday afternoon.”

  “Gone, without so much as a good-bye?” The picture of the Archbishop of Canterbury was tilting at a crazy angle.

  “You got it, Mrs. H: a parish in Kent, from what I could make out from Edna. Horribly sudden it was. But that’s bishops for you. Always getting too big for their mitres.”

  The ground had gone out from under me. I had to clutch at Ben to keep myself steady. No more Rowland. Surely there was something sacrilegious in the concept. The St. Anselm’s pulpit would never be the same. Was this God’s way of punishing me for poor attendance?

  “What brought this on?” Pacing the frayed strip of carpet, Ben did the asking.

  Mrs. Malloy patted her two-tone hair and assumed a repressive mien. “I keep me suspicions to meself.”

  “Not,” I quaked, “money missing from the collection plate?”

  “Ellie, get a grip on yourself.” My husband proceeded to unbutton my coat as though I were a rag doll. “The chap was integrity itself. Remember how he tried to ban the pool some of the parishioners got up before the twins were born?”

  “Yes,” I whispered, dizzy from being spun around for the removal of my scarf. “Dear Rowland gave that wonderful sermon—the one about the money lenders in the temple, but to no avail. They still laid bets on the sex of the babies. And now the bishop has found out about the gambling and in a fit of ecclesiastical fury banished that saintly man to the wilds of Kent. Ben, this is all my fault, and I quite see why Rowland could not bring himself to say good-bye.”

  “There, there ducky,” Mrs. Malloy said with unwonted gentleness. “Why don’t you go in and have a nice chat about all this with the new vicar?”

  Replaced so soon! I was lost in a whirlpool of remembrance … my wedding day, the twins’ christenings, and those many other luminous occasions enriched by Rowland’s presence. Would I ever again smell pipe tobacco without recalling how his cassock breathed that sweetest of all incense?

  “Change is the name of the game.” Ben hung our coats on the hall tree.

  “You’ve said it, Mr. H.” Mrs. Malloy tugged at the bodice of her frock so that the requisite amount of cleavage showed. “First Mrs. Pickle gone and me playing understudy. Then Miss Thorn—she gets her marching orders! Better than a box at the opera it was. Such a caterwauling she made! And while I’ve never been overly keen on Miss Thorn, I don’t mind saying that new vicar has made one bloody big mistake. There won’t be a man in church next Sunday, they’ll all be outside picketing.”

  Entirely possible.

  “No time for tears. Duty calls.” Giving her cranberry apron a flounce, Mrs. Malloy headed for the kitchen while I followed my husband across the hall to the sitting room. So many memories behind that closed door. Rowland had been my first friend in Chitterton Fells and now I must face the new vicar. Truth be told, the word usurper sprang to mind.

  I barely had time to hitch up my smile before entering that book-lined room. All was the same, from the monk brown sofas and striped wallpaper to the towering grandfather clock, the worn rugs and picture of Rippon Cathedral above the fireplace. No, not quite the same. Silk poppies sprouted from the vase on the bureau and the odds and sods in the curio cabinet had been replaced with what looked like Waterford crystal.

  Ben, in his role as program chairman, was not focusing on the furnishings. Instead, he was toting up the members of the Hearthside Guild present and reaching the inevitable conclusion that whichever way he counted, they still numbered only four. Dr. and Mrs. Melrose and, yes, over by the window sat Jock Bludgett, the shifty-eyed plumber, and his better half, the siren who lured him home from work, leaving my washing machine high and dry. I could see Ben was taking the poor attendance hard. As for me, the sparsity of the group was a dubious bonus. It made it impossible to miss the most obvious disruption of the old order.

  Standing before the fireplace, a teacup poised on his palm, was your stereotypical vicar. A balding man, slight of build, stooped of shoulder, whose nearsighted eyes peered wistfully upon the vagaries of this world through a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. Beside him stood your made-to-measure vicar’s wife. A pillar of the church. Her iron-grey hair of the sort that does double duty as a hat. Her beige twin set and houndstooth skirt made clear she would do a masterly job of organizing the summer fête and the Christmas bazaar. She would introduce weekly altar cloth bees and … she had seen Ben and me.

  She touched her husband’s arm. “We have some new arrivals, Gladstone, dear.”

  “Ah, lovely.” He smiled his blessing upon us from the hearthrug, while I felt the floor shift under my feet. Gladstone! Why, this had to mean that when I phoned the vicarage this morning to seek counseling for Mrs. Malloy and overheard what I thought was a radio program about the great prime minister, I had been sadly mistaken …

  “Good evening, Vicar,” Ben gushed. “I’m Bentley Haskell, Program Chairman, and this is my wife Ellie.” Normally I would have given him a discreet kick in the shin for ignoring the vicar’s wife, but I was only vaguely aware of the startled look on her face. My mind had gone gallivanting back to Gladstone’s words to the woman I had pictured as bonnetted and shawled, with a scarlet letter on her brow:

  “In the name of what we once shared, I ask you to vacate these premises.”

  And her
reply:

  “Not until I have spoken to your wife.”

  I was brought back to the moment by the vicar’s eyes on my face. His gentle smile had dimmed.

  “I am not the vicar.”

  “You’re not?”

  “I am,” said the wife.

  Unable to meet her husband’s eyes, mine flickered downward, and I saw that what I had taken for a clerical collar was but a white polo neck worn under the grey cardigan. Futile to blame the vicar for wearing civvies.

  Good heavens! This was akin to being pushed onto a darkened stage and finding oneself an actor in a Victorian melodrama. From the audience—I mean, the other members of the Hearthside Guild—came chortles at my bumble. But who in this quiet hamlet could have suspected? A female clergyman! St. Paul would turn in his grave. The congregation would go on strike over this, even if they did not take up their picket signs on Miss Thorn’s behalf. My brain stopped whirling and took a couple of steps forward and three back. Miss Thorn! Was she the woman from The Past? Was the vicar’s husband another notch on Miss Thorn’s black lace garter belt? Were old secrets and old sins about to take up residence in this house which heretofore had known no worse than an occasional puff of tobacco smoke and discreet glass of sherry? And which of them—the vicar or her husband—had dismissed the church organist on the trumped-up charge of being a back-door Methodist?

  “I am afraid I have been teasing you,” the reverend lady smiled. “I am not a fully fledged vicar. I’m a lowly deacon sent here until a permanent male replacement can be found for Reverend Foxworth.”

  “You don’t know St. Anselm’s,” I replied. “To us you will be the vicar in thought and probably name.”

  “Something to drink?” asked Mr. Gladstone Spike.

  Suspicion reared its serpent head. Rowland had not frowned on the occasional glass of Oh Be Joyful, but the new incumbent might have more exacting standards of sobriety. The Melroses gave nothing away. Neither was partaking of liquid refreshment. They stood by the harvest table holding hands—or, I should say, Mrs. Melrose, tonight wearing a sack dress that made her look more than ever like a female Friar Tuck, was holding the doctor’s hand. Hmmmm! What had we here? Far from appearing his usual sanguine self, Dr. M’s expression was reminiscent of mine when greeting him from a supine position with my feet in the stirrups. Neither of the Bludgetts was holding a glass. They were standing so close it was hard to tell which was wearing the Charlie Chaplin moustache. While I stood gawking, Ben asked for a glass of wine.

  “Whatever you have in the cellar.” He exuded affability until I spoke up, having determined better safe than sorry.

  “Have you forgotten, Bentley, that we’ve given it up except at Communion?”

  He kept a grip on his smile.

  “We’ll take tea,” I informed our hosts.

  “Milk, no sugar, if you please.” My husband measured out the words as if they were ground glass to be stirred into my cup.

  As for the vicar, I had no idea whether I had scored points with her or not. Her smile was as neutral as her mode of dress. Would even the advent of a rival for her husband’s affections ruffle her finger-waved hair?

  “Mind doing the honours, dear?” she said, addressing her spouse. “And how about the cake? Our new brethren will find they haven’t lived before sampling your chocolate madeira.”

  See the nice man blush.

  “Gladstone’s cakes always took First Place at the summer fête when we were at St. Peter’s in the Wode. Let St. Anselm’s cooks beware.” Now the vicar’s smile embraced all present, especially, it seemed to me, the Bludgetts, who bashfully emerged from their own little world. Even so, my Aunt Astrid would have ordered their immediate excommunication, public flogging having been abolished.

  Woe to he who lusts after another man’s culinary success. With elaborate indifference, Ben prowled over to the table where Gladstone Spike now had the silver teapot well in hand. Black brows fused, my husband subtly sized up the competition posed by the chocolate madeira cake. Joined by Dr. Melrose, he accepted a floral cup and saucer and stood watching the wistful drift of steam go spiralling upward.

  “The smallest sliver of cake, if you please,” I heard him say, adding that the evening’s speaker was due to arrive at any moment. The inference was that the concentration required by a big piece of cake might cause him to miss the grand arrival, thus putting the kiss of death on the evening’s proceedings.

  What did one talk about to a lady cleric? I hovered in her shadow, pleating my bag strap until she made things easy for me.

  “Please call me Eudora.”

  “And I’m Ellie.”

  “I understand we are neighbours.” She had large, slightly protruding hazel eyes and I caught in them a flicker of the same surprise she had shown when I first entered the room.

  “Yes!” I put my bag down on a chair and tried not to notice when it fell with a plop to the floor. “We live at Merlin’s Court. You can see the house from this window, which of course makes it absolutely dreadful that I missed church the last three Sundays, and I am not nearly dedicated enough to the Sewing Circle or the Friends of St. Anselm …” I paused, drew a shaky breath, and was amazed to find how much better I felt.

  Correctly interpreting my smile, she said, “Helps to make a clean breast of things, doesn’t it?”

  “It certainly does.”

  “Which is why I hope to reopen the confessionals here at St. Anselm’s. There will be objections, I am sure, and cries of popery, but I intend to make waves.”

  As Miss Thorn had found to her cost? But I couldn’t worry about that lady or lament that dear Reverend Foxworth was gone from my life. This room was aglow with the breath of life, the promise of new beginnings. For the first time in months I felt the stirrings of my old vitality. If Mrs. Eudora Spike could take on the male-dominated Church, then surely I could work at one marriage. What was it the Fully Female manual had said? Light his candle and make love till you feel the burn.

  I turned my eyes to Ben, ready to begin now to feast upon his maleness, to caress his dark good looks with my eyes, my hungry breath … but Mrs. Melrose chose that moment to put a cup of tea in my hands. And I couldn’t say I was sorry for the intrusion. I had forgotten how exhausting desire can be.

  “You two ladies have a nice chat.” Eudora left us to catch up with the rest of her flock, who had wandered away to the other side of the paddock … I mean, the room.

  From a distance I hadn’t noticed anything particularly different about Flo Melrose—other than the way she was cosying up to her husband. But standing next to her, I was startled by the new woman. The Friar Tuck hair had a bounce to it and the once doughy cheeks possessed a peachy blush. Even more startling was that the doctor’s wife wasn’t wearing a stitch under her sack dress … not so much as a fig leaf. You could tell from the flounce of her bosoms and the way the material grooved to her generous proportions.

  “Gained weight by the looks of it.” Flo roared the whisper in my ear.

  Heretofore I had quite liked the woman. Flo Melrose was the least snobbish person I knew. She would take a blind person across the road whether he wanted to go or not, and she had been there for me when I failed my Lamaze course. But I wasn’t about to take her comment with a simper.

  “Wrong, Flo. I have not put on weight. I am one of those unfortunates who can never gain an ounce.” That was no lie, for I always go up in increments of five pounds. Deep sigh. “If you only knew how sick I get of chugging down those milkshakes.”

  Her hearty laughter joggled my teacup. “Get off your high horse, Ellie. I wasn’t talking about you. I meant Ben. Those extra pounds look good on him. They’ve turned him from a yearling into a full-grown buck who’s earned his antlers.”

  I stared from Flo Melrose to my husband in disbelief. Certainly he was forever standing before the mirror, sucking in his navel so that it touched his spine and bemoaning that his belly was going to pot. But who could take him seriously? Perhaps he had gai
ned some muscle, but what man worth his steroids could complain about that?

  “Ellie, I would like your Ben to model for me.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve taken up painting again.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Nudes.” Mrs. Melrose stood there, blatantly shaping the air with her hands while she stripped Ben down to the bare bones of light and shadow. “Ellie, three weeks ago a splendid thing happened to me. I joined Fully Female. Now, for the first time in my life, I am in touch with my own sexuality. At age fifty-two I finally see beauty in buttocks. I want to emblazon them upon canvas …”

  At that propitious moment the door opened and Mrs. Malloy, with the glow of the evening star in her eyes, ushered in our speaker for the evening. Good grief. I didn’t know whether to laugh or ram Ben’s piece of chocolate madeira down his throat. This weedy chap with the face of a haddock was Mr. Walter Fisher, the undertaker!

  “My most abject apologies, ladies and gentlemen.” He bowed, folding in two over the briefcase he clutched to his pin-striped middle. “Just as I was leaving the house I was called out on a job. A Mrs. Huffnagle, taken from us while in the bath. Another case of the accidental immersion of an electrical appliance.”

  Oh, my heavens! That haughty matriarch who had swept past me in the waiting room of Fully Female this very afternoon! It seemed such an impertinent death—to be frizzled by a hairdryer or …

  My eyes met those of Flo Melrose and Mrs. Bludgett with whom I had not yet shared a word. Some words don’t need to be spoken. They hum in the air. They vibrate. From the way Mr. Fisher said electrical appliance, I knew the ghastly truth.

  Through a gap in the chocolate-brown curtains I glimpsed the moonwashed tombstones growing wild in that garden of death. What would be the epitaph on the imperious Mrs. Huffnagle’s stone?

  An alligator didn’t ate her.

  She was done in by a vibrator.