The Thin Woman (31 page)

“Worst possible thing for you,” Dorcas fumed when I tried to discuss the situation with her over my lunch tray. “Should be resting, not churning yourself up into a froth.”

“No doubt the murderer agrees with you.” I put down my soup spoon. “Lying here like a trussed chicken makes for very easy prey. Dorcas, if this were a detective story, who would be the prime suspect?”

“Me, of course—appearing out of nowhere, references all phonies, old grudge against the family. Uncle Merlin had got my father sentenced to life imprisonment in a dank Cornish jail … or, I know about the treasure and …”

“Very funny,” I said. “Next candidate, please.”

“Obvious—our dashing swarthy hero, also with a murky past, Bentley T. Haskell, Esquire.”

“Dorcas, Ben comes from a very solid background, his parents are decent, honest people.”

“They may be,” sighed my friend. “But you have to look at this from the perspective of the police should they enter the picture. Here is a man you picked up at an escort service, who charmed you into deluding a senile old man that you were engaged to be married, he is now ensconced in this house with you …”

“Wait a minute!” I sat up in bed so quickly I wrenched my neck painfully. “I’m the one who proposed to Ben!”

“No matter. Dead people don’t make reliable witnesses. An adventurer, that’s how he’ll appear to Chief Inspector, Scotland Yard. Cutting out the hopes of all those devoted relations! Can’t you see the headline, ‘Playboy and Sometime Escort Murders Fake Fiancée’ ?”

“Not without a motive,” I said. “Ben doesn’t have one—without me he gets nothing. The will stipulated that this must be a joint effort.”

Dorcas still looked unconvinced when my bedroom door opened and Ben came in. “You ladies having a nice chat?”

“Super! Watson here and I have just wound up the case. Dorcas, handcuff him to my bed. Then go to the telephone and dial our local friendly police station. Take your time.”

Warning of his imminent peril left Ben cold. He said, “If you women would spend less time fantasizing and look at the evidence, we might make some headway!”

I was determined we would not call in the police until we could prove the identity of the villain.

“Okay, Mr. Instant Analysis.” I watched as he moved to the end of my bed and stood resting his hands on the foot rail. “You tell us.”

“Don’t be cheeky,” he said reprovingly. “I may not have the answers but I sure as hell have a lot of questions. How, for instance, did the enemy know that you would be stupid enough to climb into that dumb-waiter?”

I’d had ample time to mull this one over. Confession is supposedly good for the soul so I took a deep breath and announced, “When I was giving blabber-mouth Freddy the grand tour of the house, I mentioned that I was considering turning our archaic feature into a linen cupboard.”

Ben did not take this news too critically. “Even so, you might not have got round to doing anything about it. As a method of bumping someone off, it strikes me as haphazard, sloppy.”

“That’s not quite the way I would describe my recent brush with death!” I tried to draw myself up in bed and sank back painfully with a little help from Dorcas. “Besides, if we accept your theory that we are wrestling with a full-scale lunatic, can we expect computerlike calculation?”

“Madness,” said Ben, “has a nasty habit of going hand in hand with incredible cunning. How else can it turn a relatively normal face to the world?”

My skin prickled, but I replied calmly enough, “Are you implying that we are overlooking something?”

“Exactly!” Ben’s eyes glistened under the knitted black brows, and I suspected that on some perverted level he was enjoying himself. “Although,” he continued, “some pieces of the jigsaw are beginning to fit into place. For instance, booby-trapping the dumb-waiter was the prime reason for the enemy’s visit last Sunday. Kidnapping Tobias was an added bonus but I doubt if it was part of the original plan. That cat of yours happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Right from the start I had difficulty with the idea that our mystery guest had made his elaborate plans in the hopes of tracking down that mangy ball of fur. The moving target we called him, remember? We should have seen the drowning in the moat for what it was—a side issue.”

“I’ll have to explain to Tobias,” I said sarcastically, “that he wasn’t the star of this drama at all, just a bit player.”

“Oh, he was more than that.” Ben met my glare blandly. “He acted as the enemy’s calling card. In addition to his other psychological problems, this weirdo is an egomaniac—hence the telephone calls gloating over his cleverness. Tobias floating
in his sack was tangible proof of who was winning this battle of wits.”

“Will you shut up!” I snarled. “You’re actually getting a kick out of facing off against the enemy.”

“Come now.” Dorcas, who had been sitting very quietly as though lost in thought, roused herself. “Mustn’t excite yourself, doctor’s orders.”

“Try and see it this way,” Ben reasoned. “For months you have been fascinated with Abigail, trying to establish some order to what you knew about her, hoping it would lead you to the treasure. For me, even with the incentive of the inheritance, the trail never blazed the way it did for you. Somehow the whole notion seemed a bit fanciful. You were happy fitting the pieces together so I left you to it. But now we are dealing with another kind of chase and I don’t want to be carried out on a stretcher without knowing how, and why, and whom.” He moved to the side of the bed and lightly touched my hand. “I think the time has indeed come for a return of all suspects to the scene of the crime. How about a family reunion this weekend?”

“Have a heart,” grated Dorcas, “the girl’s still on her sickbed.”

Ben’s eyes met mine. “Bring me my crutches,” I cried. “What a deplorable hostess I am, lolling in bed with guests expected any day.”

CHAPTER
Sixteen

Surveillance. That was the key to success and safety. Ben repeated this maxim often. While discreetly watching the suspects, we would as carefully watch each other. During the day Dorcas would be on permanent duty, unobtrusively keeping tabs on Ben and me in the event that either of us was left alone at any time with one of the suspects.

“Nothing too obvious,” Ben warned her. “Keep a low profile. You don’t knit, by any chance? In works of fiction, genteel lady spies always sit tucked away in dark corners clicking away with their needles. No one ever notices them.”

“Nor old people neither.” Jonas nodded sagely, stroking his moustache. “Folks don’t look at us twice. Don’t want to be reminded that one day they’ll end up in the same boat. Fat, thin, tall, short, raving beauty or ugly enough to sink ships, we all wrinkle up and look alike.”

“Okay, Jonas.” Ben grinned. “Never let it be said life doesn’t start at seventy. A life of espionage opens up before you, but for cripe’s sake be subtle, don’t keep trotting through the house with a watering hose and a bag of fertilizer.”

Jonas cast a knowing eye out the kitchen window where, for the first time in a week, the sky was a clear limpid blue. “Looks like rain, I’d best come inside and do the silver.”

“If you keep this up,” said Ben, patting the old man on the back, “we’ll give you a shilling a week raise and elevate you to butler. Dorcas, I want you to camp down on a mattress at the side of Ellie’s bed. That way you can sleep in relays. I’ll give Freddy my room and move into the one next to yours, Ellie, so you have nothing to fear. You do agree that the doors should be left unlocked to give the enemy ample opportunity to stage his attack when the lights go out?”

These prep sessions did little to still my foreboding. What if, as Dorcas had suggested, we were the victims of a conspiracy? If I had serious misgivings about one or more of our guests busily planning the social event of the season—a double funeral for Ben and me—Dorcas was even more upset. Since the night of Tobias’s near-tragedy, her brisk and chipper manner had paled, and my accident following so closely had left Dorcas a very troubled woman. I would come across her at intervals during the day, sitting limply, staring into space.

On the Friday evening a half-hour before the guests were due, she followed me into the drawing room and begged me to speak to Ben and have him call the whole thing off. “Ellie, this is madness!” She caught hold of my arm and pushed me down into a chair, as though hoping to hold me captive long enough to bring me to my senses. “Must put a stop to it. You’re building a volcano. Evil bubbling away under the surface now, but it’s gathering force, ready to erupt—destroying everyone in this house.”

Poor Dorcas, my devoted friend. She didn’t even sound like herself, and her eyes were glazed and feverish. I did hope she wasn’t coming down with another of her headaches. I squeezed her hand and told her to go upstairs and rest. Even had I wanted to, I could not stop the relentless march of feet drumming to our front door. My kin were already on their way. I had taken one precaution. That morning I had driven
into the village to visit Rose, Brassy’s grandmother, and left Tobias in her keeping.

Dorcas did not go upstairs and rest. A short time later I saw her through the window in what appeared to be earnest conversation with Jonas. After a minute or two they moved away in the direction of the stables. Comparing strategies, I thought. What a loyal pair they were. Somewhat consoled, I went upstairs to dress.

Red for courage. I slipped on the flame-coloured dress, and smoothed a touch of the same shade gloss over my lips. Dorcas returned to the house. Apparently she had taken Ben’s knitting request seriously, for she emerged from her room with a yard-long purple and citrus wool strip flung over her arm, needles jutting out one end like a psychedelic tiger baring its teeth.

She seemed in rather better spirits when we walked down the stairs together. “Only things I knit, scarves,” she confessed as I admired her handiwork. “Tried a jumper once, but the pattern lost me when it reached the armholes. Couldn’t make head nor tail of all that decreasing, increasing nonsense—slip one, drop one, loop the loop—lost patience. That jumper became another scarf. Rather wide but warm.”

I was glad to hear her sound more like her old self. The talk with Jonas must have done her good. “Never fear,” she whispered as we entered the drawing room, “I shall be right behind you at all times.”

“Don’t overdo it,” I whispered back. “You just took off part of my heel.”

Whatever their other vices, lateness was not a family trait. The guests all arrived within minutes of each other at seven o’clock, were shown to their rooms, given an opportunity to freshen up and unpack if they wished, and by eight were all assembled in the drawing room. They talked among themselves sipping sherry while Jonas did his stuff with the silver tray heaped with cheese straws and mushrooms à la grecque. Freddy looked at them with dismay. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “Aunt Sybil didn’t make these and I’ve been dreaming of her tantalizing titbits all day.”

“She’s away at the moment, visiting friends,” I said. But Freddy quickly swallowed his disappointment along with a mushroom while greasily juggling four others.

“Will you stop that!” Uncle Maurice turned on him. “Makes you look like a sea lion at the circus.”

Aunt Lulu murmured, “Don’t get on at the boy, dear,” as she turned over a china ornament to check its maker.

Freddy ignored them both. Arching his neck he tossed and caught another mushroom in his mouth. His hair trailed back in a pirate’s pigtail, and he wore a turquoise figure of a naked woman swinging from one ear. A conservative middle-class jury would have branded him the felon, but I wasn’t sure I could convict him on “appearance.” Aunt Astrid with her regal crown of white hair and her high-necked buttoned blouse pinned with its cameo brooch, and Vanessa, more gorgeous than ever in a daffodil-yellow silk suit, appeared the perfect mother and daughter combination. Uncle Maurice epitomized the man who always returns his library books on time, while Aunt Lulu represented the women of the world who take their iron capsules every day, serve liver every Thursday, and always shop at the January sales. Yet, all of these paragons had hidden their guilty little peccadilloes until publication in Uncle Merlin’s will.

“And to what,” enquired Aunt Astrid, “do we owe the privilege of this belated invitation?”

“Darling.” Vanessa turned her perfect profile towards her mother. “Don’t be dense. Ellie couldn’t resist showing off her creative homemaking talents and her youthful—prepuberty—figure.”

I saw Dorcas’s head come up sharply like a pointer on the scent, but her fingers kept clicking away at the needles, lips mouthing knit one, purl two. Her eyes caught mine and moved on around the circle, the guard dog sitting in its darkened corner.

I smiled at Vanessa. “Darling, in all of us—–even you—there is a fat girl waiting to come out.”

“Come now.” Ben picked up the silver tray which Jonas had set down when he left the room. “Ellie felt the time had come for a little celebration.”

“Aren’t you counting your guppies a little early?” asked Freddy amiably as he reached for another fistful of canapés. “The money isn’t yours yet, old chap.”