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.
“Dudley!” His wife got out of her chair to fume over him. “You really are naughty going outside in this weather. With all I have to do must I be worrying about your catching one of your nasty colds? And all your handkerchiefs already in the wash. It simply is too vexing. If I weren’t so fond of you,” she said, wiping the rain drips off his neck with her scarf, “I would be very much put out.”
“So sorry, my dear.” The vicar dragged his mild blue eyes away from his book. “Such a trial I am to everyone. As was St. Ethelwort from time to time. His bishop had to admonish him on several occasions for allowing his monks to sunbathe on the beach in their birthday suits while groups of nuns were picnicking nearby. He was, as I have so often written, a saint ahead of his time.”
“That’s all very nice, Dudley.”
“Good morning, vicar,” I piped up from the sofa, and he responded with a blink before taking a couple blundering steps toward me. In this room one must always be wary of stumbling over some object left lying in the middle of the floor.
“So you’ve arrived.” He extended a hand pried away from the book. “We received your letter and are delighted to have you pay us a visit. I didn’t think,” he turned a bemused face to his wife, “that we weren’t expecting her until next Tuesday.”
“Dear,” Kathleen responded with obvious restraint. “This isn’t cousin Alice. She came and spent four days with us and only left this morning.”
“So she did.” Reverend Ambleforth shook his head, causing his white hair to fluff out. “Then who, my dear, is this lady?”
“Ellie Haskell.”
“Ah!”
“From Merlin’s Court.”
“The,” he spoke into Kathleen’s ear, “the psychiatric place? Did they let her go, or has she escaped?”
There were some of my acquaintance who suspected that the vicar had himself escaped by way of a knotted bedsheet from some such facility, but as clergy were difficult to come by in small parishes they thought it best not to make a big thing about it.
“Always one of your little jokes, Dudley!” Kathleen produced an unconvincing chortle. “You’re talking about that place at Melton Kings, where they put criminals who can’t help doing what they do-like Peeping Toms and kleptomaniacs.”
I thought about Aunt Lulu, Freddy’s mother. How terrible if she was to end up in such a place.
“Merlin’s Court.” Reverend Ambleforth closed his book and stowed it tenderly in his trouser pocket. “I remember now. It’s the house that looks like a castle just past the bus stop.” He did, as even his detractors admitted, have his brief moments of lucidity. “And this lady is married to,” he hesitated, furrowing his brow, “her… well, it would be her husband, wouldn’t it? No need to help me on that one, my dear.”
“Dudley, you have caught a cold,” Kathleen bundled him into a chair. “They always go straight to your head.”
“I can see him as we speak.” The vicar flashed us both a triumphant smile. “A dark-haired, good-looking young man. By the name of Jones. I’m almost sure that’s what he said. Or maybe it was Smith. One of those common names. He was here this morning. Wanted a word with me about books approved by the church on the subject of divorce. Said he had a friend… or it could have been a relative who was considering leaving his wife. One of those overbearing women from the sound of it.” His abstracted look had returned. “Dear me, we do live in unsettled times.”
“It wouldn’t have been Ben.” Kathleen threw up her hands. “Why on earth would he come here pretending to be someone else?”
“He wouldn’t.” I smiled because it gave me something to do with my face. The vicar got up, patted his pocket, took out his book and crossed the room to the door. A moment later we heard a couple of thumps as he encountered some obstacle out in the hall. Then all was silent save for the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece.
“Dudley’s always the same when he gets wrapped up in St. Ethelwort.” Kathleen sat back down. “If there was a man here this morning he was probably fair-haired and never said a word about a friend or divorce. No need for you to look so upset, my dear. Unless,” she said, eyeing me intently, “that problem you mentioned has to do with your marriage?”
“Ben and I had an argument last night.” I stared down at my hands. “He was very angry that I had given away all the stuff in his study. I hadn’t consulted him, you see, and I realize it was upper-handed of me. That’s why I’m here… oh, not because Ben is considering a divorce… it’s not that serious,” I squeaked out a laugh, “but I am really hoping that you will let me have everything back. You have every reason to be annoyed with me, but I am in this awful predicament.”
“You did explain to Ben that all donations go to highly worthy causes?” Kathleen could look her most fierce
