“Imagine,” I said, “a man calling his wife Froggy!”
I was talking to myself. Ben was gone. Attempting to follow, I was swept in the opposite direction.
Someone bumped into me. Dorcas! She was enveloped in one of Ben’s aprons and was holding my cat Tobias, looking a bit overdressed by comparison in his white satin bow.
“Thank God, you’re alive,” she rasped into my ear. She handed me Tobias, but taking exception to my veil, he leapt, hissing, onto her shoulder. “Where’s Ben?”
I explained.
“Never fear, Ellie, old chum, he’ll turn up.” Dorcas yanked at her apron straps. “Hell’s bells. Best say it and be done. I’ve bad news for you.”
I hate sentences that begin that way. Had a notice arrived from the Archbishop of Canterbury voiding my marriage until further notice? Or-I clutched an anonymous shoulder to steady myself-had Ben’s parents been fatally injured while speeding down the motorway in a rush to be with us after all?
“The temporary household help,” Dorcas continued, “has proved unsatisfactory.”
“Surely not,” I shouted, “the estimable bartender described by you as Lord Peter Wimsey come to life?”
Dorcas nodded bleakly. “His lordship sampled the gin. Found him in the pantry, face down in the lobster aspic. Sid Fowler put him to bed in one of the spare rooms.”
This was bad. That aspic was the culmination of months of experimentation. Ben might be so anguished he would be unable to function for the rest of the day-or night.
“It won’t be missed,” I lied. “What about the woman who came in to serve and do the washing up? Is she, by the good Lord’s grace, still on her feet?”
“Mrs. Malloy? She’s walking around, but not in a straight line.”
“From the general state of inebriation, I surmise our guests have been mixing their own poison.”
Dorcas shook her head and Tobias clamped a paw on it. “Jonas took over drinks, while Mrs. M. and I began getting the food out. He fixed a punch. Equal quantities of scotch, gin, vodka, brandy, and champagne. Can’t blame the old chap! Never drinks anything stronger than Ovaltine himself. But I agree mightily, Ellie, either we get some food into these people to sop up the booze or offer overnight hospitality.”
My heart sank. Already I was counting the minutes until I could get Ben into our hotel room. I would don my pearl-pink nightdress and he’d insist I take it off again, at once…
“Let’s find Ben,” I said, “he’ll be putting the final touches to the buffet table.”
“Can’t take Tobias into the drawing room.” Dorcas reached up a hand to haul him down but he leapt from her shoulder, ran along a roof of hats and was gone.
Dorcas snorted. “Already fetched him out of there twice. That antique dealer, Delacorte, is allergic to cats. Don’t like the man. But don’t want him ill.”
I agreed. People might think it was the food. “Better let me chase down Tobias while you put on some records.”
“Hope you can find him in this mob.”
“Foolish friend”-I patted her shoulder-“where food is, there too is Mr. T.”
I was almost afraid to enter the drawing room. Unsuppressed sigh of relief. No overturned flower vases. No pictures knocked cockeyed on the walls. Lamplight illuminated the sheen of polished walnut and ivory brocade; and, as so often happened, Abigail’s portrait above the mantel warmed me more than the ruby glow of the fire. The wedding cake rose in tiered, pristine splendour on its own table.
I averted my eyes. I once read a story about a woman who had lived a prior life as a cat and every time she came near a mouse, her lips started twitching. Having lived my former life as a pig, icing sugar had the same effect on me. I sidled past.
The dozen or so people in the room appeared to be comporting themselves in an orderly fashion. I even recognised a few faces. Lionel Wiseman, solicitor, stood by the buffet table conversing with two ladies.
One of them was a woman of fiftyish. A beige sort of person. Her complexion, birds-nest hair, tweedy suit-even her eyes-all came in variations of that shade. I knew she was Mr. Wiseman’s secretary because she had been seated in his outer office, typing, on the day Ben and I went to discuss with him the legalities involved in purchasing the building we wished to convert into Abigail’s. Mr. Wiseman had introduced her to us as Lady Theodora Peerless. Did he joke? Or did some riches-to-rags tale lurk behind that monochromatic exterior? The other woman with Mr. Wiseman was a Marilyn Monroe blonde.
His daughter? Her photograph had been featured on his desk. At the other end of the buffet table stood Charles and Ann Delacorte. Another handsome man, if you like Nordic types with fair, almost transparent, hair. He was poking his fingers through a plate of munchy morsels, searching, I heard him say, for something nonfishy. Ann was impeccably, if not fashionably, groomed. The shoulders of her emerald green dress were heavily padded which, coupled with the way her dark hair was puffed up in front and drawn sleekly back into a roll low on her neck, made her reminiscent of a model in a nineteen-forties catalogue. I wished I could discover where Tobias was hiding. (Was that a meow?) That way I could drape him in front of me and Ann might not see that the Victorian gown she’d helped me select from Delacorte’s impressive array of old-world finery was no longer in mint condition. She turned, saw me, and smiled wanly.
“Your husband keeps bringing out more food and everything looks delicious,” Ann said, as I stole toward the table. “Usually I eat like a bird but…”
“Very true, my dear,” responded her spouse, “like a vulture.”
Charles Delacorte had eyes like iceberg chips. “Not that you don’t sing like a lark.” He touched her hand with his finger tips and lifted a pale eyebrow at me. “Did you not hear my wife’s voice leading the choir during your nuptials? Might you, perhaps, care to have her sing a ditty or two for the enlivenment of your guests? Something of a child prodigy, weren’t you, darling? Sang with some wildly famous people, long since forgotten-the Far Horizons and Sylvania, that toast of the night clubs! A rose that bloomed too soon, that’s my Ann.”
Courageous Ann. Her smile never dipped, and my heart swelled with admiration and pain for her. I found myself babbling. “It would be lovely to have you sing, but with everything so noisy it wouldn’t be fair to you. You know, I think I did see that Sylvania, or rather an old film clip of her, on television recently; she was all in sequins, seated on a piano, with a cigarette in one of those long holders, belting out a ballad in this wonderfully raspy voice about some man that done got away.” A meow cut me short, reminding me of who else had done got away. Urging the Delacortes to keep having fun, I hitched up my skirts and moved on.
A squat, muggy-faced woman touched me on the arm. It was Froggy-I mean Shirley-Daffy.
“Such a lovely bride! I cried all the way through the service. I wonder, have you seen Squeaky?”
“Excuse me, who?” My eyes strayed to the twitching tablecloth. Froggy let out a ribbitting laugh. “Silly me! Pet name for my husband. The old dear has to catch the London train so I wanted to remind him we mustn’t stay too late. He
“Thanks.” A group by the bookcase alcove dispersed, and I spied Jonas administering punch from the eighteenth-century wassail bowl. He had upended his top hat on the white-clothed table, behind a placard imprinted with the words Thank You. Terrible man. I caught his eye and mouthed, “Meow?” He lifted a hand to cup his ear; unfortunately, it was the one with the ladle. I went back to prowling.
Mrs. Roxie Malloy, the hired help, was also prowling-straightening ashtrays and tucking empty glasses into her apron pocket. Her hair was blackest black, and her face was layered with enough paint to do a small semidetached all through. Emerging from behind the sofa, she looked me up and down.
“I trust I’m giving satisfaction, mum? Your husband took over in the kitchen. Titivating the chicken tarts he was when last I saw him. I’ve had more than my share of husbands, let me tell you, and never a word of complaint out of one of them, so I trust they’ll be no trouble with me wages.”
She stalked off, slightly on the tilt, trailing a whiff of clove balls, Uncle Maurice’s antidote for boozy breath.
