housekeeper, Miss Dorcas Critchley, who became my dearest (female) friend in the world. Jonas the curmudgeonly gardener metamorphosed into Jonas the Faithful Unto Death. And Ben came to write the most scintillating cookery book ever to set sail through the post in hopes of landing a publisher. Of course, I never dared hope that he and I would experience a fairy-tale love story utterly in keeping with our turreted, moat-endowed residence; but we did. And, at age twenty-eight, I was reborn. I shed four and a half stone. The hair, the eyes, ears, nose were the same, but I got a new body.
Oh, God, why did you dangle happiness in my face only to snatch it away?
Ben had helped me end my tragic love affair with eating. Ironic, considering his profession. Because of him, I stopped feeding myself like a refrigerator, lost the stipulated poundage, learned to like myself a bit better, and at long last had the sweet knowledge that a real live man loved me. We were going to live happily ever after.
The one thing I overlooked was that I was the sort of woman who bred disaster the way hamsters breed hamsters.
A seagull uttered a plaintive cry as it skimmed aloft, over the crooked tombstones; the vicar opened his book; the buzz of voices dwindled.
The air was permeated with the mildewed sweetness of the wreaths. A tear slid down my face. Here was a funeral with even more to offer than usual. Here was the grand finale to Sudden Death, Police Inquiries, Headlines in the Newspapers, and, best of all, the Questionable Involvement of a Wealthy Young Woman.
Me.
How unfair, how wrong, that I, more than the man lying at final rest, should be the focus of the crowd’s interest. I was certain I was being watched.
“Really, Ellie!” I could almost hear Mother’s voice. “What can you expect? You are the star turn in a drama where the only price of admission is a wreath. You alone can provide the updated, unexpurgated details of the Event.”
I trembled and clutched the icy foot of the marble angel I was hiding behind as two elderly ladies clad in rusty black crunched by. Late arrivals. One brushed my arm and, apologising in a quivery voice, moved hastily past. I got a whiff of a sweet, primrose scent. Did she wish to be near the front in order to get a better view? Or did she shrink from the idea of being close to me?
Let people talk. Perhaps I did not deserve any friends. All that week I had refused to see anyone except Ann Delacorte. I had been unable to say no when she pressed me to visit her at the flat above her antique shop, so she could comfort me. Comfort! Nothing could comfort me!
There was a serenity to Ann that had drawn me from the first. But glimpsing her now, I thought her heavy black veil overly dramatic. Ann had an enthusiasm for the fashions of the forties, but was she basking in the poignant figure she presented as she clutched the arm of Lionel Wiseman, our solicitor? Lionel plucked a handkerchief from his breast pocket and pressed it into her hand. Death makes hypocrites of us all.
The day was the kind that has had all the color washed out of it. The grass between the headstones was sparse and coarse; the naked branches of the clustered elms were inked against a cobwebby sky. The wind carried a fine misting rain, and from far below (St. Anselm’s was also known as The Church on the Cliff) came the seething whisper of the sea.
“I am the Resurrection and the Life…”
Dear Rowland. Ben had always been rather jealous of this good-looking clergyman with his public school background and quiet charm. My fault again. A year ago, despairing of Ben ever falling in love with me, I had encouraged him to think that Rowland harbored a restrained but abiding passion for me.
“Ashes to ashes…”
The brass plate on the coffin flashed in the watery sunlight. A bluster of wind shook the trees and carried a woman’s voice straight to me.
“Wish vicar would get his bustle moving! I wouldn’t have missed this one for nothing, but I’ll have to stop coming regular if I’m like to miss the five o’clock bus. People keep saying it was the chicken that did for him but I says the mushrooms. Usually is the mushrooms, in’t it?”
A muffled voice answered. “Papers said natural causes; but we all
“Dust to dust…”
He was inside that coffin. Dead by my hand. Dead of eating food I had prepared. Adequate to the grandeur of the occasion. The gala opening of Abigail’s, Ben’s restaurant. For months he and I had dreamed of the great day, but when it arrived, fate intruded, and I became chef for a day.
“And to dust thou shalt return…”
My mouth was filled with dust and ashes. If only I had some chocolate, preferably Swiss, loaded with almonds. Oh, how despicable I was.
Reverend Rowland Foxworth closed his book. Wind ruffled the hem of his cassock and he stood motionless in the increasing mist while two men in black coats stepped forward and lowered the coffin down into the grave. My throat closed. People were bending, picking up moist handfuls of earth and letting them fall with sickening thuds onto the gleaming coffin lid. Ann Delacorte was looking over at me. And she wasn’t the only one. The crowd was spreading out. As soon as Rowland indicated the obsequies were officially concluded, I would be mobbed.
Sorry, but I couldn’t give them that pleasure. Slipping the strap of my bag onto my shoulder, head bent, I hurried past the two elderly ladies who had arrived late. They were standing beside Gladys Thorn, the immensely tall, immensely thin organist of St. Anselm’s. And I kept going-past drunkenly postured tombstones and unmarked grassy mounds, almost running as I reached the lich-gate.
It would take me less than ten minutes to walk along the Cliff Road to the sanctuary of Merlin’s Court, away from these prying eyes. I would cross the moat bridge. I would open the heavily studded front door and enter the immense hall with the two shining suits of armor standing on each side of the trestle table against the staircase wall. My eyes would look toward those stairs, and I would fight for the courage to take that sweeping curve up to the master bedroom.
No, no! I could not do it. Not yet. I stood motionless. To my left, the battlements of Merlin’s Court rose as if painted in watercolors on grey parchment. Below, the sea crashed.
“Contemplating nature, Mrs. Haskell? Or suicide?” The voice crept eerily through the mist. Seconds later, the stoop-shouldered figure of Mr. Edwin Digby materialized. Mother waddled alongside. Mr. Digby lived in The Aviary, a Victorian house situated a quarter of a mile beyond Merlin’s Court. He was a man in his sixties, a man of mystery in the literal sense, being a famed writer of suspense novels. Mother, plucking at his coat, was a matronly goose with feathers of Persil whiteness.
“Please assure me that you are all right, Mrs. Haskell, and not seriously deliberating a leap into infinity. Alas, that ending has been wantonly worked to death by myself and others.”
I tore my eyes from the yawning drop at my feet. “Don’t let me detain you, Mr. Digby. I’m fine, really.”
“Word reached me that there is to be no funeral feast. Doubtless such an assemblage would be too reminiscent of the fatal evening.” He frowned down at Mother. “I regret, Mrs. Haskell, I was unable to attend the service. However, I am not sorry to have met you. Poisons being in my blood, professionally speaking, I was intrigued by your husband having been struck down at so inopportune a moment. Which is not to say I don’t feel for you, Mrs. Haskell. Good afternoon!” Upon which, he and Mother waddled into the mist.
I started walking. I needed to go where I might sit quietly and sort through the debris of my life. But before I had taken a dozen steps, a bus came lumbering around the curve and drew up a few yards beyond the churchyard gates. A dozen giggling teenagers, some in school uniforms, some in ankle-length coats, with electrified purple hair, emerged. Of course-the youth group met in the church hall on Friday afternoons.
It became expedient to step out of the way. Three boys (one with a gold stud through his nose) took flying leaps off the bus. Then they plunged in among the others, who had formed a dancing figure of eight, and screeching out some current hit song, rocketed past me. None but the girl at the end looked at me. A small girl with sandy-
