The Widows Club

have to be chiselled clean, but didn’t say an unkind word. Would it, I wondered, be easier to like her if she weren’t my mother-in-law?

12:45 P.M. Into the oven with the cheese straws. They looked like worms, but that didn’t mean they would taste like them. Hark! The front doorbell. Bunty at long last. What might it take to bribe her into helping me roll out pastry? I skidded across the flagstones in the hall. Was it futile to hope I could contain the flour upon my person, so as to prevent its absorption into the air? Another peal of the bell. Were Bunty’s arms so full of boxes and bags that she had to lean on the bell with her nose?

I must have looked like an overworked pirate as I flung open the door. But it wasn’t Bunty on the step. Mrs. Amelia Bottomly, gargantuan in cape and deerstalker hat, stood there. She was flanked by the beaming ladies of the Historical Society.

“Hello, hello! Dear Mrs. Haskell!”

“What… what a lovely surprise!” I gasped

“It shouldn’t be. I telephoned last weekend and your charwoman assured me she would convey the message. She did, I trust?”

“Oh, certainly!” I brushed at my apron and the air whitened. Roxie had conveyed that message when my brain was all stuffed up from my cold. I had never given another thought to this invasion.

“Splendid.” Mrs. Bottomly surged inward and onward. At the lift of a ring-laden hand, a swarm of angora berets and assorted hats followed suit. The hall buzzed. I was surrounded by cameras, notebooks, and pencils. Could I throw my apron over my face and refuse to come out? I did not have time for this. I had Ben to consider. Still, this calamity might not be without its silver lining. It did, after all, provide me with a viable excuse for not spending the afternoon with my recovering husband.

I stepped backward to avoid being trampled, then ducked, so as not to be clumped in the face by a free- swinging Kodak camera.

“Super to have you all here.” I gave the scarf a pat as though it were the latest thing in headwear for the mistress of the manor. “But there is one smallish problem.”

“Yes?” A dozen pairs of eyes fixed themselves on me. It occurred to me that I might be in danger of being lynched if I failed to let the tour proceed.

“My husband Bentley is ill in bed, so I would appreciate your being as quiet as possible while taking a peek into the rooms on the second floor. I will show you which door not to enter, and-”

“I wonder if they share a bedroom?” came a voice from the foreground.

“What about the dungeons?” demanded an anemic-looking woman in the accusing voice of a reporter.

“Sorry. Dungeons are one medieval convenience we don’t have at Merlin’s Court.”

A rustle of disappointment. Two women lifted eyebrows in unison, tightened their coat belts, and stalked out. But as they exited, two others came in. One was Miss Gladys Thorn.

“Mrs. Haskell, such a thrill! I have been unable to sleep for nights.” Miss Thorn went into one of her curtsy dips. I also spied Mrs. Hanover from the pub and Froggy-pardon me, Shirley-Daffy, wife of Vernon Daffy, estate agent. Was she here at his behest, in hope of persuading us to sell?

The group broke into twos and threes and wandered around the hall as though it were a museum. Every table leg was respectfully surveyed. Mrs. Bottomly stage-whispered in my ear. “Decent of Millie Parsnip to accompany Shirley Daffy, don’t you agree?”

“Frightfully.” Goodness knows why, but agreement was so much speedier than questions, and speed was vital when… the cheese straws! They would be burned to a crisp!

“One has to applaud Shirley for staying in the mainstream at a time like this.”

Mrs. Bottomly drew me toward the bannister and Rufus, the suit of armour.

“Mrs. Haskell, you did read in Tuesday’s Daily Spokesman that Mr. Daffy has disappeared? He went out jogging and hasn’t been seen since.”

“I didn’t know.” An awful phrase popped into my mind-third time’s the charm. Dreadful! Poor Mr. and Mrs. Daffy! Even more dreadful was the realisation that at that moment, I was marginally more concerned about my cheese straws than a neighborhood tragedy. If they were burnt, could I curry them?

1:08 P.M. I sped down the stairs after breaking the news to Magdalene that a couple of dozen women were rampaging through the house. All she said was, “We all live our lives differently, Giselle.” Ben, thank the blessed saints on the windowsill, was still asleep.

“Do continue to make yourselves at home, ladies. I have taped a piece of paper to the door of my husband’s bedroom. And the kitchen is also off-limits because I am whipping up a few cakes for tea… in case the vicar should chance to call.”

I slipped around Millicent Parsnip and past Mrs. Daffy. Mrs. Bottomly was posing for a photo, her arm around Rufus. I hoped she wouldn’t crush him.

1:13 P.M. Bless Bunty’s blond head. She had let herself in the back door. Dressed in a leopard-skin waistcoat over a black leotard, she was shaking cheese straws off their baking trays onto cooling racks. I wondered if I should throw her an apron as a hint she was welcome to stay on for the next couple of hundred stuffed grape leaves?

“Hey, El, this is kinda fun. And Li will be so proud of me; he’s got such lofty ideals about helping the oppressed!”

1:35 P.M. All that exuberance had me fooled. Bunty wasn’t any better at this than I was. So far, we had sixteen spinach balls the size of golf balls, thirteen the size of walnuts, and forty-one pellets.

2:00 P.M. Bunty and I were discussing where we might locate a suitable pop-up cake for my role in the Aerobics Follies, when a voice caroled, “Don’t mind me. I couldn’t resist a peek at the kitchen and… my, isn’t it…”

2:01 P.M. Shaking with flour and fury, I marched into the hall to speak to the Historical Society. Typically, my timing was off. The women were all clustered around Rufus. All, that is, except Millicent Parsnip, who stood in the middle of the Turkish rug, saying, “Smile!”

The camera flashed. There were the usual complaints. “I wasn’t ready!” “My mouth was open, I’ll look like I was catching flies!”

I tiptoed behind Mrs. Parsnip, lest I be invited to be in the photo. To subdue my frustrations, I tapped on the ledge of the niche by the drawing room door. The Egyptian urn that once reposed there had been replaced by a statue of an unfamiliar saint who looked nearly as unhappy as I.

“Everyone set?”

A pang, as I remembered Dorcas taking our wedding pictures. Then, a gasp-I’m not sure if it was mine- widening to a ripple of consternation. Mrs. Bottomly swayed, caught at a bannister rung and, amid screeches of alarm, disappeared, taking with her a section of the floor, Rufus, and the two closest ladies aboard.

It was a distressing moment. The scramble of the rest of the party to terra firma! The shrieks of distress. And the sound I dreaded most-Magdalene, calling over the railing, “Giselle, would you mind asking your friends to be a little more quiet? My boy is trying to sleep.”

It isn’t enough to say I was numb. I was standing outside myself, watching this other Ellie Haskell go straddling over the legs of those women who were prone on the floor.

“Excuse me, please!” said this Ellie as she joined the braver members of the Historical Society in staring down into a dark void approximately three foot square-or to simplify, the size of one flagstone. A whisper stirred through the group, but there was silence from the grave… I mean, below. The other Ellie opened her mouth, then closed it. A section of flagstone was sliding out from the under belly of the floor. Horribly, instantly, there was no more void. The silence that Magdalene had urged now engulfed the hall.

I was stunned, but my extensive reading in the field of gothic novels was decidedly in my favour. I sensed what sort of gadget I was up against and summoned up a mental picture of where the ladies of the Historical Society were standing at the crucial moment. I had been alongside this niche, my hand on the stone ledge. Repositioning myself exactly, I thought back… yes, my eyes had been on Mrs. Bottomly as she clutched the bannister, the second bannister up… The loose bannister! The one first brought to my attention by Mr. Vernon Daffy at the wedding