The Widows Club

smirk as I manoeuvered Ben, by means of a modified fireman’s carry, alongside her.

“Well, Reggie Patterson,” my mother-in-law snipped. “I must say this is a lot better than knowing you were out there somewhere, watching. You nasty boy. And don’t go taking on airs thinking I’m frightened. What, me frightened of anyone as stupid as you? I remember well when you used to come and collect your father’s rents. It was said up and down the street that all his money couldn’t do for you what nature hadn’t. You’re stupid and a coward!”

“No, I ain’t.”

Magdalene’s lips ruched into a smile. “Those that were short on the rent put their dogs out the minute they saw you coming-even Mrs. Rose with her Pekingese. And those who didn’t have dogs had their kiddies bow-wow at the window. My Ben”-she looked lovingly at the dark head on her lap-“he used to feel he’d missed out because we weren’t on your rent books and he didn’t get to send you scampering with your tail between your legs.”

“Yeah,” came a snicker. “Benny boy stopped laughing, didn’t he, when I shut him in the tater bin?”

The gun muzzle rested chill against my neck as I slid into the driver’s seat. The Raincoat Man was the son of the wicked landlord of Crown Street and Magdalene was being kidnapped, with Ben and myself going along for the ride. The Raincoat Man got into the passenger seat.

“Move it, sister.”

Please, Heinz, I prayed, do what you do best: stall.

While I fumbled with the key, Magdalene spoke. “I’d like to know, Reggie, why you never showed after luring me to the churchyard at dead of night?” She gave a sarcastic little laugh. “Did something better turn up?”

The damn motor throbbed to life.

Reggie pulled the brim of his hat low over his mean little eyes and stuck a home-rolled cigarette between his lips. “I dunno what the bleedin’ hell you’re talking about, which is because you’s trying to confuse me. But it ain’t gonna work.” He twisted around and tapped ash in Magdalene’s general vicinity. “I tell you I ain’t stupid. Me dad’s gonna get that through his skull when I pull this baby off.” He tapped his chest with the gun.

We were through the churchyard gates, the stupid Heinz purring along as if newly minted from the factory. The breeze kept blowing my hair in my eyes. “Dad was all for putting the squeeze on old man Haskell when we got the chance to sell out all them scum-bag houses on Crown Street for a dozen times what they was worth. Some blokes wanted to tear them down and build a shopping arcade, but it was all nixed because that lousy little Shylock you’re married to wouldn’t part with his shop. The trouble with Dad is he don’t think big. He made a couple of threatening phone calls and then got the wind up his pants when your coloured shop assistant rung back and told him, in that plummy voice of his-just like he was spouting poetry, to pack it in. Dad carried on like he’d been fixed with the evil eye.”

Reggie shoved the cigarette to one side of his mouth and spat out the window. “Me, I was all for torching the shop but Dad said if I did, we was through. The arcade boys would smell a rat and call the whole deal off. It was me, the numbskull, who could see what he couldn’t, that it didn’t do no good threatening old man Haskell himself. The way to get to him was through his old lady. So I starts hanging about, watching you, letting him know that if he didn’t sign on the dotted line his missus was like to disappear.”

I stared straight ahead. “She disappeared all right, but at Mr. Haskell’s instigation. You dithered too long, Mr. Patterson. My guess is that for all your brave talk, you were afraid of Paris, the Magnificent, afraid that he might step on you and not notice.”

“No, I ain’t.” Reggie’s eyes disappeared between lash-less folds. “And I ain’t afraid of no dogs.” A scowl slid over his face like slime. “I just don’t like the way they bark and set up the alarm. And in that buggering big house of yours, someone could creep up behind me and I’d have wasted me time.”

I felt better but I was worried about Ben. I had to stay alive. I must take care of him. Keep Reggie talking. Try to get him to see the futility of his schemes. We were approaching The Aviary; there was the low buff wall, the gate, and the arthritic tree with its crippled branches supporting a huge bird’s nest. But no sign of Mr. Digby.

“I suppose,” I said to Reggie, “your plan is to detain us until my father-in-law agrees to sell his shop to you and your father. But where does that really get you? The minute we are free he can cancel the agreement and stroll down to the police station.”

Reggie turned a blackened smile on me. “No, he won’t. Not if he’s given his bleedin’ word not to. Ain’t it known from Crown Street to Buckingham Palace”-he flicked more ash at Magdalene-“that old man Haskell never breaks his word, not even if it breaks his heart?”

We were coming to a stretch of road I hadn’t travelled before. The lighthouse rose up from a serene sea, the wind dropped. What better place to keep us prisoner than in a disused lighthouse? “Magdalene,” I said brightly, “how long have you known, fully, what was going on?”

She sighed. “I suppose I’m not as quick as some. When I first came down here and saw Sid, I wondered if he might be the one, out to even some old grudge. I didn’t figure out the truth until the night of the party at the restaurant. I don’t suppose you remember, Giselle, but I was looking out the window, and I saw Reggie across the road under a streetlight, staring his weasel stare, and suddenly all was made plain.”

The Raincoat Man tossed his cigarette overboard and scratched at his greasy sideburns with the muzzle of his gun. “I was halfway up the stairs of the bloody restaurant when two waiters chucked me out, the sods, otherwise I would have nabbed you that night.”

“You wouldn’t,” snapped Magdalene. “I had my watchdog with me.” She tapped me on the shoulder and Heinz’s bumpers grazed against a jut of rock in rounding a curve. “Giselle, I know you won’t understand why I didn’t tell Eli how I’d finally seen through his pretense of being keen on Mrs. Jarrod. But after him being so strong and splendid in driving me away to the safety of the convent, I wanted him to go on thinking he’d spared me.”

“I do understand completely,” I said.

“What I don’t understand is how I could have been so simple as to believe that he and Mrs. Jarrod were… you know.”

“You mean because she was taller than he?”

“That, and Eli doesn’t like pickled herring.”

“What is this?” sneered the Raincoat Man. “Schoolgirl confessions?”

We ignored him. Magdalene sighed. “Just to make sure I wasn’t going peculiar in my old age, I wrote to Paris and asked him to tell me, was I right-was I wrong? I got a letter back saying that Eli had decided to face up to the inevitable. Sometime this idiot was bound to get up his courage and kidnap me. So, best to get it all over and done with. Eli would pay the ransom, get me back, and then go to the police. They couldn’t talk about idle threats then, could they?”

“Yeah! Well, the brain here outthought your old man.”

I took another curve. The letter that, according to Roxie, had come for Magdalene from abroad must have been the one from Paris. Ben started to snore, which comforted me; the sound was noisily healthy. The same could not be said of Heinz’s emanations.

Reggie’s hateful currant eyes turned toward me. His dirty fingernails grabbed at my sleeve. “Why are you slowing down?”

“I have the thing floored,” I pacified. The purr was still nice and even, but sleepy. We were coming to an elbow of land directly in line with the lighthouse. The Heinz slid a few more yards, then stopped. I gripped the steering wheel. “Sorry, Reggie, this is as far as we go. Something must have died.”

“Something is going to die, sister, if you don’t think again.” His voice came silky quiet as his fingers closed around my knot of hair.

“You wouldn’t kill us. You’d lose your bargaining edge.”

“I could kill one of you.”

“And then the arcade boys might decide not to do business with you.” A gull winged it overhead. The scent of hawthorn on the grassy incline to our left and the distant swish of the waves made the place cruelly peaceful.

“Giselle, far be it from me to interfere,” came Magdalene’s plaintive voice, “but I think, for the sake of my son, you might start the car.”

“Spoken like a first-rate mum.” Reggie licked his scaly lips. “Benny boy mightn’t love his wifey anymore if her nose came out the back of her head.”

I explained and continued to explain until the message sank in that the car, not I, was the one playing games. Reggie sat picking his teeth and thinking, something clearly at which he wasn’t too handy. At last he snarled, “You