No sound. I sat on the stairs and waited, maybe dozed… A hand clutched at me, almost toppling me over backward.
“Rouse, my dear Ellie, I am most concerned,” trilled Primrose. “Magdalene went chasing through the grounds after little Sweetie dog, who was being pursued by the pussycat. Hyacinth went after them, and a minute later I dispatched Butler to follow, because we cannot discount the possibility of that dreadful Raincoat Man being about. And the outcome, alas, does look bleak. None of them has come back. Admittedly, it has only been about ten minutes, and Hyacinth does have the duelling pistol with her, but I do think-as nothing seems to be ripening here- that you and I should attempt to locate them.”
“No,” I said, eager to do something. “You stay here. I know the grounds and the places where Tobias may have cornered Sweetie. If your sister and the others come back to the house and find us gone, they will panic. I’ll be in no danger. The Founder isn’t given to impromptu murder.”
“Ellie, I think you should stay here and I… oh, dear me, no, that will never do; not if Mrs. Malloy is you-know- who.” I was dragging on an old raincoat. Primrose’s face crumpled. “I have an ominous feeling about this, my child.”
Out in the garden I called out the string of names: Magdalene, Hyacinth, Butler, Sweetie, Tobias. No answering shouts, no rustle of shrubbery. It had rained earlier and the daffodils shone yellow under the fruit trees, which had blossomed overnight into fragrant canopies of pink and white. Birds twittered. Bees hummed. Everything was coming alive. Dreariness clamped down on me and, at last, the fear I had been waiting-hoping-for. Where were they? Three people whose current mission in life was to protect me wouldn’t play silly games.
What was that scuffling noise near the iron gates? I began to run, feet skidding on gravel. As I drew level with the cottage, I saw Sweetie wriggle out from under the hedge and go hopping like a rabbit out onto Cliff Road. I raced after her.
She stayed barely ahead of me, but every time I was within reach of grabbing her, she would shoot ahead. Could it be that Magdalene, pursued by Hyacinth and Butler, had chased her this way? And the little wretch had doubled back? Sweetie dodged into the churchyard; so did I.
“Magdalene! Hyacinth! Butler!” What was that? The moan of the sea? The screech of a gull? Or a voice crying out, “Here! Here!” Sweetie had vanished behind a tombstone, but the sound had not come from that direction. I ran up to the church steps and lifted the iron handle. The door was locked. A branch grated against a stained glass window and I told myself I had certainly imagined the voice. Hands in my pockets, I descended the steps. I would go home where doubtless I would find everyone returned safe and sound. A deepening of shadow against the east wall of the church hall caught my eye. I crept forward in time to see the delinquent dog make a dive toward the door, which was propped open. I couldn’t go home without her, could I?
Memories of the aborted cookery demonstration crowded in as I stepped through that doorway. The place was thick with shadow and I could not find a light switch. Damn! I almost turned about and left, but a muffled noise convinced me that Sweetie was still in here, waiting to be caught. I felt my way along the wall, past the rows of chairs, stumbling into a table. At last. I was at the stage, hoisting myself up. Only a few yards now from a familiar light switch. My hand was on the curtain when I heard it again, unmistakably a human whisper. “Here… here…” A chill slid over me.
Something was wrong here. Something was missing… And then it came to me. Bunty on the telephone telling me that there would be a rehearsal of the Aerobics Follies at 11:00 A.M. on Monday. Today. It must now be a few minutes one way or the other of that time. That’s why the door had been open, but the hall should have been ablaze with lights and alive with the voices of my showmates. Instead, the emptiness and silence expanded until it seemed infinite. Almost. The whisper came from somewhere above me, or it might have been behind me.
“Here… Ellie.”
Either someone, pretending to be Bunty, had phoned the others and cancelled the rehearsal, or-I desperately needed something to hold onto, like a large bar of chocolate, was I the only one Bunty had contacted in the first place?
This was the moment for which I had been hankering. The enemy was at hand. My support troops were otherwise occupied. I must hide, play dead; such was my only hope. I fought the urge to wrap myself in a fold of curtain-surely one of the first places The Founder would look. Forgotten was my conviction that life without Ben’s love was meaningless. I wanted desperately to survive this character-building experience. When push comes to shove, life in a parrot’s cage is better than nothing. I dropped to all fours and began crawling. My knees burned away the floor, until abruptly, my hands came to a full stop. Some obstacle was in their path.
“Here, Ellie…”
As the whisper came again, I frantically frisked the thing and felt a pinprick of hope. My cake. The one darling Poppa had made for me. If I could climb into it without making a breath of sound and draw down the wooden flap, I might be able to elude my persecutor until someone… say, the church hall inspector… came.
“Here, Ellie.”
A thin hope against a dead certainty. The lid lifted silently; a blessing on Poppa’s head for oiling the hinges. I was inside, huddled in a dark that was complete. I ordered my heart to slow down. If it kept up its present racket, it would either be heard or would set the cake walls to vibrating. The seconds stretched.
And then I heard footsteps and someone laughing-rather sadly, it seemed to me-before the hammering started. The hammering of my heart. The hammering of nails being driven into the carved icing of the cake top.
At first I struggled. If I could get my head back and my feet in kicking position… hopeless. Then I rationalized- there must be enough air in here to keep me in agonizing breaths for… minutes, after which my lungs and heart would explode. One second gone, two, three… Oh, God!
The horror seeped away, leaving me almost peaceful. I said my prayers. The Tramwells would rescue Ben from the dungeon and whilst he might not have been able to forgive me, had I lived, death would enshrine me in his memory, eternally angelic, eternally thin. The tragedy was that I was dying for nothing. The foul murders of the Chitterton Fells husbands would continue. The devilish Founder had escaped the snare. Stop it, Ellie. Focus in these last few moments on the good things. You could have died single. Instead you have known the great joy of loving Ben, and you know that what you have shared will enable him to go on when you are but a name engraved upon a stone. He will mourn for a while, and then one day some lovely young woman will admire the elegant way he holds an eggbeater, and you… you, poor fish, will be forgotten, except when casually mentioned as “my first wife.” That apprentice wife who taught Bentley T. Haskell all the pitfalls of the first year of matrimony so he could avoid them the second time around.
It seemed I wasn’t going to die at peace after all. Breathing had become an impossibility, but my lungs filled up with something more vital than air. Willpower. Ben would not have a second wife. I was going to scream if it was the last thing I did. I was going to tear this cake to shreds if… I don’t think I had got past the planning stage, but such is the power of positive thinking that my prison was coming apart. Or was I dead and having one of those transcendental experiences?
“Ellie,” whispered Ben.
I smiled seraphically. Heaven was every bit as wonderful as the prospectus claims. I was lying on a pillow cloud, and my beloved was present with me in spirit and coincidentally in the flesh, too. I blinked because the light had a sparkling brilliance, then weakly stroked Ben’s hand. It felt almost real.
“Ellie, darling. You can’t die. I don’t care what your religion teaches, but I have it on the highest authority that there is no chocolate in heaven.” He was kneeling beside me.
I struggled to sit up. “Ben, I think we are having a joint hallucination. I’m really in the cake and you are in the dungeon at Merlin’s Court.”
“No.” He was rubbing my hands. “I got you out, thanks to Sweetie, who kept whining and chewing at the cake. And Poppa and I escaped the dungeons by means of a secret tunnel which exits under one of the beds. Poppa got the idea from reading about a similar arrangement in one of Edwin Digby’s books. And, interestingly enough, our tunnel ended at the cellar of Digby’s house. Highly convenient for old Wilfred Grantham and his assignations with the two sisters at The Aviary. Wonder if it dates back to smuggling days?”
Ben was talking as though he had been away for the weekend and wanted to share the details. I shuddered and hung my head. “That cake was hell, but I wasn’t in it long and I don’t have claustrophobia… What I am trying to say, Ben, is that I don’t expect you to forgive me for the misery I have inflicted on you, locking you up, forcing you to crawl through that blackness, not knowing where, or whether it would end.”
He leaned backward so that I had to look at him. “Hell was feeling the hall floor disintegrate under my feet. I
