How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams (10 page)

“But I don’t have my handbag,” I fretted as Ben marched me down the steps into the courtyard.

“You won’t need it.”

“And I’m not wearing restaurant shoes.”

“We’re not going to Abigail’s.”

“No?” My feet had to skip in order to keep up with his as we crossed the moat bridge.

“We’re going on a picnic, Ellie; doesn’t that sound romantic?”

In theory, yes! In theory, a picnic takes place on the one perfect day of the English year. What clouds do appear in the limpid blue sky are light and airy as shuttlecocks being playfully batted about by the warm breeze, while a big orange sun beams its approval. This, however, was most definitely not that day of days. The wind that
unravelled my hair and attempted to choke me with it was chilly in the extreme. And every breath I took tasted of rain. The trees had been flattened into giant badminton rackets that flung the birds into the air and sent them pinging to the end of the garden and back again. My attempt at a smile was literally whipped off my face as we stepped onto the gravel drive, where the car sat huddled in shivering discomfort. Poor thing! It was old and had for years been subject to every infirmity known to anything on four wheels.

“Your chariot awaits, my lady!” Ben opened the door with a flourish and stood with unabated enjoyment as the wind ran its fingers with wild abandon through his black hair and I slithered onto the passenger seat. “Are we having fun yet?” he inquired.

It was ridiculous to ascribe a diabolical gleam to his blue-green eyes and a sinister spring to his gait as he nipped around the car and climbed into the driver’s seat. And it was wrong of me to hope that the engine would gasp its last breath and the headlights roll back into their sockets.

“Don’t you think we should bring Abbey and Tam?” I ventured. “They’d have so much fun on a picnic.” Whilst I would have a chance of keeping warm chasing after them as they escaped from the travelling rug spread out on the damp grass.

“We can bring the twins another time.” Ben stared at me, dumbfounded. “Ellie, what is the matter with you? I thought you would be pleased that I abandoned work at lunchtime, one of my busiest times of the day, to spend quality time with you.”

“Oh, darling, I
am
pleased.” I reached over to kiss him on the cheek. “It’s just that I feel a little guilty, despite what Mrs. Malloy said, about walking out of the house when Gerta has gone to such a lot of trouble cooking that stew.”

“We can eat it for dinner.” Ben, whose preference is to serve beef in slices so rare a vet might have some hope of reviving the poor cow, did not look enthusiastic.

“Of course we can.” I squeezed his knee. “The only other thing holding me back from fully getting into the spirit of your picnic is that I do have to go along to the
vicarage this afternoon to give Eudora some advice on redecorating.”

“Then I’ll drop you off there on the way back. Any other problems we haven’t discussed?” Ben started up the car without any of the doors flying off and buzzed down the drive, through the gates. Before I could finish buckling my seat belt, we were out on the Cliff Road, heading in the direction of the village. “You weren’t expecting a gentleman friend, Ellie, when I turned up to ruin everything?”

“Of course not. You are the only man in my life and always have been,” I assured him.

This was not strictly true. There had been the Marquise of Marshington, the Duke of Darrow, any number of earls and a handful of viscounts, along with all the Sir Somebodies. And I wasn’t ashamed of my past. These men had been there, in my single days, to rescue me from the lonely bed-sitter and the tin of sardines I was doomed to share with my cat Tobias. They had escorted me to Bath assemblies and masquerade balls attended by the Prince Regent and to picnics where the sun always shone and the blue of the sky was as pure as a virgin’s heart. Would it have been fair, would it have been
moral
to send these gallants packing when Ben appeared, somewhat belatedly, on the scene?

My husband smiled at me, apparently taking my silence as a sign that I was enjoying the view from the car window. And I tried, really I did, to appreciate the cackling of the wind as it shoved us off the narrow road and tried to send us over the cliff’s edge to somersault down onto the murderous crags below. As we turned a corner I caught a glimpse of the sea, frothing and foaming, as if smacking its lips at the prospect of devouring us, car and all, at a gulp.

We drove a couple of miles and shortly before reaching the village turned onto a winding lane that was fringed on either side by the sort of thickets that would be a highwayman’s dream. We were practically alongside the house before I saw it. It was a wonderfully macabre old place, with a secretive look to its long, narrow windows. And I was utterly enchanted until I noticed the multitude of chimneys and read the lettering on the ramshackle gate.

“Good heavens!” I grabbed Ben’s arm so tightly that
the car swerved—clipping off a sizable chunk of the hedge which stood badly in need of such pruning. “That’s Tall Chimneys, the one-time abode of Hector Rigglesworth.”

“Who?” Ben backed the car up and proceeded on down the lane without giving me further time to gawk.

“The man who haunts the library, the ghost who, in the opinion of Brigadier Lester-Smith, frightened Miss Bunch to death.”

“I thought she died from a virus.”

“So she did, but in this case one can read between the lines of the autopsy report. A malevolent force was at work and his name was Hector Rigglesworth.” I shuddered. Ben had drawn the car to a standstill beside a stretch of grass ringed by trees and with a solitary beech tree standing patiently in the middle, like a gnarled old butler awaiting his instructions.

“Here we are, sweetheart.” Ben exited the car with lithe grace and went round to the boot to collect the picnic basket. Rejoining me as I stepped from the road onto the grass, he asked, “What do you think?”

“It’s rather …” I was going to say
drafty
, but as such tends to be a condition of the outdoors, I belatedly remembered to be enthusiastic. “It is rather
lovely
. And how odd to think that in all the time I have lived at Merlin’s Court, I have never been down this lane.”

Following Ben towards the beech tree, I glanced over my shoulder. I could see a chimney and what was probably an attic window of Hector Rigglesworth’s house. Was I imagining it, or was that a face pressed against the pane? Endeavouring to shake off the unease that gripped me, I struggled to focus on the delights of the moment.

“How’s this for the perfect picnic spot?” Ben set down the basket. And I tried not to notice that he did not have a travelling rug tucked under his arm, ready to unroll and lay at my feet. Or a hot water bottle. Shame on me! So what if the grass was damp and I developed sciatica? I suddenly remembered Vanessa and how she had once fielded our cousin Freddy’s suggestion that she ought to try a camping holiday, with the response that, as far as she was concerned, roughing it was black-and-white TV. Heaven forbid that I should develop her pampered-puss mind-set.

“You couldn’t have chosen a more idyllic place.” I knelt down and felt my knees turn green, while Ben began the business of unloading packages and plates, to the rustling annoyance of the beech tree, which clearly did not think me up to snuff without a parasol, or that the tablecloth Ben was spreading out on the grass made up for the missing travelling rug. “Darling,” I said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you …” A raindrop plopped on my nose.

“What’s that?” Ben scanned the sky, bulging with wooly grey clouds, and with a wary eye continued unwrapping with increased speed.

“Nothing earthshaking,” I replied as a rumble of thunder caused a couple of knives and forks to scuttle under the tablecloth which had been blown up by the wind. “Only that I got the strangest bit of news this morning. Mrs. Malloy told me that her son—”

“I didn’t know she had one.”

“Well, she does. And it seems he’s going to marry Vanessa.”

“What a very small world!” Ben held his hair down with a plate as he laid out the serviettes and caught both of them one-handed as they attempted to blow away.

“It turns out”—I shuffled on my knees after the escaping salt and pepper shakers—“that George Malloy has done rather well for himself financially.”

“Even so, I’d have expected our lovely Vanessa to hold out for a chap with a title as well as money.”

“My thinking exactly.”

“We’ll have to drink a toast to the engaged couple.” Ben, having secured the tablecloth with a hefty rock at each corner, was rummaging frantically in the picnic basket. “You won’t believe this, Ellie! I can’t find the corkscrew!”

It was a wonder to me that he could find the hand stretched out in front of him in the drizzling rain, but I mopped my face with my serviette and said brightly that it really didn’t matter.

“Of course it matters.” Ben sounded as thoroughly exasperated with me as with the situation. “I brought wine”—he held up the bottle—“and, by damn, we are going to drink it.” Stumbling to his feet, he rooted around the trunk of the disgruntled beech and returned to the tablecloth
with a stout-looking twig that snapped in two the moment he jammed it into the cork.

“Here, let me try.” I picked up a knife, took the bottle from him, broke off the top of the cork, and began stabbing away at the remainder until it broke into chunks that ended up in the drink.

Ben firmly removed the bottle from my hands. “I don’t like my wine chewy.” He poured us each a glass and attempted to convert his grimace into a grin to show a determined party spirit. “Drink up, my darling, before it’s two-thirds water.”

“You could not have foreseen the rain,” I soothed.

“I could have looked out the window.”

“Never mind.” Resolutely I sat down on the grass and promptly felt my underwear shrink two sizes. “Let’s make that toast, Ben.” I tapped my glass to his as he squatted gingerly down across the tablecloth from me. “To Vanessa and George!”

“May they be as happy as we are!”

“At this very minute!” I agreed, taking a sip of sauterne and almost choking on a chunk of cork. My resulting croak was echoed by several crows perched in ungainly malevolence on a bough halfway up the beech tree. Hugging my cardigan around me, I tried to push away the feeling of foreboding that came with the memory of Vanessa telling me, when we were children and saw a bunch of black crows in a tree, that their infernal cawing meant somebody was going to die. My affectionate cousin had been suggesting that my days were numbered, and here I still was; but even so … I reached for something to put in my mouth to keep my teeth from chattering.

“You remember, don’t you, Ellie?”

“That old saying about the crows?” I should not have been surprised that a husband could read his wife’s mind.

“No, the food!” His smile wavered in the mist that had mercifully replaced the rain. “Don’t you recognize it?”

I stared at the assortment of dishes. Of course I recognized lobster and green salad and crusty brown rolls when I saw them, but I wasn’t getting the point of the picture.

“Our first picnic!” Ben ran his fingers through his damp hair, instantly bringing the curl back to life in a way many a woman would have envied. “Surely you remember
on that occasion I prepared this same lobster dish—stewed in white wine, chilled to icy perfection, and dressed with capers and my own special mayonnaise.”

“It is coming back to me.…”

“I can hear myself as if it were yesterday, Ellie, explaining that the mystery ingredient of the rolls was a tablespoon of treacle added to the yeast base. And I remember your exclamations of delight over the salad with its lemon and sweet vermouth dressing.”

“I do recall vaguely …”

“There is nothing the least vague about it!” Perhaps the shadows cast by the beech tree were responsible for the darkening of my husband’s face. “The dressing may be subtle, but it is never insipid. The secret is in the tossing, which must be extraordinarily gentle so as not to bruise the spinach or the baby oak leaf lettuce.”

“Did I say
vaguely
?” I shook my head at such stupidity. My tongue must have slipped on my wet lips. I looked meaningfully up at the clouds. If they dropped any lower, they’d be sitting on our heads like knitted hats. “I meant to say that I
vividly
recalled that first picnic. We had it … outdoors, didn’t we?”

“Under the beech tree in the garden at Merlin’s Court.”

“That’s right!” I beamed, hoping the sun would follow my example, but, cowardlike, it remained resolutely wrapped up in its dirty grey woolies.

“Unfortunately the garden was an impossibility this time.” Ben began spooning lobster onto our plates and garnishing it with radish rosettes and cucumber leaves. “I was thwarted, sweetheart, by the image of Gerta tying red and yellow streamers to the trunk of the tree, and she and the twins dancing around the maypole, while you and I were trying to relive our memories. Then I remembered seeing this place with the beech, so strikingly similar to the one at Merlin’s Court.”

“You’ve thought of everything!” I scooted around the wet tablecloth to nestle up close to him. For several moments the warmth of my love for this man, whom I did not deserve, drove back the chilly damp. We ate in a companionable silence, broken only intermittently by the crows’ unmelodious chorus. The rolls were not quite as crusty as
usual. But I did not mind and Ben made no apologies for them. It would seem that his sensitivities as a chef had been totally subliminated by his ardour as a husband.

The mist had cleared but, even had it turned into a pea-souper, it could not have masked his mounting passion. His eyes had darkened to a glittering emerald green and a muscle tensed in his jaw as, with intensity of purpose, he removed my half-finished plate from my hand, set it down slowly but surely on the tablecloth, and brought his lips down on mine in a kiss that would have lit a fire within me but for the weather conditions. As it was, it smouldered nicely, and I made no effort to resist as he drew me back to lie upon the grass.

“Alone at last, sweetheart!” His hand caressed my cheek and my throat with feathery delicacy before moving ever lower. Who knows how far things might have gone? Alas, when I turned my head in the throes of a warm rush of pleasure, I interrupted his heavy breathing with a horrified shriek.