How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams (24 page)

A typical English summer, one solitary day of unmerciful heat to justify the purchase of shorts and T-shirts. Tomorrow we would be back to good old grey skies and drizzle. The sun had bleached the sky with its savage glare, the leaves on the trees were perspiring heavily, and the rosebushes in the Babcocks’ garden, at number forty-one, looked ready to pull up stakes and crawl over to the porch for some shade. The newspaper headlines would surely read
Hottest Day in Twenty-five Years
, just as they did at least once a summer, to prevent ninety percent of the population from climbing in leaky little boats and sailing for Florida.

Tellingly, Mrs. Swabucher abandoned her feather boa before getting out of the car and we staggered up the path like a pair of firemen in dire need of wet cloths to wrap around our faces. It took all my strength to press the doorbell before sagging against my companion, who also looked ready to expire.

But not for long. A wild barking shook the house walls and sent a couple of tiles scudding off the roof, missing our heads by inches. A black, furry form lunged at the
door’s side window, and the creature’s talons shredded the glass. A pitiful squeal was followed by the faint promise: “I’m being as quick as I can! Don’t move, or he’ll turn on me, I know he will!”

Sylvia Babcock presented a sad picture as she opened the door. She was immaculate as always in a crisp print frock, with every pin-curl hair in place and her lipstick on straight, but her hands were shaking and her eyes looked like the glass ones sewn on teddy bears. And a teddy bear is what my canine friend Heathcliff became upon seeing me. Dropping down on his haunches, huge pink tongue lolling, he cocked his massive head and grinned broadly, as if to say “Ah, the nice lady who rescued me from my orphan state and found me this loving home, come in, do, and bring your friend. My hacienda is your hacienda!”

“Hello, Sylvia,” I said in some doubt that she was thrilled to see me. “This is Mrs. Swabucher who, wonder of wonders, is the business agent for Karisma. She has graciously persuaded him to participate in our benefit for Miss Bunch. Can you believe our good fortune?”

“How nice,” came the faint reply. “Albert and I just got back from getting the groceries, or you would have missed us.” Sylvia jumped and her glass eyes almost popped off as Heathcliff swished his tail, giving her the nudge that it was only proper etiquette to invite us in. “Won’t you?” She opened the door a further inch. Feeling I had to put my best foot forward as I crossed the threshold, Mrs. Swabucher on my heels, I held out the gift-wrapped package. Bother! I failed to explain quickly enough that it was a wedding present and with a grateful woof Heathcliff leapt up, snatched it from my nerveless grasp, and bounded off down the hall.

“You need to take him to obedience school, dear.” Mrs. Swabucher spoke the obvious. “Happiness is a well-trained pet.”

“Happiness is a
dead
pet,” Sylvia spat out with an unusual burst of ire. “But I’m afraid to let him out in the road to get run over because Albert is tickled to bits with him.” Poor Sylvia, she truly was afraid of everything from spiders to the pages of a book being turned too quickly. On one regrettable occasion, when Lord Pomeroy had let wind at a library meeting, she had dived for cover as if in
the thick of a hurricane. And because of me, meddlesome Millie, her hopes of wedded bliss with the likable Mr. Babcock were being sorely put to the test.

“You have to put your man’s happiness before your own, dear.” Mrs. Swabucher, still feeling the heat, was fanning her cheeks with a gloved hand. “As I’ve learned, at times to my cost, a woman must be prepared to make
any
sacrifice for the good of the one she loves.”

Far from taking offence at a stranger butting in on her personal affairs, Sylvia’s impeccably made-up face brightened. “You’re right, I do have to remember that Albert is a gift from God, the salt of the earth, the man I’ve been waiting for all my life. I shouldn’t get worked into a froth because he sometimes forgets to take off his shoes when he comes in, or hangs the toilet paper the wrong way, or doesn’t remember to give the soap a rinse and a pat dry after he washes his hands. His heart is in the right place … even if his clothes aren’t always hung up.”

“Speaking of things not being where they are supposed to be,” I said, “perhaps we should get that wedding present away from Heathcliff, seeing as I failed to purchase breakage insurance.”

“And then we can have a word or two about my wonderful Karisma and how a visit from him will not only raise money for your memorial fund, but put Chitterton Fells on the map. Now, doesn’t that sound a cheery prospect!” Mrs. Swabucher, ever the businesswoman, gushed. And Sylvia, further heartened by the suggestion that we did not plan to make an entire afternoon of our visit, led the way into her kitchen. This room, which was not much bigger than a garden shed, was as implacably pristine as the rest of the house. Heathcliff was under the table thriftily unknotting the ribbon decorating the wedding present, and the only eyesore, to put it unkindly, was Mr. Babcock. He, from the looks of him, had just made his fourteenth heavily laden journey from the car parked a few yards from the open door.

His arms were loaded with shopping bags bursting forth with boxes of Weetabix and packages of Tide. His hair was matted to his brow and his florid face was dripping with sweat as he set one load down on the table and rested another on the bridge of his stomach. Sylvia was
right, he was a perfect dear. Between explaining to her that he had put all the other groceries away in the pantry or fridge, he greeted me with pleasure and expressed himself delighted to meet Mrs. Swabucher.

“Can you believe this weather?” He mopped his red face with his shirt-sleeve and knocked a shopping bag, which toppled over the one already on the table so that the contents of both, including a joint of beef and an enormous cauliflower, spilled out, sending tins of baked beans and oxtail soup rolling over to the edge to land in a series of thumps on the floor.

Sylvia had been nervously trying to coax Heathcliff into handing over the wedding gift. Now she let out a piercing scream. The dog, no doubt interpreting this as a call to action, bounded out from under the table in pursuit of a tin of pineapple, knocked Mrs. Swabucher sideways, and skidded to a halt only when the joint of beef took a flying leap off the table.

“Here, Cliffy!” Mr. Babcock patted his broad thigh without much conviction. “Nice doggy, come to Daddy.”

To his credit, Heathcliff did cock an ear, but his hunting blood was up, and before his beleaguered mistress could emit another scream, he had seized up the joint of beef in his mighty jaws and raced with it out into the raging heat of the garden.

“Go after him, Albert!” Sylvia shrilled. She was understandably beside herself, given the dents in her once-perfect kitchen floor. “That’s our Sunday dinner! Albert!” she wailed.

Mr. Babcock needed no further prodding. I doubt that he saw me as I held out the chewed-upon gift package or heard me suggest that he offer to trade it with Heathcliff for the roast. Huffing and puffing, he disappeared through the doorway, and as Mrs. Swabucher and I peered through the window above the sink, we saw him engage in heroic battle, man against beast under the gruelling sun. It was an awe-inspiring sight, a hard-fought tussle in which neither combatant appeared to give an inch of rump roast, and then … yes, it really seemed that victory would belong to Mr. Babcock. I was about to cheer, when he released his
hold, staggered backwards a few paces, and collapsed in slow motion on the lawn.

My horrified eyes met Mrs. Swabucher’s. I knew exactly what she was thinking: Poor man, what a ridiculous, wasteful way to die.

“Another one added to the death roll.” Vanessa swatted a fly with a cushion and stood back to savour her kill. She and I were in the wainscotted study at Merlin’s Court. Gerta was in the kitchen making potato kuchen like a woman possessed while the twins took their naps. And Mrs. Swabucher, who had taken the abrupt demise of my friendly milkman harder than might be expected, given their five-minute acquaintance, was resting upstairs in one of the spare bedrooms.

I was pretty much done in myself. Keeping the hysterical Sylvia propped up in my arms so she did not keel over and do herself or the kitchen floor an injury had kept me occupied until the ambulance and assorted fire engines arrived. But when the professionals took over I was enormously relieved to give a quick account of what I had witnessed, promise to be available if needed for further questions, and escape with Mrs. Swabucher back to the comparative calm of my own home.

“Here.” Vanessa dropped the cushion used to kill the fly onto the easy chair by the fireplace. “Sit yourself down, Ellie, and pull yourself together. Anyone would think by the way you’re carrying on that you were married to the man. How about a sherry?” Her favourite drink because it
matched her eyes. Rooting around among the decanters on the butler’s tray, she poured a sizable jolt into a glass.

“No thanks.” I waved it away, leaned my aching head back, and stared gloomily at the latticed windows. The sun, having caused enough trouble for a month of Sundays, had called it a day and was hiding out behind clouds that had popped up out of nowhere during the last half-hour.

“Drink it.” My cousin pushed the glass under my nose. Her unexpected solicitousness puzzled me until I noticed a sparkle on her finger that put the crystal glass in my hand to shame. Her engagement ring. It had grown at least a couple of carats since I last saw it on her finger. That poor fly. Vanessa had killed it, with her left hand I now realized, as an excuse to dazzle me into commenting on her ring. “What do you think?” She perched on the edge of a chair, her titian head tipped to one side and the Hope diamond resting on her crossed knee. “Darling George took me out this afternoon while you were gone and bought it for me at that really pricey jeweler’s in Market Street.”

“But you already had a ring.…”

“True.” Vanessa blew on the new gem and buffed it with the hem of her olive-green skirt. “But you know how men are! George got this bee in his bonnet that I deserved something twice, three times as good. And you know me, sweetie, I strive to be the dutiful fiancée. He’s going to have the first little stone made into a pendant for me to wear on our wedding day. Isn’t he a dear?”

“The salt of the earth,” I muttered, and went back to thinking about the late Mr. Babcock.

“There you go, always casting a blight on my happiness.” Vanessa slipped off the chair and went to stand by the desk littered with all the comforting signs of Ben’s industrious use of it. His handwritten recipes, the litter of pens and pencils, and the stacks of gourmet journals were all arrayed on the desktop.

“I only said—” I began.

“Yes, but it’s
how
you said it.” My cousin closed her eyes so that her lashes fanned out on her damask cheeks. “I know what you are thinking, Ellie—ashes to ashes and all that dreary stuff. But it’s not my fault, is it”—she
flashed me a petulant glance—“that this Babcock man kicked the bucket? And, loath as I am to pour oil on troubled waters, you’re not to blame either.”

“Oh, yes, I am!” I swallowed the sherry in one gulp and set the glass down on the side table. “If I hadn’t pushed the man into taking Miss Bunch’s dog, he wouldn’t be dead.”

“Rubbish.” Vanessa refilled my glass and handed it to me. “I expect he had a heart condition or some other health problem and wouldn’t have lasted long in any case.”

“You could be right,” I conceded. “I remember how on the day he came into the house and ended up taking Heathcliff, Mr. Babcock had a nasty turn—he attempted to make light of it, but it was apparent there was something wrong with him.”

“There you are! And if you ask me”—Vanessa refilled my glass once again and poured one for herself—“it’s his wife who should be suffering the torture of the damned.” Her eyes lit up with mischievous malice. “Unless your friend Sylvia married the old goat for his insurance policy and being fully aware that he was a prime candidate for a stroke or heart attack sent him charging out into the broiling heat after the dog. Think about it—it could be she’s laughing on the inside, the sly vixen, while sobbing up a storm.”

“You’ve got an evil mind.” I sipped my third sherry and sat up straighter in my chair. “I’m sure Sylvia adored her husband.”

“Even when it became a case of love-me-love-my-dog? Really, darling”—Vanessa disposed herself gracefully on the low stool in front of the fireplace—“you’re
such
an innocent. Next you’ll be telling me you believe that I’m in love with George. And you know something? Crazily enough, for once you’d be right. It’s not the same sort of thing that you have with Ben, or at least did at the beginning, all soft eyes and violins playing in the background. But it works for me. We fit together somehow and, weird as it sounds, when I’m with George I really don’t mind when we don’t devote every minute to talking about me.”

“I’m pleased for you, Vanessa.”

She cupped her left hand in her right one and studied
her ring. “Honestly, I wasn’t the one pushing for a bigger diamond. I think George gets a bit insecure at times on account of his humble origins and then I suppose it’s only natural that he worries about some gorgeous guy coming along out of the blue and sweeping me off my feet. But I can’t see that happening in Chitterton Fells, can you?”