The Thin Woman (Ellie Haskell) - Softcover

Dorothy Cannell was born in Nottingham, England, and now lives in Belfast, Maine. She writes mysteries featuring interior decorator Ellie Haskell, writer and chef Bentley Haskell, and Hyacinth and Primrose Tramwell, a pair of dotty sisters and owners of the Flowers Detection Agency.

CHAPTER
One
 
Nice people everywhere know that family reunions are occasions of wholesome pleasure, more innocently rewarding than lavender-scented sheets in the airing cupboard or fresh pots of homemade bramble jelly cooling on a marble pantry shelf. I hope, therefore, that posterity will not judge me harshly when I confess I read the invitation to Merlin’s Court with the same panic I would have accorded a formal notice that I was to be executed at the Crown’s convenience. The gently worded letter on thin violet writing paper summoned me to a gathering of the clan at the ancestral home of an aged uncle. My horror lay in the knowledge that I could no longer conceal my disreputable secret from the relations I had cleverly avoided the past few years. Advertising campaigns describe such as I in soothing terms—full-figure girls. But who are we kidding? One simple three-letter word says it all.
 
Camouflage might help. Not the new outfit kind (I no longer put faith in clothes), but a broad-shouldered man to stand behind. Ideally what I needed was a handsome, devoted spouse and a circle of adorable golden-haired children, who always ate with their mouths closed and never swore in public. Surrounded by all that moral support I might feel better equipped to look my wretchedly beautiful cousin Vanessa in the eye. Daydreamer! I was, needless to say, single, and unless Zeus came down from Olympus and made me an offer, likely to remain so.
 
The weather that evening matched my mood. It was bleak and blustery, typical of late January in London. I had returned from work, my face rubbed raw, to find the letter on the doormat. My flat was at the top of a gaunt Victorian house, run by a phantom landlady who was never to be found when the taps leaked but materialized the instant the rent was due. Having hung my coat on the peg by the front door, I arranged my umbrella so it could rain over my geranium plants, and headed for the kitchen, where I did what I always did in times of trial—opened the refrigerator door. This time I was tempted to climb inside, blotting out the intrusive world. But that would have solved nothing. The ensuing scene would have been a remake of Pooh Bear getting stuck while visiting Rabbit, and no one was going to use my legs for towel racks. So I did another comforting Pooh-Bearish thing. I filled a plate with a loaf of French bread and six chocolate éclairs, tucked a pot of Mrs. Biddle’s Best Strawberry Jam under one arm and grabbed the butter dish. Planting my loot on the scrubbed wood table next to the African violet the cat had knocked over, and the morning newspaper ringed with coffee stains, I stuck a candle in a Coke bottle and lit it with a flourish. I downed two éclairs and four slices of crusty bread lavish with sweet yellow butter; thus strengthened, I reread the invitation to Merlin’s Court—my nickname for my antiquated relation’s abode. The real name was something prosaic like The Laurels or Tall Chimneys, not at all in character with the whimsical quality of the house.
 
The letter, of course, was not penned by the great man himself. Such attention might have given me an undue sense of my own importance. Aunt Sybil, who lived with the old dear and doted on his every whim, had scratched the missive in her quaint Victorian hand, all wispy loops and curls like fallen eyelashes. I was afraid to breathe on the paper in case the writing disappeared. The weekend party was to commence on the evening of Friday, the thirteenth of February, and to conclude (promptly, no doubt) on the Sunday after four o’clock tea. Refusal of this genteel invitation was obviously deemed unthinkable. I was demurely asked to apprise Aunt Sybil if I would be escorted by a gentleman friend so that a separate bedroom could be prepared.
 
What a lovely word: escorted! It makes one think of seaside promenades, top hats and twirling canes, and delicious young men with evil on their minds. The last escort I had was the ward orderly who wheeled me into Outpatients the night I twisted my ankle running for a taxi. “Have another éclair, Ellie!” “I don’t mind if I do.” The thick yellow cream oozed between my fingers. I wiped a splotch off the newspaper, and there it was in big bold black letters, shouting just for me! Eligibility Escorts, Male and Female. A Highly Legitimate Service. Don’t Go Alone! Pick Up the Phone.
 
“And get murdered,” said a little voice in my ear.
 
“What for?” said another little voice. “You don’t have any money. You’re not gorgeous.”
 
I finished the last éclair and wished I hadn’t. How much would it cost to rent a man for the weekend? A packet, no doubt. But I had Mother’s money. I rarely bought clothes or furnishings for the flat. As an interior designer, I got my kicks doing up other people’s houses. Being selective was my business. I could apply those same professional skills to choosing a man, the kind who would enhance any drawing room décor. He would be tall and elegant, with finely moulded features and a pair of darkly arched sardonic eyebrows. I had met such paragons often, between the pages of Regal Romances; they were suavely named Julian St. Tropé or Eduard Van Heckler and were the perfect accessory for a girl wanting to make a nice impression.
 
“Fool.” I crumpled the paper and picked up the empty plate. “You’d land up with someone called Fred Potts who moonlights selling floor polish door to door.” As if on cue, the doorbell trilled. It was my roommate, Tobias Feline. A very conventional cat, he refused to come up the fire escape and through the window. Perched on the hall table outside my door, he would nudge the bell until I got the message and opened up. Tobias was not alone. My neighbour Jill, from downstairs, followed him in, which did not please him. Tobias hates company. His scowl said, “Kick the witch out.” Sniffing disgustedly at his food dish, he stalked off to sharpen his claws on the sofa in my tiny sitting room. Poor Jill was looking a little witchy. She had dyed her short spiky hair once too often (she uses the every-other-day kind), and it was now a sullen-looking green, which clashed with her eyebrows. I’ve tried to hate Jill because she is tiny with a capital T—four foot ten, weighs less than I did at birth, and always sucking in her nonexistent stomach, saying she simply must go on a diet. But she is also nice with a capital N. Dropping down on a kitchen chair, she kicked off her Cinderella-sized shoes and rolled a bottle of plum wine onto the table, stretched her skinny little arms above her head, and said she was exhausted. I wasn’t surprised. Jill teaches self-defence to women who are afraid to go out alone at night, and she has a judo chop that would send Mr. Universe through three floors and bounce him back up again.
 
“Wooh! What a night. That wind. I practically flew home. Time for a warm-up. Fetch a couple of mugs, Ellie dear, and I’ll pour us each a slug of plum yum-yum.”
 
“Do you mind drinking alone?” I reached into the cupboard and came back to the table with a glass marked Present from Blackpool. “Sorry, but I don’t want to curdle my éclair.”
 
“What’s up? You look a little sour already.” Jill topped up her glass and looked at me intently. Priding herself on being an amateur psychiatrist, she has been thumbing her way through my neuroses for the past three years. So far she has prescribed group therapy, meditation, macramé, yoga, and a pen friendship with a guru. I handed her the invitation and poured myself a double Andrews Liver Salts.
 
“So? It doesn’t sound like the most exciting bash of the season, but it’s a weekend at the seaside. Boring probably, but harmless.”
 
“You haven’t met my aunt Astrid or her dear, delectable daughter, Vanessa—the girl designed with men in mind—not a brain in her head, but who notices?”
 
“Meow!” Jill ran a finger round the rim of her glass and poured herself another shot.
 
Tobias cocked an ear round the corner, decided he wasn’t being spoken to, and retreated.
 
“Cattiness is one of my few pleasures in life—I don’t smoke, I don’t drink (much), and I don’t have sordid affairs with men lusting after my body.”
 
“If you didn’t eat for six you might have a hope. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. I keep telling you, I’ll go on a diet if you will. We’ll make it a team effort. An early morning jog down to the station and back, calisthenics while you’re working, and three teeny-weeny meals a day—no cheating!”
 
“Thanks a lot, Jill, but I couldn’t take that tomato, vinegar, and stale cake routine again. Besides, it’s all too little, too late. The gala event is only three weeks away. And don’t suggest my refusing the invitation. They would all guess why I didn’t dare show.”
 
“Even though they haven’t seen you for over two years? You weren’t as heavy then as you are now.”
 
“No, but I was always chunky. When I was a teenager, Aunt Astrid predicted I would end up as big around as the dome of St. Paul’s. My failure to answer all letters and Christmas cards will have confirmed their worst suspicions.”