Dorothy Cannell - The Importance of Being Ernestine

“I suppose I could mention that a man pointed a gun at Mrs. Malloy and me,” I responded despondently. “But would that be enough to do it? It’s not as though he shot us. I’m not staggering around with a bullet in my head with the possibility of only fifteen minutes to live.”

“A man with a gun?” Freddy looked as he had done when we were children and he had accused me of having all the fun when I came out with some weird rash and couldn’t go to school until a medical name could be found for it.

“Forget it,” I muttered. Ben had come out into the hall. Suddenly I was all at sixes and sevens about mentioning the incident to him. He’d be horribly alarmed and concerned for my future safety, which would push my revamping of his study into the background where it would molder and perhaps never be properly addressed, thus leaving a permanent scar. There was, it must be admitted, another reason for my keeping quiet. Knowing all, Ben would insist on my keeping my nose out of the Krumley affair. And I wasn’t sure I could do that. Not because of how Mrs. Malloy would feel about my defection, but because I felt a certain responsibility to her ladyship. I wished now that I hadn’t said anything to Freddy. But more than anything else I wished Ben would look as though he was thrilled out of his mind to see me.

“So you’re back,” he smiled at me. A pleasant enough smile. But one that reminded me of the vicar’s benign bafflement at the sight of someone with whom he had been talking not five minutes before.

I could feel myself sinking waist deep into despondency. Freddy in an unusually tactful attempt to ease into the background went clanking up against one of the suits of armor. Ben didn’t blink let alone glance in the direction of the ensuing cacophony. Neither did he relax that fixed smile. Which set me to babbling about not having expected to be gone so long and my need to check on the children.

“No need for you to worry. I looked in on them several times, Ellie.”

I was consoling myself that he hadn’t blocked me out to the point of forgetting my name when Freddy corrected him. “You talked about going up, but remember… I went instead?”

“So you did.”

“It doesn’t matter which one handled the spot checks,” I responded heartily. “So long as they’re snugly tucked in for the night.”

“How about I make us all a cup of cocoa?” My cousin’s helpfulness was truly heartwarming, but I wished very much that he would trot back down to his cottage and leave me to try put things right with Ben. It was no use. Upon his offer of a night-cap being declined he followed us into the drawing room and planted himself in a chair with every appearance of remaining there until a van showed up to collect him for one of Kathleen Ambleforth’s charities.

It was, in my opinion, a lovely room with latticed windows at each end, a rose and turquoise carpet in the middle of the parquet floor and a pair of ivory damask sofas and several Queen Anne chairs grouped around the fireplace. Above the mantel hung a portrait of Abigail, who had been mistress of Merlin’s Court almost a century ago. Her restful pose and serenity of expression added to the tranquility of the muted color scheme. Even when the children were fighting over a ball that bounced off the secretary desk onto the top of the glass-fronted bookcase or playing hide and seek under the coffee table or behind the brocade curtains I felt anchored in this room-to its history and my present life. This evening was different. I was cast adrift, buffeted by waves of unease, sinking ever deeper into a whirlpool of uncertainty. Ben was pacing up and down in front of the fireplace. Once or twice he glanced to where I sat on the edge of a chair, but he had yet to ask how my evening with Mrs. Malloy had gone. Nor had he said a word about the study.

Freddy shifted his feet onto a footstool, yawned hugely, scratched his beard and closed his eyes. I waited a few moments for him to start snoring and plunged into a garbled apology of the sort that would have brought a husband in a romance novel to his knees with a rose from the nearest flower vase between his teeth.

“I’m so sorry, Ben! I was completely out of line in bringing in all that new stuff and getting rid of the old. You were quite right in saying I was thinking about how I wanted your study to look. I didn’t see that at the time, but I should have done if I’d taken the time to consider how you felt about that dear old typewriter and the easy chair and the…”

“Darling, don’t give it another thought!” He interrupted his circuit to place a hand on my shoulder and kiss the air two inches above my head. “I went off the deep end without appreciating all the time and effort you put into surprising me. I’m a monster and I don’t know how you put up with me.”

“You really mean it?” I was enormously relieved by the throb of sincerity in his voice and the fact that he lingered beside me, even holding my hand for a moment or two before pacing off again.

“Absolutely!” He gave me a sideways smile. “How was Mrs. Malloy?”

“Intent on turning private detective.”

“For that outfit where’s she been working?”

“Her boss went on holiday this evening, and one of his clients showed up too late to see him. And you know, Ben, how Mrs. Malloy is inclined to take over. This time she’s all fired up to impress Milk.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Jugg. And because he wasn’t there and I was… well, you can imagine how things went. I got roped into listening to the client-Lady Krumley’s story and writing it all down in shorthand.” I took a breath and made up my mind to tell him the rest, including the arrival of Have Gun. There must be no more secrets between us. If Ben told me to keep my nose out of the situation so be it. Feeling confident and virtuous I was about to expound when he stood stock still, before leaping a foot in the air and clutching at his head as if about to rip out every wavy black lock.

“What’s the matter?” I shot off my chair.

“I forgot to turn off the computer.” He was already halfway out the door. “I spent the evening figuring out how to turn it on. And now what happens if it burns itself out? It’s not like I have my typewriter to fall back on till we get it fixed. Just give me some quiet time, Ellie, to work through the manual.” The door swung closed behind him, and I saw that Freddy’s eyes were open and his ears on the flap.

“Men and their computers,” he murmured consolingly.

I fell back in my chair. “That’s why Ben was in the study all evening. He wasn’t staring into space. He was scowling at the screen trying to blink it into life. I have to get his typewriter back.”

“Not in the middle of the night, coz.” Freddy wagged a remonstrating finger. “Neither,” he added, as I inched forward, “should you go blundering into the study offering unwanted advice.” He locked his hands behind his head, shifted his lanky legs to get a better foothold on the stool and leaned back. “Far better, Ellie, to tell me all about your evening with Mrs. Malloy leading up to the man with the gun.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” I sighed. “A little lighthearted chatter to help me forget my troubles.” Clearly there was no hope Freddy would remember that he had left the iron on or that he needed to leave a note for the milkman, so I rambled away about Lady Krumley. Tobias appeared out of nowhere to land on my lap as I was detailing Flossie Jones’s deathbed curse. Freddy heard me out with only one or two gurgles of rude mirth and even wrinkled his brow in concentration when I spoke about having seen Have Gun in the café and his mercifully brief visit to Jugg’s Detective Agency.

“Although it didn’t seem all that short at the time. And perhaps it wasn’t as comic as I’ve made it sound with him waving that gun around and talking like someone…”