Dorothy Cannell - The Importance of Being Ernestine

“Not much. He was in a state trying to get the poached egg out of the saucepan. To hear him shouting, you’d have thought it was a fish that kept leaping back into the water. I told him to calm down, and he said that if I couldn’t stop making silly suggestions I could hang up. The thing is, Mum doesn’t know how to cook, but she knows how to send out for a curry. So I imagine he was taking her absence harder than he was prepared to admit. All I got out of him was the name of the pub.”

“And what was it?” I was wiping Rose’s face and hands.

“That’s just it!” Freddy thumped his forehead with a fist, sending his skull-and-crossbones earring into a wild spiral. “I can’t remember. For some reason I keep thinking Long-fellows… but that’s not it.”

“Phone again and ask your father.”

“I did this morning, risking getting an earful about my lack of fiscal responsibility-two of his favorite words-in making back-to-back calls. But there was no answer.”

“Try his office.”

“He told me he was taking a few days off to get his shirts washed and ironed. Mum always pinches a couple of new ones for him each week. So it’s understandable that he’s at sixes and sevens without her.”

“I expect she got tired of spoiling him and has gone somewhere to relax.” It was a logical explanation, and I reminded myself that Aunt Lulu had proved well able to take care of herself in the past.

“Mummy we’re going to be late for school.” Tam eyed me sternly.

“Oh, my goodness!” I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece above the kitchen fireplace. “So you are! And I’m not even dressed. But I promise you no one goes to hell for arriving two minutes after the bell rings.”

“I’ll take them if you’ll let me use your car,” offered Freddy, whose only vehicle was a motorbike.

“Are you sure you don’t mind, with this business…”

“Of the missing Mum?” He grinned at me. “She’ll turn up. Come to think of it this isn’t the first time she’s done a bunk. A spirited lass, my mother. Dad isn’t easy to live with. Remember how I was forced to run away when he stopped my pocket money after finding me playing ‘doctor’ with that girl next door?”

“Freddy you were twenty five at the time. And she was married.”

“Picky! Picky! Come on gang!” He marshaled the children toward the alcove, where their coats and schoolbags hung, and had them out the door before I had completed my second round of hugs. “Back in half an hour, Ellie.”

Usually I enjoyed a little time on my own, but the house seemed too quiet after they had gone. Almost as though it had taken Ben’s side and was giving me the silent treatment. Tobias, who usually came slinking out of hiding when it was just the two of us, was conspicuous by his absence. Even the twin suits of armor appeared to avoid my gaze as I headed for the stairs. Telling myself that I had to snap out of this silly mood, I took a quick hot shower, washed my hair and after blowing it dry got dressed in a pair of brown corduroy slacks and an olive green sweater. There, that was better! Rather than waste time pinning my hair into a chignon I tied it back with a rubber band. A dash of lipstick, a brush of mascara, and I would be ready to march down to the vicarage and beard Kathleen Ambleforth in her den.

Freddy wasn’t back with the car when I left the house, but I didn’t mind walking even though it was pouring down rain. My umbrella sprang a leak before I reached the end of our drive. All to the good. It couldn’t hurt my cause to arrive looking pathetically drenched. Kathleen, I reminded myself as I rang the bell, had a kind heart under her forthright manner. She took a few moments to answer the door and usher me into the dark hall, crammed with enough cupboards, chests and sideboards to hide a dozen members of the clergy escaping persecution in foreign parts. Donations to her charity drive, I concluded. But although I peered into every corner I couldn’t spot any of the items from Ben’s study. Hope leaped in my damp breast. Perhaps Kathleen had decided they weren’t worthy of being delivered even to the most needy, and they were already on their way back to Merlin’s Court with a sensitive little note of apology.

“Sorry to barge in without phoning first,” I said, as she took my umbrella and shook it out the door before propping it up against a chair with three legs.

“Don’t give it a thought, dear. You know I’m always glad to see you, even when I’m just walking out the door.”

“Oh, are you?” It was a stupid thing to say given the fact that she was wearing a rain hat in addition to her coat and a long wooly scarf. But Kathleen had a way of rattling me. She was an imposing figure of a woman, with a commanding voice and brown eyes that missed very little. Freddy said she scared him most when she was being jolly, but I would have been thrilled at that moment to see a glimmer of a smile. “I promise not to keep you more than a few moments.” My voice came out in a pitiful stammer. “It’s just that I’ve got this little problem.”

At that her eyes did light up. Kathleen thrived on setting people’s lives to rights. All she asked was that they take her advice to the letter and not waste her time dithering on about what someone else had to say on the subject.

“You’d better come into the sitting room.” She maneuvered her way toward a door to our right, and I skinned both legs climbing over a chest of drawers in her wake.

“I hate to delay you.”

“First things first, I always say, Ellie.” She waved me toward an elderly sofa with a couple of cushions that looked as though a six-year-old child might have embroidered them. It was a shabby room with oatmeal-colored wallpaper and faded red curtains. Books and magazines were scattered over almost every surface, an old cardigan and a floral apron were tossed over the back of a chair and the mirror above the fireplace needed resilvering. Kathleen wasn’t the house-proud sort. She didn’t have the time, or the interest. I shifted my feet, so as not to knock over a cup and saucer that had been left on the floor, and sat back and admired the cozy muddle. I couldn’t have lived with it, but I envied Kathleen’s ability to do so.

She sat opposite me in a chair with mismatched arm covers. “No call to worry, Ellie, I’ll explain to the parishioner I’m to visit that I was unavoidably delayed.”

“That is kind.”

“Now tell me about this problem.”

Before I could do so, the Reverend Dudley Ambleforth wandered into the room by way of the French doors that opened onto the back garden. The white hair that normally stuck up around his head like a dandelion clock was flattened to his head by the rain. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, let alone a coat-just a thin gray cardigan. Impervious to his drenched state he had his nose in a book-probably one he had written himself of the life of the venerable St. Ethelwort, founder of a monastery whose ruins were located a few miles along the coast. The vicar was his own favorite author, which was a good thing because most people had trouble wading through even one of the thirteen volumes he had produced on his beloved subject.

“Dudley!” His wife got out of her chair to fume over him. “You really are naughty going outside in this weather. With all I have to do must I be worrying about your catching one of your nasty colds? And all your handkerchiefs already in the wash. It simply is too vexing. If I weren’t so fond of you,” she said, wiping the rain drips off his neck with her scarf, “I would be very much put out.”

“So sorry, my dear.” The vicar dragged his mild blue eyes away from his book. “Such a trial I am to everyone. As was St. Ethelwort from time to time. His bishop had to admonish him on several occasions for allowing his monks to sunbathe on the beach in their birthday suits while groups of nuns were picnicking nearby. He was, as I have so often written, a saint ahead of his time.”