The Trouble with Harriet by Dorothy Cannell Read Free Book Online Page B

father.”
    “He was the one talking about wedding bells.”
    “She thought he was a wealthy playboy.” I removed myself from my husband’s embrace.
    “A schemer worth her salt would have realized pretty quick that he lives in tents and cheap boardinghouses because that’s all he can afford.”
    “Why did you have to say that?” Tears stung my eyes. “I’ve been struggling for the last hour to forget Daddy’s awful remark.”
    “About what?” Ben took a couple of steps toward the Aga, thought better of it, and refocused his full attention on me.
    “He said Mummy was the salt of the earth.”
    “I’d call that a rather fine tribute.”
    “Would you?” The tears now spattered down my nose. “Then I dread to think what you’d say behind my back if I were dead!”
    “Ellie!” Bewilderment and exasperation were written all over Ben’s face.
    “It’s the sort of thing a man says about his painfully plain secretary of forty years who’s never typed a word wrong, powders her nose with corn flour, and lives with her mother of a hundred and four.”
    I resented having to explain something so obvious. My mother was anything but a salt-of-the-earth woman. She was completely useless in any practical sense. She couldn’t open a tin of soup without looking up the instructions in a cookbook. She thought making a bed required assemblage for which she hadn’t the tools. And she was hopeless with money. She thought it grew on trees.
    But she was marvelous in all the important ways. She never nagged Daddy to get a job. She was great at making paper dolls and doing animal silhouettes on the walls. She thought books were the best place to live. She adored Mozart and the Beatles. And she never let other people’s peculiarities bother her. Even when Freddy’s mother’s kleptomania was out of control between treatments, my mother didn’t make a fuss when the Staffordshire dogs disappeared from our mantelpiece. She explained that Aunt Lulu wasn’t well, probably because she hadn’t received enough love as a child. And if she had to steal from anyone, it was better that she did it from us rather than from people who would have had her arrested, because there was Freddy to think of and Uncle Maurice, even if he was a pompous pain in the neck.
    Something soft and furry landed at my feet. Tobias, despite his peculiarities, always knew when I needed him most. You can’t use your children for weeping posts. And husbands may have their minds on things like hollandaise sauce. But cats are meant to be picked up and nuzzled during life’s most delicate moments.
    Ben wiped away a tear from my cheek and popped a piece of cheese into my mouth. I found myself feeling less like a soggy handkerchief. “Thanks,” I mumbled.
    “Ellie, you always told me that your father adored your mother.”
    “I thought he did, but I’m beginning to wonder if the reason he seems such a stranger is that I never really knew him.” I stood stroking Tobias between the ears as Ben edged back toward the Aga and reached for his double boiler. “Doesn’t it strike you that there’s a lot more to Daddy’s late-summer love affair than meets the eye?”
    “In what way?”
    “I didn’t become a daughter to see my father caught up in something sinister.”
    “How, exactly, did you come up with this bizarre twist on the facts?” Ben now sounded seriously worried.
    “Has the hollandaise curdled?” I asked stiffly.
    “No, sweetheart, it’s my blood you’re curdling.”
    “That’s right! Pooh-pooh my instincts!” Throwing my arms wide, I dropped poor Tobias, who understandably looked wounded to the quick and retreated under the table. Consumed with remorse, I filled a saucer with milk and put it under his nose. I also made an effort to get a grip on myself. How could I expect Ben to understand why I was so upset when I wasn’t sure that I did myself?
    “I didn’t like what Daddy said about the Gypsy.”
    “The one who told Harriet’s