Femmes Fatal (Ellie Haskell) - Softcover

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

One
 
He was a dark and stormy knight. A latter-day rake with eyes the colour of emeralds worth a queen’s ransom. His smile promised voyages to the moon. And heaven alone knew how many females lay littered in his wake.
 
To a rousing burst of Rachmaninoff, he swept into my London flat one January evening and, with the hauteur of his greeting, captured my virgin heart forever and a day.
 
“Miss Ellie Simons? My car awaits. Shall we splurge on dinner or parking tickets?”
 
Never mind that he had no intentions honourable or otherwise, my existence as an overweight, underpaid interior designer would never be the same. The man wasn’t just a handsome face. He could do more than raise a dark sardonic eyebrow. He could cook. And not just baked beans on toast! Bentley T. Haskell was a first-class chef.
 
In the grand tradition of paperback romance, we went from loathing to loving with all unseemly haste. My first two years as Mrs. Haskell were a rapturous journey with all the thrills and spills of white-water rapids. Our lovemaking blew enough fuses that one night all the lights went out. Our quarrels were glorious. The making up marvelous. Could any woman ask for more?
 
On a glowing April morning, I awoke in my bedroom at Merlin’s Court to the woeful realization that the honeymoon was over. Ellie Haskell was no sultry siren straight from the pages of a bodice-buster romance. I was a thirty-year-old matron, weighing almost as much as when the twins, daughter Abbey and son Tam, were born four and a half months before. Worse, my marriage had turned flabby.
 
At one time the sight of Ben putting on his socks had been enough to make passion’s flame set my nightie alight; now late-night feedings and stretchmarks that refused to fade with the application of S’Mother Cream had taken their toll.
 
“Good morning, Sunshine.” Ben stood at the foot of our four-poster bed, clad in a black silk dressing gown that did wonders for his complexion. Tossing a coin in the air, he clapped it down on the back of his hand. “Heads, you cook dinner tonight. Remember, I will be home this evening. We have that meeting of the Hearthside Guild at the vicarage. And I am program chairman of the Full-Time Father Committee.” A woeful glance down at the coin. “You lose, my dear.”
 
What had become of the man who once refused to let me sully my hands tossing a rasher of bacon in the frying pan? To outward appearances he remained totally adorable. The black hair was tousled, a smile lurked in those jewelled eyes, and the need for a shave hinted at gentleman turned bandit. No one would guess he had worked until midnight at Abigail’s, his restaurant in the village.
 
“Full-time father?” I queried.
 
“Ellie, we are talking about an attitude.” Again Ben spun the coin in the air, this time catching it in his pocket. “Parenting is my number-one occupation. Work is something I do”—he grinned—“to get out of the house when the nappies need washing.”
 
Smile in place, I tossed back the bedclothes and rose to face the day. As yet there was no clarion call from the nursery. Sunlight darted accusing fingers at the haze of dust on the mahogany furniture. But this remained a proud, handsome room, its copper fireplace giving off the rich glow of Harvey’s Bristol Cream. Merlin’s Court—dear to me as the day I first came here, a podgy child with a chip on my shoulder the size of a tablet from Mount Sinai. The good old days when I hadn’t been expected to lift a finger except to ping the bell for tea.
 
“Something wrong, Ellie?”
 
“Just daydreaming.” I whirled to face him, if flannel can be said to whirl.
 
A hopeful gleam lit his eyes. It had been days, weeks since we had ... well, you know ...
 
“Sorry, dear, mornings are off-limits. I have to get the babies up, bathed, and fed before I take a break and fix the washing machine.”
 
“No need, I rang the plumber.” Typical male, clouding the issue by being helpful.
 
“Thanks. I’ll have Mr. Fixit cluttering up my kitchen all morning.”
 
“You don’t have to entertain the man. A cup of tea perhaps. But definitely no cake. These days cake undoubtedly constitutes sexual harassment.”
 
“What a blessing.”
 
“My apologies for gadding off to work.”
 
We studied each other, Ben with hands sunk in the black silk pockets, I sunk in gloom. Was love’s minuet reduced to this? Each of us tiptoeing around the other’s feelings? He moved to the door, hand on the brass knob.
 
“Coffee’s made and the babies ...”
 
“I know.” A half hour earlier I’d heard him go in to change Abbey and Tam. All things considered, he deserved better than a love life that had gone from gourmet to thaw-and-serve.
 
“How about frozen dinners tonight, dear?” I said, but he was gone in pursuit of the bathroom.
 
Time for the mistress of the manor to get going. Motherhood had taught me a minute saved is a minute earned. Nudging the wardrobe open to unhook my dressing gown, I backed away from the mirror on the door, my raised hands warding off the evil vision in the manner of a vampire assaulted by sunlight. Lucky vampires! They cast no reflection. Was that flannel-faced, flannel-garbed woman really me? Had youth and beauty fled without a backward glance?
 
My poor hair, what there was of it! I could stuff a sofa with what had come out on my brush since the birth of the twins. Twisting the now pathetic strands into a plait, I homed in on the bags under my eyes. Mouth quivering, I reminded myself there are worse things—baggy knees, for instance—and then made the mistake of looking down. The case was desperate. Time to get serious about my diet. No meals between meals, no more hedging. How could I face the handsome Reverend Rowland Foxworth tonight at the Hearthside Guild with a nose like this? The mirror drew me back with all the hypnotic power of the one belonging to Snow White’s stepmum.
 
“Ellie ...” Ben’s reflection rose up behind me, handsome as all get-out in his cuff-linked shirt and pleated trousers.
 
“Oh, God! My nose. It’s moved so far over to the left I should never wear anything but red.”
 
“My adorable nincompoop!”
 
Great, now my mind was going. Peering around me, Ben bared his teeth at the mirror. Concerned, I suppose, that they weren’t a perfect match for his ultra-white shirt. A false alarm, needless to say.
 
Those lips now met mine in a kiss of sorts. But neither of us had our hearts in it. Mentally, he was already at Abigail’s, plotting a curry that would prove the cure for the common cold. I was lost in bitter reverie. Damn, life is a sexist institution. Pregnancy had not achieved the ruinous effect on Ben that it had on me. If anything, his manly charms were enhanced. His shoulders had broadened and I could swear he was a couple of inches taller. Careful, an inner voice warned, as sure as the winning raffle ticket is always the one lost, you will lose Ben.
 
One morning I would awake to find a note posted on the bedroom mantelpiece, informing me that he had gone home to Mother. The next forty years would be spent forwarding his mail and explaining to the twins why I had driven their father from the nest. “Daddy was all growed up, my sweets, he was too big to go on living at home.”
 
Dear God, something must be done! Perhaps if I took lots of steaming hot showers ... These pathetic musings ended when I turned to find Ben gone. His footsteps echoed with a dreadful finality on the stairs. Some muffled words floated up to me before the front door thumped shut.
 
“Have a nice day, hubby mine.” What an idiot I was! Did I suppose my words would chase after him to the car? Were I a wife worth the name, I would rush after Ben and stand in the courtyard beneath the blaze of mullioned windows. The wind would ruffle my night gown about my ankles and play tag with my hair; my eyes would turn the colour of the sea on a rainswept day, and he would take the memory with him. A sweet and secret thing, a rose pressed within the pages of a book. Memories maketh marriage.
 
Perhaps I wasn’t dead from the brain down, but I wasn’t about to find out. When I sped from the room, it was in answer to a cry from the nursery.
 
“Coming, my darlings!” Amazing that some N.S.P.C.C. official had not already come banging on the door. Never could I convince myself that the babies cried because they were hungry or had wet bottoms. Almost putting my foot through my flannel hem, I entered that Mother Goose room with my throat full of butterflies. True to form, I fully expected to find a masked man with a bulging sack tossed over his shoulder—a latter-day Mr. McGregor, that dreadful man who made away with Peter Rabbit’s papa. Does a mother ever learn to feel safe where her offspring are concerned? Would I be fretting that Abbey and Tam were at the mercy of a wicked world when they were sixty? Would I ever let them go downstairs alone, let alone outdoors?