Read Online The Importance of Being Ernestine by Dorothy Cannell - Free Book Online

myself sick rather than face up to our quarrel and get it behind us. If it could be put into the past? Remembering his face when he looked at the new computer I wasn’t overly optimistic. Would Kathleen Ambleforth kill me if I rang her up at this late hour and explained my dilemma and the urgent need for the immediate return of my husband’s old manual typewriter? At a pinch the rest of the stuff could wait until morning.
    My hand reached for the phone, but the twin suits of armor standing against the staircase wall suggested by the very blankness of their expressions that I would be making a big mistake in dragging Kathleen away from her hot water bottle. Or worse, I might get the vicar himself on the phone and he—being the dear befuddled soul that he is—would get everything mixed up. A vanload of pews along with the church organ, and possibly the organist herself in flannel nightie and curlers, could show up at my door to be disposed of, causing Ben to accuse me of making a further mess of things.
    The kitchen light, along with the ones in the hall, had been on when I came in, and narrow strips of light gleamed beneath the closed doors of the dining room and drawing room. I couldn’t bring myself to look toward the study. But this excess of electricity did not necessarily mean that Ben was still up. He was inclined to be careless about switching off lights. A peek into the drawing room found it empty. When I came out I saw a man winding the grandfather clock that stood in an alcove facing the front door. He had his back to me, but there was no mistaking my cousin Freddy for a madman who broke into people’s houses to make sure that they kept time with Big Ben under the illusion that any discrepancy would permanently disrupt Greenwich Mean Time. Freddy’s straggly ponytail and dangling skull and crossbones earring were always a dead give-away.
    â€œHi coz!” He shifted his lanky six-foot frame in my direction and stuck his hands in his ragged jeans pockets. “Where did you spring from?”
    â€œI spent the evening with Mrs. Malloy. Where’s Ben?”
    â€œIn the study.” Freddy stood tugging at his scroungy-looking beard. “Ellie, I think you’ve made a really big mistake this time.”
    â€œYou mean,” my voice trembled, “he’s sitting in there . . . wallowing?”
    â€œMore a case of a man in a trance. I don’t want to be overly pessimistic,” Freddy said, shaking his head so that the earring rattled, “but I’ve got the feeling that it could be a long time before Ben comes out of this. I’ve been sitting with him for an hour or more and he didn’t seem to know I was there.”
    â€œOh, Freddy!”
    â€œMaybe he’ll snap out of it.” He spoke with a complete absence of conviction. “Perhaps you could exert your feminine wiles, Ellie. Light some candles, put on some soft music, play the pitiful little woman to the hilt. It’s a shame,” Freddy flapped an arm around my shoulders, “that you don’t have some alarming crisis to drop in his lap to make him realize that he can’t let anything come between you.”
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œA 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.
    â€œForget 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