Speak Ill of the Dead. Mary Jane Maffini
call you. Edwina wants us all to have dinner at her place. Six o’clock…”
I interrupted. “I had no choice but to suggest you might be willing to get a call from this cop you used to know in high school. Sorry. But you can always take your phone off the hook.”
“A policeman? Oh, not Conn McCracken, was it?”
“Yes, look, I’m sorry….”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing much, just how were you.”
“What did you say?”
“I said you were so so.”
“Oh, Camilla.”
“And I told him that Greg died.”
“That’s all?”
“What did you want me to say?”
“I don’t know. Did he ask how I looked?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, he might call you and you can tell him how you look yourself.”
“Oh, Camilla.”
“Gotta go, I hear the dreaded Alvin approaching.”
“Wait a minute. Wait a minute,” Alexa breathed. “Does he still have all his hair?”
“I didn’t notice.”
“For God’s sake, Camilla,” she said and hung up.
The only good thing about being the boss is making up rules and then changing them without reason or warning as you go along. So when Alvin crashed back into the office, dropped his bags, and snarled something about how can you stand all those fucking tulips all over the place, I beamed as I picked up my jacket and opened the door.
“So long, Alvin. There’s plenty to keep you busy. I see about fifty linear feet of filing on the floor. By tomorrow, I expect to be able to see the pattern of the carpet.”
His wail followed me down the stairs. “Don’t you want these panty-hose?”
After twenty years or more, the tall respectable husbands collected by my sisters had begun to settle into middle age and to develop creeping hairlines, baby paunches, and minor peculiarities, some easier to adjust to than others. Take, for example, Donalda’s husband, Joe, each year withdrawing more and more into a world of his own, of golf and fishing and imaginary trophies. Or Edwina’s Stan with his collection of dribble glasses, plastic dog turds and fake vomit. I wish I had some kind of coin for every time I encountered a whoopee cushion in the passenger seat of Stan’s Buick LeSabre.
“Better take it easy on the baked beans,” he always said.
I suggested to Edwina that perhaps Stan was developing Alzheimer’s and should be locked away for his own protection, but I noticed she still kept sending him to pick me up for family get-togethers. This dinner was no exception.
A hand mirror lay on the passenger seat as I opened the door.
“Would you mind moving that?” Stan said.
As I picked up the mirror, it screamed with laughter and kept on laughing after I threw it on the floor.
“Perhaps you should get your hair done more often,” Stan said, between his own screams of laughter.
“Perhaps you should get a life, Stan,” I suggested, not laughing but giving some thought to screaming myself.
HAHAHAHAHAHA, howled the mirror from the floor, just before I picked it up and chucked it out the window.
Stan was still sulking when we reached Nepean and pulled into the driveway, which I think Edwina vacuums twice weekly.
“Aw, Camilla, the girls would have gotten a big kick out of that at dinner,” he said.
“Like hell,” I told him.
If “the girls” had sent Stan to get me into some kind of a mellow mood after a distressing day spent mulling over Mitzi’s death and Robin’s continuing state of withdrawal, “the girls” were going to be let down.
They were hanging around the entrance, three vultures with dish cloths, when we arrived. I could tell they’d been bustling around the kitchen, discussing my mental state, when they’d heard the car. Now they were trying to look like they’d all accidentally ended up near the front door just as we got there.
They scanned my face and turned to Stan. He shrugged, before perking up a bit.
“Wait a minute,” he said, flinging open the door to the basement and thundering down the stairs. “I think I have something else that might do just as well.”
“Are you all right?” Edwina asked.
“Well, I’ll never look in another mirror again.”
“He’s just trying to cheer you up, dear.”
“Let’s chat in the living room,” said Donalda, steering me, as if I hadn’t been there a thousand times.
Edwina’s entire house is picture-perfect polished mahogany, pastel brocade, flowers in silver or crystal vases. In the living room, my father glanced up from the newspaper, peering over the top of his little half-moon reading glasses. He matched the decor. Eighty-year old gentleman, distinguished, white-haired and slim, seated in wingback with matching ottoman.
“Hello, um, Camilla,” he said.
“Can I get you a little drink?” Alexa asked me. Her colour was high and she had a sparkle I hadn’t seen about her for months.
Donalda looked at my father after Alexa left the room. “Do you think she has a fever, Daddy?”
“No idea, dear,” said my father, with a flicker of worry.
“Maybe she’s in love,” I said.
“Oh, Camilla.”
Dinner was wonderful. Edwina knows her way around a kitchen and I have to confess it’s very pleasant to sit on well-padded dining room chairs, surrounded by the warm glow of mahogany, eating good food off Minton china. She presided over the distribution of the roast lamb stuffed with spinach and chèvre with the air of an artist at a show of her work.
And, in my family, we always find things taste even better when we’re discussing people who are not present.
“She did?” said Donalda, as we heaped the lemon rice onto our plates “Well, I’m not surprised. Did you see what she had on?”
“No wonder he practically dived down the front of her blouse,” said Edwina, passing the squash soufflé.
“Exactly,” said Alexa, and reached for the broccoli, “and I know we’re all human, but I don’t think church is the place for it.”
My father just concentrated on the food. He doesn’t approve of gossip. I concentrated on my food too, since I didn’t know any of the people whose blouses were under discussion.
When the neighbours and other parish members had been dealt with, they turned their attention to the murder. I was waiting for it. Mitzi Brochu’s murder had captured the imagination of the magazine-reading public in a big way.
“A crucifixion,” said Alexa, shivering. “It’s too gruesome.”
“Well,” I said, “it wasn’t really a…”
“Somebody absolutely had it in for her,” said Donalda.
“No kidding,” I said.
“Not surprising when you think about the sorts of things she wrote about people,”