How to Murder Your Mother-In-Law by Dorothy Cannell Page A

gave her a smacking kiss on both pallid cheeks. While the men and I watched in awe, Tricks dragged Mum by the hand, almost skipping as she went, and plopped them both down on the sofa, where Tobias had retreated for a snooze. He went flying up in the air, along with a couple of cushions, but Tricks didn’t notice.
    “To think, Mags, it’s been forty years, and all because of that silly quarrel at the seaside.”
    Mum hadn’t said anything about where the row had taken place and, being nosy, I was curious about the rhymes and reasons, if not eager for a blow-by-blow account. Tricks’s punk hair was softened from red to an iridescent pink by a stray shaft of sunlight, which also illuminated—less kindly—the ladder in her left stocking and the dirt trapped under her fingernails. “It was such a nasty grey day and no one was on the beach but the three of us.” She beamed up at Dad, who was stroking his beard into a more debonair shape. “So I didn’t see any harm …”
    “In suggesting we go swimming?” My mother-in-law sat as if she were on a church pew, tiny knees together, hands primly folded; her voice was several degrees chillier than the sea could possibly have been on that faraway day.
    “I know you don’t like the water, Mum,” Ben soothed.
    “Ah”—her sparrow eyes flashed—“but what you don’t know, son, is that we didn’t have our swimming costumes with us. And someone”—she edged farther away from Tricks—“called me a spoilsport because I refused to—”
    “Go skinny-dipping?” I quavered.
    “If that is the vulgar expression.”
    “My word, Dad”—Ben sounded on the verge of laughter—“what part did you play in all this?”
    “I took your mother’s side. Had to, didn’t I?”
    Silence descended, threatening to engulf us, butsomehow I managed to locate the salmon pâté and a tray of cheese straws while Ben busied himself rustling up drinks.
    “What can I get you, Mrs. Taffer?” he asked.
    “Fruit juice, there’s a love.” She gave a girlish giggle. “I’m quite the health nut. And do call me Tricks.”
    “How fitting.” Mum squeezed out a mirthless laugh and accepted a glass of lemonade. She did not “drink,” but on this occasion I wished she could be persuaded to indulge in something stronger. A glass of Lourdes water, for instance. Our little get-together was definitely in need of a miracle.
    In the gurgling voice that was decades too young, Tricks offered a toast. “Let bygones be bygones, I say, and may the good times roll!”
    Mum kept right on staring into her lemonade, but the men, my husband included, converged in a rush, and before I could get in the act, Tricks disappeared in a round of clinks and exclamations of “Cheers!” followed by an unidentified “Oops!”
    Someone’s drink went sloshing over the rim of his or her glass to splatter the arm of the sofa and a patch of carpet with a nice rich stain. A good hostess does not flinch under such circumstances, and I was about to say it didn’t matter a tiny bit, when Tricks eased all our minds.
    “Don’t give it a thought, love! These modern fabrics clean up in next to no time.” She patted the damp arm of the sofa. “And anyway, you can always hide the problem with one of these cuties.” Suiting action to words, she lifted a doily from the oak end table and plopped it down over the carpet stain. “There!” She beamed. “Who would ever know?”
    The men were struck dumb with admiration. I drank my sherry in one gulp before I could spill it. And Mum pointed a trembling finger at her life’s work, the doilies that were on display throughout the room.
    “Cuties!” Rounding on Tricks, Mum seized on theword and chewed all around it as Sweetie might have done a chair leg. “
Cuties!
Is that what you call them?”
    “Enough, Magdalene!” Dad thundered. “She didn’t mean anything.”
    “I might have known you would take her side.”
    “Parents! Parents!” Ben reproved.
    Jonas could not