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

continue at this frenetic pace. Tottering back to his chair, he hid out behind
A Tale of Two Cities
. Wishing desperately that there were some escape for me, I was tempted to announce dinner even if it meant eating the vegetables raw. Tricks started to say that she thought the world of Mags’s doilies, but there was no stopping Mum. And perhaps that was all for the best. Her hostility was like a genie unleashed from a bottle after forty years of incarceration. Even were one to catch it and stuff it back in, the respite would be only temporary. We would all be waiting for the stopper to fly off again.
    “
Cuties!
How very American of you, Tricks! I used to be so embarrassed when people clucked about you flirting with the Yanks at the air force base. I didn’t want to believe it when your own mother burst into tears one day and admitted you accepted favours from them—sticks of gum and worst of all”—she spat out the word as if she could not bear it to touch her lips—“cigarettes.”
    “Be you saying she was a spy?” Jonas came back to life, his caterpillar eyebrows scurrying with curiosity.
    “No, old love!” Tricks’s face remained one big smile. “Mags is saying I was a slut.”
    Call me a defeatist, but I experienced one of those flashes of insight on which I pride myself. My splendid evening was dead. And from the looks of Ben and the other chaps, they agreed with me. But how wrong can you be? Either our guest was the mistress of the stiff upper lip, or she was incapable of taking offence (A) because she was the salt of the earth, or (B) because she was completely out of touch with other people’s feelings. The thought did occur that the latter could bea real handicap—tantamount to crossing life’s treacherous highways blindfolded. But as usual I did not get to wallow in philosophical conjecture.
    Tricks was chirruping “Feeling better, dearie, after getting all that out of your system?” while crushing Mum in another of those pals-forever hugs. To which the recipient responded with her usual fervour, arms rigid at her sides. Her nose and one visible eye stared straight ahead into infinity.
    I was about to extol the virtues of the cheese straws, when the drawing room door banged open, making another notch in the wall, and in came Mrs. Malloy, her fishnet knees buckling under the weight of the monstrous bouquet she carried in her arms.
    The four-foot structure was made up entirely of vegetables. Obscenely oversize vegetables that looked as though they had succumbed to taking steroids. Ben was the first one to pry open his lips. “My God, Ellie! Is that your idea of an hors d’oeuvre?”
    “I brought it!” Tricks leaped to her feet, sending a lamp and a couple of eminently dispensable ornaments flying, her smile radiating more light than the hundred-watt bulb. “It’s my little party present—my thank-you for having me here for this fun evening.”
    “Give me a bunch of daffs any day!” Tactful as always, Mrs. Malloy shoved the horror at me and zipped out of the room before it could extend a green or orange paw and rip off one of the juicier parts of her anatomy to feed its insatiable appetite for human flesh.
    Poor Ben. I could see him struggling to find some word of praise that would not be in violation of the chef’s Hypocritical Oath. I myself was struggling to stay upright. Mum meanwhile sat there like a turnip—as if we didn’t have enough of those already. And Dad and Jonas crept towards me as silently and reverently as if they were in church.
    “Go on, tell me what you think!” Tricks was vibrating with excitement.
    “Incredible!” Relieving me of the Leaning Towerof Veggies, Dad held it on high, while Jonas stood riveted at his side, eyes uplifted.
    “You like it?”
    “We love it!” The two men spoke as one. And why not? Jonas gloried in the growing of vegetables and Dad in the selling of them.
    “A real prize!” one or the other of them gushed.
    “Oh, you