Free The Importance of Being Ernestine by Dorothy Cannell

know. I’m not up on the different kinds. But, now that you ask,” I stood up and sat back down, “it was rather like the one you had when we were children and played cowboys and Indians. But it could have been a real gun. It must have been . . .” I sat biting my lip, remembering how for a moment in time I had been taken in by the gun-shaped cigarette lighter Mrs. Malloy had tossed at me. It had been that sort of evening.
    â€œExplain something to me, Ellie.” Freddy’s eyes narrowed, just as they had done when he was a ten-year-old Wyatt Earp pacing toward me with his hand at his holster. “Why would this bloke in the sunglasses try to frighten you into giving up on a case that no one in their right minds would have given the time of day if he hadn’t shown up?”
    â€œNot a bad question.”
    It was one that had been nagging at the back of my mind as I drove home.

Seven
    I awoke to find another question staring me in the face: What about Ernest, the under gardener who fathered Flossie Jones’s baby girl? There had been no mention of him when Lady Krumley talked about Flossie living out her last days in a miserable bed-sitter. Was he a rotter who had bunked off rather than face up to his responsibilities? Or had Flossie shut him out of her life? Did he even know that the baby had been put up for adoption?
    A moment later I lost interest in these speculations. Ben was not in bed beside me. A distant bonging of the grandfather clock let me know that it was 8:00 and that I had overslept by an hour. There was no reason for me to panic. He would be downstairs giving the children their breakfast after getting them up and dressed. We usually did this together and had become quite good at speeding things along without making anyone feel rushed. But if I didn’t wake with the alarm clock, he would let me sleep on before bringing me up a cup of tea. Usually on those days he would take Abbey and Tam to school and Rose to her playgroup. Even so, as I dragged on my dressing gown and headed barefoot for the stairs, I couldn’t stop myself from feeling abandoned. I had dozed off in the drawing room the previous night while still talking to Freddy. He was gone when I came drowsily back to my surroundings at 3:00 in the morning. And Ben was in bed and asleep when I climbed under the covers. The sensible thing would be to take him at his word that he had forgiven me, but I couldn’t. The mad idea crossed my mind that if I looked in the study I would find a note propped up on the mantelpiece, saying that he had gone away for a while because he needed time to think, the classic words to end a doomed relationship. I reminded myself, even as I pushed open the door, that Ben loved me, that our marriage was solid and he would never abandon his children, especially over something so trivial. The study was exactly as it had been when I showed it to him last night, except for a cold cup of tea sitting beside the computer. Really, I did need to get a grip on myself. But to be fair a lot of women might go to pieces after having a gun pointed at them, real or not. Shaking my head so that my hair, which I hadn’t combed, tumbled out of its pins, I entered the kitchen, which didn’t look as inviting as usual.
    On chill, gray mornings such as this it helped to have a small blaze going in the red brick fireplace, but Ben hadn’t got one started. Nor was he there. Freddy was the one wandering around the table urging the children to eat up their cereal.
    â€œI want porridge,” Tam had his elbows on the green and white check cloth and was blowing bubbles in his juice glass.
    â€œDaddy always makes us porridge,” Abbey contributed wistfully.
    â€œLove Daddy.” Rose dropped her spoon in her cornflakes and giggled with delight when milk splashed everywhere. Tobias sat happily licking his whiskers while Freddy appeared ready to tear his out. Indeed his beard already looked extra