Mum's the Word

Informationen zum Autor Dorothy Cannell was born in London, England, and now lives in Belfast, Maine. She writes mysteries featuring Ellie Haskell, interior decorator, and Ben Haskell, writer and chef, and Hyacinth and Primrose Tramwell, a pair of dotty sisters and owners of the Flowers Detection Agency. Klappentext Several pounds heavier-and gaining-blissful mother-to-be Ellie Haskell knows her days as a thin woman are numbered. Time to let out her clothes! put up her feet! and prepare to enjoy the next nine months as pampered wife. But the first pangs of morning sickness have barely passed when Ellie's handsome husband! Ben! is invited to compete for membership in the world's most exclusive secret society of chefs! and suddenly Ellie finds herself whisked off to America-to Mud Creek! Illinois-and to a gothic mansion straight out of a horror movie. I dream I am a child again, coming to Merlin’s Court for the first time. No … that isn’t quite the way it is. My grown-up self watches, off-stage, as ten-year-old Ellie is driven in that magical vehicle of childhood—a taxi—through the village of Chitterton Fells. The shops and houses, now steeped in twilight, are of classic Christmas card design. Look, there’s the amputated Roman arch, and yes … the wavering moonbeam of coast road.   Child Ellie is wearing her blue-and-gold striped school blazer. The badge of her Panama hat heralds the motto of St. Roberta’s: Life Is Strife. Her plaits are tied with bows the size of giant moths and her face is an all-over smile.   Does that make her sound an appealing little moppet? Sorry, the truth is that she is fat. Poor dear, she was born fat. And really there was no excuse. Her parents lived thin and productive lives. Aunts, uncles, and cousins were respectable in size. And the family tree revealed only one obese antecedent—Augustus Wentworth Grantham, 1784–1863, who was forced into exile after unlacing his stays at a regimental dinner. Not another blot on the record until I, Giselle Simons, weighed in. Giselle! I know my parents chose the name as a sort of magic talisman against the inevitable. My first word was chocolate.   Peering through the shadows of my dream, I remember all those years of shelling out blackmail money to my low-cal cousin Vanessa. Anything to retrieve damning photos of Child Ellie in varying poses of indecent exposure. Short sleeves, short socks … shorts. Destroying the evidence had become vital after I went on a diet at age twenty-seven and won. Days, weeks of complacency had followed wherein I was sure I had bumped off the Before version. But every once in a while Child Ellie would creep up behind me, tap me on the shoulder, and cry, “I’m still here!”   The taxi zigs around a bend in the road and Child Ellie winds down the window to sniff the scenery. Don’t lean out too far, Child Ellie. The cliff sheers down like a bird shot from the sky. The taxi nears the top of the hill. Here stands St. Anselm’s Church, walls the colour of pumice stone. The moon is its halo. A weary congregation of tombstones and trees that writhe as though wringing their hands at the wickedness of the world.   Child Ellie smiles. Anyone would think she had never smelled the sea before, never heard it break in white-foamed rushes against the cliffs, never savoured its Alka Seltzer taste, nor seen a gull cresting the wind. What blithe optimism! What wanton vulnerability! She lunges through the window, arms flung wide to embrace the moment. But all is well. She doesn’t fall. The window is a tight fit.   The taxi glides through sagging iron gates onto a gravel drive riddled with weeds. Look … there is the old chestnut spreading its moon-dappled cloak upon the lawn … and there the lodge, a cobbled house with a brass plate on the door: Cliffside Cottage. The taxi slows, then moves on. Then suddenly the maternal ancestral home is in sight: Merlin’s Court. Her breath catch...

Product details

• Authors: Dorothy Cannell
• Publisher: Random House USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.07.1991
• EAN: 9780553286861
• ISBN: 978-0-553-28686-1
• No. of pages: 263
• Dimensions: 108 mm x 176 mm x 19 mm
• Series: Ellie Haskell; Ellie Haskell
• Subject: Fiction