She Shoots to Conquer (25 page)

“I can see I’m not going to get a fair shake with the others.” She heaved a martyred sigh. “A pushy lot, all of them, especially that Judy Nunn you were so fired up about after spending five minutes with her. Why you couldn’t have put the little snippet in your pocket and walked off with her when you disappeared, I don’t know.”

Now it wasn’t only my lower extremities that felt weighted down. “She didn’t strike me as pushy,” I protested mildly.

“Well, you didn’t see her in action when Lord Belfrey had us all together for the welcoming ceremony. She grabbed his attention right off the bat by talking about how she’d just love to get busy with a trowel and cement fixing that opening in the wall out front. Crafty creature, using how upset he was about the accident as a way of making her play for him!” A fierce tightening of Mrs. Malloy’s folded arms pushed her bosom up under her chin. I held my breath waiting for a loud pop, but I doubted that even the air going out of those balloons would have deflated her wrath.

“How did his lordship bring up the accident?”

“He waited till we got into that room we was in last night.”

“It would have the right ambience.” I leaned forward, lifted the tray, and gingerly set it on the floor as far to the left of Mrs. M’s feet as possible, although maybe a good stomp on crockery would make her feel better. “If ever a room was primed for nightmarish revelations, that one would be it. Did Lord Belfrey break the news with cameras and audio equipment present?”

“Of course not.” She bridled at the suggestion. “That would’ve been insensitive, not that I expect that would have bothered your Judy Nunn. None of the
How sad
! And
What a terrible thing
! as came out of the others’ mouths. Not so much as a shine of a tear in those little eyes of hers.”

“She doesn’t have particularly little eyes. Saucers wouldn’t suit someone that petite.”

“That’s right; take her side, Mrs. H! If it wasn’t unkind—something I leave to others,” loaded pause, “I’d say that your fall knocked all the sense out of you.” She shifted a high-heeled shoe nearer the tray, causing me to hope nastily that she would step in the prawn sandwich. Mrs. Malloy’s footwear are her life, although to be fair to her she does not have a cardboard boxed tower of them on floor-to-ceiling shelves, as Mrs. Spuds suggested was the case with Celia Belfrey.

At any other time, I would have grabbed the opportunity to
fill Mrs. Malloy in on my visit to Witch Haven and describe for her not only Celia but also Nora Burton—the downtrodden paid companion straight out of a Gothic novel if ever there was one. Did she, like her fictional counterpart, harbor a thirst for revenge against an employer who never conceived that this fetcher and carrier had her own life history? I remembered the niggling feeling that something Nora had said was somehow odd. Just a tiny bit so, or it wouldn’t keep eluding me.

It had always been such fun—so productive—talking things of this nature over with Mrs. Malloy. Were those stimulating moments on the way out? I realized sharply how fond I was of her—bossy, snide ways and all. Such qualities were her buttress against the world at large and me in particular. After all, didn’t I have to be kept in my place to prevent my turning into the evil employer equal to any Celia Belfrey? The tiny bedroom, lacking all semblance of comfort without Thumper, shrank in upon itself, turning the window into a spy hole and making the sunlight look suspiciously sneaky.

“There has to be some reason, Mrs. H, for you not seeing straight. Any other time you’d be saying it’s staring us smack in the face as how last night’s car smash wasn’t no accident. That like as not what happened to Suzanne Varney was murder plain and simple.”

It was as well the loaded tray was off the bed or my convulsive start would have sent it flying. “Murder!” I exhaled the word as though I’d never heard it before. Such a thought hadn’t crossed my mind, even though I’m usually the first to suspect foul play, given (metaphorically speaking) the slightest whiff of burnt almonds.

“And who devised this murder?” I demanded of Mrs. Malloy, knowing full well what her answer would be.

“Judy Nunn; sticks out a mile. She knew Suzanne Varney . . .”

“So did Livonia Mayberry.” I reached down for the slopped, now stone-cold cup of tea, and took a deep swallow.

“Oh, her!” Mrs. M shrugged a taffeta shoulder. “She’s too mealy-mouthed to murder a goldfish without first sending for a
priest to give it last rites. Besides, like she told you, Mayberry only entered
Here Comes the Bride
to stick it in her boyfriend’s ear. Judy Nunn wants to be Lord Belfrey’s choice so as to get her hands on Mucklesfeld’s gardens. A nut job for horticulture she is, and who did she see standing in the way of her dream but Suzanne Varney?”

“Amongst four other contestants.” I set the cup and saucer back on the tray. “Has she come clean with her plans for doing away with the rest of you?”

“Not need to be snarky, Mrs. H,” baleful stare. “What I’m thinking is, she knew she wouldn’t stand a chance against Suzanne Varney. Any woman as looks attractive dead—like Dr. Tommy told us she did—had to be she was a real smasher when breathing. Now, here’s how I see things going down.” Her voice became a touch more conciliatory. “Judy arranges for them to meet up somewhere close to Mucklesfeld for a bite to eat. Then, seeing as the fog was getting so bad, suggests they go the rest of the way in one car.”

“She couldn’t have counted on the fog.”

Back to the baleful stare. “Do I look stupid?”

“Never in a million years.”

“I’m not saying as she’d planned on killing Suzanne.” Still huffy. “More a case of grabbing the opportunity by the horns when it came along.”

“Okay.” I ignored the call of the prawn sandwich.

“So, there they are creeping up the drive, Suzanne at the wheel unable to see a blinking thing, and Judy says:
Why don’t I get out and guide you in
?”

“With or without malice aforethought?”

“Let’s just say she was thinking of her own skin, but then she sees the break in the wall . . .”

“With her superwoman x-ray vision?”

Mrs. Malloy again tightened her arms under her chest, forcing the blood up her neck until I feared she’d turn purple to match her lipstick. “With the torch she got out of the glove compartment, like any reasonably clever Dick would do. Must’ve been then,” her
voice dropped to a low rasp, “that something wicked took hold of her, swamping every ounce of human decency drummed into her as a nipper. What was one life against the call of the Belfrey land?”

I can’t say I shuddered to the villainy of this scenario. It was the torch that struck a note . . . because it was repetitive: Ben not being able to find the one Georges claimed was in a desk drawer in his lordship’s study; and further back . . . to last evening, Plunket saying that if Boris had found a torch to take outside, things might have been different. It was probably a coincidence, but even so I felt that prickling of the skin . . . the chill down the spine.

“Look,” I told Mrs. Malloy, “your not taking to Judy Nunn doesn’t mean she killed anyone. And any such suggestions to Lord Belfrey, Georges LeBois, or the other women will do nothing but ruin your own chances of ending up with the bridal veil. I’m not saying you have to be Miss Congeniality, but at least try not to be the troublemaker everyone is hoping to see out on her ear.”

“Well, I suppose it was too much to hope you’d remember all the times me instincts put me on the right track when we was handling other cases together,” Mrs. Malloy addressed the ceiling. “So you go on telling yourself this is too close and personal for me to be objective. Don’t you go worrying I’ll be saying I told you so when I’m found breathing me last after being coshed on the noggin with a poker.” Black head with its two inches of white roots held high, she made for the door.

“Oh, please!” I begged—caught however foolishly in superstitious dread. “Don’t go off miffed. Stay and have half my prawn sandwich.”

“Luncheon awaits,” hand on the knob, she did not turn her head. “We’d have sat down half an hour ago if your friend Judy wasn’t still outside with Lord Belfrey filling his head with promises of velvet lawns and herbaceous borders. And now it’ll be me that’s late.” The snap of the door behind her indicated that this was entirely my fault. To blunt my chagrin, I ate my lunch without tasting it and lay back down. No chance of Ben appearing for a while at least. He must be fully occupied in the dining room or
kitchen. As for Thumper, I recognized the hopeless folly of yearning for him to leap through the window. Courage! I told myself. At least I wasn’t Wisteria Whitworth dreading the arrival of the malevolent wardress mouthing the names of the patients she had smothered in their beds after they refused their morning gruel that she’d put her whole heart into the stirring. That miserable old Mr. Codger . . . I smiled faintly at coming up with such a redundant name. Perhaps I was drifting off to sleep.

But that wasn’t to be. Mrs. Malloy’s disastrously silly suspicions kept pulling me back from the verge. Disastrous because she wasn’t much good at concealing her feelings when her nose was out of joint. And silly because if someone had seized upon the fog to bring about Suzanne Varney’s death, there was no reason to assume it was Judy Nunn. Someone living at Mucklesfeld could have easily heard the car coming, made sure the exterior lights were off, and nipped outside at the propitious moment with a torch. One now missing from its accustomed place. If killer there be, it would have to be someone who had more to fear from poor Suzanne’s arrival than the mere possibility that Lord Belfrey would choose her as his bride.

I lay longing for another cup of tea, a hot one this time, accompanied by another lemon tartlet. I still had more than an hour to go before joining the contestants in the library. Thinking of what might be offered to eat at that time would only make my current pangs worse, so I went back to concocting nonsensical theories about a murder I hoped to convince Mrs. Malloy hadn’t happened. Let the suspects seat themselves in a circle.

My mental gaze fell first on the trio of Mr. Plunket, Mrs. Foot, and Boris. Before finding refuge at Mucklesfeld, originally as squatters and then as employees on Lord Belfrey’s return from America (when they must have expected to be given their marching papers), they had been homeless. The prospect of his lordship’s marriage had to have rattled their rib cages. What if the new wife insisted they leave? What chance did any of them have to reestablish themselves? Would they be separated? That, I felt sure, was an
anguish not to be borne; together they were the insiders, not the brutal reverse. But if the first contestant to show up conveniently died, his lordship might decide against continuing with
Here Comes the Bride
, and they—Mr. Plunket, Mrs. Foot, and Boris—would be safe, at least for the time being. What, I suddenly wondered, had caused them to be homeless in the first place?

My watch showed scant progress toward teatime. If I were to pretend seriously that Mrs. Malloy was right that murder had occurred, then I would have to add employer to employees in our group of suspects. Why might Lord Belfrey have decided to eliminate one contestant off the bat? Perhaps when he belatedly saw Suzanne Varney’s photo laid out with the others by Georges in the study, he realized that she could ruin his chances for a marriage that would save Mucklesfeld. What could Suzanne have known to his detriment that had sealed her fate? I considered the possibility that he had behaved improperly toward her on the cruise they had shared, wincing away from more graphic wording. Illogically, my heart rebelled against the possibility that he had been anything other than a gentleman; after all, if a man would commit murder, he was likely capable of other hideous violations. But I desperately didn’t want to believe anything of the kind about Lord Belfrey.

What other damning evidence might Suzanne have had against him? A dire, but less ugly possibility sprang to mind. Perhaps she had reason to know, having met the genuine article, that he was not the real Lord Belfrey! Not that I condoned the behavior of imposters (or of highwaymen, for that matter), but there is a certain romantic allure to the face masked by black cloth or pretense. What if two Englishmen living in America, uncannily similar in appearance, chanced to meet—one telling the other he had just been informed by letter that his cousin Lord Giles Belfrey had died, making him heir to the title and ancestral estate? What if during an evening at his home in a remote rural community, this man had waxed nostalgic over the course of rather too many whiskeys and sodas on the family history, mentioning names, situations, before dramatically and conveniently collapsing?
What if after failing to revive him, the other sized up the potential for starting over after two failed marriages (doomed from the start because of his fixation with Eleanor) and an abruptly ended career? What if the deceased was so newly arrived in the area that his passport and air ticket were in view on a table and his other identification in his wallet, waiting to be plucked from his jacket pocket and replaced by another set?

I might have warmed to such a scenario if it weren’t connected to Suzanne Varney’s murder. As it was, I nixed it firmly. Whatever might be false at Mucklesfeld, I was in no doubt that his lordship had lost his heart, completely and forever, when looking upward at Eleanor Belfrey in her portrait gown on the stairs.

Another glance at my watch convinced me I had spent long enough concocting motives for a murder that was all in Mrs. Malloy’s head. I was about to get off the bed to do something about my face, hair, and clothes before heading down to the library for tea, when the door opened and in crowded Mrs. Foot.

“I’ve come for the tray.” She beamed a gap-toothed smile, the heavy dusty gray locks matching matted clouds outside the window. Gone was the sunshine of a half hour before. Did the weather at Mucklesfeld tend to be this fickle, and were Mrs. Foot’s moods equally changeable? Certainly, she was making more of an effort to be jolly than she had that morning. Had Whitey been returned safe and sound to her fond embrace? Before I could inquire, she asked winningly if I’d had a nice little nap.