She Shoots to Conquer (31 page)

“That sounds distinctly creepy to me.”

She stared straight ahead. “I might have grown kinder in my feelings toward him, if the days had not been so unendurable.”

I sat silent in the cobalt blue velvet chair. Sophie the Sealyham slept on. From the continued stare into nothingness, I gauged Nora to be no longer with us but back at Mucklesfeld, avoiding whenever possible the husband who filled her with revulsion, leaving her with only one other source of companionship.

“I understood,” Nora continued tonelessly, “that Celia would resent me. Having a stepmother a couple of years her junior and knowing exactly why I had agreed to marry him would have been enraging for anyone in her position. I expected to be either ignored or the recipient of snide remarks, but she went further than that. This,” pressing a finger to the scar on her face, “happened when she threw a cut-glass dish at me. It literally came at me out of the blue. Nothing apparent led up to the incident. Celia was sitting in the drawing room leafing through a magazine when she picked it up and aimed it at me. When she saw the blood dripping through my fingers, she said, ‘Don’t get that on the floor,’ and swept out of the room. She and I both knew that I would have made a bad decision in telling Giles. I believed then—and I still do—that she would have found a way to get rid of me once and for all given half an opportunity. I began seriously to fear my days were numbered when Giles bought this house for me.”

“Witch Haven? Yours?”

“In their arrangement with him—all very tidy and legal—my parents did seek to secure some protection for me in the event of his death; at which time of course I would’ve had to leave Mucklesfeld. I was to have a place of my own in waiting. Having paid
substantially for the privilege of having a wife who couldn’t bear him to touch her,” Nora continued speaking without inflection, “Giles himself felt a financial pinch, so it had to be a reasonably priced house. Six months after our marriage, this one went up for sale and he bought it. To my surprise, having come to feel myself incapable of any positive emotion, I fell in love with the place despite its being in a shockingly run-down state. The only contented moments I spent after that at Mucklesfeld were occupied in planning how I would make Witch Haven my own—collecting ideas from magazines, positioning furniture choices on paper renditions of the rooms, deciding what colors I would use. Before leaving, I had an extensive scrapbook.”

I looked around the bedroom—the word
stolen
coming to mind. Mrs. Foot had accused Ben of stealing her kitchen. “And you came here a short time ago to find Celia Belfrey occupying your creation?”

“Extremely close. Of course there are some things I would change, perhaps because I have changed, but surprisingly my anger against her didn’t spill over to infect my feelings for the house. Perhaps it has the sort of aura that can’t be tainted, however unpleasant the personality of the occupant?”

“Maybe.” The empathy I had felt for this woman upon first hearing about her, in good part because of my attributed likeness to her, was increasing. I also saw houses as personalities; it was what I brought to my work as a designer. “How did Witch Haven get its name?”

For the first time I saw Nora . . . Eleanor . . . really smile. “It may be a legend, but the story goes that back in the sixteen hundreds a young woman from this area was accused of witchcraft on the grounds that a young dairy farmer was savagely gored by his bull after she supposedly hexed him. Her version was that she’d had to fight him off on several occasions when he’d cornered her in the lane as she was passing. It was his wife who raised the village against her. On the day she was to be hanged, the squire’s son came galloping up to the prison yard waving a
writ for her release and plucking her from the gallows as the noose was lowered.”

“Romantic! Or was he all about justice?”

“There must have been love, or at least passion, involved in his mission of mercy because he afterwards installed her in this house, with sufficient armed menservants to ensure her protection. And here she lived out her days to the grand old age of ninety-two.”

“Was Celia Belfrey also captivated by the house and its history?”

“I’m not sure if she wanted it because it was mine or because it also spoke to her. She had an eye for beauty along with an almost manic acquisitive streak.”

“Almost?”

The smile against rested for a moment on Eleanor’s lips before she turned her face away. “That day when I saw Aubrey looking up at me from the foot of the stairs, I had the mad idea that he was that squire’s son, having ridden hell for leather to the rescue. As I said, it had been a dreadful day. Celia was in a glinty-eyed fury, as she always was on the days when I sat for my portrait, and Charlie Forester had come to tell me that Hamish the Scottie had been inexplicably injured—what appeared to be a torn muscle in one of his front legs. I knew Celia had taken out her rage on the poor little fellow. I think Giles did, too, but he was always afraid to stand up to her. He told me to go to my room and stay there. It was an order—quietly given, but I didn’t attempt to argue. A bolted door . . . that was sanctuary. I think he knew that she was to be feared.”

“His lordship’s assessment of the situation was that you were his cousin’s prisoner. This Charlie Forester, why would he leave Mucklesfeld to work for her here?”

“I think he feels it his duty to keep an eye on her, to be the watchguard against her doing something dreadful, especially against Aubrey now he’s back. I don’t think she considers Dr. Rowley someone to be dealt with right now. He hasn’t taken Mucklesfeld from her . . . yet.”

I shivered. The Sealyham lifted her tufted white head and clambered out of the basket onto the bed, to perform a circle before settling down on Eleanor’s lap. But she didn’t again close her eyes. Had she picked up on my unease? Or did she experience a more pervasive sense of danger? My time with Thumper had led me to believe fervently in the omniscient powers of man’s—and woman’s—best friend.

“It was during the hours spent in my room that day that I made up my mind to leave and take Hamish with me. I knew I couldn’t go back to my parents or let them know any more than that I was safe. It was easier in those days to make an untraceable phone call. I had to disappear, and fortunately I had some friends—beatniks, was my mother’s description—who were ready to help me set up a new identity. But I couldn’t completely give up the old one. It would have been as if Celia had succeeded in murdering me—and melodramatic as that sounds, I know that was her plan. So I became Nora Burton.” She sat stroking the Sealyham with a fine-boned hand.

“When did you learn you supposedly had taken the family jewels with you?”

“Within a few days of my escape. My friends had chosen to break with the circle in which they and I moved, but they still had sufficient access to the latest scuttlebutt. When they told me what was being said, I knew that Celia had taken the only revenge left to her. She would know that Giles would not go after the insurance money and thereby set up a criminal investigation. In his own way, I believe he did love me.”

I didn’t offer my view on this. There were some things I did recognize were none of my business. “What finally brought you back?”

“Two things coincided. One of those friends who had helped me start over told me about seeing Celia’s advert in
The Times
for a companion cum secretary, and that same week I read an article in another newspaper about Aubrey’s reality show and the practical reasons for it. It came to me that if Celia had held on to the
jewels, which according to the grapevine had never come on the market, then perhaps she had hidden them either at Mucklesfeld or more likely here at Witch Haven. In the article about Aubrey, it said he’d been married and divorced twice, and now he was being forced into what seemed likely to be a third mistake. And I, who have come to think of myself as the least romantic of people, found myself wondering if he wasn’t in need of someone galloping to his rescue at the twelfth hour. Recovering those jewels should enable him to raise enough to get going on repairs and otherwise putting Mucklesfeld back together.”

I liked the sound of that. “No luck so far? Not so much as the shimmer of a diamond or the glow of a ruby through a crack in the floorboards?”

She shook her head. “This house has its share of secret spaces behind the paneling and beneath hidden trap doors; not as many as Mucklesfeld, but enough to have kept me searching at night and every other spare minute I have. I’m beginning to think wherever the jewels are, it’s not here. Or at Mucklesfeld. I’ve made a few predawn flits over there . . .”

“That explains Lord Belfrey’s household staff claiming to have seen Eleanor Belfrey’s ghost leaving the premises by way of an exterior door. Were you minus the disguising glasses on those occasions?”

“I believe so.”

“With your hair down and a dark cloak flowing from your shoulders.”

She actually laughed. “Yes, to the first, and wearing my old nurse’s cape.”

“They were all familiar with your portrait.”

“Celia needed to be able look at it day in and day out and gloat. I was sure it would be the same with the jewels—that they had to be where she could feast her eyes and her malice upon them whenever the urge seized her. But I’m beginning to think she may have been afraid to risk their discovery, however cunning the hiding place.”

“Whether they’re here or not,” I leaned urgently forward, “you’re taking a terrible risk. If she is as crazed as she sounds and she figures out that Nora Burton is Eleanor Belfrey, she may make sure you don’t escape her a second time.”

“I have to keep looking . . . at least a little while longer.”

“In the hope of saving Lord Belfrey from a potentially disastrous marriage? Eleanor, he would be appalled if he got wind of the risk you’re taking.”

“You won’t tell him?”

I hesitated. “If you were doing this to reestablish your reputation and reclaim your old life, that would be one thing, but to walk into the lion’s den out of a quixotic notion of female gallantry is an unnecessary sacrifice.”

“What difference does my motive make?”

Unanswerable. Especially as I was pretty certain that in her situation I might well have felt compelled to pursue the same course of action. “No, I won’t tell him. But forget the jewels and leave here now.”

“Soon.”

“Promise you’ll be careful!”

Ten minutes later, walking back to Mucklesfeld, I mulled over Eleanor’s assessment that Celia Belfrey’s venom was so focused on the portrait that she couldn’t see that the living woman was often in the same room where it was displayed. That might be so; hatred can shift and shape to its own design, blocking out what might otherwise be apparent. Celia might never guess that her enemy was looking at her with living eyes. Then again, something might at any moment bring the truth home to her. And then what? Eleanor might have exaggerated the threat the other woman had posed years ago. Most people, however nasty, will shrink from committing murder. But Celia? I remembered her cruel face and cringed. If only I had not made that promise not to tell Lord Belfrey that Eleanor had come back.

The ideal person with whom to discuss this predicament would of course have been Mrs. Malloy. An impossibility. The reason I
had not wanted her to come to Witch Haven with me—knowing I was going to confront Nora Burton—was that as a contestant she could not be party to information that could well and truly disrupt the production of
Here Comes the Bride
. I would not only be dropping a turnip in her applecart but also putting her in the position of knowing something her fellow hopefuls didn’t. The same would be true for Ben, who might feel under sufficient obligation to Georges LeBois to lay the facts before him. When it came down to it, I thought sadly, the only one I could have confided in with complete ease of mind was Thumper. He would have listened, assured me with his adoring gaze that he fully sympathized with my conflict, and felt no obligation to bark out the story to anyone.

In the hall at Mucklesfeld I met Lucy, the dingy blond female member of the crew with the dragon tatoos on her arms. She wasn’t carrying any equipment, and said she had grabbed at a free moment to go to the loo, from which she was now returning.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

She leaned against one of the larger pieces of furniture. “Hell if I know! We got the contestants’ organizational meeting without too many retakes, which is something, I suppose. No idea if Georges was happy or not, he’s just as snarly if he’s satisfied or isn’t.”

“I’m not clear about the structure.”

“As in?” Sticking a hand into her ragged jeans pocket, Lucy drew out a silver-wrapped stick of gum.

“The competition. I mean . . . what’s the game plan?”

“Sure. I get you. As you’ll know, Lord Belfrey had a formal meeting with each of the contestants yesterday—not much editing of those. Georges wanted all the throat-clearing and twitchy stares kept in. Today and for the duration the women will be assigned individual fifteen-minute interviews. Those will be well weeded, to bring each personality into the sharpest possible focus. I,” she tucked the gum in her mouth and tossed away the wrapper, “will be doing the questioning off camera. Georges decided a female voice would be more effective in getting them to reveal more than
intended. Keeping the viewers coming back for more means playing into the mentality of the kinds of people who used to pack up a picnic and look for a nice grassy spot to watch the beheading. The more blood and tears the merrier, then and now.” Lucy stood chewing her gum. “More often than not, the most revealing stuff comes from trailing around after a subject when they think they’re not doing anything worth recording—and most of the time they’re right. Eventually, they stop noticing the camera and even the person holding it becomes invisible. At least that’s the hope. We also aim for those candid moments between his lordship and one or other of the contestants—walking in the garden, taking a look at one of the rooms, conversing over a cup of tea.”

“And he will come to his decision how?”