She Shoots to Conquer (5 page)

“It’s what they’re used to, isn’t it? The police and medical people,
I mean, getting to places in the worst possible conditions, and of course Lord Belfrey turned on all the exterior lights for them.”

Hadn’t they been on when the woman arrived? This thought blocked out any other.

“Not that they was likely to do much good, that fog being thicker than a sheepskin coat.”

“Lord Belfrey,” echoed Mrs. Malloy, as if prayerfully reeling off the names of a dozen holy martyrs.

“That’s his nibs,” replied Mr. Plunket with a prosaic scratch of a nodule below his lower lip.

“A proper lordship?” Mrs. M pursued hopefully, while sinking into an armchair that looked as if it had been rescued after being set out next to a dustbin a hundred years ago.

“What other kind is there?” muttered Ben, his eyes fixed anxiously on my recumbent form.

“Oh, you know,” an airy wave of a ringed hand, “the sort as is given for your lifetime only—that doesn’t get passed on through the family. Or don’t you get made a lord for being a famous jockey or actor?” Her rouge brightened at this possibility. “Maybe that’s just for
sirs
and
dames
and all that lot.”

“The title’s been in the Belfrey family all of six hundred years.” Pride was evident in every throb of Mr. Plunket’s voice. And despite my increasing headache it struck that he had evinced no emotion of approaching scale when describing the appallingly recent death just beyond the doorstep.

“Have they lived here the whole time?” Mrs. Malloy inquired in a breathless rush.

“Give or take the times it was taken away on account of them being on the wrong side politically. Tudor times was the worst, from what Mrs. Foot, Boris, and me understand it. And for what? is what we ask ourselves. Roman Catholic . . . Protestant! Who gives a flaming candle?”

My mother-in-law for one, I thought dizzily. There is a woman who has never voluntarily missed mass a day in her life and can discuss the impenetrables of transubstantiation with the best of
them, including St. Augustine had he paid her a vision. My Jewish father-in-law might not have made him quite so welcome; he’s a crotchety man, not at all welcoming to drop-in guests at the flat above the greengrocer’s shop in Tottenham.

“But there’s an end to everything, even bloodthirsty kings and queens,” said Mr. Plunket as if reading from a pamphlet on sale for twenty pence at the entrance booth. “The Belfreys always came back home to Mucklesfeld Manor, and some of them—the ones that wasn’t given over to living it up wild—went about setting it back to rights, just like his nibs has made up his mind to do. Although who can say as to what will happen now that woman’s been taken away in a body bag. Mrs. Foot and Boris both talk like it won’t make no difference but . . .”

Mrs. Malloy cut into his ruminations. “Mucklesfeld?” Her voice was sharp-edged with disappointment. “Not Belfrey?”

I heard what sounded like a hiccupping cough, but looking to where Mr. Plunket still stood at the foot of the sofa, I realized he was chortling. In the sallow light cast by the lamp nearest him and others scattered stingily around the vast room, his heightened color did not look good. A decidedly unbecoming greenishorange that confirmed the pimply-gourd effect.

“Belfrey? Now that would set the place up as a joke, wouldn’t it? Bats in the belfry, there’d be no stopping the schoolboy silliness. No, the place got its name from the old muck fields hereabouts. Famous they was; some said the best in all England. Wonderful it was for growing celery. But then they went and dried up, just like the family money did. As his nibs can’t be blamed for.” He stared down at Mrs. Malloy in her chair. “He only came into the title and property last year after his cousin that was then Lord Belfrey died. Spent much of the last thirty years in America, he did—Alaska mostly, although I always thought that was Russia.”

“Whatever, it’s abroad, isn’t it?” Mrs. Malloy responded ingratiatingly. “I’m sure his lordship was glad to get back to the UK; a title in America has to be as much use as a fur coat in the tropics.” If she expected an appreciative chuckle from Mr. Plunket, she
was disappointed. He stood smoothing down the too-short sleeves of his jacket.

“From all we’ve heard, the cousin was a miserable old blighter that let Mucklesfeld go to rack and ruin while he shut himself away from the world.”

This topic would have been fascinating if I’d been sufficiently unwoozy to be my usual nosy self. Even though I seriously doubted I’d slipped gracefully to the floor during my faint, I thought it more likely my headache was due to emotional stress than physical injury. For whole minutes at a time my mind successfully warded off the memory of the Metal Knight clawing at my throat, but the nightmarish face peering down at me through the upper banisters refused to be banished. Stupid of me. Once I could think clearly I would hit upon a logical explanation for both incidents, but the aura of malevolence that had accompanied the latter . . . would I be able to convince myself that it had arisen entirely out of my penchant for the Gothic novel?

“And like I said, his nibs has been hoping to refill the coffers at Mucklesfeld. He’s had to make a decision that many a proud man wouldn’t have the guts for. This television show . . .”

Ben cut him off. “I realize this isn’t a cottage. But how long should it take for your employer to come back and inquire after my wife or at least send one of the other members of the staff with a reviving beverage?”

“Now then, Mr. H.” Mrs. Malloy sent him the admonishing glance of a nanny who doesn’t appreciate being shown up when bringing a little person down from the nursery into the drawing room. “Mr. Plunket has explained why things are bound to be a bit topsy-turvy this evening. To top it off his lordship has them television people here and we all know how temperamental people in show business can be, even without that poor woman being killed.” No doubt she would have added that it never rained but it poured or something equally platitudinous, but Mr. Plunket was off down his own road.

“Very inconvenient, that was.” His lugubrious tone did not quite make up for his word choice.

“Inconvenient?” Ben raised an eyebrow at him.

“As well as sad,” Mr. Plunket amended, “tragic more like. That goes without saying, of course.”

“Was she . . . the deceased woman . . . a relative or close friend of his lordship?” I roused myself to ask.

“Never met or spoken with her. She was one of the contestants, you see.”

“The what?” Ben added his echo to that of Mrs. Malloy, while bending over the sofa to smoothe back my hair and search my face with anxious eyes.

“Contestants.” Mr. Plunket shuffled on his feet, which like his clothes appeared too small for him. “She would have made the sixth. The other five will be getting here tomorrow if it’s not decided to put them off.”

“What are they contesting for?” That was Ben asking, while looking toward the obdurately closed door.

“The position of Lady Belfrey.”

I actually heard Mrs. Malloy’s chin drop.

“One of the lucky ladies will . . . if the filming goes forward . . . be awarded his hand in marriage during the final segment. That’s as Mrs. Foot, Boris, and me understand things. The director, Monsieur Georges LeBois—French like you might guess—hasn’t had much to say to us since he arrived this morning. All he’s been going on about is how bad the food has been.”

If Mrs. Malloy hadn’t already been seated, she would have sunk into the nearest chair or wastepaper basket.

“We can only hope the rest of the crew that just got here won’t turn their noses up at what’s on the table because it isn’t snails and frog legs.” Mr. Plunket wasn’t looking at anyone in particular; indeed, his eyes had disappeared into his gourd face.

Clearly in desperate need of something to hold on to, Mrs. Malloy finally removed the lamp shade and her hat along with it.
“You told us earlier out in the hall that they’re doing a TV reality show. Are you saying it’s one of them bachelor ones?”

“I think he’s spelled it out,” Ben snapped at her, something he almost never does.

“What’s the show to be called?” she inquired dreamily while crushing the shape out of the lamp shade.

“
Here Comes the Bride
.”

“My, don’t that sound lovely! And I expect the contestants are all lovely young things with perfect figures and faces that have never been used.” She was all eager wistfulness as she continued to pulverize the hapless lamp shade.

“Not chosen for their looks they haven’t been,” replied Mr. Plunket. “The idea, as presented to his lordship by Monsieur LeBois, was for something different from other programs of the type. That’s the attraction what they’re banking on to garner—I think that’s the word—a big audience. The contestants have been picked because of other qualities: their willingness to muck in at Mucklesfeld is how his nibs puts it. Deal with all that’s wrong with the place, pitch in with the cleanup, show they are up to the job of being Lady Belfrey while the ceilings come down about their ears.”

“Hardly romantic.” Ben paced over to the door, opened it, and closed it again.

“Oh, I don’t know.” I found myself sitting up on the sofa. Had I thought about it, I would have realized that neither the horrible face peering through the banisters nor the aggressive Metal Knight had terrorized my thoughts for the past few moments. “A woman with a strong practical streak can have her appeal, especially if she makes the most of her looks, something the beauties of this world don’t have to bother about, hopefully, until it is too late. Did Lord Belfrey make the selections, Mr. Plunket?”

“That was done by Monsieur LeBois from the hundreds of written applications and photos sent in. He and his nibs met some six months ago in London, introduced by a mutual acquaintance. The idea for the show came out of their conversation. They got
together again. You can see the mutual benefit to the winning contestant and his nibs. She’d get to become a titled lady and he’d be able to use his share of the financial proceeds from the show to set Mucklesfeld back on its feet.”

“But now things are up in the air,” I mused.

“They always was in a way.” Mr. Plunket oozed despondency. “Monsieur LeBois hasn’t managed as yet to get a firm commitment from any of the stations, he’s filming on spec—is how I think it’s called—but as Mrs. Foot, Boris, and me understand it, there’s been considerable interest.”

“Is Lord Belfrey content to marry for what it can bring him?” I felt, rather than saw, Ben’s lip curl.

“It’s how things has been done in the great families for centuries and it’s not as how his nibs is young and wild to trot. Fifty-six is what he’ll be come his next birthday. Can’t say he’s not of an age to know his own mind and stick to it down the years. Besides, his heart’s already taken by one he can’t have. That said, he’ll choose the one that’s right for him and Mucklesfeld and do right by her through the years.”

But would it be a case of separate bedrooms, as had at first been the case when Wisteria Whitworth married the estimable Carson Grant after the timely death of the husband who in order to gain control over her fortune had contrived her removal to the hellish confines of Perdition Hall? A woman subjected to the suspect ministrations of Dr. Megliani, whose medical degree had been bought from a cloaked figure with a glass eye and a missing forefinger in the backroom of an opium den in a back street of Soho. An acknowledged beauty, once the toast of London, now reduced to being force-fed lumpy gruel by the slatternly female warden (I winced away from this image) could not be expected to cast care behind her like a silk stole and respond instantly to the overtures of a man who had been a notable rake before gaining fierce self-control over his baser self.

That he was regarded as the handsomest man in England, was fluent in all modern and dead languages, rode to hounds as if
born in the saddle, and fenced like the Count of Monte Cristo, added not a whit to his conceit. Though his love for Wisteria invaded every aspect of his being, Carson Grant—whom I had naturally pictured as a young Cary of the same last name—had held his seering passion in check with an iron will and a clenched jaw.

Tormented beyond his limits, he had removed himself to his study; and when inclement weather prevented his stripping off his intricately tied cravat and French cambric shirt and diving into the deep stillness of the lake behind the formal rose garden, he strode off on a twenty-mile walk across the moors, returning only when he knew himself too weary to accost her with anguished beseechings to permit him his rights as a husband. Of course, one hundred and thirty some pages later, all had ended as it should, with her wistful acknowledgment that a marriage in name only left something lacking, including the possibility of an heir.

Back to life at Mucklesfeld Manor. At fifty-six, Lord Belfrey might have no interest in siring children, making youth, or lack thereof, insignificant in the selection of a bride. My eyes met Mrs. Malloy’s and a tremor seized me on perceiving their dreamy glow. I knew with appalling certainty that she was inwardly humming “Here Comes the Bride.” Mr. Plunket had stated that his lordship was not seeking a dainty delight of a woman to take to wife but a sturdy helpmeet, one willing to roll up her shirtsleeves and trouser legs and begin setting his house to rights. And who better to do that than a woman who had spent her working life cleaning other people’s homes? Tragically, one of the contestants was dead and a vacancy yawned.

I could understand from whence hope sprang. But even if his lordship and the director did by some remote chance add her to the list of hopefuls, the odds were five to one against her being the one chosen to become Lady Belfrey. And Mrs. Malloy was the worst of bad losers. She had snarled for a week after not winning Pin the Tail on the Donkey at Rose’s last birthday party. No, no! I could not risk her being mortally wounded on the path to a loveless marriage. She must be wrested from Mucklesfeld Manor without delay.

“Sweetheart, your eyes are glazed. Did you doze off?” Ben was all tender solicitude.

“Just drifting.” I gave him a staunch smile. Shuffling my legs off the sofa from a semi-reclining position produced an involuntary wince. My headache had gone from minor to full-blown. I was sure I looked like death. Which in this house was perhaps not a novelty. Mr. Plunket appeared not to notice.