She Shoots to Conquer (6 page)

“There’s no denying that the lady’s death puts his lordship in a difficult position.” He looked more than ever like a talking gourd. “Will he think it right to go ahead with filming
Here Comes the Bride
? Would it seem right to the sponsors of the show? Would it be a turnoff for the viewing audience?”

“But that’s what them shows is all about—high drama and cutthroat angling for the main chance,” responded Mrs. Malloy stoutly from her chair. “’Course, I don’t want to sound callous, but there it is. Talk about grabbing the audience by the throat—revealing the tragedy up front and going on from there. Especially if his lordship could find himself a replacement candidate in the nick of time . . . right out of the blue, so to speak.” The dreamy glow had returned. Clearly no time was to be lost in rescuing her from her giddy aspirations. At any moment Lord Belfrey might swan into the room to find himself a marked man. “His nibs is a sensitive bloke.” Mr. Plunket’s voice quivered. “He’ll not want to show what could look like disrespect to the deceased, may she rest in peace. Trouble is, he’s up against Monsieur LeBois. With him it’s all about the finances, what he’s already put into the project, along with whatever he’s agreed on paying his crew, including the cameraman and the staging fellow that showed up minutes ahead of you three. Can’t just send them off with a flea in their ear is what Mrs. Foot, Boris, and me heard him saying.”

Ben stood seething, lips compressed; eyes blazing the color of the emerald (a genuine fake) mounted in one of Mrs. Malloy’s rings, waiting to break in the instant Mr. Plunket paused on a shaky breath.

“No disrespect to your boss,” he enunciated bitingly, “but his
sensitivity appears to be lacking where my wife is concerned. It’s been a good twenty minutes since he absented himself and has neither returned to inquire how she is feeling or seen to be providing her with any refreshment.”

“Now then, Mr. H,” Mrs. Malloy shoved in her oar, “there’s no need to get rattled. Like Mr. Plunket’s been saying, his lordship’s got a lot on his plate. Could be he’s on the phone with the dead lady’s family or the funeral home. It don’t do to be selfish. Besides,” she looked at me and added with what I considered extreme callousness, “Mrs. H quite often gets a headache when she gets herself worked up. Tension ones, they’re called. My next-door neighbor is a martyr to them. And it’s not like Mrs. H fell hard back there in the hall, just slumped down, bottom first, as I saw it.”

Forgive her, I thought nobly; she had to be jealous that it was me, not her, whom Lord Belfrey had swept up in his aristocratic arms and deposited on the sofa. Also she very likely had a point. My nerves had been stretched to the limit during the drive through the fog. In addition to which we had failed to find the restaurant we had been seeking and I’m a person inclined to go all hollow and wobbly without food. Perhaps with a good helping of fish and chips inside me I wouldn’t have succumbed to foolish terror and fainted. I started to say this to Ben, but he was still glowering at poor Mr. Plunket, who was making apologetic noises to the effect that his nibs had intended for Mrs. Foot and or Boris to bring in a tea tray.

“But as you can imagine, sir, they’re discombobulated themselves.”

“In that case, let’s not inconvenience them or yourself.” Ben attempted to contain his irritation. “If you’ll direct me toward the kitchen, I’ll put on a kettle and . . .”

“Now, I don’t know as that’s such a good idea,” Mr. Plunket passed a hand over his pimpled brow, “the stove’s that old and unreliable, none of the knobs turn unless you’ve got the trick of it, and if you manage, which I never can, the gas flames shoot up to take off your eyebrows. No, no, begging your pardon, better
to wait on Mrs. Foot or Boris. Can’t risk an accident, so hard on this other. His nibs would never get over it if worse come to worst and you was to blow yourself up.”

“I really am feeling loads better,” I announced valiantly, “so much so that I think we should leave right away. I am sure Mrs. Malloy agrees with me. We are all eager to get home at the end of our holiday. The fog’s bound to have lifted sufficiently by now.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Mrs. Malloy demurred.

“I’m a chef,” Ben informed Mr. Plunket. “I’m entirely capable of dealing with the most resistant kitchen equipment and making my wife a cup of tea.”

“A chef!” Mr. Plunket sounded taken aback.

“That’s correct. I’ve even written some cookery books that have been reasonably well received, so if you would kindly direct me toward the kitchen . . .”

“What kind of meals? English . . . or the Frenchified sort?”

But for my increasing headache, I might have pondered the intensity of Mr. Plunket’s response. Before Ben could demand either a compass or a map, the door opened to admit a tall, gangly man with very black hair and eyes in contrast to his chalk white face. Even though not at my sharpest, I was struck by his resemblance to Lurch of the Addams family. He stood gaping, awkwardly dangling a hand on the knob, presumably in hope of preventing the door from closing on the woman endeavoring to enter behind him.

“Ah!” Ben sucked in a relieved breath and shot toward her to remove the tray she was carrying. Not surprisingly, she appeared startled at finding herself standing hands spread, holding up thin air by the handles. But her surprise was nothing to mine. Hers was the face I had glimpsed through horror-glazed eyes peering down at me through the banisters. In the dimly lit room there was the grainy quality of a bad photo to her form and features, but she did not now send a chill through my bones.

Truth be told, it was impossible not to experience a woman-to-woman pang of sympathy for her unfortunate appearance. She was
tall, so often a good thing, but in her case not an enhancement. She loomed in the manner of a man playing the part of a woman in a farce. Her smile, uncertain . . . experimental, was cruelly ridiculed by the absence of her front teeth. The shapeless dress and plodding shoes seemed as false as the clumpily curled shoulder-length gray locks that elongated her nose and chin to an extreme degree. Sadly it probably wasn’t a wig which could be taken off and tossed in the wastepaper basket. Remembering how often I had condemned my own form in the mirror, I internalized a prayer of gratitude for mercies received. I dared not look in Mrs. Malloy’s direction, but counted on her being a churchgoing woman, when she remembered it was a Sunday, not to exude an air of smug complacency.

“This here’s Mrs. Foot,” Mr. Plunket waved a hand in my direction, “her as is his nibs’s housekeeper.”

It could have been Mrs. Danvers, I reminded myself, as I added my murmur to Ben and Mrs. Malloy’s chorus of “A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Foot.” Ben had placed the tray on an already crowded table and now poured and passed me a cup of dishwater-colored tea, accompanied by a biscuit of the same shade of gray as Mrs. Foot’s hair. Her smile broadened, losing the uncertainty but gaining in the display of missing teeth.

“And that there behind her,” continued Mr. Plunket, “is Boris, his nibs’s odd job man.”

Lurch flopped a flaccid white hand, intoning in an expressionless voice: “Can always count on Boris.”

“One in a million.” Mrs. Foot was now positively beaming as she clumped further into the room. “Always the one to get the job done when needed.” She even sounded like a man pretending to be a woman and I mentally dared Mrs. Malloy to titter. “Feeling better, are you, dearie?” She stood staring down at me, and I have to admit to feeling a quiver of—not exactly revulsion . . . more awkwardness—on spotting the curiosity verging on thirsty fascination in her pale, globular eyes.

“Much better.” I took a resolute sip of tea. “Thank you so much for bringing this.”

“You do have more color.” Ben sounded as relieved as if he’d just noticed I was coming out of a ninety-day coma. A few more minutes and surely we could politely leave. Mrs. Malloy accepted her cup and saucer while settling even deeper into her chair. We might need a forklift to move her, but we’d get her out of here, too.

Mrs. Foot shifted her gaze from my face to fix it upon Mr. Plunket. “There is a strange resemblance, isn’t there? No wonder his nibs got his self in a tizz. Spooky, you could call it.”

“Now then, I wouldn’t say that.” Mr. Plunket nudged his way cautiously around the words, as if one too many might trip him up. “It’s ever easy to imagine things in this house.”

“What sort of resemblance?” Mrs. Malloy, who does not enjoy sitting on the sidelines, made a valiant effort to sound pleasantly interested.

“To a lady in one of the family portraits.”

“Really?” I completely forgot my woozy state and the desire to escape back into the fog. “I’d be interested in taking a look at the painting if it wouldn’t be an imposition.”

“It’s no longer in the house.” Boris must have spent hours in a dank cellar perfecting his sepulcher intonation. He was now standing directly behind Mrs. Foot, hunching first one shoulder, then the next, in an automated fashion that brought to mind the terror that had assailed me in the hall.

Turning on the sofa to face the assembled more fully, I said with determined lightness: “You said just now, Mr. Plunket, that it’s easy to imagine things in this house, but I don’t think it was imagination that caused me to faint.” I came to a halt, aware that it wouldn’t do to mention that I had mistaken Mrs. Foot for a ghoulish visitant. “I’m quite sure,” I plunged on, “that the suit of armor tried to attack me.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Ben bent over me, almost oversetting the teacup, “that has to have been a nightmare.”

“It was, but not one produced by the faint,” I responded firmly. “I was scared stiff. Its hands would have closed around my throat if I hadn’t nipped back in time.”

“That’s our Boris!” Mrs. Foot reached back a hand to pat his arm. “Always tinkering about for the fun of it. Last year he got the dining-room chandelier to spin. Oh, his nibs did have a good laugh! We all did. Couldn’t stop chortling for ages, could we, Mr. Plunket?”

“Always good to see his nibs enjoying himself.”

“My, what fun you all have at Mucklesfeld Manor.” Mrs. Malloy oozed rapt admiration, drawing Mrs. Foot’s attention not so much to her as to what lay at her feet.

“Now how did that get in here? It’s the one from the gallery table lamp.”

“It dropped from the banisters onto my friend’s head,” I said.

“And if I’m not complaining who should,” fired back said friend, “a very handsome shade and no damage done to me hat, as isn’t my best by a long shot. I’ve a much smarter one at home that me friends,” her voice took on a most unbecoming simpering quality, “call me lady of the manor hat.”

I was watching Mrs. Foot as closely as possible, given the weak lighting. She was shaking her head, batting the gray locks against her neck. Her look of amused wonderment was perfect, but I again felt the prickle down my spine that spread to a subzero chill. She was smiling her jovial gap-toothed smile, but I saw the face peering malevolently through the banisters. Did she believe I hadn’t seen her?

“Well, isn’t that something!” She looked from Boris—who had shifted further to her side—to Mr. Plunket, and back again. “I was up there at the time crawling around the floor doing a lastminute bit of dusting, and when I got to my feet you’d,” turning those globs of eyes on me, “you’d gone down in a faint and I can’t say I noticed the lamp shade on the other lady’s head, let alone saw it go over the railing. Like I’ve said, odd things do happen at Mucklesfeld that have us all scratching our heads.”

I hoped she wouldn’t put action to words. That hair of hers looked as though it had been around far longer than she had been on this earth and I was afraid of what might fly out.

“How’s the tea?” she asked.

The truthful answer would have been dreadful, but I said it had put life back in me. To prove the point, I attempted to get off the sofa, but was compelled by an upsurge of ridiculous dizziness to sink back down. The nibble of gray biscuit had clearly not sat well with me. And the headache was back in sickening force. I wondered if I had a migraine. I’d never had one, but as the cheerful cliché goes, there is a first time for everything. Given the stresses of the day, coupled with an atmosphere that seemed ripe for a lifetime of languishing as an invalid waiting for the doctor to arrive with his medical bag stuffed full of leeches and the recommendation to keep the hartshorn always at hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d come down with something worse. Ben eyed me worriedly, but Mrs. Malloy appeared cheerfully oblivious. The thought even crossed my mind that she was looking on the bright side of things.

“Mrs. Foot makes a very good cuppa.” Mr. Plunket’s face creased into admiration.

“Best tea maker in the world.” Boris cracked a smile that was ghastly to behold. Mrs. Foot’s smile was pleased but modest.

“That’s going a bit far. But wouldn’t say much for me if I hadn’t got the hang of it after brewing up more pots of tea than was ever seen in China during all the years I was a ward maid, trundling the trolley around to the patients. Poor dears, it was what they lived for—a cup of char and a biscuit.”

Unbidden, I pictured her handing Wisteria Whitworth a cup of pale slop and ordering her to drink it down or could be her next treatment wouldn’t go as nice and smooth as would be hoped. I was being unfair. Blame that on the fact that even Florence Nightingale’s cool hand upon my brow wouldn’t have brought me bounding back to life.

“Yes, poor dears is right. Sad, it was, how few visitors most of them got. I used to say to the doctors it wasn’t right them lying
there without a loved one’s hand to hold when they got weepy. ’Course there was exceptions . . .”

“I must get my wife to a doctor.” Ben was out of patience. He is always at his most handsome when agitated on my behalf. A pity I wasn’t up to appreciating the flaring of his nostrils, the muscle twitching in his left cheek, the arrogant set of his dark head. “Is there one nearby that I could phone and ask to see her?”

“There’s Dr. Rowley, him that’s his nibs’s cousin and has his surgery in his house this side of Grimkirk village,” replied Mr. Plunket, looking all at once like an important pumpkin. “But there’s no need for you to get on the blower. Right after bringing the lady in here, his nibs went off to fetch him. Said, given the fog, he’d walk rather than take the car. Sensible after what happened earlier. Could be he got there to find Dr. Rowley was out or just couldn’t go at a quick pace . . .”