She Shoots to Conquer (26 page)

“I tried, but my mind’s been rather awhirl.” I smiled up . . . way up at her. She would have to do a long bend to pick up the tray, which was perhaps why she made no attempt to do so. Quickly, I set it on the bed.

“Now don’t you overdo,” she admonished. Then I saw the hesitancy lurking in the greenish-yellow eyes. The smile, an overture at buttering me up perhaps, was gone. She’s bracing to tell me something, I thought. And sat still, waiting. “You must have had a bad night, dear,” a flicker of the spider leg lashes, “and for that I’m ever so sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault that I fainted.” That wasn’t entirely true, and maybe she realized that peering through the banisters had spooked me.

“That’s not what I’m getting at, dearie.” She lowered her head, the ungainly hands smoothing down the sides of her faded print frock, plucking a thread here and poking at a tear there. A nervous gesture, no more. Why did it conjure an image of those hands closing about my throat . . . squeezing it dry of breath? Because I was again seeing her as the asylum wardress who had aroused palpitations in Wisteria Whitworth’s unequaled bosom. “Before coming up, I confessed to Mr. Plunket and Boris what I’d done.
You didn’t, Mrs. Foot
! said Mr. Plunket.
Not you, Mrs. Foot
! said Boris. It went against everything they know of my soft, loving nature to think of me pulling such tricks.”

“What tricks?”

Her head stayed down, but I continued to feel those eyes. “Putting the hot-water bottle I knew leaked in your bed.” She moved a foot, drawing a circling motion on the floor in a parody of a child enduring the indignity of confessing to a disappointed mummy or daddy. “The other I did when you were deep asleep, as I knew you would be after taking those tablets Dr. Rowley prescribed. He’d let me have some a few weeks ago when I had a bout of lying awake nights fretting because Mr. Plunket was feeling down. I was scared he’d go back to the drinking that had finished him with his job and family years back, and him so lovely, like you’ll have seen, when he’s sober.”

“What else did you do?”

“Came in and opened the window. Most couldn’t reach up to that, but like I said to Mr. Plunket, I’m tall as a willow tree.” She now cranked up her head, and seeing the fierce glint of pride spread over her features, I waited for her to add that height was something she had worked on her entire life, and that with continued sacrificial exercise she would gain another foot and a half by morning. Instead, she explained her object had been for me to awake damply chilled to the marrow.

“Why?” I felt entitled in sounding put out.

“Nothing personal, if that’s a comfort.” The gray locks could have been the fog framing a tombstone.

“Then . . .”

“Had to think what was best for his lordship, didn’t I, dearie? Has to be him first and foremost with Mr. Plunket, Boris, and me. I’d seen the way he was taken by how close you looked like the portrait. The one of Eleanor Belfrey. Relieved, we’d been, when Miss Celia Belfrey marched in and took it away. It was like it had bewitched him, and that’s not a happy way for a man to live.
Give his nibs time, Mrs. Foot
, said Mr. Plunket,
now he doesn’t have her face to look at, he’ll get back to himself right as rain. That’s right
, said Boris,
don’t you go on worrying, Mrs. Foot
. Always so thoughtful of me, those two. I got my hopes up that his lordship was over the lady when he decided on this plan to get married. But then . . . there was you . . . brought in by the fog. And it came to me that if you could be got rid of fast, before it all got stirred up again for him, there mightn’t be too much harm done.”

“You panicked on discovering that Monsieur LeBois had asked my husband to stay on beyond this morning.”

“That’s the nutshell, dearie.”

“Frankly,” it had to be said, “I’m surprised your primary concern isn’t that if Lord Belfrey does select a bride at the end of the week, she might be the new broom sort and decide to replace you, Mr. Plunket, and Boris with her own choice of employees.”

“Won’t happen, dearie.” The gummy smile was back full force and Mrs. Foot went so far as to rub her hands. “His lordship wouldn’t stand for us being booted out. He’s give us his word we’re to stay as long as we wants—which is forever—and with him that’s as sacred an oath as you’d get out of a bishop.”

“I’m sure.” And naively or not, I was. What puzzled me was why Mrs. Foot had confessed to the hot-water bottle and the open window. My mind primed to suspicion by my imaginings, I remembered Mrs. Malloy’s throwing in my face our previous forays into sleuthing. I couldn’t recall if she had closed the door after
bringing in the tray. But if she had left it ajar, might not Mrs. Foot—having followed her up for the express purpose of having a listen to our conversation—be probing the reasons why Suzanne’s death might be murder most foul?

“I do hope you’re not ever so cross with me, dearie.” Vast shake of the hoary locks. “
Oh, Mrs. Foot
,” said both Mr. Plunket and Boris. “
What if the lady he thinks ofas a rare rose goes telling his lordship about her bad night and he gets his dear self in a state worrying about her catching pneumonia? We can’t have him upset—not anytime, but specially now when he needs to be thinking clear to make his choice of a bride
.”

So much for my silly ideas. Why doubt this explanation for her coming clean? “Of course I won’t say anything,” I reassured her.

“That’s a weight off my mind. I’ll go tell Mr. Plunket and Boris. I should have thought about them along with his lordship when pulling my stunt.” Giant sigh. No further mention of my feelings. “And now with all this drink your husband has brought into the house,” her voice became edged with the anger she had displayed that morning at the raising of a foreign flag over the kitchen, “I’m scared out of my wits Mr. Plunket will succumb to a glass of oh-be-joyful.”

“Ben acted upon Monsieur LeBois’s instructions and surely” (perhaps wishful thinking) “he wouldn’t have issued them without Lord Belfrey’s approval.”

“Pressured into it.” Mrs. Foot’s scowl deepened. “Not a drop of alcohol in the place from the day poor Mr. Plunket told his lordship about his battle fought and won with the bottle. An employer in a million, we’ve got. He’ll have insisted that what’s been brought into the house in the past twenty-four hours be kept under lock and key. But where there’s a will, there’s always a way to get to the booze. No stopping Mr. Plunket if the urge comes on too strong.”

“I can understand your worrying.”

Mrs. Foot knuckled a teary eye. “Just like there wasn’t any stopping Boris from letting that lion loose from his trailer in the
middle of some high street after there was talk of him being sent to a zoo if he kept balking at jumping through the ring of fire, the poor old puss! Such a lot of running and screaming when all he wanted to do was play. But of course no one thought to toss him a toy mouse! And Boris given the boot after being with the same circus since he was a boy. Talk about feeling betrayed!”

“Yes,” I managed.

“What is this sad old world coming to?” Mrs. Foot wiped the other eye with her sleeve. “It’s a good thing those two men have me to mother them. Like Mr. Plunket said to Boris just this morning, their world would fall apart if I was took.” She appeared to size up my reaction. “I’m not as strong as I look—hacking coughs every winter and a nasty boil on my neck just a few months back.”

“Oh, dear!” I was really thinking of the time. If I rushed, I’d be five minutes late for afternoon tea. I explained the situation, to which she responded by picking up the tray with a wincing heave.

“Like I say to Mr. Plunket and Boris when they hover round, Ma—that’s what the dears call me in private—isn’t made of spun glass, but there’s never any getting them to see I’m not about to break like a precious ornament . . .”

“But lovely they feel that way about you.” I opened the door more fully. “Can I take the tray down for you? Going to the kitchen would give me the chance to remind Ben about the need to keep the alcohol under lock and key.”

“And make it look that I’ve been telling tales out of school about Mr. Plunket?” The eyes flashed green-yellow fire. If a woman of her looming presence could have been said to flounce, she did so out into the hallway. The thudding footsteps continued to echo like doom on the march as I raced along to the twilit bathroom, splashed water on my face, raked a comb through my hair, decided against lipstick, let alone a change of clothes, and sped down the main staircase into the hall without bothering to wonder if Georges had set up a trip wire in the guise of adding thrills and spills to
Here Comes the Bride
. Fortunately, this must not have
occurred to him—yet. However, as I paused in my headlong rush to ponder the location of the library, a ghastly apparition emerged out of the crepuscular gloom.

A startled sidestep into the sharp edge of a piece of furniture, a suppressed scream, and I recognized the white face and lanky figure of Boris. My request for directions met with a hollow-eyed stare, as if I were a zombie or the ghost of Eleanor Belfrey. Luckily, before I was forced to go it alone—opening up door after door until hitting the jackpot—another shadow cast itself alongside him and Mr. Plunket’s voice asked if he could be of assistance. He sounded so much like a normal butler that I forgot my rush and took the opportunity to ask him if someone had been able to find a torch for Ben to use in trying to figure out what was wrong with the cooker.

Those blank looks of Boris had to be contagious because now Mr. Plunket had one.

“Monsieur LeBois said he’d seen one in his lordship’s desk. A red one,” the thickening silence had me babbling, “but there must be others, although in a house this size it must be hard to keep track of every little thing.”

“Green,” said Mr. Plunket.

“There’s one that’s—”

“Green the one in his nibs’s study.”

“Red, Mr. Plunket, dearie,” said the voice of Mrs. Foot. “That one is red. There was a yellow torch once in the pantry, but that got broke when Whitey knocked it off the shelf.”

“Color-blind,” gloomed Boris. “That’s what Mr. Plunket is, Mrs. Foot. Isn’t that right, Mr. Plunket? Remember,” his vocal cords sounded rasped to the limit, “you told us it came on you sudden, late in life, so it’s not surprising you forget sometimes.”

“That’s right.” Mr. Plunket nodded with such vigor I was afraid his head would fly off. “The result of the drink, that would be it, wouldn’t it, Mrs. Foot?”

“Now don’t you go blaming yourself, Mr. Plunket,” came the tender response; “we’ve all had our vices.”

“Not you, Mrs. Foot!” Staunch conviction.

“Not you, Mrs. Foot!” Sepulcher echo from Boris.

This was pointless. By now Ben had probably sent out for a torch or gone to purchase one himself. Mumbling something to this effect, I skirted the obstacle course of furniture and entered Mucklesfeld’s library.

As in the drawing room, the lackluster lighting made it impossible to immediately grasp the size of the space other than that it wasn’t poky. Bookcases lined with leather volumes that appeared to have been purchased in matching height and width rose on all sides to a railed portrait gallery beneath the vaulted ceiling that had the drift of an overcast sky. I was able to make out a short stairway immediately across from the doorway, providing access to closer perusal of presumably dead (and hopefully gone) Belfreys.

The living were scattered into two groups. Georges LeBois in his wheelchair watched with pouting lips as his crew carted tripods, telescopic-looking cameras, and goodness knows what other necessary equipment first one way, then another, as if searching for the perfect campsite on which to pitch a tent. All six of the contestants were assembled on sofas and chairs arranged roughly in a circle beneath an unlighted chandelier that would have flattened an entire city if it fell. Here there was not the excess of furniture that encumbered the hall and drawing room—a billiard table blanketed in shadow at the other end of the room from the seating area, an oversized desk that enhanced the professorial atmosphere, and of course the library ladder suggesting either an urge to dust or search behind the highest tomes for a hidden safe.

Georges did not acknowledge my arrival, none of the crew gave me a glance, but before I could turn tail, Mrs. Malloy beckoned me toward the leather sofa she was seated upon with Livonia Mayberry and Judy Nunn, both of whom beamed at me. Three other women took up another even longer sofa: a buxom blonde giving vent to hearty laughter and one with an attractively untidy mass of red hair drawn up on top of her head, talking animatedly over the blonde to the mousy woman of indeterminate age. Something
about flying cutlery. Hoping Mrs. Malloy had not been the source, I joined them in the hesitant manner of a schoolgirl walking into class ten minutes late, sat on a faded tapestry chair, and braced myself to embark on an explanation of why I was intruding.

“And about time, too, Mrs. H,” Mrs. Malloy shot across at me, cutting into the blonde’s continuing saga. “I’d about given up on you. And tea, like Christmas, is still a long time coming.” She was looking fiercely overdressed in her forest green taffeta, especially compared to Judy Nunn, who had shed the hiking jacket but had not otherwise changed her attire, which, with mud stains added to the knees of her slacks, had acquired the look of gardening clothes kept on a rusty hook in the potting shed.

I started to explain to the newcomers who I was, but the buxom blonde cut me off with an impatient chuckle.

“I’m Wanda Smiley and we all understand why you’re joining us, Mrs. Haskell. Monsieur LeBois gave us the explanation. Quite a long one, but then he is in the entertainment business.” A look round to see how much responsive amusement this had achieved. “Though why we need an interior decorator to tell us how to brighten up Mucklesfeld, I’m sure I don’t know, when all it needs is a good spring cleaning. But as he said, you do happen to be here, along with your husband and Roxie there.” No bothering to look at Mrs. Malloy, therefore missing the glower. “And now where was I? Ah, yes, such a laugh you’ll all get out of this one. I’d gone to buy a new bra and decided to get a good fitting, seeing I need all the support I can get, given my generous proportions.” She made the mistake of pausing to look smugly down.