She Shoots to Conquer (27 page)

“I’m so glad you’re staying, Ellie,” Livonia leaned eagerly toward me, “and after being ready to bolt off like a rabbit, I’m glad I’m here, too.” If the room had any glow at all, it came from the shine in her blue eyes. My goodness! I thought. What or who could be responsible for the stunning change? Did I need three guesses, or just two? Lord Belfrey or Dr. Tommy Rowley? Either way, she had gone in the flash of a few hours from mildly pretty to extremely so. “And, will you believe it, this lady,” casting her
radiance on the mousy-looking woman, “is Mrs. Knox’s daughter. I never knew she had one, but here she is—Molly Duggan. You remember I told you about Mrs. Knox?”

“The next-door neighbor.”

“And so horribly shocked to find out I’d entered
Here Comes the Bride
. And to think Molly is also a contestant!”

There was absolutely nothing wrong with mousy Molly’s looks and nothing right with them, either, seeing she had left it all up to Mother Nature, who hadn’t been forthcoming with a mascara wand, a lipstick, or, given that sad frizz, a comb.

“That’s nothing to what she’ll have to say when she finds out I did the same.” She peeked a nervous look around the circle. “I’ve always been a disappointment to her. It’s why she doesn’t talk about me and hardly ever comes to see me at my bed-sitter. She’s ashamed that I work the checkout at the supermarket she used to go to. Until now, my highest ambition was to be moved to the seafood department, but then this came along and I pictured the look on Mum’s face if I got to marry a lord. But after what happened at lunch when that giant fork came at me . . .” She sat gulping.

“One in the eye for the old bat you marrying into the aristocracy, eh!” The woman with the red hair—who had by default to be Alice Jones—grabbed the chance to speak. “You should have heard how my parents both carried on when I joined a commune at age nineteen.”

“Hurts to crane your neck back that far, I’m sure.” Mrs. Malloy tempered this comment with a chuckle that to me was clearly imitative of the blonde Wanda Smiley, and my heart sank. Unless reined in, my friend was going get herself soundly disliked by the rest of the group, as Georges had predicted. But how to save her from herself without putting her in the corner or telling her no sweets for a week?

“Did you live off the earth at the commune, Alice?” Judy asked with her pleasant smile. “Grow all your own vegetables, peat fires, that sort of thing?”

“Did you weave your own clothes?” Livonia emerged from a dreamy-eyed reverie. “I’ve always thought that would be so romantic.”

“Looks like she still does.” I thought it, Mrs. Malloy said it.

Alice eyed her questioningly, before judiciously deciding to assume a compliment. “To be completely up-front . . .”

“Oh, do by all means set an example.”

Really, I sighed, Nanny was going to have to get very cross indeed if this kept up.

Undeterred, Alice proceeded. “I haven’t touched a loom in years, but as it happens I was thinking on the drive here that I could put my skills to use weaving blankets for all the bedrooms. I also hook rugs and make slipcovers—I put that down on my application and I have to assume it helped in my being chosen.”

Wanda Smiley got her mouth open, but Mrs. Malloy was too quick off the mark. “You were another link in the chain, Alice, that was your selling feature . . .”

“Previously knowing which of the contestants?” I asked brightly, having caught a look from Georges that said I wasn’t doing much of a job controlling my charges.

“Me.” The word came out in a squeak. Molly Duggan, daughter of the odious Mrs. Knox, looked and now sounded like a mouse peeking out of a hole. “Alice shops in the supermarket where I work.”

“And,” said the thus named, “Wanda comes in quite regularly to the health food café where I waitress.”

“Not that I’m keen on tofu burgers or seaweed omelets.” The oar was eagerly grabbed by the blonde, not relishing the sidelines. “But they do serve a decent cappuccino and a rather scrumptious blackberry and apple crumble—the sort Mother never used to make. As I said to the saleswoman when I went in to buy myself those new bras, I never worry about what I eat because I always put it on in the right places!”

“Same here! Shame we can’t all be as lucky!” Mrs. Malloy slunk
a look at Judy, who crossed her legs, clasped her knees, and remarked that she thought she heard the distant rattle of a tea cart. It was Livonia and Molly Duggan who looked uncomfortable.

“Into the changing room we went—me and the fitter—and out came her tape measure—you could tell from looking at her she’d only half a brain. But even so, I almost dropped from shock when she told me I was a size twenty-four—round the bust mind you, not my thigh! Me of all people! The Jayne Mansfield of my school! Of course she was before my time, but anyway, it turned out the silly woman had the tape measure round the wrong way . . .”

Laughter in varying degrees of amusement, save from Mrs. Malloy.

A sudden flare of camera lights nearly blinded me. In looking away, my eyes veered upward to the portrait gallery to fasten on the painted images of a sternly bewhiskered gentleman in a frock coat, a stout matron in a crinoline, and a woman in a tall white wig and the satins and lace of Versailles’s glory days. Ruminating on her sour expression must have caused me to miss Georges’s call for
Action
. I blinked back to the assemblage upon sensing a stiffening of posture, a drawing in of elbows and a replanting of feet.

“You were saying, Mrs. Haskell,” Judy kindly cued me in.

“So exciting to be part of
Here Comes the Bride
in an observing capacity,” my voice played back to me with its embarrassingly contrived enthusiasm. What on earth was I to say next? Fortunately, Mrs. Malloy intervened before Georges yelled
Cut
! or something equally cutting.

“Well, I’ve got to say, as lunch had its moments! And I’m not talking about the food, although it wasn’t to be sneezed at—Mr. H being in top form. It was when the lid of the canteen opened all by itself and the cutlery flew up in the air that I said to meself this is a bit of all right. ’Course I see some of the others was petrified! But that’s people being different.” Smug-faced self-approbation. “Like I always say, after battling the world on me own, there’s not much as will give me the willies. And anyway I
wasn’t a hundred percent convinced it was the Mucklesfeld poltergeist or what have you pulling a stunt.”

“Special effects,” voiced Judy sensibly.

“But how?” Molly stirred nervously.

“Some mechanical device in the cabinet to get the show started, followed by a visual recording when the cutlery apparently began whizzing around the dining room.”

“Not much romance in your soul, Miss Nunn.” Mrs. Malloy hunched a shoulder.

“I will always remember it as the silver dance.” Livonia smiled dreamily.

“The idea that there are restless spirits at Mucklesfeld doesn’t bother me,” Wanda asserted. “I know blondes aren’t supposed to have much in the way of brains, preferring to rely on our other charms,” another of her self-congratulatory laughs, “but I’m convinced that a womanly hand on the helm will put paid to nerves.”

“I rather like the idea of ghosts.” Alice tucked in a tangle of reddish hair. “Places like Mucklesfeld should have them, along with a repaired roof and a thorough refurbishing.”

“How do you all feel about an influx of capital used to restore the place to its former grandeur?” I dutifully inquired of the circle of faces after catching Georges’s eye.

“First the gardens,” responded Judy.

“I don’t see why.” Mrs. Malloy at her most petulant.

“Does anyone have a particular design vision for the interior or exterior?” I persisted nobly. “Elizabethan or Jacobean furniture would seem the obvious choice, but perhaps not . . .”

“I don’t think a home is about a particular type of furniture,” said Alice. “It should be about family, and I’ve been thinking,” she looked round the circle, “that the nicest thing we could do for Lord Belfrey would be to invite his two cousins over for a meal, which I would be happy to cook . . .”

“It would provide an immediate incentive for sprucing up the place,” I responded amicably.

“Our first joint project.” Wanda was quick to display her team spirit.

“You’re on to something.” Judy nodded cheerfully. “Dr. Rowley seems a very pleasant man.”

“Oh, yes!” Livonia continued her dream state. “Of course, like you I only met him briefly . . . just long enough for him to save me from the suit of armor and . . . but I wonder,” striving to refocus, “what his lordship’s female cousin is like—the one who lives at . . . ”

“Witch Haven?” I smiled at her. “I went there this morning to inquire if anyone knew,” somehow I managed to keep my voice steady, “who owned the black Lab who’d shown up here. Celia Belfrey mentioned an archery contest that used to take place here on the grounds.” I only threw this in because there was little else I could say about Miss Belfrey without revealing how unpleasant I had found her.

“Then that’s it!” Alice exclaimed. “We’ll bring back the event for our little get-together.”

There was a general murmuring of enthusiastic agreement. If Mrs. Malloy looked sour, it was undoubtedly because she hadn’t come up with the idea.

The library door opened with startling abruptness to reveal Mrs. Foot wheeling in a loaded tea trolley. Behind her came Mr. Plunket and Boris.

Georges bellowed: “Cut!”

The camera lights went out as if doused by buckets of water, casting the room into an unnatural darkness even for the late afternoon. Momentarily distracted by thoughts of the spread Ben would have laid on, it took a communal gasp for me to realize that something other than the prospect of cucumber sandwiches and iced fancies had created a palpable awareness of something major happening. The contestants were all looking upward. But it was not until Molly Duggan screamed that I noticed the white-wigged portrait lady poised on the uppermost step of the stairway. She
was swirled around by shadows that blurred her features but did little to hide the bloody gash around her neck. Undeterred by the negative reception, she extended a satin-shod foot. However, her descent was foiled by a squeaking scurry of white along the railing and a long-tailed leap atop the Marie Antoinette coiffure!

10

W 
hitey, being no simpleton as rodents go, avoided the apparition’s clutches by performing an immediate vanishing act into the mist. Could it be I was the only one who had noticed him? That one shock at a time was more than the rest, including his nearest and dearest, could take in?

“Blimey! It’s none other than Lady Annabel Belfrey,” gasped Mr. Plunket. “The one that got her head sliced off by the guillotine when she was off on her holidays in France.”

“Gone to see her auntie she had, bless her, and now she’s paying us a visit.” Mrs. Foot sounded thoroughly delighted.

“Who wouldn’t die to make your acquaintance, Ma?” Boris’s voice floated above the hubbub. The ghost having created a sufficient stir and perhaps enduring the fright of her afterlife retreated back up the stairs to disappear into a denser confluence of shadow. I could have destroyed the impact of her appearance by stating she was the woman who worked at the sweetshop in the high street, who had hinted broadly that she was hoarding a secret relating to
Mucklesfeld. And all so easily achieved, with apparel similar to that in the portrait, access and egress through a hidden panel in the gallery, simulated mist, and camera lights turned off so that an adjustment in eyesight was required prior to adequate refocusing. But much as I might think Georges’s contrivances—the flying cutlery at lunch and now this—foolishly theatrical and seriously distressing to Molly Duggan in particular (from the bleached look of her face), I had no right to interfere with the production of
Here Comes the Bride
.

If Georges was gloating, it was impossible to detect because he was surrounded by his crew. Mrs. Foot wheeled the trolley forward and Mr. Plunket and Boris assisted her in handing around cups of tea and setting down plates of fabulous-looking sandwiches, scones, and cakes on available surfaces. I was pleased and proud to see that Mrs. Malloy had come out of her sulks to join Livonia in comforting Molly.

“Now come on,” she held a teacup to the rigid lips, “it’s all over. And a poor excuse for a ghost she was—no wailing or icy chill. I’d be ashamed if it was me not to make more of an effort, but there you are; like I always say, there’s some as put their best foot forward and others as do the minimum. How about one of Mr. H’s nice ham rolls?”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Not on me, you’re not.”

“Just a bite, Molly,” Livonia urged. “I can’t believe I wasn’t terrified. This morning I would have bolted for my car.”

“We all knew coming here,” Wanda drank her tea with pinky raised, “that adjusting to whatever Mucklesfeld offered was key. Being a romantic, though, I have to admit I’m a little disappointed that there aren’t more of the usual type of reality show moments of alone time with his lordship, walks in the rose garden under the moonlight, intimate dinners for two in the gazebo.”