She Shoots to Conquer (9 page)

My feet searched out the hot-water bottle and discovered that it was lukewarm, which didn’t surprise me given my opinion of Mrs. Foot’s incompetence or malevolence . . . no, there I was being unkind. I turned on my side in hope I would find the lumpy mattress more comfortable that way. My original impression of her had been fueled by pure silliness. She was not the hag who had rejoiced in Wisteria Whitworth’s subjugation at Perdition Hall. And if, as seemed credible, she had dropped the lamp shade on Mrs. Malloy’s head, anyone doomed to live in this house might be excused for occasionally giving way to giddy attempts at humor. I lay thinking about the odd trio of Mrs. Foot, Mr. Plunket, and Boris, who presumably had a last name. Had his lordship hired them because they were affordable or because he was kind and doubted anyone else would?

If I lay completely still and kept my eyes squeezed shut against the light, which I should have turned off, but hadn’t because the idea of complete darkness was even more unappealing, my headache receded. Except when the window rattled irritably. Checking the latch would have required standing on the flimsy
chair and I did not want to risk a pair of broken legs that might keep me at Mucklesfeld beyond the morning. I was wondering what Mrs. Malloy was up to when a jolt jerked me up, and my eyes flew wide open, to find her there, arms akimbo, staring down at me.

“Did you have to bump into the bed?” I grumbled.

“I didn’t.” She was smiling dreamily.

“With the force of the
Titanic
hitting the iceberg.”

“Not feeling better, Mrs. H?”

“I was. More to the point—why are you looking as if you just swallowed a dozen canaries?”

“Sure you’re up to hearing?” She sat down at the foot of the bed, her ringed hands folded demurely, and I knew instantly what was coming. Even so, my heart gave a thump when she said the words. “I’m to replace the dead lady as the sixth contestant. Now, don’t go looking at me like that, Mrs. H, it’s not a case of me dancing on her grave, just being practical like, and after all we do owe his lordship for taking us in out of the fog.”

“So you proposed marriage to him out of a sense of obligation?”

“What makes you think I asked him?”

“Well, didn’t you?”

“And why shouldn’t I?” she demanded haughtily. “Really, I don’t know what’s got into you, Mrs. H. I’d have thought you’d be thrilled for me, getting the chance to live out me romantic dreams. All them books we’ve both read with the blissfully happy endings.”

I could have pointed out that these invariably occurred after a couple of bodies had turned up along the way, either in the millpond or the suspiciously locked turret additionally guarded by the yellow-eyed black dog, but I restrained myself out of concern for my head, which had been good to me over the years. “This isn’t a situation that invites the grand passion, Mrs. Malloy, it’s a reality show. Which some people might consider vulgar.”

Understandably, she bridled. “You’re saying that his lordship—my intended—lacks refinement?”

“No, no!” I protested hastily. “I’m sure only dire necessity drove him to this course . . .”

“Coarse?” Her voice rose, along with the rest of her, but fortunately she sank back down without grabbing my throat.

“Course of action. I suppose it could even be said that there is something noble in his desire to save his ancestral home. What really worries me is the thought of your being hurt when . . . if, he doesn’t select . . . choose you as his bride.”

“Well, that’s the chance I’ll be taking. Tomorrow we’ll get to size up the other candidates, won’t we?”

“We? But Ben and I will be going home first thing.”

“What? Rush off before you’ve had breakfast?” She eyed me as if I had just produced a stake to thrust through her heart. “Or lunch. Well, I must say, that wouldn’t be treating his lordship very nice after all he’s done for you.”

“He didn’t say anything to me or Ben about his arrangement with you.”

“And why should he?”

Why indeed? It was unreasonable of me to feel left out in the cold. Perhaps, despite Tommy’s assurances to the contrary, I had injured my brain when I fell.

“It’s not like I’m under age, needing a guardian’s approval,” Mrs. Malloy pointed out.

“I’m sorry. This house must be getting to me.”

“What’s wrong with it? I think it’ll be lovely and comfy with a little tweaking.”

Make that demolition, I thought.

“Although,” Mrs. Malloy addressed the wall behind the bed, “being the gentleman he is, his lordship said as he wouldn’t make the agreement final until he had a word with you and Mr. H. I suppose, despite me mature charms, he saw the vulnerable girl inside.” Her purple-lipsticked mouth flickered like a butterfly landing on a dewy rose. Then her eyes hardened, giving off an iridescent sparkle to match her shadow. “But that doesn’t go giving you license to stand in me way. Of course, I understand how you’ll miss
my slaving away for you at Merlin’s Court, but it’s not like I won’t come over to visit you and Mr. H and the kiddies when I can find time away from opening the summer fête or hosting a ball.”

“What about our partnership as amateur detectives?”

“Well, we still could—no, I suppose it wouldn’t do.” Faint sigh. “A proper husband wouldn’t want his wife risking her life getting mixed up in the sordid.”

So much for Ben!

“I didn’t mention that aspect of me life to his lordship and I’d rather you didn’t neither, Mrs. H; I wouldn’t want him thinking I’d be the snooping sort. And then there’s that requirement of his that the contestants all come from ordinary lives, not the glamorous pampered-puss sort. I’ve even wondered about keeping dark having been three times chairperson of the Chitterton Fells Charwomen’s Association. That sort of office could come across as being snooty.”

Before I could answer this one, Ben came though the doorway carrying a tray. While he was settling it in front of me and asking me to taste the tomato soup, which regrettably came from a tin, and sample the Marmite toast and fruit salad, also tinned, she teetered out of the room on her high heels, brazenly humming “Here Comes the Bride.”

“How are you feeling, sweetheart?”

“Better.”

“The tablets the doctor ordered are on that saucer. He said to take them as soon as you’ve eaten. That beverage in the glass is evaporated milk thinned with water. My poor darling, it seemed safer than what was in the bottle.”

“Everything looks delicious.” I smiled up at my husband while striving to keep my legs rigid in order not to create a tsunami.

“Georges wasn’t so appreciative. There weren’t any eggs. It looks as though the contestants are expected to prove their survival skills by going out and foraging in the woods.” He shrugged expressively. “I suppose they think they know what they’re getting themselves into.”

“At least Mrs. Malloy has the advantage of having met Lord Belfrey and getting a glimpse of the reality involved.” I studied his face as I went on to explain. When I concluded with the statement that I would hate to leave her behind when we set off in the morning, I was surprised that he merely said we would have to take tomorrow as it came.

4

I 
awoke in the night to the alarming sensation that I had wandered out of my life into someone else’s disordered world. I had read enough books about time travel to make this seem perilously possible, if in this particular instance undesirable. Yes, it would be intriguing to discover oneself back in a past century, but what as? Certainly not someone compelled to sleep in a nasty chill on a lumpy bed the width of a plank in a room which in the shifting moonlight resembled a cell.

Fortunately, before clutching my throat in terror and watching my eyes roll down my cheeks, I spied the charcoal-edged shape of my suitcase, which Ben had brought into the room. Memory shifted its way out of the murky morass. Before his return to the lower regions to find himself something to eat, he had watched me dutifully swallow the tablets sent up by Tommy Rowley and instructed me tenderly to get off to sleep as quickly as possible. A likely prospect, I had thought, given his evasions when I tried to get him to talk further about Mrs. Malloy’s determination to
throw herself into the matrimonial fray. After a brief excursion to a bathroom that belonged in the Dark Ages, I returned to the room, inspected Ben’s cubbyhole where he had deposited his own case, took grateful note that it was blessed with a window, albeit one not much bigger than a table napkin, got out my nightdress, and decided on also wearing my flannel dressing gown into bed. The water bottle was by then cold, but I was suddenly too sleepy to toss it onto the floor. What exactly were those tablets Tommy had given me?

My dreams thrust me into an episodic chaos fraught with impending doom. Up one flight of turret steps and down the next, through mazes and tunnels stripped of color I fled, hampered by feet that wanted to go the other way, knowing that beyond every locked door waited something even more unspeakable than that which padded silently behind me. At the moment of waking, I realized that the fog had liquefied and was spreading in puddles with hideously distorted human faces around my ankles.

Now, having somewhat regained my bearings, I discovered what had prompted that specific. My feet and legs were chillily damp. The cause didn’t take prolonged pondering. The hot-water bottle had leaked. The cause? Either it was so ancient the rubber had perished or (more likely in my opinion) Mrs. Foot had failed to tighten the stopper. Shivering as much from aggravation as cold, I wiggled my way to the top of the bed to sit with my knees drawn up to my chin and try to find a bright spot.

Begrudgingly, I admitted there was one. My headache was gone. Tommy’s tablets had done their work. If Mother Nature had made her contribution, I wasn’t about to thank her. But for her fun and games I wouldn’t be currently incarcerated at Mucklesfeld. That Wisteria Whitworth had endured far worse did nothing to mellow my feelings. I was done with Gothic novels. The former wife who wasn’t quite as dead as the master had hoped—having reinvented herself as the vicar’s repressed spinster sister. The portrait of the cavalier in the ancestral gallery that came to life on the anniversary of Charles I’s beheading. The . . . the—my
insides buckled—the evil black dog that came hurtling through the window to land on the bed of a woman who was already suffering all the emotional and physical trauma of a leaked hot-water bottle! The mattress bounced, once, twice, thrice, before flopping back like a dead flounder.

I must be imagining the animal’s thunderous leap onto a bed that had only been designed for half a person, not one full one and a dog. This appalling visitation was a delayed reaction to Tommy’s tablets. The black dog with the yellow eyes and stalactite teeth was standard in the Gothic genre. I remembered how the ambience of Mucklesfeld had summoned up the image of one earlier. If any of this were real, Ben would have heard the commotion along with my scream . . . I was almost sure I had screamed, although in my panic I might have forgotten to do so. I wrapped my arms tighter around my drawn-up knees in a pathetic attempt to squeeze myself into invisibility.

“You do not exist,” I informed the beast sternly. “You are a medicinal complication, for which I intend to sue Dr. Tommy Rowley if he hasn’t fled the country. I am going to close my eyes and when I open them on the count of three you will be gone. One . . . two . . . ready for the magic number?”

My children would have been horribly embarrassed by this pathetic performance. Either the moonlight had grown stronger or we were closing on morning, but I could see with painful clarity that he still was there, eyeing me as if for him it was a case of love at first sight. Well, I was far from charmed.

“You did not,” I chanted, “thrust that window free of its faulty latch. What would any real live dog be doing prowling around on a rooftop? I would summon my husband to get rid of you if there were any possible chance that he could see you.”

The look on his face was nothing short of soppy. Head to one side, ears lolling, he began a cheerful pant as though eager to inhale every sweet inflection of my voice. His tail stirred into a wag that increased in enthususiastic speed to that of an orchestra conductor’s baton. I had to blink to keep from becoming dizzy. His eyes,
I realized, were not yellow but a melting brown, and I was forced to acknowledge that he actually looked more like a Labrador who lived to fetch slippers and newspapers than the hound from hell. He was wearing a collar, but there were no tags. Reaching out a hand as he inched forward, I stroked his velvet head.

“Okay,” I said, “you are real, but that makes it worse because obviously you’re a housebreaker, probably one with a record a mile long, and if I had any public spirit I would notify the police at once. But let’s pretend the phone isn’t back on, which it may not be.”

He continued to regard me with unstinting devotion. I told him he was shallow and I much preferred cats, they being creatures who preferred to be wooed than woo. What on earth was I to do with him? Should I let him stay as a replacement hot-water bottle until Ben woke and we could escort him downstairs and inquire if he was a member of the household? Surely that had to be the case. Out one window, in through another. And Mucklesfeld, like many ancient houses, must have a good-sized walkway around its roofline. I could have laughed at my silliness had my teeth not begun to chatter. With the window hanging open, I was chilled through despite my dressing gown. But closing the wretched thing, I remembered, would require standing on something and I had earlier decided that the chair was too risky. The only alternative was to drag the bed across the room.