I lay on my narrow bed in the room that had once been part of the servants’ quarters, feeling tragically akin to a Victorian parlormaid who had allowed herself to dream of finding favor with the master, only to have him turn curt and dismissive.
“I understand you were anxious to locate the dog’s owners,” Ben had said, when we left the kitchen for the hall, “but couldn’t you have spared a moment to let me know you were taking off and how long you were likely to be gone? I didn’t much appreciate learning from Lord Belfrey that he knew more about your plans than I did.” Before I could tell him he was being petty, he made an unarguable point. “How could I not worry after your being so under the weather last night?”
I apologized but reminded him I had told him before saying anything to Lord Belfrey that I intended to try to find Thumper’s owners.
“So you did, but I assumed you’d wait at least until you’d had breakfast. Rushing off without so much as a slice of toast was asking for trouble, although,” Ben’s mouth tightened and his brows came down in a bar over eyes that flashed all green-no blue-“his lordship seemed to find your rescuing spirit absolutely enchanting.”
The flat pillow did nothing to soften the memory of those words, let alone to cushion my head, but I closed my eyes against the strands of sunshine entering through the high window. If my headache returned, whose fault would that be? Not Lord Belfrey’s. I had sometimes wondered how I would feel if Ben were ever jealous. There had never been any reason… and there wasn’t now. I thought Lord Belfrey remarkably handsome; I might even go so far as to say rivetingly attractive; but that didn’t mean I longed to be swept into his arms and kissed with the passion of Mr. Rochester for Jane Eyre. Really, I felt resentment stir; Ben might have put more focus on my sadness at parting from Thumper. When I had mentioned my reservations about his return to the Dawkinses, Ben had said absolutely the wrong thing. Because it was the truth.
“It says quite a lot about the couple that they are keeping their promise to her father when they aren’t dog people. Something you can understand, Ellie. You’ve never wanted one.”
“Only because bringing another animal into the house would upset Tobias.”
“And that’s more important than the children wanting a dog?”
There had seemed no point in saying I’d promised them one when… the right time came. And I now reminded myself that Ben was understandably irritable, with the cooker not working properly, along with having to contend with diva Georges’s gourmand requirements and produce a luncheon for the contestants, presumably a solitary meal for Lord Belfrey, and yet another feed for the film crew. No problem at all at Abigail’s or even Merlin’s Court, but the kitchen at Mucklesfeld was lacking in what would have been considered rudimentary equipment two centuries back.
We had parted with Ben urging me to get some rest and promising to send something up to me on a tray.
“Just a sandwich and a cup of tea or coffee,” I’d said, knowing he’d provide much better. But not baby frog legs; he’d never do that to me, even had he caught me in a state of déshabille in Lord Belfrey’s bedroom.
The door creaked, and I opened my eyes hoping to see Ben abject with remorse at having been testy with me. But it was Mrs. Malloy who tottered in on her high heels to the accompaniment of a dark taffeta rustle, rouge heightened by exertion, a filled tray clasped in her ringed hands, and the sparkle of her iridescent eye shadow not showing up anywhere else on her face.
It was clear she was in a mood even before she set the tray down with a thump on the foot of the bed. The effect of the crisp salad, eggs mayonnaise, open-faced prawn sandwich, and lemon tartlet was offset by the tea slopped in the saucer and her folded arms.
“Thank you.” I sat up cautiously. If my voice sounded flat, it was nothing to the compression of my lower legs. “It’s quite a climb from the kitchen. I’d think suggesting installing a lift could gain contestant points. How are things going?”
“Nice of you to show some interest, Mrs. H, after bunking off all morning.” She stared coldly down at me. “Where did you go, Hong Kong?”
“That was the plan, but when I arrived at the airport, I realized I didn’t have my passport. And perhaps it was as well, seeing I never did take that seminar on which chopstick goes with what course of the meal.” My hope that an attempt at levity would put a smile on Mrs. Malloy’s purple-glossed mouth was doomed. If anything, she looked crosser than ever. Oh bother, I thought, knowing I was about to hear what she thought of the other contestants. “So?” I prompted.
“I can see I’m not going to get a fair shake with the others.” She heaved a martyred sigh. “A pushy lot, all of them, especially that Judy Nunn you were so fired up about after spending five minutes with her. Why you couldn’t have put the little snippet in your pocket and walked off with her when you disappeared, I don’t know.”
Now it wasn’t only my lower extremities that felt weighted down. “She didn’t strike me as pushy,” I protested mildly.
“Well, you didn’t see her in action when Lord Belfrey had us all together for the welcoming ceremony. She grabbed his attention right off the bat by talking about how she’d just love to get busy with a trowel and cement fixing that opening in the wall out front. Crafty creature, using how upset he was about the accident as a way of making her play for him!” A fierce tightening of Mrs. Malloy’s folded arms pushed her bosom up under her chin. I held my breath waiting for a loud pop, but I doubted that even the air going out of those balloons would have deflated her wrath.
“How did his lordship bring up the accident?”
“He waited till we got into that room we was in last night.”
“It would have the right ambience.” I leaned forward, lifted the tray, and gingerly set it on the floor as far to the left of Mrs. M’s feet as possible, although maybe a good stomp on crockery would make her feel better. “If ever a room was primed for nightmarish revelations, that one would be it. Did Lord Belfrey break the news with cameras and audio equipment present?”
“Of course not.” She bridled at the suggestion. “That would’ve been insensitive, not that I expect that would have bothered your Judy Nunn. None of the How sad! And What a terrible thing! as came out of the others’ mouths. Not so much as a shine of a tear in those little eyes of hers.”
“She doesn’t have particularly little eyes. Saucers wouldn’t suit someone that petite.”
“That’s right; take her side, Mrs. H! If it wasn’t unkind-something I leave to others,” loaded pause, “I’d say that your fall knocked all the sense out of you.” She shifted a high-heeled shoe nearer the tray, causing me to hope nastily that she would step in the prawn sandwich. Mrs. Malloy’s footwear are her life, although to be fair to her she does not have a cardboard boxed tower of them on floor-to-ceiling shelves, as Mrs. Spuds suggested was the case with Celia Belfrey.
At any other time, I would have grabbed the opportunity to fill Mrs. Malloy in on my visit to Witch Haven and describe for her not only Celia but also Nora Burton-the downtrodden paid companion straight out of a Gothic novel if ever there was one. Did she, like her fictional counterpart, harbor a thirst for revenge against an employer who never conceived that this fetcher and carrier had her own life history? I remembered the niggling feeling that something Nora had said was somehow odd. Just a tiny bit so, or it wouldn’t keep eluding me.
It had always been such fun-so productive-talking things of this nature over with Mrs. Malloy. Were those stimulating moments on the way out? I realized sharply how fond I was of her-bossy, snide ways and all. Such qualities were her buttress against the world at large and me in particular. After all, didn’t I have to be kept in my place to prevent my turning into the evil employer equal to any Celia Belfrey? The tiny bedroom, lacking all semblance of comfort without Thumper, shrank in upon itself, turning the window into a spy hole and making the sunlight look suspiciously sneaky.
“There has to be some reason, Mrs. H, for you not seeing straight. Any other time you’d be saying it’s staring us smack in the face as how last night’s car smash wasn’t no accident. That like as not what happened to Suzanne Varney was murder plain and simple.”
It was as well the loaded tray was off the bed or my convulsive start would have sent it flying. “Murder!” I exhaled the word as though I’d never heard it before. Such a thought hadn’t crossed my mind, even though I’m usually the first to suspect foul play, given (metaphorically speaking) the slightest whiff of burnt almonds.
“And who devised this murder?” I demanded of Mrs. Malloy, knowing full well what her answer would be.
“Judy Nunn; sticks out a mile. She knew Suzanne Varney…”
“So did Livonia Mayberry.” I reached down for the slopped, now stone-cold cup of tea, and took a deep swallow.
“Oh, her!” Mrs. M shrugged a taffeta shoulder. “She’s too mealy-mouthed to murder a goldfish without first sending for a priest to give it last rites. Besides, like she told you, Mayberry only entered Here Comes the Bride to stick it in her boyfriend’s ear. Judy Nunn wants to be Lord Belfrey’s choice so as to get her hands on Mucklesfeld’s gardens. A nut job for horticulture she is, and who did she see standing in the way of her dream but Suzanne Varney?”
“Amongst four other contestants.” I set the cup and saucer back on the tray. “Has she come clean with her plans for doing away with the rest of you?”
“Not need to be snarky, Mrs. H,” baleful stare. “What I’m thinking is, she knew she wouldn’t stand a chance against Suzanne Varney. Any woman as looks attractive dead-like Dr. Tommy told us she did-had to be she was a real smasher when breathing. Now, here’s how I see things going down.” Her voice became a touch more conciliatory. “Judy arranges for them to meet up somewhere close to Mucklesfeld for a bite to eat. Then, seeing as the fog was getting so bad, suggests they go the rest of the way in one car.”
“She couldn’t have counted on the fog.”
Back to the baleful stare. “Do I look stupid?”
“Never in a million years.”
“I’m not saying as she’d planned on killing Suzanne.” Still huffy. “More a case of grabbing the opportunity by the horns when it came along.”
“Okay.” I ignored the call of the prawn sandwich.
“So, there they are creeping up the drive, Suzanne at the wheel unable to see a blinking thing, and Judy says: Why don’t I get out and guide you in?”
“With or without malice aforethought?”
“Let’s just say she was thinking of her own skin, but then she sees the break in the wall…”
“With her superwoman x-ray vision?”
Mrs. Malloy again tightened her arms under her chest, forcing the blood up her neck until I feared she’d turn purple to match her lipstick. “With the torch she got out of the glove compartment, like any reasonably clever Dick would do. Must’ve been then,” her voice dropped to a low rasp, “that something wicked took hold of her, swamping every ounce of human decency drummed into her as a nipper. What was one life against the call of the Belfrey land?”
I can’t say I shuddered to the villainy of this scenario. It was the torch that struck a note… because it was repetitive: Ben not being able to find the one Georges claimed was in a desk drawer in his lordship’s study; and further back… to last evening, Plunket saying that if Boris had found a torch to take outside, things might have been different. It was probably a coincidence, but even so I felt that prickling of the skin… the chill down the spine.
“Look,” I told Mrs. Malloy, “your not taking to Judy Nunn doesn’t mean she killed anyone. And any such suggestions to Lord Belfrey, Georges LeBois, or the other women will do nothing but ruin your own chances of ending up with the bridal veil. I’m not saying you have to be Miss Congeniality, but at least try not to be the troublemaker everyone is hoping to see out on her ear.”
“Well, I suppose it was too much to hope you’d remember all the times me instincts put me on the right track when we was handling other cases together,” Mrs. Malloy addressed the ceiling. “So you go on telling yourself this is too close and personal for me to be objective. Don’t you go worrying I’ll be saying I told you so when I’m found breathing me last after being coshed on the noggin with a poker.” Black head with its two inches of white roots held high, she made for the door.
“Oh, please!” I begged-caught however foolishly in superstitious dread. “Don’t go off miffed. Stay and have half my prawn sandwich.”
“Luncheon awaits,” hand on the knob, she did not turn her head. “We’d have sat down half an hour ago if your friend Judy wasn’t still outside with Lord Belfrey filling his head with promises of velvet lawns and herbaceous borders. And now it’ll be me that’s late.” The snap of the door behind her indicated that this was entirely my fault. To blunt my chagrin, I ate my lunch without tasting it and lay back down. No chance of Ben appearing for a while at least. He must be fully occupied in the dining room or kitchen. As for Thumper, I recognized the hopeless folly of yearning for him to leap through the window. Courage! I told myself. At least I wasn’t Wisteria Whitworth dreading the arrival of the malevolent wardress mouthing the names of the patients she had smothered in their beds after they refused their morning gruel that she’d put her whole heart into the stirring. That miserable old Mr. Codger… I smiled faintly at coming up with such a redundant name. Perhaps I was drifting off to sleep.
But that wasn’t to be. Mrs. Malloy’s disastrously silly suspicions kept pulling me back from the verge. Disastrous because she wasn’t much good at concealing her feelings when her nose was out of joint. And silly because if someone had seized upon the fog to bring about Suzanne Varney’s death, there was no reason to assume it was Judy Nunn. Someone living at Mucklesfeld could have easily heard the car coming, made sure the exterior lights were off, and nipped outside at the propitious moment with a torch. One now missing from its accustomed place. If killer there be, it would have to be someone who had more to fear from poor Suzanne’s arrival than the mere possibility that Lord Belfrey would choose her as his bride.
I lay longing for another cup of tea, a hot one this time, accompanied by another lemon tartlet. I still had more than an hour to go before joining the contestants in the library. Thinking of what might be offered to eat at that time would only make my current pangs worse, so I went back to concocting nonsensical theories about a murder I hoped to convince Mrs. Malloy hadn’t happened. Let the suspects seat themselves in a circle.
My mental gaze fell first on the trio of Mr. Plunket, Mrs. Foot, and Boris. Before finding refuge at Mucklesfeld, originally as squatters and then as employees on Lord Belfrey’s return from America (when they must have expected to be given their marching papers), they had been homeless. The prospect of his lordship’s marriage had to have rattled their rib cages. What if the new wife insisted they leave? What chance did any of them have to reestablish themselves? Would they be separated? That, I felt sure, was an anguish not to be borne; together they were the insiders, not the brutal reverse. But if the first contestant to show up conveniently died, his lordship might decide against continuing with Here Comes the Bride, and they-Mr. Plunket, Mrs. Foot, and Boris-would be safe, at least for the time being. What, I suddenly wondered, had caused them to be homeless in the first place?
My watch showed scant progress toward teatime. If I were to pretend seriously that Mrs. Malloy was right that murder had occurred, then I would have to add employer to employees in our group of suspects. Why might Lord Belfrey have decided to eliminate one contestant off the bat? Perhaps when he belatedly saw Suzanne Varney’s photo laid out with the others by Georges in the study, he realized that she could ruin his chances for a marriage that would save Mucklesfeld. What could Suzanne have known to his detriment that had sealed her fate? I considered the possibility that he had behaved improperly toward her on the cruise they had shared, wincing away from more graphic wording. Illogically, my heart rebelled against the possibility that he had been anything other than a gentleman; after all, if a man would commit murder, he was likely capable of other hideous violations. But I desperately didn’t want to believe anything of the kind about Lord Belfrey.
What other damning evidence might Suzanne have had against him? A dire, but less ugly possibility sprang to mind. Perhaps she had reason to know, having met the genuine article, that he was not the real Lord Belfrey! Not that I condoned the behavior of imposters (or of highwaymen, for that matter), but there is a certain romantic allure to the face masked by black cloth or pretense. What if two Englishmen living in America, uncannily similar in appearance, chanced to meet-one telling the other he had just been informed by letter that his cousin Lord Giles Belfrey had died, making him heir to the title and ancestral estate? What if during an evening at his home in a remote rural community, this man had waxed nostalgic over the course of rather too many whiskeys and sodas on the family history, mentioning names, situations, before dramatically and conveniently collapsing? What if after failing to revive him, the other sized up the potential for starting over after two failed marriages (doomed from the start because of his fixation with Eleanor) and an abruptly ended career? What if the deceased was so newly arrived in the area that his passport and air ticket were in view on a table and his other identification in his wallet, waiting to be plucked from his jacket pocket and replaced by another set?
I might have warmed to such a scenario if it weren’t connected to Suzanne Varney’s murder. As it was, I nixed it firmly. Whatever might be false at Mucklesfeld, I was in no doubt that his lordship had lost his heart, completely and forever, when looking upward at Eleanor Belfrey in her portrait gown on the stairs.
Another glance at my watch convinced me I had spent long enough concocting motives for a murder that was all in Mrs. Malloy’s head. I was about to get off the bed to do something about my face, hair, and clothes before heading down to the library for tea, when the door opened and in crowded Mrs. Foot.
“I’ve come for the tray.” She beamed a gap-toothed smile, the heavy dusty gray locks matching matted clouds outside the window. Gone was the sunshine of a half hour before. Did the weather at Mucklesfeld tend to be this fickle, and were Mrs. Foot’s moods equally changeable? Certainly, she was making more of an effort to be jolly than she had that morning. Had Whitey been returned safe and sound to her fond embrace? Before I could inquire, she asked winningly if I’d had a nice little nap.
“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.
“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!