N o need to explain last night’s dream in which I had been powerless to scream a warning of impending danger, or to mention Reverend Spendlow’s sermon. No steaming indignation, no guilty outrage from Nora Burton. She retained her calm demeanor, skipping the question as to why her true identity was any of my business to go directly to the core. “How did you guess?”
We were now in her bedroom, she seated on the edge of the bed, I in a cobalt blue velvet chair. A small white dog-a Sealyham terrier asleep in a basket before the fireplace-added the perfect cozy touch. I had always thought I would prefer a small dog. The furnishings were charming, the warm amber, cobalt blue, and rose color scheme reflective of the hall and drawing room. Given Celia Belfrey’s demand for perfection, I doubted there was a room at Witch Haven that wasn’t lovely.
“Several reasons. Lord Belfrey asked me if my name, Ellie, was short for Eleanor; but there are always any number of ways to abbreviate. I also learned that your last name, before your marriage, was Lambert-Onger. Shorten Eleanor into Nora, take the bert from Lambert and the on from Onger to concoct Burton, and there you are. But that didn’t come to me first. The trigger was your asking if I were talking about Lord Belfrey when I mentioned Georges LeBois the other morning. Afterwards, it struck me as unlikely that Miss Belfrey had never in your hearing mentioned her cousin Aubrey by name. Not because she is fond of him. Quite the reverse. If she would vent her venom to me-a total stranger-then how could you escape being her frequent listening post?”
“What else are paid companions to spoiled, spiteful women for?” Nora’s lips curved bitterly.
“Exactly. And Celia Belfrey is worse than either of those two adjectives, isn’t she? Look.” I leaned forward. “You haven’t said it, but I will. I’m sticking my nose into your private affairs. But I’m not doing so for the fun of it. I’ve heard your story from the three people working at Mucklesfeld and from Lord Belfrey, and I think you’re taking a huge risk in returning…”
“To the scene of my crime?”
“Lord Belfrey doesn’t believe you took the jewels with you when you fled Mucklesfeld.”
“Doesn’t he?” pushing back her hair in a weary gesture. The thin white line of the scar tracing down from the corner of her eye to her cheek showed up sharply in the light coming in through the window framed in floor-length pale blue silk.
“No. You made a… very positive lasting impression on him the day he came to Mucklesfeld and saw you standing halfway up the stairs. When my husband and a friend and I arrived out of the fog the other night, he got the idea that I look something like you did then and still do in your portrait.”
“Yes,” she said, “I can see that.”
“If there is any resemblance, it has to be very faint. You were beautiful. And I have a strong feeling that without those bottle glasses, the scraped-back hair, and frumpy clothes you still are.”
“I don’t spend much time in front of a mirror. Not because of this”-she touched a finger to the scar-“I just prefer not to narrow my focus down to me. I’ve spent my life since Mucklesfeld staying constantly busy in unexciting ways. A nursing career, a small flat, and for the last three years Sophie.” The Sealyham twitched an ear, then reshuffled back to sleep in the basket. “I counted on being sufficiently uninteresting to have a good chance of getting away with this charade. At the start, fooling Celia was all that mattered. Once over that hurdle, I felt reasonably secure. Although sometimes I do wonder about Charlie Forester. He was always so kind, so eager to be of help to me. But,” she shrugged her shoulders, bunching up the cardigan, “it was a very long time ago. I’m not sure I would have recognized him; he’s over eighty now.”
“If Miss Belfrey hadn’t banned Lord Belfrey from this house, he would have presented a problem for you. No disguise or change in appearance would fool him. He seems to me a man of uncanny recall.” That wasn’t giving away more than was justified, was it?
“He… Aubrey made an indelible impression on me, too. For that one breathless moment, I thought I’d summoned up the man who would rescue me. It had been a quite dreadful day.” She removed the spectacles and rubbed her forehead above the bridge of her nose. Without them, her face seemed stripped naked and I caught my first glimpse… just a suggestion, really, of the loveliness that had haunted Lord Belfrey and the loss of which had played its part in driving his cousin Giles to madness. Nora finally asked the question I would have raised earlier were the situation reversed, but she did so without rancor. “What are you really? Some sort of private detective?”
“Occasional amateur. I’m at Mucklesfeld quite by chance, as I told you. But there was something in the atmosphere right from the beginning, something apart from the accidental death of one of the contestants that drew me in, and that was your story.”
“The absconding bride.” Something in her misty gray eyes told me talking would be a release now the cat was out of the bag and in my lap.
“Was your husband cruel from the start of your marriage?”
“Giles never treated me badly.”
“But Lord Belfrey thought… is still convinced you were terrified of your husband after being forced into a marriage contrived by your family.”
“That’s true. My father was in desperate financial straits as a result of some highly speculative investing. He was on the verge of losing everything and there was Giles offering to save the day in return for one small favor. Me. He’d been infatuated with me for several years after meeting me at Ascot on my twentieth birthday. I had no idea. He was older than both my parents by ten years. I suppose when I thought of him at all, it was as a courtesy uncle.” Nora again brushed her hair back from her forehead. A weary gesture. “I was aghast when my father told me, quite unemotionally, what was expected of a dutiful daughter. I railed, of course, but unlike my brother-there were just the two of us-I had always toed the line. Saving the family home for Jeremy to inherit along with an income to support it was of far more importance than any squeamishness on my part. After all, what did I have to complain about? I would be married to a lord.”
“So Giles dipped into the Belfrey coffers to replenish your family’s.”
“And I am supposed to have robbed them further by making off with the jewels.”
“You didn’t?”
“I’m not a thief.”
“No, but I suppose it would have been an understandable revenge against a brutal, merciless husband. But you say he wasn’t that.”
Nora resettled the glasses on her perfect nose. “I hated him at first, thought him unnatural for wanting me, knowing I had no feelings for him. Our wedding night is something I try never to think back on. Not because he forced me to submit, he was I suppose pathetically gentle, and there was nothing… out of the way, that could be considered deviant. But every part of me recoiled from his body… his touch. When I couldn’t block those times out of my mind, I told myself they would get better. But it didn’t happen, and after a few weeks he moved out of our bedroom. At least I had my nights to myself. He said, very kindly really, that it didn’t matter. That having me there, just being able to look at me, like a flower in a vase, was enough.”
“That sounds distinctly creepy to me.”
She stared straight ahead. “I might have grown kinder in my feelings toward him, if the days had not been so unendurable.”
I sat silent in the cobalt blue velvet chair. Sophie the Sealyham slept on. From the continued stare into nothingness, I gauged Nora to be no longer with us but back at Mucklesfeld, avoiding whenever possible the husband who filled her with revulsion, leaving her with only one other source of companionship.
“I understood,” Nora continued tonelessly, “that Celia would resent me. Having a stepmother a couple of years her junior and knowing exactly why I had agreed to marry him would have been enraging for anyone in her position. I expected to be either ignored or the recipient of snide remarks, but she went further than that. This,” pressing a finger to the scar on her face, “happened when she threw a cut-glass dish at me. It literally came at me out of the blue. Nothing apparent led up to the incident. Celia was sitting in the drawing room leafing through a magazine when she picked it up and aimed it at me. When she saw the blood dripping through my fingers, she said, ‘Don’t get that on the floor,’ and swept out of the room. She and I both knew that I would have made a bad decision in telling Giles. I believed then-and I still do-that she would have found a way to get rid of me once and for all given half an opportunity. I began seriously to fear my days were numbered when Giles bought this house for me.”
“Witch Haven? Yours?”
“In their arrangement with him-all very tidy and legal-my parents did seek to secure some protection for me in the event of his death; at which time of course I would’ve had to leave Mucklesfeld. I was to have a place of my own in waiting. Having paid substantially for the privilege of having a wife who couldn’t bear him to touch her,” Nora continued speaking without inflection, “Giles himself felt a financial pinch, so it had to be a reasonably priced house. Six months after our marriage, this one went up for sale and he bought it. To my surprise, having come to feel myself incapable of any positive emotion, I fell in love with the place despite its being in a shockingly run-down state. The only contented moments I spent after that at Mucklesfeld were occupied in planning how I would make Witch Haven my own-collecting ideas from magazines, positioning furniture choices on paper renditions of the rooms, deciding what colors I would use. Before leaving, I had an extensive scrapbook.”
I looked around the bedroom-the word stolen coming to mind. Mrs. Foot had accused Ben of stealing her kitchen. “And you came here a short time ago to find Celia Belfrey occupying your creation?”
“Extremely close. Of course there are some things I would change, perhaps because I have changed, but surprisingly my anger against her didn’t spill over to infect my feelings for the house. Perhaps it has the sort of aura that can’t be tainted, however unpleasant the personality of the occupant?”
“Maybe.” The empathy I had felt for this woman upon first hearing about her, in good part because of my attributed likeness to her, was increasing. I also saw houses as personalities; it was what I brought to my work as a designer. “How did Witch Haven get its name?”
For the first time I saw Nora… Eleanor… really smile. “It may be a legend, but the story goes that back in the sixteen hundreds a young woman from this area was accused of witchcraft on the grounds that a young dairy farmer was savagely gored by his bull after she supposedly hexed him. Her version was that she’d had to fight him off on several occasions when he’d cornered her in the lane as she was passing. It was his wife who raised the village against her. On the day she was to be hanged, the squire’s son came galloping up to the prison yard waving a writ for her release and plucking her from the gallows as the noose was lowered.”
“Romantic! Or was he all about justice?”
“There must have been love, or at least passion, involved in his mission of mercy because he afterwards installed her in this house, with sufficient armed menservants to ensure her protection. And here she lived out her days to the grand old age of ninety-two.”
“Was Celia Belfrey also captivated by the house and its history?”
“I’m not sure if she wanted it because it was mine or because it also spoke to her. She had an eye for beauty along with an almost manic acquisitive streak.”
“Almost?”
The smile against rested for a moment on Eleanor’s lips before she turned her face away. “That day when I saw Aubrey looking up at me from the foot of the stairs, I had the mad idea that he was that squire’s son, having ridden hell for leather to the rescue. As I said, it had been a dreadful day. Celia was in a glinty-eyed fury, as she always was on the days when I sat for my portrait, and Charlie Forester had come to tell me that Hamish the Scottie had been inexplicably injured-what appeared to be a torn muscle in one of his front legs. I knew Celia had taken out her rage on the poor little fellow. I think Giles did, too, but he was always afraid to stand up to her. He told me to go to my room and stay there. It was an order-quietly given, but I didn’t attempt to argue. A bolted door… that was sanctuary. I think he knew that she was to be feared.”
“His lordship’s assessment of the situation was that you were his cousin’s prisoner. This Charlie Forester, why would he leave Mucklesfeld to work for her here?”
“I think he feels it his duty to keep an eye on her, to be the watchguard against her doing something dreadful, especially against Aubrey now he’s back. I don’t think she considers Dr. Rowley someone to be dealt with right now. He hasn’t taken Mucklesfeld from her… yet.”
I shivered. The Sealyham lifted her tufted white head and clambered out of the basket onto the bed, to perform a circle before settling down on Eleanor’s lap. But she didn’t again close her eyes. Had she picked up on my unease? Or did she experience a more pervasive sense of danger? My time with Thumper had led me to believe fervently in the omniscient powers of man’s-and woman’s-best friend.
“It was during the hours spent in my room that day that I made up my mind to leave and take Hamish with me. I knew I couldn’t go back to my parents or let them know any more than that I was safe. It was easier in those days to make an untraceable phone call. I had to disappear, and fortunately I had some friends-beatniks, was my mother’s description-who were ready to help me set up a new identity. But I couldn’t completely give up the old one. It would have been as if Celia had succeeded in murdering me-and melodramatic as that sounds, I know that was her plan. So I became Nora Burton.” She sat stroking the Sealyham with a fine-boned hand.
“When did you learn you supposedly had taken the family jewels with you?”
“Within a few days of my escape. My friends had chosen to break with the circle in which they and I moved, but they still had sufficient access to the latest scuttlebutt. When they told me what was being said, I knew that Celia had taken the only revenge left to her. She would know that Giles would not go after the insurance money and thereby set up a criminal investigation. In his own way, I believe he did love me.”
I didn’t offer my view on this. There were some things I did recognize were none of my business. “What finally brought you back?”
“Two things coincided. One of those friends who had helped me start over told me about seeing Celia’s advert in The Times for a companion cum secretary, and that same week I read an article in another newspaper about Aubrey’s reality show and the practical reasons for it. It came to me that if Celia had held on to the jewels, which according to the grapevine had never come on the market, then perhaps she had hidden them either at Mucklesfeld or more likely here at Witch Haven. In the article about Aubrey, it said he’d been married and divorced twice, and now he was being forced into what seemed likely to be a third mistake. And I, who have come to think of myself as the least romantic of people, found myself wondering if he wasn’t in need of someone galloping to his rescue at the twelfth hour. Recovering those jewels should enable him to raise enough to get going on repairs and otherwise putting Mucklesfeld back together.”
I liked the sound of that. “No luck so far? Not so much as the shimmer of a diamond or the glow of a ruby through a crack in the floorboards?”
She shook her head. “This house has its share of secret spaces behind the paneling and beneath hidden trap doors; not as many as Mucklesfeld, but enough to have kept me searching at night and every other spare minute I have. I’m beginning to think wherever the jewels are, it’s not here. Or at Mucklesfeld. I’ve made a few predawn flits over there…”
“That explains Lord Belfrey’s household staff claiming to have seen Eleanor Belfrey’s ghost leaving the premises by way of an exterior door. Were you minus the disguising glasses on those occasions?”
“I believe so.”
“With your hair down and a dark cloak flowing from your shoulders.”
She actually laughed. “Yes, to the first, and wearing my old nurse’s cape.”
“They were all familiar with your portrait.”
“Celia needed to be able look at it day in and day out and gloat. I was sure it would be the same with the jewels-that they had to be where she could feast her eyes and her malice upon them whenever the urge seized her. But I’m beginning to think she may have been afraid to risk their discovery, however cunning the hiding place.”
“Whether they’re here or not,” I leaned urgently forward, “you’re taking a terrible risk. If she is as crazed as she sounds and she figures out that Nora Burton is Eleanor Belfrey, she may make sure you don’t escape her a second time.”
“I have to keep looking… at least a little while longer.”
“In the hope of saving Lord Belfrey from a potentially disastrous marriage? Eleanor, he would be appalled if he got wind of the risk you’re taking.”
“You won’t tell him?”
I hesitated. “If you were doing this to reestablish your reputation and reclaim your old life, that would be one thing, but to walk into the lion’s den out of a quixotic notion of female gallantry is an unnecessary sacrifice.”
“What difference does my motive make?”
Unanswerable. Especially as I was pretty certain that in her situation I might well have felt compelled to pursue the same course of action. “No, I won’t tell him. But forget the jewels and leave here now.”
“Soon.”
“Promise you’ll be careful!”
Ten minutes later, walking back to Mucklesfeld, I mulled over Eleanor’s assessment that Celia Belfrey’s venom was so focused on the portrait that she couldn’t see that the living woman was often in the same room where it was displayed. That might be so; hatred can shift and shape to its own design, blocking out what might otherwise be apparent. Celia might never guess that her enemy was looking at her with living eyes. Then again, something might at any moment bring the truth home to her. And then what? Eleanor might have exaggerated the threat the other woman had posed years ago. Most people, however nasty, will shrink from committing murder. But Celia? I remembered her cruel face and cringed. If only I had not made that promise not to tell Lord Belfrey that Eleanor had come back.
The ideal person with whom to discuss this predicament would of course have been Mrs. Malloy. An impossibility. The reason I had not wanted her to come to Witch Haven with me-knowing I was going to confront Nora Burton-was that as a contestant she could not be party to information that could well and truly disrupt the production of Here Comes the Bride. I would not only be dropping a turnip in her applecart but also putting her in the position of knowing something her fellow hopefuls didn’t. The same would be true for Ben, who might feel under sufficient obligation to Georges LeBois to lay the facts before him. When it came down to it, I thought sadly, the only one I could have confided in with complete ease of mind was Thumper. He would have listened, assured me with his adoring gaze that he fully sympathized with my conflict, and felt no obligation to bark out the story to anyone.
In the hall at Mucklesfeld I met Lucy, the dingy blond female member of the crew with the dragon tatoos on her arms. She wasn’t carrying any equipment, and said she had grabbed at a free moment to go to the loo, from which she was now returning.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
She leaned against one of the larger pieces of furniture. “Hell if I know! We got the contestants’ organizational meeting without too many retakes, which is something, I suppose. No idea if Georges was happy or not, he’s just as snarly if he’s satisfied or isn’t.”
“I’m not clear about the structure.”
“As in?” Sticking a hand into her ragged jeans pocket, Lucy drew out a silver-wrapped stick of gum.
“The competition. I mean… what’s the game plan?”
“Sure. I get you. As you’ll know, Lord Belfrey had a formal meeting with each of the contestants yesterday-not much editing of those. Georges wanted all the throat-clearing and twitchy stares kept in. Today and for the duration the women will be assigned individual fifteen-minute interviews. Those will be well weeded, to bring each personality into the sharpest possible focus. I,” she tucked the gum in her mouth and tossed away the wrapper, “will be doing the questioning off camera. Georges decided a female voice would be more effective in getting them to reveal more than intended. Keeping the viewers coming back for more means playing into the mentality of the kinds of people who used to pack up a picnic and look for a nice grassy spot to watch the beheading. The more blood and tears the merrier, then and now.” Lucy stood chewing her gum. “More often than not, the most revealing stuff comes from trailing around after a subject when they think they’re not doing anything worth recording-and most of the time they’re right. Eventually, they stop noticing the camera and even the person holding it becomes invisible. At least that’s the hope. We also aim for those candid moments between his lordship and one or other of the contestants-walking in the garden, taking a look at one of the rooms, conversing over a cup of tea.”
“And he will come to his decision how?”
Lucy shrugged. “From watching the interviews and other film. That’s the system as explained at the start of the first episode, but in reality,” curling her tongue around the word, “it’s bound to come down to the one he can best see himself stuck with for life… or at least as long as it takes to get a divorce.”
“Was Georges pleased with the mayhem produced by Lady Annabel showing up in the gallery?”
“Who knows?”
“I thought it was a bit lame. He could at least have had her head fall off so she could tuck it under her arm and go bowling. It was only Whitey showing up that succeeded in creating a sufficient panic to drive off Wanda Smiley. How many more does he hope to scare away? I’d have thought a little attrition goes a long way.”
“Right.” Lucy reached into her pocket again, drew out a packet of cigarettes, turned it over a few times, and put it back. “The idea is to dangle the question as to who may be next at a point when hopefully the viewers are beginning to root for particular contestants. The next person to talk about bolting will be invited to sit down with his lordship and talk out her concerns. His obligation-even if he’s already decided against her being the pick of the litter-will be to persuade her to stay.”
“It sounds so ruthless.”
“Has to be; that’s the reality show for you,” chewing energetically on the gum. “Sounds as though you’ve never watched even the first five minutes of one?”
“When it comes to a wedding story, I prefer fiction.”
Lucy eyed me in surprise. “That’s what the reality show is-life turned on its head so there’s no longer anything real about it. Wanda Smiley being the one to leave is what took me by surprise. I’d have bet on either Livonia Mayberry or Molly Duggan, who seemed like two timid little birds of a feather.”
“I like Livonia. And there may be more to Molly than meets the eye.” Having established myself as a sanctimonious prig, I addressed another issue. “What I don’t understand is why Georges wanted me in the library for his ghost scene. He spun me a line about my using my interior design background to draw out the contestants’ views on refurbishing Mucklesfeld, but on reflection it seems a bit feeble.”
“Don’t take offense, but you are a dewy-eyed innocent, aren’t you?”
Preferable perhaps to being too old to be scruffily attractive, but I had no idea as to her point. “Spell it out for me.”
“Okay, but I’d have thought it was obvious. The great Georges isn’t one to batten down his hopes, however remote, of a twist to the plot that’ll strike real gold. Look,” Lucy again explored her jeans pocket, but this time did not produce the packet of cigarettes, “the entire crew knows Lord Belfrey was knocked for six on first setting eyes on you-that you’re the spitting image of some young woman in a family portrait that he’s been yearning after like a soppy schoolboy for years.”
“So?” The furniture seemed to be crowding in for a listen.
“You do want it printed out in big letters, don’t you?” Lucy eyed me with, if there is such a thing, amiable contempt. “Could Georges write the script, honey, it would be bad luck for the contestants and for you the lovely moment when his lordship gets down on one knee and offers you his hand, his heart, and this god-awful house. Of course, you’ll probably have to wait for the engagement ring until the money starts pouring in from the proceeds of the show…”
“But I’m married!” I was too astounded to fume.
“Georges would consider that kind of thinking bourgeois.”
“I also have three children!”
A shrug, followed by more probing of the jeans pocket.
“And a cat!” Somehow I felt that if I could have added, And a dog, it would have clinched matters.
“Look,” said Lucy with impatient kindness, “I understand the suburban mind-set. But Georges is more narrow in his thinking. He’s only capable of taking the broad view when surveying a banquet table.”
“That’s another thing!” I leaped on the thought. “He seemed to like my husband. Or at least his cooking. Surely even he couldn’t be as treacherous as you suggest.”
Lucy’s look informed me I was a poor, deluded nitwit. Even worse, she patted my arm before saying that if she didn’t go outside and have a ciggy, she’d go into terminal withdrawal. I watched her negotiate her way through the obstacle course to the front door. Even from the rear, she had that air of negligent sophistication that makes an asset of unwashed dishwater-blond hair and torn jeans, leaving me feeling frumpish, over-washed, and utterly incapable of rushing after her to administer a sermon on the evils of smoking.
I was determined not to participate in any more of Georges’s staged events. Not difficult, on the face of it. But what if Ben wanted to know why I was being obstructive? Would I dash his chance of the publicity for Abigail’s, should Here Comes the Bride make it to the small screen? Would he suspect Lord Belfrey of complicity and whack him over the head with a rolling pin? I yearned to discuss this with Mrs. Malloy, but that was out for the same reason I couldn’t tell her that Nora Burton was Eleanor Belfrey. To put a spoke in her wheel, or for that matter any of the other contestants’, would risk destroying a dream that might raise a mundane life to glorious heights. And then there was Lord Belfrey himself, who had charted his course and was entitled to sail toward the horizon without my sticking my paddleboat in the way. Oh, to have had the ever discreet Thumper as a confidant!
I decided to go into the library, mount the steps to the portrait gallery, and search out the entrance through which the sweetshop lady had emerged to play Lady Annabel’s ghost. Opening the door into what was likely the handsomest room in Mucklesfeld, with its remnants of polish on the vast oak floor and wainscoting along with the blessedly limited furnishings, I thought myself alone until mounting the final step of the short, railed stairway, where I beheld Lord Belfrey seated on one of a pair of leather chairs at the far end of the parquet from Lady Annabel’s portrait. He rose instantly on catching sight of me. I was struck again by how his most ordinary movement exuded gallantry. He would, I thought, look heroic putting a box of corn flakes in his shopping cart.
Damn Georges! The embarrassment that seized me was entirely his fault. Any woman who wasn’t preoccupied by being tied to the stake with flames licking at her brand-new shoes would feel a quiver of response at his lordship’s intent, dark-eyed gaze and that smile… so warmly welcoming, even when touched by a suggestion of nobly repressed sorrow.
“You’ve caught me,” a rueful lift of the mouth and eyebrows.
“Doing what?” I stood as Lot’s wife must have done when feeling herself turning into a pillar of salt.
“Skulking.”
“Oh!”
“Escaping the infernal cameras, tripping over cords, blundering into seating that has just been positioned for a scene. Care to join me in my hideaway?” He extended a hand and at my nod drew back to the chairs. I took the closer, he the one he’d just occupied. “It’s not the contestants I’m avoiding.” His voice deepened with intensity. “They all seem very pleasant women.” Was it me he wanted to convince or was he attempting to blot out an inner voice that was telling him he was making the mistake of his life? Backing out now might cause enormous hurt to the five hopeful females. Ticking Georges off would also be an issue, but not likely, I felt, to weigh with him to anywhere near the same extent.
“One contestant” (I had almost said Another) “down.” I was glad to hear my voice sounding conversational. “Poor Wanda Smiley. She wasn’t smiling as she threw her clothes into a suitcase before bunking off.” Catching the drawn look on his face, I said hastily that he shouldn’t upset himself about that. “They all know that the nasty surprise is a feature of the reality show to pick up the pace now and then. No one’s going to tune in just to watch the contestants having races doing the washing up.”
“I can’t blame Georges if I’ve grown squeamish.” His lordship stared bleakly across the railing. “He warned me, even whilst remaining vague, that he had some startling tricks up his sleeve. Perhaps but for Suzanne Varney’s death I wouldn’t have these qualms. Could take it all in my stride… believe as I did at the beginning that the outcome could benefit not only myself but another.”
Sadly, I stifled the urge to protest that a loveless marriage, whatever the practical advantages, was not a cheery-sounding arrangement. Even harder to squash was the temptation to spill the beans that the woman who had held his heart captive these many years was presently installed at Witch Haven. To which I would have added the opinion that if swept into his impassioned embrace, she would not long remain impervious to his admiration. How cruel a fate should he happen upon her in the high street as a newly married man unable to offer her his hand except to unburden her of a shopping basket filled with delicacies to tempt his cousin Celia’s peevish appetite! Perhaps there would be a way I could ultimately bring the two of them together, but for now I swallowed the bitter pill of honorable silence. Such thoughts pushed my plan to discover Lady Annabel’s means of entering the gallery out of my mind.
“I spoke with the vicar’s wife after church this morning,” I said with a nicely casual touch.
“Normally I would have been there, but with all the curiosity that’s bound to have arisen over what has been happening here, I opted out today.” For the first time I caught a look of his cousin Tom in his lordship’s boyishly apologetic gaze.
“Completely understandable.” Awful to cause the beleaguered man a moment’s discomfort, but I was about to put my foot in it further. “Your cousin Celia mentioned yesterday, when I went to her house to see if she might know who… the dog belonged to, that Mrs. Spendlow was the person Suzanne intended to visit before coming on to Mucklesfeld.”
“And did they meet?” There was nothing guarded about his interest.
“Yes. They were old friends who hadn’t met in years. Apparently, Suzanne had something on her mind that she had kept to herself for some time, but for some reason felt Mrs. Spendlow would be the right confidante. Unfortunately, their time together was interrupted before she got to the heart of the matter. All Mrs. Spendlow was able to say was that Suzanne was dealing with a great deal of anger.”
“No idea what or who was the cause?” Now he did look and sound somewhat troubled.
I shook my head. “But if bracing herself to talk about whatever happened brought some of that anger to the surface, perhaps Suzanne wasn’t at her best when handling the car at the time of the accident. On any other occasion she might have been just that bit more alert…” My voice wobbled to a halt and his lordship touched my hand. All very discreet, but something connected between us, a mingling of intense emotion. We were talking about a woman-still quite young-who had died.
“Poor Suzanne,” he murmured deeply. “I remember her as very likable. And Judy Nunn speaks fondly of her. Livonia Mayberry also knew her, though rather less well. Perhaps they might have an idea what was on her mind.”
“Not if Mrs. Spendlow is correct in her understanding that she was to be the first in whom Suzanne confided.”
“Yes, I’d forgotten that point. But one must assume something quite dreadful…” He stopped. We had both heard someone enter the library below, not that whoever it was was noisy about it-indeed, there was something hesitant, tentative, it could even be said surreptitious about those footsteps, followed by a soft closing of the door. Lord Belfrey rose to his feet-his courtesy as instinctive doubtless as the curiosity that caused me to follow suit. There was no telling how visible we would have been, obscured by the gallery railing and shadows collecting in the corners, but the person who had come in did not look up. After a quick, jerking glance around the library proper, she tiptoed, head down, to stand in a bare expanse of wood floor with only the billiard table, which did not take up undue space. An island of serenity compared to the suffocatingly overcrowded drawing room and hall.
She placed a smallish rectangular object on the floor (impossible to see what it was without leaning dangerously far over the railing). Then she drew some item-or items-from the pocket of a full peasant-style skirt before bending down to remove her shoes in the same stealthy fashion that had accompanied her entrance. It did not occur to me to wonder why Lord Belfrey had not called down to her, let alone descended the stairway. He and I had become the intruders in the vignette. Setting the shoes under the billiard table, she sat down, picked up what she had taken from her pocket-slippers of some kind-placed them on her feet, and proceeded to lace them above her ankles. Before getting back up, she touched the rectangular object, and music-glorious, if at a subdued sound level, Tchaikovsky-poured into every particle of the rather musty air that was Mucklesfeld even at its best.
I felt the pressure of his lordship’s shoulder, heard the catch of startled amazement in his breath, but neither of us murmured a word. Nor did it occur to me to wonder what Georges would have made of our standing glued together like the ornamental bride and groom on top of a cake. Molly Duggan-for it was she who, incredibly and improbably, raised her arms above her head, fingers touching to form a Gothic arch-started to dance on her points. Those hadn’t been slippers but block-toed, satin ballet shoes. My hands gripped the railing when she teetered. She was going to fall splat on the floor in an ungainly heap of dumpy, frumpy forty-year-old woman. Unbearable to watch. We all have our dreams, ridiculously unrealistic though they may be. But no! She steadied, spread her arms, arched her back, and extended one leg behind her in the pure straight line of the arabesque. Out the corner of my eye I saw that Lord Belfrey also had a fast hold on the railing. Then he ceased to exist.
The music was from Swan Lake or, as my mother, who had been a ballet dancer, would have called it, Le Lac des Cygnes.
Gone also were the peasant skirt and black top. Molly was Odette in a white tutu with a cap of snowy feathers on her head as she leaped, twirled, and fluttered, light as down, achingly tragic… The early wobble must have been caused by a moment of distraction, perhaps as her eyes went to the door in fear of someone coming in and discovering her secret. For I had no doubt that this Molly existed in absolute secrecy, quite apart from the woman who worked in a supermarket and was probably most generally known pityingly as the meddling Mrs. Knox’s daughter. Suddenly, with a shift in tempo, she was Odile in black tutu and feathers, her movements no longer dreamy and sad but sharply edged, evilly bewitching, the pirouettes faster, the leaps even higher, so that it was hard to believe she could be airborne without being held up by strings. Again the music changed. No longer Tchaikovsky, but a composer I didn’t recognize. This piece was not white or black, but the misty gray of cobwebs, and that is what Molly became-a filmy drift upon the air, fragile beyond belief. I held my breath in the fear that she would brush against the billiard table and disappear. Then, abruptly, it was over. The music faded away to nothing and did not resume. Molly removed the ballet shoes, replaced them with her ordinary ones, picked up the player, and after a final furtive glace around her as if fearing that the walls had tongues as well as ears, tiptoed from the room.
“Incredible!” I said into the silence that descended.
“I’ll be damned!” said Lord Belfrey. After which we started down the stairs to hover speechless in the space where the magic had occurred. After a couple of minutes, I looked at him, he looked at me, we both nodded and went out into the hall. Understandably, Molly had not lingered there clutching the evidence of her secret life-unless she was hiding behind one of the larger pieces of furniture, which would make no sense, especially as who knew what recording devices peered and listened out of holes that only the likes of Whitey would find charming. It spoke to Molly’s desperate need to dance that she had taken so great a risk in the library. But for her surreptitious entry and exit, I might have wondered if she had entertained the possibility that his lordship might be a hidden audience to be enchanted into choosing her for his bride. No, her fearful uncertainty had seemed genuine. By now I felt sure Molly was back in her room, back pressed to the door, trembling at the enormity of her daring, yet glowing at the memory of the music that had given her wings.
I could see the lake in the moonlight as I stared rapturously into his lordship’s dark, unfathomably thoughtful eyes.
“It was the same for me, Ellie.”
“And yet the most incredibly beautiful moment was when she became the cobweb fairy. Oh, someone,” unaware of doing so I placed a hand on his arm, “has to write a ballet just for her and call it that-Cobweb and… Candlelight. She was both, wasn’t she… shadow and radiance!”
“Yes.” His mouth curved gently.
“I suppose the reason I care so much,” I continued haltingly, “is that my mother was a ballet dancer. She died when I was seventeen.”
“Such a vulnerable age.”
“I still miss her.” Words I hadn’t spoken in a very long time. A shaky laugh. “Not an ounce of her talent came my way.”
“You have other gifts.” There was no missing the tenderness in his voice, but he was a kind man.
“Something must be done about Molly. Oh, I don’t mean,” sensing his reaction, “that I think you ought to choose her as your bride, only that she can’t be left to dance in hiding. It’s such a waste.”
He nodded. “How blind we are much of the time to who people really are. She seemed so ordinary, but she isn’t… in fact, quite the opposite. You are absolutely right, Ellie, something so lovely should not be kept hidden.”
“Yes,” I whispered, enraptured by the thought of Molly curtsying amidst a shower of flowers as the curtain came down behind her.
“Pardon me for interrupting.” The suavely pleasant voice belonged to my husband. In the act of turning, I saw the hand I recognized as possibly… just possibly… my own resting on Lord Belfrey’s arm. It weighed a ton as I lifted it; a crane would have been useful, but there wasn’t even one in that foolishly jam-packed hall. Silly! Of course I was uncomfortable for nothing. Ben couldn’t possibly think his lordship and I had been looking just a little bit too cozy. Or could he? That tightening of the jaw, the brilliant flash of his blue-green eyes that accentuated the dark line of his brows did give me pause; as had been the case with Wisteria Whitworth when Carson Grant came upon her gazing limpidly into the eyes of the highly eligible justice of the peace shortly after her release from Perdition Hall. She had merely responded to his avowals of sympathy, yet she sensed with palpitating bosom and trembling lashes that Carson had misconstrued. A triumphant joy had seared her soul, before melancholy seized her. Looking into Ben’s now-closed face, I missed out on the joy and had to settle for melancholy for the heart-ticking moments it took for common sense to return.
“Hello, darling!” Wide smile. “Lord Belfrey and I have been sharing a magical moment.” Sensing from the lack of responsive glow that as clarifications went this was opaque at best, I entreated his lordship: “Is it all right to tell him?”
“Of course, but perhaps it should go no further at present.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t time just now to share whatever makes the two of you look so pleased with yourselves.” Ben twitched a smile that didn’t fully reach his lips, let alone his eyes. “Georges sent me looking for you, Lord Belfrey. He wants you in the dining room in ten minutes for luncheon with the contestants.”
“I’ll be there.”
“And, Ellie, Georges has requested that you join the ladies for the sweet. Regrettably, as I understand it, his lordship won’t be present for that course, but chocolate is always a great compensation, isn’t it?”
Somehow it didn’t seem to be quite the right time to say that I didn’t wish to fall in with any other of Georges’s schemes and be drawn into explaining the reason. Suddenly both men were gone and I was alone with the creaking of floorboards. Or was it the sneering whispers of ghosts? At least, I thought, as I trailed up the staircase, they wouldn’t start guffawing. Even a hollow laugh would be too merry a sound at this Mucklesfeldian moment in time.