I was vaguely surprised that the flagstones onto which I’d swooned weren’t as hard as might have been expected. Indeed, they felt reasonably comfy. I explored them gingerly with my hand… the word horsehair seeping into mind… before opening my eyes to see someone standing over me. This person resolved into Ben, and behind him stood someone who closely resembled Mrs. Malloy, except that she was considerably taller than I remembered.
“It’s the lamp shade,” I whispered, and saw a relief flood Ben’s face. “How are you feeling, sweetheart?”
He knelt down to take my hand and I forced my eyes to blink my surroundings into clearer focus. We were no longer in the hall, although this huge room, whatever it was, bore a decided resemblance in overcrowding, and there was the same sense of decaying antiquity. The lighting, however, was somewhat better, although not sufficiently strong to hurt my eyes. It was the back of my head that ached. Not terribly, but with a dull throb.
“I’m on a sofa.” I stretched out my feet tentatively and saw, as if looking through a telescope, that they appeared properly attached. It was my shoes that had been removed. “Did you carry me in here?”
“That was our host; he came out into the hall, saw you on the floor, and insisted.” Did I detect resentment in Ben’s voice? Surely not. What husband achingly concerned for his beloved would resent another man doing what he could to help by swooping her up into his manly arms? I remembered driftingly that I had pictured his nibs as being almost as ancient as his abode and the thought of him tottering precariously across the flagstone under my weight became so sad that I blinked back tears. I peered around, searching for a figure huddled in a chair shakily trying to find his face with an inhaler.
“Where is he now?”
“Gone to tell his housekeeper to bring you a cup of tea and a blanket.”
“Thank God, you’ve come round, Mrs. H!” Mrs. Malloy pressed a heavily ringed hand to her bosom. “I could have sworn you was a gonner.”
“Now don’t say that!” a male voice exclaimed rather too loudly for my head. “One death this evening is more than enough! Very difficult these last few hours for his nibs! And him so looking forward to the filming. Not fair to him is what Mrs. Foot, Boris, and me-that works taking care of the house-has been feeling.”
A face swam into view. Even to my numbed thinking, this could be no other than Mr. Plunket. My glimpse of him through the front doorway had called to mind the image of a medieval saint, but that had to be due to a blurred halo of saffron light surrounding poorly delineated features. It was Mrs. Malloy’s description of his having a face like a gourd that told the tale. A flesh-colored gourd sprouting pale nodules, not an attractive sight for someone coming out of a faint. His nose was flat, his eyes lacked color, and his mouth was no more than a horizontal crease among the vertical ones. Not that he could help any of that. Not all men are born to be as darkly, dashingly handsome as Ben. Indeed, as she had demonstrated when unloading the fog, Mother Nature had her moments of being difficult just for the malevolent joy of it. Mr. Plunket was also not helped by his attire. He was wearing a threadbare navy suit, several sizes too skimpy for a man of his rotund build, a dishwater-gray shirt, and a badly creased tie, all of which looked as though they had previously been used as polishing cloths.
“Who died?” Interest stirred… coupled with the insensitivity of hope. If the deceased had been strangled by the suit of armor, it would be proved beyond argument that I had not imagined his attempt to attack me. As for the face above the banisters, I would think about her later… much later.
“Ellie, try to relax, you gave yourself a real crack on the head.” Ben placed a soothing hand on my brow before getting to his feet and staring around the room as if in search of reinforcements. Had a doctor been sent for? Surely not? To disprove the need, I attempted to sit up. Unfortunately, my head went into orbit and an accompanying ringing in my ears forced me to lie back down.
“Who died?” I repeated fretfully.
“One of the”-Mr. Plunket paused, and despite my still swimming head I sensed he was making a verbal adjustment-“people… expected to descend on his nibs for the coming week. The others aren’t due till tomorrow morning. But this one asked if she could show up this evening. Had been invited to spend the day with someone in the area, she said. Why she couldn’t have spent the night with whoever it was is what Mrs. Foot, Boris, and me wondered, but his nibs said he’d no objection.”
“So what happened?” Mrs. Malloy is not one to suffer the long-winded gladly, with the exception of herself, of course.
“It was the fog…”
“An accident on the road?” Ben’s gaze met mine. He had to be thinking this could have been our fate if we had gone on, and feeling better about having followed the van onto the private drive. How puny was embarrassment to the male psyche when compared to the hovering visage of the Grim Reaper.
“No, right outside.” Mr. Plunket pointed to the window behind my sofa. “Happened three hours or so ago, when the visibility was even worse than when you got here. His nibs had said for us to keep our ears open for the sound of her car approaching the drive. And it was Boris that went out, but not quick enough. If he hadn’t lost time looking for a torch and not finding one, things could have been different.”
“So, cutting the story short,” urged Mrs. Malloy with all the authority provided by the lamp shade still on her head.
“I blame myself for not getting outside ahead of him with the hurricane lamp that’s kept in the grandfather clock, to guide that poor woman in safe.” The nodules on Mr. Plunket’s face were the more evident as he moved closer to the standing lamp at the foot of the sofa. “Gone off the drive she must have done onto the side lawn and through a broken section of a garden wall, down into the ravine that’s thick with trees. Like I said, Boris got out of the house too late. When we heard the crash, his nibs, Mrs. Foot, and me followed as quick as we could with the help of the lamp. But there wasn’t nothing could be done. It was a job getting the car door open but we managed between us. Luckily the interior lights worked. His nibs felt for the pulse in her neck. Nothing. She’d snuffed it all right and we come back inside so he could phone the authorities.”
“Did they have trouble getting here?” Ben began pacing, his eyes shifting from me to the door and back. I knew what he was thinking and he was right. I desperately needed a cup of tea or if possible something stronger to keep me from starting to cry. Un-fortunately, if there were a bottle of brandy in the room, a team of detectives would be needed to find it. An automobile accident amply explained by the fog would not have caused investigators to linger on the premises. Routine for them, while to us the deceased was a nameless, faceless stranger, but surely she was someone’s loved one… wife… mother… daughter… friend. What an agonizing shock for the bereaved to receive by phone or a knock at the door!
“It’s what they’re used to, isn’t it? The police and medical people, I mean, getting to places in the worst possible conditions, and of course Lord Belfrey turned on all the exterior lights for them.”
Hadn’t they been on when the woman arrived? This thought blocked out any other.
“Not that they was likely to do much good, that fog being thicker than a sheepskin coat.”
“Lord Belfrey,” echoed Mrs. Malloy, as if prayerfully reeling off the names of a dozen holy martyrs.
“That’s his nibs,” replied Mr. Plunket with a prosaic scratch of a nodule below his lower lip.
“A proper lordship?” Mrs. M pursued hopefully, while sinking into an armchair that looked as if it had been rescued after being set out next to a dustbin a hundred years ago.
“What other kind is there?” muttered Ben, his eyes fixed anxiously on my recumbent form.
“Oh, you know,” an airy wave of a ringed hand, “the sort as is given for your lifetime only-that doesn’t get passed on through the family. Or don’t you get made a lord for being a famous jockey or actor?” Her rouge brightened at this possibility. “Maybe that’s just for sirs and dames and all that lot.”
“The title’s been in the Belfrey family all of six hundred years.” Pride was evident in every throb of Mr. Plunket’s voice. And despite my increasing headache it struck that he had evinced no emotion of approaching scale when describing the appallingly recent death just beyond the doorstep.
“Have they lived here the whole time?” Mrs. Malloy inquired in a breathless rush.
“Give or take the times it was taken away on account of them being on the wrong side politically. Tudor times was the worst, from what Mrs. Foot, Boris, and me understand it. And for what? is what we ask ourselves. Roman Catholic… Protestant! Who gives a flaming candle?”
My mother-in-law for one, I thought dizzily. There is a woman who has never voluntarily missed mass a day in her life and can discuss the impenetrables of transubstantiation with the best of them, including St. Augustine had he paid her a vision. My Jewish father-in-law might not have made him quite so welcome; he’s a crotchety man, not at all welcoming to drop-in guests at the flat above the greengrocer’s shop in Tottenham.
“But there’s an end to everything, even bloodthirsty kings and queens,” said Mr. Plunket as if reading from a pamphlet on sale for twenty pence at the entrance booth. “The Belfreys always came back home to Mucklesfeld Manor, and some of them-the ones that wasn’t given over to living it up wild-went about setting it back to rights, just like his nibs has made up his mind to do. Although who can say as to what will happen now that woman’s been taken away in a body bag. Mrs. Foot and Boris both talk like it won’t make no difference but…”
Mrs. Malloy cut into his ruminations. “Mucklesfeld?” Her voice was sharp-edged with disappointment. “Not Belfrey?”
I heard what sounded like a hiccupping cough, but looking to where Mr. Plunket still stood at the foot of the sofa, I realized he was chortling. In the sallow light cast by the lamp nearest him and others scattered stingily around the vast room, his heightened color did not look good. A decidedly unbecoming greenishorange that confirmed the pimply-gourd effect.
“Belfrey? Now that would set the place up as a joke, wouldn’t it? Bats in the belfry, there’d be no stopping the schoolboy silliness. No, the place got its name from the old muck fields hereabouts. Famous they was; some said the best in all England. Wonderful it was for growing celery. But then they went and dried up, just like the family money did. As his nibs can’t be blamed for.” He stared down at Mrs. Malloy in her chair. “He only came into the title and property last year after his cousin that was then Lord Belfrey died. Spent much of the last thirty years in America, he did-Alaska mostly, although I always thought that was Russia.”
“Whatever, it’s abroad, isn’t it?” Mrs. Malloy responded ingratiatingly. “I’m sure his lordship was glad to get back to the UK; a title in America has to be as much use as a fur coat in the tropics.” If she expected an appreciative chuckle from Mr. Plunket, she was disappointed. He stood smoothing down the too-short sleeves of his jacket.
“From all we’ve heard, the cousin was a miserable old blighter that let Mucklesfeld go to rack and ruin while he shut himself away from the world.”
This topic would have been fascinating if I’d been sufficiently unwoozy to be my usual nosy self. Even though I seriously doubted I’d slipped gracefully to the floor during my faint, I thought it more likely my headache was due to emotional stress than physical injury. For whole minutes at a time my mind successfully warded off the memory of the Metal Knight clawing at my throat, but the nightmarish face peering down at me through the upper banisters refused to be banished. Stupid of me. Once I could think clearly I would hit upon a logical explanation for both incidents, but the aura of malevolence that had accompanied the latter… would I be able to convince myself that it had arisen entirely out of my penchant for the Gothic novel?
“And like I said, his nibs has been hoping to refill the coffers at Mucklesfeld. He’s had to make a decision that many a proud man wouldn’t have the guts for. This television show…”
Ben cut him off. “I realize this isn’t a cottage. But how long should it take for your employer to come back and inquire after my wife or at least send one of the other members of the staff with a reviving beverage?”
“Now then, Mr. H.” Mrs. Malloy sent him the admonishing glance of a nanny who doesn’t appreciate being shown up when bringing a little person down from the nursery into the drawing room. “Mr. Plunket has explained why things are bound to be a bit topsy-turvy this evening. To top it off his lordship has them television people here and we all know how temperamental people in show business can be, even without that poor woman being killed.” No doubt she would have added that it never rained but it poured or something equally platitudinous, but Mr. Plunket was off down his own road.
“Very inconvenient, that was.” His lugubrious tone did not quite make up for his word choice.
“Inconvenient?” Ben raised an eyebrow at him.
“As well as sad,” Mr. Plunket amended, “tragic more like. That goes without saying, of course.”
“Was she… the deceased woman… a relative or close friend of his lordship?” I roused myself to ask.
“Never met or spoken with her. She was one of the contestants, you see.”
“The what?” Ben added his echo to that of Mrs. Malloy, while bending over the sofa to smoothe back my hair and search my face with anxious eyes.
“Contestants.” Mr. Plunket shuffled on his feet, which like his clothes appeared too small for him. “She would have made the sixth. The other five will be getting here tomorrow if it’s not decided to put them off.”
“What are they contesting for?” That was Ben asking, while looking toward the obdurately closed door.
“The position of Lady Belfrey.”
I actually heard Mrs. Malloy’s chin drop.
“One of the lucky ladies will… if the filming goes forward… be awarded his hand in marriage during the final segment. That’s as Mrs. Foot, Boris, and me understand things. The director, Monsieur Georges LeBois-French like you might guess-hasn’t had much to say to us since he arrived this morning. All he’s been going on about is how bad the food has been.”
If Mrs. Malloy hadn’t already been seated, she would have sunk into the nearest chair or wastepaper basket.
“We can only hope the rest of the crew that just got here won’t turn their noses up at what’s on the table because it isn’t snails and frog legs.” Mr. Plunket wasn’t looking at anyone in particular; indeed, his eyes had disappeared into his gourd face.
Clearly in desperate need of something to hold on to, Mrs. Malloy finally removed the lamp shade and her hat along with it. “You told us earlier out in the hall that they’re doing a TV reality show. Are you saying it’s one of them bachelor ones?”
“I think he’s spelled it out,” Ben snapped at her, something he almost never does.
“What’s the show to be called?” she inquired dreamily while crushing the shape out of the lamp shade.
“Here Comes the Bride.”
“My, don’t that sound lovely! And I expect the contestants are all lovely young things with perfect figures and faces that have never been used.” She was all eager wistfulness as she continued to pulverize the hapless lamp shade.
“Not chosen for their looks they haven’t been,” replied Mr. Plunket. “The idea, as presented to his lordship by Monsieur LeBois, was for something different from other programs of the type. That’s the attraction what they’re banking on to garner-I think that’s the word-a big audience. The contestants have been picked because of other qualities: their willingness to muck in at Mucklesfeld is how his nibs puts it. Deal with all that’s wrong with the place, pitch in with the cleanup, show they are up to the job of being Lady Belfrey while the ceilings come down about their ears.”
“Hardly romantic.” Ben paced over to the door, opened it, and closed it again.
“Oh, I don’t know.” I found myself sitting up on the sofa. Had I thought about it, I would have realized that neither the horrible face peering through the banisters nor the aggressive Metal Knight had terrorized my thoughts for the past few moments. “A woman with a strong practical streak can have her appeal, especially if she makes the most of her looks, something the beauties of this world don’t have to bother about, hopefully, until it is too late. Did Lord Belfrey make the selections, Mr. Plunket?”
“That was done by Monsieur LeBois from the hundreds of written applications and photos sent in. He and his nibs met some six months ago in London, introduced by a mutual acquaintance. The idea for the show came out of their conversation. They got together again. You can see the mutual benefit to the winning contestant and his nibs. She’d get to become a titled lady and he’d be able to use his share of the financial proceeds from the show to set Mucklesfeld back on its feet.”
“But now things are up in the air,” I mused.
“They always was in a way.” Mr. Plunket oozed despondency. “Monsieur LeBois hasn’t managed as yet to get a firm commitment from any of the stations, he’s filming on spec-is how I think it’s called-but as Mrs. Foot, Boris, and me understand it, there’s been considerable interest.”
“Is Lord Belfrey content to marry for what it can bring him?” I felt, rather than saw, Ben’s lip curl.
“It’s how things has been done in the great families for centuries and it’s not as how his nibs is young and wild to trot. Fifty-six is what he’ll be come his next birthday. Can’t say he’s not of an age to know his own mind and stick to it down the years. Besides, his heart’s already taken by one he can’t have. That said, he’ll choose the one that’s right for him and Mucklesfeld and do right by her through the years.”
But would it be a case of separate bedrooms, as had at first been the case when Wisteria Whitworth married the estimable Carson Grant after the timely death of the husband who in order to gain control over her fortune had contrived her removal to the hellish confines of Perdition Hall? A woman subjected to the suspect ministrations of Dr. Megliani, whose medical degree had been bought from a cloaked figure with a glass eye and a missing forefinger in the backroom of an opium den in a back street of Soho. An acknowledged beauty, once the toast of London, now reduced to being force-fed lumpy gruel by the slatternly female warden (I winced away from this image) could not be expected to cast care behind her like a silk stole and respond instantly to the overtures of a man who had been a notable rake before gaining fierce self-control over his baser self.
That he was regarded as the handsomest man in England, was fluent in all modern and dead languages, rode to hounds as if born in the saddle, and fenced like the Count of Monte Cristo, added not a whit to his conceit. Though his love for Wisteria invaded every aspect of his being, Carson Grant-whom I had naturally pictured as a young Cary of the same last name-had held his seering passion in check with an iron will and a clenched jaw.
Tormented beyond his limits, he had removed himself to his study; and when inclement weather prevented his stripping off his intricately tied cravat and French cambric shirt and diving into the deep stillness of the lake behind the formal rose garden, he strode off on a twenty-mile walk across the moors, returning only when he knew himself too weary to accost her with anguished beseechings to permit him his rights as a husband. Of course, one hundred and thirty some pages later, all had ended as it should, with her wistful acknowledgment that a marriage in name only left something lacking, including the possibility of an heir.
Back to life at Mucklesfeld Manor. At fifty-six, Lord Belfrey might have no interest in siring children, making youth, or lack thereof, insignificant in the selection of a bride. My eyes met Mrs. Malloy’s and a tremor seized me on perceiving their dreamy glow. I knew with appalling certainty that she was inwardly humming “Here Comes the Bride.” Mr. Plunket had stated that his lordship was not seeking a dainty delight of a woman to take to wife but a sturdy helpmeet, one willing to roll up her shirtsleeves and trouser legs and begin setting his house to rights. And who better to do that than a woman who had spent her working life cleaning other people’s homes? Tragically, one of the contestants was dead and a vacancy yawned.
I could understand from whence hope sprang. But even if his lordship and the director did by some remote chance add her to the list of hopefuls, the odds were five to one against her being the one chosen to become Lady Belfrey. And Mrs. Malloy was the worst of bad losers. She had snarled for a week after not winning Pin the Tail on the Donkey at Rose’s last birthday party. No, no! I could not risk her being mortally wounded on the path to a loveless marriage. She must be wrested from Mucklesfeld Manor without delay.
“Sweetheart, your eyes are glazed. Did you doze off?” Ben was all tender solicitude.
“Just drifting.” I gave him a staunch smile. Shuffling my legs off the sofa from a semi-reclining position produced an involuntary wince. My headache had gone from minor to full-blown. I was sure I looked like death. Which in this house was perhaps not a novelty. Mr. Plunket appeared not to notice.
“There’s no denying that the lady’s death puts his lordship in a difficult position.” He looked more than ever like a talking gourd. “Will he think it right to go ahead with filming Here Comes the Bride? Would it seem right to the sponsors of the show? Would it be a turnoff for the viewing audience?”
“But that’s what them shows is all about-high drama and cutthroat angling for the main chance,” responded Mrs. Malloy stoutly from her chair. “’Course, I don’t want to sound callous, but there it is. Talk about grabbing the audience by the throat-revealing the tragedy up front and going on from there. Especially if his lordship could find himself a replacement candidate in the nick of time… right out of the blue, so to speak.” The dreamy glow had returned. Clearly no time was to be lost in rescuing her from her giddy aspirations. At any moment Lord Belfrey might swan into the room to find himself a marked man. “His nibs is a sensitive bloke.” Mr. Plunket’s voice quivered. “He’ll not want to show what could look like disrespect to the deceased, may she rest in peace. Trouble is, he’s up against Monsieur LeBois. With him it’s all about the finances, what he’s already put into the project, along with whatever he’s agreed on paying his crew, including the cameraman and the staging fellow that showed up minutes ahead of you three. Can’t just send them off with a flea in their ear is what Mrs. Foot, Boris, and me heard him saying.”
Ben stood seething, lips compressed; eyes blazing the color of the emerald (a genuine fake) mounted in one of Mrs. Malloy’s rings, waiting to break in the instant Mr. Plunket paused on a shaky breath.
“No disrespect to your boss,” he enunciated bitingly, “but his sensitivity appears to be lacking where my wife is concerned. It’s been a good twenty minutes since he absented himself and has neither returned to inquire how she is feeling or seen to be providing her with any refreshment.”
“Now then, Mr. H,” Mrs. Malloy shoved in her oar, “there’s no need to get rattled. Like Mr. Plunket’s been saying, his lordship’s got a lot on his plate. Could be he’s on the phone with the dead lady’s family or the funeral home. It don’t do to be selfish. Besides,” she looked at me and added with what I considered extreme callousness, “Mrs. H quite often gets a headache when she gets herself worked up. Tension ones, they’re called. My next-door neighbor is a martyr to them. And it’s not like Mrs. H fell hard back there in the hall, just slumped down, bottom first, as I saw it.”
Forgive her, I thought nobly; she had to be jealous that it was me, not her, whom Lord Belfrey had swept up in his aristocratic arms and deposited on the sofa. Also she very likely had a point. My nerves had been stretched to the limit during the drive through the fog. In addition to which we had failed to find the restaurant we had been seeking and I’m a person inclined to go all hollow and wobbly without food. Perhaps with a good helping of fish and chips inside me I wouldn’t have succumbed to foolish terror and fainted. I started to say this to Ben, but he was still glowering at poor Mr. Plunket, who was making apologetic noises to the effect that his nibs had intended for Mrs. Foot and or Boris to bring in a tea tray.
“But as you can imagine, sir, they’re discombobulated themselves.”
“In that case, let’s not inconvenience them or yourself.” Ben attempted to contain his irritation. “If you’ll direct me toward the kitchen, I’ll put on a kettle and…”
“Now, I don’t know as that’s such a good idea,” Mr. Plunket passed a hand over his pimpled brow, “the stove’s that old and unreliable, none of the knobs turn unless you’ve got the trick of it, and if you manage, which I never can, the gas flames shoot up to take off your eyebrows. No, no, begging your pardon, better to wait on Mrs. Foot or Boris. Can’t risk an accident, so hard on this other. His nibs would never get over it if worse come to worst and you was to blow yourself up.”
“I really am feeling loads better,” I announced valiantly, “so much so that I think we should leave right away. I am sure Mrs. Malloy agrees with me. We are all eager to get home at the end of our holiday. The fog’s bound to have lifted sufficiently by now.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Mrs. Malloy demurred.
“I’m a chef,” Ben informed Mr. Plunket. “I’m entirely capable of dealing with the most resistant kitchen equipment and making my wife a cup of tea.”
“A chef!” Mr. Plunket sounded taken aback.
“That’s correct. I’ve even written some cookery books that have been reasonably well received, so if you would kindly direct me toward the kitchen…”
“What kind of meals? English… or the Frenchified sort?”
But for my increasing headache, I might have pondered the intensity of Mr. Plunket’s response. Before Ben could demand either a compass or a map, the door opened to admit a tall, gangly man with very black hair and eyes in contrast to his chalk white face. Even though not at my sharpest, I was struck by his resemblance to Lurch of the Addams family. He stood gaping, awkwardly dangling a hand on the knob, presumably in hope of preventing the door from closing on the woman endeavoring to enter behind him.
“Ah!” Ben sucked in a relieved breath and shot toward her to remove the tray she was carrying. Not surprisingly, she appeared startled at finding herself standing hands spread, holding up thin air by the handles. But her surprise was nothing to mine. Hers was the face I had glimpsed through horror-glazed eyes peering down at me through the banisters. In the dimly lit room there was the grainy quality of a bad photo to her form and features, but she did not now send a chill through my bones.
Truth be told, it was impossible not to experience a woman-to-woman pang of sympathy for her unfortunate appearance. She was tall, so often a good thing, but in her case not an enhancement. She loomed in the manner of a man playing the part of a woman in a farce. Her smile, uncertain… experimental, was cruelly ridiculed by the absence of her front teeth. The shapeless dress and plodding shoes seemed as false as the clumpily curled shoulder-length gray locks that elongated her nose and chin to an extreme degree. Sadly it probably wasn’t a wig which could be taken off and tossed in the wastepaper basket. Remembering how often I had condemned my own form in the mirror, I internalized a prayer of gratitude for mercies received. I dared not look in Mrs. Malloy’s direction, but counted on her being a churchgoing woman, when she remembered it was a Sunday, not to exude an air of smug complacency.
“This here’s Mrs. Foot,” Mr. Plunket waved a hand in my direction, “her as is his nibs’s housekeeper.”
It could have been Mrs. Danvers, I reminded myself, as I added my murmur to Ben and Mrs. Malloy’s chorus of “A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Foot.” Ben had placed the tray on an already crowded table and now poured and passed me a cup of dishwater-colored tea, accompanied by a biscuit of the same shade of gray as Mrs. Foot’s hair. Her smile broadened, losing the uncertainty but gaining in the display of missing teeth.
“And that there behind her,” continued Mr. Plunket, “is Boris, his nibs’s odd job man.”
Lurch flopped a flaccid white hand, intoning in an expressionless voice: “Can always count on Boris.”
“One in a million.” Mrs. Foot was now positively beaming as she clumped further into the room. “Always the one to get the job done when needed.” She even sounded like a man pretending to be a woman and I mentally dared Mrs. Malloy to titter. “Feeling better, are you, dearie?” She stood staring down at me, and I have to admit to feeling a quiver of-not exactly revulsion… more awkwardness-on spotting the curiosity verging on thirsty fascination in her pale, globular eyes.
“Much better.” I took a resolute sip of tea. “Thank you so much for bringing this.”
“You do have more color.” Ben sounded as relieved as if he’d just noticed I was coming out of a ninety-day coma. A few more minutes and surely we could politely leave. Mrs. Malloy accepted her cup and saucer while settling even deeper into her chair. We might need a forklift to move her, but we’d get her out of here, too.
Mrs. Foot shifted her gaze from my face to fix it upon Mr. Plunket. “There is a strange resemblance, isn’t there? No wonder his nibs got his self in a tizz. Spooky, you could call it.”
“Now then, I wouldn’t say that.” Mr. Plunket nudged his way cautiously around the words, as if one too many might trip him up. “It’s ever easy to imagine things in this house.”
“What sort of resemblance?” Mrs. Malloy, who does not enjoy sitting on the sidelines, made a valiant effort to sound pleasantly interested.
“To a lady in one of the family portraits.”
“Really?” I completely forgot my woozy state and the desire to escape back into the fog. “I’d be interested in taking a look at the painting if it wouldn’t be an imposition.”
“It’s no longer in the house.” Boris must have spent hours in a dank cellar perfecting his sepulcher intonation. He was now standing directly behind Mrs. Foot, hunching first one shoulder, then the next, in an automated fashion that brought to mind the terror that had assailed me in the hall.
Turning on the sofa to face the assembled more fully, I said with determined lightness: “You said just now, Mr. Plunket, that it’s easy to imagine things in this house, but I don’t think it was imagination that caused me to faint.” I came to a halt, aware that it wouldn’t do to mention that I had mistaken Mrs. Foot for a ghoulish visitant. “I’m quite sure,” I plunged on, “that the suit of armor tried to attack me.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Ben bent over me, almost oversetting the teacup, “that has to have been a nightmare.”
“It was, but not one produced by the faint,” I responded firmly. “I was scared stiff. Its hands would have closed around my throat if I hadn’t nipped back in time.”
“That’s our Boris!” Mrs. Foot reached back a hand to pat his arm. “Always tinkering about for the fun of it. Last year he got the dining-room chandelier to spin. Oh, his nibs did have a good laugh! We all did. Couldn’t stop chortling for ages, could we, Mr. Plunket?”
“Always good to see his nibs enjoying himself.”
“My, what fun you all have at Mucklesfeld Manor.” Mrs. Malloy oozed rapt admiration, drawing Mrs. Foot’s attention not so much to her as to what lay at her feet.
“Now how did that get in here? It’s the one from the gallery table lamp.”
“It dropped from the banisters onto my friend’s head,” I said.
“And if I’m not complaining who should,” fired back said friend, “a very handsome shade and no damage done to me hat, as isn’t my best by a long shot. I’ve a much smarter one at home that me friends,” her voice took on a most unbecoming simpering quality, “call me lady of the manor hat.”
I was watching Mrs. Foot as closely as possible, given the weak lighting. She was shaking her head, batting the gray locks against her neck. Her look of amused wonderment was perfect, but I again felt the prickle down my spine that spread to a subzero chill. She was smiling her jovial gap-toothed smile, but I saw the face peering malevolently through the banisters. Did she believe I hadn’t seen her?
“Well, isn’t that something!” She looked from Boris-who had shifted further to her side-to Mr. Plunket, and back again. “I was up there at the time crawling around the floor doing a lastminute bit of dusting, and when I got to my feet you’d,” turning those globs of eyes on me, “you’d gone down in a faint and I can’t say I noticed the lamp shade on the other lady’s head, let alone saw it go over the railing. Like I’ve said, odd things do happen at Mucklesfeld that have us all scratching our heads.”
I hoped she wouldn’t put action to words. That hair of hers looked as though it had been around far longer than she had been on this earth and I was afraid of what might fly out.
“How’s the tea?” she asked.
The truthful answer would have been dreadful, but I said it had put life back in me. To prove the point, I attempted to get off the sofa, but was compelled by an upsurge of ridiculous dizziness to sink back down. The nibble of gray biscuit had clearly not sat well with me. And the headache was back in sickening force. I wondered if I had a migraine. I’d never had one, but as the cheerful cliché goes, there is a first time for everything. Given the stresses of the day, coupled with an atmosphere that seemed ripe for a lifetime of languishing as an invalid waiting for the doctor to arrive with his medical bag stuffed full of leeches and the recommendation to keep the hartshorn always at hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d come down with something worse. Ben eyed me worriedly, but Mrs. Malloy appeared cheerfully oblivious. The thought even crossed my mind that she was looking on the bright side of things.
“Mrs. Foot makes a very good cuppa.” Mr. Plunket’s face creased into admiration.
“Best tea maker in the world.” Boris cracked a smile that was ghastly to behold. Mrs. Foot’s smile was pleased but modest.
“That’s going a bit far. But wouldn’t say much for me if I hadn’t got the hang of it after brewing up more pots of tea than was ever seen in China during all the years I was a ward maid, trundling the trolley around to the patients. Poor dears, it was what they lived for-a cup of char and a biscuit.”
Unbidden, I pictured her handing Wisteria Whitworth a cup of pale slop and ordering her to drink it down or could be her next treatment wouldn’t go as nice and smooth as would be hoped. I was being unfair. Blame that on the fact that even Florence Nightingale’s cool hand upon my brow wouldn’t have brought me bounding back to life.
“Yes, poor dears is right. Sad, it was, how few visitors most of them got. I used to say to the doctors it wasn’t right them lying there without a loved one’s hand to hold when they got weepy. ’Course there was exceptions…”
“I must get my wife to a doctor.” Ben was out of patience. He is always at his most handsome when agitated on my behalf. A pity I wasn’t up to appreciating the flaring of his nostrils, the muscle twitching in his left cheek, the arrogant set of his dark head. “Is there one nearby that I could phone and ask to see her?”
“There’s Dr. Rowley, him that’s his nibs’s cousin and has his surgery in his house this side of Grimkirk village,” replied Mr. Plunket, looking all at once like an important pumpkin. “But there’s no need for you to get on the blower. Right after bringing the lady in here, his nibs went off to fetch him. Said, given the fog, he’d walk rather than take the car. Sensible after what happened earlier. Could be he got there to find Dr. Rowley was out or just couldn’t go at a quick pace…”
He was interrupted by the door opening to reveal a man who was the living image of an older, silver-haired Cary Grant… or equally believably Carson Grant. He who had loved with invincible tenderness Wisteria Whitworth. Behind him came a lesser member of the male species holding a doctor’s black bag. My headache and queasy state notwithstanding, the centuries-old, murkily lighted room came suddenly and vibrantly to life. Amazingly, it was obvious as he crossed the room that this impossibly handsome… virile… authoritive (need I add urbane?) man had eyes only for me.