W e found one of Livonia Mayberry’s gloves at the foot of the fire escape, or to be more exact the dog-which I had come to think of as Thumper-performed this feat, bringing it to me with a look of undeserved pride. Thanking him profusely, I told him without much optimism to fetch the other one. This command sent him rushing around in circles, and I was about to accept that Livonia and I would have to go in search ourselves when he dashed forward, veered first to the left and then to the right, before returning with the glove dangling from his mouth.
They were, as advertised, navy blue leather. Luckily, they did not appear to have been chewed, but neither did they look as though they had been purchased at Harrods or some exclusive boutique. More likely, I thought spitefully, Harold had bought them on sale in a bargain shop and congratulated himself that Livonia-as had proved true-would be in transports at his thoughtfulness.
She expressed gratitude for my help, then took the pair without looking them over for signs of doggy mauling and put them directly into the pocket of the Windbreaker I had lent her. I took this as a positive sign that, despite the news of Suzanne Varney’s tragic death and the emotional distress that had preceded that news, she might be coming around to the idea of making a more conventional entrance into the lion’s den that was Mucklesfeld Manor. To test the waters, I suggested that we walk down to the gates outside where she had left her car, with the keys still inside, along with her own jacket, handbag, and suitcase.
I was disappointed to see her waver. “You’re right… I’m almost sure you are, that Daddy would tell me to stay, that I should think of this coming week as a holiday with the chance to meet some new and possibly interesting people. But,” she looked up at the vast rear of the house with its multitude of windows, almost indistinguishable in their heavily grimed state from the gray stone, “it does look grim-the sort of place where you could imagine terrible things having happened over the centuries. Murders that went undetected because the victims got locked away in secret rooms or walled up behind the paneling.”
A woman with more in common with me and Mrs. Malloy than I would have thought. I shivered even though I was wearing a thick sweater over a long-sleeved linen shirt and woolen slacks.
“Any place of antiquity might look this way after years of abysmal neglect,” I said more stoutly than I felt. “It will be interesting to learn why the former Lord Belfrey failed in his stewardship. Was his inheritance already seriously reduced when he took over at Mucklesfeld or did he squander the resources that could have sustained the property?”
A glimmer of interest showed in Livonia’s blue eyes, and a pale glow of sunlight breaking through the gauzy veil of early morning brought out the sheen in the firmly set waves of her dark hair. “I wonder how much Lord Belfrey will tell us about the history of Mucklesfeld?”
“Not me,” I reminded her.
“I still wish you weren’t leaving.”
“Even if I were staying, you wouldn’t see much of me. You’ll be caught up in activities from which I’d be excluded, especially when Lord Belfrey spends time with you and the other five contestants.”
“There’ll be your friend.” She brightened marginally. “Is she easy to get to know?”
“Her name’s Roxie Malloy. I’ll tell her to take you under her wing.” If she didn’t without huffing and puffing, I thought grimly, I’d hide her makeup bag. Actually, it was more of a suitcase.
“Do you think we’ll be divided into teams?” Unease trembled on her lips.
“I haven’t thought about the format.” Staring around the wilderness with its suggestion of having once been formal gardens, I found myself wondering about Georges LeBois’s vision for Here Comes the Bride. It occurred to me that I had never been anywhere near the glamorous world of film. Our stressful arrival at Mucklesfeld Manor had blunted any latent groupie instincts; but now the questions jostled around my mind: How much individual time would Lord Belfrey spend with the contestants? Would there be competitons… described as Challenges to make them sound more dramatic? Such as a morning spent in a cellar slowly filling with algae-covered water, with floating rats leaking in from the now underground moat? Or a race to see who could swing fastest from one chandelier to another-while being smothered in cobwebs-down the length of the ballroom? Or, even more daunting, striving to be the first to finish a meal prepared by Mrs. Foot?
I took another glance round the grounds-as much as I could see of them from that vantage point-and felt a pang for the lopsided statues, moss-covered birdbaths, and capsizing garden benches scattered around what must once have been geometrically precise grassy terraces leading down to a scythed lawn with a central fountain-now reduced to a broken crock. All that stood in visible testament to a patrician past were groupings of lordly trees, their lofty branches spread in benediction over what might once have been an Eden. Sinful the number that likely would need removing due to lack of pruning and neglected root systems. What chance was there that the proceeds from Here Comes the Bride would produce more for Mucklesfeld than the superficially cosmetic?
The dog woofed as if suggesting a penny for my thoughts and Livonia asked if I knew a lot about old houses.
“I’m an interior decorator-part time now that I have a family-and I did take a few courses on the architectural periods during my training. I can tell that Mucklesfeld’s stone facade postdates the interior by a couple of hundred years. And I think the grounds were probably re-landscaped at around the same time.” My imagination warmed to the images invoked. “An eighteenth-century Lord Belfrey must have decided the place needed a face-lift, or perhaps the family coffers were overflowing at that time and he did the manly thing-went on an out-of-control spending spree to make him feel good about himself.”
“Harold thinks going mad on shopping is buying two loaves of bread at once.”
Silently, much as I detested the man unseen, I conceded that in general this was more in line with the male psyche than my version. “Shall we go down to your car?” I suggested.
She accompanied me meekly toward the drive, which ended with the gapped and crumbling wall, while the dog trotted soberly ahead as if demonstrating that he was not the sort to run away from home. I was now convinced that he did belong at Mucklesfeld or had accompanied Georges LeBois. Regrettably, if the latter were the case, he didn’t take his duties of canine assistance to a man in a wheelchair with an excess of dedication-unless he belonged to a labor union that required his being given designated time off.
“Perhaps he married an heiress, Ellie.”
Momentarily I couldn’t think who Livonia was talking about, but I was pleased by her comfortable use of my name. She had seemed so self-deprecating that I had imagined it would take months or even years for her to drop the Miss, Ms., or Mrs. with a new acquaintance. However, before flattering myself unduly, I recognized she now found herself in unknown territory.
“Oh,” I said, “my eighteenth-century Lord Belfrey! The pragmatic marriage would have been the order of his day, wouldn’t it? And now here is his current lordship engaging in a highly modern interpretation of selecting a bride with the most to bring to Mucklesfeld.”
“It sounds cold-blooded,” replied Livonia, as we skirted a sundial lurking in a tangle of tall weeds. “Still, I suppose it’s understandable he would feel morally obliged to honorably fulfill his stewardship. With his not having children, in particular a son, who will inherit the title and estate at his death?”
“He has a cousin,” I said, pleased that she was showing an increasing trickle of interest in Mucklesfeld and Lord Belfrey. “His name’s Tommy Rowley and he’s the local doctor. I met him last night.” No need to go into details, although I would have to warn her at some point about the maniacal suit of armor.
She eyed me in puzzlement. We were now walking down the badly rutted drive that sloped fairly precipitously on our left into scrub woodland. “I’d have thought that if he’s in line, his name would also be Belfrey.”
“Rowley was his mother’s maiden name. His father made the switch because of some family feud. I got the impression that he hadn’t taken kindly to being the third son. Probably got his nose out of joint from being stuck wearing hand-me-downs and told his share of the ancestral inheritance would be a predisposition to severe acne and early balding.”
“Did Dr. Rowley display any hostility toward his lordship?”
“They seemed friendly.”
“I suppose he was at Mucklesfeld because of the car accident that took Suzanne Varney’s life,” Livonia continued before I could reply. “I still can’t take it in. Did anyone say if she died instantly, or was she able to talk… if only to give them some idea what happened?”
“Tommy’s belief was that she was killed on impact.”
“It’s simply too awful.” Livonia swayed against me, stepping in a pothole. “I’ve always had a fear of getting into a bad accident. Harold says it’s because I know nothing about how cars work, so can never be in complete control of a vehicle. He’s right. I’m not the least bit mechanical, but I suppose I could take a course and hope the instructor wouldn’t lose patience with me if I got the battery and the engine mixed up. In this day and age, a woman on her own should know how to fend for herself in a crisis…” She choked up.
There hadn’t been much fending that Suzanne Varney could have done in her moment of ultimate crisis, I was thinking when we reached the tall iron gates that heralded the end of the drive. Parked against the roadside curb was a pale blue Volkswagen Beetle. Livonia opened the driver’s side door with a timidity that suggested she was expecting an arm to reach out from the back-seat to grab her round the throat. I wasn’t all that surprised, therefore, when she screamed: “There’s someone crouched down on the other side of the car. I saw the top of a head.”
Even incoherent thought, let alone a verbal response, became impossible with Thumper barking agreement. Our blinking eyes perceived a woman coming round the front of the car.
“Did I scare you? Sorry. I’d got some gravel in my shoe and bent down to shake it out.”
“Oh!” Livonia forced a tremulous smile.
“It’s so early,” I said with what I hoped was a light lilt, “we thought we would be the only ones out and about.”
“An acquaintance kindly dropped me off and it had to be at first light because she has to be back in time for work at nine and it’s a good two-hour drive. I was about to go for a walk and get the lay of the land around Mucklesfeld.”
“Oh!” Livonia repeated, but this time there was interest in her voice. “Are you another of the contestants for Here Comes the Bride?”
The woman nodded. She was a diminutive female with short fly-away beige hair and a narrow, thin-featured face. Indeed, her overall appearance was beige-complexion, hiker’s jacket, and twill slacks. The only touch of color came from her brown eyes and matching loafers. “And the two of you?” she inquired.
I explained about the fog and my overnight status. Livonia admitted tentatively to being a fellow contestant, but added that she was having some second thoughts now that a meeting with Lord Belfrey was at hand.
“Don’t go getting cold feet,” the other woman said. She had a quietly brisk, sensible voice. “You must have had compelling reasons for taking this step. In my case, it’s the grounds.” She stood on tiptoe to look around her. “When I read that once-glorious gardens and woodlands had reduced to a sad wilderness, I had to answer the call. My family owned a landscaping business, you see. My brother took it over and ran it into bankruptcy. My attempts to help him out financially caused me to lose my home with its two acres, and for the past few years I’ve been in a small flat with only a window box to satisfy my green thumb.” Thumper extended a sympathetic paw, which she bent down and shook. “Nice dog.” She looked from Livonia to me as she straightened up, her voice briskly pleasant. “Belong to either of you, or to Mucklesfeld?”
“Not ours,” I told her. “But whether he belongs here or from somewhere else in the neighborhood isn’t clear. For the moment I’m calling him Thumper.”
“Suits him. Preferable to Dog Doe certainly.” The narrow face creased into a smile that was reflected in the brown eyes. She extended a hand that was surprisingly workmanlike given her size. “I’m Judy Nunn. And you?”
“Ellie Haskell.”
“Livonia Mayberry. Judy Nunn, you said… the name sounds familiar.”
“I’m thinking the same of yours. Perhaps it will come to one of us. Meanwhile, we are still several hours early. Care to join me on a good long walk?”
Livonia looked less than enthusiastic. I spoke up.
“I should go back inside and talk to my husband about getting ready to leave for home. His parents have been taking care of our children while we’ve been on holiday.” A panicked thought surfaced. They had been expecting us last night… but of course, my breath steadied, Ben would have phoned and explained the delay. Even so, I could not continue to dally outdoors. He was bound to be wondering where I had got to, although to be fair to me-I reminded myself in true wifely fashion-he had been the first to do a disappearing act.
“I think I’ll come inside with you,” said Livonia in the tentative voice of one who was used to having the most ordinary statement dissected prior to rejection, “if you don’t mind, that is. I… I’m scared I’ll lose my nerve if I wait any longer to face the music.”
Oh, woe to Lord Belfrey, I thought with tender sympathy. Here was one woman who saw him merely as a means to causing Harold a momentary pang and another who seemed to be only after his garden. I refused to dwell on Mrs. Malloy and her silly fantasies. All it would take to squash them was the discovery that there were no bingo halls within a three-hundred-mile range of Mucklesfeld Manor. I wondered about the other three contestants as Livonia retrieved her suitcase and handbag from her car. Would there be one among the remaining trio eager to discover true love with the lord of the manor?
Judy, perhaps in the spirit of camaraderie or because it was beginning to sprinkle with rain, said she would forgo her walk for the time being and come inside with us. After disappearing around the side of Livonia’s car, she reemerged with a small overnight bag.
“No case?” Livonia inquired worriedly, as if fearing that bringing luggage was an infraction of the fine-print rules of the competition.
“Never travel with one even on extended trips,” Judy responded cheerfully. “I go by the two pairs of knicks rule. One on, one rinsed out and hung up to dry overnight. I’ve never understood why people have to take their entire lives with them when they travel.”
“That’s what Harold always said.”
Oh, dear! I thought. I could hear Mrs. Malloy saying as clearly as if she were standing next to me that Livonia Mayberry needed a backbone transplant and if I didn’t watch myself I’d be donating mine. It occurred to me at that moment that I did owe Livonia something for not blabbing to Judy Nunn about last night’s fatal accident. Further relating of Suzanne Varney’s death should be left to Lord Belfrey.
“That dog’s going to miss you like the dickens. Devotion written all over him,” remarked Judy as she set the pace on the walk up the drive. Head and shoulders forward, her feet scattered gravel right and left. Had there been a bulldozer in her way, I had no doubt she would have walked nimbly over it without missing a beat. Livonia already looked winded, and I had to suck in oxygen while glancing down at Thumper, who had kindly returned to stay at my heels after a sideways dive to encircle a couple of trees that swayed dizzily as a result. There was no doubt from his upturned face and the besotted glow in his eyes that his passion for me had not abated. If he could have done so, I felt sure he would have taken Livonia’s suitcase from me (it was the kind without wheels) and carried it on his back. From his vantage point, ours was not to be a one-night stand. Yes, he had broken into my boudoir and thrust himself unencouraged onto my bed, but he had chosen to adore me on sight and (to play fast and loose with Browning) with God be the rest. Still, there was no use in either of us pining. Clearly he wasn’t starving, nor did he show other signs of mistreatment. We would each have to forget our infatuation and move on. Although perhaps not with the speed that Judy Nunn was heading down the drive. We had reached the stone wall when Mr. Plunket came through the gap.
Even the thickening veil of rain could not disguise his unfortunate facade. It was also obvious from his labored breathing and hunched posture that he was not the outdoorsy sort. Judy Nunn halted a foot from him and stuck out the hand not holding the overnight bag with the spare pair of knicks.
“Lord Belfrey, I presume!” It was said with the utmost good cheer, but Livonia’s reaction was not so sanguine. She gripped my arm with such force that I nearly dropped her suitcase on poor Thumper.
“Not his lordship!” I murmured soothingly. “This is his butler, Mr. Plunket.”
“Then a pleasure to meet you, sir.” Judy eyed him without visible sign of either relief or revulsion.
“Oh, yes, indeed!” Livonia let me have my arm back. “Such a lovely morning to be out and about, isn’t it? Unless you’re the sort who prefers to be indoors when it rains. Everybody’s different, aren’t they?”
Mr. Plunket stared blankly from her to Judy.
“These ladies, Livonia Mayberry and Judy Nunn,” I explained, “are two of the contestants for Here Comes the Bride.”
“Is that right?” He sounded as though he was still stuck in last evening’s fog. “I was down in the ravine checking on that tree that got hit.”
“Lightning?” Judy asked with the keen interest of one who thrills to the elements, however devilish.
Mr. Plunket either did not hear her or chose to ignore the interruption. His hunted expression suggested he would much have preferred not to have encountered us on his morning constitutional. “Mrs. Foot’s been that worried that a puff of wind could bring it down.”
And cause bodily harm to a squirrel? I wondered. The area was well away from the house, but of course for all I knew the ravine might be the favored place of those who relished getting snared by brambles and scratched by thornbushes. Mushroom-hunters, I thought vaguely, or bird-watchers of the particularly dotty sort. Give me the verdant meadow, the velvet hills, the shady lane.
“Mrs. Foot?” Livonia whispered.
“The housekeeper,” I told her. “And there’s another household helper named Boris.” I made a mental note to warn her about the suit of armor that Boris, who enjoyed tinkering, had brought to maniacal life.
“Lord Belfrey should fetch in an arborist to take a look at the tree you’re worried about.” Judy surveyed Mr. Plunket kindly.
“A what?” He batted away the rain as if it were mosquito netting.
“A tree doctor,” I said, setting down Livonia’s suitcase.
“Wouldn’t a GP do for a quick look?” She squeezed out the words. “It’s so awful to think of anything suffering a moment longer than necessary. What sort is the poor stricken tree?”
“An oak,” Mr. Plunket sounded as though he was coming somewhat back into focus, “or maybe an elm or… a beech. I was never much good at nature study. It was my worst subject after English, maths, geography, and history. Like I used to tell my old mum, lunch was my best subject and I never got top marks in that, neither. His nibs will know what sort it is; for a gentleman of his superior background, knowing one tree for another will be bred in the bone along with Latin verbs and what sort of olive to put in a martini. But we don’t want to go bothering him about trees, now do we?”
Given my presumption that the tree under discussion had been hit not by lightning but by Suzanne Varney’s car, I agreed with him. Judy, if not Livonia, probably assumed Mr. Plunket was referring to the stress his lordship must be under now that the hour approached for his meeting with his prospective brides. I set down Livonia’s suitcase.
“So, if you ladies don’t mind,” Mr. Plunket turned up his jacket against the rain, “I’d appreciate your not saying anything about this little conversation to his nibs. I’m not the sort for early morning rambles in a general way and he might get to worrying that I’m going a bit funny in the head after last night.”
“Oh, yes, of course!” Livonia flinched when looking into his gourdlike face, but the sympathy was there in her voice.
“Last night?” Judy met his eyes squarely. Not a flicker of an eyelash. Perhaps she saw the unfortunate man as an interesting botanical specimen, or was simply a nice woman who didn’t think spiteful thoughts about other people’s appearance. But this was not the moment to put on my hair shirt. Mr. Plunket’s revelation of Suzanne Varney’s fatal accident was likely to keep us standing outdoors longer than was desirable. The rain had petered out, but if I felt unpleasantly damp so must the others, and Livonia was shivering.
“I’m afraid I set Mucklesfeld at sixes and sevens yesterday evening, by fainting upon arrival,” I said quickly. “So silly, but…”
“Oh, my goodness!” Livonia swayed against me. “Did you see a ghost?” She glanced fearfully toward the house, which did loom forbodingly as if prepared to sprout an extra turret or two and unleash its ivied tentacles.
“Nothing like that.” I dismissed the Metal Knight from my mind. “It was just the stress from driving in the fog.”
“Don’t seem to get so many pea soupers these days,” Judy inserted comfortably. “Certainly not the smog, thank God and cleaner burning fuel. Although I must say I always enjoyed a coal fire as a girl when coming in after a day spent digging up a field of potatoes. Now I make do with one of those fake electric log ones in my flat and…”
“Mucklesfeld has its ghosts and don’t let no one tell you different.” Mr. Plunket’s face, nodules and all, glistened with pride. “Wouldn’t be proper in an ancestral home not to have them, would it? Shortchanging, you could call it. Might as well live in a caravan at Southend is what Mrs. Foot says, and Boris agrees with her. They’ve both seen the Lady Annabel Belfrey that went on a holiday to see her auntie during the French Revolution. Can’t blame a woman for wanting to see the Eye Full Tower, I suppose, but…”
“Oh, but wasn’t that built…” Livonia petered out.
“Went to the guillotine instead, she did.”
A holiday in Southend might have been a better choice, I thought. The famous long pier, bracing salt air, walks across the mudflats when the sea was out, and yummy fish and chips.
“I suppose poor Lady Annabel has become the headless specter,” said Judy with kindly interest.
“Oh, never!” Mr. Plunket rebuked this notion. “You’d not catch a Belfrey going around making a spectacle of herself is Mrs. Foot’s opinion. And very particular about her appearance was this ancestress, from what his nibs and Dr. Rowley have to say on the subject-strong into the family history is the doctor. No, indeed, Mrs. Foot and Boris have heard she’s always been seen wearing a silk scarf thing around her neck, tied tight enough to keep her head on straight.”
“Oh, good!” said Livonia faintly. “Does she often put in an appearance?”
“Not all that frequent. Seems she was one to prefer her own company. You’ll see her portrait in the library gallery. Mrs. Foot tried putting out a plate of biscuits and a cup of tea, thinking that could tempt Lady Annabel to show her face more often, but it don’t seem to have worked.”
Remembering the refreshments offered to me by Mrs. Foot, I thought the Guillotined Ghost showed a lot of sense for a woman who did not have her head screwed on right.
“It’s Sir Giles’s second wife that’s been seen most recent, by both Mrs. Foot and Boris, slipping in or out one of the outside doors. I try not to take it personal that she hasn’t seen fit to let me get a glimpse of her.”
Abandoning any feigned interest in the conversation, Thumper sat scratching his ear.
“But it’s hard not to get our feelings hurt, isn’t it?” Livonia murmured sympathetically while either by accident or decision looking him in the face.
“None of us likes being left out by any member of his nibs’s family living or gone,” Mr. Plunket admitted, “especially one that seems to have captured his imagination with a special fondness. If you was to see her portrait-only you won’t because it’s at his cousin Celia’s house-you’d see there’s a strong resemblance between said Eleanor Belfrey and this lady here.” Mr. Plunket pointed a stubby finger at me, and I found myself blushing.
Thumper appeared to find the sight adorable.
“Perhaps a family connection,” suggested Judy.
“More like a coincidence,” I answered quickly, eager to get off the subject.
“Were there children from her marriage to Sir Giles?” Livonia wanted to know. And who could blame her for attempting to brush up on the family history, if she had begun to picture Lord Belfrey as a man who reverenced the female… in other words, the antithesis of the horrid Harold.
“No, Celia Belfrey is the daughter by the first wife.” Mr. Plunket sounded as though he were reading from a guidebook. He had taken on an air of pleased importance that was rather touching. For a man who had not initially seemed all that glad to have met up with us, he now appeared, having landed on a favorite topic, willing to chat on forever. “Mrs. Foot and Boris agrees with me that when Sir Giles married Eleanor something, anyway it was one of those hyphen names-oh, now it’s come back to me, Lambert-Onger, my mother had a friend Mrs. Lambert as lived in Ougar-he must have had high hopes of getting an heir second time around. Her being almost thirty years his junior. Younger than his daughter, I’ve heard Dr. Rowley say… not disapprovingly-never a word said against the family by him, just a statement of fact. But as it turned out, Sir Giles, sad to say, wasn’t to reap the fruits of his labor. The marriage was over before the year was out. His young wife did a bunk-vanished overnight-and to make matters even more wicked took the family jewels with her.” Mr. Plunket stood, every nodule protruding, awaiting the gasps of consternation that were his due.
“Oh, how dreadful,” breathed Livonia. “Where did she go? Was there another man?”
“Never sight nor word of her from that day to this.”
“And the jewels?” Judy sounded as though to her this was the pertinent point.
“Never surfaced. Leastways, that’s what Dr. Rowley says. His nibs don’t talk about them, but you can be sure that things would have been different at Mucklesfeld if they’d been available for selling. And his nibs wouldn’t find himself reduced to…”
“Quite!” Judy said.
Mr. Plunket now stood removing his foot from his mouth… or perhaps he was chewing on it while mulling over the evils of Lord Belfrey’s situation.
“Perhaps Sir Giles was the sort of man who would have turned any wife of his into a villainess,” said Livonia with surprising spirit. “What if he was constantly critical and never kissed her as though he meant it?”
Mr. Plunket looked uncomfortable, suggesting that he might have heard rumors to this effect from persons not one hundred percent loyal to the Belfrey family… unpaid tradesmen, dismissed employees, Jehovah’s Witnesses who’d had the door slammed in their faces. He remarked that it was beginning to rain again. Thumper looked nervously around for his tail as if the talk of theft had him wondering if someone had pinched it, before joining the rest of us in heading toward the house.
“The villainy I see,” said Judy, eyeing the lopsided, moss-coated fountain sunk deep in its tangled dell, “is the way these grounds have been neglected. Even with money short, something could have been accomplished with a spade and a lawn mower.”
“The weeds look healthy enough,” I consoled her, as Mr. Plunket led the way through a door that looked better suited to a dilapidated garden shed than an ancestral home. Thumper kept close to my heels, for which I was eminently grateful. Should a rodent scurry to meet us, I was reasonably confident Thumper would get it while I was screaming my last breath. If this were one of the doors the ghost of Eleanor Belfrey had been spied entering rather than exiting, I admired her (no pun intended) spirit. My foot caught on a flagstone in the hallway, which smelled dismally like a tomb. Not that I had ever been in a tomb… I stumbled again as a question reared up belatedly.
How could Eleanor be a ghost if she wasn’t dead? According to Mr. Plunket’s account, she had departed from Sir Giles’s life, not from this earth. Of course, anything could have happened in the meantime, but Mr. Plunket had said that nothing had been heard of her since her sneaky departure. Were the sightings a result of wishful thinking on the part of Mrs. Foot and Boris because of their resentment that the Vanishing Bride had robbed the family jewel box?
Livonia grabbed my arm, causing the thought to flee and the suitcase to drop from my hand onto my foot. A specter was drifting our way with a gait that suggested a rattling assortment of bones hastily thrown together-oversized in height, parchment white of face. I was fortunate in that this was not my first sighting of Boris. Judy had impressed me as a woman capable of dealing with a roomful of vampires with aplomb-possibly to the point of inquiring into what blood types were most nutritious-but Livonia understandably emitted a pitiful screech.
“Boris,” I whispered to her.
“Oh.” Relief flowed out of her and not only, I thought, because she had feared that here was Lord Belfrey. Poor Boris; I picked up the suitcase and gazed upon him with compassion. It was a cruelty of fate for a man to look more dead while he was walking around than he would do in his coffin.
“Looking for me?” Mr. Plunket asked with a sprightliness that had the effect of increasing the gloom of the passageway. “I’ve been out for a morning constitutional.”
“A what?” Boris, arms dangling to his knees, intoned out the side of his mouth.
“Walk. I felt a weird urge.”
“Agghh!” The blank stare would have bored a hole in the ozone.
“And on the way back in, I met this lady.” Mr. Plunket nudged an elbow my way.
“Ellie Haskell.” I retrieved the suitcase.
“You’ll remember her from last night.”
“Agghh!”
“And these two other ladies that are among the contestants for the marriage show. I’ve been filling them in about the family history.”
“Most interesting.” Judy, snippet of a woman though she was and faded of coloring as if having been through the wash too many times, exuded a warmth that should have countered the chill that oozed up from the flagstones and out of the stone walls. She introduced herself and Livonia bravely did likewise.
“Agghh!”
Suddenly I saw what seemed to be a struggle for intelligent thought working its tortuous way from Boris’s brain down his forehead and into his eyeballs. His arms battled rigor mortis to allow him to scratch the side of his nose with a reasonably lifelike-looking finger. “It was, I hope,” he painstakingly produced the words with robotically even spacing, “a good walk this morning, Mr. Plunket. I hope you saw other things of interest to you besides these…” I expected him to say creatures, but he left the sentence hanging.
Mr. Plunket gave him a quelling look before turning to Livonia, Judy, and me. “Boris and Mrs. Foot keep hoping I’ll catch a glimpse of Eleanor Belfrey so I won’t go on feeling left out. But much as I appreciate their feelings,” he redirected his gaze to Boris, speaking slowly and distinctly, “talking about it makes it worse. No, I didn’t see anything, but I wasn’t keeping my mind and eyes properly open to a… a sighting.”
“Agghh!” Boris receded into his corpse to ebb out of the passageway. Thumper heaved a sigh of what sounded like profound relief and Mr. Plunket said rather snappishly that he didn’t know what Mrs. Foot would say, seeing that she wasn’t at all keen on dogs, but we’d find out about that right now. He pushed open a door to reveal a large room with a brick wall facing us.
Set into it was an archaic cooker that looked as though it would require arduous blacking to combat rust. As old-fashioned kitchens went, this one was not invested with an excess of charm. True, the heavily timbered ceiling and the same flagstones that had been in the passageway had their appeal, as did the vast deal table surrounded by an assortment of elderly chairs, but the sink looked like a pig’s trough and the wall cupboards were lopsided and needed a fresh coat of paint. Back to a positive note, the place was appreciably more orderly and somewhat cleaner than I would have expected of a domain ruled by Mrs. Foot.
She came through one of several doors scattered around the room, with a jug in hand, the housewifely flowered bib apron contrasting quite horribly with her insane asylum wardress appearance. The hulking form and mangled gray locks fared even less well in daylight than they had done in the murky gloom of the past evening. Mr. Plunket hastened to take the jug from her before making the introductions. I set Livonia’s suitcase down in a corner while she sank blindly into a chair. Judy also deposited her overnight bag, but I didn’t get the feeling that at any point since setting foot in Mucklesfeld she had felt burdened either physically or emotionally. It was Mrs. Foot who looked as though she had been clobbered from all sides.
Mr. Plunket helped her to a bench by the side of the cooker and continued to anxiously hover over her to the accompaniment of ominous creaking. It wasn’t a stone bench and clearly she wasn’t made of that substance, either. Her features shifted as if formed out of Plasticine by a nasty-minded child. She waved a hand, almost taking out a cupboard that looked equally unhinged with its door hanging open.
“I came down to find the place looking like this, everything put away where I’ll never be able to find anything. All my favorite slop cloths and the soup tins for keeping vegetable scrapings in-gone. Everything off the floor where I could find what I needed at a glance or by stepping on it. We all have our own ways, like I used to explain when I was a ward maid and preferred taking my tea cart up the stairs to using the lift.” She made this pitiful statement with a fixed smile that compressed her cheeks upward, forcing her eyes to pop.
I gave no thought to Livonia’s sensitivity or Judy’s imperturbability. I was picturing with painful clarity the deflated look on the face of the wardress when discovering that Wisteria Whitworth had escaped her clutches by fleeing Perdition Hall with Carson Grant. Back into a world of sunlight and hope-where far from being sneered at by the arbiters of fashion for the hair that had turned white from all she had endured, Wisteria set a trend that would one day be called platinum blond.
“Who was it that did this?” Mr. Plunket asked Mrs. Foot while patting her shoulder. “Who turned your nice cozy kitchen into an empty warehouse, the sort we used to hole up in when you, Boris, and me was homeless?”
Before I could absorb this information, the cry “Them!” broke from Mrs. Foot’s lips. It carried with it a fearsome weight suggestive of mutant life-forms intent on reducing Earth to a series of crop circles, or an annual convention of euthanasia enthusiasts, or… Thumper, who had been standing discreetly behind me, gave a whine that indicated his guess was a truckload of dog-catchers.
“Them?” Livonia whispered.
“Georges LeBois was the steamroller.”
“Who?” Judy asked in the voice of one not wishing to be overly nosy.
“The director of Here Comes the Bride,” I told her.
“And the other one. Only too eager he was to shove in his oar.” Mrs. Foot reached up to pat the hand with which Mr. Plunket was still patting her shoulder.
“Dr. Rowley?” I assumed she wouldn’t have used that barbed inflection if she meant Lord Belfrey.
“Not him, sensible hardworking man that he is, he went home to get his rest. No, your husband-it was him that stole my kitchen.”
“Stole” was an odd way of putting the matter. But then, Mrs. Foot had struck me as being on the far side of odd from our first encounter. It was Thumper who took umbrage. Coming out from behind me, he sat at my side and stared down the offender, to no effect because she gave no sign of being aware of his presence. Well, I thought, so that was why Ben hadn’t been to bed or turned up after I was awake. I pictured him preparing my supper and putting together a meal of sorts for Georges LeBois under conditions that must have revolted his professional chef’s soul. After which he would have felt morally obliged to work at restoring the kitchen to some degree of hygienic acceptability without going so far as to burn it down and start from scratch.
The look Mrs. Foot directed my way was not a pleasant one; gone was all affability and eager servitude as befitted a representative of Lord Belfrey’s household. The eyes that I had thought colorless burned with a greenish-yellow fire. I felt certain that had there been a straitjacket to hand she would have bundled me into it and yanked the cords tight enough to give me the eighteen-inch waist Carson Grant had so admired in Wisteria Whitworth. Except in my case that elusive measurement would also become my bust and hip size.
“I’m sure my husband didn’t mean to offend…” I began.
“Offend!” She spat the word across the room, causing Judy to duck her head and Livonia to cower in her chair. Thumper so far forgot his status as an unwanted guest to issue a growl, which brought a glower to Mr. Plunket’s face but did nothing to put a dent in Mrs. Foot’s rage. “Offend! That doesn’t say nothing to how I felt. Heartbroken is what I was, and still am that your husband that his lordship took in along with you, Mrs., made off with Whitey right under my nose without so much as a How do you feel about having your beloved pet marched away like he’s vermin?”
“And Whitey is?” said Judy.
“Her rat,” responded Mr. Plunket mournfully.
“Cat?” Hope that I had misheard kept my knees from buckling.
“Yes, yes,” Livonia pleaded, “do let it be a dear little kitty.”
“Rat!” Mr. Plunket speeded up his patting of Mrs. Foot’s shoulder. “Bought for her three Christmases back by Boris and me. Part Abyssinian, part Polish, with a little Italian on his father’s side, the pet shop owner told us, and he’d have given us the pedigree papers to prove it if he could have laid his hand on them right there and then. A dear little fellow is Whitey, always cheerful and chirpy in his cage when he’d go in it.”
“Where’d he hang out the rest of the time?” In my opinion, Judy didn’t exude the requisite amount of horror, even in the face of Mrs. Foot’s lugubrious response.
“Up among the saucepans that till last night hung from them hooks above the stove-when he wasn’t in my apron pocket, that is. Loved to swing his self dizzy from the frying pan, did the little darling. You should have seen how Boris’s face would melt watching him. Said Whitey’s antics was better than any trapeze artist in any circus!”
Livonia made up for Judy’s lack of finer feeling by uttering the awful mumble: “I think I’ll have to go back to Harold.”
The enormity of this pronouncement brought me sharply back to my senses-diminished though they might be after an evening’s incarceration at Mucklesfeld. And when Livonia cupped a hand over her mouth and fled the kitchen, leaving the door wide open, I said firmly: “I’m sure my husband and Georges LeBois have found a safe haven for Whitey. Somewhere he won’t feel trapped in a stampede when the rest of the contestants arrive at ten o’clock, which,” looking at my watch, “should be in a little over an hour.”
“Wherever they’ve taken him, he’ll be missing his mummy something cruel.” Mr. Plunket looked on the point of tears, but Mrs. Foot appeared to be rallying. The greenish-yellow fire seeped from her eyes, leaving them as colorless as the rest of her face, but she was getting to her feet.
“I’ll have to carry on in the face of nastiness just as I had to at Shady Oaks when some of the bedpans came up missing and Sister Johnson gave me the eye like she suspected me of taking them to sell on the side… or that time old Mr. Codger’s daughter looked at me funny when I was plumping up his pillows and he was getting awkward about it. His lordship’s feelings are what count, not mine or Whitey’s even, and I hope you’ll tell Boris so, Mr. Plunket-you know how worked up he gets if he thinks I’m being upset.”
Picturing Boris getting worked up was beyond me, but Judy was made of more compassionate stuff. Looking like a wood elf sitting in a people chair, she asked Mrs. Foot kindly if Boris regarded her as a mother.
“Too right he does.” Mrs. Foot wiped the grubby sleeve of her grease-colored dress across her eyes and nose. “Him, Mr. Plunket, and me is family, along with dear little Whitey. Heaven help him,” tears squeezed stickily out of her eyes, “if they put him down in the dungeon with the wild rats. They’ll eat him alive-him having no street smarts, the poor little bugger.”
“She’s speaking of the cellars,” Mr. Plunket explained; “there is no proper dungeon at Mucklesfeld.” Being dwarfed by Mrs. Foot’s hulking frame, he now had to make do with tapping her shoulder with the tips of his fingers.
“To think of Whitey put out of sight and a dog coming to my kitchen as bold as brass.” Finally her gooseberry gaze fastened on Thumper before he skirted back behind me. “Well, he can’t stay, that’s for certain. Can’t have a black dog bringing bad luck down on Mucklesfeld, just when it looks like Lord Belfrey may be able to save the place.”
“Oh, come now,” Judy rose from her chair to say reasonably, “just look at the nice old fellow…”
“I’m not suggesting he stay,” I said. “He got in through my bedroom window in the middle of the night and I thought it likely he belonged here, but can’t we at least give him something to eat and drink before trying to find out where he belongs?”
“Well, it’ll have to be outside,” Mrs. Foot answered, returning more or less to human form. “It’s not that I’m hardhearted. Dogs aren’t my cup of tea; still, I’d be hard put to be unkind to a living creature whatever’s been done to my poor Whitey. But whatever you and this other lady,” pointing a giant finger at Judy, “go calling superstition, a black dog at Mucklesfeld can’t be tolerated, plain and simple as that. Not after what poor Lord Giles Belfrey went through after discovering that his bride of less than a year had made off in the night with the family jewels and Hamish the Scottie. And not a woof of protest out of the nasty little bugger, let alone sounding the alarm.”