S ome five minutes later, with Mrs. Malloy’s note to Mrs. Spuds in my jacket pocket and Thumper at my heels, I descended to the hall by way of the front stairs because that was the way Thumper took me and I didn’t want to argue. Especially when we must soon part. I hoped the timing would prevent my being caught up in a mob of activity with Georges LeBois and his crew milling feverishly around in readiness for Lord Belfrey’s formal greeting of the contestants. As it was, the hall was empty save for Judy Nunn, still wearing the same brown twill slacks and the hiking jacket with its numerous buttoned-down outer pockets. She stood, dwarfed by most of the furnishings, writing in a notebook. Looking up at my approach, she closed it after tucking the pencil inside.
“Hello, there!” she said in her brisk, friendly way. “Five minutes to go before I have to be outside for the opening scene-‘The Contestants Arrive.’ As per instructions from a young woman named Lucy, your friend Mrs. Malloy, Livonia, and I are to join the other three in coming up the drive as if we too are just getting here.”
“Have you met Mrs. Malloy?”
“We introduced ourselves. She and Livonia went with Lucy to do a practice walk. I was just jotting down some suggestions I have for Lord Belfrey in regard to the gardens and outlying grounds. I haven’t yet managed to see him.” A smile flitted across her face. “It took longer than needed to find his study because Livonia and I didn’t open the door with the posted order to keep out, by authority of Georges LeBois.”
“Oh?”
“When I finally realized that he might have sent us on a wild goose chase and decided to risk penalty of whatever the fiendish fellow had in mind, Lord Belfrey wasn’t in the study. That was after I had lost Livonia down that passageway,” pointing with the notebook-a sensibly sized brown leather one.
“I know,” I said, negotiating my way further toward her with Thumper as my shadow. “I’d just come from the kitchen when she came back out here.”
“Upset? Not inclined to think I’d ditched her on purpose, I hope?”
“For a moment perhaps, but she decided you were too nice to join Georges in pulling not so funny tricks.”
“Good!” Judy looked relieved. “Right after we divided up, I came to a door that instead of opening into a room took me outside.”
“The one we came in?”
“Don’t think so, although this place is such a warren. On the bright side, who should be coming my way from the wooded area with the broken wall but that sad-faced man Boris, so I waited to ask him about the study. And after he told me which room it was, I couldn’t bring myself to rush off, not when he kept standing there like he had a knife stuck in his back. I’m sorry to say,” she tucked the notebook into a chest pocket and her hands into the capacious side ones, “I forgot about Livonia and had a little chat with him.”
“A chat?” My mind boggled.
“A rather confused one about begonias.” Again the smile. “He thought they were people from the land of Begonia. He told me he had mixed with a lot of foreigners when he worked in circuses. I wanted to ask why he had left that world, but I remembered Livonia-too late as it turned out, and now if I don’t want to goof up things some more, I suppose I’d better get outside. Nice getting to know you, Ellie.” Hands removed from the pockets, right arm raised in a sideways salute, she sped away-shoulders forward, short fly-away beige hair matching the jacket.
There went stiff competition for Mrs. Malloy. If ever a woman had energy to spare, it was Judy Nunn. And energy would certainly be a key virtue in bringing the house and grounds back to life. I also had the feeling that Judy was kind, something to which I sensed strongly Lord Belfrey would respond and Mr. Plunket, Mrs. Foot, and Boris would need from whoever was to become mistress of Mucklesfeld.
These thoughts were nudged aside by what she had said about Boris. A circus worker! It went together with Mrs. Foot saying he had enjoyed seeing Whitey swinging from the frying pan handle like a trapeze artist. A politely inquiring woof from Thumper brought me back into focus. He was eyeing the front door hopefully. The word walk floated in a balloon over his head. But of course we couldn’t exit that way. I could picture all too well Georges’s fury if we blundered into what would have been a successful take, if that was the right word. It also wouldn’t be fair to distract the contestants. I wondered if Mrs. Malloy had overcome her case of the jitters and how Livonia was holding up. Would it turn out that Georges LeBois had determined it would add an extra dollop of drama if the six contestants discovered on arrival that they were each a link in a chain of acquaintances, if not actual friends? It would be particularly interesting to learn the identity of the woman coming after Livonia. Meanwhile, I looked down at Thumper.
“Come on, we’ll look for the exit Judy found down that passageway.” It seemed like one of Georges’s tricks to let him think we were off on a casual walk. Perhaps I flattered myself unduly in assuming Thumper would miss me terribly. Perhaps he showed no sign of being desperate to return to the bosom of his family because he was suffering from doggie amnesia. Perhaps he had an intense interest in home decorating and hoped I could teach him a thing or two on the subject. My gaze shifted away from his. Enough of this sentimental slosh! What must be had better be done fast or I’d have to go into mourning for a year and black is not my best color.
This decided, I strode in the impressive Judy Nunn manner for all of six steps, before stopping beside the huge jardinière displaying the dead plant. Next to it was the door that Georges had posted off-limits. The study. I made to move on, but stopped… seized by an impulse that had nothing to do with a desire to snoop or a wish to find a book. Mucklesfeld possessed a library. No, the shameful truth is I had that sudden, unbidden urge to defy authority. My late mother, lovely mercurial creature that she was, once told me with scarcely veiled pride that sometimes when she came up behind a policeman on duty she experienced an almost irresistible impulse to tip his helmet over his face. But in my case it was personal. Georges LeBois needed stamping on good and proper, to use a familiar phrase from Mrs. Malloy. Thinking of how I’d let her down that morning, in part because Georges had delayed me in the kitchen, I reached without a quiver of remorse for the door handle.
The thrill of wickedness faded the moment I stepped into the study. I had been confident of finding it empty. Certainly the last person I expected to see standing, head bent, his back to me, in front of a desk almost the width of the room was Lord Belfrey. He should have been at the top of the drive watching the women who would soon be vying for his hand make their way toward him. Shock switched the drive to a church aisle and his lordship into Henry VIII. So silly! His lordship wasn’t aiming for six wives, just one out of that number. But then neither had Henry, whatever his faults, been greedy enough to want all at once. He’d had to go through a lot to find the happiness a king deserved. The memory jingle learned at school returned to me: Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, outlived. A nervous giggle tickled its way up my throat, but mercifully subsided when Lord Belfrey turned around to face me… us. Thumper was seated to attention, demonstrating that he at least had some manners.
“I’m sorry, your lordship, I should have knocked. But… that’s neither here nor there; I’ve no business coming in.”
His expression was serious, solemn even, until slowly warming into a smile of such subtle masculine-make that virile-charm that it was impossible not to relax a little and smile back.
“Who’s your friend?” He beckoned to Thumper, who went willingly, although at a sedate pace, to be stroked. The image came of Ben’s hand on the dark head and I felt myself blushing, which was so silly. What woman on the better side of eighty wouldn’t experience a small fluttery thrill when looking into the dark eyes under well-shaped black brows? The left eyebrow quirked and the smile deepened as he straightened up after a final pat. “You look guilty. Did you kidnap him, Mrs. Haskell?”
“Ellie, please.”
“But not short for Eleanor.” The smile faded slightly.
Instantly, the rosy cloudlike feeling vanished.
“Giselle.” I was glad when Thumper returned to sit beside me, warm against my leg.
“I remember.” He reached behind him for a pencil. “Your resemblance to her portrait is uncanny.”
“It happens,” I said at my most inane, then quickly. “Mrs. Malloy told me you wanted to speak to me about her becoming one of the contestants. We both thought it very gallant of you… but of course the decision is hers… and yours. And now I’ll get out of here. I was sure you were outside and… again; I should never have come in here. You will be wishing me at the moon when you’ll be anxious to be greeting your arriving… guests.”
“Georges doesn’t want me out on the drive for another half hour. Until then I’m not a contributing factor.” The smile was there-wry, self-deprecating, and unable to conceal… what? Minor misgivings? Or a deep-rooted sorrow? “He wants to get some shots of the women meeting for the first time, sizing each other up, before bringing me on camera. Cold-blooded, wouldn’t you say, Ellie?”
“Well,” looking down at Thumper for moral support, “I suppose that’s the nature of a reality show.”
“Have you ever watched one?” He sounded as though my answer was important to him. But did he really want to know my thoughts for their own sake, or because the opinion he desired was that of Eleanor Belfrey? How well had he known her, if at all? Could any sensible man succumb to a portrait without having seen the original?
“No, but that doesn’t mean that I think there’s anything innately wrong with them. It’s just that I,” blundering on, “prefer fictional entertainment and had parents who,” unable to keep from smiling, “thought reality highly overrated.”
He raised a dark inquiring eyebrow, genuine amusement again hovering around his mouth. “That must have made for an interesting childhood.”
“Rather magical in its way.”
“Did it leave you still believing in fairy tales?”
“Perhaps.” I stood there feeling as though the conversation was taking place underwater.
“And do any of us get to write our own happy endings, or are we all the powerless pawns of fate, Ellie?”
Hadn’t Carson Grant posed the same question to Wisteria Whitworth? And hadn’t she wondered, before succumbing to his demanding lips, whether something sinister lurked behind his willingness to lay bare his romantic soul? Fortunately, Lord Belfrey’s motives were immaterial. He had no motive for wishing to either marry or murder me. We were overnight acquaintances. I had not stumbled upon a maleficent secret that he had striven ruthlessly through the years to conceal. Neither was I the possessor of a vast fortune that, if he could get his wicked hands on, would enable him to continue a life of depravity without the vulgar restrictions imposed by a lack of cash. What rubbish I was thinking! All blame to my parents’ life view! His lordship had come up with a twenty-first-century scheme to settle his financial difficulties and I was a married woman. I pictured Ben slogging in this man’s archaic kitchen and swam back up to the surface at a nudge on my left by Thumper.
“You’re not leaving your life up to fate, Lord Belfrey.” I concentrated on the hand twiddling the pencil. “Neither do most of us. I hope Here Comes the Bride will be a smashing success and you will be very happy with the woman of your choice.”
“Even if that woman is Mrs. Malloy?”
“Of course.”
“You will miss her.”
“That doesn’t enter into it. I really should be going.”
“Wait just a moment. I do have to get outside but”-his eyes caught mine in their dark, compelling gaze-I admit to dragging my feet. “This wasn’t an easy decision to reach and I’d like you to understand how I came to it.”
I nodded mutely.
“Mucklesfeld is pretty much all I have to show for my life. I’ve had two failed marriages and a career that was unremarkable before the firm I worked for collapsed. Saving the ancestral home may not seem the noblest of ambitions, but it could be my last chance of doing something that will put a stamp on my life. I spent very little time here before going out to America, but it always had a pull for me. Something in the blood and bone perhaps.”
“I can understand that.” It was true. Merlin’s Court had come down to me through the family. Thumper sat looking empathetic. “But is it worth…?” I gestured awkwardly.
“Selling myself on a television show?
“I wouldn’t put it that way.”
“No?”
“You’ll be making a bargain.” I was eager to escape the study. “I can see there could be benefits to both concerned, but it just seems a rather sad arrangement to me. Luckily, six women, including Mrs. Malloy, don’t see it that way. But if you find yourself uncertain, why not at least postpone the filming? You’ve good reason surely after what happened to Suzanne Varney.”
Lord Belfrey’s expression darkened, as Carson Grant’s had done on so many occasions when dealing with the sorrows of Wisteria Whitworth’s incarceration at Perdition Hall. “I’d met her… years ago on a Caribbean cruise. We spent the better part of a week together, dining, dancing. I was between marriages at the time. And she was a very attractive, likable woman.”
I stared at him.
“Let me show you, Ellie.” He stepped sideways, beckoning me forward. Accompanied by the faithful Thumper, I joined him at the desk. Scattered across it were a series of eight-by-ten photos displaying the faces of women. His hand went to one in the middle. “This is Suzanne.”
“As you say” (and so had Tommy) “she is… was… very attractive.”
“The applicants were all instructed to submit a photo of this size. They went to Georges. I told him that I wasn’t interested in seeing them, that I didn’t wish to be influenced by looks one way or the other. The selections were up to him, based on the personality criteria we had agreed upon. When he arrived at Mucklesfeld, he took over this room. Yesterday afternoon I came in and saw these,” waving a hand over the photos, “and recognized Suzanne despite not having thought of her in years. I told Georges at once.”
“Was it specified on the application form that the contestants must have no prior acquaintance with you?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps Suzanne didn’t connect you with the man she had met on the cruise.”
The line of his mouth was bitter. “I wasn’t traveling under an assumed name.”
“But you weren’t Lord Belfrey at the time.” Looking at her face, I decided it was etched with sorrow and felt a reluctance to believe she had broken the rules intentionally. “What did Georges say?”
“That the situation could be put to dramatic use. Either on Suzanne’s arrival or further down the road.”
“The other contestants would have a right to be upset.”
“Especially as Georges had made his selections based on an interlocking connection between them. Her death is going to come as a shock to the ones who knew her.”
I thought of Livonia and Judy. “Does it have to come out now that you and Suzanne knew each other? Even Georges must see there’s no point in setting that cat among the pigeons.” I looked studiedly at my watch. “And now I really must get out of here. Thumper’s owners must be getting dreadfully worried about him. I’ll need to find some sort of lead…”
“Take this,” he began unknotting his tie, and to my embarrassment I felt my face flush. Ridiculous to feel that something so ordinary implied an intimacy between us. “Why don’t you stop at Witch Haven, home of my late cousin Giles’s daughter Celia, and inquire there about him, if you can get the door opened to you? I haven’t been allowed in and neither has she come here since the day she demanded that I hand over Eleanor Belfrey’s portrait, saying Giles had given it to her because she admired the artist, if not the subject.” He handed me the tie and I took it wordlessly. “If you do get inside Witch Haven, you might get to see the portrait and discover whether or not I am exaggerating your resemblance to Eleanor.”
“Am I right in thinking you didn’t know her?”
“Giles was never welcoming of family visits.” His lordship turned his back on the desk and the spread-out photos. “Nevertheless, I showed up in defiance of that attitude shortly after their marriage. When the butler grudgingly allowed me into the hall, she was going up the stairs wearing the dress in the portrait, ankle-length and of pale filmy gauze. She must have been sitting for the artist. Halfway up she turned and looked down before going on her way. I stayed until late evening, despite the frequent glares from Giles, and from Celia, who was twenty-three at the time. A couple of years younger than myself. Despite Giles and I being first cousins he would have been fifty or fifty-one at the time. The ages stick in my mind. He was so damnably proud of having snared so young a bride.” Lord Belfrey moved a hand around his shirt collar as if fingering for his tie, looked at what was in my hand, stared for a moment in puzzlement, and then said gently: “Go on, Ellie Haskell, make your getaway with the dog.”
“As did Eleanor,” I replied, “only she didn’t come back.”
“Thank God for that. Don’t let my dislike of Celia put you off stopping at Witch Haven. She certainly isn’t a woman to answer her own door.”
“Did she marry?” Just being incurably nosy.
“Not to my knowledge. I think of her as devotedly wedded to herself; but don’t picture her as a recluse. Tommy claims to get on well with her. She has plenty of help in the house, including an elderly handyman named Forester she doesn’t deserve, and, so I’ve been told, a recently acquired paid companion. God help the woman!” He gave Thumper a farewell pat before holding the study door open for us.
I had to ask, “Are you over your cold feet?”
“Whoever she is, she won’t be a vulnerable girl living in fear of her life while wishing she were dead. That was the look I saw on Eleanor’s face when she looked down at me from the stairs.”
The study door closed behind him. Thumper looked up at me expectantly and together we crossed the hall to the passageway that Judy had said led to an outside door. I did think about going to the kitchen and telling Ben that I would be gone for a while. But he was bound to be busy. I knew that I had to try to return Thumper, and also felt compelled to make myself scarce before the house became a hotbed of activity.
Once outside, I knotted the tie around Thumper’s collar, but let it dangle loose. Time enough to take hold when we got out onto the road. But how to get there? I couldn’t do so by way of the drive. Even to sidle down the wooded side would be an intrusion; I didn’t flatter myself I was sufficiently slim to be easily hidden by the trees. Diminutive Judy with her muted coloring might have managed this feat, although I couldn’t imagine her sidling anywhere. Practical, kindly Judy-or so I saw her on early acquaintance-what would she have thought of his lordship’s recounting of seeing Eleanor Belfrey on the stairs?
Thumper was trotting a little ahead of me across the weed-ridden lawn as I searched for a path through the woods that might take me out onto the road sufficiently beyond the gates for me to head toward the village without drawing attention. Most particularly, I didn’t want to be seen by Lord Belfrey. How awful if he thought I was checking to make sure he had stuck with his decision and was now greeting the contestants with the requisite amount of pleasure and pageantry.
I stopped and looked in the direction of the dell, with its broken fountain and misshapen tumbles of mossy stone. A silken breeze brushed my face and rippled questing fingers through my hair-loosening strands that I did not bother to tuck back in place. The sky was a pure, pale blue between the skeined fleece of the clouds. Thumper stopped to look back at me before apparently deciding that the only way to keep his doggie figure was by racing in ever-narrowing circles and cheering himself on by a series of congratulatory barks. I found myself wondering what the garden had looked like when Eleanor Belfrey was here. Had she liked flowers, reveled in birdsong, been happy during any of her time at Mucklesfeld? I pictured her coming up from the dell wearing the dress from the portrait; I saw the soft filmy material as the color of moonlight. I saw the look on her face described by his lordship. Had she hated the idea of returning to the house, hated and feared the husband old enough to be her father? I shivered despite my light jacket. A dreadful thought socked me in the chest.
What if Eleanor had suspected Giles was planning to murder her? What if she had never left Mucklesfeld on that fateful night… and her body concealed along with the maligned Scottie was somewhere in the house? Or buried in one of the wooded areas… perhaps even the ravine where Suzanne Varney had met her death? The present faded, taking Thumper’s joyful barks with it. The dreadful scenario continued to unfurl from the wrappings of shadow woven into a shroud thirty years before. Whatever Eleanor’s reasons for marrying Giles, her feelings had turned to revulsion and loathing… the eyes that watched her every movement, followed her even when she was briefly alone, the grasping of her shrinking flesh. And he had known with bitterness and despair that she could never be his-except in death. It all fitted. The missing jewels buried with her to give credence to her flight. The dog killed first to prevent his barking. The sightings of her ghost, the house left to rot around him as Giles completed his descent into madness. But, rational thought (something my parents had vaguely despised as too close to reality) crept back. Who knew if the legend was the true story?
I turned to follow Thumper, who had now reached the woods and was looking back at me. The cornerstone of my wild flight of fancy was what Lord Belfrey had told me. And how much were his impressions to be relied upon? He was a young man at the time, not overly fond of his much older cousin, perhaps determinedly eager to condemn the marriage. To base so much on one glimpse of Eleanor, halfway up a staircase at that, had to be implausible. Wasn’t it clear that his lordship was obsessed with her memory, and that he-rather than Giles-had been driven mad by desire, in his case for an illusion that had transferred itself to a portrait and possibly to me? I wished I could talk my thoughts over with Mrs. Malloy, but that was out of the question at this time.
I caught up with Thumper as he was nosing around some nettles on the edge of the ravine. “Be careful,” I warned, “you’ll come out in blisters.” He gave me a tender look, took a couple of steps toward me, then turned tail to plunge into the brush. A succession of barks indicated his wish that I follow him, but I had no desire to descend a treacherous slope, especially when the opening he had used was too narrow for me to get through without gashing myself or twisting an ankle.
Some barking, then silence. I stood waiting, rubbing my arms-the breeze had picked up and the clouds had thickened, making for fewer, smaller patches of blue. But was that what had made me shiver? I felt the prickling of the skin, the cold stealth of fingers down my spine that accompanies that sense of being watched from a hidden vantage point by someone… or something… exuding menace. Eleanor’s ghost? But even if that were credible, why would she have it in for me? An answer formed. A ridiculous one. Lord Belfrey might have fallen in love at first sight, but to believe that Eleanor had been struck by the same bolt of lightning, dazzled by the same stardust, swept up in the same whirlwind of wonderment, was a stretch even for me. Then, if not Eleanor, who? Something shifted, a soft settling sound… a foot replacing itself after slipping? Why didn’t I call out, requesting the watcher identify himself? Because common sense (not all that common in my case) said there was no one at Mucklesfeld who would wish me harm. It could be a trespassing fauna hunter or, even more likely, a rabbit or squirrel.
I heard Thumper coming back, and following the sound of his greeting I came to the wide gap in the wall, responsible presumably for last evening’s tragedy. I had a brief, sharp glimpse of a broad track of flattened branches and brambles before he came lolloping along with a bunch of multicolored flowers in his mouth. Oh, my goodness! I thought, as he sat down in front of me with the look of proffering his heart along with the bouquet. They’d be the ones Tommy placed in remembrance! An irreverent part of me wanted to laugh. Nerves, of course. It suddenly occurred to me that I could be seen by those gathered on the drive, but when I looked around what I saw was a swarm of backs, the movement, including equipment, being toward the house. Evidently the arrival scene had been completed without a hitch.
“Naughty boy!” I scolded with less heat than required, because I hated to see the sorrow fill his eyes. “Take them back this minute.” I didn’t expect him to do as told. The thought of descending to the place where Suzanne had met her death, seeing the tree the car had hit, was not pleasant, but it would be unkind not to return the flowers, leaving them in a mangled heap for Tommy to come across. He had been nice to me, cured my headache; and with chubby schoolboy gallantry he had saved Livonia from the clutches of the Metal Knight. I hesitated. Again that intense feeling of being covertly watched. Thumper also hesitated, before turning and to my amazement wending his way back down into the ravine, to return brief moments later absent the flowers.
“Wonderful boy,” I praised while bending to knot Lord Belfrey’s tie, which I had forgotten I was holding around his collar, before setting off down the drive, there being no reason now not to use it to reach the road. We had just passed through the gates when I realized he still had something in his mouth. Inserting fingers and gently prying his teeth apart, I pulled out something flat, irregularly shaped, and about two inches in size. On closer inspection this proved to be a piece of broken-off plastic. “Very nice,” I told a pleased Thumper. “I’ll keep it as a souvenir of you.” I’d do nothing of the sort, of course, but to have tossed it aside would have been hurtful to his feelings, even if my parents hadn’t brought me up to believe that littering was a deadly sin, worse than any of the others, although they could never recall what they were.
Thumper took amicably to the tie as we proceeded down the road bounded on our near side by Mucklesfeld’s wall and by more woods on the other. It was a good-sized road with a crossing a short way down, but very little traffic. We came to a Norman church surrounded by an iron-fenced cemetery. It reminded me of St. Anselm’s, which Ben and I attend fairly frequently (meaning if we don’t oversleep or decide that a leisurely breakfast in bed would be nice). We passed nobody during the five or so minutes it took us to reach the village. Grimkirk looked to be more pleasant than its name. There was the familiar juxtaposing of half-timbered Tudor buildings, with sharply peaked roofs and narrow latticed windows, converted into boutiques and bakeries, and the modern wide-glass-fronted shops, banks, and electrical appliance showrooms. All of which make up the usual English high street. After crossing at the only traffic light in sight, I stopped a middle-aged woman in a head scarf and winter coat. A mistake. She had that blind, bustling stare of the morning shopper who is adding sausages and that nice sharp Cheddar-and mustn’t forget the vinegar-to her shopping list. Understandably startled, she asked me to repeat my question.
“You don’t happen to recognize this dog?”
“What dog?”
“This one,” pointing down.
“No.” Remembering the pork pie to have on hand in the fridge, in case the son and his wife showed up unannounced like they often did at teatime. “Why?”
“He’s a stray and I’m trying to return him.”
A smile appeared. “Well, isn’t that kind of you! Wish I could help you, dearie. Always been fond of animals, I have, but can’t have a dog or a cat because our Ted’s allergic. Why don’t you ask at the sweetshop, two doors along? One of the girls that work there might know something to help you.”
I took her advice, and feeling I couldn’t leave Thumper outside, took him in with me. The woman behind the counter, with the rows of large, enticingly filled glass jars on the shelves behind her, hadn’t been a girl in a very long time. But her ornately piled and puffed white hair, stuck through here and there with sparkly topped pins, the heavy makeup, and the exceedingly tight black top made clear that she was still vigorously fighting the battle against Time.
Had there been other customers, she might not have immediately noticed Thumper, sitting like an obedience champion.
“No dogs in here.” She had a rasping voice that suggested she stirred gravel into her morning black coffee for the benefits.
Again I explained the situation without success. She didn’t remember seeing the dog before. Nor had she been asked to post a Missing notice by the owners of a black Lab. She suggested I inquire at the estate agents on the opposite corner, who never seemed all that busy these days. I thanked her but decided against trooping from shop to shop and bothering passersby. I would take Lord Belfrey’s advice and call at Witch Haven. Hadn’t I been hoping it would come to that… the chance to meet Giles Belfrey’s daughter, Celia? And if that didn’t work out successfully, I might reap results when delivering Mrs. Malloy’s note to Mrs. Spuds. Working for Tommy must have given her some insights into the lives of those who had inhabited Mucklesfeld.
When I asked directions to Witch Haven, the pained expression altered, but not more pleasantly so. Interest both sly and avid flickered in the narrow strips of eyes between the gummy black mascara.
“Miss Belfrey likes her privacy, so if it’s just about the dog, you’d better be ready to have the door shut in your face. If it’s something more personal…” She let the words drift.
“Lord Belfrey suggested I go there.”
“Did he then? And how do you come to know his lordship?” Usually I don’t mind curiosity, especially when it’s my own, but hers was accompanied by a barely suppressed sneer tinged with glee, as if she were hoarding some delicious secret.
“I’m staying at Mucklesfeld.”
“One of the contestants?” She pulled a tissue out of its box and wiped it across the top of the cash register, while the real activity remained in those eyes.
“My husband and I got stranded in the fog. If you could kindly tell me how to get to Witch Haven?”
Scrunching the tissue, she tossed it into a plastic bin behind the counter. “Arrive before or after the accident?”
“After.”
“How’s his lordship taking it, then?”
“My husband and I just met him.”
“What sort of lot are they-the contestants, the ones that made it into Mucklesfeld alive?” She shrugged. “Can’t blame us locals for being interested, especially me, seeing as… but that’s for me to know and others to find out.” There it flashed again-the look of being the holder of a gleeful secret. The door jangled, and a woman came in with a couple of small children who instantly dropped down to fuss over Thumper. The mother said: “Mustn’t touch strange doggies.” I assured her that this one was friendly, made the necessary inquiry, got the negative result; then asked her, turning my back on the woman behind the counter and all those wonderfully filled jars of old-fashioned sweets-humbugs, gob-stoppers, aniseed balls-if she could direct me to Witch Haven.
Back out on the pavement, I told Thumper that there was always a bright side. “Had the guillotine not intervened, Marie Antoinette could have ended up looking like that Terror in there. And then who’d give a hoot whether or not she had said, Let them eat cake.” This naturally reminded me that I hadn’t eaten breakfast, leading me into the bakery, where I purchased a Chelsea bun and a Bakewell tart with no objection to Thumper from the assistant.
Paper bag in hand, I continued down the high street, munching as I went. As instructed by the mum in the sweetshop, I turned at the jewelers, proceeded down a narrow road lined with narrow gray brick houses opening directly onto the pavement, their elderly appearance cheered in some cases by glowing white steps, geranium pots in the windows, and wicker trellises around the doors. Few people were about, and none showed any undue interest in Thumper. Halfway down, I crossed over to turn left at the next corner into a tree-shaded lane that looked as though it had never seen a car, let alone a bus.
Set back in a charming garden with a weeping willow leaning toward a brook was a whitewashed, green-roofed, comfortably sized cottage-style house. It had a welcoming look that made me wish it was Witch Haven, but the instructions had been to continue on until the lane broadened into an avenue. There were only two other houses in the lane, both thatched cottages and picture-postcard charming, but I did not linger to admire. The green shade provided by the canopied branches of two rows of trees drew me in and dappled Thumper’s black fur with shadow as he trotted contentedly along beside me, the tie hanging loose in my hand. What a pleasant way to spend a morning. A woman and her dog taking a walk, neither thinking particularly deep thoughts, just enjoying the moment-peaceful in silent companionship. Far too abruptly, we came to the narrow, meandering drive leading up to the faded redbrick house with its ivy and latticed windows.
Here was Witch Haven. I expected to find it dark and drear, and so it might prove on the inside, but I was enchanted by the exterior. I could sense the history in which it was steeped… Cromwell’s Roundheads pounding on the door on a rainy winter’s night, the brave resistance from the Royalist household within. Then later, a Jacobite supporter, with a clear crush on Bonnie Prince Charming, hiding out in the priest hole. And on down time to Queen Anne telling the mistress of the house while paying an informal visit that she was pleased with the new style of furniture but feared it wouldn’t last.
My mind thus occupied, I reached the end of the drive, from which flowed a velvet lawn made for idyllic afternoons of croquet and tea under what looked like Longfellow’s “spreading chestnut tree.” Up the short wide brick steps Thumper and I went to the dark oak, iron-studded front door. It did present a daunting appearance. But if it had opened to Cromwell’s men (conveniently forgetting I had created that scene), why shouldn’t it do so for us? Unable to find a bell, I lifted the saucer-sized iron knocker. It fell with a thud that sent half a dozen crows flapping madly from some lofty perch, darkening the air around them.
“Perhaps she isn’t home,” I said, and then the door opened to reveal a tallish woman of uncertain age wearing horn-rimmed glasses and bundled into a thick cardigan above a shapeless tweed skirt. A painfully pale face, faded hair twisted into a high bun, and clumpy lace-up shoes completed the image of a woman who spent her days hurrying back and forth performing a hundred and one uninteresting tasks at the behest of the lady of the house.
In little doubt I was looking at the recently hired secretary-companion Lord Belfrey had mentioned, I gave my name and explained my errand, including the fact that his lordship had suggested I try his cousin for information.
“I’m new to the area and don’t go out much.” Her voice was devoid of regional accent or personality. “My employer has the groceries delivered, does her banking herself, and therefore rarely sends me into the village. I don’t think I’ve seen him before and I think I would remember. To some people all black Labs would look alike, but I’m a dog lover-being allowed to bring my Sealyham with me was one of the reasons I decided to come to Witch Haven, and that boy there does have a particularly lovable face.” Even this was said without inflection.
After a momentary hesitation, during which I expected her to close the door, she beckoned me into a handsomely wainscotted hall with a beautiful Persian carpet picking up the tones of the warmly glowing red-tiled floor and the cobalt blue of the glass lantern overhead. Unlike Mucklesfeld, the ceiling here was low, but its arched timbers along with the graceful curve of the staircase drew the eye upward. I was aware of gilt-framed portraits of bewigged gentlemen and ladies in richly hewn satin gowns, a dark oak dower chest, and a painted black-and-gold chair in the Empire style with a fringed, dark blue velvet shawl tossed upon it to artistic effect. A silk fan with a tassel would have been too much; but I wondered if it had been tried.
“I’m Nora Burton, Celia Belfrey’s assistant.” The woman bent her head to look with a vestige of a smile down at Thumper and I noticed both the creping of her neck and the fine white tracing of a scar above and below the corner of her left eye. Or was that an age line brought into sharper relief than the rest by the overhead light under which she was directly standing? Perhaps sensing my glance, she ceased the flow of words to Thumper… that he looked a nice boy, a good dog, someone had to be waiting anxiously at home… and raised her eyes to mine. The dutiful employee was replaced by a flesh-and-blood woman. “I hate the thought of dogs running loose, ready to get run down by the next passing car, but they do get out despite watching, especially the bigger ones, I imagine. It wouldn’t be fair to think nasty thoughts about the owner.”
“No, I wouldn’t do that.” Callous person that I was, I preferred not to think about the owner at all. “And the search isn’t a chore. Actually, I’m glad to get away from Mucklesfeld for a bit.”
“Is it like a madhouse, with the television show?”
It was nice of her to show a polite interest, though perhaps anything was a break in the daily drudge. I was getting a good feeling from Celia Belfrey’s house, possibly because likable people might have lived in it once upon a time, but I wasn’t predisposed, from what Lord Belfrey had told me, to be equally charmed by the present owner-should I be granted the opportunity to meet her. On the other hand, was it entirely fair to assume that because Nora Burton was dowdy, she was also downtrodden? Or even that his lordship’s view might not be slanted by Celia’s removal of Eleanor’s portrait on the grounds that it belonged to her? I dragged my mind back to what Nora Burton had asked about what was currently going on at Mucklesfeld.
“Things are just getting under way, but I expect the drama will increase rapidly. If it doesn’t, Georges will have a major disappointment tantrum.”
“Lord Belfrey?”
“No, the director.”
“I’m new here,” she reminded me, “and haven’t met his lordship. Forester, the handyman here who was with Miss Belfrey’s father for years, says his lordship rarely visited at Mucklesfeld as a boy or a young man.”
“Miss Burton,” came an irritable, well-carrying voice from a room down the hall with its door, I now noticed, ajar, “who are you talking to out there?”
“Excuse me.” The dutiful employee slipped back into place behind the horn-rimmed glasses. “I’ll explain to Miss Belfrey why you came.” She departed without saying she would return, but I took that to be left hanging in the air; if I were to be evicted, Cousin Celia would not dilly-dally giving the order. Several slow-ticking minutes passed. I thought about the children with yearning. Thumper availed himself of the opportunity to sit down and scratch. A paunchy periwigged gentleman on the wall kept me in his sideways leer whichever way I moved. And if the door had not suddenly reopened, I might have decided that Celia Belfrey had died from an overdose of smelling salts on being told his lordship had sent me to spy on her.
“Miss Belfrey will see you and the dog,” Nora Burton informed me in the neutral tones of the impeccably trained maid-servant seen on old black and white movies-invariably named Mary or Ethel and too dimwitted to reveal to the mustached, laconic inspector from Scotland Yard what she had overheard when giving the drawing-room brass doorknob a good polish. Thus ensuring she would get herself strangled, to be found in the butler’s pantry in an ungainly sprawl of thick stockings, with an adenoidal gape on her face.
“Thank you.” I picked up the tie lead I had dropped on entering the house and drew Thumper to my side.
“If you will kindly follow me into Miss Belfrey’s sitting room.”
Nora stood aside as I entered, but remained in the doorway as I crossed parquet turned golden by the sunlight entering through the latticed windows despite the raindrops spattering the glass. It was a room as lovely as the hall, with the richness of red and cobalt blue accenting perfectly other time-muted shades. The furniture was an unerring mingling of exquisite antiques and some fine contemporary pieces, including two ivory linen sofas on either side of the Adam fireplace. The woman seated on the one with its back to the windows, face turned toward the door, bore a strong resemblance to Lord Belfrey, despite the fact that she could never have been a beauty even when young. The female version of his features and black eyes conveyed a hardness impervious to rose pink silk blouse and matching cashmere cardigan draped around the shoulders. The straight, midlength hair was too black for her middle-aged skin, although I found myself doubting that it was dyed, and the slash of red that comprised her mouth suggested a woman who would stop at nothing to get her own way. She did not shift position on the sofa, let alone rise to her feet. As she watched my approach, those eyes never dipping to take in Thumper, a slow, cruel smile curved that mouth into a scythe.
“Look your fill,” her voice was low and throaty.
“I’m sorry…?”
“At the portrait of my stepmother above the mantel.” She raised a silk-sleeved arm, which fell back to reveal a ringless hand. “It’s why he sent you, isn’t it?”