She Shoots to Conquer Page 10

  “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 in
stead, 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.”

  “M
ost 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.