She Shoots to Conquer Read online

  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,” t
ears 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.”

  6

  A lack, poor Thumper! Cast in the role of pariah because he was born a dog! Unfair, my heart cried out on his behalf! Nothing in his bark had suggested a trace of a Scottish accent that would lead one to believe he knew the entire works of Robbie Burns by heart and longed to wear the tartan.

  “Whitey would have squeaked his dear little head off before being ripped away from Mucklesfeld, wouldn’t he, Mr. Plunket?” Mrs. Foot was saying when Livonia came creeping back into the kitchen like one of the ghosts said to haunt the house along with the memory of a treacherous Scottie.

  “Sorry for disappearing like that. I just needed a moment alone,” she whispered while returning to her chair next to Judy.

  “And quite unstandable,” began Mr. Plunket, to be interrupted by Georges LeBois rolling his wheelchair through the doorway and performing a nifty swivel in the center of the room in silent acknowledgment of his audience. I was surprised that Thumper didn’t greet him as a relative of sorts with a friendly woof. But perhaps he took exception to hugely stout men wearing yellow and brown checked waistcoats coupled with crimson silk cravats tucked into aqua blue shirts. A prejudice I could not approve, considering I had once been plus-sized myself, which should have made me less critical of appearances in general, as in the cases of Mr. Plunket, Mrs. Foot, and Boris, instead of thinking wickedly unkind thoughts about them. It was Livonia, getting to her feet along with Judy, who broke the silence.

  “Lord Belfrey?” The question combined hesitancy with an overly bright lift of the lips. She had a very readable face. Written all over it now was the awful dilemma of not wanting to find herself affianced to a stranger (she had made clear to me that being a contestant on Here Comes the Bride was only a charade intended to bring Harold either metaphorically or in actuality to his knees) while wondering how she could reject a man in a wheelchair if his choice fell upon her. Everything about Georges LeBois roared out that he was not a man to be pitied, that he did not view himself as handicapped, that he towered in his mind over his fellows with portable legs. They must plod through life while he spun circles around them, vast in size and knowledge of what was going on behind a timidly pretty face.

  “’Course this isn’t his nibs.” Mr. Plunket sounded mortally offended by the suggestion. “It’s Mr. Georges LeBois as is in charge of doing the filming of Here Comes the Bride.”

  “Oh!” Livonia released a quivery breath and tentatively followed suit when Judy moved to shake his hand.

  He inclined his head, making three reasonably sized chins out of one humongous one. “Yes, yes!” A royal wave from a hand the size of a bowl of bread dough. “It will be interesting to see how you each comes through on film. You-the little washed-out beige thing-may be more alive to the camera than Ms. Teacup Face here. That’s what makes for a good take, stripping away the flesh and bone to reveal what’s hiding underneath, if anything.”

  “It’s all very interesting, isn’t it, Mrs. Foot?” said Mr. Plunket.

  “Oh, indeed, Mr. Plunket,” replied Mrs. Foot, with a return to the normalcy that I continued to find more scary than her greenish-yellow-eyed rampages. “I’d make you one of my nice cups of tea… and the ladies too, if I knew where the kettle had gone.”

  “On the rubbish heap, I devoutly hope!” Georges LeBois spun his wheelchair so that its back was toward her and Mr. Plunket. “As for you two,” he notched his bellow down to a rumble in addressing Livonia and Judy, “don’t stand there wasting your simpers on me. Go and announce your presence to Lord Belfrey, he’s the one who may get stuck marrying one of you.”

  “And where will we find his lordship?” asked an undaunted Judy briskly.

  “In his study.”

  Livonia tried but failed to unhinge her jaw.

  “And where is that?” Again Judy posed the question.

  Georges favored her with the bloodhound smile that could have gobbled up persons far larger than her less than five feet. Thumper might have been impressed had he not decided that the better part of valor was going to sleep at my feet. “My good woman, if you and your husband-seeking companion are incapable of locating a room without being led to it by the nose or by means of a map marked with a cross, you are patently not up to the gamesmanship of the contest ahead. And should forthwith make your absence felt. As you were informed on your application forms,” Georges gestured mightily, “and in subsequent acceptance letters, Lord Belfrey is not looking for a bride of startling beauty or even above-average intelligence, merely one with the modicum of practicality that will prevent her going raving mad before the decorators are brought in to take the cobwebs down.”

  “Thank you for your assistance, Mr. LeBois,” said Judy, and with Livonia in tow she serenely departed the kitchen.

  “Monsieur LeBois,” he swiveled to call after them as the door closed. “Hmm! That half rasher of bacon may be the one to watch in this race. The other’s pretty and may have more to her than we’re seeing now. But if looks mattered, the winner would have been the one that died… unless her photograph had been doctored, which I don’t think it was. Ah well,” the yellow and brown checked waistcoat swelled and the crimson cravat flamed to his grandiloquence, “that’s life!”

  “Not for Suzanne Varney, it isn’t,” I retorted roundly, “and you were horridly rude to Judy Nunn and Livonia Mayberry.”

  “It’s his artistic temperament.” Mrs. Foot eyed Georges ingratiatingly. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Plunket?”

  “’Course it is, and Boris would agree if he was here. I expect he’s looking for Whitey to give him a nice piece of cheese and tell him he’ll be back among the saucepans, swinging his little heart out on the frying pan in next to no time.”

  “Over my fat carcass!” Georges roared with flabby-lipped relish. “As for the artistic temperament, you should know something about that, being married to a chef, Ellie Haskell, if that is your real name.”

  “And why shouldn’t it be?”

  “Because not everything in this house is entirely what it seems.”

  If his intent was to make me quiver and quake, he was to be disappointed. My temper was up. “Very likely,” I said, “you’re certainly no more a Monsieur than Whitey the Rat. My guess is you originated in Tottenham where my husband was raised.”
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br />   “We never claimed the little dear was French.” It was Mr. Plunket’s turn to take umbrage. “Abyssinian and Polish is what we said, with a splash of Italian. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Foot?”

  Georges turned the wheelchair squarely on them. “I was referring, Mrs. Wife of the Chef, to the suit of armor that comes alive when one stands too close to it, inducing susceptible women to faint dead away.”

  “Nothing supernatural about that,” I said, remembering that I had meant to warn Livonia about the Metal Knight. “Mr. Plunket explained that the extending arms and clawing mitts were the result of Boris’s penchant for tinkering with inanimate objects.”

  “I did say that, though not with the Latin-sounding words,” agreed Mr. Plunket.

  “And no reason why you shouldn’t have.” Mrs. Foot loomed enormous behind the wheelchair. “Very proud of Boris we both are. He’s a genius in his quiet…”

  “Unassuming,” supplied Mr. Plunket, displaying his mastery of the English language.

  “That’s the word.” Mrs. Foot nodded her head, causing the gray locks to shift like wooly clouds blown along by a fierce wind. “Unassuming, that’s always been Boris. And unappreciated, only think what he’s been put through in the past by them that had to be jealous of his looks and charm and cleverness.”

  “For God’s sake, you two,” Georges roared, “get out of my presence and indulge your delusions elsewhere.”

  “I still say what you need is one of my lovely cups of tea.” Mrs. Foot spoke in the manner I imagined her perfecting when trundling her trolley through the wards of Lofty Poplars, Leafy Elms, or whatever the name was. That she sounded menacing in a slippery soft way rather than soothing was the fault of her hulking form, witch mane, and hag’s grin, but instead of castigating Mother Nature for cruelty above and beyond, my sympathy went to the patients I pictured using every last ounce of feeble strength to hide under their sheets.