She Shoots to Conquer Page 2

  “Coming with you.” Sounds of Mrs. Malloy opening her car door. “You’ll need my arm to hold on to, Mrs. H, or if I know tuppence you’ll get yourself lost before putting one foot in front of the other. Stay put when you’re out and I’ll come and get you.” She is a woman who can’t bear to be left out of anything, however small, which is not to minimize her genuine, if often disgruntled, concern for my welfare. What I didn’t put much faith in were the four-inch heels she invariably wore except (possibly) to bed.

  “No, you stay by your door,” I responded firmly, and on the wave of Ben’s dejected sigh exited the car, to be met as I rounded the bonnet by his fog-bulked presence. Given the feeling of standing in damp fur, it was a relief to feel his hand cover mine. Mother Nature, having eased up on us, was back to demonstrating how quickly and thickly she could knit up a gray angora blanket. The van had been absorbed into the mix of plain and pearl, and it was with relief that I felt someone speaking with Mrs. Malloy’s voice bump into my side.

  “A good thing my vision has always been so good, Mrs. H!”

  This was a surprise to me; she had always claimed the opposite when I would casually mention the cobwebs dangling from the ceiling. But there are times when it doesn’t do to nitpick.

  “I can see the outline of steps going up the building. And those blobs moving up them have to be the people that was in the van. There!” If she pointed, I couldn’t see her hand. “We just need to move straight ahead. Do you have hold of Mr. H?”

  “His hand, I don’t know if the rest of him is tagging along. Are you there, darling?”

  A response came in the form of a grunt.

  We shuffled forward… or it was to be hoped that was the direction we were taking. I felt myself becoming increasingly disorientated until my foot touched an impediment that suggested we had reached the bottom step. Galvanized by presumably reaching this same conclusion, Ben reclaimed full use of his voice.

  “Ellie,” he said with irritable vigor, “do not make excuses for the situation by complaining that the drive should have been better posted. And for God’s sake don’t agree to a cup of tea if they offer. Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

  “Not getting good vibes from the place?” Mrs. Malloy snorted dismissively as she tugged us onward and upward. “Some of us is too suggestible, is what I say. Seen in a good light it’ll be just another stately home… with a history of course, that I suppose could include murder and mayhem given its age.”

  “We don’t know anything about its age,” Ben rebutted.

  Not true, I thought with a lack of wifely loyalty. My impression during that thinning of the fog had been of eighteenth-century construction. Another sobering thought emerged. Were we shuffling up the steps of one of England’s stately homes? Would we be required to purchase tickets before requesting information of the admittance person in braided uniform? Excitement stirred. My work as in interior designer was often sparked by seeing how the upper crust lived. If as Mrs. Malloy had suggested we’d been preceded up the steps-which were certainly of a length to suggest awaiting grandeur-by the person (or people) from the van, it seemed likely they were already inside by now.

  An eerie silence enveloped us along with the fog, broken only by the intermittent wheeze of our collective breathing and the tentative tap-tapping of Mrs. Malloy’s high heels. The damp chill had worked its way within my light jacket and it was a relief when my extended hand touched a flat wooden surface. Surely a door! Sir Edmund Hillary could not have felt greater triumph when stumbling to the top of Everest. Not to belittle his achievement in accomplishing his scenic hike, in the pleasant month of June 1953 all that was then required of him was to bask in the moment with his fellow ascender and plant the triumphal flag before nipping back down for a cup of cocoa. Far more taxing to my mind was the need to locate either a knocker or a bell.

  “You know what I think,” gasped Mrs. Malloy over my shoulder, “it’ll turn out this isn’t an imposing house like I could feel properly at home in, but a bloody great block of flats. Talk about disappointing, Mr. H!”

  I stood immobile-not only because I had been counting on touring a gallery of ancestral portraits after sipping tea from priceless Sèvres cups in the formal salon, but also due to the daunting prospect of pressing any number of bells before making contact with a static voice inquiring after our bona fides in palpable fear that we were either bill collectors or the police. Whether Ben would have suggested turning tail must forever remain questionable because a sound reminiscent of Big Ben shredded the gauzy mantle of gray tranquility.

  “Must have hit the buzzer with me knee,” came Mrs. Malloy’s voice. “It’s this reckless leg syndrome I’ve been plagued with ever since I heard about it on the telly.”

  “Restless,” I corrected.

  “Does it matter?” Ben snapped.

  We might have gone on to discuss other medical ailments if the door had not opened inward with a grotesque creak to reveal a rectangle of yellowish light surrounding a figure, rather in the manner of a card depicting the image of a saint proffering hope of succor to all who wander parched and weary upon life’s barren plain.

  “I’d a feeling there was more of you outside,” said a male voice that sounded more cockney than saintly, as the three of us scuffled an entrance accompanied by some elbowing in the ribs and trampling on each other’s feet. “Didn’t seem likely to me and Mrs. Foot that there’d only be them two that just arrived.”

  Did a fog routinely bring in a stream of lost souls? I should of course have focused on what the man continued to say, but there was the distraction of Ben’s rigid discomfort and Mrs. Malloy’s jabbing me in the side as she adjusted her hat, which would have been a bit overdone even for Ascot. Added to which I am one of those shallow types as much drawn to the environments into which I find myself catapulted as to those who provide admittance. Rather than wondering if the man was the home owner and who were Mrs. Foot and them two mentioned, I let my gaze pass through him to roam the vastness of a baronial hall shrouded in shadow so thick in places it was as though we had brought some of the fog inside with us. The yellowish light issued from a barely visible fixture suspended from some forty feet up, along with wall lamps that resembled the sort of torches held aloft by wild-eyed wretches screaming for the heads of their oppressors.

  A snatch of a maudlin song warbled years ago by a greataunt infiltrated my head, something along the lyrics of: In the gloaming… oh my darling… when the lights are dim and low…” And lo, all these years later, I stood in the gloaming ignoring my own darling in the process. My eyes found the staircase. It stood a quarter of a mile down to my left, and despite the poor visibility there was no mistaking its baronial splendor. Straight ahead in the distance was a fireplace vast enough to roast more than one proverbial ox… or equally possibly a couple of recalcitrant peasants to be removed when necessary from the correspondingly large log bin to the left of the hearth. On my more immediate right was the outline of a carved screen that might well have been pinched from a cathedral. A trestle table that could have seated an army stood loaded with murky miscellany, and adding to the confusion were numerous squares and rectangles that could feasibly be packing chests brought in on moving day several centuries distant.

  One thing was clear. Either I had mistaken the exterior of the building as eighteenth century or this hall dated back to an earlier part of a revamped structure. Tudor? No, I thought, undoubtedly doing some wishful thinking… Lancastrian or even further back to Plantagenet times. The name Geoffrey of Anjou filtered back to me from childhood history lessons, but I chose to indulge myself with the image of Henry II sporting a sprig of yellow broom tucked into his crown. By the time Mrs. Malloy pointed out that I was standing there gawking, the number of living persons in hall had dwindled by one.

  “I expect you hurt his feelings by not listening to a word he said.” She stood majestically, smoothing down the front of the emerald green taffeta jacket to which were pinned enough sparkling br
ooches to ransom half the nobility of Europe. Clearly she wasn’t speaking about Ben, who was pacing on the spot, but in recognition of my stupid look she clarified for me. “Him as let us in, and I’d have thought you’d have thrilled to every syllable, Mrs. H!”

  “Who is he and what did I miss?”

  “Mr. Plunket.”

  “That’s his name?” Call me persnickety, but as a sobriquet for a member of the landed gentry this one left something to be desired.

  “So he said, and I don’t see why he’d say so if it weren’t true. Not one of your more romantic names, is it? ’Course, maybe it was pronounced French at one time. ‘Ploonkay’ has a certain air to it…”

  “Possibly if he wanted to be a fashion designer, but maybe he’s happy as he is.”

  “Happy is what he didn’t look, Mrs. H, when he took an eyeful of you.”

  “Me?”

  “Could we continue this rather banal conversation outside?” Ben paced further into the gloaming, allowing Mrs. Malloy to ignore him without seeming to be downright rude.

  “Never mind that, Mrs. H, before you get all upset, Mr. Plunket is not the owner of this lovely big house.”

  “No? Then what is he? A policeman directing traffic?”

  “The butler.” Mrs. Malloy shook her head at my dimwittedness, then, perhaps feeling she had been unnecessarily crushing, added: “Not that he looked the part. More like he’d dressed out of the ragbag.”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “What difference does it make what he was wearing?” Ben made an irritable turn and collided with a suit of armor, which made a metallic protest but mercifully did not draw its sword.

  “And a face like a gourd,” continued Mrs. M remorselessly. “Still, as I remember thinking on being introduced to my second… no, third husband, ugly is as ugly does. Like my American friend says, Abraham Lincoln never won any beauty pageants.”

  “And where is Mr. Plunket now?” I asked.

  “Gone for a word with his nibs, is how he put it.” Mrs. Malloy pointed at a door which I estimated could be reached without getting winded by anyone in reasonably good shape.

  “About giving us directions? Why couldn’t he have done that on his own?”

  “Some people can’t point the way to the end of their own noses. But never mind that, Mrs. H.” Her eyes flashed like a cat’s in the dark, and it was finally borne in on me that she was sizzling with excitement. “Get this! Them two people he mentioned as getting here ahead of us-the ones from the van, that is-they’re part of a television crew, cameramen, audio, and such. Seems they’ve come to film a documentary! The director’s French, if you can believe it!”

  “God! What a ghastly stroke of luck!” Ben paced back into view, his footfall echoing up from the flagstones like the march of thousands. “We can’t intrude at such a time! What if we get caught on camera explaining we couldn’t find our way from point A to point B because of a little mist that wouldn’t have stalled a kid on a tricycle. Ellie”-there was a note of pleading in his voice that would have undoubtedly touched my very core had I not been considering the likelihood of the director’s name being François and whether he would wear a beret and sit in a canvas chair with his name on the back.

  It shames me to report that I turned away from Ben to ask Mrs. Malloy a vital question. “Did Mr. Plunket say what sort of documentary?”

  “So now you’re interested.” She struck a pose indicative of pondering her best side if presented to the camera. “He didn’t get round to that. He ran off, it seemed to me”-she paused to give me the gimlet eyes from under penciled brows-“when he took a good look at you, Mrs. H!”

  “Keep rubbing it in. I’m sorry I missed his reeling back in horror.”

  “You don’t say. Anyway, from the look on his face it was like he’d seen a ghost.”

  “What rubbish!” If my laugh sounded hollow, it was due to the acoustics produced by the mile-high ceiling that vanished to a glimpse of the dependent light fixture and a railing girding what was presumably a gallery. I preferred the thought of lepers to minstrels. Was that a grotesquely dehumanized face peering down at us? Ridiculous! My overactive imagination had conjured a bedraggling of hoary locks out of a trick of light. And yet, in my defense, a place like this, reeking with antiquity and seemingly serious neglect, might cause even the normally unsusceptible to overreact.

  “It was right after eyeballing you that Mr. Plunket said he’d ask his nibs about the directions. Scuttled off he did like the hounds of hell was at his heels.” Mrs. Malloy stood savoring the memory, while Ben took a detour around the trestle table before fumbling his way toward the fireplace. I inhaled a thought.

  “Maybe that’s the reason for crew and the documentary.”

  “What you mean, Mrs. H?”

  “Ghosts. I wonder if this place is to be part of a series on haunted houses. I can’t imagine it having been chosen for the glimpse it provides into the golden glory of aristocratic living.”

  “I’ll bet you’ve hit the nail on the noggin.” My trusty cohort is not one to hand out praise on a shovel and she did not now beam approval, but her nod conveyed agreement of sufficient fervor that her hat shifted a couple of degrees.

  “What can be keeping the butler fellow this long?” Ben again passed the suit of armor without so much as a nod of acknowledgment. Did the sensation of being preyed upon by unseen eyes and ears emanate from that chunk of metal? Or was there some other hovering presence counting the seconds until Ben dragged Mrs. Malloy and me out the door that would thud heavily and inexorably against us as we went fleeing back into the night? Aware that this was a chapter I had read more often than was good for me, I banished the chills and thrills and concentrated on the logical.

  “Very likely Mr. Plunket has interrupted a session between his nibs and the director of the television show and is having difficulty stirring up interest in our trivial situation.” I felt regretfully compelled to add: “Under the circumstances, I think you’re right, darling, we are making nuisances of ourselves, and from what Mrs. Malloy said of Mr. Plunket’s reaction to me, I don’t suppose he’ll mind one bit returning to find us gone.”

  Being… or thinking… myself good at picking up atmospheres, I imbibed waves of gratitude flowing my way from Ben, coupled with even stronger vibes that boded well should he and I ever be blessed in entering our own bedroom once again. But before he could utter more than a reprieved sounding half-syllable, Mrs. Malloy responded vehemently. “That’s right, Mrs. H, go blaming me for forcing us to do a bunk. Well, I for one don’t hold with bad manners-them being precluded in Article Forty-nine, paragraph fourteen of the CFCWA [Chitterton Fells Charwomen’s Association] Charter. Besides, it could be the reason Mr. Plunket’s not back yet is that his nibs and the director are talking about inviting us to be extras”-her face became a beacon far outshining the inadequate wattage of the hall-“or even give us speaking parts.”

  To be on television? My shallow nature thrilled to the prospect. And, I reminded myself, on the practical side the exposure would be good for my career and Ben’s. He could casually mention his cookery books and the bistro. I could display a charming knowledge of furniture styles, fabrics, and ambience before the camera panned to my logo and business e-mail address. A couple with three children and a cat to support must sensibly seize opportunities offered. Besides… my incredibly beautiful fashion model cousin Vanessa would be sick with jealousy, as would that woman at church who always looked down her nose at me because I don’t know one opera from another… and there was that friend of hers who talked all the time about going to Paris for lunch…

  Upon catching Ben’s eye, I reined in my delusions of approaching fame while being sufficiently resentful of his wet blanket attitude to move away from him and Mrs. Malloy and prowl over to the suit of armor. We have a pair at Merlin’s Court positioned against the staircase wall, and I was interested in discovering if there was any familial resemblance. If so, I could give this one an update on
how often ours, according to the children, came alive when they thought no one was watching.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Malloy in a defeatist voice, “could be I’m getting ahead of meself about us being included in the show. Not that it matters to me; it was you I was thinking about, like always, Mrs. H. I expect the truth is his nibs is ninety years old and Mr. Plunket is having trouble waking him from his nap.”

  “Or deciding if he’s dead,” muttered Ben nastily. “In this lighting, his viability could be questionable for days.”

  “No need for jokes, Mr. H, I don’t think it’s nice considering-now I come to remember-that Mr. Plunket said this had been a difficult evening already.” Either Mrs. Malloy or Ben sighed gustily; there followed the irritable tap-tap of her high heels. Without turning my head, I was aware of her standing with her back squarely to me a yard or so from the staircase.

  “Good evening,” I addressed the suit of armor with the courtesy I had instilled into my children during the process of introductions. “What, my fine fellow, can you tell us of this place?”

  Its visored face showed only slightly more expression than a guard at Buckingham Palace.

  “Ever get an urge to scratch an itch?”

  Oh, the folly of thinking oneself witty at the expense of the immobile. Foolish… infantile assumption! Before the smirk fully adhered to my face, I experienced a sharp pain above my right foot, and just as I started to hop, I saw the metal arms begin to rise through the grainy gloom and draw together… the metal paws curled inward… closing around the general vicinity of my throat.

  Did I imagine the macabre chortle and the gleeful murmur of “Who’s immobile now?” Would I have stood there trembling on the edge of reason until those salad spoon hands closed around my throat, choking out every last spluttering gasp as my eyes stood out like Ping-Pong balls and… with a final expiring breath my nose blew off? It is not a question I allow myself to ponder in the dead of night when the ghastly memory returns. I was saved by a scream of unholy terror from behind me. Had I been capable of coherent thought, I would have assumed Ben or Mrs. Malloy had paused in thinking about themselves to notice my imminent danger. As it was, I turned in automated slow motion to witness Mrs. Malloy with her mouth opened in size to the entrance to a cave. For teeth she had stalactites and stalagmites. But what did it for her appearance was her wearing a hat on top of a hat-one with a circle of corded fringe cutting her face in half.