She Shoots to Conquer Read online

  “What are they contesting for?” That was Ben asking, while looking toward the obdurately closed door.

  “The position of Lady Belfrey.”

  I actually heard Mrs. Malloy’s chin drop.

  “One of the lucky ladies will… if the filming goes forward… be awarded his hand in marriage during the final segment. That’s as Mrs. Foot, Boris, and me understand things. The director, Monsieur Georges LeBois-French like you might guess-hasn’t had much to say to us since he arrived this morning. All he’s been going on about is how bad the food has been.”

  If Mrs. Malloy hadn’t already been seated, she would have sunk into the nearest chair or wastepaper basket.

  “We can only hope the rest of the crew that just got here won’t turn their noses up at what’s on the table because it isn’t snails and frog legs.” Mr. Plunket wasn’t looking at anyone in particular; indeed, his eyes had disappeared into his gourd face.

  Clearly in desperate need of something to hold on to, Mrs. Malloy finally removed the lamp shade and her hat along with it. “You told us earlier out in the hall that they’re doing a TV reality show. Are you saying it’s one of them bachelor ones?”

  “I think he’s spelled it out,” Ben snapped at her, something he almost never does.

  “What’s the show to be called?” she inquired dreamily while crushing the shape out of the lamp shade.

  “Here Comes the Bride.”

  “My, don’t that sound lovely! And I expect the contestants are all lovely young things with perfect figures and faces that have never been used.” She was all eager wistfulness as she continued to pulverize the hapless lamp shade.

  “Not chosen for their looks they haven’t been,” replied Mr. Plunket. “The idea, as presented to his lordship by Monsieur LeBois, was for something different from other programs of the type. That’s the attraction what they’re banking on to garner-I think that’s the word-a big audience. The contestants have been picked because of other qualities: their willingness to muck in at Mucklesfeld is how his nibs puts it. Deal with all that’s wrong with the place, pitch in with the cleanup, show they are up to the job of being Lady Belfrey while the ceilings come down about their ears.”

  “Hardly romantic.” Ben paced over to the door, opened it, and closed it again.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” I found myself sitting up on the sofa. Had I thought about it, I would have realized that neither the horrible face peering through the banisters nor the aggressive Metal Knight had terrorized my thoughts for the past few moments. “A woman with a strong practical streak can have her appeal, especially if she makes the most of her looks, something the beauties of this world don’t have to bother about, hopefully, until it is too late. Did Lord Belfrey make the selections, Mr. Plunket?”

  “That was done by Monsieur LeBois from the hundreds of written applications and photos sent in. He and his nibs met some six months ago in London, introduced by a mutual acquaintance. The idea for the show came out of their conversation. They got together again. You can see the mutual benefit to the winning contestant and his nibs. She’d get to become a titled lady and he’d be able to use his share of the financial proceeds from the show to set Mucklesfeld back on its feet.”

  “But now things are up in the air,” I mused.

  “They always was in a way.” Mr. Plunket oozed despondency. “Monsieur LeBois hasn’t managed as yet to get a firm commitment from any of the stations, he’s filming on spec-is how I think it’s called-but as Mrs. Foot, Boris, and me understand it, there’s been considerable interest.”

  “Is Lord Belfrey content to marry for what it can bring him?” I felt, rather than saw, Ben’s lip curl.

  “It’s how things has been done in the great families for centuries and it’s not as how his nibs is young and wild to trot. Fifty-six is what he’ll be come his next birthday. Can’t say he’s not of an age to know his own mind and stick to it down the years. Besides, his heart’s already taken by one he can’t have. That said, he’ll choose the one that’s right for him and Mucklesfeld and do right by her through the years.”

  But would it be a case of separate bedrooms, as had at first been the case when Wisteria Whitworth married the estimable Carson Grant after the timely death of the husband who in order to gain control over her fortune had contrived her removal to the hellish confines of Perdition Hall? A woman subjected to the suspect ministrations of Dr. Megliani, whose medical degree had been bought from a cloaked figure with a glass eye and a missing forefinger in the backroom of an opium den in a back street of Soho. An acknowledged beauty, once the toast of London, now reduced to being force-fed lumpy gruel by the slatternly female warden (I winced away from this image) could not be expected to cast care behind her like a silk stole and respond instantly to the overtures of a man who had been a notable rake before gaining fierce self-control over his baser self.

  That he was regarded as the handsomest man in England, was fluent in all modern and dead languages, rode to hounds as if born in the saddle, and fenced like the Count of Monte Cristo, added not a whit to his conceit. Though his love for Wisteria invaded every aspect of his being, Carson Grant-whom I had naturally pictured as a young Cary of the same last name-had held his seering passion in check with an iron will and a clenched jaw.

  Tormented beyond his limits, he had removed himself to his study; and when inclement weather prevented his stripping off his intricately tied cravat and French cambric shirt and diving into the deep stillness of the lake behind the formal rose garden, he strode off on a twenty-mile walk across the moors, returning only when he knew himself too weary to accost her with anguished beseechings to permit him his rights as a husband. Of course, one hundred and thirty some pages later, all had ended as it should, with her wistful acknowledgment that a marriage in name only left something lacking, including the possibility of an heir.

  Back to life at Mucklesfeld Manor. At fifty-six, Lord Belfrey might have no interest in siring children, making youth, or lack thereof, insignificant in the selection of a bride. My eyes met Mrs. Malloy’s and a tremor seized me on perceiving their dreamy glow. I knew with appalling certainty that she was inwardly humming “Here Comes the Bride.” Mr. Plunket had stated that his lordship was not seeking a dainty delight of a woman to take to wife but a sturdy helpmeet, one willing to roll up her shirtsleeves and trouser legs and begin setting his house to rights. And who better to do that than a woman who had spent her working life cleaning other people’s homes? Tragically, one of the contestants was dead and a vacancy yawned.

  I could understand from whence hope sprang. But even if his lordship and the director did by some remote chance add her to the list of hopefuls, the odds were five to one against her being the one chosen to become Lady Belfrey. And Mrs. Malloy was the worst of bad losers. She had snarled for a week after not winning Pin the Tail on the Donkey at Rose’s last birthday party. No, no! I could not risk her being mortally wounded on the path to a loveless marriage. She must be wrested from Mucklesfeld Manor without delay.

  “Sweetheart, your eyes are glazed. Did you doze off?” Ben was all tender solicitude.

  “Just drifting.” I gave him a staunch smile. Shuffling my legs off the sofa from a semi-reclining position produced an involuntary wince. My headache had gone from minor to full-blown. I was sure I looked like death. Which in this house was perhaps not a novelty. Mr. Plunket appeared not to notice.

  “There’s no denying that the lady’s death puts his lordship in a difficult position.” He looked more than ever like a talking gourd. “Will he think it right to go ahead with filming Here Comes the Bride? Would it seem right to the sponsors of the show? Would it be a turnoff for the viewing audience?”

  “But that’s what them shows is all about-high drama and cutthroat angling for the main chance,” responded Mrs. Malloy stoutly from her chair. “’Course, I don’t want to sound callous, but there it is. Talk about grabbing the audience by the throat-revealing the tragedy up front and going on from there. E
specially if his lordship could find himself a replacement candidate in the nick of time… right out of the blue, so to speak.” The dreamy glow had returned. Clearly no time was to be lost in rescuing her from her giddy aspirations. At any moment Lord Belfrey might swan into the room to find himself a marked man. “His nibs is a sensitive bloke.” Mr. Plunket’s voice quivered. “He’ll not want to show what could look like disrespect to the deceased, may she rest in peace. Trouble is, he’s up against Monsieur LeBois. With him it’s all about the finances, what he’s already put into the project, along with whatever he’s agreed on paying his crew, including the cameraman and the staging fellow that showed up minutes ahead of you three. Can’t just send them off with a flea in their ear is what Mrs. Foot, Boris, and me heard him saying.”

  Ben stood seething, lips compressed; eyes blazing the color of the emerald (a genuine fake) mounted in one of Mrs. Malloy’s rings, waiting to break in the instant Mr. Plunket paused on a shaky breath.

  “No disrespect to your boss,” he enunciated bitingly, “but his sensitivity appears to be lacking where my wife is concerned. It’s been a good twenty minutes since he absented himself and has neither returned to inquire how she is feeling or seen to be providing her with any refreshment.”

  “Now then, Mr. H,” Mrs. Malloy shoved in her oar, “there’s no need to get rattled. Like Mr. Plunket’s been saying, his lordship’s got a lot on his plate. Could be he’s on the phone with the dead lady’s family or the funeral home. It don’t do to be selfish. Besides,” she looked at me and added with what I considered extreme callousness, “Mrs. H quite often gets a headache when she gets herself worked up. Tension ones, they’re called. My next-door neighbor is a martyr to them. And it’s not like Mrs. H fell hard back there in the hall, just slumped down, bottom first, as I saw it.”

  Forgive her, I thought nobly; she had to be jealous that it was me, not her, whom Lord Belfrey had swept up in his aristocratic arms and deposited on the sofa. Also she very likely had a point. My nerves had been stretched to the limit during the drive through the fog. In addition to which we had failed to find the restaurant we had been seeking and I’m a person inclined to go all hollow and wobbly without food. Perhaps with a good helping of fish and chips inside me I wouldn’t have succumbed to foolish terror and fainted. I started to say this to Ben, but he was still glowering at poor Mr. Plunket, who was making apologetic noises to the effect that his nibs had intended for Mrs. Foot and or Boris to bring in a tea tray.

  “But as you can imagine, sir, they’re discombobulated themselves.”

  “In that case, let’s not inconvenience them or yourself.” Ben attempted to contain his irritation. “If you’ll direct me toward the kitchen, I’ll put on a kettle and…”

  “Now, I don’t know as that’s such a good idea,” Mr. Plunket passed a hand over his pimpled brow, “the stove’s that old and unreliable, none of the knobs turn unless you’ve got the trick of it, and if you manage, which I never can, the gas flames shoot up to take off your eyebrows. No, no, begging your pardon, better to wait on Mrs. Foot or Boris. Can’t risk an accident, so hard on this other. His nibs would never get over it if worse come to worst and you was to blow yourself up.”

  “I really am feeling loads better,” I announced valiantly, “so much so that I think we should leave right away. I am sure Mrs. Malloy agrees with me. We are all eager to get home at the end of our holiday. The fog’s bound to have lifted sufficiently by now.”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Mrs. Malloy demurred.

  “I’m a chef,” Ben informed Mr. Plunket. “I’m entirely capable of dealing with the most resistant kitchen equipment and making my wife a cup of tea.”

  “A chef!” Mr. Plunket sounded taken aback.

  “That’s correct. I’ve even written some cookery books that have been reasonably well received, so if you would kindly direct me toward the kitchen…”

  “What kind of meals? English… or the Frenchified sort?”

  But for my increasing headache, I might have pondered the intensity of Mr. Plunket’s response. Before Ben could demand either a compass or a map, the door opened to admit a tall, gangly man with very black hair and eyes in contrast to his chalk white face. Even though not at my sharpest, I was struck by his resemblance to Lurch of the Addams family. He stood gaping, awkwardly dangling a hand on the knob, presumably in hope of preventing the door from closing on the woman endeavoring to enter behind him.

  “Ah!” Ben sucked in a relieved breath and shot toward her to remove the tray she was carrying. Not surprisingly, she appeared startled at finding herself standing hands spread, holding up thin air by the handles. But her surprise was nothing to mine. Hers was the face I had glimpsed through horror-glazed eyes peering down at me through the banisters. In the dimly lit room there was the grainy quality of a bad photo to her form and features, but she did not now send a chill through my bones.

  Truth be told, it was impossible not to experience a woman-to-woman pang of sympathy for her unfortunate appearance. She was tall, so often a good thing, but in her case not an enhancement. She loomed in the manner of a man playing the part of a woman in a farce. Her smile, uncertain… experimental, was cruelly ridiculed by the absence of her front teeth. The shapeless dress and plodding shoes seemed as false as the clumpily curled shoulder-length gray locks that elongated her nose and chin to an extreme degree. Sadly it probably wasn’t a wig which could be taken off and tossed in the wastepaper basket. Remembering how often I had condemned my own form in the mirror, I internalized a prayer of gratitude for mercies received. I dared not look in Mrs. Malloy’s direction, but counted on her being a churchgoing woman, when she remembered it was a Sunday, not to exude an air of smug complacency.

  “This here’s Mrs. Foot,” Mr. Plunket waved a hand in my direction, “her as is his nibs’s housekeeper.”

  It could have been Mrs. Danvers, I reminded myself, as I added my murmur to Ben and Mrs. Malloy’s chorus of “A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Foot.” Ben had placed the tray on an already crowded table and now poured and passed me a cup of dishwater-colored tea, accompanied by a biscuit of the same shade of gray as Mrs. Foot’s hair. Her smile broadened, losing the uncertainty but gaining in the display of missing teeth.

  “And that there behind her,” continued Mr. Plunket, “is Boris, his nibs’s odd job man.”

  Lurch flopped a flaccid white hand, intoning in an expressionless voice: “Can always count on Boris.”

  “One in a million.” Mrs. Foot was now positively beaming as she clumped further into the room. “Always the one to get the job done when needed.” She even sounded like a man pretending to be a woman and I mentally dared Mrs. Malloy to titter. “Feeling better, are you, dearie?” She stood staring down at me, and I have to admit to feeling a quiver of-not exactly revulsion… more awkwardness-on spotting the curiosity verging on thirsty fascination in her pale, globular eyes.

  “Much better.” I took a resolute sip of tea. “Thank you so much for bringing this.”

  “You do have more color.” Ben sounded as relieved as if he’d just noticed I was coming out of a ninety-day coma. A few more minutes and surely we could politely leave. Mrs. Malloy accepted her cup and saucer while settling even deeper into her chair. We might need a forklift to move her, but we’d get her out of here, too.

  Mrs. Foot shifted her gaze from my face to fix it upon Mr. Plunket. “There is a strange resemblance, isn’t there? No wonder his nibs got his self in a tizz. Spooky, you could call it.”

  “Now then, I wouldn’t say that.” Mr. Plunket nudged his way cautiously around the words, as if one too many might trip him up. “It’s ever easy to imagine things in this house.”

  “What sort of resemblance?” Mrs. Malloy, who does not enjoy sitting on the sidelines, made a valiant effort to sound pleasantly interested.

  “To a lady in one of the family portraits.”

  “Really?” I completely forgot my woozy state and the desire to escape back into the fo
g. “I’d be interested in taking a look at the painting if it wouldn’t be an imposition.”

  “It’s no longer in the house.” Boris must have spent hours in a dank cellar perfecting his sepulcher intonation. He was now standing directly behind Mrs. Foot, hunching first one shoulder, then the next, in an automated fashion that brought to mind the terror that had assailed me in the hall.

  Turning on the sofa to face the assembled more fully, I said with determined lightness: “You said just now, Mr. Plunket, that it’s easy to imagine things in this house, but I don’t think it was imagination that caused me to faint.” I came to a halt, aware that it wouldn’t do to mention that I had mistaken Mrs. Foot for a ghoulish visitant. “I’m quite sure,” I plunged on, “that the suit of armor tried to attack me.”

  “Oh, sweetheart,” Ben bent over me, almost oversetting the teacup, “that has to have been a nightmare.”

  “It was, but not one produced by the faint,” I responded firmly. “I was scared stiff. Its hands would have closed around my throat if I hadn’t nipped back in time.”

  “That’s our Boris!” Mrs. Foot reached back a hand to pat his arm. “Always tinkering about for the fun of it. Last year he got the dining-room chandelier to spin. Oh, his nibs did have a good laugh! We all did. Couldn’t stop chortling for ages, could we, Mr. Plunket?”

  “Always good to see his nibs enjoying himself.”

  “My, what fun you all have at Mucklesfeld Manor.” Mrs. Malloy oozed rapt admiration, drawing Mrs. Foot’s attention not so much to her as to what lay at her feet.

  “Now how did that get in here? It’s the one from the gallery table lamp.”

  “It dropped from the banisters onto my friend’s head,” I said.

  “And if I’m not complaining who should,” fired back said friend, “a very handsome shade and no damage done to me hat, as isn’t my best by a long shot. I’ve a much smarter one at home that me friends,” her voice took on a most unbecoming simpering quality, “call me lady of the manor hat.”