She Shoots to Conquer Read online

  I was watching Mrs. Foot as closely as possible, given the weak lighting. She was shaking her head, batting the gray locks against her neck. Her look of amused wonderment was perfect, but I again felt the prickle down my spine that spread to a subzero chill. She was smiling her jovial gap-toothed smile, but I saw the face peering malevolently through the banisters. Did she believe I hadn’t seen her?

  “Well, isn’t that something!” She looked from Boris-who had shifted further to her side-to Mr. Plunket, and back again. “I was up there at the time crawling around the floor doing a lastminute bit of dusting, and when I got to my feet you’d,” turning those globs of eyes on me, “you’d gone down in a faint and I can’t say I noticed the lamp shade on the other lady’s head, let alone saw it go over the railing. Like I’ve said, odd things do happen at Mucklesfeld that have us all scratching our heads.”

  I hoped she wouldn’t put action to words. That hair of hers looked as though it had been around far longer than she had been on this earth and I was afraid of what might fly out.

  “How’s the tea?” she asked.

  The truthful answer would have been dreadful, but I said it had put life back in me. To prove the point, I attempted to get off the sofa, but was compelled by an upsurge of ridiculous dizziness to sink back down. The nibble of gray biscuit had clearly not sat well with me. And the headache was back in sickening force. I wondered if I had a migraine. I’d never had one, but as the cheerful cliché goes, there is a first time for everything. Given the stresses of the day, coupled with an atmosphere that seemed ripe for a lifetime of languishing as an invalid waiting for the doctor to arrive with his medical bag stuffed full of leeches and the recommendation to keep the hartshorn always at hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d come down with something worse. Ben eyed me worriedly, but Mrs. Malloy appeared cheerfully oblivious. The thought even crossed my mind that she was looking on the bright side of things.

  “Mrs. Foot makes a very good cuppa.” Mr. Plunket’s face creased into admiration.

  “Best tea maker in the world.” Boris cracked a smile that was ghastly to behold. Mrs. Foot’s smile was pleased but modest.

  “That’s going a bit far. But wouldn’t say much for me if I hadn’t got the hang of it after brewing up more pots of tea than was ever seen in China during all the years I was a ward maid, trundling the trolley around to the patients. Poor dears, it was what they lived for-a cup of char and a biscuit.”

  Unbidden, I pictured her handing Wisteria Whitworth a cup of pale slop and ordering her to drink it down or could be her next treatment wouldn’t go as nice and smooth as would be hoped. I was being unfair. Blame that on the fact that even Florence Nightingale’s cool hand upon my brow wouldn’t have brought me bounding back to life.

  “Yes, poor dears is right. Sad, it was, how few visitors most of them got. I used to say to the doctors it wasn’t right them lying there without a loved one’s hand to hold when they got weepy. ’Course there was exceptions…”

  “I must get my wife to a doctor.” Ben was out of patience. He is always at his most handsome when agitated on my behalf. A pity I wasn’t up to appreciating the flaring of his nostrils, the muscle twitching in his left cheek, the arrogant set of his dark head. “Is there one nearby that I could phone and ask to see her?”

  “There’s Dr. Rowley, him that’s his nibs’s cousin and has his surgery in his house this side of Grimkirk village,” replied Mr. Plunket, looking all at once like an important pumpkin. “But there’s no need for you to get on the blower. Right after bringing the lady in here, his nibs went off to fetch him. Said, given the fog, he’d walk rather than take the car. Sensible after what happened earlier. Could be he got there to find Dr. Rowley was out or just couldn’t go at a quick pace…”

  He was interrupted by the door opening to reveal a man who was the living image of an older, silver-haired Cary Grant… or equally believably Carson Grant. He who had loved with invincible tenderness Wisteria Whitworth. Behind him came a lesser member of the male species holding a doctor’s black bag. My headache and queasy state notwithstanding, the centuries-old, murkily lighted room came suddenly and vibrantly to life. Amazingly, it was obvious as he crossed the room that this impossibly handsome… virile… authoritive (need I add urbane?) man had eyes only for me.

  3

  H ow are you feeling?” He stood looking down at me, and it was a moment before I realized that Ben had stepped aside to make room for him or that Mr. Plunket, Mrs. Foot, and Boris had ebbed out the door. The doctor, a rotund five foot six to his lordship’s magnificent six foot three, also might not have been there. The same could be said of Mrs. Malloy, who had stood up in acknowledgment of Lord Belfrey’s general greeting. Preen though she might, she was a shadow on the wall. I was in shock: Cary Grant… Carson Grant! Down to that entrancing cleft in the chin. Was I in a movie or a book? “Forgive me if Mrs. Foot forced one of her abominable cups of tea on you. She considers brewing up her main mission in life.”

  His voice enhanced his every other charm; it was deeptimbred, with a slight blurring around the edges. I shifted to a more upright position on the sofa, the better to bask in his smile, which so engagingly crinkled the skin around his eyes. He had a wonderful mouth… perfect teeth, particularly remarkable for a man in his fifties. Poor Mrs. Foot, with that sizable gap. I regretted every unkind thought about her.

  “Really,” I insisted, “there’s nothing wrong with me but a tension headache. It was nerve-wracking driving in the fog, and I haven’t eaten in ages because we couldn’t find a restaurant. That must have been what caused me to faint.”

  “A sandwich and a glass of brandy would have been helpful.” Ben sounded none too friendly, especially it seemed to me when adding, “Your lordship.”

  “Of course. Although I’m not sure anything prepared by Mrs. Foot would have made you feel any better.” A wry and utterly beguiling smile. “Georges LeBois, who is here for the filming, is refusing to eat. And regrettably I don’t keep alcohol in the house on account of Plunket having a weakness for anything that isn’t orange juice”-again the kindness came through-“but if my cousin Tommy, here”-placing a hand on the doctor’s shoulder-“prescribes a medicinal dose of brandy, or better yet cognac, for Mrs. Haskell, it will be fetched. A relation of ours lives within walking distance and she keeps an excellent cellar.”

  “Quite right.” The doctor nodded his head vigorously. He had the round, guileless face of a schoolboy, his brown eyes shining with goodwill and his white hair fringing his forehead. His upper teeth (I was really noticing teeth or the lack thereof at Mucklesfeld) gave him endearingly goofy looks and a slight lisp. “I’m a teetotaler myself, for no reason other than I prefer lemonade, but it will be no trouble for me to walk over to Witch Haven, Celia’s house.”

  “She’s the daughter of our cousin Giles, who was at Mucklesfeld before me,” explained his lordship.

  “Interesting,” said Ben.

  “I’m also a Belfrey, or should be,” the doctor chimed in cheerfully, “but my father chose to adopt my mother’s maiden name. He was estranged from the family, believing he’d never been fairly treated as the third son. Silly, these family feuds. Now, if you do not object, Mrs. Haskell, I will take a quick look at you.” He was opening his bag with great importance, encouraged by his wearing his big-boy suit instead of his play clothes. I pictured his mother agreeing on the condition that he didn’t play in the dirt.

  “What sort of a look?” I asked uneasily.

  “Nothing that will require any undressing. Just an examination of your head and eyes. It’s entirely possible,” he continued cheerfully, “that you fractured your skull or suffered a concussion in that fall.”

  “It wasn’t a fall,” I protested. “It was a… slide. And please,” feeling a ridiculous desire to be made one of the family, “do call me Ellie.”

  “Short for Eleanor?” Did Lord Belfrey frequently display that knack of indicating a vital interest in something of minor importa
nce?

  “Giselle.” Mrs. Malloy assumed the role of speaking for me, given that the balance of my mind was disturbed. “Her husband is Ben,” no appreciative smile from that quarter, “and my name’s Roxie.”

  Lord Belfrey acknowledged this information with a smile that puffed up Mrs. Malloy’s bosom under her taffeta ensemble and doubtless turned her knees to water. Could I begrudge her the thrill? Yes! She would get him alone at the speediest opportunity and propose herself as a contestant on Here Comes the Bride. No sooner thought than done. She made her move. The hussy coyly suggested to his lordship that it might be proper for the two of them to leave the room while his cousin examined me. His consummate gallantry would have demanded this of him, but I watched him go with more regret than was appropriate in a woman with a husband of ten magical years standing devotedly at her sickbed… sofa.

  Dr. Rowley-Tommy, as he urged me to call him-produced one of those eye-inspecting gadgets with all the enthusiasm of a schoolboy pretending to be a grown-up.

  “A bright light!”

  “Yes.” I wanted to ask him what he thought of Lord Belfrey’s plan to find a wife.

  “Wear glasses?”

  “No. Your cousin…”

  “Aubrey?”

  “An aristocratic name.”

  “And I got stuck with plain old Thomas.” He chuckled while setting aside the instrument and beginning to probe the back of my head with enthusiastic fingers. “That hurt?”

  “Some. Mr. Plunket mentioned that his lordship inherited the title from another cousin.”

  “Lie still, sweetheart,” Ben urged.

  “That was Giles.” Tommy was now probing my neck. “Our paternal grandfather had three sons. Each of whom fathered only one child. The eldest produced Giles, the second Aubrey, and the youngest got stuck with me.”

  I murmured a protest before saying: “Didn’t Giles have children?

  “Another only and this time a girl.” Tommy continued to beam encouragement while laying my head back on the cushion. “Celia, who lives at Witch Haven and is likely to have brandy in the house. What does that make her to Aubrey and me? Daughter of a first cousin! I always have trouble working these relationships out. Always seem like something out of Genesis to me, this begetting or is it begatting? Too much to work out for a simple country doctor. That’s the trouble with being the son of the third son, means a job. Not that Aubrey didn’t have to work.” Tommy blushed, embarrassment written all over his cherub face, as if in anticipation of a rebuke from his form master. “He went out to America as a very young man and stayed there, working for an insurance firm, until coming back last year when Giles died.”

  America! So that explained his sounding, as well as looking, like Cary Grant-another transplanted Englishman.

  “It seems he didn’t return with the proverbial fortune.” Ben’s tone was hard to read.

  “No.” Tommy was standing, repacking his bag in readiness for another game of let’s pretend to be a big, grown-up doctor. “The firm went under. Unethical behavior on the part of several of the high-ups. Hard on Aubrey. Clean as a whistle in his own dealings.” His voice deflated like a ball bounced too often. “Anyone can tell that, even after only a year of getting back to knowing him. And now when he’d come up with this plan, which couldn’t have been made lightly, to restore Mucklesfeld, we have this evening’s tragedy.”

  “My wife is going to be all right?” Ben demanded sharply.

  “Oh, yes. I don’t see any reason for alarm.” Did Tommy sound ever so faintly disappointed? Was he aching for the chance to do a bit of delicate suturing or better yet wield a laser gun? “I was speaking of the car accident that took the life of one of the contestants.”

  “You were brought in on the scene?” Ben did not sound abashed by his error, which was understandable, given the husband he is. I hoped Tommy would see it that way. He was very likely a married man himself.

  “Oh, yes! Aubrey, after discovering that the phone was out, as happens not infrequently here when the weather is bad-he drove to my house knowing I have a cellular, which he doesn’t. After getting in touch with the police, I came back with him in his car. It was that drive that made him think it would be better-quicker-for him to walk, as I had done on returning home, when he needed me again. Don’t remember such a fog! Not at all surprising what happened to the poor woman-Aubrey told me her name was Suzanne Varney.” Tommy’s round brown eyes shone more brightly than ever with what had to be the gloss of tears. My heart warmed to his childlike sensitivity. “Only forty-five, so Aubrey said. Severe blunt chest trauma. The autopsy will get to the nub of it. Only minor damage to the face. It was obvious she had been a pretty woman.” A tear trickled down a rounded cheek. “She won’t need much fixing up by the mortician to have her looking her very best for the funeral if the family chooses an open coffin. That’ll be a consolation.”

  “Let’s hope,” said Ben.

  Tommy wiped away the tear with his jacket sleeve and drew a shaky breath. “You’ll have to excuse me; I’m a sentimental old bachelor. My daily helper, Mrs. Spuds, keeps going on at me about getting a cat. It is a temptation. But I’m not sure I’m ready after losing Blackie. It still hurts too much after forty years. He was my birthday present when I was ten, and twelve and a half when he got out onto the road and was hit by a…”

  I wondered sadly-with thoughts of my own Tobias-if there had been any fixing Blackie up for the funeral.

  “But enough of myself.” Tommy blinked bravely.

  “My wife?” Ben prodded, not looking quite as moved as I was.

  “Indeed, yes. I think you have it right-although I could be wrong, we doctors so often are. A bad tension headache, possibly-or perhaps a migraine.”

  “She fainted.” Ben sounded determined on a bleak diagnosis.

  “Explained most likely by the stress she mentioned.”

  “She fell.”

  “Yes, well… uhmm.” Tommy appeared rattled. Maybe he wouldn’t be a doctor when he grew up. Clearly patients could be awkward, expecting a fellow to be sure of his facts. Better perhaps to go back to wanting to be a fireman or a bus driver. But hadn’t his mum and dad always told him not to be a wussy puss? Suddenly he straightened to his full five six, squared his shoulders, and stuck out his rounded chin. Time to assert himself. “People usually… generally… almost invariably, although this is arguable, don’t fall hard when they faint. They… crumple.”

  “The latest medical term?”

  “Oh, Ben, please! Dr. Rowley has to know what he’s talking about. He must see hundreds of patients.”

  “I can’t say that,” demurred the truthful boy. “Grimkirk is a very small village, just a couple of shops and a strip of cottages. But I do see the occasional farmer and person on holiday. Let’s say,” chuckling convincingly, “I keep my hand in.”

  “I’m sure you do.” My maternal instinct was aroused, and I was further touched on seeing when he bent to unlatch and relatch his bag that there was bald spot on the back of his head. What he needed more than a cat was a grown-up wife to tell him he was wonderfully clever. I wondered about his daily-Mrs. Spuds (who could forget such a name?). A woman who liked cats had to be nice, but like as not she already had a husband who wouldn’t take kindly to her marrying someone else, bigamy not having the cachet it once did.

  “Ellie,” Ben sat down beside me on the sofa, “what sort of husband would I be if I didn’t worry about you?”

  “But I’m feeling better,” I said, and realized it was true. Mrs. Foot’s gray biscuit and dreadful tea had settled. I felt less queasy and my headache was barely noticeable if I lay still.

  “My prescribed treatment,” Tommy puffed out his chest, “is for you to go immediately to bed and once there be given a light meal and a drink, after which you will take the tablets I will leave for you. Two to be repeated every four hours if you should wake and feel the need.”

  Lovely as this sounded, I had to explain the obvious. “But I can’t go straight
to bed. We have to drive home or at least find a place to spend the night.”

  “Out of the question.” Tommy was back to his beaming schoolboy self. “Aubrey will insist you stay here. If I know him, he will already be seeing that a room is prepared for you-preferably one that isn’t layered in dust; although I could prescribe a mask.” Radiating cheerful self-approval at this clever solution to what might or might not be a problem, he gathered up the bag and, saying that he would inform Aubrey and my friend of the situation, trotted from the room.

  “Sweetheart,” Ben got off the sofa to pace, “I don’t put much faith in our Dr. Rowley.”

  “That was blatantly apparent. You must have hurt his feelings horribly.”

  “How do we know he’s even a doctor? Mad as hatters, everyone in this house! Not a normal person among them!”

  “Lord Belfrey…!” I protested.

  “Him!” My adored spouse presented a nasty sneer. “The worst of the lot. Stalking around doing his impersonation of Cary Grant!”

  “He can’t help it if he’s the spitting image. Besides,” sidling my legs off the sofa the better to face him, “normal is highly overrated. My parents certainly thought so. To their way of thinking, normal was the real weird!”

  “Sweetheart,” Ben just missed colliding with a marble Aphrodite on a pedestal and a six-foot urn containing a dead shrub, “don’t get worked up. You’ll make your headache worse.”

  “And you shouldn’t be ungrateful. You should be down on your knees in gratitude to Lord Belfrey for providing a port in a storm.” This was nonsense. We rarely quarreled. But for some reason I couldn’t put a lid on it. “I hope you enjoy the satisfaction of saying I told you so if Dr. Rowley’s diagnosis proves wrong and I wake up in the middle of the night to find myself in a coma!”

  “Is she always this much of a histrionic nutcase?” demanded a querulous male voice.

  Ben and I froze in place, but Aphrodite jumped or… did a wobble on her pedestal. Gliding his circuitous way from the opposite end of the mile-long room was a man in a wheelchair. He was cloaked in shadow, as the cliché goes, which to my bewildered mind made him appear the more ominously substantial. He cleared the edges of the table bearing the tea tray and rolled to a silkily soft halt a few yards from the sofa. An enormously stout man, with a bloated bloodhound face, and sparse, greasy black hair combed over a high, bald dome. His eyes bored into mine, conveying a distaste that flattened my back to the sofa. Only by biting down on my lip did I prevent myself from quiveringly inquiring what right he had to call me histrionic. Then he smiled, a jovial smile that seemed instantly part and parcel of his brown and yellow checked waistcoat and voluminous cravat.