She Shoots to Conquer Page 7

  “What about our partnership as amateur detectives?”

  “Well, we still could-no, I suppose it wouldn’t do.” Faint sigh. “A proper husband wouldn’t want his wife risking her life getting mixed up in the sordid.”

  So much for Ben!

  “I didn’t mention that aspect of me life to his lordship and I’d rather you didn’t neither, Mrs. H; I wouldn’t want him thinking I’d be the snooping sort. And then there’s that requirement of his that the contestants all come from ordinary lives, not the glamorous pampered-puss sort. I’ve even wondered about keeping dark having been three times chairperson of the Chitterton Fells Charwomen’s Association. That sort of office could come across as being snooty.”

  Before I could answer this one, Ben came though the doorway carrying a tray. While he was settling it in front of me and asking me to taste the tomato soup, which regrettably came from a tin, and sample the Marmite toast and fruit salad, also tinned, she teetered out of the room on her high heels, brazenly humming “Here Comes the Bride.”

  “How are you feeling, sweetheart?”

  “Better.”

  “The tablets the doctor ordered are on that saucer. He said to take them as soon as you’ve eaten. That beverage in the glass is evaporated milk thinned with water. My poor darling, it seemed safer than what was in the bottle.”

  “Everything looks delicious.” I smiled up at my husband while striving to keep my legs rigid in order not to create a tsunami.

  “Georges wasn’t so appreciative. There weren’t any eggs. It looks as though the contestants are expected to prove their survival skills by going out and foraging in the woods.” He shrugged expressively. “I suppose they think they know what they’re getting themselves into.”

  “At least Mrs. Malloy has the advantage of having met Lord Belfrey and getting a glimpse of the reality involved.” I studied his face as I went on to explain. When I concluded with the statement that I would hate to leave her behind when we set off in the morning, I was surprised that he merely said we would have to take tomorrow as it came.

  4

  I awoke in the night to the alarming sensation that I had wandered out of my life into someone else’s disordered world. I had read enough books about time travel to make this seem perilously possible, if in this particular instance undesirable. Yes, it would be intriguing to discover oneself back in a past century, but what as? Certainly not someone compelled to sleep in a nasty chill on a lumpy bed the width of a plank in a room which in the shifting moonlight resembled a cell.

  Fortunately, before clutching my throat in terror and watching my eyes roll down my cheeks, I spied the charcoal-edged shape of my suitcase, which Ben had brought into the room. Memory shifted its way out of the murky morass. Before his return to the lower regions to find himself something to eat, he had watched me dutifully swallow the tablets sent up by Tommy Rowley and instructed me tenderly to get off to sleep as quickly as possible. A likely prospect, I had thought, given his evasions when I tried to get him to talk further about Mrs. Malloy’s determination to throw herself into the matrimonial fray. After a brief excursion to a bathroom that belonged in the Dark Ages, I returned to the room, inspected Ben’s cubbyhole where he had deposited his own case, took grateful note that it was blessed with a window, albeit one not much bigger than a table napkin, got out my nightdress, and decided on also wearing my flannel dressing gown into bed. The water bottle was by then cold, but I was suddenly too sleepy to toss it onto the floor. What exactly were those tablets Tommy had given me?

  My dreams thrust me into an episodic chaos fraught with impending doom. Up one flight of turret steps and down the next, through mazes and tunnels stripped of color I fled, hampered by feet that wanted to go the other way, knowing that beyond every locked door waited something even more unspeakable than that which padded silently behind me. At the moment of waking, I realized that the fog had liquefied and was spreading in puddles with hideously distorted human faces around my ankles.

  Now, having somewhat regained my bearings, I discovered what had prompted that specific. My feet and legs were chillily damp. The cause didn’t take prolonged pondering. The hot-water bottle had leaked. The cause? Either it was so ancient the rubber had perished or (more likely in my opinion) Mrs. Foot had failed to tighten the stopper. Shivering as much from aggravation as cold, I wiggled my way to the top of the bed to sit with my knees drawn up to my chin and try to find a bright spot.

  Begrudgingly, I admitted there was one. My headache was gone. Tommy’s tablets had done their work. If Mother Nature had made her contribution, I wasn’t about to thank her. But for her fun and games I wouldn’t be currently incarcerated at Mucklesfeld. That Wisteria Whitworth had endured far worse did nothing to mellow my feelings. I was done with Gothic novels. The former wife who wasn’t quite as dead as the master had hoped-having reinvented herself as the vicar’s repressed spinster sister. The portrait of the cavalier in the ancestral gallery that came to life on the anniversary of Charles I’s beheading. The… the-my insides buckled-the evil black dog that came hurtling through the window to land on the bed of a woman who was already suffering all the emotional and physical trauma of a leaked hot-water bottle! The mattress bounced, once, twice, thrice, before flopping back like a dead flounder.

  I must be imagining the animal’s thunderous leap onto a bed that had only been designed for half a person, not one full one and a dog. This appalling visitation was a delayed reaction to Tommy’s tablets. The black dog with the yellow eyes and stalactite teeth was standard in the Gothic genre. I remembered how the ambience of Mucklesfeld had summoned up the image of one earlier. If any of this were real, Ben would have heard the commotion along with my scream… I was almost sure I had screamed, although in my panic I might have forgotten to do so. I wrapped my arms tighter around my drawn-up knees in a pathetic attempt to squeeze myself into invisibility.

  “You do not exist,” I informed the beast sternly. “You are a medicinal complication, for which I intend to sue Dr. Tommy Rowley if he hasn’t fled the country. I am going to close my eyes and when I open them on the count of three you will be gone. One… two… ready for the magic number?”

  My children would have been horribly embarrassed by this pathetic performance. Either the moonlight had grown stronger or we were closing on morning, but I could see with painful clarity that he still was there, eyeing me as if for him it was a case of love at first sight. Well, I was far from charmed.

  “You did not,” I chanted, “thrust that window free of its faulty latch. What would any real live dog be doing prowling around on a rooftop? I would summon my husband to get rid of you if there were any possible chance that he could see you.”

  The look on his face was nothing short of soppy. Head to one side, ears lolling, he began a cheerful pant as though eager to inhale every sweet inflection of my voice. His tail stirred into a wag that increased in enthususiastic speed to that of an orchestra conductor’s baton. I had to blink to keep from becoming dizzy. His eyes, I realized, were not yellow but a melting brown, and I was forced to acknowledge that he actually looked more like a Labrador who lived to fetch slippers and newspapers than the hound from hell. He was wearing a collar, but there were no tags. Reaching out a hand as he inched forward, I stroked his velvet head.

  “Okay,” I said, “you are real, but that makes it worse because obviously you’re a housebreaker, probably one with a record a mile long, and if I had any public spirit I would notify the police at once. But let’s pretend the phone isn’t back on, which it may not be.”

  He continued to regard me with unstinting devotion. I told him he was shallow and I much preferred cats, they being creatures who preferred to be wooed than woo. What on earth was I to do with him? Should I let him stay as a replacement hot-water bottle until Ben woke and we could escort him downstairs and inquire if he was a member of the household? Surely that had to be the case. Out one window, in through another. And Mucklesfeld, like many ancient houses, must
have a good-sized walkway around its roofline. I could have laughed at my silliness had my teeth not begun to chatter. With the window hanging open, I was chilled through despite my dressing gown. But closing the wretched thing, I remembered, would require standing on something and I had earlier decided that the chair was too risky. The only alternative was to drag the bed across the room.

  I didn’t see any problem there, but it proved unbudgeable even with the dog off it. Had it been nailed to the floor to prevent the kitchen maid from taking it with her when she ran off with the bootboy? Much as I disliked the idea of waking Ben prematurely-and my watch showed that it was only a little after five-I wasn’t noble enough to climb back and freeze. I was on the point of going to rouse him when I looked again at the wide-open face of the window and came fully back to my senses (such as they are) and faced the truth. No dog that wasn’t foaming at the mouth, mad from being bitten by a rabid wolf, and inclined to leap through fire if it stood in his way, would have hurtled itself off a roof ledge at a pane of glass with sufficient force to release the faulty latch. Besides which, the window opened outward.

  There was only one reasonable possibility. The wind. There wasn’t any now, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been a raging gale earlier. Those tablets would have kept me from waking until… as must have happened… the chill was too much even for my subconscious.

  “I maligned you,” I informed the dog. “You are not guilty of breaking and entering. The window was open when you came trotting along the roof as any reasonably sane dog might do in the middle of the night. Your reasons are your own.” He accepted my apology with a besottedly rapturous expression and a vast thumping of the tail. Sensing he was about to hurl himself into my arms and lick my face off, I raised a warning finger. “Kindly stay seated. This in no way excuses your leap onto my bed. And don’t go trying to turn the tables and suggest I opened it in a half-sleeping state, because even your fur brain must recognize that I don’t have the reach. Neither does my husband, a man of medium height. Even a six-footer like Lord Belfrey would need a pole hook to open the window.”

  The dog cocked his black head, intent on lapping up every nuance. Clearly I could have read off the instructions on a box of scouring pads and he would have been enthralled.

  “Even if he could have done so, Ben would not have opened the window without asking me if I wanted to freeze to death. Someone’s wacky idea of a practical joke? Now there’s a merry thought. I’m inclined to think that no one in this house, other than his lordship, is entirely right in the head, which explains you if you live here, but this isn’t quite the same as Mrs. Foot dropping that lamp shade on Mrs. Malloy’s head. There would be maliciousness to anyone creeping in here while I slept…” I was brought to a halt by the memory of the Metal Knight reaching its glinting hands toward my throat. “But let me not dismiss Mrs. Foot’s prosaic explanation for that.

  “There is Boris, who looks as though he was apprenticed to Dracula,” I conceded to my devoted listener. “Seemingly he takes pleasure in bringing inanimate objects to life. We all have our little hobbies, don’t we? And bear in mind the suit of armor is in the hall, where the full effects of its gyrations can be appreciated by anyone unlucky enough to pass through. Not tucked away in a bedroom not normally in use. Okay! So here I am tonight. But why would Boris make me the specific target of his tricks? It’s Mrs. Malloy, not I, who’s intent on marrying Lord Belfrey and might decide with good reason-should she get the ring on her finger-to sack the staff of three in one fell swoop. As could be the decision of any of the other contestants, given the chance.”

  I paused to wonder in all seriousness if this possibility was a cause of hand-wringing concern to Mr. Plunket, Mrs. Foot, and Boris. If I were they, I wouldn’t be counting my chickens, unless Lord Belfrey had made them a sworn promise to stand firm on their remaining at Mucklesfeld. Shame, not the dog, leaped up at me. Glibly I had dismissed them as an odd trio, but suddenly I was thinking of them as people trudging through life, hanging on to survival by a thumbhold, with no place to go if cast out of Mucklesfeld. If Mrs. Foot had got the idea that Mrs. Malloy and I were early arriving contestants, I could understand the irresistible urge to drop a lamp shade-for want of something heavier-on one of our heads.

  “Let us be sensible and agree it was the wind that rattled the half-caught latch and blew open the window,” I told the dog. “Mrs. Foot did say that spooky things happened at Mucklesfeld, but much as I’d like to I don’t believe in poltergeists or other wayward spirits.”

  No disagreement from him. His melting expression and thumping tail assured me that every word I said was fact. I was as infallible as the Pope and he worshipped every inch of me.

  “Let me remind you that I am a happily married woman and as such I am now going to take a peek into the cubbyhole,” I pointed at the door, “and see if Ben’s awake, so he can move that bed under the window. I’m rather surprised that being an early riser, especially when traveling, he hasn’t already emerged to find me talking to you. Knowing me as he does, he normally wouldn’t find that odd, but he’s worried about me at the moment. Did I tell you that I slid into a faint on the hall floor?”

  He raised a gentle paw and pressed it against my knee.

  “Oh, cheese crackers!” I said. “I’m going to fall in love with you, which is wrong in every way. You’re someone else’s dog, and my cat would threaten to throw himself under a bus if he got wind that something was going on. And you know how cats have a sixth sense about these things.”

  He blinked as though squeezing back impending tears, before getting to his paws and following me to the cubbyhole door. It was now quite light, albeit with gray overtones, and I saw immediately that the narrow bed compressed against the right wall was unoccupied. Indeed, it didn’t look as though it had been slept in. The eiderdown, as flat and faded as the one I’d slept under, was unrumpled, no impression that would suggest Ben had even sat down on it while removing his shoes for the night. His suitcase stood upright against the opposite wall. No sign of pajamas or dressing gown. Certain that he had not taken them out, I fought back a ridiculous feeling of abandonment. But mustn’t let the dog see I was upset. He looked young and was bound to be impressionable.

  As was I. It didn’t have to be something as drastic as a dog leaping through the window in the middle of the night to startle me witless. An unknown face contorted by emotion suddenly peering at me through the glass was generally enough for my undoing. Which (violent start!) was now the case. I forgot the dog and the possibility of creating a neurosis that would keep him in canine therapy for years. I let out a yelp. The cubbyhole window was very small, making the face appear abnormally large.

  The dog emitted a rumble deep in its throat before giving vent to a nice-sized bark. Not vicious-that would be overstating it-but certainly manfully assertive. The face vanished from the window, which was beside the bed across from the door.

  “Good boy!”

  He sat down with an attitude of pleased accomplishment, tail thumping wildly. But whoever was out there hadn’t vanished in alarm. A hand appeared at the window and a tentative tapping followed.

  Another deep-throated rumble. But this one struck me as of the inquiring sort. Was my furry companion wondering if we should let the person in? Had he perhaps realized that both face and hand belonged to someone of his acquaintance? His owner, in fact, out on the roof eager to rescue him after searching fruitlessly for a half hour?

  “If you’re wrong about this and you’re forcing me into an acquaintance with a violent intruder, you’d better bare those fangs of yours and if necessary eat him or her.” The dirty glass had made it impossible to tell whether the face was that of a man or a woman, let alone recognize it. Having at least made myself clear to the dog, I stared impotently at the window. A cardboard silhouette of a person couldn’t get through it without being folded to the size of an envelope. I would have to return to the other room and pray like Samson for the blessing of brute strength in ho
pe of shoving the bed under the window. Of course there was no saying that the person outside wouldn’t have given up by that time and gone in search of another entry, such as a strategically placed door. Speaking of which, I suddenly spotted one halfway behind the bed, its dirty whitewash merging it almost imperceptibly into the wall. Even in my relief, the thought crossed my mind that there might also be an outside staircase that served as a fire escape. Also, as I raised the iron latch, why hadn’t our visitor knocked on the door?

  The dog stood close as I inched the door open as far as it would go, given the protrusion of the bed. It was a relief to behold a flat ledge of at least six feet that was barricaded by a waist-high railing. The only opening in sight provided access to a fire escape in direct line with the cubbyhole window. Pressed tightly against this, hands squeezing the wall, was a woman with dark hair in a suit the color of last night’s fog. She was also wearing court shoes, which despite their sensibly sturdy heels did not look best suited to climbing to dizzy heights. Judging from her compressed profile, I had never seen her before. It was still misty and she was shivering badly from cold, fright, or both.

  “Hello,” I said ineptly as the dog inched his nose forward.

  “Oh, thank God!” came the whispered reply.

  “Would you like to come in?”

  The dog added an encouraging woof to this idiotic question but did not rush forward to offer a helpful paw. If she were his owner, he had an inadequate way of showing it.

  “I haven’t been able to move, not even to turn my head since reaching the top of the fire escape.”