She Shoots to Conquer (10 page)

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 hope 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.”

This explained her not noticing the door no more than three feet away.

“It took everything I had to force my fingers to tap at the glass when I thought I saw movement in the room.”

“I understand; I’m not particularly fond of heights myself,” I said, stepping cautiously toward her after ordering the dog back inside; it would be dreadful if she backed up in panic and went tumbling down the metal staircase. Tommy Rowley might then find himself confronted with a severe head injury and multiple broken limbs if, I shivered, she weren’t killed outright. Two fatal accidents at Mucklesfeld in the space of hours would lead to stories for years—centuries—to come of the ghosts of two women being glimpsed, one emerging behind the other to drift toward the house on nights when it seemed likely the hovering mist would turn into a full-fledged fog.

I felt clammy thinking about it. But anything was better than looking down. Murmuring encouragement, I reached her, succeeded in unclamping her from the wall, and got her into the cubbyhole one inching step at a time, whereupon I speedily closed the door and sat her down on the bed. The dog then proceeded to greet me with ecstatic wagging, but mercifully did not leap up at me. Someone must have trained him not to bowl people over, I thought. And he had been obedient about going inside when told.

The woman looked in need of a stiff drink, but Lord Belfrey had said that he didn’t keep liquor in the house. Anyway, her prim seating—feet together, hands folded in her lap—caused me to sense that she wouldn’t have accepted one if offered. I’m not much of a drinker, but after standing on a roof I would have swigged an entire bottle of brandy. Why on earth had she come up that fire escape?

“I’m Ellie Haskell.” I smiled encouragingly.

“Livonia Mayberry.”

“Feeling any better?” I asked her.

“It’ll take a minute. I just need to breathe.”

“Of course. I’ll go along to the bathroom and bring you a beaker of water.”

“Oh, no! Don’t leave me! I’ll fall apart if left alone.” She had a small, fluting voice that reminded me poignantly of my nine-year-old Abbey.

“Then I won’t budge an inch.” This statement caused the dog to eye me as if witnessing a halo forming around my head. His interest in our visitor appeared only politely social. After a few moments of silence, I was relieved to see that her color looked better. She was rather pretty in the manner of a woman from the 1950s—the perm that was intended to last. No eye shadow or mascara, minimal lipstick, and a powdered nose. Her light wool gray suit, the cream blouse with the Peter Pan collar, and the navy court shoes all spoke of that era.

“Is he yours?” She looked startled at the sound of her own voice.

“The dog? He came in through the window of the room next door where I was sleeping. I thought when I saw you peering in here that you’d come to claim him.”

“I never saw him before tonight . . . this morning. But I did follow him up the fire escape. It was madness, but I had to—there was no choice. He’d made off with my . . .”

“My goodness!” Horror prevented my allowing her to continue. “How long were you out on that ledge?”

“I don’t know.” She twisted her hands together. “It seemed forever. Hours, days . . . weeks.”

“Why didn’t you go back down?” I knew it was a heartless question even as it left my mouth.

“I froze . . . shut down completely; I even blanked out about my reason for being up there”—she unknotted her hands to point a finger that looked as if it had been permanently bent in the process at the dog. “I don’t think I would have seen him or my gloves if they’d both been right next to me.”

“Your gloves?”

“He didn’t bring them in with him, I suppose?” Despair mingled with pitiful hope showed in her blue eyes. “He made off with them when I got out of the car.”

The dog put his head down on his paws.

I nipped back to my bedroom and checked. “No sign of them,” I said on returning.

A pathetic, whispering sigh. “Mrs. Knox—she’s my next-door neighbor—was right when she said I would be punished for getting mixed up in such a mad scheme. She said only a fool would consider entering in a marriage contest, especially when there was dear Harold waiting so patiently in the wings. He gave me those gloves, and despite everything I can’t bear the thought of losing them. Without them, I’m not sure I exist.” A sharp intake of breath. “I’m so sorry . . . I’m still not thinking straight. You’ll be one of them . . . of us, I mean. A contestant.”

“Oh, no!” Not wanting Livonia Mayberry to think I disapproved of her involvement, as the neighbor had done, I explained—hopefully in not too bragging a voice—that I was married. I was about to add that a friend of mine had just been added to the list, but this would have required me to break the news that death had put one of the other contestants out of the running. “My husband and I and our traveling companion ended up here by accident during the fog and Lord Belfrey kindly allowed us to spend the night.”