She Shoots to Conquer (15 page)

Livonia made up for Judy’s lack of finer feeling by uttering the awful mumble: “I think I’ll have to go back to Harold.”

The enormity of this pronouncement brought me sharply back to my senses—diminished though they might be after an evening’s incarceration at Mucklesfeld. And when Livonia cupped a hand over her mouth and fled the kitchen, leaving the door wide open, I said firmly: “I’m sure my husband and Georges LeBois have found a safe haven for Whitey. Somewhere he won’t feel trapped in a stampede when the rest of the contestants arrive at ten o’clock, which,” looking at my watch, “should be in a little over an hour.”

“Wherever they’ve taken him, he’ll be missing his mummy something cruel.” Mr. Plunket looked on the point of tears, but Mrs. Foot appeared to be rallying. The greenish-yellow fire seeped from her eyes, leaving them as colorless as the rest of her face, but she was getting to her feet.

“I’ll have to carry on in the face of nastiness just as I had to at Shady Oaks when some of the bedpans came up missing and Sister Johnson gave me the eye like she suspected me of taking them to sell on the side . . . or that time old Mr. Codger’s daughter looked at me funny when I was plumping up his pillows and he
was getting awkward about it. His lordship’s feelings are what count, not mine or Whitey’s even, and I hope you’ll tell Boris so, Mr. Plunket—you know how worked up he gets if he thinks I’m being upset.”

Picturing Boris getting worked up was beyond me, but Judy was made of more compassionate stuff. Looking like a wood elf sitting in a people chair, she asked Mrs. Foot kindly if Boris regarded her as a mother.

“Too right he does.” Mrs. Foot wiped the grubby sleeve of her grease-colored dress across her eyes and nose. “Him, Mr. Plunket, and me is family, along with dear little Whitey. Heaven help him,” tears squeezed stickily out of her eyes, “if they put him down in the dungeon with the wild rats. They’ll eat him alive—him having no street smarts, the poor little bugger.”

“She’s speaking of the cellars,” Mr. Plunket explained; “there is no proper dungeon at Mucklesfeld.” Being dwarfed by Mrs. Foot’s hulking frame, he now had to make do with tapping her shoulder with the tips of his fingers.

“To think of Whitey put out of sight and a dog coming to my kitchen as bold as brass.” Finally her gooseberry gaze fastened on Thumper before he skirted back behind me. “Well, he can’t stay, that’s for certain. Can’t have a black dog bringing bad luck down on Mucklesfeld, just when it looks like Lord Belfrey may be able to save the place.”

“Oh, come now,” Judy rose from her chair to say reasonably, “just look at the nice old fellow . . .”

“I’m not suggesting he stay,” I said. “He got in through my bedroom window in the middle of the night and I thought it likely he belonged here, but can’t we at least give him something to eat and drink before trying to find out where he belongs?”

“Well, it’ll have to be outside,” Mrs. Foot answered, returning more or less to human form. “It’s not that I’m hardhearted. Dogs aren’t my cup of tea; still, I’d be hard put to be unkind to a living creature whatever’s been done to my poor Whitey. But whatever you and this other lady,” pointing a giant finger at Judy, “go calling
superstition, a black dog at Mucklesfeld can’t be tolerated, plain and simple as that. Not after what poor Lord Giles Belfrey went through after discovering that his bride of less than a year had made off in the night with the family jewels and Hamish the Scottie. And not a woof of protest out of the nasty little bugger, let alone sounding the alarm.”

6

A 
lack, poor Thumper! Cast in the role of pariah because he was born a dog! Unfair, my heart cried out on his behalf! Nothing in his bark had suggested a trace of a Scottish accent that would lead one to believe he knew the entire works of Robbie Burns by heart and longed to wear the tartan.

“Whitey would have squeaked his dear little head off before being ripped away from Mucklesfeld, wouldn’t he, Mr. Plunket?” Mrs. Foot was saying when Livonia came creeping back into the kitchen like one of the ghosts said to haunt the house along with the memory of a treacherous Scottie.

“Sorry for disappearing like that. I just needed a moment alone,” she whispered while returning to her chair next to Judy.

“And quite unstandable,” began Mr. Plunket, to be interrupted by Georges LeBois rolling his wheelchair through the doorway and performing a nifty swivel in the center of the room in silent acknowledgment of his audience. I was surprised that Thumper didn’t greet him as a relative of sorts with a friendly woof. But
perhaps he took exception to hugely stout men wearing yellow and brown checked waistcoats coupled with crimson silk cravats tucked into aqua blue shirts. A prejudice I could not approve, considering I had once been plus-sized myself, which should have made me less critical of appearances in general, as in the cases of Mr. Plunket, Mrs. Foot, and Boris, instead of thinking wickedly unkind thoughts about them. It was Livonia, getting to her feet along with Judy, who broke the silence.

“Lord Belfrey?” The question combined hesitancy with an overly bright lift of the lips. She had a very readable face. Written all over it now was the awful dilemma of not wanting to find herself affianced to a stranger (she had made clear to me that being a contestant on
Here Comes the Bride
was only a charade intended to bring Harold either metaphorically or in actuality to his knees) while wondering how she could reject a man in a wheelchair if his choice fell upon her. Everything about Georges LeBois roared out that he was not a man to be pitied, that he did not view himself as handicapped, that he towered in his mind over his fellows with portable legs. They must plod through life while he spun circles around them, vast in size and knowledge of what was going on behind a timidly pretty face.

“’Course this isn’t his nibs.” Mr. Plunket sounded mortally offended by the suggestion. “It’s Mr. Georges LeBois as is in charge of doing the filming of
Here Comes the Bride
.”

“Oh!” Livonia released a quivery breath and tentatively followed suit when Judy moved to shake his hand.

He inclined his head, making three reasonably sized chins out of one humongous one. “Yes, yes!” A royal wave from a hand the size of a bowl of bread dough. “It will be interesting to see how you each comes through on film. You—the little washed-out beige thing—may be more alive to the camera than Ms. Teacup Face here. That’s what makes for a good take, stripping away the flesh and bone to reveal what’s hiding underneath, if anything.”

“It’s all very interesting, isn’t it, Mrs. Foot?” said Mr. Plunket.

“Oh, indeed, Mr. Plunket,” replied Mrs. Foot, with a return
to the normalcy that I continued to find more scary than her greenish-yellow-eyed rampages. “I’d make you one of my nice cups of tea . . . and the ladies too, if I knew where the kettle had gone.”

“On the rubbish heap, I devoutly hope!” Georges LeBois spun his wheelchair so that its back was toward her and Mr. Plunket. “As for you two,” he notched his bellow down to a rumble in addressing Livonia and Judy, “don’t stand there wasting your simpers on me. Go and announce your presence to Lord Belfrey, he’s the one who may get stuck marrying one of you.”

“And where will we find his lordship?” asked an undaunted Judy briskly.

“In his study.”

Livonia tried but failed to unhinge her jaw.

“And where is that?” Again Judy posed the question.

Georges favored her with the bloodhound smile that could have gobbled up persons far larger than her less than five feet. Thumper might have been impressed had he not decided that the better part of valor was going to sleep at my feet. “My good woman, if you and your husband-seeking companion are incapable of locating a room without being led to it by the nose or by means of a map marked with a cross, you are patently not up to the gamesmanship of the contest ahead. And should forthwith make your absence felt. As you were informed on your application forms,” Georges gestured mightily, “and in subsequent acceptance letters, Lord Belfrey is not looking for a bride of startling beauty or even above-average intelligence, merely one with the modicum of practicality that will prevent her going raving mad before the decorators are brought in to take the cobwebs down.”

“Thank you for your assistance, Mr. LeBois,” said Judy, and with Livonia in tow she serenely departed the kitchen.

“
Monsieur
LeBois,” he swiveled to call after them as the door closed. “Hmm! That half rasher of bacon may be the one to watch in this race. The other’s pretty and may have more to her than we’re seeing now. But if looks mattered, the winner would have
been the one that died . . . unless her photograph had been doctored, which I don’t think it was. Ah well,” the yellow and brown checked waistcoat swelled and the crimson cravat flamed to his grandiloquence, “that’s life!”

“Not for Suzanne Varney, it isn’t,” I retorted roundly, “and you were horridly rude to Judy Nunn and Livonia Mayberry.”

“It’s his artistic temperament.” Mrs. Foot eyed Georges ingratiatingly. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Plunket?”

“’Course it is, and Boris would agree if he was here. I expect he’s looking for Whitey to give him a nice piece of cheese and tell him he’ll be back among the saucepans, swinging his little heart out on the frying pan in next to no time.”

“Over my fat carcass!” Georges roared with flabby-lipped relish. “As for the artistic temperament, you should know something about that, being married to a chef, Ellie Haskell, if that is your real name.”

“And why shouldn’t it be?”

“Because not everything in this house is entirely what it seems.”

If his intent was to make me quiver and quake, he was to be disappointed. My temper was up. “Very likely,” I said, “you’re certainly no more a Monsieur than Whitey the Rat. My guess is you originated in Tottenham where my husband was raised.”

“We never claimed the little dear was French.” It was Mr. Plunket’s turn to take umbrage. “Abyssinian and Polish is what we said, with a splash of Italian. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Foot?”

Georges turned the wheelchair squarely on them. “I was referring, Mrs. Wife of the Chef, to the suit of armor that comes alive when one stands too close to it, inducing susceptible women to faint dead away.”

“Nothing supernatural about that,” I said, remembering that I had meant to warn Livonia about the Metal Knight. “Mr. Plunket explained that the extending arms and clawing mitts were the result of Boris’s penchant for tinkering with inanimate objects.”

“I did say that, though not with the Latin-sounding words,” agreed Mr. Plunket.

“And no reason why you shouldn’t have.” Mrs. Foot loomed enormous behind the wheelchair. “Very proud of Boris we both are. He’s a genius in his quiet . . .”

“Unassuming,” supplied Mr. Plunket, displaying his mastery of the English language.

“That’s the word.” Mrs. Foot nodded her head, causing the gray locks to shift like wooly clouds blown along by a fierce wind. “Unassuming, that’s always been Boris. And unappreciated, only think what he’s been put through in the past by them that had to be jealous of his looks and charm and cleverness.”

“For God’s sake, you two,” Georges roared, “get out of my presence and indulge your delusions elsewhere.”

“I still say what you need is one of my lovely cups of tea.” Mrs. Foot spoke in the manner I imagined her perfecting when trundling her trolley through the wards of Lofty Poplars, Leafy Elms, or whatever the name was. That she sounded menacing in a slippery soft way rather than soothing was the fault of her hulking form, witch mane, and hag’s grin, but instead of castigating Mother Nature for cruelty above and beyond, my sympathy went to the patients I pictured using every last ounce of feeble strength to hide under their sheets.

“Out! Out!” The purple mounting in Georges’s face suggested a readiness to mow her down with the wheelchair if she didn’t leap out of range and take Mr. Plunket with her. They took the hint and disappeared through one of several interior doors in the kitchen. Thumper, having staggered sleepily to his paws, sank down to continue snoring contentedly, perhaps happily reliving the moment he had leaped through the window onto my bed.

“You were saying,” I prompted Georges coldly.

“Ah, yes!” He settled back into his wheelchair, spreading himself out to near overflow, with the blatant implication of taking the universe back on his terms. “I lay cheerful claim not only to being the brains behind Boris’s tinkering with the suit of armor, but to instructing him in the setup of several other little surprises which will test the fortitude of the contestants.”

“How interesting.”

“For the bigger, more complicated work, including some whimsical visual effects, along with what I immodestly regard as the pièce de résistance, I sent in professionals earlier in the week. But what satisfies me most fully right now, Mrs. Wife of the Chef, is the hope springing in my . . .”

“Heart?” I stared at him in disbelief. “You’re hiding one under that waistcoat?”

“I was referring to my self-serving stomach.”

“Silly of me,” I said, as he patted his designated organ of sensitivity complacently. “But do you seriously believe, after speaking to Mr. Plunket and Mrs. Foot as you did just now, that one of them will come out of the pantry—or wherever they went to cower—and toss you a crust of toast?”