She Shoots to Conquer (38 page)

“It all sounds rather intimidating,” I heard Alice say, but with an edge of laughter. “Do we get a good practice in first?” Charlie assured her that they’d all have the basics down pat before firing their first arrows.

Livonia and Molly stood in what to me looked like nervous conversation, while Mrs. Malloy, having actually replaced her high heels with lace-up shoes she must have borrowed, pivoted this way and that, pulling an imaginary bow, eyes narrowed in deepest concentration. Lord Belfrey retreated to stand alongside Georges.
What, I wondered, would be his reaction upon approaching his cousin Celia? Would something deep in his being cry out in recognition upon beholding her hired companion? My thoughts had been so occupied with this question I had forgotten the absent Judy, but in turning my head to see if I could detect anything from Nora Burton’s posture, I saw Judy emerge in the familiar hiking jacket from the ravine at a fast pace. Head down as if to carve out more speed, she did not look up until nearing her fellow contestants still hearkening with various signs of interest—Mrs. Malloy’s the least—to the words of Charlie Forester.

“So sorry to keep you all waiting,” Judy said with remorseful embarrassment. “Afraid I lost track of time down there hunting for a few final pieces of stone to finish the wall. Have to go inside and wash my hands, but will speed on back.”

Mrs. Foot, who had the entry door open prior to going back inside—perhaps to make herself one of those cups of tea that no one else seemed to appreciate—held it for Judy and they went in together. At that point, I became increasingly absorbed by what was going on immediately in front of me. If the entire audience and crew had got up and left, I wouldn’t have noticed.

Charlie continued his flow of instructions while the bows were handed out by a blank-faced Boris, hindered rather than helped by Mrs. Foot, when she returned from the house. Provided with their sporting weaponry, the women—still absent Judy—wandered around in circles, occasionally pausing to bump into each other.

“Line up your stance and look directly at target when preparing to shoot,” instructed Charlie, moving, bravely in my opinion, among them. There was quite a bit of turning when being spoken to, despite having been told this was taboo, and much dropping of arrows.

“If you don’t listen, I’ll never make shooters out of you. Anchor index finger to corner of the mouth. That’s not your finger, it’s your wrist,” he informed Mrs. Malloy, who bared her teeth in a smile. “Keep shooting arm straight,” he told Alice. And then to Molly: “Make sure nock is firmly on string.”

What was a nock? I wondered.

“Elbow high,” he said to Livonia.

How very confusing it all was! Which elbow; hadn’t he just said to keep the shooting arm straight?

“Don’t release, still practicing!” For the first time he raised his voice when looking at Mrs. Malloy, who indeed appeared poised to let fly.

Judy came out of the house. Lord Belfrey crossed the lawn toward the audience, halting midway for what seemed like a full minute before moving slowly on. A joyous barking rent the air and . . . could it be? Yes! It was! Thumper came flying into view, colliding with his lordship and several others—the audience having grown since I last looked. What was to have been a family affair had turned into a village outing. Knowing it was me he had come to see, bless his dear faithful heart, I hurried to greet him before he could further disrupt the archers. I was kneeling on pebbly ground, holding his wonderful furry warmth close, when there was a scream to my rear followed by a torrent of exclamations.

Heart in my mouth, I released Thumper, ordering him to stay, and raced back to the source of whatever had happened. Georges, for once looking anxious, was wheeling himself at speed in the same direction, the crew hurrying along with him, while Lord Belfrey and Tommy Rowley came up behind me. On the ground, encircled by the other contestants, lay Judy. Charlie was kneeling beside her. For a long—excruciatingly long—moment I was sure she was dead. There was an arrow protruding from her chest that had to be close to her heart. Tommy brushed urgently by me, but before he could take medical action, Judy opened her eyes and against instructions from all sides sat up, looking dazed but sounding quite coherent when responding to the babble of questioning coming from all sides.

“I’m fine,” she kept repeating.

“But how’s that possible?” Livonia stood twisting her hands. “You’ve got an arrow . . .”

“So I have.” Judy looked down and—without a blink—pulled it
out. “It must have gone in the notebook in my jacket pocket.” She managed a shaky laugh. “How lucky I am, although,” she added ruefully, “I think I may have sprained an ankle when I went down.”

Here was something for Tommy, at Lord Belfrey’s anxious urging, to examine. While doing so, he admonished Judy in a very grown-up doctor voice for removing the arrow herself. He talked about tetanus shots, and for all the grimness of the situation I sensed his awareness of the glowing looks bestowed on him by Livonia. But the troubling question hung heavy in the air: How had Judy come to be shot? No one asked until Tommy rose to his feet, saying the only injury appeared to be the ankle, which was already beginning to swell.

“What happened, Charlie?” Lord Belfrey placed a hand on Forester’s shoulder.

The keen eyes in the leathery face returned his look man-to-man. “I was talking to this lady here,” nodding at Molly. “They’d all been told not to shoot till I gave word for the first to move in front of the target. Sometimes it happens that someone gets a little too pumped up and releases without thinking.” He didn’t direct his gaze toward Mrs. Malloy, but I saw Livonia, Alice, and Molly steal glances at her. She was gripping her bow . . . but arrow she held not.

“It wasn’t me!” I could tell from the defiant anger in her voice that she was frightened. “I’d dropped me arrow and was bending looking for it when something whizzed past me. It’s a wonder it didn’t take me ear off! I can tell,” darting looks this way and that, “as how my word won’t be good enough for some.” And why would it be? I thought sadly. Her spite toward Judy—particularly at lunch yesterday, must be fresh in the minds of the other contestants, even if word of it had not spread further to Lord Belfrey and the rapacious Georges.

“It was my own fault entirely,” Judy said, looking pitifully defenseless on the ground over a wince of pain from shifting her ankle. “I blundered toward the others without paying the least attention to what was going on. My mind was elsewhere, so please don’t anyone make something big out of what happened.”

No one had anything helpful to add.

That was the problem; there had been a great deal of preoccupation at the crucial moment. A lack of reliable witnesses, and a continuing suspicion I feared directed at Mrs. Malloy. For the shooter, that muddying of the waters was a gift if the object had been to kill Judy, which I perhaps stupidly, was fiercely sure was the case. If Mrs. Malloy had been hit in the first attempt, another arrow would have been speedily drawn. As it was, expertise or at least a natural hand-eye coordination, coupled with daring desperation, would have achieved the objective, but for the life-saving notebook.

Coming up to me, Ben squeezed my hand. “I’ll offer to help get Judy into the house,” he said.

“And I’ll go and get a glass of water for her. With all the furor, maybe no one has thought to do so.” As I headed off, I felt the comfort of Thumper keeping pace beside me. “Sorry to have ignored you,” I told him, “but being the perceptive fellow you are, you’ll have noticed we had a crisis.” Time later to consider his necessary return to the Dawkinses. Pushing open the entry door, I was grateful for some time to think, but that opportunity was doomed. Halfway down the passageway that would take us through the hall to the kitchen, I heard the familiar hateful scurrying, glimpsed a flash of white, felt Thumper bristle, then all was shrill squeaking, raucous yelping, and flying fur.

“Thumper, stop!” My voice may have reached the tip of his tail as he rounded the corner, but he so outdistanced me that there was not a flicker of black to be seen when I reached the hall. I could, however, hear him with increasingly deafening clarity as I neared the kitchen. That he was capable in this mood of feverish pursuit of standing on his hind legs and turning the doorknob seemed all too probable. The scene I entered upon was mayhem, with hostile overtones coming forcibly from Mrs. Foot, who stood clasping Whitey to her apron chest, while Thumper raced in circles around her like an Oliver Twist sent berserk after being denied a reasonable request for more. Mr. Plunket, weaving like
a tree in the wind, stood close by, Boris beside him, wearing the bright pink shirt of yesterday, his right hand—I noted numbly—clamped around his left arm.

“Just look at the sweet darling trembling like a leaf in my arms,” Mrs. Foot bellowed at me. “That dog of yours should be put down—going after Whitey like he was vermin! I’d kill him with my bare hands if it wouldn’t mean dropping my precious!”

It didn’t occur to me to say that Thumper wasn’t my dog. Nor was I compelled to order him to quiet down. Having successfully treed what would have been a very small snack, he looked to me for approval before lying down, nose on front paws, in sighing contentment.

“I came in for a glass of water for Judy, who’s been hurt,” I said as calmly as I could manage.

“That girl Lucy’s already been in for one. We know all about the hoopla, don’t we, Mr. Plunket and Boris? No, don’t you go bothering answering, poor dears. Just look at the two of them.” She rounded on me again. “Poor Mr. Plunket was so upset with everything gone wrong for his nibs, just when his lady cousin decides to visit again, he needed a restorative tipple. It was that husband of yours leaving bottles in an old bread bin where anyone with a stepladder to climb to the top pantry would think to look that started him back on after years of laying off the stuff. Who can wonder at a little lapse the way this week’s gone! My kitchen being taken over! That Monsieur LeBois rolling around the place like he’s king on wheels, never so much as lifting his bottom when I hand him one of my nice cups of tea. Oh, I know his kind—can’t budge a muscle for themselves unless it suits them. Ask me and I’ll tell you he doesn’t need that chair any more than I need wings. But for him, none of you lot would be here stirring up trouble. And Mr. Plunket and I’ve got Boris standing there with his arm tore up by that dog leaping at him when Whitey ran up his leg.”

“Missed that.” Grinning foolishly, Mr. Plunket continued to sway as if in a quickening breeze. “Always did love his uncle Boris, but not more than you, Mrs. Foot. Nobody in the whole
wide world,” spreading his arms, “is loved more than you, Mrs. Foot.”

“There, there, Mr. Plunket! But it’s our Boris that matters most right now. Look at him,” this to me, “standing there white as a sheet”—as this was normal for Boris, I hadn’t panicked on looking at him—“and him waiting so patient for a proper bandage!”

I thought snappishly that she was right about that. A dead man couldn’t have looked more patient. “I’m sorry,” I said . . . suddenly meaning it. There was something heartrendingly sad about Boris’s empty-eyed stare and his rigor mortis stance. I remembered Judy’s kind way with him and suddenly felt close to tears. So much so that when Mrs. Foot worked herself back to a roar—letting me know that if I didn’t get that dog out of the house right now she’d ring the police—I replied meekly that I was sure Mrs. Spuds or Dr. Rowley would agree to return him to his owners.

Whitey bade us a triumphant squeak of good riddance as we left the kitchen, but I didn’t leave the house. Instead, I went into Lord Belfrey’s study—currently the dominion of Georges. I had been seized by the urge to take another look at Suzanne Varney’s photo. Foolish, I know, but I thought that if I could look into her face I might get a clearer sense of who she was . . . that she might even tell me something. The photos of the contestants were no longer spread over the table. I knew it was wrong, but the impulse to revisit her image was so strong that I crossed to the desk and opened the top right-hand drawer first. Inside were some notepads, pencils, and a torch . . . a dull red torch. I picked it up, turned it over in my hands, and saw the uneven crack in the plastic and the small jagged gap where a piece had broken off. My hand found its way into my jacket pocket and drew out what I had taken from Thumper’s mouth on his return from the ravine.

He sat, looking up at me with sympathetic curiosity as I sank down in the desk chair and fitted the broken-off plastic back into the torch. Suddenly it was as though Suzanne were in the room with me, striving to tell me what she must have intended to tell Mrs. Spendlow. I felt her anger and grief pour into me. If
only . . . if only fate had not brought her to Mucklesfeld. But it had, and all I could do was unmask her killer.

I now strongly suspected who had lured her down into the ravine with the torch. If I was right as to the who, the why stared me in the face. But if I were wrong, even a subtle change in attitude toward the person in question might be enough to give the tip that the game was up. Also, I risked besmirching the good name of someone who might never be able to convincingly prove innocence of both crimes—the murder of Suzanne and the attempt on Judy’s life.

After repocketing the piece of plastic, I returned the torch to the drawer and was on my way out into the hall when, as so often seemed to happen, I nearly collided with Lord Belfrey. He did not ask what I had been doing in his study. It was apparent that he was as preoccupied as I.

“How’s Judy?” I asked.

“Doing well, apart from the ankle. Your husband and I carried her into the drawing room, where Tommy is administering the required care. What a plucky woman she is. I admire her tremendously, more so I have to admit than the other contestants, fine and likable as they are.” He hesitated and I detected a change in him, a lightening of the heart and a barely restrained joy.

“I saw her, Ellie; something drew me across the lawn. Of course I had to greet those who had come to watch, in particular, Celia—whatever my feelings toward her—but there was a summons more powerful than required politeness. Before I could fully make out her form and features, my heart knew, recognized her despite all the years gone past . . . those,” he smiled, “those ridiculous glasses.”