She Shoots to Conquer (4 page)

Upon catching Ben’s eye, I reined in my delusions of approaching fame while being sufficiently resentful of his wet blanket attitude to move away from him and Mrs. Malloy and prowl over to the suit of armor. We have a pair at Merlin’s Court positioned
against the staircase wall, and I was interested in discovering if there was any familial resemblance. If so, I could give this one an update on how often ours, according to the children, came alive when they thought no one was watching.

“Well,” said Mrs. Malloy in a defeatist voice, “could be I’m getting ahead of meself about us being included in the show. Not that it matters to me; it was you I was thinking about, like always, Mrs. H. I expect the truth is his nibs is ninety years old and Mr. Plunket is having trouble waking him from his nap.”

“Or deciding if he’s dead,” muttered Ben nastily. “In this lighting, his viability could be questionable for days.”

“No need for jokes, Mr. H, I don’t think it’s nice considering—now I come to remember—that Mr. Plunket said this had been a difficult evening already.” Either Mrs. Malloy or Ben sighed gustily; there followed the irritable tap-tap of her high heels. Without turning my head, I was aware of her standing with her back squarely to me a yard or so from the staircase.

“Good evening,” I addressed the suit of armor with the courtesy I had instilled into my children during the process of introductions. “What, my fine fellow, can you tell us of this place?”

Its visored face showed only slightly more expression than a guard at Buckingham Palace.

“Ever get an urge to scratch an itch?”

Oh, the folly of thinking oneself witty at the expense of the immobile. Foolish . . . infantile assumption! Before the smirk fully adhered to my face, I experienced a sharp pain above my right foot, and just as I started to hop, I saw the metal arms begin to rise through the grainy gloom and draw together . . . the metal paws curled inward . . . closing around the general vicinity of my throat.

Did I imagine the macabre chortle and the gleeful murmur of “Who’s immobile now?” Would I have stood there trembling on the edge of reason until those salad spoon hands closed around my throat, choking out every last spluttering gasp as my eyes stood out like Ping-Pong balls and . . . with a final expiring breath my nose blew off? It is not a question I allow myself to ponder in
the dead of night when the ghastly memory returns. I was saved by a scream of unholy terror from behind me. Had I been capable of coherent thought, I would have assumed Ben or Mrs. Malloy had paused in thinking about themselves to notice my imminent danger. As it was, I turned in automated slow motion to witness Mrs. Malloy with her mouth opened in size to the entrance to a cave. For teeth she had stalactites and stalagmites. But what did it for her appearance was her wearing a hat on top of a hat—one with a circle of corded fringe cutting her face in half.

“I can’t see! I’m blind! Blind!” Her screech was one of reverberating panic. Immediately, Ben was at her side making the necessary adjustment to what I realized, on the verge of hysterical laughter, was a lamp shade. His attempts to pull it off completely were unsuccessful. Apparently the hat underneath, having first dibs, refused to give an inch.

“Why are you wearing that?” I asked her in a voice as deadened as the rest of me.

“It dropped from above.”

“Better a lamp shade than the roof of the temple. Poor old Samson had it worse!” Ben laughed comfortingly while placing an arm around her, drawing her into a hug, a gesture I would have found endearing had I been capable of the least flicker of emotion. “I expect someone took it off to dust and set it down on a piece of furniture or even the banister railing, forgot about it, and some vibration sent it toppling off balance.” His words may have helped soothe Mrs. Malloy but did nothing for me.

“Unfortunately, it’s not becoming,” I pronounced tonelessly. “Suit yourself, but I wouldn’t make it the basis of any future outfits.” Somewhere deep inside I recognized the cruelty. I should have told her that the lamp shade elongated her figure . . . provided an Audrey Hepburn elegance . . . but when one has come close to being murdered by a suit of armor something within the soul dies.

“Ellie!” Ben protested. Could this be the wife he revered except for those times when she failed to pass on telephone messages or interrupted when he was watching football?

“Oh, that’s all right!” responded Mrs. Malloy with a pathetically resigned look on her face. “Some people can never bear others being the center of attention, even when it’s the nasty sort.”

At that I started to shake. “A lamp shade fell on your head! Go ahead and sue his nibs! Insist that he tear down this horrible mausoleum. You won’t get any complaints from me. That thing . . . that evil thing kicked me, and that . . . that was before it attempted to choke me.”

“What thing, sweetheart?” Ben was at my side in an instant.

“That!” With an immense effort I twisted around to face the suit of armor, my pointing finger gyrating out of control.

“It looks harmless now.” The laughter that had been in Ben’s voice was back. And, adding insult to injury, Mrs. Malloy relented toward me, saying magnanimously that after all we’d been through it wasn’t any surprise that I was overwrought.

“Probably you bumped into it and it tilted forward. Them legs and arms have to move some or the person inside wouldn’t have been able to stagger into battle holding his crossbow, or sword, or whatever.”

Of course what she said had to be true. It must have happened that way. But it hadn’t! It hadn’t! I stared at that metal, triangular-fronted face with hatred. If I’d had a tin opener at the ready, I would have gone whirring into action as if it were a tin of Heinz Tomato Soup. “Take that, you metal cretin!” I railed silently. In my defense, it had been a tense evening from the moment the fog descended through to our entrapment, or so it seemed, in this oppressive hall. It is almost certain I would have rallied to laugh with Ben and Mrs. Malloy at my overly vivid imagination, but recoiling from the disbelief in their eyes I looked up to see a face above the banisters.

Its features were blurred, but even without the distortions of distance and shadow it was grotesquely, terrifyingly recognizable by its straggling locks and toothless gape as the face of the wardress of the insane asylum in which Wisteria Whitworth was incarcerated by her brutal husband. Could there be any doubt
that I was on the verge of a similar fate? Under such melodramatic circumstances, there was only thing to do. Regrettably, I did not have a history of fainting, but it’s amazing how quickly one can develop the knack. The room spun, the floor went out from under me, and I went down into blessed oblivion.

2

I 
was vaguely surprised that the flagstones onto which I’d swooned weren’t as hard as might have been expected. Indeed, they felt reasonably comfy. I explored them gingerly with my hand . . . the word
horsehair
seeping into mind . . . before opening my eyes to see someone standing over me. This person resolved into Ben, and behind him stood someone who closely resembled Mrs. Malloy, except that she was considerably taller than I remembered.

“It’s the lamp shade,” I whispered, and saw a relief flood Ben’s face. “How are you feeling, sweetheart?”

He knelt down to take my hand and I forced my eyes to blink my surroundings into clearer focus. We were no longer in the hall, although this huge room, whatever it was, bore a decided resemblance in overcrowding, and there was the same sense of decaying antiquity. The lighting, however, was somewhat better, although not sufficiently strong to hurt my eyes. It was the back of my head that ached. Not terribly, but with a dull throb.

“I’m on a sofa.” I stretched out my feet tentatively and saw, as if looking through a telescope, that they appeared properly attached. It was my shoes that had been removed. “Did you carry me in here?”

“That was our host; he came out into the hall, saw you on the floor, and insisted.” Did I detect resentment in Ben’s voice? Surely not. What husband achingly concerned for his beloved would resent another man doing what he could to help by swooping her up into his manly arms? I remembered driftingly that I had pictured his nibs as being almost as ancient as his abode and the thought of him tottering precariously across the flagstone under my weight became so sad that I blinked back tears. I peered around, searching for a figure huddled in a chair shakily trying to find his face with an inhaler.

“Where is he now?”

“Gone to tell his housekeeper to bring you a cup of tea and a blanket.”

“Thank God, you’ve come round, Mrs. H!” Mrs. Malloy pressed a heavily ringed hand to her bosom. “I could have sworn you was a gonner.”

“Now don’t say that!” a male voice exclaimed rather too loudly for my head. “One death this evening is more than enough! Very difficult these last few hours for his nibs! And him so looking forward to the filming. Not fair to him is what Mrs. Foot, Boris, and me—that works taking care of the house—has been feeling.”

A face swam into view. Even to my numbed thinking, this could be no other than Mr. Plunket. My glimpse of him through the front doorway had called to mind the image of a medieval saint, but that had to be due to a blurred halo of saffron light surrounding poorly delineated features. It was Mrs. Malloy’s description of his having a face like a gourd that told the tale. A flesh-colored gourd sprouting pale nodules, not an attractive sight for someone coming out of a faint. His nose was flat, his eyes lacked color, and his mouth was no more than a horizontal crease among the vertical ones. Not that he could help any of that. Not all men are born to be as darkly,
dashingly handsome as Ben. Indeed, as she had demonstrated when unloading the fog, Mother Nature had her moments of being difficult just for the malevolent joy of it. Mr. Plunket was also not helped by his attire. He was wearing a threadbare navy suit, several sizes too skimpy for a man of his rotund build, a dishwater-gray shirt, and a badly creased tie, all of which looked as though they had previously been used as polishing cloths.

“Who died?” Interest stirred . . . coupled with the insensitivity of hope. If the deceased had been strangled by the suit of armor, it would be proved beyond argument that I had not imagined his attempt to attack me. As for the face above the banisters, I would think about her later . . . much later.

“Ellie, try to relax, you gave yourself a real crack on the head.” Ben placed a soothing hand on my brow before getting to his feet and staring around the room as if in search of reinforcements. Had a doctor been sent for? Surely not? To disprove the need, I attempted to sit up. Unfortunately, my head went into orbit and an accompanying ringing in my ears forced me to lie back down.

“Who died?” I repeated fretfully.

“One of the”—Mr. Plunket paused, and despite my still swimming head I sensed he was making a verbal adjustment—“people . . . expected to descend on his nibs for the coming week. The others aren’t due till tomorrow morning. But this one asked if she could show up this evening. Had been invited to spend the day with someone in the area, she said. Why she couldn’t have spent the night with whoever it was is what Mrs. Foot, Boris, and me wondered, but his nibs said he’d no objection.”

“So what happened?” Mrs. Malloy is not one to suffer the long-winded gladly, with the exception of herself, of course.

“It was the fog . . .”

“An accident on the road?” Ben’s gaze met mine. He had to be thinking this could have been our fate if we had gone on, and feeling better about having followed the van onto the private drive. How puny was embarrassment to the male psyche when compared to the hovering visage of the Grim Reaper.

“No, right outside.” Mr. Plunket pointed to the window behind my sofa. “Happened three hours or so ago, when the visibility was even worse than when you got here. His nibs had said for us to keep our ears open for the sound of her car approaching the drive. And it was Boris that went out, but not quick enough. If he hadn’t lost time looking for a torch and not finding one, things could have been different.”

“So, cutting the story short,” urged Mrs. Malloy with all the authority provided by the lamp shade still on her head.

“I blame myself for not getting outside ahead of him with the hurricane lamp that’s kept in the grandfather clock, to guide that poor woman in safe.” The nodules on Mr. Plunket’s face were the more evident as he moved closer to the standing lamp at the foot of the sofa. “Gone off the drive she must have done onto the side lawn and through a broken section of a garden wall, down into the ravine that’s thick with trees. Like I said, Boris got out of the house too late. When we heard the crash, his nibs, Mrs. Foot, and me followed as quick as we could with the help of the lamp. But there wasn’t nothing could be done. It was a job getting the car door open but we managed between us. Luckily the interior lights worked. His nibs felt for the pulse in her neck. Nothing. She’d snuffed it all right and we come back inside so he could phone the authorities.”

“Did they have trouble getting here?” Ben began pacing, his eyes shifting from me to the door and back. I knew what he was thinking and he was right. I desperately needed a cup of tea or if possible something stronger to keep me from starting to cry. Un-fortunately, if there were a bottle of brandy in the room, a team of detectives would be needed to find it. An automobile accident amply explained by the fog would not have caused investigators to linger on the premises. Routine for them, while to us the deceased was a nameless, faceless stranger, but surely she was someone’s loved one . . . wife . . . mother . . . daughter . . . friend. What an agonizing shock for the bereaved to receive by phone or a knock at the door!