Dorothy Cannell - She Shoots to Conquer

“Let’s hope,” said Ben.

Tommy wiped away the tear with his jacket sleeve and drew a shaky breath. “You’ll have to excuse me; I’m a sentimental old bachelor. My daily helper, Mrs. Spuds, keeps going on at me about getting a cat. It is a temptation. But I’m not sure I’m ready after losing Blackie. It still hurts too much after forty years. He was my birthday present when I was ten, and twelve and a half when he got out onto the road and was hit by a…”

I wondered sadly-with thoughts of my own Tobias-if there had been any fixing Blackie up for the funeral.

“But enough of myself.” Tommy blinked bravely.

“My wife?” Ben prodded, not looking quite as moved as I was.

“Indeed, yes. I think you have it right-although I could be wrong, we doctors so often are. A bad tension headache, possibly-or perhaps a migraine.”

“She fainted.” Ben sounded determined on a bleak diagnosis.

“Explained most likely by the stress she mentioned.”

“She fell.”

“Yes, well… uhmm.” Tommy appeared rattled. Maybe he wouldn’t be a doctor when he grew up. Clearly patients could be awkward, expecting a fellow to be sure of his facts. Better perhaps to go back to wanting to be a fireman or a bus driver. But hadn’t his mum and dad always told him not to be a wussy puss? Suddenly he straightened to his full five six, squared his shoulders, and stuck out his rounded chin. Time to assert himself. “People usually… generally… almost invariably, although this is arguable, don’t fall hard when they faint. They… crumple.”

“The latest medical term?”

“Oh, Ben, please! Dr. Rowley has to know what he’s talking about. He must see hundreds of patients.”

“I can’t say that,” demurred the truthful boy. “Grimkirk is a very small village, just a couple of shops and a strip of cottages. But I do see the occasional farmer and person on holiday. Let’s say,” chuckling convincingly, “I keep my hand in.”

“I’m sure you do.” My maternal instinct was aroused, and I was further touched on seeing when he bent to unlatch and relatch his bag that there was bald spot on the back of his head. What he needed more than a cat was a grown-up wife to tell him he was wonderfully clever. I wondered about his daily-Mrs. Spuds (who could forget such a name?). A woman who liked cats had to be nice, but like as not she already had a husband who wouldn’t take kindly to her marrying someone else, bigamy not having the cachet it once did.

“Ellie,” Ben sat down beside me on the sofa, “what sort of husband would I be if I didn’t worry about you?”

“But I’m feeling better,” I said, and realized it was true. Mrs. Foot’s gray biscuit and dreadful tea had settled. I felt less queasy and my headache was barely noticeable if I lay still.

“My prescribed treatment,” Tommy puffed out his chest, “is for you to go immediately to bed and once there be given a light meal and a drink, after which you will take the tablets I will leave for you. Two to be repeated every four hours if you should wake and feel the need.”

Lovely as this sounded, I had to explain the obvious. “But I can’t go straight to bed. We have to drive home or at least find a place to spend the night.”

“Out of the question.” Tommy was back to his beaming schoolboy self. “Aubrey will insist you stay here. If I know him, he will already be seeing that a room is prepared for you-preferably one that isn’t layered in dust; although I could prescribe a mask.” Radiating cheerful self-approval at this clever solution to what might or might not be a problem, he gathered up the bag and, saying that he would inform Aubrey and my friend of the situation, trotted from the room.

“Sweetheart,” Ben got off the sofa to pace, “I don’t put much faith in our Dr. Rowley.”

“That was blatantly apparent. You must have hurt his feelings horribly.”

“How do we know he’s even a doctor? Mad as hatters, everyone in this house! Not a normal person among them!”

“Lord Belfrey…!” I protested.

“Him!” My adored spouse presented a nasty sneer. “The worst of the lot. Stalking around doing his impersonation of Cary Grant!”

“He can’t help it if he’s the spitting image. Besides,” sidling my legs off the sofa the better to face him, “normal is highly overrated. My parents certainly thought so. To their way of thinking, normal was the real weird!”

“Sweetheart,” Ben just missed colliding with a marble Aphrodite on a pedestal and a six-foot urn containing a dead shrub, “don’t get worked up. You’ll make your headache worse.”

“And you shouldn’t be ungrateful. You should be down on your knees in gratitude to Lord Belfrey for providing a port in a storm.” This was nonsense. We rarely quarreled. But for some reason I couldn’t put a lid on it. “I hope you enjoy the satisfaction of saying I told you so if Dr. Rowley’s diagnosis proves wrong and I wake up in the middle of the night to find myself in a coma!”

“Is she always this much of a histrionic nutcase?” demanded a querulous male voice.

Ben and I froze in place, but Aphrodite jumped or… did a wobble on her pedestal. Gliding his circuitous way from the opposite end of the mile-long room was a man in a wheelchair. He was cloaked in shadow, as the cliché goes, which to my bewildered mind made him appear the more ominously substantial. He cleared the edges of the table bearing the tea tray and rolled to a silkily soft halt a few yards from the sofa. An enormously stout man, with a bloated bloodhound face, and sparse, greasy black hair combed over a high, bald dome. His eyes bored into mine, conveying a distaste that flattened my back to the sofa. Only by biting down on my lip did I prevent myself from quiveringly inquiring what right he had to call me histrionic. Then he smiled, a jovial smile that seemed instantly part and parcel of his brown and yellow checked waistcoat and voluminous cravat.

“I was teasing, my dear. Only teasing! I adore a spirited woman. You are a lucky man, sir,” he swiveled around to look up at Ben, “what zest she must put into your life and so captivating in her looks. I have always been an admirer of the subtle beauty of the woodland nymph fleshed out to full womanly glory.”

“Ellie and Ben Haskell,” I said hastily. “Wherever did you spring from?”

He performed a half-swivel this time, waving a vastly plump hand as he did so. “Through an archway beyond the dark reaches of all these hellish medieval furnishings. What possesses people to accumulate the hideous? The British nobility and their excesses! Take the Empire, for one small example. Ah, but as someone, possibly myself, so pertinently phrased it-vulgarity on a vast enough scale achieves a certain grandeur. For myself, I prefer the Spartan elegance of midcentury modernism in my London and Paris pieds à terre. But each to his own, and Aubrey Belfrey is a decent enough chap, perhaps not to be blamed for the sins of his forebears. One has to be broad-minded.”

“My wife is an interior designer.” Ben offered this tidbit warily.

“We don’t have your name,” I pointed out.

“Apologies! Apologies! Did I not say? It is Georges LeBois. Forgive the lack of a French accent.” He performed another of those hand flourishes. “My formidable English nanny, may she rest in peace,” eyes raised heavenward, “drilled it out of me. She was less successful in inuring me to milky puddings and toad-inthe-hole.” His vast stomach quivered noticeably at the horror of memory. “Is it any wonder that I escaped into the world of make-believe and at the conclusion of my incarceration within the vilely conceived British public school system studied film and became a director? I am here, at the aptly named Mucklesfeld Manor, for the making of Here Comes the Bride .”