Dorothy Cannell - She Shoots to Conquer

“She couldn’t have counted on the fog.”

Back to the baleful stare. “Do I look stupid?”

“Never in a million years.”

“I’m not saying as she’d planned on killing Suzanne.” Still huffy. “More a case of grabbing the opportunity by the horns when it came along.”

“Okay.” I ignored the call of the prawn sandwich.

“So, there they are creeping up the drive, Suzanne at the wheel unable to see a blinking thing, and Judy says: Why don’t I get out and guide you in ?”

“With or without malice aforethought?”

“Let’s just say she was thinking of her own skin, but then she sees the break in the wall…”

“With her superwoman x-ray vision?”

Mrs. Malloy again tightened her arms under her chest, forcing the blood up her neck until I feared she’d turn purple to match her lipstick. “With the torch she got out of the glove compartment, like any reasonably clever Dick would do. Must’ve been then,” her voice dropped to a low rasp, “that something wicked took hold of her, swamping every ounce of human decency drummed into her as a nipper. What was one life against the call of the Belfrey land?”

I can’t say I shuddered to the villainy of this scenario. It was the torch that struck a note… because it was repetitive: Ben not being able to find the one Georges claimed was in a desk drawer in his lordship’s study; and further back… to last evening, Plunket saying that if Boris had found a torch to take outside, things might have been different. It was probably a coincidence, but even so I felt that prickling of the skin… the chill down the spine.

“Look,” I told Mrs. Malloy, “your not taking to Judy Nunn doesn’t mean she killed anyone. And any such suggestions to Lord Belfrey, Georges LeBois, or the other women will do nothing but ruin your own chances of ending up with the bridal veil. I’m not saying you have to be Miss Congeniality, but at least try not to be the troublemaker everyone is hoping to see out on her ear.”

“Well, I suppose it was too much to hope you’d remember all the times me instincts put me on the right track when we was handling other cases together,” Mrs. Malloy addressed the ceiling. “So you go on telling yourself this is too close and personal for me to be objective. Don’t you go worrying I’ll be saying I told you so when I’m found breathing me last after being coshed on the noggin with a poker.” Black head with its two inches of white roots held high, she made for the door.

“Oh, please!” I begged-caught however foolishly in superstitious dread. “Don’t go off miffed. Stay and have half my prawn sandwich.”

“Luncheon awaits,” hand on the knob, she did not turn her head. “We’d have sat down half an hour ago if your friend Judy wasn’t still outside with Lord Belfrey filling his head with promises of velvet lawns and herbaceous borders. And now it’ll be me that’s late.” The snap of the door behind her indicated that this was entirely my fault. To blunt my chagrin, I ate my lunch without tasting it and lay back down. No chance of Ben appearing for a while at least. He must be fully occupied in the dining room or kitchen. As for Thumper, I recognized the hopeless folly of yearning for him to leap through the window. Courage! I told myself. At least I wasn’t Wisteria Whitworth dreading the arrival of the malevolent wardress mouthing the names of the patients she had smothered in their beds after they refused their morning gruel that she’d put her whole heart into the stirring. That miserable old Mr. Codger… I smiled faintly at coming up with such a redundant name. Perhaps I was drifting off to sleep.

But that wasn’t to be. Mrs. Malloy’s disastrously silly suspicions kept pulling me back from the verge. Disastrous because she wasn’t much good at concealing her feelings when her nose was out of joint. And silly because if someone had seized upon the fog to bring about Suzanne Varney’s death, there was no reason to assume it was Judy Nunn. Someone living at Mucklesfeld could have easily heard the car coming, made sure the exterior lights were off, and nipped outside at the propitious moment with a torch. One now missing from its accustomed place. If killer there be, it would have to be someone who had more to fear from poor Suzanne’s arrival than the mere possibility that Lord Belfrey would choose her as his bride.

I lay longing for another cup of tea, a hot one this time, accompanied by another lemon tartlet. I still had more than an hour to go before joining the contestants in the library. Thinking of what might be offered to eat at that time would only make my current pangs worse, so I went back to concocting nonsensical theories about a murder I hoped to convince Mrs. Malloy hadn’t happened. Let the suspects seat themselves in a circle.

My mental gaze fell first on the trio of Mr. Plunket, Mrs. Foot, and Boris. Before finding refuge at Mucklesfeld, originally as squatters and then as employees on Lord Belfrey’s return from America (when they must have expected to be given their marching papers), they had been homeless. The prospect of his lordship’s marriage had to have rattled their rib cages. What if the new wife insisted they leave? What chance did any of them have to reestablish themselves? Would they be separated? That, I felt sure, was an anguish not to be borne; together they were the insiders, not the brutal reverse. But if the first contestant to show up conveniently died, his lordship might decide against continuing with Here Comes the Bride , and they-Mr. Plunket, Mrs. Foot, and Boris-would be safe, at least for the time being. What, I suddenly wondered, had caused them to be homeless in the first place?

My watch showed scant progress toward teatime. If I were to pretend seriously that Mrs. Malloy was right that murder had occurred, then I would have to add employer to employees in our group of suspects. Why might Lord Belfrey have decided to eliminate one contestant off the bat? Perhaps when he belatedly saw Suzanne Varney’s photo laid out with the others by Georges in the study, he realized that she could ruin his chances for a marriage that would save Mucklesfeld. What could Suzanne have known to his detriment that had sealed her fate? I considered the possibility that he had behaved improperly toward her on the cruise they had shared, wincing away from more graphic wording. Illogically, my heart rebelled against the possibility that he had been anything other than a gentleman; after all, if a man would commit murder, he was likely capable of other hideous violations. But I desperately didn’t want to believe anything of the kind about Lord Belfrey.

What other damning evidence might Suzanne have had against him? A dire, but less ugly possibility sprang to mind. Perhaps she had reason to know, having met the genuine article, that he was not the real Lord Belfrey! Not that I condoned the behavior of imposters (or of highwaymen, for that matter), but there is a certain romantic allure to the face masked by black cloth or pretense. What if two Englishmen living in America, uncannily similar in appearance, chanced to meet-one telling the other he had just been informed by letter that his cousin Lord Giles Belfrey had died, making him heir to the title and ancestral estate? What if during an evening at his home in a remote rural community, this man had waxed nostalgic over the course of rather too many whiskeys and sodas on the family history, mentioning names, situations, before dramatically and conveniently collapsing? What if after failing to revive him, the other sized up the potential for starting over after two failed marriages (doomed from the start because of his fixation with Eleanor) and an abruptly ended career? What if the deceased was so newly arrived in the area that his passport and air ticket were in view on a table and his other identification in his wallet, waiting to be plucked from his jacket pocket and replaced by another set?