Dorothy Cannell - She Shoots to Conquer

I might have warmed to such a scenario if it weren’t connected to Suzanne Varney’s murder. As it was, I nixed it firmly. Whatever might be false at Mucklesfeld, I was in no doubt that his lordship had lost his heart, completely and forever, when looking upward at Eleanor Belfrey in her portrait gown on the stairs.

Another glance at my watch convinced me I had spent long enough concocting motives for a murder that was all in Mrs. Malloy’s head. I was about to get off the bed to do something about my face, hair, and clothes before heading down to the library for tea, when the door opened and in crowded Mrs. Foot.

“I’ve come for the tray.” She beamed a gap-toothed smile, the heavy dusty gray locks matching matted clouds outside the window. Gone was the sunshine of a half hour before. Did the weather at Mucklesfeld tend to be this fickle, and were Mrs. Foot’s moods equally changeable? Certainly, she was making more of an effort to be jolly than she had that morning. Had Whitey been returned safe and sound to her fond embrace? Before I could inquire, she asked winningly if I’d had a nice little nap.

“I tried, but my mind’s been rather awhirl.” I smiled up… way up at her. She would have to do a long bend to pick up the tray, which was perhaps why she made no attempt to do so. Quickly, I set it on the bed.

“Now don’t you overdo,” she admonished. Then I saw the hesitancy lurking in the greenish-yellow eyes. The smile, an overture at buttering me up perhaps, was gone. She’s bracing to tell me something, I thought. And sat still, waiting. “You must have had a bad night, dear,” a flicker of the spider leg lashes, “and for that I’m ever so sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault that I fainted.” That wasn’t entirely true, and maybe she realized that peering through the banisters had spooked me.

“That’s not what I’m getting at, dearie.” She lowered her head, the ungainly hands smoothing down the sides of her faded print frock, plucking a thread here and poking at a tear there. A nervous gesture, no more. Why did it conjure an image of those hands closing about my throat… squeezing it dry of breath? Because I was again seeing her as the asylum wardress who had aroused palpitations in Wisteria Whitworth’s unequaled bosom. “Before coming up, I confessed to Mr. Plunket and Boris what I’d done. You didn’t, Mrs. Foot ! said Mr. Plunket. Not you, Mrs. Foot ! said Boris. It went against everything they know of my soft, loving nature to think of me pulling such tricks.”

“What tricks?”

Her head stayed down, but I continued to feel those eyes. “Putting the hot-water bottle I knew leaked in your bed.” She moved a foot, drawing a circling motion on the floor in a parody of a child enduring the indignity of confessing to a disappointed mummy or daddy. “The other I did when you were deep asleep, as I knew you would be after taking those tablets Dr. Rowley prescribed. He’d let me have some a few weeks ago when I had a bout of lying awake nights fretting because Mr. Plunket was feeling down. I was scared he’d go back to the drinking that had finished him with his job and family years back, and him so lovely, like you’ll have seen, when he’s sober.”

“What else did you do?”

“Came in and opened the window. Most couldn’t reach up to that, but like I said to Mr. Plunket, I’m tall as a willow tree.” She now cranked up her head, and seeing the fierce glint of pride spread over her features, I waited for her to add that height was something she had worked on her entire life, and that with continued sacrificial exercise she would gain another foot and a half by morning. Instead, she explained her object had been for me to awake damply chilled to the marrow.

“Why?” I felt entitled in sounding put out.

“Nothing personal, if that’s a comfort.” The gray locks could have been the fog framing a tombstone.

“Then…”

“Had to think what was best for his lordship, didn’t I, dearie? Has to be him first and foremost with Mr. Plunket, Boris, and me. I’d seen the way he was taken by how close you looked like the portrait. The one of Eleanor Belfrey. Relieved, we’d been, when Miss Celia Belfrey marched in and took it away. It was like it had bewitched him, and that’s not a happy way for a man to live. Give his nibs time, Mrs. Foot , said Mr. Plunket, now he doesn’t have her face to look at, he’ll get back to himself right as rain. That’s right , said Boris, don’t you go on worrying, Mrs. Foot . Always so thoughtful of me, those two. I got my hopes up that his lordship was over the lady when he decided on this plan to get married. But then… there was you… brought in by the fog. And it came to me that if you could be got rid of fast, before it all got stirred up again for him, there mightn’t be too much harm done.”

“You panicked on discovering that Monsieur LeBois had asked my husband to stay on beyond this morning.”

“That’s the nutshell, dearie.”

“Frankly,” it had to be said, “I’m surprised your primary concern isn’t that if Lord Belfrey does select a bride at the end of the week, she might be the new broom sort and decide to replace you, Mr. Plunket, and Boris with her own choice of employees.”

“Won’t happen, dearie.” The gummy smile was back full force and Mrs. Foot went so far as to rub her hands. “His lordship wouldn’t stand for us being booted out. He’s give us his word we’re to stay as long as we wants-which is forever-and with him that’s as sacred an oath as you’d get out of a bishop.”

“I’m sure.” And naively or not, I was. What puzzled me was why Mrs. Foot had confessed to the hot-water bottle and the open window. My mind primed to suspicion by my imaginings, I remembered Mrs. Malloy’s throwing in my face our previous forays into sleuthing. I couldn’t recall if she had closed the door after bringing in the tray. But if she had left it ajar, might not Mrs. Foot-having followed her up for the express purpose of having a listen to our conversation-be probing the reasons why Suzanne’s death might be murder most foul?

“I do hope you’re not ever so cross with me, dearie.” Vast shake of the hoary locks. “ Oh, Mrs. Foot ,” said both Mr. Plunket and Boris. “ What if the lady he thinks ofas a rare rose goes telling his lordship about her bad night and he gets his dear self in a state worrying about her catching pneumonia? We can’t have him upset-not anytime, but specially now when he needs to be thinking clear to make his choice of a bride .”

So much for my silly ideas. Why doubt this explanation for her coming clean? “Of course I won’t say anything,” I reassured her.

“That’s a weight off my mind. I’ll go tell Mr. Plunket and Boris. I should have thought about them along with his lordship when pulling my stunt.” Giant sigh. No further mention of my feelings. “And now with all this drink your husband has brought into the house,” her voice became edged with the anger she had displayed that morning at the raising of a foreign flag over the kitchen, “I’m scared out of my wits Mr. Plunket will succumb to a glass of oh-be-joyful.”

“Ben acted upon Monsieur LeBois’s instructions and surely” (perhaps wishful thinking) “he wouldn’t have issued them without Lord Belfrey’s approval.”

“Pressured into it.” Mrs. Foot’s scowl deepened. “Not a drop of alcohol in the place from the day poor Mr. Plunket told his lordship about his battle fought and won with the bottle. An employer in a million, we’ve got. He’ll have insisted that what’s been brought into the house in the past twenty-four hours be kept under lock and key. But where there’s a will, there’s always a way to get to the booze. No stopping Mr. Plunket if the urge comes on too strong.”