Dorothy Cannell - She Shoots to Conquer

I lost no time in making off for Witch Haven. It was tempting to linger in the leafy lane, enjoying its green shade and mosaic of shadows on the ground, the warm breeze suggesting a frolicsome mood to the day. Would I be speedily shown the door after saying what I had to say-if given the chance? My hand grasped the door knocker. My heart thudded along with its hammering fall. There was a line between sins of omission as addressed by Reverend Spendlow and sticking one’s nose in other people’s business. The door opened with startling speed, scattering beyond recoverable reach the words I’d been shoving into random order.

“Good morning,” said Nora Burton; she was again lumpily dressed in a wintry-looking skirt and sagging cardigan. The thicklensed glasses loomed large on her face, contracting her expression of polite inquiry to a lift of the mouth.

“Back like the bad penny!” Assuming admittance, I placed a foot on the threshold.

“Without the dog.” She didn’t budge. “Did you find the owner?”

“Yes…”

“Good, I’ll let Miss Belfrey know.”

“I have a message for her from the contestants in the reality show.” I held it out and watched her pocket it in the shapeless cardigan. “But it’s you I must talk to.”

“Must?” She stepped backward into the hall.

“Somewhere private.”

She stood rigidly still, as if finally the moment she had been anticipating since coming to Witch Haven was at hand.

Aware that the hall might have ears, I whispered the question. “You are Eleanor Belfrey?”

N o need to explain last night’s dream in which I had been powerless to scream a warning of impending danger, or to mention Reverend Spendlow’s sermon. No steaming indignation, no guilty outrage from Nora Burton. She retained her calm demeanor, skipping the question as to why her true identity was any of my business to go directly to the core. “How did you guess?”

We were now in her bedroom, she seated on the edge of the bed, I in a cobalt blue velvet chair. A small white dog-a Sealyham terrier asleep in a basket before the fireplace-added the perfect cozy touch. I had always thought I would prefer a small dog. The furnishings were charming, the warm amber, cobalt blue, and rose color scheme reflective of the hall and drawing room. Given Celia Belfrey’s demand for perfection, I doubted there was a room at Witch Haven that wasn’t lovely.

“Several reasons. Lord Belfrey asked me if my name, Ellie, was short for Eleanor; but there are always any number of ways to abbreviate. I also learned that your last name, before your marriage, was Lambert-Onger. Shorten Eleanor into Nora, take the bert from Lambert and the on from Onger to concoct Burton, and there you are. But that didn’t come to me first. The trigger was your asking if I were talking about Lord Belfrey when I mentioned Georges LeBois the other morning. Afterwards, it struck me as unlikely that Miss Belfrey had never in your hearing mentioned her cousin Aubrey by name. Not because she is fond of him. Quite the reverse. If she would vent her venom to me-a total stranger-then how could you escape being her frequent listening post?”

“What else are paid companions to spoiled, spiteful women for?” Nora’s lips curved bitterly.

“Exactly. And Celia Belfrey is worse than either of those two adjectives, isn’t she? Look.” I leaned forward. “You haven’t said it, but I will. I’m sticking my nose into your private affairs. But I’m not doing so for the fun of it. I’ve heard your story from the three people working at Mucklesfeld and from Lord Belfrey, and I think you’re taking a huge risk in returning…”

“To the scene of my crime?”

“Lord Belfrey doesn’t believe you took the jewels with you when you fled Mucklesfeld.”

“Doesn’t he?” pushing back her hair in a weary gesture. The thin white line of the scar tracing down from the corner of her eye to her cheek showed up sharply in the light coming in through the window framed in floor-length pale blue silk.

“No. You made a… very positive lasting impression on him the day he came to Mucklesfeld and saw you standing halfway up the stairs. When my husband and a friend and I arrived out of the fog the other night, he got the idea that I look something like you did then and still do in your portrait.”

“Yes,” she said, “I can see that.”

“If there is any resemblance, it has to be very faint. You were beautiful. And I have a strong feeling that without those bottle glasses, the scraped-back hair, and frumpy clothes you still are.”

“I don’t spend much time in front of a mirror. Not because of this”-she touched a finger to the scar-“I just prefer not to narrow my focus down to me. I’ve spent my life since Mucklesfeld staying constantly busy in unexciting ways. A nursing career, a small flat, and for the last three years Sophie.” The Sealyham twitched an ear, then reshuffled back to sleep in the basket. “I counted on being sufficiently uninteresting to have a good chance of getting away with this charade. At the start, fooling Celia was all that mattered. Once over that hurdle, I felt reasonably secure. Although sometimes I do wonder about Charlie Forester. He was always so kind, so eager to be of help to me. But,” she shrugged her shoulders, bunching up the cardigan, “it was a very long time ago. I’m not sure I would have recognized him; he’s over eighty now.”

“If Miss Belfrey hadn’t banned Lord Belfrey from this house, he would have presented a problem for you. No disguise or change in appearance would fool him. He seems to me a man of uncanny recall.” That wasn’t giving away more than was justified, was it?

“He… Aubrey made an indelible impression on me, too. For that one breathless moment, I thought I’d summoned up the man who would rescue me. It had been a quite dreadful day.” She removed the spectacles and rubbed her forehead above the bridge of her nose. Without them, her face seemed stripped naked and I caught my first glimpse… just a suggestion, really, of the loveliness that had haunted Lord Belfrey and the loss of which had played its part in driving his cousin Giles to madness. Nora finally asked the question I would have raised earlier were the situation reversed, but she did so without rancor. “What are you really? Some sort of private detective?”

“Occasional amateur. I’m at Mucklesfeld quite by chance, as I told you. But there was something in the atmosphere right from the beginning, something apart from the accidental death of one of the contestants that drew me in, and that was your story.”

“The absconding bride.” Something in her misty gray eyes told me talking would be a release now the cat was out of the bag and in my lap.

“Was your husband cruel from the start of your marriage?”

“Giles never treated me badly.”

“But Lord Belfrey thought… is still convinced you were terrified of your husband after being forced into a marriage contrived by your family.”

“That’s true. My father was in desperate financial straits as a result of some highly speculative investing. He was on the verge of losing everything and there was Giles offering to save the day in return for one small favor. Me. He’d been infatuated with me for several years after meeting me at Ascot on my twentieth birthday. I had no idea. He was older than both my parents by ten years. I suppose when I thought of him at all, it was as a courtesy uncle.” Nora again brushed her hair back from her forehead. A weary gesture. “I was aghast when my father told me, quite unemotionally, what was expected of a dutiful daughter. I railed, of course, but unlike my brother-there were just the two of us-I had always toed the line. Saving the family home for Jeremy to inherit along with an income to support it was of far more importance than any squeamishness on my part. After all, what did I have to complain about? I would be married to a lord.”