Dorothy Cannell - She Shoots to Conquer

“So Giles dipped into the Belfrey coffers to replenish your family’s.”

“And I am supposed to have robbed them further by making off with the jewels.”

“You didn’t?”

“I’m not a thief.”

“No, but I suppose it would have been an understandable revenge against a brutal, merciless husband. But you say he wasn’t that.”

Nora resettled the glasses on her perfect nose. “I hated him at first, thought him unnatural for wanting me, knowing I had no feelings for him. Our wedding night is something I try never to think back on. Not because he forced me to submit, he was I suppose pathetically gentle, and there was nothing… out of the way, that could be considered deviant. But every part of me recoiled from his body… his touch. When I couldn’t block those times out of my mind, I told myself they would get better. But it didn’t happen, and after a few weeks he moved out of our bedroom. At least I had my nights to myself. He said, very kindly really, that it didn’t matter. That having me there, just being able to look at me, like a flower in a vase, was enough.”

“That sounds distinctly creepy to me.”

She stared straight ahead. “I might have grown kinder in my feelings toward him, if the days had not been so unendurable.”

I sat silent in the cobalt blue velvet chair. Sophie the Sealyham slept on. From the continued stare into nothingness, I gauged Nora to be no longer with us but back at Mucklesfeld, avoiding whenever possible the husband who filled her with revulsion, leaving her with only one other source of companionship.

“I understood,” Nora continued tonelessly, “that Celia would resent me. Having a stepmother a couple of years her junior and knowing exactly why I had agreed to marry him would have been enraging for anyone in her position. I expected to be either ignored or the recipient of snide remarks, but she went further than that. This,” pressing a finger to the scar on her face, “happened when she threw a cut-glass dish at me. It literally came at me out of the blue. Nothing apparent led up to the incident. Celia was sitting in the drawing room leafing through a magazine when she picked it up and aimed it at me. When she saw the blood dripping through my fingers, she said, ‘Don’t get that on the floor,’ and swept out of the room. She and I both knew that I would have made a bad decision in telling Giles. I believed then-and I still do-that she would have found a way to get rid of me once and for all given half an opportunity. I began seriously to fear my days were numbered when Giles bought this house for me.”

“Witch Haven? Yours?”

“In their arrangement with him-all very tidy and legal-my parents did seek to secure some protection for me in the event of his death; at which time of course I would’ve had to leave Mucklesfeld. I was to have a place of my own in waiting. Having paid substantially for the privilege of having a wife who couldn’t bear him to touch her,” Nora continued speaking without inflection, “Giles himself felt a financial pinch, so it had to be a reasonably priced house. Six months after our marriage, this one went up for sale and he bought it. To my surprise, having come to feel myself incapable of any positive emotion, I fell in love with the place despite its being in a shockingly run-down state. The only contented moments I spent after that at Mucklesfeld were occupied in planning how I would make Witch Haven my own-collecting ideas from magazines, positioning furniture choices on paper renditions of the rooms, deciding what colors I would use. Before leaving, I had an extensive scrapbook.”

I looked around the bedroom-the word stolen coming to mind. Mrs. Foot had accused Ben of stealing her kitchen. “And you came here a short time ago to find Celia Belfrey occupying your creation?”

“Extremely close. Of course there are some things I would change, perhaps because I have changed, but surprisingly my anger against her didn’t spill over to infect my feelings for the house. Perhaps it has the sort of aura that can’t be tainted, however unpleasant the personality of the occupant?”

“Maybe.” The empathy I had felt for this woman upon first hearing about her, in good part because of my attributed likeness to her, was increasing. I also saw houses as personalities; it was what I brought to my work as a designer. “How did Witch Haven get its name?”

For the first time I saw Nora… Eleanor… really smile. “It may be a legend, but the story goes that back in the sixteen hundreds a young woman from this area was accused of witchcraft on the grounds that a young dairy farmer was savagely gored by his bull after she supposedly hexed him. Her version was that she’d had to fight him off on several occasions when he’d cornered her in the lane as she was passing. It was his wife who raised the village against her. On the day she was to be hanged, the squire’s son came galloping up to the prison yard waving a writ for her release and plucking her from the gallows as the noose was lowered.”

“Romantic! Or was he all about justice?”

“There must have been love, or at least passion, involved in his mission of mercy because he afterwards installed her in this house, with sufficient armed menservants to ensure her protection. And here she lived out her days to the grand old age of ninety-two.”

“Was Celia Belfrey also captivated by the house and its history?”

“I’m not sure if she wanted it because it was mine or because it also spoke to her. She had an eye for beauty along with an almost manic acquisitive streak.”

“Almost?”

The smile against rested for a moment on Eleanor’s lips before she turned her face away. “That day when I saw Aubrey looking up at me from the foot of the stairs, I had the mad idea that he was that squire’s son, having ridden hell for leather to the rescue. As I said, it had been a dreadful day. Celia was in a glinty-eyed fury, as she always was on the days when I sat for my portrait, and Charlie Forester had come to tell me that Hamish the Scottie had been inexplicably injured-what appeared to be a torn muscle in one of his front legs. I knew Celia had taken out her rage on the poor little fellow. I think Giles did, too, but he was always afraid to stand up to her. He told me to go to my room and stay there. It was an order-quietly given, but I didn’t attempt to argue. A bolted door… that was sanctuary. I think he knew that she was to be feared.”

“His lordship’s assessment of the situation was that you were his cousin’s prisoner. This Charlie Forester, why would he leave Mucklesfeld to work for her here?”

“I think he feels it his duty to keep an eye on her, to be the watchguard against her doing something dreadful, especially against Aubrey now he’s back. I don’t think she considers Dr. Rowley someone to be dealt with right now. He hasn’t taken Mucklesfeld from her… yet.”

I shivered. The Sealyham lifted her tufted white head and clambered out of the basket onto the bed, to perform a circle before settling down on Eleanor’s lap. But she didn’t again close her eyes. Had she picked up on my unease? Or did she experience a more pervasive sense of danger? My time with Thumper had led me to believe fervently in the omniscient powers of man’s-and woman’s-best friend.

“It was during the hours spent in my room that day that I made up my mind to leave and take Hamish with me. I knew I couldn’t go back to my parents or let them know any more than that I was safe. It was easier in those days to make an untraceable phone call. I had to disappear, and fortunately I had some friends-beatniks, was my mother’s description-who were ready to help me set up a new identity. But I couldn’t completely give up the old one. It would have been as if Celia had succeeded in murdering me-and melodramatic as that sounds, I know that was her plan. So I became Nora Burton.” She sat stroking the Sealyham with a fine-boned hand.