Dorothy Cannell - She Shoots to Conquer

My face stretched into a yawn as I unwrapped the one treat I’d bought myself in Yorkshire. How long ago the visit to Tom and Betty’s now seemed as I lifted the heavy… oh so heavy… bronze candlestick and trolled back to the bed to place it under the pillow… which seemed to shift shape in the most peculiar way. Indeed. How long ago and far away everything seemed. Slapping my face with flopping hands, I came back to myself sufficiently to decide I was giving way to panic. A sound from Judy roused my ministering instincts. I found her half awake and clearly in pain from the ankle. Staggering to the chair which served as a chest, I sloshed water from the thermos into the glass, picked up the tablets, and managed to accomplish my Florence Nightingale turn without falling on top of her. I think she thanked me, she would have, must have done-that was Judy, although who Judy was or why she was in Ben’s bed became less clear by the second. The next I knew… and that groggily… was that I was on my bed and after that… swirling darkness, drawing me down, down into nothingness.

Afterwards, I was to reflect wryly on how I’d felt rather smug when getting rid of the beverages, but they hadn’t contained the crushed sleeping pills. For all Mrs. Foot’s pride in her lovely cup of tea, she must have doubted my proper appreciation, so she had doctored the Chantilly cream instead. Something I should have suspected by the lack of rosettes, which had required flattening out in the process. If Judy had eaten a slice, all the better. Mrs. Foot had used the tablets that Dr. Rowley had prescribed for her when she’d told him she was having trouble sleeping and that she’d held on to in case of need. Life always offered the unexpected and it was best to be prepared.

She admitted all this to the police, in the early hours of the next morning, along with a great deal more-that she had smothered Suzanne Varney’s father, Mr. Codger, as well as several other of the difficult patients during her days as a ward maid at Shady Oaks. It was Livonia’s mentioning that Tommy had helped out there during his summer holidays that jolted my memory of where Mrs. Foot had worked. But unfortunately not until I was sitting in Lord Belfrey’s study that afternoon had I pictured her nosing around in there shortly before the contestants were due to arrive and coming across Suzanne’s photo.

“A proper start of surprise, it gave me,” she told the police in wounded fashion. As they recorded in her statement.

Suzanne had had concerns about Mrs. Foot for some time, and on her father’s death, insisted to the administrator that she be investigated.

“Such a fuss about one old man… well, yes, there were others, helped on the way to a better place. Not that there was any proof, I’d been that careful, but I wasn’t going to stay around to be looked at funny every time I came into one of the wards with my lovely trolley. It seemed best just not to show up again. So, out of a job and forced to live in the streets it was, but always the silver lining, it was there I met dear Mr. Plunket and sweet Boris. And now here we were landed on our feet, happy as larks at Mucklesfeld, and now she was coming… bound to go telling stories to his nibs so that he’d decide-lovely though he is-that the three of us would have to go.”

So much I had guessed. The use of the torch to lure Suzanne down into the ravine, the concern that it had been dropped and lost in the fog, Mr. Plunket’s early search for it the next morning, Boris’s similar attempts to find it-yes, it turned out to be he who had been watching from a strategic vantage point among the trees when I stood debating whether to follow Thumper down on his scramble. And then Judy coming up from the ravine this afternoon and going almost immediately into the house to hand over the torch she had found. Its having been discovered in the ravine wasn’t likely to seriously interest the police. But it wasn’t the police that mattered; it was the sad thought that his nibs might wonder who had removed the torch from his drawer and put two and two together. If life was to continue happily, Judy must be disposed of before she could talk, and the chances seemed good that she wouldn’t bring the matter up during the archery contest. That oh so convenient contest! She hadn’t died, yet even then all was not lost. The injured ankle was bound to put so trivial a find out of her mind for the immediate future. And Mrs. Foot set great store by Dr. Rowley’s sleeping tablets.

And now there I was, drugged to the gills, the candlestick a wasted attempt at protection under my pillow, my chivalrous whim not to confide my suspicions until proved true precluding rescue by Mrs. Malloy, who would have so thrilled to the opportunity. Later, Ben would tell me in no uncertain terms that if I ever attempted such heroics again, he would never make me another chocolate orange gateau-which didn’t have quite the impact it would once have done. I had been a well-meaning fool, undeserving of the passionate devotion that brought Thumper to the rescue, leaping through the window onto the bed, barking to raise the dead… or in my case the stupored. But, unlike Whitey, who so needed his little cuddles, he lingered not a moment beyond the one it took to pry myself up. Away he raced into the cubbyhole. To my horror in following him, I saw Judy’s bed was empty. Nor had Thumper dallied there; he was out on the rooftop growling menacingly.

I had not taken Mrs. Foot for the killer, and I had been right in thinking that one of the two who loved her beyond her deserts had taken care of matters for her. It was Boris who stood like death personified holding Judy in his arms. The empty eyes stared through me before he laid her down with a gentleness she had seen in him and remarked upon, and took the graceful leap of a trapeze artist to his death.

I hope I’m a woman as learns from trial and tribulation,” said Mrs. Malloy from the backseat as we left the gates of Mucklesfeld behind us. “’Course there’s no overlooking quite yet your leaving me in the dark about what you was up to. Could be you thought I needed being taught a lesson, what with me not being overly nice to Judy Nunn, that I have come to see as a good egg, and a brave one at that, though she didn’t remember any of the night, which is a blessing. Although it could be said she missed out on one of the most exciting moments in her life, and for most of us they don’t come along often.”

“I’d think you’d be glad of some peace and quiet after all that’s happened,” said Ben, looking remarkably handsome behind the steering wheel. Thumper had not, as it turned out, been the only hero of the hour. Lord Belfrey had mentioned to Ben his belief that I wanted Judy in my room in case something happened to her. He believed I feared she might take a turn for the worse, but Ben construed it differently, explained my concern might be from a different cause, and the two of them in manly accord had kept watch outside my door throughout the evening, neither of course making anything of Mrs. Foot’s arrival with the tray. What neither they nor I had anticipated was that Boris would come up by way of the fire escape, and then creep through both rooms to lock my door. Thumper’s frantic barking had alerted the men of trouble, but also drowned out their subsequent pounding on the door. So they had broken down the door and entered upon the scene to lift Judy from the roof edge and carry her back to bed.

“Mr. Plunket is the one I now feel most sorry for,” I said. “His worried knowledge was what turned him back to drink. But I’m sure Lord Belfrey and Dr. Rowley will come up with a solution as to where he should go, if the police let him off lightly, which won’t be the case with Mrs. Foot after her unremorseful confession.”