She Shoots to Conquer

by Dorothy Cannell

  Before offers of assistance in this nearly impossible endeavor could pour in, Mrs. Foot entered the dining room wheeling a trolley with one of Ben’s delectable chocolate orange gateaux ornamented with Chantilly cream, candied almonds, and marigold petals. Knowing it to be laced with Grand Marnier, my tongue melted at the sight. Behind her came Mr. Plunket, bearing a tarnished silver coffeepot. Creeping in last came Boris. A cheery raspberry pink short-sleeved shirt emphasized quite horribly his zombie appearance. That he carried a knife, admittedly a cake one, served to heighten the impression that he had been given his orders and would perform them in glassy-eyed fashion.

  Mindful, one presumed, of the need to display aplomb worthy of the mistress of Mucklesfeld even when faced with having their throats cut, not one of the contestants squealed. Indeed, a smiling Judy complimented him on the shirt.

  “Taken from a dead man.”

  “Oh!” Livonia committed the solecism of turning pale.

  Seizing the moment for additional points, Mrs. Malloy said in her best high falutin’ voice: “How frightfully nice of some… body,” capping off this bon mot with a posh-sounding chuckle.

  Mrs. Foot placed the gateau on the very edge of the table, either unaware of the risk or daring it to attempt a flying leap so she could flatten it with a hand that outmatched it in size. “The word’s corpse.”

  “So it is! So it is! Trust you, Mrs. Foot, to know the medical terminology.” Mr. Plunket chuckled appreciatively. “Comes from all her years as a ward maid,” he confided to the gathering, which at that moment decreased considerably with the clanging exit of Georges and the crew. “But to explain clearer, Boris didn’t himself take that there shirt of his off the bod… corpse. He got it from an undertaker acquaintance of ours. Amazed you’d be,” Mr. Plunket was now wending his way around the table with the coffeepot, missing more cups than he hit but not appearing to notice the sloshy saucers, “proper amazed at how many people don’t want the clothes back that their loved ones is brought in wearing. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Foot?”

  “True as you, Mr. Plunket, and Boris is standing there looking so handsome. And not just clothes, neither. Tell the ladies, Boris.”

  “Glass eyeballs and false teeth, too. Always got customers waiting for them has our friend.” The zombie voice would have produced a chill regardless of subject. As it was, Molly pressed a hand to her mouth. She had been correct in saying that the word dentures had a far less dribbly sound than false teeth.

  “Nothing wrong with economizing is what I say.” Mrs. Foot took the knife from Boris and began hacking up the gateau, sprinkled liberally with gray hairs.

  Mrs. Malloy drew on her better nature to pass Molly the first piece.

  “The waste that’s going on out there in the kitchen makes my stomach turn.” The wiping of the blade on her grubby apron caused my insides to perform the same feat. “All that chocolate when a tablespoon of cocoa would have done just as well.”

  What hadn’t been wasted on Mr. Plunket, I feared, was the Grand Marnier. I got a strong whiff of orange as he again paused at my side to tilt the empty coffeepot over my cup before weaving on to do the same for the others. But he managed to inform us steadily that the one exception to Mrs. Foot’s rules of economy was when it came to her tea making.

  “Always a good strong cup.”

  Sadly, his fondness for other beverages must have destroyed his taste buds. I exchanged glances with Mrs. Malloy and experienced a spurt of pleasure when her expression mirrored my thought. There would again be times when we thought as one.

  “No one brews up better than Ma,” droned Boris.

  “Now then,” Mrs. Foot stopped licking the knife blade (mercifully having finished passing round the portions) to give him and Mr. Plunket her broad, gap-toothed smile, “that’s enough about me, you two. Go to the stake for me, you would!”

  “Isn’t that wonderful?” said Judy warmly.

  “Oh, yes! Lovely!” Livonia laid down her dessert fork after raising it halfway to her lips.

  “Nothing like true friends,” chimed in Alice.

  “When they’re not being awkward.” Mrs. Malloy sailed a look over my head.

  Molly ventured a closed-mouth smile.

  “There was something I was meant to tell you ladies.” Mr. Plunket stood scratching at his face, when he didn’t miss it by a yard. “Now, what was it, Mrs. Foot? Do you remember, Boris? Never mind,” lowering a wobbly hand,” I’ve got it. His nibs asked me to tell you his cousin Miss Celia Belfrey will append… attend the archery contest. She sent word round just a few mim… minutes ago by Charlie Forester, who said he’ll be haffy… happy to…”

  “Provide instruction? How very kind of him!” Poor Mr. Plunket, I had to rescue him before he stumbled over his tongue and fell flat on the floor. Presumably the same thought caused Mrs. Foot to grasp him by the elbow and airlift him out of the dining room with Boris lurching behind.

  “He’s been at the booze!” Alice said, on the possibility, I supposed, that no one else had noticed.

  “Ben will have done his best to keep it away from him.” I hoped I didn’t sound defensive. “But he’d have to turn his back sometimes. He may not have seen Mr. Plunket come into the kitchen…”

  “No one could blame your husband.” Livonia’s blue eyes brimmed with sympathy. Was she swept up in a new understanding of the burning need to protect one’s beloved against even a hint of unjust criticism?

  “Never knows who’s there or who isn’t, does Mr. H, when he’s in cookery heaven.” Mrs. Malloy sounded so much like her old self that I found myself relaxing on her account as well as Ben’s.

  “Mr. Plunket seemed all right when he first came in,” said Molly, seemingly restored after the false teeth business.

  “I don’t know a lot about drink, but Harold told me-he was always telling me things-that alcohol takes effect less slowly in people with severe post nasal drip. But,” she added cheerfully, “I’m beginning to think he wasn’t nearly as clever as he thought, except when it came to door and window handles, which was his job.”

  Nobody asked who Harold was or the nature of his career in handles, either because Livonia had already explained him to the other contestants or because he sounded such a dreadful bore. Judy demonstrated a knack of knowing when to change the subject by bringing up the archery contest.

  “I’d forgotten it’s set for tomorrow. I do hope Lord Belfrey is pleased his cousin seems willing to bury the hatchet at least for an afternoon. I don’t like to think we’ve put him in a difficult position.”

  “If anyone’s up a tree, it’s me.” Alice speared a piece of gateau but didn’t attempt a bite. “I’ve never held a bow, let alone shot an arrow in my life. I know what will happen. My hair will fall down all over my face,” a poke at the recalcitrant tresses, “and I’ll shoot myself in the foot, or worse yet someone else in the eye.”

  “Remember,” pointed out Judy, “this nice-sounding man Charlie Forester will be there to show those of us new to the sport what to do.”

  “That’s right.” Molly, who had been looking twitchy, smoothed out.

  “And Tommy… Dr. Rowley is coming,” said Livonia to her coffee cup.

  “With an ambulance?” Alice, whom I was beginning to like, slumped theatrically back in her chair.

  “Naturally some of you will be glad of the lessons.” Mrs. Malloy smoothed a hand down her majestic bosom and assumed a look of unconvincing modesty. “As for meself, I don’t claim to be an expert in the sport, but I do believe I’ve acquired sufficient knowledge to do Mrs. H, here, proud.”

  I yearned to wipe the smug look off her face; instead, I forced myself to sound admiring. “How exactly have you come by this knowledge of archery?”

  “And you asking me that, Mrs. H! As if you didn’t read that book by Doris McCrackle same as I did.”

  “Perdition Hall?”

  “’Course not! The Landcroft Legacy is what I’m talking about. Remember how when Semolina Gibbons w
as coming back across the moor-after visiting old Mrs. Weathervane, who wouldn’t tell what she knew about the body in the bog on account of her varicose veins putting her in a mood-someone shot an arrow at her…”

  “Who?” Livonia was so intent, her elbow went into her cup.

  “Unfortunately,” Mrs. Malloy was brought to the brink of a smile by the recollection, “Semolina couldn’t see who had tried to kill her, because of the mist that she didn’t want to admit to herself was really a fog, seeing as she’d promised the rector who had taken her into his household when he came upon her as a waif selling matches one dark and dismal night in a mean little street…”

  “Oh, I love match girls!” Livonia’s eyes remained riveted on Mrs. Malloy’s face, even as she wiped off her elbow with her table napkin.

  “So do I!” Molly was looking equally entranced.

  “Certainly enterprising,” said Judy, after absently (it must be assumed) swallowing a forkful of gateau.

  “The rector, as was named Reverend Goodhope-you’ll remember that, Mrs. H-couldn’t bring himself to buy any of Semolina’s matches because he disapproved of their use for lighting up pipes and cigars… cigarettes too, although I don’t remember him mentioning them. It’s a very politically correct book. All Doris McCrackle’s books are politically correct.”

  “How did he light his fires?” Alice asked reasonably enough.

  “With a flint box,” Mrs. Malloy said. “He was a very flinty gentleman, but kind in his way to Semolina. The reason he had made her promise never to go out in a fog was that his sister had left the house in a temper-no custard with the jam sponge was the trouble, I think-got caught in a pea souper, and never returned. Although,” Mrs. Malloy’s voice took on a sepulchral overtone, “her ghost was said be glimpsed in the avenue between the rectory and Landcroft Lodge. And there had been a number of other deaths before her; Doris McCrackle can’t never be accused of being stingy when it comes to the number of bodies.”

  “Corpses,” Alice corrected naughtily.

  Mrs. Malloy waved a dismissive hand. “Semolina briefly suspected the dean’s butler, but he had led a blameless life, unless you’d call giving innocent young girls tours of the Deanery pantries, with particular emphasis on the bottled fruit, wicked.”

  “Oh, I do love Deaneries,” exclaimed Livonia. “They’re so Trollope!”

  “Splendid author,” said Judy, “although perhaps rather too focused on the indoors. A little more about herbaceous borders and potting soil would…”

  “Interestingly,” Mrs. Malloy placed unnecessary emphasis on the word, “all the deceased women had spoken fluent Flemish. As did Semolina’s mother that was Belgian before the consumption took her.”

  “I never have time to read anything but shelving manuals,” Molly said from the edge of her seat.

  Mrs. Malloy rewarded her with a magnanimous nod. “ ’Course The villain didn’t always stick to the same weapon. Variety gave him his thrill, the nasty bugger! He’d been bullied as a boy, you see, by being called a stick-in-the-mud. But he did like bows and arrows best.”

  “Surely not the rector!” Alice gamely took part. “His own sister added to the laundry list!”

  “That’s what we was supposed to suspect, either him or Sir Lucimus Landcroft as had dared to love Semolina despite his twitchy left eye and nasty allergy to red vegetables. It was his new undergardener as had the bad speech impediment-only that turned out to be put on because he was really Inspector Smith from Scotland Yard as solved the crime. There’d been a second attack on Semolina, you see, and the inspector explained, without a hint of a stammer, that even an experienced archer can miss if he tenses up and releases the arrow too soon.”

  Mrs. Malloy drew up straighter, expanding her majestic bosom. Only the orb and scepter were lacking. “It is the memory of Inspector Smith’s detailed explanation-at least eight pages, of what an archer should and shouldn’t do-as makes me confident that, all modesty aside, I won’t show meself up in tomorrow’s competition.”

  Modesty was several miles down the road.

  “But must it be won? Why can’t we all go out and enjoy ourselves?” Judy looked down the table.

  “Because, like it or not,” retorted a tight-mouthed Mrs. Malloy, “everyone for themselves is the nature of a competition!”

  And I had thought for a brief, flickering glimmer that she was coming back into her own! Full of herself, long-winded, but able to capture the interest of most of her listeners. Now, as sure as she had a hundred pairs of shoes, she was going to blow any gained goodwill. Then again-hope reared its foolish head-maybe not.

  “It was a lovely story.” Molly’s look of beholding some distant vision suggested she might have missed Mrs. Malloy’s biting comment. “I can picture it made into a breathtaking ballet; the murder parts set to Beethoven’s Fifth, and the scenes at the Deanery to Handel, with interspersions of Wagner, Chopin, and Liszt.”

  “Not Wagner, if you don’t mind my saying so, Molly,” demurred Livonia with utmost seriousness. “Not because of his music, but I don’t think he was a very nice man. I picture him as much more like Harold than Tommy… Rowley, for… just one vague example.”

  “I don’t like the bally, in fact,” Mrs. Malloy added a self-congratulatory chuckle, “I think it’s bally awful.”

  Nobody could have missed that one. Before Molly’s face had finished crumbling, and before Alice could get her mouth more than a third open, Judy said, with an obvious attempt at keeping a grip on her temper, that it was always a matter of each to his or-this case her-own opinion.

  “So, what’s your idea of enjoying yourself, Miss Candidate for Sainthood?” Mrs. Malloy’s defiant attempt at a laugh came out as a snort, quite unfitting a future mistress of Mucklesfeld. “Would it be thinking you’ve already won Lord Belfrey’s heart with your looks and charm? A shame you’re not tall enough to look in a mirror once in ten years!”

  The ensuing silence was the loudest I had ever heard. A pinched-faced Judy made no reply, but the gleam of tears in her eyes spoke paragraphs. No one else said peep, fearing perhaps, as I did, that to say anything would only make matters worse. If I could have produced a clap of thunder to startle Mrs. Malloy back to sense-demonstrated by a crawling, sniveling apology-I would have done so. As it was, I would have to wait until I got her alone. Or so I thought for the second and a half before a deafening crash of what sounded like vast wooden cymbals blasted us all back in our chairs, followed by an immediate plunge into darkness. A higher power at work? But just how much higher? Even in my shattered, trembling state, I couldn’t help thinking that Georges had been remarkably quiescent during this gathering. Had he just made up for such restraint with a bang?

  Judy’s voice pierced the blackness. “That sounded to me like exterior shutters being clapped shut outside. There weren’t any at these windows when I was walking around that side of the house this morning, but it wouldn’t have taken any time even for one person to install them.”

  “’Course not.” The meek voice sounded vaguely like Mrs. Malloy’s. Too little too late, I feared, to put her instantly back in anyone’s good books, but at least she wasn’t (as yet) ratcheting up the tension. “It could have been done right before lunch; no one was likely to go outdoors when waiting for the gong to bong, so to speak.”

  “There aren’t any shutters at any of the windows.” This sounded like Livonia. “It isn’t the house for them, is it? I mean, it’s not a villa in the South of France or that type of place.”

  “I’ll feel my way over to the door and try for a light switch.” That was Alice. As with Judy’s, her voice was instantly recognizable. A scraping back of chairs, followed by some blundering into one another (the dark truly was impenetrable), and then Alice again. “I’ve found it.” Minuscule pause. “Nothing! The power’s off, at least in here.”

  “That Georges!” Judy sounded back to her bracing self. “No one can accuse him of not doing things in style. Have you tried the door handle?”
/>
  “Won’t turn.”

  “Could I try?” Livonia offered. “One thing I got out of my relationship with Harold were a few, supposedly top secret company tricks on how to wiggle a lock. If someone would pass me a knife… Oh, thanks, whoever you are! A butter one, that’s perfect!”

  Hope flamed… flickered… ebbed and died.

  “Sorry. It has to be bolted on the outside. Harold didn’t have any solutions to that one.”

  “Good try, Livonia,” said Judy. Echoes of agreement rose and fell.

  “Well,” Mrs. Malloy said (perhaps a little less puffily than usual), “like Wisteria Whitworth exclaimed when the padded cell door closed on her…”

  “Who?” several voices inquired.

  “Another of Doris McCrackle’s heroines,” I supplied. “On that occasion she told herself there was no reason to panic and absolutely no use in screaming because no one would hear her. We’ll be heard, but no one will come because they’ll be under orders not to interfere. Even my husband will feel compelled to stuff his fingers in his ears. Luckily, unlike Wisteria, we aren’t dealing with reality-except in the silly sense of the word. This is a game. Another of Georges’s wacky challenges to see if the five of you can display steel under pressure. Meaning there has to be a way out of here. You just have to find it.”

  “But you’ll help, won’t you, Ellie?” said Livonia steadily. “Perhaps your being here is Georges’s way of giving us a bonus card. You have a professional understanding of houses.”

  “If anyone can find a secret exit, it’ll be Mrs. H here.” Even though my anger at Mrs. Malloy for bringing that gleam of tears into Judy’s eyes did not evaporate, I couldn’t help being touched by the pride in her voice. “Couldn’t put in a book all she knows about old places. Wouldn’t brag about it herself, she wouldn’t-modest to a fault, always was and always will be.”

  This was laying it on too thick. Aware that attempting to sound self-deprecating would come off as self-satisfied, I kept silent.

  “Glad for the silver lining,” said Alice. “Of course it’s too much to hope that Georges has supplied us with a torch.”