“Who’d have thought when we set off in the car, Mr. and Mrs. H, that we was in for such an adventure?” Mrs. Malloy fluttered her false lashes, attempting to look soulful, but merely looking as though she had something in her eye.
“I’d like my next adventure to be that omelet we were talking about.” Georges LeBois spun his wheelchair in a circle and brought it back to face Lord Belfrey. “You do know this man’s a chef, Aubrey?”
“Plunket told me.”
“Manna from heaven, my dear fellow. Do what it takes to keep him here. Choose him as your bride! Now that would be a reality show!”
His lordship smiled and Ben did not. What had happened to my beloved’s sense of humor? My headache was coming back full force. I barely restrained myself from snapping at Mrs. Malloy when she suggested accompanying us.
Lord Belfrey eased the moment by encouraging her to stay and get acquainted with Georges. After a momentary pout, she set her face back to rights and waved me off as if watching a liner shift away from the quay to carry me to parts unknown. Which was the truth of the matter in the small scheme of things. Icebergs and squalls might not await, but as we followed Lord Belfrey down a corridor and up a flight of angular stone steps, I did have the feeling we were entering alien and possibly hostile territory.
Ben’s muttering “Damn!” (for want of a worse word) upon stumbling in the ubiquitous half-light didn’t help my increasing feeling that Mucklesfeld Manor did not embrace a visitor with promises of warm and fuzzy delights to come. His lordship flipped light switches with efficient speed, but a candle would probably have worked better. Several more passageways and series of steps loomed. I felt rather like a piece being shuffled forward on the board of Snakes and Ladders-always in danger of shooting precipitously back down to the bottom and having to start the whole business over again. His lordship turned every dozen paces to make sure that we were comfortably keeping up with him.
“Where are we at this minute?” Ben asked with, I was pleased to hear, just the right amount of interest as we stood in a small room off a landing. It was lined with shelves containing nothing but dust and the occasional mildewed cardboard box.
“Used to be one of the linen closets in the days when there were mattresses on the beds and working taps on the baths.” His lordship spread expressive hands.
“It must be next to impossible to keep places like Mucklesfeld up these days,” said Ben conversationally as we passed into yet another passageway. I knew he was thinking that the time had come to throw in the towel… if there were any to be had.
“But we owe the past something, at least that’s my assessment,” his lordship replied, and it seemed to me that his eyes sought mine in hope of understanding. Or was he worrying that what seemed to have been a twenty-mile trek had exhausted my weakened constitution?
“I can appreciate the sense of responsibility,” I said.
We plunged on, up another flight of steps to another landing, down again, and along what proved to be the last stretch. His lordship opened a door, flipped the switch to his right, and surprisingly the round globe in the center of the ceiling produced a sufficiently decent light to reveal a box of a room provided with a narrow bed covered with a faded paisley eiderdown. There wasn’t much else to observe: a couple of clothes hooks protruding from the discolored plastered walls, a bentwood chair, a door in addition to the one we had entered, presumably giving entry to the cubbyhole in which Ben was to sleep, and a narrow window sliced into the sloping ceiling.
Lord Belfrey followed my gaze upward. “We are directly under the roof of the east wing. For centuries the female servants slept in one vast open space up here, but sometime in the early part of the twentieth century it was divided up into a warren of single or double rooms to provide them some privacy when they came off duty for the night.”
“That must have been a treat,” I said, adding with what I hoped was a cheery smile, “Is it much of a bus ride to the bathroom?”
“Right next door on your left. It is why I selected this room for you.” His dark eyes seemed to take in my every movement as I sat gingerly down on the chair that didn’t look as if it could support a Teddy bear. “I wish I had better to offer you.” He did not embellish, there was no need. His voice said it all. “As for a meal, I’ll take your husband to the kitchen and hopefully between the two of us we can concoct something that he can bring up on a tray.” He turned to Ben, who was still standing in the doorway to the passage, and now asked him about the tablets Tommy had said he would let me have.
“We’ll get them from him.” “Then best to get going.” Ben cast me an anxious look that was not alleviated by my bright statement that there was no rush because I was feeling almost back to normal. “Lie down, sweetheart, and try to rest.”
“What about my night things?”
“I’ll get our cases from the car.”
“Plunket can bring them up and put them outside the door,” Lord Belfrey assured me in a voice equally soothing to that of my husband, adding that he’d had Mrs. Foot put a hot-water bottle in the bed. Perhaps I should have kissed them both before they left me. Ben was so incredibly dear, and his lordship emanated a secret sorrow that it was surely the duty of any compassionate woman to assuage. Let it be hoped, I thought rather woozily as I got off the chair, that in one of the contestants he would find a love that went beyond gratitude for helping him save Mucklesfeld. Perhaps an all-consuming passion was too much to be hoped for under the circumstances, especially as at the age of almost fifty-six he must have known and had his pick of countless women. Very likely he had been married in the past. At any other time I would have imagined a scenario to match his fascinating good looks, but I discovered that I was so desperate to lie down that I crawled under the eiderdown without worrying that it was filled with moths or that the pillow on which I laid my head had been around since the plague.
My feet searched out the hot-water bottle and discovered that it was lukewarm, which didn’t surprise me given my opinion of Mrs. Foot’s incompetence or malevolence… no, there I was being unkind. I turned on my side in hope I would find the lumpy mattress more comfortable that way. My original impression of her had been fueled by pure silliness. She was not the hag who had rejoiced in Wisteria Whitworth’s subjugation at Perdition Hall. And if, as seemed credible, she had dropped the lamp shade on Mrs. Malloy’s head, anyone doomed to live in this house might be excused for occasionally giving way to giddy attempts at humor. I lay thinking about the odd trio of Mrs. Foot, Mr. Plunket, and Boris, who presumably had a last name. Had his lordship hired them because they were affordable or because he was kind and doubted anyone else would?
If I lay completely still and kept my eyes squeezed shut against the light, which I should have turned off, but hadn’t because the idea of complete darkness was even more unappealing, my headache receded. Except when the window rattled irritably. Checking the latch would have required standing on the flimsy chair and I did not want to risk a pair of broken legs that might keep me at Mucklesfeld beyond the morning. I was wondering what Mrs. Malloy was up to when a jolt jerked me up, and my eyes flew wide open, to find her there, arms akimbo, staring down at me.
“Did you have to bump into the bed?” I grumbled.
“I didn’t.” She was smiling dreamily.
“With the force of the
“Not feeling better, Mrs. H?”
“I was. More to the point-why are you looking as if you just swallowed a dozen canaries?”
“Sure you’re up to hearing?” She sat down at the foot of the bed, her ringed hands folded demurely, and I knew instantly what was coming. Even so, my heart gave a thump when she said the words. “I’m to replace the dead lady as the sixth contestant. Now, don’t go looking at me like that, Mrs. H, it’s not a case of me dancing on her grave, just being practical like, and after all we do owe his lordship for taking us in out of the fog.”
“So you proposed marriage to him out of a sense of obligation?”
“What makes you think I asked him?”
“Well, didn’t you?”
“And why shouldn’t I?” she demanded haughtily. “Really, I don’t know what’s got into you, Mrs. H. I’d have thought you’d be thrilled for me, getting the chance to live out me romantic dreams. All them books we’ve both read with the blissfully happy endings.”
I could have pointed out that these invariably occurred after a couple of bodies had turned up along the way, either in the millpond or the suspiciously locked turret additionally guarded by the yellow-eyed black dog, but I
