had summoned up the image of one earlier. If any of this were real, Ben would have heard the commotion along with my scream… I was almost sure I had screamed, although in my panic I might have forgotten to do so. I wrapped my arms tighter around my drawn-up knees in a pathetic attempt to squeeze myself into invisibility.
“You do not exist,” I informed the beast sternly. “You are a medicinal complication, for which I intend to sue Dr. Tommy Rowley if he hasn’t fled the country. I am going to close my eyes and when I open them on the count of three you will be gone. One… two… ready for the magic number?”
My children would have been horribly embarrassed by this pathetic performance. Either the moonlight had grown stronger or we were closing on morning, but I could see with painful clarity that he still was there, eyeing me as if for him it was a case of love at first sight. Well, I was far from charmed.
“You did not,” I chanted, “thrust that window free of its faulty latch. What would any real live dog be doing prowling around on a rooftop? I would summon my husband to get rid of you if there were any possible chance that he could see you.”
The look on his face was nothing short of soppy. Head to one side, ears lolling, he began a cheerful pant as though eager to inhale every sweet inflection of my voice. His tail stirred into a wag that increased in enthususiastic speed to that of an orchestra conductor’s baton. I had to blink to keep from becoming dizzy. His eyes, I realized, were not yellow but a melting brown, and I was forced to acknowledge that he actually looked more like a Labrador who lived to fetch slippers and newspapers than the hound from hell. He was wearing a collar, but there were no tags. Reaching out a hand as he inched forward, I stroked his velvet head.
“Okay,” I said, “you are real, but that makes it worse because obviously you’re a housebreaker, probably one with a record a mile long, and if I had any public spirit I would notify the police at once. But let’s pretend the phone isn’t back on, which it may not be.”
He continued to regard me with unstinting devotion. I told him he was shallow and I much preferred cats, they being creatures who preferred to be wooed than woo. What on earth was I to do with him? Should I let him stay as a replacement hot-water bottle until Ben woke and we could escort him downstairs and inquire if he was a member of the household? Surely that had to be the case. Out one window, in through another. And Mucklesfeld, like many ancient houses, must have a good-sized walkway around its roofline. I could have laughed at my silliness had my teeth not begun to chatter. With the window hanging open, I was chilled through despite my dressing gown. But closing the wretched thing, I remembered, would require standing on something and I had earlier decided that the chair was too risky. The only alternative was to drag the bed across the room.
I didn’t see any problem there, but it proved unbudgeable even with the dog off it. Had it been nailed to the floor to prevent the kitchen maid from taking it with her when she ran off with the bootboy? Much as I disliked the idea of waking Ben prematurely-and my watch showed that it was only a little after five-I wasn’t noble enough to climb back and freeze. I was on the point of going to rouse him when I looked again at the wide-open face of the window and came fully back to my senses (such as they are) and faced the truth. No dog that wasn’t foaming at the mouth, mad from being bitten by a rabid wolf, and inclined to leap through fire if it stood in his way, would have hurtled itself off a roof ledge at a pane of glass with sufficient force to release the faulty latch. Besides which, the window opened outward.
There was only one reasonable possibility. The wind. There wasn’t any now, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been a raging gale earlier. Those tablets would have kept me from waking until… as must have happened… the chill was too much even for my subconscious.
“I maligned you,” I informed the dog. “You are not guilty of breaking and entering. The window was open when you came trotting along the roof as any reasonably sane dog might do in the middle of the night. Your reasons are your own.” He accepted my apology with a besottedly rapturous expression and a vast thumping of the tail. Sensing he was about to hurl himself into my arms and lick my face off, I raised a warning finger. “Kindly stay seated. This in no way excuses your leap onto my bed. And don’t go trying to turn the tables and suggest I opened it in a half- sleeping state, because even your fur brain must recognize that I don’t have the reach. Neither does my husband, a man of medium height. Even a six-footer like Lord Belfrey would need a pole hook to open the window.”
The dog cocked his black head, intent on lapping up every nuance. Clearly I could have read off the instructions on a box of scouring pads and he would have been enthralled.
“Even if he could have done so, Ben would not have opened the window without asking me if I wanted to freeze to death. Someone’s wacky idea of a practical joke? Now there’s a merry thought. I’m inclined to think that no one in this house, other than his lordship, is entirely right in the head, which explains you if you live here, but this isn’t quite the same as Mrs. Foot dropping that lamp shade on Mrs. Malloy’s head. There would be maliciousness to anyone creeping in here while I slept…” I was brought to a halt by the memory of the Metal Knight reaching its glinting hands toward my throat. “But let me not dismiss Mrs. Foot’s prosaic explanation for that.
“There is Boris, who looks as though he was apprenticed to Dracula,” I conceded to my devoted listener. “Seemingly he takes pleasure in bringing inanimate objects to life. We all have our little hobbies, don’t we? And bear in mind the suit of armor is in the hall, where the full effects of its gyrations can be appreciated by anyone unlucky enough to pass through. Not tucked away in a bedroom not normally in use. Okay! So here I am tonight. But why would Boris make me the specific target of his tricks? It’s Mrs. Malloy, not I, who’s intent on marrying Lord Belfrey and might decide with good reason-should she get the ring on her finger-to sack the staff of three in one fell swoop. As could be the decision of any of the other contestants, given the chance.”
I paused to wonder in all seriousness if this possibility was a cause of hand-wringing concern to Mr. Plunket, Mrs. Foot, and Boris. If I were they, I wouldn’t be counting my chickens, unless Lord Belfrey had made them a sworn promise to stand firm on their remaining at Mucklesfeld. Shame, not the dog, leaped up at me. Glibly I had dismissed them as an odd trio, but suddenly I was thinking of them as people trudging through life, hanging on to survival by a thumbhold, with no place to go if cast out of Mucklesfeld. If Mrs. Foot had got the idea that Mrs. Malloy and I were early arriving contestants, I could understand the irresistible urge to drop a lamp shade-for want of something heavier-on one of our heads.
“Let us be sensible and agree it was the wind that rattled the half-caught latch and blew open the window,” I told the dog. “Mrs. Foot did say that spooky things happened at Mucklesfeld, but much as I’d like to I don’t believe in poltergeists or other wayward spirits.”
No disagreement from him. His melting expression and thumping tail assured me that every word I said was fact. I was as infallible as the Pope and he worshipped every inch of me.
“Let me remind you that I am a happily married woman and as such I am now going to take a peek into the cubbyhole,” I pointed at the door, “and see if Ben’s awake, so he can move that bed under the window. I’m rather surprised that being an early riser, especially when traveling, he hasn’t already emerged to find me talking to you. Knowing me as he does, he normally wouldn’t find that odd, but he’s worried about me at the moment. Did I tell you that I slid into a faint on the hall floor?”
He raised a gentle paw and pressed it against my knee.
“Oh, cheese crackers!” I said. “I’m going to fall in love with you, which is wrong in every way. You’re someone else’s dog, and my cat would threaten to throw himself under a bus if he got wind that something was going on. And you know how cats have a sixth sense about these things.”
He blinked as though squeezing back impending tears, before getting to his paws and following me to the cubbyhole door. It was now quite light, albeit with gray overtones, and I saw immediately that the narrow bed compressed against the right wall was unoccupied. Indeed, it didn’t look as though it had been slept in. The eiderdown, as flat and faded as the one I’d slept under, was unrumpled, no impression that would suggest Ben had even sat down on it while removing his shoes for the night. His suitcase stood upright against the opposite wall. No sign of pajamas or dressing gown. Certain that he had not taken them out, I fought back a ridiculous feeling of abandonment. But mustn’t let the dog see I was upset. He looked young and was bound to be impressionable.
As was I. It didn’t have to be something as drastic as a dog leaping through the window in the middle of the night to startle me witless. An unknown face contorted by emotion suddenly peering at me through the glass was generally enough for my undoing. Which (violent start!) was now the case. I forgot the dog and the possibility of creating a neurosis that would keep him in canine therapy for years. I let out a yelp. The cubbyhole window was very small, making the face appear abnormally large.
The dog emitted a rumble deep in its throat before giving vent to a nice-sized bark. Not vicious-that would be overstating it-but certainly manfully assertive. The face vanished from the window, which was beside the bed across from the door.
“Good boy!”
