Plunket kindly.
“A what?” He batted away the rain as if it were mosquito netting.
“A tree doctor,” I said, setting down Livonia’s suitcase.
“Wouldn’t a GP do for a quick look?” She squeezed out the words. “It’s so awful to think of anything suffering a moment longer than necessary. What sort is the poor stricken tree?”
“An oak,” Mr. Plunket sounded as though he was coming somewhat back into focus, “or maybe an elm or… a beech. I was never much good at nature study. It was my worst subject after English, maths, geography, and history. Like I used to tell my old mum, lunch was my best subject and I never got top marks in that, neither. His nibs will know what sort it is; for a gentleman of his superior background, knowing one tree for another will be bred in the bone along with Latin verbs and what sort of olive to put in a martini. But we don’t want to go bothering him about trees, now do we?”
Given my presumption that the tree under discussion had been hit not by lightning but by Suzanne Varney’s car, I agreed with him. Judy, if not Livonia, probably assumed Mr. Plunket was referring to the stress his lordship must be under now that the hour approached for his meeting with his prospective brides. I set down Livonia’s suitcase.
“So, if you ladies don’t mind,” Mr. Plunket turned up his jacket against the rain, “I’d appreciate your not saying anything about this little conversation to his nibs. I’m not the sort for early morning rambles in a general way and he might get to worrying that I’m going a bit funny in the head after last night.”
“Oh, yes, of course!” Livonia flinched when looking into his gourdlike face, but the sympathy was there in her voice.
“Last night?” Judy met his eyes squarely. Not a flicker of an eyelash. Perhaps she saw the unfortunate man as an interesting botanical specimen, or was simply a nice woman who didn’t think spiteful thoughts about other people’s appearance. But this was not the moment to put on my hair shirt. Mr. Plunket’s revelation of Suzanne Varney’s fatal accident was likely to keep us standing outdoors longer than was desirable. The rain had petered out, but if I felt unpleasantly damp so must the others, and Livonia was shivering.
“I’m afraid I set Mucklesfeld at sixes and sevens yesterday evening, by fainting upon arrival,” I said quickly. “So silly, but…”
“Oh, my goodness!” Livonia swayed against me. “Did you see a ghost?” She glanced fearfully toward the house, which did loom forbodingly as if prepared to sprout an extra turret or two and unleash its ivied tentacles.
“Nothing like that.” I dismissed the Metal Knight from my mind. “It was just the stress from driving in the fog.”
“Don’t seem to get so many pea soupers these days,” Judy inserted comfortably. “Certainly not the smog, thank God and cleaner burning fuel. Although I must say I always enjoyed a coal fire as a girl when coming in after a day spent digging up a field of potatoes. Now I make do with one of those fake electric log ones in my flat and…”
“Mucklesfeld has its ghosts and don’t let no one tell you different.” Mr. Plunket’s face, nodules and all, glistened with pride. “Wouldn’t be proper in an ancestral home not to have them, would it? Shortchanging, you could call it. Might as well live in a caravan at Southend is what Mrs. Foot says, and Boris agrees with her. They’ve both seen the Lady Annabel Belfrey that went on a holiday to see her auntie during the French Revolution. Can’t blame a woman for wanting to see the Eye Full Tower, I suppose, but…”
“Oh, but wasn’t that built…” Livonia petered out.
“Went to the guillotine instead, she did.”
A holiday in Southend might have been a better choice, I thought. The famous long pier, bracing salt air, walks across the mudflats when the sea was out, and yummy fish and chips.
“I suppose poor Lady Annabel has become the headless specter,” said Judy with kindly interest.
“Oh, never!” Mr. Plunket rebuked this notion. “You’d not catch a Belfrey going around making a spectacle of herself is Mrs. Foot’s opinion. And very particular about her appearance was this ancestress, from what his nibs and Dr. Rowley have to say on the subject-strong into the family history is the doctor. No, indeed, Mrs. Foot and Boris have heard she’s always been seen wearing a silk scarf thing around her neck, tied tight enough to keep her head on straight.”
“Oh, good!” said Livonia faintly. “Does she often put in an appearance?”
“Not all that frequent. Seems she was one to prefer her own company. You’ll see her portrait in the library gallery. Mrs. Foot tried putting out a plate of biscuits and a cup of tea, thinking that could tempt Lady Annabel to show her face more often, but it don’t seem to have worked.”
Remembering the refreshments offered to me by Mrs. Foot, I thought the Guillotined Ghost showed a lot of sense for a woman who did not have her head screwed on right.
“It’s Sir Giles’s second wife that’s been seen most recent, by both Mrs. Foot and Boris, slipping in or out one of the outside doors. I try not to take it personal that she hasn’t seen fit to let me get a glimpse of her.”
Abandoning any feigned interest in the conversation, Thumper sat scratching his ear.
“But it’s hard not to get our feelings hurt, isn’t it?” Livonia murmured sympathetically while either by accident or decision looking him in the face.
“None of us likes being left out by any member of his nibs’s family living or gone,” Mr. Plunket admitted, “especially one that seems to have captured his imagination with a special fondness. If you was to see her portrait-only you won’t because it’s at his cousin Celia’s house-you’d see there’s a strong resemblance between said Eleanor Belfrey and this lady here.” Mr. Plunket pointed a stubby finger at me, and I found myself blushing.
Thumper appeared to find the sight adorable.
“Perhaps a family connection,” suggested Judy.
“More like a coincidence,” I answered quickly, eager to get off the subject.
“Were there children from her marriage to Sir Giles?” Livonia wanted to know. And who could blame her for attempting to brush up on the family history, if she had begun to picture Lord Belfrey as a man who reverenced the female… in other words, the antithesis of the horrid Harold.
“No, Celia Belfrey is the daughter by the first wife.” Mr. Plunket sounded as though he were reading from a guidebook. He had taken on an air of pleased importance that was rather touching. For a man who had not initially seemed all that glad to have met up with us, he now appeared, having landed on a favorite topic, willing to chat on forever. “Mrs. Foot and Boris agrees with me that when Sir Giles married Eleanor something, anyway it was one of those hyphen names-oh, now it’s come back to me, Lambert-Onger, my mother had a friend Mrs. Lambert as lived in Ougar-he must have had high hopes of getting an heir second time around. Her being almost thirty years his junior. Younger than his daughter, I’ve heard Dr. Rowley say… not disapprovingly-never a word said against the family by him, just a statement of fact. But as it turned out, Sir Giles, sad to say, wasn’t to reap the fruits of his labor. The marriage was over before the year was out. His young wife did a bunk-vanished overnight-and to make matters even more wicked took the family jewels with her.” Mr. Plunket stood, every nodule protruding, awaiting the gasps of consternation that were his due.
“Oh, how dreadful,” breathed Livonia. “Where did she go? Was there another man?”
“Never sight nor word of her from that day to this.”
“And the jewels?” Judy sounded as though to her this was the pertinent point.
“Never surfaced. Leastways, that’s what Dr. Rowley says. His nibs don’t talk about them, but you can be sure that things would have been different at Mucklesfeld if they’d been available for selling. And his nibs wouldn’t find himself reduced to…”
“Quite!” Judy said.
Mr. Plunket now stood removing his foot from his mouth… or perhaps he was chewing on it while mulling over the evils of Lord Belfrey’s situation.
“Perhaps Sir Giles was the sort of man who would have turned any wife of his into a villainess,” said Livonia with surprising spirit. “What if he was constantly critical and never kissed her as though he meant it?”
Mr. Plunket looked uncomfortable, suggesting that he might have heard rumors to this effect from persons not one hundred percent loyal to the Belfrey family… unpaid tradesmen, dismissed employees, Jehovah’s Witnesses who’d had the door slammed in their faces. He remarked that it was beginning to rain again. Thumper looked nervously around for his tail as if the talk of theft had him wondering if someone had pinched it, before joining the rest of us in heading toward the house.
“The villainy I see,” said Judy, eyeing the lopsided, moss-coated fountain sunk deep in its tangled dell, “is the
