She Shoots to Conquer

You-the little washed-out beige thing-may be more alive to the camera than Ms. Teacup Face here. That’s what makes for a good take, stripping away the flesh and bone to reveal what’s hiding underneath, if anything.”

“It’s all very interesting, isn’t it, Mrs. Foot?” said Mr. Plunket.

“Oh, indeed, Mr. Plunket,” replied Mrs. Foot, with a return to the normalcy that I continued to find more scary than her greenish-yellow-eyed rampages. “I’d make you one of my nice cups of tea… and the ladies too, if I knew where the kettle had gone.”

“On the rubbish heap, I devoutly hope!” Georges LeBois spun his wheelchair so that its back was toward her and Mr. Plunket. “As for you two,” he notched his bellow down to a rumble in addressing Livonia and Judy, “don’t stand there wasting your simpers on me. Go and announce your presence to Lord Belfrey, he’s the one who may get stuck marrying one of you.”

“And where will we find his lordship?” asked an undaunted Judy briskly.

“In his study.”

Livonia tried but failed to unhinge her jaw.

“And where is that?” Again Judy posed the question.

Georges favored her with the bloodhound smile that could have gobbled up persons far larger than her less than five feet. Thumper might have been impressed had he not decided that the better part of valor was going to sleep at my feet. “My good woman, if you and your husband-seeking companion are incapable of locating a room without being led to it by the nose or by means of a map marked with a cross, you are patently not up to the gamesmanship of the contest ahead. And should forthwith make your absence felt. As you were informed on your application forms,” Georges gestured mightily, “and in subsequent acceptance letters, Lord Belfrey is not looking for a bride of startling beauty or even above-average intelligence, merely one with the modicum of practicality that will prevent her going raving mad before the decorators are brought in to take the cobwebs down.”

“Thank you for your assistance, Mr. LeBois,” said Judy, and with Livonia in tow she serenely departed the kitchen.

“Monsieur LeBois,” he swiveled to call after them as the door closed. “Hmm! That half rasher of bacon may be the one to watch in this race. The other’s pretty and may have more to her than we’re seeing now. But if looks mattered, the winner would have been the one that died… unless her photograph had been doctored, which I don’t think it was. Ah well,” the yellow and brown checked waistcoat swelled and the crimson cravat flamed to his grandiloquence, “that’s life!”

“Not for Suzanne Varney, it isn’t,” I retorted roundly, “and you were horridly rude to Judy Nunn and Livonia Mayberry.”

“It’s his artistic temperament.” Mrs. Foot eyed Georges ingratiatingly. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Plunket?”

“’Course it is, and Boris would agree if he was here. I expect he’s looking for Whitey to give him a nice piece of cheese and tell him he’ll be back among the saucepans, swinging his little heart out on the frying pan in next to no time.”

“Over my fat carcass!” Georges roared with flabby-lipped relish. “As for the artistic temperament, you should know something about that, being married to a chef, Ellie Haskell, if that is your real name.”

“And why shouldn’t it be?”

“Because not everything in this house is entirely what it seems.”

If his intent was to make me quiver and quake, he was to be disappointed. My temper was up. “Very likely,” I said, “you’re certainly no more a Monsieur than Whitey the Rat. My guess is you originated in Tottenham where my husband was raised.”

“We never claimed the little dear was French.” It was Mr. Plunket’s turn to take umbrage. “Abyssinian and Polish is what we said, with a splash of Italian. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Foot?”

Georges turned the wheelchair squarely on them. “I was referring, Mrs. Wife of the Chef, to the suit of armor that comes alive when one stands too close to it, inducing susceptible women to faint dead away.”

“Nothing supernatural about that,” I said, remembering that I had meant to warn Livonia about the Metal Knight. “Mr. Plunket explained that the extending arms and clawing mitts were the result of Boris’s penchant for tinkering with inanimate objects.”

“I did say that, though not with the Latin-sounding words,” agreed Mr. Plunket.

“And no reason why you shouldn’t have.” Mrs. Foot loomed enormous behind the wheelchair. “Very proud of Boris we both are. He’s a genius in his quiet…”

“Unassuming,” supplied Mr. Plunket, displaying his mastery of the English language.

“That’s the word.” Mrs. Foot nodded her head, causing the gray locks to shift like wooly clouds blown along by a fierce wind. “Unassuming, that’s always been Boris. And unappreciated, only think what he’s been put through in the past by them that had to be jealous of his looks and charm and cleverness.”

“For God’s sake, you two,” Georges roared, “get out of my presence and indulge your delusions elsewhere.”

“I still say what you need is one of my lovely cups of tea.” Mrs. Foot spoke in the manner I imagined her perfecting when trundling her trolley through the wards of Lofty Poplars, Leafy Elms, or whatever the name was. That she sounded menacing in a slippery soft way rather than soothing was the fault of her hulking form, witch mane, and hag’s grin, but instead of castigating Mother Nature for cruelty above and beyond, my sympathy went to the patients I pictured using every last ounce of feeble strength to hide under their sheets.

“Out! Out!” The purple mounting in Georges’s face suggested a readiness to mow her down with the wheelchair if she didn’t leap out of range and take Mr. Plunket with her. They took the hint and disappeared through one of several interior doors in the kitchen. Thumper, having staggered sleepily to his paws, sank down to continue snoring contentedly, perhaps happily reliving the moment he had leaped through the window onto my bed.

“You were saying,” I prompted Georges coldly.

“Ah, yes!” He settled back into his wheelchair, spreading himself out to near overflow, with the blatant implication of taking the universe back on his terms. “I lay cheerful claim not only to being the brains behind Boris’s tinkering with the suit of armor, but to instructing him in the setup of several other little surprises which will test the fortitude of the contestants.”

“How interesting.”

“For the bigger, more complicated work, including some whimsical visual effects, along with what I immodestly regard as the piece de resistance, I sent in professionals earlier in the week. But what satisfies me most fully right now, Mrs. Wife of the Chef, is the hope springing in my…”

“Heart?” I stared at him in disbelief. “You’re hiding one under that waistcoat?”

“I was referring to my self-serving stomach.”

“Silly of me,” I said, as he patted his designated organ of sensitivity complacently. “But do you seriously believe, after speaking to Mr. Plunket and Mrs. Foot as you did just now, that one of them will come out of the pantry-or wherever they went to cower-and toss you a crust of toast?”

“Those two cretins may seal themselves up and join the skeletons already stuffed behind the walls.” The leer that accompanied this inappropriate remark was shocking to behold and I could only be grateful that Thumper did not crack open an eye to witness it. “Let it be hoped,” Georges’s eyes narrowed gleamingly above his Roman nose, “that their vile pet joins his fellows in gnawing at their bones. Meanwhile, I look forward to the epicurean delights your husband will provide for me during the coming week.”

I stared at him blankly.

“I knew him to be a man after my own heart-were I to possess one-when he ignored the Foot woman’s screams for mercy and banished the albino rat, after insisting it be first returned to its cage. My enthusiasm increased when he set about bringing this kitchen out of the Stone Age into something approaching the nineteen fifties by a great deal of scrubbing surfaces and throwing out of disgusting pots, pans, cutlery, and crockery. He agreed with me as I reclined in my chariot proffering the occasional word of advice as to which supplier would most speedily dispatch the caviar exquisite… the pistachio mushroom pate delectable… the swordfish sublime… the loganberries lip-smacking that my stomach was announcing in impeccable French that it desired.” Georges’s oratory swelled into the operatic and I awaited the sound of wineglasses cracking. After studying my reaction, he abandoned his impersonation of Enrico Caruso and shook his head, puffing out the bloodhound cheeks as he did so. “The point I am making, Mrs. Wife of the Chef, is that before I retired for the night it was agreed between us that my gourmand interests were his.”

“Yours and Ben’s?” A woman who has been awake since the middle of the night and has not yet had a cup of