Thumper a farewell pat before holding the study door open for us.
I had to ask, “Are you over your cold feet?”
“Whoever she is, she won’t be a vulnerable girl living in fear of her life while wishing she were dead. That was the look I saw on Eleanor’s face when she looked down at me from the stairs.”
The study door closed behind him. Thumper looked up at me expectantly and together we crossed the hall to the passageway that Judy had said led to an outside door. I did think about going to the kitchen and telling Ben that I would be gone for a while. But he was bound to be busy. I knew that I had to try to return Thumper, and also felt compelled to make myself scarce before the house became a hotbed of activity.
Once outside, I knotted the tie around Thumper’s collar, but let it dangle loose. Time enough to take hold when we got out onto the road. But how to get there? I couldn’t do so by way of the drive. Even to sidle down the wooded side would be an intrusion; I didn’t flatter myself I was sufficiently slim to be easily hidden by the trees. Diminutive Judy with her muted coloring might have managed this feat, although I couldn’t imagine her sidling anywhere. Practical, kindly Judy-or so I saw her on early acquaintance-what would she have thought of his lordship’s recounting of seeing Eleanor Belfrey on the stairs?
Thumper was trotting a little ahead of me across the weed-ridden lawn as I searched for a path through the woods that might take me out onto the road sufficiently beyond the gates for me to head toward the village without drawing attention. Most particularly, I didn’t want to be seen by Lord Belfrey. How awful if he thought I was checking to make sure he had stuck with his decision and was now greeting the contestants with the requisite amount of pleasure and pageantry.
I stopped and looked in the direction of the dell, with its broken fountain and misshapen tumbles of mossy stone. A silken breeze brushed my face and rippled questing fingers through my hair-loosening strands that I did not bother to tuck back in place. The sky was a pure, pale blue between the skeined fleece of the clouds. Thumper stopped to look back at me before apparently deciding that the only way to keep his doggie figure was by racing in ever-narrowing circles and cheering himself on by a series of congratulatory barks. I found myself wondering what the garden had looked like when Eleanor Belfrey was here. Had she liked flowers, reveled in birdsong, been happy during any of her time at Mucklesfeld? I pictured her coming up from the dell wearing the dress from the portrait; I saw the soft filmy material as the color of moonlight. I saw the look on her face described by his lordship. Had she hated the idea of returning to the house, hated and feared the husband old enough to be her father? I shivered despite my light jacket. A dreadful thought socked me in the chest.
What if Eleanor had suspected Giles was planning to murder her? What if she had never left Mucklesfeld on that fateful night… and her body concealed along with the maligned Scottie was somewhere in the house? Or buried in one of the wooded areas… perhaps even the ravine where Suzanne Varney had met her death? The present faded, taking Thumper’s joyful barks with it. The dreadful scenario continued to unfurl from the wrappings of shadow woven into a shroud thirty years before. Whatever Eleanor’s reasons for marrying Giles, her feelings had turned to revulsion and loathing… the eyes that watched her every movement, followed her even when she was briefly alone, the grasping of her shrinking flesh. And he had known with bitterness and despair that she could never be his- except in death. It all fitted. The missing jewels buried with her to give credence to her flight. The dog killed first to prevent his barking. The sightings of her ghost, the house left to rot around him as Giles completed his descent into madness. But, rational thought (something my parents had vaguely despised as too close to reality) crept back. Who knew if the legend was the true story?
I turned to follow Thumper, who had now reached the woods and was looking back at me. The cornerstone of my wild flight of fancy was what Lord Belfrey had told me. And how much were his impressions to be relied upon? He was a young man at the time, not overly fond of his much older cousin, perhaps determinedly eager to condemn the marriage. To base so much on one glimpse of Eleanor, halfway up a staircase at that, had to be implausible. Wasn’t it clear that his lordship was obsessed with her memory, and that he-rather than Giles-had been driven mad by desire, in his case for an illusion that had transferred itself to a portrait and possibly to me? I wished I could talk my thoughts over with Mrs. Malloy, but that was out of the question at this time.
I caught up with Thumper as he was nosing around some nettles on the edge of the ravine. “Be careful,” I warned, “you’ll come out in blisters.” He gave me a tender look, took a couple of steps toward me, then turned tail to plunge into the brush. A succession of barks indicated his wish that I follow him, but I had no desire to descend a treacherous slope, especially when the opening he had used was too narrow for me to get through without gashing myself or twisting an ankle.
Some barking, then silence. I stood waiting, rubbing my arms-the breeze had picked up and the clouds had thickened, making for fewer, smaller patches of blue. But was that what had made me shiver? I felt the prickling of the skin, the cold stealth of fingers down my spine that accompanies that sense of being watched from a hidden vantage point by someone… or something… exuding menace. Eleanor’s ghost? But even if that were credible, why would she have it in for me? An answer formed. A ridiculous one. Lord Belfrey might have fallen in love at first sight, but to believe that Eleanor had been struck by the same bolt of lightning, dazzled by the same stardust, swept up in the same whirlwind of wonderment, was a stretch even for me. Then, if not Eleanor, who? Something shifted, a soft settling sound… a foot replacing itself after slipping? Why didn’t I call out, requesting the watcher identify himself? Because common sense (not all that common in my case) said there was no one at Mucklesfeld who would wish me harm. It could be a trespassing fauna hunter or, even more likely, a rabbit or squirrel.
I heard Thumper coming back, and following the sound of his greeting I came to the wide gap in the wall, responsible presumably for last evening’s tragedy. I had a brief, sharp glimpse of a broad track of flattened branches and brambles before he came lolloping along with a bunch of multicolored flowers in his mouth.
“Naughty boy!” I scolded with less heat than required, because I hated to see the sorrow fill his eyes. “Take them back this minute.” I didn’t expect him to do as told. The thought of descending to the place where Suzanne had met her death, seeing the tree the car had hit, was not pleasant, but it would be unkind not to return the flowers, leaving them in a mangled heap for Tommy to come across. He had been nice to me, cured my headache; and with chubby schoolboy gallantry he had saved Livonia from the clutches of the Metal Knight. I hesitated. Again that intense feeling of being covertly watched. Thumper also hesitated, before turning and to my amazement wending his way back down into the ravine, to return brief moments later absent the flowers.
“Wonderful boy,” I praised while bending to knot Lord Belfrey’s tie, which I had forgotten I was holding around his collar, before setting off down the drive, there being no reason now not to use it to reach the road. We had just passed through the gates when I realized he still had something in his mouth. Inserting fingers and gently prying his teeth apart, I pulled out something flat, irregularly shaped, and about two inches in size. On closer inspection this proved to be a piece of broken-off plastic. “Very nice,” I told a pleased Thumper. “I’ll keep it as a souvenir of you.” I’d do nothing of the sort, of course, but to have tossed it aside would have been hurtful to his feelings, even if my parents hadn’t brought me up to believe that littering was a deadly sin, worse than any of the others, although they could never recall what they were.
Thumper took amicably to the tie as we proceeded down the road bounded on our near side by Mucklesfeld’s wall and by more woods on the other. It was a good-sized road with a crossing a short way down, but very little traffic. We came to a Norman church surrounded by an iron-fenced cemetery. It reminded me of St. Anselm’s, which Ben and I attend fairly frequently (meaning if we don’t oversleep or decide that a leisurely breakfast in bed would be nice). We passed nobody during the five or so minutes it took us to reach the village. Grimkirk looked to be more pleasant than its name. There was the familiar juxtaposing of half-timbered Tudor buildings, with sharply peaked roofs and narrow latticed windows, converted into boutiques and bakeries, and the modern wide-glass-fronted shops, banks, and electrical appliance showrooms. All of which make up the usual English high street. After crossing at the only traffic light in sight, I stopped a middle-aged woman in a head scarf and winter coat. A mistake. She had that blind, bustling stare of the morning shopper who is adding sausages and that nice sharp Cheddar-and mustn’t forget the vinegar-to her shopping list. Understandably startled, she asked me to repeat my question.
“You don’t happen to recognize this dog?”
“What dog?”
“This one,” pointing down.
