She Shoots to Conquer

five hopeful females. Ticking Georges off would also be an issue, but not likely, I felt, to weigh with him to anywhere near the same extent.

“One contestant” (I had almost said Another) “down.” I was glad to hear my voice sounding conversational. “Poor Wanda Smiley. She wasn’t smiling as she threw her clothes into a suitcase before bunking off.” Catching the drawn look on his face, I said hastily that he shouldn’t upset himself about that. “They all know that the nasty surprise is a feature of the reality show to pick up the pace now and then. No one’s going to tune in just to watch the contestants having races doing the washing up.”

“I can’t blame Georges if I’ve grown squeamish.” His lordship stared bleakly across the railing. “He warned me, even whilst remaining vague, that he had some startling tricks up his sleeve. Perhaps but for Suzanne Varney’s death I wouldn’t have these qualms. Could take it all in my stride… believe as I did at the beginning that the outcome could benefit not only myself but another.”

Sadly, I stifled the urge to protest that a loveless marriage, whatever the practical advantages, was not a cheery-sounding arrangement. Even harder to squash was the temptation to spill the beans that the woman who had held his heart captive these many years was presently installed at Witch Haven. To which I would have added the opinion that if swept into his impassioned embrace, she would not long remain impervious to his admiration. How cruel a fate should he happen upon her in the high street as a newly married man unable to offer her his hand except to unburden her of a shopping basket filled with delicacies to tempt his cousin Celia’s peevish appetite! Perhaps there would be a way I could ultimately bring the two of them together, but for now I swallowed the bitter pill of honorable silence. Such thoughts pushed my plan to discover Lady Annabel’s means of entering the gallery out of my mind.

“I spoke with the vicar’s wife after church this morning,” I said with a nicely casual touch.

“Normally I would have been there, but with all the curiosity that’s bound to have arisen over what has been happening here, I opted out today.” For the first time I caught a look of his cousin Tom in his lordship’s boyishly apologetic gaze.

“Completely understandable.” Awful to cause the beleaguered man a moment’s discomfort, but I was about to put my foot in it further. “Your cousin Celia mentioned yesterday, when I went to her house to see if she might know who… the dog belonged to, that Mrs. Spendlow was the person Suzanne intended to visit before coming on to Mucklesfeld.”

“And did they meet?” There was nothing guarded about his interest.

“Yes. They were old friends who hadn’t met in years. Apparently, Suzanne had something on her mind that she had kept to herself for some time, but for some reason felt Mrs. Spendlow would be the right confidante. Unfortunately, their time together was interrupted before she got to the heart of the matter. All Mrs. Spendlow was able to say was that Suzanne was dealing with a great deal of anger.”

“No idea what or who was the cause?” Now he did look and sound somewhat troubled.

I shook my head. “But if bracing herself to talk about whatever happened brought some of that anger to the surface, perhaps Suzanne wasn’t at her best when handling the car at the time of the accident. On any other occasion she might have been just that bit more alert…” My voice wobbled to a halt and his lordship touched my hand. All very discreet, but something connected between us, a mingling of intense emotion. We were talking about a woman-still quite young-who had died.

“Poor Suzanne,” he murmured deeply. “I remember her as very likable. And Judy Nunn speaks fondly of her. Livonia Mayberry also knew her, though rather less well. Perhaps they might have an idea what was on her mind.”

“Not if Mrs. Spendlow is correct in her understanding that she was to be the first in whom Suzanne confided.”

“Yes, I’d forgotten that point. But one must assume something quite dreadful…” He stopped. We had both heard someone enter the library below, not that whoever it was was noisy about it-indeed, there was something hesitant, tentative, it could even be said surreptitious about those footsteps, followed by a soft closing of the door. Lord Belfrey rose to his feet-his courtesy as instinctive doubtless as the curiosity that caused me to follow suit. There was no telling how visible we would have been, obscured by the gallery railing and shadows collecting in the corners, but the person who had come in did not look up. After a quick, jerking glance around the library proper, she tiptoed, head down, to stand in a bare expanse of wood floor with only the billiard table, which did not take up undue space. An island of serenity compared to the suffocatingly overcrowded drawing room and hall.

She placed a smallish rectangular object on the floor (impossible to see what it was without leaning dangerously far over the railing). Then she drew some item-or items-from the pocket of a full peasant-style skirt before bending down to remove her shoes in the same stealthy fashion that had accompanied her entrance. It did not occur to me to wonder why Lord Belfrey had not called down to her, let alone descended the stairway. He and I had become the intruders in the vignette. Setting the shoes under the billiard table, she sat down, picked up what she had taken from her pocket-slippers of some kind-placed them on her feet, and proceeded to lace them above her ankles. Before getting back up, she touched the rectangular object, and music-glorious, if at a subdued sound level, Tchaikovsky-poured into every particle of the rather musty air that was Mucklesfeld even at its best.

I felt the pressure of his lordship’s shoulder, heard the catch of startled amazement in his breath, but neither of us murmured a word. Nor did it occur to me to wonder what Georges would have made of our standing glued together like the ornamental bride and groom on top of a cake. Molly Duggan-for it was she who, incredibly and improbably, raised her arms above her head, fingers touching to form a Gothic arch-started to dance on her points. Those hadn’t been slippers but block-toed, satin ballet shoes. My hands gripped the railing when she teetered. She was going to fall splat on the floor in an ungainly heap of dumpy, frumpy forty-year-old woman. Unbearable to watch. We all have our dreams, ridiculously unrealistic though they may be. But no! She steadied, spread her arms, arched her back, and extended one leg behind her in the pure straight line of the arabesque. Out the corner of my eye I saw that Lord Belfrey also had a fast hold on the railing. Then he ceased to exist.

The music was from Swan Lake or, as my mother, who had been a ballet dancer, would have called it, Le Lac des Cygnes.

Gone also were the peasant skirt and black top. Molly was Odette in a white tutu with a cap of snowy feathers on her head as she leaped, twirled, and fluttered, light as down, achingly tragic… The early wobble must have been caused by a moment of distraction, perhaps as her eyes went to the door in fear of someone coming in and discovering her secret. For I had no doubt that this Molly existed in absolute secrecy, quite apart from the woman who worked in a supermarket and was probably most generally known pityingly as the meddling Mrs. Knox’s daughter. Suddenly, with a shift in tempo, she was Odile in black tutu and feathers, her movements no longer dreamy and sad but sharply edged, evilly bewitching, the pirouettes faster, the leaps even higher, so that it was hard to believe she could be airborne without being held up by strings. Again the music changed. No longer Tchaikovsky, but a composer I didn’t recognize. This piece was not white or black, but the misty gray of cobwebs, and that is what Molly became-a filmy drift upon the air, fragile beyond belief. I held my breath in the fear that she would brush against the billiard table and disappear. Then, abruptly, it was over. The music faded away to nothing and did not resume. Molly removed the ballet shoes, replaced them with her ordinary ones, picked up the player, and after a final furtive glace around her as if fearing that the walls had tongues as well as ears, tiptoed from the room.

“Incredible!” I said into the silence that descended.

“I’ll be damned!” said Lord Belfrey. After which we started down the stairs to hover speechless in the space where the magic had occurred. After a couple of minutes, I looked at him, he looked at me, we both nodded and went out into the hall. Understandably, Molly had not lingered there clutching the evidence of her secret life-unless she was hiding behind one of the larger pieces of furniture, which would make no sense, especially as who knew what recording devices peered and listened out of holes that only the likes of Whitey would find charming. It spoke to Molly’s desperate need to dance that she had taken so great a risk in the library. But for her surreptitious entry and exit, I might have wondered if she had entertained the possibility that his lordship might be a hidden audience to be enchanted into choosing her for his bride. No, her fearful uncertainty had seemed genuine. By now I felt sure Molly was back in her room, back pressed to the door, trembling at the enormity of her daring, yet glowing at the memory of the music that had given her wings.

I could see the lake in the moonlight as I stared rapturously into his lordship’s dark, unfathomably thoughtful eyes.

“It was the same for me, Ellie.”