anticipated was that Boris would come up by way of the fire escape, and then creep through both rooms to lock my door. Thumper’s frantic barking had alerted the men of trouble, but also drowned out their subsequent pounding on the door. So they had broken down the door and entered upon the scene to lift Judy from the roof edge and carry her back to bed.
“Mr. Plunket is the one I now feel most sorry for,” I said. “His worried knowledge was what turned him back to drink. But I’m sure Lord Belfrey and Dr. Rowley will come up with a solution as to where he should go, if the police let him off lightly, which won’t be the case with Mrs. Foot after her unremorseful confession.”
“Glad of some peace and quiet!” Mrs. Malloy had fastened on Ben’s words. “There won’t much of that waiting at Merlin’s Court, what with the children and Tobias and everything that will need putting to rights, after your parents leave-no offense, Mr. H, but your mother will keep putting out doilies no matter where I hide them.”
“Speaking of hiding places,” I turned my head, “it was your treasured collection of shoes that gave me the idea where Celia Belfrey might have hidden the family jewels that Eleanor was thought to have stolen. And then there was your talking at lunch about the clue that revealed the identity of the murderer in
“Did I do anything else?”
“Yes. Giving me a living person to fight for in addition to Suzanne.”
A sniff, followed by, “I still say you should have told me it was Boris.”
“But I wasn’t sure, right up to the end. I had this dreadful fear that it might have been Tommy Rowley. Mrs. Spuds said he went out for a walk in spite of the fog, and he might have gone down with the bouquet into the ravine to look for the torch. When I found out that he too had worked at Shady Oaks, I couldn’t write him off entirely, and there was Livonia so in love with him.”
“Well, I suppose I can see…”
“There was always the possibility that Lord Belfrey had done away with Suzanne because of something that happened when they met on that cruise. Or it could have been Celia… she could have followed Suzanne after she stopped at Witch Haven for directions to the rectory. To ruin any plan of Lord Belfrey’s would cause her delight, and then there was Nora… Eleanor, who could be expected to hate the family. Oh! One last detail. It was Lucy who found Eleanor’s gown in a trunk in Giles’s room and thought it perfect for the skeleton. No sinister motive there.”
“At least some of those we’ve met would seem to have a good chance of happiness.”
“Yes, but there are Judy and Alice and Molly!”
“Don’t you worry,” answered Mrs. Malloy with her old confidence. “Things will work out perfect for them, along with everyone else. Celia Belfrey will do a bunk, Lord and Lady will go to live at Witch Haven, but they’ll keep Mucklesfeld as a refuge for the homeless old and young. Sad the way some can’t manage to put roofs over their children’s heads. Molly will stay on to teach dancing; Alice handwork; and Judy will turn part of the grounds into a paying proposition as a market garden. She’ll have plenty of help. And because it will all be a great big success, Georges LeBois will make a documentary about it that will help pour in money for a staff of health professionals under the direction of Dr. Belfrey. Livonia will help out as much as poss, but she’ll have two cats and a new son named Thomas after his dad and…”
I didn’t interrupt. Fiction makes such a wonderful change from reality. Or-maybe not. Amazingly, everything turned out much as she predicted, except that Livonia also had a little girl named Eleanor… Ellie, for short. Alice married the detective involved in the case, who proved to be a great help with the sometimes troubled youth. And Molly gained fame from choreographing a ballet titled
But all that was for the future, and I was entirely in the present. I had fallen in love during that week, passionately, irrevocably in love. When I confided this to Ben, he had not shown the smallest jealousy. It was he who managed it all… the talk with Tommy and Livonia, who talked to Mrs. Spuds, who talked to Mrs. Spendlow, who talked to her husband… who better than the rector to lift the burden of guilt over an ill-made promise from Mrs. Dawkins’s shoulders?
She was waiting at the gate with Thumper when we pulled up outside the house. He had on a new collar and a bright red lead.
“Just look at his lordship,” said Mrs. Malloy, sticking her head out the car window. “Now don’t go thinking you’ll be keeping him all to yourself, Mrs. H. I’ll be the one fixing up his dinner a treat and making sure he gets enough walkies. Like I’ve always said, who needs a man when you can have a dog?”
To my knowledge she’d never said anything of the sort. But perhaps neither reality nor fiction can ever be quite sufficient on its own… and life at its richest must be a perfect blending of the two.
Dorothy Cannell
