might swan into the room to find himself a marked man. “His nibs is a sensitive bloke.” Mr. Plunket’s voice quivered. “He’ll not want to show what could look like disrespect to the deceased, may she rest in peace. Trouble is, he’s up against Monsieur LeBois. With him it’s all about the finances, what he’s already put into the project, along with whatever he’s agreed on paying his crew, including the cameraman and the staging fellow that showed up minutes ahead of you three. Can’t just send them off with a flea in their ear is what Mrs. Foot, Boris, and me heard him saying.”
Ben stood seething, lips compressed; eyes blazing the color of the emerald (a genuine fake) mounted in one of Mrs. Malloy’s rings, waiting to break in the instant Mr. Plunket paused on a shaky breath.
“No disrespect to your boss,” he enunciated bitingly, “but his sensitivity appears to be lacking where my wife is concerned. It’s been a good twenty minutes since he absented himself and has neither returned to inquire how she is feeling or seen to be providing her with any refreshment.”
“Now then, Mr. H,” Mrs. Malloy shoved in her oar, “there’s no need to get rattled. Like Mr. Plunket’s been saying, his lordship’s got a lot on his plate. Could be he’s on the phone with the dead lady’s family or the funeral home. It don’t do to be selfish. Besides,” she looked at me and added with what I considered extreme callousness, “Mrs. H quite often gets a headache when she gets herself worked up. Tension ones, they’re called. My next-door neighbor is a martyr to them. And it’s not like Mrs. H fell hard back there in the hall, just slumped down, bottom first, as I saw it.”
Forgive her, I thought nobly; she had to be jealous that it was me, not her, whom Lord Belfrey had swept up in his aristocratic arms and deposited on the sofa. Also she very likely had a point. My nerves had been stretched to the limit during the drive through the fog. In addition to which we had failed to find the restaurant we had been seeking and I’m a person inclined to go all hollow and wobbly without food. Perhaps with a good helping of fish and chips inside me I wouldn’t have succumbed to foolish terror and fainted. I started to say this to Ben, but he was still glowering at poor Mr. Plunket, who was making apologetic noises to the effect that his nibs had intended for Mrs. Foot and or Boris to bring in a tea tray.
“But as you can imagine, sir, they’re discombobulated themselves.”
“In that case, let’s not inconvenience them or yourself.” Ben attempted to contain his irritation. “If you’ll direct me toward the kitchen, I’ll put on a kettle and…”
“Now, I don’t know as that’s such a good idea,” Mr. Plunket passed a hand over his pimpled brow, “the stove’s that old and unreliable, none of the knobs turn unless you’ve got the trick of it, and if you manage, which I never can, the gas flames shoot up to take off your eyebrows. No, no, begging your pardon, better to wait on Mrs. Foot or Boris. Can’t risk an accident, so hard on this other. His nibs would never get over it if worse come to worst and you was to blow yourself up.”
“I really am feeling loads better,” I announced valiantly, “so much so that I think we should leave right away. I am sure Mrs. Malloy agrees with me. We are all eager to get home at the end of our holiday. The fog’s bound to have lifted sufficiently by now.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Mrs. Malloy demurred.
“I’m a chef,” Ben informed Mr. Plunket. “I’m entirely capable of dealing with the most resistant kitchen equipment and making my wife a cup of tea.”
“A chef!” Mr. Plunket sounded taken aback.
“That’s correct. I’ve even written some cookery books that have been reasonably well received, so if you would kindly direct me toward the kitchen…”
“What kind of meals? English… or the Frenchified sort?”
But for my increasing headache, I might have pondered the intensity of Mr. Plunket’s response. Before Ben could demand either a compass or a map, the door opened to admit a tall, gangly man with very black hair and eyes in contrast to his chalk white face. Even though not at my sharpest, I was struck by his resemblance to Lurch of the Addams family. He stood gaping, awkwardly dangling a hand on the knob, presumably in hope of preventing the door from closing on the woman endeavoring to enter behind him.
“Ah!” Ben sucked in a relieved breath and shot toward her to remove the tray she was carrying. Not surprisingly, she appeared startled at finding herself standing hands spread, holding up thin air by the handles. But her surprise was nothing to mine. Hers was the face I had glimpsed through horror-glazed eyes peering down at me through the banisters. In the dimly lit room there was the grainy quality of a bad photo to her form and features, but she did not now send a chill through my bones.
Truth be told, it was impossible not to experience a woman-to-woman pang of sympathy for her unfortunate appearance. She was tall, so often a good thing, but in her case not an enhancement. She loomed in the manner of a man playing the part of a woman in a farce. Her smile, uncertain… experimental, was cruelly ridiculed by the absence of her front teeth. The shapeless dress and plodding shoes seemed as false as the clumpily curled shoulder-length gray locks that elongated her nose and chin to an extreme degree. Sadly it probably wasn’t a wig which could be taken off and tossed in the wastepaper basket. Remembering how often I had condemned my own form in the mirror, I internalized a prayer of gratitude for mercies received. I dared not look in Mrs. Malloy’s direction, but counted on her being a churchgoing woman, when she remembered it was a Sunday, not to exude an air of smug complacency.
“This here’s Mrs. Foot,” Mr. Plunket waved a hand in my direction, “her as is his nibs’s housekeeper.”
It could have been Mrs. Danvers, I reminded myself, as I added my murmur to Ben and Mrs. Malloy’s chorus of “A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Foot.” Ben had placed the tray on an already crowded table and now poured and passed me a cup of dishwater-colored tea, accompanied by a biscuit of the same shade of gray as Mrs. Foot’s hair. Her smile broadened, losing the uncertainty but gaining in the display of missing teeth.
“And that there behind her,” continued Mr. Plunket, “is Boris, his nibs’s odd job man.”
Lurch flopped a flaccid white hand, intoning in an expressionless voice: “Can always count on Boris.”
“One in a million.” Mrs. Foot was now positively beaming as she clumped further into the room. “Always the one to get the job done when needed.” She even sounded like a man pretending to be a woman and I mentally dared Mrs. Malloy to titter. “Feeling better, are you, dearie?” She stood staring down at me, and I have to admit to feeling a quiver of-not exactly revulsion… more awkwardness-on spotting the curiosity verging on thirsty fascination in her pale, globular eyes.
“Much better.” I took a resolute sip of tea. “Thank you so much for bringing this.”
“You do have more color.” Ben sounded as relieved as if he’d just noticed I was coming out of a ninety-day coma. A few more minutes and surely we could politely leave. Mrs. Malloy accepted her cup and saucer while settling even deeper into her chair. We might need a forklift to move her, but we’d get her out of here, too.
Mrs. Foot shifted her gaze from my face to fix it upon Mr. Plunket. “There is a strange resemblance, isn’t there? No wonder his nibs got his self in a tizz. Spooky, you could call it.”
“Now then, I wouldn’t say that.” Mr. Plunket nudged his way cautiously around the words, as if one too many might trip him up. “It’s ever easy to imagine things in this house.”
“What sort of resemblance?” Mrs. Malloy, who does not enjoy sitting on the sidelines, made a valiant effort to sound pleasantly interested.
“To a lady in one of the family portraits.”
“Really?” I completely forgot my woozy state and the desire to escape back into the fog. “I’d be interested in taking a look at the painting if it wouldn’t be an imposition.”
“It’s no longer in the house.” Boris must have spent hours in a dank cellar perfecting his sepulcher intonation. He was now standing directly behind Mrs. Foot, hunching first one shoulder, then the next, in an automated fashion that brought to mind the terror that had assailed me in the hall.
Turning on the sofa to face the assembled more fully, I said with determined lightness: “You said just now, Mr. Plunket, that it’s easy to imagine things in this house, but I don’t think it was imagination that caused me to faint.” I came to a halt, aware that it wouldn’t do to mention that I had mistaken Mrs. Foot for a ghoulish visitant. “I’m quite sure,” I plunged on, “that the suit of armor tried to attack me.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Ben bent over me, almost oversetting the teacup, “that has to have been a nightmare.”
“It was, but not one produced by the faint,” I responded firmly. “I was scared stiff. Its hands would have closed around my throat if I hadn’t nipped back in time.”
“That’s our Boris!” Mrs. Foot reached back a hand to pat his arm. “Always tinkering about for the fun of it. Last year he got the dining-room chandelier to spin. Oh, his nibs did have a good laugh! We all did. Couldn’t stop chortling for ages, could we, Mr. Plunket?”
