“And,” said the thus named, “Wanda comes in quite regularly to the health food café where I waitress.”
“Not that I’m keen on tofu burgers or seaweed omelets.” The oar was eagerly grabbed by the blonde, not relishing the sidelines. “But they do serve a decent cappuccino and a rather scrumptious blackberry and apple crumble-the sort Mother never used to make. As I said to the saleswoman when I went in to buy myself those new bras, I never worry about what I eat because I always put it on in the right places!”
“Same here! Shame we can’t all be as lucky!” Mrs. Malloy slunk a look at Judy, who crossed her legs, clasped her knees, and remarked that she thought she heard the distant rattle of a tea cart. It was Livonia and Molly Duggan who looked uncomfortable.
“Into the changing room we went-me and the fitter-and out came her tape measure-you could tell from looking at her she’d only half a brain. But even so, I almost dropped from shock when she told me I was a size twenty-four-round the bust mind you, not my thigh! Me of all people! The Jayne Mansfield of my school! Of course she was before my time, but anyway, it turned out the silly woman had the tape measure round the wrong way…”
Laughter in varying degrees of amusement, save from Mrs. Malloy.
A sudden flare of camera lights nearly blinded me. In looking away, my eyes veered upward to the portrait gallery to fasten on the painted images of a sternly bewhiskered gentleman in a frock coat, a stout matron in a crinoline, and a woman in a tall white wig and the satins and lace of Versailles’s glory days. Ruminating on her sour expression must have caused me to miss Georges’s call for Action. I blinked back to the assemblage upon sensing a stiffening of posture, a drawing in of elbows and a replanting of feet.
“You were saying, Mrs. Haskell,” Judy kindly cued me in.
“So exciting to be part of Here Comes the Bride in an observing capacity,” my voice played back to me with its embarrassingly contrived enthusiasm. What on earth was I to say next? Fortunately, Mrs. Malloy intervened before Georges yelled Cut! or something equally cutting.
“Well, I’ve got to say, as lunch had its moments! And I’m not talking about the food, although it wasn’t to be sneezed at-Mr. H being in top form. It was when the lid of the canteen opened all by itself and the cutlery flew up in the air that I said to meself this is a bit of all right. ’Course I see some of the others was petrified! But that’s people being different.” Smug-faced self-approbation. “Like I always say, after battling the world on me own, there’s not much as will give me the willies. And anyway I wasn’t a hundred percent convinced it was the Mucklesfeld poltergeist or what have you pulling a stunt.”
“Special effects,” voiced Judy sensibly.
“But how?” Molly stirred nervously.
“Some mechanical device in the cabinet to get the show started, followed by a visual recording when the cutlery apparently began whizzing around the dining room.”
“Not much romance in your soul, Miss Nunn.” Mrs. Malloy hunched a shoulder.
“I will always remember it as the silver dance.” Livonia smiled dreamily.
“The idea that there are restless spirits at Mucklesfeld doesn’t bother me,” Wanda asserted. “I know blondes aren’t supposed to have much in the way of brains, preferring to rely on our other charms,” another of her self-congratulatory laughs, “but I’m convinced that a womanly hand on the helm will put paid to nerves.”
“I rather like the idea of ghosts.” Alice tucked in a tangle of reddish hair. “Places like Mucklesfeld should have them, along with a repaired roof and a thorough refurbishing.”
“How do you all feel about an influx of capital used to restore the place to its former grandeur?” I dutifully inquired of the circle of faces after catching Georges’s eye.
“First the gardens,” responded Judy.
“I don’t see why.” Mrs. Malloy at her most petulant.
“Does anyone have a particular design vision for the interior or exterior?” I persisted nobly. “Elizabethan or Jacobean furniture would seem the obvious choice, but perhaps not…”
“I don’t think a home is about a particular type of furniture,” said Alice. “It should be about family, and I’ve been thinking,” she looked round the circle, “that the nicest thing we could do for Lord Belfrey would be to invite his two cousins over for a meal, which I would be happy to cook…”
“It would provide an immediate incentive for sprucing up the place,” I responded amicably.
“Our first joint project.” Wanda was quick to display her team spirit.
“You’re on to something.” Judy nodded cheerfully. “Dr. Rowley seems a very pleasant man.”
“Oh, yes!” Livonia continued her dream state. “Of course, like you I only met him briefly… just long enough for him to save me from the suit of armor and… but I wonder,” striving to refocus, “what his lordship’s female cousin is like-the one who lives at… ”
“Witch Haven?” I smiled at her. “I went there this morning to inquire if anyone knew,” somehow I managed to keep my voice steady, “who owned the black Lab who’d shown up here. Celia Belfrey mentioned an archery contest that used to take place here on the grounds.” I only threw this in because there was little else I could say about Miss Belfrey without revealing how unpleasant I had found her.
“Then that’s it!” Alice exclaimed. “We’ll bring back the event for our little get-together.”
There was a general murmuring of enthusiastic agreement. If Mrs. Malloy looked sour, it was undoubtedly because she hadn’t come up with the idea.
The library door opened with startling abruptness to reveal Mrs. Foot wheeling in a loaded tea trolley. Behind her came Mr. Plunket and Boris.
Georges bellowed: “Cut!”
The camera lights went out as if doused by buckets of water, casting the room into an unnatural darkness even for the late afternoon. Momentarily distracted by thoughts of the spread Ben would have laid on, it took a communal gasp for me to realize that something other than the prospect of cucumber sandwiches and iced fancies had created a palpable awareness of something major happening. The contestants were all looking upward. But it was not until Molly Duggan screamed that I noticed the white-wigged portrait lady poised on the uppermost step of the stairway. She was swirled around by shadows that blurred her features but did little to hide the bloody gash around her neck. Undeterred by the negative reception, she extended a satin-shod foot. However, her descent was foiled by a squeaking scurry of white along the railing and a long-tailed leap atop the Marie Antoinette coiffure!
10
W hitey, being no simpleton as rodents go, avoided the apparition’s clutches by performing an immediate vanishing act into the mist. Could it be I was the only one who had noticed him? That one shock at a time was more than the rest, including his nearest and dearest, could take in?
“Blimey! It’s none other than Lady Annabel Belfrey,” gasped Mr. Plunket. “The one that got her head sliced off by the guillotine when she was off on her holidays in France.”
“Gone to see her auntie she had, bless her, and now she’s paying us a visit.” Mrs. Foot sounded thoroughly delighted.
“Who wouldn’t die to make your acquaintance, Ma?” Boris’s voice floated above the hubbub. The ghost having created a sufficient stir and perhaps enduring the fright of her afterlife retreated back up the stairs to disappear into a denser confluence of shadow. I could have destroyed the impact of her appearance by stating she was the woman who worked at the sweetshop in the high street, who had hinted broadly that she was hoarding a secret relating to Mucklesfeld. And all so easily achieved, with apparel similar to that in the portrait, access and egress through a hidden panel in the gallery, simulated mist, and camera lights turned off so that an adjustment in eyesight was required prior to adequate refocusing. But much as I might think Georges’s contrivances-the flying cutlery at lunch and now this-foolishly theatrical and seriously distressing to Molly Duggan in particular (from the bleached look of her face), I had no right to interfere with the production of Here Comes the Bride.