“What happened, Charlie?” Lord Belfrey placed a hand on Forester’s shoulder.
The keen eyes in the leathery face returned his look man-to-man. “I was talking to this lady here,” nodding at Molly. “They’d all been told not to shoot till I gave word for the first to move in front of the target. Sometimes it happens that someone gets a little too pumped up and releases without thinking.” He didn’t direct his gaze toward Mrs. Malloy, but I saw Livonia, Alice, and Molly steal glances at her. She was gripping her bow… but arrow she held not.
“It wasn’t me!” I could tell from the defiant anger in her voice that she was frightened. “I’d dropped me arrow and was bending looking for it when something whizzed past me. It’s a wonder it didn’t take me ear off! I can tell,” darting looks this way and that, “as how my word won’t be good enough for some.” And why would it be? I thought sadly. Her spite toward Judy-particularly at lunch yesterday, must be fresh in the minds of the other contestants, even if word of it had not spread further to Lord Belfrey and the rapacious Georges.
“It was my own fault entirely,” Judy said, looking pitifully defenseless on the ground over a wince of pain from shifting her ankle. “I blundered toward the others without paying the least attention to what was going on. My mind was elsewhere, so please don’t anyone make something big out of what happened.”
No one had anything helpful to add.
That was the problem; there had been a great deal of preoccupation at the crucial moment. A lack of reliable witnesses, and a continuing suspicion I feared directed at Mrs. Malloy. For the shooter, that muddying of the waters was a gift if the object had been to kill Judy, which I perhaps stupidly, was fiercely sure was the case. If Mrs. Malloy had been hit in the first attempt, another arrow would have been speedily drawn. As it was, expertise or at least a natural hand-eye coordination, coupled with daring desperation, would have achieved the objective, but for the life-saving notebook.
Coming up to me, Ben squeezed my hand. “I’ll offer to help get Judy into the house,” he said.
“And I’ll go and get a glass of water for her. With all the furor, maybe no one has thought to do so.” As I headed off, I felt the comfort of Thumper keeping pace beside me. “Sorry to have ignored you,” I told him, “but being the perceptive fellow you are, you’ll have noticed we had a crisis.” Time later to consider his necessary return to the Dawkinses. Pushing open the entry door, I was grateful for some time to think, but that opportunity was doomed. Halfway down the passageway that would take us through the hall to the kitchen, I heard the familiar hateful scurrying, glimpsed a flash of white, felt Thumper bristle, then all was shrill squeaking, raucous yelping, and flying fur.
“Thumper, stop!” My voice may have reached the tip of his tail as he rounded the corner, but he so outdistanced me that there was not a flicker of black to be seen when I reached the hall. I could, however, hear him with increasingly deafening clarity as I neared the kitchen. That he was capable in this mood of feverish pursuit of standing on his hind legs and turning the doorknob seemed all too probable. The scene I entered upon was mayhem, with hostile overtones coming forcibly from Mrs. Foot, who stood clasping Whitey to her apron chest, while Thumper raced in circles around her like an Oliver Twist sent berserk after being denied a reasonable request for more. Mr. Plunket, weaving like a tree in the wind, stood close by, Boris beside him, wearing the bright pink shirt of yesterday, his right hand-I noted numbly-clamped around his left arm.
“Just look at the sweet darling trembling like a leaf in my arms,” Mrs. Foot bellowed at me. “That dog of yours should be put down-going after Whitey like he was vermin! I’d kill him with my bare hands if it wouldn’t mean dropping my precious!”
It didn’t occur to me to say that Thumper wasn’t my dog. Nor was I compelled to order him to quiet down. Having successfully treed what would have been a very small snack, he looked to me for approval before lying down, nose on front paws, in sighing contentment.
“I came in for a glass of water for Judy, who’s been hurt,” I said as calmly as I could manage.
“That girl Lucy’s already been in for one. We know all about the hoopla, don’t we, Mr. Plunket and Boris? No, don’t you go bothering answering, poor dears. Just look at the two of them.” She rounded on me again. “Poor Mr. Plunket was so upset with everything gone wrong for his nibs, just when his lady cousin decides to visit again, he needed a restorative tipple. It was that husband of yours leaving bottles in an old bread bin where anyone with a stepladder to climb to the top pantry would think to look that started him back on after years of laying off the stuff. Who can wonder at a little lapse the way this week’s gone! My kitchen being taken over! That Monsieur LeBois rolling around the place like he’s king on wheels, never so much as lifting his bottom when I hand him one of my nice cups of tea. Oh, I know his kind-can’t budge a muscle for themselves unless it suits them. Ask me and I’ll tell you he doesn’t need that chair any more than I need wings. But for him, none of you lot would be here stirring up trouble. And Mr. Plunket and I’ve got Boris standing there with his arm tore up by that dog leaping at him when Whitey ran up his leg.”
“Missed that.” Grinning foolishly, Mr. Plunket continued to sway as if in a quickening breeze. “Always did love his uncle Boris, but not more than you, Mrs. Foot. Nobody in the whole wide world,” spreading his arms, “is loved more than you, Mrs. Foot.”
“There, there, Mr. Plunket! But it’s our Boris that matters most right now. Look at him,” this to me, “standing there white as a sheet”-as this was normal for Boris, I hadn’t panicked on looking at him-“and him waiting so patient for a proper bandage!”
I thought snappishly that she was right about that. A dead man couldn’t have looked more patient. “I’m sorry,” I said… suddenly meaning it. There was something heartrendingly sad about Boris’s empty-eyed stare and his rigor mortis stance. I remembered Judy’s kind way with him and suddenly felt close to tears. So much so that when Mrs. Foot worked herself back to a roar-letting me know that if I didn’t get that dog out of the house right now she’d ring the police-I replied meekly that I was sure Mrs. Spuds or Dr. Rowley would agree to return him to his owners.
Whitey bade us a triumphant squeak of good riddance as we left the kitchen, but I didn’t leave the house. Instead, I went into Lord Belfrey’s study-currently the dominion of Georges. I had been seized by the urge to take another look at Suzanne Varney’s photo. Foolish, I know, but I thought that if I could look into her face I might get a clearer sense of who she was… that she might even tell me something. The photos of the contestants were no longer spread over the table. I knew it was wrong, but the impulse to revisit her image was so strong that I crossed to the desk and opened the top right-hand drawer first. Inside were some notepads, pencils, and a torch… a dull red torch. I picked it up, turned it over in my hands, and saw the uneven crack in the plastic and the small jagged gap where a piece had broken off. My hand found its way into my jacket pocket and drew out what I had taken from Thumper’s mouth on his return from the ravine.
He sat, looking up at me with sympathetic curiosity as I sank down in the desk chair and fitted the broken-off plastic back into the torch. Suddenly it was as though Suzanne were in the room with me, striving to tell me what she must have intended to tell Mrs. Spendlow. I felt her anger and grief pour into me. If only… if only fate had not brought her to Mucklesfeld. But it had, and all I could do was unmask her killer.