She Shoots to Conquer

by Dorothy Cannell

  This explained her not noticing the door no more than three feet away.

  “It took everything I had to force my fingers to tap at the glass when I thought I saw movement in the room.”

  “I understand; I’m not particularly fond of heights myself,” I said, stepping cautiously toward her after ordering the dog back inside; it would be dreadful if she backed up in panic and went tumbling down the metal staircase. Tommy Rowley might then find himself confronted with a severe head injury and multiple broken limbs if, I shivered, she weren’t killed outright. Two fatal accidents at Mucklesfeld in the space of hours would lead to stories for years-centuries-to come of the ghosts of two women being glimpsed, one emerging behind the other to drift toward the house on nights when it seemed likely the hovering mist would turn into a full-fledged fog.

  I felt clammy thinking about it. But anything was better than looking down. Murmuring encouragement, I reached her, succeeded in unclamping her from the wall, and got her into the cubbyhole one inching step at a time, whereupon I speedily closed the door and sat her down on the bed. The dog then proceeded to greet me with ecstatic wagging, but mercifully did not leap up at me. Someone must have trained him not to bowl people over, I thought. And he had been obedient about going inside when told.

  The woman looked in need of a stiff drink, but Lord Belfrey had said that he didn’t keep liquor in the house. Anyway, her prim seating-feet together, hands folded in her lap-caused me to sense that she wouldn’t have accepted one if offered. I’m not much of a drinker, but after standing on a roof I would have swigged an entire bottle of brandy. Why on earth had she come up that fire escape?

  “I’m Ellie Haskell.” I smiled encouragingly.

  “Livonia Mayberry.”

  “Feeling any better?” I asked her.

  “It’ll take a minute. I just need to breathe.”

  “Of course. I’ll go along to the bathroom and bring you a beaker of water.”

  “Oh, no! Don’t leave me! I’ll fall apart if left alone.” She had a small, fluting voice that reminded me poignantly of my nine-year-old Abbey.

  “Then I won’t budge an inch.” This statement caused the dog to eye me as if witnessing a halo forming around my head. His interest in our visitor appeared only politely social. After a few moments of silence, I was relieved to see that her color looked better. She was rather pretty in the manner of a woman from the 1950s-the perm that was intended to last. No eye shadow or mascara, minimal lipstick, and a powdered nose. Her light wool gray suit, the cream blouse with the Peter Pan collar, and the navy court shoes all spoke of that era.

  “Is he yours?” She looked startled at the sound of her own voice.

  “The dog? He came in through the window of the room next door where I was sleeping. I thought when I saw you peering in here that you’d come to claim him.”

  “I never saw him before tonight… this morning. But I did follow him up the fire escape. It was madness, but I had to-there was no choice. He’d made off with my…”

  “My goodness!” Horror prevented my allowing her to continue. “How long were you out on that ledge?”

  “I don’t know.” She twisted her hands together. “It seemed forever. Hours, days… weeks.”

  “Why didn’t you go back down?” I knew it was a heartless question even as it left my mouth.

  “I froze… shut down completely; I even blanked out about my reason for being up there”-she unknotted her hands to point a finger that looked as if it had been permanently bent in the process at the dog. “I don’t think I would have seen him or my gloves if they’d both been right next to me.”

  “Your gloves?”

  “He didn’t bring them in with him, I suppose?” Despair mingled with pitiful hope showed in her blue eyes. “He made off with them when I got out of the car.”

  The dog put his head down on his paws.

  I nipped back to my bedroom and checked. “No sign of them,” I said on returning.

  A pathetic, whispering sigh. “Mrs. Knox-she’s my next-door neighbor-was right when she said I would be punished for getting mixed up in such a mad scheme. She said only a fool would consider entering in a marriage contest, especially when there was dear Harold waiting so patiently in the wings. He gave me those gloves, and despite everything I can’t bear the thought of losing them. Without them, I’m not sure I exist.” A sharp intake of breath. “I’m so sorry… I’m still not thinking straight. You’ll be one of them… of us, I mean. A contestant.”

  “Oh, no!” Not wanting Livonia Mayberry to think I disapproved of her involvement, as the neighbor had done, I explained-hopefully in not too bragging a voice-that I was married. I was about to add that a friend of mine had just been added to the list, but this would have required me to break the news that death had put one of the other contestants out of the running. “My husband and I and our traveling companion ended up here by accident during the fog and Lord Belfrey kindly allowed us to spend the night.”

  “Is he… did he seem nice?”

  “Very.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “And very handsome. The reincarnation of Cary Grant.”

  “Really?” She reacted as if she had just heard that the date of her execution had been moved up to this morning and she had been denied the right to choose hanging versus beheading. “I’d hoped he would be quite ordinary. Good-looking men scare me, I always feel so intimidated around them. Harold is short and going bald and he wears glasses with very thick lenses. But don’t get me wrong. I like his looks. He’s my type; my mother said he was and so does Mrs. Knox. Do you think he will be annoyed that I arrived hours ahead of time and have created such a silly disturbance?”

  “Harold?”

  “No… well, he’s already upset. He told me not to count on his overlooking my wanton behavior when I came crawling back, but I meant Lord Belfrey.”

  “Look,” I said, “your showing up on the roof hasn’t upset me. And if you would like to talk your situation through, I’ll be glad to listen.”

  “Are you sure,” she was knitting her fingers back together, “that you aren’t dying to get rid me? I won’t stay long, I promise. You will think me a coward, because that’s what I am. All the sense of adventure has been shaken out of me. As soon as I feel steadier, I’m going to get in my car and drive home to Hillsbury.”

  I sat down beside her on the bed, and the dog, catching my warning look, lay down next to it. “How did you decide to be a contestant in Here Comes the Bride over Harold’s objections?” It wasn’t hard to picture him and the interfering Mrs. Knox.

  “From meeting a woman who had already been accepted. On a day trip to London I ran into an acquaintance from a few years back. She and I had got to know each other a little when my father and hers were in the same nursing home. Mine died first. Hers must have had a difficult time of it at the end because she said she couldn’t bring herself to talk about it when we recognized each other coming out Selfridges. She remembered my speaking about Harold and I told her we were still together after courting for ten years.”

  “Most married people don’t stay together anywhere near that long.”

  “That’s awfully nice of you to say.”

  Ben and I had been lucky, I thought gratefully.

  “But lately it had begun to seem as though there’d always be a reason why Harold didn’t think it was the right time for us to get married. All very sensible, but I was forty-one on my last birthday and the other women at the bank where I’m a teller have stopped asking me when we’re going to set a date.” The blue eyes searched mine in appeal. “At the beginning-for the first seven years or so-I was in agreement that we shouldn’t rush into things. It wasn’t as though children would be an option. Harold had made it clear he wouldn’t agree to them. A needless expense is how he put it.”

  “Really!”

  “He feels the same way about pets. And I have always wanted a cat. But Mummy was allergic to them.”

  “Oh
dear!”

  “But I don’t want to give you the wrong idea about Harold. He’s practical, which is a good thing, and I suppose I’m a dreamer.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” I said, to which the dog responded with a look of rapt approval.

  Livonia Mayberry stared wistfully into space. “Mrs. Knox says that in this day and age I should be glad of a steady man. And I did truly appreciate Harold accepting that with my being an only child I had a responsibility to stay at home and take care of my parents. But they’ve both been gone for over five years.” Her voice cracked. “And after Mummy passed away, Daddy insisted on going into a residential facility. He said it was never his idea to keep me corraled-that was his word-with a couple of fogies, but he’d never been able to go against Mummy.”

  “Oh!”

  “I didn’t press him on that; but he couldn’t have meant he was afraid of her. She was so sweet. Everyone, including Mrs. Knox next door, thought her absolutely wonderful.”

  Don’t we all look better from a distance?

  “It was just that she wasn’t strong, and if either Daddy or I were ever a little thoughtless with her she would get terribly worked up and talk about being a nuisance and how it would be better for everyone if she ended it all.”

  “How awful!”

  “Nothing I said could dissuade Daddy from going into Shady Oaks.”

  “And that was where you first met the woman you met again outside Selfridges, who told you about Here Comes the Bride?”

  Livonia Mayberry stopped twisting her hands and sat motionless, her expression blank, her lips moving stiffly. “Yes. She said she had heard about it from a friend of hers who had come across it. She said the friend was a lot more adventurous than she was, but she was lonely after the breakup of a long relationship and sufficiently intrigued that she looked up the site on her computer and decided there was nothing to lose. It was a surprise, she said, to be notified that she had been accepted.”

  “What made you decide to give Here Comes the Bride a try?”

  “Harold and I had an upset that evening. I was late with his dinner due to missing the train I’d hoped to catch coming back from London. He’s in the habit of coming to my house for his evening meals three times a week as well as Sunday lunch. And really-I know this sounds boastful-I’m quite a good cook and always try to provide something tasty and nutritious with plenty of roughage. Harold is adamant about roughage.”

  He would be! I mentally conveyed this snide thought to the dog.

  “But that evening he complained that the runner beans were undercooked-I’d had to hurry them because he gets upset if we don’t eat promptly at six thirty, especially if he has to go back to the office afterwards. Which has happened more frequently over the years as he’s gone up in his job.”

  A high-rise window cleaner or a crane operator? I’d concede their claim to the dizzy heights, but somehow I didn’t picture Harold as the fearless outdoor type.

  Livonia Mayberry returned my look of inquiry. “He works as an accounts supervisor for a firm that manufactures hardware for doors. Sometimes he accuses me of not understanding the pressure he’s under… the responsibility, having to constantly check that those under him are doing what they are supposed to do.”

  “Being a bank teller must bring its headaches, too.”

  “Thank you. It does. But Harold is a worrier; he’ll talk for hours about someone having moved a paperclip on his desk and what could have been behind it. Sometimes, disloyally, I’ve wanted to tell him he might be just a little bit neurotic. And that particular night when he went on and on about the undercooked green beans and that there wasn’t a proper pudding-just some jam tarts from Sainsbury’s-I felt ready to…”

  “Throw a paperclip at him.”

  The dog grinned up at me, but Livonia Mayberry did not crack a smile “… tell him what I’d heard the girls at the bank saying.”

  “Which was?”

  “That I must be blind as a bat not to realize that he was stringing me along because of the free meals and all the other things I did for him-taking his clothes to the cleaners, mending and altering, doing the shopping for when he ate at his flat, to which I was rarely invited. That all those evenings when he said he had to go back to the office he was really seeing someone else… possibly several different women. But I couldn’t get any of it out. I knew I would go to pieces if I tried. After he had gone, I just sat wishing desperately that I had a dear little cat so I could hold on to it and cry all over its fur. And the next morning I went on the Internet at work, during my lunch break, of course, and found the site for Here Comes the Bride. I felt I had to do something… anything to force Harold into a decision about our relationship.”

  “How did he take the news when you were accepted?”

  “At first he thought it was a joke-a very bad joke-and I was about to cave in and say that was all it was and that I was sorry, when he called me a tart… a repressed tart of the Victorian spinster variety, incapable of a normal sexual relationship, and he shouldn’t be surprised that this was what he got for his patience in allowing me to keep him at arm’s length all those years.”

  “Brutal.”

  “And unfair. He’d never given any indication that he was… eager to get me into bed.” She blushed at the three letter word. “Sometimes I did wonder at his restraint. Never more than a kiss goodnight. I know the girls at the bank think it all very peculiar, but I always assumed he had old-fashioned morals and… perhaps a low libido. Mummy always said that men set the pace. And I would never have dreamed of broaching the subject and making us both uncomfortable.”

  “Did he break things off?”

  “Not exactly. He said he’d have to think long and hard about giving me a second chance when I wasn’t the selected bride, which I wouldn’t be because no lord of the realm-however desperate to find an unpaid housekeeper-would pick me.”

  Why commit himself to giving up all those free meals and other entitlements? I placed a hand on her arm. “Oh, Livonia! I wish I could have been there to punch him in the nose for you. But,” thinking it best to wrench the subject away from that cruel scene, “back to those gloves that my doggy friend made off with; you said Harold gave them to you.”

  “A couple of years ago at Christmas.” Her face unfroze and tears melted her blue eyes. “It was such a lovely surprise; usually he gave me a wall calendar. Mrs. Knox said she couldn’t think of anything more thoughtful, but the gloves-navy blue leather-I just couldn’t believe he’d got the fit so right. I’ve always been a little vain about my hands.” She held them out-nicely shaped, with slim fingers and oval nails coated with clear varnish. “Mummy said once that they were the prettiest thing about me.”

  How flush with the compliments!

  “I know it sounds silly,” Livonia looked more directly into my eyes than she had yet done, “but sometimes on nights when I was feeling down about how things were going with Harold I would take the gloves to bed with me and sleep with them under my cheek. When I set off in the car at a little after two this morning, I wore them not just because my hands were cold but because they made me feel that I hadn’t completely burned my boats. What perhaps I haven’t made clear is that even if by the longest of chances Lord Belfrey chose me for his bride, I wouldn’t agree to marry him. I’d thank him, then tell him he’d be much better off with the runner-up. I just had to-and call it spite, that’s what Mrs. Knox did-show Harold that I’d been his doormat long enough.”

  “And quite right, too!” The dog added applause by thumping the floor with his tail.

  “But as soon as I set off, all the courage I’d squeezed up by talking to myself for hours began to seep away. I couldn’t believe I was doing something so completely out of character. Yet I kept on driving.” She paused. “I expect you’re wondering why I allowed myself so long to get here, arriving hours before the appointed time, but I was afraid of getting lost-my sense of direction isn’t good and I’m a nervous driver.”

 
“Did you run into last night’s fog?”

  “A few patches of mist, but not enough to terrify me, and there wasn’t a horrible amount of traffic. For once in my life I didn’t make one wrong turn, so there I was parked outside the gates with the sun not yet up. I knew I’d have to take off again before someone looked out a window and came down to investigate and I’d come across as a pitiful idiot. But my legs were shaking and I was afraid I was going to faint.”

  “I’ve been there,” I said in heartfelt tones.

  “So I got out of the car to breathe in the fresh air, and after a moment took off my gloves to feel if my face was perspiring. I had them in one hand when he,” pointing at the dog, “was suddenly there… racing around me in circles. My head started spinning and I dropped the gloves and he grabbed them up. I tried to tell him to put them down, but nothing came out, and the next second he’d raced off down the drive with them. I suppose I flipped. I was never a runner-Mummy said nice little girls shouldn’t run and even when I had to be in a race at school I walked.”

  “Same here,” I said. “I’d have been last either way.”

  Livonia Mayberry inched her hand toward mine to touch my fingertips. “But this morning I did run, if you could call it that, and every few yards or so he’d turn back and look at me and I had this mad thought that he was laughing at me-the way I knew some of the girls at the bank did-and I actually screamed at him to stop. Which of course made him take off faster than ever.”

  “Bad boy!” I told the miscreant, who abjectly licked my foot, causing Livonia to back up on the bed. “You’re sure he still had the gloves in his mouth at that point?”

  She nodded. “We reached the end of the drive, which seemed a mile long, and came to a low wall; he went through an opening and started to go down the slope. It looked steep even in the early morning light, and I could see that there were a lot of stones and rocks among the undergrowth, but didn’t think about wrenching my ankle. All I thought was that if he dropped the gloves down there, I might not be able to find them. The thicket at the bottom looked like a wilderness.”