Read She Shoots to Conquer for Free Online

the lamp nearest him and others scattered stingily around the vast room, his heightened color did not look good. A decidedly unbecoming greenishorange that confirmed the pimply-gourd effect.
    “Belfrey? Now that would set the place up as a joke, wouldn’t it? Bats in the belfry, there’d be no stopping the schoolboy silliness. No, the place got its name from the old muck fields hereabouts. Famous they was; some said the best in all England. Wonderful it was for growing celery. But then they went and dried up, just like the family money did. As his nibs can’t be blamed for.” He stared down at Mrs. Malloy in her chair. “He only came into the title and property last year after his cousin that was then Lord Belfrey died. Spent much of the last thirty years in America, he did—Alaska mostly, although I always thought that was Russia.”
    “Whatever, it’s abroad, isn’t it?” Mrs. Malloy responded ingratiatingly. “I’m sure his lordship was glad to get back to the UK; a title in America has to be as much use as a fur coat in the tropics.” If she expected an appreciative chuckle from Mr. Plunket, shewas disappointed. He stood smoothing down the too-short sleeves of his jacket.
    “From all we’ve heard, the cousin was a miserable old blighter that let Mucklesfeld go to rack and ruin while he shut himself away from the world.”
    This topic would have been fascinating if I’d been sufficiently unwoozy to be my usual nosy self. Even though I seriously doubted I’d slipped gracefully to the floor during my faint, I thought it more likely my headache was due to emotional stress than physical injury. For whole minutes at a time my mind successfully warded off the memory of the Metal Knight clawing at my throat, but the nightmarish face peering down at me through the upper banisters refused to be banished. Stupid of me. Once I could think clearly I would hit upon a logical explanation for both incidents, but the aura of malevolence that had accompanied the latter . . . would I be able to convince myself that it had arisen entirely out of my penchant for the Gothic novel?
    “And like I said, his nibs has been hoping to refill the coffers at Mucklesfeld. He’s had to make a decision that many a proud man wouldn’t have the guts for. This television show . . .”
    Ben cut him off. “I realize this isn’t a cottage. But how long should it take for your employer to come back and inquire after my wife or at least send one of the other members of the staff with a reviving beverage?”
    “Now then, Mr. H.” Mrs. Malloy sent him the admonishing glance of a nanny who doesn’t appreciate being shown up when bringing a little person down from the nursery into the drawing room. “Mr. Plunket has explained why things are bound to be a bit topsy-turvy this evening. To top it off his lordship has them television people here and we all know how temperamental people in show business can be, even without that poor woman being killed.” No doubt she would have added that it never rained but it poured or something equally platitudinous, but Mr. Plunket was off down his own road.
    “Very inconvenient, that was.” His lugubrious tone did not quite make up for his word choice.
    “Inconvenient?” Ben raised an eyebrow at him.
    “As well as sad,” Mr. Plunket amended, “tragic more like. That goes without saying, of course.”
    “Was she . . . the deceased woman . . . a relative or close friend of his lordship?” I roused myself to ask.
    “Never met or spoken with her. She was one of the contestants, you see.”
    “The what?” Ben added his echo to that of Mrs. Malloy, while bending over the sofa to smoothe back my hair and search my face with anxious eyes.
    “Contestants.” Mr. Plunket shuffled on his feet, which like his clothes appeared too small for him. “She would have made the sixth. The other five will be getting here tomorrow if it’s not decided to put them off.”
    “What are they contesting for?” That