Read Online A Deadly Snow Fall by Cynthia Gallant-Simpson - Free Book Online Page B

ridden to the hunt, side by side, competed in
steeple chases, taken jousting lessons and dancing lessons and even
gone to the same summer camps for rich children. I always knew that
Nigel loved me. Well, I loved him too but not that way. He still
expected me to get through my independent phase and come home to
marry him. It was not going to happen.
    A wave of homesickness rolled over me while I
waited for Nigel to pick up. I envisioned Big Ben’s mighty face
looming over the Thames--boats of all sizes passing in the noonday
sun or mist as the case may be in that flighty London climate. The
ubiquitous tourists crowding the sidewalks and Ben’s magnificent
peal ringing out over the city. For a fraction of a second I was
achingly homesick.
    Then, reminding myself that the Cranberry Inn
had become more homelike to me than any place I’d ever resided
except for my wonderful years at Oxford, I quickly nipped that
false emotion in the bud. Sure I missed the city. That city. But
red, double decker buses and telephone booths, deep fog and dank
rooms, the Haymarket Theatre and straight as a rod Buckingham
Palace guards had been replaced by white sandy beaches, rusty
fishing boats, crimson lobsters and sandpipers dancing along the
shore. London, a great place to visit, but Provincetown was now
home.
    “Agent Nigel Hoppington here.”
    “Hello, Nigel; its Elizabeth calling from
America.”
    “Darling girl, how are you, Lady Elizabeth?
Long time no word. So nice to come home to your melodious voice,
cara mia.” Nigel spent all of his holidays in Italy and loved using
his second, if generally butchered, language for emphasis.
    “Drop the ‘Lady,’ Nigel; I live in America
now where such titles, like wearing fur, can get you splashed with
red paint. However, I am in fine fettle, running my sainted aunt’s
little bed and breakfast in a quaint seaside village, writing a
cookery book and having a jolly good time of it. However, I have a
question that only you, my darling friend, can answer.”
    “Oh, beloved woman, just the fact that you’ve
come to me makes me weak in the knees. Anything. But please make
it, “Will you marry me Nigel and come to live with me in my seaside
village?”
    “Maybe sometime, ducks, but just now I may be
about to---foolishly, I might add---plunge into a quagmire that
will probably be my undoing in my seaside village. But after all,
as my new gal pal Daphne Crowninshield would say, what is the point
of having a life if one does not go for all the gusto? Nigel,
something has occurred here that has pulled me into a little
mystery. Perhaps a murder mystery. Before I go ahead, however, I
need you to clear up something for me.”
    “Did you say Daphne Crowninshield? The Daphne
Crowninshield, multi, multi-millionairess of the Crowninshield
South African mining fortune?”
    “Damn. I knew that name sounded familiar. NO.
No, she couldn’t be. Could she?”
    “Unless there is another, but I can tell you
that when the old man died two years ago she took off and only her
family knows where she is and the fortune just keeps on growing. Is
she tall, slim as a reed with an angular but striking face and a
gritty kind of voice? Sexy, I’m sure, to some, but for me only your
angelic voice trills in my heart.”
    “Nigel, that describes her exactly. She has
been very circumspect about her roots and her past, but I
never….well, well. She is very dear to me, so I will respect her
need for anonymity…for now. May have to use it to blackmail her
sometime though.”
    Nigel laughed with delight. I knew all too
well that I had to tread carefully since this sweet man was so dear
to me. However, not dear in the way he would have liked. Since
childhood, both children of busy parents who’d left the job to
nurses, governesses and school masters, we’d been thrown together
often. My parents and his had been best friends; thus, we were more
like siblings than just friends. I, however, still considered him
brother-like