Read Online Down the Garden Path by Dorothy Cannell - Free Book Online Page B

Hyacinth and Primrose play the parts assigned to them. And so far, in a sense, they had. The stage-managing of the production had been almost disconcertingly easy. I had experienced that unexpected feeling of alarm during the feigned attack, but I quickly realized that this was a primitive female reaction to the idea of assault; nothing really to do with Harry himself. And other than the appearance on the stage, when the scene shifted to Cloisters, of a couple of rather colourful bit players and a guard dog capable of flaking the flesh from one’s bones, all had worked like a charm. No intrusive introduction of policemen or doctors. So why was it that the Tramwells’ falling for the Old Regency Masquerade scam no longer seemed as easy and harmless as it had when talking it over with Harry?
    Harry was the one who had suggested Abbots Walk as the setting for Act I. He had reported back to me a few days after my visit that he had done a bit of research, disguised as a binocular-slung American tourist in the public bar of the Golden Goose. He had uncovered information that each Monday Miss Primrose Tramwell passed along the walk at approximately three in the afternoon on visits to the needy. That’s one of the characteristics of elderly people. I had nodded. They are so wonderfully predictable. It’s leading those dull lives, I suppose. But Miss Primrose Tramwell will be meeting adventure very soon now.
    So merrily complaisant; but this afternoon when we had come tottering out of the walk, I had wondered if the break in her routine might not be too much for one so frail. And yet, when she had suggested thwacking me over the head to cure the amnesia hadn’t I sensed a hint of steel under the feather duster? Or had I been reacting to that breathless hush of evil in the atmosphere? Harry had said Abbots Walk was considered almost a sacred place by the locals, so was it my conscience that was stalking me ... or what?
    “Cloisters,” Primrose had said as we finally got away from the trees, “is not a palace. Only seventeen bedrooms and five receptions, not counting the parlour. Some people find the idea of the house being built on monastery grounds a trifle unearthly, but the family joke is that having taken a vow of silence, our ghosts don’t answer back. A very old joke because we have lived in the house since the first of April, 1561. Henry gave us the land, Bloody Mary took it back, and construction did not begin until Queen Bessie returned it.... Oh, well! Without royal bickering, we wouldn’t have history books, would we? Earlier we—the family—lived on the site of what is now Cheynwind Hall.”
    “What a splendid memory you have,” I said, my pensive sigh uttered to show that my infirmity had been brought home to me.
    “Dearest child,” trilled Primrose with a silvery laugh, “I did not say I was speaking from personal recollection. It is Flaxby Meade itself that has the long memory. The stories are handed down. There is the one about the duel between my great-great-grandfather and the squire of the day. They fought it out on a dining room table with fish knives instead of swords. And, bless me! There was the time Maude Krumpet’s father was thrown in gaol by my own father for poaching. He had been shooting blackbirds out of our trees.”
    We veered slightly left on coming out of Abbots Walk, passed the Ruins on our right and the common with its stocks on the other side of the narrow cobbled road.
    “Would you believe that this road once went all the way to Warwick?” Miss Tramwell chattered on. “Progress. But at least we have not been boxed in by rows of semis. The only house within a mile of us down the road belongs to our dear friend Mr. Deasley.” I slackened our pace further as she coughed gently, a slight flush mounting her cheeks. “Cloisters—you will glimpse it now just ahead—will go to a cousin’s son after Hyacinth’s and my day, so we are the last of the direct line. Our only other