Read Online Styx and Stones by Carola Dunn - Free Book Online

least she could be pretty certain Johnnie was not the only victim of the Poison Pen. That cut out Mr. Paramount as a suspect, she thought with relief as they approached the Oakhurst gates. His resentment was aimed specifically at his usurping nephew, so she wouldn’t have to beard him in his den.
    Of course, Alec would not cross a suspect off his list so easily. The old man never left the lodge and she had never heard that he had any visitors, but his daily woman might provide all the village gossip. General misanthropy could be motive enough for the other letters, or perhaps they were just an attempt to disguise the provenance of Johnnie’s.
    Alec was right—once someone was on the list, it was difficult to be quite sure one could take them off.
    They reached the end of the drive. Daisy glanced at the church clock: ten to eleven. She gave Belinda the shorts. “Here, go and put a pair on right away,” she said, “before you dirty that frock. Derek, please tell Nanny I’ll be very grateful if she will kindly lend a couple of your shirts to Bel. Straight home, now. I’m going to elevenses with Mrs. LeBeau.”
    The door was opened by a neat, white-capped maid, not young. Daisy knew as soon as she spoke that she was not local.
    â€œPlease to come through, miss. Madam is in the arbour.”
    What Daisy saw of the house as she passed through left a pleasant impression of light and air. The back garden, rather than sloping up, was terraced on three levels. The lowest was paved. The second was a rose garden, with a shady, rose-grown bower of the kind described by Dickens as a shelter erected by man for the benefit of spiders. Daisy presumed it had been swept clear of eight-legged marauders before its elegant mistress ensconced herself there.
    Mrs. LeBeau came to the top of the steps to greet Daisy.
Her dark hair, loosely looped up into a chignon, gleamed in the sun. “You won’t object to taking coffee outside, I hope?” she said. “We can easily move indoors if …”
    â€œNo, no, it’s beautiful out here.”
    â€œI’m rather fond of roses, as you may have guessed! I spent some years in the grimmer parts of South Africa. Roses grow marvellously in the Cape, but where we were those that survived were generally covered in dust. I used to dream of English rose gardens.”
    â€œI have a friend who lived in southern Italy and dreamt of daffodils,” said Daisy, sitting down on one of the white-painted wrought-iron chairs, well cushioned, in the arbour. “What took you to Africa?”
    â€œI married a big-game hunter,” Mrs. LeBeau said drily, “frightfully handsome and dashing, but without a penny to his name. It was a runaway match and my family cut me off without the proverbial shilling. Shooting lions and buffalo was all Perry knew how to do, so he became a guide, going off into the veldt for weeks while I was left behind in dusty little dorps full of dusty little Dutchmen. With neither shillings nor pennies to our name, we hadn’t much choice.”
    â€œI suppose not.” Daisy regarded with some doubt the expertly cultivated garden and the charming Queen Anne house, in excellent repair.
    Mrs. LeBeau laughed. “You’re wondering how I managed all this. Sheer luck! A party of prospectors on holiday hired Perry. After the shooting, he went up with them into the Wit watersrand, and they practically fell over a vein of gold. I suspect it was in a drunken celebration they signed over a share to Perry. At any rate, the result was that when a buffalo took revenge on him for all the slaughter, and I came home, I found myself with a comfortable income.”
    â€œWhat luck!” said Daisy, not without a touch of envy. But
then, if she had not had to work for her living, she would never have met Alec. “Oh dear, I didn’t mean what luck losing your husband. I’m sorry!”
    â€œOh, as to that, poor old Perry had