Down the Garden Path (10 page)

I glided on past the other portraits, none of them arranged in any particular sequence. Women with acid faces wearing stiff black dresses, men wearing gold watch chains stretched across their pompous fronts. An eighteenth-century rake in white wig and foaming lace at his throat. And beside him a girl of about my age in weighty blue velvet, an Elizabethan ruff under her round chin. Eyes wide and alive stared right into the candle flame. She was no beauty; heavy-set, plain features, round face. She looked jolly, and knowing, as though she understood my reasons for being here and did not condemn my masquerade romp. A small brass plate in the right-hand corner gave her name. Tessa Tramwellyan. I gritted my teeth to stop my breath rushing out and extinguishing the candle. This was my namesake. Had to be ... because a quick glance farther down the row showed no other Tessas. I moved back to her. My hand shook and shadows moved in the hall. Ridiculous, but I could have sworn she winked at me. A pity her looks weren’t more dramatic. With her romantic history Tessa should have been a great beauty, with a hint of sorrow in her eyes.

Suddenly, a faint noise sounded behind me. Instantly I flattened against the wall. Some detective! Would that ruse make me invisible, candle and all? Muffled voices breathed out from the sitting room door a few yards away. Amazingly, fear evaporated. What an opportunity! I might find out what the inhabitants of Cloisters thought of me! Heroically snuffing out my candle with my fingers I tiptoed forward.

Fergy had always said luck was my patron saint. A faint crack of light showed that the sitting room door stood a finger-width ajar. I pressed close to that strip of light and peered into the room. Primrose and Hyacinth sat at a gate-legged table in the corner diagonally across from me. They were playing cards. Beat Your Neighbour or Happy Families? I smiled. Rather sweet their staying up way past the hour when nice little old ladies should be in bed.

“Ace takes king,” Hyacinth reproved, tapping her cards on the table. “I knew when you threw the three of spades and ducked the jack of hearts that you were not concentrating. I realize this has been an unusual day, but excitement generally keeps you on your toes.”

“So sorry, dear,” Primrose sighed. “I was thinking about the girl.”

“Wondering, no doubt, if she may not be a great deal of trouble.” Hyacinth picked up the cards and shuffled them before fanning them swiftly into two stacks. “One thing I will say for her, she does not appear to eat horrendous quantities. Watches her figure. Humph! Can’t say I blame her.”

“I imagine a great many men do likewise.” Primrose sounded thoughtful. “I have been fussing with the notion that she might be rather useful to us. Clearly well brought up as well as quite lovely. I imagine don’t you, my dear, that she would be rather pleased to make some small return for our hospitality?”

Not quite what the heroine had in mind, I thought, but assisting Butler and Chantal with a little light housework would provide excellent cover for my investigations.

“That might be treading on sticky ground.” Hyacinth was examining her cards. “Can’t feel he would be pleased, and in all fairness one could not blame him.”

Butler?

“One faces the question of propriety,” she muttered. “Capitalizing on her youth and physical attributes isn’t quite nice, is it?”

How quaint and old-fashioned they were. Jogging three or four laps around the rooms with the Hoover wouldn’t kill me. Unless ... if the house had to be swept from attic to cellar with a dustpan and brush I could see her point. Primrose did not.

“Fiddle. I think, my dear, you are exaggerating what would be asked of her. Not that I suggest we actually voice a request ...”

Had I made a slight sound? Naturally I felt a little miffed at the prospect of being given orders like a parlour maid, but I didn’t think I had gasped in outrage. Primrose had, however, turned her head towards the door. I must not be caught here like a thief in the night. I must make for the stairs. But, alas, hampered by having to hold up my skirts I was prevented from feeling my way. Speed was out. All I could do was mentally cross my fingers and trust the sisters would attribute any sound to the wind, whimpering dispiritedly around the house.

But all was well. No cry of “Halt, who goes there?” My body brushed the bannister knob and I stole up the stairs. Slowly, steadily, one tiptoe at a time. I was in no state to fake a desire for warm milk. Almost at the top. Almost safe. What ... what was that? The wind? But the wind had not sounded so fierce a moment ago.

Now it had broken through the house and with a huge gusting rush slammed into my back, pitching me painfully forward. Not the wind. The snarling menace that held me pinned down against the floor and was burrowing into my neck had a face covered with fur and a huge wet tongue.

Being used to dogs, I realized that Minerva’s greeting was violently enthusiastic, not hostile, and she had the decency to exercise sufficient restraint not to bring the Tramwells running. No wild crescendo of barks! Crawling out from under, I told her she was my favourite animal in the world, but could we please get better acquainted in the morning? Reaching up for a fingerhold on the next step I continued my wary ascent, with man’s best friend making playful snatches at my hem. Couldn’t this prove a nightmare with me waking to find myself scrunched up in my pygmy bed? Scratch the nightmare idea. In the ways of their topsy-turvy horror, I would probably find Hyacinth and Primrose had flown up to wait for me, glassy-eyed, at the top of the stairs.

But it was Butler who was waiting there for me. Dared I hope that in my shroud nightgown he would take me for the house ghost, not the house guest?

The master of unflappability did even better.

“Pardon me, miss. It would seem that you have been sleep-walking. A very trying—indeed  dangerous—habit, I’m sure.” He reached out a deferential hand to assist me up from my grovelling position. “Brought on no doubt by a very ‘arrowing day. May I fetch something to settle you, miss? Say a cup of hot chocolate?”

What a wonderful noble thing the Tramwells had done in reforming this man! What a credit to their benevolence!

“Hot chocolate would be lovely, Butler. Thank you.” Minerva was lying on my feet but I managed a brilliant smile at the blurred figure of my rescuer.

“At once, miss,” he responded with that marvellous blend of aloof respect. “Shall we say your room or mine, miss?”

I quailed. What was this, blackmail? Somehow I managed a whisper. “How silly of me! I have just remembered that I don’t know whether I like hot chocolate or not. Better forget it. Goodnight. Coming, Minerva? Sweet of her—she seems to have taken a fancy to me. Wants to sleep on my bed.”

In the safety of the nursery—key turned in the lock and a chair pushed against it for good measure—I told myself firmly that Butler had lapsed briefly into cockney humour. In the morning I would actually believe it. Surprisingly I slept well even with Minerva slumped across my middle, and I awoke to find sunlight gilding the furniture and to a feeling of boundless energy. Better make immediate use of it. However gracious the Tramwells’ hospitality, my time here was limited. I would have been on my way downstairs in five minutes if I could have found Angus’s watch. I was sure I had put it down on the table with my charm bracelet after checking the time, but perhaps I had dropped it down on the mantel when lighting the candle. My watch wasn’t there and I couldn’t think where else ... unless Minnie had whiled away a wakeful period in the night playing hide and seek with it? Slipping on my charm bracelet I jingled it at her. But she missed the implication that it was mine—mustn’t touch—and made a snapping leap at my arm.

We met no one as we reached the downstairs hall. But even if the sisters weren’t yet up I was sure the servants would be, and that this would be an excellent opportunity to meet and speak with the enticingly mysterious Chantal. What psychic powers I possessed were strong enough to suggest I would find her in the kitchen, but not sufficiently developed to tell me how to get there. I opened three doors into wrong rooms, all gloomily bare save for a few humps of furniture draped in yellowing sheets, before I found the kitchen. It was at a right angle from the sitting room, down a short flight of stone steps.

The kitchen was empty of people, but I loved it anyway. In size it was about half the dimensions of the front hall, and positively brimming with Gothic delights. A huge open fireplace, complete with a spit equal to roasting a mediaeval martyr, dominated one stone wall. Two black cauldrons hung in side alcoves.

A foot or so farther down the wall stood a cast-iron cooker capable of baking enough loaves to feed all the village poor. Only these days those unfortunates would have shiny gas cookers of their own purchased on the never-never, and glossy no-wax lino on their floors. This floor was stone, each flag about the size of one of Harry’s paddocks. Only the sink looked modern, circa 1906. On either side of it ran a stretch of marble very likely pinched from the Taj Mahal. A half-dozen Welsh dressers crammed with bone china, Woolworth’s plastic, tarnished silver, brass, and empty jam jars, filled up some dead space. But there was still an island of room for the huge deal table in the centre. Fergy would have given both arms and a leg for one like it.

A seemingly dead black cat by the fireplace sat up and joined Minerva under the table in devouring an unpleasant blob of pressed pink meat out of a Chinese porcelain bowl. We had a smaller one in the same silkworm pattern in our front room cabinet, and The Heritage owned a magnificent version presently on loan to the Art Institute in Chicago. Minerva snarled at the cat and it skimmed across the room to leap up a step-ladder standing beside one of the dressers.

“Sure an’ away ‘tis a dog’s life, Minnie,” I sighed. She bared her teeth in a grunt, showing no memory of our night together. Turncoat. Amnesia must be contagious. That feeling grew when Butler, entering by a side door opening off a flight of narrow stairs, evinced no sign of embarrassment at having even jokingly made a pass at a guest of the family.

“Good morning, miss.” Slight inclination of the head. “May I h’assume you are here to advise how you wish your h’eggs prepared?” (Butler had that tendency of the reformed “H” dropper to add them occasionally in inappropriate places.) “The ladies like theirs lightly boiled.” He gave no indication of noticing that Minnie had taken hold of one of his trouser legs and was worrying it fiercely. “On h’egg days, we always send in extra toast so they can cut it into soldiers—for dipping.”

I was about to exclaim “That’s exactly how I like my eggs!” when I caught myself and said, “Sounds lovely, Butler.”

He bowed again. “Very good, miss. If you care to h’adjourn to the breakfast parlour you should find the ladies already down.”

He was easing me out of the kitchen, and resentment surged. Fergy was queen at our house so it wasn’t his august manner that bothered me but the feeling that below it lay contempt. Why? What had the Tramwells told him about my reasons for being here? I watched Minerva amble off to sit, belching, by the fireplace. If only Chantal would come in. I stalled for a little extra time.

“I do hope I am not making a great deal of extra work for you, this is such a vast house to keep up, if I can be of help in any way—some dusting or ...”

“You’re a guest, miss.”

“But I wouldn’t mind, really. I like”—a slight stumble, I was about to say I liked old houses—”I like this house. It’s almost like a person.”

“Yes, miss.” Butler’s voice had mellowed a fraction.

“Really a very beautiful house.”

“And a great many clocks, sixty-five until the ladies parted with one recently.”

Now he had almost a glow about him and, puzzled, I could only say, “No excuse for anyone to ever be late, then.”

“Certainly not, miss, so I won’t keep you.” Impassively he held open the kitchen door. “I’m very partial to clocks. They have always been rather a speciality of mine. My father ‘ad—had—a similar enthusiasm for cigarette cases and my mother—she worked on the trains—took up lighters as a hobby.”

“A lot more interesting than stamps” was all I could think to say before Butler bowed again and I found myself out in the hall. I still hadn’t met Chantal, and I still hadn’t asked Butler what he had been doing on the second-floor landing last night. Checking for burglars, perhaps?

One clock chimed and another one boomed and I headed hurriedly in the direction of the little old ladies. The parlour was the room in which we had eaten dinner last night. It was considerably smaller than the sitting room but with similar French windows opening on to the same view, a wide terrace set out with clay pots of wallflowers and scattered with a few deck chairs.  Beyond was a large garden reached by moss-grained steps. The lawn was shaved to a soft green plush and the flower beds were cut into a wide circle of crescents glowing with every shape and   colour   of rose   from   deepest   pink   to   apricot,   pale yellow, and champagne. Dad would love this place.

Dear Dad. For one whole second I thought I saw him, sitting at the small round table with Hyacinth and Primrose. But, other than not having much thatch on top of his head, the elderly gentleman leaning forward to pat Hyacinth’s veiny hand with its ruby-red fingernails was nothing like Dad. Come to that, Hyacinth did not look like the Hyacinth I had previously seen. She was positively dimpling, and the flutter of her eyelashes was enough to cause a severe draught.

Primrose, sitting with her lavender shawl hunched around her shoulders, looked chilled and curdled—if not actually sour. Could it be: sibling rivalry at over sixty? Gentlemen callers before breakfast! What was the older generation coming to! A giggle stirred but almost immediately subsided. How sad if Hyacinth and Primrose had never experienced romance when young. Why shouldn’t Hyacinth have a little flirtation now before it was too late? Then she said something to the man and, despite myself, I was a little shocked by the decidedly come-hither look in those black eyes. Out of nowhere came an amazing thought. Who would have better reason to conceal a pregnancy and ferret the child away than a fortyish spinster?