Down the Garden Path (25 page)

“So you know about Fred.”

“Nurse Krumpet talked to me about him. She is a believer in my powers and wanted to know when Fred would leave; I told her I didn’t know.”

“I think h’under the circumstances I will set a place at the kitchen table for Fred, miss. H’it’s not as though he will make any extra washing up.” Butler disappeared back into the kitchen, but Chantal went with me into the hall. Other than ourselves it was empty.

“Tessa, I want to say something to you.” She touched my arm.

“Yes?”

“Our first meeting was unfortunate, and finding me at Cloisters cannot have spurred any friendly feeling on your part. But despite my background I am fairly civilized. Shall we call a truce in the hostilities until the outcome of this morning’s happening is settled?”

I ran fingers through my tangled hair. “I bear you no animosity. Believe me, I’m not the least jealous of whatever you and Harry have going, for the simple reason that he now means absolutely nothing to me at all. Invite me to the wedding and I’ll be happy to bang my tambourine in the choir loft.” Awful. I sounded pettish and hateful and every bit as jealous as I was insisting I wasn’t.

“I don’t believe you, much as I would like to. Harry thinks your—”

“I don’t give a damn what Harry thinks.”

“He thinks your fertile imagination is winsome and madly appealing, but I find your genius for pretence a sign that you haven’t grown up yet. You view me as a woman who plays musical beds, don’t you? Wrong. If Harry didn’t mean a great deal to me, I wouldn’t have gone through the hell of listening to him extolling your charms, anguishing at your pitching his ring at him. Both of us always looking over our shoulders watching for you to waltz back into his life.”

“Oh, don’t you see,” I said, “we’re both better off without him.”

“True; you because you don’t love him, and I because I do.”

“I have to go into the sitting room,” I said, taking a few steps away from her. “As I’m not the total spoiled brat you think me, the truce is on. Permanently if you wish.”

Her husky reply reached me as I touched the doorknob. “No. We won’t swear undying affection. Let us leave it until the case is solved, whether or not one of us is found to be the guilty party.”

I turned to stare at her, but she was gone.

The sitting room was a fairground of people milling about. In addition to the Squire I spotted his mother. (No sign of men in blue.) She was trotting around in circles with a vase of daffodils in her hands.

“Really, Mumsie, they won’t bring the body in here,” twittered Godfrey. A violent sneeze burst through the room. Three more sneezes, and I understood why Mrs. Grundy was holding the daffs. Mr. Deasley was also present, and she was looking for a place where they could cause him the least irritation. Primrose, her face crumpled like a wad of tissue almost the colour of her dove-grey dress, took the vase—setting it inside a cupboard—and returned to help Hyacinth plump up cushions. Mr. Deasley graciously assisted in tidying by pushing a couple of magazines under one of the sofas.

Mrs. Grundy whispered in my ear, “Do you have a duster, dear?”

“Not on me.”

“Where would one be? We must have the place all spruced up for the police. An untidy room is so unwelcoming. Isn’t this murder shocking?”

“Dreadful.” I had trouble forming the word.

“But one can’t help experiencing a slight thrill. You know we haven’t had a really good murder in Flaxby Meade for years. One could say hundreds. Naturally, Goddy—do you see him looking at you, dear? Why, I think the boy is blushing ... but as I was saying, we are rather partial to our own ancestral caper. A natural bias, some might say. But then again, that Reverend Snapper is going to use us as a chapter in the book he is writing. Only one thing worries me, you don’t think outsiders might think drains rather non-U?” Mrs. Grundy had picked a lace doily off a walnut what-not and was vigorously dusting the bureau shelf.

“Not at all.”

“Thank you, dear. And at least our murderer wasn’t a copy-cat like this one. When Goddy broke the news my first reaction was that we had been presented with a blatant take-off of the Tessail murder.”

Yes, of course. How could I not have seen that before now? But not everything slipped by me. “So Godfrey told you about Mr. Hunt being dressed in a monk’s habit?” Keeping my tone politely curious was hard but I didn’t want her to realize what I was thinking.

“Monk’s habit? No, he didn’t say anything about that. What absolute impudence on the part of the murderer.”

“If you didn’t know about the habit, what did you mean about a take-off?”

Mrs. Grundy flapped her duster, sending motes flying into the air. “Why, the deed being done in Abbots Walk, dear. That’s where that prurient monk Tessail got what was coming to him.”

No wonder I had felt no sense of evil in the Ruins, only under the living gallows of the walk. How long did elms live? Could the one from which the villagers had strung up that poor young man still be alive? Had the first Tessa hated the walk, too? Another parallel in our lives—someone close to each of us dying violently in that place. Did I really believe in ghosts, or was the sense of watching menace I had experienced since coming here something human?

Mrs. Grundy patted my arm and moved on to wield the doily over other surfaces while I tried to straighten the objects she had scattered on the bureau. They did not look quite right, but I could not remember how they had been arranged. Fergy always got the shakes if anything was moved from its appointed place.

The others in the room were either fussing about like Mrs. Grundy or talking loudly, binding themselves together. Butler appeared with a tray laden with a teapot and crockery. He set it down on the coffee table, and I went over and started setting out cups.

“Tessa dear.” Mrs. Grundy appeared again at my elbow. “I want you to know that the reason I came here this morning was to talk to you.”

“How nice,” I handed her a cup.

“About Goddy.” She rested the saucer in the crevice between her bolster bosom and her bolster stomach. “To be perfectly frank”—Fergy always said that the minute someone said that you could bet they were being less than frank—“we had a little mother-son tiff about you last night. Nurse Krumpet was quite worried about my blood pressure, and the upshot was that eventually I went out to walk off some steam.”

“In the middle of the night? What could you have to say about me that could be so upsetting?” I asked.

Mrs. Grundy gave me saucy wink. “We won’t get into that now, dear. Murder comes first. The bitters before the sweets. That poor Mr. Hunt. I am very relieved I did not come round by way of Abbots Walk. My word, I might have stumbled over the body.”

“Or collided with the murderer.” I poured more tea.

“That would depend on when the act was committed, wouldn’t it, dear? And I am afraid I can’t even be exact on how long I was out. All I know is that I left Cheynwind at about six. Before that, I hid in the grandfather clock, you see. At times even the best son needs a good shaking up.” Mad! The woman was quite mad.

“So you saw no one out and about?”

“Only Goddy and Nurse Krumpet. Well, I didn’t actually see her. I saw her bicycle propped against a tree.”

“Far from the walk?”

Mrs. Grundy was pondering on that when Mr. Deasley’s voice came from right behind me. “Ghastly business, eh? Although, human nature being what it is, my sales will treble during the next few weeks.” My hand jerked the teapot, spilling the brown liquid in an ugly pool onto the tray. The room shifted slightly. I felt queasy and giddy. I couldn’t hold on to the pot. It went down with a crack on the table.

“Hold on—I’ve got you, my dear” came Mr. Deasley’s concerned voice. I felt his arm encircle me, a little higher than necessary, and he edged me down on the sofa.

“Bend forward, you will be better momentarily.” Over his voice I could hear Mrs. Grundy saying she would look in her bag for something to revive me.

“I don’t need aspirins or smelling salts.” The pressure of Mr. Deasley’s hand rubbing my thigh was bringing me round with great speed. “Thank you, I’m recovered now.” Seeing that tea dripping made me remember the blood, pooling on the ground. I accepted the cup Mr. Deasley handed me and found my hands were quite steady.

“Ghastly business,” he repeated, his glasses glinting as he shook his head. “Positively couldn’t believe what I was hearing when Primrose met me at the front door with the news.”

Primrose, across the room from me now talking with Hyacinth, glanced up at the sound of her name and began fidgetting with her cuffs.

“Happened to be passing and thought I would invite myself to breakfast,” he continued. “Confounded nerve perhaps, but a man gets tired of eating on his own, and you must have gathered that I’m deuced fond of the Tramwells. Consider them family, being rather lacking in that department. No wife, no children, as far as I know.” Behind the glasses Mr. Deasley’s right eyelid quivered as though about to wink but he resisted the urge.

I stared at him over the rim of my cup. Mr. Deasley was exactly the kind of man who would have progeny that he knew nothing about dotting the countryside. How long had he lived in Flaxby Meade? I didn’t dislike him exactly, but neither had I any burning desire to pass his genes along to my children. All those allergists’ bills.

Why hadn’t I taken a harder look at the men of Flaxby before now? A sideways glance at Godfrey provided one good reason, but surely ... no, the thought was too grim to contemplate. Mr. Deasley shifted a little closer and patted my knee. My skin retracted. Thank heaven for Mrs. Grundy. Taking advantage of the freed space she sat heavily down beside him, her pointed glance inducing him to move his hand. Then Primrose crossed the room to hover in front of us and Mr. Deasley rose, offering her his seat.

“Boggles the mind to think that only yesterday I gave the man a ride to the station from here, and now he’s snuffed it. Had a great chat we did about eighteenth-century painting, I have a portrait in the shop ...”

“Did he say he would be returning today? It does seem rather precipitate, doesn’t it?” murmured Primrose. “He would have had to drive down in the very early hours.”

“He did say he would gladly take a look at that portrait, but we arranged nothing definite.” Mr. Deasley looked at Primrose and cleared his throat. “The man was most congenial, flatteringly so; not that I made out the picture was a masterpiece or anything of the sort.” He looked again at Primrose, then as Hyacinth came and poured herself a cup of tea he went off to talk to Godfrey by the French windows. Was he expecting the police to come that way? Why were they taking so long?

I was thinking about Angus talking to Mr. Deasley about a portrait. His interest would have been genuine; he loved small antique shops. A man of such enthusiasms. I reached up to finger the watch chain around my neck and as I did so I saw the strain etched in deep lines around Primrose’s eyes. Slipping a hand on her shoulder I asked, “How are you holding up?”

Reaching up she patted my hand. “Fine, dear. Mustn’t give way, must we? This will take its toll on poor Hyacinth. That little difference in our ages shows up at times like this. She looks quite haggard.”

To the contrary. Hyacinth looked crisp—and was the word invigorated?—as she stood with one hand on the curtain, looking into the garden.

Her wait and ours was now over. A rasp of the French windows opening. Everyone braced, but the police had not descended yet. Harry was entering with Maude. My cup rattled in the saucer. I stood up, stumbling over Mr. Deasley’s feet.
Don’t look at Harry.
But I knew his eyes were on me as he spoke in low tones. How entrancing Hyacinth and Primrose must have found his performance as Dr. Hotfoot. I caught the word, “Aunty.” So much cosier and less Victorian than “cousin.” Maybe he hadn’t believed me when I informed him in the Ruins that the sisters had gambled away most of their substance, but he would have to face the raw truth soon enough.

He was coming towards me, closing in, Primrose tweeting something incoherent as I made for the door. Across the hall in a dozen flying steps ... my hand was on the bannister knob when his hand yanked me backwards.

“Not so fast, Tess, you and I have some talking to do.”

“Surely not. Dr. Hotfoot’s place is with his relations in their troubled hour. Forget me, because you and I are through!”

“God, I hope so.”

My hand flew back ready to come cracking down against his face, but he was too quick for me. He had both my hands now.

“I meant as conspirators. I’m sorry you had to find out this way, Tessa, and I can understand your need to hate me as an escape from your grief over your friend, but—”

“Don’t bring Angus into this. He was the most open, honest man I ever knew apart from my father. You are a loathsome liar. Snickering behind your hand while I made an utter idiot of myself.”

“I never ...”

“Don’t speak to me, and take your hands off me.” He did. Sinking them into the pockets of his jeans he stood, mouth grim, eyes sparking blue fire. His hair waved against the collar of his white open-necked shirt rising over his olive-green sweater. For a man who had been up all night he looked offensively alive. Utterly arrogant. An infinitesimal hunch of his left shoulder reduced my rage to trivia. The aunties’ pride and joy couldn’t wait to return to their doting presence.

Damn him. I was biting a nail. “Don’t you even have the decency to defend yourself?”

“You told me not to speak.”

“That was a minute ago. With your intimate knowledge of the female mind you should know how very changeable we are.” Mounting a couple of stairs I leaned over the rail. “Tell me, has it all been great fun, keeping tabs on me on the sly? Have you had a good few cackles over the telephone or in person with the Tramwells while I’ve been upstairs sewing or sleuthing?”

“I haven’t spoken to them since Dr. Hotfoot’s visit, and then we certainly did not subject you to ridicule. Hyacinth and Primrose both said then that you were everything I had ever claimed.”

“I can imagine! Well, if the sisters weren’t your confidantes, what about your mistress? On the nights I couldn’t make it to the Ruins, did you rendezvous with Chantal instead? Aha!” I gripped the bannister rail, my hair tumbling forward and covering one eye. “I’ll bet you did see her the other night; she was out—looking for the dog. But which dog?”