Down the Garden Path (2 page)

“Unhand that girl at once if you know what is good for you.”

The man snickered. “Ah! What I like best! An audience!”

“Sneer if you must, sir.” The elderly lady unpinned her shawl carefully and checked for damage. “But beware! My nephew Marmaduke, otherwise known as Muscles, is right behind me.”

The man tossed Tessa away, sending her sprawling on the ground. “The old hen’s lying. What say you, little temptress? Shall we adjourn our merry romp for another time?” He lowered his voice. “If I hang around too long she may recall where she saw my wanted poster. But despair not, I am the faithful kind. I will see you again—some dark and stormy night.”

Before Tessa could struggle to her feet the man had sprinted down the walk and they heard the surging roar of the motorbike. She was shaking violently all over.

“My poor child, are you all right?” The elderly lady nipped spryly over and placed a tentative hand on Tessa’s arm. “There, there! Such an appalling thing. In my young day, a girl would never recover from such an outrage. Indeed, it would have been considered a shade unladylike if she had. Now, my dear, that rogue was rude but truthful in calling me a lying old hen in reference to my nephew Marmaduke. The boy lives in America, so we cannot place any dependence upon his assisting us. We will have to manage on our own. Should one call in Scotland Yard, one wonders? An exciting prospect! But I have the notion that they really do prefer murder. And can we risk offending Constable Watt by going over his head? With strikes rampant, one
does
have to pander to the sensibilities of the working class, doesn’t one? But as my dear father always said, one doesn’t chase down a solution with a wooden club. First things first. When we get back to the house we will both have a nice hot cup of tea to settle our nerves, so we can think straight, then say a little prayer of thanksgiving that I reached you before all was lost.”

Tessa looked into the crumpled tissue-paper face with its gentle pansy-blue eyes. “You’re very kind,” she breathed, slowly raising a limp hand to her brow. “Excuse me, I feel rather faint.” Groping with her other hand, she met unresisting air, dropped forward and—before the elderly lady could catch her—slipped into a heap upon the dark, sun-warmed ground.

Were the ghosts enjoying themselves? Behind her closed lids Tessa could see them, squirming shadows thick among the leaves. She could almost hear the murmur of their watching ...

* * * *

Ten-year-old Bertie Krumpet had just experienced the most gruesome time of his life, even worse than the time he accidentally got locked in the henhouse one night when Aunt Maude was gone on a case. Worse even than his memories of the orphanage in the East End before his adoption. Worse than being sent to the butcher’s and seeing all those stiff carcasses hanging from the ceiling, the dried bloodstains on the sawdust floor.

Most times he enjoyed coming to Abbots Walk. Him and Fred often went there. They wasn’t afraid of spooks. People was what frightened them—people like the Squire with his weird toddler’s voice and sissy clothes, and that gypsy lady with the big black eyes that took X-rays of your innards. Weird, they was. But they wasn’t wicked like the man in the leather jacket. No one was that wicked except on the telly. Funny about that....

For a while, as he and Fred peered down from their perch midway up one of the elms, Bertie felt like they was watching a play. Sort of comforting in a way. You wasn’t expected to rescue people on the telly, however awful they got knocked around. Must have been the young lady’s being so pretty what gave that make-believe feeling. Bertie had only grown frightened when he realized that her fear was real. And it weren’t as though the man had done something awful like sticking a knitting needle in one of her ears and out the other. It were his voice—all thick and slimy—what told you he was wicked and spooked you half to death.

What a stroke of luck, the old girl bopping along in the nick of time like that! And now the young lady had come over queer and fainted! Awful, but exciting! What next? Miss Primrose Tramwell was gentry, a breed for which Bertie felt immense pity. Imagine never prowling round Woolworth’s or munching fish and chips out of newspaper while walking home from the flicks on a dark wet night. But Miss Tramwell weren’t just gentry, she were batty; she and her sister both. A very weird pair—Miss Hyacinth and Primrose Tramwell. The whole village said so.

From the tree branch, screened by leaves, Bertie and Fred had continued to watch, fascinated, as the frail elderly lady reached into her string bag. Drawing out a jar of pickled onions, she unscrewed the lid, and waved them under the girl’s nose.

“That pong’ll bring ‘er round,” said Fred comfortingly, and some of Bertie’s guilt at not having scrambled to the rescue began to fade. He was almost beginning to enjoy himself. The girl’s eyelids quivered open and she was staring about her in a frightened way.

“Where am I?” she whispered.

Bertie’s question was, Who was she? Flaxby Meade being no longer than a clothesline in any direction, stood to reason there was no one living there he didn’t know. Same went for Leather Jacket. He weren’t Flaxby.

Miss Tramwell carefully replaced the lid on the pickled onions and set them down. She was now wafting her lavender shawl before the girl’s face. “Shock is what you are suffering from, my dear. Men! And people continue to feel sorry for the old maid! I expect we will find your assailant has a bicycle fetish and cannot control himself.”

Bertie swore enthusiastically under his breath. “Cor blimey! Fiddle-assing around! Why can’t the old girl ‘op on that there bike and chase the man down?”

“Come off it,” said Fred, always Bertie’s voice of reason, “ ‘ow’s she going to nail a motorbike? Ain’t as though she could ‘ave nicked a look at the licence plate. Know what, Bertie? We should ‘ave crept down and tried to get a quick dekko. But then ... Aunt Maude would ‘ave worried if we’d bin late ‘ome for supper.”

Fred was great that way. Bertie felt a lot more cheerful knowing that their failure to act the heroes was based in some measure on consideration for Aunt Maude and her mutton pie.

The girl inched slowly upwards into a sitting position. She was now rubbing her forehead. “Oh, please, please! Where am I?” She gazed wistfully up at Miss Tramwell through thick dark-gold lashes. “And who are you?”

Miss Tramwell breathed a tremulous sigh of relief and bent to wrap her shawl about the girl’s shoulders. “My dear, words cannot express ... I really was not sure the onions would work. No one faints these days. It’s quite out of fashion ... but all’s well that ends well. Dear me, I must
not
go rambling on. My sister Hyacinth is always remonstrating with me. We may be a fidgety pair of spinsters, she says, but there is no need to keep giving the game away. I know you will like Hyacinth. She is older than me, but really she does a remarkable job of keeping herself up. I am sure very few people notice that she dyes her hair. Now, my dear, if you will let me help you to your feet. There we are. Now we may be on our way.”

“Our way?” breathed the girl.

“To Cloisters, naturally. The home of the Tramwells for four hundred and twenty-four years. Now, as you will see”—she patted the string bag on her arm—”I was on my way to pay a sick call on Dr. Mallard. He has his thirty-second cold this year. The man’s a hypochondriac, so I will just catch him when he is laid up again, in a fortnight or so.”

“Oh, Gawd!” muttered Bertie. “She’s a bloody record.” But just when he began to wonder if old Celery Legs was intentionally prolonging the agony, she ran out of wind. The girl stood up, wide expressionless eyes fixed on Miss Tramwell’s face.

“I don’t know who I am,” she murmured dreamily. “So sorry ... I seem to have gone all funny from that faint. You said I fainted, didn’t you? Why am I here in this wood? I don’t know
anything!”

“Weird!” sighed Bertie ecstatically, shifting as noiselessly as possible in his tree.

The girl was sinking into a kneeling position on the ground, arms cradling her body as if to protect it from the outside world. “Who am I?” she demanded angrily, as though the information had been stolen from her.

“Dear me,” sighed Primrose. “We seem to find ourselves in even more of a pickle than first supposed. Whatever is one to do?” she fluttered. “Even if old Quack-Quack—Dr. Mallard, that is—weren’t indisposed, he knows nothing about the inner workings of the mind. Most people hereabouts think he’s been out of his for years. Hyacinth and I put more stock in the old folk remedies than in modern medicine. Come to think of it, only last week we were reading an article about amnesia in one of those do-it-yourself health magazines, and I remember particularly the author suggesting that a judicious thwack with a blunt instrument on the back of the head is worth months of arduous psychotherapy.”

The girl gave a violent start.

“Remember anything? Oh dear; paltry of me ... but I really don’t believe I have the fortitude to pick up a tree branch and slug you. Best to go and talk matters over with Hyacinth, I dare say.”

“I—I don’t want to impose.” The drooping girl straightened. Eyes wild, she twisted around as though searching for a means of escape. (Bertie did not think the bicycle would be much help. It, too, looked as though it had been attacked.) “And I am sure I don’t need medical attention. In a few minutes ...”

“I understand completely. The last thing you need to see right now is a man. And doctors do have a nasty tendency to be male.... Good gracious, how very foolish not to have thought of her before ... our visiting nurse, Maude Krumpet.”

“Aunt Maude,” said Bertie and Fred as one.

“Yes, your Aunt Maude!” Miss Tramwell stopped brushing leaves and twigs from the skirt of her dress and looked up into the boughs. “Come down from that tree, Bertie Krumpet, and run home as fast as your sneaky legs will carry you. If Nurse is in, tell her she is needed at Cloisters. Otherwise, look until you find her.”

Old Celery Legs was a witch. How had she known they was up that tree? Old women like her was supposed to be deaf as doorposts and blind as teddy bears. Bertie sidled down the trunk, scraping his knees and angry that Fred would not come with him. He glowered up at Miss Tram-well through his fringe of spiky ginger hair. The beautiful forgetful miss must be thinking him a real sop. He wished he was thin and tall, like Fred, instead of short and pudgy with a face all over freckles. Miserable old Celery Legs. Fred might not come back for days.

“Be off with you, Bertie!” Miss Tramwell flapped her hands at him. “And no skipping stones in the brook, mind.”

Bertie went. He was so miffed that he did not give Miss Tramwell even grudging admiration for not only having caught him out but remembering his name. It was the other one who had caught him in the garden at Cloisters and warned him that she had counted all the apples on the big tree so she’d know if one was missing.

“How did you know he was there?” the girl asked as Bertie vanished.

“My dear child.” Primrose Tramwell patted her prim silver curls and adjusted a couple of invisible hairpins. “When you are as old as I, and have spent as many nights quaking in your bed, listening for a burglar’s footsteps on the stairs, you will discover your hearing is remarkably acute—when necessary. At other times it is quite as useful to be a little hard of hearing. Dear me, there I go rambling again; this is nothing to you, is it, poor child! How white you look. Are you ready to go? I know you will feel so much better when we reach Cloisters and have a nice hot cup of tea—with lots of brandy.”

Yes, indeed, thought Tessa. A stiff dose of medicinal brandy is exactly what I need. This may not be quite as easy as you and I planned, Harry, wherever you are. Perhaps even
more
of a challenge, especially if Hyacinth turns out to be anything like her saccharine-sweet sister. Still, if things get sticky, I can always feign a swift return to my faculties and make a getaway. But, oh, Harry, I hope it doesn’t come to that! This is so important to me. We plotted everything so well—the parts we were to play. Except that rehearsals are never quite the real thing, are they? Coming at me like that—you scared me, Harry, you really did....

Our housekeeper, Mrs. Ferguson, always blamed my wicked ways on my origins. Don’t get me wrong:  Fergy wasn’t referring  to  Dad’s being your typical gentle, absent-minded clergyman or to the fact that Mum—dear cosy redheaded Mum, with her wonderfully appalling taste in clothes and equally wonderful taste in what little girls like to eat, play with, and have read to them on rainy afternoons—had died when I was ten. Neither was Fergy referring to my being an only child, our living at Kings Ransome, a small nondescript village near Warwick, or that I had always had pets, had gone to boarding school at the age of eleven, and had never learned to ride a bicycle.

When she spoke of my origins, which she did often with immense relish, Fergy spoke from a literal interpretation of the dictionary. How I was Begot. Tradesmen and lost souls seeking guidance to the local pub became her captive audiences, but her greatest source of pleasure was any newcomer to the village who joined her group, the Joyful Sounds or, in plainer terms, the Ladies’ Choir. These ladies, mostly charwomen or housewives escaping from punitive children, held their meetings every Tuesday afternoon in the vicarage kitchen. This may not sound very grandiose, but you have to realize that they all wore hats like the Queen Mum and did not remove their gloves while partaking of sherry cake and China tea. The sherry was always Harvey’s Bristol Cream and the tea was always poured by Fergy from the silver teapot. And why not? Dad preferred his from the earthenware one. He had no objections to Fergy keeping the silver “primed,” as she called it.

After Mum died, the only ladies entertained at the vicarage were the Joyful Sounds. Dad was too shy to be social, except in the pulpit where somehow he became impassioned and magnificent like Laurence Olivier. Fergy had stressed upon him that a widowed clergyman brought out the animal in most women. “Just won’t leave poor Vicar alone.”

And I had to agree that Fergy might be right. Phone calls in the middle of the night. Distraught females taken suddenly bad with terrible attacks of conscience that could only be assuaged by immediate confession. Fergy’s answer was to tell the twerps to turn R.C. and hang up on them. But one of Dad’s special talents was for listening.