Down the Garden Path (7 page)

“What?” He picked up the cider bottle and studied the label. “Maybe this has a higher alcohol content than stated.”

I waved him back to the table. “Come and sit down—this isn’t as drastic a measure as it sounds. I’m not asking you to rob the old ladies. All I need is for you to stage a heinous attack upon my person—causing such palpitations and attacks of the vapours (very much the in thing in Regencies) that I will suffer a nasty bout of amnesia—to be witnessed by one or both of them. That part I haven’t quite worked out ... fixing them on the scene, I mean ... but I’m sure between us we can solve that small problem. Now what else should I tell you?”

I couldn’t read the look in his intensely blue eyes and decided it was probably just as well. A strand of hair had fallen over my left eyebrow and I blew it away. “Let’s see ... the ladies’ name is Tramwell. They live in this vast house called Cloisters. And, really, I don’t anticipate any trouble at all in luring them into offering me hospitality until I simultaneously recover my memory and uncover my origins.”

Harry did not sit down with me. He shook his head with disbelief. “Of all the outrageous, arrogant schemes. To assume that because these women are old they are also completely senile. I almost think it would serve you right if I let you go through with it—and spend a week in an atmosphere of mothballs and woodworm.” He thrust his hands deep in his pockets, and looked at me. “In plotting this little drama, didn’t you give any thought to the police being brought in to investigate? And do you seriously suppose you would escape a thorough medical before being carted off to the padded cell?”

I should have known! Hadn’t he failed me before when I desperately needed him? Rising, I thrust my chair back with a wonderful grating sound, and made an ostentatious display of looking round for my bag.

“You didn’t bring one.”

“Huh! I should have remembered what a spoilsport you are, Harry Harkness.” Stalking across to the kitchen door I flung it open, stood glaring at it for a moment, swung it backwards and forwards biting down on my lip, and waited. Wasn’t he going to say anything?

“Goodbye,” I said with awful finality.

“Tessa, nobody wants you to be happy more than I. Whatever has happened between us, you are still the most important person in the world to me. But ...” As a declaration of affection it was spoken in a strangely flat tone. And that was what touched me, what forced me to blink back the tears. He wasn’t hiding behind flippancy anymore. Turning, I ran to him, twining my arms around his neck and burying my face against the comfort of his rough shirt. His fingers moved slowly, gently, through my hair shaking out a spray of pins, and I forgot our quarrels, the woman in his bed. We were a team. We had always been a team.

“I still say”—his voice was muffled—”that your plot is mad, outrageous, and in all likelihood pointless.”

Disengaging my arms I moved slowly away from him. I had to be reasonable, coherent, and imperturbable, all difficult when I was breathing in the giddy scent of his aftershave, becoming lulled by the idea that nothing was really that important outside this room.

“Why mad, outrageous, pointless?”

“Mad—because the chance of pulling the thing off is less than minimal, without a hidden ace—or two. Outrageous—because you know nothing about these women, and pointless—because you have no proof that your connection is to their family.”

“Okay.” I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “We do have an ace up our sleeves. The Tramwells’ thirst for romance. Poor old pets, you only had to look at them to know the high points of their lives are shopping at Harrods twice a year and Princess Diana’s having another baby. In a way I think it is rather splendid that we can let them live out one of their fantasies. And as for not being related to their family, maybe I do want to believe I am descended from that other Tessa because it would all fit so well, but if I am wrong about that I still may discover something about my origins through being in that house. If my mother ...”

“Tessa, why aren’t you more curious about your father?”

“What do I need him for? I have Dad.”

“But you can’t just ignore his role, even if you have no desire to know him.”

I shook my head. “Fergy always said that she reckoned he was a sleeping partner in more ways than one, but I see him more as a hit-and-run motorist. If he had been around when my mother needed him, she wouldn’t have had to do what she did. Harry, you are going to help me, aren’t you? Please.”

I reached out to him with both hands and he took them slowly.

“Yes,” he said. “But for my reasons, not yours.” And I was too happy to wonder then what he meant.

For all my bravado I did experience the occasional twinge of conscience at the prospect of tricking two innocent old ladies. And on the morning of the great event I could not get warm. Fergy’s words kept knelling in my ears. “God pays debts without money.” Although fortunately for her peace of mind she had no idea of what turn my wickedness had taken. She and Dad believed I was engaged in a farewell bed-and-breakfast tour of the Cotswolds. She wrote saying future correspondence would be directed to the Kings Ransome post office, that she was busily occupied in founding a new chapter of the Joyful Sounds, and in keeping the ladies away from Dad. What could be more captivating to predatory female instincts than a new clergyman with a spotlessly kept house? Yes, Fergy could see her work cut out for her, especially as Dad had displayed a certain uncharacteristic waywardness in inviting Vera’s sister Ruth to tea and actually requesting the silver pot.

How innocent it all sounded. If Fergy had seen me that first night at Cloisters, lying in a narrow bed in what had been the nursery fifty years ago, she would have dragged me out by the hair. Lying back on my pillows, I looked about the room. Impossible not to feel the eeriness. A faint scent of dried lavender hung in the air, but it couldn’t cover the deadness. All those relics of spent childhood; the ink-stained desk, the arthritically slouched rocking horse, frayed picture books, and dolls. Those dolls were the worst, with their blind-eyed stiff china smiles. In the centre of the room was a full-sized swing suspended on thick ropes from rings in the high-beamed ceiling. Creak, creak. I did not relish waking in the dark to the sound of a gibbet out on the windswept moor.

Well, what was I complaining about? My amateur theatrical production demanded atmosphere, didn’t it? It also demanded that 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 surviving sister, Violet, lives in America and will never return. Once colonized they can never readjust to our plumbing.”

A delicious quiver of excitement trickled down my spine. “What charming—perfumey—names you all have.” (Violet. Devon violet paper!)

“How very dear of you! Yes, our mother adored flowers. And how fortunate we were all girls. There were four of us, you know. Lily was the one who died.”

The trickle turned to ice. Which was stupid: Lily could have been six months or eighty when she passed away. I opened my mouth to say, “I’m sorry, was she ...” but Primrose was twittering on. A rise of stone appeared beyond a clustering of elm.

“Not a word to Hyacinth, but I will tell you, primroses were always Mother’s absolute favourite flower. Here we are—a few more yards, and do be careful of those two steps at the gate. Down the garden path we go. Cloisters, you notice, has only a modest front lawn these days. People just don’t go in for the lodge keeper at the gates anymore.”

She may have rambled on. I wasn’t listening. The lawn did look as though it had been cut from too skimpy a piece of green cloth, but the house was positively splendid. It actually
belonged
in one of those Regency novels and I fell instantly, madly, passionately in love with it. Built of Cotswold stone, somewhere between Jersey cream and warm custard, its gabled roof had faded to a pigeon grey, blushed with the faintest hint of rose. Ivy traced the walls in a delicate mesh of twine and leaves. A stone trelliswork decorated the pinnacles, and an arched jade and lavender stained-glass window flamed above the triple-arched portico.

The door should have been opened by a superbly aloof butler, but Primrose let us in herself. We were in a vast hall, and my eyes lit on a topsy-turvy grouping of Wellington boots in one corner, a plate of dog biscuits tucked under a table, and a stack of hot water bottles sitting on a chair. The fantasy faded, but this was even better. Real people lived in this unreal house. No everyday clutter could disperse the antiquity wafting in the air. Ancestors in gloomy oils scowled down upon us from the wainscotted walls. Angus Hunt would have scowled back at them. But would the first Tessa be among them? The Reverend Snapper had said the family had moved into this house when she was a young woman.

We were standing at the foot of a magnificent dark-oak staircase, which owed its rich mellow sheen more to age than to Johnson’s lavender wax. Fergy would have said that the place looked like it hadn’t smelled a polishing cloth since World War I. She would also have taken exception to the way the faded Persian rug lay sprawled unevenly across the floor, but she would have termed the general air of shabbiness “proper classy.” To Fergy, anyone reduced to buying furniture hadn’t come from much.

“Home Sweet Home,” chirped Primrose. On her last word a nearly invisible door in the oak panelling sprang open, releasing the ugliest, most rabid-looking canine (of bulldog extraction) I have ever seen. With one fell, ear-splitting swoop it came yelping and slithering across the floor, juicy fat tongue lolling, yellow eyes bulging in what I desperately hoped was a near-sighted glare. No such luck. It was making directly for my legs. Would he—she—bury the bones under the sofa? Terror had me dodging behind Primrose’s back, clutching her breathlessly and whispering “nice doggie” over her shoulder. Incredible! The creature fell back and lay spread-eagled, flattened, pretending to be dead. The peculiar angle of the Persian rug was now explained.

“Good girl! Sweetie baby,” purred Miss Tramwell, beaming down fondly at the canine monstrosity. “Minerva dearest, sit up and offer our guest a paw. That’s the way.”

I timorously accepted Minerva’s overture, trying to ignore the hungry look in those yellow eyes as she sniffed my hand.

“Now, Minnie, this is Miss ...” murmured Primrose. “Oh dear, how very awkward. Or, dare I hope, child, that you have sensed some indication of incipient recovery?”