02 - Down the Garden Path

by Dorothy Cannell

  “Not the latest best seller,” I said.

  She turned, the book closing with a thud. Making no excuse for reading on the job, she dusted off the binding and returned the tome to the shelf. Fleetingly a deflating thought intruded. In addition to her other attributes, might Chantal be a secret intellectual? More than I could bear. But, not being a total twit myself, I remembered that mediaeval times were fraught with witchcraft and devil’s curses. Was Chantal doing a bit of brushing up on the good old days?

  “May I help you, miss?” She smoothed out the white half-apron covering her dark blue skirt. The nerve! Acting as though she had never hissed horror in my face last night? I told her distantly that I wanted to read up on local history. As I scanned the shelves she reached up and pulled down a thin olive book titled The Tramwell Family. I was impressed. She did get around with that duster.

  “You’ll not find it highly entertaining,” she offered. “Having been written by a local nineteenth-century curate, it’s been well-laundered. All the tasty bits—such as how the Tramwells connived to get this land at the Reformation—have been either adjusted or totally deleted. Old Sinclair the pirate comes off like a missionary, and, need it be said, the Tessa story is the trumped-up version.”

  “Trumped-up?” The book stabbed into my rib cage, but I felt no pain.

  “How foolish of me to keep forgetting you know nothing about all that. In brief, the lavender-scented version is that her father, Tessail the monk, committed suicide. But between these walls”—she lowered her voice to a husky purr—”what really happened was that the God-fearing villagers murdered him. And who could blame them, miss! Only doing their yeomanly duty, same as they burnt my people’s caravans when they camped on the common.”

  Murdered. Tessail murdered.

  “And the amusing thing is, miss, that for all the righteousness of hanging the fornicating celibate, the present-day villagers would rise with their pitchforks against anyone who let that old truth leak out. Doesn’t flatter the Sunday school image Flaxby Meade chooses to present to the tourist bureau.”

  I could hear voices in the hall. Clutching the book, I left Chantal without another word. Poor Tessail and that unknown girl who had been Tessa’s mother. Angus was saying goodbye to the sisters in the hall and I went up to them. It was now or never. I had to find some acceptable reason for speaking to Angus alone, but for the life of me I couldn’t get my lips to move. He was looking at his watch, saying he had ample time for the walk to the station, and then, miraculously, Primrose helped me.

  “In about ten minutes Butler will be finished washing the car, but if you wish to take Shank’s pony, Mr. Hunt, I am sure Hyacinth would be pleased to show you the short-cut through Abbots Walk. I want a word with our friend Clyde Deasley who is”—she fussed with her seed pearl necklace— “yes, I am sure he is somewhere about. Ah, here he is coming downstairs, he must have popped up to use the—cloakroom. Otherwise, Mr. Hunt, I would be pleased to show you the quickest possible route to the station.”

  Setting my book down on a chair, I said, “If Hyacinth isn’t absolutely pining for fresh air, I would enjoy getting outside, and I think I remember the way to Abbots Walk.” It was agreed.

  Minutes later I found myself outside the house, with Angus hefting along beside me. We passed Butler, lathering up the hearse, and I felt his eyes upon our backs as we crossed the narrow road. Could I be catching Chantal’s ESP? The vibes I was getting struck me as decidedly hostile. Didn’t Butler like his ladies to have gentlemen callers?

  Neither Angus nor I spoke a word until we were well out of earshot and eyeshot of the house. Then he planted a heavy hand on my shoulder and said, “Your noot said ‘all will be explained.’ Get with it, Miss Fields, if that is still your name. All the gory details for old Uncle Angus, if you please.”

  Taking a deep breath I spilled the beans. We had reached Abbots Walk before I had finished.

  “Your friend Harry needs his head examined on a butcher’s block,” he growled.

  “No, you mustn’t blame him. I made him help me.”

  “Such an honest cheat you are, Tessa.” And then he roared with laughter. “My dreary bachelor existence has been fair illuminated by knowing you. But that’s not to say that if I were your father I wouldn’t flay you alive. What would he say if he knew you were holed up with as canny a pair of card sharps as ever dwelt among the Cotswolds?”

  Ridiculously I felt an urge to defend the Tramwells. “Don’t be too hard on them, Angus.” I tucked an arm cosily through his. “Being old must be desperately boring. All they have is their library books, afternoon tea, and knitting.” My eyes swerved up to his and I winced. “Forget the knitting.”

  “Shame, lassie, you were at the keyhole.”

  “The house echoes.” I shook back my hair. “The butler was giving us jim-jam looks back there. I wonder if he had his ear glued to the wall and overheard what you said to the old ladies.”

  “Oot and away! What difference if he did? He must know what they’re aboot.”

  He was right. Butler must have known a fair bit about the Tramwells before he dropped by that night to burgle the house. Why, they may have been out playing cards on that very occasion. We were in the walk, under the rustling archway of the trees, and stealthily, chillingly, terror soaked through my pores.

  “What is it, lassie?”

  “Nothing. Only that this place gives me the spooks.” We stopped and he tilted my chin up with one of his enormous fingers. “Go home, Tessa; forget all this hashing and be a daughter to a man who loves you. Aye, I know he does, because if a wee bairn could have been dropped on my doorstep I’d have liked it to be you.”

  I picked at his silver watch chain so he wouldn’t see my tears. “If you had had me to raise, you wouldn’t have been able to indulge yourself at every pokey clockmaker’s in every village you amble through.”

  “On the subject of extravagance”—his voice was pensive—”do you think, Tessa, that despite appearances, the ladies of the manor may be noon too flush in the pocket?”

  A fierce tooting of a car horn burst into the stillness of the walk and, turning, we saw Mr. Deasley’s car across the lane. “Want a lift into the village? Going that way and more than happy to oblige any friend of the Tramwells.”

  “Aye, I’ll no refuse. I’m noo much of a walker,” said Angus.

  How could he rush off like that? I thought of all the things I wanted to talk with him about—the missing picture in the gallery, Chantal’s shattering words last night.... He winked, then said in a rumble, “A rare pleasure meeting you, young lady—and one I hope will be repeated soon.” The last I saw of him was his trying to unravel the seat belt to accommodate his vast bulk before the gleaming Vauxhall chugged away, Mr. Deasley’s mouth opening and closing faster than the wheels turned.

  Time for a stern self-to-self lecture. Saving the sisters from their nefarious practices was not my job—yet. If and when I discovered we were related I would take them in hand. Now I would return to Cloisters, write a letter to Dad and Fergy, and make notes of all I had learned about Lily and Violet. Busy work, but I would have to wait until everyone was in bed tonight before scouring the house in a last-ditch effort. Quickening my step, I passed the Ruins. Crumbs! Was that the Reverend Snapper standing behind a crumbling pillar? It was. And how peculiar, he pretending not to see me. Unless he was remembering his undignified exit of the night before.

  As I crossed the back lawn I saw Chantal exit from the side of the house. A series of gurgling yelps, and Minerva came romping up to me. By the time I disentangled her paws from my neck, Chantal was gone. So was Minerva half a second later, diving off towards the Ruins.

  Thoughts of her chasing the Reverend Snapper up a pillar cheered me as I went into the empty sitting room. Good—as long as the Tramwells weren’t in the hall I should be able to get upstairs without being hailed for a chat or a cup of coffee. Despite my defence of the sisters I still wasn’t ready to face them without feeling an
gry with them. I didn’t feel I would be very adept at hiding my emotions at this time.

  And was proved right. A faint, distant, tinny clatter caused my hands to clench in the pockets of my borrowed skirt. My nerves must be in a bad way if a saucepan dropped in the kitchen ... Walking slowly to the wall on the left of the French windows, I said softly, “If I could hear that and Chantal’s singing, part of one of the kitchen walls must back onto this room.” Even so, with the notorious thickness of old walls it was surprising that sound travelled so well. Perhaps not. Two feet from the edge of the curtain was an unobtrusive hatchway. How delightfully convenient for passing through a plate of sandwiches when the family was alone and informal, and the servants all down with the plague. The shutter was closed, but I lifted it an inch, without making a sound, and spied the top of a dresser. Not all that convenient, after all, to pass anything through, one would have to stand on a step-ladder.

  Out in the hall I picked up The Tramwell Family and, thumbing through the pages, mounted the stairs. In the nursery I placed it on my bedside table to read that night while I waited for sleep to overtake the other inhabitants, and automatically fingered my wrist. I hadn’t put on my charm bracelet that morning and it was gone from the table. Neither had I worn my watch—doing so would have made me feel even more unworthy when meeting Angus—but it still lay coiled up like a sleeping dormouse on the scarred wooden surface. Think! I hadn’t worn the bracelet last night. Very fishy: first the watch is missing, then returned, and now this. Either I was going demented in true Gothic fashion, or someone was playing Gothic games. The same someone who had locked me in the priest hole? Looking for moths in the wardrobe—fie on you, Butler! What a pity Detective Fields is here on personal business, or she could have a lot of fun pondering your checkered past.

  Back to business. Seating myself at the ink-stained desk, I tore a sheet of paper out of a dog-eared exercise book, picked up a pencil, and scribbled a quick letter to Dad. Quick because I did not wish to dwell on the reassuring fibs I was telling. Ah! Here was an envelope and Harry would provide the stamp.

  Now to seine the subconscious. I wrote “Violet” in square stubby strokes. Move, pencil! And it took off as if bewitched by Chantal. Mrs. Grundy said I resembled Violet but Maude said not physically, Maude writing letters to her. Airmail letter this morning—Wilkinson (and now the pencil went wild) She once gave Godfrey a dead frog ... “morbid girl,” he said, turned Catholic, the hearse, Wilkinson ... the pencil lead snapped off and I sat staring down at the paper. Spooky—not that I seriously believed some unseen force had guided my hand any more (a shiver) than I had believed in evil atmospheres before entering Abbots Walk on Monday. My mind was just spilling out fragments of information it had filed away and which ... Why did the hearse and the name Wilkinson go together? Then I had it! On the way to Cheynwind Hyacinth had said the vehicle had been sold to them by Wilkinson’s, the undertakers, who had gone heavily into cremation.

  Violet married into a family of undertakers? Rather gruesome. But perhaps she had been driven into it, on the rebound from the ill-fated union that had produced me. Absently touching the exercise book as I reached for the paper, I read in the top right-hand corner the words “Violet Tramwell.” Hands shaking, I flipped it open, calling myself all sorts of names for not searching this gold mine of a room sooner, and found that all the writing on the filled pages was in French. Never mind, there were plenty more exercise books on the shelves next to the desk.

  Piling them onto my lap, I went through them for fifteen minutes. I found two belonging to Lily. I touched the pages lightly, trying to get the feel of this child who had been terrible at arithmetic but a good speller—or so her tutor father had thought. Remembering when I had done similar work, I decided that Lily must have been about eight at the time of both books. I thumbed past Latin by Hyacinth and Literary Analysis by Primrose and came to Composition by Violet. In the front pages was a loose piece of paper. On it was a drawing of a coffin with two beaming stick figures seated inside holding hands, with a fancy scripted legend below—Violet Tramwell loves Arthur Wilkinson. Okay, she’d had a crush on him as a child, and the woman she had become had left home and country, and changed her religion for a man her family considered beneath her. None of that made Violet an unlikely candidate for the role of my mother. She could have fallen prey to some passing philanderer while Arthur was getting established in America; or perhaps Arthur was my father, and ...

  I chewed the end of the pencil. Part of me found it difficult to imagine Violet depositing darling Arthur’s baby on a doorstep, but she was obviously a very determined character—and if an untimely pregnancy had threatened her relationship with the man she loved, wasn’t it perfectly understandable that she would have chosen the lover over the baby?

  No, it wasn’t—not when the baby was me. But then, my mother wasn’t some fanciful extension of me. Harry had tried to instill that realization in me often enough. The distant orchestra of clocks punctured the silence of the nursery, and I realized I would have to go down soon for lunch and face the sisters without revealing any knowledge of their guilty secret. “Guilty secret! Who are you to judge others?” Dad’s voice was so close, so clear, that I almost expected to turn around and find him behind me.

  A lovely, peaceful feeling came over me as I remembered what else Dad was wont to say. “You don’t love people despite their faults but because of them.” In coming here I had committed myself to finding my mother, and I would just have to take her as I found her. Should, incredible as it seemed, her name be Mrs. Arthur Wilkinson, undertaker’s, wife, or even Hyacinth or Primrose Tramwell. Writing the word “Lily,” I underlined it and added Her father never recovered from her death.

  After staring at those few words for several minutes, I found I could write nothing else about Lily. Had the gallery contained portraits of the other sisters as adults I could have assumed that she had died in childhood—but until I knew the how and when of her demise I was stumped. Fear that the Tramwells would think it odd that someone in the throes of amnesia would show extreme curiosity about their past family history had prevented me from asking too many probing questions. But I would now have to take the plunge.

  The nursery had grown stuffy. I opened the window, leaning out to look at the garden. How peacefully innocent it appeared, washed sparkling clean from yesterday’s rain. A blackbird zoomed down from one of the elms, settled on the edge of the sundial, then fluttered off. Was the cat out? My eyes searched the flower beds for a skulking black form and then I saw what had disturbed the bird. Bertie was crouched behind a wooden seat. That boy! Was he playing Robin Hood? On impulse I leaned out the window and called down, “The Sheriff has Big John and Friar Tuck!”

  Bertie’s face inched over the top of the seat and he gaped. “Cripes, how did you know, miss?”

  “I know everything. Why didn’t you ask your friend to play?”

  “Fred?”

  “Don’t you have another one?”

  “You mean Ricky? Fred doesn’t like him anymore.”

  “And if the Tramwell ladies catch you skulking around they may not like you anymore. Better scram.”

  Leaving the window open so the nursery would catch a little sun, I went into the hallway, and on impulse decided to look in some of the rooms in the hopes of finding portraits of the four sisters as adults. Down the whole length of the hallway I tiptoed, opening one door after another into—nakedness. Not one was furnished. Yesterday, when I had opened the wrong doors looking for the bathroom, I had thought how sensible the sisters were to have cleared a few rooms to save on work for the servants. Now, a deep sense of foreboding moved within me.

  At last; here was a room furnished and obviously occupied. It was crowded with black lacquered furniture decorated with Oriental panels which did not complement the hyacinth-patterned wallpaper. Next, a large linen cupboard. And then, a room with primroses on the paper, a dainty frilly room with a canopied four-poster bed and an ornate French armoire cut
ting one corner. Mm ... None of the previous, barren rooms had possessed floral wallpaper that I could remember. A creaking below the bannister rail brought me up short. I paused, listened, and went on past the bathroom. But yesterday, when I had opened those doors by mistake, surely I had seen a room with flowered paper.

  Here it was. Empty of all furnishings, except for the faded mauve-blue curtains at the window; a blue that picked up the colour of the violets garlanding the walls. Not even a footstool. I bit down on a nail. Even if Violet had never come home for a holiday, I would have thought her old room would have been kept in readiness, just in case. The room next door did possess a footstool, pushed up against the far wall. Above it was a small plain brass cross. I was standing near the door, tracing the shape of one of the lilies on the paper, when a hand came down on my shoulder. A scream rose in my throat which I barely managed to swallow.

  “After Lily’s death Father used to come here and pray.” Hyacinth spoke as though we had been in the middle of a conversation. Her black hooded eyes were on the cross.

  Now I could ask the big question. So easy, but my voice crawled out in a whisper. “How did your sister die?”

  I thought at first she would never answer. Then, leaving me standing in the doorway, she went and stood with her back to me in the middle of the room. “I suppose one could say Lily was a victim of the Tramwell family curse.”

  * * *

  Chapter 12

  “What?”

  “Lily fell down the stairs, like our ancestress, Tessa.”