02 - Down the Garden Path

by Dorothy Cannell

  “Harry, I’m worried about the Tramwells. Wednesday night we went to a card party at Cheynwind Hall—that’s the home of Godfrey Grundy, the local Squire—and although they won, I’m afraid they aren’t always as lucky, because they’ve sold off nearly all the furniture and are now starting on the silver and books. And the most unfortunate thing ... you won’t believe who was among the guests, along with ...”

  Harry laughed, sliding a hand over my mouth. “Oh, Tessa! Your imagination is a witch’s cauldron.”

  I pushed his hand away. “I tell you, those two women are hardened gamblers, and what is more, they cheat. Rather creatively, to give them their due, but someone recognized what they were up to—and that someone was Angus Hunt.”

  “The man you worked for at The Heritage?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I gather he didn’t give the game away where you were concerned.” Harry stood up and paced slowly up and down in front of me. It was now light enough for me to see the olive green of his thick-knit sweater and the faded blue of his frayed jeans. “You say that Hunt caught on to what the women were doing. Did he start some sort of row?” His voice was so grim that I was afraid he now viewed Cloisters as a gaming hell and that he’d carry me off to prevent my being totally corrupted by two sweet old ladies. (Sweet! Whatever else they were, they certainly weren’t that.) A straggle of hair tickled my nose, and I blew it away.

  “Angus is too much a gentleman to verbally attack anyone publicly if it can be avoided. And there was someone else present—one Fritz Wortter, who was thirsting to do Primrose bodily harm. Angus came over yesterday morning to admonish and warn the Tramwells....” My words were interrupted by a soul-wrenching howling in the distance.

  “Some animal is in deep trouble. Either hurt or trapped somewhere.” Harry slid off the wall and grabbed backwards for my hand. “We’d better look.”

  “It must be Minnie, the Tramwells’ dog. I found her semiconscious in the attic just now. I thought she was all right or I would never have let her go off.” I watched Harry’s face as he listened. The sound came again, still anguished.

  Harry was yanking me forward. “I was wrong. That sound isn’t pain. It’s more like ...”

  “What?” We scrambled over a broken ridge of wall. If anything happened to Minnie the sisters would be devastated.

  “... Terror. That dog is deathly afraid. Listen! The sound is coming from the walk. Let’s go.” He dragged me to the lane, and as my feet sent pebbles and twigs scattering, I thought, Who would want to harm Minnie? But someone apparently did. I had been too preoccupied after finding her to consider the significance of the attic door being closed when I went to enter. Minnie couldn’t have shut it behind her and it could not have swung to on its own. And as for an accident, who would go up to the attic at night? Primrose had said it was rarely used, and Chantal ... Chantal was out.

  The leaves on the elms were olive, almost black. No light penetrated beneath the canopied branches of the walk. The secret patter of the trees deepened as we walked beneath them. The air was cold. Why did I hate this place? Was it only that it was steeped in my guilt? I would go back to Cloisters; I would confess all to the Tramwells and beg their forgiveness. What was a little cheating at cards compared with my deception?

  “Look!” rasped Harry. He pointed forward, the other hand digging into my arm. About halfway down Abbots Walk a giant shadow lay sprawled on the ground. A man-sized shadow. A dark brown robe stretched wide across the splayed legs. Even when Harry dragged me down with him to kneel on the ground we could not see the face for the attached hood that covered it. A thin rope was knotted around the waist. A monk’s habit. Someone wandering away from a fancy-dress party in a drunken stupor? But who would blunder into this lonely spot at this lonely hour? Harry was reaching forward to draw back that hood, and I wanted to stop him. Stop time, or push it back behind the day when I had first come to Flaxby Meade.

  My hand moved to clutch Harry’s wrist, but came down instead on brown cloth. When I raised my palm it was dark and wet with blood.

  “Poor devil,” said Harry. And now I had to look at the face because anything was better than staring stupidly at blood upon my palm. No ... not better. Not better. I tried to scream but my throat locked. Somewhere close by a dog howled.

  “Angus,” I moaned, reaching out with both hands to touch his face. “Don’t be dead. Please, please, don’t be dead.” Tears were dripping on to my hands. “It’s Tessa, and I love you.”

  “Angus Hunt,” said Harry very low. “Give him room, Tessa. He is alive, barely. He needs every breath of air he can get. Be a good girl and run for help. Phone for an ambulance and then notify the police. I’ll stay with him.”

  The police. They would find who had done this, who had dressed Angus up in this grizzly costume and lured him here. But I didn’t care about who or why, if only ... “I can’t leave him.”

  “For God’s sake, Tessa, I can’t let you stay. The maniac who did this may still be lurking nearby.”

  I had found one of Angus’s hands and was rubbing it. How cold it was. But if I could only keep him going—will him to live. It seemed to be working. Through my drenched eyes I saw the white lips struggle to form a shape. A sighing breath, and then, as I bent my ear above his mouth, I caught the word “Dog ...”

  “Yes, she told us you were in trouble. But now you are going to be all right.”

  A bubble of pinkish foam appeared at the side of his mouth. Again that agonizing striving to mould words.

  “The dogs ... Min ...”

  “The dog’s what?” asked Harry gently.

  Angus’s eyes opened and he looked at me. His lips didn’t move, but somehow he was smiling. And after that I couldn’t see him anymore. “Tessa, lassie, glad you’re here.” His voice was laboured but clear. “False friend ... phoned , . . told me she was going to kill herself ... hang herself here ... tell them I am sorry ... never could keep my mouth shut ... tell them I am very fond of my two old aunties in ...”

  He was dead. I had never seen anyone die before, but I knew that Angus had just died. My fault. All my fault, for Angus must have come back to see me. Yes, he had told the Tramwells he wanted the card games stopped, but he wouldn’t have hounded them.

  “Tessa, I’m so sorry, but I don’t think even if we had got to him sooner that anything could have been done to save him. Poor devil ... did he have any family other than those two aunts in Dundee?”

  The hand I had raised to wipe my face stopped an inch or two from my cheek. ‘‘How did you know they live in Dundee? Oh, never mind. What does it matter?” I rubbed a knuckle under my right lid. “Whoever did this is going to pay.”

  “We should have asked him if he recognized his assailant. But at least we know that it was a woman, and that she got him into the walk by threatening to hang herself from one of the trees.”

  A woman.

  “From the looks of this”—Harry’s fingers hovered, without touching, over the sodden chest area—“he was stabbed. I suppose it’s too much to hope that the murderer dropped the knife when the dog gave chase.”

  “Don’t,” I said. “I don’t want to see any of it in my mind.” A scuffling sound brought us both to our feet. The killer was returning. To retrieve the murder weapon or to silence Harry and me in case Angus had told us too much? I was remembering the last time Harry and I were in Abbots Walk and Primrose came pouncing through the trees with ... Someone dropped with a skidding thump behind me and I whirled, bracing myself.

  “It weren’t me,” whined Bertie. “Honest it weren’t. An’ I didn’t see nuffink. Don’t let the rozzers pin it on me!”

  “Don’t talk rot. No one could think this the work of a child.” Relief blending with misery made my voice curt as Harry drew me to stand with him in front of Angus to shield him from Bertie’s view. But with leaves and dust still clinging to his jersey and trousers, he inched around us.

  “ ‘As ‘e croaked?”

  Harry nodded. Ki
cking aside a fallen branch, he took hold of Bertie’s arm, walked him over to the edge of the walk, and eased him down on the ground. “You’re doing fine, old man, but murder—especially on an empty stomach—is rough. Easy. Put your head down between your knees.”

  “I ain’t gonna faint,” Bertie quavered. True enough. He looked closer to being very sick. His face was the colour of Spirogyra. Crouching down, I hugged him. The silence all around us grew so dense that when it was broken by a twig snapping I clutched Bertie convulsively. His head came up.

  “Sorry,” I said. “A mouse or a bird, that’s all. You’re going to be all right, Bertie. Honest.”

  “Better than all right.” Harry’s voice was soothing. “The police aren’t going to give you a bad time. They’ll be as pleased as ninepence with you. Their star witness. The newspapers will refer to you as assisting Scotland Yard in its enquiries, and you’ll be able to watch your mates at school turn green with envy.”

  “I told you. I didn’t see nuffink.”

  “Tess, get him to the house.”

  “In a minute.” Reaching out I touched Bertie’s hair. “What about Fred? He’s not as sensitive as you, is he? I bet he looked out through the leaves when he heard ...” I couldn’t go on.

  “Fred? Another child was with you?” Harry dropped the hands he had been impatiently holding out to assist us up. “Where is he now?”

  Bertie scraped at his scuffed red knees. “Scarpered, ‘e did. But ‘e telled me ‘e didn’t see much. The leaves was in the way an’ ‘e were afraid to lean out....” Another twig snapped.

  “But he did see something?” I pressed. And suddenly I was afraid of his answer. I wanted to know, needed to know who had done this loathsome thing, but I also wanted the murderer to be someone I could hate without reservation. Someone with a motive unconnected with Flaxby Meade and Cloisters.

  Harry pressed a finger against his lips, and I stared at him numbly for seconds before grasping what I would have realized sooner if shock hadn’t sent me out of my head. It was folly, dangerous folly, to sit here—screened only by the trees—discussing what had been witnessed. The killer might be miles away; but he could also be cowering within hearing distance.

  “Come on, Bertie.” I dragged at his hand. “We’ll talk about Fred later.” He didn’t move and I got up.

  Contrary child—words suddenly began to gush out of Bertie’s mouth, and I was afraid to tell him what I feared in case he went into a screeching panic, which in turn might panic the killer if he heard. (We were dealing with a madman, weren’t we? The monk’s robe indicated as much.) “It were ‘alf dark—an’ it all ‘appened so quick. All Fred knowed was that they was coming through the walk, two of them. Then one of them bends down and picks up a branch an’ coshes the other. An’ then ‘e what done it starts looking around on the ground, like for something. After that Fred didn’t look no more. Everything went real gruesome quiet until the dog come and starts up a ruckus.”

  “Get going, you two.” Harry sliced out the words.

  “I don’t want to leave you here.”

  “Don’t be silly.” He pressed a hand into my back as I stood hesitating. It was Bertie who pulled me forward, and we were halfway down the walk when Harry called out “Tessa.” I spun Bertie round with me. “Tessa, there’s something ... but this isn’t the time. Just please always remember ... that I do love you.”

  The words went drifting up into the elms and the birds came back to life chippering and chirping disdainfully. But Angus would have understood my half-strangled surge of joy. Bertie squeezed my hand tighter. “You’ll think me bonkers, miss, but that gent’s voice sounds like the man what attacked you; you wouldn’t remember, but ...”

  I yanked him around and started running. If I told Bertie he must be mistaken, and later, during the murder investigation ... As we neared the end of the avenue the trees crowded closer and the effect was claustrophic, ensnaring. So much was bound to come out during the investigation. Harry’s and my deception. Oh, God. Hadn’t Maude said that first evening that such an attack could lead to murder, next time? When I explained to the police that I knew Harry, that it had all been a masquerade, he would be safe from suspicion. Or would he? Might they not categorize him as an unstable type, along with me—the bad seed? They would leap to the conclusion that Angus had discovered my hoax. They would imagine him threatening me—but wasn’t that better than their finding out that he had threatened the Tramwells about their card playing practices?

  A woman. Harry had taken Angus’s dying words as definitely indicting a woman as the murderer. Into the brackish light ahead a woman came pedalling a bicycle at a smooth fast clip.

  “Bertie,” Maude cried, braking to a standstill with her foot, her navy blue cloak flapping up and down at her sides. “What are you doing here? You should be at home having breakfast. So sorry, I was delayed at Cheynwind; there’s been a real set-to up there.”

  Arms outstretched, Bertie scrambled towards her, half bawling, half whining. “Don’t be cross, Aunt Maude. Somefink awful’s ‘appened. Some gent’s bin done in.”

  “My word, no!” Maude side-stepped off the bike and propped it against a tree, looking at me. “This isn’t another of Bertie’s yarns, is it?” Her big comfortable arms went around him and I wanted to run and throw myself against her cushiony body, too. Lucky Bertie.

  “It’s true. A man is dead.” I came slowly up to them. “His name is Angus Hunt and he was one of the guests the other night at Cheynwind. We’re on our way to Cloisters to notify the police.”

  “But not murdered? Surely not?” She removed a hand from Bertie and held it out to me. “I do remember the man, if he was the one with the Scottish accent. About fiftyish and very overweight—a prime candidate for a heart attack. I must get to him at once, it may not be quite as bad as you fear.” She let go of my hand and eased Bertie towards me.

  “There’s a man named Harry Harkness with him. I am sure he will appreciate your waiting with him until the police arrive, but Mr. Hunt is definitely dead.” I rubbed a hand down the side of my face, feeling my jaw muscles swell out like a boil. “He was stabbed, and poor Bertie was in one of the trees when it happened. You can be proud of him, he’s doing very well, aren’t you, pal?” I tweaked one of his ears, my eyes focussing on a damp spike of hair where a tear of mine had landed.

  “Bertie, my poor little Noddy.” She enveloped both of us in her cape. “Will you be all right while Aunt goes back and has a look at the poor man?” Bestowing on Bertie one final hug, Maude asked me to see he got something hot and sweet to drink as soon as he reached the house, and started off at a fast pace down the walk.

  Shoulders squared, chin raised, Bertie ran beside me into the lane. As we came up to the Ruins, I suddenly felt I didn’t want to reach the house. I didn’t want to face the sisters. What if...? But no; the belief that they might be my relations had nothing to do with my conviction that they could have had nothing to do with Angus’s murder. Whatever their faults, they weren’t bad people. How could they be when they had put faith in a social outcast like Butler, and had taken pride in Chantal’s heritage rather than throwing salt over their shoulders every time she came near? They were amusing and hospitable and loved that exceptionally plain dog. You see! After only a few days at Cloisters I balked at the idea of terming Minnie ugly.

  Minnie. As Bertie and I came into the garden I saw her. She was leaping in circles around the Squire, who was trying to stroke her. As he saw our approach he jerked his hand away from her sharply displayed teeth, rubbing his clenched fist before shoving it to safety in his pocket.

  “The exquisite Tessa.” He minced a smile. “Rather pitiful, really; my trying to make nice with this revolting flea-bag. Doggies have never liked me and rejection does terrible things to my sensitive soul. How cruel life is—and this morning I am so particularly vulnerable. Tell me, have either of you dear people seen my mumsie? The old darling has run away from home in the most frightful tizz. That overpaid nu
rse promised to check Abbots Walk while I came up here.”

  “I’m sorry, but we haven’t seen Mrs. Grundy.”

  “Thank God for that!” Godfrey clutched his cashmere bosom, and I walked round him, not caring that he wasn’t making any sense.

  “Between you, me, and the gatepost”—Godfrey tripped after Bertie and me up the verandah steps—”Mumsie can’t stand the Tramwells. But she only enjoys visiting people she doesn’t like, so even disregarding her threats, which I didn’t take seriously, I half suspect that we will find her seated within.”

  “Then she is going to be in for a shock, along with Hyacinth and Primrose.” I was speaking in a stone-cold voice as the sitting room French windows opened and Hyacinth stepped out.

  One look at both my face and Bertie’s told her something was dreadfully wrong. “Tessa, what is it? What has happened?” The earrings seemed to glide in slow motion and I had to clutch at the window frame to keep myself steady. My legs had turned to porridge and, although I opened my mouth, I couldn’t speak. It was left to Bertie to chirp out the news.

  “The man in the walk, miss. He’s bin ‘orribly murdered.”

  “What are you saying, child? The man in the walk? You don’t mean—not the man on the motorbike the other day who ...” She was clenching my arms. “Tessa, it can’t be! Not Harry! Tell me it’s not Harry!”

  * * *

  Chapter 14

  Anger was an iron curtain for the moment blocking out grief. The traitor. And with those words I condemned Harry, not Hyacinth. She and Primrose were victims in his despicable double-cross, but I alone was his dupe. They had acceded to his fiendish request because they were fond of him. He was their distant cousin, the heir of whom they had spoken. No wonder I had experienced that feeling on first being admitted to Cloisters that All Was Going Too Smoothly! Harry had perverted my sensitively choreographed Regency masquerade into a Gothic frolic.