Annie Haynes Premium Collection – 8 Murder Mysteries in One Volume. Annie Haynes

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СКАЧАТЬ views and the parent of a numerous progeny, was leaning over her garden gate in a négligé costume. “I don’t know what we shall do if it be wet,” Mavis went on. “Certainly there will be the tents, but you will be crowded up all of you.”

      “Ay, and tents isn’t everything if it rains!” remarked Mrs. Grogram, whose disposition was apparently pessimistic. “I mind how when I was staying with my cousin and we went to Squire Mayhew’s harvest home it set on to pour, and after about half an hour it come through the marquee, as they called it, just as if it was running through a sieve.”

      “Well, we must hope that ours will be made of stouter stuff,” said Mavis with a laugh. “You’ll bring Tommy, won’t you, Mrs. Grogram. My brother wants the children particularly.”

      “Which I call very good of him, m’m, and him having none of his own. Oh, yes, I shall bring Tommy! Mr. Garth Davenant’ll be coming down, I reckon, Miss Mavis?”

      Mavis’s colour deepened.

      “He will be at the Court to-morrow.”

      “Ah, I thought we should have him over, though it doesn’t seem long since he went away! As I said to Grogram when he said maybe Mr. Garth would not be able to spare the time, ‘Bless you, Grogram,’ I says, ‘he’ll make time for that! Do you think he’d leave Miss Mavis alone with all the folk going in and out of the Manor, and all Sir Arthur’s friends about?’ Nice looking young gentlemen too, some of them, I’ll be bound! No, he won’t give them a chance of cutting him out!”

      In spite of a touch of vexation Mavis laughed aloud.

      “I don’t think he is coming because he thinks I am not to be trusted, Mrs. Grogram, but because he knows that I shouldn’t enjoy it a bit if he were not there.”

      “Ay, do you think so, indeed, miss? Well, we are all like that one time or another,” Mrs. Grogram replied indulgently. “As for Mr. Garth,” she added more critically, “I am not going to say but he is a fine figure of a man, but as far as looks go he isn’t a patch on poor Mr. Walter. The last big ‘do’ as you may call it, as we had down in these parts was when he come of age, wasn’t it, miss?

      Mavis looked grave.

      “I suppose it was,” she said hesitatingly, “but that was when my uncle was alive, before we lived here, and I was only a child then.”

      “Were you really, miss? I am sure no one would think it to see the well-grown young lady you are now,” Mrs. Grogram observed complimentarily. “Then you never see Mr. Walter, miss? But there, it wasn’t long after that that it all happened. I shouldn’t wonder if it don’t bring it back to Mr. Garth though. The good lady as come down last week is over again for the coming of age, I suppose, miss?”

      “What good lady?” asked Mavis mechanically. Her thoughts had strayed far away from Mrs. Grogram and were busy with that tragedy of old.

      “The one as come here thinking she might know something about the young lady, Miss Hilda, as they call her.”

      Mavis frowned. Though of late, unconfessed even to herself, an element of distrust had crept into her feeling for Hilda, still loyalty to her brother demanded that Mrs. Grogram’s disparaging tone, when speaking of his fiancée, should be checked.

      “Oh, you mean Mrs. Leparge!” she said coldly. “No, she is not likely to be here—in fact, poor lady, she is probably too much occupied to find the time.”

      “Oh, no!” Mrs. Grogram said confidently. “She has got time enough, miss. She is staying down here now. An hour or so ago I had occasion to go up to Farmer Townson’s, and I come across her talking to Miss Hilda over by the Home Wood.”

      Mavis looked surprised.

      “I think you must be mistaken, Mrs. Grogram.”

      “Mistaken! Me, miss!” Mrs. Grogram’s tone was righteously indignant. “It ain’t often as I make a mistake; more by token as I had almost to ask ’em to move to let me get over the stile. This person here, she were telling the young lady she must do something—I don’t know rightly what, I’m sure, but I heard her say, ‘The rest can be managed, but it remains for you to do your part.’ Yes, miss, them was her very words.”

      “Oh!” said Mavis, feeling distinctly puzzled. “Well, I don’t know, I am sure; I had no idea she was likely to be in the neighbourhood again. Perhaps her inquiries after her daughter may have brought her this way.”

      “Perhaps they may,” Mrs. Grogram assented with a sniff as Mavis moved on. “Thank you kindly, miss! I am sure I hope the weather will hold good.”

      Mavis walked quickly up the lane and into the park. Very bitterly now, watching her brother’s growing infatuation for Hilda, was she inclined to regret the introduction of a stranger into their home circle; more especially did she blame herself for yielding to the spell that Hilda’s beauty and charm had cast over her.

      She dated her first conscious feeling that Hilda was not the wife her brother should have chosen from Mrs. Leparge’s visit, and she was by no means inclined to welcome the news that that lady was in the neighbourhood again. She knit her brows as she walked quickly over the short grass, crisp with the first frost of autumn, and tried to recall the events of the last three months in their true sequence, but so much seemed to have happened in them that her brain grew confused. She told herself, looking back, that she could have fancied it a phantasmagoria of bad dreams, in which the only thing that was real was her love for Garth, or, as she whispered with a tender little smile, their love for one another.

      Lunch was on the table, and was indeed, being somewhat of an informal meal at the Manor, already in progress when she went into the dining-room. Hilda was looking particularly well, Mavis noticed, as she slipped into the place opposite; the pale blue gown she was wearing was one that had been run together for her by Lady Laura’s maid, as Mavis knew, but its very simplicity made Hilda look younger and more girlish. She seemed bright and animated too, and was exchanging gay badinage with Arthur, from whom she glanced off to smile at Mavis.

      “What do you say to this new proposal, Mavis—that you and I are to take a day in town to-morrow to choose the presents to be given at the treat next week?”

      “It is out of the question for me, I am afraid,” Mavis said as the man brought her a plate. “Garth comes down to-morrow. I hear you have met a friend to-day, Hilda.”

      “A friend!” Hilda looked bewildered. “I don’t know what you mean. I think,” with a wistful smile, “all the friends I know are in this room at present.”

      “I heard you had been having a chat with Mrs. Leparge.”

      “With Mrs. Leparge?” Hilda’s amazement became more obvious. “Is she here?”

      “Isn’t she?” Mavis parried. “Have you not been talking to her?”

      “I? Certainly not!”

      “What bee have you got in your bonnet now, Mavis?” her brother struck in. “Hilda has not had much opportunity of talking to anybody but me; she has been out with me all the morning, and I think I have taken up most of her time.”

      “I suppose it was a mistake then,” Mavis said, turning, her attention to her lunch. “Mrs. Grogram told me she saw you by the stile going into the Home Coppice, and that you were talking СКАЧАТЬ