Flowers Stained With Moonlight by Catherine Shaw Read Free Book Online

endured!
    ‘Do you like spotted dick, dearie?’ she was saying pleasantly. ‘Lovely – we’ll have that tonight, then, after the roast. Just let me know if there’s any special thing you’d favour.’
    Mr Huxtable, Sarah and Mrs Firmin comprise the entire staff of the household. It seems a small one, yet when I reflect that Mrs Bryce-Fortescue lives most of the time quite alone, I suppose that after all it is probably more than sufficient.
    After the culinary conversation, Mrs Bryce-Fortescue showed me upstairs to my room, the farthest of a line of three small chambers next to each other on the left-hand side of the narrow passageway lying directly over the large one below.
    ‘My room is there, and the bathroom is beyond,’ she said, gesturing towards the closed doors on the right-hand side of the passage before opening the one leading into the room in which she had placed me. It was a neat little square, with a window looking out over the gardens at the back of the house.
    ‘This other door leads into the chamber over the library,’ she told me, indicating a closed door on the opposite side of the room from the one we entered by, with a little dressingtable in front of it. ‘It is bolted shut, for we no longer enter that room. Not only is there a real danger of tiles or parts of beams falling from the roof into the room, as has already happened several times, but the floor has been inundated with water so deeply and so often that we fear it is quite rotten in parts, under the bricks, and we are afraid it may break open over the library. This room used to be Sylvia’s old schoolroom, but we have fitted it out with a bed since then. Camilla is next to you, in the room that was once used by Sylvia’s governess, and she herself is in her own bedroom beyond. We have no problems with floors or ceilings in these little rooms; they and the roof above them were strengthened and rebuilt just two years ago.’
    ‘It must be a great job to have the roof mended,’ I remarked.
    ‘Yes, it is a difficult job, for the rotten beams must be carefully removed and replaced and the roof tiles also. It was … it was thanks to the generosity of my son-in-law that I could have it done. He offered to have some of the most urgent work on the house done for me when he married Sylvia, and I – I accepted his offer.’
    ‘That was very kind of him,’ I said innocently, although Mr Granger’s gift sounded suspiciously like what is known as a bride-price in certain primitive societies. Mrs Bryce-Fortescue did not answer, and I began to have a feeling that Mr Granger was not a simple character. I determined that my first step would be to spare no efforts to find out everything I could about the kind of man he was, and decided that my first source of information shouldbe the coachman Peter. I asked if it would be all right for Peter to take me to the post office tomorrow.
    ‘Oh, there is no need for that,’ said Mrs Bryce-Fortescue a little annoyingly, although she meant well, of course. ‘Just leave your letters on the hall table; he takes them to the post office himself each day. Now, about this afternoon. I have sent the girls out for a walk until teatime, which we take in the parlour at four o’clock. In principle, that is also when the police inspector is supposed to arrive, and if he arrives unexpectedly early, as he frequently does, Sylvia will not be in. I shall leave you now, if you wish, until four, for I am sure that you wish to repose and refresh yourself. Please ring if you need anything and Sarah will come.’
    She left me, and I waited until her footsteps died away in the corridor and I heard the click of a door closing. I waited eagerly, with pounding heart, and as soon as I believed I could not possibly be observed, I stepped silently to the second door of the bedroom, shifted the little table in front of it to one side, and tried to slide the bolt back, for something told me that the large chamber behind my bedroom