The Return of the Gypsy by Philippa Carr Read Free Book Online Page A

fight shy of saying the word “dead” and try to make the act of dying less tragic by calling it something else.
    Dolly went on: “She’s gone. I went to her room and she’s not there. She’s just gone …”
    “Gone!” echoed Claudine. “How can she be? She found it hard to get about. Where could she have gone on a day like this? Tell me exactly …”
    “I think she must have gone last night.”
    “Oh no … Dolly, are you sure?”
    “I’ve searched the house. She’s nowhere to be found.”
    “It’s impossible. I’d better come over.”
    “I’ll come too,” I said.
    Claudine went up to her room to get her coat and snow boots. Dolly looked at me, staring in that disconcerting way she had.
    “I don’t know where she can have gone,” she said.
    “She can’t be far off. She was almost bedridden.”
    Claudine came down and we walked over to Grasslands. There were only two servants there; the man who managed the small estate lived in a cottage half a mile away and his wife also helped in the house.
    Dolly took us up to Mrs. Trent’s bedroom.
    “The bed has not been slept in,” I said.
    “No. She couldn’t have gone to bed last night.”
    “She must be in the house somewhere.”
    Dolly shook her head. “She’s not. We’ve looked everywhere.”
    Claudine went to the cupboard and opened the door. “Has she taken a coat?” she asked.
    Dolly nodded. Yes, she had taken a coat.
    “Then she must have gone out.”
    “On a night like last?” asked Dolly. “She would have caught her death.”
    “We’ve got to find her,” said Claudine. “She must have had some sort of breakdown. But where could she have gone?”
    Dolly shook her head.
    “I’ll go back to Eversleigh,” said Claudine. “We’ll send some men out to look for her. It’s going to snow later on. Where on earth can she be? Don’t worry, Dolly. We’ll find her. You stay here. Get a fire going in her bedroom. She may need to be warmed up when she gets back.”
    “But where is she?” cried Dolly.
    “That’s what we have to find out. Come along, Jessica.”
    As we trudged back to Eversleigh, Claudine said: “What a strange thing … That old woman. She had difficulty in walking up and down the stairs. I can’t think what this means. Oh dear, I do hope she is all right. I can’t think what will become of Dolly if anything happened to Mrs. Trent.”
    “It’s Dolly who really cared for Mrs. Trent.”
    “But Dolly … all alone in the world.”
    “She can’t be far away,” I said.
    “No. They’ll soon find her. But if she has been out all night … in this weather …”
    “She must have sheltered somewhere.”
    As soon as we returned to Eversleigh and told them what had happened search parties were organized. As predicted it started to snow and the strong winds were making almost a blizzard. The search went on all through the morning, and it was not until late afternoon when Mrs. Trent was found, not by one of the searchers, but by Polly Crypton. Polly had been out—bad as the weather was—to take a potion to old Mrs. Grimes, in one of the cottages, who suffered terribly from rheumatism and had run out of her medicine. Coming back Polly had stumbled over something close to her garden gate. To her horror she had discovered that it was a woman, and looking closer had recognized Mrs. Trent.
    It was clear to Polly that she had been dead some time. She hurried to give the alarm, and at last Mrs. Trent was brought back to Grasslands.
    Several of us were there—my mother, Claudine, David, Amaryllis and myself. The doctor had come. He said that the effort of walking so far would have put a great strain on her impaired health; it was his opinion that exhaustion had been the main cause of her death; and even if that had not been the case she would have frozen to death.
    “Whatever possessed her to go out in such weather?” cried Claudine.
    “She must have been temporarily out of her mind,” said my mother.
    “It is Dolly who