Down the Garden Path by Dorothy Cannell Page B

shake and stood up. “What still worries me most, dear, is your family.” She came over and felt my forehead. “You weren’t carrying anything that could possibly identify you?”
    “Oh!” I managed a creditable start. “I never looked on the ground to see if I had a handbag with me.”
    Primrose preened herself a little. “Ah, but I did. Not a sign of one.”
    My mouth drooped and I lifted a trembling hand to thread a loose curl behind my right ear. “That’s that, then!”
    “I wouldn’t discount hope.” Hyacinth reached across and patted my knee bracingly. “We will check your clothes for labels. See if we can discover where they were purchased. You know I really do begin to see the fascination of the detection business. Perhaps if you find, upon recovering your memory, that you do not urgently have to be elsewhere, you would remain with us for a little while. We could put our heads together and see if we might not uncover the identity of your attacker.”
    It was working! They were falling prey to the romantic lure of the highwayman. So why this funny feeling of something lodged unpleasantly in my throat? Certainly it wasn’t a fear of wrinkled old labels disclosing who I was. My clothes had all been bought at Selfridge’s. Was it an attack of conscience? Or that the Tramwells’ quirky old-maidishness left me winded? Nurse Krumpet’s solid ordinariness served to emphasize their oddity. She passed another hand over my brow. “No headache, dizziness, or nausea? Splendid! I really do believe you will do just fine.” Her voice was a little absent-minded. Thinking of something else—a case perhaps. A baby she had to deliver?
    At that moment I did experience a decided dizziness. Deliver a baby! I was very likely in the same room as the woman who had delivered me. My lack of birth certificate had always pointed to my being eased into the world by someone who could keep her mouth shut. Someone with personal loyalties. Wasn’t Maude Krumpet proving that, despite old feuds, when the Tramwells called she came? When they asked for discretion she complied? She was buttoning her cape, still looking at me.
    “His being in the walk, I can’t help wondering ...”
    “Roaring around the countryside on his motorbike, nothing odd about that,” said Hyacinth.
    “Nasty, noisy things.” Maude did up the last button. “But as I say, I do wonder if he might be an acquaintance of your Chantal. Lovely girl. Would think she’d bring men buzzing round your back door like flies, but keeps to herself, doesn’t she? Only time I’ve seen her with a man was a week or so back. Yes—it was in the walk. I caught a glimpse of her standing just inside the trees as I pedalled past. Remember, because I thought him an odd sort of man and ...”
    “A tourist, I expect. Even though the season is ending we still get some gawking at the Ruins.” Primrose reached down to pat Minerva, who had ambled to her side. “But, dear me, I suppose it could have been him. Was he tall and handsome in a brutish piratical way?”
    “No, he was short, kind of skimpy, and ...”
    Nurse did not finish because Butler came through the door with a tray. With dust and grime removed he looked more than ever like his fictional namesake. Deferential, unobtrusive, of regal bearing—but other than that I would have been hard put to describe him. His hair was neither dark nor light. He was somewhere between tall and short and his eyes were a blend of green, grey, and brown. The perfect servant merging impeccably into the background of lives eased by servitude. As he left the room Nurse gulped down her tea, glanced at her watch, and said she must be off. If she was needed she would be at the Fletchers’, and then up at the Hall. The Squire’s mother had suffered another of her turns.
    Brushing away my murmured thanks Nurse left the room accompanied by the Tramwells, and I was left watching a sudden rain, slipping tearily down the windowpanes. I moved to the