Down the Garden Path by Dorothy Cannell Page A

stairs.
    But it was Butler who was waiting there for me. Dared I hope that in my shroud nightgown he would take me for the house ghost, not the house guest?
    The master of unflappability did even better.
    “Pardon me, miss. It would seem that you have been sleep-walking. A very trying—indeed  dangerous—habit, I’m sure.” He reached out a deferential hand to assist me up from my grovelling position. “Brought on no doubt by a very ‘arrowing day. May I fetch something to settle you, miss? Say a cup of hot chocolate?”
    What a wonderful noble thing the Tramwells had done in reforming this man! What a credit to their benevolence!
    “Hot chocolate would be lovely, Butler. Thank you.” Minerva was lying on my feet but I managed a brilliant smile at the blurred figure of my rescuer.
    “At once, miss,” he responded with that marvellous blend of aloof respect. “Shall we say your room or mine, miss?”
    I quailed. What was this, blackmail? Somehow I managed a whisper. “How silly of me! I have just remembered that I don’t know whether I like hot chocolate or not. Better forget it. Goodnight. Coming, Minerva? Sweet of her—she seems to have taken a fancy to me. Wants to sleep on my bed.”
    In the safety of the nursery—key turned in the lock and a chair pushed against it for good measure—I told myself firmly that Butler had lapsed briefly into cockney humour. In the morning I would actually believe it. Surprisingly I slept well even with Minerva slumped across my middle, and I awoke to find sunlight gilding the furniture and to a feeling of boundless energy. Better make immediate use of it. However gracious the Tramwells’ hospitality, my time here was limited. I would have been on my way downstairs in five minutes if I could have found Angus’s watch. I was sure I had put it down on the table with my charm bracelet after checking the time, but perhaps I had dropped it down on the mantel when lighting the candle. My watch wasn’t there and I couldn’t think where else ... unless Minnie had whiled away a wakeful period in the night playing hide and seek with it? Slipping on my charm bracelet I jingled it at her. But she missed the implication that it was mine—mustn’t touch—and made a snapping leap at my arm.
    We met no one as we reached the downstairs hall. But even if the sisters weren’t yet up I was sure the servants would be, and that this would be an excellent opportunity to meet and speak with the enticingly mysterious Chantal. What psychic powers I possessed were strong enough to suggest I would find her in the kitchen, but not sufficiently developed to tell me how to get there. I opened three doors into wrong rooms, all gloomily bare save for a few humps of furniture draped in yellowing sheets, before I found the kitchen. It was at a right angle from the sitting room, down a short flight of stone steps.
    The kitchen was empty of people, but I loved it anyway. In size it was about half the dimensions of the front hall, and positively brimming with Gothic delights. A huge open fireplace, complete with a spit equal to roasting a mediaeval martyr, dominated one stone wall. Two black cauldrons hung in side alcoves.
    A foot or so farther down the wall stood a cast-iron cooker capable of baking enough loaves to feed all the village poor. Only these days those unfortunates would have shiny gas cookers of their own purchased on the never-never, and glossy no-wax lino on their floors. This floor was stone, each flag about the size of one of Harry’s paddocks. Only the sink looked modern, circa 1906. On either side of it ran a stretch of marble very likely pinched from the Taj Mahal. A half-dozen Welsh dressers crammed with bone china, Woolworth’s plastic, tarnished silver, brass, and empty jam jars, filled up some dead space. But there was still an island of room for the huge deal table in the centre. Fergy would have given both arms and a leg for one like it.
    A seemingly dead black cat by the