silk.
Burden looked down on it. Of course you couldn’t see any of those people from here. You couldn’t see the pilgrims transformed into refugees, moving on with their bundles to pastures new. One day, not far off now, a twin-track road, three lanes each side, would change the entire face of that panorama, like a white bandage covering a long never-to-be-healed wound.
They found the house with some difficulty. It was concealed in shrubbery and tall trees and was invisible from the road. Its nearest neighbor was a cottage on the outskirts of Framhurst village. They went past the house,realized they had gone too far, and turned around. A sign on the gatepost was overgrown with tendrils of wild clematis. Karen had to get out and pull away the leaves to disclose a name: “Markinch Hall” in almost obliterated letters with “Savesbury House” printed boldly over the top of it.
“Interesting,” said Burden. “I wonder if what-are-they-called, Sacred Globe, had problems finding the place.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Struther probably gave directions over the phone.”
The gates were open so they drove in and up a graveled drive bordered by cypresses with tall alders and sycamores making a backdrop behind them. Brick and timbered walls gradually appeared as the trees thinned, and the varied colors, red, yellow, and purple, of a well-tended garden replaced much of the green. The house looked like two houses joined together, the one ancient and picturesque, gabled and lattice-windowed, the other a tall Georgian with portico. The whole must be very big, Burden thought, big enough for several families and with outbuildings or even wings behind.
There are gardens and gardens, his wife said. Most of them are full of stuff from the local garden center, but the other kind, the rare kind, contains plants you hardly ever see, plants her father called “choice,” the ones that only have Latin names. The gardens of Savesbury House came in this latter category. Burden would have been hard put to name a single one of these flowers, these bedding plants and climbers, but he could tell the effect was very pleasing. The sun that succeeded the rain of the day before brought out a subtle sweet scent from whatever it was that spread its blossoms over the Georgian facade.
A Gothic front door on the older part of the building, black and worn, arched and studded, looked as if it hadn’tbeen opened since Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. Burden was approaching it, his eye on a curly iron bellpull, when a man came around from the side of the house. He glanced at Burden, curled his lip at Karen, eyed Burden again, and said, “What d’you want? Who are you?”
It was the kind of accent that the majority of the British people laugh at and Americans can’t understand, a plummy drawl that is never acquired by public school alone but requires parental backup and preparatory education from the age of seven.
Burden had no incentive to be nice. He said, “Police,” and produced his warrant card.
The man, who was young, no more than in his midtwenties, looked at Burden’s photograph and back at the original as if he seriously expected a hoax. He said to Karen, “Have you got one too, or are you just along for the ride?”
Karen exhibited warning signs, familiar to Burden, though not perhaps to her questioner. Her eyes snapped, then stared unblinking. “Detective Sergeant Malahyde,” she said and put her card in his face.
He stepped back a little. He was tall, well-built, in riding breeches and hacking jacket over a white T-shirt, his features copyable by an artist or photographer as the archetype of an English upper class, straight nose, high cheekbones, tall forehead, firm chin, and the kind of mouth that was once called clean-cut. His hair, of course, was straw blond and his eyes steel blue.
“All right,” he said. “What have I done? What misdemeanor have I committed? Have I driven without lights or subjected some young lady to sexual
Burden looked down on it. Of course you couldn’t see any of those people from here. You couldn’t see the pilgrims transformed into refugees, moving on with their bundles to pastures new. One day, not far off now, a twin-track road, three lanes each side, would change the entire face of that panorama, like a white bandage covering a long never-to-be-healed wound.
They found the house with some difficulty. It was concealed in shrubbery and tall trees and was invisible from the road. Its nearest neighbor was a cottage on the outskirts of Framhurst village. They went past the house,realized they had gone too far, and turned around. A sign on the gatepost was overgrown with tendrils of wild clematis. Karen had to get out and pull away the leaves to disclose a name: “Markinch Hall” in almost obliterated letters with “Savesbury House” printed boldly over the top of it.
“Interesting,” said Burden. “I wonder if what-are-they-called, Sacred Globe, had problems finding the place.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Struther probably gave directions over the phone.”
The gates were open so they drove in and up a graveled drive bordered by cypresses with tall alders and sycamores making a backdrop behind them. Brick and timbered walls gradually appeared as the trees thinned, and the varied colors, red, yellow, and purple, of a well-tended garden replaced much of the green. The house looked like two houses joined together, the one ancient and picturesque, gabled and lattice-windowed, the other a tall Georgian with portico. The whole must be very big, Burden thought, big enough for several families and with outbuildings or even wings behind.
There are gardens and gardens, his wife said. Most of them are full of stuff from the local garden center, but the other kind, the rare kind, contains plants you hardly ever see, plants her father called “choice,” the ones that only have Latin names. The gardens of Savesbury House came in this latter category. Burden would have been hard put to name a single one of these flowers, these bedding plants and climbers, but he could tell the effect was very pleasing. The sun that succeeded the rain of the day before brought out a subtle sweet scent from whatever it was that spread its blossoms over the Georgian facade.
A Gothic front door on the older part of the building, black and worn, arched and studded, looked as if it hadn’tbeen opened since Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. Burden was approaching it, his eye on a curly iron bellpull, when a man came around from the side of the house. He glanced at Burden, curled his lip at Karen, eyed Burden again, and said, “What d’you want? Who are you?”
It was the kind of accent that the majority of the British people laugh at and Americans can’t understand, a plummy drawl that is never acquired by public school alone but requires parental backup and preparatory education from the age of seven.
Burden had no incentive to be nice. He said, “Police,” and produced his warrant card.
The man, who was young, no more than in his midtwenties, looked at Burden’s photograph and back at the original as if he seriously expected a hoax. He said to Karen, “Have you got one too, or are you just along for the ride?”
Karen exhibited warning signs, familiar to Burden, though not perhaps to her questioner. Her eyes snapped, then stared unblinking. “Detective Sergeant Malahyde,” she said and put her card in his face.
He stepped back a little. He was tall, well-built, in riding breeches and hacking jacket over a white T-shirt, his features copyable by an artist or photographer as the archetype of an English upper class, straight nose, high cheekbones, tall forehead, firm chin, and the kind of mouth that was once called clean-cut. His hair, of course, was straw blond and his eyes steel blue.
“All right,” he said. “What have I done? What misdemeanor have I committed? Have I driven without lights or subjected some young lady to sexual
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