Down the Garden Path by Dorothy Cannell Page B

brought greater clarity that he was not, after all, the man for me.
    “The following day,” I said, “I paid a second visit to Flaxby Meade by car. What I hoped for I am not really sure. I know enough about small villages, even discarding the Reverend Snapper’s dour commentary, to realize that I would accomplish nothing by tapping on cottage doors, making discreet enquiries into my origins. So there I was, back in the cafe eating Chelsea buns, when inspiration struck. The inspiration that is to start you and me upon a life of crime.” I smiled—bewitchingly I hoped—up at him.
    “Will it be something lip-smackingly vicious and obscene?” He inched a shade closer and panted into my neck.
    “Hardly, considering whence came my inspiration,” I said, eyes on my hands, primly folded over my governess frock. “I got my fabulous idea from two elderly but sprightly spinsters. They were sitting at a corner table when I noticed them. It would have been impossible not to notice them. All they needed were signs round their necks marked Endangered Species. Amazing. I had believed that women like that were extinct outside of books. And speaking of books! The legs of their table were hidden by stacks of books. Library books.”
    “Could I interest you in a glass of cider to wet your voice?” Harry had turned and was rummaging in a cupboard. “Sorry to interrupt, but before you get too far along, I think I had better admit that I have never felt that manly urge to knock little old ladies over the head....” He paused, holding a glass in each hand. “However”—the word came out slowly as he poured the cider—”roll out the yarn—what did these funny old birds look like?”
    I stood up and we tapped glasses. “The shorter one was wearing a pale lavender-blue twin set above a long striped wool skirt, cherry net gloves even while she ate just like the Joyful Sounds, and a preposterous hat. A goldfinch perched in a nest of feathers! But the other one ...”
    “Her friend?”
    “Sister, as it turned out. She was wearing an inky-blue-and-red peasant dress, lime-green patent shoes, a muddy dishcloth shawl, and the most enormous dangly earrings. Enough to knock her silly every time she moved her head! A head of suspiciously black hair all swept up into a great big thundercloud. She looked like an aged beatnik. Strange. They were both strange!”
    Harry downed the last of his cider. “I don’t know. They sound the spitting image of two of my father’s elderly relatives.”
    “Really?” I nearly got sidetracked. “I didn’t know you had any relatives except that aunt in Devon. You positively must have her get in touch with Daddy. Anyway, seeing their piles of books made me think it wouldn’t be a bad idea to spend the morning hunting up a definitive work on that weak-kneed Tessail and his victims. Then I heard the old girls talking. They were discussing Regency romances. You know—earl meets girl, et cetera. Let me tell you, they were passionate on the subject, squabbling over who should get first dibs on The Highwayman and the Hangwoman. It was rather sweet really. Whatever would they do if one cold and blustery night a highwayman did come leaping at them out of the bushes? I was sitting there hidden away behind a potted plant sprouting plastic oranges and lemons, toying with the notion, when the waitress went up to them—all of a bob and curtsey—and spoke to them by name. The Name. The name of the family who took in the first Tessa.”
    I walked slowly across the kitchen and then turned back to face him, “It was all meant, you see.”
    “Meant?”
    “Yes. When I heard that name I knew what I had to do.”
    “Pass yourself off as a member of some historical society, enquiring if the old girls knew of any twentieth-century take-offs on the old family saga?” Harry was smiling as he pulled at a loose thread in his shirt. “You needn’t have gone to all that trouble. If you really think those two old ladies