A Deadly Snow Fall Read Online Free PDF Page B

and blushing pink to Williamsburg Blue, Tanbark Red
and Scrivener’s Gold. The white woodwork had been fairly recently
done and was just fine so I left it in place. The shiny wide pine
floors were lovely, needing nothing more than the handsome striped
Dash and Albert cotton rugs that I ordered on-line.
    I turned a long sun room off of the kitchen
into an office that did double duty as a sitting room. There I
could work at my laptop, read on sunny afternoons (the room had six
long windows that offered wonderful light on all but the darkest,
stormiest days) or serve tea to friends. I bought a wonderful,
antique pine hutch where I stored, out of sight, everything related
to running the inn. I replaced the old brown tweed, cat
hair-infested couch with a glove soft, navy blue leather sofa and
added two deep, comfy wing chairs. Thus, over time, the Cranberry
Inn Bed and Breakfast was transformed from a charming, out-dated
summer hotel into a nautical-style oasis. The addition of framed
nautical charts on the two windowless walls completed the picture
along with a wicker coffee table and two matching lamp tables. As a
house-warming gift, Daphne had painted six white cotton duck cloth
throw pillows with assorted nautical themes. A wonderful antique
brass sextant from a local antique shop sat proudly on a side table
and an old a ship model graced the mantle. The Great Age of Sail
meets Ralph Lauren in a nautical mood.
    It was during my re-decorating period that
I’d met Daphne Crowninshield who was to become my dearest, new
friend in the “new world.” I was becoming more American every day.
Not that my giveaway British accent matched the transformation, but
I was one more lump in the “melting pot.”
    I’d popped into Daphne’s art gallery called
Galimaufry, on my way to Souza’s Market one morning that first
autumn. I was greeted by a statuesque runway model obviously
impersonating a struggling artist. “Good morning. Welcome to
Galimaufry. I know, a weird name but a good one nevertheless, I
assure you.” Daphne said by way of introduction.
    Immediately, I liked her. “Hello. I am Liz
Ogilvie-Smythe. I just love your work. So…local.”
    We laughed and were immediately friends.
“After all,” as Daphne said that day, “we bounders must stick
together while in the colonies.” Although I wondered at her
butchering of the King’s English, I found her to be great fun and
always a breath of fresh air. Even so, things sometimes got mighty
weird and there were days when I wondered if I just might have to
return to England and marry simpering Cecil Bottomley.
    Daphne told me that Galimaufry was an archaic
term meaning “a mixed collection of things, a kind of hodgepodge of
unrelated objects.” She explained that her goal was to bring in
different styles of painting, eventually. We spent an hour and a
half bonding and then went off to the Lobster Bowl for lobster
rolls. “The best on the east coast,” proclaimed Daphne. She’d been
quite correct. Yum.
    I told her how I’d come to end up in
Provincetown. She told me that she’d known and very much liked my
aunt. We talked about art and I told her about attending the Edward
Granger show at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts while temporarily
staying in the city. She told me that she liked most of Granger’s
work except for his local paintings. I laughed until my sides hurt
when she commented on her impression of the paintings Granger had
done while summering on the Cape.
    “Sort of American Gothic without the
pitchfork. Or, Norman Rockwell meets Grandma Moses on the day the
Valium ran out. I don’t really think the area was ever so forlorn
and seeming to be waiting for true life to begin.”
     
    We’d been good chums ever since. The day
after Edwin Snow III’s body was found in the snow, Daphne and I met
for breakfast at Beasley’s fifties-retro restaurant. Known for the
best breakfasts for miles around as well as superior comfort food,
Beasley’s was run by a