High Rhymes and Misdemeanors Read Online Free PDF Page A

keeping time to the Irish reels playing on the tape deck. Grace concentrated on shifting gears with her left hand. It had taken a while to get used to driving on the “wrong” side of the road in the wrong side of the car, but she had finally grown comfortable enough to appreciate the scenery as she steered.
    Perhaps I could add an extra day or two in West Cumbria and give up Scotland, she thought, as the road sign advising the way to Hill Top, the farm once belonging to children’s author Beatrix Potter, flashed by. The car seemed to be of the same thought, because they were certainly headed south, although Grace still told herself she hadn’t made up her mind. Of course, were she to stick to her original plan, next on her agenda was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but he had lived in Keswick, which lay to the north.
    She comforted herself by the recollection that by the time Coleridge had moved to the Lake District, he was addicted to opium and his greatest poetical works lay behind him.
    Aside from losing Monica to Love’s Young Dream Revisited it had been a great holiday, and after all, she and Monica had spent the first week together visiting Kew Gardens on the outskirts of London, the Geffrye Museum, and Charles Dickens’ house at 48 Doughty Street. Just as they had planned for the past fourteen months they had savored buttered crumpets and tea at the Maids of Honour, and tried out the sticky toffee pudding at Pophams. Best of all, on Saturday they had prowled the antique market at Portobello Road where Grace had picked up three etched glass apothecary bottles to keep bath salts in, and an eighteenth century tea chest made of rosewood and lined with green felt.
    It was after this high point that they had hit Surrey, the literary southeast, where Monica had bumped literally into Professor Calum Bell who had once been her don at Oxford. After that Monica had not even shown interest in visiting Elizabeth Browning’s childhood home in Herefordshire—shocking when one considered that the Victorians were her period.
    Not only was it lonely, it was a little awkward because Monica was the one who knew her way around Britain. Grace missed not having anyone to share her adventures with, but she felt she was managing pretty well. If Monica had been with her yesterday she probably would not have taken that twilight stroll, and Peter Fox would be dead, and Grace would have missed an entertaining evening. So perhaps things were working out for the best.
    After stopping for a quick lunch at Lakeside Pier on the southern end of Windermere, Grace resumed driving. Despite the leaden skies, traffic was heavy through this popular holiday resort. Visitors piled in to see the Steamboat Museum and The World of Beatrix Potter, one of the ten most popular tourist attractions in the entire country. Grace was not fond of tourist attractions. She longed to see the Lake District known only to the local residents, not the guidebook’s recommendation for day-trippers and summer folk.
    The silver water of England’s largest natural lake was dotted by boats of all kinds, including old-fashioned steamers chugging out toward the Victorian-styled village of Bowness-on-Windermere. That famous stretch of water, coursing through densely wooded banks and secluded islands, still functioned as a public waterway, just as it had been used since the days of the Romans.
    There were at least two used bookshops in Bowness that Grace would have liked to visit. There really wasn’t a legitimate reason to be rushing along, ignoring breathtaking scenery and missing all these once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, and yet, Grace felt impelled to hurry.
    It was nearing teatime when Grace spotted the van. Several miles back on the empty road, it gained quickly, the tires eating the miles between. As the van drew near it flashed its lights; the driver blasted his horn.
    With drystone wall on one side and a steep embankment overlooking somber woods on the other, Grace had no