Room With a Clue (Pennyfoot Hotel Mystery) Read Online Free PDF

someone.”
    “What kind of snake be it, then?”
    Phoebe felt quite sure she was going to scream. What difference did it make, for pity’s sake? “Henry’s a python.” She spread her arms out at her sides as far as they would reach. “His head is this big.”
    John pulled off his cap and scratched his thick white hair. “I reckon he won’t bite, missus. Pythons are more partial to squeezing, so’s I’ve heard.”
    With a howl of frustration, Phoebe grabbed John’s arm.“They eat goats, John. Goats! He’s out here somewhere in the gardens—”
    John’s lined and weathered face registered real concern, and his gaze finally bumped into hers. “The gardens? Why didn’t you say so before, then? Come, we best find him right away before he do some damage.”
    They started their search in the rose gardens, peering and prodding under every bush. At least, John did the prodding. Phoebe kept well back in case Henry should take offense at a poke from the garden rake. A sleeping snake presented a very different threat than a cornered python on the rampage.
    Henry was not in the rose garden, nor was he lying in the rock pool. Neither the croquet lawn nor the grass tennis court revealed any sign of the python’s huge body, and Phoebe felt genuinely light-headed with all the anxiety.
    When John suggested the courtyard with its sun-warmed bricks, her hopes rose. Just the place for a snake to seek refuge, though the rain pattering down could have disturbed Henry’s sanctuary by now.
    Thick laurel hedges, eight feet tall, bordered the courtyard on all four sides. The narrow entrance barely gave one person passage, and Phoebe allowed John to pass through before shuffling her sodden shoes anxiously behind him. Once inside, she waited as John began poking under the hedge.
    Already the storm had darkened the evening, bringing an early dusk. At first Phoebe thought the wind had scattered pieces of laurel about. Then lightning danced across the dark red surface of the ground, and she saw that the laurel was in fact chunks of brick. In the same instant, the white-hot light bathed a bundle of wet clothes lying on the rockery in the corner. A second later it vanished, so suddenly Phoebe thought she’d imagined it.
    She heard John’s grunt of surprise, and her stomach seemed to drop like a bucket down a well. Even without the lightning, she could now see a pair of satin shoes sticking out from the wet bundle. Dancing shoes. And they still clung to a pair of feet.
    Thunder rumbled closer, longer, then erupted with an angry bellow. Phoebe shrieked, her hand slapping her mouth as if tostop the sound. From the open French windows of the ballroom came the lilting strains of the opening waltz. The ball had begun, minus one of its guests.
    Unable to move, Phoebe watched John creep closer, his slight stoop hunching his broad shoulders. He knelt by the side of the macabre mound and reached out a hand.
    Shivering, Phoebe waited for the worst. How was she going to tell dear Algie his mother was responsible for a death by python? She felt sick. And she desperately needed to go to the lavatory.
    Slowly John turned his head to look at her. Just at that moment another blinding flash transformed his face into a white blob. “From the looks of the bloody mess her head be in,” he observed quietly, “it be very likely the lady be dead.”
    Phoebe’s legs gave way, and she sat down hard on the drenched bricks. It didn’t seem to matter, anyway, since she’d already wet her drawers. Her lips seemed to be imprisoned in ice. “Who … who is it?”
    John’s voice seemed very loud in the hush that followed the thunder. “It be Lady Eleanor Danbury, Mum.”

CHAPTER
     
    4
     
    Cecily had enjoyed one saving grace when competing with her brothers—her height. By the time she was fifteen she equaled her youngest brother’s stature of five feet six. At eighteen she’d come close to her eldest brother at five feet nine.
    There weren’t too many