Rose Trelawney Read Online Free PDF Page A

has a very German head on her shoulders. Keen on the sciences and mathematics. And she looks more German than myself, Miss Smith. My great-grandfather—as you appeared curious in my bearing a German name I mention it—was from Germany. He married an Englishwoman, however, and settled here a hundred or so years ago. All that remains of Germany is the name.”
    “I think something of the manner lingers,” I disagreed politely. I don’t know what he understood by the remark, but I meant to infer there was a Prussian abruptness and love of authority still in evidence.
    “Quite possibly,” he answered, unfazed.
    We fell silent till we approached that area where I had been reborn, like Paul on the way to Damascus. “This must be where it happened,” I mentioned, to break the heavy silence.
    He pulled down the window, hollered to his coachman, and the horses jingled to a halt. “Right here?” he asked.
    “I believe that is the bunch of trees I remember going around in circles above me. There are none for some distance except these. This must be the spot.”
    “What, you were actually lying on the ground?”
    “Yes, in that ditch over there.”
    He descended to view the place, and I too got out, unaided. “Were you hurt?”
    “I had a bump on the head. I thought perhaps a branch hit me.”
    There was no sign of a large branch fallen, but it could have been picked up to use as firewood by a poor farmer. I had often seen them do it at home. I could even see the fustian jacket of a nameless phantom, on a nameless road somewhere in the foggy landscape of my past. Odd, useless bits of this sort surfaced regularly, but never anything of the least use. I mentioned the stage’s passing at an appropriate hour, and the theory that I had asked to be put down from it.
    “Why the devil would you do that? There’s nothing within half a mile of here but Gwynne’s place. Half a mile onwards, Theodore Gwynne’s home. The name mean anything to you?”
    “No, who is he?”
    “A retired merchant from the city. A bachelor. We’ll call on him and see if any bells ring. In fact, I want him to have a look at a painting I picked up at Sotheby’s in London. It is called, optimistically I fear, a Vermeer. My father was used to do a spot of collecting. I usually pick up a clinker myself, but at the price this one was going for, I risked it.”
    “I should like to see it.”
    “You’re interested in art?”
    “Very much so, but not the Dutch genre school in particular.”
    “You remember all that, do you?” he asked, frowning.
    “I remember irrelevant things.”
    “Who is to say they are irrelevant? You mentioned liking painting, missing your brushes you said as well. You alit here, and Gwynne is a fanatic on the subject of art. There must be some connection. We’ll call on him tomorrow. Why, it begins to look as though we’ve solved your case already, Miss Smith. Odd no one thought of Gwynne living so close by.”
    “I was headed in the other direction. I mean—I decided to go that way. I don’t actually know where I was on my way to.”
    “No one in Wickey seemed to know a thing about you, or to have been expecting you. You were likely headed to Gwynne’s, all right. If you are known in artistic circles at all, Theo will know all about you. Come, we’ll get back in the carriage. You have been ill.”
    On this occasion, Sir Ludwig held the door for me, rather impatiently to be sure, in a way that caused me to stop and look back down the road behind me, just to show him I was not impressed with his performance. “Remember something?” he asked.
    “Yes, I am remembering how cold it was that night, almost like home.”
    “Home? The storm must have already started when you left your home, then. You can’t be from very far away.” But that wasn’t the feeling I had. I seemed to recall cold winds blowing in from long ago and far away, blowing across hills, stony crops. Cornwall?
    “We’ll start investigating right