The Winter Garden Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page A

hayfields. Mummy insisted on letting him dig up the whole field and he found a couple of coins, though I sometimes wonder if she didn’t buy them and plant them for him. They were in awfully good condition.”
    â€œWould she do something like that?”
    â€œOh yes, anything to keep him happy—except letting him go,” Bobbie said bitterly. “Anyway, he never found much else, but he never lost interest. Then Ben came to work for Daddy and got Bastie keen on the Greeks.”
    â€œMr. Goodman really is a Greek scholar, then.”
    â€œFirst at Oxford, and he’d be a don if the War hadn’t come along and upset things. Of course, he’s keener on books and philosophy and all that rot, but he’s terribly sweet about humouring Bastie and teaching him about pots and stuff. Mummy bought him a frightfully ancient and expensive amphi-something—amphora?—but he says it’s not the same as digging it up yourself.”
    â€œI suppose it’s impossible to earn a living as an archaeologist,” Daisy mused. “The people who go into it all seem to be rich to start
with, like Lord Carnarvon, who dug up King Tutankhamun’s tomb last year.”
    â€œOh, Sebastian has a goodish pile. Enough to live on, anyway. He inherited from an aunt, like you—she didn’t leave me a bean, worse luck.”
    â€œAnd he hasn’t buzzed off to Greece?” In her astonishment, Daisy forgot tact.
    Bobbie flushed. “You can’t blame him for not standing up to Mummy,” she said defensively. “Wait till you meet her and you’ll understand.”

3
    â€œS o you’re Maud Dalrymple’s daughter.” Lady Valeria’s tone did not suggest she found any cause to congratulate the Dowager Viscountess on her offspring.
    Under the critical gaze, Daisy wished she had put on her grey frock with its high neckline and left off her lipstick and face-powder. She wasn’t sure the basilisk stare did not penetrate straight through to the frivolous artificial silk cami-knickers she had donned in place of her practical combies.
    At least she should have made sure someone else had come down before joining Lady Valeria in the drawing room.
    She was a professional woman, not a dependent, she reminded herself sternly, taking a seat on one of the fringed, tasselled, an-timacassared Victorian chairs. She had no reason to wither beneath that withering eye. No mere imperious presence swathed in imperial purple could cow her unless she allowed it to. Even a voice horribly reminiscent of her headmistress’s was insufficient to reduce Daisy to an erring schoolgirl.
    â€œYou know my mother, Lady Valeria?” she asked politely.
    â€œShe and I were presented in the same year, though we lost touch long ago. In those days young ladies were properly brought up. Emancipation! We did not know the word. I am shocked that Maud
should permit her daughter to seek employment.”
    â€œMother does not control my actions.”
    â€œWell, she ought to. Still, Maud never did have any backbone.”
    Daisy held on to her temper with an effort. Her mother might be a querulous grumbler with a permanent sense of grievance, but it was not for Lady Valeria to criticize her.
    â€œMother is quite well,” she said through gritted teeth, “considering her circumstances. I shall tell her you enquired after her. I must thank you for inviting me to write about Occles Hall.” There, let her stick that in her pipe and smoke it. “Both the house and the village are charming.”
    Smugness chased censure from Lady Valeria’s heavy, high-coloured features. “Everything was in a shocking state when I married Sir Reginald, but I flatter myself you will seldom find another estate so perfectly restored and maintained.”
    Revenge was irresistible. “Except for the smithy.”
    Lady Valeria scowled. “You will not write about the smithy,” she