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115 pages

English

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Description

This crime puzzle features Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald, who is a “London Scot” and an avowed bachelor with a love for walking in the English countryside. But what will he make of the body found dead in a cave?

Sujets

Detective

Mystery

Fiction

Informations

Publié par	Rare Treasure Editions
Date de parution	04 novembre 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781774642559
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0050€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Death Came Softly
by E.C.R. Lorac

First published in 1943
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
Trava2909@gmail.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Death Came Softly

by E. C. R. L orac

1
When Eve Merrion first saw Valehead House she wasconscious of a sense of exasperation. House hunting is aweary business, and house agents, in Mrs. Merrion’sopinion, enjoyed sending their clients on wild goosechases to view impossible properties. Seeing the size ofthe great house when she first glimpsed it between thebeech trees, Eve Merrion nearly turned her car and droveback the way she had come. Valehead was obviously toobig a house for any individual to take as a privateresidence.
“It’s quite out of the question,” she said to herself.“It’d be impossible to run it, impossible to get servants,and it’s miles away from anywhere, and probably asinconvenient as a house can be.”
Nevertheless, Mrs. Merrion did not turn her car andretrace the mile of difficult surface which the agents haddescribed as “the drive.” The house might be “impossible,”but as she stared at the gracious white buildingstanding so serenely in the sunshine on the little plateauabove the water meadows, Mrs. Merrion felt impelled toget closer to it. The dignity of the long Italianate building,so stylized and symmetrical, set among the wild, richDevonshire woodland, was an experience worth having.Obviously the day would count as another wasted dayfrom the point of view of house hunting, but it promisedan experience of unusual beauty which would compensatefor waste of precious time and yet more preciousgasoline.
She drove on slowly over the rutted, bumpy “drive,”the beech woods closing in on her again. On her left theground rose steeply in a great scarp of red earth and redrock. The branches of the beech trees, clad in the enchantmentof Maytime foliage, hung low over the roadway,and the ground below them was misted with bluebells.White cow-parsley foamed over the bank, and therose-red of campion shone like an enameled enrichment.To her right there was a short, steep drop to the riverand the lakes, and water irises crowded along the water’sedge—not only the familiar yellow iris of English watermeadows, but flowers of violet and blue and lilac, lovelyalien blossoms, were established there. Eve Merrionadored flowers. Gardening was her passion, and shedrove slowly on, becoming more and more absorbed, asher eye caught drifts of wild daffodils—their flowers overnow—and clumps of the small Italian tulips with-frilledpetals which grow wild on the hillsides around Florence.
The drive took a sharp turn to the right and clearedthe woods, and Eve Merrion drove on over a white bridgewhose delicate ironwork tracery showed the same Italianatedesign which she had noted in the distant house. Shecaught her breath as she cleared the bridge and saw thebanks of rhododendrons which lined the drive across theriver: rose and white, lilac and purple and crimson, theflowers bloomed in a prodigal mass of color which seemedalmost incredible. A sharp rise took her up the bank onthe farther side of the rushing stream and she swung hercar around a curve and up onto the level plateau infront of the south porch of Valehead House.
As she alighted, Eve noticed the trees on the level turfto the side of the house—cedar of Lebanon, cupressus,Irish yew—and a vast magnolia, its glossy foliage almosthidden behind the myriad rose-pink chalices of its greatflowers. She had hardly an eye for the house at all; shecould only stare at the trees and flowers. Beyond, fartherup the valley, camellias were in flower, rose-red, crimson,coral, as vivid and prolific as the trees beside Lake Maggiore.Walking around to the side of the house, EveMerrion followed a neglected garden path which led fromterrace to terrace by a series of shallow steps. She wanderedthrough an overgrown rose garden, past a rockgarden whose beauty was almost smothered by encroachingbramble and wild clematis, and a desire seized herto set to work and cut back the choking branches whichwere killing the dwarf maples, with their fine-cut rose-redleaves, and smothering the primulas and saxifrageand rock rose and gentian. Wandering on, she left theformal garden and followed a wooded glade above thestream until she reached a circular lake half hidden byclose-growing trees and shrubs. Bamboos made a thicketat one side: arbutus and eucalyptus shaded it, and closearound the waterside were hydrangeas and azaleas. Thehydrangeas were only just in bud, but Eve imagined themas they would be in blossom—a veritable sea of blueflowers around the lake where moorhens nested, andherons trailed their long legs as they rose from theshining water. She stood still, listening to the sound ofthe river and the bird song all around her: gazed fascinatedat the yellow and orange and peach color of theazaleas: saw the rose-red blossom of some strange floweringtree with hanging flowers like fuchsias, and beyond,the banks of rhododendron and the shining camellias.“I don’t care what the house is like. I’m going to have it.I must have it,” she said to herself. “I’m going to beliving here when those hydrangeas are in flower.”
“So I hear you have taken a house in Devonshire.”
Emmeline Stamford looked at her sister with a slightlift of her fine eyebrows, her lips curving in what Eve hadonce described as “her Mona Lisa smile.” Before theywere both married Eve and Emmeline had been verygood friends indeed, but during the last dozen years theyhad grown apart, their interests lying in widely divergingdirections.
Eve, who had just passed her thirty-fifth birthday, hadrecently lost her husband. Axel Merrion had been ametallurgist, a man of great intellectual powers yet ofmarked humanity, interested in all that pertained to theadvancement of human knowledge and well-being. Ledby his wisdom, fired by his enthusiasm for all that wasnoblest in human thought, Eve Merrion had developedfrom a kindly, light-hearted girl into a mature woman ofwide information and generous mind. Her sister, Emmeline,had married an officer in the Indian Army, andher environment since her marriage had crystallized allthat was conventional in her. “Empire, Prestige, Dignity”—thesewere Emmeline’s values, described laughingly byEve as “E.P.D.” In the narrow sphere of army life andthought, Emmeline had grown into what her sister ruefullydescribed as “a perfect lady, perfect within thelimitations of social convention.” Emmeline, at thirty-three,was a beautiful woman, still slender, her fine skinunspoiled by tropical suns, though there were wrinklesaround her fine dark eyes, and something in her expressiontold of weariness and disillusionment. EmmelineStamford was always beautifully turned out, her appearancefinished and exquisite, despite the fact of her smalldress allowance. Axel Merrion had been a wealthy man—hisfortune was now his widow’s—but Eve, with anindefinite amount of money to spend on clothes, had shewished to spend it, never achieved the beautifully cladappearance of her sister. Eve had grown stouter as shegrew older; her figure was robust rather than elegant,her skin weatherbeaten, her hands showing plainlyenough that she enjoyed digging and potting, but she alsohad a beauty of her own, and good health showed in hersunburned face and wide-set, clear gray eyes.
Emmeline Stamford was staying in a private hotel inKensington, and it was here that Eve came to see her aweek after her visit to Valehead House. Emmeline eyedher older sister with affectionate amusement, noting thatEve’s tailored suit was put on “anyhow,” her beautifulbrown hair still dressed in a bun screwed up at the baseof her fine solid head. Eve pulled off her hat and ranher fingers through her hair in a gesture which recalledthe fat, happy, untidy child of twenty-five years ago.
“Yes, I’ve taken a house in Devon, Emma. I knowyou’ll say I’m mad. I dare say I am mad, but I couldn’thelp it. The garden—oh, my dear, it’s lovely next to heaven.It’s simply unbelievable.”
“So it may be, my dear—but what about the house?I hope it’s not too big.”
Eve flung herself down in a chair and laughed, herbeautiful white teeth shining like pearls in her wide,generous mouth.
“It’s much too big, Emma. In fact, it’s enormous, butit’s perfectly adorable.”
Emmeline frowned a little. “Much too big? Meaning?How many rooms are there?”
“I didn’t count. Thirty at least. Some of them areperfect, others are awful. There are two great paneledrooms facing the magnolia trees, and a gorgeous entrancehall with a parquet floor, and some really lovely bedrooms—enormousgreat rooms with vast windows lookingright down the valley and over the woods—”
“My dear Eve! A house with thirty rooms . . . itsounds quite mad. Where on earth is it?”
“Miles from anywhere,” said Eve cheerfully. “It’s abouttwelve miles from Enster and ten miles from BewleyAbbas, hidden in one of the wooded north Devon valleys.It’s the most amazing place to come upon unexpectedly,after driving along miles of narrow twisty roads,sunk between high hedges—that lovely long white house,set among incredible flowers. Emma darling, the sight ofall those rhododendrons and camellias was like heaven—‘otherEden, demi-paradise’ . . .”
“My dear Eve!” Emmeline Stamford’s cool, ratherbored voice broke in on her sister’s rhapsodies. “I’mwilling to believe that the flowers are marvelous. It’s thehouse which strikes me as incredible. About thirty rooms,miles from anywhere, hidden at the end of narrow Dev