Read The Villa of Death: A Mystery Featuring Daphne du Maurier (Daphne du Maurier Mysteries) for Free Online Page B

see the likes of some of them here, thinkin’ themselves all that. ”
    I smiled, adding that Major Browning could be relegated to this category.
    “Don’t know him,” Nelly reflected, “but I’ve read about his fiancée, Lady Lara. Beautiful, ain’t she? Like a china doll. All that golden hair and a—”
    “Yes.” I cut her off short. “The tea, Nelly?”
    “And do try and tempt her to eat.” Nelly went on organizing the tray, even pausing to add a fresh flower from the garden. “Strawberry jam on toast. It’s her favorite.”
    “I will try, Nelly.”
    I couldn’t wait to leave. If I heard one more word about Lady Lara Fane, I’d spit in the pond.
    “Daphne,” whispered a voice as I entered the hallway.
    A voice I knew too well. Grinding my teeth, I tensed. “If you say one word to me, Major Browning, I’ll throw this tray at you.”
    “That’s not very ladylike.”
    I ignored his appeasing grin.
    “I came as early as I could.”
    He’d slipped into walking side by side with me down the hall. Looking straight ahead, I seethed beneath my skin. “What are you doing here?”
    Whistling, he fell back a step. “Vicious.”
    Squaring my shoulders, I kept my pace and repeated the question, adding, “You’ve got no reason to be here, Major Browning. This does not concern you; you yourself said you hardly know the family. You were only invited because Ellen thought—”
    “Ah, she did not know I and Lady Lara’s fiancée were one and the same, did she? Very economizing for her, I daresay, but I am only a cover fiancée”
    I paused. “A cover fiancée?”
    We were nearing the front hall.
    “Who let you in, by the way?”
    He smiled, producing a knife from his pocket. “A window, in the tearoom. I noticed it had a faulty latch yesterday.”
    “And you make a business of smuggling yourself into great houses, do you? I should call the police.”
    “I am the police, remember?”
    I couldn’t win with him and the fact irked me. No, the fact incensed me. Yes, that word fit better.
    “You won’t get rid of me so easily,” he called after me. “I’ve business in the area.” He plopped a card on the tea tray. “It’s for Ellen. See that she gets it.”
    He turned and exited through the front door.
    Ellen had risen when I appeared with her breakfast. My father had encouraged her to sit by the newly stoked fire. It was a chilly morning and seeing the stiff body under the blanket sent an extra chill up my spine. Could the man really have been murdered? Or had he just died of natural causes?
    “I’m living a nightmare,” Ellen said to me, struggling to sip a little of her tea. “I don’t know how I can go on now. Nothing will seem right. How can I even sit here and eat breakfast? How can I possibly recover? We’d planned our whole lives together. Oh … oh…”
    Choking on her tears, she pulled away to the window. “No, leave me be.” She hid her face in her hands and sobbed.
    I glanced at my father.
    He eyed the toast on the tray but I shook my head. “Ellen,” I said softly. “The police will be here soon. Come upstairs with me and change.”
    “Yes,” she cried, tears spilling down her wedding dress. “Cut it off me; I don’t want to ever see it again!”
    Thankfully, I navigated the way to her bedroom without anybody seeing us. A moment longer and we’d certainly have run into one of the guests leaving their rooms.
    Ellen started unbuttoning her gown before I opened the door to the master chamber. In medieval times, this room had been the lord’s solar. Stumbling after her, I was amazed at the changes. Shut up for years, I truly felt as if I’d stepped into another time, another era.
    “We were to spend our wedding night here,” Ellen moaned, sitting on the enormous four-poster in the center of the room.
    The room was the epitome of a fifteenth-century wealthy lord’s chamber. Medieval weapons stared down at us from the stone walls where four hunting tapestries graced the