The Perfect Garden: A Mystery Crime Novel Set in an English Country Garden by Guy Sheppard

Author:Guy Sheppard [Sheppard, Guy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Socciones Editoria Digitale
Published: 2023-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

The way he sang it sounded a warning:

Now if you were not true in word,

As now I know you be,

I’d tear you as the withered leaves,

Are torn from off the tree.

30

That night Laura kept careful watch from her caravan’s window.

She lay in wait for whoever would sing to her again – this time she would catch them red-handed.

Either Mr Mortimer was her stalker or he was in league with who was. He had chosen to imitate someone in order to cow her, only she was not prepared to be silenced that easily. When the police wouldn’t take her seriously she must act by herself. Something odd was going on in Green Way House. Bad things happened to people here and she wasn’t about to be one of them.

It was not easy at first to distinguish anyone from the darkness.

Just then the moonlight lit the rhinestone flowers on a person’s black, long-sleeved sweater.

It wasn’t Mr Mortimer.

Laura buttoned up her denim jacket in a hurry.

Listened for a song.

Instead Lady Ann passed by silently on her nocturnal round – she stopped every few yards to observe the ground…

Laura waited while she shone a torch at her feet.

…as she looked for signs of someone’s recent passage.

Then Laura grabbed her scarf and beanie and slipped out of the caravan’s door to go in pursuit.

Her ladyship’s whole demeanour suggested someone hungry for almost scientific answers – she treated each possible clue like a person conducting experiments. She carried a loaded shotgun over one arm as usual.

Twice the chatelaine retraced the tracks of her quarry. “Seek, and ye shall find”, thought Laura. “Patience is a virtue”. Next minute Lady Ann steered for the chicken run situated beyond the south-east range. She walked right round its wire fence where she stooped to search for more clues.

Anyone else might suppose she was hunting foxes.

But when Laura did the same she found no trace of anything living.

Still her ladyship deployed all her powers of concentration – she behaved as if there was definitely someone to be detected.

Laura suddenly snapped a twig underfoot. Froze in the gloom. That crack of breaking wood sounded, to her ears, absolutely deafening.

Like a gunshot.

‘You know where I am,’ cried Lady Ann defiantly. ‘Come find me.’

Laura did not move. Held her breath. To her right a long line of trees stretched to the foot of the hill at the garden’s south-eastern boundary. Open countryside lay beyond that, up the slope to the tree-topped escarpment. She was caught in the open? Except she was not the one being addressed…

Lady Ann uttered a deep sigh. Consulted her wristwatch. She behaved in a way that suggested someone or something had just failed to rise to her challenge.

It wasn’t a fox.

No animal set foot on lawns grown so wild.

That’s not to say her ladyship was all angry frustration, Laura noted. On the contrary, she suddenly beat a hasty retreat back to the house. She rushed to bolt its front door top and bottom.

Lady Ann locked herself in as if greatly

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