The Silver Ghost Read Online Free Page A

sort. Here, give me the shawl and finish your dinner. I’ll go find her.”
    She was passing the buffet table, noticing to her surprise that the frumenty bowl had been scraped clean as a whistle, when she spied Professor Ufford. He was heading her way, and the smile on his face was not professorial. Sarah flipped her train into reverse and made a beeline for Max.
    “Darling, I’m sorry to break up so attractive a threesome, but could you come and help me find Aunt Bodie? She’s somewhere out in the grounds and Aunt Appie’s afraid she’ll get cold without a wrap.”
    “Sure. See you later, ladies.”
    Max climbed over the bench and took his wife’s arm, leaving Hester and Marcia to exchange comments, no doubt, about what a charmer he was; and Professor Ufford to seek what consolation he could find among the Afghan hounds.
    * Cleveland Amory in The Proper Bostonians described a similar adjectival effort’s having been expended over a period of years on the white gown of a Boston lady. If either wearer ever noticed, she was probably mildly amused.
    ** The Convivial Codfish

3
    “W HAT’S SO URGENT ABOUT finding your aunt?” Max wanted to know when they’d got clear of the pavilion.
    “Nothing, really, I don’t suppose,” Sarah answered. “It’s just that Aunt Bodie was talking before we went in to dinner about going to sit in the Rolls Royces. She’s a bit of an antique car buff herself. As far as I know, she’s still driving a beige and gray Daimler her mother bought in 1946.”
    “So?”
    “So I’m hoping she hasn’t got into trouble with whoever’s guarding the Billingsgates’ cars, that’s all. Aunt Bodie can be pretty sniffy when somebody tries to keep her from doing whatever she’s set her mind on. Where’s the car shed?”
    “This way, if I’m not mistaken.”
    They picked their steps down a picturesque but rather damp path through a bosky dell that lay to the right of the terrace, and over a quaint stone bridge that spanned what had probably been laid out to represent the castle fishpond.
    “It’s too Horace Walpole for words, don’t you think?” Sarah observed. “Where’s the fern’d grot, I wonder?”
    “I wot not of the grot,” Max replied, “but the car shed’s just over the hill.”
    “It would be.”
    Sarah’s pink slippers hadn’t been designed for climbing hills. She was glad of Max’s helping hand as they navigated another rise of closely mown greensward on the other side of the bridge. “How do they get the cars out to the road, for goodness’ sake?”
    “You’ll see. Remember how we drove into that big graveled circle down behind the house?”
    “Where you parked the car, yes. Then we walked through that long hallway and out over the drawbridge.”
    “That’s right. Abigail told me Bill’s grandfather didn’t want carriages and automobiles driving up to the front of the house because he thought they’d spoil the effect of the portcullis. It’s a stupid arrangement, but anyway there’s another drive that leads from the circle up to the car shed, which is behind that stone wall up ahead of us.”
    The wall was of undressed granite chunks, about seven feet high surmounted by a spiked iron fence. As they got closer, Sarah could see a beautifully raked gravel drive. It snaked up from among some tall hemlocks that masked the house from view, and ran at last between iron gates that were set into the wall, these were heavily padlocked; beside them stood a dapper little wooden sentry box with a peaked red roof. Inside, Sarah could see only a wide gravel turnaround and a large, utilitarian, one-story building of unromantic concrete blocks roughed up to look like stone but not succeeding. Like the gates, the building appeared to be locked up tight.
    “I don’t see any sign of Aunt Bodie,” she said.
    “I don’t see the watchman, either.” Max was not happy. “He ought to have challenged us by now.”
    “Might he have gone to get something to