Lethal Legend Read Free Page A

familiar.”
    Another bray of laughter greeted Maggie’s claim to be a witch. “Better get busy with your spells, then. Maybe you can locate your lost lamb. Diana tells me the minister insists on talking to them together before their nuptials. A nuisance, I’m sure, but there it is.” She hit a series of discordant notes before abandoning the piano to roam the parlor.
    Maggie muttered something unintelligible.
    “What’s that?” Elmira demanded.
    “I said I tried that already!” Maggie all but snarled the admission.
    “Well, then, it’s a good thing I took matters into my own hands.”
    Diana sprang to her feet in alarm, setting the china rattling. “Mother, what did you do?”
    “I searched his room, of course, and when that yielded nothing useful I sent my darling new husband to Ben’s office to search there. Ed is better than I am at getting into locked buildings.” When the cries of outrage died down, Elmira added, in a tone that set Diana’s already strained nerves on edge, “Men are always leaving their possessions lying about.”
    “Well,” Maggie demanded in the lull that followed this statement, “what did you find?”
    “A telegram, one sent very early on Tuesday, the same day Dr. Northcote so abruptly left Bangor.”
    “You’re enjoying this,” Diana said with considerable asperity, “and enjoying drawing it out.”
    Elmira shrugged. “Why not? I have so few pleasures in life.”
    Maggie’s snort of disbelief threatened to start another round of snide comments and outright insults. Diana held up a hand to silence them both. “Enough! Where is the telegram now?”
    “You never let me have any fun,” Elmira complained, producing it from a pocket in her skirt.
    Diana had to shake off the eerie conviction that, had she not been staring at her mother, she’d have had difficulty telling which woman had spoken. She’d more than once heard Maggie accuse Ben of the same thing.
    Taking the telegram, Diana unfolded the paper and read its contents aloud: “Need medical assistance. Meet noon Belfast. Tell no one. Somener.”
    “Somener,” she repeated, recognizing the name from the list of wedding guests. “Graham Somener. He’s one of Ben’s closest friends.”
    He was also a very wealthy man, one she intended to ask for an interview when they met. Was that why Ben hadn’t told her who had asked for his help? Diana bridled at the notion that tell no one had applied to her. Just because she refused to resign her position as a reporter for the Independent Intelligencer was no reason to shut her out. All Ben had to do was ask her not to write about his friend. She had no desire to pursue reluctant subjects.
    As she puzzled over the implications of the telegram, Maggie and Elmira resumed their seats. Maggie poured more tea.
    “That perfume doesn’t suit you,” Elmira remarked to her hostess. “Lily-of-the-valley is all wrong. Almost as bad a match as the gardenia scent my daughter seems to have bathed in.”
    Since the ornate crystal bottle of Eau de Gardenia had been a birthday gift from Ben, given to her only a few days before he’d left. Diana had to bite back a waspish response. Ben said her skin reminded him of gardenia petals. She’d always considered it a very pretty compliment.
    Maggie didn’t bother with restraint. “Something with nettles would suit you, I think. Or adder’s tongue.”
    Elmira chuckled. “Good one.”
    Belatedly, it occurred to Diana that the two women were enjoying the exchange of insults. That was the final straw. Out of patience with them both, she left them to their verbal sparring and went out into the garden.
    Twilight still lingered, although it would be gone in a matter of minutes. Diana relished the longer days and milder temperatures of June after the violent storms of March and the long, cold weeks of April and May. She needed no shawl as she wandered the paths that surrounded Ben’s house and the illumination spilling out through various