Free The Colonel and His Daughter by Teresa Ashby

 
     
    CHAPTER ONE

     
    Ermintrude Benson swept a pink chiffon headscarf over her hair, tucked in a stray tendril or two, then donned the sunglasses she’d bought way back when she was going through what she liked to call her “Elizabeth Taylor period.”
    She pouted before the mirror, added an extra dab of livid red lipstick for good measure, then pressed her lips together and parted them with a loud smacking noise.
    In this get up, no one would recognise her. She could walk the length and breadth of Great Evensbury and not a soul would stop to pass the time of day.
    She’d be a ghost, a shadow, slipping along the street unseen and unnoticed.
    She was wearing a long grey tweedy coat purchased from the thrift shop in town for two pounds and her thin ankles disappeared into a pair of chunky shoes she’d found lurking in the back of the closet from goodness knows when.
    Slowly she opened the front door of Lily Cottage and peeped out.
    The last person she wanted to see was Bernard Chumley and there he was, head slumped forward, bald pate shining in the sunshine as he sat on the bench opposite her cottage, snoozing.
    He’d been there since following her home from church this morning. He’d knocked on her door and peered in through her window, but she’d told him to go away.
    “I’ll wait for you forever, Troodles,” he vowed through her letterbox and it seemed he was willing to carry out his threat.
    Apart from him the village was deserted. It was three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon and Great Evensbury slept soundly beneath a blue summer sky.
    Roger heard the opening of the door and approached hopefully from the living room. He looked up at her and she pressed her finger to her lips.
    “Sh, Roger, it’s only me,” she said, hoping he would recognise her scent and not go into attack mode.
    Not that it was likely. The last time Roger attacked anything it was his own tail and that must have been years ago. Besides, he was mild and gentle, even for a Labrador and she sometimes thought if a mad axe murderer walked into the cottage, Roger would greet him like a long lost friend and probably offer to oil his axe for him.
    “I’m not going walkies, Roger,” she explained. “I’m going on a secret mission. You are to wait here until my return, okay?”
    He continued to stare at her, his thick rudder of a tail thumping against the door. It sounded like someone beating a drum and any hope of making a quiet exit flew out of the window.
    With a sigh, she picked up her purse from the hallstand and waved it at him.
    “I’m going to the shop, I won’t be long,” she said loudly, but not too loudly. She didn’t want to wake Bernard.
    She didn’t like lying to Roger, but needs must and all that.
    Roger clattered back into the lounge and hurled himself into his armchair with a cross huff.
    She peered out once again then slipped out and tiptoed down her front path. So far so good. No neighbours out and about in their gardens, no one to spot a stranger lurking in the village, for surely that is what they would take her for.
    A stranger.
    She was hot footing it past the church when the Reverend Blinking emerged.
    “Ah, Trudy,” he called out. “Just the lady.”
    Most people called her Trudy because she’d never really suited being an Ermintrude. She stopped in her tracks and dropped her sunglasses an inch so she could peer at him over the top.
    “Isn’t it rather warm for that get up? Winter coat and scarf?”
    “How did you know it was me?” she hissed. “I’m travelling incognito.”
    “Ah,” he said, making a vicarly steeple with his fingers. “I see.”
    “I don’t think you do, Vicar,” she said. “I’m on a mission. An assignment you might say and I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention this to anyone.”
    “May I ask the purpose of your mission?”
    Trudy squirmed. She’d been taught from a very young age that it was bad to fib to anyone, let alone vicars. And she’d already told dear old Roger