Free The Witness on the Roof by Annie Haynes Page A

geraniums, begonias, lobelias, petunias and calceolarias; lower down, beyond the ha-ha which formed the boundary opposite, he was thinking of making a rosery.
    Joan listened and approved. It was very sweet to the girl who had been slighted all her life to be first now with one person, to find her every whim gratified, her slightest wish law. Sometimes she would rub her eyes, would tell herself that it must be a dream that she was Lady Warchester, that presently she would awaken to find herself little unconsidered Joan Davenant once more. Her engagement had been so short, Warchester had so hurried the marriage, that it seemed almost impossible that it could be an accomplished reality.
    The honeymoon had been comparatively brief. It had been spent on board Warchester’s yacht, wandering from port to port, just as fancy led them. Joan had bought all sorts of beautiful things, it seemed to her that she had spent a fortune, while Warchester had only laughed and encouraged her.
    It was Joan’s first experience of being spoilt, and she found the process very pleasant; nor was her homecoming a disillusionment. The neighbourhood received her with open arms—for was she not young and beautiful, the wife of the principal landowner in the county, and the heiress of the Davenants to boot? It was the general belief that Evelyn would not be found, and that the Davenant possessions would pass to Lady Warchester,
    It was a marvellous change for Joan, from being Mrs. Davenant’s unloved granddaughter. Unlimited money to spend, a worshipping husband, crowds of admiring friends—no wonder the girl stood in some danger of having her head turned! Warchester was drawing her to the steps that led from the terrace to the garden below when a man came across the lawn towards him.
    â€œMr. Knight is in the library, my lord.”
    â€œKnight!” Warchester frowned. Knight was his farm steward; his business was wont to be of a lengthy nature. “Did he say what he wanted?”
    â€œI understood him to say that he came by your lordship’s appointment.” The man hesitated.
    â€œMy appointment?” Warchester said; then his face cleared. “Of course; I was forgetting. Say I will be with him in a minute, James. I must just speak to Knight, Joan,” as the footman departed. “It is about some improvements Warren wants. I will get rid of him as soon as I can. Will you come with me?”
    â€œI don’t know a bit about farm improvements, and it is lovely out here. I will wait until you come back. Be as quick as you can, Paul.”
    â€œI won’t be away from you an unnecessary moment,” he promised her.
    Left alone, Joan watched, his tall, well-knit figure back to the house, then turned to look at the men at work in the garden below. Truly her lines had fallen in pleasant places, she reflected as she idly plucked a Gloire de Dijon that was nodding at her over the wall, and inhaled its fragrance. Who, knowing her history, would have prophesied that such happiness would fall to her share? Then, as a natural sequence, her thoughts turned to Evelyn, the other child of her mother’s disastrous marriage. Her life had been very different, yet for her too there would be a good time now, if she lived to enjoy it.
    Joan asked herself afresh what could have become of Evie. There seemed to her something unaccountable in her long silence, in the fact that so far the detectives had utterly failed to trace her. It had been assumed by Messrs. Hewlett and Cowham that Evie had grudged her sister’s good fortune, the home that had been offered to her at Davenant Hall but, looking back at the love and care Evie had bestowed upon her, Joan found it difficult to give credence to this hypothesis. 
    It was quite feasible that Evie had married and gone abroad, where none of Mr. Hurst’s advertisements had reached her, that her letters, falling into Mr. Spencer’s hands, had been lost. It might