No Mortal Reason Read Online Free Page B

the happiest of women. To wear it now was wrong.
    “All right,” he said, using an oh-so-reasonable tone of voice that she found most provoking. “Perhaps I’ll go for a walk.”
    “An excellent idea,” Diana muttered, clinging to the remnants of her self-control by a thread. “Here’s a better one. See that mountain?” She indicated the view from the balcony. “Go climb it!”
     

Chapter Two
     
    The lobby was once again deserted by the time Ben passed through it. Out of curiosity, and to keep himself from dwelling on the mistake he’d made by not warning Diana that he meant to register them as husband and wife, he stopped to look through the open pocket doors of the room Miss Grant had come out of earlier.
    It was a large parlor and she had obviously been hard at work washing windows and polishing woodwork. Unfortunately, neither ammonia nor lemon-scented wax could quite hide an underlying mustiness. The stain on a patch of wallpaper below a bank of windows plainly showed where there had been a leak. Upon closer inspection, Ben saw that the black walnut chairs were of good quality but sadly dilapidated and that the carpet at the center of the room was not only threadbare, but moth-eaten.
    A pity, he thought. It looked as if Hotel Grant had fallen on hard times. On the other hand, given the external repairs he’d seen on the way in and the newly installed elevator, perhaps their fortunes had recently taken a turn for the better.
    Passing through an outer door, he stepped out onto the veranda and headed for the east end of the wide, wrap-around porch. The boardwalk he’d noticed earlier led into the trees. Little oil lamps, spaced out like street lights along one side, indicated that it was also meant to be used for promenades after dark.
    Once he was in the woods, Ben felt a sense of peace descend upon him. Vibrant greens engulfed him, even though, here and there in shady spots, he occasionally glimpsed the rusty remnants of the winter’s heavy snows.
    He walked slowly, enjoying the way the boardwalk meandered through a series of pleasant groves. One, bordered by a profusion of laurel bushes, contained a small model of a Greek temple, another a grouping of cast-iron planters in the shape of Grecian urns, and a third, though hardly by design, a pair of fallen trees. He did not venture close enough to identify the species, but as he walked he picked out chestnut, black walnut, and butternut trees, as well as hickory, hemlock, black cherry, and birch.
    Ben paused at a lookout to study the view. At a distance stood a building that had been designed to resemble an Egyptian obelisk. His best guess was that it was a water tower, since it was situated on a high point of land. It was at that moment that Ben realized the rushing noise he heard in the background was the sound water made flowing over rock. Continuing along the boardwalk, he soon reached the secluded glade through which the brook in question bubbled. 
    The boardwalk ended there, somewhat abruptly. Lumber lay piled along both banks of the stream, obviously intended for use in building a spring house. At present, however, the “fountain” consisted of a large wooden tub sitting in the stream bed and connected to a fissure in a nearby outcropping of rock by a length of pipe.
    Curious, Ben stepped closer, avoiding muddy spots, and bent over the contraption. A quarter of the top of the tub was hinged, so that it could be flipped back to allow access to the water below. It was securely shut and fastened with a large padlock to discourage further investigation.
    “You looking to take the waters?”
    Ben turned slowly in the direction of the raspy voice and found a square-built, florid-faced individual regarding him with suspicion. Deeply incised wrinkles around the man’s eyes and his iron gray hair suggested he’d seen at least six decades come and go. He was dressed like a farmer or workman in an open-necked white shirt and blue denim trousers held up by