by Tamara Berry
“Yes, please. He didn’t seem to think much of mine.” I wait until she gets to her feet before rising and following her to the back door. “He doesn’t seem to think much of me, period.”
“Really?” Her hand closes on the doorknob, surprise showing in the elegant arch of her brows. “I understood you were instrumental in closing that murder investigation up at the castle last year.”
“I wasn’t instrumental. I was the literal instrument. He couldn’t have done it without me.”
She laughs, showcasing a line of even white teeth that shine as brightly as the pearls around her neck. “He also told me you’re helping him stop smoking. I’ve been after him to do that for years.”
We’ve stepped out onto the garden, which is everything I wish my own could be. Margaret lives not too far from the evergreen crossroads, her home a quaint stone structure with a roof that’s perfectly sound and a neatly trimmed yard that extends for several acres. She doesn’t have a walled garden, the way I do, but rows of neat boxes lined up like graves.
That’s where any analogy to death ends. Her garden boxes are literally teeming with life, plants and flowers spilling over in an abundance of horticultural glory. I have no idea how she’s managed to grow so much this early in the year, but the results are spectacular.
“Are you sure we’re talking about the same man?” I ask.
“Peter doesn’t have many friends,” Margaret says by way of answer. “He never has—part of it’s the job, but most of it is that abrupt way of his. It puts people off.”
“Including his ex-wife?” I suggest.
She just laughs. “That’s why it’s so nice that you’re willing to overlook his manner and extend a helping hand. Well, there it is. Third box from the back. From what I can tell, the cage was cut sometime last week, but I can’t say for sure which day. It’s been raining so much that I haven’t had to come out here to water.”
There is so much about what she’s just said that I need to unpack—the first, of course, this accusation people keep leveling at my head about Inspector Piper and I being friends. A friend is, objectively, someone who doesn’t try to pin a murder on you. I refuse to accept any other definition.
However, that bit about the cage has me mightily interested.. . .
“Your garden box has a cage around it?” I ask as I glance toward the third box from the back.
My question is answered the moment my gaze alights on it. There are a total of twelve garden boxes in all, but only one with restricted access. Although most of the contents seem innocent enough, there are five padlocked iron cages spread out among the growth. At first glance, they look almost like birdcages with heavy-duty black bars, but their purpose becomes clear as I draw closer. A sign affixed to the bars of the first cage bears the image of a skull and crossbones as well as a warning that the cage contains hemlock.
“Hemlock?” I ask, more excited than I should be to find myself facing not one, not three, but five different types of deadly poison growing in front of me. I turn to the next cage, which bears a similar sign. “Belladonna? Strychnine? Foxglove? You grow all that right here in your backyard?”
By the time I make it to the fifth and final cage, I’m starting to gain an understanding of why Inspector Piper was so eager for me to pay Aunt Margaret a visit. It looks as though a pair of bolt cutters have been taken to this one, leaving a gaping hole big enough to pull out one of the familiar purple plants by the roots.
“Wolfsbane,” I say and emit a long whistle. “So, that’s it. Sarah’s poison came from your garden.”
Margaret sighs as she joins me at the edge of the box. “So it would seem. I’ve always known it’s a risk, keeping these plants out here in the open, but I’m careful to warn the homeowners in this area not to let their kids or pets play near the boxes.”
“Who knew about this?” I ask.
“Oh, lots of people. The neighbors, my friends, Peter . . . I’ve never kept it a secret. And you’ll note that each plant is carefully marked and protected. My insurance company insisted.”
I do note it. Not only does each caged plant’s sign bear the skull and crossbones warning, but it includes the common name, the scientific name, and the exact nature of the grisly death you can expect to experience at its hands. It’s a serial killer’s dream come true.
In fact, if I were a police detective investigating a recent poisoning, it’s the very first place I’d look—not, as some people did, at the local friendly witch just trying to get by making a few harmless elixirs.
“You mean he knew it was here all along?”
“Who?” Margaret blinks at me. “Peter? Of course. There have been police crawling all over this place trying to discover who cut the cage. I hope they find out soon—I’d hate to have to dig up and discard the rest of these plants. Most of them are perfectly benign in the right dosage. The hemlock is the only thing that makes my joints stop aching in this weather.”
As much as I sympathize with an herbal-minded woman doing what she can to get by in this world, I cast my attention away from Margaret and scan the darkening horizon instead. Access to this garden would be easy enough to gain, since there are only a few low rock walls between her yard and the pasture that lies beyond it. The lights of the farmhouse next door catch my eye.
“Who lives over there?” I ask.
“The Gilfords,” she says. “Nice people. They raise the sheep whose milk I use to make my soap. Peter’s already talked to them, but they didn’t see anything, unfortunately. And their poor dog, the one who’s usually so good at barking whenever there are strangers about, has gone missing.”
That last bit causes my head to swivel her direction. “Their dog is missing? Since when?”
A sympathetic clucking sound issues from the back of her throat. “I couldn’t say. He never was the sort to go running off. They’re absolutely heartbroken over it.”
“Does Inspect—” I clear my throat. “Does Peter know about the dog?”
“Of course. He’s quite good at his job, though I expect he’s hit a bit of a wall, which is why he’s brought you on.” She turns her back on the garden box and addresses me directly. “Well? Is there anything else you’d like to see? I wish I could help you more with deciphering the notebook, but I’m not nearly as well educated in the occult as I used to be. I believe that rounded bit at the bottom of each page has to do with wealth, but that’s as far as I ever got. Wealth, beauty, and sex—that was the only real use I had for any of those spells. Nowadays, it’s all joint relief and cursing Mr. Worthington when his pig gets out and eats my prize begonias again.”
For the second time in as many minutes, I find myself at a loss. Villages as small as this one are likely to be paved with paths that wind and cross and overlap, but this is becoming downright eerie. No matter how many times I try to focus on the murder of Sarah Blackthorne, Mr. Worthington’s pig keeps wandering back into the picture.
Its escape. Its death. Its missing heart.
And at the center of it all—the lingering question of a werewolf in our midst.
“You heard about Regina, didn’t you?” I ask. “That she was, um, attacked by some kind of animal the night after Sarah’s death?”
“Was she?” Margaret makes a tsking sound. “I’m not surprised. That animal has been a menace since the day Old Worth brought her home. Did you know she could eat right through those fence posts?”
I hold back a groan. “Yes, thanks. I’ve since been made aware of that fact.”
That pig was nothing short of miraculous, apparently—and everyone in the village knew it except me. What she couldn’t do, however, no matter how determined she might have been, was bite through an iron cage over the top of a wolfsbane plant. That was done by human hands.
I swallow. At least, I assume those hands were human.
“One more thing before I go,” I say, hesitant to leave just yet. Margaret’s company is soothing in the same way Vivian’s is—free of expectation or judgment—an
d the only place I have to get back to is my own damp cottage. “You said that your nephew brought me on to help solve the case, as if it were a thing he did on purpose, like we’re working side by side. But he’s never asked me for my help. In fact, I was under the impression he considered me a candidate for murder.”
“Well, of course he didn’t ask for help. A police inspector turning to a suspected witch for help solving a case involving wolfsbane poisoning? What would the authorities say?”
“Forty to life is my guess.”
She laughs and winds her arm through my own. “Now that our business is done, it’s time for pleasure. Have I ever told you about the time I sailed across the Atlantic in the company of an American yacht-racing crew? No? Well, it was a dark and stormy night. . . .”
Chapter 12
“Nicholas Hartford the Third, you have some serious explaining to do.”
“Hello, my dearest, my darling, my delight. How did you know I was back?”
I push past both the man and the front door leading to the castle. Both are heavy; both are stalwart. Only one of them, however, is made of wood.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” I ask. I don’t wait for a reply. “There are currently no fewer than three—count them, three—men prancing about on my roof. There were four, but one of them fell through the thatch above my bed. I awoke to a pair of hairy ankles dangling through the plaster.”
It’s difficult for me to make out all the details of my beloved through my righteous indignation, but I suspect that Nicholas’s lips twitch in his familiar attempt not to laugh. He reaches out a hand and plucks a piece of powdery white ceiling tile from my hair.
“Evidence of your wake-up call?”
“It’s not funny!” My righteous indignation abates enough for me to notice that Nicholas isn’t looking his impeccable best. He’s still attractive, of course, his white button-down crisp and clean, his craggy features finding the right balance between charming and jaded, but there are dark shadows under his eyes and a scruff of hair along his jawline.
“Oh,” I say. “You just got in.”
He checks his watch. “Technically, I got in thirteen minutes and twenty-two seconds ago, but, yes, my arrival is of recent origin.”
I peer closer at his eyeballs for signs of any redness. “Have you slept?”
“That depends on your definition of the word. I napped a little while the plane was on autopilot over the Pyrenees.”
“You did not.”
“They practically fly themselves these days,” he replies mildly. “I find the whole process quite soporific. And ravening. I’d ask you to breakfast with me, but I haven’t yet had a chance to lay in supplies. Have the roofers fallen through your kitchen ceiling yet, or can we go there?”
Reminding me of the roofers isn’t Nicholas’s smoothest move. I lift a finger and point it at his chest, stopping just shy of making physical contact. “How dare you bring them in behind my back. And without so much as a by-your-leave.”
“I’ve always wondered about the origins of that expression,” Nicholas muses, taking in my finger with no more than a blink. “Shakespeare, I think. Merchant of Venice. It’s fascinating how many of our sayings originate from the Great Bard.”
“I told you I was fine.” If he’s going to ignore the real crux of the matter, then I’m going to ignore the bulk of his elitist commentary. “I said I had the roof situation handled, and I do. I don’t need you to send in your fleet of incompetent thatchers, and I don’t need you to risk life and limb flying all night over mountain ranges to check up on me.”
He blinks. “Is that what you think I did?”
“Well, I didn’t hire them, and I doubt they’re up there out of the goodness of their hearts.”
Once again, he sidesteps the actual argument I’m trying to make. “I’m not here to check up on you, Eleanor. I came home early because I missed you.”
The ability to manipulate time is one of those tricks I used to practice on the regular, winding back clocks and changing cell phone settings in an effort to make circumstances seem as spooky as possible for my clients. However, it’s not something I’ve done since I moved here, since a witch has much less call for that kind of mysticism than a psychic.
Which is why it’s so strange for time to stop all on its own. As I stand in the castle foyer looking at Nicholas—the weary lines of his face, the dark scruff of his stubble, those gray eyes that see so much—the entire world falls away. Nothing seems to matter. Not the recent deaths or the poison, not my missing cat or the werewolf who took her. There are only the two of us: a con woman with an investigative streak and the rich, powerful, gorgeous man who seems, for some incomprehensible reason, to like her.
Well, what are you waiting for?
It’s not Winnie’s voice this time. It’s mine—and I don’t have a good answer. Pride and independence are all well and good, but the more time I spend peering into Sarah Blackthorne’s life, the more I realize what it means to be alone. Really alone. The kind of alone that turns into misery and joylessness, that makes an entire village happy to see you gone.
Which is why I throw myself into his arms and show my appreciation the best way I know how.
“That’s more like it,” he says after an interval that feels like minutes but might be hours. We’re still standing in the doorway to the castle, and some of the plaster from my hair has made its way onto Nicholas’s now-rumpled suit, but I find it difficult to care.
He missed me.
People don’t miss me very often. Oh, Liam feels a pang or two for my absence, I know, and I occasionally get a sweet note from Peggy, Winnie’s primary caretaker in the years before her death, but as for the rest . . . Why would they? You don’t hire a psychic or a witch when things are going well in your life.
“A welcome like this one makes up for almost crashing into the summit of Aneto,” Nicholas murmurs as his arms wrap more firmly around my waist.
“Still not funny,” I reply. There are several romantically appropriate ways in which I could continue this conversation, but none of the sensations I’m feeling are more pressing than the one bubbling on the end of my tongue. I pull back and peer up at him. “But I don’t understand. If you didn’t hire the roofers to come out and replace the thatch, who did?”
Nicholas shakes his head, his lips—now reddened by my dark lipstick—quirked in a lopsided smile. “Absence might have the traditional effect on my heart, but I see yours is as it ever was.”
“You have to admit the timing is rather suspect. Hairy ankles and your return on the same morning?”
He sighs and releases me. After taking a quick moment to wipe his lips with the handkerchief he invariably keeps in his breast pocket, he offers me the crook of his arm. “I suppose there’s nothing else for it, is there? Come along.”
I eye that arm suspiciously. “Why? Where are we going?”
“To the mistress’s keep, naturally. It’ll be breakfast and a show. I’ve never seen a man fall through a roof before.”
* * *
“Careful, son, careful. You’ll want to raise it a little bit higher there.... Yes, right there.”
The sound of the general’s voice reaches my ears long before Nicholas and I make it all the way up the drive. The walk was a muddy one, as the hem of my ankle-length peasant skirt can attest, but Nicholas has managed to make it through unscathed. I’m not sure how he does it, unless he just naturally walks on a cloud of air.
“Oh, there you are,” the general says as we come into view. He seems unsurprised to see the pair of us. “Paying a morning visit to the castle? I’ve always loved the sunrise there. Well? What do you think?”
He turns and surveys the cottage with a self-satisfied air. Like Nicholas, he doesn’t seem the least bit damp or dirty despite the fact that the only vehicle parked in the drive is the roofer’s work van. It must be the tweeds everyone around here wears—there’s a reason they all look the same color as the English countryside
. You can tramp for miles and never show a speck of dirt.
“What do I think about the castle sunrises?” Nicholas asks. “Personally, I’ve always found them to be best in winter after fresh snowfall. Summer sunsets are worth a look, too, especially near the rise out back. Eleanor hasn’t seen one of those yet.”
I nudge Nicholas with my hip to quiet him. He knows very well what the general was asking, but he’s always faultlessly literal when he’s trying to be smart.
“Are you responsible for this?” I ask. “The roofers, I mean?”
Self-satisfaction takes over the general’s expression, the ends of his mustache twitching like a puppy’s tail. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it for weeks, but with one thing and another, it slipped my mind. Spring can get a bit nasty around these parts. You need a watertight roof or you’ll get drowned out.”
“Um, yes. I discovered that.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” He points a finger up toward the roof. “The one with the beard is my sister’s nephew on her husband’s side. Family discount, you know.”
A sinking feeling weights me to the ground. Family discounts are all well and good, but I doubt a connection as branching as that one is going to be of much use. “That’s so kind of you, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to ask them to stop.”
The general plants his feet and fixes me with a hard stare. “Stop? Now?”
I can also feel Nicholas’s interested gaze on me, but I’m careful not to look at him as I reply. “Yes. Unfortunately, domestic upheavals should only be conducted under the waning moon cycle. If you’d asked me first, I could have warned you.” Since the general shows every sign of opening his mouth to argue, I add, “That’s probably why your sister’s nephew landed on my head. The timing is inauspicious.”
“Inauspicious?”
“Ominous.”
“Ominous?”
I allow my voice to drop. “Doomed.”
“Now, see here.” The general turns on me with a tightly furrowed brow. “I was only trying to be neighborly. There’s no need to start dropping curses on my head. A young woman all on her own in these parts in a cottage everyone knows is leakier than a sieve—and with only the Hartfords to turn to. It’s not right, that’s all I’m saying.”