Delphiniums and Deception

by Ruby Loren

  Eamon shook his head. “What on earth does any of this have to do with Christine? Elliot’s death was tragic, but the perpetrators were punished ages ago. It’s all done and dusted.”

  “I think the writing on the snapdragon is evidence to the contrary,” I said, pausing for a second while I thought. “And for some reason, the writer wanted Christine Montague to see it before she died.”

  6

  The Devil is in the Details

  Eyes darted to and fro around the room.

  “I didn’t do it,” Rich said when the eyes kept coming back to him - a man who hadn’t exactly spoken highly of his boss.

  “Well, one of us probably did!” Eamon batted back, folding his arms and looking around the room.

  “Luckily, we have a professional investigator amongst us!” Jack piped up before gesturing grandly at Fergus.

  Everyone looked at him. They didn’t look convinced. “I thought he was some conspiracy nut…” I heard someone say, although I wasn’t able to pinpoint the person.

  “I have been known to investigate mysteries. The thing to keep in mind is that I don’t have anything to do with flowers. So, you can say with near certainty that I would have had no reason to kill Christine. I was asleep all night, wasn’t I?” He looked at me questioningly.

  I sighed when the attention was once more focused on me. “He’s a heavy sleeper.” I did my best to ignore the curious looks Rich was shooting from me to Fergus. He could wonder all he wanted.

  “We were asleep all night, too, weren’t we, darling?” Duncan said, looking at his wife.

  She nodded silently.

  “That’s hardly fair - you four claiming alibis by using one another. For all we know, either pair of you could have worked together!” Eamon protested. The lecturer was starting to become a thorn in my side. He took a step forwards so that he was standing in front of the screen and at the centre of attention. “What we should do is keep an eye out and keep our distance. If no one is friendly to anyone, any person trying to get close to you will be exceedingly suspicious.”

  “But what if the killer broke in and isn’t one of us at all?” Rich persisted.

  Eamon threw his hands up in the air. “Well dash it all! Do what you like. All I know is that I certainly didn’t kill her. I’m a lecturer! I have a reputation to uphold. This whole thing is preposterous!” He brought his hands back down, accidentally brushing a hand against the screen. The siren sounded and glitter - this time blue - was dumped over Eamon. “Dash it all!” he repeated turning around and pressing another one of the icons at random, fury taking over. “Well done! Challenge completed!” the voice announced and the door slid open. Two peeved glitter-covered men stalked through the doorway to find out what awaited us whilst the rest of us trailed miserably behind them.

  I found myself biting my lip. It was clear that nobody was going to accept anyone else’s authority on this matter, because no one trusted anyone. Whilst that was a reasonable decision to have made, it didn’t make getting any closer to figuring out who killed Christine Montague, and why, an easy task. The first thing to do is to work out why Elliot Harving’s name was written on that flower, I thought, wondering what kind of connection Christine could have had to him and why someone had bothered to write it on a petal. And why a snapdragon? Just before I walked over the threshold, I hesitated, remembering the title of one of the books that had been in amongst the research. I ran back and grabbed it before following the group through the doorway and down the corridor beyond.

  “Ah! Some fresh air at last,” I heard Eamon say. A second later I saw light bloom at the end of the tunnel.

  I shoved the slim book into the pocket of my garden overalls that I’d worn yesterday and always wore when working with flowers. The book curled up a bit, but with the internet out, it was my only opportunity to do some research to discover if my suspicions were correct.

  I walked out of the long tunnel into the daylight beyond. This next challenge, whatever it was, would take place outside in the grounds.

  “This way!” Jack called, beckoning the trailing group towards what looked like a lean-to wood store, built close to the edge of a wood.

  Within the store there was a sealed off shed area. A small screen flickered on just above the door. “Hello everyone!” Damien, our virtual teacher, greeted us. “You’ve already learned about the importance of using seasonal plants and flowers in your arrangements today. It is excellent knowledge to possess for sustainability of the environment, in order to avoid unnecessary shipping from overseas, and also for your wallet. In season is cheaper! Now, some of you will still have to contend with brides who ‘know what they want’ but it is something to think about, and it will help you to plan your arrangements ahead of time, knowing what will be around when you're arranging them. Today you will learn to make use of a very old skill - foraging! In our beautiful British Isles there are a few rules that must be abided by when you are out in public. No picking of wild flowers! However, that doesn’t extend to greenery or anything else interesting you might be able to get your hands on. As you know, we are on private land at the moment, so everything is up for grabs. All we ask is that you source your foraged items with an eye for sustainability. Pick, cut, and dig thoughtfully, with a mind to always leaving enough behind for regeneration. Your guides will now show you your tools for this challenge… and then off and away! You have two and a half hours to forage and create ten displays worthy of a wild crown.”

  “Ten displays,” I muttered, remembering that these messages had been recorded prior to Christine’s death. We were going to be short of an arrangement. I forgot all about that conundrum when Lorna opened the door to the shed and revealed our foraging gear.

  As soon as the door was open, my eyes had drifted to the row of trowels and miniature garden forks hanging along a shelf. There was a space where the tenth fork should have been. I looked around the group to see if anyone looked particularly worried or shady, but no one seemed to have even noticed the missing fork. No one apart from Fergus who was mouthing ‘it’s a fork!’ at me from across the other side of the group. I mouthed back ‘I know!’ and then added ‘Be quiet!’ for good measure.

  “Right! Everyone grab yourselves anything you think you’ll need. There are ten hammered metal pails in here. That’s where we’re supposed to display the final pieces. The actual display shelf is here,” Jack said, pointing to a plank of wood clearly marked ‘display shelf’.

  I found myself wondering once again how much more the guides really knew than their charges. They seemed as in the dark as we were about the content of the challenges. I privately thought they’d been employed to add drama and act as people shepherds. They simply had to make sure everyone went to the right places. But today they’d need to step it up a notch.

  “Lorna and Jack… we’re going to need another arrangement. One of you will have to take Christine’s place,” I said in amongst the gear grab in progress.

  “Oh, yes… right, of course,” Jack said, looking frazzled.

  “I’ll do it,” Lorna said. I noticed she still looked green around the gills. Perhaps the fresh air and foraging would take her mind off what she’d seen this morning.

  “Let’s share a fork,” Fergus said in my ear. “Then perhaps no one will notice the missing one.”

  “Where do you think it is?” I said. The fork wasn’t hanging up, and it hadn’t been left in the room with Christine. So where the heck was it?

  I couldn’t believe I hadn’t realised what had caused the holes in Christine’s back from the very start, but I’d been thrown off by the sheer number of puncture wounds. I hadn’t noticed that three of them must have been in perfect alignment every time. A miniature garden fork was exactly the right size to have done the job. If we could find the one missing from the toolshed lineup, I was certain we’d have our murder weapon.

  “If I catch anyone sneaking up on me… it will be the worst for you!” Eamon told the group whilst waving a pair of garden
shears in a threatening manner. No one else made any threats, but I could tell that our group’s trust building had taken several leaps backwards today.

  Fergus and I walked through the woods for five minutes carrying our pails without stopping to look at any of the interesting flowers, twigs, and leaves along the way. When we were finally far enough away to not be able to hear any sounds of the others following behind, Fergus stopped walking and turned to me. “So… what are we going to do?”

  I lifted my shoulders up and let them down again. “What is there to do? The sensible thing is to keep our heads down for the last day and a bit and then hand over everything we know to the police, once we get out.”

  Fergus shook his head. “The police aren’t going to find anything! Just look at the clues we found in the room. You said it yourself - they’re too obvious. They were almost certainly left there to frame one person or another. That or the robber liked sparkly flower hair pins and had a medical condition. But I think that there’s no way that this murder was committed on impulse. Christine came to me the day before she was killed. She knew someone was after her.”

  “The snapdragons. I wonder if they were in her room from the start?” I mused, giving Rich Strauss’ theory about the course provider being in on it a little more credence.

  Fergus shook his head. “I think someone wanted her scared. They could have easily sneaked off into her room before she took her baggage there. We all sort of drifted around before we ate, didn’t we? Could you say with absolute certainty that everyone was present? Did anyone pop off to the loo? Our rooms were marked with our names. The only thing I can’t figure out is why would the killer want to warn her?”

  “Because they knew there was nothing she could do to escape it. We’re all stuck in here with each other. Where could she run? They wanted her to know her time was up and they wanted her to know the reason why,” I said, realising it must be true. “We have to find out exactly what happened to Elliot Harving. I think someone here knows. And someone here knows how Christine Montague ties in with it all.”

  Fergus grinned, twirling the shared fork in his hand. “That sounds a lot like you’re planning to do some asking around instead of waiting for the police.”

  I frowned, realising the truth of his words. “The police won’t understand. I don’t know if they’ll even look beyond an opportunistic and sadistic robber. The snapdragon evidence is gone by now. There’s only our word for it.” I bit my lip. “In fact, I’m not sure that the killer intended anyone other than Christine to spot their hidden message after she’d received it. Snapdragons wilt fast when left out of water. If her window hadn’t been left open, the temperature would have been warm enough to make the petals wilt so much I probably wouldn’t have even noticed it.” I thought about it. “I think it might be the only genuine clue we have so far.”

  Fergus nodded. “We were meant to find the hair pin and the medical bracelet… but not the flower and writing. That would make sense. However, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t still clues. Especially if we know more than the killer intended us to find out.” He pulled the medical bracelet out of his pocket. I would have criticised him, had I not still been holding onto the hair pin. With the scene of the crime hardly on lockdown it had seemed natural for us to hold onto these key pieces of ‘evidence’. Either they would have remained in place, and therefore been deliberately planted to tip the police in the wrong direction, or they’d have mysteriously vanished before we were released. In which case, they couldn’t have been brought to bear as evidence. I reassured myself that we’d done the only thing we could, given the circumstances.

  “This thing is so old that most of the details are worn off. I can’t make out a name, but I think it’s for someone who’s diabetic. I’m not even sure if it’s a man or a woman’s,” Fergus said, looking thoughtfully at the shining metal before returning it to his pocket. “Shouldn’t be too hard to figure out who it belongs to, right?”

  “It is a good place to start,” I confessed, privately thinking the hair pin was also quite traceable. I remembered Lady Isabella wearing several diamanté hair pins on the day we’d all met. Could the flower pin be one of hers? Or was it one of the other floral-minded women on this course who’d dropped it? It could even have belonged to Christine. I dismissed the thought immediately. She’d preferred statement pieces. The pin was far too subtle for her tastes. I bit my lip. I would have to do some casual asking around. If it really was a genuine clue, with a bit of luck, the owner wouldn’t realise they’d dropped it - or, more importantly, where they’d dropped it.

  “Hey… earlier you said that Christine was poisoned by her tea. What exactly did you mean?” Fergus asked, poking at a bit of twig sticking out of the ground. I took his cue and started gathering greenery - it would be foolish to forget that we were being timed.

  “I’m almost certain that she was poisoned. When I walked into the room, I smelled something bitter. Natural poisons are often accompanied by a bitter taste. It’s the plant’s way of warning you that it shouldn’t be eaten. Secondly, I’m not a forensic pathologist, so I can’t say for certain, but although it looked like there was a lot of blood at the scene, I don’t think there actually was that much - at least, not as much as there would have been if Christine’s heart had still been pumping blood around her body when she was stabbed.”

  Fergus goggled as he thought it over. “The police will know that, right? They’ll be able to tell she was poisoned first?”

  I tilted my head from side to side. “That would depend on how closely they look. When you see stab-wounds and blood, you tend to make an assumption.” I frowned, thinking of the cup of tea. “I only knew because of the smell of the stuff. We probably should have made sure no one touched the tea bag or cleared up the tea. It’s evidence.”

  “Why would someone kill her twice?” Fergus marvelled, seizing a giant stem and pulling hard.

  “I think they didn’t want to have a fight on their hands.” I looked at the fork in Fergus’ hand. “If you’re not a professional killer, and I really don’t think the person responsible for this is, you wouldn’t want to take any chances. Could you guarantee that you'd kill someone with your first strike of that fork? You saw the way not all of the strikes penetrated the skin. The attack was full of rage, but not skill.”

  Fergus kept on pulling up his leaves whilst I considered everything we knew and everything that we didn’t.

  I suddenly focused on what my foraging partner was actually doing.

  “Fergus! That’s giant hogweed!” I said, horrified to discover exactly what he was yanking on.

  Fergus released the plant and looked down at his hand. “Is that bad? I thought it looked nice and big. I was going to bung a few in the pail and call it an arrangement.”

  “I’m sure you’d have got points for audacity and insanity,” I said, glancing anxiously up at the sun and then back down at Fergus’ hands. “You used both hands? Just your hands?” I asked. He nodded. After looking around for inspiration, I was forced to take off my overalls and wrap them around his hands. “Be careful with that. There’s a book in one of the pockets.”

  “Why the hand wrap?” Fergus queried, looking faintly amused by my reaction. He wouldn’t be amused if I’d already acted too late.

  “Giant hogweed strips away the skin’s natural protection against sunlight. You should only touch it whilst wearing protective gear, and even then, if any gets on your skin… it’s bad. Once exposed to sunlight the skin will blister horrifically. If we can avoid that happening, it would be great. Let’s find some water. You need to wash it off as much as you can. Then, we’d better hope someone carries factor 99 suncream with them… or gardening gloves.” I thought I knew which was more likely given the season. Fergus was going to have to put up with the pair of gloves I’d brought with me, just in case. My only concern was that they wouldn’t go far enough up his wrists to protect him properly.

  In the end, we found a solution. On the way back ins
ide to attempt to find some water along the approved route to our nearest facilities we bumped into Lady Isabella Duprix. After explaining what had befallen Fergus, she’d sympathised and had pulled a couple of long formal gloves out of the little handbag she carried everywhere with her. “You just never know when you might need to dress for the occasion,” she informed us before reassuring Fergus that they weren’t her best pair and that she didn’t need them back.

  “Before I forget, I found a hairpin this morning. Does it belong to you?” I asked, hoping I was being subtle. I pulled the pin out from my trouser pocket and showed it to her. She inspected it warily before shaking her head. “That’s not mine. Perhaps it belongs to one of the other ladies. Or maybe it was Christine’s,” she added, making me believe she’d seen straight through my casual questioning.

  “I don’t suppose you’re diabetic, are you?” Fergus pitched in, abandoning subtlety entirely.

  “I am not,” Lady Isabella told him shortly. “I think we should all be returning to our foraging. There can't be long left, and you know the things they do when you’re late.” She looked sickened by the memory of the terrible smell we’d all been subjected to that morning. I dearly hoped it would have been fumigated by the time we returned to our sleeping quarters. Although, no one can do anything about the body next door, I silently remembered, realising that I would be sleeping two doors down from death tonight.

  “Thanks for the gloves,” Fergus said before walking off towards the woods.

  I hesitated for a moment, some part of me knowing this would be one of only a few chances I’d have to speak to another course member alone and not be overheard. “How did you hear about the accident with Elliot Harving?” I asked.

  Lady Isabella blinked. “It was all over the papers. I was due to go to Chelsea the day after. No one had much cheer after it. It was a terrible tragedy for that poor young man. When they found the sculptors responsible for negligence and threw the book at them it didn’t much feel like justice for anyone. I don’t know much about sculpting, but surely they made the sculpture to his designs? He would have checked it himself. I just don’t see how it was the sculptors’ fault, that’s all.” She gave her head a gentle shake. “Did you hear what actually happened to the couple who made it? They were sent to prison! It just doesn’t seem fair, does it? Not when people who have done far worse seem to get away with a slap on the wrist. I suppose it’s all about who the press decides are the enemy - and they really went after those poor sculptors. It wasn’t just their freedom that was taken, but their whole lives, their business, everything. Imagine working on something for your entire life and then ‘poof!’ it goes up in smoke.” She sighed. “I’m not taking anything away from the tragedy that occurred. I just believe that the authorities could have shown a little more compassion in their convictions.”