Shrugging one shoulder, Ger replied, “A year.”
So, Pru thought, a newcomer, an unknown factor in the village equation. Perhaps that’s why Cherry didn’t trust him. Pru could think of nothing to ask the insolent fellow, and apparently neither could the sergeant.
“Right, thank you. Leave your particulars with Sergeant Appledore,” Christopher said, his tone light and even. “Your phone number and also your previous address.”
Ger’s glance darted between the sergeant and the DI. “Is that it?”
“For now.”
—
Of the other two people that had lined up at the police tape, one, as it turned out, was not totally unknown to Pru—it was Danny Sheridan, the publican from the Horse & Groom. The other, his part-time barman, Mick, had already gone.
“We couldn’t help but notice the panda cars,” Danny said. “And the ambulance—it wasn’t in a hurry.”
“Do you live on the premises?”
“I live behind the pub—the rooms above we let. We left our woman from the kitchen alone, that’s why I sent Mick back.”
“Did Batsford Bede ever go into the Horse & Groom?” the sergeant asked.
“Not exactly your typical pub customer, was he?” Danny scoffed.
Christopher leaned forward an inch. “Are you saying he’d never been in?”
“I’d say he had some fancy club in Cheltenham to go to for a drink.”
“You’ve not been at the Horse & Groom long?”
Christopher had stayed in one of the pub’s rooms three years before, Pru remembered, so he would recall the proprietor.
“I took it over two years ago,” Danny replied, and stuck his chin in the air. “Pubs round the country are closing every day—and we’re losing an important part of village life. I’m doing my part to put a stop to it. I’m not getting rich off it, I can tell you that.”
—
The locals departed, the sergeant went out to the gardens—the search still on for an implement capable of crushing the limestone feet of Pliny the Elder—and Pru and Christopher made their way to the kitchen. She glanced at the time—gone three o’clock. All things considered, she’d rather leave this part of police work to Christopher and sit down to a late lunch. But she’d remembered something during the questionings.
“Yesterday,” she said, “I heard Mr. Bede talking with someone—at least, I believe it was Mr. Bede. The French doors to the courtyard were open, and I was at the gate. I didn’t see who it was, and I heard only the one voice. He said, ‘You’re on notice,’ or ‘I’m putting you on notice’—something like that. And then he started coughing.”
“Was he speaking with Coral?”
Pru shook her head. “While he was talking, Coral came out the front door. She didn’t say who was in with him, only that his door was closed because he was in with someone.”
Coral—what was she to do with her? Pru mulled over this one problem while Christopher appeared to be pulled in twelve different directions at once—answering questions from the sergeant and a PC, taking a phone call, and jotting something down in a notebook. Pru didn’t envy his job, although she admired the way he seemed to slip into it with ease.
At a break in his action, she said, “Coral shouldn’t stay here by herself.”
“No, certainly not. What about Natalie—could she take Coral in at Grenadine Hall?”
“Yes, good—I’ll ring. I’m surprised someone from the Hall hasn’t wandered up the lane.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket, and Christopher rested his hand on hers.
“I’ll need to speak with her—Coral,” he said.
“Of course,” Pru replied.
Natalie—shocked at the news—offered to take Coral in before Pru could ask. “But I’d say you’d better check with her first.”
Coral remained sitting straight up in bed, staring ahead. PC Mills rose from her bedside seat and came to the door. “I couldn’t get much more out of her after the story about the dog.”
Pru sat on the edge of the bed and placed her hand on Coral’s arm.
“Coral, while all of this is going on”—she waved vaguely over her shoulder—“Natalie would very much like it if you stayed with them at Grenadine Hall. Only for a day or two. Shall I help you pack a bag?”
The eyes that turned on Pru were wide as saucers.
“I can’t go there,” Coral whispered. “I’m not wanted.”
“You are wanted—it was Natalie who brought it up. She’d love to have you.”
Coral shook her head and pulled her hand away from Pru. “No, I won’t go. I can’t. You don’t understand what I’ve done.” She scrambled from the bed, but Pru had to catch her when she swayed. “No, no, no.” Her voice trembled.
“Yes, all right,” Pru assured her. “Not Grenadine Hall. But you can’t stay here alone at the moment. It isn’t—” Pru caught herself before she said “safe.” How did she know what was safe? She longed to sit down with Christopher and talk through the day—the crowd of police, the busyness of forensics—it was too chaotic for her to think straight. “Look, I know—what about the Copper Beech? Why don’t you stay with us at Mrs. Draycott’s?”
Coral quieted and cocked her head. “I collected the eggs once—I had to push the hens off the nest. It was a bit frightening.”
“Well, I’m sure they were more frightened of you than you were of them. How about it? Come on now, PC Mills will help you gather a few things.”
Coral accepted the offer, and Pru stepped out in the corridor to phone Mrs. Draycott.
“Dear God,” the landlady said upon hearing the news. “Yes, of course bring her here, Ms. Parke, we can’t leave the girl on her own like that.”
PC Mills drove Pru and Coral to the B&B in the panda car—no one wanted Coral to drive. She had agreed to leave her car in the garage at Glebe House and given her permission for police to have a look inside, where the most they discovered was the morning’s shopping, which Mills took into the kitchen.
Christopher promised to follow as soon as he could, and Pru promised he’d be able to question Coral then. In the end, it hadn’t been easy to move her along—she dallied in her bedroom, but wanted no assistance while she packed what looked to Pru like a small train case from the 1950s.
Mrs. Draycott met them at the door, mothering Coral into the front room, and sitting her down in front of a plate of digestive biscuits.
“My only regret is that I’ve nothing else to offer at the moment, but we’ll have our dinner early this evening and that will make up for it.”
With a sinking feeling, Pru imagined the plate of chicken, potatoes, and—what pale veg this time? Boiled cabbage?
“This is lovely, isn’t it, Coral?” Pru asked. Coral replied with an empty smile. “Well,” Pru continued, “I think I’ll sit out on the terrace for a few minutes. Would you like to join me?”
“No, thank you,” Coral murmured. “I’m a bit tired.”
“You go on, Ms. Parke, and I’ll bring you out a cup of tea.”
Pru escaped through the door in the breakfast room, taking a couple of digestives with her. She stood on the terrace and breathed deeply as she wondered how one day could feel like five and when Christopher would return. After a few minutes, she walked farther back and watched one of the chickens take a dust bath and then noticed a vine tumbling over a trellis in the back corner. It must’ve been in bloom for months, as it held both fluffy seedheads and yellow, bell-shaped flowers. She knew it—Clematis tangutica.
Mrs. Draycott came up beside her. “I had that from Batsford—oh, it must be eighteen years ago. ‘See how this does for you, Fabia,’ he said to me. I’d say it’s done quite well.” She held out a cup. “Here you are. Now, I’ll just settle Coral in—I’d say you need a rest as well, Ms. Parke.”
Pru agreed. “This is quite restful, watching your chickens.”
“Too true—they are better than the telly.”
Mice have been at the seeds in the shed—my deduction
, although the girl believes it might be a thief in the night come to steal our treasures. BB
Chapter 15
The chickens provided mindless entertainment while Pru drank her tea, but it wasn’t long before her gaze fell on the weedy bits of the terrace, and she found herself snooping in Mr. Draycott’s toolshed, coming up with a broad, sturdy knife. She sat down on the stone and dug out groundsel and bittercress and shepherd’s purse—problems she knew how to handle. She hoped Mrs. Draycott wouldn’t mind—perhaps she wouldn’t even notice. Pru would love to get her hands on the Thyme Walk at Glebe House, but the entire garden would be likely off-limits during the investigation.
Whoever would want to kill Batsford Bede? she thought angrily as she attacked a dandelion root, tossing it on the growing pile of weeds next to her. Never having met the man, she felt the loss of him acutely. She had imagined long talks, debates on the merits of plants and design. Now she would have none of that.
But wait—she did have his voice. She had heard it in his words, the garden diaries that she had upstairs. She examined the rosette of bittercress in her hand. What had he written about weeding—the most intimate experience one could have with the garden.
An image came to her of the tall, thin figure leaning on a walking stick—only two days ago, he had been at one end of the Long View, she at the other. Had he truly been happy about Pru lending a hand? She’d never know.
Pru stood, sniffed, and felt an insect tickle her cheek. She swept it away, and discovered it wasn’t an insect, but a tear, followed by several more. Hearing steps behind her, she wiped her face quickly, and her fingers, dirty before, came away swept in mud. She turned to find Christopher and noticed the sun had dipped low in the sky.
“I didn’t realize the time,” she said, taking out her hair clip, combing through, and reclipping, hoping to distract him from her face. “Coral must be resting. How are you?”
He came to her without speaking and took her in his arms. She rested her head on his chest and felt it rise and fall as he heaved a huge sigh.
“We need to talk,” he said.
She rushed in before he could pull the rug out from under her. “You won’t send me away, will you? Tell me this is police business and I should keep out of it? I could be of great use to you—Coral and the gardens and the monkshood. I won’t stick my nose where it doesn’t belong, but I do feel I have a right to…”
Drat. She lost her train of thought as he held her at arm’s length and caught her in that penetrating gaze of his, brown eyes that could see through her. She shut her mouth and waited, and at last he gave the smallest of nods. She was in.
“What I actually wanted to talk with you about is your encounter with the bull.”
Her answer came out in a rush of relief. “Custard—that’s his name. It was nothing. It won’t happen again.”
“You and Custard have come to an understanding, have you?”
She laughed. “Yes, he understands that I will take the roundabout route from now on and avoid his field altogether.”
Christopher slipped an arm round her waist and pulled her close again. “And about the case”—she should’ve known better than to think he had finished with that subject—“we don’t know what this is about, and I don’t want you to put yourself in any danger.”
“Danger,” she scoffed.
“You heard what was probably someone pounding away at the feet of that statue, pushing it over.” As if he’d reminded himself of the danger she’d been in, his face grew hard.
“I didn’t see anyone,” Pru pointed out. “And no one saw me.”
“You don’t think anyone saw you,” Christopher countered. “We don’t know that for certain.”
Time to get him off the subject of her safety and onto the inquiry. She sat in one of the wrought-iron chairs and pulled Christopher down onto another.
“Is this murder?”
Christopher stretched his legs out under the table, but kept hold of her hands. “Could it be anything else? We can look at the possibilities. Bede could’ve died from natural causes. But if that’s the case, why did someone push the statue over on him?”
“Pliny the Elder,” Pru said. “The statue. At least, I thought it might be him. What about this: Mr. Bede intentionally took aconite—the poison. It’s suicide.” She frowned. “And so, why the statue?”
“Or, Bede was given the poison on purpose and dies while out in the garden. Why was he there? And the statue is pushed over on him—again, why?”
“To make sure he’s really dead?”
Christopher nodded once. “Or, the intention was to have the statue hit the body, to make it look as if that’s what had killed him. Perhaps the perpetrator hoped that it would be thought of as a tragic accident—an ancient piece of stone toppling over and killing a weak old man. And the poison goes undetected.”
“But that didn’t work, because I interrupted the murderer as he hammered away on the feet of the statue, and he wasn’t able to do a proper job.”
Christopher’s eyes narrowed. She rushed on.
“If the statue never made contact with the body, wouldn’t it be—at the very least—attempted murder? Can you have attempted murder of a dead man?” Pru’s head swam, and she asked, “Where do we begin?”
“We begin by looking at the people in Bede’s life.”
“I didn’t think he had any people, apart from Coral.” And Cynthia, she added to herself. “Didn’t John call him a recluse?”
“The murderer is seldom anonymous,” Christopher reminded her.
“Mmmm.” That was the problem, wasn’t it? “Do you know when he died?”
“Probably between about seven and nine this morning.”
The image returned to her—Mr. Bede on his back, glasses askew, a handful of flowers, his walking stick still held tightly—
“His walking stick? There might be fingerprints.”
“Appledore is on that.”
“The sergeant,” Pru said. “How is he taking the sudden appearance of a detective inspector on his patch?”
“In good humor, but not quietly.”
“And just how did you manage to become the DI so quickly?”
“The chief constable and I were sergeants together, and we’ve kept in touch. He’d no one else in the area apart from Appledore, and so I offered. They’re giving me space at the station in Stow for an incident room.”
“Well done, you,” Pru said and leaned forward to kiss him, afterward brushing the dirt off his cheek. “When will you know for certain how Mr. Bede died?”
“A day or two if we’re lucky—and that’s pushing. But at least we can tell them to look for aconite. In the meantime, there’s a great deal of background work to do. I need to speak with Coral.”
“Yes. After dinner?”
Christopher nodded. “And I want to talk with Noah Elkington.”
“The solicitor? Why?”
“Because everyone else wants to.”
Just over Christopher’s shoulder, Pru saw Coral standing behind the French doors. Pru waved, and Coral smiled.
“Let me attend to my weeds and we’ll go in.” When she looked down, she found three brown hens pecking through the pile, stripping off leaves, and hunting for insects. “Right, you lot,” she said as she gathered up the weeds, “follow me. Oh”—she looked back at Christopher with dismay—“I suppose Mrs. Draycott will be sorting out dinner for us.”
—
At dinner, Pru wondered how long one roast chicken could last—or if this was another, as blandly roasted as the first. She glanced out the window as a small brown-feathered figure darted under a shrub. Yes, flee if you can, little hen.
Joining the chicken and potatoes on their plates for the evening, another mound of white food, which turned out to be pureed parsnips. Mealtime was quiet—Pru and Christopher dutifully chewing and swallowing. Coral, knife and fork in hand, looked as if she dozed over her untouched food. She was in no shape for a police interview—Pru fr
owned at the thought, and her gaze shifted from Coral’s near-comatose form to Christopher. He shook his head slightly, and Pru relaxed. It could wait until tomorrow.
Coral roused herself at the end and helped clear the table. When Pru insisted on washing the dishes, Coral insisted on drying. Afterward, Mrs. Draycott suggested Pru and Christopher go off to the pub for a drink. Coral followed them to the door, and she watched them out the window as they got in the car.
“She’s like a stray dog,” Pru said.
They skipped the Horse & Groom, and instead drove to The Plough in nearby Kingham, where no one knew them—even so, they sat in a corner and kept their voices low as they went over the events of the day. They returned to the Copper Beech about eleven—the B&B dark and silent. In bed, Christopher fell asleep instantly, and Pru stayed up reading Batsford Bede’s garden journals.
Miss Willmott’s ghost (Eryngium giganteum) does not haunt as much as gallops along the hot patch of the Deep Borders, her silvery form popping up where you least expect her. Unexpected, perhaps, but not unwanted. BB
Chapter 16
A voice called to her—light and lilting, loud enough to be heard, but not so loud as to disturb anyone.
“Pruuuu! Pruuuuu?”
The knocking came next, starting at the far end of the corridor. Not knocking on a door, but some large object careening into the walls. Boom! Boom!
Pru bolted upright in the pitch black, breaking into a cold sweat, unable to see anything. Silence. Christopher grabbed her arm and whispered, “Stay here.”
“Pruuuuuuu!”
“No.” Pru shook her head, breathing at last. “It’s Coral. I’ll go. Can you find the correct light?”
Pru took the flashlight off the nightstand, stumbled to the door, and out into the corridor. “Coral? I’m right here. Where are you? Are you all right?”
More silence. She flashed the torch around, revealing an empty corridor.
“Coral?”
The light show began—under doors, Pru could see thin lines of illumination go on and off, as Christopher shifted gears with the joystick on the wall inside their room. She heard a rustling to her right and realized one door stood open. She swung the torch over, came face-to-face with a specter, and screamed.
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