Death in an English Garden: Book Six in the Murder on Location series

by Sara Rosett

  I came out the back door, pelted across the terrace, and down the steps to the garden, slowing only enough to make sure I didn’t lose my footing on the steps. I plunged into the deep shade of the garden. My heart stopped for a moment as a figure separated from the shadows around a clump of trees, but then I saw it was Alex, and I ran to him.

  “I thought I better meet you here,” he said against my hair.

  I heard sounds of running footsteps on the terrace and tensed. A door was shoved back against a wall with a clatter, and then I heard diminishing shouts of, “Police. Hands in the air,” from inside Tate House. “On the floor…both of you,” the shouts continued, and I relaxed back into Alex’s arms. “Much better idea, to meet here.”

  Chapter 32

  “SO YOU GOT BOTH TORRIE and Sylvester?” I asked Quimby, who was seated at my kitchen table. He had been asking Alex and me questions for nearly an hour, and it looked as if he was wrapping up. I figured I’d better ask my question while I could.

  Alex was beside me and had a firm grip on my hand. After the chaos died down at Tate House and Alex and I had permission from the police to wait for Quimby at my cottage, we’d returned there, and I’d brewed a strong pot of coffee. We were now on our second pot.

  Alex and I had been a little too absorbed in each other to take in much of what had happened with Torrie and Sylvester. Now that Alex and I were sorted—I felt a little giddy, and it wasn’t just from the adrenaline high that came from running for my life—I wanted to hear what had happened with Torrie and Sylvester.

  Quimby nodded as he rubbed his deeply shadowed eyes. He’d been up all night. His suit was rumpled, and he had a layer of stubble on his face. He had gratefully accepted the large cup of coffee I offered him. “After I heard what Gil Brayden had to say and I got your text, I went directly there.”

  Quimby had told us that Gil had come around in the hospital and when he found Quimby at his bedside, he’d repeated everything he told me in Alex’s cottage. Quimby continued, “I’d called and asked the local officers to meet me there. We had the situation under control within a few minutes. We apprehended Sylvester Hibbert first. Once he saw the other officers, he dropped to his knees. Torrie Mayes went back through the house and grabbed a large bag, which hampered her progress. She didn’t make it off the grounds of Tate House. Both of them are in custody.”

  I said, “Even with millions waiting for her in Jersey, she still wanted more. And she thought Arabella was greedy.”

  “Well, the bag was full of five hundred euro notes.” Quimby removed a large plastic bag and set it on the table. “I thought you might want to see this.”

  It contained the charred remains of the box. It was a considerably smaller package than it had been. Below the curled and blackened edge of the box sat two fat stacks of pink notes with seared edges. Quimby tapped the plastic. “This denomination, the five hundred euro note, will be a thing of the past soon. They are being phased out—for good reason.”

  “Smuggling?” asked Alex, reaching down to pet Slink, who was curled at his feet.

  “Yes. Law-abiding citizens don’t have much need for them. It’s the criminals who want them. Makes it easier to move cash. They take the pounds they get here from drug sales and convert them into euros through shady money exchanges then iron the bills as flat as they can get them. Five or six million euros only weighs about ten or twelve kilograms, an easy fit for a suitcase.”

  “So that’s why they had the ironing board set up at Tate House,” I said. “I should have known something was up when I saw it in Arabella’s room. She certainly wasn’t the sort to do her own ironing. But they were mailing most of the money, right, in boxes like this, not putting it in suitcases?”

  Quimby said, “Correct. It’s quite a good way to move the money, actually. The flat boxes could be mailed at a postbox. Nice and anonymous. Since they broke it up into tiny shipments, they could get the money out of the country without worrying about taking a suitcase through customs at an airport. Different regulations regarding the post make monitoring it more difficult, not to mention the sheer volume of material that’s processed. The mail is one of the easiest ways to smuggle currency, a fact that I’m sure Arabella picked up from Lund.”

  “They must have had several boxes packed and ready to go because I saw a stack of them on the kitchen table the day I saw Gil in the garden, and Torrie was still dropping them in the mail after Arabella died. I saw her mail a package before they got the crowbar.”

  Quimby nodded. “That’s what Sylvester Hibbert tells us. He began talking right away. He’s quite anxious to cooperate. He said Arabella had several boxes lined up and ready to go when she died. They continued mailing them to the address in Jersey, intending to go there and pick them up. They only got the trunk open yesterday. They searched for the key, but when they couldn’t find it, they pried it open. Mr. Brayden’s attempt to ‘sell’ the key to them came a little too late. By then he was a liability, which they tried to take care of.”

  Alex took a sip of his coffee and said, “I get that Arabella stole the money from Stevie and that Gil Brayden saw an opportunity. He snatched the bracelet with the key, hoping he would get his money. What I don’t understand is why Torrie worked out an elaborate plan with the wires in the garden, but didn’t have a better plan for the trunk. Why would she wait until the last minute to move it out of Arabella’s room?”

  I glanced toward Quimby, but he waved his hand and settled back in his chair, obviously glad to have a few minutes to enjoy more coffee before he had to leave. I turned to Alex. “Because she couldn’t move it until Arabella was dead, and Arabella wasn’t going to do yoga outside until the weather was nice. Those days of rain and drizzle probably extended Arabella’s life by a few days. Torrie told me she didn’t know Arabella was going to workout in the garden that day. And she didn’t know about Arabella’s meeting with Gil, either. When Torrie came back and found out Arabella was dead, she was as surprised as we were. She worked herself into a frenzy to buy some time away from me to get upstairs and move the trunk. Everything was moving faster than she’d expected. She must have thought she’d have time to replace the wires with her sections of pre-cut wires, which would make the lighting look completely normal and the death would be written off as a tragic accident.”

  “She knew how to do that, rewire the lights?”

  I lifted a shoulder. “The information is online for anyone to find.” I glanced out of the corner of my eye at Quimby. After he’d had a few swallows of the coffee and settled at the table, I’d told him about the note and the computer searches. He frowned at me now, but didn’t rehash the warnings he had given me earlier about withholding evidence and obstructing an investigation. He’d had quite a bit to say on both subjects, but instead of arresting me, he’d dispatched someone to collect the laptop from Alex’s cottage and alerted his office to watch for the envelope I’d sent him.

  He put his cup down as he said, “When you found Arabella’s body, you threw everything off. Torrie planned to be the one to ‘discover’ her body, but only after the wiring had been put back in place.”

  “So she did go into the garden and the shed. Is she really allergic?” I asked.

  “Sylvester Hibbert says she is, but that she took antihistamines to keep her allergies down and then risked going into the garden to set up the wires. She wore long sleeves and pants to protect from stings.”

  “She thought about so many things,” I said, “but there were so many she couldn’t control, like you showing up too early. She lost it for a second when she found out an inspector was already at Tate House,” I said, “but she recovered as best she could. More coffee?” I asked, mostly as a distraction, so that Quimby wouldn’t backtrack to my subterfuge with the note. He waved me off, so I said quickly, “What will happen to Stevie Lund? He really wasn’t trying to kill Arabella.”

  “That’s probably the one and only time he’s not guilty of something he’s accused of. Don’t worry. By tonig
ht, Stevie Lund will be living a very different life than he is now. No sports cars or designer suits.” I raised my eyebrows, and Quimby continued, “After I interviewed Gil Brayden, I sent word to the drug task force about the woman who lived near Lund’s flat, but they didn’t need her information. They arrested Lund this morning, caught him attempting to transport a suitcase full of cash to one of his mules.”

  “All those suitcases of cash,” I murmured.

  “I’ll never look at luggage the same way again,” Alex said.

  Quimby smiled briefly. “Quite.”

  “What about Arabella’s sister, Violet?” I asked.

  “What about her?” Quimby asked.

  “Did she know about the money? I saw her this morning, leaving Tate House before I went in. She’d said she was leaving Nether Woodsmoor so I was surprised to see her.”

  Quimby frowned as he tapped a note into his phone. “That is interesting,” he said and had me describe the encounter in detail.

  His phone rang, and he answered then sat up straight. “Gone? How?” He listened a moment, barked some orders about getting officers to the train station, then ended the call. He pushed back his chair. “Brayden left the hospital sometime in the early morning hours. Just walked out.” Quimby left so quickly that Slink barely had time to rise and trot after him to the door.

  I settled back into place beside Alex. “I’m not at all surprised that Gil slipped away without them knowing. He’s probably halfway to London by now. I wonder where he’ll go? He did say he wanted to go somewhere warm when he said he wouldn’t talk to the police.”

  “Probably somewhere far away from this mess—South America maybe. I have no doubt that he’ll land on his feet.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s true. He does know how to take care of himself.”

  “Gil Brayden is the last thing I want to talk about,” Alex said.

  I settled into the curve of his arm. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “It’s so often about money, isn’t it?” Beatrice said as we walked down the steps to the gravel drive in front of Parkview. The interview in the Tapestry Gallery had gone off without a hitch earlier today, and I had just finished the final inspection, making sure we left the room exactly as we found it, when Beatrice arrived and asked if I could spare her a moment.

  You don’t turn Lady Stone down, so I’d given the drapes a final tug then walked with her through the elegant rooms to the front of the house and down the wide steps to the drive.

  At the base of the steps, she turned and looked up at the mellow golden stone. Her gaze ran across the banks of windows and up to the stone pediment with its figures carved in relief. “Marriages made, land bought and sold, dowries settled. So many decisions made—good and bad—for money.”

  She was not generally a philosophical person, but I had been thinking the same thing over the last few days as the tangle around Arabella’s death had been sorted out. “Arabella was certainly all about the money.”

  Beatrice sniffed. “Quite the ruthless person, too. Now that other young man, the photographer, what happened to him?”

  “Still no word. I doubt he’ll be found,” I said, picturing Gil on a beach somewhere.

  “And the other security guard, was he involved?” Beatrice asked.

  “Chester Hibbert? No, he’s much more of a by-the-rules kind of person. Inspector Quimby told me that Arabella, Torrie, and Sylvester kept the theft and transfer of the money from him. Apparently, once Sylvester worked out what they were doing, he wanted in, but insisted they keep it from Chester because he might turn them in.”

  “I see. Well,” Beatrice said, “I’m glad that’s sorted. Quite disturbing to have something like that going on here in Nether Woodsmoor.”

  I agreed, understanding why she was asking the questions. She wanted to make sure all was well and back to normal in her little village.

  “Oh, that reminds me, we have an inquiry about a possible event, Painting at Parkview. I believe the organizer, Violet Emsley, was part of the recent incident at Tate House. Do you know anything about her?”

  “Arabella was her sister,” I said. “But Violet wasn’t really involved with the mess at Tate House.” Quimby had called me with a few follow-up questions for his reports. While I had him on the phone, I’d asked him about Violet. “Quimby told me that they investigated her. Violet didn’t know about the money and wasn’t involved in the plan to murder Arabella. She only came to Nether Woodsmoor to see her sister.”

  And to attempt to get some funding for an art school, I added mentally but didn’t mention that to Beatrice. Instead, I said, “Violet told Quimby that she’d decided Tate House would be an ideal location for an art retreat and that was why she stuck around. She made several attempts to get inside and see the grounds and the house.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed that last bit, about Tate House being a good location for an art retreat. But maybe it was the truth, if Violet was actually planning an art event in the area.

  “Odd that she’d want to use Tate House after what happened there,” Beatrice said.

  “Yes, I thought so too, but she said she thought it could be a memorial.” Cynically, I wondered if Violet had wanted to grab onto some of the publicity surrounding Arabella’s death to get the word out about her art school, which was in the works, according to Quimby. I shifted my gaze from Parkview to the gardens. “But I think Parkview is a much better location for an art retreat. The gardens alone would keep an artist busy for years.”

  We both turned at the sound of a car coming up the drive. It was Alex at the wheel of the MG, which had survived running off the road without a scratch—well, without a new scratch. Because of its age, it already had some signs of wear and tear. The day was pleasant, and he had the top down. The wrap party for the final episode had already kicked off, and he was here to give me a lift to the party. We planned to announce our engagement there, and I felt a flutter of nerves, but they were good nerves—excitement and happiness, not worry or strain.

  Beatrice turned to me and said in a brisk voice, “Now, I want you to know that there is an opening on the calendar, the third Saturday of September. Parkview would be a lovely location for your wedding. Sir Harold and I would enjoy it greatly if you’d have it here. We’d waive the normal fee, of course, as part of our wedding gift.”

  “Ah—I—um.” Stunned, I swallowed and tried to put together a coherent sentence. “But it’s not—um…”

  “Official?” Beatrice said. “Yes, I know. But it’s obvious,” she said as Alex braked at our side.

  “Hello, Beatrice,” he called. To me, he said, “All finished in the Tapestry Gallery?” I nodded, still processing what Beatrice had said. Did everyone already know about Alex and me? We’d wanted to keep our news to ourselves until the end of filming. I hadn’t told anyone, not even Melissa or Louise.

  I slid into the passenger seat, and Beatrice closed the door. “Discuss it with Alex and let me know. We’re so happy for you.” She patted the door once then climbed the steps back to Parkview.

  Alex shifted into first, and we motored along the drive under the arching branches of the oak trees. “What was that about?”

  “Ah—Beatrice says she and Sir Harold would love for us to be married at Parkview on the third Saturday of September.”

  Alex burst out laughing. “Figured it out did she?” We came out from the shade of the drive to the road. Alex shifted up through the gears, and the wind flicked my hair around my face. We came to a rise that gave us a view of Parkview looking elegantly formal, its honey-colored stone glowing against the undulating green countryside. Alex let the car roll to a stop on the edge of the road. “What do you think?” Alex asked looking at the view. “Should we get married there?”

  We hadn’t talked about the ceremony, and Alex was a very low-key person. “It depends. What sort of wedding do you want?” I asked.

  “I want you there and my family and friends—that’s all that matters to me. What do you wan
t?”

  “Same thing—mostly,” I said, thinking of the havoc my mother could cause. “You haven’t met my mother yet.”

  “She’ll want to be there, of course.”

  “Without a doubt. Getting me married off has been her one unchanging goal and desire in life. Since that will be happening, maybe that will, um, take the edge off.” I hoped that would be true, but I felt a wiggle of doubt about the statement. “If we are married at Parkview, we could use the photos on our website to show the versatility of the location.”

  “That’s my girl. Always thinking about business.”

  “Not all the time,” I said, and we exchanged a smile before I looked back at the view. “I think it would be lovely.”

  Alex nodded. “Then let’s do it.”

  * * *

  THE END

  * * *

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  The Story Behind the Story

  THE TITLE CAME FIRST WITH this book. I loved the idea of writing a story around an English garden. Originally, I’d intended it to be a cottage garden like the one in front of Kate’s house, but as the story developed, I realized Arabella Emsley would require a grand garden. I used the Wollerton Old Hall Garden as inspiration, particularly the Yew Walk along with some gorgeous images on Pinterest. (You can check out the images and inspiration on the Death in an English Garden Pinterest page.)

  I also found the research into currency smuggling fascinating. Like Alex, I’ll never look at suitcases the same way! And it was fun to use an iron and an ironing board as a clue. Chatsworth House in Derbyshire is the inspiration for my Parkview Hall, and part of it was swathed in scaffolding and white drape when I visited it on a research trip.