They decided to split up. Emma would drive to the convent on her own and then meet Colin at the hospital. She knew he didn’t want to delay getting in to see Jeremy Pearson and get him to talk.
She took the second half of the glazed doughnut with her to her car and the short drive to the harbor. The crisp, clear autumn morning only accentuated that her weekend hadn’t turned out as planned. Colin pulled in behind her in the small lot that served the working docks and Hurley’s. The popular rustic restaurant was set up on pilings, the tide lapping under its floorboards. Somehow it managed to stay open year-round, in part, Emma thought, because Rock Point had so few options and no one complained about drafts and cold feet.
They found Henrietta and Oliver at a round table in back, by windows overlooking the harbor, sparkling in the early-morning sun. “We were up at dawn but only got here a few minutes ago,” Henrietta said. “This place is perfect. Quintessential Maine, isn’t it?”
Emma smiled, sitting across from them. “A lot of people think so.”
“I wish Father Bracken could join us, but he’s seeing to his church duties,” Oliver said. “I debated attending Mass this morning. I’ve never seen Finian in the pulpit.”
Colin took a seat, his back to the windows. “Neither have most people in town, but he’s beloved by those who do attend church.”
“Especially the women, I imagine,” Henrietta said. “Or shouldn’t I say that?”
Oliver laughed. “You can say anything you’d like—and you will.” He turned to Emma. “I first noticed Henrietta on a rainy Sunday at our little Cotswolds church. She was four and I was seven.”
Henrietta snorted. “I remember that. You sat behind me and pulled my hair.”
Oliver’s parents and grandparents were buried in the church’s cemetery, and Freddy Balfour, Henrietta’s legendary spy grandfather, and her great-aunt, Posey. Emma had been to the old graveyard with Colin. It was a lovely spot, shaded and green—quintessential Cotswolds, Henrietta would say.
“I’m famished.” Henrietta glanced at the menu in front of her on the table. “My stomach’s reminded me it’s lunchtime at home. I’m ordering everything.”
She practically did, telling the waiter she wanted fried eggs, bacon, sausage, home fries, orange juice, a blueberry muffin and tea. “Hot tea, not iced tea. I understand it’s best to specify.”
Oliver was slightly more modest, leaving off the sausage. Emma stuck to coffee, but Colin ordered scrambled eggs in addition to coffee. “Does either of you know anything about wild mushrooms?” he asked casually as their drinks arrived.
“Foraging for wild edibles is gaining in popularity in the UK,” Henrietta said. “I imagine it is here, too. Mushrooms are particularly tempting, but I prefer mine from the grocer. It’s too easy to make a mistake.”
Oliver lifted the lid to his stainless-steel teapot. “I forgot how pathetic tea is in this place. Finian hasn’t reformed them, I see. A small price to pay for everything else, I suppose. In any case, I’m not sure I’d trust my friends to bring me wild mushrooms.”
Henrietta poured her tea without complaint. “Is that what happened yesterday? Did your partyers ingest poisonous mushrooms?”
Colin shrugged. “Possibly.”
“I know a bit about mushrooms, but I’m more familiar with flowers, trees and shrubs in my garden work.” She picked up a small pottery pitcher and poured a dollop of cream into her tea. “Any word on the condition of the two hospitalized?”
“I checked with the hospital on my way down here,” Colin said. “Fanning and our William Hornsby—they should both be discharged today.”
“Well, that’s good news,” Henrietta said, clearly relieved. “I’m sure they’ll be pleased to put yesterday behind them. I know it was a difficult day, and our presence—not great timing, to say the least. We aren’t here to cause trouble.”
Colin didn’t touch his coffee. “But you’re here because of trouble.”
Oliver grinned at him. “I’m here for wild blueberry muffins.” He turned to Emma. “You seriously aren’t going to have anything to eat?”
“Kevin Donovan stopped by the house with doughnuts,” she said.
“The other Donovan in law enforcement.” Oliver gave a fake shudder. “You need protein, Emma. I can share my breakfast with you. I’m not as hungry as Henrietta. You don’t want to get irritable. And you, Colin? I can’t tell. You naturally look a tad irritable. Then again, you’re having eggs. That’s good.”
Colin ignored him. He was more indulgent of Oliver’s cheekiness than he’d been when they’d first met last fall, but he had his limits. Emma usually was more tolerant, but she’d noticed since her father’s death her patience was more easily frayed than it used to be. “I might nibble on a piece of bacon,” she said.
Henrietta drank her tea. “Oliver will be less exasperating once he’s fed.” She glanced at him. “Won’t you, love?”
He grinned at her. “Am I exasperating this morning?”
Their breakfast arrived, steaming and tempting, but Emma could tell with their first forkfuls of eggs they weren’t going to say anything substantive until Henrietta, at least, spoke with Jeremy Pearson. Colin, obviously reaching the same conclusion, didn’t object when they changed the subject to autumn lobstering.
When he finished his eggs, he pushed back his chair. “I’m heading to the hospital. Do you two want to ride up there with me?”
“We’ll drive up on our own,” Henrietta said. “That way we can stay flexible and take our time, not tie you down.”
“Makes sense. We’ll talk later, then.” He got to his feet and kissed Emma on the cheek. “Say hi to the sisters. I’ll see you soon.”
Oliver frowned but said nothing. Henrietta watched Colin cross the worn wood floor to the main door before she turned to Emma. “The sisters?”
“At my former convent. They provided fresh vegetables for the party yesterday.”
“I see,” Henrietta said.
Emma didn’t elaborate. She knew they had questions, but right now, that wasn’t her concern—which Henrietta would appreciate perhaps more than Oliver. Emma paid for their breakfasts on her way out, and by the time she climbed into her car, she wished she had more than doughnuts and coffee in her system.
She saw she had a message from Lucas in Ireland. She tried calling him but got his voice mail again. Phone tag, she thought in frustration. “It’s Emma. Call me, or I’ll try again in a bit. Talk soon.”
* * *
Oliver eyed Henrietta as they left the rustic restaurant after their delicious breakfasts. He took a moment to appreciate the colorful autumn leaves reflected on the sparkling harbor water. He doubted Henrietta noticed their surroundings. Something Emma or Colin said had thrown her.
“You know, Henrietta, you’re as focused and intense when it comes to your MI5 work as you are with a rosebush that hasn’t been pruned in a decade. It’s your nature. In their own ways, Freddy and Posey were the same, he as a spy catcher, she as a master gardener.”
She frowned at him. “What are you talking about, Oliver?”
He smiled. She’d made his point for him. “We’re on tricky ground here, Henrietta.”
“Yes, I’m afraid we are.”
He could feel her frustration, but he didn’t think she was annoyed or upset. She bit off another sigh and resumed walking, shoulders back, hair tangling in the breeze off the water. She’d opted for another of her long flowered skirts today. It didn’t seem to get in her way, but Oliver didn’t know much about such matters. The skirts suited her complicated swirl of a personality.
She squinted at the harbor with its working boats bobbing in the tide, docks stacked with lobster pots, ropes and other bits and bobs of a fisherman’s life. “Did you sneak aboard that yacht yesterday, Oliver?”
Her question didn’t take him entirely by surprise. Henrietta
Balfour wasn’t one to ask direct questions unless she was positive she wanted an answer, whatever it was. Her wild curls were already tousled and tangled from their windy walk from the rectory for breakfast, and he doubted the fresh gusts could do more damage.
“Oliver. Speaking about it hypothetically as we did last night is one thing. That’s not what I’m doing now. I need to know. Did you sneak aboard that yacht?”
“Even Colin didn’t ask me that.”
“Because it complicates his life if he asks, whether you lie or tell the truth.” She paused, her blue-green eyes warm with love—and suspicion, he noted. “If you did it, I know when it happened. It was when we stopped to admire the ocean view up from the Sharpe Fine Art Recovery offices. I dozed off due to jet lag. You walked down to the rocks by the water, you said.”
“It was a convenient nap, Henrietta.”
She scowled. “For you to do Jeremy’s bidding.”
“And for you to let me do it if he had instructed me to do so. But he didn’t, and I didn’t.”
She raked a hand through her hair. “Then you didn’t steal that bloody painting.”
Oliver hadn’t considered what to do if his MI5 handler slipped into the US without telling Henrietta and ended up out of commission and leaving him to deal with her on his own. Not to mention the FBI, a town filled with Donovans—and a local priest with a strong bond with the Irish artist responsible for the painting now apparently missing from a private luxury yacht.
Henrietta came to an abrupt stop when they reached the rectory. A few but not many more cars than usual were on the street, and a handful were in the small church lot. Mass would end soon. Oliver wondered if she’d interrogate Father Bracken, too. She was in that sort of mood.
“Do you suppose the locals are called Rock Pointers?” he asked her.
She glared at him. “Oliver.”
“No, Henrietta, my love, I didn’t sneak on board the yacht while you were napping. I didn’t then or at any other time.” He bent down and scooped up two freshly fallen orange-colored leaves and tucked them behind her ear. He smiled. “They match your coloring.”
She was undistracted. “Did you and Jeremy discuss his decision to pose as William Hornsby, fly to Boston and get himself invited onto the Fanning yacht?”
“No. I don’t ‘discuss’ anything with Jeremy. He tells me what to do and I do it.”
“Mmm. That straightforward, is it? By your standards, perhaps so—and please don’t take that as an insult. You have a scholar’s mind.” She sighed—she’d been sighing since he’d had tea with her in the rectory kitchen at 5:00 a.m.—and tugged the leaves out of her hair. “They’re pretty when they first fall to the ground. Eventually they turn brown and crumble to bits, or they get soggy and stick to one’s shoes. Oliver...” She raised her gaze to him. “You’re a well-regarded English mythologist who’s helped William Hornsby with his work as an art consultant and happens to be in Maine visiting friends, and I’m your garden-designer friend. That’s where we need to keep our focus.”
He nodded. “Got it.”
“All the best cover stories are woven with facts and truth.”
Oliver had learned that himself during his time as an art thief and working as a Hollywood consultant under an alternate identity. As Henrietta marched up the front walk, he realized she’d said all she would say about what she knew about this excursion, and no amount of badgering would get her to say more.
Once inside the rectory, he jotted a note for Finian to let him know they were off to the hospital and placed it on the kitchen table where he couldn’t miss it. Henrietta grabbed the key fob to their rental car, and they headed back out.
She sighed—another one—at the small church and its smattering of cars. “Thirty people at Mass, maximum, wouldn’t you say? But I don’t see our Father Bracken serving at a cathedral.”
Oliver noticed two elderly women emerge from the side entrance, smiling, one with a cane. “He belongs here for now, if not forever.”
She handed him the key. “You drive. I need to think.” She grinned at him. “You cheeky bastard. Don’t look so relieved.”
He grinned back at her but made no comment as they headed to the car. He absolutely, without question preferred to do the driving. Henrietta was a demon on the road, and driving on the right—he didn’t need that madness on top of everything else. He knew few details about her work with British intelligence, but she didn’t drive like a normal person. Her MI5 training, no doubt, but also her personality and the way she’d grown up, with parents who’d pawned her off as often as they could on her elderly great-aunt. She was self-sufficient, courageous and smart, and she loved puttering in her garden. If his parents hadn’t been killed, would they have fallen for each other sooner, had a brood of children by now?
He started the car, an ordinary sedan, serviceable but not as fun to drive as his Rolls-Royce at home. Henrietta settled into her seat. “I suspect there’s a personal connection between Jeremy and Georgina Masterson. If you know what it is, Oliver, I suggest you tell me.”
“Or...what?”
The hint of a smile. “Or I’ll let Colin and Emma get it out of you.”
“Ah.”
Her smile spread across her face, to her eyes. “And here I’d hoped I’d have you shaking in your boots. I suppose it would take more given your history. Do you remember the way to the hospital?”
He did, and as he pulled out onto the quiet street, he wondered what it would be like to be in Maine visiting friends for real—and to have Henrietta’s trust as well as her love. Nonetheless, he was holding back on her about his meeting with Robin Masterson. Perhaps best to earn her trust.
10
Sister Cecilia Catherine Rousseau met Emma at the shaded main entrance to the Sisters of the Joyful Heart’s convent, located on its own small peninsula that jutted into the Atlantic not far from the village of Heron’s Cove. Emma had called ahead, after she’d left her voice mail for her brother in their ongoing phone tag. Wearing a simple black headband, dove-gray tunic and sturdy shoes, Sister Cecilia greeted Emma with a hug and a squeal of delight. They exchanged a few innocuous updates about their lives. Sister Cecilia was making progress on the biography she was writing on Mother Sarah Jane Linden, the convent’s foundress and an accomplished artist in her own right.
“Mother Linden and your grandfather were such great friends,” Cecilia said. “Do you think he might be amenable to an interview with me?”
Emma couldn’t imagine anyone refusing to talk to the young religious sister, including her sometimes unforthcoming grandfather. “I’ve no doubt.”
“Maybe I could visit him in Dublin and interview him in person. I’d love to see the Book of Kells while I’m there. It’d take some doing, but I bet I could figure out how to pull off such a trip.”
Of that, Emma had no doubt. Once Sister Cecilia put her mind to something, she had a formidable knack for getting it done. She was an art educator, with truly a joyful heart, Emma thought, fully committed to her order and its dedication to art education, restoration and conservation. “Let me know when you decide for sure, and I’ll be happy to help.”
“That would be wonderful. Now, you want to know about the vegetables we delivered to the yacht in Heron’s Cove yesterday—the one that suffered the food-poisoning episode.”
“Yes, anything you can tell me.”
“The chef came here to choose them herself.”
Emma raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Georgina Masterson?”
Cecilia nodded. “She ran here from the marina in Heron’s Cove.”
“By herself?”
“Yes. She said so, and I didn’t see anyone else with her. I met her here at the gate. She told me she takes the opportunity when in a port to go for a run and get out on her own. She’s training for a half marathon. I took her to the shed where we keep the fresh-picked
vegetables. She chose what she wanted and we put them in a box, and one of the sisters delivered them to the yacht. I walked her back here, and she asked if she could check the woods for mushrooms. She was hoping to find a few chanterelles.”
“She specifically mentioned chanterelles?”
“That’s right. I pointed her to the coniferous forest on the hill. Chanterelles love conifers. She said she’d have a look and then run back to the yacht. I was impressed, I have to say.” She made a face. “I hate to run.”
Emma didn’t love it, but she did it to stay in shape. “What time was this?”
“About 9:00 a.m. Would you like me to show you where I told her to go?”
“Please.”
Sister Cecilia ducked past a white pine to a trail along the outside of a black iron fence that enclosed most of the former Victorian estate the Sisters of the Joyful Heart had purchased in their early days as an order. The property had been in a state of disrepair and neglect, but, bit by bit over the years, the sisters had transformed it into a place where they could live, work and welcome visitors for retreats. On the convent side of the tall fence were wide, well-kept lawns dotted with shade trees and a variety of gardens. The trail on the other side of the fence curved along the top of a densely wooded hillside that plunged to the rockbound coast and sea.
After about fifty yards, Sister Cecilia stopped as the trail narrowed and made a ninety-degree turn and descended through pines and spruce trees. She was breathing hard but not, Emma knew, from exertion. In August, they’d followed the trail down through the woods to the water, where they’d discovered a man dead, his body wedged among rocks, in the cold tide. It was the same area where, a few days later, Emma’s father had fallen into the water and suffered what had turned out to be a fatal heart attack.
Emma felt her own emotions rise, but she focused on the matter at hand. “Have you picked chanterelles out here?”
Sister Cecilia took in a breath, composing herself. “Oh, yes. They’re one of my favorites. You can spot them by their funnel shape and yellow color. It’s important, though, never to get complacent with wild mushrooms. You need to follow specific rules before confidently identifying an edible species. Sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish an edible mushroom from an inedible one.”
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