Bittersweet herbs, p.23
Bittersweet Herbs, page 23
“You didn’t need to wait,” she said, the relief of telling her story evident in her easy manner and smile. “I couldn’t’ve escaped.”
“I wanted to make sure you knew I’m serious about the garden ornaments,” Pru said.
Sophie Grey emerged, too, gave Pru a nod, and spoke to the desk sergeant.
Laura buttoned up her coat. “This is so unreal,” she said. “I can’t believe Ellis would do anything to harm his wife, but all these questions”—she shot a look at Sophie—“is that what they think?”
“Is that what you thought? Isn’t that why you came to Winchester from Oxford?”
“I suppose it is. Are they going to arrest him?”
Pru shrugged. “I’m not really part of the enquiry.”
“Pull the other one, why don’t you,” Laura said quietly.
“So,” Pru said, “you’ll give me a quote on the four season statues?”
The subject of business brought a smile to Laura. “Yes, of course I will.”
When she’d gone, Sophie said, “Her conscience caught up with her.”
“Good thing, too,” Pru replied. “Also, it shows you what sort of hotel it is if you can walk into reception at two o’clock in the morning and order tea and scones.”
“I doubt they blink an eye,” Sophie said, “and only ask ‘fruit or plain?’”
“Is this a break in the case?” Pru asked, edging toward that mix of relief and fear and repulsion.
“Not exactly a break,” Sophie said, “but interesting. It’s taken the boss up to Oxford, and it’s led Detective Superintendent Upstone to assign me the task of going over the CCTV from the hotel. Again. There’s my evening sorted.”
“But there’s just the one camera?”
Sophie nodded. “On the drive. So, I hear you’re the one who persuaded Laura Quigley to stay and tell her story. Good work.”
“Happy to do my part, but it was only because of our garden connection. Which leads me to tell you about something Ellis Temple’s neighbor noticed.”
Two men walked into the station arguing with each other about a car being clamped and demanding to see someone from traffic.
Sophie nodded to the door behind the desk sergeant. “Do you want to come back?”
“No, it’s not much.” Pru explained about the uprooted mahonia. “Claudia was away on Wednesday with Finley Martin. He took her to an herb nursery near Bristol, and they didn’t return until that evening. Ellis was due in Oxford, wasn’t he? So, what was he burying in the garden? And then there’s this. Acantha rang this morning to say that the dwale—the herbal mixture—would’ve been strained and then there would have been the leftovers to dispose of.” Pru frowned. “Ellis doesn’t seem the type to cook up his own herbal mixture, but it’s worrisome, don’t you think?”
“Did you tell the boss?” Sophie asked.
“I didn’t have the chance,” Pru said. “He was eager to get away to Oxford.”
“We’ll take care of it. Of course it’s all for naught if there’s no evidence of Temple leaving the hotel. Especially when we’ve several suspects so close to hand that night.”
“Yes,” Pru said. “They all wanted Claudia’s money. Not for themselves, but for the garden. It’s odd.”
“Well,” Sophie said, “I’d better get to it. You all right?”
“Yes. See you.”
Pru wasn’t all right. She felt hollow, as if she’d given all she could and her gas tank was empty. Petrol tank. This was a fanciful thought until she remembered she’d missed lunch and here it was gone four o’clock. She looked out the window of the station to see that it was already dark. She’d had about enough of winter.
After Sophie went back into the station’s inner sanctum, Pru remained in the lobby and thought. Christopher’s journey to Oxford would be about an hour up and an hour return, plus time for questioning. He could be back in time for dinner. There was one more thing she wanted to do before she left Winchester, and she had plenty of time. She wanted to talk with Sabine. Was she still somewhere in Somerset? Had she returned to Orchard House? Had she decided to leave for good? Pru sent a text: Are you home?
A few moments later, a reply came. At a gallery near the Cathedral.
I’m in town. Do you have time to meet?
Twenty minutes? Sabine replied.
Royal Oak is near you.
The long, low pub held a comfortable crowd—groups of people at tables or standing in clusters, and a line of drinkers at the bar. Pru scanned all the faces until she’d reached the back room, where she had talked with Arlo that first day. There, Sabine sat at a table next to Danny, who had his sketchbook out.
“Blind contour drawing,” she was saying. “So here, start with a fresh sheet and your pencil at the top. Look at”—Sabine glanced up and saw Pru in front of them. She held her hand palm out, and Pru stopped. “Look at Pru and not at the paper. Let your eye follow her outline, and as you do, let your pencil do the same on the paper.”
Pru had never modeled before and wasn’t sure if she was allowed to breathe. She kept as still as possible until Danny said, “Okay, can I look?”
“Can I move?” Pru asked.
“Yes and yes,” Sabine said. She leaned back against the settle, looking entirely at ease.
Pru broke her pose and leaned over the table to see Danny’s work as he began to fill in the sketch. She was surprised to recognize herself in it. “How did you two know to find each other?” she asked, sitting down.
“I noticed someone with a sketchbook and couldn’t help being nosy,” Sabine said. “It’s like you and plants. And when I saw Danny’s work, I knew he was the same artist whose work you showed me.”
“Artist,” Danny said. “I don’t know about that.”
“Well, this couldn’t be more perfect,” Pru said. “I’m going up to the bar and order a sandwich—can I get you two anything?”
She left them discussing shading and smudging and charcoal, and returned to the table carrying a tray with her coronation chicken sandwich, several packets of crisps, and three pints of bitter. Danny leapt up and took it from her, all the while asking Sabine about a watercolor wash. Pru left them to it, listening, not understanding, but enjoying the talk.
At a pause in the discussion, she asked, “Is Arlo around?”
“He went off a few minutes ago, but said he’d be back,” Danny said, tipping the last of the crisps into his mouth.
Then, the three of them had a good chat wandering through topics of interest but of no great import. Sabine told how she had spent a month in Inverness two years earlier and had done a series of paintings focusing on Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness, but had spent most of her time in an enormous bookshop housed in an old church. Danny said he and Libby had their eye on a garden flat and would have room for a few veg and herbs and asked Pru for recommendations. Pru wanted to know the difference between painting in oil and acrylic and how to tell the media apart when you look at someone’s work.
But through it all, Pru reserved a fair portion of her thoughts for worry. Did Sabine look rested and renewed because she and John had reconciled—or was that a steely resolution to go her own way that Pru saw? Was Ellis involved in Claudia’s death? Danny had given no indication that he thought so. It seemed he didn’t like his stepfather for a host of other reasons, but not murder.
Had Ellis cooked up dwale in the kitchen when Claudia was out and about with Finley Martin and then buried the dregs in the garden? How had he forced Claudia to drink the stuff? Pru recalled the many times Ellis had done his best to point the finger at Acantha for leaving herbs and mixtures on the doorstep and coercing Claudia to try them.
Had he slept with Laura Quigley in order to have an alibi? How did he get from Oxford to Winchester to kill Claudia and then back again without being seen? Why would he do it? Pru’s thoughts wrapped round one another until they were a mass of wriggling red worms in the center of a compost pile. When Arlo approached the table, she swept away her tangle of worries and said, “Can you join us? The pub isn’t too busy?”
“Yeah, well, hiya, Pru,” he said. “It is picking up, but I’ve just had a quick dash home and back so that I could show Danny this.” He waved a half sheet of paper, limp with age, and then held it against his chest as if he’d just won a school prize.
It was a drawing done with crayons. The setting was the out-of-doors, represented by a large round tree and a border of grass at the bottom. Three people stood with a picnic basket: a man with spiky hair, a woman with a broad smile, and a boy whose features were disguised by a large stuffed bear in his arms.
Danny screwed up his face. “Did I do that?”
“You did—you were five and a half years old,” Arlo said, and turned to Sabine. “You can see his talent, can’t you, even then? As a lad he was always messing about with drawing. Good, innit?”
“It isn’t good,” Danny said, his face scarlet.
“But it is,” Sabine said. “Your representation is quite developed, and you understood position in space and the relationship among all the parts. What was the bear’s name?”
Danny stared at the drawing. “Bear,” he said.
“Was he really as big as you?” Pru asked.
“He was,” Arlo said. “I remember Bear. I’m sorry to say I don’t remember much else from those years. I was seriously losing the plot about then. Your mum was right to leave.” His face lost its animation. “Wonder what’s happened to him, your Bear.”
“Mum kept him.” Danny shut his sketchbook. “I’ve got to be going.”
“Yeah,” Arlo said, “all right, son. Look, tomorrow, I want to be there.”
“I don’t want to think about tomorrow.”
The barman called out to the boss.
“Better get back to work,” Arlo said. He rubbed his hands on his denims and shrugged. “See ya.”
“I’ll be on my way, too,” Sabine said. “Danny, we’ll be in touch, right?”
“Yeah, thanks,” Danny said, standing.
“Sabine?” Pru followed her out of the back room, but over her shoulder, said to Danny, “I’ll be right back.”
Sabine stopped near the bar to pull on her coat. She looked past Pru to Danny, who had opened his sketchbook again.
“I’m glad you wanted me to meet him,” Sabine said. “I hope he keeps at the drawing. He’s just the age Tom was.” She dipped her head, looking into her bag instead of at Pru. “The age Tom will always be.”
“I’m sorry if that made it hard for you,” Pru said.
“No,” Sabine said. “Not hard. At least, not as hard as it used to be.”
“How are you?” Pru dared to ask. “How is John? How are the two of you?”
“We’re … talking,” Sabine said.
“Good. That’s good—isn’t it?”
Sabine answered with half a shrug. “We’ll see.”
“While Danny is here, perhaps you and John could come to Greenoak for dinner again. Come early, if you like, and you two artists can spend the afternoon drawing, and Christopher and John can”—Pru waved her hand vaguely—“go fishing or something.”
Sabine laughed as she gave Pru a hug. “Thanks for not giving up.”
That fed Pru as much as the sandwich did. She went back to Danny with a warm glow that cooled when she found him staring at the table instead of drawing.
“Will you be going back to Greenoak now?” she asked.
Danny slumped back against the settle. “I’ve got to stop at Ellis’s house first. He says he has some stuff of my mum’s to give me.”
“I’ll go with you,” Pru said, perhaps a bit too eager.
“No, it’s all right,” he said.
“I’d like to, really.”
Danny frowned at her, and Pru realized her eagerness might be giving too much away. What could she tell him about Ellis to explain her reluctance at letting the young man walk into that house alone? He didn’t need to hear a load of suspicions that she couldn’t back up.
“I don’t mean go in with you,” Pru said, although she would do if he asked. “I’ll go and wait outside. For moral support?”
Danny pulled his silver Honda up behind the red Jag, which was parked in front of the monolith. Pru had just enough room behind Danny, and away from the streetlight. As they’d arranged, she would stay in her car and wait until he came out, then they would return to Greenoak. Pru was grateful there were no floodlights or police cars on the street yet, indicating the big dig in the back garden hadn’t started. Perhaps they were waiting until morning. She lowered her window when Danny got out of his car.
“Take your time,” she said. “I’ll wait here. But let me know if you need help carrying anything.” Danny gave her a nod.
The lights were on at Tabby’s house, the next one up. Pru hoped the neighbor wouldn’t notice her arrival on the street, or she’d be out asking for an update on the enquiry. Pru also hoped Danny wouldn’t be so long that she would need the loo, but she didn’t think he want to spend that much time in Ellis’s company, no matter what. She kept the engine idling and the heater on, staying warm and toasty, and checked her phone for messages. At an odd tapping sound, she lifted her head, looked out into the dark, and saw that it had started to rain. How long had it been since they’d had precipitation of any sort? But was that rain? As she squinted at it, the rain turned to snow—actual flakes, bypassing the sleet category altogether. Wait, now it was back to rain. Rain was good. It would warm them up to normal winter temperatures and melt all the—no, there it was snow again.
Pru’s phone rang with a call from Christopher.
“Hiya,” she said. “I’m glad it’s you. Are you on your way back?”
“Just starting,” he replied. “Are you home?”
“No, Ellis had some things of Claudia’s for Danny to pick up, and I came along.”
“Are you inside the house? Is Temple there?”
“I’m in my car waiting,” Pru said, a stab of fear freezing her insides. “Why? What did you find out? Should I go in and get Danny?”
“Do not go in the house. Look, I’ll have Grey send a car over.”
“What is it?”
“Ellis Temple did leave the hotel that night,” Christopher said. “The reason we didn’t see his Jaguar on the hotel car park’s CCTV is because he was driving Laura Quigley’s car.”
Chapter 19
Pru shivered. There it was—Ellis Temple lied about his whereabouts on the night Claudia was murdered. He’d taken Laura Quigley’s car to disguise his movements.
“How did you find out?” she asked.
“Grey went through the footage again,” Christopher said. “The first time, we were on the lookout for Temple’s car, but this second go-round, she had Quigley’s car model and number plate. He departed at eleven fifteen and returned at three thirty.”
“How many cars come and go from a hotel in the middle of the night?” Pru asked.
“You’d be surprised. And the two cleaners—the fellows that thought so much of Temple because he’d let them drive his Jag—after I had another word with them, they changed their minds about what they saw that night. As it turns out, they do remember that he left.”
“But Laura—”
“The desk clerk confirms her story,” Christopher said.
A door slammed and Danny stalked out of the house, his head down and carrying a single carton with a large stuffed animal under his arm.
“He’s come out, and he has Bear with him,” she said, her voice breaking. She lowered her window as Danny approached his car.
“All right, Danny?” she called as a flurry of snow drifted in the window. She shot a nervous glance at the house.
“Berk,” Danny said, and then added, “sorry, not you. He thinks he can …”
She didn’t hear the rest because he’d popped the hatch on his car and was stowing the box and Bear.
“I’ll follow you home,” she said. “It’s coming down a bit. You’ll be careful, won’t you?”
Danny slammed the hatch closed as Christopher, still on the phone, said, “Pru?”
Pru put up her window and said, “Danny’s right—he is a berk.”
“Do you see any sign of Temple?”
She scanned the house. All the lights seemed to be on, but there was no moving shadow within. “No, he’s staying put, I guess.” Danny pulled out. Pru put her phone on speaker and her Mini in gear. “Here we go.”
“I’m staying on the line,” Christopher said. “Is it snowing?”
“At the moment,” Pru said, “but it changes back and forth, rain, snow.”
“Is he heading to the A3090?” Christopher asked.
“Yes, it looks like it.”
“Is anyone behind you?”
The question caught her short. She glanced in the rearview mirror and back to the road. “No.” She looked again. “No, I don’t think—” Her eyes darted to the road and the mirror, back and forth and then she saw them, headlights far behind. “Wait,” she said. They disappeared, then reappeared again. Pru broke out in a sweat. “There is a car, but it’s a ways back.”
“I’m going to let Grey know. How far along are you?”
Pru had driven this road many times lately, but it was dark, and the precipitation had settled on snow, which changed the world round her. “Getting near the Straight Mile, I think.”
“Stay on the call, and I’ll be right back,” Christopher said.
Pru concentrated on the road ahead. She wished Danny would drive a bit slower, but, at the same time, quicker so that they could get away from the car behind. It soon caught up with them, and kept varying its speed, pulling closer and then backing off. Could this be just some random driver who wanted to pass? At a bend in the road, she checked her rearview mirror and got a good look at the car—low, red, and sleek. A Jag.
They all three turned onto the Straight Mile, a road that wasn’t all that straight, but had quite a few bends as it wended its way past small clusters of houses and into the countryside. Pru kept her eyes on Danny’s taillights, not wanting to get too close. Once or twice, Ellis pulled out as if to overtake Pru, but headlights of an oncoming car stopped him. Otherwise, there was no traffic. The snow fell heavier now, and it felt as if the three of them were the only ones on earth.
