Bittersweet herbs, p.6
Bittersweet Herbs, page 6
“Christopher,” John said, “did Molly ever get you to volunteer at her mother-and-baby charity fête? She was always trying to rope in the junior officers.”
“No, I don’t recall I ever did that.”
“Sabine,” Pru said, “does Orchard House have fruit trees?”
“We’ve a couple of old apple trees at the bottom of the garden,” Sabine replied. “But before you can get there, you must first beat your way through the wisteria to get out the kitchen door.”
“You’ll have to see the gardens at Greenoak,” Christopher said.
“Molly started that charity in York,” Upstone said, plowing on as if no one else had spoken. “It’s still going strong.”
Pru’s eyes darted to Sabine, who had a pleasant expression but two red spots on her cheeks.
“Wisteria can so easily get away from you,” Pru said. “I’d be happy to take a look at it for you.” She shoveled another mouthful of food in and fumed about John’s apparent lack of ability to speak about—or to—his wife. The living one.
Upstone waved a fork at Christopher, who moved out of its way. “I can’t count the number of times Sergeant Pearse and I ended up in the kitchen in the middle of the night with Molly doing a fry-up for us. Do you remember that assault case where the man was beaten with a model of a caravel from the Spanish Armada—”
“Of course, it’s frustrating,” Pru cut in, “not being able to dig in the garden right now. Usually, winter—as long as it isn’t too wet—is a wonderful time to plant.”
Upstone aimed his fork at Pru. “You phoned the victim the morning she died, didn’t you?”
“John!”
That rebuke came from Christopher. Pru stopped chewing as Upstone threw his former protégé a look, and Christopher corrected himself. “Sir. Don’t you think—”
“Yes, yes, all right,” Upstone replied, recovering a bit of his good humor. Perhaps he believed he’d won a victory now that the spotlight had properly turned to murder. “Will you be able to come into the station tomorrow and give us a statement?”
“Yes, of course,” Pru said. “I’ll be there first thing in the morning.”
Christopher gathered plates after they’d finished the chicken, and Pru—usually never the troublemaker—felt an unaccountable urge to suggest that he help Sabine in the kitchen, so that she could have a go at John. But, overcome with common sense, she instead followed their hostess again to the kitchen and returned with an apricot tart. After that, Sabine suggested coffee in the front room, and shooed Pru off with the men.
“Do you do much fishing these days?” Upstone asked Christopher as the three of them stood in the sitting room. “I remember Molly baking perch that you’d caught in the Foss.”
“I take the Scouts out on the Test,” Christopher replied. He nodded to the painting above the mantel. “Is that the Lake District?”
Sabine came in behind them with the coffee tray. “It is,” she said.
Christopher took the tray from her and set it down. “A fine place for fishing,” he said, “although, there’s a visit a few years ago that stands out for me the most, when my son and I spent a couple of days near Cockermouth.” He slipped his arm round Pru’s waist. “It was a near disaster.”
Pru, warmed at the memory, smiled and continued the story. “There was a rail strike. Christopher and Graham were stuck in the middle of nowhere, and I was about to flee the country—that is, move back to Dallas. You returned in the nick of time,” she said to her husband and then turned to Sabine. “Where did you and John meet?”
“There.” Sabine nodded to the painting. “I was living in Keswick for a year and had a show at a local gallery. This was last winter. Sometimes an artist sees her work in an entirely different light when it’s hung. So, during the opening, I stood back to look at this one. Then, I heard a man behind me say, ‘Cat Bells. It’s as if—”
“ ‘—I could walk right into that painting and climb the fell.’ ”
When John spoke those words, his face softened, but he dropped his eyes, avoiding his wife’s gaze.
“It was my first sale of the show,” Sabine added quietly.
The tender memory brought tears to Pru’s eyes. “So, you’re the artist. The painting is beautiful.”
“Do you remember, Christopher,” John said, “the time I took Molly up for a ramble in the Dales, and we got lost for almost an entire day because she …”
They made it through coffee, and at last readied to take their leave. It had been an excruciating evening, the meal notwithstanding.
“Please do come back and see the garden in the daylight,” Sabine said to Pru as coats were retrieved and “good nights” exchanged.
“I will,” Pru replied as she and Christopher stepped outside.
The door shut. Pru dropped the smile and stomped off to the car, spinning round halfway there and hissing at Christopher, “It was as if she were invisible. How can he do that?”
Christopher herded her into the car as Pru seethed, yanking on the seat belt and shoving it into the lock. “Did he speak to her—even once? Did he ever acknowledge his wife was in the room?”
“Not a word to me about being married.” Christopher reversed out of the drive abruptly, but then continued at a reasonable speed. “What is he playing at—all this talk about his dead wife? If he felt he were disrespecting Molly’s memory, why even start something with Sabine? When did they marry? What are they doing in Hampshire?”
Pru crossed her arms and stared out into the darkness. “I intend to find out.”
Christopher cut his eyes at her. “You don’t want to get on his bad side.” After a moment of silence, he added, “Pru?”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” she replied. “Sabine invited me. For a garden consultation.”
The sky had returned to gray the next morning—still freezing, still no snow. A dull day, and it matched Pru’s mood as she hunkered over a bowl of porridge at breakfast. Christopher had left early, giving her plenty of time to dwell on her morning activity: to go to the Winchester police station and give a statement. But what was she to say about the death of a woman she had met only once and who had either killed herself or … what? What did John Upstone suspect had really happened? But thoughts of Upstone led Pru directly to his shabby treatment of Sabine the evening before, and once her mind settled on that, her spirits sank deeper.
Evelyn loaded the oven with an enormous sheet of root vegetables—carrots, parsnips, and swedes mixed with rosemary and garlic—and then poured herself a cup of tea, and joined Pru at the table.
“Does your friend Acantha know about this turn of events? Did Christopher’s superintendent tell her that it might not be suicide?”
Pru had thought it better not to mention the John-and-Sabine issue to Evelyn until she’d learned more, and so, had given only a brief account of the dinner party—what a delightful happenstance to find that Christopher’s old boss was nearby, how lovely that he’d remarried, and look, I have a recipe for a crab-and-avocado tart.
“Superintendent Upstone didn’t say any more than Acantha told us on Friday, except something about a ‘concoction.’ I wonder do they think she’d taken poison—or that someone had given it to her. Christopher was going to be briefed this morning, so we’ll know more later.” She sighed. “I’d better be on my way.”
“You’ll invite them for dinner, won’t you?” Evelyn asked. “Superintendent Upstone and his wife? Wouldn’t we all like to meet this man that Christopher admires so?”
Pru wasn’t entirely sure the John Upstone that Christopher had known still existed.
Chapter 7
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you aren’t allowed any weapons inside the police station.”
“What?”
The desk sergeant’s comment grabbed Pru’s attention. She’d been glancing round the lobby, but now turned back to the matter at hand—the search of her large canvas bag. It lay open on the table, exposing not only her purse, three extra hair clips, a notebook, four pencils and two pens, her phone, a handful of receipts, but also—at the bottom—a pair of hand pruners.
“My secateurs—so that’s where they’ve been,” Pru said. “I’ve been looking for this pair for ages.” One of the words the sergeant had spoken drifted back into her consciousness. Weapon. She blushed to the roots of her hair. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think to … I’m a gardener, you see. I remember now a couple of weeks ago I’d taken them with me up to the church because Bernadette—Reverend Freemantle—asked if I could cut the ivy away from the One Lost Lamb window. You know how ivy can be, and then I forgot to take them out again and … ”
She stopped babbling. You’d think that being married to a detective inspector would put her at ease in a police station, but that wasn’t always the case.
The desk sergeant seemed unimpressed with her explanation. “You’ll have to leave them here,” he said, giving Pru a form to fill out and handing over a chit. He slipped the so-called weapon into a drawer and locked it, after which he gave the handle a test pull, just in case the pruners had a mind to escape of their own accord and snip the brown leaves off that quite sorry-looking spider plant hanging in the corner.
“Take a seat, please, and Detective Superintendent Upstone will be out to collect you.”
Pru sat, glancing round at the Winchester police station. It felt vast, but she knew it was only because it wasn’t Christopher’s normal patch—the cubbyholelike station in Romsey seemed a bit more like home to her.
The door to the street opened, and Acantha walked in, looking smart in her mulberry suit and purple coat. She spotted Pru and made a beeline for her, ignoring the desk sergeant’s greeting of “Yes, ma’am, what can I help you with?”
“Did they call you in because of Claudia?” she asked Pru, her stage whisper loud enough for anyone to hear. “What’s this about? I spoke to them on Friday, but someone rang and told me to come in to the station today.”
“Excuse me, ma’am,” the desk sergeant called.
Nodding to the counter, Pru said, “Why don’t you speak to him first, and then come and sit down.”
When the desk sergeant performed his search on Acantha’s leather satchel, he found a plastic bag of dried plant material. She identified the plant as clary sage, but still, he made a careful examination of the crumbling specimen before allowing her to sign in. She then gave him a short lecture on the benefits of the herb, which, when steeped in water, made an eyewash, and had been used as a remedy for more than a thousand years.
“Of course, it’s better fresh,” she said to Pru, sitting down at last, keeping her hands busy re-sorting her handbag, unbuttoning her coat, and smoothing her bun. “But as it’s winter, I had to make do. I’m giving a talk to a garden club this evening, and I work better with a prop.”
“Acantha, the police have more questions about Claudia’s death.”
“I don’t know what else they could—”
Pru cut her off, wanting to get this over with. “My husband is a police officer—a detective inspector. He’s been asked to work on the enquiry.”
She and Christopher had talked it over. Pru had wanted the information out there so the others wouldn’t learn about it another way and worry that she was a snitch.
Acantha paused. “Enquiry?” she echoed. “Police don’t investigate suicides, do they?”
“No, I don’t believe they do.”
“Your husband—was he the one I talked with on Friday at Claudia’s house?”
Pru shook her head, perhaps a bit too vehemently. “That was probably Detective Superintendent Upstone. I’m married to Christopher Pearse, and I wanted you to know so you didn’t think I was trying to hide something. Perhaps he’s the one you’ll talk with today. Or maybe you’re here only to sign your statement. It could be that simple.”
“Not so simple for me,” Acantha said. “You see, I need to get back into Claudia’s house.”
“Why?”
But Acantha had no time to answer, as Upstone emerged from a door behind the counter.
“Ms. Parke, if you’ll follow me. Ms. Morris—someone will be along for you.”
“You’ll understand, I’m sure, it’s better that I interview you instead of your husband.” Upstone sat across the table from her with a file folder open and a pocket notebook nearby.
“Yes, of course,” Pru replied to the detective superintendent, a man who appeared confident and assured in his role and his surroundings—so unlike the John Upstone from the previous evening.
The interview began, and it soon became clear he had more interest in Acantha, Rollo, and Finley than in her own encounter with Claudia. But Pru had no more information about the other members of the society than she did of the victim. If Claudia were truly a victim.
Pru waited for a lull in the questioning, and as Upstone flipped a couple of pages in his notebook and then wrote something in the file, she finally asked, “Why do you think she was murdered?”
He ran a finger over his David Niven mustache. “Pearse should have the autopsy results by now, and we’ll know for certain. Let’s just say, I didn’t like the look of things at the scene.”
A police officer’s instinct—she’d seen it with Christopher, and when asked, his answers were just as vague, as if they couldn’t really say why something was off, only that it was.
“I’m sorry I can’t be of more help telling you about the society,” Pru said, “but, you see, I met them only last week after I attended the lecture. Even so, I don’t see how any one of them could be suspected of murder. Why would they do it? They had just received a huge donation from Claudia.”
“A million pounds, was it?” Upstone leaned forward. “A great deal of money. Paperwork done and dusted? No hard feelings about it?”
Pru had no trouble following his line of thought, because on the drive home the previous evening, after exhausting the topic of John and Sabine, she and Christopher had gone over a few salient points, including the PHDHN.
“You’re referring to the Protect Hazel Dormouse Habitat Now group. Because Claudia had reneged on her promise to give them the money. Do you think Terry Reed would kill her out of anger—if the dormice couldn’t have her million, then no one could? Or do you think someone in the medieval garden society didn’t want her to have the chance to change her mind again?”
The superintendent shrugged, as if now that he’d planted that seed, he could back off. “It’s a line of enquiry. Two, actually.” He closed his notebook.
“Is that it?” Pru asked. “I’m not sure I’ve been much help to you.”
“Perhaps it isn’t what you know now, but what you can find out for us. After all, as a new member of this society—and possibly new board member—you’re perfectly positioned to see the enquiry in a different light from the police.”
“Are you saying you need a mole?”
“I’m not asking you to join MI5. Your relationship to the enquiry doesn’t need to be a secret. What I’m looking for is a connection to this group—someone who can explain to us the medieval aspect. The gardens, the plants, and what they were used for.”
“Was she poisoned?” Pru asked.
“Let’s leave it at that for now, shall we?” Upstone said, standing and smoothing his suit jacket.
Pru rose and moved to the door, taking the end of official business as permission to introduce another topic. “Thank you for dinner last evening—it was lovely to meet Sabine.”
Upstone’s eyes flashed, and Pru waited. Go ahead, growl at me. But instead, he blushed, and mumbled, “Yes, well,” turning back into the bumbling husband from the evening before. She felt a pang of guilt for trying to poke the bear, only to have the bear whimper instead of roar. Although, it was quite a tiny pang.
He held the lobby door open for her and then returned to the inner sanctum of the station. The desk sergeant gave her barely a glance as most of his attention was being taken with an older woman complaining about an attempted bag snatching.
No Acantha in sight, but Rollo had arrived. He sat forward in his seat, elbows on his thighs and hands clasped. His face had a greenish tint to it, as if he’d spent the morning trying and failing to keep his breakfast down.
When he saw Pru, he popped up and said, “You, too? What’s this about—have you any idea? The police rang me over the weekend. It was very awkward, I must say. I mean, it’s dreadful about Claudia, but what questions would they have for me? If they wanted to ask anyone anything, it should be Finley—he’s the one. Why me?”
With that, Rollo ran out of steam and dropped back into his chair. Pru sat beside him.
“Police are investigating Claudia’s death, because they suspect it might not have been suicide.”
“What?” Rollo gasped, clasping his chest and recoiling, with his eyes wide and his pupils reduced to tiny dots of black in a sea of green. It was, Pru thought, a bit over the top.
“I don’t know anything else,” she replied. “Although, I do want to tell you that the investigating detective inspector is my husband.” Pru counted herself lucky that she would have to give this explanation only one more time.
Rollo’s overwrought manner melted away. “Is he? Well, then, you can vouch for us, can’t you? Because, what would we know about … ” He frowned. “But, Pru, Acantha said Claudia had hanged herself. How would someone—”
At that moment, Finley walked into the lobby wearing his Cossack hat and gray coat. He went straight to the counter and, the desk sergeant having handed over the woman who had nearly been robbed to a police constable, blinked at this new arrival.
“Sir?” he asked.
Finley explained his business, signed in, and then turned. Spotting Pru and Rollo, he dragged off his hat, made his way to them, and sat down on the other side of Pru.
“Well,” he said, toying with the edge of his hat, “bloody awful thing.”
“Hello, Finley,” Pru said. “You’re here about Claudia’s death. I want to explain something.”
