Meadowsweet. And cowslip. Jo sat cross-legged on a flagstone outside the cottage, one of the salvaged garden books open across her knees. The morning had dawned bright and promised fair—and she was trying to distract herself while waiting for Roberta.
“Hallooo,” came the war cry. Jo stood up and shielded her eyes from morning sun. Making her way along the footpath in knee boots (and wielding a formidable walking stick) was the woman herself.
“Passing fair,” she said, appraising the cottage. “You’ve moved into it, have you?”
“Well, I keep trying to.”
“Built in 1817 by Constance Shearwater after a fire took the existing bothy and barn.” Roberta sniffed, her sharp nose turned up into the wind like a dog’s. “Farm country, you see. Scottish blackface sheep. But he sold the land to the Ardemores shortly after William inherited the baronetcy. You know he was only second to the peerage, don’t you? His father, Richard, had been declared for service during the Crimean War.”
Jo was having trouble absorbing the information. She was too busy biting back on her own burning questions. Gwilym had suggested a frontal assault might not be the best way to go. Show her the garden first.
“Let’s go,” she said. If it was abrupt, Roberta didn’t seem to mind. She gave the ground a thump with the end of her walking stick, presumably permission to proceed. Jo started up the hill.
“You can’t really see it from the ground,” she said.
“Of course not.” Roberta sniffed. “That’s the point of the spyglass room.”
“The—what?”
“Up there.” They had made it to the garden wall, and Roberta pointed to the mystery room high above. “Sir Richard had a spyglass—a small telescope—installed there so he could see the garden at its best.”
Jo stopped walking.
“Wait.”
“Beg your pardon?” Roberta asked, wheeling about on her. Jo held her hands up, a bit helplessly.
“I have to give my brain a chance to put that somewhere.” She scrunched her eyes shut. A spyglass room. “That’s what it’s for? It has a lock but Sid never gave me a key—I broke a skeleton key trying to open it. What did he keep in there?”
“Lep-i-dop-ter-a,” Roberta said, pronouncing each syllable separately, as though Jo were a bit slow on the uptake. “Butterfly specimens. And rare orchids. Pressed flowers.” She removed her lenses, marionette frown still in place, but a softening around the eyes. “Are you ill?”
“I’m fine,” Jo said, putting on what she hoped was a suitable face to prove it. “I think I mentioned the missing painting? That’s where I found it.”
“Don’t know anything about that,” Roberta said.
“But you saw the photograph!” Jo erupted. Smooth. Roberta frowned, and Jo, well. She just kept talking. “I found the same picture in the archive with Gwilym. He got the original at an auction, and he just realized you were the signatory—it’s all cut out from the wedding photo of Gwen and William. And her painting was up there! In the house. Until it wasn’t.” The sudden stop was nearly as inelegant as her charge forward. Roberta drew herself up slightly.
“Are you quite finished?” she asked. Jo nodded meekly. She also handed Roberta her phone, with the photo displayed.
“That—that’s her.” Jo felt the flush go in and out of her cheeks, and a welcome prickle of wind through her sweater. Roberta’s posture hadn’t changed; rough wool tweed, walking stick, wellies. She looked like she belonged exactly where she was, against a backdrop of stone and overgrown garden.
“Landscape photos,” she said at last. “Mostly amateur. I kept two of the gardens, here, taken before the worst decay. Didn’t see a point in keeping the others, so, yes, I sold them at an auction. This was among them.”
The prickle at Jo’s back threatened to become a shiver. The sun had just darted behind a cloud.
“Where did it all come from?” she asked, and her voice sounded small.
“What do you mean? Here, of course.” Roberta nodded in her usual austere manner. “Aiden Jones gave them over before he died.”
Sometimes, Jo’s brain and body connection just failed. Not the way they had at the Red Lion when she couldn’t make herself understood; no, this was a brownout. Noise fuzzed, the world got gooey at the edges, and Jo sat right down on the damp grass.
“Goodness!” Roberta barked. Jo just held her hand up.
“Hold—hold on.” Discord, disgraphic, dysphoria. She looked up past Roberta’s careworn leather face and beyond to the bright, bright sky. “My uncle Aiden gave you that photograph. You’re serious.”
“I didn’t realize it would be a shock.” For once, Roberta looked discomfited. Ironic, since Jo was the one sitting on the ground. She got back to her feet and brushed off her jeans.
“I just don’t know anything about anything! I don’t know why they left. I don’t know who Evelyn was or why her painting was upstairs. I don’t know why Aiden had her photograph, or even anything about him—or about the Ardemores, either.”
“Ah.” Roberta packed a lot into a syllable. She wasn’t even looking at Jo, but at the corners of the house, the anchoring points of Richard’s gardens. “Well. Your uncle wanted to know about the Ardemores, too, I gather. Came to the archive a few times. I told him the same thing I told you.”
“You told me to talk to people that are already dead,” Jo said.
“I told him to speak to Sid,” Roberta corrected. And there was a hint of gentleness to it. “That’s when the family went wrong, you know. The Randles put everything into this place. They’d been promised something in return. A piece of the land, even. Never happened. Family went broke, rather did Sid’s father in.”
Jo thought about Sid on the first day, a fox surprised in his burrow. His family had been let down—by her own. His immediate dislike suddenly made a certain sense.
“I don’t know a thing about this Evelyn, or that photograph,” Roberta continued. “It’s original—I could see that. But I suspect Aiden framed it himself.” Roberta cleared her throat. “Now, still planning to show me the gardens, or are we through being pleasant?”
The words came out before Jo could stop them:
“You have never been pleasant.”
Roberta blinked at her. And then laughed. It snapped a tension wire in Jo, and she felt herself settling into apology.
“I am so sorry—”
“You’re not. You meant it,” Roberta said, her eyes still in crow’s-feet. Jo puffed air.
“I did. And you aren’t. You scare me a little. Do you want to see the spyglass room or not?”
“Lead the way. Please.”
The house’s weathered front now appeared to be spying through its single unboarded eye. Jo walked through to the cavernous front hall and up the grand stair.
The roofers took weekends off, apparently, but evidence of their presence had been strewn everywhere. The hole had been tarped over again, and some of the debris swept away. Better, the window had been opened up. Jo could see the scaffolding outside, like a metal skeleton, but now the gardens were visible without recourse to the roof.
“That’s it exactly,” Roberta said, looking over the damp sill. She leaned her walking stick against the wall and pressed her gnarled hands together, almost as if she were planning to say a prayer. “Look at it. A sad ruin, now. But it was glorious. You—come and stand here.”
Jo joined her at the windowsill; Roberta nudged her slightly left.
“Lining up your view,” she said, and then handed her a folded piece of heavy paper. “Take a look.”
“Oh!” Orange trees bloomed under Jo’s fingertips among bee balm and lavender and shaded lime walks. Watercolor, she thought. Art print. The caption, tilting in scripted font, gave Richard’s name, fig 3. “It’s from a book!”
“Sir Richard’s botanical. He did most of the landscape paintings,” Roberta told her. “Now look there”—she pointed out past Jo’s shoulder. She was looking at the same scene, precisely the same, plus a hundred years and some.
And it reminded Jo that she had her own show-and-tell.
“I told you I had a garden plan,” she said. “It’s downstairs.” She left Roberta at the window, rocking on her heels, hands back in the pockets of her goose-down vest. Obsession, Gwilym would say. But everyone deserved their private joys.
“Here it is,” Jo panted once she returned, waving the crisply refolded document. Roberta had moved to the other side of the room. Bent at an angle—acute this time, Jo thought absently—she appeared to be examining the wallpaper.
“They’ve changed the wallpaper,” Roberta said. “I’ve a photograph of this room and his orchids. It should be printed in florals.”
“I thought it was Victorian paper—isn’t it?” Jo asked. She ran her finger along the faded print.
“Pink, is what it is,” Roberta huffed. “Looks like a bleeding nursery. Whose painting did you say was in here? The wife? Probably wanted a girl.”
“Oh no, it was Evelyn’s. And anyway, Gwen and William never had any children—” Jo stopped midsentence as her brain ground gears. Then she grasped Roberta by her stick-free hand and squeezed it. “You. Are. A genius.”
“Good heavens, girl.” Roberta was flustered and pulled free, but Jo scarcely heard her. She was too busy digging for her phone in the too-many jacket pockets of her mackintosh. She texted fast enough to require spell correct:
Gwilym! I know why Evelyn was hiding out in the country!
Jo and Gwilym sipped tea in the mill-museum kitchen. Roberta, who had softened considerably since being called a genius, had provided them with sweet brown bread, jam, and eleven archive boxes from the city hospital.
“You think our Evelyn was pregnant?” Gwilym asked, trying to read labels without his glasses.
“I know it,” Jo said. “I should have thought it before now.”
“Okay—I’m not disagreeing!” Gwilym assured her. “And if you were hiding a pregnancy, you would definitely be camera shy—and wouldn’t be turning up at garden parties.”
Roberta gripped elbows across her chest.
“In 1908, Abington had the dispensary and two private doctors. Prior to the establishment of the NHS, of course.” She took a seat. “One of the doctors was a woman.”
“Really?” Gwilym asked. “Isn’t that pretty progressive?”
“Hardly.” Roberta had resumed an imperious look. “The only places you ever saw them were little towns like this. Couldn’t make a living in London, could she? Ida Hobarth. She’s buried in the cemetery by the park.”
“Still, that seems like a good place to start, doesn’t it?” Jo asked.
“The aristocracy tended to favor physicians over midwives,” Gwilym suggested. “Evelyn wasn’t married, so perhaps Ida would have been her first choice over a man?”
“We’ve a reading room,” Roberta said. “But you’ve only got till three-thirty. It’s choir night.”
Jo checked her watch. It was three...and even hyperlexia wouldn’t get them through all the medical detritus in an hour. Gwilym was watching her and seemed to catch the thought midair.
“Ms. Wilkinson?” he asked, “I know this is a big ask, but is there any way we might borrow these for tonight?”
He’d pushed his glasses on again, as if that would help. Roberta scowled.
“Remove them from the museum library? And take them where?”
“I know how precious these are to you,” Gwilym said, resting one hand on the nearest box. “We’ll sign any waiver or agreement you like.”
We will? Jo wondered what that might entail. Maybe a trade?
“You can keep the garden plans,” she said suddenly. “They’re original, and you can keep them till we bring all these back.”
“And we’ll return everything tomorrow morning, first thing,” Gwilym pursued. He gave the box a loving tap. “You don’t know it, but Jo here is an editor—a research editor. And an amazing reader.”
That part might not have been a lie, Jo admitted, but it was definitely pandering to the audience. Roberta gave a curt little nod.
“Understood. And you will sign for them. And I will have them by eight tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The upside, Jo supposed, was freedom to peruse the documents at leisure. The rest were downsides, including walk-racing back to the Red Lion for Jo’s rental car, followed by hauling and packing all eleven boxes under Roberta’s discerning gaze.
“There’s a curry house around the corner,” Gwilym said as they pulled away.
“I thought you paid board in advance at the Lion?” Jo asked.
“Yeah. I just feel a curry. You don’t care for it?”
Honestly, there wasn’t much in the world of food Jo didn’t like. She shrugged and pulled onto the appropriate side street, which resulted in a twenty-minute wait...but also chicken tikka masala.
“If those boxes smell of curry, Roberta will murder you,” Jo cautioned. “Now, where are we supposed to do this midnight research?”
“The Red Lion pub room is too loud.”
“We aren’t doing this in your bedroom, fella.”
“I wasn’t even flirting that time!” Gwilym protested. “I was thinking maybe we could do this on-site.”
“You mean at Ardemore house?”
“Why not? Come on, please? Even Tula and Ben have been there!” He cocked his head like an expectant dog. “What if I buy beer?”
“All right, fine.” Jo watched Gwilym do a celebratory fist pump. Then he folded his hands in his lap and went suddenly, almost alarmingly quiet. His face had gone a bit red, too. None of this squared with her read of the situation.
“You look like you’re holding in a hiccup.”
“Sorry!” Gwilym squeaked. “It’s like a date!”
Fleet had returned, not by train but by car. MacAdams rather thought he might have done that in the first place and saved everyone the trouble—but felt a little too in his debt to say so. They convened in the incident room over coffee, and he told him about the break-in.
“And no one saw the perpetrator?” Fleet asked. MacAdams shook his head.
“Not in any useful way. Olivia saw someone—a man—in a trench. That’s all we got,” he said. Which described just about every bloke in Yorkshire. “I can gather a few other things, just from circumstance. He’s bold, breaking into a woman’s house in the middle of the night. He must surely have known the occupants would be around this time.”
“You’ve no proof he didn’t know that before, when he broke into the cottage,” Fleet reminded him. It was true; Jo happened to be out of town. The killer may or may not have known that.
“Fair. But that doesn’t change the profile—our suspect takes risks. And he has to be reasonably athletic. I doubt he meant to overturn an antique bureau, but even so, it takes some force.”
“Or heft,” Fleet mused over his tea.
“Doubtful. The only other thing Olivia made plain was that our perpetrator was tall and thin.” What she had actually said was “not as heavy as you are, Detective.” MacAdams wasn’t exactly the Olympian standard, but he wasn’t overweight. Not clinically, anyway. Thus, the perp was thin. He cleared his throat. “We know he’s looking for something. We don’t know what. And it’s increasingly unlikely to be cash, as the sisters are more or less broke now.”
The perp was also unlikely to be Lotte or Olivia. MacAdams plucked them from the whiteboard and stuck them in the further column.
“You are removing them from suspicion?” Fleet asked. “Despite knowing that Lotte and Sid were in business together?” What a way to put it, MacAdams thought.
“I’ll agree that Lotte had something to lose without the cottage arrangement,” he said. “But that wasn’t Sid’s fault and killing him certainly wouldn’t solve it. She thought he might continue clearing customers for her, despite his claims about cashing in. Sid’s ‘wins’ never lasted very long.” Olivia was case in point. Her ten grand disappeared in less than six months. Sid must’ve used part of it to pay off creditors—and the rest to get new ones.
“I see.” Fleet rocked slightly, peering over his teacup at the woman who remained front and center: Elsie Smythe. “And now we know criminality runs in the family.”
“We do,” MacAdams agreed. It had been rather gratifying to discover the Elsie-Jack connection ahead of Fleet. But there were still problems with the theory. “Only one problem—Elsie is certainly hard enough, I think. But she’s also not a tall, thin man.”
“People see what they want to see,” Fleet said. “Olivia sees a trench coat. She may have seen anything.”
“I saw a man, too, Fleet. At the cottage break-in. Remember?” MacAdams pressed. Fleet took a long sip in silence before casting him an appraising glance.
“You saw a gloved hand.”
MacAdams was presently squeezing his own hand into an irritated fist. Mainly because Fleet was, again, correct about this.
“What I am saying,” he said stiffly, “is that more than one person may be involved.”
A two-dimensional Elsie stared back at them; the photo had to be a decade old. Unsmiling, with the same fierce eyes as her brother. Was he imagining their connection? He knew better than to surmise without facts. The Full Sutton register hadn’t logged any visitors for Jack at all, much less a family member. But then, who—or what—else did she have to hide?
“I know she’s involved,” MacAdams said slowly. “Otherwise, she wouldn’t be so damn hard to locate.”
“You have been watching her aunt’s house in York?”
“Yes, Fleet, and no, she hasn’t returned to it. She hasn’t been back to the Newcastle apartment, either.”
Fleet’s bland look had changed to something less meritorious.
“You should have brought her in for questioning while you had her,” he said bluntly, “And you should get a warrant to search both her homes.”
MacAdams turned back to face the board. He had plenty to say to that—but not within shouting distance of Cora’s office, not on your life.
“I can’t haul her in without evidence,” he said through his teeth. “And I do have a warrant for her apartment. I’ve been there, so have Newcastle uniform. It’s empty.”
Of course, he wasn’t really angry at Fleet. It was the truth that rankled him. He had Elsie in reach; he’d caught her off guard. It would have been the perfect moment, the perfect time to bring her in for questioning. But on what grounds? How did you corner Elsie Smythe?
There had been aspects of performance to all the ex-Randles women. Lotte played at rebel kink, but her sexual emancipation was tied up in economics—and she feared Olivia’s disapproval. Olivia might be earning her stripes as a drunken cynic, but she’d also been the hardest worker, the biggest giver, and still her sister’s primary support. Both also played at being grieving widows, looking for sympathy and revising their histories with Sid. Elsie, however? She was something else. A different level. When he closed his eyes to try and picture her, he kept fumbling, seeing instead a mishmash of her two looks: the red dragon heels and leather skirt with the soft pastel blouse under sharp business suit. He might describe Jarvis Fleet as a mask with a mustache...but Elsie? She was the whole damn costume.
He suspected her, yes. A lot. But was she murderer or accomplice—or both? By her account, she’d not seen Sid since the divorce, and her neighbor in Newcastle hadn’t seen him coming and going. Her brother Jack had been evasive, too, but who else was there to ask if they couldn’t produce the aunt? Elsie appeared where she didn’t belong, vanished from where they expected to find her. He might as well have asked Jack about a ghost, for the way he blanched when the subject of murder and blackmail came up.
MacAdams tapped the tabletop.
“We need to do some more digging on Jack Turner. I want to see him again. By myself, this time.”
“Alas,” said Fleet, and this was not the response MacAdams expected.
“Meaning?”
“I meant to tell you. York received a call from Jack’s legal counsel. He’s cited us for harassment.”
“He—what?” MacAdams had been standing. Now he threw himself into the nearest chair, which happened to be Gridley’s. “I’m sorry, but that is bullshit.”
“We can fight it, but it’s an injunction against speaking to him further.”
MacAdams rubbed his temple with a free hand. Why in hell would Jack do something like this?
“Fuck, Fleet—it’s your people up there! Do something, would you?” He’d raised his voice. And he’d used a word Cora black-listed from the office. And she had fucking supernatural hearing. He heard the door open and the sound of sturdy shoes.
“Is there a problem, James MacAdams?”
MacAdams faced a solid block of irritation in navy blue. He had barely slept in a week, ferreted out the semi-illegal mishmash of both Rupert Selkirk and Lotte Randles, and chased a perp on foot.
“There is not a problem,” he said as steadily as he could with his jaw clenched shut.
“Good. You are on very thin ice. Jarvis? You said you’d like to see the War Room?”
“For old times’ sake, yes.” He turned to MacAdams. “I haven’t been since the funeral.”
“Right, you two and all that military machinery.”
“Military process,” Fleet corrected pertly. “Good day.”
MacAdams nodded agreeably to the idea of losing Fleet for the afternoon. He leaned back in Gridley’s chair and dialed Tommy in Newcastle.
“Anything to report?”
“All quiet here, sir. And Newcastle forensics have nothing to report—suspect wore gloves.”
Yes, thought MacAdams. Black ones. To think: if he’d caught the burglar that night at Jo’s cottage—
His phone buzzed in his hand. An unfamiliar number was trying to reach him. He put Andrews on hold to answer.
“Hello?”
“Areet, am gan to the toon, but that lass is back.” Geordie—thickly accented.
“Is this Edith?” MacAdams asked, “Elsie’s neighbor?”
“Aye. Just back. Saw her out in the skip.”
Oh God.
“You found her body?” MacAdams demanded.
“Nar, nar! The bags is in. She gone off agin. And I took ’em, too, though the meter man giving us hackies.”
“The bags. She put bags in the skip—and you took them out?”
“Aye, told yer. Big black uns. Wants ’em do yer?”
MacAdams assured her that yes, yes, they very much wanted them. It took him less than two minutes, but he was already at his car.
“Boss?” Andrews asked, when MacAdams managed to get him on Speaker.
“Sorry—yes. I’m picking up Green. We’ll meet you in Newcastle.”
Green stood in the doorway of Edith’s tiny apartment, her tan raincoat hanging loose on her shoulders.
“I can’t believe we are doing this,” she said.
“Patience,” MacAdams encouraged. The living room had a distinctly oily feeling, like too many fried up dinners had accumulated on its surfaces. Not unclean, just oddly filtered; everything seemed to have gone slightly red-brown in tint.
“Think I’m a right nebby bugga, but here y’go.” Edith stepped in from the adjoining room and plopped two black sacks on the rug.
“Good work, ma’am,” he said, leaning to take hold of them. Green clicked her tongue and asked, quietly: “Is this perfectly legal?”
“We have a warrant for her apartment,” he said, and after all, the items must surely have started out there... “Help me get these in the boot.”
“Divvent want to open ’em first?” Edith asked. “Mehbee garbage.”
This made more sense than he wanted to admit. MacAdams put the first bag on the plastic doormat, hooked one finger into the plastic knots and gave a stiff pull. The lip slackened and a pair of men’s shoes spilled out. MacAdams picked one up in gloved fingers; well worn, large size. He gave the bag a shake, redistributed its goods, and shone his penlight within.
“Green, what do you see?” he asked. Green peered over his shoulder at a men’s shaving kit, toothbrush, and belt—among other things. She crouched next to him for a better view.
“That would be...all the things we didn’t find in Sid’s flat,” she whispered huskily.
“Nor in the cottage,” MacAdams reminded her. “Now, what would Ms. Elsie be doing with those?”
“Giz a deek at that,” Edith said. “And she calls me the wazzock? Bloody bint, she war.” MacAdams had only a faint idea of what she meant, though bint and bitch were sister-terms. Either way, it reminded him that here was not the place to be going over potential evidence. He nodded to Green, who donned her own gloves and began tying the bag back together.
“Was Elsie alone when she came round?” he asked the bent little woman.
“Aye.”
“And how did she come? By car?”
“Oh, aye. Nicest thing I seen. Nar a sound, neither. ’Lectric.”
MacAdams recalled the BMW i3, sleek and well shined on the day of the funeral. If it were just a rental, as Elsie claimed, why might she still be driving it around? And if not a rental...then she was making a sight more money than her accounts led them to believe.
“So what now?” Green asked as they loaded the bags into MacAdams’ trunk.
“I need forensics to go over it, but I don’t want to wait that long to bring Elsie in.” He was, in fact, afraid this drop-off meant she was about to do a runner. “I want a warrant for Elsie’s arrest—and a manhunt if that’s what it takes to find her.”
“No need,” Green said, smiling broadly at a text on her phone. “Look here! York uniform just saw her. She must have gone there straight after dumping things here.”
MacAdams took the phone from her and dialed.
“This is DCI MacAdams. Do NOT let her out of your sight.”