Lights flashed through hazy windows, and Jo found herself focusing on a whorl in the glass. Police with bright yellow vests had turned up first; they put a blanket on her shoulders and left her in the little kitchen where the counter mostly blocked her view. Men in paper suits and gloves came next. She’d seen that before, back in Brooklyn. A man had been shot in her apartment building. It hadn’t felt real then, and it didn’t feel real now.
“—a shock.”
Jo looked up to find a man in a slightly rumpled suit peering down at her. She wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing there.
“Sorry?”
“I said I am sure it must have been a shock,” he repeated, pulling the other chair forward and sitting down across from her. “DCI MacAdams.”
Detective Chief Inspector, Jo thought, her brain translating by rote. Senior investigating officer, UK brand. He had brown hair, shaggy gray at the temples, and a jaw like a mousetrap. Jo noticed that his tie was crooked and that it had dried egg on it.
“I understand you found the body, Ms. Jones?” he asked her.
“I did.” She motioned to the yellow and white paper suits. She’d given them a very basic explanation, delivered like bullets from a Gatling gun. Plus her name, number, address at the Red Lion.
“I know it’s upsetting, but I have a few more questions.” The detective pulled out a small notepad. “Let’s start with what time you arrived here?”
“11:12 a.m. was when I called Rupert Selkirk.”
“Right.” MacAdams made a note. “But when did you find the body?”
“I just said.”
“You called your solicitor when you found the body?”
“Yes, but he wasn’t there. So, then I called Ben,” Jo explained. The detective was frowning now.
“I’m sorry, you called Ben—?”
“Well, I called Tula and got Ben. At the Red Lion.”
“Ma’am, why—?”
“Jo,” Jo corrected. Which was also not the right thing to do. She was doing this badly, judging by the look at the detective’s face. Get a hold of yourself, she thought.
“Okay, Jo, why didn’t you call the police?” he asked. That was easier, at least.
“I don’t know how. It’s not 911 like in the US.”
MacAdams continued to frown, though the rest of his face remained impassive. Had he practiced that look a lot? Jo found herself searching it for clues.
“How long did you know the deceased?” he asked.
“I didn’t. I knew of him, but I only met him on Tuesday, and I fired him yesterday.”
MacAdams was still looking at her, his pencil poised in midair.
“You fired him,” he repeated. “But you didn’t know him.”
“Oh.” Jo tapped fingers against her knee to avoid gripping her thumbs into nervous fists.
“Rupert hired him, originally. But he stole a painting from the house, so I had him fired.”
“This house?” MacAdams asked, eyes sweeping the cottage front room right to left.
“No—Ardemore House, up the hill,” Jo corrected. “Which is my house now. I guess they both are.”
For the first time, MacAdams’ face betrayed a bit of real expression. Unfortunately, it appeared to be suppressed irritation. He rechecked his notepad.
“You said your name was Josephine Jones, from the US,” he read.
“My mother was from York.” She pursed her lips. There was a perfectly straightforward way to explain all this, but her mind kept diving sideways into subplots. And frankly, the egg spot on his tie was driving her to distraction. “What I mean is, it’s a family property and I inherited it a few months ago.”
The detective responded by waving at someone just out of Jo’s line of sight.
“I’m going to have more questions,” he said. “But in the meantime, Detective Sergeant Green will drive you back to town.” A muscular woman with tight box braids joined them. A bit younger than Jo, she had serious eyebrows.
“Yes, sir.”
“Hang on—I don’t want to go back to town,” Jo protested, standing up. She was quite a bit shorter than either of them and instinctively stood on her toes. “I—I live here.”
“This is a murder investigation,” said MacAdams, straightening the egg tie. “Forensics will take twenty-four to thirty-six hours, maybe longer. We will take you to the Red Lion. Stay there, please.”
“I can’t stay here?”
MacAdams had almost made it through the door. Now he turned so fast that his coat caught on the handle.
“A man has been shot,” he said, freeing himself, and Jo shrank into her shoulder blades. She sounded coarse, didn’t she? Sid was dead. She fired him, he was dead, and she’d just asked about something useless and banal.
“I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean it like that—” she began, but her apology was interrupted by shouting.
“You can’t come in, ma’am!”
“Don’t you ma’am me, Jake, I know your mother!” Tula shoved her way past the do-not-cross tape. “Jo, you okay? Ben told me, and I came straightaway.”
She’d nearly made it through the assembled officers, none of whom seemed eager to stop her, when MacAdams put his hands up.
“All right, everyone out. You, too, Tula Byrne.”
“Boss?” Green asked. “Should I take Ms. Jones, now?”
“No, you won’t.” Tula put a protective arm around Jo’s shoulders and steered her into the sunlight. “I’ll get her back all right.”
Murder. How were you supposed to get your head around that? You didn’t, probably. Jo held a potato in one hand and was making attempts at peeling it; Tula had the forethought of putting her to work in the kitchen.
“Awful business,” Tula was saying from the stove. “Wonder if anyone’s called next of kin.”
“And he was...married?” Jo asked.
“Three times.” Tula dropped pasta into boiling water. “And three times divorced. Two of them sisters.”
Jo’s mouth responded before her brain told it not to: “My God, is there some kind of shortage?”
“Of men?” Tula laughed. “Not to speak of, though I lit the fires of hatred among every woman and not a few men when I took Ben off the market. Granted, we’re not officially married. Didn’t see the need.”
“I was. Once,” Jo admitted. “Tony. He was forty, and I’d just graduated college.” She pushed the skinned potatoes into a neat pile. “I’m an editor. He had a small publishing house.”
Tula had gone about the business of kneading bread dough.
“Ah. Fell in love with the boss, did you?”
Jo blushed fiercely.
“I interned for him, first. We were married soon as I graduated, and then I worked for him.” Jo nicked her knuckle. Dammit. “I worked for us,” she corrected. “I was the acquisition editor—and a fact-checker. And a lot of other things.” Jo had, in fact, been Tony’s entire editorial team. She had always been proud of her own instinctive sense for where a text was going, and whether it was derivative, or fresh, or worth bothering over. She thought Tony had been proud of it, too.
“So what did he do, then?” Tula asked.
“Tony? He cheated.” Jo tried turning the grimace into a smile but failed. She leaned forward on her elbows, resting her chin on her hands. “Our publishing house got bought out. A hostile takeover, they call it. Buyers go straight to shareholders and then underbid with promises for big returns.”
Tula pushed hair out of her face.
“Not sure I follow, quite.”
“Doesn’t matter. It wasn’t true. Well, it was. Kind of.” Jo sighed, puffing air through her lips like a frustrated horse. “We’d only just gotten shareholders. And I didn’t know he was sleeping with one of them. Or that she was also attached to the publishing house we sold up to.”
“Ah, feck,” said Tula. Jo nodded appreciatively.
“Yeah. I thought, you know, it was just bad luck. But as soon as everything was signed and sealed, he asked for a divorce. We split what was left of the assets without bringing it to court.”
“So you ended up with half of not much.”
“And Tony ended up CEO of the new larger publishing house,” Jo added. Tula made a guttural noise and punched down the dough.
“Holy Jesus, Jo! Illegal, ain’t it?”
Jo pressed her lips together. Hard to say. Yes? No? She could have fought it. She’d meant to fight it. But then she received the telephone call that changed her world.
“My mom got sick. She died. But not right away.” Jo spoke slow, worried that if she got started it all might come out like a flood. “After that, my job, Tony, my whole old life—just didn’t seem to matter anymore. So, I sold it all and came here. God. I don’t know why I am telling you all this.”
“Because I asked, love. Pretty sure that’s how it works.” Tula smiled. Jo wished she could smile like that; a sort of beacon, bright, full of meaning but not wholly decipherable. “I told you, I’m an outsider here, too. I make it my business to also be in charge. No one crosses Tula Byrne, if you take my meaning.” She dusted flour onto her apron. “You must be raw, still, over the loss?”
Raw. An interesting word. There was a whole raw chicken on the sideboard, its pink meat pale and flaccid. Raw wind chapped your lips till they cracked, raw onions made your eyes water. Jo thought about the days she cried after, and also about the days she didn’t. When everything seemed dried up inside.
“My mom and I were close the way you have to be when you’re the only ones left,” she said, finally. It felt like a bridge too far, like sharing something ugly that she shouldn’t have. But hell, she’d come this far and Tula hadn’t seemed put off. “She left England unmarried and five months pregnant to live with her aunt, Susan, in Chicago. She never said why. But there are only so many reasons.”
Tula was nodding slowly, her hazel-flecked eyes looking at the space over Jo’s head.
“And Aiden Jones was your uncle,” she said slowly. “Your mother’s brother?”
“Yeah. Last branch of the family, sideways from the Ardemores. They didn’t get on. Mom never spoke of him and didn’t go to his funeral. Did you know Aiden? Sid—um,” Jo choked a bit over the next part, “He said I was just like him. Last night.”
Tula gave her an indulgent smile.
“S’alright, love,” she assured her. “I did meet your uncle, once. I remember he once got a little curious about the local history around here. Afraid I don’t recall much more than that.”
“Oh.” Jo cleared her throat. “It’s just I never knew him. And I don’t know what happened between them. Mom had been hurt somehow. Badly. And now there aren’t any of them left. Except me.”
Saying that out loud hurt more than she’d expected. But she also felt strangely lighter for it. She watched Tula, who was watching her right back. Might as well lay everything on the table while she was at it—
“Look. I’m on the spectrum, right? Autistic. So if I bother you, will you please, please tell me?”
Tula’s look was hard to read. Not patronizing—not maternal, either. It felt like a call to arms, somehow.
“I told you, didnae I?” she asked in her soft Irish accent. “We do for each other. I’ve taken a shine to you, and you’re all right with me. I make my friends quick that way. My enemies, too, mostly.”
Jo wet her lips, then pursed them together. Otherwise, her heart might get out. Or she might fall weeping at Tula’s feet and then curl there in a fetal position at the sheer generosity of it all. Neither of which seemed an appropriate response. In the silence, Tula went on talking.
“Anyway, it’s a quiet little place, and mostly good people. Haven’t had anything this upsetting happen since that awful car-theft-arson-murder five years ago.” Jo stopped peeling potatoes.
“Arson...murder?” she asked.
“Man was burned to death in his car. Ex-military fellow, a local.”
“Pardon me, Ms. Jo?” Ben emerged from over the swinging kitchen doors. “Mr. MacAdams is here to see you.”
Jo felt her chest constrict; she desperately wanted to know—anything—about what happened. And also dreaded hearing any of it. She stood on her toes to peep over the kitchen door. MacAdams leaned at the bar rail and was looking toward the stairs. He must assume Jo was in her room recovering from shock—or convalescing like a Victorian heroine. And for some reason, she felt an impish rush of playfulness that had absolutely no place in the situation. Keeping the apron on, Jo stepped through to the bar.
“What’ll you have, mister?” she asked. MacAdams turned, and it took him at least ten seconds to register who she was. He did not register the joke.
“Ms—Jones.” He said it as though assuring them both, then took out his notepad. “I’d like to continue the interview.”
“Okay. I don’t know how to work the taps anyway,” Jo admitted, coming round to sit on the stool next to him. His face was wooden and serious, a film noir face. But no one had told him about the egg-tie, and the rumpled too-big overcoat made him look like a deflated elephant. Detective MacAdams looked like Sam Spade tangled with Columbo and got the worst of it.
“I’ve been to see Mr. Selkirk. He confirms what you say about Sid’s contract, and that he was supposed to turn in his keys at eleven this morning. So, if you would, start at breakfast, and trace your movements until finding the body. Details are helpful. Even small ones.”
He was in luck. Jo was very good at details.
“I woke up at 6:00 a.m. because I’m still jet-lagged and have no idea what time it is, internally. Left at nine-fifteen for the hardware store because I needed toilet paper and then it took ages to figure out where to buy bedsheets. I left Sainsbury’s about a quarter to eleven, I think. It doesn’t take long to get up there to the cottage. The door was locked, both bolts. They’re brand-new.”
MacAdams scribbled all the while, hair falling forward into his face. “You say the cottage locks are new. Did you replace them?”
“Me? No. I’ve only been here since Monday, remember.”
MacAdams stopped scribbling and scratched his eyebrow with the pencil end.
“From the United States, yes. Where?”
“New York.” Jo shook her head. “Sorry, no. Chicago.”
MacAdams’ pencil hovered midair. Jo sighed.
“I lived in New York. My mom got sick with cancer and I went to be with her. I left from Chicago. London, then York, then here.”
“And when were you here, last?”
Jo felt twitchy at the flat quality of his voice. Inflection would have been nice. She could’ve at least worked with that.
“I’ve never been here before. I inherited the place when my mother died.”
“And when was that?” he asked. Jo tried to say, swallowed, and tried again.
“February.”
This time when MacAdams looked up, a crease had taken residence in his brow. His face didn’t do a lot of expressions, apparently, but this one seemed like actual consideration.
“I’m very sorry,” he said.
“Me, too. So. I just arrived, and now there’s a dead person in my house.”
MacAdams shut the notebook.
“I have noticed the timeline, myself,” he said. “It is curious. Do you have any enemies?”
Jo almost choked on her spit.
“Me? Shouldn’t you be asking if Sid had enemies?”
“Sid has lived in Abington his whole life. The house has been uninhabited all this while, and Sid has been caretaker of the cottage for the last five years. Now, someone has murdered him there. Your arrival represents the only change to habitual pattern.”
Jo gaped at him.
“Like what, I’m a harbinger of death? Poe’s raven or something?”
MacAdams was giving her a glazed, slightly perplexed look. “Consider, Ms. Jones. Sid may not have been the intended victim.”
“That’s silly,” Jo said. “No one has a reason to kill me.” It must have come out wrong, because both of MacAdams’ eyebrows had just made a trek up his forehead.
“But there were reasons to kill Sid Randles?” He glanced at his notebook. “Earlier you told me that Sid stole something from you. Were you angry about that?”
Jo felt her face flushing.
“Obviously. I asked him to be fired.”
“I see.”
“That doesn’t mean I think he should be murdered.” Jo was getting upset. And that wasn’t great for mental processing. First he suggested she might be a target, and now that she might be the villain. MacAdams merely continued, as deadpan as before.
“Was the painting valuable? Might there have been other valuables on the premises?”
“I don’t know—how could I?”
“It belonged to you.”
Jo blinked. Yes, of course it belonged to me—otherwise I wouldn’t think it was stolen, would I? She didn’t manage to get words out to that effect, though. In fact, she hadn’t said anything, and MacAdams apparently wasn’t waiting for her to work around to it.
“Maybe something useful will occur to you, later,” he said, flipping the notebook closed and handing her his card. “In the meantime, don’t leave town.”
Jo clutched the card hard enough to bend it. James A. MacAdams, the card said. A for asshole, maybe. Jo crumpled it and shoved it in one pocket. She’d just found a body on her rug; she was scarcely going to think of anything else for the foreseeable future. Well. Except the painting, which she’d wanted to tell the police about. But if this is what passed for detective work in Abington, she might as well set up as a private eye herself.
MacAdams climbed into the passenger seat of a squad car. Beside him, Green wore a hungry, hawkish look. Mostly hungry.
“Could have brought some chips back. Crisps, even,” she said. “They have those. In little foil bags.”
“Call it a night. We can’t do much more until the autopsy is finished and ballistics come back.” MacAdams leaned his head against the seat rest. “Murdered in a place he’d worked for years. And that woman’s only been here three days.”
“And?” Green asked.
“And...” MacAdams didn’t have anything else. But Green wasn’t going to let it go. The engine had been running for several minutes, but she’d taken her hands off the steering wheel to cross them over her muscular chest.
“And what did she say. The constables told me she’d been waiting by the dead body—just right there next to it.”
MacAdams had been thinking about that. Jo Jones: rather pale, with longish brown hair of the dormouse variety. Took the pulse of a dead body and asked to stay the night at the murder scene.
“Odd emotional reaction,” he agreed. “Doesn’t square with what you told me about the argument between her and Sid at the Red Lion.”
Green had interviewed Ricky Robson along with several regulars. She nodded vigorously.
“I know. By all accounts, she’d seemed terrified that night. Shrinking violet. Ricky said she started it, which I doubt. But most people say she overreacted, shouting at him not to touch her, and then going all mute and wide-eyed.”
“What about Ben and Tula?” MacAdams asked.
“Tula takes Jo’s side, and she’s a hell of a bulldog about people she likes,” Green said. This might even be an understatement. “Ben agrees with Tula, as usual.”
MacAdams made a dismal note to come back and speak with them personally. It wasn’t dislike of the parties involved, but frankly it was the best pub in town and he’d hate getting barred. Tula could be a tough nut.
“Go see Rupert and Emery again tomorrow. I’d like to know if she’s got money wrapped up in the estate—or if there’s an insurance policy on her.”
“Wait, you think she was the intended victim?” Green asked.
“I suggested as much to her. She’s the only new variable.”
Green put the car in gear.
“I don’t think I buy that,” she grumbled, reversing into the street.
“Consider—she turns up out of the blue. Maybe she’s running from someone. Maybe they followed her here from the US and Sid got in the way—was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or, hell, some Brexiteer might be prejudiced against an American inheriting a Yorkshire baron’s estate.”
“Prejudiced. Against a white lady? Please.” Green rolled dark eyes at him. “I got a better one. How about—Jo Jones shot Sid in the back because of the old family portrait she’d been raging about in the inn. Did you ask her about that?”
“You think she shot a stranger over a thing she inherited on Monday?”
“Well? You don’t know. You said yourself she’s the only new thing around here. And she’s American, after all. Guns.”
She had a point. Green, her fiercely braided hair, cut-stone cheekbones, and machete personality: She was going to run the department someday.
“We’ll keep our minds open,” he said.
“Good. I’m still hungry, by the way. Rachael’s out of town and I ain’t cooking. Do you want Thai or something?”
Rachael was the chef of the pair, as he’d quickly learned from occasional invites to their end-of-terrace. And he did want Thai. But not tonight. He didn’t want to face the autopsy with Tom Yum Goong sloshing about his insides. Whisky and chips, though. That would be proper bracing.