This was not how MacAdams had imagined his day. He’d put the mackintosh back on, despite the warmth, and stood in back of a surprisingly attentive crowd. Up on stage, Jo Jones held forth about botany, architecture and Gertrude Jekyll as though it was her principal stock in trade. The utter ease with which she interwove the histories she’d only just learned herself was admittedly impressive, all while bouncing enthusiastically on short legs, ponytail bobbing wildly. He could see the ever-eager Gwilym, too. He seemed to be holding up placards with images too distant to make out, and mainly staying out of her way.
On second thought, this was how he intended to spend the fete—just not with the intent of questioning her about another dead body, or demanding yet another search of her premises. Why could she not just steer clear of murder?
“To quote Jekyll herself,” Jo said, her voice rising in crescendo. “‘The love of gardening is a seed that once sown never dies. There is no spot of ground, however arid, bare or ugly, that cannot be tamed into such a state as may give an impression of beauty and delight.’ Thank you.”
* * *
When the applause subsided, Roberta Wilkinson—who had made it, after all—handed Jo a pair of oversize scissors. The yellow ribbon fell away and Jekyll Gardens opened at last to the public. There were party crackers and cheers, and MacAdams began the inglorious work of threading through the crowd.
“Well, well! You came after all,” said a spring-fresh Emery Lane. He towed along a more conservatively attired Rupert Selkirk, his partner both in life and at the law firm.
“Official business, unfortunately,” MacAdams said.
Rupert’s bushy brows gave the slightest rise.
“Nothing serious, I hope.” He said it genially enough, though a certain coolness had developed between them since the murder of Sid Randles last year. It was an investigation that required a bit of “special research” into Rupert’s personal affairs to guarantee his cooperation.
“I’m just trying to reach Ms. Jones.” The couple gave way and let MacAdams get on with it. He was certainly trying. An excited throng mobbed the little stage and Jo was in the thick of it—wide-eyed, semifrozen.
“So your ancestor was a thief and a forger? Is that how he got rich?”
“Are you rich?”
“This is where that house burned down, isn’t it?”
“Were you really inside when he—”
“Ladies and Gentlemen!” MacAdams barked in his best clear-the-way baritone. He spotted Gwilym, took him by the shoulders and placed him bodily in front of Jo Jones. “This gentleman here will answer all of your questions.”
“I will?” Gwilym asked—but MacAdams already had a hand on Jo’s shoulder and was steering her into the clear.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?” he asked, scanning the increasingly noisy party grounds. Jo still had a fish-eyed look, but she followed him in acquiescence. Once inside a tea tent nearby, she perched herself on a corner folding chair, and MacAdams flagged the hostess: Teresa, if he remembered right. Kate Gridley’s niece.
“Milky tea with a lot of sugar,” he said, pointing to Jo. “Then I need you to close shop for a bit, Teresa.”
“James! It’s my first event—you know we just opened. I need this!” she protested.
This was a fact. MacAdams sighed and fished out his credit card. Probably a good thing he never had kids with his ex-wife; there were plenty of others happy to spend his money.
“Run this for thirty quid and then go for a walk.”
Teresa crossed her arms and did the new-adult version of pouting.
“Fine! Run it for fifty. It’s police business.”
“I’m gonna ask Auntie,” she said, but very happily ran his card on her mobile register. He watched her bounce away then partly closed the tent flap for a bit of privacy. Jo—well, Jo drank tea.
“That’s a lot of sugar,” she said.
“Helps the nerves—” MacAdams began, but she finished for him.
“L-Theanine, amino acid in black tea. It induces a sense of relaxed calm and lowers cortisol levels. The sugar just releases serotonin into the bloodstream,” she said, swallowing. “But you don’t need quite this much.”
“Thank you for that.”
“Your welco—Actually, thank you. My hero and everything.”
“Don’t speak too soon,” MacAdams muttered, pulling out his notebook. Jo put the cup back on its saucer.
“Oh. The dead body,” she said. MacAdams scratched his chin with the end of his pencil. Roberta. No doubt the whole town would know all about it by day’s end.
“Yes, a body was found. And I have some additional bad news,” he said.
Jo nodded before delivering the matter-of-fact pronouncement: “It’s my lodger, isn’t it?”
* * *
Jo didn’t remember what she’d said on stage. Or, rather, she remembered the material, just not her performance of it. She’d never had a fear of public speaking—if anything, she excelled at it in school. Just not for the reasons people thought. Up there, she wasn’t making small talk or even conversing with another person. It was just Jo, her special interest and the irresistible desire to share it. While in the middle of it, a sort of synethesia took over; she could see the arc of her story lit up by animated pictures, each fact bursting with color and light. When it was over, she felt a bit punch-drunk and was, as a result, completely unprepared for a people onslaught after stepping off the stage.
When Jo had seen MacAdams making his way through the crowd, her immediate response had been one of wild relief. Second, and upon its heels, though—a feeling of presentiment. There was a body, Gwilym had said. A man’s body, in a red shirt, Roberta had added. Now that the post-speech haze had lifted, everything else she’d been thinking between events came pouring out.
“This morning! I just thought it was so early, he must still be there. But I should have checked!”
MacAdams had not moved since she started spilling details, and still seemed in suspended animation. When she stuttered to a halt, however, he put both hands in the air.
“You had no reason to think anything was wrong—”
“But I did. Because of the car,” Jo interrupted.
“What car?”
“There wasn’t one.”
MacAdams opened his mouth, shut it again, then fetched himself a cup of sugar tea and slugged it like a shot. When he returned he picked up the pencil and notebook.
“Can we start over, please? You started in the middle of a conversation we weren’t having yet.” He paused with forced bemusement. “Again. Yet again.”
Jo knew he was trying to put her at ease and failing a lot. Jo took a breath and red-penciled the narrative in her head.
“He booked late in the afternoon, but didn’t turn up until just after ten. In the storm. He was soaked.”
“Did he seem agitated?” MacAdams asked.
Jo shut her eyes. She could see him so plainly, framed against her doorway and backed by sheets of rain. She’d thought of surprised pigeons and body snatchers. Those did not seem like good examples.
“Great Expectations—you’ve read it, right? Mr. Pocket keeps trying to lift himself up by his own hair. That’s how he looked.”
“Could we try a suitable adjective?” MacAdams asked. Jo’s nose twitched.
“Surprised? Harried? He thought it was a self-catering cottage. And he didn’t come to Abington for the gardens at all—just on business, he said. But when I told him about it, he said he’d be there, wearing a fancy red shirt.”
“And when was the last you saw of him?”
“Last night. Had a blue shirt and a rumpled, wet raincoat. Greenish—khaki, I guess? He changed out of muddy pants, ate a lot of biscuits and went up to bed before eleven.” She paused, thinking about the steamed dial of her bathroom clock. “I know, because I was in the shower by eleven ten.”
MacAdams’s pencil had been busily scratching, but now he looked up.
“How does that relate to the car—that wasn’t?” he asked. Jo blanked for a moment; it seemed so obvious now, almost beyond saying. Yet she’d missed it, too.
“When I left this morning, there wasn’t any sign that he had a car. I mean, I didn’t see one last night, either, but he got here somehow, didn’t he? I should have realized something was . . . well, wrong.”
MacAdams sat straighter, smoothing his own coat lapels after her description of Foley.
“You know we’ll need to search the cottage,” he said.
“You aren’t going to ban me from my home this time, are you? He didn’t get murdered there!”
MacAdams winced. “It’s not officially a murder until forensics—”
“Roberta said someone bashed his head in,” Jo interrupted. The wince hadn’t faded; it instead acquired a grimace.
“Yes, she is very forthright, is Roberta,” MacAdams said. “I will want a full statement from you, everything you remember. And I’ll need your keys for now.”
Jo put her hand inside her pocket, but didn’t withdraw them.
“Nah-ah. I’m coming with you.”
Of course she was. Saying no would change nothing, and to be honest, he wasn’t inclined to refuse her, anyway. He dialed the station for a forensic search team to follow, and asked her to lead on.
* * *
Jo fumbled slightly with the lock and dead bolt. MacAdams had wanted to go in first, but it was her house—and if anything was wrong, she’d know straight off.
“Here we are,” she said, stepping through. Nothing moved, not her books, not the furniture . . . not the tea and biscuits on the island that separated the tiny kitchen from the living room.
“This was your first guest?” MacAdams was asking behind her, but Jo had just reached the unopened Jammie Dodgers, and her answer stuck in her throat. Somehow, the little cookies unlocked emotions that the death announcement itself had not. She’d learned that lesson first when her mother died; the strawberries Jo bought for her spoiled in the fridge. Death was hard to grasp, uneaten meals painfully tangible.
“Sorry. Yes—he, um, he really liked these.” She waved the package.
“And his room?” MacAdams asked.
Technically, he’d seen the place before as a work in progress. He may have participated in some of the work himself, especially the bathtub business. She’d meant to show it off in a more official way once complete, really impress him with it, but hadn’t got around to it. Now she hovered at the door, wondering if something awful might be on the other side. MacAdams was still behind her, on the stairs (and so also partly in the living room). Click-clack-click. The door swung open to reveal—nothing much.
They stepped into the breezy, yellow-green room, glinting in sunlight. It looked almost exactly as it had before Ronan Foley ever arrived: new half bath in one corner, full-size bed, bureau, minitable, chintz armchair . . . and fresh wallpaper in green floral. It made Jo think of The Wind in the Willows and sundry fur creatures huddled under quilts with steaming mugs of tea.
“Did you remake the bed?” MacAdams asked.
“Not me. And he didn’t, either—I know how I make a bed.” Jo pointed to the careful seams and tidily tucked corners. “He never slept in it.”
MacAdams didn’t reply; his attention had been drawn to the man’s duffel. It lay unzipped at one end of the mattress.
“You saw him close his door at eleven?”
“Yes. Then I showered. Was in bed by midnight.”
“And everything—this door, the cottage door—was locked up this morning?” MacAdams asked.
“I didn’t check this one. The front door was unlocked,” she said. MacAdams did almost a full circle turn, like a clumsy pirouette.
“Why didn’t you say so?” he asked, and Jo felt her face get warm. She grew up in Chicago and New York, learning to install all the best locks and dead bolts. But a year in the quiet countryside had made her forgetful—so much so, that leaving the doors unlocked of an evening had become a semiregular thing.
“Because I’m the one who didn’t lock it.”