9

It actually had occurred to me already that Heather might know something worth knowing (for a change). She was Rashima’s near neighbor and a stay-at home mom. While she didn’t have as clear a view into Anna’s place as Rashima did, the fact she spent much of her waking life in the kitchen making porridge or whatever gave her more opportunity than Rashima to notice what was going on across the crescent. Like Rashima, I’d seen Anna going into her house a couple of times lately. Knowing the police would probably talk with Heather eventually, I thought I might get in there first.

Heather Cartwright had retired to full-time mummyhood from a brief career in human resources for a large retailer. Selfridges, I think it was. I can best describe her by saying that she patronized shops in Weycombe like the Cannery on High for herbs and jars and labels, as well as the Sew-Sew shop, where I understand you can buy calico and quilting supplies. I have never been entirely sure what calico is, but that’s certainly where I’d go to look for some. It was Heather who introduced me to Mod Podge, saying it would change my life.

Physically, Heather was a big bear of a girl, flat-chested but tall and broad and imposing, with a habit of standing feet wide apart and arms akimbo, like a warrior queen atop a mythical lost mound in Ireland. You couldn’t knock Heather over with a wrecking ball. It was as if she compensated for being so masculine in appearance by being determinedly domesticated, practiced if not skilled in all the womanly arts of hearth and home.

Philosophically she was a back-to-the-land type whose native habitat was the Saturday farmer’s market on the green. There she would trot from vendor to vendor swinging a woven shopping basket covered with, I kid you not, a red gingham cloth, like a British Laura Ingalls Wilder. Her husband, Gideon, was the son of a well-known merchant banker in London; Heather was his second wife, playing against every stereotype. His first wife had been an actress who died in a freak accident playing Peter Pan—the wires holding her up had failed; big scandal—and the general theory was that marrying Heather not long afterward was rather like choosing comfort food over spicy takeaway.

What merchant bankers do all day remains a mystery to me. In the US they call them investment bankers, but it’s no clearer what they get up to, and I’m sure they like it that way: better we don’t ask too many questions as our money disappears down whatever sinkhole they’ve created for the world that week.

Gideon’s father lived in nearby Watermill, and he and my husband knew each other slightly from being in the same profession. Will often would return from the Bull saying he’d bought the old man a beer, but possibly because they worked for competing organizations they kept a certain distance. They may have been worried about charges of collusion or something. As I say, that world is a mystery to me, and the spreadsheets I saw Will poring over might as well have been written in Sanskrit. It provided us with a comfortable if not luxurious income, and freed us from total reliance on Will’s family, and for that I was grateful.

Apart from enjoying the occasional foxhunt, Heather’s Gideon had turned his back on the world of his father to become a university lecturer specializing in foreign affairs. He had written a book I did not understand and would be willing to bet no one else understood either, but it was hailed as a masterpiece. “Makes accessible the recent history of the Middle East,” as one reviewer put it, which, to give all credit due, really is saying something. Will and I went to Gideon’s book signing on a boat chartered for the occasion and of course we bought a copy, but I don’t believe either of us ever cracked the spine on it. It sat on our bookshelves making us look intelligent and concerned about the state of the world. I donated it to the library when I left Weycombe.

Gideon appeared on the BBC News in those days, sweating lightly through his makeup and pushing his Harry Potter glasses up his nose when he wanted to emphasize a particularly obscure point. The glasses I’d long suspected were less for viewing and more for enhancing the professorial stereotype. This included the standard tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. He was younger than Heather by a year or two, and how such an intellectual had landed himself with such a major twit was one of life’s mysteries. Perhaps he found her company soothing after skirmishing with backstabbing eggheads all day.

He did travel a good deal for research, and I gathered his teaching duties were somewhat perfunctory and limited essentially to guest appearances. This left Heather with lots of time on her hands. Other women might seize the opportunity to have an affair or take up kickboxing. Heather knitted, canned, and cleaned. Too often she had only her child for company, and I don’t suppose when Gideon was around Heather understood half of what he was saying.

I knocked at her door, not surprised to see she was taking part in the wreath-hanging competition that gripped the village each season. Right now every other door featured fallen leaves and small decorative pumpkins and the occasional bat with ruby eyes. Heather’s contribution was an eyesore because she could never bring herself to leave well enough alone—a twiggy confection shot through with acorns and seashells painted brown and orange.

As I followed her into her kitchen I saw she was, swear to God, ironing tea towels as something like a witch’s cauldron simmered on the stove. Nearby in an apple-green high chair sat one-year-old Lulu, engaged in her usual pastime of eating mashed something or other. If it wasn’t mashed already you could be sure it would be by the time Lulu’d smeared it all over her face. This time it looked like oatmeal but of an Exorcist color and consistency—organic and all-natural, of course. Heather did everything but milk her own goats, and that was only because the homeowners’ association forbade anyone’s keeping livestock.

Before she’d put her people skills to use in human resources, Heather had been a retail professional. I think she worked behind the counter at Boots. That talent seemed to have carried over well into her life as Lulu’s mother. There was a constant busyness to Heather’s existence, and an innate order applied to everything she owned. While I had not seen her closet, you could be certain her sweaters were rolled just so and sorted according to season and color. Each spring, she would seal the heaviest sweaters and coats into vacuum bags and store them in the attic until autumn. I told myself I was way too busy for that but to be honest, I just did not see the point. A jumper thrown on a chair is still there to be found the next day. It’s not like stuff moves around on its own.

A loom crouched in one corner of Heather’s living room, a great whacking thing of shuttles and knobs. I don’t think she’d touched it for a while. At least, every time I saw it the same shaggy cloth was emerging from its innards. She made all her own Christmas presents from ideas she copied from Pinterest and Etsy, and if you were unlucky, she’d weave or decoupage something for you.

Lulu let out a giddy, ear-piercing shriek at the sight of me.

“Is it just me or is she just the cutest thing ever?” Heather asked of no one in particular (certainly not me), looking adoringly at her oatmeal-crusted offspring. She rested the iron on its heel while she settled a new dishtowel in place of the old one. I can’t tell you the last time I ironed a blouse, let alone a fucking tea towel. I engaged in a mini-staredown with Lulu, who at that moment had a big drool of something coming out of her lopsided features. She looked like a miniature sumo wrestler clad in gingham and lace, and she seemed to be adding a few new rolls of baby fat to her middle even as we sat watching her, as if she were the subject of a slo-mo documentary on childhood obesity.

It’s just you, Heather.

“She’s a charmer,” I said brightly. “Reminds me of her dad.” The last part at least was true. Her father had gifted Lulu with the chubby face, the Buddha-like build, and mounds of curly dark red hair. This last really was a gift, as Heather’s own hair was stringy as a cobweb. But she was a busy mum, too busy to fuss with her hair, as she never tired of telling everyone who would stay to listen. She was also too busy to fuss with her wardrobe, which always looked like something knotted together out of dried rainforest plants. Lulu had a lot to overcome; I hoped I wouldn’t be around to witness the teen years.

Of course, Heather and I had to spend the next five minutes discussing the mystery of birth, with particular reference to the miracles of reproduction and heredity and the DNA markers that had gone into producing such a specimen as Lulu, before I could finally get down to business. But while Heather seemed to be aware there had been a murder in the village—a murder of someone she knew personally, mind—she evinced more interest in her dishtowels.

“Did you get any sense,” I finally got to ask, “that Anna was preoccupied in the days leading up to her death?”

I must have sounded even to Heather’s ears like a documentary on police procedure, for she stopped making funny faces at Lulu and turned, giving me her full attention at last. Lulu aimed a cross-eyed look of unqualified contempt at her mother’s back, then grinned at me as if I were her favorite co-conspirator.

“Preoccupied?” Heather repeated.

“You know. Worried. Sad. Distracted. Or happy, even. Manic. Was there something going on in her life, did you sense? Because—and forgive me, I may be wrong—I never had the impression you and she had much in common. And yet I noticed she was over here a good deal. I just thought she might have confided in you, given that you were so close.”

“I wouldn’t say close.”

“Okay. What would you say?”

“Friendly.”

I could see this was going to be a challenge, and I wished the police very good luck if they interviewed this doorstop. They’d have to take her to the station just to get her away from the ironing board. Lulu made some kind of choking, gurgling sound that pulled Heather’s always fleeting attention back to her child, and before we were plunged again into one of Heather’s digressions on the virtues of breast milk and whole grains, I said, “Look, let me speak plainly: Anna always had an angle. I mean, we all have one. We all want something from someone. It doesn’t mean we’re bad people. It means we’re people.”

Heather nodded along with this simple logic but said nothing, so I prodded her: “What did Anna want from you? Did you get any sense of that?”

“Hmm?”

“Did Anna seem to want something from you?”

“No. Not really.”

Sigh. I wasn’t sure why I thought she’d know anything. It was more her physical proximity to Anna. That and the occasional recipe exchange at book club, more out of politeness on Anna’s part than a sudden interest in marinated tofu, I was sure.

“If you really want to know what’s going on,” Heather said, the beam of her focus returned to the precious Lulu—it was like trying to hold a conversation with a kitten—“you should talk with Elizabeth.”

“Who?”

“Elizabeth Fortescue. I think she and Anna were friendly.”

Knowing Anna, she had her eye on the elderly Elizabeth’s cottage in case she decided to sell, or anticipated the day Elizabeth would have to go into assisted living. Anna was like that, always one step ahead of the market.

Heather continued, talking to me but looking at Lulu: “Elizabeth knows where all the bodies in the village are buried. Literally, since she’s on the St. Chrysostom’s vestry. But you know what I mean. You won’t have any trouble finding her—she’s at the church every weekday afternoon.”

A good tip. I wouldn’t have thought of Elizabeth right away, but Heather was right: she was a busybody who had her finger on the pulse. Proving that even Heather had her uses beyond fermenting everything in sight.

“A village Iyanla,” I said, nodding.

“Who?”

“As in, Iyanla, stay the hell out of my life.”

“Who’s Iyanla?”

“She’s on Oprah. She’s—oh, sort of an expert on everything. Particularly other people’s business.”

My eyes wandered over to the enormous pot simmering on top of the stove. The table was covered with Mason jars.

“I’m making jam,” Heather said, going over to turn down the heat.

“Why? Did Whole Foods burn down?”

“Hmm?”

“Never mind. I’m sure it’s delicious. Way better than any store brand.”

“I should think so.”

“Although I bought a jar of blueberry preserves on sale at Waitrose last week and it was delicious.”

Heather was aghast at this heresy, as I knew she would be. “I think a lemon is the last thing I bought at Waitrose,” she said, “and that was months ago. Did you know lemon is a natural degreaser?”

“No. Myself, I prefer to use harsh chemicals that pollute the environment.”

I gave her a moment to study my expression and figure out that I was kidding. Heather kept information like that stored in a tin neatly labeled “Social Interactions: Visual Cues.”

I looked around as I waited for those gears to kick in. The kitchen was of course organized and homey, with each item in its own indexed container. It was as if a team of stagers arrived nightly to arrange the wooden cooking spoons just so in their white ceramic jars, to mist the leaves of the potted herbs on the sill, and to squeegee the sparkling windows. I wondered how long the perfection would last once Lulu began to walk and scream and pull things willy-nilly out of the lower cabinets, but for now her little toys were neatly contained in a single wicker basket in the living room. No surprise, Heather had woven the basket herself.

If I were leading the police investigation she would have my vote for potential suspect in the OCD category, but eventually I got out of her that she had an alibi. She was shopping at the Sew-Sew and had a conversation about how to make a French seam (don’t ask, no idea). Then she’d tripped over to the yarn shop, swinging her little shopping basket, followed by a stop at the greengrocers. All easily documented, although in truth, one day’s shopping for Heather was much like another. Would the shop owners even be able to verify this?

“Eliza had a sale on interchangeable knitting needles,” Heather informed me. She zipped open a little container that held rows of what looked like something you’d see at the dentist’s. I made suitable noises to show my awe, throwing in a tinge of envy when she added, “It was the last one on sale.”

“Too bad,” I said. “My husband will have to wait another year for hand-knitted socks.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Heather did not have much of a sense of humor—at least, my comments tended to fly straight past her. As she was always looking for ways to increase her income and self-worth by selling her useless homemade crap, you had to be careful what you wished for. Her preserves for the church fundraiser might have landed a few people in hospital but fortunately the jars exploded prematurely. Before she could say, “I’ll make him some if you’d like,” I had to fess up that I was kidding.

Lulu had nodded off for a moment, so turning Heather’s attention back to the topic of Anna’s murder was easy, sort of like peeling open a little box labeled “Dead Anna.” It was all anyone wanted to talk about, and that would be true for months to come.