10

Did you need anything more, Jillian? Because I need to sterilize these jars and change Lulu in time for Baby Play, so I—”

“I guess I was just sort of wondering what your reaction to Anna’s murder was. How you were feeling. You know.” Even Heather looked a bit skeptical at my sudden concern, and I reminded myself not to underestimate her. Gideon was no dummy and he must have seen something more in her than I ever could. On the other hand, maybe she just catered to his secret bondage fetish. Still, I figured that with Heather, it was best to keep the questions open-ended and my motives for asking vague.

She put down her wooden spoon on a ceramic holder shaped like a little windmill.

“They’re really certain it’s … you know?”

She didn’t want Lulu learning a new word like “murder.” I nodded.

“I can’t believe it. Right here in our neighborhood, or nearly. What next?”

“I know,” I said. “It’s all way too close to home. I wonder if you’d seen her lately—to really talk to her at length, I mean? If you had any sense of what was on her mind?”

She shook her head. “Honest—I hardly knew her, really.” I knew better but I let it pass. Keep her talking and something useful might pop out. “She was older than me, and interested in different things. You know how it goes.”

I did indeed. I imagined that Anna had written Heather off pretty quickly—with Anna, it was always all about Anna, and advancing Anna’s own needs and wants. Although she might have seen Heather’s semi-famous Gideon as holding some romantic potential: I wondered about that. Just because I couldn’t see the attraction in a red-headed Buddha didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

Heather was funneling something into a jar now. When she informed me she was making her own window cleaner I saw even more clearly why people like Anna had disowned her. I just hoped she didn’t mix it in with the jam somehow. It was absurd—I mean, it wasn’t as if Heather needed to save money by making her own Windex. That was true of everyone in Weycombe Court, unless someone was going bankrupt I didn’t know about. Anna, for example: she’d never let on anything was wrong but the real estate boom-bust had touched even Weycombe’s strong market.

“Funny thing, though,” said Heather, judiciously eyeing a measuring cup of white vinegar. “As it happens, I think I do know what was on her mind. Who, I mean.” She reached for a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

I perked up. “Really?”

She began shaking the mixture in the spray bottle. “I’ve been wondering whether to tell someone. It’s really none of my business. But if it helps them catch whoever did this … ”

“Tell me and let me be the judge,” I said, adding rather pompously: “It’s your civic duty to tell the police what you know—of course you realize that.”

“I know. But really, it’s nothing specific.”

“I was a reporter for ages.” A slight exaggeration. “I know how these investigations work. What the investigators are liable to think is important may surprise you.”

“That’s just it. I really don’t want to get dragged into it or drag anyone else in by mistake. It won’t bring Anna back, will it?”

“Would you really want her back?”

She stared at me for a moment, letting that sink in. Then a surprisingly feminine little squeak of laughter escaped her. “Anna—yeah. She could be a real Miss Fitch.” She casually leaned over and wiped some more effluvia off Lulu’s face. “Or worse.”

I took a wild guess Miss Fitch was cockney for bitch. Knowing I should not go down that road, I should just ignore her and plow on, I said, “Worse?”

“You know what I mean. Starts with C, rhymes with hunt.”

I paused, pretending to have to search the windmills of my own mind.

“Oh,” I said, wide-eyed as comprehension dawned. “Well, yeah. But she was pretty nice to me. When I first came here.”

“She was nice to everyone. To their faces, anyway. Especially when they were coming or going. You never knew when they might want her to sell their houses for them.”

“So, just tell me already,” I said, trying not to throttle it out of her. “I promise you, pinky swear, that if it’s important, I’ll use my media connections to get the word privately to the police. You’ll never even have to be mentioned. Unless you’re, like, an eyewitness or something. Or you’ve found a signed confession in your kitchen.”

She shook her head. “I’m an eyewitness but there must be a dozen others. She was involved with … someone in parliament. Gideon knows about it, too. Can you see why I have to keep both of us out of it?”

Actually, I didn’t see. Of course, I knew about Anna and the MP, but I played dumb. “You don’t mean … ?”

She was looking really uncomfortable now, clearly wishing she’d said nothing. If her husband was pally with Colin Livingstone, our local up-and-comer and rider to hounds—so what? It was only natural. There was speculation Colin might one day lead his party. In any event, he fancied himself a big expert on Wither Britain, giving him and Gideon lots to talk about. He was an Oxbridge type and like Will he was the real thing, with a pedigree practically going back to King Canute.

“Colin and Anna had something going on,” she said quickly, dropping her voice. She looked around the room, as if it might be bugged, or Lulu might be pressing the record button hidden under the seat of her high chair. “Something serious. Gideon is sure of it. And worse, Alfie found out about it.”

Of course, I knew as much already, except for the part about Alfie’s certain knowledge. How Gideon knew was anyone’s guess, but maybe riding to hounds was just an excuse to brag about sexual conquests in the open air. In any event, Anna was not known for her discretion.

“Wow,” I said. I wanted to encourage more confidences, not shut Heather down by letting on I knew much of this already.

“You do see the problem?” she asked. “I have to be discreet. At the same time, I have to tell what I know. Anything else would be wrong. Wouldn’t it?”

The silence hung so long in the air I realized she was expecting an answer. I am so seldom the go-to person for parsing moral quandaries.

“Yes, that would be wrong,” I said.

“But the thing is, I don’t know know.”

I emphasized it was her bounden duty to tell what she knew. “But not until you’re sure,” I added. “Lives could be wrecked, Heather. Murder investigations are like that. Everybody goes downriver with the victim. By the way, you weren’t out walking yesterday by the river, were you?”

It was a clumsy segue in an attempt to test the strength of her shopping story. Because shops like the Sew-Sew don’t open early on Mondays. They might not open at all on Mondays, now that I thought about it. Because most women in Weycombe didn’t sew their own clothes; they went to London, like normal people, to buy them. I wanted to find out exactly where Heather had been, and when.

“Oh, yes, I forgot: I took the dogs for a walk while Gideon stayed with Lulu. I shudder to think … I might have seen something. Oh my God, if I’d known, I might have stopped her being killed. But I might have been killed myself. And then who would take care of Lulu?”

Good question; for sure not me. “You saw nothing of the—you know. Rhymes with herder?”

“I saw nothing.”

I sighed. “Bummer.”

She launched into a long description of the low-visibility weather that day, and the intermittent sunlight. Then she shrugged, topic closed. Heather was like that. The focus came and went. I decided to leave before she started measuring me for an apron.

“Here,” she said, “Take some of this jam with you. I made so much we’ll never finish it all.”

I soon left Heather to her own early version of Woman’s Hour. She was clearly anxious for me to go: I had put her behind schedule and she still had her daily wholegrain bake to do. Later that day I deposited her two jars of jam on a shelf at home, intending to wait a suitable interval before throwing the contents down the disposal and returning the jars. She’d made the jam from the berries of Chinese lantern plants, which even I knew was a dicey proposition if you didn’t know what you were doing. I wondered vaguely where she’d got the berries from, as none grew in her garden.