The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one’s ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the fender, of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries.
—Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Nathan left for the golf course early the next morning, leaving me to cuddle with the two tiger cats, Archie and Louise, who’d slipped into our room as he left. Archie seemed to have extended his affection for Vera to me, though not if Nathan was nearby. He walked across my chest, back and forth, and finally circled into the crook of my elbow. Louise waited until he was settled, and then she stretched out alongside him. Their rough purring lulled me back to sleep. Sometime later I awoke at the sound of what I thought was a knock at the front door. I threw on Nathan’s Key West Police Department sweatshirt over my pajamas and hurried out to check. I peered through the peephole: a beefy police officer with a round face and prominent ears waited on the stoop. He held up his badge, which I studied carefully. It looked authentic and so did he.
“I’d like to speak with Vera Campbell, Hayley Snow, and Gloria Peterson,” he said once I’d cracked the door open. “It’s about the death at the Falkirk Wheel.”
“I’m Hayley. Please come in.” I opened the door wider and waved him through. “Sorry to greet you in my PJs. I’m so embarrassed—I never sleep till nine o’clock. We had a very busy day yesterday, so we’re having a bit of a lazy morning. I’ll start a pot of coffee or water for tea, and then get the others.”
I seated him at the kitchen table, noticing that one of the husbands had made coffee earlier. It would taste a little stale, but better than offering him nothing. I poured the man a cup of the strong brew and went to fetch the other women. First, I knocked on Vera’s door and, in response to her muffled hello, told her a police officer was waiting in her kitchen. Then I trotted back downstairs to shake Miss Gloria awake. It wasn’t too often that she slept later than I did, but the jet lag must have been wreaking some havoc with her system.
“Cop in the kitchen,” I hissed. “He wants to talk with all of us.”
She rolled out of bed, pulled on a robe, and stumbled down the hall behind me, with her hair standing up in cirrus cloud wisps. In the sunny kitchen, she blinked like a hedgehog who’d climbed out of his den after a winter of hibernation, like a character from Wind in the Willows. Within minutes, Vera followed us in and took the farthest seat from the cop. I poured Miss Gloria a cup of coffee and made Vera a cup of tea, and joined them at the table.
“How can we help you, officer?” Miss Gloria asked.
“Following up on yesterday’s incident at the Falkirk Wheel, we’ve identified the deceased. His name was Joseph Booth.” He pushed a black and white photo to the center of the table. The man was dressed in formal suit and tie and stylish glasses, and his expression was dead serious, as though he’d been applying for an important position. Or possibly a passport. He had a square chin and laugh lines around his eyes so I imagined he had a nice smile too. Since I hadn’t really gotten a good glimpse of the man yesterday, this face meant nothing to me except for feeling a whisper of sadness. He looked to be in his early forties, far too young to die.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know him,” I said. “Though we’ve only been in this country two days, so we hardly know anyone.” I stopped myself from babbling off a list of every person we’d met on the trip so far.
“I don’t know him either,” said Miss Gloria, “though I’m very sorry for his family’s loss.”
We waited for Vera. After a pause, she shook her head. Her lips were pinched, which gave a grim cast to her face. Looking as though he didn’t quite believe her, the policeman angled the photograph so it faced her directly.
“There is some question remaining about how the man came to fall from the wheel. Did any of you see this happen?”
Miss Gloria piped up, pressing her fingers to her temples. “I had the worst headache. I hate to malign one of your important Scottish monuments, but that wheel gave me a terrible feeling of claustrophobia. I’m afraid I wasn’t paying attention the way I usually do. We’ve solved a few murder mysteries ourselves,” she began to add.
Under the table, I tapped her foot with mine to cut her off. Our nosing into other crimes didn’t seem like the kind of conversation we’d want to have with a foreign police officer. Nathan and Steve Torrence didn’t appreciate our butting into crime solving, and they knew us well and loved us. We should stick to the facts and keep our theories to ourselves, I thought.
“Can I get you a refill on coffee?” I asked, noticing that he’d barely touched what I’d poured for him earlier. “Or tea maybe?”
“No thank you, ma’am,” he said, fixing his gaze on me. “Did you see what happened?”
“No, we were at the other end of the boat, facing forward, away from the platform,” I told him. “I didn’t notice anything unusual before the fall either. Of course, we all shifted over to look out once the yelling began, but it was too late to understand what had happened by then. He’d already fallen.”
“Same,” said Vera briskly. “Only I was seated on the water side of the boat and saw even less than my friends did.” She stood up as if to tell the cop the interrogation was over. He followed her lead, standing and collecting the photo after dealing out business cards to each of us.
“Should you remember any other details, please call me on my mobile or at the station.” Vera thanked him for his time and closed the door firmly behind him.
Once he was gone, I pictured the scene on the boat after the man’s fall, trying to visualize each of our party’s positions. Vera had said that she and Ainsley were seated across the aisle, a ways behind us. I didn’t remember them moving to rubberneck. Glenda and Gavin would have been sitting together, but not near us, I thought. But I hadn’t actually seen them, so I couldn’t say for sure.
Why was Vera wound so tightly about this incident? Did she know more than she was willing to say? Did she really not recognize the dead man?
I would have liked to have questioned her about whether she told the cop the truth. The pause, the pinch of her lips, made me wonder. But I was a little afraid of her reaction, and she hustled off so quickly toward the hall leading to the bedrooms that I couldn’t get the question out. I heard her footsteps on the polished wood of the staircase, going up. I exchanged a glance with Miss Gloria, and we both got up and trailed her down the hallway like puppies.
“Can we do anything for you?” I asked Vera.
“I need some time to prepare for our trip,” she called back down the stairs. “When dealing with Gavin, it’s best to have very specific instructions about what photographs must be taken. Otherwise, as he demonstrated so completely yesterday, he goes off on his own, and Lord only knows what the results might be. I will see you downstairs at noon, with your luggage in hand.”
We watched Vera disappear into her bedroom from the bottom of the stairs. “She’s a complicated character. Who in the world knows what’s going on in her head?” Miss Gloria whispered. “I have a mah-jongg game online with Mrs. Dubisson, unless you need me for something?”
I shook my head at the wonder of her being technically savvy enough to set up and play mah-jongg on her iPad with her best Key West pal, time difference and everything. “No problem. I’ll work on my articles and get ready to go.”
As I was eating a bite of breakfast—cheese and toast with English jam—a text message arrived from chef Grace: I know you’re leaving for Peebles today, but any way we could chat for a few minutes before then? I can meet you at the statue in the center of town? Would prefer to talk in person.
Another mysterious missive. Be there in 20, I texted back.
I pulled on my most comfortable black jeans, a turtleneck, and my jean jacket and sneakers, and headed outside to meet Grace. The day was turning out to be glorious, sunny with puffy white clouds, but cool and not a bit humid, so you knew it was Scotland and not Key West. Vera’s flower garden looked lovely in the morning light, some of the buds beginning to unfurl into a pale lavender. If it wasn’t for the stressful events of the last couple days and my sister-in-law’s distress, I would have reveled in the free hours and taken my time exploring the town. As it was, I checked the map on my phone to be sure I was headed in the right direction and walked briskly to meet Grace.
She was pacing around the statue.
“Thank you for coming, I know it’s an imposition. But I didn’t know who else to turn to.” Her eyes were blinking furiously, from the effort of not crying I suspected.
“It’s okay. Tell me what’s up.”
“The police were at the house again this morning,” she said. “They reported that there were traces of poison in Glenda’s plate at the dinner the other night, but only her food.” At this point in the narrative, Grace lost her battle with tears. They flowed down her cheeks as she said, “How in the world could they figure this out if everything had already been scraped into the trash? Wouldn’t everyone’s leftovers be mixed together?” Suddenly a look of horror crossed her face.
“Do you mind walking that way? I totally forgot that I have a cake in the oven. Mr. Dougal will need tea while you lot are off in the countryside.”
I pinched my arm to keep from asking what kind of cake. It didn’t matter right now. What mattered was one death that was possibly a violent murder, and another possible poisoning attempt. At the house, maybe I would also get the chance to talk to Ainsley, be able to ask her about the conflict behind the scenes in this book project.
I trotted across town behind Grace, who had set a quick pace, wondering how such a talented and experienced chef could forget something as basic as leaving a cake in the oven. The answer had to be that she was distracted by something that felt even more important.
Once we got to Ainsley and Dougal’s building, she unlocked the door and hollered behind her, “I am going to take the stairs, the elevator is so slow.”
I vaulted up behind her, huffing and puffing and thinking I needed to up my exercise game. My gym trainer at home in Key West would agree. By the time we reached the fourth floor and burst into the hallway, I could already smell the scent of well-done, bordering on burnt, cake. Grace darted into the kitchen, slammed the oven door open, and grabbed the pan with two blue oven mitts. “I may or may not have saved it,” she said.
She slid the cake on to the cooling rack that was waiting on the counter. Thin slices of sugared lemon covered the top, slightly caramelized by the heat. The crispy sugary citrus smell was incredible.
“It’s stunning,” I said. “I think you got it out in the nick of time.”
Grace went to the door and cracked it open to be sure no one was listening. “Sorry to bring you out this morning with my cloak-and-dagger act,” she said in a hushed voice. “It’s just that Blair reminded me that I told him I’d seen a man I didn’t recognize come out of the apartment the day I was preparing for the party.”
Blair, I remembered, was the cheese vendor we’d met at the farmers market. I had wondered what their relationship was. “It wasn’t Blair who saw this man, it was you?”
Grace nodded slowly but said nothing.
“Okay, what did he look like? And did you get a sense of who he came to see? Why he was here?”
She looked distraught. “Maybe medium height, reddish-brown hair, wearing tortoiseshell glasses. That’s hardly any help is it? It could describe fifty percent of Scottish men.”
Including the dead man, I thought but didn’t say. “What do you think he was doing in the house? Any idea?”
“After Blair stopped in the kitchen to deliver the cheese, I walked him out. On the way back, I saw this man rushing down the hall from Ainsley’s office, apparently in a big hurry to leave. I called to tell Blair about the party when I got home that night because I was so upset. And then I remembered this man, wondering if he had some connection to their book. But after that, I was worried to distraction about what happened at the dinner, and so busy that I never thought of it again.”
“But you must have thought of it if you remembered to tell Blair.”
She shrugged. “I tell Blair everything. Besides, you remember what a difficult night that was. With Glenda collapsing and then the accusations that someone had tried to poison her—it went by in a blur after that. It was a bad night to be the chef who’d catered the party. I was pure done in.”
I nodded my agreement. “Have you asked Ainsley who this person was?”
She shook her head. “She’s hardly speaking to me. She’s left a few notes about what to prepare for her husband while she’s away, but that’s it. I’m afraid she thinks I really did poison her friend.” Her lips quivered. “I know you’re wondering, but honest to gosh I didn’t. Not on purpose anyway.”
Then I noticed the time on her kitchen clock. “I need to dash. I haven’t even packed. Please text if you remember anything else—I’m certain we’ll get this all straightened out soon.” I smiled warmly. “I think that cake will be perfectly lovely.” I started out of the kitchen but turned back halfway. “Does the name Joseph Booth mean anything to you?”
“Sorry, no,” she said and returned to her stove.
I hurried back across town to Vera’s home, puzzling over what could be going on with this group of friends. All three of them seemed on edge about something. The yearbook photo haunted me—the promise radiating from them compared with the horror of the past few days. I hadn’t had the chance to talk with Ainsley or Glenda, but hopefully I could get each of them alone over the next several days.
My mother-in-law Helen had already arrived at Vera’s home, and was installed at the kitchen table having a cup of tea and reading the paper. Her suitcase waited by the door.
“You’re up and about early,” she said, her eyebrows quirking with curiosity.
“Yes, and I’m not packed so I better get moving. Have you talked to the police this morning?”
“They came to the hotel,” she said. “I suspect they showed you the same photo, Joseph Booth?”
I nodded. “Miss Gloria and I certainly had never seen him before, and Vera said she didn’t know him either.” I paused, biting my lip, wondering whether to tell her my concerns about her daughter and her friends. I hated to align myself too tightly with Helen because I was afraid that would sour things with Nathan’s sister. But I could ask questions.
“Did you meet Vera’s friends when they were all in college? They seem lovely, Ainsley especially.”
Helen looked pained. “We came over to visit twice a year—that’s all she allowed. It was so hard to have her far away and wonder how she was coping. She was holding us at such a distance that I didn’t dare ask too many questions. We took those girls to dinner each time we visited, at Vera’s request. I think that was another way of keeping us away. We couldn’t very well quiz her about personal issues with guests at the table. And Nathan’s father and I weren’t getting along well, so I suppose dinner with us must have felt a bit like living through a cold war.”
A nightmare, I thought, imagining his father—a man like Nathan, but more intimidating, because he’d be even more distant and cool—sparring with Helen. Helen had opened up to me after the trauma we’d suffered together, but sharing difficult emotions wasn’t her natural inclination. “That must have been so hard.”
“Indeed. Vera insisted she was fine,” Helen continued, “but she struck me as so fragile still. She was very sensitive to us hovering, and always scanning our faces and voices for a reason to shut down. That’s why I hate so much to see this sort of thing happening. Again.” She sighed, her shoulders drooping.
“We’ll figure it out together,” I said, smiling with encouragement.
Miss Gloria clattered into the kitchen, dragging her wheeled suitcase, with the two tiger cats tagging behind. She would always be the Pied Piper of pets. “Ready to rock and roll. And ready for a second breakfast,” she said, glancing at the scones and teapot on the table.
“Yikes, it’s late. I better get ready.”
I retired to our room and took a quick shower and then threw some clothes into my small bag, thinking over the events packed into the last couple of days. Something definitely felt off with Vera. She felt brittle, in the way her mother had described her in her college years. Was the problem really with the book project?
For an instant, I wondered if she was having the same problem with me that I suspected her mother had faced when she first heard of Nathan’s plan to marry me. Was she still close to Nathan’s first wife and not eager to welcome number two? I pushed that thought away; it didn’t fit. It felt more like Vera was reacting badly to the weight of her project, the events of the last two days, and maybe recurring themes in her history with her mother.
Maybe they were simply different animals—her mother had a backbone of steel, while Vera was a reed.