Delphiniums and Deception

by Ruby Loren

  She looked down at the bunch of twigs augmented with some bright autumn berries and even a flower or two of a variety that I didn’t recognise. “I think I’ve nearly finished my arrangement. I might go and get it judged. Good luck with yours.” Lady Isabella gave me a curt nod before sweeping off in the direction of the toolshed.

  “Learn anything interesting?” Fergus asked when I walked over to him and we began gathering twigs, leaves, and anything else we could get our hands on, in earnest.

  “I don’t think so,” I confessed. “I think just about everyone on this course knows a reasonable amount about Elliot Harving, but I’ve no idea why his name was written on the snapdragon.” I sucked on my bottom lip for a second. “I suppose I’ll have to do some more asking around and see if anyone lets anything slip, but if we push too hard, we could end up ostracised from the group.”

  Fergus shrugged. “If anyone seems particularly unwilling to talk, you’ve probably found the guilty one. On the plus side, no one can really get away from you here.”

  “And on the minus side, we can’t get away from the killer,” I pointed out, wondering if it was wise to poke a stick into what might turn out to be a hornet’s nest.

  Fergus nodded, inspecting his gloved hands. “You know… these may be a little small, but boy, do I feel fancy!”

  I rolled my eyes to the heavens and dumped some sloe-laden blackthorn stems into my pail. Finding the truth was going to be even harder with Fergus distracting me every few seconds.

  “Let’s get this challenge done and then think about our next move,” I said, placing some twigs in his pail. “Perhaps something will turn up…”

  At lunchtime, it did.

  Everyone was sitting down to eat a lunch of smoked salmon sandwiches when we heard the scream. A quick scan of the table revealed that Sylvia was missing from the group.

  “I’ll go,” I said, sliding out of my chair.

  Rich slid out of his own at the same time. We looked at each other for a long moment. “Together?” he suggested, and I nodded.

  We walked out of the dining hall towards the bedrooms to find out what had happened to Sylvia.

  7

  Unravelling the Threads

  Sylvia stood outside of her room with a shaking hand covering her heart.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, wondering if there was a medical emergency that needed dealing with.

  “No, dear, but I’m sure I will be soon. I just need a moment.” She took a couple of deep breaths and some of the colour returned to her cheeks. “I popped into my room to freshen up and have a few moments to myself. I had to spend the whole morning in my night dress, you know, after that terrible stench and being forced to keep on with all of this after what happened to poor Christine. I reached into my knitting bag and felt something sticky. I thought that maybe a toffee had escaped, but when I looked at my hand, it was all red! I felt quite dizzy, dear, thinking I’d cut myself. But it was worse than that. When I looked inside the bag there was a hand fork in there, and it was absolutely covered in blood.” She turned pale again. “I shan’t be able to knit again! I certainly want that bag gone from my sight for good.”

  “Try not to worry. I’m sure you’ll get a fresh supply of wool once we’re out of here and be back knitting in no time,” I reassured her, knowing she was focusing on that issue to take her mind off the terrible truth - she had found the weapon used to stab Christine Montague.

  Rich returned from Sylvia’s room with the bloodstained knitting bag clutched between his thumb and forefinger. I considered the potential for him having tampered with the evidence before I let it go. This whole situation was a disaster when it came to crime scene preservation. Refusing to touch a knitting bag containing a weapon used in a murder was ridiculous - especially when Sylvia had already inadvertently touched it.

  “I told you I saw a man in my room last night. He must have come in and dropped the fork. Maybe I scared him when I screamed,” Sylvia said, looking more animated now that Rich and the bag were with us. I thought she was recovering well from the initial shock of her discovery. “No one believed me, but I was right! I knew I wasn’t dreaming. He must have come in through the window and then run out through the door by unlocking it from the inside. I was so sure I locked it, you know, but I did leave the key in.”

  “Why would he run inside the bunker?” Rich asked, looking perplexed.

  “Heaven knows! This place is huge. I’m sure there are simply hundreds of places to hide. You said yourself that this whole thing could be preconceived,” Sylvia reminded him.

  Rich shrugged it away. “I was probably a little over-excited when I said that. Do you remember what the man looked like?”

  Sylvia went quiet for a moment. “Well, no. It was dark and I’d only just woken up. He was broader shouldered than you are. He wasn’t as tall as Eamon, and he seemed to me to be slim - unlike Duncan. I may not have been able to see his face, but I’m quite certain I’d never seen that man before in my life. You probably saw him better than I did, Diana. What did you think?”

  “You saw someone?” Rich looked surprised.

  I nodded grudgingly, knowing that my story sounded pretty ridiculous. “The person was dressed in a military uniform from what I could see, and they were…ah…glowing. I didn’t see anything apart from their back as they ran down the corridor.” I pointed in the direction I’d watched the person run. “I didn’t see where they went, but Jack said it’s a dead end down there. So, either they walked through a locked door, or they went back into one of our rooms.” I left the implication hanging.

  “You didn’t recognise the glowing military guy?” Rich enquired, looking faintly amused by the hint of accusation.

  “No. Sylvia’s description was perfect. I don’t think it was you, Eamon, or Duncan… and Jack was right there a second later.”

  “You keep saying ‘person’. You don’t think it was a man?” Rich pressed.

  I hesitated. “I’m not sure,” I confessed. “All I know is that someone is playing a game with us - a game that has already resulted in a murder. And I don’t think they’ve finished playing with us yet.”

  Rich was frowning. “I don’t see how it has anything to do with any of us. It doesn’t make any sense!”

  “It doesn’t make any sense at the moment,” I corrected. “What do the both of you remember about what happened to Elliot Harving?”

  Rich shook his head. “I still don’t understand why you’re asking about that random accident, but fine!” He raised his hands before I could say anything more. “I was working on the other side of the world when it happened, but it was news in all places where English-speaking people live. At the time, I was working for a construction company. I remember them all being shocked that the sculpture had collapsed. The media claimed it was to do with the old, unstable metal used, but the guys I worked with said it wasn’t likely. Old steel that thick is tough - no matter how much rust is on it. The only way it would have collapsed would be a faulty weld or something deliberate that might have caused a weld to fail. In the end, I think they found there was some problem with the weld - just like my guys said. I reckon that was what got the sculptors in so much trouble. It was their responsibility to have done the proper job.”

  Sylvia nodded along. “I just felt sorry for the poor couple who went to prison over it all,” she said, echoing Lady Isabella’s sentiments. “I read in one of my gardening magazines that they later died. Both of them were taken ill whilst in there. I’m sure it’s the sort of thing that could happen whether in prison or out of it, but you can’t help thinking that for that couple - who I think were quite elderly - it must have been a terrible shock.”

  “Do either of you know why someone might think Christine was somehow involved in something to do with what happened to Elliot Harving?” I asked, feeling that I wasn’t getting much closer to the truth. Everyone seemed to know about the story, but I couldn't find a single connection between Christine and the young man who
had died… yet.

  “No idea,” Rich said, folding his arms and throwing me a skeptical look. “What about you? What do you know about Elliot Harving?” The look in his eye was clear: What gives you the right to be asking all of the questions?

  I gave him a little shrug. “I don’t actually remember much about the incident or the reports on it. I wasn’t interested in anything to do with horticulture at the time. I was eating, sleeping, and breathing chemistry. My time was spent working at a laboratory in London.”

  “You said Christine was poisoned, right?” Rich clarified.

  I inclined my head. “I believe she was drugged with a fatal dose of something. I think that it is likely she was dead by the time the attack occurred, but not being a pathologist, I can’t stake a lot on that.”

  “I bet a chemist like you would know how to whip up some poison in no time at all.”

  I opened my mouth and shut it again. “I thought I’d already made it clear that the poison was likely from a natural source and not chemically obtained. But why on earth would I want to kill Christine Montague? I’m sure we can all agree that the attack was a frenzy of violence. It was done in hate.” But planned carefully in advance, I silently added, believing it was the case. Someone had known that Christine Montague was going to be on this course, and someone had arranged for her to not make it out alive.

  “You tell me,” Rich batted back. “I’ve worked with Christine for long enough to know that there are no end of people she has rubbed the wrong way. You grow flowers, right? She could have slammed your work in her magazine column or blacklisted your company.”

  “I doubt it. I’m not exactly a big fish.”

  “Christine was spiteful. Don’t underestimate the lengths she would go to if you did something, knowingly or otherwise, that might threaten her precious business.”

  I felt my forehead crease. “If you disliked her so much, why did you work for her?”

  “I already told you. She paid me well for the privilege of my company and abilities. I’m not going to be picky about morals when that amount of cash is on the table.” He winked at me.

  “Are either of you diabetic?” I enquired, seeing as we were hardly tiptoeing around the matter now.

  Both Sylvia and Rich shook their heads.

  “I think Eamon is,” Sylvia supplied, smiling sweetly at me.

  Seeing as I still appeared to have Sylvia on my side, I directed the next question at her. “Do you know who might own this hair grip?” I pulled out the jewelled flower and showed it to her.

  “I do! That is - it’s mine. Wherever did you find it? I was looking for it before…” she paled again, remembering the fork in her knitting bag.

  “It was on the floor next to Christine Montague’s bed,” I told her, wondering what it could mean. I’d thought that the obvious placement of the grip had been clumsy and Sylvia’s easy admittance that it belonged to her was strange if she suspected that she might have lost it whilst committing murder.

  “Well! I have no idea at all how it could have got there,” the elderly lady said. I tried to imagine Sylvia shimmying out of the window, having just murdered Christine, and slipping back into her room by hauling herself up through her own window, having made sure to lock Christine’s door from the inside… and then claiming she saw a man in her room. If it weren’t for the fact that I’d witnessed the running figure with my own eyes and had seen Sylvia appear at the same time, I supposed I could have given the possibility more consideration, but aside from it sounding too crazy to be true, Sylvia struggled to climb up stairs. Dangling from windows was probably out of the question.

  Then there was the bracelet to consider. If it did belong to Eamon, did that mean he was the killer? His figure didn’t match that of the person I’d seen running away from Sylvia’s room, but I knew better than to trust my own eyes - especially in the dark. With the right padding and a good costume, it could have been just about anyone running down that corridor.

  Rich shook the bag and frowned before pulling it open and looking in. “Sylvia, are these your keys? There’s a really big set in here.”

  “No, mine are in my handbag, dear,” she told him, looking puzzled.

  Rich pulled an apologetic face at me and then delved into the bag, pulling out a big jangling set and destroying another piece of evidence. There was a handy label attached that read ‘Fennering Bunker Master Keys - Care of Jack Hart and Lorna Bates’.

  “What could they have been doing in there?” Sylvia asked, her hand fluttering to her chest again.

  “Oh, I don’t know… maybe they were accidentally dropped in amongst all the wool when the killer was trying to dispose of the fork.” Rich looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “I think you might be questioning the wrong group of people.”

  “Conspiring, are we?” Eamon said, walking towards us with a face like thunder.

  “Not at all, Eamon. I had quite a fright after finding a garden fork covered in blood in my knitting bag. Diana and Rich kindly stayed with me until I was calm. We were just about to come back,” Sylvia reassured him.

  “Sure,” Eamon said, looking unconvinced.

  “You’re diabetic, aren’t you?” I asked, wanting to get to the bottom of this little mystery.

  “Yes, what of it?” Eamon was more on guard than Sylvia had been, I noted, but then he would probably have been the same level of standoffish if I’d asked him something as simple as what colour the sky was today.

  “Fergus just found a medical bracelet and wondered if it was yours. The name was worn off,” I said, still wanting to see his reaction.

  Eamon’s hand went to his wrist. He frowned down at it. “Darn thing is always falling off at the slightest puff of air. I’ll get it from him later. Kind of you to pick it up.”

  “No problem. It was lying next to Christine’s bed,” I said, dropping the truth on him the same way I had with Sylvia. I observed that I wasn’t the only one in our little group watching the lecturer very closely.

  Eamon immediately coloured. “Well, I! I went in to check what all the fuss was about, didn’t I? I practically broke the door down,” he stumbled. “It must have fallen off then. I do hope you’re not suggesting…”

  “…No one is suggesting anything,” I finished, sensing that tempers were about to fly off the handle.

  “What’s going on?” Duncan and Bella arrived at our little group, looking almost as troubled as Eamon had.

  “We found the weapon - a handheld garden fork - that we believe was used to stab Christine,” I explained and then had to do so again when the rest of the dining group arrived outside Sylvia’s room. We stood in a ring and looked round at one another in suspicion.

  “Half an hour before we should start the next challenge,” Jack’s nervous voice came, trying to cut through the bad vibes, but our flower arranging circle was beyond that. Something needed to be done, or who knew what might happen next? Innocent people could be victimised and the real criminal might get away with a terrible crime. We had to approach this logically and calmly…

  “I think an extraterrestrial was responsible for Christine’s death,” Fergus piped up.

  I tried not to strangle him right there and then.

  Eamon’s brow furrowed and Rich looked amused. Around the group there was bafflement. Only Tanya was managing to look intrigued by Fergus’ outlandish statement. Well, well! I thought, deciding that Tanya might have transferred her affections away from Rich in favour of Fergus.

  I had no idea why.

  “How so?” Eamon prompted.

  “I don’t see another logical explanation. This site is a well known hub of UFO activity. It’s been shut off from the public for years… and I think we may have just discovered the reason why.”

  “You think aliens poisoned Christine and then stabbed her? Did this alien also dress up in some kind of glowing military uniform and run down the corridor?” Rich asked, sarcasm practically dripping from his voice.

  “Glowing?” Fergu
s narrowed his eyes at me before continuing. “I will be investigating every possible angle, but I think it could be plausible. Aliens mostly come into contact with our military personnel, so this visitor from outer space might have worn the uniform as a disguise, hoping to blend in.”

  “But why kill Christine?” Eamon pressed, itching to say that this was all utter nonsense.

  “That is an excellent question, and one I believe can be answered… with a bag search,” Fergus finished, surprising everyone present - myself included.

  “That’s a sensible idea,” I said, shooting Fergus a sideways look to see if it had been his plan all along. He studiously avoided making eye contact with me.

  “What do you hope to find out about aliens from a bag search?” Rich asked, still looking amused.

  “I think this visitor might have planted certain items in our cases.” Fergus said it like he really believed it. Even I wasn't sure if this was part of his method to diffuse all of the tension with a ridiculous theory, or if he genuinely did think we’d been visited by E.T.