Best-Laid Plants

by Marty Wingate

  “Couldn’t?”

  “He deferred to her that first night in the pub—did you notice?” Pru leaned against the car. “Cherry seems to think Ger has been loitering about Glebe Hall.”

  “Yesterday morning?”

  “Not specifically, just in general.”

  Christopher scribbled something in his notebook and shoved it back into his shirt pocket.

  Coral drew up to them. “It’s lovely to see Lizzy again. I should’ve stopped by before this. Are we walking back, Pru?”

  “Christopher will drop you at the Copper Beech—we have one more stop to make. And it won’t be long before Mrs. Draycott begins preparing our evening meal.”

  “Oh dear,” Coral said, pressing her lips together and cutting her eyes at Pru.

  Pru sputtered a giggle, but guilt instantly smothered her moment of humor. Who was she to poke fun at someone’s lack of cooking skills?

  As they got in the car, Pru thought how well Coral seemed to be dealing with events. Indeed, she seemed almost happy. Coral had been away from the village for years, and since back, she had been almost a recluse. But now, forced to encounter people she’d known her entire life but had perhaps forgotten about, she was discovering just how nice home could be. She’d reconnected with Lizzy, and she’d broken the ice with Oliver. Granted, that hadn’t gone well, but Pru, Pollyanna that she was, told herself things could change.

  —

  At the Copper Beech, Pru lifted Coral’s suitcase out of the boot of the car and set it down abruptly—it felt as if it had been packed with not only clothes, but also a few bricks. She let Christopher take over.

  Mrs. Draycott held open the front door. “Follow me, Mr. Pearse,” she said, and started up the stairs while Pru and Coral waited at the bottom.

  “Will you be long, do you think?” Coral asked, as if tugging on the imaginary tether Pru felt connected them.

  “No, not long,” Pru said. “We’re stopping to see Ger Crombie.”

  “The fellow who works for Margaretta?” Coral asked. “Why do you need to see him?”

  Christopher paused on the landing and threw a look to Pru over his shoulder.

  “Just a chat,” Pru answered blithely. “About badgers.” She caught the inspector’s nod of approval as he pushed his way through the fire door.

  Where C and I keep account of our favorite ramblers, the girl compiles a list of wildlife seen on the grounds and in the fields: hedgehog, fox, blackbird, toad, dormouse, badger—the last more inferred than observed. BB

  Chapter 20

  Bram and Ger waited at an outdoor table under an umbrella. Without her knit cap, Bram’s dark hair framed her face in soft curls. She waved at them, but Ger kept his gaze to the table, his eyes hollow with dark circles underneath. Probably what I look like, Pru thought. Perhaps he’d lost a night’s sleep, too.

  “Shall I get us something?” Pru asked to break the ice. “What will you have?”

  “Here, I’ll help,” Bram said, leaping off the bench. They left the two men—Christopher looking completely at ease, and Ger, his eyes locked on Bram as if he saw his life raft drifting away.

  —

  “You can’t prove I did that, because I didn’t.”

  Bram and Pru returned with pints of beer and packets of potato crisps to an interrogation-in-progress.

  “We’ve dusted the inside of the tractor cab for prints,” Christopher said, his eyes boring a hole through Ger. “It’s remarkably clean.”

  “I lost the tractor key last night,” Ger said. “It could’ve fallen out when I emptied my pockets in there at the bar, looking for coins. You should ask Danny. I intended to get a new one today. And anyway, one tractor key is as good as another.”

  “One key fits any tractor?” Pru asked.

  Bram nodded. “Practically. After all, who’s going to steal a tractor? It isn’t as if it’s a quick getaway.”

  “Where were you this morning?” Christopher asked. “Early—six o’clock?”

  “I was in my bed where I was supposed to be,” Ger shot back. “But you’ll finger me for this regardless, won’t you—only because I’ve no witness.” He took a long drink.

  Christopher did not take the bait. “Why would you bother to destroy a sett? Unless someone had put you up to it.”

  Crombie slammed his glass down on the table. “So now I’m doing someone else’s dirty work for them?”

  “Ger, can you not just answer the questions and this’ll be over?” Bram asked.

  “Bram, he’s trying to stitch me up for something I didn’t do!”

  “About yesterday morning,” Christopher cut in, zigzagging across topics. “You said you arrived at the field at seven, but Bram said you were there nearer eight.”

  Ger’s face froze.

  “Ah,” Bram said, shaking her head. “This is what you get for not having a radio or a windup clock, Ger, and that dodgy old mobile of yours is next to useless.”

  Pru searched Bram’s face—clear of pretense, not even a blush. She wasn’t lying, Pru decided.

  When Christopher had thanked them for meeting—a polite police dismissal—Bram and Ger stood to leave.

  “Bram,” Christopher said. “Will your leasehold deal stand with Bede’s death?”

  “Oh yes,” Bram said in a rush. “I’m sure it will. Definitely. What could change?”

  —

  After Bram and Ger had walked off down the lane, Christopher explained, “He’s had a warning from police before.”

  Pru tore open a packet of crisps and asked, “For what? Something violent?”

  “Disrupting a fox hunt—down in Dorset. No charges were ever filed, but names were taken. Ger’s appears on the list—along with another Crombie.”

  “So, wait—first Ger was protecting the foxes, and now he’s destroying badger setts? What is he, a marauder-for-hire?”

  “There are those who don’t care what they do as long as they come out ahead,” Christopher said. Pru didn’t think Ger looked like someone who had ever come out ahead. “This earthmoving—it’s as if it were for show, not actually to destroy the sett. If there were badgers there, they may come back. Michael’s going out tonight to watch.”

  Christopher’s phone rang at the same moment Bram reappeared. Pru stood to meet her while Christopher took his call a few feet away.

  “Look, now,” Bram said to Pru. “I only want to say that I don’t think Ger could’ve done this with the sett.” She paused for only a second. “And there’s that other thing, but Cherry said he wouldn’t pursue it.”

  “What ‘other thing’ is that?”

  “It’s—” Bram looked down the lane, squinted, and took a deep breath before continuing. “A few months ago, someone lobbed a stone through a window at Cherry’s house. Broken glass all over the floor, but nothing was taken. Cherry said he’d seen Ger along the drive just before.”

  “Did Ger do it? And why?”

  Bram shook her head. “There’s no reason he would, but Ger wouldn’t defend himself. Good thing that Cherry let it drop—didn’t even ring the police. I know Ger’s a rough manner, that he can be belligerent. But it’s just his way—he has a problem with authority.”

  “Have you known him long?” Pru asked.

  “About a year—since he showed up here. He’s been drifting the past three years or so—since his sister died. It was just the two of them, see, and they must’ve been quite close. She was older than Ger, and mostly a mother to him. After he showed up here, I gave him some work and that caravan to live in.” She smiled. “He says I remind him of her—I’m that bossy, I suppose. I thought I’d use that to my advantage, help him back on his feet.”

  Pru melted—anything involving family and redemption hit a mark close to her heart. “Oh, Bram, that’s lovely.”

  Bram continued. “That’s what Cynthia said I should do—and it’s really working. She’s amazing—such good advice.”

  Yes. Lovely.

  —

  “We’
ve confirmation on the aconite,” Christopher told her. “The capsule and in the body. The contusions were superficial, from when he fell. Someone turned him over—probably checking to see if he was still alive. It’s the aconite that killed him—the rest was just…poor judgment on the murderer’s part, I’d say.”

  “That other Crombie on the fox-hunt list,” Pru said. “I think it’s Ger’s sister.” Pru related Bram’s story.

  “Are you saying he’s a lost soul?”

  She knew he’d see it differently, and that didn’t bother Pru—she was a softie, and Christopher had a policeman’s sharp analytical mind. She thought it balanced them out well.

  “Do you suspect Ger for both the badgers and for Mr. Bede’s murder?” she asked as she started in on the second packet of crisps. “Sort of an odd combination—how could they be related?”

  Christopher stared into his pint glass. “He has a poor excuse for this morning. And his timing was off for yesterday. He could certainly damage that statue and push it over on the body.”

  “But he doesn’t seem like a poisoner.”

  “No, the two methods don’t jibe. And he’s lacking a motive—that we know of.”

  “I looked up the symptoms of aconite poisoning,” Pru reported. “It’s easily fatal—it doesn’t seem to take much, and if Mr. Bede was not in good health to begin with, perhaps even a small amount could’ve killed him. If taken orally, it can start out as a numbing on the lips and the tongue and in the mouth. The feeling would travel, his limbs becoming weak. It’s odd that he would’ve taken it and then gone out to the garden.”

  “He had a plant in his hand—it looked as if he’d pulled it up,” Christopher said. “You saw that?”

  Pru nodded, remembering the stems, leaves, and few faded flowers crushed in Mr. Bede’s hand. “It was betony. It’s a good perennial, a native—produces flowers through summer and into autumn. It’s also been used as a medicinal herb—a sort of panacea, you know, said to fix anything. I wonder if that’s what he thought. I believe he wrote about betony, but I don’t remember that he mentioned it as a medicine, only as an ornamental.”

  Her morning conversation with Dr. Cherrystone came back to her.

  “The doctor thinks that someone might’ve set Mr. Bede up to think that herbal medicine would cure him,” Pru reported carefully. “Cherry wasn’t happy about that. He says perhaps Mr. Bede took aconite of his own accord, but on someone’s recommendation.”

  “Coral’s?” Christopher asked, frowning.

  “I doubt it.” Pru’s own thoughts had gone directly to strawberry jam with basil and marmalade with bay. It was Cynthia who visited Batsford Bede regularly—had been a great positive influence on him, according to Lizzy.

  Pru toyed with the empty crisps packet, smoothing it out and folding it over and over until it was the size of a ten-pence piece as she tried to get up the courage to say more. She released the packet and it jumped as if alive, and unfolded itself.

  “Christopher,” she said, not looking up.

  “Cynthia,” he replied. “She knows about herbs, doesn’t she? So does Lizzy, but it was Cyn who was close with Bede.”

  Pru gave a tiny nod, but wanted to be fair. “Perhaps it was a mistake. He took too much or…”

  “Or it was on purpose. But why?” Christopher asked. “And what about that damned statue? Poison is calculated, planned—but throwing over a piece of stonework on someone is immediate. Possibly full of rage.”

  “Did you check all the tools in the garden shed?” Pru asked. “Might one of them have been used to crush Pliny’s feet to make it easy to push him over? Or something from the glasshouses?”

  “We’ve yet to find anything on the grounds, and the glasshouses are completely stripped inside.” He tapped his empty glass on the table. “Cyn wants to talk with me—and I’ve got questions for her, even if she was away when Bede was killed.”

  “Yes, you should talk with her.” May I be there when you do? Pru wanted to ask, but couldn’t bring herself to sound so petty. Still, she had to add one more piece of information.

  “Coral reacted badly when Cyn appeared at Glebe House this morning. She told me that Cynthia was a spider and had caught Uncle Batty in her web. I think it might be guilt—Coral’s, because she left Mr. Bede alone after her mother died.”

  Christopher stared off into nothing for a moment before resting his gaze on Pru. She forced herself to look at him, although she shifted, her bench seat hard and uncomfortable.

  “I don’t mean to sound as if I’m trying to blame Cyn.”

  “That isn’t how you sound. It’s what we do,” he reminded her. “We collect facts, opinions, accusations—it’s all part of the job.” Christopher gathered their glasses and litter to take in to the bar, but paused. “They lifted a partial print from the capsule found in the bedroom. Most of it was quite clean, but there’s a narrow band where one piece fits into the other. They aren’t sure if it’s usable or not.”

  Behind the bar in the pub, Mick stacked glasses in the dishwasher.

  “Cheers,” he said, taking their empties.

  “On your own this afternoon?” Christopher asked.

  “I am, but we’re not busy until later.”

  “Have you worked here long?”

  “Danny brought me on when he took over. I was up at the Tollgate before that.”

  “Do you recall Batsford Bede ever coming into the pub?”

  “The old man who died? Yeah, two or three times, I suppose. He’d sit by the fire there—alone or not. He seemed harmless enough. But not for a few months now. Do you know what happened?”

  From the great wealth of vague police phrases at his disposal, Christopher chose, “It’s early days yet. Say, you didn’t happen to sweep up a tractor key in here last evening?”

  Mick laughed. “Not that it isn’t possible, but no, I don’t recall.”

  Pru walked out of the pub ahead of Christopher, and when she reached the car, she whipped round, her eyes shining.

  “Mick says that he’s seen Mr. Bede in the pub, but Danny Sheridan said no, he had never come in.”

  Christopher smiled. “Sheridan didn’t actually deny it, of course—he only deflected my questions. Why would he lie about that? Hang on, I’ll get Appledore onto Sheridan’s past, see what he can find.” While he rang the sergeant, Pru waited at the pub’s window box deadheading the blue marguerites.

  Finished with his call, Christopher came up from behind, encircling her with his arms. She squeezed his hands and leaned back onto his chest and sighed.

  “This business can be too much,” he said. “It can consume your every waking thought. Let’s remember, we have the fête this weekend.”

  Pru smiled. “I’ve just been reminded of that this morning. Jo and Cordelia and Lucy and Ollie will arrive Friday—it’ll be wonderful to see them. You’ll be at the Badger Care booth, and I’ll be…I’ll need to ask Natalie for a job. I can’t put my feet up while you’re all working.”

  I’ve uncovered a previously undetected skill for cooking when, last evening, C and the girl were out. The secret: go easy on the tarragon. BB

  Chapter 21

  When Pru and Christopher arrived at the B&B, they were met with unaccustomed aromas of seasoned roasting with herbs and spices. Christopher continued upstairs, but Pru followed her nose to the kitchen, whereupon she felt as if she had entered another dimension.

  There was no sign of Mrs. Draycott. Instead, Coral, wearing the landlady’s checkered pinny over her full skirt, stirred a pot on the cooker.

  “Coral?”

  “Here you are, now.” Coral held up a wooden spoon and struck a pose that reminded Pru of her mother’s old Betty Crocker Cookbook. “Mrs. Draycott was almost late for her walk, and I asked if I could help with the meal. After she left, I rummaged round in her pantry and discovered a jar of roasted sweet peppers with thyme. I mixed them into the potatoes, tossed a handful of cheese on top, and threw it in the oven. And I found a lovely chutney o
f some sort that we can douse the chicken with. And pickled sprouts! I wonder wherever did they come from.”

  Pru glanced at the jars lined up along the counter. They all bore labels written in a hand she recognized—the same as on the jar of strawberry jam with basil and marmalade with bay. These were from the kitchen of Cynthia Mouser. Probably best not to mention the source to Coral.

  “We’ve time before we eat, Pru—why don’t you make us a sponge. I spotted a jar of stewed rhubarb, and you can cook up the custard after.”

  Pru couldn’t speak. A sponge cake? Memories of her one attempt at baking—the year before when she had created Christmas pudding chaos—filled her head. She stammered, “Oh, you know, I’m not that…” She stopped and took a deep breath. “I can’t cook,” she blurted out. “Or bake. I can’t.”

  “Oh.” Coral’s brows furrowed and her mouth turned down, but it quickly flipped into a little smile that wrinkled her nose. “I tell you what, let’s make it together.”

  Coral took out a bowl and utensils and gathered eggs, butter, sugar, milk, and flour. As she measured and mixed, she talked about what she was doing, sort of a monologue as if she was talking to herself more than Pru.

  “Eight is the magic number—eight ounces of flour, eight of sugar, eight of butter. See how we beat the butter and sugar. Here, Pru—four eggs. You add them.” Coral held out the whisk.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Pru said, putting her hands behind her and backing up a step.

  “Go on, then,” Coral coaxed, nudging Pru with her elbow. “Those eggs are far more afraid of you than you are of them.”

  Pru laughed. “Oh, all right.” She took the whisk and held it between index finger and thumb, as if it might bite.

  “Beat the eggs in one at a time, so they don’t overwhelm the butter and sugar.”

  A bit of shell got in the batter and Pru fished it out, but otherwise the eggs went in smoothly and she marveled as the batter took on a golden hue. “They just disappear, don’t they?”