by Agatha Frost
"Temporarily suspended," Barker muttered with a cough, his cheeks blushing.
"Yes, well, even the most hopeless looking plants can be brought back from death, but root rot is still root rot, no matter what you call it. I have five minutes before I need to start on my next job. A wreath, you say?"
Barker glanced to Julia, who was still biting her tongue. He looked as though he wanted her to jump in, but she decided it was best to keep her lips locked, even if Barker had just embarrassed himself.
"Somebody left a wreath on my doorstep yesterday," Barker said as he placed the sash on the counter, the letters facing up and shining under the spotlights in the ceiling. "A funeral wreath."
"I know," Harriet said through pursed lips. "I put it there."
"Oh."
"I don't usually do deliveries for single items, but they paid extra, so I was more than happy to oblige, even if it was out of my way. I forgot you lived up that lane, Julia. I would have popped in for a cup of tea."
"The thing is, this wreath is for me," Barker said, the frustration obvious in his voice.
"Didn't you like the flowers?"
"I did, but – well – I'm not dead, you see."
Harriet peered over her glasses, her brow arching even higher. She looked Barker up and down, even leaning over the counter to peer at his shiny shoes.
"I can see that."
"Maybe there was a mix-up?" Barker asked, a glimmer of hope returning to his voice. "Is there another Barker in the village?"
"Are you suggesting I can't do my job, Mr. Detective Inspector?"
"No, not at all, it's just -,"
"I was given very specific instructions, all handwritten and very detailed. I followed them to the letter, including leaving the wreath on your doorstep yesterday morning. Your address was underlined and written out very clearly."
Barker looked to Julia again, the fear from yesterday returning to his eyes. Julia stepped forward and decided it was time to unlock her lips to help him out.
"Can you tell us who ordered the wreath, Harriet?" Julia asked kindly.
"No can do, I'm afraid."
"Why not?" Barker asked rather loudly.
"Client confidentiality."
"They're only flowers!"
"And the law is still the law!" Harriet snapped back. "Not that you care much about the law! I'm almost certain it's illegal to pretend to be an officer, temporary suspension or not!"
Barker's cheeks darkened as his nostrils flared. Julia had suspected this might happen. Being a trader herself, she was familiar with the law concerning customer records and privacy, even if it was something she had never encountered in her café.
"I understand that," Julia murmured, resting her hand on Barker's arm to let him know to leave it to her. "The law is the law, but it's put Barker in a tricky situation. As you can understand, seeing your name on a funeral wreath can be quite distressing, and we're just trying to get to the bottom of things without wasting police time."
"You know I can't tell you, Julia."
"I know that," Julia agreed. "But the man who ordered these flowers might be -,"
"I never said it was a man," Harriet jumped in, shaking her head and pulling off her glasses.
Julia concealed her smirk, glad Harriet had fallen into her trap.
"So it was a woman?" Barker asked suspiciously.
Harriet exhaled severely, her eyes darting between them. She sighed, licked her finger, and flicked back through the book.
"Listen, I can't tell you who ordered them because quite frankly, I don't know who ordered them," Harriet said through pursed lips as she scanned her bookings. "A girl came in here on Saturday with a handwritten note and cash. She wouldn't leave a name or a contact number. I wouldn't usually stand for that, but she came in the last thing on Saturday and didn't stick around. I thought maybe her family had sent her down for a funeral that was happening on Sunday, so I put the order together and delivered it at the time that was written down."
"So she was a young girl?" Julia asked, glancing to Barker, who was looking more and more confused.
"I never said that."
"But you thought her family had sent her, which suggests she wasn't old enough to come into a florist and order funeral flowers on her own."
Harriet’s lips twisted into a taut snarl, her expression growing more serious, clearly frustrated by the incessant questioning. Julia knew they didn't have long until they permanently made their way into her bad books.
"She was a teenager," Harriet said, slapping the book shut. "Thirteen, maybe younger, maybe older. It's hard to tell these days. That's all you're getting from me because that's all I know, and I'm confident that doesn't break any laws. Now if you don't mind, you've wasted enough of my time, so if you're not buying flowers, you can leave."
Julia decided against buying the yellow roses, although she made another mental note to bake a particularly rich fruitcake to give to Harriet on her next visit to the café, if she ever showed her face again. Barker led the way out of the florist, leaving Harriet to start gathering the flowers for her next job.
"Well that was a waste of time," Barker exclaimed as he shielded his eyes from the sun.
"Not necessarily," Julia said, pulling her car keys from her bag. "We know it wasn't Jeffrey Taylor who ordered the flowers."
"I almost wished it were him. At least that would make sense."
They climbed into the car, but instead of pushing her keys into the ignition, Julia held them against the wheel and stared ahead to the end of the lane, where two men were loading a grandfather clock from the antique barn into a white truck.
"Are you going to tell me about this Jeffrey Taylor?" Julia asked, shifting in her seat to face Barker. "He seems to have you pretty rattled."
Barker glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes before running his hands down his light stubble. He looked ahead at the grandfather clock, following its journey into the truck.
"You know how Superman has Lex Luthor?" Barker asked, turning fully in his seat, his brow wrinkling deep in thought. "Jeffrey Taylor is my Lex Luthor."
"Okay?"
"He was my first case after I passed my inspector's exam eight years ago. I had just turned thirty, and I was living in Hull at the time. I had the world at my feet, and I felt unstoppable. In my first month, I was put on a serial murder case with another DI, Steven, who had thirty years experience on me. He was under pressure from the big dogs to close the case before the press grabbed hold of the story and made our jobs ten times harder. Women were turning up dead all over the city, and we couldn't figure out a pattern. It was like trying to finish a crossword puzzle without the clues. It felt like we would never get a break, and then we found Jeffrey Taylor at the scene of one of the murders. He was arrested and processed. Turns out his DNA matched one of the samples taken from another one of the victims. He didn't have alibis for any of the times of deaths, and he fit the rough profile of what we had managed to put together. Steven was sure we had our guy, so that meant I was sure. I was fresh into the job, and I didn't want to ruffle feathers by going against the grain. The evidence was purely circumstantial, and aside from the DNA, we had nothing else. It was enough though. It turned into a witch-hunt, and he got life in prison. It all happened so fast, and then when no more women were found dead, it felt like we had our guy safely behind bars."
"So what happened?" Julia asked, her stomach writhing as she edged closer to Barker, her keys clenched tightly in her fist. "Why is he suddenly out of prison?"
"I looked online last night and it seems new evidence recently came to light putting another man in the frame. From what I could gather, the new guy even confessed. Jeffrey's lawyers called for a mistrial, and he won. Got a healthy payout by the sounds of it too. I transferred out of Hull to London soon after the first trial, and I moved on. The case was passed on, and they never called on me, but I never forgot his words on that last day in court. ‘I'll make you pay for this! I'll kill you all!' He looked
me right in the eyes when he said that. I had nightmares of him killing me for weeks, but eventually, I forgot. I had that nightmare for the first time again last night, knowing he was in Peridale. I barely slept."
"Do you think he's innocent?"
"I don't know what I think, I just know that he's here at the same time somebody warns me of my death. It's all a little too creepy to be coincidence, don't you think?"
Julia thought about it for a second, not wanting to believe that Barker could really be in danger, but also not wanting to scare him any more than he clearly already was. Instead, she reached out and grabbed his hand in hers. Their eyes connected, a smile flickering between them. A loud sound of crashing wood snapped them both back to reality, and they turned to see the grandfather clock shattering against the cobbled road.
"Coincidences do happen," Julia stated as she slotted her key into the ignition. "Maybe he's come to Peridale to start a new life like you did?"
"Or maybe he's come to ruin my new life," Barker whispered, almost under his breath.
They drove back to Barker's cottage in silence. When they pulled up outside, Julia jumped out of the car and opened her boot, pulling out a plastic cake box.
"The latest version of my chocolate cake," Julia said as she handed it over. "There's a gooey chocolate ganache centre in this one."
"You always know how to cheer me up," Barker said with a soft smile. "Join me inside for a slice?"
"I need to get back to the café," Julia said regretfully, glancing to Barker's cottage, where she knew the wreath was still sitting on his coffee table. "If I leave Jessie alone any longer she'll burn the place to the ground."
Barker kissed her goodbye, his lips lingering against hers a little longer than usual. When she climbed back in her car and drove down the lane, she peered through her rear-view mirror to see Barker standing by his gate, the cake in his hands as he watched her drive away.
For Barker's sake, Julia was going to get to the bottom of the wreath before it turned into anything else. She had no idea who had placed the order at Pretty Petals, but she did know she could find out why Jeffrey Taylor had come to Peridale.
Chapter 4
By the time Julia got back to the café, word of the wreath had spread around the village, no doubt thanks to their disastrous visit to Pretty Petals. When she locked the door after an unusually busy Monday afternoon, she was even more determined to get to the bottom of the strange mystery. Leaving her car parked in between her café and the post office, she sent Jessie home and set off walking across the village.
Evelyn's B&B sat on the corner of Peridale's main street, just past The Plough, and across from the small police station. It curved along the corner of the road in an L-shape, with an overgrown and wildly colourful garden at its heart, which still looked beautiful despite the dark grey sky above. Julia stood at the gate and looked up at the many windows scattered across the old cottage's frontage, knowing it was deceptively larger inside than it appeared. Despite this, a small sign poking out from a rose bush, which was in desperate need of pruning, let her know there were no rooms available.
Julia unclipped the gate and walked up to the front door holding a cardboard box containing two scones packed with cream and jam. Instead of a traditional doorbell, there was a metal chain, which Julia was instructed to pull by a small, hand-painted sign in swirling handwriting.
After Julia had pulled on the chain, which sent a melodic tune chiming throughout the cottage, the door shot open dramatically to reveal Evelyn in a loose lilac caftan with a turban secured around her head to match. A glittery diamond brooch held the turban in place, staring out into the world like a third eye.
"Julia!" Evelyn exclaimed. "Come in! Come in! Are those scones? The universe foretold that I would have an unexpected visitor. Would you mind taking off your shoes? I've only just finished shampooing the carpets this morning."
Julia obliged and kicked off her shoes. She followed Evelyn through her eccentrically decorated B&B and into the small sitting room overlooking the beautiful garden. When the B&B was closed for the long winter months, Evelyn travelled the world alone, picking up unusual trinkets and strange artefacts, which were displayed throughout her home as her own personal museum. Dot had always called the collection ‘tacky’ because it wasn't the usual style in Peridale, but Julia liked Evelyn's taste in décor. It was chaotic and cluttered, but it made perfect sense for Evelyn, whose mind was similarly disordered and jumbled.
"Would you like a tarot reading, my dear?" Evelyn asked as she unclipped a small wooden box on the table. "I never had you down as a believer of tarot cards, but we're all full of surprises, aren't we?"
"No, thank you," Julia said with a polite smile as she pushed the scones onto the table. "Maybe another time. Been anywhere nice recently?"
"I spent the winter in Morocco," Evelyn said proudly, adjusting her turban. "I picked up a rather beautiful collection of Moroccan tea glasses there. Can I make you a cup? It will go lovely with these scones of yours!"
Before Julia responded, Evelyn scooped up the scones and floated off to the kitchen, her caftan fluttering behind her. Julia hadn't known how she was going to approach the subject of Jeffrey Taylor, but she knew a cup of tea was a good place to start.
"It's Maghrebi mint tea," Evelyn announced when she returned with a steel tray containing an oddly shaped teapot with small coloured glasses, and the scones on two plates. "I know you like your peppermint, so I'm sure you'll love this."
After pouring the tea, Evelyn scooped up one of the glasses in the palms of her hands and inhaled deeply. Her eyes flickered behind her lids, a content smile washing over her. Julia copied Evelyn's actions, surprised by the minty sweetness of the murky liquid. It calmed the nerves she had about the true nature of her visit.
"Do I detect spearmint?" Julia asked.
"Your baker's nose never fails you!" Evelyn exclaimed. "A young man who went by the name Amine introduced me to it. Amine means ‘faithful and trustworthy', although I would disagree after finding out he had a wife. Alas, I was twice the boy's age, but isn't that what travel is for?"
Julia choked on her tea but attempted to pass it off as a cough. She held it in her throat, a respectful smile on her lips as her face burned bright red. Evelyn was a decade Julia's senior, but was better travelled than any other person in Peridale, and had the stories to prove it.
"It is very delicious," Julia agreed as she placed the cup back on the tray. "I'll have to see if I can buy some online."
"I brought back plenty!" she cried, waving her hand. "I'll give you a bag before you leave."
"That's very kind of you."
"Not a problem at all, my dear." Evelyn drained her cup and placed it back on the tray. "If you didn't come for a reading, and I guess you're not here for a room, not that I have any left, may I ask the purpose of your visit today? It's nice to see you, but I'm just more accustomed to seeing you in your café."
Evelyn reached out for a scone and immediately plucked it from the plate to take a large bite. With cream and jam on her lips, she chewed silently, her eyes closed once more, and an even wider grin taking over her face. Julia was happy to see her scone having the desired effect.
"I actually wanted to ask you about -,"
Before Julia could finish her sentence, the lamps flickered and turned off entirely. They sat in darkness for a moment looking up at the lights in the ceiling, but when they didn't turn back on, Evelyn sighed, ditched her scone, and forced herself up off the sofa.
"Those fuses!" she cried out. "Been on the blink ever since I got back!"
Evelyn scurried into the hall, leaving Julia alone in the sitting room. She peered out of the window as shadowy clouds rolled over Peridale, pushing the room into even further darkness. From the hallway, she heard a small bang, followed by Evelyn crying out. Julia pulled her phone out of her bag and flicked on the bright flashlight before following the B&B owner.
"Evelyn?" she called out. "Are you okay?"
> "Down here," her voice echoed through an open door. "I can't see a darn thing!"
Julia pulled on the door and shone the light down into the dark cellar. Using the wall to guide her, she descended down the stone steps, every flicker of warmth leaving her body. Nerves flooded Julia’s system as she realised she was surrounded by darkness in the same building as a man who had been sent to prison for murder. When she reached the bottom, she shone the light in front of her, the shadows shifting and shaping before her eyes. When the light caught Evelyn's glittery brooch, she hurried to her, glancing over her shoulder as the blackness consumed the space around her.
"I can never figure this thing out," Evelyn whispered as she flicked various switches on the fuse box. "All the labels have worn off."
Julia shone her light over the different switches, pausing on two large red ones, which were both pointing down. She forced them back up and was relieved when light flooded into the cellar from the open door at the top of the stairs.
"Happens whenever I've got a full house," Evelyn said as she adjusted her turban. "Everybody has everything plugged in at all times these days. What happened to a good book, or a conversation?"
They headed to the stairs, both of them pausing and letting out small gasps when they saw a shadowy figure standing at the top, the light illuminating only the outline. Julia shone her flashlight up to the figure, sheer fright spreading through her when she saw an almost skeletal man’s face staring down at her. Tattoos crept up his arms, only stopping at his sharp jawline, darkening his presence even more.
"Jeffrey?" Evelyn cried out with a small chuckle. "You startled me!"
Julia held back and let Evelyn lead the way up the stone steps, unable to look directly at the man. She could feel his eyes trained on her, forcing the hairs on her arms to stand on end.
"Oh, Jeffrey!" Evelyn cried when she reached the top of the stairs. "What have I told you about taking your shoes off after you get back from your run? I've only just finished shampooing the carpets!"
Julia looked down the hall, where large muddy footprints led all the way to Jeffrey. Mud was splattered up his calves, which were saturated in tattoos, just like his arms and neck. Julia was sure every inch of his slender body was smothered in ink. She landed on his gaunt face, unsettled by his icy eyes, which felt like they were staring deep into her soul. Her stomach knotted when she noticed that the man was missing the top half of his left ear, which jutted out at an unnatural angle.
