Midsummer Mayhem

by Marty Wingate

  * * *

  —

  The Romsey police station—in a low and nondescript building located near the rail station—did not suffer from too much space. Walk inside the door and you had already arrived at the high counter, behind which sat a woman police constable in uniform who greeted Pru and rang DI Pearse to let him know his wife had arrived.

  Pru perused the community bulletin board while she waited—a food-bank drive for neighbors, a police poster urging residents to WALK SMART, WALK SAFE, and an upcoming jumble sale at a local primary school, which the son of the desk sergeant attended.

  A door clicked open, and Christopher escorted her back into the close quarters of the detective inspector’s office—with one corner carved out for Police Sergeant Grey, who sat at her desk on the phone. What little room there was had shrunk considerably, taken up by a large board on wheels that cut off the corner opposite Sophie. It was magnetic and overlaid with a grid pattern. Squiggly green lines from a thick felt marker formed squares and rectangles and unspecified blobs. Three brown squares of different sizes sat in a U shape, and a larger brown square occupied the upper-left corner. This one had written across it in red House closed.

  It was Coeur-de-la-Mer Priory Hall and grounds—and it looked much like a garden designer’s plan view except for the clusters of small, round magnets. They were about the size of a coat button, and each one had initials on it: MS, AG, PF, LB, WA. Pru caught on quickly enough—Max Stirling, Ambrose Grant, Penelope Farthing, and the rest.

  She had seen a murder room before. Once, Christopher had created a makeshift one in the small dressing closet off their bedroom at Greenoak. The board in a murder room displayed photos of the victim, the possible suspects, evidence, and timing. Often, lines were drawn from element to element, helping police see connections, keep track of clues, and promote speculation about the case. But this was the first time she’d seen such an arrangement—it reminded her of a battlefield board game.

  “Oh look, there I am,” Pru said, pointing to a magnet marked PP, which had been placed in the middle of a small square identified as PPC—Pru’s Plant Corral.

  “We’ve taken each interviewee’s statement and positioned the cast and crew through the late morning according to the times given us,” Christopher explained. “Then we took photos of each arrangement and put them up on the back side of the door.” Pru turned round and examined the photos, each labeled with a name and time. “Nothing matches up—people are shown to be missing, but different reports offer contradicting times.”

  “And you want me to do the same—tell you where I remember everyone was and at what time? I’m not sure I’ll be much better than the others.”

  “I’d like you to give it a go. After all, you weren’t onstage reciting lines or keeping notes. You are the only one who was an observer the entire time.”

  “Right, well—I’ll try.”

  “And I’ll leave you to it,” he replied, going back to his desk.

  Christopher was counting on her to remember times and places. Pru calmed her mind and cast her thoughts back to that morning. After coffee, she had walked out of the cottage with Les Buchan. They’d met Hal, who had been headed to Beaulieu. What time was that? She needed a proper and clear starting point in order to sort through everyone’s movements. If she couldn’t do that, what good would her timeline be?

  She pulled out her phone and made a call.

  “Hal, it’s Pru—listen, when you get this message, would you give me a ring? I’m trying to remember what time I saw you leave for Beaulieu on Tuesday. Thanks.”

  Pru hoped her assistant hadn’t refused to answer because he was pouting. She hadn’t banished him from Coeur-de-la-Mer, it was only he wasn’t needed there any longer and he did have other responsibilities. What about his town garden, Dean Bank? Not that she wouldn’t need his help again—after the play closed, she’d have him back to take apart the set and make sure that the grounds were left in good shape for the next head gardener.

  But her immediate need remained—a time. Hal unavailable, she rang the nursery instead, thinking she could work backward from Hal’s arrival there. It was a small business that specialized in perennials with only a couple of workers on staff full-time—they might be able to help.

  “I do remember and all,” the owner said. “He was expected by twelve o’clock. We’re only open for the trade Tuesday mornings, so I asked one of our part-time propagators to stay back and wait for him. Your man didn’t show up until, what was it, two o’clock?”

  Pru heard a voice in the background call out, “Two-thirty.”

  “Two-thirty, there you are now. It isn’t as if we don’t appreciate the business, but we do expect some consideration.”

  Pru apologized for Hal’s late arrival, gushed about how lovely the brunnera looked, and ended the call. She tapped her phone against her chin and thought. It was only a half-hour drive down to Beaulieu—had Hal been distracted once again and left even later than when she’d seen him on his way out? Had he decided to weed the gravel drive or start a list of the Rhodohypoxis for Simon before leaving? And he hadn’t even finished the dahlias.

  She couldn’t start her timeline at noon if it had been eleven-thirty or twelve-thirty—Christopher was relying on her for accuracy. But the only other person who would know at what time she should begin was Les Buchan. Pru’s feelings had been shifting. One moment she thought what an amiable man he was, and how could someone so kind—or seemingly so—murder? And yet she’d seen how bitter he was over an event a decade ago. Could someone hold on to anger that long, finally see his opportunity, and wreak revenge?

  Wait now—hadn’t Les himself mentioned the time? “I talked with him at break about bearded iris,” Pru mumbled to herself, hoping that vocalizing would help her pull details out of her memory. “Penelope called time, everyone left, I was last out, Puck—Les—was on the phone.” To his wife! He said he phoned her every day after morning break, and he was late that day because it was—twelve o’clock.

  That set Pru on the right path, and she began making notes and moving magnets as she continued to talk to herself—but quietly, because Sophie was still on the phone. The sergeant finished her call and turned to Christopher. “Boss, here it is. Les Buchan and his wife live in a Bedfordshire village called Woburn. The daughter lives in Birmingham. Unmarried. But ten years ago, she was still at home, and the family lived near Milton Keynes in Two Mile Ash—that’s where Gabriel Gibb came from. So, that checks out.”

  Perhaps this wasn’t quite like a battlefield, Pru thought as she moved the magnets round with one finger or hopped them over each other. More like checkers, which, as a girl, she’d played with her dad. When she played the same game with her English mother, it was called draughts.

  “Right,” she said at last. “That’s about all I can do—shall I start over and walk you through it?”

  Sophie took a snapshot of each stage of the checkerboard, and only once did Pru’s hand hesitate, hovering over Max’s magnet until she grabbed it off the board and clenched it in her hand only long enough for the sergeant to snap again, after which time, Pru slapped Max back on the theater lawn. Across the small room, Christopher watched.

  “Who’s that off in the right corner?” he asked.

  “Hal.”

  “He was off-site the entire day?”

  “No, he was there in the morning. I saw him outside the cottage at noon—I know that time is correct, so I’ve started there. Hal was on his way to Beaulieu. He was already running late at that point—and he was even later still to the nursery.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Weeding the drive, for all I know. He cut back the catmint along the double border—it’s eighty feet long. So that would be”—she did a quick sum—“a hundred and sixty feet, actually. He’s quite dedicated.”

  Christopher moved Hal’s magnet to insid
e the gates. “We’ll check that. What’s Will Abbott doing here?”

  “He was helping me shift plants onto the stage,” Pru said, one finger on the WA magnet. “But then, I couldn’t find him—he wasn’t onstage, though.”

  Sophie uploaded the photos to the computer, and Christopher examined each in turn. “They are every one of them gone at some point.”

  “Apart from Penelope—she never gets a break.” Pru studied the board, too. She frowned. “It isn’t much help, is it?”

  “It is a great help. Most of them had only vague recollections. For example, Will Abbott swears his sister wasn’t gone from the theater lawn at all, yet she told us she’d walked back to the stables at about one-thirty.”

  “No, I think at one-thirty she was with Anna—they must’ve been going over lines or something. But, it does look as if most of them had the opportunity,” Pru said, turning to the inspector and his sergeant. “What if they all did it?”

  Sophie frowned, and Christopher sat on the edge of his desk, arms crossed.

  Now that it was out there, Pru rather liked the idea. “They could’ve planned it together—because each one of them had something against Gabriel. What if it was an Agatha Christie plot?”

  Never so weary, never so in woe,

  Bedabbled with the dew, and torn with briars—

  I can no further crawl, no further go.

  3.2.443–44

  Chapter 25

  Inspector Pearse and Sergeant Grey hadn’t liked the conspiracy theory nearly as much as Pru, although on second thought, even she had to admit it sounded silly. First of all, this was Shakespeare, not Christie. And second, the entire cast? What would they have done, wait in line outside the study door, entering in single file, each of them releasing one bee?

  Pru took another look at her battlefield arrangement, and then slung her bag over her shoulder. “Well, that’s me away. Bye, Sophie.”

  “See you tomorrow, Pru,” the sergeant replied.

  Christopher walked her out. “The lab has promised us the results of the honey analysis tomorrow, but I’m not sure how much good it will do. When I had them side by side, I could see the two samples were different. The color, the consistency. One was thin, the other quite thick. The shape of the jar was different, as well.”

  “Linden uses that hexagonal shape—it’s a popular one for honey,” Pru said. “Makes the product stand out, I suppose—it sort of echoes the shape of a honeycomb. The broken jar looked like the ordinary canning variety. If you didn’t get any fingerprints, I don’t know how you’d find out where it came from. They’re everywhere.”

  If the honey in the jar that had trapped bees and led to Gabriel’s death had not been from Linden’s hives, that would let both her and Nick off the hook. Or at the very least lessen the likelihood one of them had been the murderer. The list of suspects was shrinking by the minute—were they closing in on the killer?

  On that unsatisfying thought, Pru said goodbye to Christopher and set off from the police station through the Waitrose car park and past the shops on The Hundred, dodging walkers. She soon became aware that she was being shadowed but continued until she reached Market Place. Outside The White Horse, she pivoted and marched up to Will Abbott, five paces behind her.

  “Will.”

  He took a step back. “What do you want?”

  “What do you want? Every time I turned round today, there you were. And now you’re following me through town.”

  “You’re the one who’s been following me,” Will accused.

  “I have not,” Pru said. Had she been wrong—were these innocent encounters? “Where are you off to?”

  “I was walking to my flat.”

  “Your flat is on Tadburn Road—that way.” She nodded behind him. “Did you want to talk with me?”

  “No. Well, yes. I mean, I did, but I changed my mind.” He stuck his hands in his pockets.

  “Well, you need to talk to someone.”

  “The police, you mean.”

  “Yes, the police. If you know something, you can’t keep it to yourself—you need to tell the police so that they can get on with their inquiry.”

  “You’re only saying that because you’re married to the DI.”

  “That’s right, I am. Because I know what kind of a man he is, and if you or Nell needs help, he will find it.”

  If you trust the police so much, why haven’t you told Christopher about Max and the injection pens? Pru chose to ignore the voice in her head and instead concentrate on Will. He didn’t reply, but neither did he move, and so she thought she might have a chance.

  “Maybe you’d like to talk to someone else to begin with—before you talk to Christopher. Maybe you’d like to talk to Bernadette.”

  Pru saw a glimmer of what she thought might be hope on his face. “Reverend Freemantle? Is she here?” Will asked, glancing round.

  “She can be in five minutes,” Pru said, pulling out her phone.

  * * *

  —

  They met at a coffee place off The Hundred—Pru and Will standing in stilted silence on the pavement until Bernadette rocketed past in her Smart car and pulled into a space between a Land Rover and a Fiat that was about big enough for a pram. She saw them, waved, and straightened her collar as she approached.

  “Hello, Will.” Bernadette put a hand on his arm as she spoke, and the young man’s shoulders relaxed, as if relinquishing a heavy load.

  Pru took orders and returned with the coffees to an outdoor table where Will had maneuvered the seating arrangement so that he had his back against the wall as if he feared an ambush.

  No one spoke. Pru shifted in her chair. She didn’t want to gawk at the young man as if he were a zoo exhibit, and so instead, she examined the large containers of ornamental grasses that marked the boundary of the shop’s patio. Will stared into his coffee while he folded up an empty sugar packet. Bernadette, at ease and smiling, watched him for a moment and then began.

  “How is the script coming along?” she asked. “With all that’s happened, I don’t suppose you’ve had much time for it.”

  Every vestige of resentment vanished. Will came alive. “I’ll be getting a round of rewrites soon, but I don’t mind it. And it’s another four weeks before they move it up to Edinburgh.” He caught himself and frowned. “I hope I can be there.”

  Pru was at sea over this exchange. At first, she assumed Bernadette to be asking about the current production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream—something about Will learning his lines or Max’s re-blocking of a scene.

  “Of course you’ll be there,” Bernadette told him. “Experimental drama always needs the author on hand.”

  “Are you a playwright?” Pru asked.

  “I am,” Will replied, sitting up straight. “I’ve got a one-act in the Edinburgh festival this year—a small company from Shrewsbury is putting it on. My first work to appear on the stage.” He gulped his coffee.

  “So, is acting only a sideline for you? Do you write full-time?”

  “I can do both,” Will said with all the optimism of youth. “That way, I can keep an eye on Nell—until she’s more established, you know.”

  Pru had been shifting Will’s magnet round the checkerboard of her mind—where had he been and when? At that moment, she’d prefer to take it off the board altogether.

  “Look.” Will set his coffee down and put his hands on his thighs. “Nell’s trying to make out that she knew about Gabriel’s allergy—that she saw those jab pens he had, but that isn’t true. I was the one who saw them, not her.”

  The vicar cut her eyes at Pru. She didn’t know these details—Pru would need to confess later.

  But not knowing the situation didn’t stop Bernadette from carrying on. “How did you see them?” she asked.

  “Gibb wasn’t exactly the tidiest
flatmate,” Will told them. “You should’ve seen his bedroom—before the police came in, that is. It was a trash tip, couldn’t see the floor for the rubbish. And he always left his bag sitting in the middle of the kitchen table, in the way. One day, I shifted it and it was open, and, well, there they were. I didn’t mess with them or anything, just caught a look.”

  As he told his tale, Will looked at the table, into his coffee, at passersby on the pavement—but never at Bernadette. Even Pru, unschooled in the ways of counseling or police questioning, knew what that meant—he was lying.

  “What did they look like?” Pru asked. “The pens.”

  “Cylinder things. Two of them. The label said, ‘Adrenaline. Epinephrine. Remove the cap and press the tip into the thigh and hold for five seconds. Massage the area after.’ See,” Will said in triumph, “I’m the one who saw them.”

  Those were the directions on the pens—Pru knew that because she’d read them online just as, she suspected, Will had. Could he have taken all that in at a brief glance? Unlikely.

  “Why did Nell say she was the one?” Pru asked, hoping she wouldn’t have to dredge up the circumstances Nell had described.

  “She…she thought…ah, I don’t know why she got it in her head. But now you know, right? That I’m the one that saw them.” He stood.

  “Why didn’t you tell the police this to begin with?” Pru asked.

  Will stared at her a moment, and she could almost see his mind searching for an answer. Finally, he gave a shrug. “Slipped my mind, I suppose. But now, you can tell them—and while you’re at it, tell them they should stay away from my sister.”