* * *
—
They watched Will lumber away and down The Hundred as Pru considered this role Will had cast her in as police go-between.
“He’s lying, don’t you think?” Pru asked. “About seeing the pens.”
“Oh yes,” the vicar replied. “Poor sausage.”
Pru filled Bernadette in on the injection pens, keeping strictly to the facts of that particular situation, but Bernadette was right—there was something about that collar. Injection pens led to mentioning other suspects, and eventually she ended up back with Will and Nell. The only thing she kept quiet about was Max.
“The person who saw the pens,” Pru mused, “could be the person who took them and left Gabriel with the bees. I don’t believe Will is that person, but I believe he’s worried it was his sister.”
“Is that how the inquiry works, Pru? Examining each person and what they’ve told you to find the truth. Is this how you find out if someone’s guilty?”
“I don’t find out,” Pru corrected her. “The police find out.”
Bernadette gave her a sideways look. “If you say so. Are you off home now?”
“I should check with Christopher first. Tell him what Will said—as I seem to be the emissary. I’m sure the police will want to talk with him again.”
“You ring if you need me for anything,” Bernadette said as she inserted herself into her Smart car. When she had sped away, Pru meandered back round to Market Place, where she saw—just behind the statue of Lord Palmerston—Nell duck into a doorway next to the Indian restaurant.
She would talk with Nell before the police. This made more sense to Pru—she could feel out the young woman for the truthfulness of Will’s story, and after that she would report back to Christopher. The door Nell had taken was locked, and so Pru pressed the buzzer and heard it go off somewhere inside.
But the buzzer went unanswered, even after a second try. Pru stepped back onto the pavement and looked up at the open window.
“Nell!” she called. “It’s Pru!”
After a moment, Pru caught a glimpse of blond curls behind the glass. Then nothing. Another minute, and, with Pru’s finger hovering over the button again, the door buzzed open to a narrow staircase.
Only one flat at the top of the stairs, and the door was ajar. Still, Pru gave a light tap as she pushed it open and entered. “Hello?”
So this was the lovers’ hideaway? Not exactly roomy, even by bedsit standards. A hot plate and sink occupied one corner next to a closet-size loo, and the rest of the room was filled with two chairs and a single bed. Ah, youth.
“This is a surprise,” Nell said, glancing down the stairs as she closed the door, as if she feared there could be other visitors.
“It’s only me,” Pru replied. “Look, I’m not following you. I happened to be in town and saw you, and I remembered you told me about the bedsit. I hope you don’t mind me stopping in.”
“It’s all right,” Nell said, polite but cautious. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“No, thanks.” Pru panicked as she realized she had not planned a way to introduce the topic at hand. “Do you know Bernadette—Reverend Freemantle?”
Nell sat on the edge of the bed. “The vicar? She was at your house yesterday.”
“Of course, our rainy day of rehearsals. Did you have a chance to talk with her?”
“No, but Will seems quite taken with her, you know. He said she really listens to him.”
“She’s lovely, yes—a really caring person. Will told me he needed to talk with someone, and I suggested Bernadette, so we just all three had coffee.”
The blond curls trembled. “Why? What’s he gone and done now?”
“Nothing, he’s done—” Well, Pru couldn’t be too sure of that. “He wanted to tell me that you weren’t the one who saw the injection pens. Will said he saw them in Gabriel’s bag—in the flat they shared.”
Nell flew off the bed. “Ah, Will,” she said in exasperation. “Can he not just let me make my own mistakes?”
“It’s obvious he’s concerned about you. And I can see that he’s protective—he’s a good brother, I’m sure. I wonder, do you think he made the claim because…does he think that you…could he believe you were so angry with Gabriel that you would try to hurt him?” The last words were so difficult for Pru to say it felt as if she were squeezing them out, as if her throat were a near-empty toothpaste tube.
Nell said nothing as she paced back and forth in front of the open window. Pru had hoped for an outraged denial here, and so she waited. She took a deep breath—catching the fragrant aroma of curry that drifted up from the restaurant below. Pru wondered what Evelyn had left them for dinner, and could it hold until the next day if they had Indian takeaway instead. Her stomach growled.
Nell stopped pacing and picked at a cuticle on her forefinger. “He’s worried because I had a few problems when I was young.” Her eyes flickered to Pru and down again. “Will and I grew up in foster care, see—dragged about from place to place. We never had anything of our own, except I had my film collection.” She wrinkled her nose. “Five of them—videotapes I’d found in someone’s bin. Carried them round with me for years. When I was seven, the carer we lived with said they were rubbish and took them from me—all I wanted was to watch The Lion King. Cow. So, I poured washing-up liquid in her tea.”
“Oh dear.”
Nell shook her head. “I knew how she could knock back a cuppa—she’d taken a gulp and swallowed before she knew what was up. But it isn’t as if I poisoned her. They moved us after that.”
What a life, Pru thought.
“And then when I was twelve, one of the older girls in the place stole six pounds from me. You have no idea how long it takes to save six pounds when you’ve no regular income! I’d been planning to have real photos done for an audition.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Wendy in Peter Pan, a production at the local church hall. They said they didn’t need photos, but I wanted to do it proper. I would’ve been quite suitable for the part, but then she took the money, and so I stuffed cornflakes in her mattress and the mice found them.”
Pru sniggered and Nell grinned, but her good humor faded. “Got moved again, naturally.”
* * *
—
Miriam sat at the table, leafing through a magazine, when Pru walked into the kitchen at Greenoak.
“Evelyn’s gone,” she reported.
“Yes,” Pru said. “She and Peachey deliver the pensioners’ meals once she finishes here.”
Miriam’s brows furrowed. “She said she was sorry that she hadn’t been able to get to our dinner and perhaps you and I could cook something together.”
“She said what?”
The few dinners that Pru had managed to cook had been carefully planned under strict guidance from Evelyn—the two of them worked through the list of ingredients and preparation. Without Pru’s teacher by her side, onions that needed to be “cooked until translucent” could so easily become browned to the point of ending up on the compost heap. And what was she to do about those lumps that inevitably appeared unbidden into almost every sauce she had attempted?
“Do you cook?” Pru asked Miriam.
The costumer squirmed at Pru’s question. “Not exactly. Don’t you?”
“No. That is, not quite. I’m learning, but I don’t think I’m at the point where I should be left to my own devices. I suppose there’s always scrambled eggs.”
With a sinking feeling, Pru thought about all that lovely Indian food at the restaurant in Romsey. She should’ve followed her nose when she left Nell and brought home takeaway. A flame of hope ignited when she realized that a good dinner might be possible still—Christopher could stop on his way home from the station. She grabbed her phone to ring him and place an order just as the mudroom door opened and he walked
in.
“Oh, hello,” she said, unable to keep the disappointment out of her voice. “Miriam and I are going to cook dinner.”
If she had hoped that her declaration might scare him into going back into Romsey for their meal, she had another thing coming.
He eyed the two of them. “Excellent,” he said. “Why don’t I go and open the wine?”
The kitchen door swung to a close behind him.
“That was a quick escape,” Miriam observed.
Pru dashed over, cracked open the swing door, and called after him. “When you’ve got it open, bring it in here.”
“That makes me sound like a bad mother, doesn’t it?” Miriam asked. “That I don’t cook. I did cook for Alec, but it was so long ago I’ve rather got out of the habit. And I was never the best, anyway. Fish fingers. Pies from the local shop.” She drummed her fingers on the table. “I suppose my best dish is macaroni cheese—the kind you stir up in a pot. Not exactly haute cuisine.”
“Macaroni and cheese is perfect.” Relieved that they had a plan, Pru began rummaging in the pantry. “Here we are now, pasta. Milk and cheese in the fridge. Butter on the table. A spoonful of mustard, perhaps?”
She suspected Evelyn of having an ulterior motive behind this I-didn’t-have-time-to-cook-your-dinner ruse. With their hands busy, Pru and Miriam were freer to talk, to get to know each other. No sense in letting this opportunity pass.
“Did you and Alec live with your parents long?”
“He was five when we moved out.” Miriam poured macaroni into the boiling pot. “And let me tell you, there were tears all round—from him, from his nana, and from me. But it was time, and we quickly settled into our little house in Tunbridge Wells.”
As they continued to cook, Pru listened to tales of Alec growing up. She couldn’t help comparing them with what she’d heard from Nell. It made her heart ache for that little girl and her brother.
And yet, on another front, it was encouraging to hear Miriam include Ambrose in many of the anecdotes. Dad attending their son’s school events, both parents making decisions, the entire family out on day trips.
But when Pru asked, “Have you never thought you might want to try and make a go of it with Ambrose?” Miriam instantly changed the subject, asking about Pru’s move to England and how she and Christopher had met.
As the mac and cheese came together, Pru dashed out to the kitchen garden to harvest spinach. The last few leaves from the early spring planting—they were a bit tough for a salad, but perfect to add to the pot. As she rinsed the greens off under the tap, Pru thought she would mention her idea to Evelyn. It would show the teacher that her student had initiative.
Miriam chose a generic topic for their dinner conversation—afraid, no doubt, that Pru might continue to nag her about Ambrose—and asked all manner of questions about the village. Did they have a pub? Who ran the shop? How did they manage to run the post-office window with volunteers? And the church—Bernadette had mentioned to Miriam that St. Mary’s held a fundraiser.
“I’d love to donate a few things to the auction,” the queen of soft furnishings said, “if Bernadette thought it appropriate.” Pru was sure the vicar would be over the moon.
When the meal was finished and the kitchen clean, they all three went their separate ways—Miriam to bed, Christopher to the library, and Pru out to the potting shed to water the seedlings. Dinner had not been an entirely satisfactory affair for Pru. First, she felt powerless when it came to encouraging two people who wanted to be together to take that scary first step. And second, Nell’s and Will’s conflicting stories of the injection pens worried her. Injection pens. She needed to face up to her duty and tell Christopher.
When she returned, the house was quiet. She’d just pushed open the kitchen’s swing door and saw the light in the library when her phone rang. It was a number she didn’t recognize, but when she answered, she heard the director’s light Russian accent.
“Prunella, I need your help.”
O grim-looked night, O night with hue so black,
O night which ever art when day is not!
O night, O night, alack, alack, alack
5.1.167–69
Chapter 26
“I hope I’m not disturbing your evening,” Max added.
“No, you aren’t, of course you aren’t disturbing me,” Pru said quietly. She retreated into the kitchen, eased the door closed, and walked out to the mudroom. “Is there a problem?”
“A problem?” Max echoed. “No, not as such. Well, yes, I suppose you could say that. I would like to talk with you about something, you see, but our days are so full, I have not had the opportunity. I wonder—could you meet me on set in the morning? Before the others arrive—I’d hate to be interrupted.”
Pru trembled, but at the same time, laughed at the fear that washed over her. She stifled her emotions with a cough. This was ridiculous, she told herself—what murderer would make arrangements over the phone to meet his next victim? Perhaps some would, but not Max, because Max could not be a murderer.
“This isn’t something you want to discuss over the phone?” See—there’s an out for him, because if he wasn’t the murderer, they could have a normal conversation mobile to mobile and be done with it.
“No”—Max dropped his voice—“there’s very little privacy here, penthouse or no. I believe it would be better tomorrow.”
“Well then, of course I’ll meet you.”
“Splendid. Shall we say eight o’clock? That should give us plenty of time.”
For what?
“Yes, eight o’clock it is. Onstage.”
Perhaps he was going to offer her the part of Lysander—after all, men had played the women’s parts in Shakespeare’s time. Wasn’t turnabout fair play? Maybe he needed a dog minder for Bubble and Squeak during performances. Or a minder for the fairies. Would Miriam give her a pair of fairy wings to wear? Pru distracted herself with these silly thoughts as she hurried up the stairs, intent on being in bed and fast asleep before Christopher came up, because there was no sense in beginning a conversation about Max if she didn’t yet know the end.
In their room, a lamp glowed on the bedside table, bright against the darkening sky outside. Pru got as far as one of the chairs next to the open window and sank into it, watching the light fade and breathing in the heavy perfume of lilies from a pot on the terrace below. She would take a moment to think. There was more than Max to consider here—what about the other suspects? She took her hair clip out, combed it through, and reclipped as she teased out her thoughts into tangle-free streams.
The door opened and she gasped, but recovered before Christopher saw her.
“Dinner was delicious,” he said. “You’d never know the two of you were caught off guard. Is Evelyn all right?”
Evelyn had rarely left them without a meal, so it was a valid question, but one Pru thought she knew the answer to.
“Evelyn wanted Miriam and me to work together—get to know each other better and so be easier in each other’s company. I believe she’s aware of the Miriam-Ambrose saga and wants to play a part in reuniting them.”
Christopher sat on the edge of the bed near Pru and and reached over for her hand. “And so…”
This signaled a change of subject.
Pru took the plunge. “I ran into Will Abbott in Romsey after I left the station this afternoon.”
“A happenstance?”
“Yes—well, he accused me of following him. But I wasn’t,” she added in a rush. “That was just an excuse he used because he wanted to talk but didn’t know quite how to start. But Bernadette helped out—she’s good that way.”
“The vicar. I don’t suppose he needed to confess anything?”
“Oh yes, he confessed—but not to murder.”
Pru told him the story of Will and Nell. She he
ard her own words romanticizing the brother-and-sister plight, but couldn’t help picturing little Nell and her protector, Will, as Victorian waifs, struggling to grow up amid difficult circumstances and with little love or support.
“So, there it is,” Pru said, sniffing. “She was just a little girl when she acted out. And think how hard things were for them—moving from house to house, never really finding a home. Washing-up liquid in a cup of tea, cornflakes in the mattress—you can hardly compare that to…”
“Releasing bees on someone who was allergic? Taking away the medication that would’ve saved him?”
“I don’t believe it. Not Nell.”
“Will?”
“It sounds as if he’s spent his life protecting his little sister. And that’s what he’s doing now—lying, saying he was the one who saw the injection pens, not her. But neither of them said anything about taking the pens, only seeing them.”
“Then who did take them?”
No one I know, she wanted to say. Not Max.
Was that worry written all over her face? She frowned at Christopher, hoping to cover her fear. This would be cleared up in the morning when she met the director. All would be revealed, as they say. Would Max, too, treat her as an emissary as Will had, asking her to carry a message to the police? What message would that be—a confession?
“Was this what you wanted to sort out?” Christopher asked. “The business of Nell and Will?”
“No, that sort of came up. The other thing is…still to be sorted.”
“If you know something—”
“That’s why I’m waiting,” Pru said. “I don’t know anything yet. But I will. And then—”
“And then you will hand it over to me. It’s fine with me for you to ask your own questions”—she coughed, and he corrected himself—“mostly fine. But not if it puts you in danger. Do you feel uneasy about this? Do you believe you could be in harm’s way from someone in the cast or crew?”
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