large stone. The spikes of a monkey puzzle tree scratched his cheek as he stood up, but he took no notice. Levering with his fork, he brought to the surface a square grey tablet, a foot long and wide. As he brushed off the dirt, he uncovered chiselled indentations. Within a minute an inscription was revealed.
WILL TAKE OUR LEAVE
An anagram? He played around in his mind with the letters, but couldn’t come up with anything that wasn’t fanciful or meaningless. Perhaps the message wasn’t meant to be read in isolation. He’d been clearing the undergrowth from a patch populated by ferns and foxgloves, divided from the rest of the garden by a picket fence and bounded by two monkey puzzle trees, a yew and a small weeping willow.
He leaned on his fork, massaging his back with one hand, listening to the buzzing of the bees. His body was aching, and he’d tweaked the muscles in his ribs, but this wasn’t the moment to give up and retreat inside. A current of excitement was flowing through him, a sensation he’d experienced at Oxford. He was on the brink of discovery.
Hannah closed her eyes and let the blast of water from the shower cleanse her. If only she could wash away what had happened. She must clear her mind, the doctor was right, think about the future. Looking back might destroy her.
She stepped out of the cubicle and towelled herself dry. The house was as silent as a crypt. Strange to be here on a weekday. Her instinct was to ring the office, check out what was going on, but she’d promised Marc that she wouldn’t make the call, wouldn’t allow herself to be sucked straight back into the quicksand of endless meetings and filling in forms.
But it was safer to think about work than the rest of her life. She needed to focus on solving the murder of Warren Howe, it would give her a goal to aim for. Even that was fraught with angst. She couldn’t rid herself of the suspicion that Tina Howe had murdered her husband. But she’d watched Tina running towards the dropzone seconds after Kirsty’s death. The woman’s ravaged face was a sight she would never forget. She might be a murderer, but that was a punishment too far. Nothing was crueller than watching your own child die.
The tablet had lain beneath one of the monkey puzzle trees. Daniel used the fork to test the ground beneath the other. Soon the metal prongs struck another piece of stone. He levered it up and uncovered a second inscription.
LEAVES FROM THE GARDEN
Mosquitoes had stung his bare arms, leaving red tender marks. Sweat was pouring off him, and he’d forgotten to replenish his sun block. None of this mattered. He couldn’t stop now. He was on a roll, no question. The pain in his back and ribs meant nothing.
He was driven on by the conviction that at last the cipher was within touching distance. No stopping now. Within ten minutes, he had dug out a third stone from under the drooping willow branches. He cradled it in his hands, as if it were a Ming vase.
The tablet bore a carved question.
WHY DID YOU LEAVE?
The phone trilled. Hannah let it ring. Probably a recorded message that would try to sell her a timeshare in Spain. But the caller was persistent. In the end she surrendered.
‘Hello?’
‘Hannah, is that you? You sound strange. Are you all right?’
Terri. Faithful Terri. At least, faithful as a friend if not always as a wife. Hearing her brisk, confident tone was a therapy in itself. Hannah wondered whether to lie and pretend everything was all right. But Terri was no fool. She’d see through the subterfuge. And besides, even detective chief inspectors sometimes needed a shoulder to lean on.
‘Well, actually, I’ve been better…’
There must be another stone. Must be. The message he’d uncovered made little sense. There were four trees and he’d convinced himself there must be four stones. But he couldn’t find the missing link.
His skin was burning, but he kept on going. The yew tree had thick, tangled roots that slowed him down, but he was certain there was something to find. Time passed. Twenty minutes, half an hour. What was that, wrapped around by the spreading roots?
He’d found it. Soon he was brushing the dirt from the fourth stone and squinting at its inscription.
TOGETHER AGAIN FOR ETERNITY
Yew trees are often found in cemeteries, he remembered. Christ, did it mean that a corpse was buried here? The thought of it made him grind his teeth. But there was no body in the garden — who could it be? Not Jacob and Alice Quiller, for they had been interred in the churchyard at Brack. Not their son John, whose body had been brought back from South Africa and laid to rest in the same place.
He looked around and saw the cottage grounds with new eyes. Paths leading nowhere, false turnings, dead ends. Belladonna, foxgloves, hellebore. Poisonous plants in a beautiful landscape. Even the loveliest blooms seemed sinister this morning. Weren’t lilies by tradition the flowers of funerals?
‘Daniel!’ Miranda had emerged from the cottage. ‘Phone for you. Marc Amos, from the bookshop.’
‘You talked about Jacob Quiller.’ Marc sounded pleased with himself. ‘He’s mentioned in a book I picked up in a job lot at a book fair. Riddles of South Lakeland. I spotted his name when I was flicking through a chapter on Brackdale. It talks about Quiller’s garden at the cottage in Tarn Fold.’
‘The cipher garden.’
‘So you know all about it?’
‘I wish.’
‘This book was published by a local firm, the print run must have been minuscule.’
‘Which company?’
‘RG Publications, they’re based near Hawkshead. A small press, a one-woman band. She’s been churning out a title a month for ten or twelve years now. Local interest stuff for tourists rather than the natives. A crowded market, but she keeps her head above water. This isn’t a book I recall. Must have been one of her earliest.’
‘What does RG stand for?’ Daniel asked, although he could guess.
‘Roz Gleave, that’s the publisher’s name. The author is called Eleanor Sawtell. Never heard of her. According to the blurb, she is — or was — a former primary school teacher. She also boasts that she’s a lifelong resident of Staveley and has three children and eleven grandchildren.’
‘What does she have to say about the garden?’
‘Not a lot, disappointingly. I’ll copy the paragraphs and put them in the post to you.’
‘Thanks, but I’ll call in and pick them up.’
‘In a hurry?’
‘Puzzling over the garden will take my mind off yesterday.’
‘Hannah said you were at the airfield.’ He sighed. ‘Frankly, she was in hell of a state last night. A horrific business, by the sound of it. That poor young girl. I suppose it couldn’t have been an accident?’
‘Hannah would know better than me, but the girl’s behaviour looked calculated enough from where we were standing. She just ripped off her helmet and parachute and dropped like a stone.’
‘My God, how could you hate life enough to want to do that to yourself?’
‘Don’t ask me. How is Hannah today?’
A pause. ‘For once in a blue moon, she’s not fit enough to go into work. Though she took some persuading. Of course, she’s a workaholic, you must have noticed.’
‘She’s obviously very committed to the job.’
A brief laugh. ‘That’s one way of putting it. Between you and me, she takes it all too much to heart. Naturally, she’s shocked by what happened. She’s not as thick-skinned as most police officers. In fact, she’s not thick-skinned at all. God knows what she was doing at the airfield. I’ve never heard her express an interest in skydiving before.’
‘Something to do with work?’ Daniel had assumed it was no coincidence that Hannah and her sergeant had shown up at an event featuring Warren Howe’s daughter. But he didn’t want to say too much.
‘Suppose so.’ A pause. ‘She was on her own, I suppose?’
Daniel hesitated. ‘We didn’t have time for conversation. But I didn’t see her interrogating spectators, if that’s what you mean. And of course the suicide jump stunned all of us. Nobody could have expected that.’
If Marc Amos realised that Daniel had dodged his question, his voice didn’t betray it. ‘No, the girl must have
