pine. A leaf was still attached to the laurel. The others he would have been hard pressed to name. But Polly and her mother would have no trouble with the identification. They would know by the colour, the density, the scent.
He climbed the stairs, moving quickly, knowing that Rita was bound to put an end to his search as soon as she’d discovered its limit in amusement value. He looked right and left, assessing the possibilities presented by a bath and two bedrooms. Immediately in front of him stood a leatherbound chest upon which sat an unappealing squat bronze of someone male, priapic, and horned. Across the passage from this a cupboard gaped open, spilling forth linens and assorted jumble. Fourteenth labour of Heracles, he thought. He went for the first bedroom as Rita called his name.
He ignored her, stood in the doorway, and cursed. The woman was a sloth. She’d been in the lodge for more than a month, and she was still living from her mammoth suitcase. What wasn’t oozing from this was lying on the fl oor, on the backs of two chairs, and at the foot of the unmade bed. A dressing table next to the window looked as if it had once been a set-piece in a criminal investigation. Cosmetics and a colour wheel of nail-polish bottles crowded its surface, with an impressive patina of face powder dashed across everything, much like fingerprint dust. Necklaces hung from the door knob and from one of the posters of the bed. Scarves snaked on the fl oor through discarded shoes. And every inch of the room seemed to emanate Rita’s characteristic scent: part ripe fruit on the verge of going bad, part ageing woman in need of a bath.
He made a cursory check of the chest of drawers. He moved on to the wardrobe and then knelt to examine the space beneath the bed. His sole discovery was that the latter served as repository for an extensive array of slut’s wool as well as one stuffed black cat with its back arched, its fur at the bristle, and
He went to the bath. Rita called his name a second time. He made no reply. He shoved his hands through to the rear of a stack of towels that sat on one of the recessed shelves along with cleanser, scrubbing rags, two kinds of disinfectant, a half-torn print of some Lady Godiva type standing in a clam shell — covering her privates and looking coy — and a pottery toad.
Somewhere in the lodge there had to be something. He felt the fact’s certainty just as solidly as he felt the lumpy green linoleum beneath his feet. And if it wasn’t the tools, whatever else it might be, he would be able to recognise its signifi cance.
He slid open the mirror of the medicine chest and rooted through aspirin, mouth wash, toothpaste, and laxatives. He went through the pockets of a terry bathrobe that hung limply on the back of the door. He picked up a stack of paperback books on the top of the toilet’s cistern, fl ipped through them, and set them on the edge of the tub. And then he found it.
The colour caught his eye first: a streak of lavender against the yellow bathroom wall, wedged behind the cistern to keep it out of sight. A book, not large, perhaps five by nine inches, and thin, with its title worn from the spine. He used a toothbrush from the medicine chest to force the book upwards. It flopped onto the floor face up, next to a balled-up washing flannel, and for a moment he merely read its title, savouring the sensation of having his suspicions vindicated.
Why had he thought the proof might be a trowel, a three-pronged cultivator, or a box of tools? Had she used any of those, had she even owned them in the first place, what a simple thing it would have been to dispose of them somewhere. Dig a hole on the estate grounds, bury them in the wood. But this slim volume of incrimination spoke to the truth of what had happened.
He flipped the book open haphazardly, reading chapter titles and feeling each moment ever more sure. “The Harvest’s Magic Potential,” “Planets and Plants,” “Magical Attribution and Application.” His eye fell upon descriptions of use. He read the warnings appended as well.
“Hemlock, hemlock,” he murmured and riffled through the pages. His hunger for information grew, and facts about hemlock leapt out as if they’d only been waiting for the opportunity to sate him. He read, turned more pages, read again. The words flew up at him, glowed as if rendered in neon against a night sky. And finally the phrase
He stared at this, unprepared for memory, thinking no, no, no. He felt rage and grief make a knot in his chest.
She’d been lying in bed, she’d asked him to open the curtains wide, she’d watched the moon. It was the bloody orange of autumn, a lunar disc so huge it looked within grasp. Harvest moon best, Col, Annie had whispered. And when he turned from the window, she had sunk into the coma that led to her death.
“No,” he whispered. “Not Annie. No.”
“Mr. C. Shepherd?” Rita’s voice, calling imperiously from below, closer than before. She was near the stairs. “You having a bit of fun with me undies?”
He fumbled with the buttons of his woollen shirt, slipped the book inside, flat against his stomach, and tucked it into the waistband of his trousers. He felt dizzy. A glance in the mirror and he saw the high colour smearing palm prints across his cheeks. He removed his spectacles and bathed his face, holding the icy water against his skin until, from out of the pain of the chill, anaesthesia spread.
He dried his face and studied his refl ection. He ran both hands through his hair. He looked at his skin and examined his eyes, and when he was ready to face her with equanimity, he went to the stairs.
She was standing at the bottom, and she slapped the banister. Her bangles rattled. Her triple chin bounced.
“What’re you up to, Mr. Constable Shepherd? This a’nt about shed doors and it a’nt a social call.”
“Do you know the signs of the zodiac?” he asked her as he descended. He marvelled at the calm of his words.
“Why? Want to see if me and you’s compatible? Sure, I know’m. Aries, Cancer, Virgo, Sagi—”
“Capricorn,” he said.
“That’s you?”
“No. I’m Libra.”
“The scales. Nice one, that. Just the thing for your line of work.”
“Libra’s October. When does Capricorn fall in the calendar year? Do you know, Rita?”
“Course I know. Who d’you think you’re jawing, some yobbo on the street? It’s December.”
“When?”
“Starts the twenty-second, runs for a month. Why? Is her up the lane more goat than you thought?”
“It’s just a fancy I had.”
“I’ve one or two of my own.” She trundled her enormous weight around and headed back in the direction of the kitchen where she positioned herself at the door to the service porch and wiggled her fingers at him in a come- tomama gesture made awkward by her care to make certain that the still-tacky nail polish didn’t smudge. “Your half of the bargain,” she said.
The thought of what she might mean made his legs quiver unexpectedly. “Bargain?” he asked.
“C’mere, luv-bunny. Nothing to fear. I only bite fellahs whose sign is the bull. Give us your palm.”
He remembered. “Rita, I don’t believe in—”
“The palm.” Again, she gestured, more come-hither than come-to-mama this time.
He cooperated. She was, after all, blocking the only reasonable access to his boots.
“Oh, nice hand, this.” She ran her fi ngers the length of his and crossed his palm with a feathery touch. She whispered a circular caress on his wrist. “Very nice,” she said, her eyes fluttering closed. “Very nice indeed. A man’s hands, these. Hands that belong on a woman’s body. Pleasure hands, these. They light fi res in the fl esh.”
“This doesn’t sound much like a fortune to me.” He tried to pull away. She tightened her grip, one hand on his wrist and the other holding his fi ngers fl at.
She turned his hand and placed it on one of her mounds of flesh that he took to be her breast. She forced his fingers to squeeze. “Like some of that, wouldn’t you, Mr. Constable-person. Never had anything quite like it, have you?”
There was truth in that. She didn’t feel like a woman. She felt like a quadruple batch of lumpy bread dough. The caress had the approximate appeal of gripping onto a fi stful of drying clay.
“Make you want more, luv-bunny? Mmm?” Her eyelashes were painted thick with mascara. They made a crescent of spider legs against her cheek. Her chest rose and fell with a tremulous sigh, and the odour of onions whiffed into his face. “Horned God make him ready,” Rita murmured. “Man to a woman, plough to a field, giver of
