The Blue Last

there?”

“Sometimes she did, but she’s gone.” Hence, scarcely worth the breath to talk about.

“Was Richard with you in the greenhouse?” Jury gave the doll a pat.

“Yes, except he wasn’t Richard yet. He was-Ruth or Rebecca or Rachael or Rose or Rhonda…” She shrugged.

Richard’s tenure on earth as a girl still gave Gemma trouble. Jury was glad the litany of names ended.

She said, “If it’d been Richard, then he could have caught whoever did it.”

“That’s right. You turned the light on when you went in?”

Clasping Richard to her chest, she said, “I had to see, didn’t I? I only turned one on, anyway.”

“What happened then?”

“I heard a kind of crack, then the window broke and glass scattered everywhere. Then it was like a mosquito whrr’d past me. I got down.”

“That was smart.”

The corners of her mouth stretched down, indicating exasperation at being questioned yet again. “I guess I have to write a statement about being shot at.”

Jury was looking off across the garden, where Melrose was dumping another bucket into the flowerbed. Mulch, maybe. “You know what? If you tell this to-what’s your new gardener’s name?”

“Ambrose.” Looking in the same direction, she squinted.

“Tell Ambrose and he can write it down. As soon as he’s finished his garden chores, of course.”

Although this arrangement was preferable to writing herself, there were still reservations. “He’ll just argue about every little thing.”

“He can’t. He wasn’t here, after all. He didn’t witness it.”

“He’ll still say I saw it the wrong way round.”

Jury didn’t know what to make of this little conundrum. “I’ll tell him just to write down what you say and not argue about it.”

Gemma murmured, “He won’t pay any attention.”

“If you think I’m going to carry buckets until you sort all this, well-”

They were standing near the greenhouse. “You’re doing the job so well I’d say you were a natural- ow!”

Melrose had just dropped a bucket of fertilizer on Jury’s foot. “Oh, sorry about that.”

Jury rubbed at his ankle. “Sure. Now, what did Angus Murphy have to say about this Jenny Gessup?”

“Unreliable, useless, uninterested, or, as he put it, in a state of desuetude.”

“Funny word to be using.”

“Isn’t it? He says she didn’t have the strength for some of the jobs, such as carrying buckets for hours on end. This-” Melrose said of the bucket on the ground “-must be the dozenth today.”

“What’s in it?”

“Who cares? Fertilizer, I expect.”

“Listen: I want you to write down the account of the shooting Gemma’s going to tell you.”

“What? What? That would be one of the labors of Hercules, I suppose you know. And if she’s told you already, why-”

“Because sometimes details turn up with repetition. You know that. She might mention something left out of what she told me.”

Melrose frowned. “What about the poisoning and the choking?”

“That didn’t happen. I suspected that. The shooting clearly did. Being shot at gave her bad dreams, and the choking, smothering business was only that. A dream. The poisoning didn’t happen either; it was the result of someone’s talking about poisoning in general.”

“But that still leaves the question, why shoot her?”

“No, it doesn’t, not if that was the only attempt made.”

“Sorry, I don’t follow.”

“Gemma might not have been the target. People assumed she was because of these other two fictionalized attempts. If they hadn’t occurred, police would have brought up the other possibility: it wasn’t Gemma.”

“Then… who and why?”

“One of two things might have happened: it could have been a prearranged meeting in the greenhouse between the shooter and his or her target-just to get the person out of the house probably. Or the shooter saw someone in the greenhouse, thought the person was the target, took the opportunity and got a gun. An impulse. As I said, those are just possibilities. But it wasn’t necessarily Gemma the shooter was after.”

“Good lord, you’re not suggesting it was old Angus Murphy?”

“No. He’s still around after several months. Had it been Murphy he’d most likely be dead by now. My guess is Jenny Gessup, who I’m going to see as soon as I can gather up Wiggins.”

Melrose bent, cursing, to pick up the bucket. “The antiques appraiser was chicken feed to this.”

“With that attitude, you’ll never make first base at the Chelsea Flower Show.” Jury turned to leave. “And don’t forget to take down that statement.”

Melrose called to Jury’s swift departure, “All she’ll do is argue.”

Jury smiled. Full circle.

In the kitchen, a tea party appeared to be in progress, with Sergeant Wiggins at the center of things. Around the table also sat an elderly but robust-looking woman who must be the cook, two young ones who were probably maids and a thin, acne-scarred lad who would have been a groom, if there’d been horses. Leaving that occupation, Jury imagined he was Archie Milbank, who did odd jobs under the gimlet eye of Barkins, who was not present at the table.

The kitchen was wonderfully massive and cozy at the same time, partly owing to an inglenook fireplace blazing away as if initiating the Great Fire of London. It was flanked by a large industrial-size Aga and a modern column which housed a microwave oven and what looked like a rotisserie. The cook was not hurting for modern conveniences.

When Jury walked in, Wiggins rose and the others looked at Jury with simple delight, as if he were one of the Wise Men come with a bucket of frankincense. (Jury had trouble getting that image of Melrose Plant out of his mind.)

Jury’s smile only increased the general air of beneficence as Wiggins introduced him around the table. Here was Mrs. MacLeish, cook; Rachael Brown, maid; Clara Mount, cook’s helper; Archie Milbank, “maintenance.”

Jury thanked Mrs. MacLeish for the mug of tea she was pressing into his hand and asked if he could have a word with her. Of course, of course. They went to Barkins’s little sitting room.

“First,” said Jury, “I’m awfully sorry about Mr. Croft. You knew him from childhood, didn’t you?”

Her eyes grew glassy with tears, against which she drew a handkerchief from her apron. “I did that, yes. Mr. Simon was a lovely man, just lovely. Like the rest of the family, scarcely ever a cross word.”

“It’s been suggested he was afraid of someone or something. Did you get that impression?”

She frowned. “He did seem not to want to see people, or at least some people. I thought it was because of that book he was writing. Spending all his time on that, he was. Of course, I never did see him much as I went to the house only twice a week to do the cooking. Mr. Simon wasn’t big on cooking for himself. Sometimes he got Partridge’s to cater. I do know he got that policeman-a friend of the family, he was-to stop in every once in a while. So I expect he could’ve been afraid, couldn’t he? Maybe it was for some of those valuable paintings and things?”

“Possibly, yes.”

Jury thanked her and rose.

They were in the car with Wiggins thumbing through his notes. As always, they were copious. “According to Mrs. MacLeish, who went to Simon Croft’s house to prepare meals for him, the only people who got inside the house were the grocer and your DCI Michael Haggerty. Maisie Tynedale called. But Croft did not want her inside and told