He put down the book and sighed. There was no way he was going to be able to settle down now. He left his room, ran lightly down the sweeping curve of the stairs, and headed outside into the warm evening air. The scent of roses and lavender spread around him as he wandered the gardens. Rooks cawed in nearby woods and squirrels chased up and down the cedars on the expansive lawn.
He found a young woman, wearing an oversized blue and black checked shirt, sitting on a bench near the kitchen garden, staring into the middle distance. He recognised her as Jessie — the girl who’d been tearfully snipping roses earlier that day.
‘Was that his?’ he asked, sitting down next to her and nodding at the shirt.
She looked up at him in surprise, wiping away a fringe of brown hair and revealing red-rimmed blue eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, realising he was being very presumptuous — they hadn’t even been introduced. ‘I’m Lucas — the dowser..? Grant told me about your boyfriend. I’m really sorry.’
She sniffed and nodded. ‘Yeah,’ she said. She gathered the thick weave shirt around her. ‘And yeah — this was his. It still smells of him.’
‘Were you together for long?’
‘Just over a year,’ she said.
‘They say it was suicide,’ he went on, aware that he was prying, but also picking up that she was not averse to talking about it.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘That’s what they say.’
‘What do you say?’
‘I say it’s bollocks. He wasn’t depressed. He was worried, yeah, but not depressed.’
‘Oh… what was he worried about?’
‘You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?’ she said, tilting her head and fixing him with a stare.
He shrugged and pulled Sid out of his shirt. ‘This pendulum thing… it helps me dowse for water and other lost things. It’s telling me you’re a bit lost.’ He lifted his hands. ‘God — that sounds like a cheesy come on — it’s really not. I’m just picking up that you might want to talk, that’s all — I promise.’
She sighed. ‘It’s OK.’ She peered at the blue bottle stopper. ‘Can you really find stuff with that?’
He smiled. ‘It’s not magic,’ he said. ‘And it’s not really this that does the work — dowsing is something anyone can do, if they work at it. It just helps to have a focal point, like rods, hazel twigs or a Y diviner. Or a pendulum like this — I call this one Sid.’
‘So… if I hide something… you can find it?’
‘Usually,’ he said. He decided to break his rule. If anyone needed a party piece, this young woman did. ‘Hide something if you like.’
She gave him a watery grin and pulled a pound coin from her pocket. ‘Wait there, then,’ she said and slipped away around the far side of a tall yew hedge, completely out of his sight. Two minutes later she jogged back to him. ‘Go on then. Show me.’
He smiled and got to his feet, pulling Sid out of his shirt and looping the chain over and off his head. He let the pendulum drop between his fingers and waited for it to show him the way. Sid did his circle, then his figure of eight, and then his back and forth swing, giving Lucas a clear direction. He followed Jessie’s route around the yew and then did a sharp turn to the left, down a stony path and some steps to a sunken garden. Jessie followed, saying nothing, but looking fascinated and distracted, for now, from her grief.
He reached a formal flower bed with a statue in the centre of several blooming, highly scented rose bushes. The carved stone ornament depicted a woman in Roman–style robes, holding aloft a pitcher. Lucas stepped towards it, almost reaching for the pitcher before turning abruptly to the right and taking a few steps to the edge of the rose bed. He dropped to one knee and lifted a nondescript lump of brick. Beneath it, shone the coin.
‘Oh my god, you can do it,’ breathed Jessie, her reddened eyes now wide with wonder. He handed the coin back to her, nodding.
‘And you promise you didn’t follow me? Because I did go right up to that statue! I was going to leave the coin in that stone jug.’
‘I didn’t follow you, cross my heart and…’ he petered out fast.
Her face fell, and she sat down on a low brick wall and let out a long sigh. ‘I am lost,’ she said. ‘Confused. They say Martin left a note, but I haven’t seen it yet. Apparently it just said, “I’m sorry”. What the hell kind of note is that? I mean — it didn’t even mention me! Or his mum or dad. If he was writing a suicide note, he would have put our names on it, surely?’
Lucas nodded and sat down beside her. ‘It does seem odd. You said he was worried… what about?’
‘He was having some problems with money,’ she said. ‘Credit cards maxed out, I think, and his pay wasn’t great… and other stuff going on at work that he didn’t tell me about. Some guys aren’t so good at sharing… but, you know, normal stuff. Not do yourself in kind of stuff.’ She paused for a moment and then added, ‘And who slits their own throat?! I mean… wrists, yeah… but your own throat?’
‘So… you think someone killed him?’
She shrugged and stared down at the shirt. ‘My mum thinks I should let it go. That it’s just one of those things… she thinks I’d rather believe he was murdered than admit he’d kill himself without saying anything to me or
