“May Fair’s tonight,” Ivor said, looking wistful. “First one I’ll have missed in more than thirty years.”
“If I win a teddy bear, it’s yours.”
“Much obliged.” Ivor’s blue eyes twinkled. “Your detective inspector will be there?”
“Of course.” I gathered my handbag and slipped my cell phone in the outside pocket. “Take care, Ivor.” I stopped halfway to the door. “Is there anyone who might know more about the Villiers family?”
“Come now, Kate.” Ivor cocked his head. “Who knows everything about everyone in these parts, hmm?”
I couldn’t help smiling.
Ivor winked. “Give Vivian my regards.”
Chapter Three
I parked the Mini beside Rose Cottage, one of several on the Finchley Hall estate. A climbing rose grew up and around the planked-wood door. Flowers in the front garden bloomed in profusion—columbine, foxglove, bellflowers. Mounds of pink and white peony bushes drooped under the weight of their blooms. Snatches of A Midsummer Night’s Dream came to mind—“oxlips and nodding violets;” Queen Titania, asleep on a bank of wild thyme.
I stifled a yawn. It couldn’t be jet lag. I’d been in England more than a week now. Still, a bank of wild thyme sounded tempting.
I let myself in with my key. “Vivian? Fergus?”
Silence. Fergus’s leash, usually hanging on a hook by the door, was gone.
A note lay on the kitchen table: We’re at the Hall with Lady Barbara. Everything’s fine. Don’t worry. We’ll see you at the fair.
Now I was worried, of course—Vivian’s aim, no doubt. A self-proclaimed non-gossiper, Vivian loved nothing better than implying she had tantalizing secret information she couldn’t divulge—just before letting you drag it out of her. Ivor was right, though. Vivian Bunn knew everything about everybody within thirty miles of Long Barston.
Tossing my car keys in my handbag, I climbed the stairs to my room under the thatch. After my stay in Long Barston last December, when I knew I’d be spending most of May and June in the village, I’d searched online for a short-term lease. I’d just about settled on a self-catering cottage in a nearby village when Vivian put her sturdy leather brogue firmly down.
“Pay for accommodation? Nonsense. I have a spare room. I won’t hover. You’ll have your own key, so you can come and go as you please. Kitchen privileges so you won’t feel obliged to keep us company.”
Fergus, Vivian’s elderly, obese pug, had snorted his agreement. No brainer.
Rose Cottage was the perfect solution, within walking distance of Ivor’s shop, near the friends I’d come to care about in Long Barston, and (most importantly) a mere stone’s throw from Tom Mallory, the handsome detective inspector I’d first met in Scotland and had fallen hopelessly in love with.
There—I’d admitted it, if only to myself.
The double bed, with its rose satin comforter and chintz pillows, looked tempting. Instead I settled myself at the desk under the small-paned dormer window and opened my laptop. I typed Wallace Villiers into the search bar and waited. A series of news articles from 2002 appeared. I opened the one on top.
The Telegraph, 12 March 2002
Colin Wardle, the 27-year-old Suffolk man accused of murdering prominent investment banker Wallace Villiers, has been released after the coroner pronounced the cause of Villiers’s death as natural.
According to eyewitnesses, Villiers confronted his daughter, Lucy, 17, and Wardle, his chauffeur, at 1 a.m. outside his Edwardian house near the village of Little Gosling. An altercation ensued, leading to what the coroner described as “a neurological event.” Police and emergency responders were called but found Villiers unresponsive.
Wardle insisted he’d acted in self-defense. “Mr. Villiers was a good employer,” he said at the inquest, “until he found out about me and Lucy. Wasn’t good enough for her, was I?” Wardle testified he had arrived at the house that night in order to rescue Lucy from what he described as “a toxic environment.” Miss Villiers told police they were traveling to Scotland, where they planned to marry.
Two weeks earlier, Wallace Villiers had reported the theft of a valuable 17th-century painting, naming Wardle as the perpetrator. Wardle denied the charges, and when Miss Villiers testified that the two had been together the night of the theft, the charges were dropped.
“It wasn’t Colin’s fault,” said a defiant Lucy Villiers at the inquest.
A grainy photograph showed a dark-haired girl with a thin face, sloping chin, and small round eyes.
Speaking outside the coroner’s court in Ipswich, a tearful Evelyn Villiers, wife of the deceased, said, “That young man insinuated himself into our family, preyed upon our daughter, and turned her against us. He took the painting, and now he’s taken Wallace’s life. One day he’ll pay for what he’s done.”
When questioned about Mrs. Villiers’s statement, Wardle said, “She’s suffered enough.”
Had Lucy married Colin Wardle? If she had, I could understand Mrs. Villiers wanting to make sure he would never get his hands on her husband’s art collection.
There were depths here I couldn’t plumb.
An elopement, a betrayal, a death.
The uneasiness I’d felt earlier in the day came back in spades, but now it centered on the húnpíng. Was it safe? I’d left the funerary jar on a shelf in Ivor’s stockroom. The shop had security—roll-down metal grilles on the windows plus a coded and monitored alarm system—but the jar was on consignment. The least I could do was conceal it.
After checking my e-mail to see if either of my children had written (they hadn’t), I changed into the cotton sundress and warm cardigan I’d planned to wear that night with Tom. Even mild summer evenings in England can be chilly.
A delicious sense of anticipation washed over me. Tonight was the May Fair, the traditional spring fête, held in Long Barston since the fifteenth century. Tom was meeting me on the green. Afterward, we’d share a late dinner at his house in Saxby St. Clare. And the best part? His mother, Liz (definitely not a fan of mine), was out of town,
