EQMM, January 2007 Read online

  "What do you mean by the last of the old farms?"

  "Traditional. Cattle and sheep. Everyone's switching to flowers and bulbs since that foot-and-mouth epidemic. We didn't have an outbreak here, thank the Lord, but other farmers didn't want the risk and sold up. Much of the land has been put under glass by Ben Black, known to you as Balthazar."

  "The tall man?” Laura said.

  "A giant in the nursery garden business and a very astute businessman. Lay chairman of the Parochial Church Council as well, so I have to work closely with him. He's from London originally. To the locals, he's an incomer, but he gives them a living."

  "So he'll be interested in Blackberry Farm if it comes on the market?” Rosemary said.

  "No question.” The vicar sighed. “I happen to know he made Douglas a handsome offer last week, far more than it's worth, and I heard that Douglas was willing at last to sell."

  "Every man has his price,” Laura remarked.

  "Yes, and it is also said that gold goes in at any gate except the gate of heaven. As it turns out, Ben will get the farm for a fraction of that offer if Kitty Boon wants to sell.” He looked wistful. “I'll be sorry if the cows go. They hold up the traffic when they're being driven along the lane for milking, but rows of daffodils wouldn't be the same at all."

  Laura had a vision of rows of daffies holding up the traffic.

  "Do you mind if I ask about someone else?” she said. “On Christmas Eve, Gertrude Appleton called with some mince pies."

  "Gertrude?” The vicar had a special smile for this member of his flock. “That's one of her many superstitions. Something about exchanging pies to avoid bad luck. False worship, really. I don't approve, but we all indulge her because she's such a formidable lady."

  "Harmless?"

  "We have to hope so."

  "Is she on good terms with my friends, Jane and Michael Eadington?"

  "As far as I know."

  "No boundary disputes? Complaints about the greyhound? Excessive noise?"

  "I've never heard of any. Why do you ask?"

  Rosemary said quickly, “It's a joke. Those pies she brought round aren't the most appetising."

  The vicar smiled. “Now I understand. Did you try one?"

  She shook her head. “It's the look of them, paler than Hamlet's father."

  His eyes twinkled at that. “I'm afraid not one of the carollers could face one the other night."

  "And will you indulge her, as you put it, and exchange mince pies?"

  He smiled. “The annual batch of pies for Gertrude is one more parochial duty for me. I don't have a wife to cook for me, unfortunately."

  "Your pies are delicious, I'm sure,” Laura said, liking this young clergyman.

  Rosemary said in her no-nonsense voice, “The third of the Three Kings was Caspar, right?"

  "Little Colin Price the other night,” the vicar said. “He's my tenor, at the other end of the scale from Ben Black."

  "As a singer, do you mean?"

  "I was thinking of his situation. Colin's up against it financially. He was a dairy farmer like Douglas, but less efficient. He lost a big contract with the Milk Marketing Board a couple of years ago and Douglas bought him out. He's reduced to work as a jobbing gardener these days."

  Laura exchanged a wry smile with Rosemary. “There are worse ways to make a living."

  "True. But I have to object when he does it on Sundays sometimes and misses Morning Service. Colin just smiles and quotes those lines, ‘One is nearer God's heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth.’ That isn't scripture, I tell him, it's a bit of doggerel."

  The vicar came out to see them off and Rosemary admired the yew hedge and asked if he clipped it himself.

  "Every twig,” he said. “Can't afford a gardener on my stipend. Some people seem to have the idea that yew is slow-growing. From experience I can tell you that's a myth."

  "What do you do with the clippings—burn them?"

  "No, I bag them up and send them away to be used in cancer treatment."

  "For the taxol in them,” Rosemary said. “Very public-spirited."

  "I must admit they pay me as well,” the vicar said with a fleeting smile at Laura.

  Their return across the frost-white fields was spoiled by a blue police light snaking through the lanes. Laura said, “I just know it's going to stop at The Withers."

  She was right.

  When they got there the inspector was looking smug. “You might be thinking the forensics lab was closed over Christmas, but I happen to know one scientist who is a perfect Scrooge, can't stand the parties and the eating and only too grateful to earn double overtime. It's bad news for you, I'm afraid, Mrs. Thyme. The late Douglas Boon was poisoned. My scientist found significant amounts of taxin in his body."

  "Toxin?” Laura said.

  "Taxin. It comes from the yew,” Rosemary murmured. “Just like taxol, only this is no help to anyone, not to be taken in any form."

  "You're well informed,” the inspector said.

  "I'm a plant biologist."

  "And Mrs. Thyme? Are you also an expert?"

  "Only an amateur,” Laura said.

  About as amateur as a million-pound-a-week footballer, if the inspector's look was anything to go by. “I've got a warrant to search this house."

  "Here? What are you looking for?” Rosemary asked.

  "We know from the stomach contents that the last food Mr. Boon ingested was a mince pie. In your statement of Christmas Eve, Mrs. Thyme, you admitted administering a pie to the deceased."

  "Administering?" said Rosemary. “She handed round a plate of pies, that's all."

  "And we'd like to have them examined, if they aren't already destroyed."

  This was a defining moment for Laura. Should she confess to changing the lids on Gertrude's pies? She glanced towards Rosemary, who nodded back. “Inspector,” she said, “there's something I ought to tell you, something I didn't mention last time."

  The inspector raised both hands as if a wall was about to collapse. “Don't say another word. I'm going to issue an official caution and you're going to accompany me to the police station."

  "Oh, what nonsense,” Rosemary said. “The pies were made by someone else, and that's all there is to it."

  "Don't put ideas in her head, Miss Boxer. She's in enough trouble already."

  As Laura got into the police car, Wilbur whimpered. The hand pressing down on the back of Laura's head felt like an executioner's this time. They kept her waiting more than an hour while the house was searched. The plate of mince pies, wrapped now in a polythene evidence bag, was carried from the kitchen in triumph.

  Rosemary watched in silence, sickened and infuriated by this turn of events. She could see Laura's troubled face through the rear window of the patrol car as they drove away. She thought about following in the Land Rover, and then decided they wouldn't let her near the interview room. She'd be more useful finding out precisely what had been going on in this sinister village.

  * * * *

  By asking around, she tracked Colin Price (the little man Laura knew as Caspar) to the garden behind the village hall. He was up a ladder pruning a huge rambler rose. The clippings were going into a trailer he'd wheeled across the lawn.

  "What's that—an albertine?” Rosemary asked, seeing how the new shoots sprouted from well up the old stems.

  "Spot on."

  "Late pruning, then?"

  "It's a matter of getting round to these jobs,” he said. “I can only do so much. It's mostly grass-cutting through the summer and well into autumn. Other jobs have to wait."

  She introduced herself and mentioned that she was Laura Thyme's friend. “Laura had the unpleasant job of driving poor Mr. Boon to hospital on Christmas Eve. You met her earlier, of course."

  "That's correct,” he said. “And now she's been picked up by the police, I hear."

  "Word travels fast,” Rosemary said.

  "Fields have eyes, and woods have ears, as the saying
goes.” He got down from his ladder. “But all of us can see a police car with the light flashing. What do you want to ask me?"

  "It's about the man who died, Douglas Boon. Could anyone have predicted that he'd take one of the mince pies my friend offered round?"

  He shrugged. “Doug liked his food. Everyone knew that. I've rarely seen him let a plate of pies go by."

  "So he had one at every house that evening?"

  "Every one except Miss Appleton's."

  "Gertrude's? Was there a reason for that?"

  A slow smile. “Have you met the lady?"

  "No."

  "Have you sampled her cooking?"

  "No."

  "If you had, you'd understand.” He closed the pruning shears in a way that punctuated the remark.

  She said, “I thought you all exchanged pies with her."

  "We do, but we don't have to eat them. My wife always makes a batch and I prefer hers any day."

  Rosemary ventured into even more uncertain territory. “Did Douglas have any enemies around here?"

  He mused on that for a moment. “None that I heard of."

  "His dairy farm was the last in the village, I heard. What will happen to it now?"

  "Kitty isn't capable of running it alone. Likely it'll be bought for peanuts by Ben Black and turned into another nursery. That's the trend."

  "Sad to see the old farms disappearing,” Rosemary said. “It happened to yours, I was told."

  "Bad management on my part,” Colin said without hesitation. “I've no one to blame but myself. Doug acquired the herd and my three fields."

  "Would you buy them back if they came on the market?"

  "I'm in no position to. Ben is the only winner here."

  She asked where Ben was to be found.

  "This time of day? I wouldn't know. Last I saw of him was yesterday morning."

  She decided instead to call on the village Lucretia Borgia.

  The cottage could have done with some new thatching, but otherwise it looked well maintained. Gertrude Appleton must have seen Rosemary coming because the door opened before she reached it.

  Tall, certainly. She had to dip her head to look out of her door.

  And she was holding a meat cleaver.

  "What brings you here?” she asked Rosemary. The eyes fitted Laura's description of them as about as sympathetic as wet pebbles.

  "I'm staying next-door."

  "You think I don't know that? What do you want?"

  A little Christmas cheer wouldn't come amiss, Rosemary thought. “My friend Laura has been taken to the police station for questioning about the death of Mr. Boon."

  "So?"

  "So she can't keep her promise to bring you a mince pie. We had some left, but the police have seized them."

  Those cheerless eyes widened a little. “She baked me a pie?"

  Rosemary sidestepped that one. “She was saying it mattered to you, something about good luck for next year."

  Gertrude's face lightened up and she lowered the cleaver to her side. “Did she really?"

  "She said you generously made her a present of some pies of your own, and advised her that the carol singers were coming round."

  Abruptly, the whole look reverted to deep hostility. “Was it one of my pies she fed to Douglas Boon?"

  "I believe it was."

  "And now they're saying he were poisoned? Are you accusing me?” Suddenly the cleaver was in front of her chest again.

  Rosemary swayed out of range. “Absolutely not."

  "You said the police seized some pies. Were any of mine among them?"

  "Actually, yes."

  Gertrude took in a sharp breath. “I've made pies for twenty years and more, and never a whisper of discontent."

  "So we've got to find out how some taxin—that's from a yew bush or a tree, the seeds, the foliage, or the stems—found its way into that pie, which apparently killed him."

  "One of mine? How could it?"

  "Can you remember making the mincemeat? Did anyone come by while you were mixing the fruit?"

  "Not a living soul."

  "Could anyone have interfered with it since?"

  "Impossible. This isn't open house to strangers, I'll have you know. No one crosses my threshold."

  That much Rosemary was willing to believe. “You don't have a yew bush in your garden, I suppose?"

  "I wouldn't. It's the tree of death. It kills horses, cattle, more animals than any other plant."

  "Yes, but this was deliberate. Human deaths from taxin are rare. Someone added seeds of yew, or some part of it, to the mincemeat Douglas Boon consumed on Christmas Eve. Don't you see, Gertrude? We've got to discover how this happened. I'm certain Laura is innocent."

  "They'll pin this on me,” she said. “That's what they'll do, and everyone in the village will say the old witch deserves it."

  "Will you do something for Laura's sake? For your own sake?” Rosemary said. “Will you think about everything connected with the making of the mincemeat? The chopping of the fruit, the source of all the ingredients, sultanas, currants, raisins, peel, nuts—whatever went into it. Go over it in your mind. Did anyone else contribute anything?"

  "No."

  "Please take time to think it over."

  Gertrude sniffed, stepped back, and closed the door.

  * * * *

  Late that afternoon, Wilbur's barking brought Rosemary to the front door before Laura emerged from the police car that returned her to The Withers.

  "What a relief,” Rosemary said. “Have they finished with you?"

  "I wouldn't count on it,” Laura said as she scratched behind Wilbur's ears. He'd given her a delightful, if slobbery, welcome.

  Over a fortifying cup of tea, she told her tale. She had been interviewed three times and kept in a room that wasn't quite a cell, but felt like one. She'd told the detectives everything she knew and provided a written statement. “I'm sure they would have charged me with murder if it wasn't for Gertrude's pies. They had them analysed and got the results back this afternoon."

  "Poisoned?"

  "No.” Laura smiled. “They were harmless, all of them."

  Rosemary pressed her fingers to her lips. “I find that hard to believe."

  "So did the inspector. You should have seen his face when he told me I was free to leave."

  "That's amazing. Gertrude is innocent."

  "And so am I.” Laura glanced across the room. “What's he eating? Wilbur, what have you got in your mouth? No, Wilbur, no!” She dashed across and forced open the dog's jaws. A small piece of mincemeat fell into her palm. “Rosemary, look. There are crumbs on the carpet. I think he's had a mince pie."

  Rosemary was already at her side fingering the pastry crumbs. “It can't have come from inside the house. The police spent over an hour searching the place."

  "The garden, then,” Laura said. “He must have found it in the garden."

  They went to the front door. “Let him show us,” Rosemary said. “Find it, Wilbur. Good dog."

  Wilbur knew what was wanted. He went straight to a lavender bush and lifted it with his nose. A brownish conical thing was exposed.

  "A death cap,” Rosemary said.

  "Do you mind?” Laura said. “That's pastry. That's one of my lids.” She picked it up and turned it over. “How on earth did this get here?"

  The question hung in the air unanswered. Wilbur's cooperation could only go so far.

  "Should we get him to a vet?” Laura said.

  "Let's give him water first."

  Rosemary filled his bowl and brought it to him. He lapped it obediently.

  "He doesn't seem to be suffering,” Laura said. “The onset was rapid with Douglas Boon."

  "Taxin is one of the quickest of all the plant poisons,” Rosemary said. “I doubt if we'd get him to a vet in time."

  "He looks all right."

  Wilbur licked her hand and wagged his tail.

  "I think he wants some more."

  An
hour later, he was still all right.

  Rosemary and Laura allowed themselves the luxury of fresh tea. They didn't get to drink it because Wilbur unexpectedly barked several times and ran to the door. Someone was outside holding a flashlight.

  Laura looked out. The evening had drawn in and she had difficulty seeing who it was.

  The voice was familiar. “You'd better call the police,” Gertrude Appleton said. “I've gone and killed another man."

  * * * *

  3.

  "This can't be true,” Laura said. “You're in the clear. Your pies were analysed today and there's nothing toxic in them."

  With a stare like the condemned woman in a silent movie, Gertrude said, “Follow me,” and started towards the gate.

  Laura looked at Rosemary. They'd been in dangerous situations before. Rosemary shrugged. At least Gertrude wasn't wielding that cleaver. They went after her.

  She paused at her garden gate and turned the flashlight beam on Rosemary and Laura to check that they were behind her. Then she led them to her greenhouse and unlocked the door.

  The place would have been creepy even in daylight, with a huge overhanging vine that still had some of its leaves, brown and contorted. Other skeletal plants in pots had been brought in for the winter. Gertrude edged around a raised flower bed in the centre and directed the flashlight at a dark shape on the floor.

  A man's body.

  "I killed him,” Gertrude said with a stricken sigh. “I never looked here when I smoked out the pests on Christmas Eve. I just put down the stuff and set light to it."

  "He is dead, I suppose?” Laura said.

  Rosemary leaned over for a closer look. “Well dead, I would say."

  Gertrude was still reliving the experience. “I made sure it was smouldering and got out, locking the door behind me. Opened it an hour ago and found him. I can only suppose he was drunk and crept in here to sleep it off.” She paused. “Will I go to prison?"

  "Let me have the flashlight,” Laura said. She edged past Gertrude for a closer inspection. “I can't say I know him intimately, but isn't this one of the carol singers, the tall one, Balthazar?"

  "Ben Black? It is!” Gertrude said in despair. “God forgive me. What have I done?"

  "Unless I've got my facts muddled, you haven't done anything at all,” Laura said. “You fumigated on Christmas Eve after visiting me, am I right?"