Chapter Nine #2
After they were at last blessedly free of both the Murder Tourists and the tearoom—though only after Sebastian had consumed enough scones to fuel an army—and were making their way slowly down the high street, Georgie reached out a hand to seize him by the elbow and yank him to a halt.
“I don’t want to get my hopes up,” Sebastian said, looking down at her, “but does this signal a thawing in relations? Are you hoping I might offer you my arm?”
“Perhaps I’ll find another heavy object dropped on my head, and then your dream will come true,” she said.
“But until then, no. But do you know, Miss Singh’s discussion of The Deathly Dispatch made me wonder—where do you think they get the information they print?
I refuse to read it, but it sounds like they must have a source among the police—they’re much more tight-lipped when giving Arthur information to report on.
And they speak awfully favorably about Detective Inspector Harriday. ”
“Yet another mystery to add to our list. Remarkable quantity of them per capita here, don’t you think?”
“I do think,” she agreed coldly. “Which is, if you will recall, the reason you are here.” She shook her head. “This is growing more maddening by the moment—Murder Tourists everywhere! Dr. Severin not being remotely helpful! Rogue newsletter writers!”
“Would you like to know what I do when I am feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders?”
“Not if it involves nudity.”
“Ah.” He fell silent.
Her mind was turning in confused circles, but then a thought occurred to her. “The Murder Tourists will all be on the Murderous Meander just now,” she said, “meaning the murder exhibition at the village hall should be pretty quiet.”
“Of course,” he said wisely. “Eager to revisit the relics of your previous successes, to bolster your spirits for the difficult task that lies ahead?”
“No,” she said shortly. “Mrs. Penbaker runs the exhibition, so this might be a chance to speak to her alone.”
“Ah,” he said, unfazed. “I suppose that makes sense, too. Shall we invite her to lunch?”
Georgie stared at him incredulously. “You just ate three scones, how can you possibly be thinking about lunch?”
“Not for me,” he protested, looking wounded, then appeared to reconsider. “Well, I’m sure I wouldn’t say no to a bite, if it were on offer—”
“Argh!” Georgie threw her hands up to clutch at her hair, feeling as though she were losing her mind.
Surely this case wasn’t worth it—why not just assume Penbaker had died of natural causes and send Sebastian on his merry way?
She could already picture the days of peace that would await her in his absence.
She could spend an entire day in her garden, she thought dreamily.
Plants couldn’t talk. She had never fully appreciated this particular virtue of theirs until now.
“But,” Sebastian continued, apparently blind to her distress, “old Fitzy takes an awful lot of lunch meetings, you know.” He paused significantly, as though expecting her to immediately change her tune in the face of this knowledge.
“I’m very good at booking tables as a result. ” He looked at her hopefully.
“I think you’ll find we do things a bit differently here,” she said, crossing her arms. “Now, follow me, and for the love of God, do not flirt with Mrs. Penbaker.”
“I wish I could promise you that, Georgie,” he said, sounding honestly regretful. “But when the spirit of flirtation moves me, I find myself powerless in its grip.” He shook his head sadly. “It is both a blessing and a curse, really.”
“On second thought,” she said, setting off down the street without bothering to confirm that he was following, “perhaps it is best if you don’t say anything at all. Mrs. Penbaker is a bit more reserved than her husband was—I don’t want you to scare her off.”
“But Georgie, old bean,” he said; glancing to the side, she saw that he was matching her stride, smiling at her winningly while dodging puddles that would ruin his ridiculous, impractical shoes. “Wives absolutely adore me.”
“Yes,” she agreed sweetly. “Rather too much, I expect. I believe it’s recently got you into trouble, in fact?”
Rather than looking chastened, he merely appeared even more amused. “Touché, my dear Georgie. But this time, it will prove to be useful. Just you wait.”
The village hall was located in the very center of town, directly opposite the green and behind a low stone wall.
A tidy garden featuring roses, peonies, and lupins lined the short path leading from the street to the oak doors.
Georgie noted with some disapproval that there was a patch of Himalayan balsam, but she had already learned that lectures on invasive plant species were not often well-received.
Something of her thoughts must have shown on her face as they approached, however, because Sebastian asked, “What is it?”
She blinked; she hadn’t realized that her face was so transparent. “That’s Himalayan balsam,” she said, pointing to the pretty pink flowers. “They’re not native to England, and spread easily and stifle native flora.”
“You’re very fond of plants,” he said, and she glanced at him, a bit startled. “It’s only—the cases you solved. A couple of them involved poisonous herbs—you seem to know a lot about them.”
“Yes,” she said, and then added, without pausing to consider, “I want to open a botanic garden at Radcliffe Hall someday, showcasing the native flora of Gloucestershire.”
“Yes, I noticed the gardens earlier. Your doing?”
She nodded as she walked up the neat gravel path to the front door.
“My mother loved to garden, and even had greenhouses built behind the house. After she died, I took over the gardening, since we can’t…
well, we can’t afford a gardener anymore.
” She didn’t see any point in pretending the financial situation at Radcliffe Hall was anything other than a bit desperate; surely he’d already noticed the chipped paint and worn furniture.
“Anyway, I hope to expand the gardens eventually, but…”
“But what?” he prompted, reaching out a hand to her elbow to slow her approach to the door. She glanced over at him, surprised. He must have interpreted her look as a scold—which, for once, it wasn’t—and quickly dropped her elbow.
“But… well, I suppose I don’t really know anything about running a botanic garden,” she said, shifting from one foot to another, twirling her umbrella in her hands.
“I mean to say—I understand the plants, obviously, but I don’t know all the ins and outs of a large-scale operation like that.
I don’t expect to manage something like Kew Gardens out in rural Gloucestershire, but even so…
it would be helpful if I had a bit of experience, working as a gardener somewhere—Kew stopped hiring women as apprentice gardeners after the war, but there are other gardens…
even horticultural colleges for women….” She trailed off, a bit uncertain.
“I suppose it’s not a very common goal for a woman, but—”
“I cannot imagine that stopping you,” he said, and it did not sound like an insult; rather, there was something close to admiration in his tone, and Georgie decided to ignore this, because quite frankly she had no notion of what to do with the admiration of a man like Sebastian Fletcher-Ford.
“I’d once thought to go live with my aunt in London for a year or so,” she continued instead, “if I could apprentice at Regent’s Park, perhaps, or the Royal Horticultural Society, but…” She hesitated, but before he could prompt her to finish, she added, “I can’t leave my family. They need me.”
He opened his mouth to reply, but she turned and opened the door to the village hall, stepping through the doorway.
The hall was primarily comprised of a single large room—they held an annual Christmas dance here, as well as the yearly cheese festival, which usually drew a sizable crowd each August. At the moment, however, the hall had been entirely taken over by…
well, by murder. There was a giant map of Buncombe-upon-Woolly displayed prominently near the entrance, with a dramatic red X marking each spot where a murder had occurred in the past year.
(Georgie scowled at the X on Radcliffe Hall.) Beyond it, there was an entire display of newspaper clippings—from both The Woolly Register and (much to Arthur’s displeasure) The Deathly Dispatch, and even a couple of stories that The Times had picked up—detailing the past year’s gruesome events.
The bloody knife that the Murder Tourists had mentioned had pride of place on a slightly faded cushion.
The entire thing was garish and appalling.
“Well, this is delightful,” Sebastian said.
“It isn’t,” she retorted as he strolled around the room, exclaiming excitedly each time he spotted something new.
Georgie’s gaze landed on the framed photograph of Detective Inspector Harriday and her frown deepened.
Constable Lexington, she noticed, did not merit a mention, despite certainly having contributed just as much—if not more—to each investigation.
A sudden hoot of laughter drew her attention, and she knew, with a sudden premonition of doom, what Sebastian had spotted.
“Georgie, is that you?”
She crossed the room to stand beside him near the back of the exhibition, where he was ogling a small framed photograph of Georgie—taken a few years earlier, because she had flatly refused to sit for a new photograph for the sake of this nonsense—next to an informational placard titled The Lady Detective.
“… ‘the village’s own Poirot’—well, not sure that’s quite accurate,” he said apologetically, as if wary of causing offense. “You don’t sound terribly Belgian, old bean.”
“Dear God,” she muttered.
“… ‘racing boldly against the clock as the snow fell heavily outside to confront a killer within her very own home’—I say, Georgie, this Christmas case sounds quite dramatic.”