The Show House Murder (The Pattern House Cozy Mysteries #2)

CHAPTER 1

PERFECT FINISH

At six twenty-three on Friday evening, Romy decided that perfection was mostly a matter of knowing which flaws could be left alone.

Asterleigh Rectory did not agree.

The Georgian house stood at the end of a gravel drive outside Merewick, every pale stone scrubbed, every sash window polished, every brass fitting catching the last of the September light.

Tomorrow morning, the gates would open for the Merewick Show House, and several hundred people would pay twenty-two pounds each to decide which designer had done the best job of pretending nobody actually lived there.

Tonight, the place smelled of beeswax, fresh paint, cut flowers, expensive fabric, and panic.

“Is that normal?” Leo Finch asked.

Romy looked up from her tablet.

“Which part?”

A woman in black trousers hurried through the entrance hall carrying six tasselled cushions and swearing with remarkable precision.

“That.”

“Very.”

A crash sounded upstairs.

Leo winced. “Also normal?”

“More normal than the cushions.”

He smiled, and some of the tension left Romy’s shoulders.

It was Leo’s first official placement day with Pattern House.

Not his first day helping. He had spent enough unofficial hours carrying sample books, making tea, photographing cornices, and asking intelligent questions to qualify as unpaid staff months ago.

But today his name had appeared on the project sheet under hers.

LEO FINCH. CONSERVATION ASSISTANT.

He had photographed it twice.

Romy had pretended not to notice.

She had also checked Pattern House’s bank balance twice before breakfast.

“Final circuit,” she said. “We check the principal rooms against the conservation schedule, photograph anything that could become somebody else’s version of events tomorrow, and leave before one of these people decides we can fix upholstery.”

Leo adjusted the canvas satchel across his shoulder. “You said never to volunteer skills during installation week.”

“I said never to reveal skills during installation week.”

“Because they multiply?”

“Because designers remember competence the way sharks remember blood.”

From the drawing room came an offended voice.

“That is not aubergine. That is bruised plum.”

Leo looked at Romy.

She kept walking. “Do not engage.”

They crossed the entrance hall under a restored plaster ceiling that had taken Pattern House eleven days to clean, consolidate, and repair.

Romy still knew where every section of original lime plaster ended and the new work began.

That was the point. A good repair should not announce itself, but neither should it falsify the building.

Asterleigh had been difficult from the start.

The house had spent thirty years as solicitors’ offices, five years empty, then another three trapped in planning disputes before the Merewick Heritage Trust leased it for the annual show house.

Twelve designers had been given rooms. Sponsors supplied fabrics, antiques, lighting, paint, flowers, ceramic dogs, hand-blocked wallpaper, and enough decorative cushions to smother half the county.

Pattern House had been hired to stop them damaging the actual building.

Romy had accepted before anyone finished explaining the press coverage.

She needed the coverage.

Before Julian Staveley’s murder, Pattern House had been small but steady.

Afterward, its name became recognizable for the wrong reason.

Some clients stayed loyal. Others postponed meetings, reconsidered contracts, or decided a conservation firm recently connected to a homicide did not project the calm professionalism required for work on a Jacobean staircase.

Romy had survived it. Pattern House had survived it.

Survival was expensive.

Now Leo’s placement stipend appeared every month beside insurance, rent, materials, vehicle costs, and the dozen smaller bills that only looked harmless separately.

She wanted him there.

That made the responsibility worse.

“You’re doing it again,” Leo said.

Romy stopped at the foot of the main staircase. “Doing what?”

“The face.”

“I have many faces.”

“The one where you calculate money while pretending to inspect mouldings.”

“I was inspecting the mouldings.”

“You looked at the same acanthus leaf for twenty seconds.”

“It has depth.”

“It has you worried about payroll.”

Romy stared at him.

Leo looked slightly ashamed. “Sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No.”

She started upstairs.

“First lesson of official employment. Never diagnose your employer in a public corridor.”

“Noted.”

“And second lesson?”

“Never reveal skills.”

“Excellent. You may survive.”

On the landing, installation panic had reached its final form.

Florists threaded branches into urns. A photographer crouched outside the Yellow Bedroom while its designer argued that no human being had ever wanted a radiator visible in a photograph.

Two volunteers were trying to remove adhesive labels from a door with something Romy suspected had come from a supermarket cleaning aisle.

She intercepted them.

“What are you using?”

Both women froze. One held up a bottle.

Romy closed her eyes. “Please stop.”

“It says suitable for wood.”

“That door is two hundred and ten years old.”

The bottle disappeared behind the woman’s back.

Leo offered conservation-safe adhesive remover from his satchel and explained where they could use it. He did not lecture. He did not sound pleased with himself. He did not once say obviously.

Romy watched him.

Good.

That was the problem.

He was good enough that she had started imagining Pattern House with him in it permanently.

Permanent meant wages. Wages meant commissions. Commissions meant getting Asterleigh finished tonight without a designer accusing Pattern House of sabotaging an artistic vision.

“Blue Study,” she said when Leo rejoined her.

His expression brightened. “Celeste Arden.”

“You say that as though we’re approaching wildlife.”

“She called a thermostat visually aggressive.”

“She wasn’t entirely wrong.”

Leo stared at her.

Romy opened the Blue Study door.

Celeste Arden had transformed a modest east-facing room into an argument conducted in silk.

Blue glazed walls reflected the lamps in soft uneven patches.

A deep sofa faced the fireplace. Lacquered tables carried silver boxes, porcelain birds, and stacks of books chosen mainly because their bindings matched the room.

Above the mantel, a decorative panel of hand-painted silk sat within a narrow gilt frame.

It was beautiful.

It was also covering part of a ventilation opening.

Romy’s good mood died.

Celeste stood on a small stepladder with one hand pressed to the silk panel. Her assistant, Imogen, waited below with a screwdriver.

“No.”

Celeste turned. She wore cream trousers, a blue blouse, and the expression of a woman interrupted midway through winning.

“Romy.”

“No.”

“You have not heard what I’m asking.”

“You’re standing beside the transfer grille with a screwdriver.”

“I am standing beside my decorative panel.”

“Which is mounted in front of the transfer grille.”

“With the spacer you insisted upon.”

“Exactly.”

Celeste climbed down.

The narrow conservation frame Romy had approved that afternoon held the silk panel far enough from the wall to keep air moving through the high-level transfer grille behind it. From the doorway, the gap was barely visible.

To Celeste, it was apparently vandalism.

“I can see the shadow line,” she said.

“You can see it because you know it’s there.”

“Sebastian will see it.”

There it was.

Not beauty. Not balance. Not conservation.

Sebastian.

Sebastian Pryce had founded Pryce & House nearly twenty years ago and turned being unpleasant in expensive rooms into a profession.

He wrote a monthly design column, consulted for television, chaired award panels, and could make fabric samples vanish from a manufacturer’s catalogue by describing them as suburban.

Tomorrow he would conduct the press preview.

Everyone in Asterleigh knew it.

Everyone feared it.

Celeste feared it loudest.

“Sebastian isn’t responsible for the building,” Romy said.

“He is responsible for the feature that will run in Hearth.”

“He may dislike a six-millimetre shadow.”

“He will describe it as timid.”

“Then tell him the conservation consultant insisted.”

“I would rather tell him nothing.”

Celeste reached for the screwdriver.

Romy put one hand against the ladder. “No.”

Celeste’s smile vanished. “Romy.”

“The transfer grille stays operational.”

“We are discussing six millimetres.”

“We are discussing ventilation.”

“For one weekend.”

“Ten days.”

“Fine. Ten days.”

“In a room that will have hundreds of visitors moving through it.”

“The door will be open.”

“Until somebody closes it.”

“The windows open.”

“They are painted shut.”

Celeste glanced toward them as though the Georgian period had betrayed her personally.

Romy went on. “The high-level grille moves air into the corridor system. The room already has new fabric, new paint layers, flowers coming in tomorrow, and more bodies than it was designed to hold. We agreed the spacer before installation.”

“We agreed to something discreet.”

“It is discreet.”

“It throws a line.”

“So does the mantel.”

“The mantel belongs.”

“So does the ventilation grille.”

Celeste folded her arms.

Romy knew what Leo was doing without looking. Staying quiet. Learning which battles conservation actually required.

Most were not dramatic. Usually the work came down to saying no to intelligent, determined people who believed six millimetres did not matter.

Six millimetres mattered.

Tiny gaps prevented damp. Tiny screws split timber. Tiny temporary changes became permanent once enough people forgot who had called them temporary.

Celeste breathed out through her nose. “Could we reduce it to three?”

“No.”

“Four?”

“No.”

“Five?”

“Celeste.”

“All right.”

Imogen lowered the screwdriver.

Celeste glared at the silk. “I still hate it.”

“You’re allowed.”

“And if Sebastian says it ruins the room?”

“I’ll give him my card.”

That earned the faintest smile. “You may regret that.”