Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
The afternoon light was fading by the time Vera returned to the Jolly Miller.
She had spent the intervening hours preparing for that night’s reconnaissance—checking her equipment, memorizing the footpaths to the old mill, and explaining to Watson why he absolutely could not accompany her on a mission that might involve explosives.
Watson had been unimpressed by her reasoning. He was currently sulking in his cat bed, having turned his back to her with the theatrical disdain that only felines could achieve.
But the reconnaissance could wait until dark. Right now, Vera had other business.
Pym was scared. Pym was under pressure. And scared, pressured men sometimes made desperate decisions—like cooperating with someone who offered them a way out.
It was a long shot. Pym was clearly terrified of his employers, and “the doctor” even more so. But Vera had turned assets in worse circumstances. A man facing death might accept any lifeline, even one thrown by a grandmother with a knitting bag.
Besides, she wanted another look at those contracts Mrs. Gable had shown the Vicar. Pym would have copies. Pym would have documentation—names, account numbers, the paper trail that corporations always left behind, no matter how careful they tried to be.
The Jolly Miller’s lobby was empty when she arrived. Mrs. Pringle’s armchair sat vacant, the television dark. A handwritten sign on the reception desk read: Back in 20 minutes. Ring bell for service.
No bell was visible.
Vera glanced around. The stairs to the guest rooms were unguarded. The hallway above was silent.
She climbed the stairs without ringing any bells.
Room 4 was at the end of the corridor. The door was closed, but as Vera approached, she noticed something that made her slow her steps.
The “Do Not Disturb” sign was hanging from the handle. But the door wasn’t fully latched. A thin strip of light showed between the door and the frame.
Vera stopped. She listened.
No sound from inside. No television. No pacing footsteps. No anxious phone calls.
Silence.
She reached into her knitting bag and wrapped her fingers around the canister of pepper spray. Then, with her other hand, she pushed the door open.
“Mr. Pym? I thought we might have a conversation about—”
She stopped.
Arthur Pym wasn’t going to be having any conversations. Not anymore.
He was sitting in the faded armchair by the window, his body slumped sideways against the armrest. His eyes were open, staring at nothing. His skin had taken on the waxy, greyish pallor of the recently deceased.
On the small table beside him sat a half-empty cup of tea. And next to the tea, arranged with almost theatrical precision, was a familiar tin.
Mrs. Gable’s Famous Lavender Shortbread.
The tin was open. A half-eaten biscuit lay on the saucer beside the teacup, a single bite mark visible in the golden surface.
Vera didn’t scream. She didn’t gasp. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her with a soft click, careful not to touch the handle with her bare fingers.
She approached the body.
Pym’s face was frozen in an expression of mild surprise—the look of a man who had been expecting something unpleasant but not this unpleasant. No signs of a struggle. No defensive wounds. He had been sitting in his chair, drinking his tea, eating his biscuit, and then he had simply... stopped.
Vera leaned close, examining without touching. No pinprick on the neck this time—Julian had varied his method. The poison had been in the food, not injected. Easier to disguise. Easier to blame on someone else.
She sniffed the air above the teacup. Nothing obvious. But some poisons were odorless, tasteless—the kind that dissolved into hot liquid and left no trace except the corpse.
She looked at the biscuit tin.
Mrs. Gable’s Famous Lavender Shortbread.
The same tin that sat in the bakery window. The same biscuits that half the village bought every week. The same recipe that Martha Gable’s grandmother had perfected sixty years ago.
The frame was elegant in its simplicity.
Julian had killed Pym with poisoned biscuits—biscuits that came from Mrs. Gable’s shop, biscuits that could be traced directly back to her kitchen.
When the police tested Pym’s body, they would find the toxin.
When they searched Mrs. Gable’s bakery, they would find the same substance planted in her flour stores or her sugar bins.
And Martha Gable, who had been publicly pressured by Pym, who had motive and means and opportunity, would be convicted of a murder she didn’t commit. Would they re-examine the Major’s body and be able to blame that on her, too?
Clever, Vera thought grimly. Vicious, but clever.
She surveyed the room with professional detachment. Pym’s laptop was gone. His phone was gone. The briefcase she had seen him carrying at the fête was nowhere in evidence. Julian had sanitized the room of anything incriminating—anything that might point toward OmniCorp or the Viper Protocol.
All that remained was the body and the biscuits.
Vera’s mind raced through her options.
She could take the tin. Remove the evidence. Without the biscuits, the frame would collapse—or at least become harder to prove.
But if she took the tin, Julian would know his plan had failed.
He would know that someone had been in this room, someone who understood what was happening.
And his next move might be direct action against Mrs. Gable—not a frame-up, but an “accident.” A gas leak.
A fall down the stairs. A fire in the night.
Mrs. Gable was safer in police custody than she was in her own home.
Prison is the safest safe house, her old handler used to say. Not many can reach you behind bars.
It was a cold calculation. Let an innocent woman be arrested for murder, trust that the truth would come out before trial, and use the time to gather evidence against the real killers.
Vera had made worse choices in her career. But this one sat heavy in her chest.
“I’m sorry, Martha,” she whispered to the empty room. “I’ll get you out. But first I need to catch the snake who did this.”
She pulled her cardigan sleeve over her hand and wiped the door handle—inside and out—erasing any trace of her presence. Then she slipped out of Room 4 and pulled the door almost-closed behind her, leaving it exactly as she had found it.
The hallway was still empty. The stairs were still unguarded.
She had almost reached the lobby when she heard it.
Sirens.
Distant at first, but approaching fast. Coming up the main road toward the village centre.
Someone had already called the police.
Vera’s instincts flared. Julian. He had killed Pym, planted the evidence, and tipped off the authorities—all in one smooth operation. The police would arrive, find the body, find the biscuits, and the frame would snap shut around Mrs. Gable before anyone could stop it.
She couldn’t be found here. Not now. Not with a dead body upstairs and suspicion falling on everyone connected to the case.
Vera moved through the lobby and out the back entrance, into the narrow alley that ran behind the B&B. The sirens were louder now—she could hear the crunch of tires on gravel as a police car pulled into the front car park.
She pressed herself into the shadows of a recycling bin and waited.
Through the gap between buildings, she watched Constable Oakes emerge from the car, his face pale with unaccustomed urgency. A second officer—someone from the county force, by the look of his uniform—followed close behind.
They disappeared into the Jolly Miller.
Vera counted to thirty. Then she slipped out of the alley and made her way around the building, keeping to the shadows, until she had a clear view of the front entrance.
She didn’t have to wait long.
Eight minutes later, Oakes emerged, speaking urgently into his radio. She caught fragments: “—confirmed deceased—” “—suspicious circumstances—” “—requesting forensics from Cheltenham—”
A third car arrived. Two more officers. They went inside, emerged again, conferred in hushed voices.
And then the car she had been dreading.
A small blue hatchback, driving too fast, screeching to a halt at the edge of the police tape that was being strung across the car park. Martha Gable stumbled out of the passenger side, the Vicar close behind her.
Someone had told her. Someone had warned her—or summoned her.
Mrs. Gable was crying, her hands pressed to her mouth, shaking her head at whatever Oakes was saying. The Vicar had his arm around her shoulders, his face tight with fear and confusion.
And then Oakes produced a pair of handcuffs.
Vera watched from the shadows as Martha Gable was arrested for the murder of Arthur Pym. She watched the woman crumple, watched the Vicar argue and plead, watched the county officers guide Mrs. Gable—gently, almost apologetically—into the back of a police car.
The car pulled away. The Vicar stood alone in the car park, his hands hanging at his sides, looking like a man whose world had just collapsed.
Vera stayed hidden until he, too, had gone—stumbling back toward the vicarage with the dazed steps of someone walking in a nightmare.
Then she turned and walked home.
The Rookery was quiet when she returned. Watson was sitting in the front window, watching her approach with the expression of a cat who had been ignored for an unacceptable length of time.
“Don’t start,” Vera said as she unlocked the door. “I’ve had a difficult afternoon.”
Watson followed her into the kitchen and sat pointedly beside his food bowl, even though it was still half full.
Vera put the kettle on. She moved through the familiar motions—tea, milk, her favorite cup with the chip on the handle—and let her mind run through what she had seen.
Pym was dead. Mrs. Gable was arrested. Julian had executed a textbook frame-up and disappeared without a trace.
And Vera had let it happen.
She didn’t regret the decision. That was the thing about difficult choices—you made them, and then you lived with them. Regret was a luxury for people who had never operated in the field. In the real world, you weighed the options, picked the least terrible one, and moved on.
Martha Gable was safer in custody than she would be at home with Julian stalking the village.
Someone must have planted the idea of Martha poisoning Pym to Oakes.
The frame would hold for a few days at most—forensics would find inconsistencies, the toxicology would raise questions, and a halfway competent solicitor would tear the case apart.
Vera just needed to provide the evidence before it went to trial.
Simple. Clean. Professional.
She carried her tea to the armchair and sat down. Watson jumped onto the arm of the chair and stared at her with unblinking intensity.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Vera told him. “But I’ve done worse things for worse reasons. This barely registers.”
Watson’s tail flicked. He didn’t look convinced.
“The objective hasn’t changed,” Vera continued, as if explaining to a junior officer. “Find the evidence. Expose OmniCorp. Free Mrs. Gable. Neutralize Julian.” She ticked each point off on her fingers. “Four tasks. Twelve hours until the noon deadline. Perfectly manageable.”
Watson yawned, displaying every one of his teeth.
“Your confidence in me is overwhelming.”
She finished her tea and set the cup aside. The light outside was fading, the sky turning from gold to purple to grey. Another hour and it would be properly dark—dark enough for what she had planned.
Vera rose from her chair and went to the Welsh dresser. She retrieved her field kit from the false bottom: lock picks, flashlight, pepper spray. She checked each item methodically, the way she had done a thousand times before.
Watson watched from the armchair, his eyes tracking her movements.
“Guard the house,” she told him. “And this time, try to look intimidating if anyone breaks in.”
Watson began washing his paw, supremely unconcerned.
Vera pulled on her dark coat—the one with the Kevlar lining—and tucked her equipment into her knitting bag. She caught a glimpse of herself in the hallway mirror: a slight, grey-haired woman in sensible shoes, carrying a floral tapestry bag.
She looked like someone’s grandmother.
She smiled. It was not a warm smile.
“Right,” she said to her reflection. “Let’s go to war.”