“I’m sorry to hear she’s unwell.”
“We’ve never got on especially well, but I do worry about her.” She smiled at me. “She’s quite well enough to see you, however.”
“I purchased some honey from her at the festival, but I didn’t have a chance to pick it up…” I left the rest of that sentence unfinished, lest the reminder provoke Marena to further tears. “Perhaps now isn’t the best of times, but you know how women in my condition often have their fancies.”
It was a flimsy excuse. After all, I could very well have sent Winnelda to collect it without coming myself. It didn’t seem, however, that Marena had noticed.
“You may have to go around to the kitchen door. She often pretends she’s not here when visitors knock on the front door.” I didn’t miss the little look of contempt she gave as she glanced back at the house.
“I’ll just go and speak with her then. Go back to the vicarage, dear, and do try not to worry so much. Everything’s going to be fine.”
“I hope you’re right, Mrs. Ames,” she said softly. She got on her bicycle and went off down the lane toward the village without a backward glance.
I looked back toward the house and was startled to see the face of Mrs. Hodges watching us through the curtains. Then the curtain dropped, and she was gone.
While I was standing, debating whether I should go to the front door and knock or go to the kitchen door as Marena had suggested, she opened the door.
“I thought I heard Marena causing a scene out here,” she said flatly. I marveled at her lack of compassion for her daughter. Whatever one thought of Marena’s romantic escapades, surely one must feel sorry that a young man she had once cared deeply for had died.
I fought down my irritation, however. As Mrs. Hodges would be, I was sure, the first to say, one caught more flies with honey than with vinegar.
“She’s quite upset,” I said. “She cared very much for Bertie Phipps.”
She let out a short breath through her nose, either impatience or disagreement, I wasn’t sure which. “She didn’t care for that boy as much as she pretends to now that he’s dead. What can I do for you, Mrs. Ames?”
“I was wondering if I might collect my jar of honey. I didn’t have the chance at the festival.”
Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and I could tell that my excuse was not entirely satisfactory. Nevertheless, she stepped outside and closed the door behind her.
“Come this way,” she said. She led me around the side of the house, through a tidy kitchen garden. At the edge of the field of lavender and yarrow beyond the back gate I could see the stacks of her hives, waiting for their occupants to return. We went in through a door that led into a clean, sunny kitchen. I had imagined the interior of her house to be a bit grimmer than this, and I was a bit surprised at the homely warmth of it.
There were filmy white curtains on the windows, admitting the sunlight, and every surface had been scrubbed until it shone. The floors, too, practically gleamed. Beeswax, no doubt.
There was a teapot on the table with a milk pitcher and a small jar of honey.
It smelled pleasantly of herbs, and I looked up to see bunches of dried lavender, thyme, and rosemary and bundles of sage hanging from one of the ceiling’s wooden beams.
She went to a cupboard against one wall and pulled it open. “You’re in luck. I’ve only a few jars of the lavender left,” she said. She nodded at the jar on the table. “And that’s the last of the rosemary. Marena’s favorite, though it’s too strong a taste for most. I’ll be glad when the bees return. I’m hoping to have a larger colony this year than last.”
“I meant to collect it after the race,” I said. “But with everything that happened, it slipped my mind. It was all so unfortunate…”
“That boy getting himself killed, you mean? Yes, I suppose it was.”
There was something very unpleasant about Mrs. Hodges, but one couldn’t help but feel that there was also something clever about her. I decided that she would, perhaps, appreciate the most direct approach.
“Who do you think might have done it?”
She turned her hard gaze on me. “It doesn’t matter what I think.”
Another thought occurred to me, and, before I could think better of it, I asked the question out loud. “Why were you in the field near the Priory during the races?”
I expected, perhaps, a look of surprise, but, if anything, her expression became more calmly guarded. “Who says I was?”
“Someone mentioned it to me,” I said vaguely.
Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly even as the corner of her mouth turned up in a grim smile. I recalled suddenly the illustration of a woodland witch in a storybook I’d read as a child.
“You’re a clever one, Mrs. Ames,” she said. “But I’m not the one you need to be questioning.”
“You were wearing a different dress after the races than before,” I said. Now that it was all out in the open, I might as well be direct.
She shrugged, unfazed by this piece of evidence. “I broke a jar of honey and walked home to change my dress. No crime in that, is there?”
“No, of course not.” Could the explanation really be so simple? I found it unsatisfactory somehow, though it made perfect sense. The property line between Bedford Priory and Thornecrest was nearly a direct route to this cottage.
“I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to harm him to keep him from Marena, anyway, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
I didn’t bother to deny it, and she went on. “People must take the consequences of their actions. If Marena wanted him, I wasn’t going to stand in the way.”
“Lady Alma said Bertie mentioned he knew a secret about you.”
I had said it bluntly, to see if I could catch her off guard, but the only thing that crossed her face was a confused frown. “It must have been secret indeed, for I’ve no idea what you mean.”
“Are you sure?” Even as I asked the question, I felt somehow that she was telling the truth. She had been surprised, not afraid, at the suggestion. I had seen it clearly in her face.
“I’ve a better question for you,” she said. “One that’s been on my mind since that afternoon.”
My skin prickled a little, as though I were about to learn something very important. “Oh?”
She leaned a bit closer, her sharp dark eyes meeting mine. “What was that Imogen girl doing that day talking to Bertie Phipps in the field where he died?”
16
“YOU SAW IMOGEN Prescott talking to Bertie Phipps?” I asked, surprised by this latest bit of information.
She nodded. “I didn’t think much of it at the time. But after he turned up dead, I started to wonder what she was doing with him.”
“How did you know who she was?”
“It’s hard to keep things quiet in this village.”
That was true enough. But what connection was there between Imogen and Bertie? Thus far no one had given any indication that the two of them had known each other, Imogen least of all.
My mind immediately began sorting through the possible reasons for this deception. What was Imogen hiding? I knew Bertie had often gone to London. I supposed they had met there, though the nature of their connection was a bit harder to discern. A romantic liaison was perhaps the most obvious choice, but I had been so sure that Bertie genuinely cared for Marena. Could there be some other relationship between Bertie and Imogen?