Bess reached up to toy with my lips and I nibbled her fingers.
“Do you remember what Arthur said about your grandfather?” I asked her, somewhat indistinctly. “He knew that Grandpa was a retired attorney with a passion for orchids. He also knew about Grandpa’s upcoming wedding. He knew things about Emma, too,” I went on. “When we were in the library, he called her ‘the other American’ and talked about her riding school. He claimed that he ‘heard’ things about Finch in a general way, as one does in the country. But maybe he heard about me and Emma and Grandpa from Marigold.”
I looked at the file cabinets again.
“What’s his game?” I asked Bess. “Why is he so interested in Finch?”
I couldn’t picture the Summer King as a developer.
He already owns the village, I argued internally. If he wanted to convert his properties to holiday homes, he wouldn’t have allowed Amelia to lease Pussywillows. He wouldn’t have allowed Elspeth, Opal, Millicent, and Selena to lease their cottages. He would have kept Mr. Barlow from leasing the house near the bridge and he would have had Marigold Edwards tell Bill to look somewhere else for office space.
I stroked Bess’s pink cheek.
“Arthur Hargreaves isn’t a greedy corporate creep,” I told her. “He’s a . . . he’s a . . . a teacher.”
My voice trailed away into horrified silence as I realized how Arthur might bring the power of the imagination to bear on Finch.
“They’re scientists,” I said in hushed tones. “They like to conduct experiments.”
Arthur’s grandson was an astrophysicist, his son was a rocket scientist, and his wife was a structural engineer. While they pursued advanced scientific careers, Arthur’s younger grandchildren conducted experiments just for the fun of it.
There was Emily, who buried chicken bones for later excavation; Stephen, who used his Meccano set to construct complex machines; and Colin, the prankster, who thought it would be a good joke to make his grandmother’s carriage clock run backwards. Even Harriet’s pinwheel cookies were an experiment.
Then there were the kites, the marvelous kites that had been designed and built by a veritable horde of Hargreaveses.
It seemed as though the entire Hargreaves family was fond of experimentation, including Arthur’s second nephew, the financier who was “creative, yes, but not in a good way.”
“And let’s not forget Great-Great-Grandpa Quentin,” I said, “the inventor who built experimental models.” I caught my breath as another piece of the puzzle fell into place. “No wonder Arthur bought a da Vinci sketch, Bess. Leonardo da Vinci was a scientific genius. He spent his whole life jumping from one experiment to the next.”
My horror morphed into anger as my train of thought picked up speed.
Had Arthur decided to conduct an experiment in Finch? I asked myself. Were my neighbors and Marigold’s clients unwitting participants in a social engineering project he’d designed? Did he pick and choose residents based on criteria he’d devised? Did he plot the results of the immersion tours on a graph? Did he illustrate them with details taken from Marigold’s reports? Was he planning to publish his findings?
The answers seemed all too obvious.
“How dare he?” I growled. “How dare he sit on his hill and look down on the rest of us? How dare he tinker with people’s lives?”
Bess didn’t react to my growling because she was asleep. I laid her gently in the pram, shut down the snack bar, and got to my feet. My meeting with Marigold Edwards had proved to be more revealing than Aunt Dimity could have imagined, but I’d gleaned all the information I could glean from Marigold.
To obtain the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about Monoceros Properties, Limited, I would have to confront Arthur Hargreaves.
? ? ?
I drove directly to Fairworth House, transferred Bess from her car seat to the pram, and headed for the orchid wood. I entered the Hillfont estate through the wrought-iron gate in the boundary wall, crossed the broad meadow, and walked beneath the arched opening in the outermost inner wall.
I passed through the apple orchard, the berry garden, the herb garden, the burgeoning vegetable garden, and the minor courtyards, and I found my way to the fountain court, guided by the distinctive shapes of the half-ruined walls I’d passed when I’d followed Arthur.
The fountain court was abuzz with activity. Stephen, Colin, Emily, and Harriet were there along with five other children I didn’t recognize. The nine children appeared to be attaching tails to nine simple but brightly colored kites.
Dressed in a faded Hawaiian shirt, worn blue jeans, and battered sneakers, and adorned with his grape-wreath crown, Arthur stood in their midst, answering questions, giving advice, and lending a helping hand where one was needed.