Garden of Secrets Past

NINE


Two and a half hours later, Kingston swung his garage door closed, locked it, and set the ADT security alarm. Two years earlier, his TR4 had been stolen from his rented Waverley Mews garage and he’d gone to great lengths to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.

From a traffic standpoint, the drive back from Stafford had been uneventful. With dry weather and no road works or accidents, he’d had plenty of time to relive and try to sort through the shocking events of the last twenty-four hours, and to start shaping a tentative course of action for the hours and days to come. The first priority, when he got back to his flat, would be to call Amanda to offer his condolences. He sensed that it could be another difficult conversation for both of them.

He knew that more prying into her brother’s activities or raising the question of another visit without good reason would be a breach of etiquette and would run the risk of ending the relationship there and then. Nonetheless, he also realized that if his inquiry was to continue, he had to find a way to examine Tristan’s study, sooner rather than later. Whether he achieved that would depend on her frame of mind when they spoke. He hoped that she would be willing to cooperate. Another option, of course, was to tell her everything, including what her brother had divulged in the last few hours of his life. That would be his last alternative, he decided.

He went through the post and checked his answerphone. The first message was from Amanda. It wasn’t until he heard twenty seconds or so that he realized it was the call she’d left earlier, to tell him that the house had been ransacked. There were no other messages of importance.

There was little doubt in his mind now that the break-in was related to Veitch’s investigation into the Morley family and the potentially explosive material he’d unearthed. So the burglars would certainly have cleaned the place out, taken all of Tristan’s manuscripts, records, notes, phone records, et cetera, anything and everything that could point to complicity or guilt. The fact that they’d taken his computer and iPhone confirmed that. Nevertheless, they’d perhaps overlooked something. If that something existed, Kingston intended to find it, no matter how insignificant or minuscule. “The truth, if it exists, is in the details,” was one of the few proverbs he’d been known to use with any frequency.

If premeditated poisoning was the cause of death, it raised a lot of burning questions: Why was Tristan poisoned and by whom? When and what type of poison? How was it administered? Was it acute or chronic, that is, administered over a period of time? Considering all that, one possibility hadn’t escaped him. Much as he found the thought repellent, it couldn’t be dismissed. Had Amanda played a role? He wanted to rule out the thought summarily but knew that could end up being a mistake. From what little he knew of her and the way she had exhibited genuine concern and caring for her brother, she would seem the last possible suspect. However, having dealt with more than one murderer—two of them women, in fact—he knew better than to take things at face value, to assume anything. The police, he knew, had their own ways of looking at these things, too. The first people to come under scrutiny were usually family members or friends, particularly in husband-and-wife situations or sibling relationships like theirs.

Kingston went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, still thinking about how he could bring her around to the idea of his visiting her without making it seem self-serving or appear that he was intruding in her personal life. If she got the impression that he was inquiring solely for his own benefit, she could easily take it the wrong way, and that would be the end of his just-begun investigation—for the time being, anyway. Waiting for the coffee to percolate, he stared out the window into the small garden below where the clematis, Perle d’Azur, was putting on a flamboyant show on the south wall facing him.

He turned his thoughts to Veitch and his shocking indictment of unnamed members of the Morley family and the “staggering amount of money” involved, which would be in keeping with the rumor about money that Samuel Morley had embezzled from his brother. If everything Veitch had said was true—and Kingston had no reason to doubt the veracity of the historian’s claims—one or more of the Morley clan was complicit in crimes of conspiracy, larceny, and, by the sound of it, much more. Question was, which of the Morleys? Had Veitch meant those in the distant past, or present-day members? Either way, it was starting to look as if he would be knocking on Morley’s door for a chat much sooner than he thought. That he was unaware of crimes of this magnitude seemed impossible, and yet he’d sworn that there was no truth whatsoever to the rumor.

Kingston sat on the sofa, a mug of coffee at his side, and dialed Amanda’s number. This time she was quick to answer, and he was pleased that her voice seemed normal.

“Hello, Amanda,” he said softly but firmly. “I’m calling to offer my condolences. Dr. Chandra told me this morning, at the hospital. I just got back home, as a matter of fact. Are you okay?”

“I am. Yes. Thanks for asking. The truism is undeniable, though: No matter how much you try to prepare yourself for this kind of news, when it happens it’s as if you’d done nothing. In a perverse way, Tristan’s study being ransacked has turned out to be a good thing of sorts. At least it’s given me something meaningful to do today.”

“Is your friend, your neighbor, still staying with you?” Kingston asked, trying not to sound too inquisitive about the break-in so early in the conversation. She’d raised the matter of Tristan’s study, though, and he was wondering how he could keep her on the subject without making it sound contrived.

“No. She had to get back to her shop.”

“The police returned, I take it?”

“Yes, they did. They spent the better part of two hours questioning me.”

“Has cause of death been established?”

“No. They haven’t received the coroner’s postmortem report yet.”

“Did they offer any theories, motives, why someone would have wanted to harm him?”

“They didn’t. No answers, just questions.”

“Did they ask about Tristan’s line of work?”

“They did. They wanted to know everything about him: what he’d been working on, what projects and assignments, if anyone was employing him, if he was collaborating with anyone or he’d met with anyone at the house or elsewhere in recent weeks. They also wanted to know if I knew anything about his work or had been assisting him in any way. I didn’t, by the way, and I wasn’t helping him either.”

Kingston was thinking about asking if the police had mentioned Endicott’s name, when she cut in.

“The police inspector was curious about you, why you wanted to meet with Tristan and what took place at the hospital. I told him that Tristan had asked to see you and that’s all I knew. Then I realized that I knew virtually nothing about you. You’ve never told me what you do or why you called Tristan in the first place. Are you mixed up in this somehow?”

“No, I’m not, Amanda. Let me explain why I wanted to talk to him. I’m a retired professor and occasionally—”

“You don’t have to explain your background. Inspector Wheatley told me all about you, and your reputation, your ‘inclination to meddle in police matters.’”

Kingston nodded to himself. That answered his earlier question.

“So why did you want to see Tristan?” she asked.

“About three weeks ago, the patriarch of a well-known Staffordshire family retained me to conduct an inquiry into a suspicious death—a murder, in fact—that had taken place on their property.” He paused. “You might as well know the name of the family in question—it’s Morley.”

“Really? Sturminster?”

“The same. To begin with, I needed to learn, independently, all about the family, both past and present. By a stroke of luck, I found out that Tristan was a historian who, so I was told, probably knew more about the Morley family than anyone else in the county. That’s why I called him and how I ended up on your doorstep. That’s it, plain and simple. It turns out now that Tristan was working on a story that if published might result in a potentially devastating criminal investigation of the Morley dynasty, one that could rewrite the history books. He told me this at the hospital. He was convinced beyond doubt, it seemed, that members of the Morley family were guilty of capital crimes. I got the impression he also realized that if word got out about what he’d uncovered, the consequences could be very serious indeed. The people concerned wouldn’t hesitate to take extreme measures to prevent that from happening.”

“So that’s why Tristan wanted to see you at the hospital?”

“It is. He must have sensed that it might be his only chance to tell me.”

A lengthy pause followed, which implied that she was weighing his explanation.

“I was going to tell you all this, Amanda, but I decided it could wait, at least until after the funeral service,” he said. “If there’s to be one.”

“I see.”

“I only wish it were different, particularly piled on top of everything else. But you deserve to know the truth.”

When she still didn’t answer, Kingston was starting to wonder if she might be too upset to continue and want to end the conversation. He decided not to wait any longer and simply ask, point-blank, if he could pay her a visit.

“I’m returning to Staffordshire to visit my client in a couple of days,” he said. “If it wouldn’t be an imposition, and providing you feel well enough, of course, I’d like to spend a couple of hours with you, so we can talk this over.”

“Don’t you think you should be telling all this to the police?”

“I will, of course. But it’s important that I talk with you first.”

“What purpose would that serve? It seems that you’ve told me everything already.”

“Not everything, Amanda.”

“Look, Doctor, I’m satisfied, for now anyway, that the police are doing all they can to get to the bottom of this and, for the time being, I think it best that we wait until we have more information. You’ve been kind and considerate, and when this is all over, perhaps we can meet again.”

“I understand. I know how difficult it must be for you right now. I respect your wishes and hope, too, that one day we can get together. Good-bye for now.”

Kingston lowered the phone and stood, thinking how he could have handled the call better, not at all happy with her unfavorable decision. The one narrow avenue of investigation that he’d pinned his hopes on was now blocked, which meant that the only remaining line of inquiry was through Lord Morley. In the coming hours he must focus on how to break the news of Veitch’s accusations to Morley, what to tell him and what to hold back. In an aberrant way, he was looking forward to that confrontation.

* * *

Kingston’s phone call to Morley, at nine the next morning, was directed to Simon Crawford. Morley, he said, was in Paris on a business trip and would be returning on Friday, five days hence. Kingston said that he’d come across information relevant to the murder, stressing that it was important he meet with Morley as soon as possible. Crawford seemed genuinely encouraged by the news and assured Kingston that he’d pass on the message to Morley the moment he returned.

In the kitchen, with a fresh cup of tea, Kingston turned his thoughts to the next couple of days and what he would do with himself. He knew, without looking at his calendar, that he had no commitments, nothing that demanded his attention. A phone call to Andrew would doubtless elicit an invitation to lunch or an event of some sort. It usually did. Maybe he should suggest a visit to Andrew’s garden at Bourne End, an overnight stay. He hadn’t seen it for a long while and he really should make an effort to help Andrew shape it up before the Open Garden event. The more he thought about it, the better the idea sounded. At least the weather had taken a turn for the better. The last couple of days had been clear and sunny—but just in case, he’d check the forecast. Andrew would want to know about his trip to Stafford, too. That would be another slanging match, he knew.

His phone call was picked up by Andrew’s answerphone. It was his usual succinct message, so Kingston had no idea when he might expect a call back. Having recently returned from his fishing trip, it was doubtful that Andrew had wandered far from home, he assumed.

It wasn’t until six thirty that evening that the phone finally rang. Kingston was in the kitchen with a glass of Sancerre, readying dinner: salmon fish cakes. He no longer needed Jane Grigson’s classic recipe; he knew it by heart. He wiped his breadcrumb-daubed hands with a cloth, went into the living room, and picked up the phone.

“Hello, Andrew,” he said, trying to sound jocular.

“This isn’t Andrew.” A long pause followed. “Is this Dr. Kingston?” It was a woman’s voice. Then he realized. It was Amanda.

“Amanda. I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”

“I’m calling to say I’ve changed my mind.”

Her lackluster voice was the same one he remembered from the day they’d first met. “In what way?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what you told me yesterday. I was up all night and I’ve thought of little else since. That’s not the only reason, though. I got a call this morning from Inspector Wheatley—the results of the postmortem, the toxicology tests. The police are convinced now that Tristan was poisoned intentionally.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Did they say what kind of poison?”

“Yes. It was aconite.”

“Aconite?”

“Yes. I wrote it down. I’ve since looked it up. It comes from a plant.”

“I know. Aconitum. It’s beautiful and grows all over the world, but it’s also one of the deadliest, if not the deadliest, plants.”

“This changes everything. All along, I’d been hoping that it was an accident or something else entirely. Now this. It keeps going from bad to worse and I no longer know what to think or where to turn.”

They spoke for another five minutes and it was agreed that Kingston would return to Staffordshire the next day to talk things over and attempt to make sense out of Tristan’s untimely and highly suspicious death. When he’d suggested conducting a thorough search of the house and outbuildings, looking for anything the burglars or police might have missed that might reveal more about Tristan’s research, she’d raised no objection. Staying overnight was no problem, she’d said. She also added that Tristan kept a well-stocked wine cellar, which was music to Kingston’s ears. When the conversation ended, he was left with the impression that she was now willing to help however she could to find her brother’s killer.