“Two weeks ago. Our annual spring fling. Games and refreshments and punch. Silly games like egg-and-spoon races. Although, in fact, there was more than punch. Asia was touting her homemade limoncello. Tasted like bathroom cleaner, if you ask me.” He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “The whole thing is a chance for the new money to trot themselves out in front of those of us who are middle-class professionals, or worse, have inherited our houses. We are a nuisance they’d like to be rid of. Then their property values would go up.”
“All good mates, then.” Kerry gave him a sharklike smile. “We’ve been given to understand that sometimes there’s a bit of, um, hanky-panky that goes on in the garden at night. Illicit activity, if you take my meaning. Residents visiting other residents, that sort of thing.”
“Hanky-panky? God, I haven’t heard that in years. And, no, Chief Inspector, I don’t know anything about any illicit activities. My wife would kill me.”
Then Peacock seemed to realize what he’d said and looked, for the first time during the interview, truly horrified.
Roland Peacock had told them they’d recognize the house by the wisteria growing over the small patio. Indeed, Gemma had noticed the flowers when they’d walked along the south side of the garden that morning. The scent, heavenly on the morning air, was even stronger now in the heat of the day. The plant grew on a pergola anchored by the two brick walls separating Asia Ford’s patio from its neighbors on either side. It made Gemma think of a purple-roofed cave.
Beneath the clustered blooms there was a bricked area with worn, comfortable-looking wicker furniture, and a small greenhouse. Almost every available space was filled with pots and plants and gardening tools, but shelves in the greenhouse held a beautiful array of glass bottles. Strings of fairy lights hung beneath the pergola.
As in most of the houses, a low iron fence and gate separated the private patios from the larger space. Gemma hesitated at the gate—it seemed an intrusion to just walk into a space so personal.
Kerry, who had stopped to check on the SOCOs, had just joined her when the house door opened and they were spared the dilemma.
A woman came out, greeting them with a smile. “Were you looking for me? I saw you from the kitchen window.”
“Are you Asia Ford?” asked Gemma, although she was certain it must be she. The name, with its combination of the exotic and the commonplace, fit her perfectly. With her loosely tied hair, cotton T-shirt, and flowing skirt, Gemma at first thought her young, perhaps Reagan’s age. But as she came into the brighter light by the gate, Gemma saw that there were silver sparkles in her light brown hair and that her face was lightly lined.
“I am. Can I help you?” Asia Ford took in Kerry’s very official jacket and skirt and her smile faded. “I saw the people in boiler suits. Is this about Reagan?”
“I’m afraid it is,” Gemma said, and introduced them. “Can we have a word?”
“Oh, dear.” Ford touched her fingers to her lips, but the gesture only partly covered the spasm of distress. “Such a dreadful thing.” She shook her head as she unlatched the gate. “Please, come and sit. I was just making some lemonade. I’ll bring the pitcher out.”
Kerry started to protest but Gemma quickly said, “Thank you. That would be lovely.” The jacket potato and coffee at lunch had left her thirsty, and it was getting very warm. She sank gratefully into one of the wicker chairs and Kerry followed suit although with obvious reluctance. It was cooler under the purple canopy and the sweet scent of the blossoms hung about them like a physical presence.
After a moment, drawn by curiosity, Gemma stood up again and went to the door Ford had left standing open. “Can I help?” she called, looking into a kitchen cum sitting room.
Roland Peacock’s living area had been scattered with things in everyday use, but beneath the surface clutter the rooms had been modern and expensively designed. Asia Ford’s kitchen and sitting area, however, might have existed in a time warp.
An enormous old cream-colored Rayburn dominated the room, and Gemma thought it might heat the entire house in the winter. There was a scarred Welsh dresser, more of the same wicker furniture as that on the patio, a table covered with a floral oilcloth, and beside the Rayburn, a sofa of indeterminate age and color draped in cashmere shawls. A farmhouse sink and oak work tops stood below the window.
The walls—what could be seen of them beneath an assortment of prints, paintings, and posters—were the same pale green as the walls of Gemma’s childhood flat. Every surface in the room seemed filled with odd bits of china, books, and jugs filled with fresh-cut flowers.
It ought, thought Gemma, to have been claustrophobic, but instead she found it immensely charming. “What a wonderful room,” she exclaimed.
Ford looked up from the mismatched glasses she was setting on a tin tray. “Do you like it? The house was my parents’, and I’ve never been inclined to do it up. Or had the money, truthfully, with what it costs these days to refit things.” To the tray, she added a clear pitcher afloat with sliced lemons, a small bowl of ice cubes, and a vase filled with the same trailing, pale pink roses Gemma had seen at the bottom of the garden. “Climbing Cecile Brunner,” Ford said, following her glance. “Clive Glenn cuts them for me. I love the scent. You could hold the door for me,” she added, and together they took out the refreshments.
Gemma remembered what Peacock had said about the new money wanting to get rid of the residents who’d inherited their properties. She could just imagine a builder slavering at the thought of tearing out that kitchen and putting in all the mod cons, and it made her sad. Not that either Ford or Peacock were old—she would put Ford perhaps in her fifties and Peacock in his forties, although it was hard to judge men in those mid years.
“Your parents—did they live here a long time?” she asked.
“My mother was born in this house. Her father was a factory manager, very respectably middle-class although Notting Hill had declined from its heyday by then. My parents were missionaries so the house was rented out piecemeal over the years,” Ford added as she put two ice cubes in each glass and topped the glasses up from the pitcher.
Gemma had been expecting a fizzy drink or lemonade made from a tin, but what she tasted when she lifted her glass was fresh, cool, and tart enough to make her mouth pucker. She drank half of it down in a gulp. “That’s wonderful.”
“I grow my own lemons,” said Ford, with a gesture towards the little greenhouse. Beyond the glass bottles, Gemma glimpsed the glossy dark green foliage of lemon trees, and remembered Roland Peacock’s comment about the limoncello.
“Miss Ford,” she said, “Roland Peacock said you were friendly with Reagan Keating. He said the two of you were chatting at the garden party.”
“Please, call me Asia. ‘Miss Ford’ makes me feel like a spinster aunt.” The animation faded from her face and she sighed. “Reagan liked to help me with things. And she loved it here.” Her gesture took in the patio. “We were so looking forward to the summer and picnics. Silly things.”
“You spent quite a bit of time with her, then?” said Gemma.