On Harrow Hill

“I wouldn’t be surprised, considering his age.” Looking suddenly bored, she picked up her phone from the coffee table and glanced at the time. “I have calls to make. Is there anything else you need from me right now?”

“One last thing,” said Gurney, standing up from the couch. “It would be helpful if you could put together a list of people who might welcome your husband’s death.”

“Detective Slovak already asked for that, and I’ll tell you what I told him. If you mean people who’d be glad Angus is dead, the list is endless. If you mean people getting a significant financial benefit from his death, the list is short.”

“Okay. Start with the short list.”

“Hilda Russell. Chandler Aspern. And Angus’s conniving, gold-digging wife.”

Morgan stared at her, his expression frozen.

Gurney asked, “Are those the words people use to describe you?”

“Those, and a lot worse.” She brushed a hair back from her perfect face. There was a combative glint in her dark eyes.

As they were heading back along the path to the main house, there was a jittery edge to Morgan’s chronic anxiety. “What did you think of that?”

Gurney didn’t answer right away. He was unsettled as much by the attitude of the new widow as by his active involvement in a meeting he had intended to simply observe.

“You mean, what did I think of her short list?”

“I mean, what did you think of Lorinda herself?”

Gurney waited for the woodpecker in the forest to conclude a long series of ratatatats before answering. “Conniving and gold-digging might be close to the truth. Also, controlling and smart. But I have the feeling there’s another quality in her, something I can’t put my finger on. How much do you know about her?”

“Larchfield is as gossipy as any small town. People like Angus and Lorinda figure in a lot of stories. People say she was a wild teenager, brought up in a crazy family over in Bastenburg. There’s a unified school district here, so she went to the same high school as the Larchfield kids. The rumor was that there was an inappropriate relationship between her and the school principal, Hanley Bullock, when she was fifteen. She never said anything publicly about it, nothing was ever proven, and it never became a police matter. But in the end Bullock resigned, his wife divorced him, and he moved out of the area.”

“And Lorinda?”

“When she graduated and turned eighteen, she married Angus, who was sixty-­eight at the time and had recently dumped his third wife. That was ten years ago, and people are still talking about it.”

Morgan stumbled forward on a rough spot in the path, just managing to catch his balance. He didn’t speak again until they emerged onto the lawn in front of the conservatory. “We’re going to meet with Helen Stone over in the carriage house.”

“Okay.”

“What about the other two names on her cui bono list?” asked Morgan, as they proceeded across the lawn. “Any thoughts?”

“I’m not sure what I think. What can you tell me about Hilda Russell?”

“Not much more than I told you on our drive over here. She’s Angus’s younger sister, the Episcopal rector of St. Giles on the village square. She and Lorinda are as different as two human beings can be. Except for willfulness. They both have a ton of it.”

“What about her relationship with Angus?”

“They seemed close enough, at least on the surface. In the community, Hilda was better liked than Angus. She didn’t antagonize people the way he did. Although . . .” Morgan slowed his pace, then stopped. “At least one person had a problem with her. Or with her church.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you Billy Tate was killed in an accident the night before Angus’s ­murder—which is why his fingerprints being at the crime scene is so problematic. I didn’t go into the details of his death, because they didn’t seem relevant. He couldn’t have killed Russell. Dead is dead. End of story. But the fact is, the accident that killed Billy Tate occurred at Hilda’s church. On the roof.” He paused. “Tate, as you may have gathered by now, was a bit of a lunatic. A wild child who got wilder as an adult. He was on the roof of St. Giles, spray-painting graffiti on the steeple, with a thunderstorm blowing in. He was struck by lightning, knocked off the roof, fell a good twenty-five feet onto a hard gravel path. Stone-cold dead.”

“This was witnessed by someone?”

“Two patrol officers, a dog-walking couple, Brad Slovak, and yours truly. In fact, we have it all on a phone video, taken by one of the dog walkers. I’ll show it to you back at headquarters—after we talk to Helen Stone.”

9

As they were heading to the carriage house, Slovak approached them. He didn’t look happy.

“Sir,” he said, giving Gurney a crisp nod, then speaking mainly to Morgan. “Martinez and I just finished interviewing the three gardeners. Bottom line, they didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything, don’t know anything. I showed each of them our file photo of Tate, asked if they’d ever seen him here, or anywhere near here. All said no.”