The Wrong Flowers at Wickham Ford
The wreath arrived on a Tuesday, which was, in Agnes Peel’s view, already suspicious.
She had been deadheading the roses along her front wall when the florist’s van rattled past, slowed at the bend, and stopped outside Dovecote House. Agnes watched over her reading glasses as the young driver climbed out and carried a large circular arrangement of white lilies and dark ivy to the front step of number twelve. He rang the bell, set the wreath down, and drove away before anyone answered.
Agnes snipped a spent bloom. She waited.
The door opened. Margaret Featherby stood in the frame, one hand pressed flat against the wood, staring down at the flowers. The lilies gave off that particular cold sweetness that Agnes associated with church aisles and drawn curtains. Margaret did not bend to look at the card. She simply stepped back and closed the door.
Agnes set down her secateurs.
Margaret Featherby’s husband, Colin, had not died. Agnes had seen him at the post office on Friday, buying stamps and a Battenberg cake. He had been in perfectly good health. He had, in fact, complained at some length about his left knee.
She went indoors and put the kettle on, because that was what one did when one needed to think properly.
By Wednesday morning, Agnes had a theory. By Wednesday afternoon, she had called on Dorothy Sprake, who ran the flower shop in the village and who could be relied upon for information provided one arrived with shortbread.
Dorothy’s back room smelled of cold water, green stems, and the particular sharpness of chrysanthemum sap. She was stripping lower leaves from a bucket of carnations when Agnes set the tin on the workbench.
“A wreath,” Agnes said. “White lilies, dark ivy. Delivered to Dovecote House yesterday morning.”
Dorothy’s hands paused for just a fraction of a second before continuing. “We do a good deal of sympathy work.”
“I’m sure. Who placed the order?”
Dorothy reached for the shortbread. “I’m not certain I ought to say.”
“Dorothy. You made my daughter’s wedding bouquet. You can tell me.”
A long moment passed, filled with the drip of water onto the stone floor. Dorothy sighed. “It was phoned in. Paid by bank transfer, name on the account was C. Featherby.”
Agnes walked back to Dovecote House in the thin afternoon light, her shoes crunching over the grit the council had scattered after the last frost. She knocked and waited.
Margaret opened the door. She had circles beneath her eyes the colour of old bruises, and she was wearing a cardigan she had clearly put on inside out.
“I wondered,” Agnes said, “whether you might like some company.”
They sat at the kitchen table with tea that Margaret made too strong and then forgot to drink. The wreath was not visible. Agnes suspected it was in the bin behind the garage.
“It’s been going on for some time,” Margaret said at last, turning her mug in slow circles. “Letters. Phone calls. A solicitor’s letter suggesting Colin had amended his will.” She stopped. “He doesn’t know. I haven’t told him.”
“Someone wants you to believe your husband is preparing for something,” Agnes said carefully. “Or preparing to leave.”
“Both, I think. Sometimes one, sometimes the other.” Margaret’s voice was very even, which cost her something; Agnes could see it in the rigid line of her jaw.
“Has anything been taken? Money moved?”
Margaret looked up. “Our joint savings account. Someone’s been making small withdrawals. Colin thought it was me. I thought it was him. We had words.” She pressed her lips together. “Quite a few words.”
Agnes thought about the stamps and the Battenberg cake. She thought about a man who would stand at a post office counter for ten minutes discussing his knee. He was not a man arranging to disappear. He was a man entirely unaware that someone was working hard to make his wife believe he was.
“The bank transfer,” Agnes said. “For the flowers. Under Colin’s name.”
“He has a step-brother,” Margaret said quietly. “Raymond. He’s been staying at the Lamb and Flag for three weeks. He came for a funeral and never left.” She picked up her mug, found it cold, and set it down. “The will amendment. It was Raymond’s name in the new draft. As principal beneficiary.”
Agnes walked to the Lamb and Flag on Thursday morning. She did not go in. She stood on the opposite pavement and noted the hire car in the car park, the curtain moving at a first-floor window, and the way Raymond Featherby, when he spotted her watching, let the curtain fall and did not appear again.
She telephoned Detective Constable Marsh at Ridley Cross that same afternoon. She had his direct number, because this was not her first occasion of needing it.
On Friday, she was back at her roses. The morning air carried the smell of turned earth from the allotments and the distant sound of a tractor working up on Pell Hill. The florist’s van did not pass. Two police cars went in the direction of the Lamb and Flag, quiet and unhurried, which was the way things tended to go in Wickham Ford when Agnes Peel had made a telephone call.
Margaret Featherby came out of Dovecote House at half past ten, crossed the lane, and set a small pot of homemade jam on Agnes’s wall without a word. Damson, by the look of it. Dark and thick through the glass.
Agnes picked it up, felt the slight warmth that still lingered in the jar, and went indoors to find a spoon.
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