Doug Allyn: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, No. 1. Whole No. 785, January 2007

“I don’t want another death on my hands.”

“This is all supposition anyway,” Rosemary said. “We’ll probably find the poor man died of natural causes.”

“Listen, if Gertrude is a poisoner, those pies were meant for my friends Jane, Michael, and Maeve. Was she in dispute with them? You know what neighbours can be like.”

“Neighbourly, in most cases.”

“What could she have used?”

“You said she’s a gardener. You and I know that a garden is full of plants capable of poisoning people.”

“Christmas roses!” Laura said. “We’ve got some in the front.”

“Let’s not leap to any conclusions,” Rosemary said, trying to remain calm. “Besides, your carol singers had been round most of the village eating mince pies and drinking wine before they got to you. If he was poisoned, it could have been someone else’s pie that did it.”

Laura refused to think of anyone else except Gertrude as responsible. “I’d dearly like to know if she was having a feud with Jane and family.”

“Why don’t we ask someone?”

“In a village? Who do you ask?”

“The vicar. He ought to be discreet.”

The vicarage was ten minutes away, at the end of a footpath across the frost-covered fields. If nothing else, they’d be exercising Wilbur the greyhound. With difficulty they got him into his coat.

They passed Gertrude’s garden on the way. Laura grabbed Rosemary’s arm. “Look, she’s got a patch of Christmas roses.”

“She’s also got white bryony in her hedge and a poinsettia in her window, both of them potential killers, but it doesn’t make her a murderer,” Rosemary said to curb Laura’s imagination. “She may have mistletoe inside the house. Death cap toadstools growing in her compost. I see she has a greenhouse. There could be an oleander in there.”

But Laura was unstoppable. “I didn’t tell you about the greenhouse. She told me she was fumigating it for pests, and I don’t know what she was using, but it sounded primitive, and hazardous as well. Would you believe burning shreds of paper that she had to stamp on to produce the smoke?”

Rosemary winced. “Out of the ark, by the sound of it. Well, out of some dark shed. Old gardeners used flakes of nicotine. Highly dangerous, of course, and illegal now. What’s wrong with a spray?”

Laura tapped the side of her nose. “Chemicals.”

“Fumes are eco-friendly, are they? Isn’t that the vicarage ahead?”

They shouted to Wilbur, who must have scented fox or rabbit. He raced back, tail going like a mainspring, and got no reward for obedience. He was put on the lead and no doubt decided it’s a dog’s life.

The vicarage was surrounded by a ten-foot yew hedge that Rosemary mentioned was another source of deadly poison. Laura gave her a long look. “You wouldn’t be winding me up, would you?”

She smiled. “Encouraging a sense of proportion.”

The vicar, in a Bath Rugby Club sweatshirt, was relaxing after his Christmas duties. He sounded genuinely disturbed about the death of Melchior, and guilt-stricken, also. “If I’d had any idea he was so ill, I wouldn’t have asked you to take him in,” he said to Laura. “You acted splendidly, getting him to hospital.”

“I couldn’t tell the police much about him,” Laura said. “Didn’t even know his surname.”

“Boon. Douglas Boon. His family have farmed here for generations. Blackberry Farm is the last of the old farms. I suppose his wife inherits. There aren’t any children. She’ll have to sell up, I should think.”

“What do you mean by the last of the old farms?”

“Traditional. Cattle and sheep. Everyone’s switching to flowers and bulbs since that foot-and-mouth epidemic. We didn’t have an outbreak here, thank the Lord, but other farmers didn’t want the risk and sold up. Much of the land has been put under glass by Ben Black, known to you as Balthazar.”

“The tall man?” Laura said.

“A giant in the nursery garden business and a very astute businessman. Lay chairman of the Parochial Church Council as well, so I have to work closely with him. He’s from London originally. To the locals, he’s an incomer, but he gives them a living.”

“So he’ll be interested in Blackberry Farm if it comes on the market?” Rosemary said.

“No question.” The vicar sighed. “I happen to know he made Douglas a handsome offer last week, far more than it’s worth, and I heard that Douglas was willing at last to sell.”

“Every man has his price,” Laura remarked.

“Yes, and it is also said that gold goes in at any gate except the gate of heaven. As it turns out, Ben will get the farm for a fraction of that offer if Kitty Boon wants to sell.” He looked wistful. “I’ll be sorry if the cows go. They hold up the traffic when they’re being driven along the lane for milking, but rows of daffodils wouldn’t be the same at all.”

Laura had a vision of rows of daffies holding up the traffic.

“Do you mind if I ask about someone else?” she said. “On Christmas Eve, Gertrude Appleton called with some mince pies.”

“Gertrude?” The vicar had a special smile for this member of his flock. “That’s one of her many superstitions. Something about exchanging pies to avoid bad luck. False worship, really. I don’t approve, but we all indulge her because she’s such a formidable lady.”

“Harmless?”

“We have to hope so.”

“Is she on good terms with my friends, Jane and Michael Eadington?”

“As far as I know.”

“No boundary disputes? Complaints about the greyhound? Excessive noise?”

“I’ve never heard of any. Why do you ask?”

Rosemary said quickly, “It’s a joke. Those pies she brought round aren’t the most appetising.”

The vicar smiled. “Now I understand. Did you try one?”

She shook her head. “It’s the look of them, paler than Hamlet’s father.”

His eyes twinkled at that. “I’m afraid not one of the carollers could face one the other night.”

“And will you indulge her, as you put it, and exchange mince pies?”

He smiled. “The annual batch of pies for Gertrude is one more parochial duty for me. I don’t have a wife to cook for me, unfortunately.”

“Your pies are delicious, I’m sure,” Laura said, liking this young clergyman.

Rosemary said in her no-nonsense voice, “The third of the Three Kings was Caspar, right?”

“Little Colin Price the other night,” the vicar said. “He’s my tenor, at the other end of the scale from Ben Black.”

“As a singer, do you mean?”

“I was thinking of his situation. Colin’s up against it financially. He was a dairy farmer like Douglas, but less efficient. He lost a big contract with the Milk Marketing Board a couple of years ago and Douglas bought him out. He’s reduced to work as a jobbing gardener these days.”

Laura exchanged a wry smile with Rosemary. “There are worse ways to make a living.”

“True. But I have to object when he does it on Sundays sometimes and misses Morning Service. Colin just smiles and quotes those lines, ‘One is nearer God’s heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth.’ That isn’t scripture, I tell him, it’s a bit of doggerel.”

The vicar came out to see them off and Rosemary admired the yew hedge and asked if he clipped it himself.

“Every twig,” he said. “Can’t afford a gardener on my stipend. Some people seem to have the idea that yew is slow-growing. From experience I can tell you that’s a myth.”

“What do you do with the clippings — burn them?”

“No, I bag them up and send them away to be used in cancer treatment.”

“For the taxol in them,” Rosemary said. “Very public-spirited.”