Carla Neggers - Thief's Mark

“Henrietta!” Cassie Kershaw, who owned the original Balfour farm with her husband, waved by the iron gate in the stone wall that divided their two properties. “Are you all right? I just heard what happened.”

“Hang on,” Henrietta said. “I’ll come to you.”

She extricated herself from examining a crumbling rose trellis and took a well-trodden footpath through the back gate. Cassie stepped aside, tucking strands of her fine, pale hair behind her ear as if to help calm herself. “My God, Henrietta, what a day. Are you all right? Did you just get back from the York farm? I’ve been worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” Henrietta said. “I wasn’t hurt. I spoke with the police and came back here for lunch. You’ve probably heard more details than I have.”

“Gossip, not details.”

Gossip about an unexplained, bloody death was inevitable, but Henrietta had discovered that people in Oliver’s small Cotswold village seldom gossiped about his family tragedy. She didn’t believe they considered it a forbidden subject as much as one well in the past and none of their business. Oliver had been on his own since the back-to-back deaths of his grandparents when he was in his late teens. Henrietta had accompanied Posey to their funerals. She remembered how sad and yet self-contained he’d looked at the cemetery service, the wind catching his tawny hair as he’d stood in front of his parents’ graves. He’d kissed her cheek and told her he was glad she was there, but it had felt mechanical and rote, an upper-class young man remembering his manners. He’d promptly dropped out of Oxford, dividing his time between London and the farm—and eventually his illicit travels to steal art.

In the years since, he could play the dashing, aristocratic Englishman when it suited him, but for the most part he’d kept to himself, particularly when he was at his farm. Henrietta had never been under the impression villagers judged him for his solitary ways. They left him alone, since it was what he wanted.

Or had wanted. Bit by bit since last fall, he’d been lifting himself out of his self-imposed isolation, venturing to the pub, having visitors, now that his secret career as an art thief had come to an end.

Something, of course, Henrietta couldn’t discuss with Cassie or anyone else in the village. “There’s not much I can tell you,” she said.

“You walked home?”

“I didn’t have my car. Someone would have dropped me home, but it felt good to walk after such an intense couple of hours.”

“What a fright. Just awful.”

Henrietta noticed a pair of bright pink work gloves in a wheelbarrow next to a compost bin off to Cassie’s right. She looked in her element, dressed in a baggy flannel shirt, baggy jeans and muddy Wellies. She was American, but she and Henrietta were related through a circuitous connection to the Balfours. Henrietta had introduced her to Eugene Kershaw, an unhappy Oxford solicitor now a deliriously happy farmer. He and Cassie were the parents of two young boys. Eugene’s grandparents had purchased the Balfour farm from Henrietta’s father shortly after her grandfather’s death. It’d been their dream to own a Cotswold farm, but they’d never managed to make much of a go of it. Eugene’s parents were Oxford professors and had no interest in taking on a thriving farm, much less a struggling one.

By the time Eugene and Cassie took over, the property had been seriously neglected and getting it back in shape was proving to be considerably more work at far more expense than either had anticipated. The risk and effort were paying off, and now they were drawing a sufficient income that allowed Eugene to quit his outside work. Both he and Cassie worked at the farm full-time. Henrietta had never heard them complain about the vagaries of farm life. They’d helped spread the word about her garden-design business when she’d made her career change. This was the life Cassie and Eugene wanted to live, how they wanted to raise their sons.

“I’ve been in the compost pile, as you can see,” Cassie said. “Eugene and the boys love mucking about in compost more than I do, but it does feel good to work up a sweat. We only just heard about the mishap out at the York farm. The police came round to ask if we’d seen anyone about. We hadn’t, of course. The death—It was a mishap, wasn’t it?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Henrietta said truthfully. “I’m still trying to absorb everything.”

“But you’re not one to panic,” Cassie observed, making it sound almost like a criticism.

“Dealing with plants will do that.” Henrietta left it there. She wasn’t accustomed to family and friends living close by, seeing people she’d known for years—since childhood, in many cases—on a regular basis. She’d maintained a very different existence in London. “One imagines all sorts of dramatic scenarios to cope with the parts of the work that are pure drudgery. Plucking weeds gets boring after thirty seconds. I’ve imagined myself in so many dangerous situations, it was second nature to deal with a real one.” None of which was an outright lie. “I had Martin’s example. The man is unflappable.”

Cassie relaxed slightly. “I can imagine. He strikes me as the epitome of ‘keep calm and carry on.’ Do you know the man who was killed?”

Henrietta shook her head. “I never saw him before that I can recall. If the police know, they haven’t told me. Where’s Eugene?”

“He’s just back from the post office. I think he’s in the cottage we’re renovating. I’ve been so distracted since the police were here. They were gracious and professional, but you know how it is.” Cassie stopped abruptly and pointed at Henrietta’s forearm. “Is that blood?”

Henrietta glanced at her sleeve. It was blood, indeed. She hadn’t noticed until now. Neither Martin nor the police had mentioned it, but she’d had on her jacket. She must have got blood on her sleeve when she’d checked the dead man’s pulse. She lowered her arm, discreetly angling the blood smear from Cassie’s view. “Martin and I tried to help, but we were too late. There was nothing we could do.”

“How dreadful. Maybe you should have stayed in the potting shed with the housekeeper.”

“How did you know about Ruthie?”

Henrietta winced at her quick question—her MI5 past bubbling up—but Cassie didn’t seem to notice. “Nigel Burns,” she said.

Nigel was the older of Ruthie’s two adult sons, a mechanic who often worked on the equipment at the York farm. Lately he was helping renovate a traditional stone-and-timber cottage on the Kershaw farm. It predated the farmhouse. At one point, Posey had considered it for her home, but Henrietta doubted that thought had lasted long. The low ceilings alone would have done in Posey. The cottage was located just down the stone wall, amid trees that bordered a stream and a field, green with spring grass. Cassie’s parents planned to retire later in the year and move into the renovated cottage.

“Ruthie did well today,” Henrietta said. “She’s old-fashioned, dedicated, a thorn in Martin’s side and part of the furnishings as far as Oliver’s concerned, but she’s reliable. I appreciate her—I promise you I do—but if I ever get as proprietary about gardens as she does about muddy footprints and spots on water glasses, I expect you to elbow me in the ribs.”

Cassie nodded warmly, some color returning to her cheeks. “Consider it done.”

“Today wasn’t easy for her,” Henrietta added guiltily.

“I’m sure it wasn’t. You’re gaining quite a reputation throughout the Cotswolds, you know.”

“A reputation for what?”

“Garden design and a cheerful demeanor.”

Henrietta sighed. “A cheerful Henrietta Balfour. That would shock some people.”