MURDER IN BLOOM a BRAND NEW utterly gripping cozy murder mystery full of twists by LIZ FIELDING

Author:LIZ FIELDING [FIELDING, LIZ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books crime thriller and cozy mystery
Published: 2024-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

The sun had slipped beyond the distant hills leaving the sky golden and Abby was lying back in a deckchair replete with a perfectly battered fish and rather too many chips.

“This is perfect,” she said.

“It has been special staying here on our own for a couple of nights.”

Since Jake had been invited by the children to come to stay at Christmas and somehow never left, the houseboat had become a family weekend retreat and they rarely had it to themselves.

He lifted the champagne bottle from a bucket filled with ice and shared the last between their glasses. When he put the bottle down he picked up her hand and ran his thumb over the long scratch. “How did you get this?”

“I had an argument with a bramble and lost.”

“Brambles always win,” he said, keeping hold of her hand. “Where exactly was this bramble?”

“There are some on my show garden,” she said, “but it’s been a bit of a crazy day. Dee asked me to go with her to talk to Fay. I met with Kevin Tarr at the Queen’s Head and then I went to Lower Haughton with Megan. She’s got a house on the market there. It backs on to Hartford Manor so I thought I’d take look.”

His hand tightened around hers. “Abby . . .”

“Patrick Farrell caught me in the garden,” she admitted. “I said I was looking for my dog. A spaniel.” She ignored his exasperated huff. “Daisy might have thought she was having a wedding reception in a beautifully converted Jacobean manor in a few weeks, but although the place is draped in scaffolding and tarpaulins there’s absolutely no sign of building work.”

“But Daisy must have been there?”

“Megan saw her there with Patrick Farrell and she wasn’t happy. You’d think she’d be all over it but she has been very busy. It wasn’t just The Potting Shed and appearances, the book she was working on was scheduled to go out in the autumn to coincide with harvests, and she was negotiating with the company who were to produce her teas and cordials for sale in the spa.”

“So she was leaving the hotel side of things to Farrell?”

“Presumably. I imagine she saw the designs and signed off on them, but didn’t want to be involved in managing the work — not when she had Farrell to do it for her. And there was a big-money deal with a lifestyle magazine to cover the wedding. They were concerned that rival magazines would have time to get people in undercover to take photographs and rush out copies if the news leaked so they were paranoid about secrecy.”

“But there isn’t going to be a wedding,” Jake said. “And from what you saw today, there isn’t going to be a hotel either.”

“No.”

“You think it was all a lie, don’t you? Right from the start.”

“If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck . . .”

“I hope you didn’t quack at Patrick Farrell.”

“No, I acted as if I thought it was his home.

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