She was silent a long moment. “I think I prefer accidental ingestion.”
“Well, she definitely wouldn’t eat it on purpose.” I got up and paced the room. “We’re forgetting Peony,” I said. The cat was still missing. “This is getting hard to keep track of.”
“We need a chart.” Miss Judson was a great proponent of charts. The schoolroom was liberally adorned with them—Mendeleev’s Periodic Table, a reproduction of the Copernican solar system, even a framed anatomy chart that had been Mum’s. The only wall that wasn’t covered with charts, or windows, had a full-length blackboard with an extra sliding panel. I pushed it aside, rubbed out last week’s lecture on Abyssinia, and started making notes—everything I could remember from Dr. Munjal’s report and my conversation with Trudy. The apparent heart attack, the bruises, the lack of water in her lungs. The messy bathroom and the pollen-stained nightgown.
“Don’t forget the footprints. And the cigar cutter.”
“And Mr. Hamm lying,” I added. I paused, chalk in midair. They were his footprints I’d found, plus he lived on the grounds and had access to the plant. He was also the most likely person to encounter Miss Wodehouse in the middle of the night. “Is it easy to distill the digitalis from foxgloves?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Miss Judson said. “But according to this, all parts of the plant are poisonous. It doesn’t take much skill to make tea out of leaves.”
I turned to her. “A professional gardener would know that foxgloves are toxic. Wouldn’t he?”
7
Witness Statements
It is common practice, when confronting a suspect, to withhold facts only the perpetrator could know, in the anticipation that he—or she—will slip up and inadvertently confess.
—H. M. Hardcastle, Principles of Detection
I needed to talk to Mr. Hamm. I couldn’t bring myself to believe he could have killed Miss Wodehouse, no matter what our chart said about Means and Opportunity. He didn’t have any motive. Saturday morning was the funeral, and Mr. Ambrose and Father’s aunt Helena were coming over for dinner that night, but Miss Judson released me around teatime, whereupon I headed straight to Redgraves. I had the strangest feeling the gardener was avoiding me. I finally found him out near the border with the park, overturning the compost.
“Aye, lass,” he said in his rich, rumbly voice. “I’ve not see tha’ about these days.”
I didn’t like it when anyone else called me “lass” or “little girl,” but when Mr. Hamm said it, it made me feel warm inside, as if I wasn’t just the weird girl next door who was too smart for her own good, but someone worth teaching. Worth listening to. I climbed onto the lowest rail of the fence around the compost heap. “I still haven’t found Peony. Trudy says she’s never been gone this long.”
He leaned on his rake and scratched under his rumpled hat. He still had on the black armband from the funeral, even over his work coat. “She’ll turn up. Tha’ munna worrit.”*
“What will happen to the gardens now?”
He glanced toward the house. “Depends on the solicitors, I suppose.”
“But what will happen to you?” I said, adding, “I don’t want you to go.”
Mr. Hamm gave a little grunt. “Now, don’t you worrit over me, neither. A lot of gardens in England.”
Holding fast to the fence, I watched the compost turn and turn. We were in a shady back corner of the grounds, far from the house, and it occurred to me that a compost heap would be an ideal place to conceal a body. There was quicklime in the greenhouse—gardeners used it to improve the soil, but murderers used it to improve decomposition.
Miss Wodehouse’s body wasn’t missing, though, and it seemed exceeding unlikely that there’d be another one just composting out here, by coincidence. Still, I’d already seen Mr. Hamm destroy evidence once—his so-called “storm debris” bonfire the morning after the murder—and it was possible he could be concealing more, where no one could see or stop him.
“Do you think Miss Wodehouse died naturally?” I asked.
The rake jerked suddenly, like it had hit a stone. Mr. Hamm didn’t look up or speak for the longest time. The hush from our corner of the garden was oppressive, and I realized just how isolated we really were.
“Now, what has tha’ wondering sommat like that?”
I gripped the fence and made myself ask the question. “I know you and Miss Wodehouse were in the garden that night, and someone pushed her. Was it you?”
Mr. Hamm shoved his hat back and stared at me like I’d started singing opera in Portuguese. “Push Miss Wodehouse? Tha’ thinks I’d do such a thing?”
“No! But I want to know what happened. What was she doing out there that late at night? I saw your footprints—those shoes you’re wearing right now. And whatever you were burning, it wasn’t storm debris. It was the lilies, wasn’t it? Why did you destroy them?”
“Look here, lassie,” he said, his voice hot and cold at the same time. “All tha’ needs to know is that I never did owt here that Miss Wodehouse didn’t approve. I never were int’ lily plot Tuesday night, and I never pushed Miss Wodehouse. She were an old lady! It’d be like pushing an old dog. Who could do that?”
“Well, she was mean. Maybe she snapped at you?”
Mr. Hamm scoffed at this. “She were always snappin’ at everybody. I’ve worked here nineteen years. If I hadn’t got used to Mistress’s ways by now, I’d not have stayed this long. And I’d never kill her. I’d just move along. Like I said, lots of gardens in England.”
I chewed on my lip and considered this. I wanted to be reassured, but he hadn’t actually answered my questions. He had no alibi, and he was being evasive. I knew what Father would make of that. Mr. Hamm went back to his savage stabbing of the compost, all friendliness gone from his face.
I ventured another question. “What do you know about foxgloves?”
“Full sun. Not too much water. Anything else, lass?” His voice was hard.
There was, but he was clearly in no mood to answer me. I shook my head.
“Tha’ best be along, then.”
I trudged back to the main house. My Investigation was not proceeding with due haste, but I was determined not to let another frustrating interview deter me. Near the front doors, I found the flower bed where Miss Judson had sketched the foxgloves. The tall purple flowers stuck up behind a tangle of four-o’clocks and silvery lamb’s ears. Mindful of the plant’s overwhelming toxicity, I stepped carefully over the shorter flowers in the bed, looking for broken stems or missing leaves, but couldn’t tell if anything had been disturbed.