Geoffrey stood up and delivered his answer solemnly. “Lamb. The answer is lamb.”
“That’s right, Geoffrey,” said Carol. “While we’re on the subject, is there a similar pie thatdoescontain beef? If so, what is it called?”
“Cottage pie,” said Geoffrey, almost adding “Your Honor,” then sitting down.
“Cottage. Pie,” said Carol. “Don’t feel bad about it, Dr. Turnham, it’s a very common error, but it is an error that sent us down the wrong path. I’m sure Geoffrey would have spotted it himself in the autopsy, but I’m told he was feeling a little queasy. Desmond didn’t have shepherd’s pie that day. He had cottage pie, and he had it somewhere else. But we’ll get to that.”
Carol looked at her table of allies. Margaret’s, Catherine’s, and Geoffrey’s mouths were agape in admiration. It gave her the confidence to continue. She held up her thumb and forefinger. “Bludgeoning. Desmond was hit on the head by a blunt object that had a flat, circular surface, with a diameter of roughly forty-five millimeters. My first thought was a croquet mallet. They are readily available at Sheldon Oaks. Jim, who unfortunately can’t be with us this evening, was a regular on the croquet lawn and had experience with murder. But there are two problems with that: Our murderer was left-handed, while Jim was not. And our croquet mallets do not match the indentation on Desmond’s head. I know because I measured one this morning. There is one mallet missing from Sheldon Oaks, though. The gardening mallet. If anyone is interested, by the way, the top-selling gardening mallet on Amazon just so happens to have a surface diameter of forty-five centimeters.
“While we’re on the subject of gardening tools, let’s come to strangling. The autopsy suggested that whoever strangled Desmond didn’t do it with their bare hands. I wonder if they could have been wearing gardening gloves. Tyler?”
Tyler, headphones still around his neck, was in denial. “You don’t know nothing!”
“Geoffrey, you’re our resident grammar expert. What was that?” asked Carol.
“A double negative,” said Geoffrey.
“That’s right. A double negative. You’re right, Tyler. I don’t know nothing. In fact, I know rather a lot. I know that you took Desmond up onto the roof. You had a key. I know that the cleaner stopped vacuuming because she saw you do it. Is that why she had to be sacked? What did you do, Elisa? Send her off to Thailand for a few months as a redundancy package? And, Tyler, I also know that you bludgeoned him on the head with the gardening mallet—with your left hand. See, I thought you were right-handed, but then Catherine said something about her grandson.Plays cricket with his right hand, tennis with his left.Some people are like that, aren’t they? Ambidextrous? You’re very comfortable on those decks. I guess you fix fences with your right hand and murder with your left. What happened to the rope fence by the way? You never finished the job. Did you lose your mallet? Or did you decide you had to throw it away?
“And then, finally, you pushed him. That’s a very distinctive jumper you’re wearing, Tyler. The trace of fiber it left on Desmond led us to Polly. But Polly didn’t murder Desmond. Polly is in a world of her own and that’s all thanks to you, Tyler, because you’ve been providing her with hash cakes. Which is why she knitted you the jumper. As a thank-you.” Carol smiled. “I love it when the different generations get along.”
Tyler’s eyes were darting around the room.
“You could try and make a run for it, but I don’t think you’d get very far. The police are sitting right over there. Why don’t you just sit still for a moment and I’ll tell everyone why you did it? I’ve gotsomething that may help to reduce your sentence. You didn’t do it on your own. You were only helping your mother. Wasn’t he, Elisa?”
Elisa stood frozen, by the bar.
“Ferragudo. That’s where our friend Elisa is from. I’ve never been but it’s beautiful, isn’t it, Polly?”
Polly slowly nodded.
“I know Elisa doesn’t look it, but would you believe she turns fifty next year? Funnily enough, fifty years ago was when Polly and Desmond went to Ferragudo on their honeymoon. Desmond got a waitress pregnant. That waitress was Elisa’s mother. When you showed me the picture, I wondered why anyone would want to leave such a place. You were looking for your father. I wondered where a lady of your complexion might have got those bright blue eyes. I don’t know how long it took for him to show an interest, but you were so determined that when he retired, you came to work here. Got your son a job here too. Elisa, you got to know your dad at Sheldon Oaks, and Desmond was a gentler man in his later years. He didn’t shun you, I imagine, but did he show you love?”
Elisa took her glasses off and wiped her eyes.
“Not enough, I’m sure, to make up for all the lost time. Certainly not enough to put you in his will. Think of the life you and Tyler could have had if he’d supported you the way he did these embarrassments.” Carol gestured toward the Newsoms. “I empathize, Elisa, I really do. He made you both angry, and that is reason enough to kill someone. Certainly was for me. Of course, you were the one who told me Polly had been married to Desmond. You were looking to give me a suspect to throw me off the scent, but all you did was lead me to your door. Did you hold a grudgeagainst Polly? That doesn’t seem fair. All she did was marry the wrong man.”
Polly now had a thousand-mile stare, lost in the past.
“I was up all night on Facebook,” said Carol. “You young folks, you don’t bother with Facebook anymore, do you? It’s all Instagram—and what’s that other one, Tyler? TokTok? TikTok? But plenty of us old folks love Facebook. Some of us put everything on there! I suppose it’s a way of feeling like we’re still in touch with the world and you told us all to learn how to use it fifteen years ago and now that we’ve figured it out you’re telling us we need to go on some other app. It’s ridiculous!”
There was a murmur of approval from the residents at Carol’s brief rant.
“Desmond had a Facebook account, you see. You probably didn’t even know. He wrote a status on the day he died. Do you know what it said?”
Elisa shook her head.
“Looking forward to cottage pie with my daughter today. Yum yum!Little did he know that you would pack his cottage pie with deadly nightshade. I went for a walk in the gardens this morning and checked the flower beds. Among the deadly nightshade, there’s a clump missing. It’s been pulled right off the stalks. You knew it could kill, didn’t you, Elisa? That’s what a quick Google search will tell you.”
Elisa held on to the edge of the bar, her other hand shaking.
“Who killed Giles?” shouted Agatha. “And what color were they?”
“Yes! Giles!” said Carol, clapping her hands together. “Funny you should ask that, Agatha. I’ll rattle through this one as quickas I can. I know you were all looking forward to the karaoke. I don’t think I’ll surprise any of you if I say that Giles Temple was a suspect. I’ve had a look through his accounts, and the man was in trouble. The fact is, money is a good enough reason for anyone to kill, but why Desmond Crisp? If Giles had a motive, I never found it, and when he himself was murdered, I knew he wasn’t responsible.
“Elisa couldn’t stand to see an idiot like Giles Temple be given so many breaks in life, only to cock them all up. It was people like her who deserved a chance. She knew that Giles wasn’t on top of his finances, never understood his statements, never spoke to his accountant. His money seemed to keep disappearing. He couldn’t understand it. You were stealing it, weren’t you, Elisa? The Sheldon Oaks accounts at Companies House look awfully peculiar. You’ve got a little account somewhere, haven’t you? An awful lot of money from Sheldon Oaks Ltd. seems to be going to a business in Portugal. You also managed to change his will. That office of his is such a mess. Documents everywhere. I managed to take a peep at a few when you nipped out for a conversation with your son. What were you talking about? Murder? You knew Giles never looked at the documents you gave him to sign. But then, on the day he was murdered, he texted you to say he was about to sell this place to someone who had just come into some money: Shep Newsom.”
Helen Newsom dropped a glass in cartoon fashion.
