“Hello! Very sorry to bother you,” Cosima said. “We didn’t have a way to call ahead. I’m Cosima, and this is Edie. We’re here from Harlaxton. We’ve been staying at Gregory Place, and we followed your clues in the guest book.”
The woman stood at the door of her cottage for a long, long moment. “Is Minnie gone?”
The anguish in this question carried across the space between them. Her dog whined at her feet.
Edie swallowed over a throat sore with empathy. “Ms. Llewellyn, we don’t know. We were hoping you could help us.”
Agatha put her hand on her dog’s head. A freezing-cold blast of wind from the river made both Edie and Cosima wrap their arms around themselves in defense.
“Come in, then.” She disappeared inside with her dog.
Edie looked at Cosima. “You first,” she said.
“Me first?” Cosima lifted her chin. “Why me?”
“You were the one who wanted to race here from Barcelona. We could be in the lounge at Gregory Place, interrogating Morag so we didn’t walk into a situation with a masc fae and her massive hound in the middle of Wales, in the dark, yards away from a deep, cold river, but no.”
Frowning fiercely, Cosima started walking. Edie followed her a couple paces behind, her ragged breath making her feelings-sore throat worse.
They scuttled to the door, and Cosima disappeared inside the cottage.
Edie stepped over the stone threshold and toed off her Converse, leaving them on a rubber mat next to Cosima’s. Then she looked up and froze.
Mauve.
Mauve everywhere. Mauve-painted plaster walls. Mauve rugs. Pink or pink-and-white or pink-and-blush upholstery on every stick of furniture. The room glowed like the inside of a conch shell.
“Edie!” Cosima whispered. Agatha must have stepped into another room, or she was hovering against the ceiling abovethem, her spidery wings spread, poison dripping from her fangs.
“What?”
“The mantle.”
Edie looked. There were two porcelain shepherdesses. “What the fuck.”
“What the fuck, indeed.” Agatha stood at the entrance to the room with a tray. “The clues were not meant for you, and you don’t seem to know Minnie, so what are you doing here? Sit down. This is tea. There’s Hobnobs there, but I’m on my last packet, so don’t be greedy. Plenty of cream and sugar.” Agatha smashed the tray down on an ottoman in the middle of the room.
Edie quickly filled a mug from the Brown Betty teapot and grabbed two Hobnobs, another variety of accidentally vegan English biscuit that she’d enjoyed. She planted herself in a pink chair. Cosima followed suit, if a little more elegantly, perching on the edge of a settee.
“Ms. Llewellyn,” Edie started.
“Agatha. I use she and her. This is Sherlock. He uses he and him, though I imagine he’s actually beyond the binary.” She put her hand on the dog’s cement-block-like head, and his mouth dropped into a panting smile. He was some kind of pit bull mix, but Edie was beginning to suspect he must be all for looks, given his wagging tail and constant side-eyes at Agatha asking for permission to slobber on her guests. “You’re Phoebe Frank’s daughter,” she said to Cosima. “I recognize you. Didn’t want to act like I don’t. I hate it when people do that.”
“Me, too,” Cosima said.
“My condolences for your mother. Her studio producedThe Clock Stopped at Midnightyears ago. Very nicely done. I stillreceive residuals. Didn’t get to meet her, though. She didn’t come to Wales, and I don’t leave.”
Agatha had taken command of the room. Though Edie knew from her biography she was north of eighty, she seemed much younger. Her hair was a smooth blend of gold, blond, and white. Her navy eyes were large and sharp.
But Sherlock had moved closer to her, and when she put her hand on his neck, stroking him softly, it trembled. She was nervous. Upset.
Edie felt a thought like a sharp needle stabbing her in the back of the neck—a thought she couldn’t quite form. There was the business of the mauve-explosion decorating. The similarities between this room and the Gregory Place lounge, including the shepherdesses, were too strong to be coincidences, but when Agatha had been at Gregory Place, it was 1977. The inn had been newly decorated in all of its mauvy glory years later. So the mauve here could not be a result of Agatha, heartbroken, redecorating in memory of Minnie.
“You never leave Wales, but you went to Harlaxton in 1977,” Edie said.
Agatha’s eyes narrowed. “And you are?”
“Edie Whitelock. Of Green Bay, Wisconsin. My mother never produced any of your books into movies, but she did have a copy ofThe Bones of Kildeerwhen I was growing up that I read in middle school. It gave me nightmares for weeks, so well done.”
