“Edie, yes. I was in Harlaxton in 1977.”
“No other time.”
“I was not.” Agatha seemed composed, but her hand had drifted again to the smooth spot on top of Sherlock’s square head.
“Do you get a lot of visitors here?”
“One Tree Cottage is my sanctuary. The only invitation I ever issued was through the guest book. Officially, Agatha Llewellyn doesn’t have an address. In the village, I’m called Bronwyn. Does that answer your question?”
Edie’s brain was racing, trying to find the source of her neck prickle. “Agatha’s your middle name.”
“Yes, but—”
The prickle became a stab as the pieces finally fit together and she remembered the photograph of Morag in the guest book, a striking young woman with dark braids and a cigarette. Morag Tourmaline Beveridge.
Tourmaline.
Minnie?
“Oh my god, thatwitch, how dare she?” Edie asked.
“What?” Cosima put down her tea mug. “What is it?”
“She used us as her minions. Her familiars. We’re nothing more than girls who she’s ensorceled and turned into bats to fly over the countryside and do her bidding.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Agatha demanded.
Edie frowned at Agatha, riding the wave of her anger so she didn’t have to feel any of the sorrow beneath it. For heaven’ssake. “Your one and only is perfectly healthy, I can tell you that much. YourMinnie, aka Tourmaline, akaMorag, who until recently had Miss Havisham’ed herself into a pink travesty of an inn, moping around, waiting for what? Maybe you can tell me. And nothing funny. I’ve had enough of getting pushed around by octogenarians who can’t get their shit together. As a twenty-genarian, I am perfectly capable of not getting my own shit together without assistance. ‘Are you girls going to find the treasure?’ she asks. ‘Oh, I’ll be waiting for you forever,’ you say, in a letter you have to knowCistercian numbersto find.”
“Oh! The Cistercian monks were the ones who built Tintern Abbey, where we are,” Cosima interjected. “So that makes sense.”
Edie turned to Cosima. “You”—she pointed at her—“have to be onmyside.”
“Noted. It’s just that if this is going where I think it’s going, I thought it was quite interesting to mention.”
Edie sighed. “Out with it,Bronwyn. This instant. Have you been stalking Morag in this ridiculous and invisible way for fifty years? Who has the broken heart? Areyouseriously the treasure? Would Morag even think so?”
“Only her mother called her Morag,” Agatha said.
“Everyonecalls her Morag!” Edie shouted, discovering to her dismay that there was a vein of fierce protective feeling beneath her incandescent anger. Damn it all to hell, she lovedMorag. Lose one vegan cheese shop and apparently a vacuum opened in the center of your heart. “Every single person! Morag. Of Gregory Place. Probably since before I was born.”
Agatha nodded. Then she put down her tea mug and leaned back in her chair. For the first time, she looked her age.
She stared into the fireplace, which had a flickering gas insert. After a long moment, she spoke.
“I was so full of myself then. I had just written my fourth bestseller. I was traveling the world, calling it research for my books, but really doing a lot of sunbathing and drinking and chasing pretty women. I finished a signing at Foyles in Charing Cross, and my new American literary agent was there. I had a trunk full of clothes tailored for me in Mayfair—you know, the Savile Row places.Annie Hallhad made my look popular that year, and I was riding it into every bedroom in Great Britain.”
“All right. I get it, Dream Butch.” Edie didn’t want to knowwhere this was going. She wasn’t interested in crying over a love story. Morag’s doomed love story, especially.
Agatha laughed. “I deserve that. I had decided I wanted to write a murder mystery set at a small Lincolnshire or Herefordshire vicarage. I went to the library, and the Harlaxton church was on the registry of historic places. I wrote the vicar at the time. A woman, which was still new. She advised me to take a room at Gregory Place. Convenient, she said, and it came with meals. I rang up Gregory Place and reserved my room for three months. I had my things shipped ahead. I anticipated a rural idyll, rusticating with locals to infuse my book with flavor.”
Edie crossed her arms. “Harlaxton is not a bouquet garni.”
“No, it’s not. I figured this out almost right away. First of all, the services at the church were… more than research. They were beautiful. The people were charming, for the most part, but mainly they were hardworking and honest, with themselves and with me. I figured out that my parties and traveling and women had been a way to avoid a lot of things. A lot of hurt.”
Edie wanted to lash out at Agatha again, but she understood what she was describing. There was something about Harlaxton. Maybe magic. Maybe just who Edie had been there.
Who Agatha had been, it sounded like.
