Page 4 of The Spy Who Loved Tea

Mrs. Gable herself stood nearby, weeping into her apron. Her eyes kept darting toward the body, then away—the look of someone calculating terrible possibilities.

She’s wondering, Vera thought, if anyone will blame the biscuits.

The poor woman had no idea how right she was to worry.

Vera looked down at her knitting bag. Somewhere in Lark’s End, a killer was walking free. A professional. Someone who knew tradecraft, who could administer a lethal injection in full view of a crowd and slip away like smoke.

And somewhere else, the man called Pym was running scared—a loose end that the grey-eyed doctor would eventually need to tie off.

Vera adjusted her glasses.

“Well,” she murmured to herself, her voice losing its elderly warble and dropping to something colder, sharper. “I suppose the knitting can wait.”

CHAPTER TWO

Vera shuffled toward the village green exit, the very picture of an elderly woman overcome by shock. Her shoulders were hunched, her steps uncertain, her handkerchief pressed to her eyes.

She didn’t leave.

The moment she passed behind the judges’ tent—out of sight of Constable Oakes and the milling crowd—her shuffle vanished. She moved with brisk, silent efficiency, slipping into the shrubbery that bordered Major Barnaby’s property.

The fête was dissolving into chaos behind her. The tea tent was being disassembled, voices murmured in shocked speculation, and somewhere Mrs. Higgins was loudly declaring that she had always said the Major worked himself too hard. No one was watching the hedgerow. No one was watching Vera.

The Major’s cottage, ‘The Willows,’ backed onto the village green. It was a sprawling, ivy-strangled affair with a large Victorian glasshouse attached to the side.

Barnaby wasn’t just a grow-your-own enthusiast; he was obsessive. The glasshouse was his sanctuary. If he was hiding anything—and men who refused million-pound offers were usually hiding something—it would be there.

Vera scanned the perimeter. No CCTV—Barnaby hadn’t trusted “the digital cloud”—but he did have a sad-looking German Shepherd named Buster who was currently investigating a squirrel near the compost heap.

Vera reached into her bag and retrieved a small, sealed packet. Premium jerky, treated with a mild sedative—nothing harmful, just enough to encourage a pleasant nap. She didn’t always carry it, but she had learned long ago that dogs were the most common obstacle in her line of work.

She whistled softly. Buster trotted over, barked once, sniffed the air, and accepted the offering with a wag of his tail. Thirty seconds later, he was snoring peacefully under a rhododendron.

“Sleep well, soldier,” Vera whispered.

She approached the glasshouse. The door was locked, naturally. An old warded lock, sturdy but simple. Vera fished out her tension wrench and a rake pick from the hollowed needle case.

Click. Scrape. Click.

The door groaned open.

The air inside was thick, humid, and smelled of damp earth and tomato vines. Rows of benches were crowded with prize specimens: orchids, exotic ferns, and, of course, the petunias.

Vera moved quickly. She wasn’t looking for plants. She was looking for anomalies.

A disturbed pot. A loose brick in the floor. A hiding place specific to the tradecraft of a paranoid ex-military man.

She checked the potting bench. Trowels arranged by size. Fertilizer bags stacked neatly. Everything in its place—the workspace of a man who valued order above all else.

Then she saw it.

In the corner, under a bench dedicated to begonias, was a bag of potting soil. It was the only bag that was open, spilling dark earth onto the pristine tiled floor.

Barnaby was a man who shouted at people for stepping on his lawn. He didn’t spill soil.

Vera knelt. She pushed her hand into the open bag. The soil was loose, recently disturbed. Her fingers brushed against something hard and plastic.

She pulled it out.