The Flower Girls (21 page)

“Mrs. Carrington do you know something, please? I’m going out of my mind with worry.”

“They’ve been here. The police. I only know it’s serious. I think you need to leave there. I don’t know anything else.”

There was no time for Poppy to respond. Mrs. Carrington slammed down the receiver. A sick feeling filled the back of her throat, the room spun. She bent her body into a chair by the phone. Darkness came and still she sat there. Listening as the rain returned with a vengeance, hammering against the windows.

“No,” she cried out loud. “This isn’t happening.”

* * * *

The only flight she could take at short notice was Paris and then Birmingham. She took it, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but getting back…but to where? Not to Heaton Grange? She shuddered. No, not there, not yet… At Birmingham she hired a car. It was eleven a.m. when she’d arrived, the traffic on the motorway, until she left the Birmingham sprawl, was heavy. There was more heavy traffic between Manchester and Huddersfield. The dismal, gray rain didn’t help. She felt cold; it was like coming back from Florida all over again. Only this time she was swamped by misery.

When she reached the town she headed for the police station. Remembering the car park, she headed there and then dashed through the gloom and went to the police station. Once inside she tugged a tissue from the pocket of her jeans and mopped her face, then dragged it through her hair which was dripping damply down her neck.

In answer to the bell the same police sergeant came. She half expected he would tell her that Foreshaw had gone home. When Foreshaw honed into view she wasn’t sure who was more surprised, him or her.

“Poppy,” he said. With a grim expression he came and opened the door leading into the office and urged her inside.

There were several detectives at tables but he led her to a private office. It was as neat and immaculate as he was.

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” she exclaimed, sliding onto the seat he suggested she take.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t let you know. When I realized you were in France with…with Sanderson, it seemed better to have the element of surprise.”

Pleadingly she looked up at him. He was in front of her, half-sitting on the desk, his arms folded, looking down at her. She spread her hands.

“I don’t understand!” Hearing the note of hysteria in her voice was unpleasant but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t want to burst into tears but felt she could so easily do that.

“Poppy, I’m so sorry. I know you were close to Seth Sanderson but I’m afraid he’s wanted for the murder of your sister.”

She didn’t faint, or slide from the chair; she just sat perfectly still, staring at him, through him, begging him to tell her he was mistaken. Then the full weight of his accusation, the horror of his words tore into her and she let out a loud moan that was almost a scream.

Chapter 27

The car, silver was traced. It was in the garage at Caroline’s house. Seth wasn’t at the big house but at a cottage near York just before Poppy arrived from Florida. A cottage he owned. She’d never known about it but recalled the day he had business in the area and how he’d taken her to York and then gone about his business. It wasn’t relevant to anything; she pressed her lips closed against any comment.

Foreshaw was talking to her. There was gentleness in his tone. It was where Seth Sanderson was—the cottage—when Poppy had first arrived. Sometimes he liked to go there. It was small, pre-Georgian in a quiet country lane. Perhaps he wrote there or maybe he liked to go there because it was a hideaway from Jasmine. It seemed likely she didn’t know about it either. Only the Carringtons knew about it.

Jasmine must have phoned his mobile as a last resort when she was stuck on that road. He’d driven to Caroline’s, the Donningtons were away, swapped cars and went to pick up Jasmine. It was premeditated, had to be else why would he not take his own car? Foreshaw didn’t know for certain what had happened but he discovered that Seth had possession of that car on that night. Someone from the village had passed the car on the road but hadn’t put two and two together until he had seen Robert Donnington driving it a couple of days ago. The villager had since reported it to the police. Contrary to what Poppy had believed previously, Jasmine must have been trying to get back to Heaton Grange because she knew her sister was due to arrive.

“It can’t be,” she insisted when Foreshaw stopped talking. “It’s just a car; anyone could have been driving that car.”

He was looking down at her, and his sympathetic expression made her feel even more wretched.

“Then why has he run away, Poppy? Why did he leave you in France? Where is he?”

“You don’t know?” she asked miserably.

“No.”

“He needs to clear his name, that’s what he’s doing.”

He might have said,
“Oh Poppy,”
but of course he didn’t—but it was there in his body language. Did she think he was a fool? That was there too. Foreshaw had to be sure of his facts. Yet those facts could be interpreted in so many different ways. There had to be an excuse, a reason, the man she’d loved wasn’t a brutal killer.

He can’t be!

“He had an alibi only for that day he was in London, Poppy. We didn’t have a specific time of death of Jasmine but from forensics we knew it couldn’t have been those couple of days, it had to be before. We asked him where he was, he said he was at home but of course he was at the cottage. Mrs. Carrington had given him an alibi but in the end she told the truth, he was away—at his cottage. I don’t believe she even suspected him of killing Jasmine but she didn’t want him to be a suspect. Silly woman but…” He sighed.

“I know it’s difficult for you, Poppy but…” He left the sentence unfinished.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“I can’t tell you what to do, but if it were me, I’d go away…somewhere, anywhere different…”

Like a wounded animal,
she thought,
I need to go and lick my wounds and do something about these thoughts and feelings. I need to make this horror go away but somehow I feel it never will.

* * * *

There were things at Heaton Grange she needed. Not just clothes, they could be left. She had a key but didn’t use it. Mrs. Carrington opened the door. There was no smile or greeting, she merely stood back and urged Poppy inside.

“I need to collect stuff,” Poppy said.

Mrs. Carrington nodded. At first it seemed as if she would go with her but then after shrugging her bony shoulders, Mrs. Carrington went down into the kitchen.

The bedroom was still and silent. The windows firmly closed, the bed made and unblemished.

Her suitcase was in the closet. She brought it out and without folding or being neat as she normally was, Poppy just threw stuff into the case. Jasmine’s letters were there, in the shoebox. She took them from the box and set them to one side. She couldn’t bear to read them again but she thought they might be of some use to Inspector Foreshaw. It had never occurred to her to give them to him previously. At first when she’d told him about them he’d been a little annoyed but he let it go. Obviously he saw her distress and realized her omission hadn’t been for sinister reasons. Merely a stupid oversight.

Once downstairs she went into the library. Here, everything was neat and tidy as if no one had ever lived in there. It had that vague lack of atmosphere, rather like a house that was open to visitors and whose owners had long gone.

She found a large envelope and pushed Jasmine’s letters inside. She would drop them off at the police station on her way to Manchester.

Mrs. Carrington honed into view. Poppy asked, “The police told you everything?”

The woman’s mouth was a thin line. “They did. I don’t believe it, but if it’s true…” she shrugged, “she was a bad bitch!”

The latter was said with such vehemence that Poppy shuddered. Words crawled across her tongue but she thought better of them. She said nothing, just goodbye, and she left the house.

Epilogue

Even the sunshine state couldn’t cure her melancholy. It certainly couldn’t erode the guilt she felt over her relationship with the man who’d murdered her sister. For all Jasmine’s willfulness, Poppy realized Jasmine hadn’t been entirely untruthful to her sister. She was afraid. It hadn’t stopped her being reckless, it hadn’t made her walk away forever from the man she feared. But then again that was Jasmine and she would never have believed that he would murder her. Of that Poppy was very sure.

She remembered something her sister had said when she’d phoned her before Poppy left: “He doesn’t get mad, there’s a cold, passionless fury in him, it’s totally weird.”

Yet she’d allowed that telling statement to drift out of her mind.

There was no word of Seth Sanderson’s arrest. He’d disappeared. Poppy picked up her life again. Found a new apartment to rent, another job, not the perfect job or one she really wanted, but it brought in money and that was all that mattered. She was on automatic pilot. If the old friends she’d had in Florida thought her weird, they didn’t say and continued to ask her out, her continuous refusal not dimming their willingness to try to help her.

The sunny days helped, the walks along Bayshore Boulevard soothed her. The sight of dolphins in the bay were a delight to her battered soul.

She came back from a long walk, kicked off her trainers and took a cola from the fridge.

The laptop on the worktop was winking at her. She clicked on. There was an email with a strange address. She was about to delete it without opening when her heart gave a sudden thud. Premonition? Perhaps. She clicked on it. It said,
“I’m sorry.”
She sank onto a nearby chair, her hand pressed against her thumping heart.

The light was draining from the sky when she went back to the computer. Her heart was frozen, there was a deadness deep inside her. She clicked the forward button. There was someone who might be able to trace where it had come from…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Margaret Blake was born in Manchester, England. She was married to John for thirty-eight years. Margaret has one wonderful son, Dan, a fantastic daughter-in-law Alyce and three lovely grandchildren.
The Flower Girls
is her fifteenth novel with Whiskey Creek Press. Her previous novel
Eden’s Child
was the March bestseller at Whiskey Creek Press, as was
The Substitute Bride
, which was also a finalist at the Eppies.

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