No Flowers Sent

Chapter 1: The Honey Cake

The marquee had been erected on the village green at half past six that morning, its canvas panels snapping in a brisk May wind that carried the scent of fresh-cut grass and the distant bleating of Reginald Wicks's sheep. By ten o'clock the wind had dropped, the sun had asserted itself, and the annual Wrenfield Flower Show was in full, magnificent bloom.

Philippa Roberts stood at the edge of the green, her overnight bag still in the boot of her hired car, and allowed herself a moment of pure nostalgia. She had not been back to Wrenfield in three years — not since her mother's funeral, not since the awkward tea at Beatrice's cottage where her godmother had pronounced, with characteristic bluntness, that grief was a luxury best indulged in private and that Philippa ought to eat more. The memory stung and warmed in equal measure.

The village had not changed. The flint-faced cottages along the High Street still wore their thatch like untidy hats. The church of St. Crispin's still presided over the green with its squat Norman tower, and the pub — The Barley Mow — still advertised its guest ale on a chalkboard that leaned against the horse trough. Only the marquee was new, its white canvas incongruously bright against the ancient hedgerows.

Philippa was thirty-four, tall, with dark hair cut sensibly short and the kind of face that people trusted instinctively — open, attentive, a little serious. She worked as a senior librarian at the British Library's rare books division, a position that required patience, precision, and an almost forensic attention to detail. These were qualities she had inherited, people said, from her late mother. From Beatrice Latham, her godmother, she had inherited something else entirely: a refusal to let nonsense go unchallenged.

She found Beatrice in the judging tent, bent over a display of hybrid tea roses with a magnifying glass and an expression of controlled displeasure.

"Greenfly," Beatrice said, without looking up. "On the Mister Lincoln, if you can believe it. Harold Fenton has the nerve to enter a rose with greenfly."

"Hello, Beatrice."

Beatrice straightened. She was seventy-three, thin as a fence post, with silver hair pinned in a chignon and eyes the colour of January slate. She wore a tweed skirt, a silk blouse the shade of clotted cream, and a brooch in the shape of a dahlia. She looked, as always, like a woman who could silence a room by clearing her throat.

"You're late," Beatrice said. "I expected you at nine."

"The A303 was murder."

"Everything is murder on the A303. You should have taken the train to Basingstoke and had me collect you, as I suggested."

"You also suggested I bring a Victoria sponge for the refreshment tent, and I'm afraid I've failed on that count too."

Beatrice's lips twitched — the closest she came to a smile in public. "Never mind. Edith Prayne has baked enough for the entire county. Come, let me finish here and then we'll have a proper look round. I want your opinion on the delphiniums. There's a blue that Harold Fenton has somehow managed that I find deeply suspicious."

They walked the judging tent together, Beatrice pausing at each display with the concentrated attention of a surgeon examining an X-ray. Philippa listened as her godmother delivered verdicts — sharp, forensic, occasionally devastating. The sweet peas were "adequate." The dahlias were "trying too hard." A display of wildflowers arranged in a milk churn was "charming in the way a puppy is charming — no discipline whatsoever."

Outside the tent, the show hummed with the easy rhythms of village life. Children darted between the stalls. A brass band played something that might have been Elgar. The Women's Institute had set up a tombola, and Sergeant Dennis Woolgar, the village constable, was attempting to win a bottle of elderflower cordial with the focused determination of a man who had nothing more pressing to attend to.

Philippa noticed, as they circled the green, how people reacted to Beatrice. Some smiled and nodded. Others turned away with studied casualness. A woman in a floral dress — Edith Prayne, the vicar's wife, Philippa remembered — went visibly pale and busied herself rearranging scones. A large, ruddy-faced man in a waxed jacket — Reginald Wicks, the gentleman farmer whose land bordered half the village — touched his cap but did not meet Beatrice's eye.

Only one person approached them with anything like warmth: a young woman with auburn hair and freckles, carrying a tray of potted herbs.

"Mrs. Latham," she said. "I've put the lavender where you asked, by the entrance."

"Thank you, Olive," Beatrice said, and her voice softened fractionally. "This is my goddaughter, Philippa. Philippa, this is Olive Denny. She runs the flower shop on Bell Lane. Quite the most talented young florist in Hampshire, though she refuses to believe it."

Olive Denny blushed and shook Philippa's hand. Her grip was firm, her palm rough with work. She was perhaps twenty-five, with a quiet, watchful quality that Philippa found appealing.

"Lovely to meet you," Olive said. "Mrs. Latham talks about you often."

"Only the flattering parts, I hope," Philippa said.

"There are no other parts," Beatrice said crisply. "Now, Olive, have you entered anything this year? I noticed your usual display is absent."

A shadow crossed Olive's face — quick, almost imperceptible. "Not this year, I'm afraid. I've been terribly busy with wedding orders. There wasn't time to prepare anything properly."

"A pity," Beatrice said. "You'd have won the arrangement category. Nobody else comes close."

Olive murmured something modest and retreated with her herbs. Philippa watched her go, noting the slight hunch of her shoulders, the way she kept her head down as she passed the other stallholders.

"She seems nice," Philippa said.

"She is nice. She's also lonely and works too hard. Her mother, Janet, was a friend of mine — died four years ago. Dreadful business. Olive's been running the shop alone ever since."

Beatrice said this with a matter-of-factness that Philippa recognised as her godmother's way of expressing deep feeling. Beatrice did not do sentiment. She did facts, opinions, and the occasional act of unacknowledged kindness.

The morning progressed. Prizes were awarded — Beatrice delivering her judgments from a small podium with the gravity of a High Court judge. Harold Fenton's roses were disqualified on grounds of greenfly. A woman named Mrs. Beale won the dahlia category and wept with joy. The vicar, Reverend Arthur Prayne, gave a short speech about community spirit that nobody listened to because the brass band had started up again.

At half past twelve, the refreshment tent opened.

It was a modest affair: trestle tables draped in white cloths, plates of sandwiches, scones with jam and cream, and — centrepiece of the spread — a golden honey cake decorated with crystallised violets. A small card beside it read: "Baked by Edith Prayne, with honey from Wrenfield Apiaries."

Beatrice made straight for it.

"Edith's honey cake," she said. "Say what you will about the woman — and I could say a great deal — she bakes a respectable cake."

Philippa took a scone and a cup of tea. Beatrice cut herself a generous slice of the honey cake and ate it standing, as was her habit, with a paper napkin tucked into her collar.

"Rich," Beatrice pronounced. "Almost too much honey. And there's something else — a nuttiness. Almond, perhaps. Edith's been experimenting."

Philippa was about to reply when she noticed Beatrice frown. It was a small frown, a tightening around the eyes, as though she had bitten into something unexpected.

"Beatrice? Are you all right?"

"Perfectly fine. A little warm, that's all. This tent is stifling."

But Beatrice was not fine. Within thirty seconds, the colour had drained from her face. She set down the plate — carefully, precisely, because Beatrice Latham did everything with precision, even dying — and pressed one hand to her chest.

"Philippa," she said. Her voice was strange, thin, as though it were coming from a long way off. "I think perhaps—"

She did not finish the sentence. Her knees buckled, and she went down like a felled tree, straight and rigid, hitting the grass with a sound that Philippa would never forget — a soft, final thud.

Philippa dropped to her knees beside her. "Beatrice! Someone call an ambulance! Call—"

People were shouting. Sergeant Woolgar pushed through the crowd with surprising speed for a man of his bulk. The vicar appeared, white-faced, murmuring prayers. Someone knocked over the tea urn, and a river of brown liquid spread across the grass.

Dr. Piers Naughton, the village GP, arrived within minutes — he had been browsing the book stall on the far side of the green. He knelt beside Beatrice, checked her pulse, listened to her chest, and looked up at Philippa with an expression she recognised from hospital dramas but had never expected to see in real life.

"I'm sorry," he said. "She's gone."

"Gone?" Philippa heard herself say. "She was eating cake. She was talking to me. She can't be gone."

"Cardiac arrest, almost certainly. It would have been very quick. She wouldn't have suffered."

The crowd pressed closer. Philippa was dimly aware of Edith Prayne sobbing, of Reginald Wicks removing his cap, of Olive Denny standing very still at the back of the tent with her hands at her sides.

Philippa leaned down and pressed her lips to Beatrice's forehead. It was still warm. And there, faint but unmistakable, she caught a smell that did not belong on the lips of a woman who had died of heart failure.

Bitter almonds.

She sat back on her heels and looked at Dr. Naughton.

"It wasn't her heart," Philippa said quietly.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Smell her lips. Go on."

Naughton frowned but obliged, leaning close. When he straightened, his face had changed.

"That's—"

"Prussic acid," Philippa said. "Hydrogen cyanide. I catalogued a Victorian toxicology manual last month — the chapter on cyanide poisoning described the smell exactly. Bitter almonds, Doctor. Someone poisoned that cake."

The tent went silent. Somewhere outside, the brass band played on, oblivious, filling the May afternoon with bright, indifferent music.