Page 28 of Welcome to Murder Week

“If you must know”—he looks around, like he’s checking to see if anyone’s listening—“at school, I was inYou’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.”

“Which role?”

“Linus.”

“With an American accent?”

“God, no. But the critics said I sucked my thumb with great panache.”

I peer at him, too dramatically, but I can’t help myself. “Why do you live here, really? Are you trying to single-handedly bring down the village’s average age?”

He laughs.

“After my parents got divorced, my mum moved back here and my dad moved to Delhi to find his roots. I left London two years ago, when mum took a turn for the worse.”

“You live with your mother?”

If he says yes, he’s definitely not acting; even Roland Wingford wouldn’t script that detail into a character meant to be the local heartthrob.

“I live in a cottage on her property. Alone.”

“Oh.” I give myself a moment. “I live alone too.” I pick up the cocktail menu and look like I’m studying it, but I don’t register the words. Should I not have said that? But when I look up, he’s leaning in close, dark hair flopping onto his forehead, and pointing to the menu. He recommends the Hanky Panky, and I have to make an extra effort to swallow.

“It’s gin, sweet vermouth, and Fernet-Branca,” he says.

I have no idea what that means.

“It’s an Italian brand of fernet, a kind of bitters,” he adds, turning and taking a bottle off the shelf.

I ask what’s in it.

“The recipe has been a secret since it was formulated in 1845, but if I had to guess,” he says, opening a bottle and taking a sniff, “I’d say it has gentian, probably chamomile, maybe Chinese rhubarb, definitely peppermint and saffron, and myrrh.”

“Get out. Like frankincense and myrrh? From the Bible? They’re real?”

He gets that excited look on his face again. “They’re resin extracted from trees. They’re brilliant, really. Chemists in Italy discovered a molecule in myrrh that affects the brain’s opioid receptors and acts like an analgesic.”

“Well, then, make mine a double.”

He looks amused. He mixes the ingredients, strains the blend into a glass with ice, garnishes it with an orange twist. The drink is a luscious red.

“It’s good.”

“And good for you,” he says. “Bitters have cancer-fighting properties.”

“You sound like a scientist.”

“That was the plan. But chemistry led me to distilling, which is a lot more fun.” He folds his arms, leans onto the bar. “So, what do you do when not solving pretend murders?”

It’s hard to think with him so close to me.

“I help people see,” I say.

“You’re a fortune teller?”

I shake my head.

“A psychotherapist?”

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