Page 36 of Welcome to Murder Week

Our path winds through a lush forest dotted with deep red rhododendrons and pink azaleas, the kind of bushes people pay good money for back home.

Wyatt starts listing things we learned about Lady Blanders that could be clues: she has a personal hairdresser, a longtime maid, and a gardener; she’s being honored by some charity, has two sons and a snobby husband, with whom she doesn’t spend much time; and she goes to Sproton House spa every month. She also said that Tracy’s husband is a loser and that Tracy is known for having lovers. Oh, and she has a friend named Demetra.

“Who doesn’t?” I say.

“Dissy,” Amity says. “They always use nicknames.”

“We’ll have to check her alibi at the King George Inn, but let’s go to the stationer’s first to question Tracy’s landlord, Bert Lott,” Wyatt says. “While we’re there, we can buy a bulletin board.”

“Yes!” Amity says. “And some red string.”

“What for?” I say.

“Seriously?” says Wyatt.

“Have you not watchedSherlock?True Detective?” Amity says.

“A little?”

“Homeland?” Wyatt asks.

“Most of it, I think.” I remember a wall covered with photographs and newspaper articles and red yarn linking them like Silly String. The whole thing looked like chaos.

“Didn’t Carrie Mathison lose the plot?”

“That’s not the point,” Wyatt says. “We have a lot of details to keep straight, and we need to see them to connect the dots.”

We must be close to the village, because we pass by some houses with cultivated gardens and then come to the footpath that runs behind the row of shops along the Willowthrop green. The walkway is quiet and pretty. We pass behind the King George Inn and are nearly behind the hair salon when I trip over what I think is a branch but turns out to be the end of a long black umbrella. I pick it up and am about to rest it against a fence so whoever lost it might reclaim it, but Wyatt says, “Stop right there.”

“This could be evidence,” he explains. “Edwina said whoever left the salon hid himself with a big black umbrella. Maybe this is it.”

Wyatt takes a photograph of the umbrella.

“Our first bona fide clue,” Amity says. “This could confirm what Edwina said, that whoever killed Tracy left on foot.”

“And must have gone down the alley on the side of the building and picked up the footpath,” Wyatt says. “If only we knew where he was heading.”

“He might have parked a car somewhere farther away so it wouldn’t be noticed near the salon,” Amity says.

I put the umbrella back on the ground, and we resume walking.

A squawk, and a plump black-and-white bird flies in front of my face. I jump back.

“What the hell?” I say.

“Magpie,” Wyatt says.

“Like the rhyme?” Amity says. “One for sorrow, two for joy?”

“Yup. Member of the crow family.”

“You know a lot about birds for someone who doesn’t really like them,” I say.

“Osmosis,” Wyatt says.

“But why do you work at your husband’s store if you don’t love birds?” Amity asks.

“Because Bernard loves birds and I love Bernard.” He stops to pick a daisy, which he puts behind his ear. “And the truth is, I don’t know what else I’d do.”

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