Rules of Murder by Julianna Deering Page A

shuffled through his papers. “He was killed in a prison brawl a year ago.”
    “Ah,” Mason said, and then he clasped his hands in his lap and said nothing more.
    “What does any of this have to do with what happened last night?” Drew asked the chief inspector. “Do you think there’s a connection between this incident or McCutcheon’s death and Lincoln’s?”
    “No,” Birdsong said. “I shouldn’t think there’s any connection, but it’s early days yet. Early days. Now, if you will kindlystart at the beginning, Mr. Farthering. When you came home and found Mr. Lincoln in your room . . .”
    The chief inspector questioned Drew and Mason for some while longer, mostly repeating the same questions but slightly rephrased, noting, Drew was certain, any variations, any hesitations in the answers. Before Drew was absolutely determined to strangle the man, it was over.
    “I’d like to see this gardener of yours,” Birdsong said. “This Peterson.”
    Mason rang the bell. A moment later, there was a knock at the study door.
    “Come in, Dennison.”
    Dennison complied. “Something you wished, sir?”
    “Send Peterson to me.”
    “In here, sir?”
    “Yes, please. At once.”
    Raising his eyebrow a disapproving quarter of an inch, Dennison bowed. “Very good, sir.”
    Before long, Peterson shuffled to the study door, peering inside like a wary old badger at the mouth of a trap. Eventually he bared his head, revealing lank, greasy curls shot with gray, and then took two steps inside.
    “Afternoon, Mr. Parker. Mr. Drew.”
    “Good afternoon, Peterson,” Mason said. “Chief Inspector Birdsong would like to ask you a few questions about last night.”
    Peterson nodded his head, worrying his worn cap in his hands.
    “Come on in, Mr. Peterson,” Drew urged. “It’s all right.”
    The gardener nodded once more and, after taking a moment to buff the toes of his battered boots against the back of his trouser legs, ventured four steps closer.
    “Your name, please,” Birdsong began.
    Peterson pursed his lips. “Well, didn’t he just call me by it?”
    “For the record, if you please.”
    “Peterson. Arwel Peterson.”
    “And your profession?”
    Peterson displayed his grimy hands, dark with the sun and his work in the earth. “I didn’t get these of keepin’ the accounts, now, did I?”
    Mason cleared his throat. “If you please, Peterson.”
    “No disrespect, sir,” Peterson muttered, still worrying his cap. “I’m head gardener here at Farthering, Inspector. I never had me any truck with the p’lice. You’ll pardon me if it sets me a bit on edge.”
    Birdsong peered at him. “You have anything that ought to be worrying you?”
    “No. What do you mean?”
    “Something you’d rather not speak with us about?” Birdsong looked into his ever-present notebook. “No?”
    Peterson shook his head and swiped a hand across his stubbly upper lip.
    “Tell me what you did last Friday.”
    “The whole day?” Peterson asked.
    “The whole day.”
    The gardener scratched the side of his head with one grimy fingernail. “I gets up round five, as I reckon it, and gets dressed. My old woman, she give me beans on toast fer breakfast and a bit of black pudding and tea. Then I goes down to the shed fer my spade and such.”
    “Is that the shed where you kept the shotgun?”
    “It is.”
    “Go on.”
    “About then I sets Mack and Bobby, my men, you see, I sets them on to weedin’ and that whilst I tends to the roses. Mrs. Parker, God rest her, sir, Mrs. Parker was that fond of her roses,and I liked to keep ’em nice fer her. So I were mixing some top-class muckings from the stables into the soil round them, just to perk ’em up like. Took me nigh unto noon to do ’em all.”
    “All right,” Birdsong said. “And did you see anything during that time?”
    “I seen some of them has aphids.”
    “I mean anything unusual,” Birdsong pressed.
    “That is unusual for my roses.”
    Drew bit his