Page 93 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

When his jaw did something, I put my hand over his and looked out of my own window and let him alone.

Rosehaven House came apart at the seams in a good way. Fox delivered eleven days of greenhouse accounts standing at attention in the drawing room. Every watering. Every feeding. Three cuttings struck. One sundew lost and confessed to at once with the manner of a man expecting to be broken on the spot.

Cosmos heard him out to the end. “How did the sundew go?”

Fox swallowed. “Root rot.”

“Too much water?”

“Yes.”

“Then we have learned something.”

“Yes.”

Cosmos held out his hand. Fox stared at it, then shook it.

Laurel announced that she had finished Gibbon. “All of it,” she said. “The decline was long but the fall was surprisingly quick, and I have opinions.”

“I never doubted it.”

Holly and Ivy arrived together and spoke at once until nobody understood either of them.

Then Chrissie arrived.

She stopped three steps into the drawing room. Cosmos looked at her. Neither moved for perhaps two seconds.

Then he came to his feet. “Chrissie.”

She crossed the room and went straight into his arms.

Petunia could not be removed at all. She attached herself to Cosmos and stayed there for the better part of an hour. She sat on his lap through his breakfast and conducted a full inquiry into the elephant. “Did you have him with you every day?”

“Every day.”

“Even at night?”

“Especially at night.”

“Did Justice sit upon Inspector Dodson?”

“With great severity.”

“Did the other gentlemen see him?”

“They did.”

“Did they like him?”

“One offered me half a crown for him.”

Petunia gasped.

“I refused.”

She considered this.

“Good.”