“No one hurt,” I said, “and no harm done to anything but an old shed and some garden tools. Oh, gosh. You didn’t have anything valuable in there, did you, Simon?”

  “Nothing of my own. Rakes and secateurs can be replaced easy enough.”

  “All’s well that ends well, Mrs. Campbell,” one of the guests said. “Your granddaughter will be needed here for a while yet. Can we escort you to your room?”

  “Thank you,” Rose said. “How very kind of you.” She took the offered arm and they went into the house.

  The guests began to disperse. Some returned to their beds, some wandered over to the firetrucks to watch them rolling up hoses and preparing to leave. Matt had reached the shed without being ordered to leave, and he was studying something on the ground. Excitement over, Éclair snuffled across the veranda, visiting everyone in turn, sniffing at feet and receiving pats and praise.

  I became aware that Wesley was watching me. I caught his eye and rather than turn away, he gave me a slow, lazy wink. Flirtatious? Threatening? I couldn’t tell. I ducked my head.

  “Never a dull moment when you’re around, Lily Roberts,” he said.

  “Through no fault of mine,” I replied.

  Simon caught the frost in my voice, and he gave Wesley a sideways look. Wesley stuck out his hand. “Wesley Schumann. Don’t think we’ve met.”

  “We did, when you were making a scene at breakfast the other morning. Simon McCracken. I’m the gardener here.”

  The edges of Wesley’s mouth turned up. “The gardener, right. I remember you now.” He reached out and gave my head an affectionate pat, much like the lingering guests were doing to Éclair. I pulled sharply away. “Lily and I go back, way back,” Wesley continued. “I’m hoping she’ll soon get tired of living in this tourist backwater and come back to the city, where she belongs. She’s squandering a hard-earned reputation as a top-ranked pastry chef out here in the boonies. The long winters can be tough on a tourist-based business, I’d expect.”

  Simon said nothing.

  “Then again, maybe this place has other attractions.” Wesley looked directly at Simon. “That won’t last.”

  “Excitement’s over.” Simon’s English accent was sharp. “You can go back to bed now, sunshine.”

  “I’ll do that.” Wesley pointed across the lawn, toward the dark, ruined garden shed. “You’re lucky, Lily. This time. Nasty things happen out in the countryside. Or so I’ve been told. Good night.” He kissed me on the cheek before I could pull away, and went inside.

  “Charming bloke,” Simon said. “Ex-boyfriend?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. A mistake on my part. Pay him no mind.”

  “I’m not sure I can do that. Sounded to me like a threat, Lily.”

  It had to me, too. Had Wesley set the fire? For what possible aim? I was hardly going to suddenly decide North Augusta wasn’t safe and flee back to Manhattan.

  “Here they come,” Simon said. “Let’s join them.”

  Police officers were stringing yellow tape around the south end of the property. The unpleasant scent of smoke and ash and burned wood hung heavily on the night air.

  Éclair began to head for the shed to do some investigating of her own. I called her back. She hesitated. I called again and snapped my fingers, and she returned, reluctantly I thought, to my side. She’d been very good up to now, but the temptation of nosing (literally) around a fire scene might prove more powerful than her training to obey me. The scents must be intoxicating to her powerful senses, and she was a curious dog. I scooped her up. She licked my face, and I laughed.

  We met Matt and the fire captain in the driveway. “I’ll have an arson investigator here first thing,” the older man said.

  “You think it was deliberately set?” I asked.

  “Not much doubt about it, ma’am. We’ll be opening a full investigation in conjunction with the North Augusta police. In the meantime, stay away from that area and make sure your guests do, too.” He rubbed Éclair’s ear. “And this dog.”

  “You didn’t see any indication of who might have started the fire?” Simon asked. “Like a dropped driver’s license, or something?”

  “No such luck.” The firefighter gave me a nod. “Go back to bed, folks. Ms. Roberts, we’ll talk in the morning.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Simon, Matt, and I watched him head back to his vehicle. Éclair wiggled in my arms, asking to be let down. I held on firmly.

  A car sped down the driveway, swerved to avoid the firetrucks and police cars, and screeched to a halt. Bernie had arrived.

  “Okay,” I said. “Who called her?”

  “Not me,” Matt said.

  “Nor me,” Simon said.

  My friend ran toward us, red hair streaming behind her. She’d pulled on black yoga pants and a pale-green workout shirt. She stretched out her arms and enveloped me and Éclair in a ferocious hug. When she finally let us go, she gazed deeply into my eyes. “Lily, are you okay? You look okay. Tell me you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine. We’re all fine. Why are you here?”

  At that moment my phone rang, and I recognized the tune indicating it was Rose calling, so I answered, trying to balance the phone and the squirming dog at the same time.

  “Meeting. Kitchen. Five minutes.” She hung up.

  “Rose called you,” I said to Bernie.

  “Of course she did. Did you doubt it?”

  “No.” I should also not have expected my grandmother to meekly toddle off to bed. My phone rang again, and I shoved Éclair into Bernie’s arms.

  “Lily, I assumed you’d still be up,” Amy Redmond said.

  “As I am.”

  “I’ve been notified of an incident at your house. A fire. No one harmed and no property damage, other than to an outbuilding and its contents.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you have reason to believe this might be connected to the death of Kimberly Smithfield?”

  “Detective, I have no reason to think it can be anything else. The fire chief seems confident the blaze was deliberately set.”

  Bernie’s eyebrows rose, and she exchanged a worried glance with Matt.

  “I have no enemies—” The words died in my throat.

  “What?” Redmond asked.

  “I had a minor, and I mean minor, altercation with Allegra Griffin in town earlier tonight. I can’t say she made threats against me, but she was . . . hostile might be the word.”

  “Do you need me to come around tonight?”

  “No, we’re fine here. I’m heading back to bed.” I looked at my circle of friends, all of them watching me, and shrugged.

  “I doubt that very much, but I’ll be around in the morning to talk to the arson investigator. If anything else happens, let me know.”

  “I will.” I hung up.

  Chapter 20

  We were a motley group gathered in the B & B kitchen that night. Rose and I in our nightwear (although I’d found a ratty old sweater in the front closet and thrown it on in a poor attempt at preserving my modesty), and Bernie, Matt, and Simon in whatever clothes they’d grabbed (probably off the floor or out of the laundry basket) in their rush. Robbie settled himself comfortably on Rose’s lap, and Éclair assumed her usual place under the table, where she could keep an eye on me, her muzzle resting between her front paws. I was not in the mood to make coffee and tea, but I offered refreshment out of habit. Everyone refused hot drinks, but Bernie ventured into the fridge and brought out jugs of juice while Simon found glasses.

  Before sitting down, Rose had produced a pad of paper and a pen from the depths of her housecoat pockets. She flourished the pen now. “The first order of business is to draw up a suspect list.”

  I groaned.

  “We have to assume this incident is related to the Smithfield killing,” Matt said.

  “Actually, we don’t,” Bernie said. “Top of the list, Rose, write down ‘Allegra Griffin.’ We ran into her earlier tonight. Or rather she ran into us. She’s obsessed with blaming Lily for her losing her chance to be on America Bakes!”

  “That happened weeks ago,” I said. “Why would she strike tonight?”

  “Seeing you in town reminded her,” Bernie said.

  “I don’t buy it. It’s too much of a coincidence, happening so soon after Kimberly’s murder.”

  “We talked about coincidences earlier,” Bernie said. “We agreed they can happen.”

  “Before settling on suspects,” Matt said, “let’s consider the details of the fire itself. The intent was obviously to do no serious damage.”

  “Destroyed my best secateurs,” Simon growled.

  “Might not have even done that,” Matt said. “If they’re made of metal. The fire moved fast, but it was put out soon.”

  “It was only by chance a woman was awake and in a bedroom facing the direction of the shed at the right time,” I said. “She saw the fire and raised the alarm.”

  Matt nodded. “That’s true, but we still have to bear in mind that the shed’s a good distance from any other buildings, with no trees immediately surrounding it, and the lawn and plants are well watered. Not much chance of the fire spreading.”

  “In the grand scheme of things, the condition of Simon’s preferred pruning instrument is of little consequence,” Rose pointed out. “I’ll call my insurance broker in the morning; we should be fully covered. Simon, mark a shopping expedition in your calendar for later this week.”

  “ ‘It’s an ill wind . . .’ ” he said.

  Bernie cleared her throat. “If we may continue. Matt’s point is that if this person or persons unknown wanted to cause real damage, they could have. An old house full of sleeping people. Lily alone in her cottage. Guest cars in the driveway. Rose’s car and heavy garden equipment in the garage. If it was Allegra, wouldn’t she have been more likely to try to burn down Lily’s tearoom?”

  “One thing I’ve learned,” Matt said, “is not to spend too much time trying to understand the motives of anyone who’d do such a thing. Their motives are totally understandable to them, but they might make no sense whatsoever to anyone else. However, in this case, I’d say the fire was set to send a message, and nothing more.”

  “What, then, is the message?” Rose asked.

  The table fell silent.

  “A warning,” Bernie said.

  “What are we being warned against?” I asked.

  “Interfering in the investigation into the death of Kimberly Smithfield.”

  “I’m not interfering.”

  “But you were . . . we were.”

  “You were?” Matt said. “Why would you do that? Leave it to the police.”

  “Lily gets curious,” Bernie said.

  “Me!”

  “Okay. We get curious. I get curious.”

  “I can be curious,” Rose added.

  “To say the least,” I muttered.

  “More to the point,” Bernie said, “we’re involved despite ourselves. Lily had possession of the tea chest which contained the envelope which supposedly contained the last will and testament of Rosemary Morrison Smithfield. Kimberly Smithfield died steps from Lily’s cottage. Rachel Morrison, also in search of the lost will, has been to the tearoom asking for Lily’s help. The dead woman and her husband were staying here, at Rose’s B & B. The husband’s still here, and he and Lily have a history.”

  “Nasty bloke, that one,” Simon said. “Passive aggressive in the worst way.”

  “Sounds like Wesley,” Bernie said. “He’s conflicted, to say the least, about how he feels about Lily. I wouldn’t put it past him to have set the fire in the hope that she’ll seek solace in his manly arms.”

  I snorted.

  “Precisely.” Rose wrote his name on her list beneath Allegra’s with a flourish.

  “Catch me up with your not-investigating,” Simon said. “Who do you suspect of killing Kimberly? That person must be the one who set the fire.”

  “We have, sorry to say, nothing but suspects,” Bernie admitted. “It’s all a jumble. The greedy husband, the jealous brother, the resentful sister.”

  Rose scribbled down names.

  “As well as people outside the direct family,” I said. “I’ve heard opposing things about the family lawyer, including a suggestion he contributed to Kimberly’s late father losing a great deal of money. Maybe Kimberly learned something about that and threatened to take him to court.”

  “The housekeeper doesn’t like Rachel,” Bernie said. “Although that doesn’t explain why she’d kill Kimberly, and not Rachel.”

  “And that’s another complication. Helen Chambers, the Smithfield housekeeper, took tea today with Rachel. They were, as far as I could tell, getting on perfectly well.”

  Bernie threw up her hands. “I give up.”

  “Which is exactly what I’d decided to do,” I said. “Until someone set a fire on my grandmother’s property and thus made it very much my business. Our business.”

  “Okay,” Bernie said. “What do we do now?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” I said.

  “The fire department will be here at first light tomorrow,” Matt said. “They can learn a surprising amount from a burnt-out building. Amateur criminals are never, ever as smart as they think they are, and they usually leave a whole bunch of clues trailing along behind them. Call me when they get here, and I’ll pop over.”

  “Of all those suspects’ names Rose is carefully recording,” Simon said, “only one is staying here. In this house. You need to give him the boot. Tomorrow. I’ll escort him off the property myself.”

  “I don’t—” I began.

  “I do,” Bernie said. “I’m with Simon on this one. I’m sick and tired of the great Wesley Schumann passively aggressively, or outright aggressively, threatening Lily. You have reason to ask him to leave and legal grounds to do so.”

  Robbie stood up, stretched every fiber of his substantial being, and opened his mouth in an enormous yawn. That broke the tension, and we all laughed.

  “Nothing more we can do tonight,” Simon said. “I’ll spend the rest of the night in the drawing room.”

  “You don’t—” I began.

  “I do,” he said. “Our intruder might come back. He”—he looked pointedly at me—“might not have left.”

  “I’ll be on call,” Matt said.

  “Me too,” Bernie said.

  Éclair barked.

  * * *

  I didn’t think Wesley would agree to go quietly, and I wasn’t wrong.

  Simon came into the kitchen shortly after six as I was starting breakfast prep. Éclair leapt to her feet to accept a rub behind the ears.

  “How’d you sleep?” I asked Simon. His sandy hair was tousled, his eyes bleary, the trace of stubble dark on his jaw, and his clothes rumpled.

  He smothered a yawn. “Not well. Those sofas are not meant to serve as beds.”

  “I’m sorry about that. It was nice of you to stay.”

  He turned his attention from the dog and smiled at me. “Other duties as assigned.”

  We looked at each other for a long time. He broke away first and helped himself to coffee, while Éclair settled herself back down under the table. “I was thinking about your problem guest, and I don’t think Rose should be the one to tell him he’s being given the boot. He might not take it well.”

  “He’s not going to attack an old woman. It is her property, after all.”

  “She isn’t usually up before breakfast is over, and I’d like to see the back of him as soon as possible. I’ll knock him up at seven.”

  “You’ll do what?”

  He laughed. “Sorry, English expression. I gather it means something quite different in America. I’ll knock on his door and tell him to pack his bags.”

  “I’ll come with you,” I said.

  “Best not.”

  “Probably, but I will, anyway. He’ll think you’re acting on our instructions, so I need to be there.”

  “In the meantime, I’m going to have a look at what remains of the shed. I won’t go past the line of tape, but maybe I can have enough of a look ’round to see if anything’s salvageable. As long as I wasn’t able to sleep, I did some checking into garden sheds. That shed was an old one, handcrafted of good wood, nicely made. Unless Rose wants a custom-built replacement, we can order a prefab thing from the hardware store and they’ll deliver.”

  “I’ll let her decide that. Custom built will be expensive, but the old one added a good deal of charm to that section of the property. The decision might depend on what her insurance company has to say.”

  I got the baking started and put together an egg-white frittata, and then I laid out eggs and sausages for those wanting the traditional English breakfast. When Edna arrived, I told her I had an errand to do at seven, but it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, and I’d start the cooking when I got back.

  “I heard what happened last night,” she said. “No harm done? Other than to that outbuilding?”

  “It gave us all a heck of a fright, but there wasn’t any real danger. When was the last time an arsonist was at work in North Augusta?”

  “Never,” she said. “Kids on vacation or celebrating the end of school have been known to set trash cans on fire, and things can get out of control causing a great deal of fuss and bother. Teenagers sneaking around, quiet, alone in the dark? Nope.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  Simon came in, smelling of smoke, his hands and face dusted with ash and gray and black dust. “Mornin’, Edna.”

  “You went past the keep-out tape,” I scolded as he scrubbed his hands at the sink.

  “Couldn’t help meself. I didn’t go inside the shed, though. What remains of the shed, that is, and it’s not much. Almost everything’s gone.”

  Coulda been worse, I reminded myself. Far worse.

  “Ready?” he said.

  Voices drifted in from the dining room, the first of the guests arriving for breakfast. I took my apron off, shook out my hair, and gathered my courage around me. “Ready. Be right back, Edna.”