The Cipher Garden Read Online Free PDF

funeral, and then Aimee, his lover, had embarked on another suicide attempt and he’d been too late to save her from throwing herself from the top of a tower.
    * * *
    Miranda came into the sitting room, wrapped in a yellow bath towel. She loved aromatherapy and there was a glow of contentment about her. He could smell rosemary and juniper.
    ‘Any luck at the church?’
    ‘I asked the rector if I could see the parish records, but all he could do was refer me to the County Records Office, and I didn’t find anything useful there. But I had a look around the graveyard and found where the Quillers were laid to rest.’
    Their cottage had been built over a century ago, by a cousin of the man who owned Brack Hall. His name was Jacob Quiller and after he and his wife died the place had changed hands several times before the Gilpins arrived.
    She feigned a yawn. ‘Am I right in thinking you won’t rest till you’ve made sense of that crazy garden?’
    He glanced through the window. Outside, darkness had fallen. A lamp cast a pool of brightness over the path leading to the tarn, but the effect was to make the dark shapes of the trees beyond reach of the beam all the more mysterious. He caught sight of a movement in the plants by the side of the path. The fox was getting bolder. At night-time the garden became a different place, the kingdom of unseen creatures. The patterns that men imposed on the landscape were only skin deep.
    ‘I must admit I’m intrigued.’
    ‘Another crusade, huh?’ She wasn’t into the past; the present was all that mattered to her. Already she was preoccupied with unbuckling his belt. ‘Come and join me on the rug. Better make the most of our freedom before your sister arrives.’
    He was glad she’d changed the subject. Too easy for him to develop a fresh obsession with the mystery of thegarden. It had scarcely been touched for many years and he suspected that the underlying design dated back as far as the Quillers’ time. Their grave was situated under the leaves of a spreading oak in the churchyard. Its marble headstone was large, but lacked the grandeur of the vaults dedicated to the squires of Brack Hall and their families. No twee verses, no doleful epitaphs.
    Three people were buried there. And here was an oddity: Quiller and his wife Alice had died on the same day, the first anniversary of the date given for the death of their son. He was named as Major John Quiller of 1st Northumberland Fusiliers and he’d died on 5 April 1902. The tail end of the Boer War, though there was no indication that he’d been killed in action. Beneath his parents’ names were four words.
    Died of broken hearts.
     
    Warren Howe’s face leered at Hannah out of the glossy file print, as if he were about to proposition her. Hannah contemplated the dead man, wondered how to climb inside his mind. Murder victims forfeited their privacy. Human rights? Forget them, they were an indulgence for the living. She stared into his eyes, searching for a clue to what he’d done to earn such a savage fate.
    He wasn’t bad-looking in a louche kind of way. Unruly dark hair and old-fashioned sideburns, full lips, a wide fleshy face. Teeth marred by a chipped front incisor that accentuated a small gap. The deep-set eyes were his best feature, startling and blue. One ear had a discreet ring. A strong face, with a touch of devil-may-care. Easy to understand why some women fell for him, despite knowing he was a serial seducer.
    The picture featured in a brochure extolling Flint HoweGarden Design and a dog-eared copy had been kept in the file. A footnote credited the photographer, Tina Howe. She’d also been responsible for the shot of her husband’s partner. Bespectacled, with a fuzz of greying hair, high forehead and long nose, Peter Flint looked as though he’d be more at home in a college library than getting his hands dirty in the great outdoors.
    Family snaps spilled out of a buff folder. The Howes, parents and children,