The Stargazey Read Online Free PDF

suspense to be had, God knows he could do it over a body found in the Fulham Palace grounds. Jury had begun grinding his teeth ever since the telephone call less than an hour ago. He called upon his store of seemingly bottomless patience, reminding himself that Chilten was a very good cop.
    That their destination was an herb garden had a most salutary effect on Sergeant Wiggins, washing away, as one of his tinctures literally might, all of that “locked-horns” business and rendering him an agreeable companion.
    The three policemen—Jury, Wiggins, and DI Ronald Chilten—were walking through the grounds of Fulham Palace. They passed a boundary of holm oak trees and a silver lime; passed cedar, chestnut, maple, walnut, an enormous California redwood—a world of trees Jury couldn’t put names to. It was Chilten who pointed them out, which surprised Jury, as he wouldn’t have expected the man to have a horticultural oraesthetic bent. “Beautiful prospect, isn’t it?” he said, stopping to gaze upwards at the tiered branches of a holm oak. “It’s a wonder more people don’t know about these grounds, considering how much we love our gardens. There must be more different kinds of trees in these few acres than anywhere else in the British Isles.”
    They continued walking, Jury looking back at the rather severe Georgian facade of the palace, recalling from some garbled history he had heard as a boy that all bishops at one time were said to live in “palaces,” so the term was merely a euphemism for “house.” “When did they stop using it as a residence?”
    â€œThe bishops? Seventies, maybe.”
    â€œBut it’s being used.”
    â€œThe borough rents it out as offices.”
    â€œFulham does?”
    â€œHammersmith and Fulham, yeah.” They had reached a brick wall that Jury assumed must enclose the gardens. Chilten said something to one of two uniformed policeman who appeared to be on guard. They nodded.
    With a curt nod toward an indentation in the brick wall, Wiggins said, “Bee bole.”
    Jury waited for further comment, but the sergeant said nothing. Wiggins and Chilten, thought Jury, should get on like a house afire.
    What was most vivid was the enormous quiet of the place. London might have been dissolving around them; no traffic noises, no shouts and cries reached the little herb garden, walled in within the outer wall of the rest of the gardens.
    Jury looked at the brown vines, imagining the spring when veils of wisteria would shiver in the breeze, undulating along the long fence to their left. On their right was a ruined greenhouse, a vinery, a grape arbor, given the look of the hardy vines that still ran within it, now with its roof caved in. It was a pity, Jury thought, that a place like this couldn’t get funded by the government when one saw so much money wasted. The old story.
    In the center of this walled garden was a large tear-shaped bed, sectioned off into small allotments for various herbs, now dry andovergrown. It was shaped like an eighteenth-century knot garden. There were patches of thyme, rosemary, lavender, and a dozen others, which he could tell apart only with the help of the museum map.
    Wiggins looked down at the weedy, brown, and blighted winter aspect of the garden as if he were visiting the graves of the dead. He made his mournful way around the center plot, bound round by the bright yellow POLICE DO NOT CROSS tape, which was used to keep a murder site in as pristine condition as humanly possible.
    Wiggins was in his element, not because this was police work but because it was herb work. “Feverfew, that stuff is.” He pointed to the first section within the plot. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen that, I mean outside the shelves of my homeopathic medicine shop.”
    The wreckage of the Titanic wouldn’t have called forth greater awe. Jury consulted the map.