Later, the castle had fallen and in its place the mansion had risen. The fiefdoms had dissolved and the squires had replaced armor and mace with the threat of debtor’s prison if the farmers renting their lands did not pay their bills. The property had remained in the same family for many generations, finally descending to distant cousins of the original owners whose income had never approached the level necessary to maintain the estate. During the two world wars Harrowsfield-Reggie had never discovered a definitive account of where the name came from-was used as a hospital for wounded soldiers. After that it lay abandoned for several decades until the government had been compelled to take it over and make minimal repairs. Mallory had discovered the place and finagled the use of it. To the outside world it was merely an informal gathering place for eccentric academics whose work was as esoteric as it was innocuous.

Reggie passed by columns of ragged English boxwoods, their urine odor sweeping over her. Even though it was very late in the spring, a chilly breeze nudged at her back as she trudged along. She zipped up her worn leather jacket, which had belonged to her older brother. Though he’d only been twelve at the time of his death, he had been over six feet tall and the jacket enveloped her, even as his death had shattered her. She still felt emotionally brittle, like a pane of cracked glass that would disintegrate with the very next impact.

After a walk of a quarter mile she pushed open the door of what had once been the estate’s greenhouse. The smell of peat and mulch and rotting plants still drifted into her nostrils even though there had been no gardener or gardening here for decades. She passed by broken glass and loose boards that had dropped from the ceiling. Shadows were cast in all directions as the sun continued its descent into the English countryside. The chilly breeze turned still colder as it was funneled through the small openings in the windows and the walls, fluttering spiderwebs and rustling the disintegrating remnants of a horticulturist’s paradise.