Lily Bancroft’s gallery smells like turpentine and jasmine and the creative chaos that comes from a woman who paints the way other people breathe — constantly, instinctively, with her whole body.
I come here on Thursday afternoon because Lily asked me to. She called the B&B at noon — Agnes answered, listened for a moment, and handed me the phone with an expression that said I don’t approve, but I’m not going to stop you.
“I need to talk to you,” Lily said. “Can you come to the gallery around two? I’ll close for the afternoon.”
Now I’m sitting on her battered leather couch with a cup of chamomile tea that Lily brewed on a hot plate in the back room, and Lily is sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of an unfinished painting of the harbor, her auburn hair tied back with a paint-stained rag, her fingers wrapped around a mug that says WORLD’S BEST GODDAUGHTER in faded gold letters.
“I need to tell you something,” she says. “About Victor. About me. About Thursday night.”
“I know about the scarf, Lily.”
Her face crumbles. Not dramatically — Lily isn’t a dramatic person — but in the quiet, devastating way of a woman who has been holding something together for days and has finally run out of adhesive.
“I was sleeping with him,” she says. “For three months. Since his second visit to Saltbreeze Harbor.”
She tells me the story in stops and starts, the way people tell stories they’re ashamed of — not because the story is shameful, but because they’re ashamed of their own role in it. She met Victor at a gallery opening in Portland last spring. He was charming and attentive and genuinely interested in her art — or so she thought. They started seeing each other. He began visiting Saltbreeze Harbor more frequently, always staying at the B&B, always finding time to see Lily.
“I thought it was real,” she says, staring at her tea. “He bought my paintings. He remembered the names of my colors. He asked about Agnes and George and the garden and the things I cared about. He made me feel like I was the most interesting person in the room.”
“But it wasn’t real.”
“Not entirely. I started to suspect something was off about a month ago. Victor was asking too many questions about the Hawthorn family — about George, about Agnes, about the house. He wanted to know about George’s study, about old papers, about the history of the property. He was charming about it, always framing it as ‘research for the article,’ but…”
“But you didn’t believe him.”
“I stopped believing him when I found his notebook.” Lily’s voice tightens. “He left it at my gallery one afternoon. I wasn’t snooping — it was just sitting there on the work table, open. I saw my name. And next to my name, a note: ‘Lily — goddaughter of Agnes Hawthorn. Close to the family. Source of info on George’s papers and the B&B’s history. Keep close.’”
I look at Lily’s hands and try to imagine finding my own name used that way.
“He was using me,” Lily says. “For information about Agnes and George. About the house. About whatever he was really investigating.” She sets her mug down. “I confronted him Thursday evening. At the B&B. That’s what you heard — the argument.”
“I heard raised voices.”
“I was furious. I told him I’d seen the notebook. I told him I knew he was using me. I told him I wanted nothing to do with him or his lies or his ‘research.’” Lily’s eyes are bright with unshed tears. “He didn’t deny it. He just looked at me with those wire-rimmed glasses and said, ‘Lily, it’s more complicated than you think. I’ll explain everything after Thursday. I promise.’”
“After Thursday.”
“After Thursday dinner. He said he was going to settle something that night — something he’d been working toward for a long time. He said it would all be over by Friday, and then he’d tell me the whole truth.”
“Did he say what he was settling?”
“No. He said it was better if I didn’t know. He said the less I knew, the safer I’d be.” Lily’s voice breaks. “He was trying to protect me. Even while he was using me, he was trying to protect me. And I was so angry I didn’t see it.”
She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, leaving a streak of blue paint across her cheekbone.
“What time did you leave the B&B Thursday evening?” I ask.
“Seven-ten. I checked the clock. I walked out through the kitchen. I was crying. I didn’t look at anyone. I went to the gallery and painted until about nine-fifteen.”
“Did you see anyone else at the B&B when you were there?”
“Dale was in the kitchen when I walked through. He was sitting at the table with a beer. He said something — ‘Hey, Lily’ or ‘You okay?’ — I don’t remember. I just kept walking.”
“And Agnes?”
“I didn’t see Agnes. She was probably in her sitting room.”
I think about the timeline. Lily left at 7:10. Dale was in the kitchen. The dinner was at 7:30. The tea tray was at 8:40. The kitchen door opened at 8:55.
“Lily, did Victor say anything about who he was going to confront Thursday night? Anything at all?”
Lily is quiet for a long time. She picks up a paintbrush from the floor and turns it in her fingers, the way a person handles a small, ordinary object when the weight of the conversation is too much for their hands.
“He said something about an original. A letter. He said he couldn’t go to the police with a story that fell apart when somebody asked to see the paper.” Lily looks up. “I thought he meant his notebook. I was too angry to listen properly.”
“Did he say where the original was?”
“At the library, I thought. He said Marina was bringing it. Then he asked me to stay, and I told him I was finished being useful.”
I think about Marina in her office, surrounded by five years of research, connected to Victor by blood and purpose and the shared need to find the truth. I think about Lily, beautiful and furious and heartbroken, used by a man who was trying to find his uncle’s killer.
“He cared about you,” I say. “Whatever his reasons for getting close to you, I think he cared.”
“It doesn’t matter now.” Lily sets the paintbrush down. “What matters is that someone killed him. Someone in this town. And I want to know who.”
“Can I ask you one more thing?”
“Anything.”
“Thursday night. After you left the conservatory. Did you hear anything? See anything? Was there anyone in the garden, or on the path, or anywhere near the B&B that you recognized?”
Lily thinks. Her brow furrows. She stares at the unfinished painting on the easel — the harbor in blues and golds, the boats, the water, the town — and I can see her going back to that evening, replaying it frame by frame.
“There was a dog,” she says.
“A dog?”
“When I left the gallery to walk home — this was later, after nine-fifteen — I heard a dog barking. Up on the hill. Near the B&B.” She frowns. “A beagle, I think. Short, sharp barks. The kind a beagle makes when it’s spotted something.”
Eugene Marsh’s beagle. Captain.
“Eugene walks his dog past the B&B every evening,” I say. “Around nine to nine-thirty.”
“I know. I’ve seen him. He always walks the same route — past the B&B, along the hill, down to the harbor.” Lily pauses. “That night, the dog was barking more than usual. I remember thinking it was odd, because Captain is usually quiet. Elderly dogs don’t have much to say. But that night, he was going at it.”
“What time, exactly?”
“Nine-twenty. Maybe nine-twenty-five. I was at the corner of Hillcrest and Harbor Road, and I could hear the dog up on the hill.”
Nine-twenty or nine-twenty-five. Close to the time I heard Clover, though neither of us had checked a clock. Two animals upset on the same evening: something to report, not a stopwatch.
“Did you tell the police this?”
“I didn’t think it mattered. It was a dog barking. Dogs bark.”
“Dogs bark when they see something unusual. If Captain was barking at nine-twenty, he might have been barking at someone — someone near the B&B, or leaving the B&B, or in the garden.”
Lily’s eyes widen. “You think Eugene saw something.”
“I think Eugene might have been the closest thing to a witness this case has. And I think it’s time someone asked him what he saw.”
I stand. Lily stands with me. She looks at me with an expression that’s equal parts hope and fear — the look of a woman who wants the truth but is terrified of what it might cost.
“Be careful, Tess,” she says. “Whoever killed Victor is still out there. And they know you’re looking.”
I leave the gallery with two things to report: Victor wanted an original document, and Lily heard Captain barking later that evening. Neither gives me a face in the conservatory.
I turn toward the houseboat, then remember the bread proving at home. Eugene’s conversation will have to wait. I send Davenport a message about the barking before walking back up the hill.
Behind me, the town hums and breathes and goes on living, and somewhere in it — in a house, or a shop, or a garden, or an office — a person is carrying a decades-old secret and a week-old murder, and they know that I’m getting closer.