Flowers for His Funeral

To Meredith Mitchell’s slightly jaundiced eye, the penultimate day of the Chelsea Flower Show bears comparison to the battle of Waterloo, its war-weary veterans struggling on to the bitter end. But even her anxiety to encounter something other than yet another rose bush couldn’t explain why she picked her old schoolfriend Rachel Hunter out of the crowd with such enthusiasm – they had never in fact been that close, and Meredith quickly realizes that she and the well-heeled, effortlessly self-confident blonde have even less in common now than they did as teenagers. Apart from one thing: Meredith’s companion, Chief Inspector Markby. To the embarrassment of all concerned – except of course the self-possessed Rachel – Meredith’s old schoolfriend turns out to be Markby’s former wife, from whom he was divorced years before in less-than-friendly circumstances.
The meeting with Rachel is not the only surprise the trip has in store for Markby. Before the afternoon is over, he has a death on his hands, a death that is soon proved to be far from accidental. Both he and Meredith find themselves drawn into the plush, apparently well-run world Rachel and her second husband Alex Constantine have created in their Cotswold home, Malefis Abbey, a world that Markby becomes convinced harbors a highly skilled murderer.