Strangled With Lavender

July 1923. The lavender is at the height of its season, which means Thea Penrose has been up since five and will not stop until the light fails.

She knows her farm. She knows the difference between lavender oil that has peaked and oil that will wait another day. She has good records and a well-ordered apothecary and a farmhand who is slowly learning to tie a knot correctly.

What she did not expect was the body in her barn. Or the questions that came with it — the ones the village is asking, and the quieter ones, the ones in her own handwriting in a notebook she has started keeping for reasons she has not fully examined yet.

The quiet ones always know. Thea is starting to understand what she knows.