Page 110 of The Botanist (Washington Poe)

‘OK,’ he said.

‘Don’t you want to search it?’ Lee said.

‘No. It wouldn’t be right to. Estelle didn’t want me to come here – I won’t rifle through her backstory. Not until I have her permission.’

‘Fair enough.’

Poe spent ten minutes looking through Highwood’s first-floor windows, desperately hoping for something that could explain theunblemished snow. A tree that could be reached with a ladder. Telephone wires. Anything he could sell to a jury.

But there was nothing.

The drive wrapped the house and it was ten metres wide. The killer couldn’t have jumped out of a window without leaving a mark in the snow. Poe’s mood blackened.

‘What next?’ Lee asked.

‘I’d like to see Elcid Doyle’s study.’