The Garden Plot Page 12

  Beginning on one side of the field, they made their way counterclockwise around the booths, straggling along and calling to one another to look at this cup or that knitted hat. Pru had moved ahead a booth or two and Jo had backtracked to walk with Cordelia and Lucy, who had just emerged from the house, when Natalie came up beside her and casually examined a quilted tea cozy. “Pru, I don’t want to alarm you, but there’s a fellow at a tent across the way who has been watching your every move since we got here.”

  Pru froze. Had someone followed her here from London? The bag snatcher? Malcolm? Saxsby? That exhausted her suspect list, so she asked, “Which booth? What does he look like?”

  Natalie casually turned and surveyed the tents as if she was looking for someone.

  “Straight behind you. He’s tall, dark hair. He looks harmless, but rather intense. He’s at the Badger Care booth.”

  Pru turned around, and across the field she saw DCI Pearse standing under a banner that read: “Badgers—our companions in the country.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Do you know him?” asked Natalie, who looked back to see Pearse talking with a couple of people at the booth.

  “Yes, I guess I do know him,” Pru said. She couldn’t quite identify her reaction to seeing him—it was part surprise, part annoyance, and part … she wasn’t sure what that other part was. He’d seen her, and so she couldn’t ignore him. “I suppose I’ll go and just say hello.”

  Pru made what seemed like an excruciatingly long walk across the grass to the Badger Care booth, cutting off not only the tea tent, but also the jumble sale, to which she intended to get back. Pearse had watched her walk halfway—Pru had given him a tiny wave—but then he turned to offer a brochure to someone who approached the table, and when she walked up she heard him say, “You might see that they’ve dug into the side of a small hill. The opening will be hidden with shrubs, to protect the cubs and give them a place to play.” He glanced at her and gave a small smile while she perused the table of leaflets, which had a drawing of a badger head on them as a logo. It reminded her of the knocker at Primrose House.

  “Hello.” A girl, eight or nine years old, stood holding a thick pile of leaflets. She wore denims and two sweaters and had strawberry-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and green Wellington boots up to her knees.

  “Hi,” Pru said.

  “Are you interested in the badgers?” the girl asked.

  “Well,” said Pru, “yes, I am interested in badgers.”

  The girl’s eyes grew large. “Are you American?”

  “Yes, I am. I’m from Texas.”

  “Do you have badgers in Texas?” she asked.

  “I believe we do,” Pru said, “although I’ve never seen one. But we do have possums, and I see those. Possums have long noses, they hang in trees by their tails, and carry their babies on their backs.” The girl lifted her eyebrows. “I’d love to see a badger, though.”

  “Badgers can live quite close to your house, you know, and they won’t bother you at all,” the girl replied, launching into what sounded like a school report. “My class has adopted a badger sett near here, to help teach people about them. You can even go and watch the badgers at night, but you must be very quiet about it.”

  “Right, Becky, thanks for helping out here,” Pearse said, now freed up from his earlier exchange. “Did your dad send you over?”

  “Mum and Dad are just coming, and when they get here, I can go to the crafts tent. We’re building a house for toads.”

  “You go get started on the house.” Pearse smiled at Becky. “I’ll be fine until your dad arrives.”

  “Right,” she said, “bye,” and she ducked under the table and headed off to the crafts tent. Pearse turned his attention to Pru.

  “Ms. Parke, what brings you to the country?” he asked.

  “I’m visiting for the weekend with my friend, Jo. She’s related to the Bennet-Smythes.” It occurred to her that this might be a problem. “Was I not supposed to leave London?”

  “You’re free to move about, Ms. Parke. After all, we do have your passport information. And your fingerprints.”

  Pru chose to ignore that. “Did the badgers bring you here?” asked Pru.

  “I lived near here for many years, and I still like to get out of London when I can, although that’s not often. I don’t mind helping out with the group.”

  “Helping out? He started the whole organization,” said a tall, elegantly dressed blonde walking up to the table.

  Pearse’s demeanor stiffened slightly. “Hello, Phyl, were you looking for me?”

  The woman stretched her hand out to Pru. “Hello, I’m Phyllida Tinsdale, the ex. Are you a friend of Christopher’s?”

  Pru took her hand with a firm grip and replied, “Hello, I’m Pru Parke. I was a witness to a … I found the …”

  “Ms. Parke is helping with an investigation,” Pearse said smoothly.

  “Lovely to meet you, Pru,” Phyl said, and turned back to Pearse. “Have you phoned Graham? He wanted you to go for parents day if you could.”

  A stocky man with a shaven head came up behind the table and held out a brochure to Pru, who, grateful to be taken out of the spotlight, began asking anything she could think of about badgers, while trying to keep one ear on the other conversation.

  She heard only snatches of the exchange: Pearse saying, “Phyl, I talk to Graham every week—you don’t have to remind me,” and Phyl replying, “Yes, but do you ever take any time off work to go visit?” and something about the Lake District. Pru’s mind flipped through all the possibilities at hand—ex-wife, Graham, probably son, at school somewhere. Divorced for how long?

  “… And I’m glad you can come out with us this evening, it isn’t far, and it’s quite interesting to see them in their habitat.” Pru was brought back to the moment at hand when she realized that she’d just volunteered to go that evening to see a badger sett.

  “It’s a fascinating look at wildlife, if you’re interested,” Pearse said, now free of Phyl, who was heading toward the car park.

  The man, whose name Pru didn’t think she got, started up a conversation with an elderly woman who lingered a second too long in front of the table, leaving Pru and Pearse on their own. “I’m not quite sure what I volunteered for. Is it tonight? Where do we go?”

  “I’m sorry if Phyl distracted you. We don’t see much of each other, but when I’m out here, she does stop by.”

  Pru felt her cheeks grow warm. “I wasn’t distracted. I just didn’t quite get all the information that …” Pru faltered at the man’s name, knowing that wasn’t a good sign.

  Pearse handed a brochure to a woman with a baby in a front-pack, after which a young girl came over to ask for one of the badger coloring booklets. As Pru took a step back and turned to leave, Pearse said to her, “Ms. Parke, I’m finished here in another hour. Fancy a pint down the road at the Horse & Groom?”

  Caught slightly off guard, she regained her composure quickly. “Yes, thanks, I’d like that. I’ll meet you there.”

  Pru walked to the pub, about a mile down the road, on a public footpath through a field, and then a short bit down another road, following directions given to her by Natalie. At the house she’d left a note for Jo, whom she’d lost track of—Pru thought she might be going over the treasures in the jumble sale tent—that said she’d run into DCI Pearse, who wanted a word with her. She knew that sounded too official, but she felt it was better to keep it that way. After all, as far as she knew, it was official.

  She arrived just two minutes before him and had time to dash in the loo, coming out as he walked in the door. They ordered and collected their pints, choosing a settle opposite the bar. Pru thought badgers would be neutral ground.

  “Did you really start the Badger Care group?” she asked.

  “I was just one of several people. We wanted people in the country and the city to know that badgers are a vital part of our British life.”

  “Along with
Ratty, Mole, and Toad.”

  Pearse smiled.

  “My mother read The Wind in the Willows to me,” Pru said, “and I still remember wishing I could get an armadillo to talk to me the way Badger and the rest of them talked.”

  “They are quite taciturn in real life,” Pearse said.

  Like some police officers, she thought. “Do you volunteer for the group often, Inspector?”

  He sighed and carefully rearranged the extra beer mats on the table. “Ms. Parke … Pru, please call me Christopher.”

  “Yes. Of course. Christopher.”

  “I enjoy the country, and I like to help keep it. And when I get out of London and just past Oxford, I feel like I can breathe again.”

  “It shows,” she said.

  “I don’t take much time off work, and so I suppose I keep up my official demeanor a little too fiercely.”

  “No,” Pru said, “I didn’t mean that—it’s just that, it’s nice to see you, as, not the detective chief inspector. For a while.”

  Christopher watched her and smiled. She’d seen little of that smile during their encounters in London. He had a direct way about him, she thought, and intense brown eyes that seemed to see through her. It disconcerted her when he questioned them at the Wilsons’. It disconcerted her now, too, but in a different way.

  “You said your mother was British,” he asked. “Where was she from?”

  “She was from Imber.”

  “Imber? Was she now?” he asked with amazement in his voice. “And where did she end up?”

  She was pleased he knew about Imber, a village on the Salisbury Plain that was closed in 1943—all the residents evacuated—so that the American soldiers could practice and prepare to invade Europe. The village remained closed, and the British army continued to use the area for military maneuvers.

  “My mother and her mother moved in with some cousins in Ibsley, near the RAF base. Her father was killed in the war. I know that Imber—or what’s left of it—is open occasionally to former residents and families. I haven’t looked into it, but I might be able to visit.” One more reason to stay, she thought.

  Thinking about her mother’s early life always reminded Pru of the small box—too small a box, she thought—stored at Lydia’s when she moved to London. It held a few pieces of her mother’s life in England: some faded photos of Pru’s grandmother, her grandfather in uniform, her mother as a child. Really, her mother was still just a child when she had met her future husband. The box held some old letters, including several that her mother herself had written but never sent, tied with a faded blue ribbon. After her mother died, Pru opened the letters, but found them too personal to read so soon, and she had carefully retied them and put them away.

  “She met my father in Ibsley, when the Americans came over and he was stationed there. She was barely sixteen at the end of the war, but he waited another two years and came back from Texas for her. I grew up listening to stories of England. My father died about fifteen years ago, and my mother died two years ago, and I realized that what I needed to do, what I’d been waiting to do my whole life, was live here.” Pru startled herself with how much she told him.

  “England is quite a change from Texas,” Christopher said.

  “And Texas was quite a change for my mother. It isn’t easy to plant an English cottage garden in that climate”—she smiled—“but my mother always tried. She learned that, in order to grow sweet peas, she had to plant them in the fall, and they would bloom in April. It sort of threw off the summer garden look.”

  “And the English weather doesn’t bother you?”

  “I adapted quickly. Although I’m not sure this will all work out. My friend Lydia in Dallas has already started pushing for my return. I had a plan—I gave myself a year to find a permanent head gardener position—that seemed like enough time. But so far all I can find are bits of maintenance work, and my year is almost up.”

  “Is there ever any room for compromise in your plans?”

  She glanced up at him and away again. Must be those keen investigative skills, she thought. “No,” she said with a half smile, “not very often. Of course, the Wilsons’ garden is more than just maintenance work. It’s a whole project, and that will help. When,” she emphasized, “I can get started. Has there been any progress in the investigation?”

  “We’ll try to get you gardening as soon as possible,” Christopher said, “but in the meantime, you will be careful about what you do. You don’t need to get involved in the investigation.”

  Pru watched him quietly for a moment, not wanting to argue, but knowing that she couldn’t let this go. Involved, thought Pru, is just what I need to be—not just because I want to know what’s going on, but also because I need to hold on to that garden, to say nothing of standing up for Mr. Wilson, who couldn’t possibly have murdered his friend over a mosaic in the shed.

  That line of thinking brought to mind the conversation between Malcolm and Saxsby that she overheard, and she was about to tell Christopher when she saw Jo walk in. Jo saw Pru, but because of the high back on the settle, she did not see anyone sitting across from her. Jo strode across the room, saying, as she walked, “Can you believe that he would start interrogating you here when all you are trying to do is have a weekend—” She reached the table, saw Christopher, and stopped short. “Oh. Hello.”

  “Jo, this is Christopher Pearse. Christopher, this is my friend Jo Howard.”

  “Ms. Howard.” They all looked in different directions. “Will you join us?”

  Jo became graciousness personified. “No, thank you so much, Mr. Pearse. Pru mentioned she might be at the pub, and as I was on my way back from picking up a few things in Stow, I thought I’d just stop by and see if she needed a lift.”

  “I’d be happy to return her to the house,” Christopher said.

  “No, thanks, Christopher.” Pru felt as if she might be overcome with giggles. “I’ll go back with Jo. Thanks for the drink.”

  “I’ll call for you this evening at six. Is that all right?”

  “Yes, that’s fine.”

  “Be sure to wear quiet clothes.”

  As soon as they were outside, Jo burst into laughter, and Pru let the giggles out. “Quiet clothes?” Jo asked. “What kind of a date is this?”

  “It isn’t a date.” Pru sobered up. “We’re going to watch badgers.” She needed to raise her voice to be heard over Jo’s howls of laughter. “Other people will be there.”

  Pru layered her clothes for the evening trek; the weather might be mild, but sitting or standing still for she didn’t know how long would surely chill her. She read through the badger brochure and learned that quiet clothing—that is, clothes that didn’t rustle—decreased the possibility of startling the badgers and increased the chance of watching them do whatever badgers do when they come out at night.

  She waited outside the front door, and Christopher pulled up with two other people—the other man at the booth and his wife, little Becky’s parents, Michael and Susan. “Becky wanted to come along, especially when she learned the American woman would be here, but it’s really much too late an evening for an eight-year-old, so she’s home with her older brother.”

  As they drove down the country lanes, Pru turned halfway round so that she could see Susan, who talked about the fête and how more people lately seem to really care what happened in the country. Then Susan said, “Becky told us about you first, that you’re from Texas. And then Christopher told us about you, and your work and how much you know about gardens. And that your mother was English.” Pru had no idea she had made such an impression on Becky. Or Christopher. She looked over at him, but he kept his eyes on the road.

  “Here we are now,” he said, pulling off the road. “Our shelter is quite close, but we shouldn’t make any noise, and there’s no talking once we’re settled in there.”

  “I’ll try to keep quiet,” Pru said.

  They walked to a small wooden shed, like a duck blind. Susan took a
cloth bag out and tossed peanuts and raisins around the clearing. Pru had read that would keep the badgers around for a while after they emerged. They stood quietly watching through the opening as dusk settled.

  At first, Pru felt disconcerted to be among people she didn’t know well without being able to talk, but the silence, instead of growing in size and weight, actually became companionable. Looking out onto the edge of woodland brought her a sense of peace, and she found her mind quieted. As they waited, she realized she should have been closer to the opening for a better view. As she tried to stand on her toes and peer out, Christopher, standing near the edge of the window, nodded his head, silently asking her to come closer. She moved as quietly as she could to stand beside him, he put his hand on her back to guide her, and they waited. Pru tried to keep her mind on badgers.

  And then they came. The badgers, their long, sleek faces accentuated by the black-and-white stripes that ran from their noses straight back over their ears and into salt-and-pepper fur, snuffled about, finding the treats left for them. They were stocky animals, and bigger in person than she imagined. She could hear them make small sounds, sort of like chuckling. It was magical—much better than a Disney movie, Pru thought.

  The food kept them around for a while, but eventually, as it grew dark, they trundled off on their nightly routines. When they were well and gone, the four humans returned to the car as the moon rose.

  “We thought we’d stop for a meal, Pru,” Susan said. “Is that all right?”

  “Yes, perfect.”

  The Horse & Groom held a comfortable contingent of locals, most of them standing with their pints, but a few at tables where, in the evenings, they could order food—lunch orders were taken strictly at the bar.

  “They do a lovely curry,” Susan said. Pru thought she’d go along with her suggestion, as it would take her far too long to read through every item on the menu—without any reading glasses. Then—Pru noticed the soup of the day: roasted tomato bisque. She did so love soup and ordered a large bowl.