The Garden Plot Read online

  Reluctantly, she had emailed Lydia—and Marcus—and thanked them for all their help, and the offer of her old position back. Yes, she would take it, she wrote. She would let them know the details of her return soon. After that, she made reservations for her flight to Dallas. After that, she had a good cry.

  Right, she thought, that’s my quota of self-pity for today. She had bulbs to plant at the Hetheringtons’ later, and wondered if she might check in at the Wilsons’ before or after.

  An image of Mr. Wilson rolling up the envelope from Hodges & Hodges into a fat cigar flashed in her mind. She wondered if the police knew about Hodges & Hodges. It could be nothing—Mr. Wilson might be putting up for auction some of their furniture or family heirlooms or … or he could be involved in selling off antiquities that didn’t belong to him. It would take little to find out one way or another—just a word from the appraisers, a definite statement that absolved Mr. Wilson of any involvement in the upcoming auction announced on the website.

  Perhaps she did have too much time on her hands, because before she realized it, she was making plans to find out herself. She would ring up, not as herself, but as some wealthy potential bidder and ask for details. Surely she could pull off that minor deception.

  She would need to be someone both rich and unknown to them, a collector of fine ancient things. After thinking a moment, she hit upon a plan. Checking the company’s website, which still contained the special auction announcement, she rang.

  “Hodges and Hodges, how may we help you?” came a smooth female voice.

  “Well, hi there, this is Duxton Stewart, and I’m calling from Houston, Texas, about that very special auction you have listed on your website. Can you tell me about it?”

  “Just one moment, and one of our associates will assist you.”

  Pru tried to breathe normally as she waited on the line. She thought this might work: Duxton Stewart was an enormously wealthy Houston widow whose husband, about forty years her senior, had died a couple of years back. The widow collected art, Pru remembered, and her only companions these days were her dog and her pool boy. That’s about as far as Pru’s knowledge went—and she knew that much only because a member of her crew at the arboretum had gotten a job as Duxton’s gardener.

  “Hello, this is Gabriel Collingford speaking, Ms. … is it Ms. Duxton-Stewart?” said a voice equal in smoothness to the receptionist’s.

  “Oh, no, Mr. Collingford.” Pru laughed a throaty laugh. “Duxton is my first name. It was my mother’s maiden name, you see—it’s a very Southern thing to do. All my friends call me Dux.” She put as many vowels as possible into the nickname. Pru couldn’t approach a realistic British accent, but she could stretch her light Texas drawl from here to Amarillo with little trouble.

  Mr. Collingford sounded slightly flustered. “Well, yes, Ms. Stewart, please let me know how I can help you.”

  “Well, Gabriel, I am a huge fan of antiques and art and my dear late husband and I collected pieces from all over the world, and I am just fascinated by the announcement on your website about this special auction of … let’s see now, is it some Greek statue? Or a special Roman, oh, I don’t know … mosaic or something?” She hoped she wasn’t pushing her luck there.

  “Ms. Stewart, I’m delighted you’ve contacted us about this unique opportunity, and I want to assure you that I will be able to give you the full details of the auction just as soon as they become available.”

  Pru heard a light tapping in the background and thought for sure that Collingford was searching “Duxton Stewart” online. “Well, shoot, Gabriel,” she said in a pouty tone, “I sure was hoping to find out just what this exciting thing is. Can’t you tell me anything about it? Who owns it? Where it was found? Just some little thing to keep me interested.”

  The slight pause worried Pru.

  “Ms. Stewart,” Collingford said, “isn’t it terribly early in Texas?”

  Crap. Although she had remembered to block her phone ID, she’d forgotten the time difference. A quick glance at the clock on her computer screen showed that it was 9:30 a.m., local London time, which made it … 3:30 a.m. in Houston. Oops.

  “Oh, Gabriel, you are so right. It’s terribly early here. I confess to you that I just haven’t slept well at all these last two years since my dear”—Pru couldn’t remember her husband’s name—“husband died. It’s just a curse.”

  He sounded marginally satisfied with the explanation and went on. “Ms. Stewart, I will be happy to let you know more just as soon as I possibly can. Would you like to leave your contact information?”

  “I tell you what, Gabriel, why don’t I give you a call back in a few days? How does that sound? I really must run now. I hear my little dog Cha-Cha waking up. Bye-bye!”

  Perhaps she wouldn’t make a good undercover investigator after all. She felt a small thrill at the attempt, but really, what had she gained?

  The Hetheringtons lived near Carlyle Square, which wasn’t all that far from Chartsworth Square, and so, after she’d finished the bulb planting, Pru thought she could just nip over to the Wilsons’. As she walked out onto Old Church Street and past the Cadogan Arms, she heard a voice calling from across the road, “Pru! Hello, Pru!” It was Romilda, wiggling the cherry-red tips of her stubby fingers in the air.

  “Hello, Romilda, this is a surprise,” she said. “Are you still looking for a flat?”

  A look of mock exasperation came over Romilda’s face. “I know, you thought I’d be looking for a flat forever,” she said with a titter. “But I found one.”

  “Congratulations, that’s great.”

  Romilda caught Pru’s arm, as if to stop her from escaping. “How are you? How’s the gardening?”

  “It’s … fine, just fine.” The conversation appeared to stall. “Well, good luck with your new place.”

  “Oh, Pru, let’s have a drink, shall we? Don’t you have a few minutes? I’d love to hear more about your work. And what about that murder—you must tell me more.”

  Pru hadn’t heard from Jo since they returned from the country, even after leaving a couple of messages, and that cast-off feeling had crept in again. Romilda was chirpy and chatty and a drink might just take Pru’s mind off everything else. “Yes, let’s.”

  They walked into the Cadogan Arms, and Romilda immediately headed for a dark corner. “I’ll have a gin and tonic,” she said to Pru over her shoulder.

  “Oh, sure.” She’s very good at that, Pru thought. But then, Romilda was new in town. Perhaps she hadn’t started her job yet and was short on cash.

  Pru took the gin and tonic and her own half pint of bitter over to the dark corner, and Romilda began a long story about her new job, which involved being a personal assistant to the owner of a high-end modeling agency.

  “Romilda,” Pru began. She was learning it wasn’t easy to follow everything that Romilda said, but she felt sure that this was an entirely different job from what she’d heard about before. “Weren’t you going to work for a social-services agency?”

  The cherry-red lips pursed slightly. “That didn’t work out.” Her eyes widened. “Speaking of not working out, I tried a new pub the other day—the Queen’s Head, over by King’s Road.”

  “The Queen’s Head,” Pru said. “Isn’t that a gay pub?”

  “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.” Romilda’s machine-gun laugh went off. “How was I to know? I stuck my head in, and there were all these good-looking men. Well, I had to take my chances, didn’t I?” She carried on with a tale of trying to chat up a particularly buff hunk at the bar, until he kindly told her the score. “ ‘No, darling,’ he said to me, ‘but thanks for the offer. You wouldn’t have a younger brother at home, would you?’ ”

  She snorted into her G&T, and Pru laughed along with her. “Although,” Romilda paused, “he didn’t have to say ‘younger’ now, did he? Oh, but here’s something that did work out—my flat.” She proceeded to describe in great detail her new place, which was on the second floor above a Caffè Nero
near Waterloo station. “But I desperately need your help, Pru.” She reached across the table to grab Pru’s arm.

  “You mean, moving in?” Pru could see herself carrying boxes up two long flights of stairs, remembering that the ground floor in Britain wasn’t numbered.

  “No, no, not at all.” Romilda laughed. “No, I want you to help me with my little garden. It’s just a small balcony, but I want you to help me decorate it with flowers and vines and trees and … everything for a garden.”

  Pru had seen the tiny balconies accompanying some flats in London, and there didn’t appear to be room for much of anything, but she thought it couldn’t hurt to give Romilda a bit of advice. “I’d love to take a look. I hope it’ll be quiet for you there. I’ve had problems in the house I’ve sublet—noises in the locked basement. I think it might be mice.”

  Romilda found that hilarious. She laughed and laughed until Pru started giggling, too. “I guess that does sound a little silly, doesn’t it? It sounds as if the mice are rearranging the furniture.”

  Pru continued to giggle, but Romilda stopped dead. “Are they that noisy?” And then she dismissed the subject. “Oh, really, Pru, don’t begrudge a little mouse a home. Here now.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a scrap of paper. “Here’s where my flat is. You’ll come, won’t you?”

  “Yes, I’d love to see it. How about one day next week?”

  “No, no, we don’t want to wait that long … now do we? Tomorrow evening, I’ll meet you there at eight. Right? Tomorrow?”

  “Yes, sure, tomorrow.”

  Christopher had phoned twice since their dinner. The first time, her last visit to the Nethercotts, she had the electric shears going and couldn’t hear the ring. The next time she had been at the Wilsons’ for lunch; she saw whom it was but didn’t think that was the place to talk. The police had informed the Wilsons they were looking into their financial affairs and had asked the whereabouts of Mrs. Wilson’s brother. No one knew, although when they told Pru about it, Mr. Wilson had muttered, “I’d like to get hold of him myself.”

  At the lunch—a hearty autumn salad with orange segments and roasted beets, assembled by Mary, Mrs. Wilson’s cook and housekeeper—Pru thought she’d ask about the mysterious Mrs. Crisp. “Have you ever even seen her?”

  “Yes, she and Malcolm invited us over for coffee just after we’d moved in,” Mrs. Wilson said. “She seemed pleasant enough, and, of course, that was before we knew much about Malcolm.”

  “Alf was still here,” Mr. Wilson said, “and he went, too. He and Malcolm became quite chummy after that.”

  “But when we returned the invitation,” Mrs. Wilson continued, “Malcolm said his mother wasn’t well enough. We tried two or three more times—afternoon tea, lunch, I offered to do some shopping for her—but Malcolm said she didn’t need the help, she had him, and that social occasions wore her out. After that we dropped it, and we never heard from her again.”

  Christopher had left a brief message each time he phoned, no more than “Hello, Pru, it’s Christopher.” A second of silence. “Hope to talk with you soon.” Perhaps these were official calls, she told herself; he wanted to question her about the Wilsons or Malcolm or Saxsby. He had, after all, phoned during the day; that sounded like business. Why didn’t he phone in the evening and remove all doubt? She returned both calls, once leaving the same sort of message, but the second time she rang off before the beep.

  That didn’t stop her from talking with Jo about her dinner with Christopher. The day after she met Romilda, they sat in Jo’s tiny flat over a glass of wine in the late afternoon. She’d been happy to hear from Jo and hoped that whatever had come between them—she still couldn’t even guess—had been resolved.

  Pru explained about the argument at the country pub, and Jo offered her own interpretation. “He must care about you, Pru,” she said, “to be so concerned about you doing your own investigating.”

  Pru scoffed at that, but couldn’t help the tiny warm feeling growing in her heart. “Really, Jo, he’s the police. It’s his job to tell me to mind my own business.”

  “And did you talk about the murder at dinner?” Jo asked.

  “Yes, we did,” Pru said. “At least, at first we did.”

  “Tell me how it went.” She listened to every word as Pru described the evening, asking pertinent questions—“Did he pull your chair out for you?”—and making a comment when it was needed—“He chose your favorite restaurant without knowing it. Don’t you find that interesting?” But when she asked, “Did he kiss you good night?” Pru felt herself go scarlet.

  “I don’t think I gave him the chance,” she admitted and shook her head. “It’s been too long. I don’t even know how to go out on a date anymore.”

  She left Jo’s for home still in that rosy glow of having shared details of her dinner with Christopher. Jo was just about to board the bus when he rang, and she made a quick about-face, so she could answer without a crowd listening.

  “Are you gardening?” he asked.

  “I am not gardening,” she said. “I just had a good chat with Jo, and now I’m off home.”

  “I’d like to see you this evening. How about dinner?”

  “Oh,” she said, her heart sinking, “I can’t—I’m sorry. I’m going to look at a new flat and try to think up something to grow on the balcony.”

  “Your new flat?”

  “No, not mine,” she said, “some woman I hardly know. I’ve run into her a couple of times on the street, and we’ve had coffee together. She’s new in town and doesn’t know anyone, and, well, I know how that feels. Still,” Pru said, “I’m not sure how I got roped into going to look at her new flat.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Romilda …” Had Romilda said her surname? Pru didn’t remember.

  “Where does she work?” He asked it in an offhanded manner. Pru wondered if the police officer in him always needed details.

  “I don’t know. She told me about one job the first time we met, and yesterday, she told me about another. She’s a chatty thing, and a lot of fun to talk with, although it can be sort of hard to keep up with her. Anyway, I’m very sorry I promised her, because I’d much rather see you.”

  He paused. She wished she could see him right now. “What time are you meeting her?” he asked.

  “At eight. Maybe we could meet for a drink after?”

  “Good, yes, let’s do that. You ring me when you’re finished. Where did you say this flat is?”

  Pru laughed as she dug out the paper from her bag. “Is this an interrogation?”

  “Certainly not, just casual curiosity.”

  She read Romilda’s address to him, they rang off, and she was so caught up in a minor daydream about meeting him for a late drink in a quiet pub that she didn’t even notice when the next bus stopped until someone asked, “Are you boarding?”

  The Victorian brick building contained a row of shops on street level, including the Caffè Nero. The coffee shop had taken in its sidewalk tables and chairs for the night, and, as this was mostly a business district, all the other shops were closed, too. The door to the small lobby was unlocked. Pru saw no lift when she passed through to the stairs. Yes, boxes and boxes to hand-carry up all the long flights of stairs made necessary by those high ceilings.

  It was a building of flats in sore need of refurbishment, but maybe that’s why Romilda could afford it. The wood fixtures all showed the wear of decades and decades of use. The handrail on the stairs was shiny with the millions of hands that had skimmed its surface. The floor dipped here and there, and the doors to all the flats had been nicked by keys missing their marks. Several doors looked chewed at the base. The stairs were carpeted, but the carpet had worn through in the center where every foot had fallen; now, bits of wiry carpet padding stuck out as if tiny land mines had exploded.

  The door to 219 stood slightly open. “Romilda?” Pru asked before stepping in and closing the door behind her. The place was dark, but li
ghts shone from the street.

  “Pru, here it is!” Romilda emerged from a corner, held out her arms, and spun around the empty room. Her hands appeared pale, and Pru couldn’t see any cherry-red tips. Maybe she’s between polishes, she thought. “What do you think?”

  Pru thought it was a good thing it was dark. Even in the poor lighting, she could see the peeling wallpaper and the pitted bare floor. Around the room all along the baseboard was a necklace of grime from years of pushing a mop back and forth and never really cleaning.

  One large window, at least four feet wide and six feet high, faced out to the street, the bottom of the window only about a foot above the floor. In addition to the narrow stone ledge that ran around the building, there was a small … Pru didn’t think she could call it a balcony. It was a ledge, perhaps two feet deep and just wider than the window; a wrought-iron decorative bib about a foot high ran around the edge. She could see cigarette butts strewn about. Ah, she thought, the smoking section.

  She must think of something nice to say. “Wow, Romilda, won’t it be great to have your own place?”

  “Now, give me your expert opinion, Pru,” Romilda said as she walked over to the window, which stood wide open. “I want to know exactly what I can grow. Come over and take a look at my little garden spot.”

  Pru set her bag down and walked over to the window. Then she put her hand on the inside frame and leaned out slightly. Around the edges of the extended ledge, she could see the ground far below—it shifted slightly and she felt dizzy. She leaned back in.

  “Well, I’m sure you could put out some pots, and they would be easy to tend,” she said.

  Romilda stood behind her. “No, Pru, we need to see the whole thing. You’ll be surprised at how much room I have. Come on, let’s get out there.” She put her hand on Pru’s back, pushing her gently toward the window. Pru pushed back.