The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree (18 page)

Mildred frowned at it. “We should install it. Leave it leaning against the tree like that, somebody might come along and steal it”

“Let’s take it around to the back,” Bessie said. “That way, if we don’t get around to it today, it won’t be out in plain sight”

With Bessie carrying the sign, they went around to the back garden and stood for a moment, surveying the scene. The iris and lilies and roses were blooming in sweet profusion, and so were the weeds, which almost smothered the flowers. The honeysuckle was about to completely overwhelm the cardinal climber, and the foot of the garden, a boggy area, was a sea of green ferns.

“Whew. Just look at this mess.” Ophelia shook her head. “There’s certainly plenty to do back here.”

And there was. The grass had been recently mowed, but the borders needed to be cleaned out, the dead vines pulled off the fences, the low-hanging tree branches cut back, and the shrubs pruned. Some of the work—pruning the roses and dividing the lilies and other bulbs—would have to wait for the proper season. But the clearing-out could be done now, or at least started.

“Where do you want us to begin, Bessie?” Ophelia asked.

“Anywhere,” Bessie said, waving her arm. “Just choose a spot, any spot. Let’s pile all the weeds and debris in the middle of the yard for now. There’s a compost pile behind the vegetable garden—when we’re finished for the morning, we can carry everything over there. Mrs. Horner, over on Mimosa, promised Lizzy that we could clean out her hen-house in return for the chicken manure. It makes a really nice hot compost”

“Sounds good to me,” Mildred said. “That’s what we like. Plenty of hot compost.” She pulled on her garden gloves and headed for the fence to take control of the rampaging honeysuckle, while Bessie started for the perennial border. Ophelia went to work beside her, and they began yanking weeds—Johnson grass, dog fennel, henbit, and ground ivy—throwing them onto a large pile on the grass.

After they had been working for a few minutes, Ophelia said, “What’s this I hear about the Cartwright ghost, Bessie?”

“Ghost?” Mildred turned, her clippers poised for attack. “Somebody’s seen the Cartwright ghost?”

“My goodness,” Bessie said, sitting back on her heels. “Where’d you hear that, Ophelia?”

“Mrs. Adcock,” Ophelia said. “She got the news from Mrs. Sedalius at church on Sunday. She told me about it yesterday.”

“Word gets around, doesn’t it?” Bessie chuckled. “Well, I’ll tell you, Ophelia. I’ve lived in this neighborhood since I was a girl, and I keep hearing tales about folks seeing the Cartwright ghost. Over the years, dozens have told me they’ve seen her. But I’ve never seen her myself, and I didn’t believe Mrs. Sedalius when she said she’d seen her—black cloak, spade, and all. I figured she’d had too many nips of that bootleg rum she hides under her bed.”

Ophelia laughed. Since Mrs. Adcock only knew Mrs. Sedalius as a fellow churchgoer, she probably didn’t know about the bootleg rum. “But you changed your mind?”

“Well, not exactly,” Bessie said. “I still don’t believe in ghosts. That’s not my style. However, I will admit to a shiver or two when I heard that spade clinking.”

“Spade?” Mildred asked.

Which meant that Bessie had to tell the whole story, from beginning to end. When she had finished, Mildred asked slyly, “So when you heard the ghost digging, did you jump right out of bed and come down here to see what was going on?”

“Not in the dark, you silly goose,” Bessie replied, and they all laughed. “I waited until it was bright daylight, before church. Then I came back here and looked all around. I didn’t see a thing.”

“No holes?” Ophelia asked. “But if you heard the sound of digging—”

“Nary a hole,” Bessie said firmly. She glanced toward the back of the garden. “Although I didn’t go poking around down there, where Miss Rogers thinks we ought to put the bog garden. It’s damp and overgrown, and I was wearing my Sunday shoes.”

“I’ve never been back there,” Ophelia said. “There’s a creek, Lizzy said.”

“Well, sort of.” Bessie got to her feet. “Actually, it’s more like a seep spring, which is why Miss Rogers thinks it will be a good place for a bog garden. But it’s going to take a lot of work. Most of those ferns will have to come out, and there’s sedge grass and burdock. Come on back and let’s have a look.”

“I’m ready for a break,” Mildred replied, stripping off her gloves. They walked toward the rear of the garden, past a fragrant gardenia bush and a pretty clump of flowering agapanthus. “I enjoyed seeing the pictures you showed us of what the garden looked like in the days when the Cartwrights were living in the mansion,” she added.

“It was beautiful,” Ophelia agreed. “Acres of lawn, and all those azaleas and weeping willows and oaks hung with Spanish moss.”

“They had plenty of slaves to keep it that way,” Bessie said, matter-of-factly. “You can’t have a garden like that now—not unless you have more money than you know what to do with, or a dozen friends who will work for nothing.”

“Or a dozen garden club members,” Mildred put in dryly, “who work for the love of gardening—and the chance to take home a few passalong plants for their own garden. Like those spider lilies over there. They really need to be dug and divided.” She paused. “Didn’t you tell us that it was Dahlia Blackstone’s mother who designed the original garden?”

“I didn’t know that,” Ophelia said. “Must’ve been a long time ago. Mrs. Blackstone was in her eighties when she died, wasn’t she?”

“Eighty-two,” Bessie replied. “Dahlia’s mother—Cornelia, her name was—came here as a young bride in the 1840s, back when the place was new-built. She put in the gardens before the War, Dahlia told me, before Mr. Lincoln freed the slaves. Which was long before the mansion burned.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard the real truth of that story,” Ophelia said. “Just a lot of rumors. Did the Union troops torch the house?” After the fighting was over, soldiers had looted and nearly destroyed the town of Claiborne, not far away on the Alabama River, then had made their way to Darling, wreaking havoc as they went.

“Nobody seems to know just what happened,” Bessie said. “Dahlia’s father, Colonel Cartwright, was away in Virginia, where he had been fighting alongside General Lee. He didn’t get home until several months after the War ended, and by that time, his wife was dead and the house was gone.”

“Such a sad thing,” Mildred said mournfully. “To fight all that time, and come home and find nothing left”

“I’m afraid there were plenty of other situations just like this one,” Bessie said. “The Cartwright place was the largest house in the area, and Dahlia—who was only thirteen or fourteen when the War broke out—said that her mother was terrified that the place would be ransacked and they would all be murdered. Mrs. Cartwright had her jewelry and the family’s valuables hidden, in an effort to keep them from being stolen.”

“The same thing happened in my family,” Ophelia put in reminiscently. “My grandmother was living in Atlanta. When she heard that Sherman and his Yankee rabble were coming, she pulled a brick out of the fireplace and put her jewelry behind it. The soldiers searched the house, but they didn’t find a thing.”

Bessie was rueful. “I’m afraid it didn’t turn out that well in this case. Dahlia never liked to talk about it, or about the ghost, either. In fact, she thought the ghost was a lot of nonsense. But she did tell me once that the man who was responsible for hiding the family treasure had been killed. Her mother—she had consumption—was dead as well. They searched and searched, but the family’s valuables never turned up. Whether they were lost or stolen—nobody knows. Whatever the truth, it’s hidden in the mists of time.”

“And the mansion?” Ophelia asked. “How did it burn?”

“When Cornelia got sick, Dahlia was sent to Mobile to stay with her grandmother. She didn’t come back until her father returned from Virginia. By that time, the place had burned to the ground. Could’ve been Union looters, although they didn’t burn anything else in Darling. Maybe it was an accident. Or—” Bessie shrugged. “Dahlia said she never knew for sure and never really wanted to find out. She didn’t like to think back on those days. She had lost too much. It was too painful to remember.”

“We think we have it hard now,” Mildred said seriously, “and we do, with people losing their money and their jobs. But it was a lot worse back then. The War changed everything. You wonder how people managed to survive.”

“A lot of them didn’t,” Ophelia said. “Unless you had a garden, you and your kids could starve.” Walking slowly, they had reached the edge of the grassy lawn. “Is that the spring down there?” The area was green and thick with clumps of green ferns and shrubby bushes and shaded by low-hanging branches.

“This is it,” Bessie said ruefully. “As I said, if we’re going to plant a bog garden here, we’ve got a lot of work to do. It’s a jungle.” There were a number of square-cut stones scattered randomly among the underbrush. “I wonder if there was a garden area here before. Those stones—looks like they might have come from a wall. Maybe a seating area, too?”

“It would have been beautiful,” Mildred said, looking up. “These are gorgeous old trees. Just look at that huge sycamore, with the lovely peeling trunk. And that cucumber tree, in bloom. Must be the same age as the one out front, on Camellia Street.”

“Dahlia said that her mother planted a half dozen or more cucumber trees along Camellia Street,” Bessie replied. “Back then, you know, it was just a country lane, running along the front of the mansion’s grounds.” She sighed. “The trees are all gone now, except for the one in front of the Dahlia House. There was a splendid tree in front of Magnolia Manor—growing there since before the house was built. It was a sad day when it got struck by lightning. The cucumber tree has to be the prettiest tree God ever invented.”

“Magnolia acuminata,”
Ophelia amended, in Miss Rogers’ prim voice, and all three of them laughed.

Mildred had wandered a few steps away, looking curiously at an area of broken ferns. She bent over and parted the greenery to have a closer look, then called over her shoulder, “Girls, come look at this.”

“What is it?” Bessie asked, looking over her shoulder.

“Looks like somebody’s been digging up plants,” Mildred said. “In the last few days, too. The dirt is fresh.” She stepped back, frowning. “I thought people were supposed to donate plants for the bog garden—not come and dig them up.”

For that’s what they were looking at: a half-dozen mounds of freshly turned soil, among the stones scattered under the cucumber tree. A few of the holes were quite large and deep.

Ophelia and Bessie exchanged wide-eyed glances.

“The ghost?” Ophelia asked breathlessly.

“Ghostly spirits don’t dig real holes,” Mildred pointed out.

“Ghostly spades don’t clink, either.” Bessie frowned. “You don’t suppose somebody was looking for a plant, do you? But if that’s what it was, why didn’t they just ask, for pity’s sake?”

“Might’ve been a rare plant,” Mildred remarked. “Maybe we’d better put up a no-trespassing sign.” She looked at her wristwatch. “Listen, girls—I’ve only got another half hour to work on that honeysuckle. Then I have to get back home and see how Jubilee is coming with the ironing. Last time, she had to do two of Mr. Kilgore’s shirts over again.”

“What about putting up that sign out in front?” Ophelia asked Bessie.

“We can do that another day,” Bessie said. “Let’s just finish that bed, tote the rubbish to the compost pile, and call it quits. It’s getting hot, anyway.”

They went back to work, and when it was time to stop, Mildred offered to give Ophelia a lift home.

“Thanks, but it’s just a couple of blocks,” Ophelia replied. “I can walk.”

“Nonsense,” Mildred said, opening the car door. “We haven’t had a chance to talk in weeks. Get in.”

Ophelia climbed into the front seat. The two of them had been best friends once, but Mildred and Roger had built a big house not far from the Cypress Country Club and they didn’t see as much of each other now as they used to. But the old friendship was still there, and when they got together, it wasn’t long before they were chattering like a couple of teenagers.

Mildred turned the key in the ignition and started the car. “Did you hear about the girl who stole the car and drove it into Pine Mill Creek and killed herself?”

“Bunny Scott,” Ophelia replied. “Lizzy and Verna said they sometimes ate lunch with her, but I only knew her from the drugstore. Actually, I bought some lipstick from her a few weeks ago. Tangee. She said it would look natural, and it does. Did you know her?” she added curiously. There must have been some point to Mildred’s question.

“No, not really,” Mildred said. She shifted gears, glancing at Ophelia. She had the look of somebody who is carrying a huge secret and is just bursting to tell it. “But I know something interesting about her. I didn’t want to talk about it in front of Bessie. You know how she hates anything that sounds remotely like gossip—even though most of that history stuff she’s so crazy about is nothing but old folks’ gossip.”

Ophelia frowned. She didn’t like gossip, either, but there might be something here that Verna and Lizzy ought to know about, for their investigation. “What do you mean, Mildred? What do you know?”

Mildred looked straight ahead, both hands on the wheel. “Well, on Friday afternoon, I happened to go into the drugstore to buy a bottle of Bayer. When I went in, I couldn’t see anybody. Bunny Scott wasn’t there, nor Mr. Lima, either. Which I thought was sorta odd, you know, because Mr. Lima never leaves that store untended, not after he had all that trouble with boys coming in and stealing candy bars. That’s why he put the candy behind the soda fountain counter, where they can’t reach it.” She sighed. “Really, I just don’t understand modern children. They are so undisciplined. Where are their parents? Don’t they learn anything at Sunday school? Why, when we were girls—”