The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

BOOK: The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies
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Table of Contents
 
 
 
China Bayles Mysteries by Susan Wittig Albert
 
THYME OF DEATH
WITCHES’ BANE
HANGMAN’S ROOT
ROSEMARY REMEMBERED
RUEFUL DEATH
LOVE LIES BLEEDING
CHILE DEATH
LAVENDER LIES
MISTLETOE MAN
BLOODROOT
INDIGO DYING
A DILLY OF A DEATH
DEAD MAN’S BONES
BLEEDING HEARTS
SPANISH DAGGER
NIGHTSHADE
WORMWOOD
HOLLY BLUES
MOURNING GLORIA
 
AN UNTHYMELY DEATH
CHINA BAYLES’ BOOK OF DAYS
 
With her husband, Bill Albert, writing as Robin Paige
 
DEATH AT BISHOP’S KEEP
DEATH AT GALLOWS GREEN
DEATH AT DAISY’S FOLLY
DEATH AT DEVIL’S BRIDGE
DEATH AT ROTTINGDEAN
DEATH AT WHITECHAPEL
DEATH AT EPSOM DOWNS
DEATH AT DARTMOOR
DEATH AT GLAMIS CASTLE
DEATH IN HYDE PARK
DEATH AT BLENHEIM PALACE
DEATH ON THE LIZARD
 
The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter by Susan Wittig Albert
 
THE TALE OF HILL TOP FARM
THE TALE OF HOLLY HOW
THE TALE OF CUCKOO BROW WOOD
THE TALE OF HAWTHORN HOUSE
THE TALE OF BRIAR BANK
THE TALE OF APPLEBECK ORCHARD
THE TALE OF OAT CAKE CRAG
THE TALE OF CASTLE COTTAGE
 
The Darling Dahlias Mysteries by Susan Wittig Albert
 
THE DARLING DAHLIAS AND THE CUCUMBER TREE
THE DARLING DAHLIAS AND THE NAKED LADIES
 
Nonfiction books by Susan Wittig Albert
 
WRITING FROM LIFE
WORK OF HER OWN
TOGETHER, ALONE: A MEMOIR OF MARRIAGE AND PLACE
AN EXTRAORDINARY YEAR OF ORDINARY DAYS
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
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(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,
South Africa
 
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
 
This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
 
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reaction to the recipes contained in this book.
 
Copyright © 2011 by Susan Wittig Albert.
 
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. BERKLEY
®
PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
 
 
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
 
Albert, Susan Wittig.
p. cm.
ISBN : 978-1-101-51680-5
1. Gardening—Societies, etc.—Fiction. 2. Women gardeners—Fiction. 3. Nineteen thirties—Fiction. 4. Alabama—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3551.L2637D39 2011
813’.54—dc22
2011009395
 
 

http://us.penguingroup.com

To garden clubs everywhere,
with grateful thanks for
making your communities more beautiful.
The Darling Dahlias and I send you our love.
Author’s Note
I love writing about real places. The little town that is the setting for this series is fictional, but it is located in a very real place: in southern Alabama, in the wooded hills west of Monroeville and east of the Alabama River, about seventy miles north of Mobile. You will find a map of Darling on the series website:
www.darlingdahlias.com
. You will also find other items of interest there, including: Depression-era recipes and household tips, some historical background of the 1930s (the period in which the series takes place), and information about Southern gardens. I’ll be adding new material frequently, so please bookmark the site and visit often.
I also love language, and in this series, as in all my books, I’ve tried to use the language of the people and their times. This historical series includes language and social practices appropriate to the early 1930s in the rural South. For instance, the characters use the terms “colored,” “colored folk,” and “Negro” when they refer to African Americans, and the attitudes of white people toward their black fellow citizens reflect the conscious and unconscious racism of the times. To write truthfully about this time and place requires the use of language and ideas that may be offensive to some readers. Thank you for understanding that I intend no offense.
As I work on these books, I especially find myself loving the spirit of the times. The 1930s were terribly difficult years, because so many people were facing daunting challenges that resemble some of the economic challenges we face today. But people didn’t lose hope. They had faith in themselves, in their families, and in their communities, and they did whatever they could to help themselves. I am touched by this spirit as I read the newspapers and books published in those years, and as I remember my mother and my aunts talking about the “tough times” they lived through in the decade before I was born. Ordinary people were tough and resilient enough to weather extraordinary challenge, and I hope to represent that spirit in these books.
Susan Wittig Albert
November 1, 1930
Darling, Alabama
 
Dear Reader,
 
When the author of
The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree
asked us if she could write a second book about us, we were thrilled. It’s not every garden club that gets a book written about it, much less two books! But we agreed because we liked the way Mrs. Albert gave you all the ins and outs of what happened in
The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree
. Mr. Dickens naturally didn’t print the full story in the
Dispatch,
so lots of people in town didn’t know all the details and were very surprised when they found out. In fact, some people were so surprised that they tried to boycott the book when Mr. Mann put a stack of them out for sale in front of the Mercantile, and Mrs. Lima was heard to say that she didn’t know how she was going to hold up her head in this community, now that everybody knew what had gone on in the back room at Lima’s Drugs. We’re sorry about that, but we do believe that Mr. Lima will toe the straight and narrow from here on out, and that Mrs. Lima won’t have a thing to fret about. Everybody understands that people make mistakes. Live and learn, as the old folks say.
Anyway, when Mrs. Albert learned that we were in the middle of another mystery and asked us if she could look over our shoulders and write everything down as it happened, we thought it was a good idea. Several of us were especially wondering about the pair of ladies who had moved into Miss Hamer’s house on Camellia Street, the one with all the naked ladies in the front yard. And if you don’t know what naked ladies are, well, you can read this book and find out. We won’t tell you anything more about that, since we don’t want to spoil the story for you.
And it’s true that we need stories these days, don’t you think? Times have been hard since the Crash, people are out of work all over the country, and it seems like too many of us are scraping the bottom of the barrel. But stories—even when they include a few folks who don’t measure up by the Golden Rule—help us to forget our troubles for a little while and learn something about people and the silly (and sometimes dangerous) things they do.
So we hope this story brightens your day a little. And speaking of bright, Aunt Hetty Little wants us to remind you of something we have said before but which bears saying again. We keep our faces to the sun so we can’t see the shadows, which is why we plant sunflowers and marigolds and cosmos in amongst the collards and sweet potatoes and okra in our gardens.
We hope you will, too.
 
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Lacy, president, The Darling Dahlias
Ophelia Snow, vice president & secretary
Verna Tidwell, treasurer
The Darling Dahlias Club Roster, October 1930
OFFICERS
Miss Elizabeth Lacy,
president. Secretary to Mr. Moseley, attorney at law, and garden columnist for the Darling
Dispatch
.
Mrs. Ophelia Snow,
vice president and secretary. Wife of Darling’s mayor, Jed Snow.
Verna Tidwell,
treasurer. Secretary to the Cypress County probate clerk.
 
CLUB MEMBERS
Earlynne Biddle.
Married to Henry Biddle, the manager at the Coca-Cola bottling plant. A rose fancier.
Mrs. Bessie Bloodworth,
Darling’s historian. Owner and proprietor of Magnolia Manor, a boardinghouse next door to the Dahlias’ clubhouse and gardens.
Mrs. George E. Pickett (Voleen) Johnson,
wife of the owner of the Darling Savings and Trust Bank. Specializes in pure white flowers.
Mildred Kilgore.
A collector of camellias, Mildred is married to Roger Kilgore, the owner of Kilgore Motors, and lives near the Cypress Country Club.
BOOK: The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies
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