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Authors: Marty Wingate

The Garden Plot

BOOK: The Garden Plot
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The Garden Plot
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

An Alibi eBook Original

Copyright © 2014 by Martha Wingate

All Rights Reserved.

Published in the United States by Alibi, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

A
LIBI
and colophon are trademarks of Random House LLC.

eBook ISBN 978-0-8041-7770-2

Cover art and design: Scott Biel

www.readalibi.com

v3.1

Prologue

He couldn’t stay away. The thought of what lay beneath the earthen floor had consumed him for months. He’d let it slip only once, and at first he thought it wouldn’t be noticed, but no luck. He’d been asked and asked until he shared details. Details led to plans, and plans led to grandiose dreams of fame and fortune; these had temporarily taken over his more sensible side. Now he had acquired a “partner”—an unwanted partner, one he wished with all his heart he could shed.

He stepped past the pots of faded pelargoniums—
They certainly do need a gardener,
he thought,
but why now?
—and down the stairs, then let himself in quietly and pulled the door to, not wanting to risk another sound that might set the dog off. First morning light wasn’t what it used to be—the autumn sun rose later and later, and on this day, fog dimmed the light even more. He dared not switch on a light, and so he moved carefully through the basement.

Up and out into the back garden, he stopped for a moment to make sure no one watched. Moving along the wall, he walked to the shed. He had been surprised to see the ivy cleared away. It made his task easier, but it made it easier for others, too, and that worried him. The fewer people who knew the real secret, the better. He’d already made one enormous mistake; he didn’t want to make any more.

He wanted only to look again, perhaps dig a bit, just to feel as if he were doing something. If he could find one of the markers, he could use it as evidence that he was no amateur, but a professional who could find and recover new—old—pieces of history. He took off his coat, then reached over and pulled one of the spades off the wall. He uncovered the mosaic again and then dug deeper. Water seeped into the hole, and he smiled to himself.
Yes,
he thought,
you stay safe down there.

He plunged the spade in one more time and heard a metallic sound. Reaching down into the muck, his hand grasped the small treasure he sought.

“Digging? Have you reconsidered?”

He turned abruptly, not realizing he’d been followed. A wisp of fog trailed behind the speaker, like a ghostly companion.

“No, not really digging,” he said, clutching the treasure in his hand while he leaned the spade up against the wall. “I told you, we can’t disturb the place. This is too important.”

“Important? To whom? Will you really let this slip away while the others take the
glory—and the money—away from you? From us?”

It was the same argument. But only a trace of temptation remained; he brushed it aside for good, he was finished with those thoughts. He turned to get his coat and had just put it on when the spade came down on his skull.

Damson Hill Manor Farm House Gardens

2 Tumbly Hill Road

nr Quedgeley, Cheltenham

Gloucestershire

GL2 5DH

25 September

72 Grovehill Square

Chelsea

London SW3

Dear Ms. Parke,

Further to our conversation on 30 August, I write to regretfully inform you that you have not been selected for the post of head gardener for Damson Hill Manor Farm House Gardens. Thank you for sharing with us your knowledge of the Arts & Crafts movement and William Morris’s influence on garden design in the Cotswold landscape.

We appreciate your interest in this post, and wish you well in your future endeavours.

Yours sincerely,

Lionel F. Arbuthnott, director

Damson Hill Manor Farm House Gardens Charitable Trust

LFA/sar

Chapter 1

The rain leaked down the outside of the window, caught on the sash, and dripped onto the sill, each drop counting down the days remaining before the end of Pru Parke’s life. Through the rivulets, she could see the London street outside and, across the road, the line of plane trees inside the wrought-iron railing that surrounded the private square. Inside the railing, a mixed border, flowering shrubs, and climbing roses surrounded a three-tiered fountain that splashed merrily.

“What a pretty garden,” an American tourist had said to Pru one day last summer when they both stood looking through the rails.

“It was designed in 1845 by Rowland Mason Ordish,” Pru said, “the engineer who designed the Albert Bridge and the dome of the St. Pancras rail station. The fountain was added at a later date. There’s a giant sequoia, more than one hundred and fifty years old, in the far corner.”

“Oh, you’re American,” the visitor replied. “How did you learn so much about the place?”

Bits of garden history stuck to Pru like cat hair on wool—a master’s degree in garden history and lifelong love of learning made sure of that.

“I grew up in the States, but I live here now.” As much as Pru loved saying it aloud, she knew it couldn’t really be true until she found a permanent job, a job as head gardener at a small historic garden. Give her a couple of acres and a place to live; she didn’t need the grounds of Windsor Castle.

She had continued to look into the square after the tourist departed, taking along directions from Pru to the Sloane Square Underground station. The plants, the fountains, the roses all called out for Pru to enter the square and enjoy, but only residents of the houses around the square held keys. Real residents, not her, not an American subletting in such a tony neighborhood as Chelsea while she searched for acceptance and a job that would keep her in the only place that ever felt like home.

… Thirty-six days, thirty-five, thirty-four … Pru felt time slipping away and taking with it her dream of escaping her former life in Dallas to live in England. Not that she had a life to go back to. She knew that sounded overly dramatic and carried overtones of self-pity—perhaps not the most attractive qualities in a woman in her early fifties—but Pru felt it true to her very bones. She hadn’t begun a new chapter of her life by moving to England, but rather an entirely new book—one that she’d prepared her whole life to
write. Not only had she given up the physical pieces of her life in Texas—sold her little adobe-style house, quit her steady job at the Dallas Arboretum—she had also relinquished all ties; she had untied herself in order to follow a path that felt new and old at the same time. England was her home. The boldness of her move had energized her and scared her half to death.

She glanced around the sublet surroundings that she got for a song, at least until the owners returned from a year in Italy—comfy chintz sofa, overstuffed chair and ottoman, tea tables, requisite Constable print on the wall by the door to the hall, piles of magazines—her own more recent issues of British garden mags next to a stack of two-year-old
Country Life
issues left by the owners. They had left the bookshelves on either side of the fireplace full, but locked up the rest of their possessions in the basement. Pru carried out no gardening here; the small space behind the house had been completely paved over.

“You’ve got the place to yourself,” Jo, the property manager who had become her good friend, had said. “And you won’t have to worry about stumbling into a vase or ancient Greek urn.” Pru got the idea that antiques filled the basement.

When she first arrived, she had toyed with the idea of becoming The American Gardener in Chelsea. Maybe she could acquire enough rich clients and become so well known that she’d be asked to design a garden for the Chelsea Flower Show, win a gold, and be interviewed by that cute Chris Beardshaw from BBC One or possibly Alan Titchmarsh, a famous garden personality who, just a few years ago, had been named Sexiest Man in Britain. Only in Britain would a gardener be at the top of that list.

In reality, this temporary lodging plus filling her days with garden work at many different London houses kept her going, but it could not be a permanent replacement for an actual job and home. And she desperately wanted something permanent; she wanted to fit into this new life she had chosen. Middle-aged American woman with no head-gardener experience seeks complete life change in the form of a position in a highly competitive field in a foreign country. What was she thinking?

Three piano chords in G major came from her phone. She pushed her hair out of her face, reached for it, and wondered where her hair clip had got to.

“Is this Pru Parke? Mrs. Vernona Wilson speaking,” said a rushed voice. “Victoria Pegg-Wells gave me your name, she said you’re a wonderful gardener, and I do so need someone to tidy up the bottom of the garden. It’s frightfully overgrown, and there’s a shed down there I would be afraid to even put my nose in—if I could get close enough. Can you come and sort it out for me?”

Oh fine,
Pru thought.
I’ve gone from gardener to rubbish removal.

“I could stop by tomorrow to take a look,” Pru replied. “May I email you a brief form to fill out? It’ll help me get familiar with your garden before I even see it. You can jot down exactly what you’d like done.”

“Oh, no, dear, tomorrow is too late a start. You’d better stop by this afternoon. You can take a look at what you’re up against, and after you’ve sorted this out, I’ve a whole list of other jobs for you,” Mrs. Wilson said. “I’m sure your form wouldn’t have room for everything. It wasn’t terribly tidy when we moved in here last year, and I have had so much to deal with in the house … well, I’m afraid I turned a blind eye to the garden. We had such a large place before and to fit the furniture and all our photos and art into such a small town house …”

Pru stopped listening to Mrs. Wilson’s description of her change of life when she heard the post drop through the slot in the door. Hoping that one of her clients had paid a bill, she headed into the front hall, offering sympathetic “mmm’s” occasionally as Mrs. Wilson explained that the only reason she’d decided it was time to attend to the garden was that she was afraid her little dog, Toffee Woof-Woof, would get lost in the chaos and what would her luncheon guests think at the sight of it.

Pru scanned the few letters that had landed on the front mat, among them was a note from her best friend in Dallas, Lydia Morales. She glanced to the end and saw that Lydia had added: “Marcus says hello.” Marcus—Lydia’s brother and Pru’s old … what, flame?—could say all the hellos he wanted, but he shouldn’t expect one back. A photo slipped out of the envelope, a snapshot of Lydia and her husband, Ray’s three girls, Yolanda, Dora, and Lupe, in their school uniforms. On the back Lydia had written: “They’ll never be this clean again.”

When Pru had announced her move to England, Lydia had protested, “But the girls will miss you.”

Pru had responded, “You’ll bring them over to visit.”

That had prompted Lydia to say, with a sly grin, “Yes, you can take them up in that Ferris wheel on the Thames.”

BOOK: The Garden Plot
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ads

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