The Red Book of Primrose House: A Potting Shed Mystery (Potting Shed Mystery series 2) (25 page)

Primrose House

30 July

Dear Pru,

Can you believe it’s finally here? We’ll be more than ready to greet our visitors today, and we are thrilled that, in addition to all the gardeners in England, many members of Bryan’s investor group will be in attendance. I did just want to let you know of one person in particular—he’s Swiss, a great friend of Bryan’s, and quite influential. He is looking to move his company’s headquarters to London, and we are eager to make his visit today just as enjoyable as possible. A good impression could make such a difference!

Would you keep your eye out for him and perhaps give him just a little extra attention? He isn’t really a gardener, but has asked if he could see…well, you know, where it all happened. We know that we can rely on you to make him feel like Britain is the best place for his company. He is rather tall and will probably be wearing one of those Australian bush hats—you won’t be able to miss him.

Here’s to success!

Best,

Davina

Two envelopes had been stuck in Pru’s door that morning with instructions written on each: one labeled “Read now” and the other with the directive “Read this evening.” Pru read the first one and rolled her eyes. A Swiss investor—leave it to Davina to add one more thing to the day. She set the second note on the counter, assuming it was another plea for Pru to follow the Templetons to their next great adventure.

Bryan and Davina were leaving Primrose House. The ancient and convoluted laws that Hugo had told Pru about had stood the test of time—the Earl of Lamerton had no right to sell Primrose House, and so instead had offered a long-term lease. But the Templetons were interested in ownership, not tenancy—although Pru secretly believed that what they really liked was the process of restoration, not necessarily the finished product—and so plans were already afoot for them to depart.

The earl had asked Pru to stay on. She said she would consider it, but Primrose House had lost its charm for her now. When she explained it all to Christopher, she kept that detail back. Another plan had seeded itself in her mind, and she decided she would share her idea with him the next time they were together.

For a few weeks just after the attack, Pru had taken to directing activities from the balustrade terrace. Each day, Liam carried a chair out from the kitchen and she sat, using a walking stick to point and gesture. She had told them it was something else she had in common with Repton—if only temporarily. Late in his life, after a carriage accident, he was confined to a wheelchair, and carried on with work in just the same way. He had even drawn a self-effacing picture of himself doing so.

But before long her ankle had healed and she was back at it, as they all were—her regular crew and, after the Templetons increased her budget an eye-popping amount, many additional workers.

In April the pond had been excavated, and they watched, over the several days that followed, the water seep in to fill the void. On the phone, she had tried to describe the scene to Christopher. “I wish I had been there,” he said. “I wish you were here now,” she replied.

A few days after Sunday lunch with the Parke family, Christopher had rung to say that he had been assigned to help with an investigation at a police station out of London. They were short-staffed, and as he’d done something similar before, they knew he could be trusted to do the job. It was away north in Scunthorpe.

“Lincolnshire?” Pru’s voice had risen in alarm. “That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?” Lincolnshire would mean no weekends together, as it would take him four hours—at the very least—to drive just one way. “Is this punishment? Because you’ve spent so much time down here with me?”

No, not punishment, he had assured her, although he hadn’t sounded entirely convinced himself. He would help investigate a terrible crime against a child—he knew better than to offer her details—and then stay on while they got their force back in shape after the unexpected departure of the chief superintendent. “It won’t be for long.” His attempt at an encouraging tone fell short of the mark. “And, when your open garden is finished…”

Pru at last had conceded that she would have no time to spare for a personal life until after July, and that perhaps it wasn’t the end of the world that he would temporarily be at the ends of the earth.

And so they had gone back to separate beds, nightly phone calls, and trying to keep up each other’s spirits.

When the open day approached, Christopher—still stuck in Scunthorpe and working seven days a week—had said that perhaps he could drive down early that Sunday morning.

As much as she disliked telling him “no,” she knew it was for the best. “Don’t do it,” she had said. “You don’t need to. I won’t have a minute to talk, and you’d have to turn right around as soon as it was all over and go back. It would be too frustrating. We’ll have time later.”

The last Sunday in July dawned clear and warm. In the months leading up to it, Pru had been taken on a meteorological roller-coaster ride. In May, the weather had turned hot with no rain, and talk of a watering ban was on everyone’s lips. She was frantic—she had to water all the new plants or else everything would turn to toast. But after two weeks of unseasonable heat, the showers began. June was cool and wet, which not only kept her garden alive but also slowed things down so that the roses had yet to go over and her late-planted alliums still held on to that moment between flower and seed. July began a bit on the cool side, but warmed up and dried out the second half, and so they could ask for nothing better.

Pru took little note of her tea and toast the morning of the open garden—ripping the toast into tiny bits, she gnawed piece after piece like a mouse. She didn’t think she could possibly eat anything ever again—that is, until she walked into the kitchen at Primrose House.

No one had dared venture a guess about possible visitor numbers, but everyone had been optimistic, and so Ivy and her friends had been baking for days. Now every inch of kitchen surface was taken up with cakes of all manner—cakes studded with currants, topped with blanched almonds, decorated with chopped candied ginger, drizzled with lemon icing.

But one cake stole Pru’s attention: a Victoria sponge, its two naked layers separated by a cushion of sliced strawberries and a thick layer of sweetened whipped cream. Nothing compared to English strawberries—their perfume seduced her from across the room. Pru couldn’t take her eyes off the cake, and Ivy took notice.

“I don’t know how that got there,” Ivy said, as if the cake had stolen in the back door and was attempting to blend in with the other, more pedestrian sweets. “It’ll never do for this crowd.” In a wink, she had boxed up the cake. “I’ll have one of the lads run it down to your cottage.”

“Oh, Ivy,” Pru said, and took a deep breath, “it’ll give me something to look forward to. Thanks so much.”

A half hour before opening time, cars began parking along the lane and people lined up, digging in their pockets and purses for the £3 entry fee, which would go to the charities Davina had chosen: Chaffinch’s and the dog rehoming organization that had brought Mrs. Sock and Trevor together. After paying, visitors picked up copies of the leaflet that Pru had fussed over for two weeks—a short history of Humphry Repton, a summary of the restoration, and plants in bloom—and off they went. Pru followed suit.

She walked the grounds nonstop in a continuous loop, ignoring the twinge in her ankle that developed on the third circuit—through the walled garden, around the gravel path to the house, along the balustrade terrace, down through the terracing to the pond, around to the front of the house, and past the oval bed. Ah, the oval bed, which had prompted so many outlandish ideas from Davina. She had finally let Pru have her own way there, and Pru had decided on a giant sequoia—still called a wellingtonia in Britain—that stood at a young twenty feet high. She reminded herself to check back in about fifty years to see how it was doing.

She didn’t think she had a second to herself the entire day. Questions came nonstop. “Did Repton design the terraces?” “Could I grow that grevillea in Shropshire?” “Have you used the blue color from Snowshill Manor on the American chairs by the pond?”

She was quite proud of those Adirondack chairs, painted a popular vibrant blue. She stood resting her hands on the balustrade, the stone warm from the sun, and looked straight down the staircase that cut through the middle of the terraced beds, through the gap cut in the now waist-high yew walk, and onto Repton’s pond with the trees mirrored in it. On the far side of the pond sat the two chairs, calling attention to themselves not only by their style—truly American—but also by their color—quite Farrow & Ball.

She could give only passing acknowledgment to family and friends. Jo, along with Cordelia, Lucy, and baby Oliver, appeared and she gave them each a hug before she was called away to explain the provenance of a few Texas roses she had found for sale at a mail-order nursery in Dorset. During one discourse in the walled garden, Pru waved her arm back toward the main gate and almost hit Simon in the face. They laughed before she introduced her brother to the group—an act that made more of an impression on Pru than it did on the visitors, but no matter.

Late in the afternoon, she noticed Liam on the terrace. He stood with one hand in his pocket and one stretched out, holding Nanda’s hand as she pirouetted beneath. Cate stood near the stairs talking with Hugo. Family squabbles had been put aside by this younger generation: Cate had given Hugo her father’s many boxes of notes about the area, and the reporter was writing a history of Bells Yew Green. Hugo and Ned would be listed as co-authors.

The heat took its toll on Pru. She wore a loose linen top with linen capris and fanned herself constantly with a leaflet, but she remained perpetually dripping in sweat. The dust, kicked up by cars on the lane and feet on the gravel, created thin lines of mud in the creases of her arms and neck.

She dragged herself up to the balustrade terrace once again, and Ivy appeared with a cup of tea. Pru thanked her and took a sip, but later she sneaked into the kitchen and, when no one was looking, packed a glass with ice from the lemonade table and poured tepid tea over it. She hid in her old room—the former pantry, right off the kitchen—where a dozen cakes occupied the bed. In her head, she heard her mother saying, “Nothing cools you off like a good, hot cup of tea,” but she was siding with her Texas dad today as she swirled the glass, chilling the contents before drinking it down in one go. She held the cold glass up to her face and rubbed it on her neck, spilling ice inside her top, where it lodged in her bra and made her gasp with pleasure.

Almost everyone understood that the house was not open, but Bryan did discover an elderly couple in the upstairs hall, peering at the wallpaper and discussing William Morris, and Davina tracked down two small boys under a table in the library, playing with Bryan’s collection of Dinky cars. No harm done, she said as she shooed them out; after all, that’s what the toys were made for.

At five o’clock, the last stragglers were herded out of the wood, through the terraces, and from the walled garden. Davina swore that she had made five hundred copies of the leaflets, and they had run out an hour before closing. Was that possible? Pru certainly felt as if she’d talked with at least five hundred people—each one asking her about Repton, the Red Book, and which clematis was planted in the center of the beds. “Duchess of Albany,” she replied. “It’s an English selection of a Texas vine.” Ivy cleaned the kitchen in a flash and left—she had recently started a new job as head cook at Chaffinch’s, and had given up her day off to help out. The Templetons invited Pru to stay to dinner, but all she could think about was her quiet cottage and that Victoria sponge, so she begged off and headed for home.

She dragged herself in the door and stood for a moment in the cool, dim room contemplating which would come first—a wedge of cake or a large whisky. With ice. A knock.

“Pru? It’s just us.”

She opened the door to Liam and Cate.

“We thought we’d better tell you,” Liam began, looking apologetic, “there’s someone still in the walled garden.”

“Oh, no, Liam,” Pru whined. She couldn’t face even one more visitor. “Can you please tell them the garden’s closed?”

“Sorry, Pru, we haven’t time,” Cate said. “Mrs. Sock took Nanda home with her, and she’s invited us for tea. We promised we’d be back by now. We’ve got to run.”

“Yes, sure, fine,” she said, and sighed heavily. “I’ll go. Give Nanda my love.”

They hurried out to Liam’s car on the lane, as Pru walked over to the walled garden. A rivulet of sweat trickled down her spine. The gate was open just enough to slip through, and when she did, she saw Christopher leaning over to smell Highway 290 Pink Buttons—a Texas rose with no fragrance whatsoever.

She laughed as her fatigue vanished and she sprinted to meet him. No words, just kisses, until finally she took a breath and said, without a speck of conviction, “You shouldn’t have come all this way.”

That ghost of a smile played about his lips. “I had no intention of missing it, and I’ve had a fine tour of the garden.”

She leaned back in his arms. “How long have you been here?”

“An hour or so. I watched you from afar. I saw you talking with some tall fellow wearing an Aussie bush hat.” She snorted. “I couldn’t get near you, you were in such demand.”

“The day seemed to go well,” Pru said with a little shrug. She touched Christopher’s face. “I can’t believe this. I’m so happy to see you. Although, look at me. It’s been such a hot day—I’m dripping in sweat.”

He pulled her close. “I thought I did that to you.”

She giggled. “Oh, but you do.” He tugged at her shirt in back, pulling it up to expose a band of skin that cooled immediately when the air touched it. She closed her eyes and sighed, then opened them again. “When do you have to go back?”

“Not tonight.”

She was in heaven.

“Is everyone gone?” he asked.

“Yes,” she whispered. “We’re all alone.” He pulled her shirt up farther, as her hand slipped down his leg.

“Hellooo?”

They jumped apart, and Pru whirled around to see two ladies in floral dresses and wide-brimmed straw hats peering through the gate into the garden.

“I’m sorry,” Pru said, approaching them and stifling a laugh. “The garden is closed now.”

“Is it?” One turned to the other. “You were right, Ellen. Now, isn’t that too bad?”

Pru came within five feet of them and was knocked back by the smell of gin, which was like a force field around the two women.

“We stopped for lunch at a hotel on the other side of Staplehurst,” Ellen said to Pru, “and I’m afraid the time got away from us. We’ll try another day.” She took her companion’s arm and said, “Come along, Charlotte.” She looked over Pru’s shoulder into the garden. “It looks lovely.”

“Could I call a taxi for you?” Pru asked, thinking that fueled-by-gin wasn’t the best way to drive home.

Charlotte waved her away. “No, dear, there’s no worry, Ellen’s husband drove us, and he’s had nothing stronger than orange squash.” Pru looked past them and saw a gray-haired man with hunched shoulders sitting behind the wheel of a sedan.