The Red Book of Primrose House: A Potting Shed Mystery (Potting Shed Mystery series 2) (6 page)

They’d had enough time to look casual. Pru prepared the tea. Christopher lit a fire—a practice he said he loved, and which Pru was happy to relinquish, having smoked up the cottage on her first try—and walked back into the bedroom to unpack his case. She heard car tires on the gravel and opened the door.

“Hello, Ms. Parke.”

“Sergeant Hobbes, come in.” Christopher walked out of the bedroom, and Pru said, “Christopher, this is…”

“David?” Christopher asked.

“Inspector Pearse? Is that you? Well, what a surprise.” The two men shook hands.

“I’d forgotten that you were in Tunbridge Wells. How’s the job?”

“It’s fine, sir, I’m really enjoying it. Are you…here on official business?” He looked from Christopher to Pru.

“No, not at all. I’m only visiting.” To Pru he said, “DS Hobbes was in uniform in London, until he got this promotion. David, who are you under?”

“Inspector Tatt, sir.”

“God,” Christopher said.

“Yes, well.” Hobbes glanced at the floor and gave a little cough.

“Would you like tea?” Pru asked.

The two men sat at the kitchen table and talked while Pru poured. She stepped behind the DS—it was just a bit tight in there—and bent down to get milk out of the half-sized fridge. The fridge was full of a brown paper bag, neatly folded over with a note taped to it: “For Pru from Gasparetti’s—compliments of Riccardo.” Gasparetti’s, her favorite Italian café in London and site of the first dinner she and Christopher had together. She clutched the milk carton to her chest as she turned and smiled at him. While Hobbes told a story about the theft of shopping carts from the local Sainsbury’s, Christopher glanced up, saw her reaction, and gave her a half smile, knowing she’d seen the surprise he brought her.

“Ms. Parke…”

“Please call me Pru.”

“Pru. We’ve found nothing conclusive in the shed. We’re asking your workers to come down to give their fingerprints, just so we can check against any that we find. Would you mind doing that yourself?”

“My fingerprints are on file in London. Can you get them from there?”

Christopher said, “Pru was a witness on a case of mine in the autumn in Chelsea, and she had her prints taken at that time.”

“That’s fine, then,” Hobbes said, making a note. “We couldn’t find any clear footprints outside or inside the shed—mostly the ground had been trampled.”

“That was probably me,” Pru said with a shrug. “Obliterating evidence is one of my specialities.” She had done the same thing at the Wilsons’ shed when she found the body.

Christopher grinned, adding, “Unintentionally.”

“Well, we had to get the fire out,” she said. “And then fire and rescue showed up, so it wasn’t all me.”

“Both these incidents happened right after a post went up on the
Courier
’s blog about you and the garden—Mrs. Templeton pointed that out to me,” Hobbes said.

Christopher lost the grin and leaned toward Pru. “Do you know of a connection? Someone who might not like the blog? Someone who could act out of spite or to show the Templetons up?” And then he caught himself. “Sorry, David.”

“I don’t mind, sir. I’m happy to have you around, you know, to keep an eye out. You might see something we miss.”

No,
thought Pru,
Christopher does not need to start worrying about my well-being from afar.
“Kids, it was probably kids,” she said, dismissing the whole subject. “Davina and I talked about it, and most likely it’s just some local children trying to stir something up. They’ll get tired of it soon and stop.” She made sure to avoid the subject for the rest of the evening.

On Saturday, she gave Christopher a tour of the grounds, beginning with a walk through the walled garden.

“We’ve done most of our work here so far,” she explained, glancing around at the barren landscape within the walls. “And most of that work has been clearing away—except for the four yews in the middle bed. We’ll save that until spring, and then shear them just enough to separate the four plants.”

“Will you have time for new plants? Before the open garden day?”

“We’ll have time to plant them,” she replied, “but the plants won’t have much time to grow.” Pru stared at the empty beds and the blank brick walls, with only the buttresses for decoration. “Antique apple varieties all along the walls,” she said, gesturing as they walked up and around the paths. “Those bare-root trees have been ordered, and we need to start marking where they’ll be planted and decide on the shapes they’ll be trained. But no fruit the first year, we can’t allow that. The trees need to get established.”

She told Christopher her ideas for color and form, and how she wanted each bed tied to the next visually with a snaking, low hedge of boxwood and some Victorian flamboyance in the middle—probably cannas.

By the time they left the walled garden and walked up to the house, plans and descriptions were coming fast and furious. Pru and Christopher flashed past the front door, where she gave a quick wave—“Roses, there, holes all ready”—and she took him around to the broad stone terrace that ran the length of the house.

They stood looking west. That is, Christopher stood while Pru paced. As she paced, she flung her arms around as if she could conjure the completed garden into being.

“Stone pots, huge ones, and probably twelve of them all along here, with two more on either side of the French doors there,” she said as she gestured toward the entrance to the library, “and there.” She hurried down to point to the doors to the drawing room.

Back she went, to the other end of the terrace to show him where the wisteria would climb. She waved at the boxwood allée running down to their right, mentioning the daffodils. As she passed him, Christopher reached out and grabbed her hand. “Pru, hold still.”

“I can’t hold still,” she said with a small, high laugh, slightly out of breath. “There’s too much to do.” She gave his hand a squeeze and resumed her frenetic tour, rushing over to the balustrade.

From there, after a thirty-foot drop, the land sloped away until it reached the overgrown yew walk that ran parallel to the house. She pointed to the lawn and told him her idea to have it terraced—later. To the south was the beech copse, mostly bare, but some trees had retained clumps of dried leaves in the interior of the lower branches. It always reminded Pru of an old Amish fellow with a beard growing not on his face but under his chin.

“Over there—I believe that the beech wood is Repton’s.” She forgot herself—and her fear of heights—and stood on tiptoe, leaning out over the stone railing until she saw the ground far below appear to shift. She backed off, bumping into Christopher, who wrapped his arms around her and held tightly.

“I want to hear about the garden, but I don’t want you to have a nervous breakdown over it. All right?” he asked.

She leaned back against him and took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her heart rate decreased.

“Sorry, I looked down and…” She didn’t have to add the rest—that she got dizzy when the ground seemed to move of its own accord.

“They can’t expect you to have it all finished by July. It’s a garden—it has to grow.”

She turned her head enough to give him a smile. “Perhaps I could have you come and explain that to them.”

“You will have the garden looking its best. And surely you can describe the history of the place to visitors without needing to restore every bit.”

“Yes, I’ll memorize the Red Book and recite pages of it to everyone—after they’ve had a few gin and tonics.”

He laughed. “Right. Now, I’ll hold on, and you tell me what we can see of Humphry Repton.” He kissed her neck.

Her calm restored, her enthusiasm for the garden’s history returned. “Repton said that it was best to see deciduous trees with the sun behind them, so the wood was planted south and west of the house.”

“So the trees there are two hundred years old?” he asked, nodding toward the copse.

“Many of them—beeches, oaks, and a few Spanish chestnuts that have survived on the far side. More trees have come up on their own.” She stood on tiptoe again, but remained safely within his arms. “And, here on the north side of the wood, there’s a big, dark green meadow of sorts. It’s difficult to see with the yew so overgrown. Well, I don’t think that it’s a meadow. I believe it’s the pond, Repton’s water feature, and somewhere along the way it was filled in. He said you should always look down on water, to get a reflection of the trees around. If the water is level with where you stand, all you see reflected is sky.”

“Will you dig the pond out?”

She smiled. “Yes. We’ll dig it out, and in spring, we’ll cut the yew down to a reasonable size, so that we can see the pond.”

He was losing interest in the finer points of yew hedges as he continued to nuzzle her neck, but the fleece collar on her jacket kept getting in his way.

“Badgers,” she said.

He stopped. “Mmm?” His lips vibrated against her skin and tickled.

“Badgers.” She laughed. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

He was a countryman at heart, she knew it, and his eyes brightened at the thought of tramping through the woods and sussing out wildlife. They made their way on a trail below the walled garden. There was a thin patch of trees beyond where she made the brush pile, and a rocky rise at its edge. She’d done a bit of investigating. It looked as if a hole had been dug out of the side of the hill. A few scrubby hollies grew in front.

They kept well away, standing near the brush pile. She looked at him with her eyebrows raised.

He had his arm around her and gave her a squeeze. “Yes, it’s quite possible that’s a sett. You haven’t seen anything?”

“No. I’ve come out at dusk once or twice, but it was cold and I didn’t wait. You don’t think the brush pile is too close?”

“Probably not. They aren’t too active in winter. Come spring, we’ll see what happens.” He put his mouth to her ear. “Wait, see that?”

Her eyes followed where he’d nodded, and she saw a tiny olive-colored bird with a golden stripe on its head scurrying around the base of a beech. “What is it?” she whispered.

“A goldcrest—you’ll want him around your garden. He eats greenfly.”

She gave a little gasp. “Aphids—good. He can bring all his friends.”

They returned to the cottage chilled to the bone, but that didn’t last long. Supper consisted of more treasures from Riccardo. Too bad she had such a tiny fridge, she thought; otherwise, she could stock up every time Christopher visited.

That evening they sat with glasses of wine before the fire, Christopher with his feet stretched toward the flames, Pru with her toes tucked under his thigh. She watched him watch the fire until he smiled and looked at her.

“When we first met,” she said, “you were a police officer.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I’m still a police officer,” he said.

“Yes, but not to me. At first, you were doing your job, and I kept interfering.”

He took hold of her calf and massaged it. “I didn’t want you to be hurt. I needed to keep an eye on you.”

“And so you protected me.”

He lost a bit of his smile. “I don’t know how successful I was at that.”

She reached over and traced his lips with her finger. “But now, I don’t need protecting, and so I can see you for all the other things you are.”

“I reserve the right to protect you if the need arises,” he said as his hand moved up her thigh.

“I might need protecting from Davina’s incessant notes. Or possibly from Liam’s arguments. Or from Robbie’s questions. Can you protect me from those?”

Sunday afternoon, Pru and Christopher wrapped up against the cold wind and walked to the pub. The Two Bells fulfilled many needs for the locals. In addition to fine ales, the pub had music on the weekends—local DJs taking turns at their own playlists, which ran the gamut from Mel Tormé’s version of “On the Street Where You Live” to Coldplay. They had just claimed a booth when Liam appeared.

“Pru, Christopher,” he said quietly, with a glance over his shoulder. “How’s the weekend?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Could I…would it be all right if I brought someone over for you to meet?”

Pru exchanged looks with Christopher. “Yes, Liam, sure,” she said.

He disappeared and returned almost instantly, accompanied by a tall, slender woman with glossy, straight, jet-black hair, a coffee-colored complexion, and a timid smile. “Pru, Christopher,” Liam said, “this is Cate.”

“Will you join us?” Christopher asked.

“Yeah, that’d be great, thanks,” Liam said, sitting next to Christopher while Cate slipped in alongside Pru.

“Cate, do you live round here?” Pru asked.

“Almost my whole life. Ned’s my dad,” she said, and her smile faded.

“Oh.” Pru wasn’t as surprised at the difference in appearance—Cate looked like she might be of Indian origin, and so perhaps had been adopted—as she was at the fact that Ned had a daughter. “I didn’t know about you.” Pru glanced at Liam; he held her gaze for a moment and then looked back at Cate.

“My mum died when I was thirteen,” Cate continued, “and it was just Dad and me then. Of course, I’ve been out of the house for ages.”

“Cate’s a nurse,” Liam said.

“Where do you work?” Pru asked.

Cate looked over her shoulder at the door and put her hands on the table, rubbing one on top of the other. “Well, I haven’t worked lately. I have a little girl—she keeps me busy.”

“Nanda,” Liam said, grinning. “She’s a corker.”

“Ah, Liam’s got a soft spot for her.” Cate smiled and looked over her shoulder again. “She’s three, and a real handful.”

“Shall I get us another round?” Christopher asked.

Liam looked at Cate, who said, “I’d better go. It’s been lovely to meet you both. I hope to see you again.”

Before they could say anything other than goodbye, Liam spirited her away.

“Well,” Pru said, “that was…”

“Unusual?” Christopher offered.

“Bizarre,” she replied. “On so many levels. Ned has a daughter? Liam—he was polite and kind. Not that he isn’t a good person, but he’s usually so flippant. I’ve never seen this side of him.”

“She’s married—or at least she probably was until recently,” Christopher said.