EG04 - The Trail of the Wild Rose

by Anthony Eglin

  “I remember one mountain road we encountered was literally cut out of the side of a vertical slope. If you have vertigo or acrophobia, forget it.”

  “Jesus. If you’re trying to impress me, Lawrence, you’ve succeeded.”

  Kingston smiled. He couldn’t resist one last “Indiana Jones” shot. “The weather can be a bugger, too. You see, nearly all seedcollecting expeditions take place in the autumn. And in that part of the world you never know what to expect: torrential rains, the constant threat of typhoons, the occasional earthquake, just for starters.”

  “Good God. All this, to collect a few seeds and plants?”

  “It sounds irrational, I know, but men have been risking their lives doing it for three hundred years.”

  Banks was shaking his head. “Not a lot to go on.”

  “Right. But at least we know the locale and we have a name. That might be sufficient for Clifford and his people to determine who organized the expedition, who was on it, and what Peter Mayhew’s role was.” Kingston stood, ready to leave.

  “Here’s a copy.” Banks got up from his chair and handed Kingston an audiocassette.

  “Thanks.” Kingston took a small address book from his inside jacket pocket. “I don’t think there’s much to be gained from my staying on in Oxford. If Mayhew talks again in the next couple of days, perhaps you could call me at my friend Bertie Conquest’s. I’ll be staying there tomorrow night through Friday.” Kingston tore a perforated page from the back of the address book and wrote down his mobile number, Pigeon Farm’s address and phone number, as well as his own in Chelsea. “Also, it might be a good idea if you could have any future taping sessions copied and the cassettes or transcripts sent to both Clifford and me,” he said, handing Banks the addresses. “As a matter of fact, I understand there are ways now to e-mail audio messages.” He broke into a smile. “Still having one foot in the mid-twentieth century, I haven’t the foggiest idea how it’s done, but I’m sure someone on your hospital staff will know all about that kind of stuff.”

  Banks smiled back. “They will, I’m sure. It was a plea sure meeting you, Doctor,” he said as they shook hands.

  “Likewise,” said Kingston.

  “Next time you’re in Oxford, stop by and say hello.” He winked. “I’ll show you a few of Morse and Sergeant Lewis’s hangouts.”

  “I certainly will, and I’ll let you know how this all works out,” Kingston replied, motioning with the cassette before putting it in his pocket. “Most important, I hope your patient makes a full recovery. One day, God willing, he can give us the full story.”

  Kingston crossed the hospital parking lot, got into the TR4, and checked his watch. It was not yet eleven. He would return to Oxford, park the car in the Randolph’s nearby lot, and drop off the tape at his room. After calling Clifford Attenborough and reporting on the day’s events, he would spend a leisurely couple of hours strolling around the city, followed by a late pub lunch. The remainder of the cloudless but breezy day would be spent revisiting Britain’s oldest botanic garden, the University of Oxford Botanic Garden.

  . . .

  The next day, Kingston was settled in the guest cottage at Pigeon Farm, the charming Edwardian country house, home to his friends retired Colonel Bertrand Conquest and his pert wife, Penelope. After the episode at the hospital, he planned to enjoy every minute of his three-day stay. He was looking forward particularly to reacquainting himself with their quintessentially English garden that had been listed in the National Garden Scheme’s Yellow Book for the last half dozen years and was open to the public on most summer weekends.

  As on his previous visits, he knew that Penny would never let him leave without their making the rounds of the stables and paddocks. Like it or not, he was duty bound to spend what customarily amounted to an hour or two fraternizing with the current crop of miniature horses. The concept perplexed him. He couldn’t imagine why anyone, other than children, would want to own a miniature horse. Hers were not only miniature but also Falabellas, a relatively rare breed of Argentinean origin that must conform to a strict height requirement at the withers—the ridge between the shoulder bones—of no more than thirty-four inches by the time they reach four years old. Or, as Kingston exclaimed, roughly six inches below his belly button.

  Naturally, the number one topic over the roast Aylesbury duckling dinner on the first night was St. George’s mystery patient. With a setup that already had the makings of a BBC whodunit, there was no reason for Kingston to add any embellishments. He did anyway, and by the time coffee was served there was much speculating on what might have transpired on what he had volubly portrayed as a plant-hunting expedition gone awfully wrong.

  A couple of preprandial scotch whiskies and several glasses of wine had lulled the colonel into a mild state of anesthesia, his responses limited mostly to nods and the occasional grunt. For reasons unknown, the wine had the opposite effect on Penny, not that she’d consumed anywhere near her husband’s intake. Before long she had commandeered the conversation with a blitz of questions that would have made a trial lawyer appear tongue-tied.

  Kingston soon found that steering the conversation away from the plight of the unfortunate Peter Mayhew and the dangers of plant hunting in faraway parts of the globe was no easy matter. After two hours and far more wine than he was accustomed to drinking at one sitting, it was clear that Penny still didn’t fully grasp the concept of plant hunting. Though he was drowsy and ready for bed, he decided that a story might serve to convince her and to close out the night.

  “Let me tell you about George Forrest,” he said.

  “Please do,” she replied, wide-eyed.

  “Sadly, few people know about him, even dyed-in-the-wool gardeners. Forrest was one of many British plant hunters who changed the face of horticulture in this country. He went on his first serious plant-hunting expedition to China, in 1905, to the northwest corner of Yunnan.”

  “Same place as the Mayhew expedition?”

  “The same region. Yes. Whether he was aware or not at the time, it was a particularly dangerous assignment because the entire area was in a state of political turmoil and civil unrest.” Kingston paused to take a sip of water; no more wine for him. “Forrest was a guest of a small French mission, and while he was quietly hunting in the area, lamas—Tibetan priests, that is— were on a rampage in the immediate countryside, committing atrocities and murder.”

  “Good heavens,” Penny muttered.

  “Forced to leave the mission, he and his assistants and about sixty men, women, and children set off for the next village several miles away. At midday, on a patch of high ground, they watched as their mission was burned to the ground. Forrest left the group to reconnoiter, looking for a way of escape, but it was too late. From his position on a ridge he watched with horror as the Tibetans rushed forward with their swords and bows with poisoned arrows. The entire group, numbering about eighty, was picked off one by one or captured. Some of the women committed suicide by throwing themselves into a nearby stream to escape slavery.”

  Kingston now had Penny’s rapt attention. “What a horrifying thing to have witnessed,” she said.

  “Of Forrest’s seventeen collectors and servants, only one escaped. The lamas hunted Forrest for eight days and nights. Traveling by night and hiding in the daytime, he managed to subsist on a handful of wheat and dried peas, which he’d found earlier and had the presence of mind to save. Starting to hallucinate, suffering cuts and bruises and limping on swollen feet, he had a number of close calls, including one in which two poisoned arrows passed through his hat. He finally shook off his pursuers and eventually stumbled across a small tribal village.”

  Bertie interrupted, announcing gruffly that he was “going up the wooden hill” for the night. After he’d left the room, Kingston continued.

  “Where were we?” He was having trouble remembering now.

  “He’d arrived at the village.”

  “Right. So, with the aid of friendly villagers,
who fed and took care of him for several days, at great risk to themselves, he was able to continue. He was not out of the woods yet, though. With the villagers now helping and hiding him, he discovered that to escape the region required climbing a mountain range with a snow line of eighteen thousand feet. Reaching the summit, Forrest and his party then traveled for six days over glaciers, snow, ice, and jagged limestone until his feet were ‘torn to ribbons.’ This was not the end to his misery, though. Descending the mountain he stepped on a fire-hardened bamboo spike set by villagers to protect their crops. The one-inch-diameter spike passed straight through his foot, sticking out two inches on the topside.”

  “Good grief,” said Penny.

  “Hobbling for several more days, he and the party reached a friendly town where his wound was attended to, and he was fed and rested. When recuperated, he disguised himself as a Tibetan and managed to escape by accompanying a troop of soldiers to the safety of a larger town. There, he learned that, during his nightmarish period of escape, the Foreign Office had declared him as missing, presumed dead.”

  Kingston folded his arms and leaned back. “So you see, Penny, plant hunting’s not exactly for the weekend gardener.”

  Penny was shaking her head. “I should say not. All to collect seed and find new plants. It’s hard to believe.”

  “Forrest was one of the best. Over the next twenty-seven years, he went on eight more excursions to Yunnan. On his final trip— 1932, I believe it was—he died of a heart attack and was laid to rest in a little churchyard there. In his nearly thirty years of plant hunting, George Forrest collected thirty thousand herbarium specimens and three hundred new introductions of rhododendron.”

  Kingston had no difficulty nodding off that night.

  The next day passed seamlessly. The morning was devoted to a leisurely stroll through the garden with the colonel as guide. Kingston knew of few private gardens with a better collection and display of old roses. Mixed in with perennials and shrubs, they hugged the ground and clambered up old apple trees in the orchard. The walk through the garden was followed by lunch at a local gastro pub: another concept that Kingston found meretricious at best. He found the phrase itself not only oxymoronic but also begging for the insertion of the word “intestinal.” By and large, British pubs, along with their excellent beers and ales, were the last bastion of honest-to-goodness, decently cooked, predictable food in the country. Kingston had no problem with landlords stepping up the quality and widening the selection of their menus, but—much as he appreciated fine food—in no way did truffles, duck confit, and foie gras belong in the local pub.

  What remained of the afternoon was dedicated to miniature horses.

  The following morning, Kingston was sitting in the conservatory with a cup of tea, reading the local newspaper, when he heard the phone ringing in another part of the house. “Phone for you, Lawrence,” Penny called out a few seconds later.

  He went into the living room, where he found Penny pointing in the direction of the hall. As far as he could recall he’d given the Conquests’ number only to his friend Andrew and Dr. Banks. On the hall table he saw the phone, off the cradle, and picked it up.

  “Lawrence Kingston,” he said.

  “Hello, Lawrence. It’s Donald Banks. Sorry to call so early, but I’ve got some rather bad news.”

  It must be about Mayhew, thought Kingston. Why else would Banks be calling?

  “Peter Mayhew died last night.”

  “That is bad news. I’m sorry it had to go that way.”

  “Yes. It was quite a shock. I was convinced he would pull through. We all were. So much so that we’d moved him out of ICU. That’s why we decided to establish the cause of death.”

  In the pause that followed, Kingston was wondering if that was standard procedure in such cases. Before he could ask, Banks spoke again.

  “It’s a police matter now, I’m afraid.”

  “A police matter?”

  “Yes. Peter Mayhew didn’t die as a result of his injuries. It was an overdose of lidocaine. It’s widely used as a local anesthetic, but excessive doses lead to cardiac arrest and death.” Banks paused. “It was never administered to Mayhew by anyone on the hospital staff. Someone wanted to stop him from talking, by the looks of it.”

  “Good Lord!”

  “Quite a turn up for the books, eh? By the way, I told the police of your involvement and they’ll probably want to talk with you. I gave them your address and phone numbers. I hope that was all right.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “There was something else. The inspector I talked with— Sheffield—said that another vehicle was involved in Mayhew’s accident. They found fragments of glass from a vehicle other than the bike. Skid marks, too.”

  “A hit-and-run, by the sound of it.”

  “Inspector Sheffield didn’t speculate, but now, with Mayhew most likely having been murdered, it would seem a possibility, one would think?”

  Banks’s question went unanswered for a moment while Kingston contemplated the inescapable: Someone had managed to slip into Mayhew’s room, unnoticed, and given him a lethal injection. “Yes, it would,” he replied.

  “Well, I’m sorry to have spoiled your day, Lawrence. When are you returning to London?”

  “In all probability, tomorrow.”

  “You’ll inform Clifford Attenborough, of course.”

  “I will, yes.”

  “Goodbye, then. Don’t forget to call me next time you’re in Oxford.”

  “That’s a promise.”

  Kingston put the phone down and stood for a moment, shaking his head, mulling over the grim news and its implications. After several moments, he turned and went through the French doors into the garden to tell Penny and Bertie.

  FIVE

  Kingston left Pigeon Farm that afternoon after lunch, cutting short his stay by one day. On the drive back to London, with the radio off, he had plenty of quiet time to mull over the troubling events of the last few days, trying to fathom why someone wanted Peter Mayhew silenced and how the assailant managed to do it. In the end, he could think of nothing further that might change his original line of reasoning and first-blush conclusion: Mayhew’s murder was linked somehow to the expedition. If so, he could only suppose that something had happened on the expedition that one or more of the other members didn’t want revealed. Whatever that “something” was had to be serious enough, so incriminating, to warrant taking a man’s life. The police would have heard the tape by now. He wondered if they’d come up with anything. Five minutes later, passing through Beaconsfield, he gave up thinking about it and turned on the radio.

  Kingston arrived at his Chelsea flat just after four. Before calling Kew again, he decided that a cup of tea was in order. He’d called twice from Pigeon Farm, but on each occasion Clifford was away from the office.

  He put the kettle on and opened the biscuit tin, to find that he was out of digestives. “Damn,” he muttered. In the living room he checked the answerphone. The LCD display showed three messages. Kingston couldn’t help but smile. A metaphor for his social life: gone for four days and only three messages. The first was from his friend Andrew, inviting Kingston to lunch. The next, from his garage, was a reminder that the TR4 was due for a minor service the coming Wednesday. The last was a message from Detective Inspector Sheffield, Thames Valley Police, asking Kingston to return his call.

  Kingston sat on the sofa and dialed the Oxford number. In no time at all, the inspector was on the line.

  “Ah, Dr. Kingston. Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. The people at St. George’s said you were taking a few days off. Decided my questions could wait ’til you returned.”

  “Yes. I just got back from visiting friends in Princes Risborough.”

  “Dr. Banks told me about your subbing for the people at Kew and what happened when you were at the hospital.”

  Kingston detected the hint of a North Country accent. Unusual for an Oxford cop, he thought. “Yes. Fra
nkly, I didn’t realize what I was letting myself in for.”

  “You’re aware that we have Peter Mayhew’s death listed as a homicide?”

  “Yes, Dr. Banks told me.”

  “He informed me that you’re a retired professor of botany.”

  “That’s right.”

  “He said that you’d also been on a plant-hunting expedition in China. That was one of the reasons for Kew Gardens having asked you to provide assistance, if I’m correct.”

  “Yes, that’s right. It was a long time ago—the expedition, that is.”

  “The things that Mayhew talked about, did it strike you that he was speaking from experience?”

  “There’s little doubt. In my opinion, everything he said would seem to confirm that he had indeed been on an expedition. The mention of herbarium specimens, field notes, seeds—they’re all key indicators.”

  “And China’s a popular destination for plant hunting, I take it?”

  Kingston smiled at Sheffield’s choice of words. He certainly wasn’t a gardener, that was for sure. “It is, and has been for many centuries,” Kingston replied, biting his tongue.

  One of those awkward pauses followed where each waited for the other to speak.

  “On the tape, Mayhew mentioned Rosa chin something,” said Kingston. “That’s even more significant.”

  “Why is that?”

  “He’s almost certainly referring to Rosa chinensis var. spontanea. It’s an ancient species of wild rose. Its age is unknown, but could date from at least the eleventh century B.C. One of the ancestors of most of today’s rose cultivars—certainly the hybrid teas and floribundas. It may well have been the reason for the expedition in the first place. By all indications, an expedition that went wrong.”

  “It certainly looks that way.” Sheffield paused, then said, “Mayhew mentioned an ‘accident.’ ”

  “Yes. Banks and I discussed that. Because of the hardships, the often-inhospitable terrain, plus the awful weather, accidents are not uncommon, particularly late in the year, in that treacherous mountainous region.”