EG04 - The Trail of the Wild Rose

by Anthony Eglin

  Kingston pulled up in front of the house next to a mudspattered older Land Rover. He got out and stretched. Suddenly the countryside quiet echoed with the cacophony of dogs barking. Before he could take a step toward the front door, two ponysized Irish wolfhounds were at his feet, jostling and panting to be the first to welcome their new visitor. Temporarily rooted to the spot, he was encouraged to see that their tails were wagging. A shrill whistle sent them back to their master, standing on the front doorsteps. “Sorry about those two scallywags. Come on in, Lawrence,” said Graves, beckoning. They shook hands and entered the house.

  In appearance, Spenser Graves was a true-to-life country squire. He was lean and tall—an inch or so shorter than Kingston—and looked to be in his late fifties. There was no telling whether his ruddy, weathered face was as a result of time spent outdoors, or indoors in the company of Johnny Walker. Under bushy eyebrows flecked with gray, his blue eyes were pink-veined and watery. He wore a multipocketed Barbour jacket, tattersall shirt, and paisley silk scarf knotted casually at the neck. A battered felt hat completed the picture.

  Graves led the way through a sparsely furnished entrance hall with massive gilt-framed portraits covering the dark-painted walls—ancestors, Kingston assumed. Their footsteps echoing off the black-and-white diamond-pattern tile floor, they continued along a hall, past several doors, and entered another large room. One of the most magnificent crystal chandeliers that Kingston had ever seen dominated the airspace. The comfortable seating, antique furniture, and elegant carpeting determined that it was a drawing room—maybe one of several, thought Kingston. Graves gestured to a chair and they both sat.

  “Damned good to see you looking so well, Lawrence,” said Graves, crossing his legs, exposing gaudy argyle socks. “So glad you could come up. I don’t get too many visitors these days—well, the public, of course, but I try to avoid them as much as possible. Damned idiotic questions most of the time.” He glanced at his watch. “How about a nip before lunch?”

  Kingston smiled. “I don’t see why not, if you’re having one. A dry sherry, perhaps?”

  Graves picked up the cordless phone on the table next to him and punched in two numbers. A pause followed while Graves stared up at the gilt-decorated coffered ceiling. Kingston hadn’t noticed it when they entered. It was intricate and beautifully crafted. “Ah, there you are, Hobbs,” said Graves. “Think you can rustle up a glass of dry sherry and the usual for me? We’re in the drawing room. Thanks.” Graves leaned back and turned his smiling attention to Kingston. “So, Lawrence, what have you been up to since we last met?” He frowned. “Must have been at least three or four years ago.”

  Kingston obliged, spending a minute or so telling him how it had taken a long time to come to grips with his wife’s untimely death, but that he now found living in London well suited to his needs. “Couldn’t wish for more,” he said, wrapping up. Thankfully, there was no need for Kingston to dredge up the blue rose affair or the now-celebrated garden rehabilitation in Somerset and the architectural and art discoveries that resulted. Graves was well aware of Kingston’s involvement. Not surprising, given the national news coverage.

  Graves had just started to talk about the garden and arboretum when the graying-haired, bespectacled Hobbs, wearing an illfitting black jacket, arrived with their drinks. Kingston couldn’t help thinking how much he resembled a taller Woody Allen. Lowering the small silver tray to the coffee table, Hobbs stepped back a pace. “Let me know when you would like lunch served, sir,” he said obsequiously.

  “I will,” Graves replied, with a nod. “Thank you.”

  Hobbs turned and departed.

  Kingston picked up his glass and took a sip of sherry. Now was as good a time as any, he figured, to do a little circumspect digging. “When we talked on the phone, Spenser, I believe I mentioned that I’d been involved in a small way with that strange case in Oxford. The one involving the expedition you were on.”

  “You did, yes,” said Graves, picking up his highball glass containing a generous measure of what Kingston guessed to be scotch. “Said that our mutual friend Cliff Attenborough had asked you to sub for him, I believe?”

  “Right. The hospital and the police wanted someone with knowledge and experience of plant hunting to observe and authenticate what the mystery patient was mumbling about. The whole thing was short-lived, as you probably know.” He realized immediately his poor choice of words. “Anyway, as the saying goes, I’m no longer on the case.”

  “Yes, I read all about it, poor bugger. Murdered, of all things. Damned queer business, I must say. As a matter of fact, one of the local gendarmes paid me a visit not long after it happened. An inspector from Leicester.” Graves glanced momentarily at the ceiling. “Name escapes me. Asked all the expected questions—what was the expedition about, who was on it, how Mayhew’s accident had happened. Pleasant chap. Oddly enough, quite knowledgeable about Asian antiques. Collected Japanese swords.”

  A pause followed while Kingston took a purposeful sip of sherry, allowing him to frame his next words. “The reason I brought it up, Spenser, was that I happened to talk with Peter Mayhew’s half sister, Sally, last week.”

  “I didn’t know he had a sister. Not until I read the report in the newspaper.”

  Immediately, Kingston recalled what Sally Mayhew had said, that Bell had tried unsuccessfully to reach her by phone, right after the accident. He wondered if he should ask Graves why Bell hadn’t mentioned that but decided it might be both premature and ill-mannered to start quizzing his host so soon after arriving.

  “No reason you should, really,” he replied. “She said they weren’t close.” Kingston put his glass on the table, then continued. “A few days ago, I agreed to an interview with a reporter from the Oxford Mail. He was doing a story on the case. As it turned out, to save time, he interviewed Sally and me at the same time.”

  Graves nodded. “I see.”

  “She said that after the inquest, she met briefly with Julian Bell, who had told her how the accident happened. It must have been devastating for all of you.”

  Graves was gripping his glass, which rested on the arm of his chair. After a pause, he took a healthy gulp of the amber liquid and pursed his lips. “It was, believe me. Damned rotten luck. In retrospect, Mayhew shouldn’t have been on the trip. He wasn’t in good physical shape. My opinion, of course, but shared by more than one of us, Bell, for one. Damned fool never told us he suffered from vertigo.”

  “Maybe, until that time, he wasn’t aware.”

  “There’s no saying now.”

  “Did you happen to see him fall, Spenser?”

  “No. But I knew something was wrong when I heard scuffling sounds and realized that everyone behind me had stopped. When I turned, Peter was on the ground with David kneeling behind him.”

  “David Jenkins, right?”

  Graves nodded. “As I walked back to ask what was happening, Peter got to his feet, insisting that he was all right and that we should continue. It was pissing with rain and windier than hell. We debated whether we should turn back, but we continued. You probably know the rest of the story. Less than a minute later, he fell again, this time over the bloody edge. Poor blighter.” Graves downed his drink as if it were a metaphor for the finality of it.

  Kingston finished his sherry, too, and shook his head. “As you say, ‘rotten luck.’ ”

  Graves nodded and took a deep sigh, as if he’d rather forget the incident.

  “How many guides were there?”

  “Three, if you include the Chinese botanist.”

  “I understand that one of them almost went over the edge, too.”

  Graves frowned and looked off into the distance for a moment. “Really,” he said, looking back to Kingston. “As I recall, the guides were standing to one side right after it happened. I could be wrong, though. We were all in a state of shock, you know.”

  “I’m just going on what Bell told Sally Mayhew.”

  “And what was
that?”

  “He said one of the guides was last in line behind Peter. When Peter went down, the guide lost his footing, too, and fell, shoving Peter close to the edge of the gorge.”

  Graves looked aside, thinking for a moment. “I suppose one of the guides could have been in back of Peter,” he said at length. “Truthfully, I don’t know. You have to understand, it was utter confusion.”

  “I can just imagine. I’m sorry to have dredged the whole thing up.”

  Graves rested his head on the back of his chair, a feigned smile on his face. After a measured pause he said, “I can see all this detective work has gone to your head, Lawrence. Besides, I thought you said you were off the case.”

  “You’re right, Spenser, I am. I’m sure you’d prefer to forget the whole business.”

  A gentle knocking on the door interrupted them. They both turned to see the door partially open to reveal an attractive young woman in a fleece jacket and blue jeans. “Sorry to bother you, Daddy,” she said. “Wanted to let you know I’m leaving now.”

  Graves rose, as did Kingston. “Come in, Alex. I want you to meet an old friend, Lawrence Kingston. My daughter, Alexandra,” he said with obvious pride. With wavy chestnut hair, an English complexion, and intelligent gray eyes, she was right out of the pages of Town & Country. They talked only briefly, and in less than a minute she departed.

  “You have a lovely daughter, Spenser. She appears to be around the same age as mine. As an only child, they become extraspecial, don’t they?”

  “Only natural, I suppose,” Graves replied. “She’s a wonderful person. Engaged to a fellow who’s in the Diplomatic Corps. Getting married in Paris.”

  “Romantic.”

  Graves smiled and nodded. “Hungry?”

  “Ready whenever you are.”

  They left the drawing room, Graves leading Kingston along a picture-lined hallway into another grand room, this one elegantly appointed with French antiques, mostly Louis XVI, a huge Aubusson carpet underfoot. On the walls, several large glass-fronted cabinets displayed Asian ceramics and other Oriental antiques. Kingston wished he could have paused to study them, but Graves was pressing on. They soon arrived at what had to be the dining room to end all dining rooms. The small picture he’d seen on Audleigh’s Web site didn’t do it justice—no mere photograph could capture the magnificent room.

  The two stood in the middle of the room, Graves content to watch Kingston drink it all in. Kingston realized that most visitors’ reactions—and Graves had doubtless escorted hundreds over the years—would likely be pretty much the same as his own at this moment: reverential awe and repose.

  Graves broke the long silence. “Sadly, the room’s not put to much use these days. I can’t even remember the last dinner we served here. Must have been at least a couple of years ago. We’ll lunch in the conservatory. You’ll enjoy the view, Lawrence.”

  Two hours later, after a splendid meal of sorrel soup followed by roast guinea fowl with port gravy and celeriac, then ramekins of chilled gooseberry fool, all lubricated with a bottle of Vouvray and a grand cru Burgundy, Graves took Kingston on a tour of the gardens and arboretum.

  The landscaping close to the house was quintessentially English in design and plantings. They walked the compact lawns and along wide herbaceous borders with a backdrop of climbing and rambling roses trained on ancient brick walls. Crossing a small Japanese bridge led them to a rose garden that Graves said was originally planted by his grandmother more than ninety years ago, and later redesigned by Graham Stuart Thomas. Planted among the profusion of scented heirloom roses was a white variety of campanula and blue-flowering catmint. A low clipped-boxwood hedge contained the breathtaking sight. Passing under a long arched tunnel of espaliered apple trees intertwined with clematis, they crossed a small orchard and were soon in what was clearly the woodland garden.

  As they walked, Graves described how the arboretum was originally laid out and planted by his grandfather and later reconfigured to its present layout by his father. Over twelve thousand trees and shrubs—nearly seventeen hundred different species, he said, were growing within the fifty-five-acre hilly landscape, mostly grown from seed collected in the wild from various parts of the world.

  A glossy detailed map that Graves had handed to Kingston before they left the house showed the arboretum divided into a dozen sections, each given a name, and each devoted principally to trees and shrubs of a specific country or geographic region, such as China, Japan, and North America. In some cases, sections or parts of sections were given to plants of a specific species, such as rhododendron. Graves also pointed out that every plant was labeled. A discreet metal tag gave the botanical name in Latin, its common name, the botanical family name, the plant collector’s number and initials, an abbreviation denoting country of origin and province, and date collected. A database and location number were included for use by the arboretum’s botanists and staff. Kingston was impressed.

  For the next hour, they walked and talked along shady paths, across meadows dotted with wildflowers, by the side of riverbanks, over bridges, up steep banks off the main paths, crossed valleys—all the time discussing, admiring, and wondering at the extraordinary wealth of botanical riches that had been brought back from faraway lands over the last seventy-five years to create this one-of-a-kind garden in the heart of England.

  All the hiking and climbing appeared to have had little effect on Graves, which didn’t surprise Kingston. Anyone who has been on a plant-hunting expedition to China—not just once but several times, as had Graves—must be in top physical shape. Laboring up the perilous paths of twenty-thousand-foot-high snow-capped peaks requires the lungs, legs, and heart of an athlete.

  “Follow me.” Graves took off at a lively pace. Kingston hustled, falling in alongside. “We’ll take a shortcut back to the house, along the ridge,” said Graves. “You’ll like the view.”

  Within a few minutes they were on a narrow grassy path that crossed the spine of a long ridge that stretched off into the distance. Now, high up out of the protection of the woodland’s embrace, their trouser legs flapped in the stiff breeze. Off to their left, Kingston caught sight of a small village across the patchwork of fields. Graves stopped and looked out over the countryside, pointing. “That’s Audleigh, way over there on the other side, between those dark stands of trees. Looks like a long way, but it isn’t really.” Before Kingston could say anything, Graves was off again, taking a small path to the right leading down the side of the ridge. “I want to show you something, Lawrence,” he said. In less than a minute, a thatched cottage appeared. It stood alone in a green meadow, dwarfed by massive elm and copper beech. It even had the quintessential jumbled cottage garden behind its simple wooden gated fence.

  Kingston was reminded of his childhood and his mother’s collection of biscuit tins. Cottage gardens were popular among the Victorian images that were pictured on the tin lids. “Charming,” said Kingston as they stopped by the gate. “Is it part of the estate?”

  Graves nodded. “It was built by my grandfather. Whenever he tired of rattling around in the big house, he would come out here to read and paint. It has quite a well-stocked underground wine cellar. I do the same once in a while.”

  “Can’t say as I blame you. I would, too.”

  “I’d show you the inside, but I didn’t bring the key.” He glanced at his watch. “Best get headed back, anyway,” he said. “You’ve got a long drive ahead of you.”

  Standing on the wide front steps, the afternoon sun dipping beneath a lofty yew hedge along the side of the drive, Kingston and Spenser Graves shook hands. “You must come back, Lawrence.” The emphasis gave Kingston reason to believe that Spenser really meant it. “Didn’t even get a chance to show you some of my Asian antiques,” he added, bringing a smile to Kingston’s lips.

  “I’d very much like to see them. It’ll be a good excuse for me to return, Spenser. And thanks for a truly excellent lunch and the garden tour. I enjoyed it immensely.”<
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  Kingston eased into his TR4 and prepared to leave. “I’ll keep in touch, Spenser,” Kingston shouted over the rumbling of the sports car’s engine. With a wave, he took off down the drive.

  Heading south on the A508 toward the Motorway, Kingston was thinking back to their conversation and Graves’s version of the fatal accident. It differed from Julian Bell’s as told to Sally Mayhew—not a lot, but sufficiently so to be worrisome. Was one of them bending the truth, trying to cover something up, or did one of them just have a bad memory? On top of that, there was the business about the phone call. He recalled distinctly Sally saying that Julian Bell had tried to call her from China immediately after the accident. Graves, however, knew of no such thing. Given the gravity of the moment, it seemed highly unlikely that this was not discussed among all of the expedition members, that Bell had made the unsuccessful call without telling anyone.

  EIGHT

  On the drive back from Leicestershire, Kingston had plenty to think about. When he had told Spenser Graves how much he had enjoyed himself, he’d really meant it. Few things pleased him more—more now than ever, in fact—than to spend an hour or two wandering through someone else’s garden. Over his lifetime, he had visited countless gardens in his travels, most of them, of course, in Britain. The long list included most of the noteworthy gardens and a great number that were small and privately owned. Along with all the obvious sensual rewards of spending time in these places of beauty, tranquillity, and seclusion, there was often the dividend of meeting the inspired gardeners responsible for creating these Edens on Earth. And Kingston had had the privilege of meeting many. Not surprisingly, each was as passionate as the next in a love of gardening, all unassuming in their creativity and achievements and steadfastly determined to keep going no matter what obstacles Mother Nature flung at them. Whether it was the humblest cottage garden or one-hundred-acre estate, he had long ago come to realize that their creators all shared the same challenges and ambitions. His writer and photographer friend Marina Schinz summed it up admirably: “Gardening is an exercise in optimism. Sometimes, it is a triumph of hope over experience.”