EG04 - The Trail of the Wild Rose

by Anthony Eglin

  “I will, of course.”

  “By the way, Mayhew’s sister called me a couple of days ago. Wanted to know if we’d made any headway. I’ve told her that we have every reason to believe that her brother’s death was an accident, but she wants definitive answers. Can’t say as I blame her.”

  “You’ll be questioning Graves and Bell again?”

  “We will. Among other things, to ask where they both were at the time of Jenkins’s murder. Up ’til now they’ve been cooperative, but this will be the third time, I believe.”

  “I never did ask, Inspector, but I assume that they both had alibis for Lester’s murder.”

  “I’ll be up-front with you, Doctor. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be told. Over the last weeks, as you know, we’ve conducted interviews with the four remaining members of the expedition. All have given sworn statements concerning Mayhew’s death—their versions of what happened on that mountain in China. I conducted two of them. The first was with Bell—who had just got back from a trip to Taiwan—and then Jenkins. Graves, I believe, already told you he was interviewed by our chaps up in Leicestershire, and an agent from the FBI field office in San Francisco talked to Kavanagh at some length. The upshot is that all their accounts jibe.”

  “They all told the same story?”

  “I know what you’re thinking. If Mayhew’s death was not accidental, whoever might have reason to withhold information—to cover something up—has had time to get his story straight.”

  “Or their stories.”

  “Right.”

  “What about Lester’s murder?”

  “They were all questioned about it, except the American. The FBI has reassured us that he hasn’t left the States since returning from the expedition.”

  “Alibis?”

  The long pause that followed had Kingston wondering if he was asking too many questions. Then the inspector answered.

  “Graves was in London for two days, attending a Sotheby’s antiques auction. He bought two pieces. He also had receipts from his hotel and for a purchase he made at Austin Reed. One evening, he had dinner with a former colleague and his wife. It all checked out. As for Bell and Jenkins, they were together at the time of Lester’s death.”

  “Really? How . . . convenient.” Immediately, Kingston regretted his skeptical remark, wishing that he could take it back. It didn’t appear to have bothered Sheffield, though.

  “That’s what I thought at first. Expedient. According to their separate statements, the day before Lester was murdered, Bell drove down to Cornwall to meet with Jenkins to discuss a project that he’d been working on—something to do with saving some rare trees from extinction. They were also in the early stages of planning a future trip.”

  “And the next day?” The tree comment had validity, he knew.

  “I’ll get to that. Bell said he stayed at Jenkins’s place overnight, and they went out to dinner that evening at a local pub—the Lighthouse, I believe it was. Bell paid for the dinner and has the receipt to prove it.”

  “Credit card?”

  “Yes, with Bell’s signature. The waitress remembered serving Jenkins—she said he’d dined there before—and that he was with another man. Unfortunately she couldn’t provide a description. They were busier than usual that night, she recalled, something to do with a local regatta. It was a trifle flimsy, you might say, so we asked ourselves if there was any other way his story could be corroborated. One of our chaps pointed out that it was a decent drive from where Bell lived in Dorset to Cornwall and back, and that he’d have had to stop for petrol sooner or later. He drives one of those big Jeeps, and even if he’d filled it up before leaving Dorset, he couldn’t have made it there and back without refueling. We asked him about this: if he’d stopped for petrol, and if he had, where? He remembered right off. Just outside Plymouth on the way back the next day, near Buckfastleigh, he thought. We did a calculation based on the tank capacity and the fuel consumption, and determined that, if he’d started with a full tank, that’s just about where he’d have had to refuel. Give or take, about thirty miles east of Plymouth. Not only that, turns out that he’d kept the credit card receipt, which he sent us two days later.”

  “Hard to argue with that.”

  “Right. But to make doubly sure, we obtained the closedcircuit TV tapes from the station. A black Jeep was shown to be there at three twenty-four p.m. It had Bell’s license plate number. Seems conclusive to us.”

  With little more to be said, the conversation ended just as the kettle had come to a boil and switched off. Kingston got up to fetch the Times and make a pot of tea. While waiting for it to steep, he thought about Bell’s and Jenkins’s alibis. Listening to Sheffield, he had detected an underlying tone of disappointment and frustration. There had been no progress whatsoever, and he, too, was starting to question his own failure to come up with any ideas or new avenues of investigation. The mention of Sally Mayhew had reminded him of his hasty lunch invitation. Thankfully, nothing had come of that, at least not yet.

  With Kingston, bringing up superstition, spirit manifestation, channeling, crop circles, or any form of psychic phenomenon would likely be met with good-humored ridicule. He was, after all, a man of science, and most scientists, by schooling and nature, are skeptics. He would tell you that skepticism, not to be confused with cynicism, is the application of reason to any and all ideas. It is critical thinking, diligence, and inquisitiveness, the need to see compelling evidence before believing, a stock-in-trade that might explain why he had become so good at solving problems and crimes. Thus he found it uncanny, embarrassingly so, to receive a phone call only a couple of hours after he’d hung up on Sheffield from none other than Sally Mayhew.

  “It’s Sally,” she said, pausing. “Sally Mayhew.”

  “Well, how nice to hear from you. You’re not going to believe this, but Inspector Sheffield and I were just talking about you earlier this morning.”

  “Yes, I called him to see if there was any more news on Peter’s death.”

  “He told me.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder if we’ll ever learn what happened on that trip. Too much time has passed now.”

  “You may be right.” He was wondering if she knew about Jenkins. How could she? Sheffield had said she’d called two days ago. He decided not to bring it up, just for now. Why give her more to worry about? “How have you been?” he asked cheerfully.

  “I can’t complain, I suppose.”

  “Well, that’s good to know.”

  “Actually, the reason I’m calling is that I’m in London this week. I’m house-sitting for a friend of mine who has a nice place near Regent’s Park. She has two Siamese cats.”

  Kingston had little choice—unless he lied, saying he would be gone for the rest of the week. “How nice,” he said after a pause. “Why don’t we have the lunch we talked about?”

  “I’d like that, if we can do it before Saturday.”

  “How about tomorrow?”

  “That’s fine. Where shall I meet you?”

  Kingston thought for a moment. One good thing about having Andrew as a friend was that he was never stumped when it came to picking a restaurant. He was like a walking Egon Ronay. “There’s a charming place on Chiltern Street, off Marylebone Road. It’s called La Chaumière. Can’t be much more than a five-minute walk from where you are. I’ll make a reservation for eleven forty-five; that way we’ll beat the crowd. If there’s a problem, I’ll call you back. Give me your phone number.”

  She gave him the number and he repeated the time, name of the restaurant, and the street.

  After hanging up, Kingston wondered why he wasn’t feeling pleased that she’d called. Maybe Andrew was right. Maybe he was becoming a misogynist. He smiled at the thought. What the heck, he said to himself. What could be so tough about having lunch in a fashionable French restaurant, accompanied by an intelligent and fairly attractive woman several years younger than he? Thinking back to his first, and only, meeting
with her, he couldn’t help wondering if she would take a little more care about her appearance this time. After all, he was taking her to a three-star restaurant. Dismissing the thought as vanity on his part and sexist, he picked up the phone book and leafed through the yellow pages to Museums. He had an idea. It might not lead anywhere, but it would be interesting to pursue.

  SEVENTEEN

  Kingston found the listing he was looking for and, with one hand, entered the numbers on the phone with his thumb, a practice he’d learned from his daughter when she presented him with his first mobile five years ago. Lacking in digital dexterity, he’d found it cumbersome at first, but with his latest phone—why they needed to change them every six months or so it seemed was beyond him—it was much easier.

  He was calling the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art in Bloomsbury. Earlier, he’d read that the collection began in 1912 when Indian-born Percival David started collecting Chinese art. Later, when he inherited his father’s baronetcy, Sir Percival embarked on what would become a lifetime study and a connoisseurship of Chinese art as practiced at the highest level—that of the Imperial Collection, housed in the Forbidden City, Beijing. In the 1920s, using his own money, he staged an impressive display of some of the collection’s treasures in smaller pavilions within the Forbidden City. The exhibition was a huge success, and his reputation as a connoisseur and collector of Chinese art was on the ascent.

  Over the ensuing decades, Sir Percival was able to purchase many pieces from the Imperial Collection, exporting them to the United States and eventually England. The foundation’s collection now numbers over one thousand seven hundred pieces and is the finest collection of Chinese ceramics outside China.

  The polite woman who answered, transferred his call, and in a few seconds he was talking with an assistant curator. In as few words as possible—a discipline that Kingston had never quite mastered—he told the curator, who sounded like a younger woman, how he had found the blue-and-white bowls and had photographed one of them with his mobile. Though they had Chinese character marks, he suspected—mostly because there were so many—that they might be fakes. Without mentioning that the bowls might end up being evidence in a homicide case, he asked if the foundation might take a look the photos.

  The answer was an immediate yes. If he would submit the photographs, she would be happy to have a staff member look at them and give an opinion. He went on to tell her a white lie about their having to be moved from the barn in the next few days and that a quick response would be appreciated. She promised to do what she could.

  Kingston hadn’t the slightest idea how to obtain photo prints from an image on a mobile. Up until now, he’d not even thought about it. Andrew came to the rescue. As former owner of an IT company, he knew all about that kind of stuff. Next morning, Kingston dropped off the photo prints, together with a note on his personal stationery, at the foundation’s gallery on Gordon Square in Bloomsbury.

  . . .

  Kingston made a point of getting to La Chaumière fifteen minutes early. It was less to do with punctuality, more a question of good manners: not wanting Sally to have to wait alone in the restaurant. Long ago, he had come to the sad realization that common courtesy and good manners were gratuitous, that the enduring hallmarks of a cultivated life were slipping away, and that the scrap heap of things good and decent was mounting daily— all casualties in a world gone mad with political correctness. He smiled—a smile of resignation tinged with regret. Perhaps the time had come to expunge the word “manliness” from the OED and Webster’s.

  He had been careful not to overdress for the occasion: navy double-breasted blazer, open-neck sport shirt, and tan slacks. After all, he didn’t know if she would turn up dressed to kill or looking like a throwback to the ’60s. It was beyond his grasp, as it was with many men of his generation, to comprehend what passed for “fashion” these days.

  Kingston need not have worried. Sitting at a table against the wall, sipping his mineral water, he noticed a woman enter who he thought might be Sally. Having met her only once, he couldn’t be sure. The maître d’ greeted her and then escorted her through the restaurant toward where he was seated. It wasn’t until they were almost at the table that he recognized her. Even then he wasn’t totally convinced, because she looked so different from their first encounter. As he stood to meet her, she smiled and said, “Hello, Lawrence.” The voice, too, was somehow different from the one he remembered.

  She wore a cream blouse under a lightweight jacket, and a camel-colored skirt. The single strand of pearls at her neck looked like the real thing. As the maître d’ helped her into her chair, Kingston was struck by her attractiveness compared to their last meeting. He was no judge of makeup, far from it, but he wondered if a beauty salon and stylist might have had a hand in her make over. He smiled inwardly, recalling his earlier thoughts about her appearance.

  “You’re looking very well,” he said, as Sally shifted in her chair to get comfortable.

  “Thank you,” she said demurely, her eyes taking in the room. “It’s a lovely restaurant.”

  “The food is as good as the decor. It’s one of my favorites.”

  With Kingston doing most of the listening, the small talk continued through the first course of salade Niçoise, accompanied by a bottle of Vouvray. On the way over in the taxi, he had decided, for his part, to keep the conversation light and amusing at the start, at least until he could sense her mood and receptiveness. Unless he felt it relevant or appropriate, he would avoid any mention of the plant-hunting expedition or his recent activities at Lydiard Park and in Cornwall.

  Waiting for their main course, Sally sipped her wine. “Tell me about plant hunting,” she said. “Why these men risk their lives looking for plants and collecting seeds. What’s the point?”

  Kingston was surprised. It wasn’t the attitude he was expecting. He thought that by now she would have at least a little understanding of what, for three centuries, had driven men to far-flung parts of the world in the pursuit of new and rare plants. Surely, with her having a horticulturist brother, there should be no need for such a fundamental question. Nevertheless, he was more than happy to accommodate her. Asking him to talk about anything connected with plants was like asking Billy Graham to say a few words about the Bible.

  “Where to begin,” he said, pausing. “I suppose as good a place to start as any would be to accept the fact that all life on Earth depends on plants. Without plants we would cease to exist. They are basic to our ecosystems, our most precious resource that provides shelter, food, medicines, and many of the materials we use in everyday life.”

  “I’d never really thought of plants in that way.”

  “Most people don’t. Why would they? But just think of all the products made from wood. There’s rubber; many fabrics, like cotton and flax; musical instruments; sports equipment; rope and yarns; fragrances and cosmetics. And what about paper? Even our money comes from plants. And let’s not forget fossil fuels—one of our principal sources of energy, unfortunately. Coal was once living plants.”

  Sally smiled. “Now, that I do know. Plants and dinosaurs, right?”

  “Right.” Kingston held up a finger. “Medical science. Some of the most remarkable new medicines and cures come from plants and trees. Plants maintain our atmosphere, purify wastes, protect topsoil, and on and on.” He paused to take a sip of wine. “As for plant hunting, it has endured for centuries, Sally. A gardener named John Tradescant was hunting abroad in the early 1600s. At the time, he was head gardener at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire, where Queen Elizabeth I spent much of her childhood. The gardens there are extraordinary. You should go there sometime.”

  “I’d like to.” She smiled coyly. “Perhaps you’ll take me there.”

  Kingston nodded. “Not a bad idea.”

  Sally thought for a moment. “So what exactly do you hunt for?”

  “Many things. New species of plants; rare plants; plants that are facing extinction; for propag
ation and research; to share plant material and data with other botanical gardens, and to stock seed banks like Kew’s global Millenium Seed Bank Project at Ardingly, in Sussex. Despite our reliance on plants, we’re losing them at an alarming rate. The last time I checked, as many as a hundred thousand plant species are threatened.” He smiled briefly. “I’m sure you don’t want me to go into the many reasons why.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said politely.

  Still, Kingston wasn’t quite finished. “Kew’s seed bank is extraordinary,” he said. “It’s the largest plant conservation project ever conceived, with more than thirty countries participating. Last year they banked their billionth seed in the underground cold-storage vaults. Norway has recently developed one, too.”

  Sally smiled. “You’re a veritable mine of information, Lawrence.”

  “You forget, I used to teach this stuff.”

  “I can tell.”

  Kingston frowned. “Let me see, what else can I tell you about plant hunting?” He looked up briefly at the ceiling. “Well, we take a lot of equipment with us. That’s where horses and mules sometimes come in handy. On top of all the obvious things, like luggage and backpacks, sleeping bags, clothing, and personal items, the list includes tents, a GPS device, botanical books, plant presses, herbarium tags, satellite phone . . . let’s see, pruning poles, saws and shears, torches, cameras, binoculars. One needs a checklist before packing.”

  “So when you find a plant or a tree of interest, what do you do? Gather seeds, cut off twigs?”

  Kingston smiled. “The first, definitely, but rarely the latter. In fact, on most expeditions seed collection is the principal purpose, the reason most trips take place in autumn. But we also collect what we call herbarium specimens—ideally, a manageable branch complete with stems, leaves, and, where possible, some reproductive aspect of the plant, which could be flower or fruit. These are dried in small plant presses. Later they will be identified and cataloged by research botanists. We usually know what most of them are, of course.”