Death in the Greenhouse

by JRL Anderson

  ‘It would indeed.’

  ‘It would also seem historically just that treasure acquired by the slave trade should go to an independent African nation. Your Excellency does not need my comment that your Government would use it well. Unhappily, the Ga river at that point is not far from the frontier, and there is some evidence that another Government is seeking to obtain the treasure. That Government would not, in our view, make such good use of it as would your own. But I must say no more on that score.’

  ‘You need say no more. I take your point without elaboration. What exactly do you want me to do?’

  ‘We think that there is still a chance of forestalling the discovery of the treasure. The trouble is we do not know exactly where it is. The looters think they know where it is, but we know that at least one essential piece of information in their possession is false, and this may hold them up for some little time. I have arranged to fly out to Mpuga early tomorrow, and I shall make my way from Otagara to the Ga river, travelling as a horticulturist in search of rare flowers. There is a Christian mission in the Otaro district where I think I can stay for a few days. During this time I hope to obtain conclusive evidence of the location of the treasure and of the identity of the would-be looters. Your Excellency will not expect me to disclose highly sensitive information in the possession of my department – I look forward to telling you the whole story in happier circumstances at a later date. For the moment it is imperative that I should be allowed to travel in the Otaro district freely, and that my role as a horticulturist should not be questioned. I should like Your Excellency to inform your Government that I am visiting Mpuga with your approval, and I should like you to provide me, if possible, with a document enabling me to call on the Mpugan authorities for such help as I may need in the way of transport or police assistance at any time. It would also be a great help if you could give me some authority to communicate with you, and with the Foreign Office and the Home Office in London using Mpugan Government communications. And until I can report to the authorities in your country on the conclusion of my mission, may I ask you to regard everything I have said as being in the very strictest confidence?’

  ‘You can be assured of that. You shall have the document you want – I shall prepare it as soon as I get back to my office, and send it to Sir Giles by messenger. And for anything you may need in Mpuga, get in touch with Mr Yusko Sessini, the Minister of the Interior. He is my close friend – and he controls the police. Without disclosing the purpose of your mission I shall cable him to say that you are in Mpuga, and asking him to give you any help he can. With the document that I shall send to Sir Giles I shall enclose a note giving you Yusko Sessini’s home and office addresses and telephone numbers.’ He got up. ‘It remains for me to wish you good luck, and to thank you for having taken me into your confidence.’

  Sir Giles went out with him. Boscombe said, ‘You astonished me at least as much as you must have astonished Sir Giles and the High Commissioner. How on earth have you discovered all that?’

  ‘There isn’t time to go into it – and there is still a lot that we do not know. I hope at least that I have relieved your mind about the purpose of the attempted blackmail. There may be some more messages from the man who calls himself Brand, but you can safely ignore them. Now, if you will excuse me I simply must go – I’ve an appalling lot to do before I leave in the small hours.’

  ‘All I can say is thank you for what you have done so far.’

  I called at Sir Giles’s room on my way out. ‘You’ve certainly got a nerve!’ he said. ‘Well, I didn’t let you down. Was there a word of truth in anything you told the High Commissioner?’

  ‘What is truth?’

  Sir Giles laughed. ‘A question asked through the ages – and perhaps not always tactful in the diplomatic world.’

  ‘I can answer, “possibly”. Anyway, you were a great help, and if the High Commissioner does what he says he is going to do, it will make my job a good bit easier.’

  ‘I think he will. He is going to send your documents here. How would you like to collect them?’

  ‘I’ll call for them, if I may. Your office will probably be shut by the time I get back. Can you arrange for the papers to be somewhere I can pick them up, maybe quite late in the evening?’

  ‘Easily. We go home like lesser mortals, but the Foreign Office as such is never shut. Ask for the Duty Room, and your papers will be waiting for you. I’ll leave instructions about you for the night commissionaire, and you will have no difficulty.’

  *

  My next job was to go to New Scotland Yard to call on Assistant Commissioner Paul Seddon, who is the department’s direct representative with the Metropolitan Police. We were old friends, having worked much together, and were sometimes known irreverently to younger members of the department as ‘The Apostles’ – being Peter and Paul. Seddon had put off going home because I’d told him I was coming. It was late in the day for tea, so he gave me a drink instead, and after my somewhat harrowing afternoon at the Foreign Office I was glad of it. I ran over the case with him.

  ‘It’s far-fetched, Peter, but it seems to hang together,’ he said. ‘A lot depends on what that botanist of yours has found in Lancashire, and you’re going to have a hell of a job finding the right place in Africa.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. I’ve got one or two clues that the other chap may not have. On the other hand, he’s had a long start, and goodness knows what he’s managed to achieve by now.’

  ‘Whatever he’s achieved you may get him on the murder charge.’

  ‘If I can find him.’

  ‘Well, if you are anything like right, he can’t leave the place too quickly. Can we do anything for you at Maidstone?’

  ‘Yes, that’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. He’s got that house there, and I’d like an expert to have a close look at the telephone system. You may need a search warrant – but you can deal with all that. Then there’s the black Rover car, with a possible K in the registration number. K in various combinations, including KJ, KL, KM, KN, etc., is a Kent registration. Of course, it’s not only in Kent numbers that K occurs, but it fits as far as it goes. If you can find that our chap has a black Rover, it would be useful evidence.’

  ‘We can have a look. It’s too much to hope that it’s sitting in the garage – I should think he probably used it to get to the airport when he went off. Anyway, we can have a look in the various airport car-parks and garages where people leave cars while they’re away. And you never know your luck – maybe he had the sense to leave the car at home and go to the airport by public transport, or since he was pretty senior, maybe he got one of the firm’s transport drivers to take him. Do you want us to go into that?’

  ‘On the whole, I think not. It’s not vital at the moment, and if we start making inquiries there, we’re bound to alert people. I don’t think the firm is involved in any way at all, but I can’t know, and I’d rather let ignorance prevail for a bit longer.’

  ‘You’re probably right. The Maidstone house should be unoccupied, and we can deal with that without making anyone the wiser.’

  ‘With your experience, I’m sure you can.’ We both laughed. ‘And of course you’ll take such action as you think fit if my guess about the telephone turns out to have anything in it.’

  *

  I rang Professor Huntingford from New Scotland Yard, using the laboratory number he had given me. He had got in less than half an hour ago, and began by thanking me for what he described as the wonderful help he had had from the police. ‘No need to thank us – contrary to some popular ideas nowadays the police actually like to be able to help if they can. Have you come to any conclusions about the soil around the Lancashire version of the adamantifera plant?’

  ‘Yes. They can’t be firm conclusions until I’ve carried out a full analysis which will take some time, but both at Newton Blaize and in Lancashire adamantifera was growing in prepared soil – I mean, soil that had been put there for
it to grow in, and was not just part of the surrounding earth. There were differences in the two soils. I should say that the added material in Lancashire had been there for at least a year, whereas at Newton Blaize it was much more recent. I can give you the precise chemical differences later, if they are of any interest to you. What specially interests me is the difference in the flowering of the two plants. The Lancashire flowers were pure white, whereas the spray we picked at Newton Blaize has flowers that are superficially similar, but in fact have a tiny yellow fleck at the base of the petals.’

  ‘And you think Eustace Quenenden called the genus adamantifera because of the shape of the flowers?’

  ‘I would suppose so – I can’t think of any other reason. They are slightly diamond-shaped.’

  ‘Well, I mustn’t hold you up. I have to go abroad at very short notice, and I’m leaving tonight. I can’t get hold of Ruth. She knows that I may have to be away for a time. Can you please give her my love, and say how much I am longing to get back?’ He promised, and I knew that he would keep his promise. He was rather a dear.

  IX

  Africa

  THE BEST THING to do on an air journey is to go to sleep, but I had so much on my mind when the plane at last took off for Central Africa that I couldn’t sleep. The High Commissioner had done me proud – there was a letter ‘To whom it may concern’ asking all Government agencies in Mpuga to give me any assistance I might seek, an instruction to the Mpugan Post Office to send cables for me at Government priority, and a copy of a long cable to Mr Yusko Sessini cracking me up as a horticulturist on an ‘important mission’ of which Mr Malindono said that he himself had ‘full confidential knowledge’, and inviting Mr Sessini to give me hospitality and help. I couldn’t have asked for more. What I did keep on asking myself was, ‘Is it worth it – or is the whole exercise a waste of time in a fit of madness?’

  It could be. I should have been happier to wait for the outcome of Paul Seddon’s investigations at the Maidstone house, but if I was anywhere near right about things, I couldn’t wait. Far too much time had been lost already – it was at least an even chance that by the time I got to the Otaro district all that I was trying to prevent would be over and done with. Still, there was a chance that I might yet be in time, and if one is acting on a theory of events the only sane course is to assume that the theory is correct until it has been proved wrong. At least nothing had yet proved me wrong, though that was far from saying that I was anything like right. What had I got to go on? First, the murder: that was a brutal reality, and although in these violent days young thugs are capable of kicking a man to death for little or no reason, that tends to be an urban crime, and by its very nature is usually unpremeditated. This was murder by shooting in a country village, with all the marks of careful preparation. And there must have been some powerful motive. Quenenden’s quiet life, absorbed in his plants and his studies, seemed to rule out physical passion. Either he must have possessed something so valuable that someone felt it was worth risking murder for it, or his mere existence represented a danger that the murderer felt it imperative to remove – or both. What could he have possessed? He had a fair amount of money, but not in cash, and that was taken care of by his will. There had been a violent search of his cottage for something – but I was inclined to Inspector Rosyth’s view that the almost maniacal smashing of things in the cottage did not tie up with the cool performance of the murder. That search, I felt, was meant to look like a search rather than to be one, and I gave high marks to the inspector for sensing the discrepancy.

  There remained the plants. A rare plant, especially one that can be propagated for garden sale, can be of considerable value. But Quenenden was well known for his work on plants, he had excellent marketing facilities through Sharpe and Wilberforce, and the firm had a long-established reputation. It was conceivable that someone connected with Sharpe and Wilberforce had murdered Quenenden to steal some plant from him, but it was highly unlikely. A rival firm? Again, I thought, highly unlikely – Quenenden had a distinguished place in the horticultural world, his special interests were known, and if a Quenenden-type plant was suddenly marketed by some firm other than Sharpe and Wilberforce somebody would start asking questions. Had he some other special interests which were not known?

  There was adamantifera, and his curious reticence about its habitat in his Flora. He had not been completely reticent about the plant itself, because it was mentioned in his Flora, and he had published the paper on it seen by Professor Huntingford in the journal of the Royal Botanical Society. But that appeared to be an anatomical study of the plant as a plant, establishing his theory that it belonged to a hitherto unrecorded family of plants, and again saying nothing about the location of its original habitat. Why? And why the name adamantifera? Professor Huntingford assumed that it was because the flowers had strange triangular petals, overlapping one another, and with the triangles sometimes pointing upwards, sometimes down. Certainly this presented an occasional diamond-shape, but it did not strike me as particularly descriptive of the flowers as a whole. And Quenenden was a linguist – one would have thought that when he chose a name it was because he wanted to achieve a precise, definitive meaning.

  Perhaps he had! Perhaps his knowledge of the plant, and his linguistic ability to understand the local superstitions about it, had led him to believe that the presence of the plant indicated something of extreme importance in the locality. Obviously there were plants and plants, as evidenced by the variety of local superstition, that in some circumstances it could bring good fortune, in others bad. I was pinning my hopes on the Newton Blaize variety with the tiny yellow flecks at the base of the petals, not shared with the flowers from Miss Sutherland’s old garden. The box of earth from Africa, possibly used for the Newton Blaize plants and not available in Lancashire, might explain the difference.

  But what was Quenenden trying to do with his adamantifera He was a scientist, and it would seem that he wanted his discovery of the plant recognised, but there must be something else. It was a pretty little plant, which would look pleasing on rockeries if it could be persuaded to grow at all readily in English gardens. It would grow in England – I had seen it growing – but how readily was another matter. Quenenden must have been experimenting with different soils for some time. Professor Huntingford had found evidence of added constituents to the local soil in Lancashire, and it seemed reasonable to suppose that the soil in the box from Africa had gone into the garden at Newton Blaize. And doubtless into the pots where the plants were started off in the greenhouse. Where were those pots, and where was the rest of the soil from the box? The weight of the tea-chest indicated a fair quantity of earth, and it seemed unlikely that Quenenden had used it all. It must have been tiresome, troublesome and expensive to get, and he would have been economical in using it. There was some evidence that pots were missing from the greenhouse. Had the earth been taken, too?

  Again, why? A plant, however beautiful, requiring complex mixtures of alien earth to enable it to grow in England, could not be marketed by English seed merchants with much hope of commercial success. Adamantifera, although pretty, was not strikingly beautiful. I had carefully said nothing about adamantifera to Mr Wilberforce, and he had not mentioned it to me. Quenenden’s lilies seemed to be his main commercial achievement. Mr Wilberforce would obviously have given careful consideration to anything Quenenden might suggest, but there was nothing to indicate that he had suggested marketing adamantifera.

  Why go to the length of murder to steal a plant that, however botanically interesting, had no obvious commercial value? Madly jealous scientific rivalries do exist, but such battles are normally fought with pens rather than pistols. What could have happened to make Quenenden’s murder suddenly necessary to someone? The arrival of his box and a chance to identify the earth inside it? But how could the murderer have known about the arrival of the box? And why the blackmail of Meredith Boscombe? One could assume, of course, that the blackmail and the murder were qui
te unconnected, but with Quenenden – a dead Quenenden as far as the blackmail was concerned – occurring in both, it seemed more reasonable to suppose that they must be linked in some way. Was there any help to be got from dates? Quenenden was murdered roughly a month after his box of earth had been delivered. Assuming that the murderer knew something of his reasons for wanting the earth, but did not know exactly what he intended to do with it, that would allow time for work in the greenhouse to be carried out. The first blackmailing call came later, a few days after the bank had delivered Mr Quenenden’s documents to Miss Sutherland. Could there possibly be any connection? Post hoc ergo propter hoc is among the oldest of logical fallacies – to assume that something that happened after something else, happened because of it has no logical justification. Yet in real life one thing does lead to another, and although there was not a shred of evidence that Mr Quenenden’s documents had anything to do with the blackmail of Meredith Boscombe, one could not rule out the possibility that they had.

  What were the documents? I had been through Quenenden’s diaries, and although there were meticulous notes on his horticultural work from day to day there was not a word about work on adamantifera. That was out of character. One could assume that his notes on adamantifera were kept separately, found by his murderer in the search of his cottage, and taken away. But I didn’t really believe in that search. Could one assume that the notes, kept separately, were deposited in his bank?

  Again there was no evidence, but the assumption was at least possible. If so, however, how had the murderer-blackmailer learned of them? The bank had given them, quite properly, to Miss Sutherland as executor of Mr Quenenden’s estate, and it was her duty to see that any instructions he had left were carried out. From all that was known of her character as a somewhat austere schoolmistress one would expect any such duty to be carried out faithfully. Was it because she had carried out her duty and sent the Quenenden documents to someone else that the blackmailer had learned of them? Or was it possible that the documents had been stolen from the cottage after Miss Sutherland had moved in? If so, why had she not reported any break-in to the police? Could she have been unaware of it? If the murderer had taken a spare key to the cottage, kept an eye on the place, and slipped in at some time when Miss Sutherland was out, she could quite easily have known nothing about it. But would she not have missed the documents? Perhaps she thought that she had just mislaid them, that they would turn up; perhaps she had not attached much importance to them, and in dealing with all the other aspects of Mr Quenenden’s estate she had forgotten about them. That did not seem probable, but it was possible, and it offered some sort of explanation of events.