The Garden Tour Affair: A Gardening Mystery

by Ann Ripley

  The red rose cries, “She is near, she is near”;

  And the white rose weeps, “She is late”;

  The larkspur listens, “I hear, I hear”;

  And the lily whispers, “I wait”

  Chapter 8

  HER HUSBAND’S SOFT, OFF-KEY SINGING finally woke her up. She realized he’d been at it for some time. “Wake up, wake up, you sleepyhead …”

  Bill was leaning over her bed smiling, one hand tenderly shaking her shoulder, the other caressing her cheek. “Sleepless night, huh?”

  She nodded.

  “Janie’s dressed and gone. It’s time for you to get up if you don’t want your television crew to think you’re a slugabed.”

  “Okay, darling.” Because of her silk charmeuse gown, she could slide easily off the high bed and into Bill’s arms. He gave her a long, healing hug, realizing how exhausted she was. Then he released her, and she stumbled onward into the bathroom. While she slowly washed and dressed, he read her snippets from the local paper. Just as well, since she was too sleepy to tell him about last night’s adventure.

  When they reached the dining room, everyone was at breakfast. They looked uniformly fresh, like choirboys and — girls. How could they all look like that? Louise knew some of them had to have been the night wanderers on the second floor of the mansion. She looked sharply at the men, trying in vain to observe sexual tension in the air. Only Jim Cooley referred to nighttime activity; she could hear him at the neighboring table, making some crack about “thumps in the night.”

  Nora, in pale rose culottes and top, seemed as lovely and composed as ever. And not as if she had been up all night. Yet her expression was preoccupied. Had Jeffrey ever shown up? Or was Louise wrong about the woman’s predatory intentions?

  A glance at her own reflection in a large antique mirror on the opposite wall made clear that she was the only one who had suffered from these nocturnal capers. Even after applying her makeup, she looked ravaged. Thinking along the same lines as an undertaker bent on making the corpse look good, she had put on a sporty dress in a flattering peach shade, with a touch of matching eye shadow. Bill, on the other hand, alerted that this weekend was casual except for a couple of dinners, was handsome and relaxed, and wearing his most historic, worn-out tennis shirt in faded navy blue. He loved being away from the sartorial strictures of the State Department and its buttoned-up-tight social scene.

  It took her two cups of the Litchfield Falls Inn’s robust coffee to wake up, and two more to snap her into working condition. They had eaten in the dining room because the rain made the veranda uncomfortably cool and damp; Louise was glad for its dry comfort.

  “Why is it raining?” she muttered uselessly to Bill and Nora.

  “It’s just a front passing through, darling,” said her husband, patting her hand. He was always anxious to keep her spirits up before she had to go to work.

  “A little rain won’t stop your work, will it?” asked Nora.

  Louise shook her head. “Unless it’s a hurricane, the show will go on. Marty Corbin certainly wouldn’t want us to blow a weekend’s work over a few raindrops.” Her temperamental WTBA-TV producer always labored under a skimpy budget. Each location shoot cut heavily into it. That was why only the cameraman, Doug, was flying in from Washington, and the rest would be a pickup crew from New York. Yet, she reflected, the very strength of her program was visiting private and public gardens throughout the country. A frown passed over her face. The show could use more funding so they didn’t always have to cut corners. Today, to save money, they would be without Marty, who had made the show the success it was. Big, dark-haired, and dark-eyed, his creativity and massive energy kept things at a high pitch. A shoot with Marty was like a good party, with everyone at their well-spoken best, full of body English and charm, but disciplined, and with no time for true party frivolity. With this modus operandi, he pulled from Louise and Doug and all of the crew their very best work.

  But today, she and Doug would be running things themselves. Although Marty had expressed full confidence in them, the increased responsibility made her nervous. Her lack of sleep didn’t help much, and from the looks of it, they would start out with a “garden in the rain,” as the old song said. Just keeping herself from looking like a drowned rat would require a major effort: umbrellas borrowed from the inn, slickers, constantly hovering under shelters in between taping segments. And then, she thought drearily, there would be a problem with the flowers: Too much rain was going to play havoc with iris!

  On the other hand, if the raindrops stopped and the skies stayed gray, Doug would rejoice: a “shooter’s” sky, he would call it. Perfect weather for outdoor camera work, everything flat and uniformly lit, with maybe just a little battery-powered light pumped in as she did her walk-and-talks through the gardens.

  Her spirits revived a bit when Barbara Seymour, walking slowly with what appeared to be stiff muscles, joined them at their table for coffee. She was not in costume this morning, just a faded but neat denim dress with a cameo brooch pinned at the throat. This encounter was just what Louise needed to get better acquainted with the woman. Barbara gave them a brief history of the inn, how her father had inherited it in a decrepit state and begun an enormous renovation. Louise, feeling more alert now, listened to the woman’s story and thought she recognized the plot: Single daughter of loving couple devotes life to father after mother dies. What a shame to live such a narrow life, thought Louise: Even in her mid-seventies, Barbara Seymour had a vitality that exceeded that of many younger persons. But she had funneled it all into this mansion.

  And now her relatives were putting the bite on her to give it up for development. What a payoff for a life of sacrifice!

  They had a pleasant exchange that included a recap of the Eldridges’ peripatetic history. “Yes,” Louise confirmed with a grin, “we’ve lived in seven houses—and six different cities around the world. Foreign Service people move a lot. And I have the credentials to prove it: Just give me a house, any house—I can pack it up in a day.”

  Then, because she felt so comfortable and because she suffered from terminal curiosity, Louise couldn’t resist asking the question that was burning in her mind. “Barbara, did I hear that you might turn this inn over to the Connecticut Trust?”

  Louise saw Bill roll his eyes heavenward: She knew how much he hated it when she stuck her nose into other people’s business. It was a CIA reflex, since he was always wary of questions himself. And yet, thought Louise defensively, he would be as curious as she was if he had been listening to the conversation at Barbara’s table last night, instead of dancing.

  The elderly woman gave a nervous laugh. “You probably overheard our little postdinner family discussion. I wanted to turn it over to the state. I do not think my father would have liked this beautiful land becoming a housing project—even if it was tasteful. But my niece and nephew apparently don’t agree with me about this.” She gave Louise a weary look. “It’s hard to balance these things, you know. It turns out that it’s a perfect place for a development, if there must be development …”

  “But if that ’snot what you want….”

  “It isn’t. But maybe that’s what I should want. After all, as Jim says, you have to look at the general good of the community of Litchneld, which has to develop somewhere, apparently. Maybe I’m being selfish. After all, I’m old, set in my ways …”

  Louise was appalled at the change in the woman, from the moment she’d stood victoriously at the top of the stairs yesterday, to now. Impetuously, she reached out and squeezed Barbara’s thin, blue-veined hand. “You are older, but for heaven’s sake, you’re not that old—not old enough to take yourself out of the game of life.” She groaned inwardly, appalled at herself for using such a cliché-ridden metaphor. Perhaps Jeffrey Freeling’s flagrant use of them last night had infected her.

  A little smile flickered on Barbara’s face. “The game of life. That’s kind of—”

  “Corny,” finished Louis
e.

  “Well, yes, corny. But, Louise Eldridge, I can see you at ninety, still fighting the good fight.” She smiled. “There I go, using a tired metaphor myself. But truly, I’ve always been a fighter, too, until this.”

  “Don’t give up so easily, Miss Seymour.”

  As they left the table, Bill’s face broke into a wide grin. “Why didn’t you polish it off by telling her it’s not over ’til the fat lady sings?”

  “Really,” she chided, giving her husband a gentle poke in the side, elated when he jumped a little, “you want me to mix metaphors? I was going to tell her not to leave the ring until the bell rang in the last round—but I restrained myself.”

  When they went into the lobby, Louise saw that the garden-tour crowd included only Frank and Fiona Storm, Grace Cooley, and Bebe Hollowell—plus, of course, her own clique, Bill and Nora.

  The climbers, with lunches in their backpacks, also congregated in the lobby, preparing to leave for the hour-long trip to Bear Mountain. Janie and Chris were to ride in the inn’s van with Jeffrey Freeling and Jim Cooley. The Posts had already departed, electing to go separately in their Bentley. The Gasparras also were driving alone. Freeling stood off to the side, handsome in his lederhosen and hiking boots, but looking uncomfortable. Could it be that he didn’t like the lineup of his fellow travelers to the mountain?

  As the two groups dispersed, Louise watched the young dining room manager approach Janie. He slid a worldly glance down her daughter’s body, and Louise realized he was nowhere near as ingenuous as he appeared, and probably not as young, either. He gently pressed Janie’s arm and said, “Now you take it easy on that mountain.” He gave her a toothy smile. “You know what I was telling you last night—it’s a pretty tough climb. Nontechnical, they say, but dangerous just the same.” He looked out the inn’s huge doors into the downpour. “It’s even more so today, because those rocks near the top are going to be very slippery. Once you’re on the summit, everybody climbs this ancient pile of rocks left over from some cabin—it’s kind of like the climbers who stick another flag in the ground once they reach the top of Everest. But you’d better not do that today.”

  Janie looked about ten years old, wearing shorts and hiking boots, her long blond hair in practical pigtails. It was as if she were talking to her big brother. “Gee, thanks, Teddy, for the warning,” she said.

  “Yeah, thanks a lot,” echoed Chris, putting a proprietary arm around Janie’s shoulders and giving Teddy a brisk smile— and a glance that took in his black-and-white staff attire. “But don’t you worry about it—I’ll take good care of her.”

  “What am I going to be—a grip?” said Bill.

  Louise grinned. “Exactly, because you’re going to help Doug do the setups in the rooms, and the outside segments as well. You’ll carry stuff, hold stuff, help set up light stands, steady the reflectors—things like that. He’ll have about four portable TV lights, all on stands.”

  “I knew there was some reason you invited me on this trip.”

  “First, we have to check out downtown Litchfield,” she said, propelling him toward the road. Litchfield’s “downtown” was only a mile from the inn—a nice stroll. They got their first look at it when they stopped to pick up Nora and Bill’s reserved tour tickets at the courthouse.

  It was perfect: a model village out of someone’s imagination. In the center was a flawless village green, emerald-colored and weedless, with a small white information kiosk tucked under huge trees. On one side was a church that Louise had heard was one of the most photographed churches in the United States: The First Congregational Church of Litchfield. It glistened white even on this gloomy day, its spire looming above sugar maples and pines far into the sky as a symbol of earlier Connecticut residents’ enormous piety. Flanking the green on the other side was a prim line of shops, with two other historic churches and a county courthouse sandwiched between them.

  Three elderly, fancy-hatted Litchfield women parceled out tickets for the garden tour. They sat at the foot of the courthouse steps, as if they were putting the full power of the county behind their worthy project—and it was worthy, with proceeds of the tour going to Connecticut Junior Republic, a home for boys. They carefully checked Bill’s and Nora’s names off the list, and nodded acknowledgment to Louise with more familiarity than she would have expected. “Oh, we recognize Louise Eldridge—you’re part of that television crowd,” said one, sniffing a bit. She was a tall, gaunt woman, with parchment skin drawn tightly over her face. “Of course, here in Litchfield we are quite used to you photographers.”

  “Oh, are you?” said Louise cheerfully. “Good.” She turned to her companions and quietly murmured, “Doug has to get some footage of these three ladies before the day is over. It’ll make a great B roll for the lead-in to the segment.”

  Bill and Nora looked perplexed, so she explained. “The primary interview with the talent—that’s me—is called the A roll. B roll is the pictures we use with the voice-overs.”

  Bill nodded at Nora. “That perfectly clear?”

  Nora looked uncertain. “Not perfectly.”

  “I’ll explain more later,” Louise told them.

  Erected above the women and their card table was a tiny tent. For the hats, Louise realized: The hats were the things to be protected from the prevailing weather, for they were high-crowned and intricate, their droopy silk flowers showing their age. She wondered if they could be part of the village’s historical preservation efforts. Hats from the past? She was beginning to know Litchfield, and she bet that they preserved everything, just like Louise’s tightfisted grandmother had back on her farm in Illinois. Old lumber, dented pails a half-century old, used nails, falling-down buildings, broken furniture: all things made for man’s use that must be carefully repaired and continued to be used— lest God think man was wasting His goods. As she discreetly glanced at these pleasant, firm-jawed women, she could picture them living two hundred years ago. These gals would have been the social and moral conscience of the village, thought Louise, and a pretty tough one, at that.

  As if reading her mind, the woman who had spoken to her before said, “I bet we look like ancient relics to you.” Her faded blue eyes held a dangerous twinkle.

  “Oh, my, no” said Louise, caught off balance.

  The woman gave a big, hearty chuckle, and the droopy flowers of her hat shook like a garden in the wind. “Well, we are, and so are our hats. We’re actually blood relatives of old Litchfield families. And we’ll be glad to pose for you when you come back to take our pictures.” Still chuckling, she reached out a skeletal hand and gave Louise’s hand a hard little squeeze.

  As they continued down the street, Louise said, “Now how the dickens did they know we’d come back to take their pictures? Did she hear me?”

  Bill said, “They know all about what’s picturesque — because they’re picturesque. Probably’ve been photographed as much as the Navajos out in Arizona. Native people, Connecticut-style.”

  Louise cast a long look at the two blocks of upscale shops radiating from the courthouse. They included several boutique restaurants, the boutique woman’s wear store, followed by the boutique deli, the upscale bookshop, drugstore, and antiques store. Louise realized that ordinary businesses such as hardware stores or repair shops had been driven from the area to make way for tourist-oriented enterprises.

  Wandering around a corner they found another village delight—the-post office. It was lodged in a charming old white Federal building, and its windows were filled with huge flowering and tropical plants. Louise thought ruefully of the tan postal station she took her packages to in northern Virginia: Its homeliness and grime discouraged would-be postal customers.

  Litchfield had to be one of the most idyllic little communities in the United States. It appeared to be buffered from the evils and problems that beset most places. No wonder she was attracted to it: You could come here, she thought, and hide from the real world forever.

  It was only a shor
t walk to the first house on the garden tour, where they met Doug and the rest of the TV crew near a big white van. Doug stopped busily unpacking equipment to come over and embrace Louise like an old friend. She introduced him and the others to Bill and Nora, and with amiable, quick glances, the New York contingent checked Louise out. She gave them an enthusiastic hello. Then, one of her fingers went up and touched the skin under her eyes in a reflexive female gesture.

  “It’s okay, Louise,” said Doug, slipping an arm around her shoulders and walking her a ways down the sidewalk. He reached over and straightened a piece of her long brown hair. “You don’t look that bad. You look wonderful, in fact.”

  Cameramen, on occasion, were known to stretch the truth, especially if it meant reassuring the talent. Doug was about her age, and the same height as she was. As she looked at him she saw real sympathy and affection in his friendly, luxuriously bearded face. Along with Marty, this was the man who had helped make her a Saturday TV personality, who made her look good week after week. He ranked right up there with her favorite people, like Bill and Janie—and Marty, of course. “You can tell, can’t you, Doug—I was up late last night. I hope my cover-up masks the circles under my eyes.” Her hand strayed to her face again.

  “Babe,” he said, stretching out the “a” sound, “you look great. Terrific dress.”

  She looked down and gave the skirt of the peach cotton creation a little pull. “You’re right—the dress will help a lot. It’s a color that even a dead cat would look good in.”

  He grinned. “So that’s why you bought it. You’ll look good today, Louise, even if you are coming off a bender.” He looked down the street at the idyllic village center. “But how could you find anything to do in this place? It doesn’t look like it has much life in it.”

  “It wasn’t that, Doug—it was just insomnia.”