The Garden Tour Affair: A Gardening Mystery

by Ann Ripley

  Unlike the tourists who lined up in front of the house with their umbrellas opened to protect them from the residual raindrops, the crew was allowed to photograph the inside of the house. The photo ban for the general public was a necessity, Louise had heard, for the owners of these beautiful two-hundred-year-old houses didn’t know who was in that line out there. Some visitors could be burglars who would use a photo record of the place to help them decide what to steal in a break-in.

  Today, her crew would tape inside only one house, and in three of the gardens. A hip-roofed carriage house was the first stop. Much more elegant as a fine residence than as the horse-and-carriage storage place it had been centuries before, the home was surrounded with informal gardens that Louise was a little disappointed to see contained only standard plants. But next they visited a two-hundred-year-old home in Early Federal style. Louise had heard that through the years the various residents had insisted on gilding the lily, adding to and embellishing these homes with one feature after another—railings, additions, redesigned windows. However, authenticity was the goal of this homeowner, and inside, all the furniture, the paintings, even the assorted vases and other objets d’art were appropriate to the period. With great care, the crew (including Bill) set up lights and reflectors in the downstairs rooms. The lights blazed in Louise’s eyes as she launched into a prepared spiel about the Early American decor and low-ceilinged construction. Finally they moved to the yard, where the homeowners had planted only flowers and shrubs that were used in that era. A massive display of plume poppy, with its intricate curvy leaves, and masses of later-blooming Clematis paniculata adorned the gardens. Old-fashioned phlox flourished near the little outbuildings and in clumps around the old stone fences and ledges.

  This was the first time Bill had been with her on location, and he had been plunged into the action. As she did her walk-and-talk through the garden, Doug walked backward in front of her and recorded it with his Steadicam, while her husband the grip guided him with one hand on his shoulder so he wouldn’t lose his footing or step in a hole. Finally they ended at the ancient garage with a carefully restored stone wall that Louise coveted at first sight. She had seen it before in the many photos the associate producer brought back when he did a site survey in Litchfield. But the reality was so much better.

  During a break, Bill sidled up to her. “This is kind of fun. But now I know why this job obsesses you: Everything has to be perfect—the lights, the camerawork, the script dovetailing with the action…”

  She grinned. “Doing the right thing, and saying the right thing, at the right time—that’s my job, and it is a bit of a trick.”

  He squeezed her arm. “Honey, twenty-one years as a Foreign Service wife gave you the perfect training.”

  “Didn’t it, though?” She thought, not without some bitterness, of all the years of trailing her State Department husband to overseas posts and acting the part of the perfect woman. She frowned. Was she just doing more of the same in her new career as a TV garden-show host? But all TV people—even the ones who seemed like impresarios and off-the-cuff commentators—actually worked with the bread and butter of television production: a script. True off-the-cuff moments were few and far between. Marty, the associate producer, Louise, Doug, and Rachel, the scriptwriter, had worked on this program for weeks.

  Louise consulted her notes now, rumpled pages of dialogue she had studied carefully, to refresh herself on the next segment to be taped. The next house, apparently, had one of the best gardens. It was more majestic, High Federal style, its mansard roof soaring above the white clapboard walls and ringed with an intricate guard railing. Louise doubted the guard railing had been there when the house was built.

  The gardens here followed the perimeter of the yard—comfortable, familiar plantings, but done with style. Tall, majestic stands of lilies, daisies, hollyhock, astilbe, phlox, mullein, and the giant, bulbous purple balls of allium. But Doug’s eye was caught by something not in the script: the wonderful wide allée beyond the house lined with tall columnar oaks that bespoke a European influence. The cameraman said, “This will be great: Look how the light is hitting those trees. Bill, come over and help me again.” Doug skillfully kept Louise in frame as she strode down the long lane.” Good,’ he declared when they were finished. “We’ll see how that flies.”

  Louise had been so focused on the shoot that she hardly noticed it was lunchtime. They were only two blocks from the town green. The New Yorkers were wise to all the best restaurants within a two-hour radius of the city: They grabbed Doug to go to lunch at a small, chic place called the West Street Grill. Though the new crew members were like old friends now and anxious to schmooze with her, Louise declined to join them. Somehow, a comfy outdoor restaurant she had noticed, the Aspen Garden, seemed a better choice for their group: Bill, Grace, the Storms, and two smokers—Nora and Bebe Hollowell. The Aspen Garden had big umbrellas to keep off the mists, and Louise liked sitting and watching people walk by. The locals hurried to work, while the tourists, relaxed and slow-gaited, realized the world was their apple—for the moment, anyway.

  Louise’s gaze turned from the menu to the group seated at the large round table. Bebe wasn’t her favorite person, but no doubt it was her turn to hear all about the late Ernie Hollowell. And she wanted to find out more about Grace, who was apparently a real garden aficionado. The young woman had gone into raptures over the tour and pulled a little red notebook from her skirt pocket at every new stop, writing as furiously as a botanist compiling the enormous garden reference, Hortus, on a tight deadline. Louise had exchanged just enough words with her to find out what she was writing, but she was intrigued.

  “The gardens are simply delightful, so evocative of the period,” Grace effused. Louise was impressed with her ardor: She had started out with it in the morning, and it had grown as the day wore on. “They’ve taken nature and improved upon it, in the gentlest, kindest ways—with a bed of tall old-fashioned flowers standing against an old wall, with one magnificent geranium set in an ancient concrete urn on an old stone terrace. And I hope you didn’t miss the smoke-bush growing out of that rock wall.” Grace was leaning over Bebe to direct her comments to Louise, clutching the notebook full of flowery script.

  Grace looked flowerlike herself, Louise thought, in a pale lavender lawn dress with patch pockets, her eyes feverishly bright. “They pay so much attention to the older flowers. The Macleaya, especially, is a work of art! They make the gardens so historically in touch with the beautiful houses.”

  A contrary look came over Bebe’s face, and sure enough, she had to counter Grace’s statement. “I saw some brand-new varieties of flowers at all three houses.”

  “Oh, yes … but at least they’re trying,” said Grace, retreating a little, and Louise saw that she was used to retreating: Here was a woman unsure of her own opinions. “One always adds a few newcomers to a garden, or at least I think …” She took a sip of tea, and Louise saw her slip a couple of pills in her mouth and swallow them along with the hot liquid. At least one of them looked like echinacea, an herbal remedy to ward off colds that had gained popularity lately. In Grace’s case, she might have hoped it could protect her from maladies of other kinds, such as verbal attacks.

  “I agree with that,” chimed in Louise. Grace’s enthusiasm, as delicate as a dessert soufflé, had been studiously ignored by Frank and Fiona Storm, and Louise sensed something that she hadn’t picked up yesterday: They didn’t approve of this childish woman. Grace looked relieved when Nora asked whether she, too, wrote poetry. Soon, the two of them were deep into the world of verse, and it turned out Nora knew the New York poet from whom Grace took classes.

  As Grace happily clasped a fellow poet to her bosom, Louise had ample opportunity to listen to Bebe’s forlorn tale. She had heard little snatches of it the previous evening. The poor, deceased Ernie had been a rich farmer, elderly enough to be Bebe’s father. A genial old “cuss,” as she called him, he was given to wearing bib overalls and han
ging around the general store. Everyone adored him for his daily supply of down-home jokes and generous contributions to folks in trouble. So when he had the temerity to die, people felt a keen loss and cast suspicious looks at Bebe. “He died in bed—heart attack. And for no particular reason except that he died by himself,” complained Bebe, “the town’s coroner was called in. From then on, the rumors spread….”

  “Rumors of what?” asked Louise, fearing she could guess the answer.

  “That I gave him something to induce a heart attack. That in other words I murdered my husband.” The green eyes blazed into Louise, who shrank back a little but nevertheless reeled off the obvious question.

  “Why?”

  “Because he had no history of heart problems.”

  “Was there any evidence of … murder?”

  “None, that’s just it—but apparently there are some things a person can do, that leave no trace … things like oleander, for instance.”

  “Yes,” Louise murmured, “unfortunately I’ve heard of things like that.”

  “But where would I ever get oleander?” the woman said in a whiny voice.

  Where indeed, thought Louise. She stared at the enormous tuna salad sandwich the waitress had just set down in front of her: It was big enough to feed a starving truck driver. Then she looked at Bebe. Of the two, it was preferable to continue giving her attention to Bebe rather than risk choking to death on this puffy-rolled monstrosity. So Louise sipped her tea and picked at the fail-safe french fries while she plied Bebe with more questions—although it was more like turning on a tap than “plying.”

  Louise had always been good with people like Bebe, people on the edge of hysteria. She helped soften the idées fixes that colored their entire conversation. But not with Bebe: This woman held on to her “idée” like a dog with a bone. Only her brother, apparently, believed she had no part in her husband’s death. “And sometimes he has doubts,” she lamented.

  Nora was claimed in conversation by Frank Storm, leaving Grace to sip her soup quietly. But Bebe must have sensed she was wearing Louise out, for she turned suddenly to Grace, leaving Louise to munch her french fries.

  It was a polite question, as if Bebe were trying to change her approach to the timorous Grace. “Do you have enough room for a garden in Brooklyn?”

  The younger woman brushed a damp piece of rosy-colored hair away from her forehead and looked grateful: It seemed safe to answer. “Oh, yes. It’s small, but it’s lovely. I have just installed what I call my ‘romance’ garden. Actually, I get ideas from roaming through the New York Botanical Garden—that’s in the Bronx.” A little shadow passed across her eager face. “In fact, my husband thinks I spend too much time in the garden—though it’s just a little over an hour, no trouble, just two train transfers from our house in Park Slope. Jim wants me to do other, more useful things, I guess.”

  “So what did you do to your yard?” encouraged Bebe, hanging on Grace’s words as the younger woman described digging up most of her and Jim’s tiny yard and transforming it with a small waterfall, herb garden, and “romance” garden.

  “Precious,” said Bebe. “’Romance,’ that means ‘love.’ Tell me what’s in the love garden.” The older woman was trying: She had made a giant step toward becoming a good listener.

  Grace, who had a tendency to talk with her thin hands, described knots in the air. “Love-in-a-mist—the blue variety, love-lies-bleeding, of course, and the usual romantic flowers—roses, phlox, delphinium, big puffs of baby’s breath. The yard is only twenty by fifty, but I had to have rosemary”— her huge eyes pleaded for Bebe’s understanding—“for remembrance, you know?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Bebe.

  “As well as little patches of comfrey, rue, lavender, and chervil …”

  “How lovely,” said Bebe, in a shaky voice. “It makes me want to weep.”

  This apparently touched Grace, for she reached out and put her hand on Bebe’s. “I know you’re crying because you have lost Ernie, the man you loved.”

  At that moment, Grace broke through Bebe’s crust and sealed her fate. She was Bebe’s companion from then on.

  Nora sidled up to Louise and said, “There’s a kind young woman. She doesn’t know what an obligation she has taken on. But she’ll find out.”

  Chapter 9

  THE AFTERNOON WEATHER CLEARED UP, but the air was still filled with moisture. The temperature soared into the nineties, making Louise feel like a pudding in a steamer. Their final destinations, before the much-anticipated visit to Wild Flower Farm, were two historic houses, one the birthplace of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Courtesy of the tour guide, they had another immersion in the history of staunch Connecticut citizens with consciences and the courage to speak them. Though the Beechers themselves had lived in a Greek Revival—style house, another house had now replaced it: a seventeenth-century saltbox in rusty red tones that seemed to Louise a true reflection of Yankee austerity and honesty. The second house was a simple, elegant colonial, but with profuse gardens: a patio garden—surely, a modern turn of events, thought Louise—and a kitchen garden in the style of a potager, with separate beds for herbs, others for squashes, still others for a flurry of tall annuals, cosmos, and baby’s breath, and in the circular center bed an elegant sculpture of an enormous beehive.

  By the time they reached this last house, Louise’s body felt leaden, and she wondered if she would have the stamina to make it through the rest of the shooting; her lack of sleep was beginning to tell. She was the first to respond favorably when someone suggested a tea break. They began the walk back to the green, and when they wandered by the Congregational Church again, this time they went for a look around. Inside were neat walled pews which enclosed each family—for better concentration while praying, Louise imagined, thinking of the devout settlers. She felt a pang, an unaccustomed desire to go back to a time when people were truly and unashamedly dedicated in their faith, and didn’t have to make jokes or wage societal battles, one way or the other, about religion. And yet she knew things weren’t that simple, even two centuries ago.

  Nora had been true to form and found a man to monopolize during the afternoon portion of the tour. The noble-looking Frank Storm seemed to enjoy her company, and Fiona seemed to enjoy it equally, swinging along with them in her fashionable white sharkskin slacks and top. It was interesting that Nora could relate so well to the staunch believer, Fiona, while Louise had failed so miserably. She was beginning to wonder if she were wearing her politics too publicly, like a flashing neon sign on her forehead that said, “Hidebound, knee-jerk liberal: Conservatives beware.”

  Ah, but even Nora was running into trouble with the Storms, Louise discovered as she fell in stride with the trio. Frank was gently chastising Nora about being a woman alone. “Remember the words of Rumi,” he said.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know Rumi,” said Nora.

  “Oh, you should. He was a thirteenth-century poet, a kind of mystic. He said, ‘It is dangerous to let other men have intimate connections with the women in your care. Cotton and fire sparks, those are, together. Difficult, almost impossible, to quench.’ ” Unaccountably, Frank had grown deadly serious: Did he disapprove of a woman of Nora’s beauty going off on a weekend without her husband?

  Nora was walking between Frank and Fiona. Now she slipped an arm in each of theirs to make a threesome. “I’m sure, with you around, Frank, I will be completely safe from sparks.” Louise wondered, however, if there was something to fear from the electric combination of Nora and Jeffrey Freeling; she was glad Jeffrey had chosen to go climbing instead of coming on this garden tour, for it was proving to have its own charged moments.

  Crossing the green again, they went into the deli. As predicted, Bebe and Grace had become inseparable, and their emerging friendship continued as they chose to sit together at one end of a long, group table. Louise and Bill sat next to them with the crew. Nora and the Storms sat at a second table.

  “So at last were off to see
the Sacred Blood iris,” said Doug. “I’m glad the drizzle has stopped, or you’d be slogging through the iris fields just like that time in Wilmington when the Winterthur grounds were soggy as a sponge.”

  Louise looked out the window at the slightly brighter skies above Litchfield. “I hope it will be perfect. Just wait until you see this new flower—I hear it’s magnificent.”

  “Magnificent?” Doug’s eyes shone mischievously, and she knew she was in for a hard time. “Maybe so, but Sacred Blood? Are they kidding with that name? Are they dedicating the proceeds to the church, or something? I’m a Catholic”—he wagged his head playfully—“especially when things get rough. I can tell you that name’s sacrilegious, and I’d hate to tell you what my pious old grandma would think. Man, they’re talking about the Sacred Blood of Jesus, right out of that picture Granny has over her bed, with the crown of thorns and the exposed heart with little droplets going down Jesus’s chest…”

  “How you do go on,” Louise told the cameraman, and patted his hand. “It’s just a plant name, Doug.”

  Bill chimed in. “I couldn’t agree with you more, my good man. The name’s definitely irreverent. Does Rome know about this, Louise?”

  Louise shot her husband a wry look. “I’m amazed at your concern, Bill, especially since you haven’t practiced your religion since I met you twenty-two years ago.”

  Grace piped up boldly from the end of the table in her childish voice. “I can’t wait to see it: It is the most authentic bright red iris ever grown—that’s where the name came from. The color of fresh blood.” Louise knew this information had been published in scores of garden magazines, in addition to Jeffrey Freeling’s mentioning it last night during his dispute with the Gasparras. And Grace was certainly abreast of all the new developments in the field.

  Louise told them, “I heard it took hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop. Lots of money spent, and probably lots of money to be earned, selling such a beautiful flower.”