The Skeleton Garden

by Marty Wingate

  Kitty looked down at her hands. “You wouldn’t think it of him, but early on in the war, Jimmy had been my dad’s partner in more than just the pub—in the black market, too. But my mum said he got out of it before the end. Turned his back on the whole bad business.”

  Kitty looked past Pru, her eyes widening, and Pru’s head whipped round, expecting to see Jimmy Chatters listening in.

  “Evelyn.” Kitty fussed with her blanket, smoothing it out. “How did you know I was here?”

  The cook stood in the doorway holding a bunch of grapes. “Pru rang to tell me.”

  “That was all right, wasn’t it?” Pru asked.

  “I’m glad you did,” Kitty said, patting Pru’s hand. “Come in and sit, Ev.”

  “How are you, Kitty?” Evelyn asked as she settled in the other chair and set the grapes on Kitty’s tray.

  “Oh”—Kitty waved a dismissive hand at her surroundings—“they’re making me stay here for the whole night. No reason for it. I just had a bit of a spell.” There was silence except for snoring from the patient in the far corner. At last Kitty said, “It’s good to see you, Evelyn.”

  Pru saw tears spring to Evelyn’s eyes, and she couldn’t help joining in. Sensing a vast subtext to the cake-competition rivalry, Pru thought these two might need a bit of privacy. “I’ll just get us tea, shall I?” she asked.

  She took her time with it, and when she returned with a tray, it was to hear Kitty say, “No one could find a harder worker than Sadie. She kept the Blackbird going.”

  “You must’ve grown up in the Blackbird, Evelyn,” Pru said as she distributed the cups.

  “It’s where I learned to cook,” Evelyn replied. “We ate out of the kitchens, you see. We paid no rent for our cottage, and Ma got a salary as well. Not bad for a woman at the time, no man and no skills. It was Ma gave Peachey and me the money for our little house.”

  Kitty sighed. “Twenty years gone, and I still miss her.”

  Evelyn nodded, staring down into her lap. “So do I.”

  —

  They’d just finished their tea when Jemima arrived with her dad, a tall man with close-clipped gray hair and beard to match. He greeted each of them—kissing his mother, giving Evelyn a hug, shaking Pru’s hand—before leaving to find the doctor.

  “I’ll be off now,” Pru said. “You’re well taken care of, aren’t you, Kitty? Ev, can I give you a lift?”

  “That’s kind of you, but Albert will be along. He went back to Greenoak to finish up the pensioners’ meals. He’s a dab hand in the kitchen when necessary.” Evelyn flashed her dimples at Pru. “You see, anyone can learn to cook.”

  Pru blushed and said to Kitty, “Ev is going to give me lessons starting in the new year. Maybe in the spring, we’ll have everyone to dinner, and I’ll amaze the lot of you.” She had a brief vision of carrying a Stilton soufflé into an appreciative crowd.

  As Evelyn walked with Pru out to her car, she said, “I’ve known Kitty my whole life. She’s not all that much older than me, but she was my ma’s best friend, and I suppose I was a bit jealous of that. My ma was all I had, and I wanted it to be just the two of us. But when you rang, I thought, how can I let the last connection to my ma drift away? I should never have let this much time go by.”

  Pru opened the door to her Mini, but Evelyn put a hand on her arm to stop her. “Martin had a look through Albert’s van and he came to our house, too. Martin said it was part of the investigation about Jack, that he was just pursuing…I don’t know. Normal something.”

  “Normal lines of inquiry,” Pru said, filling in with the inevitable words that were no comfort. Did Martin have evidence that implicated Peachey? She patted Evelyn’s hand. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  Chapter 31

  Alone at Greenoak, Pru had just put the kettle on when the front-door knocker boomed, echoing down the hall. She switched on the front entry light and pulled open the heavy door to find a short man with close-cut, blond hair and a reddish, two-day growth of beard. In the instant of recognition, she jumped back and closed the door all but three inches.

  The unknown suspect Joseph Hare looked as startled as Pru. “Sorry,” he said and cocked his head. “Were you at the pub when I stopped to see Jack Snuggs?”

  “Can I help you?” Pru asked, keeping her body behind the door and reaching in her pocket for her phone.

  He pulled his own phone out of a jacket pocket and checked the screen. “I’m to meet an Inspector Christopher Pearse here—this is Greenoak, isn’t it?”

  At the mention of Christopher’s name, Hare no longer looked menacing, and her grip on the door eased as her muscles relaxed. She opened the door wider and extended her hand. “Yes, it is. Sorry. I’m Pru Parke, Christopher’s wife. We did meet at the Blackbird that day. Come in, please. I’ll just let him know you’ve arrived.” She looked down at her phone to find a text had that moment arrived. Joseph Hare to stop by. Be home soon.

  “There you are, now,” she said. “He’s almost here. Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “Thanks, yes.”

  Pru looked toward the cold, dark sitting room, but circumstances didn’t seem to warrant exile. “Do you mind the kitchen, Mr. Hare?”

  “Not at all. It’s where I spend most of my time. And please, it’s Joseph.” He followed her through; she put the kettle on and got out the tin with Evelyn’s Madeira cake as she heard Christopher’s car in the drive. Joseph remained standing and said, “I didn’t know about Jack until Inspector Pearse rang this morning. I’ve been out of the country.”

  “Were you and Jack friends?” Pru asked, as she hunted through the drawers for a knife to slice the cake. “Now where’ve they all gone?”

  He nodded toward the end of the counter where a line of carving, paring, and slicing knives were lined up. “Ready to go off and be sharpened, it looks like. A sharp knife cuts best.”

  “Are you a chef?” Pru asked, picturing those delicate hands nimbly filleting a salmon.

  Joseph laughed. “No, I’m a surgeon.”

  “Mr. Hare,” Christopher said as he walked in the kitchen. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to meet you.” The men shook hands.

  “Are you Jack’s doctor?” Pru asked.

  “Well, I tried to be. And I’m sorry he’s dead, especially under the circumstances you described,” he said, looking at Christopher.

  “Sit down, please. Thanks for coming to the house,” Christopher said. “It suited my schedule—I hope it didn’t take you out of your way. We wanted to hear what you knew about Jack.”

  “I’m on my way to a hospital I attend in Dorchester, so it wasn’t a problem,” Joseph said as he accepted a cup of tea. He stirred in milk and set the spoon on the saucer before he began. “Jack needed a new heart. But as badly as he needed it, he wasn’t high up on the list in Canada, and so he came home to England and came to see me.”

  “How did he find you?” Christopher asked.

  “His doctor in Calgary is a friend of mine, a heart specialist same as I am, and he gave Jack my name. The transplant list isn’t any shorter here, I’m afraid. Still, I encouraged him to add his name—even though it wasn’t likely he’d live long enough.”

  “And did he—add his name?”

  Joseph shook his head. “He declined. He didn’t want to be on the list as it would give him and his dad false hope. But it’s difficult for a doctor to give up. I suggested a course of drugs that might help prolong his life, but he said he didn’t want to spend his last days doped up, that he had a few things to do. I stopped by the pub that day when I met you,” he said, nodding to Pru, “hoping again to persuade him.”

  “You never met his father, Stan?” Pru asked.

  “No,” Joseph replied.

  “You took a look at the coroner’s report I sent you?” Christopher asked.

  “I did. If there were any sort of a struggle, that could’ve done it for Jack.”

  —

  They finished their tea and cake, and as they s
aw him out, Joseph paused. “He rang me, Jack did, early on the day he died.”

  Christopher had reached to open the door, but dropped his hand. “You hadn’t mentioned that. What did you talk about?”

  “At first I thought he’d changed his mind about getting on the transplant list, but he only wanted to chat.” Joseph shrugged. “A doctor can become a confessor, of sorts. Jack wanted to know if I thought a person’s last wishes should be carried out. If a man wanted to be remembered as he truly was—the good and the bad together—then wasn’t it up to those left behind to make sure that happened, instead of painting a picture of a life that was too good to be true.”

  “It sounds as if he were getting his affairs in order,” Christopher said.

  “I suppose.”

  —

  Christopher closed the door behind Joseph Hare. “Jack had never been in trouble, here or Canada,” he said. “Never even been cautioned.”

  “It sounds as if he left a minor path of destruction in his wake when he left for Canada,” Pru said, thinking about Dick Whycher and the Blackbird, as well as Peachey and the railway job. “And he didn’t do much to repair it when he came back twelve years ago for his mother’s funeral. Maybe he saw this as an opportunity to put it all right—to make amends.”

  They sat down again at the kitchen table, empty cups in front of them. The suspect list remained almost unchanged—only Jack’s would-be heart surgeon had been dismissed. What had happened to Jack between ten o’clock that night, when Peachey saw nothing amiss in the parterre lawn, and midnight, when the moon lit up Jack’s body for Pru to see?

  “How’s Kitty?” Christopher asked.

  Pru told him about her day.

  “It wasn’t a fox in her duck pen,” he said. “I took a look. On the outside of the palace is a waterproof wooden bin, lined with galvanized metal. Kitty has a padlock on it—she gives them an organic feed that’s quite dear, and didn’t want it nicked. The lock had been hacked away, splintering the wood.”

  “Someone tried to steal the duck food?”

  “The food was still there.”

  “Vandals?”

  Christopher’s shrug was accompanied by a frown. She leaned over and massaged his forehead with her thumbs. He closed his eyes and leaned into the pressure. At last he sighed and took her hand, tracing a pattern on the back of it with his fingertip. “And now,” he said, “is it the end of our day?”

  She sighed. “Oh, yes, please, let it be the end.” His words loosened the tight grip she’d had round her own thoughts, and the evening spread itself out before her—curled up in front of the fire, wrapped in Christopher’s arms. Her brief reverie came to an end at the sound of the front-door knocker. “Nooo,” Pru said with a moan. “Do you think Joseph Hare got lost getting out of the drive?”

  Christopher stood. “If he did, I’ll send him on his way in short order.”

  Pru collected the cups and saucers and put the cake tin away. From the hall, she heard a woman’s voice. Christopher’s reply was in a matching volume. Before Pru could make it to the kitchen door, Claire burst through with her brother on her tail.

  “Where is he? I’d think you’d have enough respect for his parents to tell us where he is,” Claire shouted, her voice bouncing off the walls.

  Pru recoiled, as if she’d been slapped.

  “Claire believes Orlando is missing,” Christopher said calmly. Pru could hear his anger simmering just below the surface.

  “Believes?” Claire shouted at her brother, her crimson face a beacon amid her steel-gray hair and matching gray suit. She whipped round to Pru. “He’s been gone since this morning, he left no note, no one knows where he is, and he isn’t answering his mobile.”

  “But, Claire,” Pru said, “couldn’t he have gone to visit a friend?”

  “He doesn’t have any friends,” Claire said hotly, and then gasped at her own words. She took a breath and spoke at a more reasonable level. “If he left home to visit someone, it would be you two, that’s obvious.”

  The kitchen suddenly felt too warm. “Why is that obvious?” Pru asked.

  “Because apparently it’s fun to be here, much more fun than being at home.”

  “Let me remind you,” Christopher said, “that you asked us if we would take Orlando in. Pru had her own work to do, but she was happy to accommodate you and include Orlando.”

  Claire sniffed. “You aren’t his mother, Pru—you have no idea the difficulties we’ve had to deal with.”

  “No, I’m not his mother,” Pru said, her own voice taking over top volume, “I’m his aunt, and so I don’t have the responsibility you do. But even I can see the biggest difference in Orlando being at home and being here—we spend time with him. We put him to work. Is it any wonder he prefers Greenoak to being under house arrest?”

  Pru saw Claire’s throat working and hoped she wasn’t choking on a sharp reply. The three of them stood round the big farm table, no one speaking, until Christopher reached out and touched his sister’s elbow. “Claire.” She jerked away, but then her entire body slumped.

  “I’ve driven all the way from London,” she said, her voice quiet and full of self-pity. “I had another meeting tomorrow morning, but Bess said he’d taken his bag and those clothes you’d bought him at the charity shop. I couldn’t think of anywhere else he’d go. Why won’t he answer his phone?” she asked Christopher.

  “The boy is old enough to be off on his own,” he said. “I tell you what, I’ll drive you to the rail station in Romsey—it won’t take us fifteen minutes. There are only two platforms, and just one fellow working inside. He may’ve seen Orlando. And I’ll ring the police station. Perhaps he’s there right now, sitting on a bench, waiting for me. We’ll find him.” He put his arm around Claire’s shoulders and squeezed. “All right? Would you like a cup of tea first?”

  “Yes, Claire, why don’t you sit down?” Pru asked.

  “No, I’d rather go now.” She stepped back and started to the door, but paused. “Thank you, Pru,” she said, not turning. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” Pru said. “Look, I think I’d better stay here. It’s just as you said, Claire, this will be the first place he’ll stop. I’ll be waiting for him.” Not the first place, Pru thought, but she doubted that Orlando had told his mother about Jemima. Christopher watched her carefully, reading her thoughts, she hoped. “I’ll ring you the moment I see him.”

  Christopher and Claire pulled out of the drive, and Pru pulled out her phone, but her call went straight to voicemail. “Orlando, it’s Pru,” she said. “Please ring. Your mother is worried—are you on your way here? We’d love to see you, but you need to tell your parents where you are.” She took a torch from the shelf of the mudroom and her coat off a hook and rang the next number. Voicemail here, too. “Jemima, have you seen Orlando? Is he on his way? Please let me know.”

  Chapter 32

  She sprinted the quarter mile to Kitty’s cottage, hoping to collect Orlando and be back at Greenoak before Christopher and Claire returned. The beam from the flashlight bounced as she ran, and when she drew up to Kitty’s gate, it took her a moment to catch her breath. The rain had finished and the clouds departed; a sliver of moon hung in the sky. The cottage was dark—Kitty’s son and Jemima must still be at the hospital. No Orlando sitting on the front step. Then she became aware of a low murmuring that made her skin crawl until she realized she heard quiet quacking, as if the ducks were carrying on bedtime conversations.

  Pru could see part of the flock—white spots, faintly glowing in the gloom—asleep around the pond, their heads twisted back and tucked between their wings. One of them lifted its head and eyed her. They should be inside the palace and out of harm’s way for the night—she wouldn’t want a fox to get wind of a golden opportunity. Could she get them in? She gripped the large torch for confidence.

  The latch squeaked when Pru lifted it, as did the gate when she pushed it open. The entrance to the pen was on the far side, and
she walked quietly up the path and around, her heart thumping. The low quacking rose and fell like a gentle wave.

  She aimed the light at the door to the palace, which stood ajar, and then at the bin next to it where the wood around its twisted back plate was splintered. Pru opened the gate to the pen and closed it behind her. The pond was a few feet away to her left. She took a step, slid in the mud, and caught herself as she made her way to the palace door where she paused.

  The quacking swelled. Pru pushed in the door and pointed her torch across to the opposite wall as Sonia rushed her with the rest of the ducks following in a chorus of quacks. Pru’s arms flew up in automatic defense, and she screamed as someone grabbed her wrist—an intruder, he stood on a ledge to her right.

  “Aunt Pru!”

  She almost pulled him down with her flailing, but instead, Orlando steadied her and himself as she coughed and sputtered. “My God, Orlando, what are you doing up there?”

  He stood on a shallow shelf about five feet off the ground, his trainers hanging over the edge by several inches. She couldn’t help admiring his balance. “Jemima texted to say that the ducks were out and could I put them in when I arrived. She doesn’t know that I’m…that I don’t get along with Sonia.” He glanced down at the feathered entourage and their leader looked up at him. “So, I tried to herd them when I got here and it wasn’t too bad, but then once I was inside, they got between me and the door. She did it.” He pointed at Sonia. “She came at me, and so I jumped up over there.”

  Pru flashed her light along the perimeter of the pen—the shelf ran the full way round. “How long have you been up there? Why didn’t you ring? Why is your mobile off?”

  “I didn’t want to be tracked, Aunt Pru—not until I’d seen you. I was almost at Greenoak, but then I switched on my mobile for a second and saw Jemima’s text. And…you know, I couldn’t say no.”

  “Of course you couldn’t,” she said, suppressing a smile at his red face. “But why didn’t you ring when you were up there?” She gestured to the ledge.