The Garden Plot

by Marty Wingate

“I was an easy mark, wasn’t I?”

  “No, not an easy mark, a kind person who only wanted to help.”

  “Christopher says I knew something was wrong with her, but that didn’t help much. She seemed nice, and I was feeling …” Her voice faded. She had finished her whisky and stretched out on the short sofa with her feet hanging off the end. A great weariness had come over her. “Oh, I’m so very tired.”

  “You haven’t forgotten about dinner tomorrow?” Jo asked.

  “I remember,” Pru said as she drifted off. “Dinner at Cordelia and Lucy’s. Talk about a garden for the baby.”

  When Pru awoke the next morning, Jo, dressed in one of her sharp business suits, stood at the kitchen counter looking down at a folder and talking on the phone. Pru slipped into the loo and got dressed. When she came out, she heard Jo saying, “Your own office would be six hundred square feet with a gorgeous view. You might just be able to see the Royal Observatory from those lovely wide windows … Of course I can meet you there. Shall we say …”

  Pru picked up her bag and gave Jo a small wave. “See you this evening,” she mouthed, and Jo nodded and smiled.

  She had little real work to do that day but could not be idle at home, and so she thought she’d stop in at the Wilsons’ just to say hello. But when she arrived, her feet carried her straight past their front door and around the corner, then around the corner again. Christopher had as much as said that Malcolm was not a suspect, but she continued to dwell on Malcolm’s belief in Mr. Wilson’s guilt. She wanted to pin him down about what she believed were unfair insinuations.

  He had, after all, invited her for coffee, she said to herself. True, it had been a vague invitation, and she wasn’t sure he meant for her to go to his house. Still, why not just drop by to say hello and meet this mysterious Mrs. Crisp?

  She began to count doorways to make sure she got Malcolm’s house right, but there was no mistaking it; the stone urns flanking the door held mounds of butter-yellow miniature roses still in full bloom this late in the season. Pru had never cared much for miniature roses with their dainty leaves and tiny little flowers—they seemed too cute for their own good. Give her a full, heavy Bourbon rose any day.

  A young black woman answered the door.

  “Hello, I’m Pru Parke. Is Malcolm at home?”

  “No, I’m sorry,” the woman said in a lilting voice that was heavily accented, “Mr. Crisp is out. Was he expecting you?”

  “No, only I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop and say hello.”

  A small elderly woman in a wheelchair pushed herself into the sitting room doorway. “Are you the American gardener?” she asked with a smile. “Please come in, I’m Sophia Crisp, Malcolm’s mother.”

  Pru stepped inside and extended her hand. “Yes, I’m Pru. I’m happy to meet you, Mrs. Crisp.”

  “Would you like coffee? I’m sure Malcolm will be home soon,” Mrs. Crisp said. “We could make it ourselves, and Naomi”—she turned to the woman who had remained at the door—“you could take your break now.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Crisp. I’ll be back in thirty minutes,” said Naomi. She took her jacket and bag from by the door and left.

  Mrs. Crisp led the way to the kitchen. “I’m happy to meet you, Pru. Malcolm talks about your gardening expertise.”

  “Well, he’s quite a gardener himself,” Pru said as she looked out the kitchen window onto Malcolm’s collection of roses in the oval bed and along the side walls; only the wall at the bottom of the garden remained unplanted. Over the wall she could see the top of the Wilsons’ shed and the part of the garden and terrace closest to the house.

  Pru flipped the switch on the kettle as Mrs. Crisp set up the mugs, got out milk and a plate of biscuits then reached for the coffee jar; much of the kitchen equipment was accessible to her, Pru couldn’t help but notice. On the other side of the room, where the Wilsons had a seating area in their house, was Mrs. Crisp’s bed.

  “It’s instant—I hope you don’t mind.” She spooned a heaping amount of coffee into each mug.

  “Not at all,” said Pru, “as long as it’s good and strong.”

  Pru carried the tray as they returned to the front room. She thought she might as well plunge in, albeit gingerly.

  “Mrs. Crisp, it’s good that Malcolm has time to be at home with you, instead of going off to a job every day.”

  “I don’t know if it’s good or not, Pru,” said Mrs. Crisp. “Here he is still such a young man, and he really has no direction and no one to talk with except me. He’s never made friends easily, and now that he has no place to go every day, he dwells on such odd things.”

  “What about his roses?” Pru asked. “Couldn’t he join the rose society?”

  “He did join, but then there was some problem at an exhibition—he brought it to the attention of the judges that someone was trying to slip a hybrid musk in as a centrifolia. There was an accusation that he tried to attack someone with a trowel—really, how those people could ever think Malcolm capable of violence is beyond me. I think he was trying to stir up conversation, thinking that they would accept him into their inner circle.”

  Pru tried to sort out the two different pieces of information. If Malcolm could attack someone with a trowel, he might be able to attack someone with a spade. That went against the details of the murder that Christopher related to Pru, but it did show a tendency for violence.

  Pru thought of Malcolm’s accusation that Jeremy stole an artifact from a dig, just as he had accused a member of the rose society of a misdeed. An incorrectly labeled rose may not seem like a terrible act to a layperson, but Pru knew what those rosarians were like. Malcolm sounded like a little boy who pulled a girl’s pigtails just to get her attention. Did he not know how to make friends?

  “Do you see much of the Wilsons, Mrs. Crisp?” Pru asked.

  “Harry and Vernona seem much too busy for the neighbors, Pru. We had coffee once when they first moved in. They came over here with Vernona’s brother, who, I’m afraid to say, doesn’t seem the most upstanding character. After he showed up here a few more times, I told Malcolm he wasn’t welcome. I got the feeling that Alf was trying to rope Malcolm into something, and Malcolm is so impressionable.” Malcolm may be forty-something to the world, but he remained a twelve-year-old in Mrs. Crisp’s mind. “But after that first coffee, Harry and Vernona never returned the invitation and refused our invitations that I sent over by way of Malcolm. I grew rather tired of the effort.”

  It seemed that the invitations from both houses stopped dead at Malcolm. And why was that? Pru wondered. Was it because Malcolm had his feelings hurt when he wasn’t asked to play at archaeology? Shame on you, she thought. It’s one thing to have your own opinions, but to deny your mother the pleasantries of life by manipulating events is disgraceful.

  “Mrs. Crisp,” Pru began, wondering if she could get Malcolm’s mother to talk about the murder, “it must have been disturbing to have such a terrible crime happen so close to you—I mean, the murder of Mr. Pendergast.”

  “We don’t know anything about what happened over there, Pru.” Mrs. Crisp straightened in her chair, squaring her shoulders. “I wish the police would stop asking Malcolm questions, as if he was somehow involved. We never met that unfortunate man, and yet Harry Wilson persists in trying to accuse Malcolm of something he had no part in.”

  That’s not right, thought Pru. Malcolm did know Jeremy. “Mrs. Crisp, are you sure that he hadn’t met Mr. Pendergast?”

  “Malcolm would not lie to his mother, Pru.”

  Then Pru heard a key in the front door followed by Malcolm’s voice. “Mother? Mr. Davies had white peaches in again, but no artichokes at all …” His voice trailed off as he reached the door of the front room, his shopping bag in hand. “Pru?”

  “Hello, Malcolm,” Pru said with a smile. “Your mother and I were just having coffee.”

  “Malcolm,” Mrs. Crisp said, “do put those things down in the kitchen, and come out and join u
s.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Malcolm turned toward the kitchen.

  “But you’d better take the peaches out of the bag and set them on the table, so they don’t get bruised, and don’t forget to put the shopping bag away instead of leaving it out on a chair.” Mrs. Crisp’s voice remained as sweet as when she spoke to Pru.

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Malcolm, you left the light on in the front hall again last night.”

  “I don’t think I left it on, Mother …”

  “And, Malcolm, the jar of coffee was so far back on the counter, I could barely reach it.” Pru looked at the floor. The jar of coffee had been near the edge of the counter, and Mrs. Crisp had had no trouble reaching it.

  So that’s how it is, she thought. Now her feelings toward him softened, at least slightly. Poor henpecked Malcolm. Pru thought perhaps the close quarters—both mother and son living in the same house with nothing to occupy their time—had set them on each other. They played off each other’s weaknesses: Mrs. Crisp’s physical limitations and Malcolm’s stunted self-confidence.

  When Malcolm returned, Pru said, “I’d love to see your roses, Malcolm. Is that all right with you, Mrs. Crisp?”

  “Yes, of course, go right ahead,” Mrs. Crisp said in a gracious tone. “Malcolm, do be careful with the latch on the back door. Close it properly so that it doesn’t blow open, as it did yesterday.”

  Malcolm led the way into the garden, regaining a bit of his usual cockiness as he told her the story of how he planted his roses. “I’m sorry so few are in bloom now,” he said.

  “Oh, but I can tell it would be glorious in late June,” Pru said. “I had no idea all the climbers you had.” The walls were lined with neatly trained, extremely thorny stems, all pegged horizontally along the brick.

  The subject of climbing roses seemed to make Malcolm uncomfortable. He changed course from walking toward the wall to walking toward the oval island bed that took up most of the center of the garden. “Now here are a few English roses still going,” he said. “Here’s Lady Emma Hamilton.”

  She stuck her nose into an apricot-colored, bowl-shaped rose stuffed with petals. “That’s wonderful. What do you use for fertilizer?”

  “I use manure every year. I wouldn’t put any chemicals on my roses.” Malcolm caressed the foliage of the shrub nearest him. “They’re too precious.”

  “Just look how they respond to you,” Pru said sincerely, admiring another late flower, this one an antique pink. “Is this Heritage?” she asked, and he nodded approvingly. “You do a good job of pruning to keep the air circulating.”

  He looked uneasy again and glanced about the garden. “I’ve installed a few water butts to collect rain from the roof, but I had to put them under the windows, where they wouldn’t bother Mother. I was caught out by a hosepipe ban one year, and it was devastating.”

  The conversation lagged, and Pru wondered how she could resurrect the subject of the Wilsons and Alf. She decided there was no easy way and opted for the direct route.

  “Malcolm,” she said, “Mrs. Wilson mentioned that you’ve become friends with her brother, Alf.”

  His eyes darted to Pru. “Well, you might say we’re acquaintances.”

  “Did Alf tell you that Mr. Wilson was the one who killed Jeremy?”

  “Pru,” said Malcolm, once again taking on his instructional tone, “it isn’t fair that you believe everything Harry and Vernona tell you. There’s another side to the story, you know, and you may not want to get mixed up in all this. It could get dangerous.”

  It’s a little late for that warning, she thought. “I got the impression that your mother thinks you don’t see Alf any longer. Didn’t she see him when he was here last week?”

  “She was at her doctor’s appointment last week. And Mother can’t dictate who my friends are,” Malcolm said with his chest puffed out, but then he glanced behind him to the kitchen window and lowered his voice. “I mean, I may just run into Alf occasionally when he’s in town, that’s all.”

  “Malcolm, did you actually see someone in the Wilsons’ garden the morning of the murder?”

  His eyes darted around, and he stuck his hands in his pockets. He took a breath, let it out, and took another breath. “Well, I might not have actually seen someone in the garden, Pru, but I think we all know who was there.”

  “Do we really?” she asked.

  She had casually strolled the rest of the way down to the bottom wall as they talked.

  “Oh, Malcolm, look,” she said, as if taken by surprise at the sight of the wrought-iron rungs in the wall. “This must be how you can talk to me while I’m in the Wilsons’ garden.” She put a hand on one of the metal rungs and her foot on the bottom.

  “Well, those have been there for ages,” he said defensively. “I didn’t put them in.”

  Pru pulled herself up, stepped on the second rung, and looked back at Malcolm. “This is quite handy, isn’t it? Why, from up here you could see all sorts of things.” She popped her head over the wall and looked straight at Christopher, standing just on the other side in the Wilsons’ garden.

  Chapter 10

  “Hi.” She smiled at him.

  “Hello.” He smiled back.

  “Pru,” said Malcolm, “who is it?”

  She looked down. “It’s DCI Pearse, Malcolm.”

  “Oh.” Malcolm looked as if he’d lost a new toy.

  Pru looked back at Christopher, who was, she was thankful to see, still smiling. “Malcolm was just showing me the roses.”

  “Was he?”

  “And I had coffee with his mother.”

  “Did you?”

  Pru knew she needed to face up to it. “I’ll just climb down and come around there, shall I?”

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes locked on hers, “why don’t you. Unless you’d like to leap over the wall?”

  “I would,” she said, “but I’m afraid you wouldn’t catch me.” A ghost of a smile remained around his mouth.

  Pru said her thank-yous and goodbyes and walked back around the two corners. Christopher stood outside the Wilsons’ talking on his phone. As she got near, he finished his conversation, and for a moment, neither of them spoke.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine, really. I had a good night’s sleep at Jo’s. Her little sofa is quite comfortable, although I either have to hang my feet off or fold myself up.”

  “Pru …” he started.

  “Is Mrs. Wilson at home?” she asked.

  “She’s on the phone, coordinating judges for a WI stitchery competition,” he said.

  “Why are you here?” Pru asked, thinking to stall his inevitable question about why she was snooping at Malcolm’s.

  “I was following up on the list of society members—we’ve talked with each of them. And then, I asked if I could walk down to the bottom of the garden, because I had seen a hole at the base of the wall leading next door. I believe that’s how the hedgehogs get in and out.”

  “Oh, the hedgehogs, I’d forgotten about them,” she said.

  “That’s when I heard you in Malcolm’s garden. Pru—”

  She cut him off again. “Have you eaten lunch? We could get sandwiches and go back to my house. And talk.”

  He considered that for a moment. “Yes, let’s do that,” he said. “I’ve my car. Where shall we stop?”

  “I’ll phone the Cat—that’s my local—and Wilf can make something up for us and have it ready to collect.” They got in the car and she got out her phone. “What would you like?”

  Pru phoned Wilf and ordered Christopher’s beef-and-cheddar and a chicken-and-brie for herself, paid for on her account. She watched Christopher drive, smiling to herself. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, and when he shifted gears, he placed his hand on her knee and gave it a squeeze.

  “Christopher—”

  This time, he cut her off. “I planned on stopping to see you this afternoon. To find out how you were doing.” />
  “Thanks again for my rescue.” She made it sound lighthearted only because she didn’t want to conjure up the memory of clinging to the side of a building fifty feet up in the air. He reached over and covered her hand; she put her other hand on top of his and rubbed it lightly.

  “Why don’t you drop me off at the pub?” she suggested. “It’s just before you get to the square. I’ll meet you at the house. You’ll probably take at least that long to find a spot to park.”

  At the house, Christopher took off his coat in the front sitting room while Pru made tea. They sat in the kitchen to eat, avoiding the issues at hand. “It’s a nice house,” he said, “but seems sparse.”

  “I’m the sparse one,” said Pru. “The people who live here stored most of their things in the basement and locked the door. I brought over only a couple of suitcases. Easier to pack up,” she finished, almost to herself.

  He didn’t speak, and she didn’t look at him. Finally he said, “Are you packing up?”

  She had trouble forming the words, facing up to approaching defeat. “Well, it doesn’t look good. My year’s almost up, and although I can’t find a job here, there’s one waiting for me in Dallas. That isn’t where I want to be, but my plan failed, obviously, and I have to face the consequences.” Even as she spoke, she knew how it sounded: it was her way or the highway.

  She felt him watching her as she stared down into her mug.

  She took a deep breath. “So, you want to know why I was at Malcolm’s house today,” she said.

  She heard him take a breath. “Yes, I’m quite keen on hearing about that.”

  Pru recounted the morning. Christopher didn’t believe that threatening someone with a trowel meant Malcolm bludgeoned Jeremy with a spade.

  She added her own interpretation. “He’s socially inept. He doesn’t know how to make friends, and he’s jealous of the friendship that Mr. Wilson and Jeremy had. And he has an overbearing mother.”

  “This isn’t evidence, is it?” Christopher asked.

  “No,” Pru admitted, remembering she had said much the same thing to Malcolm. “But it explains why he doesn’t like Mr. Wilson—he’s just a little kid with no social skills.”