The Garden Plot

by Marty Wingate

  Christopher?”

  “Yes, yes, I’ll do that now, thanks.”

  Archie and Pippa Clarke, whose house she lived in, knew Jeremy Pendergast and the Wilsons. Did they know Alf and Malcolm, too? Archie Clarke already had been accused once of trying to sell some antiquity that didn’t belong to him. So perhaps all those random sightings of the Clarkes hadn’t been mistakes after all—they were in town. But the police had questioned everyone in Mr. Wilson’s group.—Didn’t that include Archie Clarke?

  Pru heard the knocker and relief flooded through her. Good, she thought, Christopher. She could explain in person. But when she opened the door, there stood a tall, bald, heavyset, cheerful-looking fellow wearing black gloves and dressed in a plaid jacket with patched elbows.

  “Are you Pru? Pru Parke?” he asked. “I’m Archie Clarke.” He smiled. “This is my house. Pleased to meet you.”

  Standing in front of her was the sock man—the fellow caught in her photos carrying a bag, with no shoes on and walking up the Wilsons’ basement steps the morning of the murder.

  Chapter 15

  Pru felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. The blood rushed from her head as thoughts rushed through her mind, one on top of the other. Her photo had caught him walking up from a locked basement door;—he must have his own key. Was he carrying muddy—or bloody—shoes in the bag? Does he think I know? Did he think that I knew all along?

  “Mr. Clarke, I didn’t realize you’d be back from Italy so soon.” Pru’s mind raced, trying to figure out how to call Christopher and tell him.

  “May I come in? The rain’s started again.” Archie shook out his umbrella, stepped across the threshold, and stood next to Pru, looming large. She stepped back.

  “Yes, of course. Would you like some coffee?” she squeaked as her voice deserted her. Her phone was in her pocket; in the kitchen she could text Christopher.

  “Thank you, yes.”

  “I’ll just …” Pru pointed back to the kitchen, her breathing shallow. “Please make yourself at home. Ha!” She shrugged her shoulders. “How silly of me. It’s your house!”

  She backed down the hall to the kitchen as her phone rang. She pulled it out; it was Jo. For a second she froze, wondering what to do. She answered, out of breath.

  “Lydia! Hello, how are you? How are things in Dallas?” She raised her voice so that Archie could hear it was no one of any consequence to him. She switched the kettle on.

  “Pru?” Jo sounded confused and on the verge of tears. “Pru, it’s Jo. Oh, God, Pru, I’m so sorry. What have I done? Lucy told me about Archie Clarke—Pru, they were in the basement—those were the noises you heard.”

  Pru forgot her pretense for a moment. “What?”

  “They said they needed to retrieve something they had stored down there and they wouldn’t bother you, they’d just be in and out. He told me not to mention it to you and that they wouldn’t go upstairs. I was going to tell you, anyway, because I didn’t think that was fair, but you were so upset when I mentioned them, thinking that you’d have to move out straightaway, and I just didn’t have the heart. I thought they’d be gone—they promised. Then you kept hearing noises, and I wasn’t sure what to do.” Jo sobbed. “Pru, I’m so sorry.”

  Pru heard the anguish in Jo’s voice. She couldn’t blame her friend for trying to protect her, and yet she couldn’t help being exasperated. “Oh, Lydia”—she said the name again loudly so that Archie would hear—“I’m glad you phoned, but as it turns out, I can’t talk right now.” Jo, please, she thought, you’ve got to know something is wrong.

  Jo sniffed. “Pru, is Christopher there with you?” Dear Jo, always looking on the bright side: she thought that Pru and Christopher were having a romantic evening and didn’t want to be disturbed.

  “No! No, certainly not … I’m happy to hear from you …” Pru started to panic—Jo wasn’t getting it. How did people think of coded messages off the top of their heads? Not a single word came to mind that could convey to Jo what was happening.

  “Look, I’ll just leave you alone right now, and you ring back when you have the chance, all right?” She heard Jo blow her nose. “I want to explain, and I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  “Oh, Lydia, please tell everyone—really everyone—that I am looking forward to getting back to Dallas, I really am.”

  A second of silence, and then Jo said quietly, “Pru, is something wrong?”

  Archie appeared behind her. “Would you like some help?” Startled, she dropped her phone on the floor where it landed screen side up, showing Jo’s name as the caller. Her hand shot down to cover the screen and pick it up; his hand landed on top of hers. It felt moist and soft. She shuddered.

  “No, thank you, I’m fine.” Noticing the call had been disconnected, she stuck her phone back in her pocket and hoped Jo had gotten the message. “That was my dear friend Lydia, who lives in Texas. That’s where I’m from. Texas. Dallas.” She felt the need to fill the air with words. “We’ll … just let the water boil, shall we?”

  “Let’s forget about the coffee, Pru.” He switched off the kettle. “Come with me—I want to talk with you about something.”

  Pru followed him to the sitting room, keeping her distance. Instead of sitting down, he stood in the middle of the room looking at her computer. There on the screen, he could see himself in his sock feet coming up out of the Wilsons’ basement.

  He turned to her. “You knew all along, didn’t you, Pru? You knew that you had this photo of me coming out of Harry’s basement that morning. Were you biding your time hoping you could turn this to your advantage somehow, try to get money out of me?”

  Pru’s sense of decency made an appearance a millisecond ahead of her fear. “Are you kidding me? You murder a man and then think that somehow I want to make money off it?”

  He moved fast for a large man. He shoved her up against the wall and pinned his forearm against her windpipe. He had pulled a small pistol out of his pocket and she felt the cold metal of the barrel pressed to her forehead. “Don’t get full of yourself, now, Pru,” he said.

  Pru cut her eyes over at the sound of a key in the front door, hoping not so much for a rescue as anything that would loosen Archie’s arm so that she could breathe. If she lost consciousness, would he shoot?

  A woman walked in. “Archie—what are you up to?” she asked with a frown. “Not here, not yet.”

  “I will not be ridiculed,” Archie said. He backed off but kept the pistol pointed at Pru, who gasped for air and coughed.

  The woman at the door had short black hair and looked several years younger than Archie. No glasses or blond wig, but her cherry-red lipstick and the cherry-red nails on the ends of her stubby fingers stood out like beacons. Pru’s stomach gave a lurch as she remembered being pushed out the window. “Romilda?”

  “Romilda? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Romilda—my God, you are thick, aren’t you?” She dropped the laugh and said, “Right, Archie, let’s go.”

  “Pippa,” he said, “hold the gun on her. I want to go down and get the silver jug.”

  A shot of adrenaline ran through Pru’s veins. Romilda—Pippa, Pru corrected herself—was smaller than Archie, not as small as Jo, but smaller than Pru. If Archie went downstairs, perhaps Pru could do something, distract her and grab the gun.

  “We don’t have time for that. We need to leave. Now.”

  “But, Pippa, I remember where it is now, and it’s valuable. We could get rid of it right away …”

  “Archie,” Pippa shouted in his face, “focus.” Perhaps, Pru thought, Archie wasn’t the brains behind this plan. But he did hold the gun.

  Pippa’s orders got both Pru and Archie moving. He put a raincoat over his arm to hide the pistol, which he shoved into Pru’s side. He grabbed one arm, Pippa the other, and they marched her out the door, through the rain, and into a waiting cab.

  They were cozy in the back of the cab, just the three of them and the gun. Pru could feel it pressed hard into her flesh
just below her rib cage. She wondered if Archie had his finger on the trigger. She wondered what would happen if they went over a bump. She tried not to breathe hard, but taking many short shallow breaths made her light-headed.

  The cab was silent. The driver must already know where we’re going, Pru thought. She knew, too. The Wilsons were out—at the memorial dinner for Jeremy—and so the three of them would have the house and garden to themselves.

  When they stopped in front of the house on Chartsworth Square, there were no lights on. Archie pulled her from the cab as Pippa paid. They stood in the rain and watched him drive away. Pru heard Toffee barking a hello at her from behind the upstairs window, then Archie dragged her down the stairs. He pulled out his key.

  Once inside, they closed the door, and Pippa turned to Pru. Archie kept the gun in Pru’s side, which was already sore, and shoved it harder for emphasis when he talked.

  “Stay down here, Pippa. Look for the letter. I’ll take her outside,” Archie said.

  “Jeremy had the letter,” Pippa said to Pru as she pulled on a pair of latex gloves. “But Xanthe gave everything to Harry. We know he ended up with it. Where is it? Where’s the letter?”

  Pru thought for sure that Christopher would have taken the letter with him after talking with the Wilsons earlier, but if there was no letter to look for, they might both stay with her. If Pippa remained in the basement, she would have only Archie to contend with. Big, lumbering Archie.

  “He put it away,” Pru said, glancing around the room. “I think he put it over there, to hide it.” She nodded toward an enormous stack of loose papers—many more than what Xanthe delivered. The pile teetered on the far edge of Mr. Wilson’s desk. That ought to keep her busy for a while, she thought.

  “Harry doesn’t keep a very tidy work surface, now does he?” Archie said.

  “Harry Wilson is a berk,” Pippa spat out the words.

  “Pippa,” Archie said with reproach at her mild profanity.

  “This is all his fault,” she said. “If he hadn’t objected to selling this stuff, we’d never be in the position we are now. All this talk about educational opportunities, pride in our British history, it makes me sick.” She walked over to the pile and picked up a few of the papers. “He talked Jeremy out of the plan, and that makes all this his fault. He as much as forced you to kill Jeremy by being so high and mighty, and so it’s just what Harry deserves to get blamed for it all.” Pru stood between them, and for a fleeting moment forgot the danger she was in. Instead, she felt a rush of emotion at the thought of Mr. Wilson’s altruism. I knew he had no part in this, she thought to herself. I knew it in my heart.

  “Well, you don’t need me any longer, do you?” Pru asked as if she’d just given them directions to Westminster Abbey.

  “I’d say we don’t,” Pippa said, a gleam in her dark eyes. “But we couldn’t leave you be, Pru, now could we? That’s why we went to find you; we couldn’t be sure you hadn’t cottoned on to what happened with Jeremy. And we can’t just let you walk out of here to run to your little inspector fellow.”

  “Every story needs a big finale, Pru, and you’re it,” Archie said with a smile. “You and Harry, the two of you taken care of tonight—and we’ll be free and clear.”

  “Go on, Archie.” Pippa gestured toward the back garden. As Archie shoved Pru to the door, Pippa said, “Archie, can you do it?”

  “Of course, I can do it, Pippa,” he snapped. “I did it before, I can do it again.”

  “You were sick for two days after,” Pippa said. “We can’t have that. We have to move fast. You come back for me, and I’ll do it.”

  Pru’s mind went numb, not wanting to examine this exchange too closely. Archie shoved her out the door while still squeezing her arm. She tried to keep her balance as he pushed and pulled at the same time.

  He marched her across the muddy garden, the rain pouring down, the pistol still stuck in her side. Opening the door of the shed with his elbow, he gave her a rough push inside and then followed, pulling a torch out of his raincoat pocket and hanging it on one of the pegs, where its wide beam cast light over the mosaic.

  “Start digging.”

  No need to ask where to dig, Pru thought. She reached for the spade on the ground—the one that Mr. Wilson had chucked back after his own bout of digging—but Archie stopped her.

  “No, not that one,” he said, and with a gloved hand he gave her the other spade off the wall. “This one.” He gestured to the hole. She plunged the spade in the wet soil as Archie backed off to the far corner. “We don’t want to compromise the fingerprint evidence on the murder weapon,” he said.

  “They already took that spade,” Pru said, but with a stab of fear realized Archie didn’t mean Jeremy’s murder. This spade, she thought, covered with Mr. Wilson’s fingerprints, would soon include evidence from Pru—blood, hair, tissue—she remembered with a sickening shock Christopher’s description of the first murder and what she herself had seen.

  “They won’t believe that for a minute. They already know it’s you.” Surprised to have found her voice, she lied with as much confidence as she could muster.

  “By the time they can figure all that out, after all the moaning and crying about their darling American gardener, we’ll be gone,” he boasted. “The arrangements are all made.” Pru had slowed in her digging, which prompted Archie to wave the gun at her. “Dig.”

  “I hope you didn’t let Alf make the arrangements.”

  Archie dropped his smirk for a second. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You haven’t noticed he isn’t the most reliable fellow?” Pru asked. “You know he broke into a constable’s house while the constable was home—how smart was that? And you heard about his idea of pretending to be Scottish and trying to steal money from someone he knew? This is the man who’s made your arrangements?” Pru couldn’t help rubbing it in. Archie was quiet for a moment.

  “Shut your mouth and dig,” he said.

  A thought occurred to Pru—what seemed like ages ago, she remembered Mrs. Wilson telling her that Alf asked about the “boggy place” at Greenoak. “You thought you could take it from this bog,” she said, nodding to the seeping hole in front of her, “and rebury it in the bog at Greenoak, didn’t you? You were going to take it to Greenoak and then ‘find’ it again on Alf’s property? That way the artifacts wouldn’t belong to the earl, they would belong to Alf, and he could sell it. And hand the money to you.”

  “He’ll get his cut,” Archie shouted at her. “Everybody else makes money off history—why shouldn’t I?” Archie said, his anger showing again. “Why should I just give it all up to museums and universities? Is that fair? I’m sick of it.”

  “Mrs. Wilson said that the sale of the house fell through, but that was all a ruse, wasn’t it, from the very beginning? Alf told them he was selling Greenoak because he wanted them out of the way so that you could carry out your scheme. But they’re onto you now,” Pru said, hoping to point out the futility of his plan. “The police, the Wilsons—everyone knows.”

  “Arrangements have been made,” he said in a taunting voice. “We’ll be away before they can ever get to us.” He noticed again that Pru had slowed. “Open that hole wider!” he shouted.

  “It’s a poacher’s spade,” she shouted back, referring to the long but narrow shape of the tool. “It won’t make a wide hole quickly.” Her spade went down again and hit something hard.

  “There now,” Archie said, keeping the gun on her, while with his other hand, he popped the top on one of the big rusted tins under the bench and pulled out several large, woven plastic carrier bags from Sainsbury’s. “See, I’m all prepared, and no one was the wiser that I came back to tuck these away until it was time. Now, start opening that hole.”

  “Don’t you even care that I could damage it? The only copy in the world of Hadrian’s autobiography, and all you care about is getting it into a shopping bag and selling it off?”

  He advanced on her, s
haking the gun as he did so, and Pru took a step back. “Listen to me, you bloody stupid woman.” His anger was getting the better of him. “Do you think you’re doing yourself any good with this talk? It’ll just make killing you all that much easier.”

  They both heard it. A voice called “Pru?” But because of the noise of the rain on the roof or the distance, Pru couldn’t tell whom it was.

  Archie backed up a couple of steps to look out the door, and as he did so, Pru threw the spade at him, using both hands and aiming high, toward his face. His arms flew up to protect himself, and the gun went off, sending the bullet up through the roof.

  She jumped over the exposed mosaic and lunged at him, trying to push him away from the door. She succeeded in knocking the pistol away from him, but he grabbed her wrist with one hand as he held on to the doorway with the other. She kneed him; he yelled and let go. She had made it three steps out the door when he jumped her from behind. She landed facedown in the mud and couldn’t breathe for a moment. Archie was big and heavy, and when he tried to get up, he tripped on one of the stems of ivy she’d left looping up out of the ground. It gave her enough time to crawl away through the mud a few feet.

  When she started to get up, he came around and stood over her, but he swayed slightly, and as if to try to steady himself, he waved his arms in small circles like propellers. His sluggishness gave her a second to think: It worked once—why can’t it work again? She sprang up and used the momentum to bring the heel of her hand up, striking hard under his chin. He screamed, and blood squirted from his mouth as he dropped.

  Archie groaned and turned over, his arms and legs waving about as he tried to stand. Pru tried to catch her breath and think what to do next. Someone grabbed her from behind. She screamed and turned.

  “Christopher!” She threw her arms around him. She saw police streaming into the garden.

  He held her tight. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you? There was a shot.”

  “Christopher”—she pulled back to look at him as the words came tumbling out—“he’s the sock man, it’s his house, my house, and he thought I knew he was the murderer.” She knew that made little sense, but all she could do was hit the high points and hope that he would fill in the blanks.