6.The Alcatraz Rose

by Anthony Eglin

  “Really? Graham Stewart Thomas?”

  “Who’s he?” Andrew asked.

  Kingston looked pensive. “A legendary horticulturist, author, garden designer, and much more. He’s probably best known for his knowledge and love of old and new shrub roses. Among other achievements, he designed the National Collection of old-fashioned roses at Mottisfont Abbey. It’s still considered to be the best of its kind in the world.”

  “You knew him, too, didn’t you Lawrence?” Jimmy asked.

  “I did. I had the privilege of meeting him at the abbey’s opening of the collection, back in . . . 1974, I believe. I’ll never forget it.”

  “Of course.” Andrew rolled his eyes.

  Kingston ignored the gesture. “Any idea where this Payne chap lives, Jimmy?”

  “Last I ’eard it was in Middle Cheverell, outside Cheltenham. The village is small, so you won’t have trouble finding ’is place. Ask at the Rose & Thistle, they’ll know it.”

  “Rose and Thistle. We’ll do just that. Thanks, Jimmy.”

  Kingston and Andrew strolled around the lush grounds. Kingston managed to stifle his inner professor, and they ambled about in companionable silence, enjoying the beauty and tranquillity rarely found in London.

  6

  KINGSTON STARED AT the oak door. No response.

  He rapped the brass dolphin knocker a second time. He waited for another minute, then stepped back off the porch and took in the front of the two-story redbrick Edwardian house with shiny white trim on symmetrically spaced windows. Flanked on both sides by eight-foot-high blocks of yew hedging, it appeared far too large to be called a “cottage,” so described by the barmaid at the Rose & Thistle, where he’d inquired after Reginald Payne on arriving in Middle Cheverell.

  What little garden there was in front had been masterfully planted by someone with an understanding of horticulture as well as a practiced eye for design, texture, and color. The splendid herbaceous borders were crowded with a who’s who of carefully chosen perennials, backed by gracefully arching old shrub roses that reached to the top of a drystone wall behind. Properly trained climbing roses and clematis fanned the walls of the house and even the upstairs windows. A weathered wooden sign hanging by chains from a post bore the name BEECHWOOD.

  Two cars were parked in a gravel area off to his left, an old khaki colored Land Rover and red VW convertible. Save for the omnipresent bird chatter and the distant lowing of cows, all around was a genial stillness. No barking of dogs inside and no signs of habitation. He was about to head back down the front path, back to the car where Andrew was waiting, when he heard a bolt being withdrawn and the big door creaking open. He turned to see a woman, thirtyish, he guessed—fairlyattractive, slim, longish blond hair—standing half hidden behind the partly open door. She looked at him suspiciously, tension evident in her body language.

  “Good afternoon. I’m awfully sorry to bother you. My name’s Lawrence Kingston—Doctor Kingston,” he added. The title, he found, had a way of putting people more at ease. “I’ve just been visiting Belmaris Castle inquiring about their rose collection, and it was suggested that I also talk to Reginald Payne who, I’m given to understand, is also something of a rose fancier. If he’s home and it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to have a word.”

  His words were met with a blank stare, as if she’d already made up her mind that she didn’t want to talk to him, that she might close the door at any moment.

  “This is his residence, is it not?” Kingston asked, trying to pry at least a sentence from her.

  She nodded. “It is,” she said in a near whisper. “Or was.”

  Kingston stepped back a couple of paces, trying to look as friendly and nonthreatening as he could. It was clear that she was uncomfortable with him standing a mere few feet away on her doorstep. It began to look as if she was about to slam the door in his face at any moment. “I’m not quite sure I understand. Perhaps it’s best if I leave?” he said, searching for words that would keep the conversation alive.

  His comment had a slight mollifying effect. For an instant she relaxed her tight grip on the door, and her unblinking eyes now met his more with curiosity than caution.

  “He no longer lives here?” Kingston asked.

  “He’s dead.” The two words held no emotion, no hint of underlying sorrow.

  “I’m terribly sorry.”

  “That’s all right. You weren’t to know. Sorry, I must go. Goodbye,” she said, slowly closing the door.

  As if to punctuate her “goodbye,” the inside bolt slid shut with a metallic thud. Kingston stared at the door momentarily, then turned and went back to the car.

  “I think you’re wasting your time,” Andrew said, glancing sideways at Kingston, whose eyes were glued to the road ahead, his thoughts clearly elsewhere.

  After they’d left Payne’s house, Kingston had described the brief encounter with the taciturn woman, admonishing himself aloud for not having handled it more diplomatically and, worse, for having come away with no information on the late, reclusive Reginald Payne or his roses.

  “Why’s that?” Kingston asked, shifting into second as they approached a busy roundabout.

  “Even if you had gotten to chat with this Payne chap, what did you hope to achieve? At best, he would have told you the same as Cosworth told us: that he’d seen the rose growing at Belmaris.”

  “I suppose,” Kingston said.

  “Suppose?” Andrew frowned. “You don’t think for one moment that he would’ve admitted to nicking one and growing it for himself, do you?”

  “Well, no. It was just an opportunity, that’s all. Worth a try.”

  “When we get back home, why don’t you call the fellow in San Francisco—the one who discovered the rose? You’ll learn much more from him, I’d imagine.”

  “I plan to. My only interest is finding out how a rare English rose ended up in an American prison, that’s all. It’s an intriguing horticultural anomaly, not a bloody murder mystery.”

  “And thank the Lord for that.” Andrew looked at his watch. “Why don’t we just go and have an early dinner, then?”

  Kingston nodded. “I know you suggested Jamie Oliver’s in Oxford, but that’s at least an hour away. Why don’t we go back to the Rose and Thistle? The dining room looked very gastro and we can be there in five minutes.”

  “Sure, if that’s what you want,” Andrew said, looking at Kingston with a don’t-try-to-fool-me grin. “Maybe you could make a discreet inquiry with the landlord or barmaid, ask what they know about Reginald Payne, tell them you were in the army together—but you’d probably thought of that already.”

  “I hadn’t,” Kingston fibbed. “But that’s not a bad idea. If it’s dark secrets or dirty linen you’re trying to uncover about the local gentry, there’s no better repository, no place where more wagging lips can be found, than an English pub. It’s worked before and it can work again.”

  At the Rose & Thistle, they were seated right away. All thoughts of Belmaris Castle and its gardens, Jimmy Cosworth, and Reginald Payne were put aside for the moment, as they focused their attention on ordering drinks and perusing what, for a small pub, was an unexpectedly voluminous and diverse menu and wine list. Andrew seemed duly impressed.

  Kingston had promised he wouldn’t try chatting up the owner or locals about Payne until their meal was over and they were about to leave. As it turned out, his promise was irrelevant. Since arriving they’d seen no one who resembled a landlord or manager. And after a purposefully circuitous visit to the gents’, Kingston was disappointed to conclude that no one among the drinkers or diners might be considered a regular.

  An hour and a half later, finishing the remains of an excellent bottle of Côte de Nuits-Villages and waiting for their bill to arrive, Kingston noted a sudden twitch of surprise on Andrew’s face. Looking up as he lowered his wineglass, he saw why. It wasn’t their waiter carrying the faux-leather folder containing the bill but a smartly dressed gray-haired woman hea
ding their way.

  “I hope everything was satisfactory, gentlemen,” she said with an unreserved smile, placing the folder on the table. “I’m Clare Davenport.”

  Kingston began to stand, but she motioned for him to remain seated.

  “I must compliment you and your chef for a most enjoyable meal,” he said. “I recognized your name from the licensee sign in the bar.”

  “Excellent wine list, too,” Andrew interjected.

  “I’m pleased it met with your approval. I hope you’ll come back and see us again. Are you visiting the area?”

  “Only briefly. We came down to see an old friend.”

  “Down from—?”

  “Chelsea. We were at Belmaris Castle visiting Jimmy Cosworth, the head gardener.”

  “Ah yes, the Fitzwarrens. Charming people. They come in to see us from time to time. I’ve also had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Cosworth several times—the man’s not only a genius at what he does, he’s so generous with his time. I can’t tell you how often he’s bailed me out with gardening advice over the years.”

  “Actually, it was because of him that we found you. He told us about a local chap named Reginald Payne who grew old roses. He recommended that we try to contact him while we were here. Your barmaid was kind enough to give us directions to his house, earlier this morning. On the off chance that he might be home, we stopped by to chat with him, only to learn, sadly, that he’d passed away.”

  “That must have been Mary—our new girl. She wouldn’t have known about Reggie.” Clare Davenport’s face clouded over. “Yes, it was quite a shock, I must say. The locals are still talking about it. Naturally, we’ve had a few reporters snooping around, too.”

  “What happened?” Kingston asked.

  “The police haven’t provided any details yet—as far as we know, that is.”

  “Police?”

  “Yes. It seems that foul play might be involved.”

  Kingston glanced furtively at Andrew. “Really?” he asked.

  Clare Davenport nodded. “From all accounts, it was originally thought by the police to be an unfortunate accident: that he’d tripped or had had a dizzy spell and fallen into the pond in his garden. But now the coroner has called for a full inquiry.

  “No wonder the young woman at the house was so evasive,” he said.

  “Probably Reggie’s niece. Apparently she’s staying there with her mother.”

  “Would that be Reggie’s sister?”

  She shrugged. “Could be.”

  Kingston could not contain his curiosity. “When did this all take place?”

  “About . . . a few weeks ago, a little longer, maybe. Needless to say, the entire village has been gossiping about it ever since. The police interviewed quite a few people, shopkeepers, tradesmen, and the like, including me and my husband.”

  “I take it that there are no suspects yet.”

  She shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

  “You said ‘Reggie’—you and your husband knew Mr. Payne, then?”

  “We did, yes.”

  “Were you friends?”

  Clare Davenport frowned. “You’re asking a lot of questions. You’re not policemen, are you?”

  Kingston chuckled. “Heavens no. We’re both unemployed—retirees, you might say. I’m Lawrence Kingston, and this is my friend Andrew Duncan.”

  “Kingston? Your name sounds vaguely familiar. Should I know you?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t think so,” Kingston said, as Andrew raised his eyebrows and looked away.

  “Hmmm.” She nodded. “Well, anyway, getting back to your question. We didn’t really know Mr. Payne that well. Everyone called him Reggie. He used to say that Reginald should be reserved for statesmen, poets, and BBC announcers. He’d pop in from time to time but never mingled or stayed long, kept pretty much to himself. I wouldn’t go as far as to call him a recluse, but it was generally known in the village that he was . . . well, not what you’d call the sociable kind.” She shrugged. “I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

  “It’s not really important,” Andrew cut in.

  Kingston nodded. “Thank you so much for your time, Mrs. Davenport. And for the information—as well as the lovely meal.”

  Back in the car, Kingston asked, “Well, Andrew, what do you make of all that?” as the TR’s engine coughed to life.

  “More than anything, I’m wondering how everything you do seems to thrust into the middle of a murder.”

  “How was I to know there was a murder—a still pending one—involved? A casual comment by Jimmy Cosworth, an innocent visit to see a rose collector—we simply reacted quite normally and rationally. Tell me how things could have turned out otherwise?”

  “If we hadn’t gone back to the pub,” Andrew replied, buckling his seat belt with a snap. “Before that we didn’t know Payne had been murdered, only that he’d died. We could have easily gone on to Oxford, but you wanted to go back to the Rose & Thistle. It wasn’t about being closer than Oxford or the time. You figured there was a slim chance that someone there would know more about him, to satisfy your insatiable curiosity.”

  “Come on, Andrew. Now you’re being unreasonable. It was nothing more than coincidence.”

  “Coincidence?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here’s a question for you,” Andrew said. “On average, do you know how many people are murdered in the UK every year?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Well, I do, because I looked it up when you were knee-deep in that case up in Staffordshire, the bloke found murdered on the grounds of Sturminster Hall.”

  “And?”

  “It’s roughly eight hundred.”

  “What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?”

  “Since there are roughly ninety counties in the UK, that averages out to, let’s say, nine homicides per county.”

  Kingston simply nodded, keeping his eyes on the road.

  “So it would be reasonable to say that Gloucestershire, being average in size, would have nine murders per year.”

  “If you say so.”

  “What I’m getting at, Lawrence, is Bayes’s rule—a mathematical theory commonly called the law of conditional probability. It’s taught in computer science.”

  “Then you would know.”

  “Given today’s . . . let’s just say unusual series of events and coincidences, I got to thinking. What if that rule were applied to you? What would the odds be—the probability—that in the entire county, in a mere three hours, with conversation limited to fewer than a half dozen people, that you could manage, by sheer happenstance, to run across someone who is a murder victim? Even you would have to admit that the chances against that happening would be a thousand-to-one—a million-to-one, more likely.”

  Kingston was listening with amusement, trying to hide his smile by not looking at Andrew.

  “People win the football pools and the lottery every week. Similar or worse odds, wouldn’t you agree?” Kingston suggested.

  “Maybe, but in your case, there’s a big difference.”

  “There is? Why?”

  “Because unlike the lucky punter, this is not a one-off. You have a track record, a recurring pattern. You operate by your own set of rules. In the eighties, the software designers and engineers at Apple came up with a name for this type of behavior; they called it a ‘reality distortion field’—a condition where your reality becomes flexible, negotiable.”

  “Come on, Andrew, listening to you, one would think that I’m looking for trouble.”

  “That’s exactly right. I had a strange feeling, right from the beginning, that this trip wouldn’t end without something spoiling it. Something untoward. I’m not sure what I expected, but it certainly wasn’t murder.”

  After an awkward pause, he finally turned to look at Kingston, who could no longer contain himself. A suppressed chuckle turned into full-throated laughter. For a moment Andrew looked helplessly confused, then he grinned. In
a couple of seconds they were both laughing uncontrollably.

  “I give up,” Andrew said, brushing tears from his eyes. “You’re beyond bloody redemption.”

  7

  AS IF TO cast an echoing pall over the events of the day, the capricious English weather did an about-face. Ten miles after crossing into Oxfordshire, a fast-moving storm system snuffed out the last of the gloaming, turning it into a drizzling gloom. Headlights went on and windscreen wipers soon followed. Further conversation was sporadic and of little consequence. Andrew appeared to be content within his own thoughts and eventually dozed off for an hour, and Kingston was obliged to put aside further speculation about the rose to focus his attention on the wretched driving conditions. What normally would have been a two-hour drive took almost double that time. He dropped Andrew off, parked the TR4 in his garage, and went directly to his flat.

  Tired and exhausted by trying to make sense of all the untoward things that had happened in a single day, Kingston made straight for the living room, where he poured himself a well-earned nightcap of Macallan with a splash of water.

  Ten minutes later, checking his e-mails before turning in for the night, Reginald Payne’s name popped up again his mind. Before putting the computer to sleep, he decided to do a brief Google search for him, even though he knew with so little to go on, his chances of digging up anything noteworthy were highly unlikely.

  The expected Facebook and Linkedin entries revealed nothing that suggested a rose fancier of that name, or anyone else whose attributes or achievements could apply to Payne. The following three pages were much the same. He tried a different spelling, Paine, but the results offered nothing new. His only conclusion was that Reggie had not made a sufficient mark in life to warrant Google’s attention or—unlikely—that he’d managed somehow to avoid cyberspace scrutiny.

  That night was one of the most restless he’d experienced in a long time. He tossed and turned for hours, his mind refusing to shut down. Like a hyperactive child on a pogo stick, it bounced from Andrew, to Jimmy Cosworth and the Belmaris rose, to Payne, to Clare Davenport at the pub.