Death in an English Garden: Book Six in the Murder on Location series

by Sara Rosett

  “Many people will be unhappy if Mrs. Emsley refuses to come,” Ren said.

  “Then it’s on her,” Elise said quickly. “It’s not our fault if she throws a tantrum.”

  “But then we’d have several gaps to fill,” Ren said, and Elise’s mouth pinched. I could tell that she didn’t like it, but he made a good point.

  “Is there anywhere else in the area that would meet the criteria?” Ren’s expectant gaze shifted to me.

  I was the location scout, after all. I had to find locations for filming as well as accommodations for the talent and crew. I opened my mouth to reply that there was nothing, but paused. “There is Tate House,” I said slowly. “It would be rather unusual. I don’t know if it’s even available.”

  Tate House stood on the wooded hill above the village with only its gables visible above the treetops.

  “It certainly is secluded enough,” Elise said. “But wasn’t it sold?”

  “Yes. The buyer did some renovations and put it right back on the market. Louise said it was also available for a holiday rental. I haven’t seen anyone at the house, so maybe it’s available to rent for a few days.”

  I lived on a lane of cottages on the lower portion of the hill. For a few weeks, the shrill whine of electric saws and the dull thud of hammering had filtered down through the trees. But once the workmen had packed up and departed, it had been quiet.

  Of course I wouldn’t have known if someone had moved in because the road to reach the house was actually around the other side of the hill. Anyone living there would usually arrive and depart that way. But a footpath ran behind the cottages and curved up the hill where it divided. One branch of the path climbed through the trees to Tate House while the other branch continued around the hill. It dropped down to meet the road that took ramblers to one of the old stone bridges that crossed over the river.

  The previous owner of Tate House had often used the footpath to get to the village instead of driving down, so I thought if someone had moved in, I would have at least caught a glimpse of a newcomer. But so far this spring I’d only seen visiting ramblers and cyclists on the footpath. “It’s been sitting there, empty, for months,” I said. “No one’s even come for a weekend. Or, at least that’s what Louise says.”

  “She would know if anything had changed,” Ren said. “She knew who I was before I even checked into the inn.” As the owner of the White Duck pub, Louise picked up all sorts of local news and heard quite a bit of gossip, too, but she only passed on the news and kept the gossip to herself. I was sure that was why people confided in her.

  “I suggest we attempt to fulfill some of the requests.” Ren said, his casual tone further deflating Elise’s indignation. “Then we can negotiate from there. Let’s not escalate the situation. Give them a bit, and not go into the arena of ultimatums. Nothing beneficial ever happens when ultimatums are thrown out.”

  Elise let out a long breath through her nose. She looked as though she were about to force herself to eat a food she particularly disliked. “I’d rather not give privileges, but I suppose in this case, we must at least appear to try, the schedule being what it is. Kate, get on this right away.”

  “I better finish here. I can call the estate agent—”

  “Go on,” Elise said, cutting me off. “I’m sure…er…that thickset girl can wrap up things in here. After all, it’s only putting it back the way it was before. Nothing spectacularly difficult.”

  Freya came in the room, and I hoped she hadn’t heard Elise’s comment on her build. Deciding that arguing with Elise about Freya’s body type wouldn’t help things, I tightened my jaw muscles as I said, “I’ll take care of it,” trying to channel some of Ren’s soft-spoken manner.

  Paul tapped on his tablet. “I’ll forward you the contact information for Ms. Emsley’s assistant, Torrie Mayes, since she wants you to handle everything.”

  “You should probably call her back, if you’ve been working with her,” I said.

  “But Ms. Emsley’s last requirement is that her assistant work exclusively with you.”

  Chapter 2

  “ME? ARE YOU SURE?” I asked.

  Paul nodded. “Requested you by name. Her assistant said Ms. Emsley is set on you.”

  “But…that makes no sense. Why me? That’s not even my job.” I looked around the half-finished room from the dressmaker’s dummy to the bare wall on the far side of the room where several pieces of furniture and decor still needed to be replaced.

  Paul finished tapping on his tablet then shrugged. “I don’t know why, but she asked for you specifically.” He twisted his tablet around and pointed to my name in the email.

  “You’re famous.” Freya put down the base of the dressmaker’s dummy beside the torso. “I bet it’s because of what happened in Bath. You were in the news.”

  I thought I heard Elise murmur something that sounded a lot like infamous, but when I looked at her, she smiled in her mechanical way and said, “Excellent. That will work out well, won’t it? Give—um—your assistant instructions about finishing here.” She shifted her attention back to Ren. “Now, about the gardens, let’s go down and take a look. I want it set up exactly as I…” Her voice faded as she strode away with Ren at her side and Paul trailing behind them.

  “You live in the cottages in the lane down below, don’t you?” Claire Montrose asked as she unlocked the front door of Tate House an hour later.

  “Yes, Cottage Lane.” I pulled my camera clear of the lapels of my raincoat and looked through the viewfinder at the front of the house. The day was mild and sunny with a predicted high of about seventeen degrees Celsius, which meant temperatures in the sixties—no matter how hard I tried to adjust to European measurements, I still thought in Fahrenheit—but I couldn’t quite shake my Southern California roots. To my mind, sixty degrees qualified as cool. The weather was variable here, to say the least. I knew the flat, silvery-edged clouds in the distance could multiply, sweep in, and cast a gray tinge over the village. I wanted to get some photos while the light was clear. With the surrounding trees casting deep shadows, the area around Tate House was already dark enough.

  Unlike the cottages in the lane with their carefully tended gardens and bursts of flowers, the front of Tate House had no flowers, no garden, and no lawn, just a sweep of a tarmac drive that rose from a pair of impressive gates that had swung back when Claire clicked a remote control. The drive curved through a dense grove of gnarled oaks whose canopy cast a deep shadow over the undergrowth. Drifts of fallen leaves carpeted the ground between the trees. “That brick wall on either side of the gate, how far does it go?” I asked.

  “Around the whole property. It transitions to a dry-stone wall after several meters.”

  “Good to know.” While I was sure that a determined person could scale it, the five-foot wall would keep casual ramblers from trespassing.

  “The wall encloses the top of the hill, but most of the area is wooded and not easily accessible. Of course, the house and back garden are so stunning that I doubt your client will want to leave it…except for filming, I assume?”

  “Perhaps.” When we spoke on the phone, Claire had tried to pry as many details out of me as she could about why I was looking at the property, but I wasn’t giving away anything that I didn’t have to. She knew it was related to the documentary, and had been so eager to show me the inside of the house that she’d nearly rear-ended me when she zoomed up the hill and rounded the drive’s blind turn to find me sitting in my borrowed car, waiting in front of the closed gate. While Alex was out of town, I was using his vintage MG Midget to get around, and I was so glad she’d braked in time. I did not want to have to call Alex and tell him his car was in for repairs.

  I didn’t drive much, but I had conquered my knee-weakening nerves about driving on the opposite side of the road, and now I could actually navigate without breaking out in a cold sweat. I’d even considered getting a car of my own, but I couldn’t justify the expense, especially with Alex l
iving only a few cottages down the lane and offering me a lift to work every day. He also let me use his car whenever I needed to run to Upper Benning or points farther away, which wasn’t often. I just had to ignore the sticky notes that dotted the dash. Instead of an app on his phone or a paper calendar, Alex used sticky notes to keep track of appointments and contacts. I didn’t understand it, but I’d come to realize that it was a system and—somehow—it worked for him.

  I focused the camera lens on the exterior of the house and took several photos. Thick pelts of ivy crisscrossed the façade, nearly obscuring the mellow golden stone, typical of so many of the buildings in the area.

  Claire pushed open the front door, its leaded glass inset flashing as it reflected a ray of sun that penetrated through the trees. “It’s more modern than the cottages. Completely updated inside.” The front door opened into a wide room with a fireplace directly opposite the doorway. “This is the sitting room.” Claire’s heels clicked across the pale blond floorboards. “Several walls were knocked out to create one large room.”

  “It’s not quite what I expected.” While the exterior of the house felt like a scene from The Secret Garden, the inside reminded me of a doctor’s waiting room.

  Streamlined furniture in shades of tan, gray, and pale purple were grouped around the room. An abstract painting hung over the intricately carved fireplace mantle and sleek side tables of chrome and glass made the decor of pottery bowls and woven baskets look as if they were hovering in mid-air. A staircase of frosted glass steps suspended on silver wires floated to the left of the fireplace.

  “Isn’t it wonderful? As I said, total renovation.”

  “Yes, you did.” I lifted my camera and snapped some photos. I’d discovered that my ideas about what qualified as “new” versus “old,” were quite different from most of the inhabitants of Nether Woodsmoor. To me, anything from before the Civil War was “old.” Louise had agreed with me until she realized I was talking about the American Civil War, not England’s Civil War.

  “I was expecting something from the turn of the century—the nineteenth century, that is.” I let my camera drop back and swing from the cord around my neck. I took out my Moleskine journal to make a few notes.

  She smiled at my little joke. “No. Tate House is very up to the minute. It has a very nice security system. The new owner added home automation control. The lights and security system are now controlled through online apps.”

  “What type of security system?” I asked.

  “High-end. Exterior cameras at the gate and front entrance, all connected to monitors. You can view through an app on your phone, or there’s a dedicated monitor in the study.”

  That should please Arabella Emsley, I thought.

  “The security system was the only thing that was in good shape,” Claire said. “Basically, everything else in the house has been replaced—plumbing, electrical, appliances. The flooring is new throughout the house.” She waved a hand at the glossy pale boards. “And it’s been freshly painted.” She tilted her head to the fireplace. “Of course, the owner left the unique historic touches. The mantle is Edwardian. Gives the place the feel of history, doesn’t it? But it’s not your normal boring historic home. It’s an edgy historic home.”

  I made a murmur that might have sounded like agreement. The mixture of modern with antique felt jarring to me, but maybe that was the idea. I’d take my cottage, which was unabashedly Old World and cozy, over edgy historic any day. I followed her up the glass staircase that swayed slightly. “That’s on purpose,” Claire assured me. “The architect says it reflects the insecurity and angst of our modern society.”

  “I see.” I gripped the wire that functioned as a bannister tightly.

  The upstairs was more traditional. The hallway had a country home feel with oil paintings covering the walls from the chair rail to the ceiling. Narrow tables and chairs with delicate curved legs filled the space between the bedroom doors along with glass display cabinets showing off delicate china. What looked to be a genuine elephant foot umbrella stand sat in one corner by a grandfather clock.

  There were more than enough spacious bedrooms to house Arabella’s entourage. The bathrooms were completely updated with huge tubs and separate showers, and the kitchen, with miles of stainless steel and a huge gas stovetop in a marble-topped island, looked like something transplanted from a restaurant. The only indication of the age of the house in the kitchen was a closed door that Claire pointed out, which hid the back staircase. It had once been the servant’s staircase and went to the upper floors.

  Claire walked down a short hallway that connected the kitchen with the dining room and the sitting room where we’d entered. She stopped in the dining room and pushed open the sliding glass doors that made up one wall. “The kitchen has a door that opens onto the terrace as well.” She stepped outside. “And…the back garden.” She flourished her hand.

  A wide flagstone terrace stretched across the back of the house. I walked around a pair of lounge chairs to the edge, expecting more trees. Instead, I saw masses of blooms and bursts of color. A breeze swept through the trees with a sound like running water.

  Shallow stairs in the same flagstone dropped down from the level of the house to a path that wound through an amazing garden that spilled down the slope behind the house. I walked down a few steps, dropping into a kaleidoscope of vivid blooms. A swath of low-growing purple blooms buzzing with bees gave way to a profusion of fuchsia flowers then to a carpet of tiny white blooms. “I really should learn more about gardening and flowers,” I said.

  Claire, still on the flagstone terrace above me, caught her hair away from her face as the wind picked up. “I don’t suppose you get these types of plants in California?”

  My head was level with her feet, and I had to tilt my head back to see her. Only the edge of the terrace and the gabled roof of Tate House were visible from where I stood. “No. Nothing like this.”

  I did recognize a few of the flowers in the garden. Lupines shivered on their stalks, a mix of pale pink, lilac, blood red, coral, deep purple, and cream. Roses filled one area while in another space farther down the hill lily pads floated on a pond with goldfish flickering below the shimmering surface. A yew walk filled one side of the garden, the only area with a regimented and formal landscape. A wall of beech trees encircled the entire garden. Against the tree line, ferns and ivy dominated the shadows.

  “So, what do you think? Beautiful, isn’t it?” Claire asked.

  “Gorgeous,” I said between clicks of the camera shutter. Whether or not it worked out so that Arabella could stay here, I wanted to record the cascade of color and the contrast of light and shadow. The garden was mostly in the sun. It seemed as if a giant hand had scooped out a swath of trees to make room for the garden. “I had no idea this garden was part of the house.” I walked down to the next landing and focused the camera on a pale pink rosebud that bobbed gently as a bee made its way across the petals.

  “It was a bit run down when the current owner bought it. He’s had quite a bit of work done to bring it up to this standard.” She leaned toward me and lowered her voice, despite the fact that we were clearly alone, the only sounds the faint buzz of the bee and the wind. “Between you and me, we have a major landscape magazine interested in doing a story on it. With the exposure from an article like that…well, I doubt it will be on the market much longer.”

  I reluctantly let my camera drop back onto the cord and took out my Moleskine journal from one of the large pockets on my raincoat. I climbed up the steps to the terrace. “Let’s talk about a few details.”

  “Certainly. Why don’t we go over here?” She stepped off the terrace and led me around to a square of lawn, which was tucked up against one of the walls of the house with a turret-like curve. A splash of sunshine warmed the iron table and the surrounding grass, while a few feet away the thick trunks of ash and beech trees rose higher than the house, sheltering us from the wind.

  We settled d
own at the table, and I went over dates and requirements. She whipped out contracts and made calls. I countered with my own phone calls to Paul and Elise. The end result was that Arabella and her entourage could occupy the house beginning in two days and stay on through the end of filming. Elise was adamant that Arabella had to pick up the difference in cost between Tate House and the lodging we’d originally arranged for her. As Elise would have said in her understated British way, the difference in cost was not insignificant.

  Claire got another call and went back to the terrace to discuss something in private so I took a deep breath and dialed the number for Arabella’s assistant, mentally reminding myself to negotiate as Ren had said. No ultimatums.

  I wasn’t good at identifying accents, not like my friend Melissa. She could pinpoint a person’s origin after hearing only a sentence or two. I couldn’t do that, but as soon as the voice came on the line, I recognized that this woman didn’t have the careful pronunciation style that I heard from Elise as well as from news broadcasters. I said, “Torrie Mayes, please.”

  “Yes? What?”

  Her tone was impatient, and I spoke quickly before she could hang up. “I’m Kate Sharp with the Jane Austen documentary production. I may have found an alternative location for Ms. Emsley, but we need to work out a few issues.” I gave her the details about Tate House, quoting the size of the house and describing the location, including the extensive grounds, the gated entrance, and the wall that surrounded it. “If you give me your email, I’ll send you photos of the house.”

  “That’s not necessary. How much?”

  “The cost to make the change, you mean?”

  “Yes,” she said, and I was sure from her tone that she was rolling her eyes. I named a figure and without a pause she said, “Fine. Do it. Send us the contracts, whatever you need.” She rattled off an email and fax number that I barely had time to write down before she said, “We’ll arrive the day after tomorrow,” and hung up.