Deadhead and Buried

by H. Y. Hanna

  “Yes, I remember Holly,” said one elderly lady. “A real handful, she was. Always staying out late and giving Mary no end of grief.”

  Another white-haired lady nodded. “She was never happy to stay at the cottage and help out in the nursery, like Mary wanted her to. Terrible scandal, it was, when she ran off to join those other girls—you know, the kind that follow musicians around… what are they called? Guppies?”

  “Groupies,” someone piped up.

  “Yes, that’s right. I remember that!” the first elderly lady cried. “And then she came back a year later, proud as you please, and announced that she was having a baby! Barely seventeen, she was… and no idea who the father was, of course.”

  There were tutting sounds and looks of disapproval in the crowd.

  “Oh, she knew who the father was,” the second old lady said. “She just wouldn’t say.”

  “Do you know? Did you ever find out?” asked Poppy breathlessly.

  To her disappointment, the old lady shook her head.

  “I’m surprised Mary didn’t force it out of her and make the boy marry her,” said the man at the bar counter. “Real old-fashioned, she was. Must have been her worst nightmare to have her daughter have a baby out of wedlock.”

  “Well, personally, I feel sorry for the daughter,” said one of the original three women who had invited Poppy to their table. “Can you imagine what it was like having Mary for a mother? It’d be like living in a nunnery! Up at dawn, plain porridge for breakfast, and then a day of back-breaking work weeding and digging in the garden.”

  “Yes, and Mary had such strict standards,” said her friend, shaking her head.

  “I remember being at the nursery once when Pete Sykes was doing some work for her and she made him dig up all forty bulbs that he had planted and start again, just because they weren’t evenly spaced enough for her liking.”

  “It’s no wonder the girl never wanted to stay home with a mother like that,” declared the first woman. Then, as if she suddenly remembered that Mary’s granddaughter was sitting at the same table, she flushed and glanced at Poppy, adding hastily, “But she was wonderful with plants. Mary grew the best plants I’d ever seen. So big and healthy… and blooming continuously.”

  “Yes,” her friend agreed. “Her hollyhocks were amazing. I don’t know how she did it. Over six feet tall, flowering the first year—and not a speck of rust on them, even though she never sprayed!”

  “So are you going to take over your grandmother’s nursery?” the first woman asked Poppy with a smile. “It’d be wonderful to be able to buy plants in Bunnington again, instead of having to drive out to one of those big garden centres.”

  “Er… Well, I…” Poppy felt like the whole room was looking at her expectantly, waiting for her answer. “I’m not sure,” she said at last, giving them an embarrassed smile. “I… er… I don’t think I’ve inherited my grandmother’s green fingers.”

  “Nonsense!” said the elderly lady who had spoken about her mother. “The Lancasters have always been fantastic with plants. It’s in their blood. You’ve been a city girl so far, haven’t you? Well, you just need to get out there in the garden and get your hands dirty. It’ll come to you. You’ll see.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  After lunch, Poppy dawdled in the village for a while, wandering down the high street and checking out the various shops and businesses. She’d hoped to pick up a few essentials for her extended stay (such as extra underwear!), but aside from the village post office shop and a little Co-op supermarket selling mostly fresh food and produce, the rest of the establishments seemed to cater more to tourists: there was an art gallery, an antique shop, a gift shop selling knick-knacks and souvenirs, another selling handmade soaps, creams, and lotions made from locally grown herbs, a small inn providing “bed and breakfast” services next to a larger hotel with a posh-looking restaurant, and an ancient mill that now doubled as the local tourist information centre.

  Poppy wandered back to Hollyhock Cottage at last and found the forensics team still combing the property. A young police constable had been posted at the gate to keep back the crowd of nosy villagers and tourists. She assumed that Suzanne was still in the cottage and was about to go up to the constable to announce herself, when she changed her mind and decided to take a stroll farther down the lane instead.

  As she walked beyond Hollyhock Cottage, Poppy realised that the lane was actually a cul-de-sac, with a dead end just a few hundred metres farther down from the cottage garden gate. She was also surprised to find that there was another house tucked beyond the cottage, just before the end of the cul-de-sac. It was a small, run-down affair, mostly hidden by an overgrown hedge.

  She went up to the hedge and stood on tiptoe to peer over the top. She saw a modest garden with a threadbare patch of grass and a few straggly bushes. Beyond that was an old house, with roof slates wanting repair and the walls needing painting. Who lives here? she wondered. As if in answer to her question, she heard an excited little bark, followed by the rumble of a man’s voice in admonishment. The sounds seemed to be coming from the back of the garden, on the side which shared the wall with her grandmother’s property.

  Curiosity gripped her. Poppy stretched up even more on the tips of her toes and strained to see, but that side of the garden was shaded by a row of trees growing alongside the stone wall and it was hard to make out anything in their dappled gloom. She lowered herself with a frustrated sigh, then brightened as she noticed a gap to her right, just where the hedge met the corner of the stone wall. She bent down to peer through the gap, leaning forwards and sticking her head and shoulders through the hedge to try and get a better view.

  As her eyes slowly acclimatised, she saw a familiar scruffy shape. It was the little black terrier she had seen fighting with the ginger tom on the first day. He seemed to be doing an odd little dance next to the stone wall, running backwards and forwards, panting excitedly and making bouncing movements—like a dog waiting excitedly outside a door for its owner. A moment later, to Poppy’s surprise, a figure emerged out of the wall. She blinked and rubbed her eyes. No, she hadn’t been imagining it. Where previously there had been just a dog, now there was a man standing next to him—an old man, with dishevelled clothes and unkempt grey hair.

  He was clutching a large object wrapped in heavy burlap and his movements were quick and furtive. As she watched, he said something to the dog, then hurried around the back of the house, out of sight, with the little terrier trotting after him. Poppy stared at the empty space where he had been. How had he emerged from the wall like that?

  Her curiosity really piqued now, she climbed through the gap in the hedge and straightened up on the other side. Keeping a wary eye on the back of the house, around which the old man had disappeared, she crept along the wall until she reached the place where she had seen him emerge. There, she discovered the reason behind his strange, sudden appearance: there was a large hole at the base of the wall, where one of the limestone slabs had crumbled away.

  She crouched down and looked through the opening: on the other side, a tall, bushy plant with long stalks bearing white domes of lace-like flowers was growing right in front of the hole, so that it would only be visible if you leaned sideways and looked behind the plant. Any casual passer-by would never know that the gap in the wall was there. Through the leafy stalks and the tangled foliage beyond, Poppy could just catch a glimpse of Hollyhock Cottage: the side of the greenhouse attached to the back of the house and part of the rear flowerbed, where the body had been found.

  The sound of voices came to her ears; one sounded familiar—she thought it might be Suzanne Whittaker—and the other was a woman’s voice she didn’t recognise. Poppy shifted slightly so that she could see better through the hole in the wall and caught sight of two figures standing beside the flowerbed. One was the detective inspector, the other a young woman with bleached blonde hair and the kind of figure that would have been described as “buxom” in the old days. T
heir voices carried clearly across the quiet of the garden and Poppy realised that Suzanne was questioning the young woman.

  “…an’ he said he’d be out late so not to wait up for him, so I said all right, but I’d leave a sandwich in the fridge, so he could have that if he came home an’ felt peckish. An’ that’s the last time I spoke to Pete.” The woman sniffed loudly and Poppy saw the flash of red nail varnish as she dabbed a tissue to her eyes.

  “Did he seem normal when you spoke to him, Mrs Sykes?”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “Well, did he sound agitated or angry or upset about anything?”

  Jenny Sykes shook her head. “No, he was jus’ like always.”

  “Did he say why he was going to be late?”

  She shrugged. “Jus’ said he had some stuff to finish up at the cottage.”

  “But Mary Lancaster is dead and, as far as I understand, the nursery has been shut for months now, ever since she’d taken ill, so what could he have been doing here?” Suzanne cast a disparaging glance at the overgrown landscape around her. “I doubt he was doing any garden maintenance.”

  “Um… he used to meet people here sometimes.”

  Suzanne raised her eyebrows. “People?”

  Jenny Sykes shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, you know, like customers.”

  “You mean, people coming to buy plants?” asked Suzanne incredulously.

  “No, not plants. For other stuff. You know, like… like tobacco and cigarettes and mobile phones and things…”

  Suzanne’s face hardened. “Ah… you mean, stolen goods and contraband.”

  “Pete didn’t steal them!” said Jenny. “He told me he jus’ had the chance to get things for cheap sometimes, an’ he liked to pass the saving on to locals who deserved it.”

  Suzanne’s expression made it clear what she thought of this story, but she didn’t comment. Instead, she said, “So do you know who Pete was meeting the night before last?”

  Jenny shook her head. “No, he never told me much ’bout his customers.”

  Suzanne asked casually, “And you, Mrs Sykes, where were you that night?”

  Jenny stiffened. “I… I was at home, watching the telly.”

  “The entire night? You didn’t go out?”

  “Yeah. I mean, no, I didn’t.”

  “Is there anyone who can confirm that?”

  Jenny shifted her weight. “Uh… not really. I was jus’ at home, by myself.”

  Suzanne considered her in silence for a moment, then said, “It’s strange that you didn’t raise the alarm when Pete didn’t come home yesterday morning. Even if you’d gone to bed first, you must have noticed in the morning that the sandwich you’d left him was untouched. Weren’t you worried?”

  Jenny shrugged. “He’s done it before: gone out all night an’ not come home till suppertime the next day. Sometimes he crashes here at the cottage instead of bothering to come home, especially if he’d had a pint or two at the pub… I jus’ thought he was doing the same thing again. It wasn’t till last night, when he didn’t come home again—an’ I hadn’t heard from him all day—that I started to wonder…”

  “And yet you still didn’t call the police,” Suzanne said.

  “I… I wasn’t sure if… I mean, maybe Pete was jus’ tied up with something an’ he wouldn’t have been happy if I made a fuss… you know, bothered the police an’ all that…”

  “In other words, he might have been involved in a shady deal and wouldn’t have thanked you bringing for him onto the police radar.”

  Jenny just shrugged again and said nothing. There was a long silence, then Suzanne said at last, her voice brisk and business-like:

  “Well, thank you for coming to ID the body, Mrs Sykes. I may have some more questions for you… You’re not planning to leave the area, are you? Good. I’ll be in touch. Now, one of my constables will see you home. Perhaps while he’s there, he can go in and have a look at Pete’s…”

  Suzanne’s voice faded as the two women turned and retreated into the cottage. Poppy leaned through the gap, trying to catch the last of Suzanne’s words, then froze as she heard the crunch of footsteps in the undergrowth behind her.

  A quavering voice growled: “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Poppy whirled around. She found herself facing the old man she’d seen earlier. She gasped as she saw the sinister-looking black rifle he held in his hands.

  “I… I… my name’s Poppy… I just… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to trespass… I happened to see… um… and I wondered how you… anyway, don’t worry, I won’t tell the police that you were sneaking in… not that I’m suggesting you were doing anything underhand… ah-hahaha—” she babbled, “—right, I’m sure you’ve got things you want to get back to so… um… I’ll just go back the way I came…” She started to edge sideways but jerked to a stop again as the old man waved the rifle.

  “Don’t move!” he cried.

  “Okay! Okay!” gasped Poppy, flinging her hands up in the traditional gesture of surrender. “Just don’t shoot me!”

  “Eh?” The old man looked at her quizzically, then his gaze dropped to his hands and his face brightened. “Ohhh… This isn’t a gun—it’s my Loo Blaster!”

  “Your Loo what?”

  “Loo Blaster. I was just testing it out…” said the old man, thrusting the rifle towards her. Poppy flinched, then slowly relaxed as she eyed the gun. On closer inspection, she realised that the barrel was wider than normal and there was a bushy toilet brush protruding from the muzzle.

  “It’s my latest invention,” said the old man proudly. “It’s a rifle with ejectable toilet brush heads—see? So you can dispose of the brush each time, after you clean the loo, and load a fresh one for next time.” He leaned forwards earnestly. “Do you know how much bacteria resides in the average toilet brush? It’s absolutely filthy! All those bristles, clogged up with urine and faecal matter… just the perfect breeding ground for bacteria and other nasties!” He waved the rifle wildly. “Aha… but never fear, now we have a new weapon in the lavatorial battle! This will revolutionise toilet hygiene—look, I designed all the details myself. It has a telescopic sight for precision aim in the toilet bowl and a one-piece trigger lock mechanism—finely tuned, of course, so that the pull will fit a variety of hand sizes—and an easy way to clamp in the toilet brush. You can even do it one-handed,” he said, beaming.

  Poppy stared at him, wondering if she was having a hallucination.

  “Um… right…” she said. “Er… well, if you’re not going to shoot me, why did you tell me not to move?”

  “Oh! Because you were going to step right into some stinging nettles,” said the old man, pointing to the ground next to her.

  Poppy looked down and realised that he was right: she was standing next to a big clump of leafy stalks, each covered in prickly hairs. Hastily, she took a step back and gratefully accepted the old man’s hand as he helped her out of the overgrown tangle beside the stone wall.

  “Nasty things, those plants—although I have to say, they can have their uses. They’ve been used since ancient times, for medicine and food, did you know that? And their fibre can be spun to make clothes—hmm, I’ve been thinking about experimenting with that…” He held up his forefinger excitedly. “Maybe a fabric where the stinging needles haven’t been removed! It would make a marvellous protective bodysuit, don’t you think?”

  Poppy looked at the strange old man beside her, with his twinkling eyes and infectious grin, and couldn’t help liking him. He seemed completely mad, but harmless with it, and when he invited her back to his house for a cup of tea, she found herself accepting.

  The inside of the house was in shambles, with strange contraptions in every corner and laboratory equipment littered all over the kitchen counter, dining table, and every other available surface. The little terrier rushed over to meet them as soon as they stepped in, his suspicious growl and raised hackles transforming
into excited whines and a wagging tail as he recognised Poppy. He jumped up and danced around on his hind legs, waving his front paws in the air and making her laugh.

  “That’s enough, Einstein… You show the nice young lady your manners now,” said the old man.

  “Ruff!” the dog replied and trotted over to Poppy, sitting obediently in front of her.

  “I think I met Einstein yesterday morning,” said Poppy with a smile as she crouched down to pat the terrier. “He was in the cottage garden next door, having an argument with a big ginger tom. He disappeared all of a sudden and I couldn’t work out where he had gone to. Now I know—he must have used that gap in the wall as his personal doggie door to come back here.”

  “Ah yes, Einstein can be very naughty like that. Always running off and getting into places he shouldn’t.” He looked vaguely around. “Now… where did I put the teapot…?”

  Poppy glanced up and spotted a teapot balanced precariously on top of a test tube rack, next to a glass flask in which some bright pink liquid was bubbling ominously. “Er… is that it?”

  The old man turned to look and smiled in delight. “Oh yes, that’s right—I was using it this morning to brew some explosive washing-up liquid. It’s a special blend I’m developing. Don’t worry…” he said at Poppy’s look of alarm. “I’ll rinse it out thoroughly. Now, what would you like to have, dear? I have English breakfast tea, peppermint tea, curry leaf tea, broccoli tea… and there’s still a bit of mushroom tea left, I think—”

  “Just normal English breakfast tea would be great,” said Poppy hastily.