Dead Heading

by Catherine Aird

  ‘Where did you say Capstan Purlieu Plants were, sir?’ Detective Constable Crosby had asked Sloan while they were on their way.

  ‘Keep going,’ commanded Sloan tersely, his eyes glued to a large scale map of East Calleshire. He couldn’t see the police car’s sat-nav from the passenger seat and wasn’t sure if Crosby bothered to listen to it. ‘In about half a mile you should come to a little bridge over a stream and then you follow the right-hand lane until you get to the nursery.’

  ‘Only if we don’t meet anything coming the other way,’ muttered Crosby. Single-track roads seriously cramped his driving style. ‘I don’t know how their customers ever find them.’

  Lurking somewhere at the back of Sloan’s mind was a saying that if you built a better mousetrap the world would beat a path to your door. Instead he pointed out that if someone had damaged the greenhouse at Capstan Purlieu then they at least had found their way there to do it. ‘In the dark, too, probably,’ he said.

  ‘No one out here to see you in daylight,’ countered Crosby, ‘except sheep.’

  ‘Where there’s sheep there’s a shepherd,’ said Sloan, less bothered by the high hedges and narrow lanes of deepest Calleshire than the constable. ‘Ah, I see a sign.’

  A hand-painted wooden board rested on the road verge propped up against a tree. There was an arrow pointing ahead and the words ‘Capstan Purlieu Plants’ painted beside it in freehand. As the police car drew up in front of the nursery two women emerged from a cottage nearby to greet them. Crosby muttered ‘Dr Livingstone and Mr Stanley, I presume,’ but under his breath.

  ‘Anna Sutherland,’ said a tall, rather gaunt figure with her hair severely scraped back into a bun.

  ‘Marilyn Potts,’ said a shorter, plumper woman, standing slightly behind her, curly hair flopping about just above her shoulders. Both were dressed in workman-like trousers and grubby shirts.

  ‘I hear you’ve had some trouble out here, ladies,’ began Sloan formally.

  ‘If by trouble you mean that we’ve lost half our livelihood for the foreseeable future,’ said Anna Sutherland tautly, ‘then yes, we’ve had trouble.’

  ‘That’s one way of describing the loss of a greenhouse full of valuable orchids,’ supplemented Marilyn Potts, tears beginning to well up in her eyes.

  ‘Trouble in spades then,’ muttered Crosby, pleased with the gardening metaphor.

  ‘Trouble with damage to some plants, I believe,’ soldiered on Sloan, ignoring him.

  ‘Trouble with all the young orchids growing in our greenhouse,’ said Marilyn Potts more precisely. She led the way to their greenhouse and pointed. ‘As you can see for yourselves, every single one of them is dead.’

  ‘Big trouble,’ concluded Crosby, surveying the scene.

  ‘Someone opened the greenhouse door last night …’ began Marilyn.

  ‘And left it open,’ said Anna Sutherland.

  ‘And then the frost got at them.’ The tears in Marilyn Potts’ eyes looked perilously near to streaming out as she fondled the remains of what had once been a living plant. She sniffed and the tears receded a little.

  ‘Some person or persons unknown,’ contributed Anna Sutherland, echoing, had she known it, Sloan’s earlier sentiment. ‘In other words, Inspector,’ she said with emphasis, ‘not either of us.’

  ‘Definitely not either of us,’ said Marilyn Potts, still sniffing. ‘We would never have done a thing like that. Not in a hundred years.’

  ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, although experienced policeman that he was, he was not sure of anything at this stage. It was too early to say. He scanned the greenhouse. ‘Do you happen to have a thermostat in here to warn you of frost?’

  ‘Too expensive,’ said Anna Sutherland.

  Marilyn Potts waved a hand towards the land at the side of their cottage. ‘The hardy plants out there are all right. I’ve checked that nothing’s happened to them.’

  ‘Yet,’ said her friend mordantly.

  Detective Inspector Sloan took out his notebook and got down to business: police business. ‘Can you quantify your loss?’

  ‘A year’s work,’ said Marilyn Potts tremulously.

  ‘That’s if you don’t count anything we may have to pay out to get going again,’ said Anna Sutherland. ‘Such as restocking.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Sloan, ‘do either of you have any thoughts on who might have left your greenhouse door open?’

  ‘Caused criminal damage you mean,’ said Anna Sutherland trenchantly.

  ‘The perpetrator,’ suggested Detective Crosby helpfully. It was word that had cropped up in his training that he didn’t often have a chance to use.

  There was an awkward little silence which Sloan, experienced policeman that he was, did nothing to break. After a moment or two Marilyn Potts said with almost palpable reluctance, ‘It might just have been Norman.’

  ‘Norman?’ he said.

  ‘My husband – my former husband – that is. Norman Potts.’ She gave another little sniff and said, ‘We parted brass rags.’

  ‘Big time,’ contributed Anna Sutherland.

  ‘He wasn’t happy about splitting the money after the divorce, you see,’ explained Norman’s former wife. ‘He thought he should have had more of the final settlement than he did.’

  Anna Sutherland gave a little snort. ‘Wanted to reduce Marilyn to total penury, I expect.’

  This, Detective Inspector Sloan, happily married man, knew all too well was quite often the main object of some ex-husbands and often more important to them than securing funds for themselves. He had no doubt that a forensic psychiatrist could explain this – but then, as anyone who had ever sat in a court of law could tell you – forensic psychiatrists could always explain everything.

  ‘So that I would come crawling back, I suppose,’ said Marilyn Potts. She gave a defiant shake of her head. ‘But I’m not going to do that even if I starve.’

  ‘Where does he live?’ asked Detective Constable Crosby militantly.

  ‘He used to live in Almstone when we were together but where he is now, I couldn’t say for sure,’ said Marilyn distantly. ‘I don’t know exactly where but I had heard it was over in Berebury near to a pub called The Railway Tavern.’

  ‘That figures,’ murmured Anna Sutherland enigmatically, turning to shift a large crate of plants to one side. She lifted this with great ease.

  Detective Inspector Sloan made a note and asked, ‘Would he have known Jack Haines’ nursery over at Pelling by any chance?’

  ‘I’ll say, Inspector, very well indeed,’ she said without hesitation. ‘In fact, I know Norman went there when he was first trying to find me. I guess he thought I might be back there working for Jack at the time because he knew I was fond of orchids and Jack grows them too.’

  ‘At least Jack Haines had the grace to warn her that Norman had been over to him at Pelling to ask him if he knew where Marilyn was,’ interposed Anna Sutherland, hefting another crate and putting it on the staging. ‘That was something.’

  ‘But Jack Haines didn’t tell him where you were, I hope,’ said Detective Constable Crosby involuntarily. In his capacity as a young police officer he had abruptly been exposed to the world of domestic violence and, still a bachelor himself, he hadn’t liked what he had seen of it.

  Marilyn Potts gave a wan smile. ‘No, not Jack Haines. He would never have done a thing like that, I’m sure.’

  ‘Get real, Marilyn,’ said Anna Sutherland. ‘Norman could easily have found out where you were all the same. He might be a right menace but he isn’t stupid.’

  ‘There are always ways and means of finding someone,’ contributed Crosby obscurely, a policeman only just beginning to find out about some of the sticky slug-like trails left by human beings on the surface of the planet.

  Detective Inspector Sloan, who had been considering writing his report under the heading of ‘Criminal Damage’, decided that this remit might not be quite wide enough. ‘Harassment’ mi
ght well come into it as well: it was still too soon to say. He made a note of the fact that Norman Potts knew Jack Haines too. Two greenhouses of frosted orchids couldn’t be a coincidence. Not on the same night.

  Anna Sutherland said, ‘There’s no hiding place good enough for a battered wife these days.’

  Sloan was a methodical man and so he ignored this and dutifully carried on. ‘Is there anyone else whom you may have reason to believe bears either of you any ill-will?’

  ‘You mean except Norman?’ asked Norman’s former wife.

  ‘I do,’ said Sloan, quite relaxed. Norman Potts might or might not be able to find Marilyn Potts but he had no doubt at all that, should they want to, the police could find the aforementioned Norman quite quickly.

  ‘Not that we know of,’ Anna Sutherland answered his question sturdily. ‘Either of us.’

  All that Detective Inspector Sloan knew was that that reply wasn’t going to be good enough for Police Superintendent Leeyes. The superintendent’s default setting was a toxic mixture of disbelief and irascibility.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Anthony Berra’s approach to his clients, the Lingards at Pelling Grange, was a sophisticated blend of regret and optimism. Fortunately it had been Oswald Lingard who had answered his ring at the front door.

  ‘I thought I’d better come over as soon as I could, Major,’ said the landscape designer, ‘because I must warn you that there’s been a bit of a problem with the plants that were being brought on for the new Mediterranean garden.’ Berra hastened to explain about the open doors of the greenhouses at the nursery.

  ‘Sabotage, do you think?’ asked the major. His wife had wrought many changes at Pelling Grange but even she hadn’t managed to prise Oswald Lingard out of his old tweed jacket. Patches of leather guarded the elbows but there had been nothing stopping the cuffs from fraying at the edges. ‘Wilful damage and all that?’

  ‘Could be,’ admitted Anthony Berra, twisting his lips wryly. ‘Too soon to say.’

  ‘Lot of it about these days, you know, old chap. My apples are always getting stolen. Last year the blighters even pinched half my strawberries.’

  ‘I think it’s most likely to be someone with a grudge against Jack Haines,’ replied Anthony Berra. He decided against going on to suggest that the strawberry thieves were more likely to have been of an avian rather than human nature.

  He himself was dressed rather more carefully than his client although not much better. He didn’t suppose for a moment that Oswald Lingard would notice – let alone care – how he, Anthony Berra, dressed but Charmian Lingard certainly would. It was part of the landscape designer’s credo that people with money always knew about clothes and of necessity he tried to work with people who had money – hopefully quite a lot of it – so he always paid attention to what he wore and when.

  ‘All of Jack Haines’ staff, Major,’ he said, ‘are pretty certain that the gates to the nursery were properly locked up last night but you never can tell.’

  ‘And employees being what they are they’re not going to tell anyone if it wasn’t,’ concluded Lingard realistically, his time in the Army having left its mark on him in more ways than one. ‘So where does this leave us, Berra? My wife will be coming back any minute now and she’s sure to want to know.’

  ‘I do have a plan …’ began Berra.

  Oswald Lingard wasn’t listening. ‘The restoration of the old garden here at the Grange means a lot to Charmian, you know. Very keen on it and all that.’

  ‘At least the medieval herb garden is working well,’ put in Berra. ‘That’s coming along nicely.’

  ‘And then there’s this big shindig she’s planning. A lot of people’ll be coming to that.’ Lingard hunched his shoulders and gave a little chuckle. ‘Bound to be. They’ll all want to see what she’s making of the place. And me.’

  ‘Naturally,’ agreed Anthony Berra smoothly, omitting any mention of the effect on the garden of his own work. Clients always wanted to think the good ideas had been their own. It was something he encouraged.

  ‘After all,’ went on the major reflectively, ‘this garden has been pretty nearly derelict since before my great-grandfather’s day. It was all right up until then, of course. Gardeners were two a penny until 1914.’

  ‘One man to the acre then,’ said the landscape designer. ‘Those were the days.’

  ‘We had four of them here until the Kaiser’s war.’ Lingard tapped his knee. ‘And I couldn’t do a darn thing myself when I got home – this bit of me hasn’t been right since Helmand.’

  ‘Oh, I understand that all right, Major,’ responded Berra without hesitation, ‘and as I say I’ve been giving that Mediterranean garden quite a lot of thought since Haines rang me. You remember that statue that Mrs Lingard brought home from Italy …’

  ‘I thought she told you to call her Charmian?’ interrupted Oswald Lingard.

  ‘So she did,’ murmured Berra. ‘Now about the statue …’ There had been no suggestion, though, that he called the major ‘Oswald’.

  ‘Rather jolly, I thought it,’ said Lingard simply. ‘I know you yourself weren’t very taken with it at the time, though.’

  ‘It was just that I had trouble fitting it into my original design,’ said Berra with perfect truth, the statue in question being of over-generous proportions and doubtful workmanship, ‘but I’ve been thinking that now we’re going to be without the plants that I’d planned to put in there, it could go in the bed to good effect. I’d got the ground all prepared in any case while you were away in Italy.’

  Oswald Lingard gave a grunt. ‘I’m sure that Charmian’ll be pleased to have Flora, Goddess of something or other …’

  ‘Bounty,’ supplied Berra, ‘bountiful’ describing the statue’s ample lines very well. ‘And Jack Haines should be able to whistle up something colourful in the way of summer plants to fill the ground for this year and then next year we can put in the ones I had originally planned.’

  ‘So it’ll still look all right for the garden party, then?’ The major sounded anxious. ‘Charmian has set her heart on that being a success.’

  ‘It will indeed, I promise you.’ Berra gave what he hoped was a winning smile. ‘Then, as I say, next year we can go for what I had organised in the first place.’

  ‘You chaps will keep on talking about next year,’ complained the major. ‘You’re as bad as that woman who was always saying that you should have come to see the garden last week when it was at its best or waited until next week when it would be even better.’

  ‘Ruth Draper,’ said Anthony Berra, who had heard this many times before.

  It was at this juncture that Charmian Lingard swept in, a copybook picture of a lady gardener as found in the best fashion magazines: straw hat artfully tied on with a colourful scarf, elegant dress unsullied by soil and shoes that had never left the garden paths. She had that untroubled appearance of well-being only accomplished by a life totally untouched by money or any other worries. This was underlined by a chocolate-box complexion, designer clothes and excellent grooming.

  ‘Did I hear Ruth Draper’s name?’ she said as she came in. She was carrying a wooden trug on which reposed a sheaf of greenery already half arranged for vases in the house. ‘I’m not interested in last week or next week, Anthony. You know that. It’s this week I want the garden right for. And every week, too, of course, but especially for the party.’

  Berra smiled dutifully. ‘And so it shall be, Charmian.’

  She frowned. ‘What are you doing here, anyway, Anthony? I thought you were going to be over at the admiral’s today.’

  ‘I’m going there as soon as I can.’ He told her what had happened over at Jack Haines’ nursery, spelling out the loss of the plants he had had grown there.

  Charmian Lingard took this in her stride, difficulties always having been obstacles somebody else ironed out. ‘Your problem, Anthony, not mine, but don’t forget I’ll be inviting your future in-laws and they’ll be bound to want to se
e what you’ve done here.’

  Anthony Berra was engaged to be married to the daughter of the Bishop of Calleshire. ‘I know they will,’ he said ruefully. ‘But you’ll be pleased that now I think we could fit Flora herself in the new garden after all …’

  ‘I knew you’d come round to that in the end,’ she said complacently, dumping the trug on the hall table. ‘She’ll look just right there with the peacocks on the wall behind her.’

  Oswald Lingard grinned. ‘I’m not sure what the old monks would have thought of her though, Berra, are you?’ Pelling Grange had once been attached to a monastery despoiled by Henry VIII and occasional traces of the outline of the original garden had surfaced from time to time while the landscape designer had been at work. ‘Or the Bishop.’

  Berra smiled politely and pressed on.

  ‘And I’ll put some strongly coloured plants in the bed round her as a temporary measure for this year. I think a really good Centranthus ruber would look quite well against the grey of the sculpture …’

  Charmian Lingard led the way into the drawing-room. ‘Why not roses?’ she asked as Anthony Berra had known she would.

  ‘… and Cheiranthus cherie with deep red flowers and grey foliage. The one called “Blood Red” …’

  ‘Why don’t you people ever like roses?’ persisted Charmian Lingard.

  ‘Black spot.’ Berra swept on persuasively, ‘And there’s a really striking Centaurea dealbata I’d like to try there. It’s got deep pink flowers and a lightish green leaf.’

  ‘I think roses would look even better,’ said Charmian Lingard, a touch of steel creeping into her voice.

  Anthony Berra, recognising this, gave in gracefully. ‘Then, Charmian, I’ll try some roses but they won’t like the lime in the soil. We should go for varieties with good colours all the same, to lighten the stone of the statue. Now, I’ll just need to take some measurements of Flora before I go so that we can get the dimensions of her plinth in proper proportion …’