Dead Heading

by Catherine Aird

  The nurseryman gave him an indulgent smile. ‘Weekend gardeners get a lot of back problems. They’re not used to stoop labour.’

  ‘Too right,’ agreed Feakins fervently.

  ‘Now your father, he had everything at the right height with his cacti.’

  ‘His cacti are what I wanted to ask you about, Jack.’

  ‘Don’t overwater,’ said Jack Haines immediately. ‘A great mistake.’

  ‘It’s not that. It’s that I – we – were wondering if you’d take them back in part exchange for my order. Mary doesn’t like them and neither do I.’

  The deliberate pause that followed was part of the commercial interplay that was innate in the nurseryman. ‘I might,’ Haines said slowly. ‘What’s the problem?’

  Benedict Feakins flushed. ‘You see I may have to keep you waiting for a bit before I can pay you for all the plants I ordered. It’s lovely having Dad’s house but the upkeep’s proving a bit more than I bargained for and with a baby on the way …’

  ‘I get you,’ said Haines. ‘Tell you what – you bring your dad’s cacti in and I’ll have a look at them for you.’

  ‘Great. It would be good to get rid of them. To a good home, of course,’ he added hastily lest Jack Haines happened to be as fond of them as his father had been.

  The nurseryman looked at Benedict Feakins and grinned. ‘You’re not a chip off the old block, then …’

  To Jack Haines’ surprise Benedict Feakins stiffened, his face turning a pasty shade of white. ‘No harm in a man’s not liking cacti, is there?’ he said dully.

  ‘None,’ said Haines hastily. ‘It’s just that your dad was so keen on them, that’s all, and you don’t seem to be.’

  ‘I can’t imagine that it’s an inherited characteristic,’ Benedict Feakins said stiffly.

  ‘My father couldn’t stand lilies,’ volunteered Haines at once, ‘and I love them. That right, Mandy, isn’t it?’

  ‘You do, it’s only the cat that doesn’t,’ said Mandy Lamb tactfully. ‘They’re dangerous to cats, lilies. They really upset them.’

  ‘Well, cacti really upset me as much as lilies do cats,’ said Benedict Feakins more firmly. ‘See what you can do about them, Jack, there’s a good chap. There must be somebody out there who loves them more than I do.’

  It was to the Park at Pelling that Anthony Berra headed when he left Jack Haines’ nursery. He was going to see another client who had lost plants – Admiral Waldo Catterick this time. As he steered his car through the decaying entrance gates, he cast a professional eye over the grounds. This was a very different garden from that of Oswald and Charmian Lingard at the Grange. Theirs had once been monastic; this garden was that of a small manor with eighteenth-century grandeur superimposed on its original layout.

  It had always seemed to him that whoever had lived here in the Park’s glory days had not so much been anxious to keep up with the Joneses as having been making it quite clear that they considered themselves to be the top dogs of the neighbourhood themselves. It still showed in the ghosts of a parterre and carefully sited trees cleverly leading the eye towards a distant perspective. An old pergola, one side hornbeam, one side pleached lime, led to a sunken garden, all very overgrown.

  Whoever the grandees of the past had been, they had long gone and only old Admiral Waldo Catterick lived here now. Elderly and arthritic, his horticultural demands were very different from those of the ambitious Charmian Lingard. The landscape designer was prepared to bet that the admiral never even got as far as the sunken garden these days.

  Fortunately the house had escaped the worst excesses of the Baroque epoch and it sat squarely as it had always done in a sheltered fold in the land. Anthony Berra metaphorically shrugged his shoulders, only too aware that while a neglected house will stand for years, a neglected garden less than a decade. The admiral wasn’t going to last for a decade. No way. Not now. Idly, he wondered who would live there when the old boy had gone and whether they would take an interest in the garden then. A widower for years, the man had no children that Berra knew of although he had heard that there had been a baby who had died.

  He brought his car to a stop outside the front door and apologised for being later than he had planned, explaining that he had had to see someone else first. ‘Did you get my message that I was very busy, Admiral? And would get here as soon as I could?’

  ‘Signal received,’ said the admiral, adding genially, ‘You can’t make headway in a heavy sea, my boy. I know that.’ Elderly and arthritic the old sailor might be but he was still spritely.

  ‘I’m afraid there was a bit of problem over at Jack Haines’ nursery overnight,’ began Berra, coughing. ‘I’ve just been there to see the damage.’

  The admiral regarded him with a pair of bright blue eyes. ‘A bit of a problem, eh? That’s what they said about the battle of Jutland too. Afterwards, of course.’

  ‘Vandalism,’ said Berra, who didn’t know what he was talking about.

  ‘Worse things happen at sea,’ said the old sailor philosophically.

  ‘I’m sure, but it’s a confounded nuisance all the same,’ said Berra. ‘All those exotic plants I’d got lined up for you are thoroughly frosted and quite useless now. The shrubs are all right, though.’ He coughed again.

  ‘What you need for that cough, Berra, is to go sea. Take it from me, a dose of sea air clears the tubes.’

  ‘Haven’t time,’ he said. ‘Not in the spring.’

  The admiral said, ‘And I didn’t waste my time while I was waiting for you.’

  ‘No?’ asked Berra warily. He and his client had very different views on what should happen in the garden at the Park.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about scrapping those shrubs you got Haines to put by for me.’

  Anthony Berra sighed. ‘They’re really very labour-saving, Admiral, and we did agree that low maintenance was what was needed here at the Park these days.’

  ‘Can’t wait for shrubs to settle in at my time of life,’ he said with a touch of his quarter-deck manner of old. ‘I’ll be dead before they come into flower.’

  ‘But, Admiral …’

  ‘So I’m going to get you to order an extra load of bedding plants which I can enjoy from my sitting-room window this summer.’

  Anthony Berra sighed again. ‘You haven’t been taking advice from Miss Osgathorp, have you? It’s the sort of thing she would say. She might know about orchids but she doesn’t know all her gardening onions.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said the old man crisply. ‘That woman’s a downright menace.’

  ‘In what way?’ asked Berra curiously.

  ‘Always poking her nose into matters that are no concern of hers,’ said the admiral stiffly.

  ‘I thought all old ladies were like that,’ said Anthony Berra lightly. ‘Especially the unmarried ones.’

  ‘Doesn’t understand the meaning of the Hippocratic Oath, either,’ pronounced the admiral robustly.

  Berra protested. ‘But she wasn’t the doctor.’

  ‘More’s the pity.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Then I could have sued her.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘Dereliction of duty,’ said the old man, sometime martinet.

  Anthony Berra stared at him, wide-eyed, but the admiral said nothing more.

  The two women who comprised Capstan Purlieu Plants’ total workforce could not have been more different in temperament as well as in appearance. Anna Sutherland, spare and sturdy, was the total opposite of the shorter, chubbier Marilyn Potts. She was also clear-sighted and uncompromising. Marilyn Potts on the other hand seemed capable of confusing any issue to the point of complete incomprehensibility to herself and everyone else.

  Except Anna.

  ‘It’s no good your hanging about here, Marilyn, mooning over every single one of your dead plants,’ said Anna Sutherland implacably. ‘You’ve got to go over and collect those orchids from Jack Haines whether you like it not.’


  ‘I don’t like it,’ said Marilyn Potts mulishly.

  ‘There’s no sentiment in business. You should know that by now. You need those orchids for your demonstration tomorrow night and,’ she added grimly, ‘we need your fee for speaking. You’ve been told by the Society’s secretary exactly where Enid Osgathorp had arranged for the orchids to be ready for her talk and all you’ve got to do now is go over to Pelling and collect them.’

  ‘But from Jack Haines,’ she protested weakly.

  ‘He can’t eat you,’ said Anna.

  ‘I don’t know what Norman might have said to him when he went there looking for me.’

  ‘What Norman might have said about you to Jack Haines or anyone else doesn’t matter any more,’ said Anna. ‘Never did anyway,’ she added under her breath.

  ‘Norman used to say such nice things to me once upon a time,’ said Marilyn, now near to tears again.

  ‘Once upon a time is how all fairy tales begin,’ said Anna Sutherland tartly. ‘They usually end differently.’

  ‘And now I suppose all his sweet nothings are like all my orchids. Dead and dying, the lot of them. Frosted.’

  ‘The brothers Grimm didn’t write much about flowers in their fairy tales,’ Anna reminded her. ‘Just Jack and the Beanstalk.’

  ‘That was written by someone else,’ objected Marilyn.

  ‘I don’t care who it was written by,’ retorted Anna, ‘you’ve still got to get yourself over to Jack Haines’ place and pick up those orchids before tomorrow night.’

  ‘He doesn’t know yet that I’m standing in for old Enid.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to tell him, won’t you?’

  ‘Shall I ring him and let him know it’s me who’s going to be picking them up so that he can get them ready? And then I shan’t have to hang around his place.’

  Anna Sutherland gave an unladylike snort. ‘Those orchids will be all ready and waiting for you when you get there, Marilyn, don’t you worry. Enid would have had his guts for garters if they weren’t and he knows she would – just as well as we do. I expect he’s as frightened of her as everyone else.’

  ‘Except you, Anna,’ said Marilyn Potts, ‘except you.’ She looked up and caught a curious look on her friend’s face. ‘You’re not afraid of anyone, are you?’

  Anna’s face relaxed. ‘Not of anything in trousers, anyway.’

  ‘Just as well,’ said her friend drily, ‘because there’s one of them coming up the path now.’

  Anna Sutherland looked over Marilyn’s shoulder at the approaching figure. ‘I wonder what our Anthony wants today?’

  ‘Plants, I hope, and plenty of them,’ said Marilyn vigorously.

  It was indeed plants that the landscape designer was after. Anthony Berra arrived waving a list. ‘Just checking if you’ve got any of these,’ he said after punctiliously greeting them both.

  ‘Not if they’re orchids,’ said Marilyn bitterly. ‘We’ve lost the lot.’

  ‘Not you too?’ Berra launched into a graphic description of Jack Haines’ losses.

  ‘How very odd,’ said Anna Sutherland. She frowned. ‘Has some nutter got something against orchids, I wonder? Or him and us, perhaps?’

  Marilyn Potts stayed silent while Berra went on, ‘It also means I’ve lost all the plants Jack was growing for me for the Lingards as well.’ The landscape designer grimaced. ‘And you know what Charmian Lingard’s like.’

  ‘More money than sense, that woman,’ pronounced Anna.

  ‘Thinks money will buy anything,’ chimed in Marilyn. She sniffed. ‘Well, all I can say is that she hasn’t lived long enough yet to learn that it won’t.’

  The sniffing became more pronounced and with tears welling up in Marilyn’s eyes, Anthony Berra hurled himself into the conversation. ‘Well, it seems that it’s bad luck all round then.’

  ‘Perhaps it isn’t just bad luck,’ said Anna Sutherland slowly.

  ‘Well, it certainly isn’t a coincidence,’ agreed Berra. ‘It can’t be. Not two nurseries of orchids in one night. It makes you wonder what it could be that you and Jack have in common – besides growing orchids, that is.’

  ‘Norman Potts,’ said Norman’s erstwhile wife, taking a deep breath. ‘That’s what.’

  ‘Of course, Jack’s stepson!’ he whistled. ‘I’d never thought of him,’ he confessed. ‘Ought to have done, I suppose, seeing he used to live and work there when Jack’s wife was alive.’

  ‘My once-upon-a-time husband,’ responded Marilyn, whose mind seemed still bound up with fairy tales.

  ‘But why should he or anyone else want to attack orchids?’ asked Berra, looking mystified. ‘I can’t imagine any reason myself but then I’m not a psychologist.’

  ‘If you ask me,’ said Anna, ‘reason doesn’t come into it.’

  ‘Is he pathological about them or something, then?’

  ‘The only thing Norman Potts is pathological about is Marilyn here,’ declared Anna Sutherland astringently.

  ‘What about Jack Haines then?’ asked Berra, still puzzled. ‘Norman can’t be pathological about Jack’s orchids too, surely?’

  ‘Can’t he just?’ said Anna. ‘He always was anti-Jack after Jack married Norman’s mother and he hasn’t changed that I know of.’

  ‘All I know is that Norman went over to Pelling a week or so back to see Jack Haines,’ said Marilyn Potts. ‘To try to find out where I lived.’

  ‘It sounds as if he might have succeeded,’ observed Anthony Berra, ‘if he’s the one who’s dished your orchids. And Jack’s.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t tried to find him,’ added Marilyn acidly. ‘I’d be quite happy if I never set eyes on him ever again.’

  ‘Are you likely to?’ asked Berra. ‘I mean, is he local these days?’

  ‘Last heard of living in Berebury,’ she said, ‘somewhere near a pub called The Railway Tavern.’

  ‘Living off his ill-gotten gains, I daresay,’ observed Anna Sutherland.

  ‘She means half of our worldly possessions,’ explained Marilyn. ‘His and mine.’

  ‘Immoral earnings,’ said her friend Anna Sutherland trenchantly.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ murmured Anthony, a little embarrassed. He started to hand over the list of plants he had brought with him.

  Anna plucked it from his fingers and scanned it quickly. ‘Cercis canadensis – yes, we’ve got that; Photinia Red Robin – yes; Cotinus Royal Purple – lots of that; Lonicera etrusca – sorry sold out …’

  ‘You got a customer on lime soil, then, Anthony?’ said Marilyn.

  ‘Too right, I have,’ said Anthony Berra.

  ‘We can’t do you any magic potion for neutralising it. You’ll have to go to Jack Haines or Bob Steele for that,’ put in Marilyn, grinning.

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said good-humouredly. ‘What you’re saying is that Capstan Purlieu is a nursery not a plant centre. I haven’t forgotten. Now, what about a good Abutilon, Anna?’

  ‘We’ve got plenty. Take your pick. We’ve got a good line in lilies if you’re interested?’

  He wrinkled his nose. ‘I don’t like the scent much.’

  ‘Remove the stamen, remove the smell,’ said Anna wryly. ‘I see you want a Cornus controversa Variegata too.’

  ‘That’s the Wedding Cake Tree …’ began Marilyn, looking again as if she was about to cry.

  ‘I hear you’re getting married soon, Anthony,’ Anna Sutherland interrupted her hastily.

  He nodded. ‘In the autumn. In the Minster over at Calleford by the bride’s father.’

  Anna, looking solemn, said, ‘Don’t let the girl have any Aegopodium podagraria in her bouquet or you’ll never hear the last of it.’

  ‘Anna,’ said Anthony, throwing up his hands, ‘you’ve got me there. Explain.’

  ‘Bishop’s weed,’ cackled Anna.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was at much the same time that morning when the solicitor Simon Puckle welcomed Benedict and Mary Feakins to his office in Berebury. T
hat the solicitor was sitting behind a desk as he did so and not in an easy chair alongside his clients or even sitting beside them at a round table was thought by the junior members of the firm of Puckle, Puckle and Nunnery, solicitors, to be old-fashioned – even perhaps the making of a statement. That the desk had once belonged to Simon’s grandfather only contributed to this image of antiquity.

  At this moment, though, Simon Puckle was more concerned about Benedict Feakins’ bad back than worrying about his own self-image.

  ‘I’m all right, really,’ said Benedict, nevertheless screwing up his face in pain.

  ‘Sure?’ asked Simon Puckle as his client lowered himself into a chair with great caution. ‘We could always do this on another day.’

  ‘No,’ said Feakins with unexpected vehemence. ‘We need everything wound up today, don’t we, Mary?’

  His wife nodded her head at this, her mind elsewhere. There had been a promise of coffee when they arrived and – her morning sickness having receded – she was now quite hungry. There might be biscuits with the coffee …

  ‘Just so,’ said the solicitor. ‘Now, as you know, probate has already been finalised – which was when you were able to take up residence in your late father’s house at Pelling.’

  ‘That means that everything is hunky-dory, doesn’t it?’ said Benedict Feakins. He essayed an uncertain laugh. ‘No last minute snags or anything like that?’

  Simon Puckle said, ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Copper-bottomed at Lloyds and all that?’ persisted Feakins.

  ‘I assure you that everything is quite in order.’ The solicitor was not prepared to state in so many words that the firm Puckle, Puckle and Nunnery were not in the habit of finding last minute snags in their work. Instead he made the point more subtly by moving swiftly on. ‘Now we come to the peripheral matters, particularly the transfer of such securities as were held in your late father’s name to yours. This, of course, will take time.’

  ‘Everything always seems to take time,’ complained Feakins wearily. ‘The law’s delays and all that. Shakespeare was dead right there.’

  Simon Puckle did not rise to this either. ‘There is also the important point that the liability for the insurance of the property is now your responsibility rather than that of the executors and,’ he added sternly, ‘there can be no delay about that.’