The Winter Garden Mystery

by Carola Dunn

  “Not in so many words,” Daisy put in hastily.

  “Do you think she meant it?”

  Stirring his coffee, Sebastian pondered. “Who knows? Stay longer and we’ll find out.”

  “Don’t be a hopeless ass! Daddy invited her to stay as long as she likes.”

  “A fat lot that has to say to anything,” he said cynically.

  “And Mummy knew Daisy’s mother back in prehistoric times.”

  “Oh well, then, I should think you’re safe, Miss Dalrymple, unless they had a frightful set-to?”

  “Lady Valeria didn’t mention one.”

  “She would have. Will you ride with me?”

  “Thanks, but all the same I think I’d better see the gardens while it’s fine, in case we get sleet tomorrow.”

  He nodded and did not press her, nor offer to tour the gardens with her.

  “I expect I can find my way about without your aid, Mr. Goodman,” Daisy suggested, “if you have work to do indoors.”

  “I’m glad of an excuse to be outside on such a glorious day,” he assured her.

  “It’s bally cold out,” said Sebastian abruptly, getting up and going to the sideboard. “I saw frost on the lawn. For heaven’s sake, don’t get chilled.”

  “I’ve already been out with my camera. It is a bit nippy.” Daisy had a feeling his admonition was addressed more to Ben Goodman than to herself. She liked him the better for his concern for the secretary’s dicky health.

  “We’ll wrap up well,” Mr. Goodman promised.

  When they set off together, he had on a knit balaclava helmet under his hat, covering his mouth and nose, and a heavy Army greatcoat with the shoulder-straps removed.

  “A sight to scare the crows,” he said, a smile in his voice. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I’m not a crow. The cold air hurts your lungs?”

  “If I breathe too deeply. But the sun feels warm already. I’ll take the balaclava off in a few minutes.”

  He took her first out onto a terrace on the south side. From there wide stone steps led down to an Elizabethan knot garden. Within the elaborate pattern of low box hedges, the beds were bare, but Daisy decided it would make a good photograph later in the day. She hadn’t brought her equipment, not wanting to lug it around unnecessarily.

  They went on along a gravel walk with a high yew hedge on one side, an ivy-grown wall on the other, till they came to a door in the wall. Pausing to take off the balaclava, Mr. Goodman pointed along the walk. “This turns into a footpath across the park, a shortcut to the village. I don’t know if you’d care to walk down to the Cheshire Cheese with me for a nip before lunch?”

  “I’d love to, but ought you to walk so far?”

  “A certain amount of exercise is good for my leg, otherwise it stiffens. You lost a brother in the War, I gather?”

  “My only brother … and my fiancé.”

  “I’m sorry. It was a beastly show. Both Army?”

  “Gervaise was.” She didn’t usually talk about Michael, but a depth of compassion she sensed in him made her go on, defiantly. “My fiancé was a driver in a Friends’ Ambulance Unit.”

  “A conchie?” The way he said the hateful epithet was quite different from Phillip‘s—most people’s—absolute, unhesitating contempt. “It was one of those units pulled me out. Brave men, going into Hell with no weapon to defend themselves.”

  Tears pricked behind Daisy’s eyelids. The need to bottle up her feelings unless she was prepared to defend him had kept the wound of Michael’s loss raw and painful. Ben Goodman’s understanding quickened the healing process recently begun by another rare, sympathetic soul.

  He had turned away to open the door. As it swung open, the sound of running footsteps, boots on gravel, made them both turn. A dark, wiry lad in gardening clothes dashed up.

  “Mr. Gootman, sir, a telephone call for you there is,” he announced in the musical accents of Wales. “A trunk call.”

  “Blast. Still, never mind. Miss Dalrymple, this is Owen Morgan, who is undoubtedly much better able to show you the Winter Garden than am I, but I’ll be back as soon as I can. Excuse me.” He limped hurriedly away.

  Daisy smiled at the blushing youth. “Good, an expert guide.”

  “But I don’t know all the Latin names yet, miss,” he blurted out. “Mr. Bligh, the head gardener, he knows.”

  “To tell the truth, I’d much rather have the common names. Come on, Owen.” She preceded him through the door, and stepped into instant spring.

  The garden was protected from cold winds by walls on all four sides. In the middle, in the centre of a paved square, stood a classical statue, a winged figure of a burly, dishevelled man with a conch shell held to his lips: Boreas, the North Wind according to the pedestal. And surrounding the paving, along the walls, was a wide raised border ablaze with colour.

  There were evergreens—Daisy recognized laurel and variegated holly—and plants with grey-green foliage. Flowering vines and shrubs hid the walls, yellow cascades of winter jasmine, white honeysuckle and wintersweet scenting the air, the coral blooms of Japanese quince. In front, vying with snowdrops and aconites, grew scylla and irises, crocuses, violets, multi-hued primroses, purple-blue anemones, lilac periwinkles, crimson cyclamen.

  “It’s beautiful!” cried Daisy. “How I wish someone would invent an efficient way to take colour photographs. Even if I learn the name of every plant, words will never do it justice.”

  The young gardener led her around, pointing out delicate Christmas and Lenten roses, daphne, orange Chinese lanterns, and fluffy yellow hazel catkins. She enjoyed his voice as much as the flower names.

  “Which part of Wales are you from?” she asked.

  “Glamorgan, miss. Merthyr Tydfil.”

  “That’s in the south. You’re a long way from home.”

  “Oh yes, miss, and it’s dreatfully I miss it.”

  “You have left your family there?”

  His story came pouring out. “My pa wass killed down the pit—the coal mine. Mam wouldn’t let us boys be miners. Fife brothers we are, scattered all ofer. Two’s in the Nafy; one’s a gentleman’s personal serfant in London. Rhys iss a schoolteacher,” he said with shy pride, “and so’s one of my sisters. Married the other two are, at home in Merthyr.”

  “I expect you’re lonely here, being used to a big family.”

  “I wass walking out with a young woman.” His face crumpled in misery. “Nearly engaged we wass, look you, but she ran off to London.”

  “Then she didn’t deserve you,” said Daisy firmly as they turned the last corner, coming to the bed to the right of the entrance. Owen looked less than comforted. “Are these daffodils here, just coming up between the snowdrops?” she asked to distract him, though she recognized the green shoots perfectly well.

  He blinked hard, sniffed, and answered, “Yes, miss, and narcissus. They come out here earlier than anywheres.”

  “And that bush?” She gestured at an unhappy-looking shrub in the middle of a bare patch of ground. “What’s that?”

  “Azalea, miss.” He frowned, puzzled. “They bloom early in here, too, but … .”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s terrible it looks. And where’s the irises around it? Myself I planted them, the kind that’s flowering now, and hardly any hass come up.” He stepped over the low kerb and picked his way carefully to the small bush. Most of its few remaining leaves were brown, except for one bronze-green sprig.

  Daisy saw that the dark soil of the bare patch was broken by a few scattered iris shoots. “Perhaps a dog got in and dug them up and buried them again too deep,” she proposed, though there was no sign of the earthworks usually left by an excavating canine.

  “The azalea iss dying.” Owen Morgan turned, panic-stricken. “All the buds are dead. What’ll her ladyship say? Please, miss, I must find Mr. Bligh.”

  “Of course, Owen. I’ll just wait here until Mr. Goodman comes back.”

  She wandered
around, trying to work out whether it was worth taking photos when all the marvellous colours would be lost. The knot garden, however dull in fact, would turn out better on film, but Boreas deserved a picture, she decided.

  Presumably he was supposed to be exhaling a gale from his conch, though hair, beard, and tunic were all streaming in the opposite direction and he actually faced north-east. Moving from side to side, she tried to work out the best angle for a shot. She was wondering whether to go and fetch her camera or wait for Mr. Goodman when Owen returned.

  He brought with him a wheelbarrow, spade, and fork, and a bent, weatherbeaten ancient. Mr. Bligh wore a drooping tweed deerstalker of an indeterminate colour, breeches tied at the knees with string, and woolly gaiters in startling pink and blue stripes. He tipped his hat to Daisy, revealing a hairless scalp as weatherbeaten as his face, and brown eyes as bright and knowing as a sparrow’s.

  “Fine marnin’, miss,” he remarked, and went to examine the patient.

  Owen followed him, looking anxious. Daisy hoped he wasn’t going to be blamed for whatever disaster had overtaken the azalea and the irises. The poor boy was unhappy enough already.

  “She’s dead,” said Mr. Bligh. “Dig ‘er out, lad, an’ we s’ll find summat else to put in afore her la‘ship takes a fancy to come by. I s’ll take kindly, miss,” he added unexpectedly to Daisy, “if ’ee’ll not tell her la’ship, being she don’t foller as you can’t lay down the law to plants like you can to people.”

  “I shan’t say a word,” Daisy promised as Owen took the spade and started digging, watched by the old man propped against the wheelbarrow. Returning to the statue, she realized the sun was just right for the pose she wanted. “I’m going to fetch my camera,” she said to the head gardener. “If Mr. Goodman comes, tell him I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  “Right, miss. What is it, lad?”

  “There’s something in the way, Mr. Bligh. ’Bout a foot and a half down. Like a mass of roots it feels.”

  “Try the fork, but go at it easy like. Don’t want to do any more damage.”

  Daisy left them to the new puzzle and sped back to the house. She had already put a fresh roll of film in the camera. Returning laden with equipment through the Long Hall, she met Ben Goodman on his way to rejoin her.

  “You won’t mind if I dash ahead?” she said. “I have to hurry to catch the light.”

  He nodded. “I’ll follow at my own pace.”

  When she reached the Winter Garden, she was surprised to see that Owen had dug a trench right across the bare patch of soil. He and Mr. Bligh stood at one end, gazing down with fascinated revulsion.

  “Go on, have a look,” urged Mr. Bligh.

  Owen knelt in the dirt. Reaching down, he moved something at the bottom of the trench.

  “Oh God! Oh God!” He flung himself backwards onto his heels, his arms across his face. “It’s her. It’s my Grace.”

  4

  The young Welshman’s racking sobs shuddered through the sunny garden. Daisy froze in the doorway.

  “What’s the matter?” Ben Goodman came up behind her.

  “I think … .” Her voice shook. She moistened her lips. “I think they’ve found a body.”

  “A what?”

  Of course he was incredulous. But Daisy had a horrid sense of history repeating itself. She turned to him, heart-sick.

  “She can’t still be alive if she was buried, can she?”

  “She? My dear Miss Dalrymple, what on earth are you talking about?”

  “Grace. Owen says it’s Grace.”

  “Good Lord!” With a hand on her arm he gently moved her aside, limped past her, and stood staring. “They’ve found Grace Moss buried in the flowerbed? The poor child.”

  Something in his tone caught Daisy’s attention. Behind the sincere pity, did she hear the merest hint of relief? No, she had imagined it. His face was sober, compassionate, as he took in the sight and sound of Owen Morgan’s grief.

  She had placed Grace Moss now. The gardener’s dead sweetheart was the blacksmith’s missing daughter, the pretty, fun-loving parlourmaid Ted Roper had told her about. Missing how long? Daisy’s brain began to work again. Buried when? By whom? Why?

  Murdered?

  Ben Goodman recovered from his shock and took charge. Making his halting way around the corner of the bed, he called, “Bligh, is it true? You’ve found a body?”

  The old man started. His mesmerized gaze fixed on the trench beneath his feet, he seemed to have shrunk. “Aye, sir. A corpus it is, sure as eggs is eggs. Dead as a doornail, poor creetur.”

  The secretary bit his lip. “Miss Dalrymple, please go and telephone the police. The ’phone is in a closet off the Long Hall. And not a word to Lady Valeria until the authorities have been informed. Not a word to anyone, in fact, if you can help it, unless you can get hold of Sir Reginald.”

  Daisy quite saw the point of not enlightening Lady Valeria before it became absolutely necessary. “All right, but I’d better take some photographs first. I was mixed up in a police investigation just a little while ago, and they really appreciated my pictures.”

  By that time Mr. Goodman had reached the trench. He glanced down. His already pale cheeks whitened and he shook his head. “No. Leave the camera and I’ll take a few snaps.”

  She didn’t argue. The previous occasion had not exactly been a pleasure, and a young girl who had been buried, perhaps for weeks, must be much worse. Setting the camera and tripod on the North Wind’s pedestal, she once more hurried to the house.

  The temptation to ring up Alec was almost irresistible, but she had learned enough of police procedures to know Scotland Yard could not intervene unless called in by the county’s Chief Constable. Not the village bobby, she decided, even if he had a telephone. Anyway, he’d very likely be out on his bicycle making his rounds. Chester was probably the nearest sizable police station.

  She found the Long Hall without difficulty, and the fourth door she opened was the telephone cubby-hole. The narrow, confined space, inevitably panelled, held only a Windsor chair, a small table, and the apparatus. Daisy wondered what on earth it had been used for before the telephone was invented.

  Closing the door, she was plunged into a sepulchral darkness. Hastily she opened it again. Grace was dead before she was buried, wasn’t she?

  She forced the thought from her mind. There was a gas-light fixture high on the wall and a box of matches in a drawer in the table, along with a pad of paper, a pencil, and a directory listing local subscribers. She lit the gas, adjusted the flame, and closed the door again. Either there was some invisible source of ventilation, or sooner or later someone with a desire for privacy was going to be found asphyxiated. Asphyxiated. Buried. Dark and airless … Her breath came in frantic gasps.

  Sternly she stopped her involuntary movement towards the door handle. Lifting the receiver, she jiggled the hook.

  “Hullo, operator! Please get me the main police station in Chester.”

  “Yes, madam. I’ll ring you back when your call is through.”

  “No, it’s urgent. I’ll hold the line.”

  A sharply indrawn breath warned her that the girl was going to listen in. She’d recognize the Parslows’ number, and an urgent call from Occles Hall to the police was too good to miss. Well, Grace’s death couldn’t be kept secret for long. Circumstances at Wentwater Court had been entirely different.

  Buzz, click, fizzle, hum. “Hullo, Chester exchange. Police station, please.” Click-click, ring. Ring once; ring twice.

  A bored voice: “Chester police.”

  “Go ahead, please, caller.”

  “Officer, I’m ringing from Occleswich.” Daisy admired the steadiness of her own voice. “I want to report a”—a murder? a body in the flowerbed?—“an unexplained death.”

  “Unexplained death?” The voice sat up and took notice. “I’ll put you through to Inspector Dunnett, ma’am.”

  A moment later she repeated her report.

  “
Unexplained death?” Inspector Dunnett queried, then, suspiciously, “Who is speaking?”

  “This is the Honourable Miss Dalrymple, ringing from Occles Hall. I’m a guest here. The owner hasn’t yet been informed about it.”

  “About this here ‘unexplained death,’ miss?”

  Daisy was beginning to hate the phrase and to wish she had never used it. “About the dead body in the Winter Garden,” she said flatly. “I thought it was more important to telephone you at once than to waste time hunting for Sir Reginald or Lady Valeria.”

  “Lady Valeria!” the inspector exclaimed in alarm. Her ladyship’s reputation stretched as far as Chester, it seemed. “That’ll be Lady Valeria Parslow? You won’t mind, miss, if I just confirm where you’re phoning from. We do get these young people playing their little jokes.”

  Fuming, she waited while he checked back through the Chester operator to the local operator. When he spoke to her again, he had become deferential.

  “Beg pardon, miss, but we can’t be too careful these days. It don’t do to disturb Lady … the gentry for nothing. The Honourable, did you say, miss? Dalrymple—that’s D, A, L … .”

  She spelled her name for him.

  “And you haven’t told Lady … Sir Reginald yet?”

  “I was in the garden with his secretary when the gardeners discovered the body. I came straight in to phone you.” And how she wished she had made Ben Goodman do the phoning while she took photographs. “I can’t really tell you any more. Are you coming to investigate or not?”

  “Yes, we’re coming, miss.” Inspector Dunnett sounded injured now. “We’ll be there inside the hour. I … er … it’d be a good idea if Lady Valeria was to be informed before we arrive. And Sir Reginald, of course.”

  “I’ll see that he’s told,” she snapped, and hung up. The coward, expecting her to do his dirty work for him! She’d be dashed if she was going to be the one to break the news to Lady Valeria.

  The coffinlike walls of the cubicle closed in on her again. In her annoyance with the policeman, she had almost forgotten the horror of the poor girl lying out there in her makeshift grave. With a shiver, she opened the door, but she stayed seated there in thought.