The Skeleton Garden

by Marty Wingate

  “Could we wait until we see how it goes here?” She gestured around the almost empty space. “And after we move the herb garden and replant everything they’ve dug up in the parterre lawn.”

  But Simon was on a roll. “Why don’t we use germander to line the cutting garden beds? It would be a bit different from box.”

  “Wouldn’t it look out of place, though?” Pru asked. “There’s boxwood everywhere else in there.”

  “Right, so,” he continued, “we use germander on the opposite end, around the new herb beds, too. It would even out, you know, balance it.”

  God help her—she liked the idea. “But we couldn’t get any before next week, could we?”

  “I know a fellow with a wholesale place in Southampton,” he said. “I’ll start there. We’ll clean out every nursery in the south if we have to. We’ll explain to the editor that it’ll fill in by summer.”

  They’d have to explain a good many things to the editor, Pru thought.

  “Right. Well.” Simon looked off toward the walled garden. “We can set Orlando to digging out the peaches. It’ll be a start.”

  —

  Good luck to you, Pru thought, going in search of the boy. Orlando had taken to dogging the heels of whatever uniform might be in the marquee, which also had attracted several local historians who came out to see the remains of the enemy plane for themselves. With local residents checking in regularly, too, the marquee had become as busy as the Blackbird on a Friday evening.

  When Pru approached, Sonia the runner duck waited outside the tent, watching the comings and goings like a bouncer. Inside, Kitty filled Orlando in on wartime life. “Recipes during the war had to take into account our lack of meat and sugar and flour, you see,” she said to him. “Rationing on just about everything, why, you had to take care how much tea you drank. I remember my mum had a great love of Lord Woolton’s pie during the war. I should uncover that recipe and bake one for my Jemima. She’s a vegetarian and always looking for something else to do with swedes and parsnips.”

  “Aunt Pru,” Orlando exclaimed, looking as if he might like to be rescued from Lord Woolton’s pie. “Do you need me in the garden?”

  “Simon has a job for you,” Pru said. “Unless, of course, you’d rather stay and chat with Mrs. Bassett.”

  “I wouldn’t want to shirk my responsibilities,” Orlando said. “Thanks very much, Mrs. Bassett, for telling me about what your mother cooked during the war and about the bomb falling in the field next to your house.” He edged his way out of the marquee, giving Sonia a wide berth.

  “So, Kitty, what’s this about a bomb?” Pru asked. “Were you down in the Blackbird cellars at the time?”

  “We were caught out once. The sirens had gone off, but my mum was tired of running and hiding by then, and she was in the middle of cooking up some early plums with the precious little sugar we had. I sat at the table, helping to sort the jars, when here came the plane.” Kitty’s voice dropped to a loud whisper. “We heard the whistle of the bomb, and then silence, only the noise of the plane flying off. My mum almost nailed my dress to the chair while my dad rang the ARP—Air Raid Precautions. They came round and defused it, as it hadn’t gone off itself. It was written up, of course—they kept track of all incidents reported, no matter how big or small.”

  “Do you remember this plane crashing?” Pru asked.

  Kitty’s face scrunched up in concentration. “Not as such,” she said. “It seemed as if things were exploding and crashing all round us all the time. And I was such a wee girl, what did I care about that?”

  Pru studied the airplane parts, each laid out with its own white identification tag. “Would someone have written up this crash?”

  “I’d say,” Kitty replied. “My son—Jemima’s father—went to the archives in Winchester for a school report once and saw the report for our unexploded bomb. They’ve all the incidents for the Romsey district there—stacks and stacks of them.”

  —

  “Is there no news?” It was the end of Thursday, and Pru perched in an armchair in the corner of their bedroom, watching Christopher pull off his uniform. He threw it onto the foot of the bed but then took it up again, gave it a shake, and put it away on a hanger.

  “They’ve run a check on the police files from 1939 through 1945—no missing persons or suspicious disappearances in the area. Nothing matching the remains.”

  “Is Martin working on the case?” she asked. Christopher’s days had been filled with local rowdies defacing the mile marker near the A3057 to Timsbury—he spent most of one day taking statements from the neighbors—as well as sorting out the parking scheme for an upcoming autumn fête near Abbotswood.

  “Martin has had a couple of shop break-ins to investigate in Romsey,” Christopher said. “He seems quite happy to stay in town these days.”

  “Mmm,” Pru replied. She and Polly believed there was a woman involved—that Martin’s blind date of a couple of weeks back had blossomed, although he would not reply to their thinly veiled inquiries. But Martin’s love life didn’t concern Pru as much as the bones she’d found. The skeleton, male, had been identified as British from dental work and the remnants of clothes.

  “Apart from a shoulder wound that had healed, there’s no indication of trauma on the skeleton,” Christopher said, pushing his head through the neck of a jumper. “He could’ve died in any number of ways.” But he knew better than to go into graphic descriptions with her—her imagination was graphic enough.

  Christopher gave the same answer to Orlando at dinner. “Is that it, then?” the boy asked. “You won’t ever know?”

  “Of course we’ll know,” Christopher said. He tapped the end of his fork on the table as if he wished he could knock the answer out.

  “Dad says that his uncle Johnny was a flight engineer on a Lancaster,” Orlando said, reaching for the bowl of sprouts. He turned to Pru. “That was a bomber. Dad says there should be some record about the Messerschmitt, but one of the men here said that there are no records online.” Orlando shook his head in disbelief. “I thought he was having me on.”

  “We can look at the real incident reports,” Pru said. “The archives are in Winchester. I thought I’d take tomorrow, go up, and take a look. Want to come with me?” she asked Orlando. “Are you up for it? No computers, no mobile phones.”

  “I can read a book as well as the next fellow,” Orlando said. “When I have to.”

  —

  “I’ll work over the weekend,” Pru said to Simon, who seemed to look on her trip to Winchester as scarpering. “Orlando and I will clear out the shed and get the glasshouse in working order. We’ll get loads done, you’ll see.” She left him digging out old, twiggy sunroses from between pavers that ran parallel to the back terrace. They would need to replant if it were to stay the sunrose walk.

  Christopher ran them up to Winchester. After filling out forms and getting passes, they moved into the reading room, a large, airy, modern place with a wall of windows where researchers of all ages were at work. A young woman had scrolls unrolled and held open with paperweights while she photographed the contents; an older man used a magnifying glass on yellowed scraps of paper; five primary school students examined a hanging map of the coast with hands behind their backs.

  Pru had made arrangements and now, on one of the high tables, sat four, thick, oversized ledgers, leather-bound and tied closed with cloth ribbons.

  “Right,” Pru said, “let’s get to it.”

  They each took a ledger—Pru, 1940; Orlando, 1941. Across the top were categories: date, time, incident, locality, outcome, and remarks. They began reading down the pages, which were filled with line after line of incidents, some in more detail than others. URGENT, one read. Please ring Mr. Jones near Ringwood (telephone is in shed so please ring a long time). He is excavating land at south end of water meadow called “the marsh” and has been told there is a BOMB unexploded.

  They were bogged down by the handwriting and began con
sulting each other. It made for slow going. “Orlando, do you know what this word is?” “Aunt Pru, does that say ‘device’?”

  By one o’clock they were both weary and hungry, so that little things seemed quite funny. “ ‘UXB, East Wellow, found by two cows,’ ” Orlando read aloud, and Pru sniggered. “Oh look,” she said, pointing to a scrawl, “ ‘Squid Wood.’ ” “They have a wood full of squids?” he asked, and they broke up, drawing the raised eyebrows of an elderly couple at the next table, sorting through boxes of parchment. Pru sobered up, thinking she really should be a better example to the younger generation.

  By the time Orlando began reading the 1944 ledger, Pru needed a break. “How about lunch?” she asked.

  “What’s this?” Orlando set a ruler on the page, and Pru read across the entry: “21 May 1944, 7 p.m., number 453, Romsey, Ratley, Greenoak, enemy plane down, pilot ejected and found mile away in Whitcap Wood (broken leg).” Under “remarks,” was written: Crash reported by Reginald Saxsby. Plane remains on-site.

  Chapter 14

  They didn’t speak for a moment. This handwritten account, however brief the story, brought to life the pieces of twisted and charred metal they had touched.

  “Who’s that?” Orlando asked in a whisper, pointing at the name.

  “That’s Mrs. Wilson’s great-uncle. He’s the one who left Greenoak to her brother, Alf.”

  “Is Alf the one in prison?”

  Pru nodded, sparing a fleeting thought for how many stories Orlando had heard during his week hanging about the marquee. Stan and Kitty had vague memories of Reginald Saxsby—old man Saxsby, as they called him. Since Alf had inherited Greenoak, he’d lived there only briefly a couple of years back.

  —

  In Romsey, Pru and Orlando walked from the rail station to the Waitrose, where she needed to buy some groceries for breakfast; she preferred not to use any of Evelyn’s supplies, afraid of being caught out. They came across Martin—DS Chatters—his basket filled with the kind of microwave meals that Pru lived off of in London, before she had someone else to cook for her. She saw a bottle of red wine and a package of boeuf bourguignon for two.

  “We’ve missed you this week, but I hear you’ve been quite occupied in town,” Pru said with a smile. “With work and other things. Planning a special dinner?”

  Martin’s pale skin showed little gradation between white and scarlet, the color he now turned at Pru’s mention of his private life. He looked down into his basket and back up at them. “And what are you two doing out of the garden?”

  “We’ve been investigating our mystery,” Orlando said. “We saw the incident report for the plane crash—1944.”

  “I realize police attention has dropped off,” Martin said, “but it’s only because we’ve other, more urgent, issues. We will get back to it.”

  “We know that,” Pru said, “no worries. We enjoyed doing our own research—and Orlando is quite keen to get all the facts, aren’t you?”

  “We need to find out who that poor chap was, don’t we?” Orlando shrugged in a nonchalant manner, but Pru could see an eager gleam in his eyes. “I’d say it won’t be long now before we identify the skeleton. We’ll be asking questions around the village, of course. Checking with any potential witnesses.” Potential witnesses, Pru thought, the sum total of which included Kitty, who had been five or six years old at the time, and Stan Snuggs, who had been about fifteen.

  “But, in the end, it is still a police matter, isn’t it, Martin?” She wanted Orlando interested and involved, but would rather he didn’t start harassing the neighbors.

  “It is,” Martin said, “and you’ll remember that, won’t you, Orlando? It’s an ongoing investigation.”

  Orlando lost a bit of his bravado. “Yes, sir, I’ll remember.” But as they walked away and Martin headed for the checkout, Orlando muttered, “It’s ancient history. Who would care if I did?”

  —

  “Where should I put these?” Orlando asked, standing in the doorway of the potting shed, his arms full of empty burlap bags, rolled and tied with garden twine. They’d found them under a stack of wooden seed boxes.

  Pru had taken advantage of a kitchen sans Evelyn that Saturday morning. She needed Orlando ready for their weekend project, and so she’d plied him with her one and only cooking feat, biscuits—or “American biscuits” as Christopher called them, to avoid confusion with English biscuits, which were cookies. Orlando had succeeded in finishing off an entire batch on his own—minus the two Pru had nabbed for herself. By the time Christopher had appeared in the kitchen, he could only eye Orlando and the empty plate. “They aren’t all gone, are they?” he asked.

  Pru shook her head and pulled from the oven a fresh batch. “All yours,” she said. “We’ve got work to do.”

  Well-fueled, Orlando applied himself to cleaning out the shed, following Pru’s every instruction without complaint. She stole a glance at him now and then—they’d reached a good place, she thought, friendly, workable. Now that he was settling in, he’d be a great help to them in the garden.

  She surveyed the gravel yard outside the shed. It was beginning to look as if they were having a jumble sale. “Over there”—she nodded to Orlando, who held a wooden box full of tins of linseed oil—“behind the apple crates and next to the rakes.” The potting shed was deceptive—on the outside it looked tiny, but inside, it was like Harry Potter’s tent, and the amount of paraphernalia that she and Orlando had come across was astounding. They still hadn’t reached the glasshouse end. A glass cold frame balanced on top of a wheelbarrow that was turned up on its nose and resting against several sheets of plywood. She tried to think what Simon would’ve wanted the wood for and wondered if it could go in the discard pile.

  “Don’t you take a day off?”

  “Jack,” Pru said, looking up. “Hello. Can I help you with something?”

  Jack Snuggs stepped inside. “Simon puts you to work on weekends, too, does he?”

  “Simon doesn’t put me to work,” Pru said. “We work in the garden together.”

  “Yes—I meant nothing by it. Polly told me how much it means to Simon that you’re here.”

  So, conversations with Polly, Pru thought as she slid the plywood to one side and leaned it against a bale of hog wire.

  Pru had managed only a quick and not entirely satisfactory phone conversation with Polly on the subject of Jack. “So, Jack Snuggs,” she had started. “Old boyfriend,” Polly had replied. “Ages ago. But Simon—well, you know how that goes.” Pru understood. She had been working at the botanic garden in Edinburgh earlier that year when Marcus, her old boyfriend from Dallas, had appeared. Old flames always needed explaining, but she thought Simon went to the extreme if he had concerns about Polly and Jack thirty years ago.

  “Well,” Pru now said to Jack, “it’s not just that Simon and I work together. He and I have got a lot of catching up to do.”

  “Sorry,” Orlando said, bumping into them as he walked by with teetering stacks of nursery pots, half of which tumbled down and rolled across the floor. Jack stepped out of the way while Pru bent down to collect them.

  “Knock the spiders out of these,” she said to Orlando, “and you can put them in the recycling pile.”

  “This is quite a piece,” Jack said. Pru had uncovered a wooden cabinet when she moved the plywood. It stood five feet high and four feet wide and looked much like an old library card catalog with a myriad of small drawers.

  “A seed cabinet—I didn’t know that was there,” Pru said, taking her sleeve and wiping off a thick layer of dust from the top.

  Jack opened a drawer and removed a small, flat brown envelope. “ ‘Silene schafta,’ ” he read.

  “Autumn catchfly.” Pru took the packet from him and shook it. “I don’t think that’s Simon’s handwriting—I wonder how long it’s been here. It’s so easy to lose track of what we put away.”

  “That it is,” Jack said. “It’s a fine cabinet—you should get it on A
ntiques Roadshow.” He looked round at stacks of harvest baskets, rusted sprinklers, and dented watering cans. “This shed reminds me of Dad’s attic. God knows what he’s got stashed up there.” They opened the drawers and found a handful of other seed packets. “Well, nothing else, then,” Jack said. “But good place to hide a treasure.”

  “I might try sowing some of these,” Pru said, as she felt each packet for seeds. “You never know, they could germinate.” Jack leaned up against the cabinet, making himself at home. “So, are you here looking for Simon?” Fat chance, she thought.

  “No. I saw you working when I turned into the drive,” Jack said. He stuck his hands in his pocket and watched Pru test the weight of the plywood, thinking she might move it outside. “Dad said that Evelyn put a jar of stew in the freezer for him. She and Peachey usually deliver, but asked Dad could he collect it. I said I’d stop.”

  Pru set the plywood back down. “We all benefit from Evelyn’s kitchen skills.”

  Jack smiled. “Dad and me—we aren’t the best cooks. My mum now, she could make any cheap cut of meat taste good. And she’d always make us sit down proper at the table, too. Without her, we’re more likely to have our tea in front of the telly watching reruns of Top Gear.”

  Pru softened up at the talk of family. “Yes, it’s the easy way out, isn’t it?” She grunted as she lifted a sack of potting compost and moved it into a corner. “My dad traveled for work—he’d be away weeks at a time. The first night he was home, I would set the table in the dining room with the best dishes. But while he was away and it was just my mother and I, we’d sit out back in the shade of this enormous Southern magnolia with our supper plates in our laps and throw bits of bread to the birds. Sparrows mostly, but we’d see cardinals and a few finches.” Jack moved out of the way as Pru reached behind him for a cobweb-covered trug. Her mind traveled back to those days. “The cardinals would hop from branch to branch. I used to love seeing that flash of red in the trees. And you know what she would feed them?”