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If you enjoy Marty Wingate’s Birds of a Feather Mysteries,
read on for an excerpt of
Midsummer Mayhem
A Potting Shed Mystery
An Alibi Original eBook
Must I speak now?
3.1.82
Chapter 1
“I can’t do it,” Pru whispered as she hid in the dark behind the door to the sitting room. Sounds of conversation and laughter drifted out. A drop of sweat trickled down her forehead, and she whisked it away. “I just can’t.”
“No one’s forcing you,” Christopher replied, his hand resting on the small of her back.
“It’s only that I thought I could,” she explained. “I thought it might be fun. But no, I would only make a mess of the whole thing and end up looking a fool.”
“You were perfect last night,” he said.
“Yes, but that was in bed and you were my only audience.”
Christopher peered through the narrow opening into the library and then looked back at her with a ghost of a smile. “Then, perhaps you should imagine they aren’t wearing any clothes either.”
Pru laughed and then slapped a hand over her mouth. Her nerves, stretched taut, loosened ever so slightly.
“Party pieces aren’t a requirement,” Christopher reminded her, “only after-dinner entertainment.”
No, but they formed an integral part of a convivial evening in England. And she had so wanted to participate.
“Everyone else did so well,” Pru complained. And they had—their guests had come up with poetry, funny stories, piano pieces, songs. Christopher had told his own version of an old English folk tale about how badgers can protect against dark magic. “But the thought of getting up in front of that crowd–”
“There’s only nine of us out there.”
“Yes, and it’s that ninth one that’s the problem. How can I stand there and recite his own words to him?”
“They aren’t his words, they’re Will Shakespeare’s.”
“You know what I mean—the director.” She sighed. “I’m a gardener—my party piece should be planting a tree. Why did I think performing lines from A Midsummer Night’s Dream would be a good idea?”
“Then don’t do it,” Christopher said, and kissed her temple. “I’ll go in and offer brandy. They’ll never notice.”
He moved to go, but Pru caught his arm.
“No, how silly I am.” She cleared her throat, took out her clip, combed it through her brown hair, and reclipped. “I’m ready.”
* * *
—
Pru stood in front of the unlit fireplace and felt a slight June breeze drift in from the open French doors—a delightful summer evening in Hampshire, but it did nothing to cool her off. She fidgeted. Christopher locked his intense brown eyes on her to offer encouragement. Evelyn and her husband, Albert; Pru’s brother, Simon, and his wife, Polly; and Reverend Bernadette all smiled up at her. The others—actor Ambrose Grant, stage manager Penelope Farthing, and director Max Stirling watched and waited. They had been delightful dinner companions—she must remember that.
Swallowing hard and praying she wouldn’t have to shout “Line!” Pru inhaled deeply and began.
Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough briar,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire–
I do wander everywhere
Swifter than the moon’s sphere,
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see–
Those be rubies, fairy favours;
In those freckles live their savours.
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.
Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I’ll be gone.
Our Queen and all her elves come here anon.
“Brava!” were the shouts and cheers, and Pru couldn’t sit down quickly enough. Where was Christopher with that brandy? A large glass appeared in front of her, and she seized it, giving him a grateful smile.
“Well done, Prunella,” Max Stirling said. “Gardener and actor.”
“Oh, now,” Pru said, mortified at the attention. “I believe I’d better stick to supplying you with plants for your production.”
“You are more than supplier.” Max toasted her with his glass. “You are an artist, a visionary in flora, however ephemeral your creation may be. Of course, we in the theater are accustomed to the temporary, the fleeting—isn’t that true, Ambrose?”
“Indeed. It’s why we are in constant search of our next role.”
The Ambrose Grant fan club—Polly, Evelyn, and Bernadette—tittered appreciatively. He did have that way about him—the power to charm the knickers off women of a certain age. Figuratively speaking, of course.
Well, I will undertake it.
1.2.83
Chapter 2
One morning three weeks earlier, Pru edged open the door of the mudroom with her elbow and entered bum first, her arms round a basket that overflowed with daisylike flowers in butter yellow, sunshine orange, and a glowing red that leaned toward amber. Each petal glistened with drops of rain from an overnight shower.
“There now,” she said. “I’ve thinned the calendula.”
Evelyn Peachey, towering over the kitchen sink peeling potatoes, looked down her beaky nose at the harvest. “Marigolds.”
“Yes, pot marigolds—they make a lovely edging to the veg beds and a good pollinator plant, but between reseeding and overwintering, they’re threatening to take over.”
Pru hesitated as the sharp aromatic scent of the leaves rose between them. Her relationship with the housekeeper-cook at Greenoak had come light-years since they’d met two years earlier, but Evelyn remained queen of the kitchen, and Pru wouldn’t want to presume.
“I thought they might be useful here. I could rinse the flowers off, and you could sprinkle petals in the salads for your pensioners’ meals,” she offered.
“Those old folks would think I mistook their salad bowls for the compost heap.” The cook set a stockpot under the running tap, dumped the mountain of potatoes in, then stood back as the water rose, wiping her hands on her apron. She smiled. “They’d make a lovely vinegar, though. I’ll use it to dress the greens, and they’ll not be the wiser.”
Pru breathed a sigh of relief. “A sprig of lemon verbena in the vinegar, too?” Evelyn nodded. “I’ll put the rest in water.”
Each weekday, in addition to preparing the evening meal for Pru and Christopher, Evelyn cooked a dozen extra dinners and boxed them up. These, she and her husband delivered to pensioners who lived in cottages dotted round their village of Ratley.
Pru rummaged in the mudroom cupboard for one of the many empty pint-size canning jars that always seemed to be available, and when the door banged opened, she jumped, bumping her head on a shelf. Her sister-in-law Polly swooped past her and into the kitchen.
“Have you seen this?”
She held up a copy of The Romsey Advertiser, positioning it just under her nose so that it looked as if the newspaper sported faded blond hair and red-framed glasses, and tapped on a half-page ad.
Shakespeare au Naturel
presents
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
with
Ambrose Grant
(‘Nick Pepper’ of Coronation Street!)
Linden Parfitt
and
The Bumbling Blokes (courtesy of Chataway’s Circus)
To be held on the luxurious grounds of Coeur-de-la-Mer Priory Hall
Wine and picnic hampers may be ordered with your booking
Evelyn’s hand went to her chest. “Ambrose Grant is coming here?” she gasped.
Polly nodded rapidly, and the newspaper crackled. “Can you believe it?”
In his heyday of the late 1980s, Ambrose Grant had been every woman’s dream as he played a scoundrel who wandered onto Coronation Street—the longest-running British soap opera—and stayed for a decade. Pru’s English mother had been a devoted viewer, picking up the program on cable at their home in Dallas by way of a Canadian station—and so Pru had watched, too. But she’d lost track of the actor since then.
“EastEnders was next,” Evelyn said. “Do you remember, Polly, he played Ben. Devoted to his family, he was.”
“Until his dark past caught up with him,” Polly replied, wiggling her eyebrows. “After that…well, he’s done this and that. Stage work, I believe. For a while, he was talked up as the new Doctor Who, before they cast that other fellow. But I do know he’s been on Midsomer Murders three or four times.”
Evelyn sighed. “The way his hair swooped down over his right eye.”
Polly pushed her glasses up with the back of her hand. “And the way he’d sneak a look at the camera—as if he was about to give you a wink.”
Both women sighed deeply.
* * *
—
Two weeks after Polly’s visit, Pru stood over the sink in the loo off the mudroom, scrubbing grime from her cuticles with a nail brush. Evelyn call out, “Where’s Simon got off to? He’ll miss elevenses if he’s not careful.”
Pru and her brother, Simon—heading into his late sixties and fifteen years her senior—gardened together at Greenoak, although he’d been there forty years and Pru had joined him only two years earlier, when she and Christopher had married. The six-acre landscape kept them reasonably busy, as there always seemed to be a new project in the works.
“Simon texted that he had something to do first thing—he didn’t say what. But there isn’t much would keep him away from morning coffee.”
Pru dried her hands and set the pitcher of milk on the table along with cups and saucers—because Evelyn didn’t go in for mugs. When the kettle came to a boil, she poured water over the grounds in the cafetiére.
At the same moment Evelyn pulled a pan of cinnamon rolls out of the oven, Simon pushed open the mudroom door and called, “Good morning.” Stomping his feet on the mat a couple of times, he walked in the kitchen and slid into a chair, the scent of yeast and spice dancing in the air.
“Ah, Evelyn—smells fantastic,” he said.
“Have you washed?” Evelyn asked.
“I haven’t done anything to wash off,” Simon said, but when Evelyn threw him a look over her shoulder, he didn’t take it further, and rose. Upon returning, he held up his hands to the cook.
“There now,” she said, setting a plate down and filling the cups.
Simon tucked in, tearing off a strip of roll and dunking it into his coffee and tilting his head back to drop it in his mouth. “You didn’t need to start on those stone planters at the end of the drive,” he said to Pru. “I would’ve taken care of them.”
“No, it’s all right. I weeded the Mediterranean garden and let Hal do the heavy lifting. He moved the nursery containers and the soil out before he left. We can plant the pots up this afternoon. So now”—Pru started in on her own roll—“what was the appointment you had this morning?”
“You remember the Shakespeare being put on in the gardens at Coeur-de-la-Mer Priory Hall?”
“Remember—are you joking? Shakespeare au Naturel is staging A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We already have our tickets, don’t we, Evelyn?”
“We do indeed,” Evelyn agreed. “Only think—Ambrose Grant in person after all these years.” She blinked back a tear and sniffed at the pile of onions she was chopping.
“Polly has your tickets,” Pru said. “Didn’t she tell you? We wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
Pru, mildly interested in Ambrose Grant, was delighted at the thought of a theater evening and thrilled about seeing Coeur-de-la-Mer Priory Hall. The place lay not much more than a stone’s throw from Greenoak, but it was shrouded in mystery, because the owners, who lived in France, never let anyone in. For Pru, a ticket to the play would be permission to view the grounds for the first time.
“There might be more to this than just going to a play.” Simon shoved the rest of a roll in his mouth. “It’s Jeremy, you see. He’s legged it.”
“Jeremy—the head gardener? He’s quit? What happened?”
“I’d say it was a breakdown in expectations between employer and employee.” Simon licked his fingers. “When the Gascoignes hired Jeremy—what was that, nine years ago?”
“Thirteen,” Evelyn said without turning round.
“Really? Well, there you are. Thirteen years ago, they told him he’d be left alone—just him and eleven acres. They’re never there, and when they are, they don’t entertain. That suited Jeremy perfectly—he’s more hermit than gardener.”
True. In her two years at Greenoak, Pru had seen Jeremy at the Robber Blackbird—their local pub—once, sitting in a corner accompanied only by a pint of bitter and a book.
“So, last night, I got an email from Deidre Gascoigne, and then she rang me this morning from their place in the south of France.”
“Ooh.” Pru extended her index finger and gave her brother a light poke on the arm. “Lady Gascoigne rang Simon Parke—let me touch you.”
Simon batted her hand away. “She said Jeremy’s gone off his trolley. He told the Gascoignes the actors were making a shambles of the place—wearing out the lawn and trampling the borders, destroying the rock garden, breaking through hedges. He said he wouldn’t put up with it and they could bloody well stuff the job.”
Pru frowned. “Surely they aren’t trampling the borders?”
“The point is,” Simon continued, “it’s put them in a bad way—the actors and the Gascoignes as well. They can’t leave the place without someone looking after it and, as it turns out, the Shakespeare company wants a bit of help. Deirdre thought to ring me because I had stepped in for a few months before they hired Jeremy.”
Pru’s mind worked swiftly—skipping from the departure of Jeremy to the fact that Simon was the only one who had ever met either the gardener or the owners. High season was no time to leave a garden to its own devices—anyone with any sense knew that.
“And so, they want you to fill in like you did before—until they hire a new head gardener?” This sounded intriguing—it sounded as if she might get more than a glimpse of the place.
Simon shook his head. “Deirdre told me to take care of it any way I could. They want someone to do it—and also to work with this Shakespeare au Naturel on the outdoor set. I don’t know, probably bring in some container trees or plant up a great load of annuals, I suppose.”
“I know a place where the wild thyme blows,” Pru whispered. Simon raised his eyebrows, and Evelyn looked over her shoulder. Pru gave a little embarrassed laugh. “Sorry. I saw a film version of the play and remember that line. It’s so evocative, don’t you think? Shakespeare mentioned plants quite often. Well”—she became more businesslike—“you could do that for them. Hal and I can manage here.”
“Not me.” Simon didn’t look at Pru as he reached for another roll. “This is a job for you. With your theater background, I thought you’d jump at the opportunity to hang round with a load of actors. I mean”—a sly smile spread over his face—“fairy godmother in Cinderella. It’s a wonder you aren’t in the movies by now.”
Pru and Simon had not shared a childhood, and had spent the past three years catching up on stories. This Cinderella tale had been one of them. Pru had fond memories of her role in
a fifth-grade classroom production in which she wore a frothy blue dress and appeared from behind a portable chalkboard in a magical mist she produced from throwing a handful of flour into the air. The mist hadn’t been as successful as she’d hoped, but the experience had sparked a love of make-believe and stories that had never left her.
“Nonsense, I don’t know anything about putting on a play,” she said, but a tiny thrill zinged through her at the thought of being involved. “You should do it, Simon—at least you know your way round the place.” She popped the last of a roll in her mouth and chased it with the rest of her coffee.
“I don’t have the time at the moment,” her brother replied. “I’ve got that other thing.”
That other thing was, indeed, consuming Simon’s days. The previous winter, he’d taken an art metalworking course, and in early spring, had decided to create his own metal sculptures for the four triangular beds inside the parterre lawn. This apparently required enormous amounts of time to think and plan. Simon would stand in the garden for hours, sketching furiously in one of his notebooks, yet when Pru attempted to look at what he’d drawn, he would snap the book shut.
“Well, if there’s no one else to help them out—I suppose I could do it.” Pru spoke casually, but shifted in her chair to quell the rising tide of excitement. Not only entrusted with a formerly hidden garden, but also plunged into the world of the theater….“Should I tell someone I’m offering?”
“I already rang the stage manager. I knew you’d say yes.”
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