The meal was, to say the least, a success. The actors piled their plates high, and conversation was kept to a minimum. Afterward, everyone pitched in to clean up—to the cook’s protestations—so that by the time Peachey arrived to collect his wife and the empty cartons, the gardener’s cottage was clean, stomachs were full, and there was still nearly an hour left of the midday break. The company wandered off into the sunshine, and Pru saw more than one yawn. Perhaps when time was called, Bubble and Squeak would need to roust them from their naps.
Be as thou wast wont to be;
See as thou wast wont to see.
4.1.70–71
Chapter 29
Pru didn’t need a nap, and so remained in the cottage arranging the myriad of juice boxes that would be available to the children later, and counting mugs for tea. When she opened a cupboard to search for more, she found instead a jar of honey.
It was half-pint size, a hexagonal shape, and had a label with a drawing of a tree and an old-fashioned bee skep. It read: FROM MY KIDLINGTON BEES TO YOU with an autograph at the bottom that Pru had no trouble in making out.
“Last year’s spring harvest,” Linden said from the doorway. “I brought an extra jar for the company—Penelope and Frances have been using it in their tea. It’s my ‘runny honey.’ Almost half of the pollen comes from pears, plums, and cherries—we have lots of local fruit trees.”
“You’ve had your honey analyzed?” Pru asked.
“I have a roadside stand—people pay on the honor system—and I always like to let them know what they’re getting.”
Pru held the jar up to the light and admired its rich golden color.
“Summer,” Linden continued, “it’s mostly broad beans and brambles and oil rapeseed, plus all the flowers gardeners grow.”
Here was something Pru hadn’t considered—the honey might change from spring to summer. Change how—its taste? Its color and consistency?
“Did someone use honey to lure the bees to Gabriel?” Linden asked, her arms wrapped round her bare shoulders as if she felt a chill. “Was it smeared on him or something?”
“You haven’t heard anything from Christopher yet?”
Linden shook her head. “But why else would he ask for a sample if not to compare it with what he’d found?”
They both stared at the jar on the counter, until Linden said, “Go on, have a taste.”
Pru rummaged in the drawer for a spoon, plunged it into the honey, and drew it out, watching as a thick ribbon formed and began to flow back into the jar.
“We don’t always harvest in autumn, but if we do, it’s quite strong with ivy—a dark color—and when it sets, it’s thick.”
The honey in the broken jar had been thick.
“The police think I murdered Gabriel because I wanted to break it off with him in the most permanent way possible. They suspect I let the bees take care of him. Is that right?”
Pru searched her brain for one of those police clichés that could satisfy without really saying anything. “It isn’t just you—everyone’s a suspect. Until you aren’t.” Pru stuck the spoon, still coated with honey, into her mouth.
“I had no idea Gabriel was allergic to bees—it’s not exactly a common topic of conversation. Not that we talked that much,” she added quietly. “And I would never use bees for such a nefarious purpose—what good would it do to give them a bad reputation?”
“Mmm,” Pru replied, pulling the spoon out and licking it.
“Nick and I talked about it.” Linden picked at one of the frayed holes in her denims. “You see, we’ve worked through the problems we had, and now that we’re married, we have each other’s back.”
As in, covering for each other? Pru wished Linden would stop talking. Didn’t she know how she sounded?
“All right, Linden?” Miriam asked, slipping past the actor and into the cottage.
“Yeah, fine—just off for a quick kip before the afternoon call. I left my wrap behind.” Linden grabbed a thin shawl from the sofa and departed—perhaps off to cuddle with dogs and her new husband.
“I don’t suppose there’s a cuppa going,” Miriam asked Pru. “I’m having to steel myself for the afternoon. Adults or children, actors are all the same when it comes to their costumes. ‘Perfect!’ they’ll shout, and then begin a laundry list of ‘little’ problems that won’t take me ‘two ticks’ to sort out.”
“I need a cup myself,” Pru said, filling the kettle and switching it on, hoping Miriam wouldn’t sense an oncoming interrogation and bolt. When the costumer settled at the table, Pru sat across from her and began. “If you have no interest in Ambrose—apart from as the father of your grown son—why haven’t you told him that?”
Miriam colored. “He’s put you up to this.”
“He has not put me up to it,” Pru said. “I volunteered. If you don’t want to be with him, why don’t you just tell him no flat out?”
The kettle switched off, and Miriam leapt up.
“Sit,” Pru commanded.
Miriam waited a moment as if to make it look that it was her idea to sit down again. She sniffed. “Ambrose has some romanticized version of us in his head. I’m not twenty-seven years old. This”—she pointed to herself—“is not the body he remembers.”
“I’d say he knows,” Pru said. “But that is the body he wants.”
Miriam flushed scarlet and broke out into a fit of giggles as Ambrose walked in. She leapt up and fled the five steps to the sink. “Tea?” she asked over her shoulder.
Pru didn’t think anyone could mistake the atmosphere inside the cottage—certainly not Ambrose, who lifted his eyebrows at Pru. She only smiled.
“Thanks,” he replied. “I will.”
As she had the two of them there, Pru thought she’d clear a few things up.
“Have either of you been married?”
“Yes” was the answer from both.
“You married first,” Ambrose said.
“Only because you left for Edinburgh,” Miriam retorted.
At first, Pru thought “left for Edinburgh” was code for something else—but what? Then she realized Miriam meant it literally.
“You moved to Edinburgh?” Pru asked.
“Seventeen years ago, I spent a summer in a production of The Winter’s Tale for the festival.”
“I know what you were doing up there,” Miriam snapped without turning.
“I told you I never touched her, and I meant it.”
“An actor in the show with you?” Pru asked. “Is that who you married?”
“Good God, no,” Ambrose said.
Miriam laughed. “It would’ve served you right if you had.”
Ambrose laughed, too, and the turbulence settled.
“And what about Alec?” Pru asked. “What work does he do?”
“He’s an actor,” Ambrose said.
A crash at the sink and Miriam whirled round. “He’s in risk management!”
Ambrose opened his mouth and shut it again. After a deep breath, he said to Pru, “He’s in risk management. But he does a bit of acting on the side”—this he aimed at Miriam—“and he’s quite good.”
She twisted the tea towel in her hands, and for a moment, Pru thought Ambrose was in for it. But instead, Miriam’s face softened.
“ ‘Marvelous Mercutio,’ ” she said. “ ‘Full of humor and heartbreak.’ ”
Ambrose grinned. “That was the review in The Cheltenham Standard,” he told Pru. “Local production, but quite a good company.”
Miriam smoothed the tea towel and hung it on a peg. “He got his talent from you,” she admitted.
“He got his good sense from you,” Ambrose told her, adding, “and that dimple.”
That dimple made an immediate appearance.
“Look,” Pru said, j
umping up from her chair so fast it rocked back and hit the wall. “I’ve just remembered I have plants that need watering before we begin this afternoon. Better hop to it.”
Pru didn’t think Miriam and Ambrose heard her excuse—nor noticed when she slipped out the door.
* * *
—
Actors were beginning to come to life. The Mechanicals had changed from their usual wild prints and now wore trousers and tunics in subtle forest shades of brown, red, and green. They had struck up a band—playing what looked like miniature trombones, a tiny trumpet, and a large curly horn—and were marching toward the theater lawn in a haphazard fashion. Pru started to follow them and met Penelope coming toward her, wrangling the ever-thickening three-ring binder—which now included ribbons and strips of fabric dangling from its pages—and accompanied by a new face.
“Fairy,” Penelope said, introducing the young woman to Pru in a distracted fashion. “She’s only here today and final dress, but she’s an old hand and can easily step in and out.” The stage manager turned to the newest addition. “Don’t suppose you’d like to read for Lysander, too?” she asked, and the two women laughed as they continued to the stables.
“Hiya, Pru.”
It was Nell, coming out of the path that led to the rock garden. She stretched. “That’s a lovely spot—nice and quiet and peaceful. None of our homes ever had much of a garden—now I can see why you like it so much. I saw these amazing spiny blue plants in there—covered in bees.”
“The sea holly has started to bloom,” Pru said. “I’ll take a look later.”
“And also, there’re clumps of these small flowers everywhere—some are white, and others are pink or red. Do you know what they are?”
“Rhodohypoxis,” Pru replied. “It’s called red star—even the white ones. I wonder if Hal got the names down for Simon.”
“Your Hal?” Nell smiled. “I doubt if he went in there—too far away from the action, isn’t it?”
“The action?”
“Listening in on rehearsals,” Nell said. “I caught on after a while—he’s always nearby. Even when he started to work on those flowers back there.” Nell waved her arm and Pru’s gaze followed the direction—toward the double border.
“He was trimming back the catmint,” Pru said. “It was his idea.”
“I think he gave it up when he got out of earshot.”
“Nell?” Miriam called from the door of the stables.
“Coming.”
* * *
—
Nell went one way and Pru the other—marching straight down through the beech walk with its underplanting of martagon lilies and heading toward the double border. She had not spent as much time on this side of the theater lawn. Her usual path took her up the other way, what she had dubbed the green corridor with its memorial rock to a faithful dog and its clipped cones of golden ivy. It was nearer her plant corral and so more convenient. Of course, she’d seen this part of the garden early on—but not since Hal had started. On his own, he’d found an unending number of tasks that desperately needed doing, and Pru had not checked up on him.
As she came out into the open at the end of the beeches, Pru passed the stage entrance—actors would call that stage left as they looked out at the audience—and heard Max talking to Les. The beginning of the double border lay straight ahead of her.
The borders stretched eighty feet long on each side and ten feet deep. Coeur-de-la-Mer head gardener Jeremy the hermit had left the landscape immaculate, but the Six Hills Giant catmint—a large selection that formed mounds three feet high and wide—had waited for his departure to finish flowering and then flop over onto the grass path and onto neighboring plants. Hal was right to want to cut it back. Shearing would mean a neater border as well as another, more modest, flowering. And so Pru had set him to the task and left him to himself.
But now she stopped, her heart in her throat. My God, what had happened?
He had started trimming the catmint back but had reached no further than twelve or fifteen feet down each side. From Pru’s usual post—offstage right, all the way the other side from where she stood now—these first few feet were all she could see of the double borders, and so she thought he’d done the job, never taking the time to check. Why hadn’t she?
Pru walked a bit further, past where Hal had stopped cutting. The voices onstage faded, and she surveyed the scene in the quiet. This was dreadful—like only half a haircut, but on a gargantuan scale.
And this wasn’t the only task Hal had left unfinished. He’d yet to complete the dahlia list and had started, but stopped, deadheading the roses. Yet every time she saw him, he’d been busy—coming and going from one task or another. At least he’d said so.
Had he staked the Verbascum as he said he must and pruned the flowering almond, the kerria, and those other spring-flowering shrubs he said would go to rack and ruin if they weren’t seen to immediately? Or had every job been started and then abandoned?
Perhaps Coeur-de-la-Mer had put Hal on overload, fracturing his obsession with the landscape so that as soon as he began one task, he had to move to the next. What if Jeremy returned to this? What if the Gascoignes decided to show up for one of the performances? The state of the garden would reflect on Max and the company, but it was her fault, not theirs.
Well, Pru couldn’t leave it. She had allowed this to happen by not monitoring Hal’s work, and she would put it to rights. As soon as rehearsals were finished, her work would begin, and she would continue through every evening if need be until it was done. There would be plenty of daylight until nine or even ten o’clock to guide her pruners—and plenty of time to feel sorry for herself.
She retraced her steps back through the double border, and as she reached the place where Hal had stopped cutting, she could hear voices on the stage again.
Her annoyance swelled into exasperation, racing headlong into anger before she caught herself. No sense in flying off the handle—she would think about how to approach this. Perhaps she’d ring Dilwyn Farrer, Hal’s lecturer. He might be able to advise her on how to proceed. Was this a pattern of behavior he had seen in Hal?
The young man had been an exemplary employee since they’d hired him the previous autumn and had always followed through with any job given to him. But perhaps this was how it went—he worked well for a while but eventually came to a breaking point. And maybe this was why Mr. Farrer still checked in on him.
Pru closed her eyes and inhaled and exhaled slowly as she calmed her thoughts. The warm air had a languid quality, and a slight breeze pricked the hairs on her skin. When she opened her eyes and looked at her arms, she expected to see ashes like large gray flakes resting there.
Two Mile Ash. That was what her dream had been about. What had brought it back now? Then, she realized she could hear Puck onstage—I am that merry wanderer of the night. Les Buchan and his family had lived in Two Mile Ash, and so had Gabriel Gibb. Had the dream been a message—telling her Les Buchan was the murderer?
“Pru!” Penelope called. “The fairies are arriving—to the gates!”
Come, now a roundel and a fairy song
2.2.1
Chapter 30
“Moth One, you’re to stay here in the cottage—we’re waiting our turn,” Pru said as one of the fairies attempted to make a break for it.
“I’m not Moth One,” the girl complained, hands on her hips. “I’m Peaseblossom Two.”
“Have you ever seen a real peaseblossom?” Pru asked, snatching at nothing for a way to keep them from bolting.
The girl wrinkled her nose. “It’s a thing—a true thing, not made up?”
“Yes, it’s the blossom on a plant—the pea blossom. That’s why Miriam made your costume green and white, for the green peas.”
“Green peas?” It was one of the boys, possibly Moth Three. “Why say
that? What other color would they be?”
“It’s an American thing—well, at least a Southern American thing. You say ‘green pea’ because otherwise you might get a black-eyed pea.”
“Peas have eyes?” The girl fairies broke out into a fit of giggles as the boys pantomimed in slow motion giving each other a black eye. Pru sighed. At least they had stopped trying to escape. She leaned over to one small girl who had squeezed herself into the corner of the sofa. “And is it fun being a Cobweb?”
“No, it isn’t fun,” she whinged. “I don’t want to be a Cobweb. I wanted to be a Mustardseed. Spiders scare me. They make me squeal.”
Pru, who had been known to squeal herself when surprised by one, offered what comfort she could. “Cobwebs are quite important, you know. Remember what Bottom says—that he would use a cobweb to help heal a cut. Doctors learned how to make bandages from spiders.”
“You mean a cobweb is like a sticking plaster?” One of the boys frowned.
“Yes. Sort of.” Pru had a disturbing image of the boys racing out to pull down any cobweb they saw. “But it’s best to let spiders be—they won’t bother us if we don’t bother them.”
“Right, fairies,” Nina said from the doorway, “queue up—time for your wings!”
Thank God. At last Pru would have thirty seconds to think. Several issues or clues or possible leads had ricocheted about her brain in the moments before the children arrived, but her duty as fairy minder for the past hour had chased them off. Now, as the children filed meekly out of the cottage, she set her mind to remembering. The double border…
“There’s trouble,” Miriam said. She’d stepped in as the last fairy left. Her hair had been tied back with what looked like a length of bias tape, although strands were already escaping. She frowned and held up a brown, shaggy hood of sorts with two long brown ears sticking out of it. “It’s Bottom—or rather his ass’s head. I don’t think he’ll be able to get it on and off without help. Would you mind?”
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