EG02 - The Lost Gardens (2 page)

Kingston stepped back, reached into his pocket and took out a coin. Dropping it into the well, he counted under his breath. One … two … on three, he heard the plop of the coin hitting water. ‘Deep, by the sound of it.’ He turned and cast his eyes around the low ceiling. ‘Tomorrow, let’s rig up some lights in here, Jack, and we’ll show it to Jamie. She has her own place of worship now.’

Jamie Gibson, an American, was the new owner of Wickersham Priory, the estate on which they were all working. Her project, both ambitious and expensive, was aimed at restoring the ten-acre gardens that had fallen into decay after decades of neglect.

As he turned to go, something on the flagstones caught his eye; a slight glint, nothing more. He stooped to look closer. It was a coin. A few feet away there was another, then a third. Picking them up, he examined them in the palm of his hand. One was a shilling, dated 1963. A sixpence was dated 1959, as was another shilling.

He turned to Jack, who was about to walk off. ‘Jack, how long would you say this place has been buried in that ivy?’

Jack thought for a moment. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘Bloody long time, by the looks of it. You’d know better than me—why?’

‘Just curious, that’s all.’

By eight o’clock the next morning Jack and his men had set up a battery-powered lighting rig with two floodlights clamped to a vertical rod mounted on a tripod. Over the wellhead they had constructed a makeshift pulley with a rope tied to the handle of a galvanized bucket.

Shortly after eight fifteen Kingston and Jamie joined them. The bucket, weighted with a rock, was lowered into the well. It was some time before it reached the bottom.

Huddled around the wellhead in the chill air, the small group watched silently as two of Jack’s men began pulling hand-over-hand on the pulley rope to bring the bucket up from the bottom of the well.

At last it broke the surface and they all peered over the stone ledge as it jerked and scraped its way up the last slimy ten feet—the sound echoing around the small space, misshapen shadows dancing against the white walls from the blaze of two halogen floodlights.

Sloshing water as it was lifted over the stone surround, the bucket was lowered to the floor. Jack walked over and up-ended its contents, splashing them on to the flagstones. On his haunches, he shoved the rock aside and examined the fragments of whitish material that had spilled out with the last ooze of well water and black sludge. ‘Looks like we got ourselves some animal bones, doctor,’ he said. ‘Rat—squirrel maybe.’

Kingston walked over and knelt by the upturned bucket, poking the skeletal remains with his finger. He glanced at Jack. ‘Can one of your chaps find a bag or a cloth that we can wrap these in?’

‘Sure. Why?’

‘Because this was no animal. It’s what’s left of a human hand.’

The next day, in response to Kingston’s phone call, Detective Chief Inspector Chadwick and Sergeant Eldridge from Taunton police arrived at Wickersham in an unmarked car. They were accompanied by a van with personnel from Avon and Somerset Constabulary Underwater Search Unit.

Sitting in the third row of the pews, Jamie, Kingston and the chief inspector watched as the well area was cordoned off with blue and white tape and the scene photographed with a 35mm still camera, then videotaped. Soon the underwater search diver was lowered into the well.

Three minutes passed. The diver had been submerged longer than any of them had anticipated. Conversation had ceased and all eyes were now on the steel hawser that dangled from a new pulley the police had rigged over the wellhead. Suddenly it jerked. He was on his way up.

Everyone watched with anticipation as the diver was lifted out. He snapped open his buoyancy vest and swung the scuba tank to the floor. Gripping his mask with both hands, he eased it up, resting it on the slick hood on his forehead, blinking his eyes to adjust to the floodlights. By the time he had removed the mouthpiece and tugged off his gloves there was a puddle of water at his feet. Those in the pews waited on his words.

‘Bloody dark down there,’he said. ‘Bloody cramped, too.’ Though his words were meant for Inspector Chadwick who was standing next to him, his voice echoed off the bare walls of the chapel for all to hear.

‘Anything interesting, Terry?’ Chadwick asked.

‘If you call bones interesting, sir,’ he said, peeling off his hood, waggling a finger in his ear and cocking his head to one side. ‘The doctor was right. There’s what’s left of a body down there. Mostly bones.’

‘No soft tissue, ligaments, clothing?’

‘Just a skeleton by the looks of it.’

An hour and a half later in the living room at Wickersham Priory Lawrence Kingston and Jamie sat discussing the grisly discovery. Between them on the coffee table was a disarray of china cups and saucers, a cosy-covered teapot, cake plates and crumpled napkins—the remains of their tea.

The DCI and sergeant had departed a couple of minutes earlier, having spent the best part of an hour asking questions about the events leading up to the discovery of the bones.

‘I must say, your policemen are polite,’ said Jamie, starting to stack the china.

Kingston pulled on his earlobe—a quirky habit whenever he was lost in thought—and nodded but made no comment.

Jamie paused, fingers on the handle of the china teapot. ‘Can you get DNA from bones?’

‘Certainly,’ Kingston replied. ‘Though I believe it might be difficult coaxing DNA from the bones if they’ve been down there for many years, which appears to be the case.’

Jamie got up, went to the sideboard to retrieve the tea tray.

Kingston looked down at the table, speaking more to himself than to her. ‘The inspector’s probably right. I doubt seriously that we’ll ever know who the poor soul was. Dental charts a remote possibility, I suppose.’

She looked over her shoulder. ‘How on earth would you go about matching someone’s teeth if they’ve been dead for as long as the inspector suggests?’

Kingston smiled. ‘Not easy.’

Jamie faked a shiver. ‘I suppose there
were
teeth? It’s all a bit too gross for me.’

‘I’m sure there were. And you’re right, the accident or murder—whichever—could have taken place centuries ago.’

‘Before this house was built?’

‘A possibility.’ He rubbed his chin, thinking.

Jamie screwed up her face. ‘I hope you’re right. I can live with a medieval family skeleton in the closet but it’s another matter entirely if it took place more recently. Know what I mean?’

Kingston laughed, got up from the chair. ‘I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it, Jamie. Like the inspector said, we’ll probably never know.’

‘Will they know whether it’s a man or a woman?’

‘They will, quite easily.’ Kingston had adopted a professorial stance, hands clasped behind his back. ‘They’ll determine that from the ischium-pubis index. Height too,’ he added, starting to pace the room. ‘That’s deduced from the length of the long bones in the arms and legs. Hadden and another forensic anthropologist, whose name escapes me, developed that formula.’

Jamie’s eyebrows shot up. ‘God! How come you know all this?’

Kingston smiled. ‘Spent a couple of years in med school when you were just a twinkle in your father’s eye, my dear.’

‘Really? Why did you give it up?’

Kingston grinned like a little boy who’d just landed his first fish. ‘As the surgeon said, “I just wasn’t cut out for it!’”

‘Come on, Lawrence, be serious.’

Kingston snapped his fingers. ‘Dapertuis. Professor Dapertuis. That was the other chap’s name. Oh—and one other thing—they’ll also be able to determine, within reason, the age of the victim at the time of death.’

‘What about how long he or she’s been down there?’

‘That can present a problem. The longer those bones have been down there, the more difficult it will be for the pathologist to determine the time since death. Damn. I forgot to ask the inspector the rate of decomposition that bones undergo after submersion in water.’ He shook his head, frowning. ‘What
am
I thinking of? Chadwick wouldn’t know that,’he muttered to himself.

Jamie picked up the loaded tray and started to make for the door. ‘Anything I can get you, Lawrence?’

Kingston sighed. ‘Thanks, no. I think we should call it a day.’ He studied Detective Chief Inspector Chadwick’s card one more time, then put it in his shirt pocket. ‘Get back to more pleasant things like gardens and flowers.’

Straightening up after ducking under the low beam, Kingston closed the cottage door behind him. Thatched with honey-coloured stone walls, the cottage had been built over two hundred years ago to house labourers on the estate. Jamie had furnished it in a Laura Ashley style—a bit dainty for Kingston’s taste but appropriate and comfortable. It was now his home from home while he worked with Jamie restoring the gardens at Wickersham.

He picked up
The Times
and a pencil from the Welsh dresser, went across the room and sank into the sofa. The paper was already folded to the Saturday Jumbo crossword puzzle. He placed it on his lap and put on his glasses, ready to pick up where he’d left off the night before. Three days now and only half the answers pencilled in. Far off his usual pace. Considering that he’d been doing the mind-bending cryptic for Lord knows how many years, it was to be expected that once in a while he would be stumped. He read the 49 across clue for the third time:
One’s right up the pole, as the mad may be
—8 letters.* For several moments he looked up at the misshapen timber beam that ran across the centre of the ceiling, the eraser end of the pencil resting on his lower lip. ‘Bugger,’ he said, finally, placing the paper back in his lap. He simply couldn’t concentrate. His thoughts kept

*Answer is: masthead (an anagram of “as the mad.”) returning to the well, the skeleton and the coins, trying to picture what might have taken place there. He put the paper on the coffee table and stretched out, propping a pillow under his head. Once again the nagging feeling returned: that it could have been a big mistake on his part to become involved in Jamie’s venture. It was too late now, though. He closed his eyes and thought back to that evening when she had first called him.

Chapter Two

When the phone had rung in his Chelsea flat that evening three months earlier, back in March, Kingston was comfortably settled in his rumpled leather chair reading
Gardens Illustrated
. It had been drizzling steadily all day. Next to him the small fire he’d lit earlier that afternoon hissed contentedly, giving a pleasing warmth and glow to the darkening room. He put the magazine aside and picked up the phone.

A woman with an American accent spoke. ‘My name’s Jamie Gibson,’ she announced. ‘Am I calling at a bad time?’

‘No, no, it’s fine. How can I be of help?’ Kingston replied.

‘You’ve been recommended to me by my solicitor, David Latimer. He thinks very highly of you and suggested that I contact you.’ She paused. ‘He seems to know a lot about you. Tells me you’re one of the top garden experts in the country.’

He made light of the compliment and asked again the reason for her call.

‘I promise to be as brief as possible,’ she replied.

She had recently inherited a large country house in Somerset along with its surrounding two-hundred-acre estate, formerly owned by a family named Ryder, she said. Despite its run-down condition, she had moved in and hired a local builder to start work on the house. ‘I can manage the house just fine, but what really concerns me are the gardens.’ She sighed. ‘They’re another matter entirely; that’s where I’m hoping you might be of help. The reason for my call.’

‘Gardens, plural, you said?’

‘Yes, there’re several.’

‘Really? What do you mean by “another matter entirely”? ’

‘Well, I’ve been told that, in their heyday, the gardens at Wickersham Priory were among the finest in England.’ She described the gardens as they had been in the years before the war and how, in the opinions of some garden writers of the time, they rivalled the best in the world.

‘Where did you learn all this?’ he asked.

‘Mostly from the local library. A couple of seniors in the village told me about their visiting the gardens way back—but their descriptions were pretty sketchy. I also found a good book in the local bookshop, with several pages devoted to Wickersham. Gardens within gardens. They were so grand … so beautiful.’ She spoke the words with a sensibility that he found oddly touching. Then she countered with a warm and infectious chuckle, as though she had practised it a long time to get it perfect. ‘Right now, the gardens look more like something Steven Spielberg would dream up.’ He smiled at the simile and was about to ask her to be more explicit but she carried on. ‘It’s my plan to restore them. I want to see them as they were in those days, mostly for me, but also as a way of expressing my appreciation. As a tribute, if you will, to the Ryder family. So I’m asking if you’ll help me.’ She paused but only for a second or so, as if not expecting a reply. ‘Latimer thinks you’d be perfect for the job. Of course, I’m prepared to pay whatever it takes.’Another pause. ‘Well, within reason, of course.’

Despite the temptation implicit in her last remark—and he had never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth—Kingston wasn’t swayed. As the woman had been talking, he had been trying to cobble up a credible excuse and steer the conversation to a polite close. He wasn’t going to tell her he didn’t have the time. That would sound too lame and, in any case, it would be a lie. Truth was that being retired—four years now, from his position as professor and head research botanist at Edinburgh University—he had nothing but time. No, he would simply tell her in all honesty that the magnitude of what she had described was too great for his present inclination for work and leave it at that. That could hardly offend her. In any case, Somerset was out of the question. Surrey or Bucks he might have considered, but Somerset? It was almost a half-day’s trip from Chelsea. He was about to tell her all this when she cut in again.