Murder at Maddingley Grange (30 page)

She moved, but too quickly. Careless of her immediate surroundings, every atom and molecule trained on to the great outdoors, Laurie knocked over a flowerpot. It fell and smashed, a very loud smash, on the flagstones. She stifled a low moaning cry. A terrible silence ensued.

And then the footsteps started up again. They abandoned the earthen path for one of gravel. The one that led directly to the greenhouse door. Laurie waited, melting with panic. Images, poignant and ridiculous, surged through her mind. She and Derek, linked dramatically on the six o'clock news. Scotland Yard investigating. Tearful friends and relatives ringed around her grave watching the shiny box slip away. Everyone liked her, people would affirm, as they always did when it was too late. Simon, drinking too much at the reception, would say: “She was too young to die.”

And my God, so I am, thought Laurie. So I am. Anger stroked her then, like a bear's paw. Scratching her painfully, hopefully back to life. What am I doing, she asked herself, standing here, just standing, waiting? Tamely, like some sacrificial goat. Is this the spirit with which I led Bedales against Alton Convent at hockey, winning seven nil? Adrenaline surged into her blood, firing her resolve. It was too late to run. (The footsteps were nearer now. Very near.) But it was not too late to fight. It was not too late to yell and scream and kick. Or shout
Geronimo!
and crown him with a flowerpot. Or squirt him in the eye with Tumblebug.

So Laurie picked up the kitchen chair with no back and, the second the unknown loiterer stepped through the greenhouse doorway, screwed her eyes up tight and brought it crashing down upon his head.

M
artin had been roaming the grounds for nearly an hour looking for Laurie. He alone—perhaps because he was so consistently aware of her presence—had noticed her slip away. And when Simon had missed her and run off to the garage, Martin had left too.

So far he had circled the lake, retraced his morning steps over the willow-pattern bridge and through the shrubbery and was now checking the charming and eccentric topiary. Huge cups and saucers, a snake poised waveringly on the tip of its tail and a lion with an austere, neatly barbered mane and wild flowering bushy legs. But no Laurie.

Martin felt his general anxiety quicken into a definite stab of apprehension. Where on earth could she be? A picture of her presented itself and his apprehension deepened. She was such a little thing. So vulnerable. He recalled her staggering under the weight of his breakfast tray, her slim wrist as she wielded the big silver teapot, her tender sloping shoulders. And she was out here on her own. With that bloody man on the loose…

At least steps had been taken to inform the proper authorities. Martin had noticed the van going down the drive while he was searching a clump of bamboo on the far side of the lake. Now, negotiating a giant turtle of mixed parentage (box, yew and golden privet), Martin, consumed with worry as he was, yet found himself able to reflect with a small part of his mind on the extreme peculiarity of his position.

He had never thought himself a fickle person. Off with the old and on with the new was a concept quite alien to his nature. If asked his opinion on such a way of going on he would have described it as tawdry in the extreme. Yet here he was, only twenty-four hours ago engaged to one girl, now, thanks to Rosemary's apostasy, disengaged and with his thoughts already warmly turning toward another.

Martin's relationships with the opposite sex had been modest both in number and in the degree of their intensity. He had meandered into one or two rather static relationships that had petered out in an atmosphere of mild goodwill on both sides, and then he had met Rosemary. Like most people, Martin admired or envied in others qualities that were plainly absent in himself. So he was attracted by Rosemary's forthright bounciness, not seeing how close it was to bossiness, itself a mere scold away from bullying.

But in none of these previous relationships had he felt that sweet protective urge or easy warmth of heart he experienced now when thinking of Laurie. It seemed to Martin hardly possible that he had exchanged no more than a few sentences with the girl, and half of those while under the impression that she was someone else. He attempted to consider these emotions coolly but failed. He felt excited but aware that the excitement had a still calm center. He sat down on a stone, tongue-extending griffin and pondered.

Was this then, this tranquil disturbance and extraordinary
tendresse
, love? The experience of which peerless poets and lesser lyricists alike had sung? “Some enchanted evening…It is the moon and Juliet is the sun…Unforgettable, that's what you are…Whoever loved that loved not at first sight…?”

Martin sprang up and walked on, overwhelmed and astonished by this marvelous new perception. That it was true he had no doubt. His heart tightened, his blood fizzed, his stomach swooped and his bones were all bendy. But when had it happened? As they had first spoken when he got off the bus? When she had brought up his tray so imaginatively decorated by that lovely marigold? Or just now when he had longed to offer comfort as she sat, white-faced and wretched, in the sitting room? The time was unimportant. The fact, shining with a sock-in-the-eye, klieg-light brilliance, was all. “I am in love,” murmured Martin and held the realization, like a glowing jewel, in the forefront of his mind as he strolled on.

Strangely enough, now that he had put a name to his condition (so common, so unique), the urgent need to clap eyes on his treasure lessened. It seemed enough for now that he could re-create her in his imagination. Picture her elegant in patterned silk, stunning in lamé, shy and pretty in her old blue frock. Each vision seemed to Martin to approach the very pinnacle of perfection. And, with the unclouded percipience of lovers everywhere, he knew that she was as good and kind and clever as she was beautiful.

She would not make the drearily predictable remark if he told her that he traveled in glass houses that he must be careful not to throw any stones. Or scoff at his ambition to one day design and stock his own conservatories for individual clients right down to the last flower and fern. Or laugh (as Rosemary had) if he confessed that occasionally, when the day had been especially dark, he still took Teddy to bed.

Mooning thus, Martin almost didn't notice the entrance that led to the kitchen garden. Not wishing to leave any part of the grounds unchecked he went in, closing the gate with great care behind him. Pausing only to reflect that, no doubt due to love's benign intervention, his headache had entirely disappeared, he started to look round.

Plainly the garden was uninhabited but Martin, his horticulturist's soul charmed by the neatness of the vegetable beds, could not resist it. The herb wheel he found especially appealing. He admired the greenhouse, very sensibly semi-whitewashed against the heat (the staff here obviously knew their stuff), and with the zealous curiosity of the expert, was driven to have a peep inside.

He realized it was occupied as he went up the path and heard something fall. This realization was compounded by the fact that, as he stooped to enter, someone hit him a terrific blow across the head.

Martin's last two conscious thoughts as he plummeted into darkness were: “I am being murdered” and “I shall never see her again.”

Both of these perceptions were rapidly confounded. In no time at all he became aware that his name was being urgently spoken. Also that a little light rain was falling on his face. As he struggled to sit up, his headache returned with a vengeance. The rain appeared to come from a watering can held by his beloved girl, as did the anguished name-calling.

Now she put the can aside and fell to her knees, crying:

“Darling, darling,
darling
. Oh, darling—are you all right? Speak to me, darling.”

Martin, not a whit bored by all this repetition, gave her a woozy smile. “My darling…” he began (who was he to improve upon such dialogue?) “I think I'm all right. Darling.”

“Oh!” Scarlet-faced, Laurie scrambled to her feet, and rather more slowly and hanging on to the shelving, Martin did the same. “You must sit down,” she continued, taking his arm and leading him to a sort of stool which she set upright and onto which he gratefully sank. Then she stood, rather as she had that morning in his room, looking at him with that same strange mixture of ingenuousness, excitement and alarm.

Martin, on the other hand, although in great pain, felt uncomplicatedly happy. He knew himself to be loved. Laurie had lavished endearments upon him and held him in her arms. True, this was only after she had knocked him half senseless with some sort of blunt instrument but no doubt all would be explained in the fullness of time. Lack of doubt must be the order of the day if their courtship were to blossom as Martin was determined that it should. Meanwhile, as she was now looking quite shattered and appeared to be tonguetied to boot, it was up to him to make some soothing remark and help reduce all the emotion that was charging so impetuously about. Something light, down-to-earth but unromantic (there would be plenty of time for all that later). Strictly noninflammatory. Perhaps a joke? (I've heard of the greenhouse effect but this is ridiculous.) On second thoughts, better not. Such facetiae might only upset her more. Martin looked around for inspiration and spotted the perfect opener. Safe, innocuous, uncontroversial to the point of boredom.

“I say,” he said. “Those tomatoes could do with pinching out.”

His honeysuckle burst into tears. “I've been trying to do them,” she sobbed, “ever since Simon suggested this d… dreadful weekend. And there's so man…man…man…”

“There certainly are,” agreed Martin, looking down the long aisle at the prodigality of Saint Pierres. “What on earth do you do with all the proceeds?”

“My aunt sells them. At the Women's Institute market.”

“Why don't we pinch them out now?”

“
Could
we?”

“I don't see why not. I'm in no hurry to get back—are you?”

“Oh no,” said Laurie quickly. She smiled at him, then took an old pouched hessian apron from behind the door, wrapped it around herself and started to take out the side shoots from the first plant, dropping the green fronds into the pocket. Martin started on the second. They worked down one side together and gradually the emotional tension lessened until it was nothing more than a quietly interesting simmer.

“Don't your aunt's gardeners do this sort of thing?”

“They just come in one day a week while she's away, to do the rough. I offered to look after everything else.”

“A hell of a lot to do.”

“I don't mind. I simply love it.” Martin remembered the off-color fingernails. “Simon says I was born on my knees with a trowel in my hand.”

“Me too.”

“Really?” She stopped picking and gazed at him with the warmest interest but without surprise. It seemed to Laurie, now that this great benefaction had fallen from the skies (for had Martin not called her his darling?) that all manner of things would inevitably be well. It would be quite unthinkable that he would not share her grand passion. Soul mates came equipped with all the necessary accoutrements for perfect domestic harmony. She waited happily for more of this captivating inquisition.

“Actually I travel in glass houses…” Martin paused. Laurie gave him an encouraging smile and he continued, laying his hopes and dreams at her feet.

“I've always thought,” she said when he had finished, “that there must be all sorts of marvelous plants in China and India that we don't know about yet. Things perfect for your conservatory. George Forrest couldn't have found them all. Then there's the warm parts of Russia…Georgia, you know. Or even Turkistan.”

“We must go and see.”

Laurie dropped some shoots and stumbled picking them up. She had not been prepared for that first usage of the sweetest of all the personal pronouns, or the quick piercing shaft of joy.

“I'm going to Pershore College in September,” she said, when she felt able to speak. “I want eventually to do landscape gardening.”

Martin listened, rapt and amazed. He had not assumed, he had not
trusted
that their ambitions and interests would, such is the precision of blind Cupid's aim, so marvelously coincide. To Martin the whole revelatory conversation was like being handed the gift of a ravishingly painted box and, on opening it, finding inside another of greater perfection and inside that, one more lovely still.

His heart brimming with gratitude, he reached out and took her hand. She didn't look at him but he felt her tremble. Across her brown forearm lay a bar of brilliant orange pollen. He bent his head and blew the powdery dust away. She turned then and he saw that she was crying.

“Dearest…” He put his arms around her. “What is it? Don't cry. I can't bear it.”

“Oh, Martin.” Tears sprang from her eyes and streamed down her cheeks. She buried her face in his shirt front. “I thought I'd…killed you.…”