The Garden Plot (22 page)

“Sir, do you think this evening had something to do with that case?”

“It may, so we will need to see what you find, of course.” Christopher and the sergeant continued discussing how they would share evidence, but Pru didn’t listen. She was feeling even the bigger fool now. Romilda wasn’t just some con woman; this was part of a scheme to get rid of her, because she knew … something. She knew something that she didn’t know she knew. But was Romilda an accomplice of Alf’s or Malcolm’s?

Christopher turned to her and opened his mouth to speak, but he stopped and stared at her left breast. He moved his head slightly and went for his glasses. Before she could react, he asked, “What color is her hair?”

“Blond,” Pru said, “she has long blond …” She looked down at her black sweater and saw, entwined in the wool, one long blond hair. Christopher pulled a small plastic bag out of his pocket, and the sergeant provided a pair of tweezers.
Evidence,
thought Pru,
a piece of hard evidence.

The sergeant left the room with the bag, and they continued to wait.

“Does she know where you live?” Christopher asked.

For a moment, she felt panic rising. She thought hard about all she’d said to the woman and where they met. She breathed a sigh of relief. “No, no, I never told her. She never asked. We were always away from my neighborhood when we met.” Pru stared at her tea, watching a film form on the surface.

“This wasn’t your fault,” he said.

Pru looked up sharply. “Are you a mind reader as well as an inspector? Christopher, if I hadn’t frozen there at the window, I might have been able to grab her, hold her, instead of letting her push me out.” She could feel herself back on the ledge. “You don’t know what it’s like,” she said. “It feels like the earth way down there is shifting, moving, and you’ve lost all sense of gravity. There’s no place to be.”

The sergeant returned. “Ms. Parke.” He stood just inside the door, fingering a piece of paper, then came to the table and sat down. “Ms. Parke.” He took a breath and then another. “Would you like to … speak to someone?”

“You mean besides you?”

“We have someone here that you could speak with. We know that sometimes circumstances can seem overwhelming, and you think that—”

Christopher interrupted. “It isn’t like that,” he said.

The penny dropped. “You think I was going to jump?” Pru said. “I wasn’t going to jump. I was pushed.”

“We have a copy of the application to let the flat,” the sergeant said, as he pushed the paper across the table.

Christopher intercepted it, began patting his pockets for his reading glasses, and stopped. He gave a short laugh that sounded like relief and pushed the paper over to Pru. She didn’t need glasses, either. On the line that said “applicant’s name,” someone had written in block letters: “Prudence Parke.”

“I didn’t fill this out,” she said, jabbing her finger at the paper. “That’s not my name. My name isn’t Prudence. It’s Prunella.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she said with a smile, “I’m sure of my own name.”

She could at least give a description of Romilda. She described her to the police sketch artist, who worked, not with a paper and pencil, but with a computer. Alterations could be made almost instantly. “Her bangs were a little longer, and sort of swept to either side,” Pru said, and the bangs changed. She couldn’t get Romilda’s eyes right, though, because of the heavy black frames on the small glasses—they had done a fine job of obscuring a
most important identification feature. Finally, Pru said, “Yes, I think that’s right. I think that’s her.” The sergeant printed out a copy for her.

When finally she was free to leave, they walked to the car and stood for a moment. Pru’s mind drifted back to the first time she’d met Romilda, trying to come up with some useful clue. That’s why she wasn’t prepared when Christopher said, “You shouldn’t be alone tonight.”

What did this mean?
Come home with me? I’ll put a guard at the front door of 72 Grovehill Square? Perhaps you could bunk here at the station?
She wasn’t a charity case. He continued. “Why don’t you—” but she leapt in before he could go on.

“I can stay at Jo’s tonight. Would you take me there?”

His face was unreadable, but his tone was kind. “Yes, of course I’ll take you there.”

“Let me just ring and warn her,” Pru said.

She talked with Jo briefly, giving a sketchy account of the evening. Jo wanted only to know that she was safe. Was Christopher with her? Yes, Pru replied, he would drive her over.

He wouldn’t hear of dropping her at the door of Jo’s building in Belgravia, but instead found a place to park not too far away, and they walked back. Pru took his hand, and at the door he let go so that he could put his arms around her.

“I had a lovely evening,” she said, her arms about his neck. “Thank you for saving my life.”

“It was my pleasure.” Just before their lips met, he stopped and said, “You won’t—”

“No,” she said quickly, “I won’t.” I won’t try to find out who Romilda is, I won’t try to solve the murder, I won’t … whatever.

He kissed her gently. And kissed her again. She quite forgot just where they were. The silent street gave her a sense of privacy, but it was a false sense of privacy. Their kisses grew more urgent, she pressed herself closer to him, and he slipped his hand under her sweater—and then a cab flew by and hit its horn. They broke apart for a stunned second, and Pru started laughing, while Christopher grinned and put an arm around her shoulders in a most decorous manner. Jo opened the door, wearing a turquoise silk robe over footed pajamas. She reached out her hand to Pru.

“I’ve been watching for you,” she said with a little smile. “Oh, Pru, this is so awful,” and to Christopher, “Thank God you were there.”

“He was there, and he saved me,” Pru said, holding on to both of them.

“Christopher,” Jo said, “will you come up for a drink?”

“No, thank you, I won’t tonight.” To Pru he said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She smiled. “Yes.”

Jo led her to the elevator, and as the door closed Jo said, “That would have made an interesting headline: ‘DCI Saves Life Then Gets Arrested for Indecent Exposure.’ ” Pru smiled and leaned up against the elevator wall. She could still feel his slightly rough end-of-the-day beard growth rubbing against her face. Jo grabbed her hand again. “You know I’m happy to have you here, Pru, but … why didn’t you go home with him?”

Pru gave an exasperated laugh and put the heel of her hand to her forehead. “I didn’t … he could’ve …” Bad timing, missed signals, she wasn’t sure what to chalk it up to. “I don’t know.”

Jo had put a sheet over her sofa, and set out a large soft wool pashmina for a cover. Pru stripped to her underwear and put on an old T-shirt of Cordelia’s, while Jo poured her a large measure of eighteen-year-old Glenlivet. Pru related the entire episode, beginning with her first meeting with Romilda.

“I was an easy mark, wasn’t I?”

“No, not an easy mark, a kind person who only wanted to help.”

“Christopher says I knew something was wrong with her, but that didn’t help much. She seemed nice, and I was feeling …” Her voice faded. She had finished her whisky and stretched out on the short sofa with her feet hanging off the end. A great weariness had come over her. “Oh, I’m so very tired.”

“You haven’t forgotten about dinner tomorrow?” Jo asked.

“I remember,” Pru said as she drifted off. “Dinner at Cordelia and Lucy’s. Talk about a garden for the baby.”

When Pru awoke the next morning, Jo, dressed in one of her sharp business suits, stood at the kitchen counter looking down at a folder and talking on the phone. Pru slipped into the loo and got dressed. When she came out, she heard Jo saying, “Your own office would be six hundred square feet with a gorgeous view. You might just be able to see the Royal Observatory from those lovely wide windows … Of course I can meet you there. Shall we say …”

Pru picked up her bag and gave Jo a small wave. “See you this evening,” she mouthed, and Jo nodded and smiled.

She had little real work to do that day but could not be idle at home, and so she thought she’d stop in at the Wilsons’ just to say hello. But when she arrived, her feet carried her
straight past their front door and around the corner, then around the corner again. Christopher had as much as said that Malcolm was not a suspect, but she continued to dwell on Malcolm’s belief in Mr. Wilson’s guilt. She wanted to pin him down about what she believed were unfair insinuations.

He had, after all, invited her for coffee, she said to herself. True, it had been a vague invitation, and she wasn’t sure he meant for her to go to his house. Still, why not just drop by to say hello and meet this mysterious Mrs. Crisp?

She began to count doorways to make sure she got Malcolm’s house right, but there was no mistaking it; the stone urns flanking the door held mounds of butter-yellow miniature roses still in full bloom this late in the season. Pru had never cared much for miniature roses with their dainty leaves and tiny little flowers—they seemed too cute for their own good. Give her a full, heavy Bourbon rose any day.

A young black woman answered the door.

“Hello, I’m Pru Parke. Is Malcolm at home?”

“No, I’m sorry,” the woman said in a lilting voice that was heavily accented, “Mr. Crisp is out. Was he expecting you?”

“No, only I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop and say hello.”

A small elderly woman in a wheelchair pushed herself into the sitting room doorway. “Are you the American gardener?” she asked with a smile. “Please come in, I’m Sophia Crisp, Malcolm’s mother.”

Pru stepped inside and extended her hand. “Yes, I’m Pru. I’m happy to meet you, Mrs. Crisp.”

“Would you like coffee? I’m sure Malcolm will be home soon,” Mrs. Crisp said. “We could make it ourselves, and Naomi”—she turned to the woman who had remained at the door—“you could take your break now.”

“Yes, Mrs. Crisp. I’ll be back in thirty minutes,” said Naomi. She took her jacket and bag from by the door and left.

Mrs. Crisp led the way to the kitchen. “I’m happy to meet you, Pru. Malcolm talks about your gardening expertise.”

“Well, he’s quite a gardener himself,” Pru said as she looked out the kitchen window onto Malcolm’s collection of roses in the oval bed and along the side walls; only the wall at the bottom of the garden remained unplanted. Over the wall she could see the top of the Wilsons’ shed and the part of the garden and terrace closest to the house.

Pru flipped the switch on the kettle as Mrs. Crisp set up the mugs, got out milk and a plate of biscuits then reached for the coffee jar; much of the kitchen equipment was accessible to her, Pru couldn’t help but notice. On the other side of the room, where the
Wilsons had a seating area in their house, was Mrs. Crisp’s bed.

“It’s instant—I hope you don’t mind.” She spooned a heaping amount of coffee into each mug.

“Not at all,” said Pru, “as long as it’s good and strong.”

Pru carried the tray as they returned to the front room. She thought she might as well plunge in, albeit gingerly.

“Mrs. Crisp, it’s good that Malcolm has time to be at home with you, instead of going off to a job every day.”

“I don’t know if it’s good or not, Pru,” said Mrs. Crisp. “Here he is still such a young man, and he really has no direction and no one to talk with except me. He’s never made friends easily, and now that he has no place to go every day, he dwells on such odd things.”

“What about his roses?” Pru asked. “Couldn’t he join the rose society?”

“He did join, but then there was some problem at an exhibition—he brought it to the attention of the judges that someone was trying to slip a hybrid musk in as a centrifolia. There was an accusation that he tried to attack someone with a trowel—really, how those people could ever think Malcolm capable of violence is beyond me. I think he was trying to stir up conversation, thinking that they would accept him into their inner circle.”

Pru tried to sort out the two different pieces of information. If Malcolm could attack someone with a trowel, he might be able to attack someone with a spade. That went against the details of the murder that Christopher related to Pru, but it did show a tendency for violence.

Pru thought of Malcolm’s accusation that Jeremy stole an artifact from a dig, just as he had accused a member of the rose society of a misdeed. An incorrectly labeled rose may not seem like a terrible act to a layperson, but Pru knew what those rosarians were like. Malcolm sounded like a little boy who pulled a girl’s pigtails just to get her attention. Did he not know how to make friends?

“Do you see much of the Wilsons, Mrs. Crisp?” Pru asked.

“Harry and Vernona seem much too busy for the neighbors, Pru. We had coffee once when they first moved in. They came over here with Vernona’s brother, who, I’m afraid to say, doesn’t seem the most upstanding character. After he showed up here a few more times, I told Malcolm he wasn’t welcome. I got the feeling that Alf was trying to rope Malcolm into something, and Malcolm is so impressionable.” Malcolm may be forty-something to the world, but he remained a twelve-year-old in Mrs. Crisp’s mind. “But after that first coffee, Harry and Vernona never returned the invitation and refused
our invitations that I sent over by way of Malcolm. I grew rather tired of the effort.”

It seemed that the invitations from both houses stopped dead at Malcolm.
And why was that?
Pru wondered. Was it because Malcolm had his feelings hurt when he wasn’t asked to play at archaeology?
Shame on you,
she thought.
It’s one thing to have your own opinions, but to deny your mother the pleasantries of life by manipulating events is disgraceful.

“Mrs. Crisp,” Pru began, wondering if she could get Malcolm’s mother to talk about the murder, “it must have been disturbing to have such a terrible crime happen so close to you—I mean, the murder of Mr. Pendergast.”

“We don’t know anything about what happened over there, Pru.” Mrs. Crisp straightened in her chair, squaring her shoulders. “I wish the police would stop asking Malcolm questions, as if he was somehow involved. We never met that unfortunate man, and yet Harry Wilson persists in trying to accuse Malcolm of something he had no part in.”