Swan for the Money (9 page)

Chapter 14

“Yes?” Mrs. Winkleson said. She didn’t look happy to see me. Of course, Mrs. Winkleson never looked particularly happy to see anyone, but she looked even less happy than usual.

“May I come in?” I was using my most icily polite tone. Rob called this the Mother voice.

She hesitated for a few moments, and glanced back. Then she opened the door.

I stepped in, and looked around to see if whoever she’d been quarreling with was still here. No such luck. I did see the tiny maid pop out of the usual door and stare at me for a few seconds in puzzlement before she disappeared back into the door. A few seconds later the butler popped out to stare in her place.

“So sorry to bother you, but I think there’s been a miscommunication,” I said.

“Can we discuss this later?” she asked. She seemed uncharacteristically anxious.

“Your staff don’t seem to have gotten the message to leave the gate open for the arriving volunteers,” I continued. “My brother is standing there with an official list of volunteers, to make sure no unauthorized people come in. But whoever’s in charge of the gate keeps shutting it, and he has to call up to the house every time—”

“Fine,” she said. “Marston— deal with it.”

She strode out through a door on the same side of the foyer as the servants’ door, slamming it behind her. I glanced at the butler.

“You’re Marston, I assume,” I said.

“Technically no, madam,” he said. “But that’s what she likes to call me.”

His rich, deep voice sounded slightly incongruous coming from someone barely five feet tall. He had a faint accent, so faint I couldn’t be sure what it was. Hispanic? Slavic? All I could say for sure was that he wasn’t from around here.

He walked across the foyer, and I followed him, glancing into the living room as I passed the wide opening. No one there. Apparently whoever Mrs. Winkleson had been arguing with had slipped out before she opened the door to let me in.

Marston opened a door to what I would have assumed was a coat closet. Inside I saw the gleaming components of a very modern security system. A pair of computers occupied most of a shelf spanning the width of the closet. On one of the monitors, I saw a grainy view of the front gate. There were five cars lined up at the gate, and for all I knew there could be others behind them, off camera. A damp human figure, hunched against the steady rain, was standing beside the driver’s window of the lead car, talking to its occupant. Then the figure turned around and pushed the intercom button again. Rob, of course.

“Hello?” he said, into the intercom. “Anyone there?”

Marston shook his head and pressed a button on the wall, just inside the closet door. The gate began slowly swinging inward.

“Gee, thanks,” Rob said, without enthusiasm.

Marston leaned toward a microphone perched between two keyboards.

“You’re welcome, sir,” he said. “Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience. The gate will now remain open for as long as you require. Please buzz the house when you wish to have it closed again.”

“Hey, that’s great!” Rob said. “Wagons ho!”

He gestured to the first car in line.

“May I?” I asked, gesturing to the microphone.

“Of course, madam,” he said, stepping aside.

“Rob,” I said, into the microphone. “Now that we’ve got Mrs. Winkleson to leave the gate open, don’t blow it. If you need a break, either ask Mr. Marston to shut the gate temporarily or call my cell phone so I can send someone to take over.”

Rob broke into a wide grin.

“Will do,” he said. “Good going!”

From which I deduced he knew who had pried the gates open.

“If you will permit me, madam.” Marston gestured to the microphone. I stepped back to give him room.

“Mr. Langslow,” he said, into the microphone. “Should anyone purporting to be one of Mrs. Winkleson’s nephews seek entry, please refrain from admitting them.”

A short silence.

“Purporting?” Rob said. “You mean, someone’s been pretending to be her nephew? Should I ask for ID?”

Marston winced, and looked at me.

“They’re not pretending to be nephews,” he said, softly. “But Mrs. Winkleson doesn’t want them on the premises. They are . . . estranged.”

“So I’ve heard,” I said. “Hang on.”

I snagged the microphone again.

“You ask for ID on anyone you don’t know personally, and if any of them turn out to be Mrs. Winkleson’s nephews, keep them out. Their names are . . .”

I looked at Marston.

“Theobald and Reginald Winkleson,” the butler said into the microphone.

“Okay,” Rob said. “No more Winklesons. Mrs. Winkleson herself is quite enough. I can relate to that.”

“Should they become importunate,” Marston said, “please notify me and I will deal with them.”

Rob frowned, and I could see him silently repeating the word “importunate.”

“He means if they won’t go on your say-so, call him and he’ll kick them out.”

“Okay,” Rob said. “That works.”

I stepped out of the closet and Marston shut the door.

“Nephews by marriage, I assume,” I said.

“You assume correctly,” Marston said. “And since under the terms of the late Mr. Winkleson’s will, they will inherit upon their aunt’s demise, their presence tends to agitate her. It really will be best for all concerned if they can be excluded from the property as much as possible.”

Not new information, but at least I now knew what I’d heard from the town grapevine was accurate.

“The rose show tomorrow’s open to the public,” I pointed out.

“If they show up on the morrow, we will admit them along with any other members of the general public, and allow them only so much access as the general public is permitted.”

More potential headaches for tomorrow. But if their presence would annoy Mrs. Winkleson, then perhaps I didn’t care if Rob failed to identify and exclude the nephews.

“Sounds reasonable,” I said aloud. “Anyway, thanks for your help in getting the gate open.”

“Thank you, madam,” he said. “The constant trips to the console were beginning to interfere with the staff’s routine.”

“By the way,” I said, “was that Mrs. Emberly talking to Mrs. Winkleson just now? Because if it was, I’d really love to catch up with her. I need to talk with her about the show.”

“I’m sorry, madam,” Marston said. “I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I guess that was the kind of nosy question you’re not supposed to answer.”

Marston’s lips twitched slightly, as if suppressing a smile.

“As it happens, I don’t actually know who was talking with Mrs. Winkleson just now,” he said. “They must have come in through the garden entrance.”

Garden entrance. Much more elegant than back door. Perhaps Michael and I should adopt the phrase.

“Ah, well,” I said. “Thanks anyway.”

“If I see Mrs. Emberly, I’ll tell her you were looking for her,” he said, as he ushered me outside.

“That would be super,” I said. Also astonishing, since I’d made up the name Emberly on the spot.

Outside on the terrace, I scanned the surrounding landscape. No sign of Mrs. Winkleson. The black swan had abandoned my car, so theoretically I could drive it down to the barns. But it wasn’t in the way here, and if I drove back, I’d have no chance to snoop.

I stood for a moment scanning the landscape. The two officers had finished with the field they’d been searching and moved on to the field containing the lake. Dr. Blake and Caroline were standing in the gazebo overlooking the lake, talking with someone. Someone Spike didn’t particularly like. He was barking furiously.

The third person left the gazebo and I recognized her, or at least her clothing. One of the maids. She was scurrying back to the house.

Dr. Blake and Caroline headed in the other direction. I made a mental note to send someone to check on them. Spike was behaving badly, almost pulling my grandfather’s arm out of the socket. And I should have noticed that Caroline’s oversized purse was unsuited for a long walk around the farm. She was visibly canting to one side under its weight.

Well, the sooner I got back to the barns, the sooner I could deal with it. I headed back down the brick stairs toward the garden.

Finding my way to the house was easy, partly because I’d been too mad to worry about getting lost, and partly because the great ungainly hulk of it dominated the landscape. Finding my way back to the goat pasture and from there to the barns proved slightly more difficult. The garden was an established one, older by several decades than the house. When Mrs. Winkleson had bought the farm, she’d torn down a quaint little farm house to build her mansion, but she’d left most of the garden intact partly because the previous own er had designed it as a moon garden— a garden containing only white flowers that could be seen in the dark, and preferably those that also had a strong fragrance.

But however enchanting the moon garden might be by night, right now it was a soggy, muddy morass filled with a great many trees tall enough to block my view of the barns. I got turned around several times and found myself heading back to the house.

Then I stumbled out of a grove of trees into an open area and saw something that made my jaw drop.

Chapter 15

I was in a small field, surrounded on three sides by woods and on the fourth by a fence that I hoped would turn out to be the goat pasture. In the middle of the field an area about half an acre in size was completely enclosed with a twelve-foot chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Floodlights and speakers were mounted on all four corners and at intervals along the four sides of the enclosure. Other mechanical devices whose purpose I couldn’t even guess hung on the fence or were arranged around the perimeter of the fence. The whole thing looked like something you’d find on the grounds of a penitentiary rather than a farm.

“You lost?”

I started, and turned to see Mr. Darby standing behind me.

“Very lost,” I said. “I’d appreciate a steer in the direction of the barns. But first, what’s that? The cell block where she keeps any brightly colored flora or fauna that invade her farm?”

“You’re not far off,” he said. “That’s where she keeps all her rose beds.”

“Is she that afraid people will steal her prize roses?”

“It’s not really people she’s worried about,” Mr. Darby said. “It’s the deer and the goats. To goats and deer, roses are like chocolate, caviar, and champagne, all rolled up into one, remember? You should have seen the time she saw one of the goats out here eating all her Black Magic roses. I thought for a moment we’d be eating goat stew that night. She had the contractors out the next day to build all this.”

From his tone, I gathered he shared my belief that the rose enclosure was a hideous eyesore.

“I’m going to take a peek inside,” I said.

“It’s locked,” he said.

“I can look through the fence,” I said. “Unless that’s
verboten
.”

“Careful, then.” He shrugged, as if disavowing any responsibility for the consequences of my nosiness. “She’s not dead keen on human intruders, either. And I don’t have a key. She doesn’t let anyone else inside, except maybe sometimes one of the garden staff, with her looking over their shoulders every second.”

“Still, no harm in just looking in through the fence,” I said. I figured if Mrs. Winkleson saw me and objected, I could claim I thought I saw a glimpse of white fur among the plants.

I stuck my face right up against the chain link, the better to see her roses. Even if you could forget about the surrounding fortifications, no one would ever call her rose garden pretty. For one thing, it was a little monotonous. Four long rows of precisely pruned bushes sported uniformly white flowers. I imagine if you got closer, you’d probably see enough subtle variations in size, shape, and texture of the white blossoms to make them interesting, but from where I stood they all blended into one. A rose factory.

The most interesting part of the whole enclosure was in the far corner, where there was a much smaller collection of roses. Many of them bore deep red or purple blooms, presumably Mrs. Winkleson’s potential entrants for the Winkleson prize. And also her breeding stock. Here and there I saw bushes sporting plastic bags over some branches, so I gathered Mrs. Winkle-son was trying to develop her own black roses. I knew from Dad’s efforts that you used the bags when you were cross-pollinating, to keep stray insects from contaminating the results with unwanted pollen.

I followed the fence around to the corner where the red roses lurked so I could peer in and check Dad’s competition.

“She’s got some awfully dark roses,” I said. A couple of the bushes bore buds that were almost black, and she had plenty of roses in deep velvety reds. Even a few that I’d almost call purple.

“They drive her bonkers, those roses.”

“Why?” I asked. “She’s got some lovely ones. Very dark ones.” Not as dark as some of Dad’s I thought. Then again, I didn’t know whether his best roses had survived the depredations of the deer.

“Yeah, pretty dark, but the darn things are still a long way from coal black,” he said. “You should see her out here sometimes, swearing at the roses, like she thought she could order them to turn black.”

“She probably does think that,” I said. “But if her roses are anything like Dad’s, swearing at them won’t do any good.”

“More likely to do harm.”

“Oh, are you a believer in talking positively to your plants?” I asked. “I have a cousin who swears she can double a plant’s growth rate by regularly talking to it in a warm, encouraging fashion.”

“That’s interesting,” Mr. Darby said, though by his expression I suspected interesting was his euphemism for wacko. “What I meant was that sometimes she gets so worked up that she rips a plant or two up, roots and all. White ones that aren’t pure white enough. Dark red ones she’s bred that aren’t turning out as dark as she wants.”

“Self-defeating,” I said, shaking my head.

“And then the next day she drags one of my gardeners in there to replant it,” he said. “Which doesn’t always work too well. They’re delicate things, roses.”

“So I’ve heard,” I said.

A sudden clap of thunder made both of us start, and then we both pulled up the hoods of our rain parkas as the heavens opened. We stood hunched against the downpour for a minute or two. I could see petals falling from some of the roses.

“This isn’t doing the roses any good,” I said. “But I suppose she’s already cut the ones she’s planning to exhibit tomorrow.”

Mr. Darby shrugged.

“No doubt,” he said. “Like I said, she doesn’t let anyone else mess with the roses. I’d best be getting on. Got a lot of work to do. When you’re finished inspecting the roses, you can head that way to get back to the barns. Over the fence, turn right, and mind the goats.

“Thanks,” I said.

He trudged off heading at right angles to the path he’d pointed out for me, and disappeared into the woods.

I gazed through the chain link for a few more minutes. Were these the bushes that had produced the blooms destined to defeat whatever black roses Dad had left? Or would Dad’s blooms triumph over the regimented inhabitants of Mrs. Winkleson’s rose prison?

I peered closer, trying to read the tags attached to the bushes. A couple of the ones closest to the fence appeared to say “Black Magic.” I couldn’t read any of the rest.

I found myself feeling sorry for the poor bushes, stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, blooming unseen and un-smelled, except by Mrs. Winkleson. A sad life.

I was starting to sound like Rose Noire.

I flinched at another sharp clap of thunder, but the rain had started easing off. I turned away and sloshed in the direction Mr. Darby had indicated.

Yes, as I approached the fence, I could see the goats, about two dozen of them. Some were still clustered hopefully around the feeding trough, while the rest were grazing nearby, and a small cluster were horizontal. Perhaps the thunder had startled them. I began climbing over the fence, moving as slowly as possible, to avoid startling them again.

I was halfway over the fence when I heard Spike barking in the distance.

“Blast!” My grandfather’s voice. “Come back, you rebellious cur!”

I hopped down and looked around. First, I spotted Dr. Blake, running slowly toward the fence, with Caroline following about ten feet behind. But they were no match for the Small Evil One. With his leash trailing behind him, Spike made a beeline for the goats.

Most of the goats that weren’t already lying down toppled over immediately. A few managed to whirl and take a few steps away from Spike before they succumbed. Several of the larger goats just froze in place, much like kids playing a game of Statues.

Spike seemed overjoyed with his victory. To my relief, he didn’t try to bite any of the goats. He just pranced among his victims, head high, tail wagging, uttering an occasional sharp bark of triumph.

“What’s going on?” Mr. Darby appeared out of the woods at my right and began scrambling over the fence.

“I’m so sorry,” I called back to Mr. Darby as I trotted after Spike.

“Not your fault,” he said. “Happens all the time. Dogs. Little kids. Herself with that damned umbrella.”

I was getting close to Spike, and had to watch my step, lest I trip over one of the recumbent goats.

“Perfect example of a maladaptive mutation.” Dr. Blake sounded out of breath, and was leaning heavily on the fence. “In the wild, anything that keeled over at the first appearance of a predator wouldn’t live to reproduce.”

“It’s not their fault,” Mr. Darby said, sounding a little peeved. “They were bred that way.”

“Precisely my point,” my grandfather said. “We humans have taken the goat, one of the most admirably rugged and self-reliant of ruminants, and then deliberately bred it for a trait that’s at best inconvenient for the animal and at worst dangerous.”

“Well, there’s some truth to that,” Mr. Darby said.

“Don’t let them kick that poor little puppy!” Caroline shouted. “Catch him, quick!”

“I’m trying,” I said.

Spike wasn’t seriously at risk, since most of the goats were still horizontal. He wasn’t eager to be caught either, and the longer he eluded me, the harder catching him would be. I chased, he dodged, and then the goats began getting up, which made it easier for him to use them for cover. Some of them were still a little shaky, others recovering more quickly and bounding toward the fence to greet Mr. Darby, who was reaching into his pocket and feeding bits of carrot to them. My grandfather reached over, took some of the carrots from Mr. Darby’s hand, and began feeding the maladapted goats himself.

“It’s the same as how we’ve taken an animal as magnificent as the wolf and turned it into— well, something like that,” he went on, pointing with a carrot at Spike, who was sniffing at one of the larger fallen goats. As if spurred by my grandfather’s words, Spike suddenly leaped away from the goat and began backing toward the fence, growling. I leaned down and managed to grab the end of his leash.

“Even in captivity, you’d think the extreme version of myotonia would be a handicap,” Dr. Blake went on. “The ones that succumb less readily and recover more quickly have a better opportunity to get food.”

“I make sure none of ’em starve,” Mr. Darby said.

“They look very healthy,” Caroline said.

“Yes, of course, but my point is that the myotonia gives them a competitive disadvantage,” my grandfather said. “Some of these goats have had half a dozen carrots by now, and that goat over there hasn’t had any.”

He pointed at the goat Spike had been sniffing. It still lay slightly apart from the rest of the goats, nearer the fence that separated their pasture from the farther one beyond. I took a few steps forward to take a closer look.

“That’s because it’s not a goat,” I said. “It’s a person. And I see blood. Call 911.”