The Red Book of Primrose House: A Potting Shed Mystery (Potting Shed Mystery series 2) (22 page)

“And the fellow with the red ponytail. Do you know him?” Pru asked.

“Those two,” Hattie said, shaking her head. “They argue constantly, but they’re always stuck to each other at the bar. Last night, did you hear, Ted?” She turned to her partner. “Tanner was doing this”—she imitated Jamie jabbing his finger at his friend—“and saying something about ‘And you’ll keep saying it, if you know what’s good for you.’ He’s a bully, if you ask me.”

“Hmm? What? Yes, certainly sounds like it,” Pru agreed as she replayed Jamie’s statement in her mind. She remembered talking with the red-ponytail guy on that Thursday, when she went looking for Jamie at the parks building. The guy said Jamie might still be up at Dunorlan Park, but they had lost track of each other about midday. Tatt had said Jamie had an alibi, but if that was it, it certainly didn’t sound airtight.

“Thanks very much for the coffee,” Pru said, hand on her bag.

“That’s lovely, that is,” Hattie said, nodding at the fan pendant. “It looks old. Wherever did you find it?”

Pru touched her necklace, her talisman, resting on the outside of her jacket. “It was a gift.” She smiled. “From…from my…” There she went again.

Hattie seemed to understand. “Your fellow?”

“Yeah,” Pru said, and gave a little laugh. That wasn’t too bad. “My fellow.”

Primrose House

16 February

Pru,

Just a note as Bryan and I dash off to Liverpool—I want to have a good, long talk when we return. There are several things we need to get straight. I don’t want to alarm you, but I know you will understand that it’s better to leave things alone rather than to stir up what could possibly end up being a great deal of trouble for you. We’ll say nothing else now, but do watch yourself.

Best,

Davina

P.S. I’ve left something for you in the walled garden.

She had seen Davina’s note stuck in the front door as she pulled her Mini up to the cottage. She read and reread it, attempting to decipher its veiled and mildly threatening advice. God, she felt alone. She needed some spark, some push to get her going. She needed some company. Repton. Time and time again she got out the Red Book, whether she was in need of inspiration or merely to hear his voice as she read his kind but pointed comments. Perhaps today, if she carried the Red Book along with her, she would absorb some of Repton’s wisdom about the landscape and clear her head of everything else.

She retrieved the leather-bound book from its safe place under a stack of sweaters in her wardrobe, scattering a few sweaters onto the floor in the process. She ignored them and walked outside. While she walked, she opened the book to a random page and read:

“I suppose every person who visits Primrose House will observe that the house is too near the road, but the house is not in fact too near the road but the road is unluckily too near the house. This is the great defect of the place, and although it cannot be turned in reality, it may so far be removed in appearance that it will be no longer an objection.”

Sorry to say, Humphry, the road had gone nowhere.

She pushed open the gate to the walled garden. Now what would Davina leave her here? Had she come up with a new idea for that lasting memorial to Ned? Perhaps she wanted a mural of him painted on the walls, or she would expect Pru to shear a topiary figure of the old man out of the yew. Pru glanced up to the center of the garden where two of the yews remained untouched and two remained a picture of devastation from the day they were hacked to pieces, leaving only uneven stumps. Sunk deep into the broken top of one was an ax.

Her breath came quick and shallow; she blinked several times to clear the sight away, but it remained. She was alone, she was sure of that—there was nowhere to hide in the walled garden, they’d cleared everything away. She edged forward, making no sound on the bare dirt, and the thought came to her, unbidden, that she would need to order a load of gravel to finish off the paths. She crept up to the ax, as if it could fly out of the trunk of its own accord and attack her.

Pru attempted to make sense of what she saw. Davina had left something for her in the walled garden. Was it this ax? Without touching it, Pru took a close look and could almost swear it was the one that had gone missing from the tool shed—she could still see a sheen on the wood handle from the oiling Liam and Fergal gave it. Surely Davina didn’t do this—hadn’t the Templetons been away when the yews were destroyed?

Two tools for cutting had been taken from Pru’s garden shed. The hatchet had been used on Ned, but this ax had cut wood. That brought to mind one more tool for cutting wood—the pocketknife found with blood on it under Ned’s body. Just yesterday, she had left DS Hobbes a message to say that a pocketknife was a handy tool for grafting.

Her eyes fell on the blank walls and the bare-root apple trees heeled into one of the beds.
Yes, yes,
she told them silently,
I’ll get you planted
. She pressed fingertips to her eyelids—two seconds, could she not go two seconds without worrying about what to do in the garden? The sight of the apples had loosened that shred of memory again, and she tried to catch it before it floated out of reach. She repeated what she knew: old varieties grafted onto dwarfing rootstock. Grafting—there it was again. She rubbed her hands on her trousers and looked down at her palms. Instead of her own hands, she saw another pair. Scars marred the pad of his left thumb—he held them up to her on that first day they met. “There you are,” Jamie had said, “gardeners’ hands.”

She had no sooner registered that memory than she noticed something flutter at her feet—a small red diary lay open, its pages caught by the breeze.

As she reached for it, clutching Repton’s book to her chest, she could see handwriting—pages of neatly printed names, some crossed off, others not. The chill wind that swirled around inside the walls froze the sweat that broke out on her forehead. This was Jamie Tanner’s red book. What was it doing in the walled garden?

Picking it up and paging through, she noticed that far into the book, the handwriting deteriorated, with fewer names written in poorer penmanship. By the time she reached the page with Liam’s name, the letters were large and badly formed. And there was more. She turned the page and saw the next name—each letter traced and retraced with the point of the pen until there was no need for ink to read it: NED. An X tore through both the name and the paper.

Her hand hovered over the page before turning to see the name she knew would appear next. Just as his mood could switch from charming to creepy, his handwriting had morphed from large and uncontrolled to tiny and precise: PRU PARKE. A shudder swept through her.

Ring the police.
She slapped her pocket to locate her phone. No phone. Where was her phone? The second she remembered leaving it on the floor in the snug of the Two Bells was a second too late.

He grabbed hold of the back of her collar and jerked hard, throwing her off balance. Something cut into her neck, and for a split second she couldn’t breathe. A snap, and she gasped as he let go and shoved her up against the yew stump. Repton’s Red Book went flying out of her hands. The handle of the ax, its blade deep in the yew trunk, hovered over her.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

She had seen Jamie in various states before—tidy, unkempt, cool and collected, an emotional wreck—but she hadn’t seen this. His bloodshot eyes burned, the muscles in his neck bulged, and his fists clenched at his sides.

“Jamie, you need to calm down,” she said, putting her hand up as if to stop him.

“You shouldn’t’ve done that, Pru. You chose your side—you’ll help pretty boy Liam, won’t you, but not me,” he said. “You shouldn’t’ve interfered.” He leaned down into her face. “She’s
my
wife and this should’ve been
my
job. You can’t just come in here and take what should’ve been mine.”

“It wasn’t your job—what made you think it was?” Pru sat up bit by bit as they talked, hoping to get in a better position to run.

“He promised!”
Jamie shouted in her face, spraying her with spit. “He promised me the job. He said it was to keep an eye on me, to make sure Cate was all right, but he failed, didn’t he? He couldn’t even do that for her. But with you gone, they’ll pick me, like they should’ve done to begin with.” He waved his arm vaguely in the direction of Primrose House.

“Ned tried to get you the job, didn’t he?” Pru scooted a tiny bit farther as Jamie looked away for a moment, still quaking. He was a talker—and although he now seemed a distorted version of his saner self, perhaps she could keep him talking until a better idea occurred to her.

“He told me he’d get me the job, and then he turned around and told me he’d see me in jail first for what I did to her. It was Liam—he’s the one who turned Ned against me. Ned said to keep away from her, that he was on his way to the police. I couldn’t let him do that—he can’t keep me from Cate.” Jamie looked over the walls and grew quiet.

“Did you steal Robbie’s jacket? Did you go to Chaffinch’s and take him away?”

Jamie turned his attention back to her and tapped his finger on his temple. “You see, I know how to take care of things, how to get something done,” he said in a loud whisper. “It takes brains to organize something this good—who would care what a half-wit does? It isn’t as if he’d get in trouble.”

Her foot shot out to kick at him before she could stop herself. “He isn’t a half-wit.”

The kick barely grazed him, but it made an impact. He lunged, shouting as he shook her. “I took care of it—I always take care of it. And they’d have Duffy locked up now if it wasn’t for your interfering.” He threw her back down again.

“You’re checking us off your list, are you?” She glanced past him to the open front gate. They weren’t scheduled to work in the walled garden today, and so no one would know where she was—she must get out of here.

He looked left and right in a panic. “Where is it? What did you do with it?”

She knew he wasn’t talking about Repton’s Red Book—she could see that off to her right where it landed in one of the beds. It was his own red book Jamie wanted. Pru thought she was sitting on it, but flung her hand out, pointing behind him. “It’s over there,” she said.

He turned and she scrambled. But he recovered, grabbing and hoisting her up, trapping her in a choke hold.

She tried to pry his arm off her and stand up, but her feet could not find purchase. “You
pushed
my Cate and Duffy together—you
encouraged
it,” he said. With every word emphasized, he squeezed tighter. “You couldn’t take a few friendly hints—the plants, the shed, the yews. You need to be taught a lesson—and an ax is as good as a hatchet for that,” Jamie said, reaching for the handle.

But the yew had a better grip on the ax than he did. He couldn’t pull it free, and the brief diversion gave Pru the chance to wiggle away, and the added advantage of stomping on his foot as she did so.

It wasn’t much of an advantage, but she took it, running to the side gate and out toward Primrose House and people. There was no point in trying to get to her empty cottage—what could she do without her phone, email the police?

As she ran, she shouted, hoping that if he thought people were already on site, he wouldn’t follow. She wasn’t even sure what time it was—would Liam and Fergal be there? Ivy? No Davina and Bryan, she at least remembered that.

The air seared her lungs as Pru gasped for breath, just making it to the back of the house where the stone stairs led up to the balustrade terrace. A glance behind told her that he hadn’t followed—yet. She dragged herself up the steps and got to the kitchen door.

“Ivy!” She banged on the door and peered in the darkened windows. No response. Would she even work today with no Templetons at home? Her hands went to her pockets. Another useless gesture—she no longer carried a key to Primrose House with her.

Pru looked toward the walled garden. Perhaps she had scared Jamie away. If he was crazy enough to attack her in the walled garden, he might be crazy enough to go on about his business now—she’d seen him change in a flash from sanity to insanity and back again. Leaning up against the cold brick of the house, she scanned her surroundings and her eyes fell on Repton’s beech wood. Just the place to hide until Ivy or the Duffys appeared.

She flew down the stairs past the towering pile of manure, continued down the terraced slope, and headed for the safety of the wood.
Sit quiet, watch, and wait,
she thought.
Someone will arrive.

Her eyes darted back and forth, behind and in front, in case Jamie should try to surprise her, and she scanned the ground until she found a fallen branch, or at least a piece of one, about three feet long with twigs down its length. She chose one of the largest beech trunks and settled against its smooth, gray bark, cradling her club. The trunk was broad; no one could see her from behind. She kept her eyes out toward the yew walk, Primrose House, and beyond. The skin around her neck burned, and she shivered in the cold. Her breath created little clouds—
when would spring ever come,
she thought. There was still so much to do. Where was everyone?

Car tires on the gravel drive up by the house brought her back to her immediate predicament. She got up, stick in hand. Jamie wouldn’t be bold enough to pull into the drive—someone had arrived, she thought, someone to help.

But Jamie had arrived, too. He knew his way around the grounds well, and must have gone out to the lane and circled around the house to the wood. His footsteps behind her had made no noise on the wet, decaying leaves, but just as she stood, he stepped on a twig a few feet away. She turned as he pounced, and her improvised club caught him right in the stomach. He gasped and seized the branch. Pru let go and ran toward the stone steps, but when she got to the terracing, she looked over her shoulder—a moment’s distraction that caused her to step in one of Robbie’s holes. Her right ankle bent awkwardly beneath her; she shouted in pain and collapsed. Jamie was on her in an instant, shouting what sounded like his mantra, “It’s your fault,” as he took hold of her hair, clip and all, and yanked her head back. His legs were the only things in reach—she grabbed one and pulled. Unbalanced, he fell on his back and rolled partway down the slope.

But now she had lost her ability to run and had to drag herself back up the stairs to the terrace, each step on the ankle a stab of pain that made her cry out. She got to the top on her knees, but no farther, as he had run up the steps behind. He picked her up and threw her halfway out over the balustrade, so that she was hanging facedown, her view of the Sussex countryside suddenly topsy-turvy.

“You don’t like heights, do you, Pru?” He pushed her farther over, trying to unbalance her. “You shouldn’t admit to a weakness like that—and the first time we met.”

She did hate heights, but he had miscalculated her fear. As he forced her farther over the wide stone rail, she saw that the thirty-foot drop had been cut to fifteen, and below was a soft mountain of fluffy manure mixed with wood shavings. She began swinging her arms wildly, as if flailing in panic, and reached up, fastening onto enough of Jamie to unbalance them both. They tipped over sideways and dropped.

The mountain of manure, just recently dumped onto the site, still had a great deal of loft to it—not quite as soft as a mattress, but enough to cushion their fall. If she had been a cat, she could’ve turned herself in midair and landed right on top of him, but as it was, they landed on their sides, still holding on to each other. Jamie recovered quickly and was stronger than she was. He pinned her shoulders down. She reached back, got a handful of manure, and smashed it into his face.

“Bitch!”
he shouted and slapped her hard, causing her world to spin. She pushed against his hold and tried to roll over on him, but instead they both rolled down the manure mountain together and came to a stop at the bottom of the pile. She tried to stand, but the pain in her ankle was a swift reminder that she couldn’t go far. Jamie shoved her down again. He put his hands around her throat and his thumbs pressed on her windpipe, squeezing until she made a gurgling sound. She couldn’t draw breath. Sparkles appeared in front of her eyes, and the world began to fade until a pair of hands clamped onto Jamie’s shoulders.