The Skeleton Garden (7 page)

I want you to keep clear of that Len Wheeler. It's as if when he was injured in Norway at the beginning of the war, it injured his mind, too. He's not one to be kind, not even to his family.

—Letter from Ratley Airfield

The parterre lawn changed into circus grounds, complete with an enormous white marquee. The tent's doorway flapped in the stiff wind that swept up from the southwest, and an icy rain fell sideways, landing like little needles in everyone's faces until they all moved under cover. Pru thought the whole of Hampshire was turning out for the afternoon. It began with DS Martin Chatters, a couple of uniforms, and the forensics team—all two of them—from the Romsey station. They dug up the ring of boxwood, and carefully laid the small shrubs on the canvas tarp Simon provided. He and Orlando dragged them out of the way and covered their roots.

After that, more uniforms arrived, along with a police photographer, who recorded the scene in an official capacity, although others—even Kitty—had already snapped dozens of shots with their mobile phones. Pru's phone remained indoors; she had no desire to document each human bone sifted out of the pit. She would've remained in the house with her phone except that Martin asked her to stay and help them go through the morning, step-by-step.

Jemima had left along with Sonia, and the girl's departure seemed to set Orlando free from his immobilized state. Now he couldn't hold still. He darted around the edge of the pit, getting in everyone's way and gazing longingly at all the mobile phones about him. At last, Christopher assigned him the task of carrying equipment for the police—paper overalls and booties, spades and tape measures.

As a special constable, Christopher was subordinate to many of the police that showed up, although Pru could see he wished for all the world to be involved in the process—it was something about the way his eyes cut from the bones accumulating in a box to the parade of people through the hedge opening. Martin, as senior officer present, conducted the event, but Pru heard him check with Christopher on procedure—“Do you think we should have the murder team out from Eastleigh?” and later, “Do I let forensics take everything back to the lab now?”

Pru stood in a corner of the marquee, shivering as more locals wandered in, including Dick from the Blackbird. Kitty returned without Jemima or Sonia, and Stan stood talking with her, waving his arm in the air, apparently tracing the trajectory of the plane. Police dug and sifted, separating bones from airplane parts—landing gear, tail wheel, cockpit canopy—and numbering and labeling each set. Christopher came to Pru. He didn't speak but put his hand on her back, and the warmth that radiated from the spot allowed her to take a full, deep breath, the first in a few hours.

“Stan says he doesn't think it's the pilot,” she said in a whisper. “Can you tell how he died?”

Christopher shook his head. “Not yet. No obvious signs of trauma—no holes or cracks in the skull.” They watched Martin circle the pit, on the move almost as much as Orlando. “He should stay put,” Christopher said in an undertone, “and let them report to him.”

As Christopher went off to help pull out a section of the airplane's wing, Polly entered the marquee and came round the pit.

“What a shock for you—digging up old bones. You all right?” she asked, putting a hand on Pru's arm.

“Yeah, well, sort of. Did you hear about it from Simon?”

Polly shook her head. “I was taking my turn at the post office window in the shop when Kitty rang Ursula who told Dick and me. We came over while Ursula keeps an eye on things.”

Pru wanted to ask Polly if she got any spiritual impressions of the place, but she saw Martin holding up his hands at the marquee entrance. “I'm sorry,” he said to the civilians milling about, “I'm going to have to ask you all to leave so that the police can carry on with the investigation.” No one paid him any attention, and individual conversations continued until Christopher nodded to Simon who, in a louder voice, suggested they all retire to the kitchen.

Pru went straight through the kitchen and up the stairs to ring Mrs. Wilson with the news from the quiet of the bedroom.

“Pru, dear, how lovely to hear from you,” Mrs. Wilson said. “Wait just a moment and I'll nip into
la limonella
to sit down. There, now. It's chilly even in Tuscany, although how can I mind when I sit here in this lovely bright shelter among the potted citrus trees tucked up for the season.”

Pru had the sudden urge to get on a plane and join Mrs. Wilson in the
limonella,
whatever that was. When the Wilsons flew off to Italy, Pru and Christopher talked idly of joining them for a holiday, but Simon and the garden took fierce hold of her attention, and the idea had gone out of her head.

“Mrs. Wilson, I'm ringing to tell you about the most amazing thing we dug up in the parterre lawn.”

“I hope it isn't a hypocaust,” Mrs. Wilson said, referring to the underfloor heating systems in ancient Roman villas. “Harry would be so disappointed to learn that we've come to Italy where all he can find are Etruscan potsherds and all the while the Romans have been underfoot at Greenoak.”

“No Romans,” Pru said and explained their find.

“A skeleton? Oh dear, you don't think Alf had anything to do with it?”

“Well, I'd say it's well before Alf got hold of the house and grounds, although police may want to check with him.” Alf Saxsby, Vernona's brother, was spending another year at Her Majesty's pleasure in a minimum-security prison in Kent. It had been Alf's house before it was Harry and Vernona's.

“Do you need us back there?” Mrs. Wilson asked. “You know, we'd come in a moment. Harry feels as if he's just on the edge of discovery here, and that any day they'll break through to Minerva's temple or some such—but if you need us, just say the word.”

“No, certainly not. Everything's fine here really, I only wanted you to know. Our love to Mr. Wilson and Toffee.”

When Pru descended into the kitchen, Evelyn's platter of sandwiches, thick slices of ham smeared with Colman's mustard on her homemade bread, had almost disappeared. She set down a second platter and poured up another pot of tea as she said, “I thought a bite of lunch might be needed.” The crowd in the kitchen swelled and shrank as officers and locals came and went, taking advantage of Evelyn's excellent sandwiches, cake, and tea. The atmosphere was abuzz with speculation on the skeleton's identity—German spy, potential thief, a drunk on his way home from the pub in the dark, old man Saxsby's butler. But no one had any hard facts to back up the ideas—nor, indeed, could anyone think of a local story to match the findings.

By evening, Greenoak had gone from a beehive of activity to just the three of them—Pru, Christopher, and Orlando—gathered round one end of the kitchen table and digging into Evelyn's cottage pie. Pru scooped a large helping onto her plate; she couldn't remember if she'd eaten a sandwich or had only tea and a slice of cake during the day.

“There are two hundred and six bones in the human body—give or take,” Orlando said after he swallowed a mound of minced beef and potato. “The doctor told me that—the forensics doctor. And he said that the flesh on the bones wouldn't last more than a month or so, because the body hadn't been embalmed. It would begin to decay within a few days. He told me that…”

Pru stared at her plate, using her fork to make trails through the cottage pie she'd served herself. Perhaps she wasn't as hungry as she had thought. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flicker of movement from Christopher, and Orlando stopped talking.

“Are you all right, Aunt Pru?” he asked in a small voice.

She smiled at both of them. “Yes, I'm fine.” She forced herself to take a bite of food and was relieved to find that she could swallow.

“A Messerschmitt,” Christopher said. “That's what Stan said it was.”

“We saw a Messerschmitt at Duxford,” Orlando said, reaching for a second helping. “But it was on the ground. Mr. Snuggs said he learned how to identify planes as they flew, and once he saw an air fight between a Messerschmitt and a Hawker Hurricane right in the sky over his farm.” He looked up at the kitchen ceiling. “That would be brilliant.”

“I'd say you could learn how to ID them, too,” Christopher said, and when they'd cleared up, he took Orlando into the library, where they found several books on the Second World War, including the
Hampshire Home Guard Training Manual,
with a section devoted to “aeroplane spotting.”

Pru stood at the full-length windows at the end of the hallway upstairs. She had crept out of bed, unable to stop her mind and unwilling to disturb Christopher with her restlessness. The rain and wind had died down, the sky had cleared, and a sliver of a moon hung in the sky. From her viewpoint, the outline of the parterre lawn was drawn in a distinct black line of yew, and the ghostly tent glowed in the center.

Before the police had packed up and left for the day, she had ventured out again to look at the plastic bags that had accumulated—not of bones, but of the few personal items that had turned up. A pair of shoes—brown leather, the upper half gone. Shreds of linen clothing. A nondescript metal belt buckle with no leather left. No papers or identity card—something everyone was required to carry during the war, Stan said, even children. And one quite personal item—a ring. It had sifted out with a handful of small finger bones, according to the medical examiner. It was a gold ring, not wide, with an engraved rose pattern on it still discernible. It was a woman's ring.

She saw the ring in her mind's eye as she stared out the window. Christopher came up behind her, wrapped her in a thin throw, and handed her a glass of brandy. “Weren't you cold?” he asked, keeping one arm wrapped round her and nuzzling her ear.

“Yes, I was, thanks,” she said with a slight shiver. She kissed him and covered his hand with one of hers.

He rested his cheek against her hair, and they stood for a moment without speaking.

“I hear that Dick has come up with a theme for the Christmas fête,” he said.

She smiled—there had been a bright spot in the day. “The Second World War,” she said. “It's a great idea for a fancy dress, and decorating will be fun. People may still have things in their attics we can use.” She turned her head to look at him. “You don't think that's in bad taste, do you? I mean considering the…body.”

“Not at all. You've got a great resource in Kitty and Stan. And for the rest of us, the stories we grew up with are always on the edge of our memory.”

Good. She already saw the Christmas fête in her mind, heard the music. Her mother might have attended one just like it. Perhaps that was where she had met a tall, good-looking American soldier from Texas and shared a frantic and joyous—although brief—time together before the war was over and he returned home, leaving behind a girl he loved who carried a baby he knew nothing about. “It'll be just like 1945—except with better food.” She looked up at her husband and snuggled closer to him. “You do remember how to dance, don't you?”

The next morning, Pru pulled on a large sweatshirt to accompany her plaid flannel pajama bottoms and emerged from the bedroom, yawning. Christopher was already up and out of their room. No lounging about on this Saturday, she thought, as she shuffled down the stairs, trying to come up with a low-key activity for the weekend that would keep Orlando occupied and yet not resentful. As her foot landed on the last step, there was a “whoop” from the kitchen, and the boy came barreling out, aiming straight for her.

“Galaxy Con, Aunt Pru!” he shouted, pausing in flight. “Dad got us tickets, Uncle Christopher just told me. Did you know about it? Did you know Uncle Christopher was taking me?”

“Galaxy Con?” Pru echoed.

“Yes, with cast members and all.” Orlando nodded, bouncing up and down on a step. “Captain Clyde and First Lieutenant O'Clanahan—they'll be signing autographs. And there'll be a life-size model of the bridge and a whole display on how they created Monstrosa, the ship's dragon.”

“Dragon?”

“Are you going, too?”

“Just the two of us, Orlando.” Christopher stood in the kitchen doorway. “We'll leave Pru on her own today. Get your jacket.”

Orlando vanished up the stairs. Pru remained on the bottom step. “I need an interpreter,” she said to Christopher.

He came over and stood eye level with her, his hands on her hips. “All I can tell you is that
Galaxy Raiders
is a massively popular Internet science-fiction series, and Orlando is a huge fan. They're having a convention in Brighton, and Tommy rang yesterday and told me that he'd got tickets and would I mind taking the boy. He could do with a bit of fun.”

She threw her arms around him. “What a good uncle you are,” she said, kissing him.

“Nonsense, you've had him all week. It's the least I can do.”

Orlando flew down the stairs, taking four steps at a time, and landed with a flourish. “Ready.”

“You two have a lovely time today,” Pru said, walking them out through the kitchen. “Orlando—can I ask you something? Dragons breathe fire—isn't it dangerous having one on board a spaceship?”

Orlando broke out in a grin. “Oh, Monstrosa causes all sorts of trouble. In the second series, she burned half the control panel when someone tried to take away the egg she was sitting on. They had to make an emergency landing on planet Zaphros in the Scorpioid Galaxy, which was a massive problem, because the species that lives there—”

“We'd better get on the road,” Christopher broke in.

“Yes, sir.” Orlando hurried out the door, saying over his shoulder, “Sorry, Aunt Pru, I'll explain the rest later.”

Pru waved as they drove off. The entire house, all hers. She made herself a cup of tea and went upstairs to run a bath.

Later, she took a stroll down through the hornbeam walk and out to the copse. The hornbeams lined both sides of the path, their russet leaves holding on even this late in autumn. Simon had pleached the trees—limbed them up. Byremoving their lower stems and leaving bare trunks, he made them look like a hedge on stilts. At their base, he had planted a yellow, repeat-blooming daylily called Happy Returns. Daylilies were enormously popular in the States, and she couldn't help imagining that Simon had been hard-wired to choose an American garden plant, as if deep in his psyche he knew his origins.

Pru saw with a pang of guilt that he hadn't got far in dividing them. She had meant to help him all week, but had needed to repair whatever Orlando had done wrong. She was just wondering whether she should get a spade and fork and start to work when Polly rang.

“There's a fête at Inkpen,” her sister-in-law said. “It's just up the road, and I've heard that they've a couple of top-notch weavers that we might snag for ours. We could just do with an uptick in the quality of merchandise.”

Pru agreed. Polly had taken her round a few weeks earlier to meet the locals who sold their crafts each year—patchwork tea cozies, watercolors of the south central coast, hand-thrown pottery mugs with handles impossible to grip. One woman made animal-shaped brooches out of old buttons, and had quizzed Pru on the identity of each. “What's this, then?” she'd asked, pointing to a cluster of three large, black coat buttons, with three pearly blouse buttons in the center, and an arc of tiny, glittery buttons—it looked like a Cyclops wearing a tiara. Pru studied the arrangement with a pensive frown while she heard Polly, behind her, cover a snigger by dropping her handbag on the floor. At last, the woman proclaimed, “It's a stoat.” “Yes, yes,” Pru had said, nodding. “I see it now.”

A day trip to Inkpen was just what they needed, Pru thought as she drove her Mini down the lanes over to Simon and Polly's. Polly's voice invited her in, where Pru found Simon sitting at the kitchen table staring into a mug of tea.

“Afternoon,” she said brightly. “I went out to look at the daylilies this morning. I realize I was no help this week, but I'll start in on them tomorrow. They'll bloom so much better after they've been divided.”

Simon smiled, a weak effort. “Didn't leave it to Orlando now, did you?”

“No, I'm off the hook today—Christopher's taken him to a science-fiction convention. I'm sorry that he's been more work for us.”

“Can't blame the boy, can you?” Simon asked. “Off-loaded by his parents like a pallet of spuds.”

“It's just for a couple of weeks,” Pru said. “There was a bit of a bother, and his parents thought he could use a change of scenery.”

“Oh, so they haven't abandoned him completely.” Simon wouldn't look at her.

Fine,
Pru thought,
so that's how it's going to be today—the black mood.

Polly walked in, fastening the post on an earring. She put her arms around Simon's shoulders as he sat, and said, “Will you be all right?”

“Yeah,” Simon replied, taking hold of her hand and kissing it, “I'll be fine.”

They flew down the narrow lanes in Polly's Fiat. “Simon”—Pru put a hand on the dashboard when Polly edged close to a stone wall as a Land Rover came speeding toward them—“Simon seemed a bit…subdued,” she said.

Polly gave way to a Tesco van at the on-ramp, but then pulled ahead and barreled onto the dual carriageway. “It's Birdie—he's meant to go over and start on her house today.”

It had been two months since Birdie died. “It takes awhile to go through a lifetime of things,” Pru said.

“He hasn't even begun,” Polly replied. “He can't bring himself to walk in the door. He's still both sad and quite angry. All those years of not telling him who his parents were—and that they were alive. Birdie was the only mother he's ever known, and he loves her and misses her, but he feels betrayed. And the house—well, it's full of her energy. He'll have to do it sometime—her spirit needs to be set free.”

Polly, who had been known to consult a psychic on occasion, had encouraged Simon to do so—to talk to Birdie or his parents. He had declined.

“It's my fault,” Pru said. “I started it—if I hadn't appeared in his life to stir things up, he wouldn't be going through this. He would never have known.”

“That's right, he would never have known,” Polly echoed. “He would never have known you or got to know his parents through you. Knowing may cause him grief, but the thought that he might never have known really scares him.” She cut her eyes at Pru as she changed lanes. “He's investing a great deal into this magazine article—emotional investment, you know. Will it be all right?”

“Yes. Sure. Of course.” It would have to be, wouldn't it? She couldn't steal that away from him, too, as she had stolen his parents. They were growing closer, brother and sister—at least Pru hoped. But she nursed a guilt—unsure of whether it belonged to her or her parents—that lived in a dark corner of her mind and knocked about like a poltergeist when Simon kept her at arm's length.

Polly and Pru found inspiration along with tea and cake at the Inkpen fête and returned to Ratley to end the day at the Blackbird. Christopher had rung Pru to say that he and Orlando were delayed in Brighton, something about Orlando's chance to be photographed with First Officer Cherry Bells.

Simon, in a better mood than earlier in the day, met the women at the pub; he had managed to avoid Birdie's house altogether by spending the day reorganizing his DVD collection.

After their meal, Pru and Polly stood at the bar waiting for Simon, who had stayed in the other room to watch highlights of last season's cricket championship.

“Hello, Polly.” Pru heard the man's voice behind her and saw her sister-in-law's face—she looked like a little girl on Christmas morning. Pru whirled around and found a man with short, mostly gray hair that brushed his collar in back. He smiled broadly, but with his lips pressed together as if he was unsure how happy to be. Polly took his hand and kissed him on the cheek. He returned the favor.

“Jack. You've come home,” she said, her eyes bright.

“I have.”

They continued to hold hands and look at each other until Pru could stand it no longer. She coughed, stuck her hand out, and said, “Hello, Pru Parke. I'm Polly's sister-in-law—Simon's sister.”

Polly dropped half her smile as she put a hand each on Pru's and Jack's arms. “Yes, you two need to meet.”

Jack grasped Pru's hand in a firm shake. “The American side of the family—my dad told me about you. I'm Jack Snuggs.”

“Jack is Stan's son,” Polly explained. “He's just returned from Canada—when did you arrive?”

“A couple of days ago. I wanted to ring, but didn't think that…”

“Jack.” Simon's voice sounded like a hammer hitting a lump of lead. He stood behind Pru, and she felt waves of displeasure emanating from him. She glanced over her shoulder; his face was a smooth, calm sea, although he had a steely look in his eye.

“Simon.” Much of Jack's smile drained away, but not all.

The men thrust their hands out and shook as if they were priming a dry pump. They formed a pod of silence, the four of them, amid the cheery pub noise. Simon watched Jack watch Polly, and Pru's gaze flitted between them until Polly broke in. “You should've gone to Greenoak yesterday—did you hear what they found?”

“Dad told me later. I was upstairs sound asleep—jet lag, you know. Sorry I missed it, though.”

“Your dad must be happy to have you back,” Polly said. “It's ages since you visited. How long has it been?”

“Twelve years,” Simon answered for him.

“That was when your mum died, wasn't it?” Polly asked.

Jack answered her question with a nod, as someone hailed him from across the room. He reached across Polly to pick up his pint from the bar and said, “I'll be seeing you.”

“And how long are you staying this time?” Simon asked.

Jack's smile returned. “As long as it takes.”

The three remained at the bar, watching Jack make his way through the crowd. Pru tried to assemble a few words in her mind before speaking, her fingers lightly drumming on her thighs. Certainly Simon had seen that hungry look Jack gave Polly. Pru had seen it. How should she approach this? She opened her mouth as Polly put her arm through Simon's. “Come along, love of my life,” she said, “take me home.”