The Skeleton Garden (9 page)

They didn't speak for a moment. This handwritten account, however brief the story, brought to life the pieces of twisted and charred metal they had touched.

“Who's that?” Orlando asked in a whisper, pointing at the name.

“That's Mrs. Wilson's great-uncle. He's the one who left Greenoak to her brother, Alf.”

“Is Alf the one in prison?”

Pru nodded, sparing a fleeting thought for how many stories Orlando had heard during his week hanging about the marquee. Stan and Kitty had vague memories of Reginald Saxsby—old man Saxsby, as they called him. Since Alf had inherited Greenoak, he'd lived there only briefly a couple of years back.

In Romsey, Pru and Orlando walked from the rail station to the Waitrose, where she needed to buy some groceries for breakfast; she preferred not to use any of Evelyn's supplies, afraid of being caught out. They came across Martin—DS Chatters—his basket filled with the kind of microwave meals that Pru lived off of in London, before she had someone else to cook for her. She saw a bottle of red wine and a package of boeuf bourguignon for two.

“We've missed you this week, but I hear you've been quite occupied in town,” Pru said with a smile. “With work and other things. Planning a special dinner?”

Martin's pale skin showed little gradation between white and scarlet, the color he now turned at Pru's mention of his private life. He looked down into his basket and back up at them. “And what are you two doing out of the garden?”

“We've been investigating our mystery,” Orlando said. “We saw the incident report for the plane crash—1944.”

“I realize police attention has dropped off,” Martin said, “but it's only because we've other, more urgent, issues. We will get back to it.”

“We know that,” Pru said, “no worries. We enjoyed doing our own research—and Orlando is quite keen to get all the facts, aren't you?”

“We need to find out who that poor chap was, don't we?” Orlando shrugged in a nonchalant manner, but Pru could see an eager gleam in his eyes. “I'd say it won't be long now before we identify the skeleton. We'll be asking questions around the village, of course. Checking with any potential witnesses.” Potential witnesses, Pru thought, the sum total of which included Kitty, who had been five or six years old at the time, and Stan Snuggs, who had been about fifteen.

“But, in the end, it is still a police matter, isn't it, Martin?” She wanted Orlando interested and involved, but would rather he didn't start harassing the neighbors.

“It is,” Martin said, “and you'll remember that, won't you, Orlando? It's an ongoing investigation.”

Orlando lost a bit of his bravado. “Yes, sir, I'll remember.” But as they walked away and Martin headed for the checkout, Orlando muttered, “It's ancient history. Who would care if I did?”

“Where should I put these?” Orlando asked, standing in the doorway of the potting shed, his arms full of empty burlap bags, rolled and tied with garden twine. They'd found them under a stack of wooden seed boxes.

Pru had taken advantage of a kitchen
sans
Evelyn that Saturday morning. She needed Orlando ready for their weekend project, and so she'd plied him with her one and only cooking feat, biscuits—or “American biscuits” as Christopher called them, to avoid confusion with English biscuits, which were cookies. Orlando had succeeded in finishing off an entire batch on his own—minus the two Pru had nabbed for herself. By the time Christopher had appeared in the kitchen, he could only eye Orlando and the empty plate. “They aren't all gone, are they?” he asked.

Pru shook her head and pulled from the oven a fresh batch. “All yours,” she said. “We've got work to do.”

Well-fueled, Orlando applied himself to cleaning out the shed, following Pru's every instruction without complaint. She stole a glance at him now and then—they'd reached a good place, she thought, friendly, workable. Now that he was settling in, he'd be a great help to them in the garden.

She surveyed the gravel yard outside the shed. It was beginning to look as if they were having a jumble sale. “Over there”—she nodded to Orlando, who held a wooden box full of tins of linseed oil—“behind the apple crates and next to the rakes.” The potting shed was deceptive—on the outside it looked tiny, but inside, it was like Harry Potter's tent, and the amount of paraphernalia that she and Orlando had come across was astounding. They still hadn't reached the glasshouse end. A glass cold frame balanced on top of a wheelbarrow that was turned up on its nose and resting against several sheets of plywood. She tried to think what Simon would've wanted the wood for and wondered if it could go in the discard pile.

“Don't you take a day off?”

“Jack,” Pru said, looking up. “Hello. Can I help you with something?”

Jack Snuggs stepped inside. “Simon puts you to work on weekends, too, does he?”

“Simon doesn't put me to work,” Pru said. “We work in the garden together.”

“Yes—I meant nothing by it. Polly told me how much it means to Simon that you're here.”

So, conversations with Polly,
Pru thought as she slid the plywood to one side and leaned it against a bale of hog wire.

Pru had managed only a quick and not entirely satisfactory phone conversation with Polly on the subject of Jack. “So, Jack Snuggs,” she had started. “Old boyfriend,” Polly had replied. “Ages ago. But Simon—well, you know how that goes.” Pru understood. She had been working at the botanic garden in Edinburgh earlier that year when Marcus, her old boyfriend from Dallas, had appeared. Old flames always needed explaining, but she thought Simon went to the extreme if he had concerns about Polly and Jack thirty years ago.

“Well,” Pru now said to Jack, “it's not just that Simon and I work together. He and I have got a lot of catching up to do.”

“Sorry,” Orlando said, bumping into them as he walked by with teetering stacks of nursery pots, half of which tumbled down and rolled across the floor. Jack stepped out of the way while Pru bent down to collect them.

“Knock the spiders out of these,” she said to Orlando, “and you can put them in the recycling pile.”

“This is quite a piece,” Jack said. Pru had uncovered a wooden cabinet when she moved the plywood. It stood five feet high and four feet wide and looked much like an old library card catalog with a myriad of small drawers.

“A seed cabinet—I didn't know that was there,” Pru said, taking her sleeve and wiping off a thick layer of dust from the top.

Jack opened a drawer and removed a small, flat brown envelope.
“ ‘Silene schafta,' ”
he read.

“Autumn catchfly.” Pru took the packet from him and shook it. “I don't think that's Simon's handwriting—I wonder how long it's been here. It's so easy to lose track of what we put away.”

“That it is,” Jack said. “It's a fine cabinet—you should get it on
Antiques Roadshow.
” He looked round at stacks of harvest baskets, rusted sprinklers, and dented watering cans. “This shed reminds me of Dad's attic. God knows what he's got stashed up there.” They opened the drawers and found a handful of other seed packets. “Well, nothing else, then,” Jack said. “But good place to hide a treasure.”

“I might try sowing some of these,” Pru said, as she felt each packet for seeds. “You never know, they could germinate.” Jack leaned up against the cabinet, making himself at home. “So, are you here looking for Simon?”
Fat chance,
she thought.

“No. I saw you working when I turned into the drive,” Jack said. He stuck his hands in his pocket and watched Pru test the weight of the plywood, thinking she might move it outside. “Dad said that Evelyn put a jar of stew in the freezer for him. She and Peachey usually deliver, but asked Dad could he collect it. I said I'd stop.”

Pru set the plywood back down. “We all benefit from Evelyn's kitchen skills.”

Jack smiled. “Dad and me—we aren't the best cooks. My mum now, she could make any cheap cut of meat taste good. And she'd always make us sit down proper at the table, too. Without her, we're more likely to have our tea in front of the telly watching reruns of
Top Gear.
”

Pru softened up at the talk of family. “Yes, it's the easy way out, isn't it?” She grunted as she lifted a sack of potting compost and moved it into a corner. “My dad traveled for work—he'd be away weeks at a time. The first night he was home, I would set the table in the dining room with the best dishes. But while he was away and it was just my mother and I, we'd sit out back in the shade of this enormous Southern magnolia with our supper plates in our laps and throw bits of bread to the birds. Sparrows mostly, but we'd see cardinals and a few finches.” Jack moved out of the way as Pru reached behind him for a cobweb-covered trug. Her mind traveled back to those days. “The cardinals would hop from branch to branch. I used to love seeing that flash of red in the trees. And you know what she would feed them?”

A shadow darkened the potting shed door. “Called in extra help, did you?” Simon asked.

Pru's face went as red as the bird. She'd been caught spilling secrets to a stranger—telling family stories that she should've saved for her brother.

“She's not put me to work,” Jack said with a smile.

“Orlando,” Pru called to the boy, who was knocking the nursery pots around the yard with a long-handled rake to rid them of spiders. “Would you take Jack in to the kitchen? And would you look in the library and let Uncle Christopher know that Jack is here?”

As Orlando and Jack walked toward the kitchen door, she could hear the boy. “Has your dad remembered anybody dying and falling in the plane pit? It's just that we're looking into the matter…”

Simon picked up a cultivating fork with a missing handle.

“Checking up on me?” Pru asked. “You wanted to make sure I was working?”

He tossed the broken tool out the door and onto a heap. “What did she feed them—the cardinals?”

A still moment. “Cornbread,” Pru said. “Sometimes she would fix a whole pan just for the birds.”

“Are they really as red as they are in photos?”

Tears came to her eyes at the thought that Simon had never seen a cardinal—a bird so connected to her childhood. “Yes, the males, at least. The females are never as flamboyant.”

Simon didn't turn round. “I stopped in to see if you might need me, but I see Jack's on it.”

“He wasn't helping,” Pru said. “He just stood around and talked.” And, for good measure, she added, “He was fairly useless.”

Simon looked over his shoulder at her and smiled. “Come on, I'll help you shift this lot.”

Pru showed him the seed cabinet, and Simon remembered that it had been there when he started at Greenoak, forty years earlier. They took out all the seed packets and discussed which might germinate and which probably wouldn't. Pru said wouldn't it be lovely to have ladybird poppies in the meadow, and Simon replied that they'd need to wait until spring to plant. “Would you like a coffee?” Pru asked. They heard the crunching of tires on gravel and looked out to see Evelyn walking into the house and Peachey driving away in his van. He waved out the window to them.

“Oh dear,” Pru said, trying to remember if she'd cleaned up the kitchen and realizing she'd lost her Saturday advantage.

“Not afraid of her, are you?” Simon asked.

“Certainly not.” And she marched off to the house to prove it.

“Good,” he said, following. “Because I am.”

“Evelyn,” Pru said from the mudroom door, “I didn't realize you were stopping by today.”

“Albert left me on his way out to a call at Sherfield English. I'm just taking a couple of hens out of the freezer for Monday.”

“Simon's here, and I was about to fix coffee.”

“I'll make the coffee, Ms. Parke,” Evelyn said, reaching for the kettle.

“Thanks.” Pru heard steps in the hall and hurried on just as the kitchen door opened. “Jack Snuggs is here, too.”

“Hello, Ev,” Jack said. “I haven't had a chance to talk with you since I've been back. How are you?”

Evelyn faced Jack as she dried her hands on her apron. Pru saw high color on her cheeks. “I'm all right, Jack. And how are you?”

Jack grinned. “Can't complain—wouldn't do me any good. And Peachey—how is he is getting on?”

“Albert is doing quite well for himself,” Evelyn said, her chin held high.

“I'm glad,” Jack said. “I'd like to see him—have a chat.”

Evelyn turned back to the stove. “Would you now,” she said under her breath.

Simon sat down, but Pru kept standing, her gaze shifting between Evelyn and Jack. She wasn't certain she should wade into this conversation, unsure of how deep it went.

“Is there cake, too?” Orlando asked as he and Christopher came through.

“Ginger cake,” Evelyn said. “And I'd better sort out some sandwiches for you lot before I leave.” As if they'd starve without her.

Pru popped the last bit of ginger cake in her mouth. They'd had a lively discussion around the table, speculating on various improbable scenarios for the parterre lawn findings. Jack said he was sorry to have missed the discovery. Simon explained that Polly had hoped to get a sense of the spirit left about the place and he had said to her could she get the spirit to replant the hebes, because they could use the extra help. Everyone laughed except for Jack, who said, “You should appreciate what you've got,” and Simon replied, “You should mind your own business.” After a fraction of a second of silence that seemed to last an eternity, Pru dived in and said, “Orlando was the one who spotted the incident report, weren't you?” and the boy picked up the story of his research triumph.