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‘Ah, there you are, Sloan.’ Somehow Police Superintendent Leeyes was always able to make his subordinates feel that they had kept him waiting even when they hadn’t done anything of the sort. It was, they felt, a gift. ‘Two jobs for you this morning. Both out the same way, which saves time.’

‘Sir?’ He knew it would not be Sloan’s time that the superintendent was saving but money. Police finances were as much under pressure as everyone else’s these days and Sloan knew that saving his time never figured anyway.

‘Both out Pelling way but not connected.’ Superintendent Leeyes waved a message sheet in his hand. ‘A missing person and trouble at a nursery.’

Detective Inspector Sloan groaned. Small children always spelt trouble, big time and all the time.

‘A plant nursery, Sloan.’

He relaxed. That sounded better. Until the superintendent explained, that is.

‘Surely that’s hardly a crime, sir, leaving doors open,’ protested Detective Inspector Sloan. He was the head of the tiny Criminal Investigation Department of ‘F’ Division of the County of Calleshire Police Force at Berebury and thought he knew the law as well as the next man. ‘Not yet, anyway,’ Sloan went on cautiously, since these days all governments seemed to be hell-bent on making more and more activities illegal.

Besides which, the detective inspector reminded himself hastily, this was the time of the year for his annual appraisal and it wouldn’t do to put a foot wrong just now.

Superintendent Leeyes said, ‘The owner thinks it is, Sloan. In fact, he’s absolutely sure a criminal act is involved. Says he can prove it. And he’s hopping mad about it.’

‘Of course I quite understand how he must feel,’ said Sloan untruthfully, subconsciously noting that the superintendent had used the word owner rather than householder, ‘but even so … just an open door, I think you said …’

‘Two doors opened and left open, to be precise,’ said the superintendent, waving a message sheet in his hand, ‘and a fence damaged.’

‘Even so …’ repeated Sloan, realising as soon as he’d said it that he should have been more circumspect. It didn’t do to upset his superior officer at appraisal time. Although greenhouse doors left open with or without
guilty intent – even fences broken with undoubted guilty intent – wouldn’t usually warrant the attention of a detective inspector, Sloan decided against pointing this out. ‘And the missing person?’

‘Old party not back from her hols,’ said Leeyes. ‘Gone walkabout, I expect.’

‘Has she done it before?’ asked Sloan. ‘What do the family say?’

‘She hasn’t got any family. Lives alone,’ said Leeyes, turning over the message sheet. ‘It’s a neighbour who’s been in touch and no, she hasn’t done it before.’

Detective Inspector Sloan sighed but said nothing.

‘Even so …’ harrumphed Leeyes, noting the sigh, ‘I want you out there soonest.’

Sloan’s unusual reticence was because there was something sinister pending at the Berebury Police Station as part of the appraisal element of his PDD – otherwise known as a ‘Personal Development Discussion’. This was to be held with his superior officer quite soon. He hadn’t been told exactly when it would be yet but it wouldn’t do to jeopardise the interview by an unguarded response about a quite possibly disorientated old lady.

‘Because,’ went on the superintendent, the message flimsy still clasped in his hand, ‘the owner of the nursery would seem to have had very good reasons for sending for us for something like that. And since as you know we’re well under establishment these days …’

Sloan privately decided that they’d better be very good reasons indeed or he himself would want to know why. Since technically all law-breaking in the market town of Berebury and its environs, excepting traffic violations,
eventually landed on his desk, he automatically took out his notebook. ‘Just two open doors, did you say, sir, and a hole in a fence?’

‘That’s all that he seems to be complaining about. So far anyway,’ trumpeted the superintendent. ‘He said he’d tell us more when we got there.’

At this Sloan sighed again, his superior officer being given to using the royal ‘We’ only when he had no intention of doing any of the work himself.

‘Right, sir,’ he said without enthusiasm. ‘I’ll get out there straightaway.’ The distinction between open and closed doors as far as crime was concerned was one beloved by insurance companies but disliked by those whose duty it was to frame charges – ‘breaking and entering’ was only one of them – when doors had been closed. Doors left open were quite a different ball game when it came to insurers and policemen alike.

‘Two open doors and a broken fence so far,’ repeated Leeyes, ever the pessimist. ‘I’m told the man seemed a bit guarded on the phone.’

Sloan cleared his throat and in carefully neutral tones asked his superior officer if the police had any further information about either case. There were other – and indisputably really criminal – cases on his own desk awaiting his attention that were – would seem to be, anyway, he added a silent caveat of his own – more urgent than open doors and elderly ladies on the loose.

‘Was there, for instance, anything stolen at the nursery, sir?’ he enquired.

‘No, Sloan, nothing at all.’ The superintendent gave the message sheet another wave. ‘It would appear from
information received that theft would not seem to have been what whoever left the doors open had in mind since nothing would appear to have been taken.’ He sniffed. ‘What exactly was the object of the exercise is presumably too soon to say.’

‘I’d better have some names,’ said Sloan, taking a pencil out of his pocket and suppressing any references to gross carelessness that sprang to his mind. ‘And their addresses, sir, please.’

‘The missing person is an Enid Maude Osgathorp of Canonry Cottage, Church Street, Pelling,’ said Leeyes. ‘And man is Haines – a Jack Haines.’

‘Jack Haines? Not the nurseryman?’ Sloan’s pencil stayed poised in his hand above his notebook.

‘That’s him. At Pelling too.’ Leeyes, an urban man if ever there was one, sniffed. ‘Back of beyond.’

‘Ah.’ Detective Inspector Christopher Dennis Sloan, who was known as ‘Seedy’ to his family and friends, had lived in the small market town of Berebury all his life. In his spare time he was a keen gardener and thus knew most of the nurseries for miles around. This one was out in the far reaches of the Calleshire countryside.

‘None other. Proprietor of that big outfit on the Calleford road there.’

‘What sort of doors?’ asked Sloan, his attention now thoroughly engaged. This was different. Jack Haines was a nurseryman on a substantial scale, well known to professional and amateur gardeners alike and not above, when in a mellow frame of mind, dispensing his expertise to both. ‘I mean doors to where exactly?’

‘Greenhouses, Sloan.’

‘Ah, I understand now.’ Any gardener knew that that was something quite different too. ‘Right, sir. I’ve got that. Greenhouse doors at the nursery.’

‘Left open overnight, or,’ Leeyes added ominously, ‘deliberately opened during the hours of darkness.’

‘I understand.’ Sloan nodded, tacitly agreeing that this was different too. There was another distinction, as well, one between criminal activity that took place in the hours of darkness as opposed to in daylight – a distinction that went back to what was engagingly known as ‘time out of mind’ – but was still important in law.

‘When no one was supposed to be there anyway,’ amplified Leeyes, adding the automatic caveat, policeman that he was, ‘or so the owner says.’

‘I see, sir.’ Because Sloan was an off-duty gardener himself he was beginning to be aware where this might be leading. ‘And, of course, there was quite a frost last night …’ He knew this because he’d only just pruned his own floribunda roses and when he had woken in the morning he had seen the hoary ground. He had hoped, then, that he hadn’t done it too late in the season and wondered, as he did every year, whether he should have done the job in the autumn instead. Horticultural opinion was divided but ‘the later the pruning the bigger the bush’ was something on which everyone was agreed.

‘There was. A really heavy one, too, for early March.’ Superintendent Leeyes grunted and consulted the message sheet again. ‘He says that Russell Aqueel – he’s their foreman out there – came on as usual this morning at seven o’clock and found one entire greenhouse full
of baby orchids and another one of young other plants killed off.’

‘Not good, sir,’ agreed Sloan. Nothing might have been stolen but even so there was undoubtedly loss involved. Heavy loss, certainly: crime, as well, if there had been a break-in. It was too soon to say. ‘Were the doors usually locked? Or, rather, had they been locked last night?’

‘You don’t lock greenhouses,’ said the superintendent irritably.

Detective Inspector Sloan forbore to say that you did if they contained valuable plants. He said instead, ‘I’d heard that Jack had some young orchids that he’s been growing out there. He’s a bit of a specialist in them. Are they all right?’

‘No, they’re not,’ Leeyes came back quickly. ‘And judging from his present state of mind I should think he’s pretty well lost the lot.’

‘That’s bad,’ said Sloan. ‘They must have been worth a packet.’ He looked up and asked, ‘Is Jack Haines talking about malice aforethought?’

‘Jack Haines,’ came back the superintendent impressively, ‘is talking about sabotage. You’d better get out there and see him, pronto. And you can take that dim-witted constable, Crosby, with you. We may be short-staffed but I still don’t want him here all day upsetting the civilian staff.’

‘No, sir, of course not,’ Sloan hastily agreed with this sentiment. Both men knew without saying that the superintendent was referring to Mrs Mabel Murgatroyd, the civilian staff supervisor, a lady of a certain age who took the view that uniformed policemen were an illiterate
bunch who got in the way of the important work of the clerical staff.

When told about it, Detective Constable Crosby viewed the prospect of a journey far out into the hinterland with evident pleasure. Detective Inspector Sloan locked the seat belt of the police car into place with markedly less enthusiasm.

‘There is no hurry, Crosby,’ he said as the car took off at speed. ‘The missing person hasn’t been seen for three weeks and wilted plants don’t run away. We’ll go to the nursery first while any evidence that there might be there is still fresh.’

‘Nobody dead, then?’ said the constable.

‘Not yet,’ said Sloan dryly, averting his eyes from a near miss with a refuse lorry, all public service vehicles being anathema to the constable. ‘It would seem that the only things that are dead to date are plant cuttings and I would like to keep it that way, please.’

It was something on his wish list he was destined to remember for a long time.

‘That you, Anthony?’ Jack Haines had reluctantly picked up the telephone to ring one of his professional customers and he wasn’t enjoying the conversation.

‘It is,’ a throaty voice came down the telephone in reply.

‘It doesn’t sound like you.’

‘Well, it is,’ insisted the voice testily. ‘I’m a bit chesty, that’s all.’

‘It’s Jack Haines from the nursery here.’ Haines groaned inwardly. The last thing he wanted was an Anthony Berra under the weather and in a low mood. ‘I’ve got a bit of bad news for you, I’m afraid.’

‘Tell me.’ Anthony Berra was a thrusting young landscape designer beginning to be very popular with the landed gentry of the county of Calleshire and starting to be quite an important user of the nursery too.

‘You’re not going to like it.’ Haines swallowed uneasily while he waited for the man to finish coughing. Although still with his name to make in the landscape design world, Anthony Berra was nothing if not business-like and rather formal into the bargain.

‘How bad?’ asked Berra shortly when he had recovered his breath.

‘Bad.’ Jack Haines told him about all the damaged plants in the greenhouses.

‘Good God, man, you don’t mean to say that I’ve lost the lot?’

Gloomily, the nurseryman admitted that the majority of the plants ordered by Berra for his client, Admiral Catterick, and all of those being grown for the Lingards at the Grange were now either dead or dying. ‘And some of those for Benedict Feakins too.’

Anthony Berra took a deep breath and said frostily, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to say to the Lingards, Jack, if I can’t get their Mediterranean garden fixed in time for their garden party in June. It was part of their contract with me that it would be.’

‘I’ve been ringing round everywhere trying get replacements,’ Haines admitted, ‘but it won’t be easy. Not at this time of the year.’

‘I shouldn’t think it will,’ retorted Berra crisply, ‘considering the effort I put in to ordering everything exactly as I wanted it for my planting plans for their new
project. You don’t pick up plants such as Strelitzia let alone Gardenia and Bouganvillia from any old nursery anywhere in East Calleshire.’

Half-heartedly Jack Haines muttered something about insurance.

‘Mine or yours?’ asked Berra on the instant.

‘Yours,’ said Haines gruffly. ‘I’ve never even insured the orchids. I’ve lost all of them too.’

Anthony Berra wasn’t interested in orchids and made that clear. ‘What I’m interested in, Jack, is that greenhouse of yours that had my plants in it and no, I’m not insured.’

‘Pity.’

‘Actually,’ drawled Berra a little unpleasantly, ‘since I hadn’t actually bought the plants yet I would have thought the loss was entirely yours. Not mine.’

‘I grew them especially for you exactly to your precise order, didn’t I?’ responded Jack Haines, torn between keeping Anthony Berra as a customer and minimising his own loss. ‘Especially those citrus trees and the palms, let alone the Mimosa.’

The landscape designer came back on the instant. ‘I don’t know who left your greenhouse doors open, Jack, and I don’t care, but I can assure you it wasn’t me.’ There was an uneasy pause and then Berra went on in a more mollifying tone, ‘It isn’t quite as easy as that, anyway. You must know what these particular clients of mine are like. I should think the whole village does.’