Serpent in the Garden (22 page)

T
HE CONSERVATORY, an imposing mound of wood and glass, rose before Joshua. He lifted his eyes to the sparkling cupola, then lowered them to the figure of Lizzie Manning, who paced sentinel-like outside the door. She twirled her parasol in her gloved hand, biting her upper lip with evident impatience at having to wait in the heat for a drawing lesson that should have begun half an hour ago. In her high-necked gown of pale gray she looked, he reflected, like a moth fluttering before an ice sculpture. “Mr. Pope,” she exclaimed crossly, “are you in the habit of keeping your pupils waiting?”

“My dear Miss Manning,” replied Joshua, the faintest glimmer of a smile playing about his lips, “being unused to instructing pupils, I have never formed any habits, either good or bad.” His thoughts raced swiftly on to the pinery, which he was eager to examine. “But tell me,” he said, “why did you choose to wait here and not inside this remarkable edifice?”

“I found the atmosphere within unbearably oppressive. Moreover, Granger is engaged in tending to his pots in the pinery. I thought it better we seek a more private spot.”

Joshua concurred. They walked a short distance, to a place where a stone garden seat was set into a niche of yew. Then with no further delay (they were each as hungry as the other to discover what was contained in the letter Joshua had retrieved from the desk) they set to reading.

20th May 1766

Mr. Cobb

After the encounter in the gardens today I must reiterate what I have already told you. Our association is at an end. It is fruitless to believe that by pursuit of me you might change my mind. Quite the contrary—you succeed only in strengthening my resolve and souring any sympathy I once may have had. How dare you come to Richmond and threaten me in one breath and declare your affection in another? The necklace will remain in my mother’s possession. Your threats to tell her of our association will not alter my determination. I would rather she knew all—indeed, I have half a mind to tell her myself. My only wish is that you would return to Bridgetown and leave me in peace.

Violet

Joshua had begun to doubt that the dead man was Cobb; he assumed that the corpse must be that of Hoare, the attorney who had called upon him and subsequently disappeared. But why would Hoare have a letter from Violet? On further reflection, he realized the letter did nothing to prove or disprove the identity of the corpse.

For the time being, Joshua kept most of his conclusions to himself. He told Lizzie that a man calling himself Cobb had accosted him last night and demanded Cobb’s bag, which Dunstable had given him; and that a letter written by Crackman revealed Cobb was an attorney working on the same disputed claim for the necklace as Mr. Hoare.

“Do you believe Cobb is alive?” said Lizzie, thunderstruck.

“I don’t know. I was hoping this might help us decide,” he said, holding up the letter. “But it only confirms what we already know: that the necklace and the death are linked and that there was a relationship between Violet and Cobb that soured.” He stated the obvious to see what response it might elicit from Lizzie. “Cobb, in his capacity as attorney acting for an unknown claimant, came searching for the necklace. But he had more than one reason for coming: he was still fond of Violet.”

“Perhaps in the beginning Violet agreed to assist Cobb in his attempts to recover the jewel and then changed her mind,” suggested Lizzie.

Joshua recalled that according to the maid, Marie, Sabine had put a halt to the relationship between Cobb and Violet. Clearly the fondness, from Cobb’s side at least, lasted longer than Sabine (and Marie) thought.

“At any rate, whatever was between them appears over now,” he said. Inwardly he cursed Herbert for destroying the second letter Granger had given him; the very fact he had destroyed it surely revealed its significance. Did it follow, then, that the keeping of this communication was intended to mislead?

“Suppose Cobb didn’t take the necklace,” he said. “Suppose someone else did.”

She looked a little crossly at him, as if he were taunting her by his cryptic postulations. “Who?”

“I don’t know yet. But there is another letter that may have a bearing on it. I discovered it in Herbert’s desk. Tell me what you make of it.” Here he took out his pocket book and showed her the other letter.

Mr. Bentnick,

I have done my utmost to exercise my self-control, but you have tested me to the limit. I see now that after all this time you have merely feigned sympathy with my cause, yet never truly listened to a word I said to you. My patience is now at an end, and none but you have driven me to make this ultimatum. Since you have not extracted what is mine, I will come immediately and retrieve it in person.

Joshua couldn’t help thinking how convenient his discovery of both letters was. Would Herbert have left such letters in his unlocked desk if he didn’t intend them to be found? Both were most convenient pieces of evidence to incriminate someone else. There must have been some reason why he kept these and threw away the other. Perhaps the lost letter revealed his or Sabine’s involvement in the intrigue.

“Can you fathom anything from it?” Joshua asked.

Lizzie thought for a short while before she spoke. “The letter is undated, which is irksome, for if we knew when it was written it might have helped us. The writer addresses Herbert as if he or she is quite well acquainted with him and has known him for a considerable time. The tone is definite, threatening, yet at the same time it attempts to draw sympathy.”

“Very good,” he said, impressed by her line of reasoning. “But can you hazard what it is about or, more importantly, who might have written it?”

She looked up. “It must relate to the necklace. But as to the author, the signature is indecipherable. Can you read it?” she asked.

He shook his head, then decided to give her a little assistance to see where it might lead. “If Cobb was acting on behalf of another in trying to retrieve the necklace, then this letter might have been written by that person. Perhaps that person grew tired of waiting for the legal process and has carried out their threat. If that is the case, then Herbert knows perfectly well who has taken it: the writer of this letter. But that poses a further question: why accuse me, and order me to look into the matter?”

“To keep the truth of the matter from Sabine,” postulated Lizzie cautiously.

“But Sabine must know who the claimant is, since the necklace is hers. Or are you suggesting Herbert is involved in some form of conspiracy against Sabine, whom he is shortly to marry?”

Lizzie’s face revealed her annoyance that Joshua could pick holes in her argument almost before she had strung it together. Seeing that her patience was wearing thin, he went on more gently.

“My next action will be to try to seek out the man who accosted me last night. I regret letting him slip away. Meanwhile, there is something you can do that would help me greatly. Ask the maid about what happened with the necklace the day I left. Perhaps she will say something to you she didn’t tell Sabine or Herbert. Then question Violet to see if their accounts tally. Persuade her to confide in you over the matter of Cobb, and ask her how reliable she believes the maid’s testimony to be. Do not under any circumstance divulge to her that Cobb might be alive.”

“Why not?”

“Because to judge from the tone of her letter, she was tired of his pestering—perhaps she was tired enough to wish him dead. We believe she visited Cobb at the inn, perhaps soon after this letter was written. I am no medical man, yet I believe the symptoms of death are consistent with poisoning. If so, Violet might well be the person responsible.”

“Her mother might have had more reason. Remember, Sabine’s father was a physician and taught her a great deal about the medical properties of plants. If Cobb represented the claimant to her necklace, she may have killed him to save it. But in any case you have just said Cobb might not be dead.”

“Someone is, though. Suppose Violet, or Sabine, or Herbert, or the man on the road, whoever he was, tried to kill Cobb and failed—the poison killed the wrong person. There is every possibility that on discovering the error, the guilty party might try again, is there not?”

“But whose was the corpse?”

Joshua hesitated, looking sadly into her gray eyes. He noticed their lustrous gleam and that her pupils were dilated with the excitement of the discussion. There was something attractive in her fervor, although he was aware that for her this was no more than an intriguing diversion, while for him and the poor dead man it was a matter of life, reputation, and death. Nevertheless, without her he would have no ally at all. He had to make her think he trusted her.

“I have yet to prove it categorically, but I suspect it was Hoare’s,” he said quietly.

•    •    •

THEY PROCEEDED to the pinery with their sketchbooks and pens. Lizzie was adamant about drawing pineapples. And since Joshua was curious to survey the building, he was happy to comply.

Walking into the pinery for the first time overwhelmed him. He was staggered by the scale and height of the roof and the kaleidoscopic shafts of light radiating through the myriad panes. In front of him was the atrium, a circular arena with tables and chairs set out by the fountain, and orange and pomegranate trees positioned like sentinels around the edge. Vast double doors led off to the right and left. On one side was the vine he had seen Granger tending, beyond lemon trees heavy with fruit and melons twisting up trellises. Opposite was the door leading to the pinery.

Deep raised beds, some six feet wide and filled with decaying tan bark, stretched the length of the building. In the center was a tiled path bordered by a pit containing steaming manure—which added to the heat supplied by the tan bark and the stoves and sun. The beds were filled with ranks of silvery leaves and knobbly green fruits rearing up from the centers of the largest specimens like Venus appearing from a shell.

They perched themselves sideways on the low wall of one of the beds with their sketchbooks. Lizzie appeared unperturbed by the discomfort of the mud to her hem and set to with alacrity.

She was an awkward student, quick to put down on paper what she believed lay in front of her, unwilling to examine the way each leaf curled slightly differently or the way the light altered the hue of each plant before she drew it. They chose the largest plants with fruits that, though green, appeared almost fully formed. Joshua drew the same plant as Lizzie and tried to teach her by example. An hour later, his first study of the pineapple was not quite complete and Lizzie had made several execrable attempts; there were blots and smudges all over her page.

“Miss Manning,” he said, anticipating an imminent outburst of ill temper, “I think we have done enough for one day. You have made great progress, but I feel your style would be better suited to the broader sweeps of landscape painting than to the meticulousness of botany. Tomorrow, if you wish, we will try our hand at depicting some scenes in the park. I have no doubt Sabine would welcome such a subject as a gift. Until then I believe we should cease our lesson.”

She agreed willingly and went off in search of Violet and her maid, Marie, leaving him to put the finishing touches to his drawing. He made notes as to the hues of foliage and fruit, which would serve him as an aide-mémoire when he transferred this image to his canvas. All the while he was dimly aware of Granger coming and going. When finally he gathered up his crayons and papers and turned to leave, he nearly fell over Granger halfway along the path.

“Yet again at your labors, Mr. Granger,” Joshua said cordially.

“Forgive me,” said Granger, moving aside.

“Are these new plants you have reared?”

“Why, no sir,” he replied. “They are the latest arrivals from the nursery, to fill up the places in the beds of those that died.”

“Are these any different from the other plants you have growing here?”

If Granger was surprised by Joshua’s sudden interest in horticulture, his face betrayed none of it. He answered solemnly. “Several varieties grow in this country. In the beds there are already Black Antigua, Cayenne, Enville, and Jamaica Queen. These are Providence; they make fruits that weigh fourteen pounds or more. Mrs. Mercier has requested they be the centerpiece at her wedding breakfast.”

“Then it will indeed be an occasion of providence. This is my first visit, and the whole place strikes me as a remarkable achievement. I congratulate you on it.”

Granger looked uncomfortably at the plants in his hand. “In truth, sir, I’ve done what I was asked to do. Nor more or less. The building was all here before my arrival. When all’s said and done, the pineapple is not so difficult a fruit to grow. Once you balance the water with the correct light and heat, it flourishes. Modulating the heat is the only aspect that can be difficult.” He paused, looking at his mud-logged boots. “But you have no need to be asking me about pineapples. You could ask your drawing pupil, Miss Manning. She is another enthusiast.”

“Does Miss Manning know about the cultivation of pineapple plants?”

“She’s as knowledgeable as Mr. Bentnick on most aspects of horticulture—that’s why he’s so fond of her. They used to spend hours discussing their prized plants. The gardens at Barlow Court are said to rival Astley’s, or they used to, at any rate. Sir Lancelot Brown, who had much to do here, was also, I believe, employed at Barlow Court and at my previous estate after I left it. He lives in Kew, just a mile from here—I hazard that’s why he is so popular in this vicinity.”

“His preeminent reputation may also have something to do with it,” said Joshua, not unkindly.

“Of course, his reputation is unrivaled. In any event, under his direction Miss Manning took charge of much of the planting. I know she tried to grow pineapples there. She asked me for advice, though whether Mr. Brown had anything to do with it, and whether she succeeded, I couldn’t say.”