The Garden Plot (32 page)

Pru’s mind went numb, not wanting to examine this exchange too closely. Archie shoved her out the door while still squeezing her arm. She tried to keep her balance as he pushed and pulled at the same time.

He marched her across the muddy garden, the rain pouring down, the pistol still stuck in her side. Opening the door of the shed with his elbow, he gave her a rough push inside and then followed, pulling a torch out of his raincoat pocket and hanging it on one of the pegs, where its wide beam cast light over the mosaic.

“Start digging.”

No need to ask where to dig,
Pru thought. She reached for the spade on the ground—the one that Mr. Wilson had chucked back after his own bout of digging—but Archie stopped her.

“No, not that one,” he said, and with a gloved hand he gave her the other spade off the wall. “This one.” He gestured to the hole. She plunged the spade in the wet soil as Archie backed off to the far corner. “We don’t want to compromise the fingerprint evidence on the murder weapon,” he said.

“They already took that spade,” Pru said, but with a stab of fear realized Archie didn’t mean Jeremy’s murder.
This spade,
she thought,
covered with Mr. Wilson’s fingerprints, would soon include evidence from
Pru—blood, hair, tissue—she remembered with a sickening shock Christopher’s description of the first murder and what she herself had seen.

“They won’t believe that for a minute. They already know it’s you.” Surprised to have found her voice, she lied with as much confidence as she could muster.

“By the time they can figure all that out, after all the moaning and crying about their darling American gardener, we’ll be gone,” he boasted. “The arrangements are all made.” Pru had slowed in her digging, which prompted Archie to wave the gun at her. “Dig.”

“I hope you didn’t let Alf make the arrangements.”

Archie dropped his smirk for a second. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You haven’t noticed he isn’t the most reliable fellow?” Pru asked. “You know he broke into a constable’s house while the constable was home—how smart was that? And you heard about his idea of pretending to be Scottish and trying to steal money from someone he knew? This is the man who’s made your arrangements?” Pru couldn’t help rubbing it in. Archie was quiet for a moment.

“Shut your mouth and dig,” he said.

A thought occurred to Pru—what seemed like ages ago, she remembered Mrs. Wilson telling her that Alf asked about the “boggy place” at Greenoak. “You thought you could take it from this bog,” she said, nodding to the seeping hole in front of her, “and rebury it in the bog at Greenoak, didn’t you? You were going to take it to Greenoak and then ‘find’ it again on Alf’s property? That way the artifacts wouldn’t belong to the earl, they would belong to Alf, and he could sell it. And hand the money to you.”

“He’ll get his cut,” Archie shouted at her. “Everybody else makes money off history—why shouldn’t I?” Archie said, his anger showing again. “Why should I just give it all up to museums and universities? Is that fair? I’m sick of it.”

“Mrs. Wilson said that the sale of the house fell through, but that was all a ruse, wasn’t it, from the very beginning? Alf told them he was selling Greenoak because he wanted them out of the way so that you could carry out your scheme. But they’re onto you now,” Pru said, hoping to point out the futility of his plan. “The police, the Wilsons—everyone knows.”

“Arrangements have been made,” he said in a taunting voice. “We’ll be away before they can ever get to us.” He noticed again that Pru had slowed. “Open that hole wider!” he shouted.

“It’s a poacher’s spade,” she shouted back, referring to the long but narrow shape of the tool. “It won’t make a wide hole quickly.” Her spade went down again and hit something hard.

“There now,” Archie said, keeping the gun on her, while with his other hand, he popped the top on one of the big rusted tins under the bench and pulled out several large, woven plastic carrier bags from Sainsbury’s. “See, I’m all prepared, and no one was the wiser that I came back to tuck these away until it was time. Now, start opening that hole.”

“Don’t you even care that I could damage it? The only copy in the world of Hadrian’s autobiography, and all you care about is getting it into a shopping bag and selling it off?”

He advanced on her, shaking the gun as he did so, and Pru took a step back. “Listen to me, you bloody stupid woman.” His anger was getting the better of him. “Do you think you’re doing yourself any good with this talk? It’ll just make killing you all
that much easier.”

They both heard it. A voice called “Pru?” But because of the noise of the rain on the roof or the distance, Pru couldn’t tell whom it was.

Archie backed up a couple of steps to look out the door, and as he did so, Pru threw the spade at him, using both hands and aiming high, toward his face. His arms flew up to protect himself, and the gun went off, sending the bullet up through the roof.

She jumped over the exposed mosaic and lunged at him, trying to push him away from the door. She succeeded in knocking the pistol away from him, but he grabbed her wrist with one hand as he held on to the doorway with the other. She kneed him; he yelled and let go. She had made it three steps out the door when he jumped her from behind. She landed facedown in the mud and couldn’t breathe for a moment. Archie was big and heavy, and when he tried to get up, he tripped on one of the stems of ivy she’d left looping up out of the ground. It gave her enough time to crawl away through the mud a few feet.

When she started to get up, he came around and stood over her, but he swayed slightly, and as if to try to steady himself, he waved his arms in small circles like propellers. His sluggishness gave her a second to think:
It worked once—why can’t it work again?
She sprang up and used the momentum to bring the heel of her hand up, striking hard under his chin. He screamed, and blood squirted from his mouth as he dropped.

Archie groaned and turned over, his arms and legs waving about as he tried to stand. Pru tried to catch her breath and think what to do next. Someone grabbed her from behind. She screamed and turned.

“Christopher!” She threw her arms around him. She saw police streaming into the garden.

He held her tight. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you? There was a shot.”

“Christopher”—she pulled back to look at him as the words came tumbling out—“he’s the sock man, it’s his house, my house, and he thought I knew he was the murderer.” She knew that made little sense, but all she could do was hit the high points and hope that he would fill in the blanks.

“Yes, yes, we know it’s Clarke. Are you hurt?”

“I’m all right, I’m okay—at least I think I am.” But a sob caught in her throat, and she threw her arms around him again. “I’m so glad you’re here.” She held him at arm’s length. “Oh, no, I’ve got mud all over your suit.”

“Damn the suit, Pru, are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes, I’m just …” She looked back to see officers putting handcuffs on Archie.
“Pippa,” she said in a panic. “Pippa is Romilda. She’s in the basement looking for the letter.”

“We got her.” Christopher stroked her cheek, smearing mud as he did so. She felt the tension begin to drain out of her body, taking with it her ability to remain standing on her own. She leaned against Christopher and he held her tight with one arm. More help arrived, and the back garden was abuzz with officers on radios, officers on Archie, officers beginning to search the shed, and a female officer waiting nearby.

“Did you call out the whole force?” she asked.

“I did my best. Malcolm phoned me, he phoned 999, and I think he phoned the Wilsons, too. He saw Archie drag you through the garden.”

“Malcolm,” she said, amazed. And then she noticed him, hands stuffed into his trouser pockets, standing off to the side of the garden as police moved all around him.

“Pru, are you all right?” Malcolm asked when she looked at him. He had no jacket, and he looked wet and miserable. “I never thought … I don’t know who this man is.” He gestured toward Archie, who still sat in the mud with four officers around him. “I only told Alf … Well, I’m sorry I told Alf. About your photos.”

“Malcolm, thank you for phoning the police,” Pru said, as an officer took hold of his arm.

“Sir?”

“Yes, take him in. We’ll have a few questions for you, Mr. Crisp,” Christopher said without looking at Malcolm.

Pru knew Malcolm was no innocent bystander, but she couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him.

“Will your mother be all right?” she asked.

“Yes, her carer is with her now. Thank you, Pru.” The officer led him off.

“Sir.” Another officer came up to Christopher, nodding his head toward Archie. “We’ll have to take him to hospital first. It seems he’s got an injury to his jaw and may have bitten through his tongue. There’s a fair amount of blood.”

Christopher looked at Pru, who smiled but shivered. “Right,” he replied. “Post a guard and take him straight to the station after he’s patched up.” He tightened his grip around her shoulders and said, “Let’s get you inside.”

There was a commotion at the house, and both Wilsons came swimming through the sea of officers to Pru. Mr. Wilson held up a large umbrella.

“Pru, dear, are you all right?” Mrs. Wilson asked in a rush. “Malcolm rang Harry, but we really couldn’t understand what he was saying. Then the police found us at Jeremy’s dinner and brought us home.” Mrs. Wilson turned to Christopher. “Is she all
right, Inspector?”

“Yes, Mrs. Wilson, I’m fine,” Pru said, grateful to see them and to know that they were safe. The rain had soaked her through; she had a coating of mud down her front, her hair hung in muddy clumps—she gave a fleeting thought to her hair clip—and it felt as if she’d applied a mudpack to her face. She looked at Christopher. She’d shared a good bit of it with him.

“You need to come inside,” Mr. Wilson said. “That’s all right, isn’t it, Inspector?”

“Of course it is,” Christopher said, then leaned close to Pru. “I need to stay out here for now, all right?” She nodded.

“Pru, we’ll just get you right upstairs to the shower, shall we?” Mrs. Wilson started to lead her away.

She felt slightly giddy, a reaction to the release of the fear, and the euphoria that followed. At least, that’s what she blamed it on, because as Mrs. Wilson led her away, she turned to Christopher and whispered, “Wanna come?” She didn’t stay to see his reaction.

Pru took off her shoes at the door, and Mrs. Wilson marched her upstairs to the shower while police swarmed through the house, basement, and garden. The female police officer had offered to stay with her, but Pru said she would be fine and asked if she could give her statement after she’d had a shower.

She left her wet, muddy, bloody clothes in a plastic bag, got in the shower, and scrubbed herself hard, trying to clean away both the mud and the thought of Archie’s tight grip. She examined her side; a large bruise blossomed where Archie had pushed the pistol into her.

After Pru dabbed ointment on the worst scrapes, Mrs. Wilson gave her an enormous, fluffy terry-cloth robe followed by, when she got downstairs, a large brandy. Pru sat on the sofa in the front room and gave her statement to an officer. After he left, she stayed put, well away from the activity, alone and quiet. She could hear Mr. Wilson in his basement office on the phone.

She looked up to see Christopher standing in the doorway watching her. Her hair, slicked back and half dry, had started to frizz on the ends; her face was raw with scrubbing.

“I’m irresistible, aren’t I?” she asked. “It must be the socks.” She put her feet up on the coffee table; she wore a pair of Mr. Wilson’s thick wool socks. Christopher smiled. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

She nodded. “Yes. Although I’m glad you got here when you did. I’m not sure I
knew what to do next.”

“I was on my way to your place already. We’d discovered that Archie Clarke had been blind-copied on Jeremy’s first email to Harry, and that Clarke was the ‘A’—that was what you missed when you left here earlier today. I knew the name sounded familiar, and I started to ask you about it this morning, but we got distracted with Vindolanda, and I forgot to get back to it. This afternoon we found out what he’d been up to. Once we saw his faculty photo, we matched it to the photo you took the morning of the murder, and we realized it showed him coming out of the basement.”

“Were his shoes in the bag?” she asked.

“Yes. He’d stepped in the blood and thought he’d get rid of them, but all he did was toss them in a skip at a construction site three streets over. They matched another pair of his shoes to the partial print on your post. We hadn’t known Clarke was involved with Harry’s society. The university adviser wasn’t listed on the membership list, and Harry thought he was in Italy.”

An officer stopped to say something to him; he replied, and turned back to Pru. “And then a while ago Jo phoned, saying something was wrong, but she didn’t know what. She’d phoned you to explain about letting the Clarkes get into the basement—”

“She didn’t know, Christopher. She thought they just needed to get something out of one of their storage boxes,” Pru interjected.

“Yes, I know. But she wanted to tell me that it was an odd phone conversation, and it worried her. It took her a while to get through to me, because she phoned the station’s number and the desk sergeant … well, he’ll be spoken to. By the time I arrived at your house, you were gone, but then Malcolm phoned to say he’d seen someone dragging you through the garden here.” He frowned as he recounted his movements. “I should’ve gone to you straightaway. I shouldn’t have left you vulnerable to …”

“I’m all right—well, now I am. I was afraid at first, then I was angry, then I was afraid again.” She thought about her emotions pinballing around during the episode. “I was looking at that photo on my computer when Lucy phoned to tell me about him; I forgot I’d made a copy of the photos on another flash drive. Then Archie showed up at my door and …” Pru shuddered.

Christopher looked down at his muddy suit and shoes. She knew what he was thinking. “You stay right where you are, Inspector. Poor Mrs. Wilson, what a mess we’ve made. Or, I guess I should say, poor Mary—she’ll have extra housecleaning duties tomorrow.”