The Red Book of Primrose House: A Potting Shed Mystery (Potting Shed Mystery series 2) (19 page)

“Missing? In Dubai?”

“No one can reach him.” Christopher went over to the fireplace and began to set the wood, then stopped and sat down. “Phyl tried to ring him yesterday and thought that he’d just turned his phone off. He hasn’t replied to emails for two days. I told Phyl that we had talked with him last weekend—he was fine.” He got up, went to the kitchen, and began filling the kettle.

“Did she try ringing him at work today?” Pru asked, following him in. “Maybe something’s wrong with his phone.” Dread crept over her.

Christopher put the kettle on and turned to her, his face ashen. “He hadn’t been in today, they said. They thought he might have gone out to the site of a new building on the outskirts of the city, but they hadn’t heard.”

Pru took his hands. “And you tried? You rang him?”

He nodded. “Straight to his voice mail. His phone is off or…”

She jumped into the breach. “His battery’s dead. He forgot to charge his phone—I’m always forgetting to charge mine.” She dragged him over to the sofa. “His company—the people he works with—they’re looking for him, aren’t they? What about where he lives? Does he have a flatmate?”

“No, they’re just studios really—the company owns the building and puts interns up there.”

Dubai was far away, but much of the distance was south, and so there was only a four-hour time difference. Still, she thought, that made it almost midnight there. “When did you find this out?” she asked.

“Phyl rang just before I left my flat.”

“You didn’t need to come down here for me,” she said, feeling immediately guilty that he would try to take care of her as well as his own crisis.

He held both her hands up to his lips. “I was being selfish—I needed to come for me. I couldn’t sit in my flat alone with this.”

She pressed her cheek against his. “That isn’t selfish.”

He had put his own call into Graham’s supervisor and one to a former London police colleague, Matthew Blount, who now worked in security for the same Dubai firm. The hospitals had been checked, the authorities alerted. Nothing yet, but Matthew promised to ring as soon as he had news.

“I talked to Phyl again just as I got here. I gave her your number in case she couldn’t reach me—I hope that was all right.” His eyes were empty and scared, and she wanted to hold him close.

“Of course it’s all right. Are you going to fly down there?”

“I can’t leave yet,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t sit on a plane for eight hours not knowing…” His voice trailed off, and he took her hand and squeezed it.

“We’ll wait here for good news,” she said, squeezing back. “You make a fire; I’ll pour the tea.”

That took up a few minutes, after which they sat and stared at the flames. “Tell me what you’ve been doing,” he said. “Tell me how things are.”

Thoughts of red books, an arrow aimed at her head, and her own questions about both Liam’s and Davina’s innocence flitted through her mind, but Pru held back. He was always willing to add more to his load of responsibilities, even leaving work the day she found Ned’s body, but she could not heap more weight onto the burden he carried now. “Fine, things are fine. The stone pots arrived this week, the ones for the terrace…” She proceeded to go into great detail about the little progress they’d made in the garden. She knew he wasn’t listening—she barely listened to herself—but it filled the air with sound, and that was what they needed.

The minutes dragged on into an hour, then another. A fresh pot of tea. They sat at the kitchen table and Christopher stared at his phone, left out in front of them. Pru had never seen him look helpless.

She began asking him about Graham as a boy, and he warmed to the subject, telling tales of camping and school trips and vacations—the parts of their father-son lives that overlapped after Christopher and Phyl divorced. When a story ended, they lapsed into silence, but the silence frightened her, and so she would ask for another. Was he a Boy Scout like his father? Who was his best friend when he was ten? Between stories, Christopher would grab her hands across the table. They would go over what they knew again and again. Matthew was looking; the authorities had been alerted; Graham would be found; Matthew would ring as soon as he knew anything.

It was past three o’clock in the morning when she stood up. “I’m going to look for a flight for you.”

She had just started searching online when Christopher’s phone rang. The occurrence of the one sound they’d been waiting hours to hear frightened her even more than the silence. He leapt up and answered, his back to her.

“Matthew, what have you found?” A few seconds of silence, and when he turned round, Pru saw the color had come back into his face. “You’ve seen him? Is he all right?” His voice was thick.

Her eyes filled with tears of relief. As she was about to go to him, her phone rang. It was Phyl, who didn’t bother with hello. “They found him—did you hear? Does he know?”

“Yes, he’s talking with Matthew now. What happened?”

“Graham’s hurt, but he’s going to be all right. I just spoke with him. I’ll let Christopher explain it. Pru,” Phyl said in a shaky voice, “it’s good he’s been there with you.”

That was an unnecessary kindness, but one which Pru—who had met Phyl only once and briefly—deeply appreciated. “Thanks.”

When he rang off, Christopher took her in his arms and for a moment neither spoke. It was a good silence; she could feel the tension drain out of his body. She looked up at him. “Tell me what happened.”

He didn’t let her go, but began to fill in the details. Graham was in hospital with injuries from a car crash, but he would recover. Just as the firm had suspected, he had been driving out to the site of the new building, but he’d been run off the road—they are not the most disciplined drivers there, Matthew had said. His car ended up hidden from view, and he was pinned in; they found him only Friday evening, and only after Matthew urged the police to look for the GPS signal from Graham’s phone—which had landed out of his reach. He was conscious, and he’d had bottled water at hand. Broken leg and arm, and a mild concussion—but he was alive.

“There’s a flight at seven,” Pru said, “from Gatwick. You could make that.”

His phone rang as she spoke, and when he looked down, his face lit up. “Graham? Sorry, who? Millie?”

Millie? Pru sat back down at the computer to get flight details while Christopher talked with whomever that was, and then Graham must’ve come on the line.

“Son, how do you feel? Is the doctor there? Listen, I’m flying out first thing in the morning, but I won’t see you until almost evening.” Christopher sat down on the sofa, then stood up by the mantel. They spoke for a few more minutes; he rang off and beamed at Pru. “He sounds good. At least, as well as can be expected. He’ll be all right.”

“Let me finish your ticket now—I need your passport number,” she said. Christopher went over to his jacket. “And who is Millie?” she asked.

“Another Brit, from Newcastle. She’s visited Dubai a couple of times. They’ve been seeing each other—he’s talked about her constantly.”

“He had to go all the way to Dubai to meet the girl of his dreams from Newcastle?”

“Nonsense,” he said, “he won’t meet the girl of his dreams for ages yet.”

She had her back to him and didn’t turn, lest she had misinterpreted his remark. “Well,” she said in a light tone, “I hope she’s worth the wait.”

Christopher’s arms encircled Pru, and he kissed her behind her ear. “She is most definitely worth the wait.”

She took his hand and kissed his palm.

When Phyl first rang him, he’d had the forethought—that keen policeman’s mind—to grab some clothes and his passport in anticipation of a journey. Now he could leave for the airport from her cottage. And with Graham safe and Christopher on his way to sort things out, suddenly they were both starving. Pru scrambled eggs and sliced bread for toast.

They stood at the door, not quite ready for him to leave. He took her face in his hands and kissed her mouth, her cheeks, her eyelids. “You saved me tonight,” he said.

“You’ve saved me plenty of times,” she reminded him.

“I don’t like leaving you with all this.”

“There is nothing going on,” she said. She hoped he would forgive her that small lie; it was for his own good. “I don’t want you to worry. I’ll be fine here, and you can ring anytime you want.”

He looked over to the table where the Titche’s box awaited its next journey. She saw the direction of his gaze and brushed off the impending concern. “I’m not going to talk with Simon,” she said. “I’m going to drive down, give him the box, and come home. I’ll do it on Sunday.”

“You could stop and see Harry and Vernona,” he suggested.

She brightened. “Yes, I’ll visit the Wilsons. Maybe I could spend the night with them tomorrow—oh, that’s today, isn’t it?—deliver Simon’s box to him, and then come home.” At least part of her journey would be pleasant.

“When I return,” he said, “we’ll make plans. See if we can find time away from all this.”

She looked into his intense gaze and nodded. She wondered where that time would come from. Would elves make their way into the Primrose House gardens every night and get all the work done that she couldn’t? And where would Christopher find more time? Tell crime victims that he was very sorry, but he was going off with his girlfriend—Pru almost laughed as she thought of him saying that ridiculous word aloud. They needed time, but they had no time to give.

After he left, Pru made another cup of tea—keeping herself awake until he rang once he was settled at the gate, waiting to board. “I rang Phyl to say I was on my way. And I talked with Graham again, and spoke with a doctor,” Christopher said. “I’ll find out more when I get there. I’ll ring you tomorrow after you’re home.”

She fell into bed about six and willed every single thought to leave her mind. With nothing left in there, she slept.

And woke at noon. Groggy, at first she couldn’t understand why the sun poured in her window. She stumbled out of bed and stretched until she recalled not just the night before but also the task ahead. She sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee and eyeing the Titche’s department-store box, as if it might suddenly come to life and talk to her about the past. When it didn’t, she rang the Wilsons. Pru didn’t need to say much. Mrs. Wilson seemed already aware of the situation—most likely she’d heard it straight from Birdie—and said they would have a room ready when she arrived.

On the drive to Romsey, her mind filled to the brim with questions that came from too many directions—gardens, murder, family, Graham. When she reached the Wilsons’ home, Greenoak, she realized that the arrow incident had spilled out in the overflow, unnoticed and unremembered until that moment. She would ring DS Hobbes when she got back tomorrow. In the light of day, she realized the sensible explanation was that a local, using the wood for target practice, had not seen her. She filed the incident away as the Wilsons’ terrier, Toffee Woof-Woof, greeted her in the vanguard.

The Wilsons were as dear as ever, never bringing up the subject of Simon. Mr. Wilson talked about his latest archaeological dig—Roman artifacts being his specialty—and Mrs. Wilson chatted about the Women’s Institutes, broadly hinting that Pru should join the Tunbridge Wells chapter. Pru listened without comment, fatigued from the drive. She’d had only a few hours’ sleep, and thought it might be days before she recovered from the odd hours she’d been keeping.

She left the Wilsons’ midmorning on Sunday, after a leisurely breakfast during which she grew nervous with anticipation. After promising another, longer visit soon—
and when would that be?
she thought—she followed Mr. Wilson’s directions for the short drive to Simon’s house. Pru’s heart pounded as if it would prefer to run away and hide rather than stay in her chest at that moment. She parked two houses away to compose herself and to admire Simon and Polly’s front garden. The last of the snowdrops still carpeted the ground, and the earliest dwarf
Narcissus
were just beginning. Walking up to the door, she passed a couple of small shrubs she couldn’t identify, and her heart ached at the thought that she couldn’t just drag Simon out and ask him.

Polly—
who else could it be,
Pru thought—answered the door. She had blond hair, on the faded side, cut stylishly at shoulder length, and she wore glasses with red frames. Whether or not she’d seen the recent photo of Pru, it was clear she recognized her. Pru hadn’t meant to surprise them—well, she had meant to surprise Simon, because she worried that he would absent himself if he caught wind of her impending arrival.

She clutched the box to her chest in an attempt to calm her heart. “Hello, I’m Pru. Is Simon at home?”

For a moment, Polly said nothing, only looked at Pru. A radio played somewhere in the house. “Hello, Pru. I’m Polly. Will you come in?” She opened the door wider.

“No. Thank you. I only want to give him something. Is he here?”

“Yes, let me get him.” Polly left the door open. Pru heard murmured voices, followed by footsteps. She tried to steady her breathing.

He said nothing at first, and she opened her mouth to begin, but then he spoke. “Do you want to come in?”

“No, thank you.”
Yes, please,
she thought. “I haven’t come to talk. I only wanted to give you this.” She held out the box and he looked down at it, as if unsure what sort of gift she might wish to give him.
“Take it,”
she urged in a tight voice. She took a breath. “Please, take it. It’s yours.” Simon took it, and she felt a great heaviness lifted from her, out of all proportion to the weight of the box. She hurried on before he banished her from the premises. “It’s letters and photos”—it hit her that she was giving up the photo of the family from all those years ago, the one taken at Birdie’s, and she felt a stab of pain—“that Mother saved. She saved them for you, and I didn’t understand that until now.” He remained silent and her eyes dropped to the ground. “That’s all I wanted to do—give you the box.” She turned to go.

“Pru—” he said as she walked away.

Straight home, to her safe, lonely little cottage. But a couple of hours of daylight remained, and a pang of guilt prevented her from retiring indoors—she should get some work done. She stood looking at the walled garden, hearing Humphry Repton’s voice in her head—in that friendly, insistent, designerish tone she had invented for him—telling her that the bank planted with shrubs would hide the kitchen garden wall.

The broad walk from the house would sweep down and around the walled garden to arrive at the front gate, drawing the bare outer wall into prominence. She must cover the walls, and that meant more rambling roses to peg all along the length of it—the side that faced the house. It took every ounce of effort she could muster just to sigh deeply.

The work inside the walls overwhelmed her, too. Smooth off the hacked yew trunks—surely the police would let her do that now? The apple trees were ready to plant, and she had heeled them in—digging a trench in one of the beds and burying the bare roots until actual planting took place. She’d chosen a range of old varieties from the list Ned had made—everything from Ballyfatten to Pig’s Nose Pippin and Bloody Ploughman. That last one seemed inappropriate in light of recent events, but there was little she could do about it now. Training the apples meant more masonry nails and wires. Perhaps she could set up work lights and start putting in a few hours overnight.

She walked to the greenhouse and put her hand out to open the door, and as she did so, she thought back to the first incident—when the primroses and cowslips had been destroyed.

Her hand hovered over the handle. She felt that she had done little to sort out who might have killed Ned, but surely she could figure this out. She knew who had upturned the flats, tried to set fire to the shed, and cut down the yew: Jamie Tanner. What had the police done about that? Had they looked for fingerprints on the greenhouse? She couldn’t remember. She drew her hand back. Did the police not have his fingerprints on file? No, she answered her own question, they did not: Cate never reported his abuse, and as far as she knew, he had no police record.

She walked down to the shed to check on the bow she’d found in the wood by the house. It was nowhere to be seen—not propped up outside where she had left it or inside with the tools. Her eyes darted around, as if her assailant waited under the brush pile, behind the shed, or on the far side of the cedar of Lebanon. She backed away, pulled her phone out, and hurried off to her cottage.

Her call went straight to Hobbes’s voice mail—perhaps he didn’t work on Sunday afternoons, as other police officers she could name did. “I can’t prove anything, but I believe that Jamie Tanner was behind the vandalism in the garden. Do you have his fingerprints on file? Maybe you could give me a ring tomorrow. And,” she added, slightly out of breath as she reached her door, “I have something else to tell you about. Tomorrow.”

Christopher rang Sunday evening—past midnight in Dubai, and so she didn’t get to speak to Graham, but she at least found out that all was as well as could be expected.

“You’ll bring him home, won’t you?” she asked, stifling a yawn.

“I most certainly will,” he said. “And soon—possibly midweek. Phyl’s got his old room ready for him.” They lapsed into one of those intimate silences for a few moments before he asked, “How did it go with Simon?”

“It was quick,” she said. “We didn’t talk—I told him that wasn’t why I was there. I gave him the box and left.” She scratched at a spot on the knee of her trousers in hopes of distracting her emotions. “I met Polly. They have a nice garden.” She shouldn’t have tried for the last part; she barely made it to the end of the sentence, and she knew he could tell. “Mrs. Sock knows about family disagreements. She seems to think it’ll all work itself out,” she said, trying not to sniff.

“And what does Trevor think?” Christopher asked.

Pru laughed, spilling a tear out onto her cheek. “He didn’t offer an opinion.”

Usually, a bedtime phone conversation with Christopher relaxed her and almost ensured pleasant dreams. That night, sleep eluded her. She spent most of the night staring at the ceiling and working out the planting design for the terrace beds. She told herself to go to sleep, but it didn’t work this time, and it was only near dawn when her eyes finally closed, immediately after which her alarm went off.