The Skeleton Garden (27 page)

The smoke continued to pour from the trapdoor. “Right, everyone out,” Harnett said.

“Orlando,” Pru began as they walked out into the cold night, but the shooting pain in her feet drew her attention.

“You don't have a very good poker face, Aunt Pru,” he said, dropping to the ground at the side of the road, just out of the way of the commotion. He coughed. “I knew it was serious, whatever took you and Uncle Christopher away. I got out that letter as soon as you'd left.”

Her eyes were stinging. She pressed her fingertips against her eyelids and saw an image of his mother's face. What would she tell Claire?

The police were leading Martin out, and the firefighters were heading in. Pru looked around to Evelyn and Peachey, the police, Orlando. “Where's Christopher?” she asked them, and they each looked round the group. She didn't wait for an answer but ran back—fear deadening the pain in her feet—only to be stopped by a fireman who blocked the door. “Where's Christopher?” she shouted in his face. It caught Harnett's attention, and when he approached, she took advantage of the diversion and slipped past into the pub. “Christopher!” she shouted, darting past another fireman and hopping over the hose that snaked its way to the cellar. She saw him collapsed at the end of the bar. She screamed for help and flew to his side.

My dearest Sadie,

Won't be long now. My group captain says he'll give me leave so we can be married. But I'm afraid we won't have much of a honeymoon, because there's some big movement out there for the war. I'll do my part and come home to you. We may be a family even before I have a chance to return.

Your loving,

Will

My Will,

You know I'd wait for you no matter what, even if we can't get married before you leave. Don't you worry, I'll hold my head high no matter what. Nobody can tell Sadie Farrow she's done wrong. We've done exactly right. Baby and me, we'll wait.

Your girl forever,

Sadie

Christopher lay asleep in the hospital bed with Pru in a chair next to him. “Go home and rest,” the doctor had said to her, but she had refused to return to Greenoak. Instead, she sat as close as possible to her husband and rested her head against his side, one arm draped across his body and her hand lightly resting on his. He had slept through all the comings and goings, and now the room was as quiet as hospital rooms get. She watched him for a few minutes, and it seemed she had just shut her eyes when she felt him caress her hand with his thumb. He was looking at her through half-closed lids, a small smile on his face, hindered only by the swollen cut on his lip. She smiled back, the movement reminding her how much the side of her face hurt.

“Are you all right?” His voice was husky from the smoke, as was hers.

“Yeah,” she said, sitting up. “How do you feel?”

He lifted his head, winced, and lay back again. “Why am I here?”

She leaned forward and looked into his eyes. They still held a hint of vagueness. She kissed him as gently as possible.

“You have a concussion—Martin must've knocked you out—and the doctor said that it may take a bit for you to start to remember what happened.”

Christopher reached up to her face, tracing around the swollen, red mark where Martin had hit her. She dismissed her pain by kissing the palm of his bandaged hand.

“Is Orlando all right?” he asked.

Pru nodded, and a hairpin dropped onto his chest. “Oh, sorry,” she said, picking it up. “I thought I'd got them all out. Orlando is at the house with Evelyn and Peachey. He's fine.”

She pushed her hair back. It had seen better days. She'd taken out the last of her victory rolls, but had no clip, having left her bag behind at the Blackbird when she got in the ambulance with Christopher.

“They took Martin in?” he asked.

“Yes. The police were on their way even before Evelyn rang them. She said they'd heard from Dick.” She waited to see if that would jog his memory.

Christopher blinked twice. “When I got to the Blackbird, I told Dick to leave, but to ring the station if he hadn't heard from me in a quarter of an hour.” He looked chagrined. “I didn't want to embarrass Martin—I didn't realize how far he'd gone.”

Good, it was all coming back to him. She breathed a sigh of relief and coughed.

“He didn't put up a fuss,” she said. “Harnett rang awhile ago to say that Martin won't stop talking. He's told them everything he's done—about Jack and all the break-ins. He seems to believe anyone who knew Jimmy would agree that it was the right thing to do.”

“Evelyn would say different—all these years, the truth about her father hidden away.”

“Sadie never believed he deserted,” Pru said. “And now Ev has the last two letters they wrote to each other. The one from Will that never got delivered, and the one Sadie left with Kitty that Will never picked up.”

“And the fire at the Blackbird?”

“The old sofa is a goner, but otherwise it was just smoke damage—the oak beams and posts are scorched, but they didn't get hot enough to burn.” She sat back, but Christopher tugged at her hand.

“Don't go away. Come up here with me.” He patted the narrow strip of bed that was empty.

Pru laughed. “Will I fit?” she asked as she climbed up and stretched out between him and the guardrail. “They might come in here and turf me out.”

“I'd like to see them try.” Christopher put his arm around her and looked down at her feet, which were covered in paper hospital booties that kept her bandages clean. “You didn't have those on at the dance, did you?”

“It's my new look.” She'd had seven slivers of glass taken out of the bottoms of her feet. In the process, the young nurse had admired her dress—now smoked and stained—and asked what she had done to the back of her legs, where the brown seam lines had smeared into dirty wide stripes. “The dance seems ages ago.”

“Martin messed with the investigation to buy time,” Christopher said. “Until he could find Jimmy's letter and destroy it—as if that would be the end of it. I should've seen what he was doing.”

“He didn't have you fooled for long.”

They were quiet for a moment. “What time is it?” he asked.

“It was long past midnight when they brought you in. You've already had a CT scan and they asked you loads of questions. I'm happy to report you knew who was on the throne and that I am your wife.” She yawned. “Or so I'm told—I was off getting my feet attended to. It's just gone four, I think.”

“Too early to get dressed and go home, I suppose.”

“You'll go home when they say you can go home, Inspector Pearse, and not a moment before.” She closed her eyes. She could feel her muscles relax as she slipped into that delicious place just before sleep.

Pru opened her eyes on Christmas morning. No light in the sky yet, but that didn't matter. She settled in to wait for Christopher to wake—watching carefully for any change, any little tic or blink that would signal a stir from sleep and allow her to begin the day properly. As she waited, she thought about the three weeks since the fête—Martin charged with murder, which might be reduced to manslaughter because of Jack's condition; the Blackbird reopened with only a hint of smoke in the air; Simon back with her in the garden. Orlando had gone home to Plymouth, but the Barnes family would arrive back later that day. Pru felt there could be no more healing event for all of them than Christmas at Greenoak. Evelyn would appear late morning to begin preparations for the feast, and Pru would be chief dishwasher and observer.

The turkey had been hanging for a week in the potting shed, protected by a fly cage and the temperature. The turkey had been on Pru's mind constantly. There was a local ham keeping the bird company, but cured meat didn't make her nervous—it could fend for itself.

She had no experience with unrefrigerated poultry. Evelyn assured her that the turkey was fresh—from a farm near Hook—that hanging it was proper procedure, and that the temperature would keep the bird from spoiling. Hanging, Evelyn said, was a common and sound practice that would result in a delectable bird.

Pru didn't believe a word of it and took it upon herself to monitor conditions of the turkey's confinement without telling anyone—she didn't want to offend, she just didn't want to get food poisoning. She'd bought a small thermometer from the hardware shop in Romsey, secreted it out into the shed, and hidden it inside an empty terra-cotta pot, and she had been slipping out to the shed several times a day to make sure the air temperature hovered in the low forties.

Now the day had arrived, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she waited for Christopher to stir. She could give up her angst about poultry gone off and enjoy herself—as soon as Christmas officially began. She spied movement. Christopher opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled. Pru plunged in.

“Christmas gift!”

He grinned and pulled her close, planting a kiss on her forehead. “Christmas gift,” he murmured. “I still don't quite understand this custom.”

“The first person to say it on Christmas morning gets a present,” Pru said, explaining as she had on each holiday since they'd been together. She stretched out under the covers now that her job was done. “It's from my dad's side of the family. He always tried to catch me out, but I learned to hide until I could surprise him and say it first.”

“But it's Christmas—you'd get a gift regardless.”

“Well, I suppose it's more of a greeting than anything else,” Pru said. “And, it's tradition—that's the important thing. Although Dad said that some people in the South say it on Christmas Eve instead. Christmas Eve gift—perhaps I'll try that out next year.”

They sat up in bed and exchanged gifts. She'd found him a 1910 first edition of
The Natural History of the Thames Estuary
at the Oxfam bookshop in town. He'd dug up a rare 1925 book of hand-colored garden plans by Edwin Lutyens. Pru carried it with her to the kitchen and, over coffee, read out to him particular descriptions of design elements.

“You've not looked in on the turkey yet,” Christopher said, handing over a plate of scrambled eggs.

Pru blushed. “I didn't think I was that obvious—do you think Evelyn noticed?”

“I'm not sure Evelyn has noticed much of anything the last few days.”

Four days previous, Evelyn had received the news that Will Donovan was indeed her father—the DNA testing had come through. Everyone had known it to be true, but this last official peg in place gave her, in her own words, the best Christmas gift ever. She had already started the arrangements to have her dad buried next to her mother in the churchyard.

Pru hurried through the last of her scrambled eggs. She could stand it no longer. “Well,” she said, “perhaps I'll nip out and check on the bird.”

She pulled a coat on over her pajamas, stuck her feet in a pair of Christopher's shoes—easier to slip into with her thick socks—and clumped out the door.

Every time she had gone out to the potting shed, she had made sure to close the door securely. She would swear that she had heard the latch
snick
each and every time she went in and out. Every time. Except, apparently, the last time.

The body lay slumped over the threshold of the shed. Not the whole body—merely a carcass now with its limbs strewn about the yard. The hanging turkey had kept its feathers on—easier to pluck before cooking, Evelyn had said—and now that the body had been ripped to shreds, a few white feathers caught in the breeze, swept up into the air, and floated toward her.

Pru couldn't move. She tried to speak, to shout. No words formed, only a rising wail escaped her throat. Christopher was behind her in a moment, his expletive a more concise description of the situation.

They edged up to the shed carefully to view the remains. There was little meat left on the turkey, and they had trouble accounting for all its parts. The pointed end of a wing stuck out of a small Japanese holly shrub at the corner, perhaps getting caught in its branches. One leg was missing; the other had most of the meat chewed off.

“I closed the door—I was so careful to close the door,” Pru said, her voice aquiver.

Christopher stepped inside the shed and looked around. “No sign of the ham,” he said, not facing her.

“It's all my fault,” she whispered. “Christmas dinner is ruined, and it's all my fault.”

She saw Christopher's shoulders shake. “Well,” he said, his voice choked, “someone's had a feast.”

Pru couldn't believe it until he turned round and she saw for herself. He was laughing. Shocked that he would take her predicament so lightly, she opened her mouth to admonish him, but a giggle came out instead. They snorted with laughter and soon could hardly breathe for laughing. When their mirth petered out, they looked around them at the devastation. They hadn't spoken the culprit's name. Although the scene had “badger” written all over it, Pru would not lay the blame on an animal that Christopher spent his precious free time championing. She was the one who left the turkey in a compromising situation.

“I'll get a bin bag,” Christopher said. “And some gloves. Will you ring Evelyn?”

She nodded miserably. It would be one of the hardest calls she'd ever made. “What will we all eat? Dressing and Brussels sprouts?”

They gathered up what they saw, and Christopher headed for the rubbish bin while Pru stood alone in the yard thinking about a houseful of people and no Christmas turkey. She assembled a few words to use on Evelyn and tried them out aloud, but the obvious point remained that what's done is done and there might not be enough food to feed all seventeen of them. Twenty-two, she corrected herself, recounting. Kitty, her son and daughter-in-law, and Jemima had said yes. And Stan.

“Don't wait until the afternoon,” Pru had said to Jo, who would drive down from London with her daughter, Cordelia, Cordelia's partner, Lucy, and their son, Oliver. “Come as soon as you get up on Christmas morning. Bring your gifts and open them here—we'll have the fire going, and Evelyn will be taking mince tarts out of the Aga. Come early!” She'd said the same to the Barneses. It was most unfortunate that they chose to take Pru up on her offer.

A car horn beeped in the yard—the London contingent. Pru was out of breath without ever moving, scanning the ground for any stray body parts—a wishbone or a gizzard—while they unpiled from their car. She hugged each one of them in joy, apologizing for her appearance. “The morning got away from us, but we're so happy you're here.”

The Barneses turned into the drive—occasioning more greetings and explanations. “I'll put the kettle on and then get dressed. Evelyn will be along any moment,” Pru said, causing her insides to churn with dread in anticipation.

She had not moved an inch before the arrival of two more cars full of family—Simon and Polly with daughters Peppy and Miranda plus two boyfriends.

Everyone stood about the yard after introductions were made, chatting and wishing “Happy Christmas.” In her thrill at the grand group, Pru forgot that she hadn't combed her hair yet and still wore Christopher's shoes and a coat over her pajamas. And it almost slipped her mind entirely that the feast had been marred by marauders.

When Simon emerged from his old Range Rover with an enormous grin and holding up a copy of a magazine layout, Pru's Christmas was complete.

She had contacted photographer Derek Fame not long after the fiasco of a visit, which had ended in Simon quitting the garden. Pru bypassed editor Jacinta Bloom and had asked Fame if it might be possible to have a proper article about Greenoak, perhaps in another magazine. The photographer surprised her with the news that Jacinta had abruptly departed as editor of
The English Garden,
and the new editor thought that Pru, Simon, and their garden would make a marvelous feature for the following winter issue. The advance layout they sent showed the remarkable beauty of the gardens at Greenoak and the unbreakable bond of brother and sister gardeners. Pru had left it on the doorstep at Simon's house late on Christmas Eve.

As everyone clustered around Simon to see the spread, Pru looked over her shoulder to see little Oliver—not quite two years old—bending over a mound of dianthus by the mudroom door, his hand inches away from what Pru recognized even from fifteen yards away to be the foot of a turkey, its yellow toes curled to the sky.

Pru bolted from the group, but Christopher got to Oliver first and scooped him up. Oliver giggled and Christopher winked at Pru, who grabbed the turkey foot and stashed it in her coat pocket.

More crunching of gravel on the drive. Peachey's van was pulling in.

Christopher suggested to the group that they move indoors and he would show them to their rooms. Pru heard him mention Evelyn's mince tarts. Yes, Pru thought, a mince tart would go down a treat about now—along with a large brandy to give her strength.

Peachey and Pru exchanged holiday greetings, and he followed the tail end of the guests indoors, but when Evelyn emerged from the van, she stood looking at the open potting shed door as if she could sense a disturbance in the force.

“Evelyn,” Pru began, and then told the whole story in a rush so that she wouldn't chicken out. As a coda, Pru brought the turkey foot out of her pocket, the jointed end gnawed free of the bird.

Evelyn showed no emotion. She put her head in the shed and then said, “Well, it looks as if it was—”

“Foxes,” Pru cut in. “We think it was a fox. Two foxes. Maybe more.”

Evelyn narrowed her eyes at that suggestion. “Well, they've had a good Christmas, then, haven't they, those foxes?” Pru stood morosely without comment. “Ah now, it isn't the end of the world, but”—Pru could almost hear her mind working—“we'd best get busy.” Evelyn marched off to the kitchen. Pru threw the turkey foot inside the shed and followed her. “We've bacon that would've been for breakfast,” Evelyn was saying. “If we chop that up, we can stretch it into a pie. Better start on the pastry. We'll need a white sauce for the leeks, very filling. We'll send Orlando down to Kitty's for a few duck eggs. We'll make a flan with chard—you've still chard and leeks in the garden?”

“Yes.” Pru nodded eagerly, still in her coat and Christopher's shoes, happy to hear Evelyn use her royal “we” for cooking. “I'll just nip out now and get them, shall I?”

“Send one of the others to harvest—you'll be too busy to do any gardening today,” Evelyn said. She held out a pinny.

Pru took a step back as if Evelyn held out a rattlesnake instead of an apron. “No, Evelyn, please—let me dig the leeks.”

“You're no gardener today, Pru Parke. Today, you're a cook.”