Garden of Secrets Past

TWENTY-FIVE


Saturday evening found Kingston and Andrew, limbs aching and fagged out, sitting on Andrew’s terrace at Bourne End, each with a gin and tonic. The sun was dipping across the river, burnishing ripples of gold on the slow-flowing jade water. Only the twitter of aerial-feeding martins and nightjars broke the stillness as they swooped and dived along the river at lightning speeds.

They’d both worked in the two-acre garden from early morning until six, with a short break for a boxed lunch that Andrew had ordered from a local café. Necessary watering had been completed first thing, a good soaking. The long lawn leading down to the river had been raked and mowed; gravel paths weeded, roses deadheaded, and beds given a fresh layer of mulch. Paintwork was touched up on the long arbor and planter boxes, colorful annuals had been planted to fill bare patches here and there, the terrace had been swept and hosed down, and sun umbrellas set up in seating areas. They’d also positioned a long table under an umbrella on the terrace for iced and hot tea, soft drinks, Pimm’s Cup, and a variety of biscuits and cakes.

When they’d first sat, Kingston had pulled out the decoded Winterborne message, determined to keep trying to find out what it meant. He’d shown it briefly to Andrew when he’d arrived so he was now familiar with it, too. “Damned thing’s infuriating,” said Kingston. “All this time and trouble to decrypt the code and what do we get? A blasted riddle.”

“I don’t get it either. If they wanted to make it almost impossible to solve, why bother with a code in the first place?”

Kingston nodded. “If we knew who ‘they’ are—or were—it might help in trying to read their minds.”

“Someone from the distant past—the 1700s, I suppose.”

“We know that, Andrew. Who exactly, though…”

“According to what Veitch said, one of the Morley family. Yes?”

“In all probability. But not necessarily.”

Andrew downed the last of his gin and tonic and placed his glass on the wicker side table. “The way I read what you’ve got there, back then someone buried something in a churchyard—around Sturminster, probably. The reference to ‘mortal sin’ and ‘guilt-ridden’ makes it pretty clear that whatever they buried under ‘bricks’ was something that they didn’t want to ’fess up to, or would be ruinous if discovered.”

“Yes. That’s all rather obvious. And it leads us to conclude that the ‘someone’ would be one of the two Morley brothers who, in their aberrant partnership, had created Sturminster only to regret it later.” Kingston realized that he was being uncharacteristically patronizing, so he switched to a friendlier tone. “But that doesn’t help solve the conundrum, does it, Andrew? It doesn’t tell us unequivocally who the ‘someone’ or the ‘something’ is.”

Andrew swatted a mosquito buzzing his ear. “If we were to think like them, it might.”

“Oh, come on. Think like them? How are we supposed to do that?”

A brief silence followed that seemed to suit them both.

“Any theories at all?” asked Andrew, his tone lacking enthusiasm.

“I don’t deal in theories. I gather facts. I keep gathering as many facts from as many people as I can, then I sift through them. I compare them to see if a statement—or what’s been sold as a truth—contradicts another one, either from the same person or someone else. You see, people with nothing to hide speak the truth without having to think. It’s those who are hiding something who must be extremely careful how they answer questions. It can be the tiniest mistake but, sooner or later, chances are one will slip out.”

“I must remember to buy you a briar pipe,” said Andrew with a straight face.

Ignoring Andrew’s sarcasm, Kingston swirled the ice in his glass and took a long sip of gin and tonic. “When I was helping the police in Hampshire, a suspect had stated that a man, a stranger to him, had come ‘up’ to London to see him. We knew that the man in question had indeed traveled to London from Brighton, but the suspect had no way of knowing where the man had started his journey. A two-letter slip eventually forced him to admit full knowledge of the man who was, in fact, an accomplice.”

“Very clever. This case of yours, though, it always seems to be at an impasse.”

“You needn’t remind me.” Kingston sighed. “Over the last weeks I’ve interviewed and talked to more than a dozen people with hardly anything to show for it. I’d really hoped that breaking the code would have changed all that. It’s damned dispiriting.”

“I know I said I’d help you, but I’m at a bit of a loss as to how.”

“I understand, but having second eyes and ears is a big plus, Andrew, believe me. My success rate on this one has been pretty miserable so far.”

Kingston rested his glass on the arm of the chair and stared out at the river, contemplating Andrew’s offer. “If I could only find this damned Decker or Carlson woman, we might be able to make some headway. I just know she’s somehow mixed up in all this.”

“What about your friend Amanda?”

“What about her?”

“I mean, how is she doing?”

“I’m not sure. The last time we talked she was about to be interviewed again by the police, this time at the station. I tried to make her feel better, reassuring her that it was a routine procedure, but she was clearly upset.”

“I’m not surprised, considering the pain and suffering she’s been through already.”

“I know.” Kingston sighed, shaking his head. “I didn’t want to tell her, but it’s about the poisoning. Wheatley told me so when I was up there. He has no suspects and he’s asking how a man who lived with his sister and rarely ventured out of the house managed to get poisoned.”

Andrew frowned. “You don’t think she did it, though?”

Kingston sipped his drink and lowered his glass and looked down into it, introspectively. “I don’t know, Andrew. I just don’t know what to think anymore.”

After a pensive moment, Andrew spoke again. “I’ve been thinking about this code business.”

“What about it?”

“It’s so complicated, so convoluted. You’re obviously proficient in that department, but even you are having limited success. How come Veitch didn’t have the same problem?”

“I’m not sure I follow you.”

“From what you told me, Veitch implied that the coded messages were involved in his exposé.”

“Correct.”

“So how did he decode them?”

“We don’t know for sure that he did.”

“Granted. But let’s assume for a moment that he managed to. He wasn’t a cryptology expert, was he?”

“Not from everything I’ve been able to determine. At least he wasn’t in any of the armed services or involved with any security organizations, because the same thought had occurred to me and I quizzed Amanda about it.”

“Then he must have had help. Another thing—we don’t know for sure if he’d also broken the ‘churchyard’ riddle.”

“With help, he could have broken the first code, which was rudimentary, but I wouldn’t be so sure about solving the ‘churchyard’ riddle,” said Kingston. “That’s another matter entirely.”

“It raises yet another question: How did he get his hands on the Winterborne code in the first place?”

“I’ve asked myself that same question. According to Mrs. Holbrook, the only people who knew about the hidden code were her family, the archive preservation company—oh, and the architectural salvage people—and they didn’t know what the envelope contained. I can’t answer your question.”

“How would you learn about code breaking? Where would you go? Whom would you talk to?”

“Books have been written about the subject, of course, but other than the intelligence branches of the military and the government agencies, frankly I don’t know.”

“What about Endicott? We know he was a friend of Veitch’s. He could have also been working with him.”

“To what end?”

“Think about it. He might have known about cryptology.”

“He couldn’t have learned it in the services. Conscription had ended long before then. The bottom line is that, from everything I know, Endicott seems to have had no knowledge of codes. So we’ve come full circle.”

They sat in silence for a moment. The sun had gone down and the temperature with it. Andrew was about to suggest that they go inside when Kingston muttered something, speaking to himself.

“The archive company.”

“What?”

“The people doing the preservation.”

“What about them?”

“It’s the only possible way that Veitch could have known about the Winterborne papers.”

“How, though?”

“Through the woman inquiring about the frieze—Blakely, whatever her name is.”

“I thought you said that Tyler Holbrook’s wife claimed that she didn’t tell the woman anything.”

Kingston put a hand to his forehead. “As I recall, all she said was that the papers were with a company that was preserving them. Granted, it’s not much to go on, but it could have been enough for the woman to have tracked them down and persuaded them to let her see the papers. I wouldn’t think there are too many companies of that kind around.”

Andrew didn’t look convinced. “Surely no company handling clients’ historical documents, private papers, what have you, would ever allow a complete stranger to go near them. Lawsuits would be fast and furious.”

“Unless they had the client’s permission.”

“That’s not true in this case, though. Is it?”

Kingston shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Think about it. If the Holbrooks had given permission, the archive people would have shown the woman the papers, but it would be highly unlikely that they would have shown her the envelope. Why would they?”

“You’re right.”

“Sorry to throw cold water on your theory. It’s just not plausible.”

Kingston stared intensely across the lawn to the river, now a band of gray, the graceful willows alongside silhouetted in black. When he was in one of his deep-thought moods, Andrew knew not to interrupt. Kingston suddenly turned to him. “I must pay the archive people a visit,” he pronounced, as if it must be done that very minute.

“We must pay them a visit. Remember?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I must be getting sloppy. I should have thought about it before.”

“Thought about what?”

“How Tristan Veitch learned about the Winterborne papers.”

“I thought we just settled that.”

“No. We’ve been focusing too much on the code and how Veitch managed to break it. We’re forgetting that Veitch knew nothing whatsoever about the codes until the papers were discovered. And we’ve been assuming, wrongly, that it was the Blakely woman who told him about the papers and also the code.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“It had to be someone from the archive company who told Veitch. An inquisitive employee perhaps, or even the manager or owner—someone who not only knew Veitch but also knew that he would be highly interested.”

“To the point of selling the information?”

Kingston nodded. “Maybe.”

“You could be right. I can’t see any other possibility.”

“There is none. I suggest we take a run up to Oxford on Tuesday, if that’s okay with you.”

“I don’t see why not. One of my favorite places.”

Andrew stood and picked up his glass, intimating that the subject was closed. “How about another before dinner?”

“Why not?” Kingston replied. “It’s going to be a long day tomorrow,” he added, regretting the cliché.

* * *

The Open Garden at Bourne End exceeded all expectations. Unlike the previous year, when it had been gray and cool, the skies were cloudless and by noon the temperature was close to eighty—a heat wave to most, but nobody complained. Despite no official visitor count, based on food and drink consumption, Andrew guessed it at approximately two hundred—substantially more than last year and surprising for such a small village. Many guests stayed in the garden longer than usual, just to have a chance to chat with Kingston, who looked quite the Colonial gentleman in a navy linen jacket, cream slacks, and black-banded Panama.

Brunch the following day was a huge success, too. The weather continued much the same, calling for thirst quenching with larger than anticipated quantities of champagne, wine, Pimm’s, and Schweppes before, during, and after Andrew’s extravagant catered lunch. Kingston was glad when the last guest had departed and he and Andrew were able to relax at last in deck chairs on the lawn in the still of a summer’s evening and just drink soda water and make bland comments now and then. Kingston hadn’t had to spend much of the day trying to evade or repel Henrietta, for which he thanked his friend.

* * *

Arriving home just before dark, Kingston was in no mood for anything other than to glance at his mail and check his phone and e-mail messages. After that, he planned to spend an hour or so trying to finish the rest of the Oxbridge-Bell book before retiring early. In the last three days he’d eaten too much, drunk too much, talked too much, listened too much, and slept too little. He also made a mental note to remind Andrew to retire the mattress in the guest room that he’d occupied. It was like trying to sleep on a sack of tennis balls.

Finding nothing in the post that required immediate reading, he played back three phone messages. The first was from Francis Morley, asking Kingston to call. The second was from Muriel Williams, the dahlia club lady, saying that she had more information on Vanessa Carlson. And the last was from Amanda asking that he call her. From the tone of her voice and brevity of the message, he got the impression that the news wasn’t good. The e-mails could wait until morning, he decided, but returning her call was essential. It wasn’t too late and he saw no reason why she shouldn’t be pleased to hear from him.

Amanda answered after the second ring. “Thanks for calling, Lawrence,” she said.

Kingston was relieved, if only for a moment, that her voice seemed a little more sanguine than it had on her recorded message. “Just got your message. I was gone for the weekend. Andrew’s a big do at his house on the river. I arrived home literally ten minutes ago.”

“Sorry I missed it. Was it fun?”

“It was, but rather exhausting. More important,” he said in a comforting tone, “how are you? Did you meet with Inspector Wheatley?”

“Yes, I did. Last Friday. That’s why I’m calling.”

While they’d been talking, he’d been trying to gauge her mood, but the tone of her voice gave no clue. “How did it go?”

“Not at all well, I’m sorry to say.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“First, I have an apology to make—a confession, if you will.”

“To me? A confession? For what possible reason, Amanda?”

“I haven’t been completely truthful in some of the things I told you when you were here. I omitted facts I didn’t think significant, only to protect Tristan, but somehow Wheatley knew of them or is very good at guessing. He’s accusing me of withholding evidence.”

“These facts, what were they? What, exactly, did you withhold?”

“When I’d said that Tristan hardly ever went out, that wasn’t quite true. I realize now that it was a stupid mistake on my part. I really don’t know what I was thinking at the time. I probably thought that it might help shield him from further scrutiny. I didn’t know if what he’d been researching—this Morley family thing—had got him into some kind of trouble.”

“But Tristan didn’t exactly have a social life, did he? Lots of friends?”

“Heavens no! He preferred to keep to himself and generally shunned visitors, but he was by no means misanthropic. Occasionally he went out, and sometimes he wouldn’t tell me where or with whom. It didn’t bother me. He wasn’t the sort to get into trouble in pubs, excessive drinking, that sort of thing—and I never stayed up waiting for him to come home. It was an unspoken arrangement that might seem unusual to a lot of people, but we weren’t married. If we were, I’m sure I would have felt differently.”

“I’m a little confused, Amanda. If Tristan went out occasionally, which would entail meeting someone or other people, surely that would help substantiate your case. It would open up the possibility that someone else could have poisoned him. It shifts the burden of guilt away from you.”

“I offered the same argument. Wheatley agreed in principle, but he maintained that it still didn’t change matters that much, that I could still have done it.”

“Did you ask him what your motive was, if you had?”

“I did, as a matter of fact. He said he could think of several. That’s when he told me they were launching an investigation into our financial affairs: our respective savings, inheritances, wills, debts, and so on. I’ve grown to dislike the man. He has no social skills or tact whatsoever.”

“I don’t think they’re part of the job. But in my experience, not all policemen are like that. What else did he say?”

“He pressed me about a possible relationship between Tristan and the man who was murdered at Sturminster. Had I ever met him? If he’d been to the house at all, or had phoned?”

“William Endicott.”

“Yes.”

“Had you met him?”

“No. I hadn’t.”

“While we’re on the subject, do you know if Tristan did business with an archive preservation company, in Oxford, I believe?”

“No. I’m afraid not. Even if he had, I doubt that he would have mentioned it anyway. Is it important?”

“I’m not sure. It’s probably just another dead end.”

During the lull that followed, Kingston debated whether he should tell her that he had indeed established a connection between her brother and Endicott through the Brookside Garden Club. He decided to wait for now so as not to open up the issue for even more speculation. Then Amanda spoke again.

“I didn’t have anything to do with Tristan’s death, Lawrence. That’s the truth. The very thought of it is … repugnant.” Her voice quavered on the word “repugnant” and she paused momentarily, probably to regain her composure, Kingston guessed. Then she continued. “There was no deep brotherly-sisterly love between us—if he were with us still, he would readily admit that—but we were good friends and generally speaking got along well. We shared most things, respected each other’s needs and space, and in no possible way would either of us ever have considered harming the other.”

“I believe you. Wheatley is just trying to coerce you. Now he knows that you weren’t truthful on that one matter, he’s asking himself if you could be lying about other things, too. I doubt that he has one iota of evidence to prove your culpability.”

“You may believe that, Lawrence, but Inspector Wheatley’s last words, before we parted, were that he now considers me a prime suspect in Tristan’s murder.”