The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

It wasn’t Verna or Lizzy who told Ophelia about her husband carrying on with Lucy Murphy, after all. That responsibility was assumed by Mrs. Leona Ruth Adcock, who lived kitty-corner across Rosemont from the Snows. Mrs. Adcock always took it on herself to make sure that everyone in the neighborhood stayed firmly on the straight and narrow. Or if they strayed, that the appropriate people knew about it. She and Sylvia Search had a reputation for gossip that was excelled by none.

It was early Monday morning, just about the time that Beulah and Bettina were opening up for business. Ophelia, who liked to get into the garden while it was still cool, was spading a hole beside the corner of her front porch for her new angel’s trumpet, properly called Datura arborea, according to Miss Rogers. Ophelia had swapped Bessie Bloodworth an early-blooming double white peony for it at Saturday’s plant sale. (She didn’t know the peony’s real name because it had come from her mother, who always called it Aunt Polly’s peony because that’s where she had gotten it.) Bessie, who “specialized” in angel’s trumpets, had taken half a dozen cuttings in the fall and carried them over the winter on her south-facing back porch, just for the sale. This one was supposed to be creamy yellow and would probably get about six feet tall. Ophelia wanted it by the porch where she could enjoy its sweet scent when the trumpets unfurled in the evening, but she’d have to remember to tell the kids to leave the seeds alone. They were poisonous, although Bessie said that her grandmother had smoked the leaves to relieve her asthma. Ophelia didn’t think she’d try smoking it, even though Bessie said her grandmother (who had died on her hundredth birthday) thought the smoke helped to take the edge off her troubles.

Mrs. Adcock—an older lady with a sharp, ferrety nose and a pointed chin with two or three stiff hairs growing out of it—was returning the cup of brown sugar she had borrowed the week before. But that was only the ostensible reason for her visit. Her real reason became clear when Ophelia (who tried to be neighborly even when she didn’t particularly like the neighbor) invited her into the kitchen for coffee. Mrs. Adcock wanted to let Ophelia know that certain folks in town—she didn’t like to name names—were saying that Jed was fooling around with his cousin Ralph’s young wife while Ralph was away, working on the railroad.

Of course, Mrs. Adcock went on piously, she never liked to interfere in people’s private business. But she did think it was her bounden duty to let Ophelia know what was being said. Not that there was necessarily anything in it, she hastened to add, since even Christians were always going to gossip. No matter what the truth of something was, they’d have it told six ways from Sunday, and there never was any real knowing just what the facts were.

Still, she was sure that Ophelia would like to hear about this, ’cause goodness only knew, it was terrible when people you thought were your friends were talking about your husband and his cousin’s wife behind your back and you didn’t know a thing about it.

Having delivered this nasty bit of news, Mrs. Adcock smiled in a neighborly fashion, changed tacks, and opened a new subject. “Have you heard about the ghost?”

“What ghost?” Ophelia asked blankly, trying to get her mind around what Mrs. Adcock had just said about Jed and Ralph’s wife. Of course it was all a pack of lies. Jed would never— “Over on Camellia Street. The Cartwright ghost. She was wanderin’ around in Mrs. Blackstone’s garden Satiddy night, pretty as you please.”

“Oh, really?” Ophelia murmured distractedly. She didn’t believe for a minute that Jed might be hiding any sort of— “Really.” Mrs. Adcock picked up her coffee cup. “Mrs. Sedalius saw her and told me all about it after church yestiddy mornin’.” Mrs. Adcock was one of the faithful at the Four Corners Methodist Church. “Mrs. Sedalius lives at the Magnolia Manor, you know, right next door to the old Blackstone house. She has a very nice second-floor room, facin’ south, where she can see out of her window into the garden. That’s where she saw her. The Cartwright ghost, I mean. The one that haunts the old mansion that was burned during the War.”

“Hmm,” Ophelia said. Jed wouldn’t. Not with Lucy, not with anybody. But there was that telephone call— “Exactly, my dear. That one.” Mrs. Adcock sipped her coffee. “It was ’bout ten o’clock, an’ Mrs. Sedalius was gettin’ herself ready for bed. She looked out the window toward Mrs. Blackstone’s garden, and what did she see but the ghost, wearin’ a long, dark cape an’ carryin’ a spade, way she always does.” Mrs. Adcock leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Mrs. Sedalius said it was a full moon out there an’ she saw that ghost just as plain as if it was bright daylight”