The Constant Gardener

"I'm very, very sorry, dear," said Ma Gates, slowly and clearly. "Sorrier than you or I can say, Mr. Justin. Or ever will be able to."

His interrogation of her began: long and tender as it had to be, with a lot more listening than asking. Yes, Ma Gates had come as usual on the Wednesday, nine till twelve, she'd wanted to… It was a chance to be with Miss Tessa all alone… she'd cleaned the way she'd always cleaned, nothing skimped or forgotten… And she'd had a cry and a pray… And if it was all right by him, she'd like to continue coming as before, please, Wednesdays just like when Miss Tessa was alive, it wasn't the money, it was the memory…

Soot? Certainly not! There'd been no soot on the dining room floor Wednesday or she'd have seen it for sure, and cleared it up before it got trodden in. London soot's so greasy! With those big fireplaces she always

had an eye for soot! And no, Mr. Justin, the chimney sweep certainly didn't have a key.

And did Mr. Justin know whether they had found Dr. Arnold yet, because of all the gentlemen who ever used the house, Dr. Arnold was the one she cared about the most, whatever you read in the papers, they only make it up…

"You're very kind, Mrs. Gates."

Switching on the chandelier in the drawing room, he allowed himself a glimpse of the things that were forever Tessa: the riding rosettes from her childhood; Tessa after her First Communion; their wedding portrait on the steps of the tiny church of Sant' Antonio, Elba. But the fireplace was what he was thinking about hardest. The hearth was of slate, the grate a low Victorian affair, brass and steel mixed, with brass claws to hold the fire irons. Hearth and grate were coated in soot. The same soot lay in black lines along the steel shafts of the tongs and poker.

So here's a fine mystery of nature then, he told Tessa: two unrelated colonies of jackdaws elect at the identical moment to hurl soot down two unconnected chimneys. What do we make of that? You a lawyer and me a protected species?

But in the drawing room, no footprint. Whoever searched the dining room fireplace had obligingly left a footprint. Whoever searched the drawing room fireplace — whether the same man or a different one — had not.

Yet why should anyone search a fireplace, let alone two? True, ancient fireplaces traditionally provide hiding places for love letters, wills, shameful diaries and bags of gold sovereigns. True also, according to legend, that chimneys were inhabited by spirits. True that the wind used old chimneys to tell stories, many of them secret. And a cold wind was blowing this evening, snapping at shutters and rattling locks. But why search these fireplaces? Our

fireplaces? Why number four? Unless of course the chimneys were part of a more general search of the entire house-sideshows, as it were, to the main thrust.

At the half landing, he paused to study Tessa's medicine chest, an old Italian spice cabinet of no merit screwed into the angle of the stairwell and marked with a green cross hand-stenciled by herself. Not for nothing was she a doctor's daughter. The door of the cabinet was ajar. He poked it open the rest of the way.

Pillaged. Tins of plaster, tipped open, lint and packets of boracic powder strewn about in an angry mess. He was closing the door on it as the landing telephone shrieked beside his head.

It's for you, he told Tessa. I'll have to say you're dead. It's for me, he told her. I'll have to listen to condolences. It's the Madeira Cake asking whether I've got everything I need to keep me safe and quiet in my trauma. It's somebody who had to wait until the line was clear after my five-mile conversation with Ma Gates.

He lifted the receiver and heard a busy woman. Tinny voices echoed behind her, footsteps chimed. A busy woman in a busy place with a stone floor. A humorously spoken, busy cockney woman with a voice like a barrow girl's.

"Now then! Can I speak to a Mr. Justin Quayle, please, if he's at home?" Delivered with ceremony, as if she were about to perform a card trick. "He's in, darling, I can hear" — aside.

"This is Quayle."

"Do you want to talk to him yourself, darling?" Darling didn't. "Only it's Jeffrey's the florists here, Mr. Quayle, in the King's Road. We've got a lovely floral arrangement of I-won't-say-whats to be delivered to you personally without fail this evening if you're in, as soon as possible, and I'm not to say who from — right, darling?" It evidently was. "So how would it be if I send the boy round now is the question, Mr. Quayle. Two minutes he'll be there, won't you, Kevin? One, if you give him a nice drink."

Then send him, said Justin distractedly.

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