He opened the outer door on to a walled courtyard and ushered Nancy through. "Ailsa called this her Italian garden," he said, nodding to the large terra-cotta urns that were scattered around it. "It's a bit of a suntrap on a summer evening and she used to grow night-scented flowers in these pots. She always said it was a pity it was at the scrag-end of the Manor because it was the nicest place to sit. That's the back of the garage." He nodded to a single-storey building to their right. "And this-" he lifted the latch of an arched wooden door in a wall ahead of them-"leads into the kitchen garden."
The courtyard looked curiously neglected, as if it hadn't been entered since the death of its mistress. Weeds grew in profusion between the cobbles, and the terra-cotta tubs contained only the brittle skeletons of long-dead plants. Mark seemed to take it for granted that Nancy knew who Ailsa was, even though he hadn't told her, and Nancy wondered if he knew about the Colonel's letters.
"Does James have any help?" she asked, following him into the vegetable garden.
"Only an elderly couple from the village… Bob and Vera Dawson. He does the gardening and she does the cleaning. The trouble is, they're almost as old as James, so not much gets done. As you can see." He gestured 'round the overgrown vegetable garden. "I think mowing the lawn is about all Bob can manage these days, and Vera's virtually senile so dirt just gets moved around. It's better than nothing, I suppose, but he could do with some energy about the place."
They picked their way along a vestigial gravel path between the beds with Nancy admiring the eight-foot-high wall that surrounded the garden. "It must have been splendid when they had staff to manage this properly," she said. "It looks as though they grew espalier fruit trees all along that south wall. You can still see the wires." She pointed to a raised plateau of earth in the middle. "Is that an asparagus bed?"
He followed her gaze. "God knows. I'm a complete ignoramus when it comes to gardening. How does asparagus grow? What does it look like when it's not in a packet in a supermarket?"
She smiled. "Just the same. The tips push up out of the ground from a massive root system. If you keep banking up the earth, the way the French do, then the tips stay white and tender. That's how my mother does it. She has a bed at the farm that produces pounds of the stuff."
"Is she the gardener in the family?" he asked, steering her toward a wrought-iron gate in the western wall.
Nancy nodded. "It's her profession. She has a huge nursery complex down at Coomb Croft. It's amazingly profitable."
Mark remembered seeing the signs when he passed on his way to Lower Croft. "Did she train for it?"
"Oh, yes. She went to Sowerbury House as an under-gardener when she was seventeen. She stayed for ten years, rose up the ranks to head gardener, then married my father and moved to Coomb Croft. They lived there till my grandfather died, which gave her time to develop the nursery. She started as a one-man band, but now she has a staff of thirty… it virtually runs itself."
"A talented lady," he said with genuine warmth, opening the gate and standing back to let Nancy through. He found himself hoping she would never meet her real mother. The comparison would be too cruel.
They entered another enclosed garden, with L-shaped flanks of the house forming two sides of the square and a hedge of thickly growing evergreen shrubs running from the kitchen wall to the quoin on the left. Nancy noticed that all the windows overlooking this space were shuttered on the inside, giving them a blind white stare from the painted wood behind the glass. "Isn't this wing used anymore?" she asked.
Mark followed her gaze. If he had his bearings right, then one of the second-floor rooms was Elizabeth's-where Nancy had been born-and beneath it was the estate office where her adoption papers had been signed. "Not for years," he told her. "Ailsa closed the shutters to protect the furnishings."
"It's sad when houses outgrow their occupants," was all she said, before returning her attention to the garden. In the center was a fishpond, heavily iced over, with reeds and the dead stalks of water plants poking above the surface. A bench seat, green with mold, nestled among clumps of azaleas and dwarf rhododendrons beside it, and a crazy-paving path, much degraded by weeds, wound through dwarf acers, delicate bamboos, and ornamental grasses toward another gate on the far side. "The Japanese garden?" Nancy guessed, pausing beside the pond.
Mark smiled as he nodded. "Ailsa loved creating rooms," he said, "and they all had names."
"It must be stunning in the spring when the azaleas are in bloom. Imagine sitting here with their scent filling the air. Are there any fish?"
Mark shook his head. "There certainly were when Ailsa was alive, but James forgot to feed them after she died and he says he couldn't see any the last time he came here."
"They wouldn't die from lack of feeding," she said. "It's big enough to provide insect life for dozens of fish." She squatted down to peer through the sheet of ice. "They were probably hiding in the water plants. He ought to ask his gardener to thin them out when the weather improves. It's like a jungle down there."
"James has given up on the garden," said Mark. "It was Ailsa's preserve, and he seems to have lost interest in it completely since she died. The only part he ever visits now is the terrace, and then only at nighttime." He gave an unhappy shrug. "It worries me, to be honest. He parks his chair just to the right of where he found her and sits there for hours."
Nancy didn't bother to pretend ignorance of what he was talking about. "Even in this weather?" she asked, glancing up at him.
"He's certainly been doing it for the last two nights."
She pushed herself upright again and walked beside him along the path. "Have you talked to him about it?"
Another shake of his head. "I'm not supposed to know he's doing it. He vanishes off to bed at ten o'clock every night, then creeps out again after I've switched off my bedroom light. He didn't come in till nearly four o'clock this morning."
"What does he do?"
"Nothing. Just huddles into his chair and stares into the darkness. I can see him from my window. I nearly went out on Christmas Eve to give him a rocket for being stupid. The sky was so clear that I thought he'd die of hypothermia-even wondered if that was the intention-it's probably what killed Ailsa-but he kept relighting his pipe so I knew he wasn't unconscious. He didn't mention it yesterday morning… or this… and when I asked him how he'd slept, he said, fine." He turned the handle on the next gate and shouldered it open. "I suppose it may have been a Christmas vigil for Ailsa," he finished without conviction.
They emerged onto an expanse of parkland with the bulk of the house lying to their right. Frost still lay in pockets under the shrubs and trees that formed an avenue facing south, but the bright winter sun had warmed it to a glistening dew on the sweep of grass that sloped away and gave an unrestricted view of Shenstead Valley and the sea beyond.
"Wow!" said Nancy simply.
"It's stunning, isn't it? That bay you can see is Barrowlees. It's only accessible via the dirt track that leads to the farms… which is why this village is so expensive. All the houses have a right of way attached to them which allows them to drive their cars down to the beach. It's a complete disaster."
"Why?"
"They're priced outside local people's reach. It's turned Shenstead into a ghost village. The only reason Bob and Vera are still here is because their cottage is tied to the Manor and Ailsa promised it to them for life. I wish she hadn't, as a matter of fact. It's the only cottage that still belongs to James, but he insists on honoring Ailsa's word even though he desperately needs help. He had another cottage up until four years ago, but sold it off because he had trouble with squatters. I'd have advised short-term lets rather than sale-precisely for this eventuality-but I wasn't his lawyer at the time."