It had become her daily habit to walk down to the crescent – as she and Alex now called it – to check up on Sapphire. Following Kingston’s instructions, she would do nothing for the rose unless it appeared to be undergoing stress. There had been more than sufficient rain, so watering was not required. Neither was it to be fed, he had cautioned. On this day, nearly three weeks after its discovery, Sapphire looked exceptionally healthy to Kate – almost alarmingly so. Some of the petals had faded to a pretty Wedgwood blue, but new blooms were the same startling blue as before, without blemish. The perfectly formed leaves were a holly-green colour, so shiny that she could almost see her reflection in the larger ones. Then there were the thick canes, with their impenetrable armour of menacing thorns. There were no dead leaves on the ground under the bush. Unless one knew differently, the rose could be mistaken for a good silk reproduction, the kind that must be touched to make sure that it’s not real.
The cell phone in her sweater pocket rang. It was Kingston calling.
‘Hello, Lawrence. Your ears must be ringing. I was just thinking of you. I’m standing here, looking at Sapphire as I speak.’
‘How is she?’
‘She appears to be just fine. It’s weird, though, she always looks the same. Always healthy. Never seems to drop any leaves.’
‘Considering that it’s a mutation of some kind, it’s to be expected that it will deviate in some ways from accepted characteristics of the Rosaceae family.’
‘My thoughts entirely, doctor,’ Kate said, smiling to herself.
Kingston simply grunted.
‘I was just marvelling at how unreal she looks,’ she said, eyeing the rose. ‘More like a fake rose. It’s sort of creepy.’
‘I’d really like to see it again. By the way, don’t forget to remind your friend to take the cuttings. Perhaps it’s time I came down for another look. We should take some more photos, too. Those I took were a trifle out of focus. Next time I’ll use a tripod.’
‘You know you’re welcome any time,’ Kate said, sitting down, cross-legged on the strip of grass by the rose bed. She knew that a short phone call with Kingston was an oxy-moron.
‘That’s awfully kind of you, Kate, I’d love to. But the reason I’m calling is to let you and Alex know that I’ve managed to dig up some information on Farrow.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, I ferreted out the garden club that he and Cooke belonged to.’ He sounded very pleased with himself.
‘That was clever of you.’
‘Not really, my dear. All it took was some good old-fashioned detective spadework. The club was in Newbury. Still is. The club president vaguely recalled Major Cooke – apparently he was once on the club’s board – but had no recollection of Farrow.’
‘How did you find out about him, then?’
‘I got the names and phone numbers of all ten of the club’s officers and started calling them, one by one. On the sixth call, I got lucky. The lady I talked to was the club’s recording secretary. Sounded as if she smoked three packs a day. Volunteered that she was in her eighties and remembered Farrow quite clearly. Kept calling him Tommy.’ He laughed. ‘The way she talked about Farrow, I think she might have had a soft spot for him.’
Kate allowed a little chuckle. ‘So, you got a phone number? An address?’
‘Yes, and no. She recalled Farrow’s moving up somewhere near Bletchley in Buckinghamshire, of all places. So I checked around the post offices in the area and came up with the address of a Jennifer Farrow. She’s not listed in the phone book, so I plan to take a run up there, maybe as early as tomorrow, and find out whether she’s a relative.’
‘Why do you say, “of all places”?’
‘Well, my dear, Bletchley was the place where all the classified code breaking was done during the war. It was all very hush-hush. Just struck me as being too much of a coincidence, that’s all.’
‘I must say, Lawrence, you’re becoming a regular Hercule Poirot.’
‘Ah! Mon ami – nous verrons ce que nous verrons, n’est-ce pas?’
With her scant knowledge of French, Kate knew roughly what he said and it didn’t escape her notice that Kingston spoke the language like a native.
‘We shall see what we shall see, Kate,’ he added.
He paused momentarily. ‘The actuarial life expectancy tables would indicate that by now – unfortunately for him and us – Farrow is probably six feet under and has been for a few years.’
‘Pushing up daisies, not roses.’
‘Very good, Kate.’
‘You must let us know how you get on tomorrow.’
‘Yes, I will – I hope with encouraging news. Before I go, though, there’s one more thing I wanted to tell you. I took another look at the journals yesterday. I went through them with a fine-tooth comb just to make sure I hadn’t overlooked anything. Do you know what I discovered?’
‘What?’
‘I think we’re missing one book,’ he said.
Chapter Seven
Words fail me to picture dreams of hope, expectations, surprises – yes, disappointment, sometimes despair, that are the lot of the hybridizer…
Dr J. H. Nicolas, rose hybridist
Five thousand miles from Steeple Tarrant in the town of Lakeford, Washington, on the West Coast of the United States, Ira Wolff was finishing his fourth cup of black coffee. It was a quarter to ten on Thursday, 3rd July. The polished mahogany door to his office at Baker-Reynolds was closed. He had instructed his personal assistant to route all calls to his voice mail for the remainder of the morning. Save for a top-of-the-line Hewlett-Packard computer, a white telephone, some neatly stacked folders, a binder, and a tray holding a water carafe and glass, the dark leather desk surface was empty. Clutter was not permissible in Wolff ’s life. He’d called the staff meeting for ten o’clock; he had fifteen uninterrupted minutes to prepare for it.
Were it not for Baker-Reynolds, the small community of Lakeford would have long ago withered like those dusty ghost towns of the West that had prospered only as long as there was gold or silver to be mined. Wolff was majority shareholder, President and Chief Executive Officer of the privately owned corporation. In the case of Lakeford, the ‘gold’ was in the form of another of nature’s gifts – roses. And, barring catastrophe, the roses would survive, as they had for millions of years.
Founded in 1931 as a two-family partnership, B-R – as the townsfolk called it – was among the country’s largest rose growers and hybridizers. Over seven million plants were grown each year at Roseland, the forty-three hundred acre rose farm on the floor of a fertile valley close to the Idaho and Oregon borders. In the planting and harvesting seasons the operation demanded a staff of over twelve hundred. Every year, ten billion gallons of water and five hundred million gallons of fertilizer were pumped into the ground to satisfy the voracious appetite of this thorny colony. Ten months of the year, a highly trained, horticulturally-savvy force of over two dozen sales people fanned out across the US, keeping nurseries and garden centres well stocked and well informed. In the peak selling months, daily sales often climbed as high as a million dollars. Twice a year, professional photographers, commanding fees that would make trial lawyers look charitable, were flown to Lakeford from as far afield as San Francisco and New York. With macro lenses on Nikons and Hasselblads, they would capture the quintessential moments in the life of those prized blooms decreed perfect enough to star in B-R’s catalogues. Over two million copies of these lavish works of art and salesmanship were mailed out, three times a year, to the swelling ranks of rose-crazed gardeners across the nation.