‘Yes, that’s fine, but it’ll take me some time to go through all his stuff. He was quite a hoarder, you know.’
‘Whenever you get the chance,’ said Alex. ‘Oh, don’t forget, the rest of your husband’s journals are under the table in the hallway. We apologize for having kept them for so long. Thanks again for lending them to us.’
Mrs Cooke changed the subject. ‘I’m sorry Kate couldn’t come with you. I would have loved to see her again. You’re lucky, Alex, to have such a smart and beautiful wife.’
Alex nodded. ‘I am. Unfortunately she’s away, visiting a friend in Shropshire for a few days. Good old Lawrence is staying with me while she’s gone. Not much of a trade-off – though I must say, he’s good company.’
‘How are things at The Parsonage, Alex? Are you managing to get that garden knocked into shape? I was awfully embarrassed handing it over to you with it looking so bedraggled.’
‘We’ve been working at it. Kate’s out there every single moment she gets. As a matter of fact, Lawrence is helping, too. He doesn’t like my mentioning it, but he was a professor of botany at Edinburgh University. He’s also quite an expert on roses.’
‘Just by looking through those books, I could tell that your husband was a very diligent man,’ said Kingston. ‘And having seen the garden I know he had a profound love for roses.’ He chuckled. ‘I was seduced by them years ago. I never cease to be amazed at the influence roses can have on people. The sheer power they exert.’
‘You would have got on famously with Jeffrey, then. That’s pretty much all he ever thought about. Spent every waking moment out in that greenhouse of his. More or less died out there, too.’ She chuckled, without smiling. ‘Somehow fitting, I suppose.’
‘More or less?’ inquired Alex.
‘Yes, I found him there, late in the day. Lord knows how long he’d been lying face down on the floor. Anyway, the ambulance came and they took him to the hospital in Bath.’
Kingston shifted his position on the sofa again. ‘Perhaps you’d–’
Mrs Cooke held her hand up. ‘No it’s quite all right. It’s easy for me to talk about it now.’ She frowned, and continued. ‘He was in intensive care for two days. I sat at the hospital all that time. Most of it in the waiting room. They wouldn’t let me see him that often. Not that it really mattered – most of the time he wasn’t conscious. On the morning of the third day he passed away. They said it was a nasty viral infection of some kind.’ Her voice faltered as she reflected on the painful memory.
‘Prior to your husband’s blacking out, had he been sick at all?’ Alex asked, as gently as he could.
‘As far as I knew, he was as fit as the proverbial fiddle. In fact he’d just had a check-up with old Dr Hearst. Told him he was in great shape for his age and to keep on drinking whatever he was drinking. Funny old codger that Hearst. He’s passed on now, too.’ She bit her lip, looking first at Alex and then Kingston.
‘What you’ve just told us could start to explain a lot of things,’ said Alex.
‘What things?’
‘Your husband and a friend of ours. The symptoms are almost identical.’
‘Your friend – did he die, too?’
‘It was a she. A young woman named Vicky.’ Alex stood up and began pacing ‘Yes, she died, Mrs Cooke. It all happened so quickly. They didn’t know exactly what killed her, either. “Unidentified viral infection” was what appeared on the death certificate. When I asked the doctor whether it could have had anything to do with Vicky being scratched by the rose, he almost laughed at me. Highly unlikely, he said – or words to that effect.’ He stopped and looked at Kingston. ‘What do you think, Lawrence?’
Before Kingston could answer, Mrs Cooke moistened her lips, nervously and said, ‘Are you suggesting that a rose could have been responsible for my husband’s death?’
‘It does sound a bit far-fetched, I grant you,’ said Kingston, ‘but you have to remember that many plants are toxic. Even a foxglove could kill you. A potato, if you ingest enough of the green parts. Rhubarb leaves, too. This particular rose is a mutation of some kind. So it’s plausible that if the plant it was crossed with had toxic parts, so could it.’
Mrs Cooke looked pale and flustered. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Oh dear.’
‘What is it, Mrs Cooke?’ Alex asked. ‘Are you okay?’
She got up and walked over to the sideboard, placing her hands on it, as if for support, her face to the wall. When she finally spoke – still with her back to them – it was as if the words had been waiting for a long time to be uttered. Now they came freely.
‘Over the years, there were accidents in the garden,’ she said. ‘Oh, you know, things like Jeffrey cutting himself, a gardener falling off a ladder and ending up in hospital for a week, cuts and scratches – that sort of thing.’
Abruptly, she turned to them, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. ‘But considering what you’ve just said, I think, perhaps, that you should know about the two deaths,’ she blurted.
Alex stared at her in disbelief. ‘Two deaths?’
‘My God!’ Kingston uttered.
Kneading her hands, she nodded. ‘Yes – the first occurred some time after Jeffrey died.’
‘What happened?’ Alex asked, leaning forward on the edge of his chair, fearful of what she was about to say.
‘Well,’ said Mrs Cooke, ‘we used to have a part-time gardener called Doakes – Walter Doakes. Jeffrey hired him – oh, must have been over fifteen years ago. Knew everything there was to know about gardening. A fine-looking man.’ She sighed.
‘A couple of years after Jeffrey died, I happened upon Doakes in the garden one afternoon. He was stretched out on a bench. At first I thought he was taking a nap. But it wasn’t like him to do that, so I called his name. He just lay there, very still, his face turned away from me. Then I started to get worried. I walked over and shook his arm. His shirt was damp to the touch and cold. When he moved suddenly, it made me jump. Then he turned his face towards me and I knew he was sick. His usually ruddy face was an awful greyish colour and his skin was all sweaty. He mumbled something about a doctor, then his arm flopped down lifelessly off his lap and hit the ground. I didn’t wait any longer. I rushed up to the house and called for an ambulance. Then I got a wool blanket and a glass of water and went back down to be with him until the ambulance arrived. I forget which hospital they took him to – maybe they never told me at the time. But somebody called, two days later – his sister, I believe it was – and told me that he had died. She said they didn’t know what the cause of death was. About two years ago, she died too. Liz at the post office said it was cancer. There was an obituary in the local paper. Euphemia, her name was. Euphemia Doakes.’ She screwed up her face. ‘Fancy calling a child Euphemia!’
‘Jesus!’ Alex muttered.
‘It all fits,’ said Kingston.
Mrs Cooke shook her head slowly. ‘Poor old Doakes,’ she muttered.
‘You mentioned two deaths. Who was the other person? Surely you didn’t mean Euphemia.’ Alex tried not to show his anxiety.
‘Oh, yes. It was a young boy. He was a friend of our neighbours’ lad, Mark. Nicholas was his name. It was tragic. He and Mark were staying at The Parsonage while our neighbours and the other boy’s parents were at some business function up north somewhere. I’d volunteered to take care of them overnight. The boys were about seven years old at the time. The two had been playing in the garden all afternoon – Cowboys and Indians, that kind of stuff. That evening, Nicholas started to complain about feeling sick. I took his temperature. It was high, but not enough to cause alarm. So I put him to bed and thought no more of it. The next morning he was much worse. I remember being frightened by his condition, poor lad. I got him dressed, told Mark to get up and get dressed too, and put them both in the car. I drove to the hospital in Bath and took him to the emergency room. They examined him right away and he was admitted. Immediately, I called Mark’s mum and dad at the conference and they told Nicholas’s parents what had happened. Within hours, they were at the hospital with their son.’