Swan for the Money

Chapter 1





“Dreadful news!” Dad said.

He collapsed into a chair at the foot of the breakfast table, as if no longer able to bear the weight of his dire tidings, and wiped his balding head with a pocket handkerchief. The head, the handkerchief, the hand holding it, and nearly every stitch of his clothing were so encrusted with mud and garden dirt that Mother would probably have ordered him off to take a shower immediately if she weren’t so visibly curious to hear his news.

“Yes?” she said, one hand clutching her throat in a gesture that would have looked artificial and old-fashioned on anyone else. On her it merely looked elegant.

“We’ve lost Matilda,” Dad said.

“Oh, no!” she exclaimed. From her expression, I could tell that she found this news genuinely heartbreaking.

Faint murmurs of sympathy arose from the dozen assorted friends and relatives seated around the table, but I could tell from their uniformly puzzled faces that they were all mentally asking the same question I was: who the heck was Matilda?

We used to have a Matilda in the clan, my Great Aunt Matilda. But she’d been dead for years, and I couldn’t recall anyone else gracing a recent arrival to the family with such an unusual name. Nor could I remember any friends or neighbors named Matilda. There was a time when I would have assumed Matilda was one of Dad’s patients, but he was semi-retired now, and his medical practice consisted mostly of those same family, friends, and neighbors, whose names I would recognize. Not a Matilda in the bunch.

“And what’s more,” Dad went on, sitting up and frowning fiercely, “it was foul play. No question. I only suspected it with Adelaide, but I’m sure of it now.”

“It’s the Pruitts,” Mother said. “I’ve suspected them all along.” Not surprising. The Pruitts were an old local family who used to own most of Caerphilly County and often behaved as if they still did. Most locals were quick to blame the Pruitts whenever anything sneaky or underhanded took place. Mother and Dad only spent weekends here in Caerphilly, in the old farm house they’d dubbed their summer cottage, but they were quickly picking up many local attitudes.

“You suspect the Pruitts of two murders?” my brother, Rob, asked. “Have you told the police?”

“Murders?” Dad echoed. “What murders?”

“This Matilda and Adelaide you’re talking about,” Rob said.

Dad burst into laughter. I suddenly realized what he’d been talking about.

“It’s not murder,” I said. “Because Matilda and Adelaide aren’t people, are they? They’re roses.”

“Meg’s right, of course,” Mother said, sounding slightly cross, as if baffled at how long it took us to figure this out.

“Sheesh.” Rob returned to his food. “Roses. That’s all we talk about these days.”

“Now you know how I feel,” I muttered, though not loud enough for anyone but Michael to hear. For the last two months, ever since Mother recruited me to organize the Caerphilly Garden Club’s annual rose show, roses had taken over my life. Normally I’d be asleep at this hour, not trekking to my parents’ farm to collect boxes of rose show equipment and haul them to the farm whose owner, Mrs. Winkleson, was hosting tomorrow’s show. And normally the gala breakfast might have made up for the early hour, but today my stomach was wound too tight to enjoy it.

“Can’t we talk about something else for a change?” Rob was saying.

“Peonies, for example,” my husband, Michael, said. “Much more practical for our yard. They don’t require a lot of cosseting, like roses, and the deer don’t seem to eat them.”

I could tell from Rob’s face that he didn’t consider peonies a conversational improvement over roses, and Mother and Dad ignored the interruption.

“Meg,” Mother said to me. “Your father needs coffee.” She managed to give the impression that only with an instant infusion of caffeine could Dad possibly survive this new horticultural tragedy.

“I could use some, too,” Michael said, and shot out to the kitchen before I could even push my chair back.

“Matilda and Adelaide were two of my most promising black roses,” Dad said to the rest of the table.

“And two of our best chances for winning the Winkleson Trophy,” Mother said. “Which will be given out this weekend at the Caerphilly Rose Show to the darkest rose,” she added, on the off chance that any of the assembled relatives had managed to escape hearing about the Langslow house hold’s new hobby of breeding and showing roses.

“Is there a big prize?” Rob asked.