“There’s a ‘no soliciting’ sign on the gate,” I pointed out, as Stanley parked the car along the street.
“We’re not soliciting,” he said. “And it doesn’t say ‘no trespassing.’”
“Tell that to the man with the hedge clippers,” I murmured.
The stout man had climbed carefully down from the ladder and was trotting over to meet us at the gate.
“This is private property,” he called out as he approached. “You can’t—oh, my!”
He seemed to be staring at me.
“We’re here to see Miss Annabel Lee,” Stanley said.
Not for the first time since I heard her name, scraps of Poe’s lyric flitted through my brain, and I only just stopped myself from reciting “It was many and many a year ago/In a kingdom by the sea…”
The man stared a few more moments, holding the hedge clippers in front of him, blades spread wide, as if preparing to defend himself. He looked to be in his sixties, perhaps even his seventies. If he was a longtime resident, then he was old enough to know what Cordelia had looked like when she was my age. No wonder he was staring.
Stanley reached into his pocket, took out a business card, and offered it through the gate.
After staring at the card for a bit, the man closed the clippers with a sharp snick and reached out to take it.
“I will see if she’s at home,” he said. He turned and trotted rapidly toward the front door.
“Of course she’s home,” Stanley muttered. “She’s a recluse. Doesn’t leave the house from one month to the next.”
“Yes, but she may not be at home, at least not to us,” I said.
“Still, this is more than I got last time I was here,” he said. “I rang the doorbell a dozen times with no response, unless you count seeing the front curtains flutter once or twice, as if someone was peeking out at me.”
An unseen hand opened the door for the man, and he disappeared inside without looking back at us.
We stood in front of the gate. Birds trilled, insects buzzed, and in the distance I could hear the steady drone of a lawnmower. I wondered if Stanley had a contingency plan in case the hedgeclipper/gatekeeper simply stayed inside and waited for us to leave. Before I got around to asking, the man reappeared. He walked out to the gate at a much slower, steadier pace, and when he got closer I could see that he was frowning.
“Miss Lee will see you,” he said. “Briefly.”
He opened the gate—not very wide, as if he still hoped to discourage us from entering.
Stanley stood aside and graciously beckoned for me to go first. Or maybe he wasn’t being gracious, just hoping I’d succeed in shoving the gate open a little wider, to accommodate his somewhat bulkier form. I obliged. When he was inside, he offered his hand to the man.
“Thank you,” he said. “Mr.—?”
“Doctor,” the man said. “Dr. Dwight Ffollett. Two f’s, two l’s, two t’s.” He turned back toward the house, and we fell into step on either side of him.
A doctor. Odds were he was a volunteer gardener, then, unless the medical business here in Riverton had fallen off precipitously.
“Nice of you to help Miss Lee,” I said. “Such a beautiful yard.”
“Yes,” he said. “A lot of work, though, and she can’t do it herself.”
“Did you plant all this?” Stanley asked.
Dr. Ffollett frowned as if this were a trick question.
“No,” he said, finally. “Mrs. Mason did it all.”
So my grandmother had been a gardener. Like Dad.
“Mrs. Cordelia Mason?” Stanley asked. “Miss Lee’s late cousin?” Dr. Ffollett flinched at the name, then nodded.
“Yes,” he said, his voice shaky.
He fell back to let us climb the steps without him. Stanley rang the doorbell. I glanced down to see Dr. Ffollett clutching his pruning shears the way Josh and Jamie clutched their favorite stuffed animals in a thunderstorm.
Stanley and I stood there for a few moments, both of us studying our surroundings. We were on a broad old-fashioned porch that ran along the whole front of the house and wrapped around both sides. To our left were a couple of comfortable-looking white Adirondack chairs with blue cushions on the seats and a wrought-iron table between them. To our right, a pair of white wicker chairs with a matching table. An empty white china cup and saucer suggested that someone had been having tea this morning on the wicker. There were bamboo roll-down shades you could use to block out the sun if the afternoon was too hot, and ceiling fans on either side to stir up a little breeze. An assortment of Boston ferns, spider plants, begonias, and geraniums hung from the porch ceiling in brown macramé holders or on chains from wrought-iron plant brackets attached to the walls or posts. Very nice wrought-iron brackets. Just the sort of things I’d be making now if I hadn’t injured my hand. And would get back to making as soon as my hand healed.