The second recovery was even more impressive. In an area of the garden close to the house, a twelve by thirty-foot mosaic-tiled reflecting pool looked skyward again after sixty years in hibernation. The central motif of the design, the head of a griffin, was identical to those Kingston had encountered earlier on the stone pillars—the Ryder family crest. The decorative Italian tiles were in remarkably fine condition.
And now, of course, there was the chapel and the well. Since that discovery Kingston had returned to the site twice. Although he had said nothing yet, it had struck him straight away that there was something not right about the dates of the coins. Since it was already known that the gardens had been abandoned in the years prior to the war—the late thirties—it seemed a reasonable assumption that the chapel would have been buried since that time, too. But the coins were dated 1959 and 1963. The only explanation was that there had to be another way of entering the chapel. The coins had appeared sometime after it was sealed by nature.
For this reason, Kingston’s visits to the chapel served only one purpose: to see if there had once been another means of entry; a way in that was used by the man who had either fallen down the well or whose body had been dumped there. So far he had not been able to come up with any evidence of another means of access. As a result, he had concluded that Jack and he were wrong and that somehow nature had given the chapel a reprieve and had not consumed it until much later than the rest of the garden.
As encouraging progress was on the horticultural front, one deficiency in the garden’s restoration still had Kingston in a quandary. While the mosaic pool, the greenhouse and other minor architectural features were pronounced triumphs at the time of their discovery, he had been expecting much more. Where, he kept asking himself, were the statues, decorative urns, fountains, elaborate ironwork gates, benches, pergolas and other architectural treasures that were shown on the pages of the books he’d seen in the library after Jamie had described them in their first meeting. He could only conclude that they must have been stolen in the early days, prior to the decay setting in.
In Britain, theft of architectural garden features has now reached epidemic proportions. As values of antique garden ornaments continue to rise so does the black market. With nineteenth-century iron benches selling at auction for £2,000, important statues from £10,000 up, it’s little wonder that thieves find gardens lucrative and easy pickings. A recent Sotheby’s sale of six hundred lots in Sussex netted £1.4 million.
Among his gardening colleagues and friends, Kingston had heard of some horror stories in the last few years. It seemed that anything was game now and organized criminals were becoming more skilled and more audacious. At one time it was only garden statuary, urns and ornamental wrought-iron garden gates. Now, nothing was safe. Items reported stolen from private and public gardens ranged from potted trees, paving stones, fish ponds, koi and carp, entire avenues of trees, potting and tool sheds, and several cases where entire gardens have vanished—every single plant dug up and hauled off.
Sadly, the rate of recovery of stolen items was low but Kingston had read of one case where a company specializing in identifying and locating stolen antiques met with success. A life-size statue worth tens of thousands of pounds, weighing a half a ton, that had been its garden position in an East Yorkshire stately home for one hundred years, was knocked off its plinth during the night and carted off by thieves. Following circulation of a picture of the statue, a call was received by someone who remembered seeing it being placed in a crate at a shipping agent in East London. With the agent’s cooperation, the ship that had taken the statue out of the country was determined and soon thereafter, the unwitting Chicago buyer, who very accommodatingly handed it over.
More than once, Kingston had discussed this dilemma with Jamie, since it was becoming more and more likely—as large parts of the old garden were now exposed—that the expectation of finding more garden artifacts was ebbing quickly. Replacing the missing architectural features, statuary and sculptures with similar antique pieces was out of the question. The cost would be far too prohibitive, even for someone with Jamie’s means. The answer was to replace them, where possible, with replicas. This, in itself presented a time-consuming exercise, having to track down manufacturers on the Internet, attend the occasional auction, and search out catalog companies. On the plus side, if the replicas were stolen they would be relatively inexpensive and easy to replace.
Kingston knew the results would be far from satisfactory but there was at least some comfort in knowing that certain of the better manufacturers, whose designs were based on original pieces from private gardens, stately homes and National Trust properties were made to weather more rapidly than normal. There were other ways of accelerating the weathering and patina heretofore only attained by many years of exposure to the elements. Kingston described one to Jamie: the old tried and true method of aging concrete by applying a blend of sheep manure and buttermilk. Her answer was simple, delivered with a smile: ‘I’ll supply the buttermilk but otherwise, count me out.’