Latimer smiled. ‘Would he have known about the paintings? Is that what you’re asking?’
Kingston swirled the melting ice cubes in his crystal glass. ‘Not just the paintings but other things that might have taken place at Wickersham, too, not only during his tenure but before he was hired as well.’
‘That’s a vague question, Lawrence. One that I’m afraid I can’t answer. All I know is that—well, certainly in the latter years of Ryder’s life—Mainwaring pretty much ran the show here.Yes, I would imagine that he would have had access to Ryder’s business and personal affairs, but to what degree, I have no idea. He didn’t have power of attorney, that I do know.’
‘And he vanished?’
‘As far as we know.’
Jamie interrupted, asking if the two men would like another drink. Both saying yes, she went to the butler’s table that served as a bar, poured two more scotches over ice and brought them back to the coffee table with a carafe of water.
Jamie looked at Latimer and smiled. ‘You see, David, you not only found me a wonderful garden guru but a private investigator, too.’
Latimer chuckled. ‘You’re lucky, Jamie: two for the price of one. Talking of the gardens, I want to take a look at them before it gets too dark.’
‘Absolutely. You’re not going to believe what Lawrence has achieved since you were here last.’
An hour later, Jamie said goodnight to Latimer and Kingston at the front door.
The next morning Kingston woke up late. Since moving down to the country he not only slept more soundly but longer, too. Pulling aside the bedroom curtain he saw the panes were misted on the outside. A thick fog shrouded the garden, reducing it to ghostly grey shapes. He dressed warmly: a heavy wool sweater over his corduroy shirt and cavalry twill trousers. It was going to be a full day. As arranged, he was meeting Jamie at nine to go over a pile of invoices before they approved them for payment and to discuss the forthcoming visit by the director of a documentary crew who had written expressing an interest in producing a film of the gardens’renaissance. Immediately after that he was scheduled to supervise the long-awaited planting of the lime walk, a grass-verged avenue some twenty feet wide, with fifteen Tilia trees on each side. Jamie had jokingly said that was a good feng shui number, not that she believed in it. Then, at noon, Ferguson was at long last coming to visit the chapel. But most important of all, after he was through with Ferguson, Kingston was going back to the chapel to take one last shot at solving its mystery—if indeed there was one.
When he had first mentioned the lime walk, Jamie, quite naturally, thought the trees would be citrus. He had explained that while Tilia was commonly referred to as a lime tree, it was not related to the citrus, but belonged to the Linden genus—all very confusing, he admitted. Eventually the upper branches of each semi-mature tree would be pruned and trained to cross over and entwine with those of its partner on the other side of the walk to form a living trellis—or, as Kingston liked to call it, ‘a hedge in the air’. On their day out at Hidcote Jamie had fallen in love with the pleached hornbeams in the stilt garden and wanted to do something similar.
After a hasty cup of tea and a bowl of muesli, Kingston was ready to leave the cottage at a quarter to nine. He put on his Barbour jacket, wellington boots and battered waterproof hat, closed and locked the cottage door and set off for the house.
The meeting with Jamie was shorter than he’d anticipated. By eleven thirty, eight of the thirty lime trees were planted. Even with only four trees, equally spaced on each side of the walk, the visual effect was striking. Kingston left the crew to finish the planting when Ferguson arrived at noon sharp. After a brief exchange of pleasantries with Jamie, Kingston whisked him off to view the chapel.
Ferguson’s reaction was more or less exactly what Kingston had anticipated: a mixture of awe and curiosity. For the first five minutes there was little talk as the archivist went to work silently studying every inch of the chapel and the well. It wasn’t long before Ferguson asked the question that Kingston had been expecting.
‘I take it you haven’t made any progress regarding the old priory basement?’ Ferguson asked, taking a tiny silver camera from his jacket pocket.
The word ‘basement’ struck Kingston as amusing. Surely an academic could come up with a more fitting noun? ‘Unfortunately, no,’ he replied. ‘You’d have been the first to know if I had, Roger. Without some kind of documented or physical evidence to tell us the exact location of the priory, it’s going to be impossible to find the underground rooms—if they still exist, that is.’