The Campanula That Couldn’t Wait
The village of Thurwick smelled of woodsmoke and wet stone that October morning, the lanes so narrow that fallen horse chestnuts lay undisturbed in the gutters, glossy and fat as conkers had always been when Miriam Oakes was a girl. She walked with her shopping bag over one arm and her good ash walking stick in the other hand, taking the long route past the churchyard because she always did, because habit was the architecture of a quiet life.
She stopped at the low wall beside Gerald Fitch’s cottage.
The gate stood open. That alone was worth noting. Gerald had been buried eleven days ago, a quiet service with very few mourners, and the solicitors had not yet sent anyone round to assess the property. The gate, Miriam knew, had a stiff iron latch that required a firm thumb to release. It did not blow open in the wind.
But it was the flower bed that held her.
Along the south-facing border, in full and brazen bloom, stood a row of campanula. Pale blue, nodding slightly in the breeze. Campanula bloomed in June and July. In October, with the dahlias already blackened by frost and the soil hard enough to ring under a boot heel, campanula did not bloom. It could not.
Miriam stood very still for a moment. Then she walked on to the post office to buy her stamps.
—
Dorothea Vane ran the post office from a counter that smelled of rubber bands and lemon barley sweets, and she knew everything about everyone in Thurwick, a talent she exercised with great discretion and only occasional inaccuracy.
“Those campanula in Gerald’s front bed,” Miriam said, accepting her stamps.
Dorothea’s hands paused over the till drawer. “Pretty, aren’t they.”
“They’re potted specimens, planted out within the last fortnight. You can see the soil is disturbed in rings. Someone wanted colour at the front of that cottage. Someone who knew it would be viewed.”
Dorothea said nothing for a moment. Then she said, carefully, “Gerald’s nephew has been round twice this week. Martin. The one from Bristol.”
“I didn’t know Gerald had a nephew from Bristol.”
“Neither did Gerald, according to Reverend Hollis. Martin Fitch turned up the week before Gerald died. First time anyone here had ever laid eyes on him.”
Miriam tucked her stamps into her purse. “And the cottage. Is it Gerald’s to leave?”
“Was, until he changed his will.” Dorothea lowered her voice, though the shop was empty. “Edna Spriggs types for Harker the solicitor on Tuesdays. She didn’t say a word about the specifics. But she did say that whatever Gerald signed three days before his heart attack, he was signing it under considerable agitation.”
—
Miriam found Martin Fitch in the cottage garden that same afternoon, raking leaves with the air of a man rehearsing ownership.
He was perhaps forty, with a good coat and soft hands that had not done much raking in their time. He looked up without warmth.
“Come to pay your respects?” he said.
“I have come to admire the campanula,” said Miriam. “I grow them myself. The Telham Beauty variety, particularly. These are Prichard’s Variety, I think. Blue Waterfall, possibly. Either way, they want a cold frame by now. You’ll lose them if the temperature drops tonight.”
Martin Fitch’s expression shifted by a fraction. “I bought them from the garden centre in Halcomb. Thought the place looked bare.”
“From Halcomb.” Miriam tapped her walking stick gently against the path. “That’s twenty-three miles. A long way to go for plants you’ll only inherit if the will stands.”
The raking stopped.
“I’m not sure what you mean by that,” he said.
“I mean that a man who was in excellent cardiac health at his last check-up, according to his GP, who has a Thursday slot at the same practice I use, died rather suddenly after signing a document under what witnesses might describe as visible distress.” She looked at him steadily. “And I mean that potted campanula placed in a garden to suggest settled, loving occupation is a detail that speaks of someone who anticipated scrutiny.”
Martin Fitch set down the rake. His jaw was tight. His hands, she noticed, had gone very still at his sides.
“You should speak to a solicitor,” he said at last.
“I rather think you should,” said Miriam. “I shall be speaking to Constable Revell.”
—
It took three weeks for the picture to become clear, and it was not a pleasant one. The will had been signed, Edna Spriggs eventually confirmed to the proper authorities, while Gerald sat pale and trembling, with Martin standing at his shoulder and a story about unpaid debts that Miriam doubted had ever existed. The signature was genuine. The circumstances surrounding it were not.
The solicitor at Harker’s applied to have the document set aside on grounds of undue influence. The court agreed.
On the morning the decision came through, Miriam walked past the cottage again. The campanula had long since died, caught by a hard frost the very night of her conversation with Martin Fitch. The stems were brown and collapsed, pressed flat against the cold earth.
She paused at the gate, which stood closed now, its iron latch sitting firm.
Gerald’s true heir, a quiet young woman from Cirencester who had written him letters every birthday, would take possession in the spring.
By June, Miriam thought, the border would bloom on its own terms.
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