The Buttonhole That Bloomed Too Soon
The village of Nettlewick-on-Bourne held its Harvest and Horticulture Show on the second Saturday of September without fail, and had done so for eighty-three consecutive years. The bunting was always slightly damp. The Victoria sponge competition was always won by someone who had never entered before and therefore hadn’t yet made enemies. And the dahlia cup — the coveted Aldbourne Trophy, a silverplate vase no taller than a milk bottle but treated with the reverence due a cathedral relic — was always the centrepiece of the flower tent.
This year, it was also the centrepiece of a rather heated argument.
“It was there at half past nine,” insisted Gerald Fitch, the show secretary, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. “I checked the display table myself. Bloom perfectly presented, entry card in place. By ten o’clock, the thing had simply vanished.”
The dahlia in question belonged to Marjorie Onslow-Pryce, a formidable woman of seventy who had won the Aldbourne Trophy four times and fully intended to win it a fifth. Her entry — a dinner-plate dahlia of deep burgundy and cream called *Empress of Autumn* — had apparently walked off the display table between the judges’ preliminary inspection and the formal adjudication.
Constance Fry stood at the edge of the small crowd that had gathered inside the flower tent, listening. She was seventy-three, small, white-haired, and had served as village librarian for forty years before retiring. She was also, though she would never have described herself this way, considerably sharper than anyone in Nettlewick tended to give her credit for.
She watched. She noted.
The show chairman, a flustered man named Douglas Peel, was speaking in low, urgent tones with the two judges — a pair of retired horticultural society members brought in from the next county precisely to ensure impartiality. Neither of them had taken the dahlia, he was apparently satisfied of that. Three other exhibitors stood nearby: young Tom Yarwick, who grew flowers commercially and entered the show each year as a matter of publicity; Patricia Helm, who ran the village post office and whose own dahlia entry — a rather fine purple cactus variety — sat untouched on the table; and Edward Goss, the retired headteacher, who had entered for the first time this year and wore an expression of barely concealed distress.
Constance moved slowly around the tent, looking not at faces but at flowers.
She paused at Edward Goss’s entry. His dahlia was a large, blowsy bloom of coral pink, the entry card reading *First Sunrise*. It was lovely. It sat in its narrow-necked show vase with quiet confidence.
Then she looked at Edward Goss’s lapel.
He was wearing a buttonhole — a small, neat flower tucked into his jacket. Not unusual for a village show. What was unusual was the flower itself: a tight, barely-opened burgundy and cream bud, the colouring unmistakably similar to the missing *Empress of Autumn*.
Constance crossed to Patricia Helm. “Patricia, dear, you’ve been here since the tent opened this morning?”
“Since eight,” Patricia confirmed, folding her arms. “I wanted to make sure my vase was centred properly. The judges do notice these things.”
“And you saw Mr. Goss arrive?”
Patricia thought for a moment. “He was already here when I came in. Standing near the back of the tent, I think. He had his buttonhole then, I’m fairly sure of it.”
Constance considered this. Then she walked over to Gerald Fitch and tugged gently at his sleeve.
“Gerald, one small question. When Mr. Goss submitted his entry registration — was there a second dahlia listed? A secondary cutting from the same plant, perhaps?”
Gerald frowned and consulted his clipboard. “No. One entry only. *First Sunrise*, one stem.”
“And the entry rules — they prohibit exhibitors from wearing flowers from their own entered plants during judging, don’t they? To prevent the judges from making any kind of prior association.”
“Correct,” Gerald said slowly, the frown deepening. “Strictly speaking, they prohibit wearing any flower that will be — or has been — exhibited in the show tent.” He looked up. “Constance, what are you suggesting?”
“I’m not quite suggesting anything yet,” she said pleasantly. “But I wonder if you might ask Edward Goss where he obtained his buttonhole this morning.”
The question was put, with Gerald doing his best to sound casual. Edward Goss went very still. He was a tall, careful man, and he chose his words with the habit of someone who had spent decades in front of classrooms.
“I grew it myself,” he said. “At home.”
“From what variety?” Constance asked.
A pause that lasted precisely two seconds too long. “I couldn’t say off the top of my head. I grow several.”
Constance smiled gently. “The thing is, Edward, I’ve visited your garden twice this summer for the open garden weekend. You grow coral and yellow dahlias exclusively. You mentioned it yourself — you said warm colours only, it was a personal philosophy. Burgundy and cream would be quite out of character for your beds.”
The silence in the tent became rather total.
Gerald Fitch, connecting the remaining dots at some speed, stepped forward. “I’ll need to ask you to remove the buttonhole, Edward. And I think we may need to look in your car.”
They did, in fact, find *Empress of Autumn* in Edward Goss’s car, resting in a small tube of water in the footwell. He had hoped — rather desperately, it emerged — that Marjorie Onslow-Pryce’s entry would simply be declared missing, invalidating her participation, and that his own modest coral dahlia might stand a better chance at the trophy without her formidable entry to overshadow it.
He had cut a small bud from *Empress of Autumn* first, thinking it would be taken for something he’d grown himself.
It was a plan that had several small flaws. Constance had found all of them.
The dahlia was returned to the display table. Marjorie Onslow-Pryce won the Aldbourne Trophy for the fifth time. Afterwards, she presented Constance with a generous slice of her own walnut cake and the two women sat in the afternoon sun outside the refreshment tent, saying very little, which is often the most comfortable conversation of all.
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