The New Neighbour’s Garden Twine
Agnes Plum had lived in Little Fordham for sixty-one years, and in that time she had developed what her late husband Gerald called “an unhealthy interest in other people’s business.” Agnes preferred to think of it as attentiveness.
It was attentiveness, therefore, that caused her to pause on the lane outside Greenhayes Cottage on a bright Thursday morning, secateurs in hand, and stare at the broken latch on Edmund Priory’s greenhouse door.
Edmund had moved to the village eight months ago — a quiet, pleasant man in his early sixties who grew heritage tomatoes and attended the Thursday quiz night at the Lamb and Fleece without ever causing the slightest remark. Agnes liked him well enough, though she noted he volunteered little about himself and asked rather a lot about others.
The greenhouse latch had been forced, that much was clear. The metal bracket was bent outward, and the wooden frame around it showed fresh, pale splinters. But it was not the damage itself that arrested Agnes. It was the loop of green garden twine that had been threaded through the broken bracket and tied around the door handle — presumably to keep the door closed after the break-in had occurred.
The knot was a bowline.
Agnes knew her knots. Gerald had sailed dinghies on the reservoir at Hadbury every summer for thirty years, and Agnes had crewed for him whether she liked it or not. A bowline was a sailor’s knot — reliable, non-slipping, and not the sort of thing an ordinary person tied without training.
Edmund Priory, she recalled, had mentioned sailing only once, in passing, at the harvest supper.
She walked on, thinking carefully.
At the post office, she collected her television guide and exchanged pleasantries with Norma Blatch, who mentioned that the Fordham Horticultural Society’s petty cash tin had gone missing from the village hall storeroom sometime between last Friday’s meeting and Tuesday’s delivery of seed catalogues.
“Dreadful business,” said Norma. “There was only about forty pounds in it, which isn’t the point of course. Reverend Hollis is quite upset.”
Agnes made sympathetic noises and bought a second-class stamp she did not need.
She went home and sat with her tea and thought about Edmund Priory, who grew heritage tomatoes and tied bowlines and asked questions.
The following morning she returned her library books and stopped, as if on impulse, to admire the window boxes at Greenhayes Cottage. Edmund was in the front garden, staking a rose.
“Those dahlias are coming along beautifully,” said Agnes, though she was looking at his hands.
They spoke pleasantly for ten minutes. Edmund mentioned he had been “a little under the weather” on Friday and had stayed in all evening. Agnes noted that his fingernails were very clean and his gardening gloves were new — the kind without wear at the fingertips.
“Did you hear about the horticultural society’s cash tin?” she asked lightly.
Something passed across his face — too quickly for most people, but Agnes was a retired schoolteacher and had spent decades watching children decide how to answer a question.
“Dreadful,” he said. “Norma mentioned it.”
Agnes smiled warmly and said goodbye.
She went directly to the village hall, where she found Reverend Hollis and committee treasurer Phyllis Armitage cataloguing the seed catalogues in a state of mild distress.
“The storeroom lock,” said Agnes, without preamble. “Was it forced, or was a key used?”
Phyllis and the reverend exchanged glances. “A key,” said Phyllis. “Or something very like one. The lock wasn’t damaged at all. We’ve been quite baffled.”
“Who has keys?”
“Myself, Reverend Hollis, and we gave one to Edmund Priory when he joined the committee in January. He offered to help with deliveries.”
Agnes was quiet for a moment. “And your greenhouse, Reverend — does it have a similar latch to the one at Greenhayes Cottage?”
The reverend blinked. “Why, yes. Edmund helped me fit them both last autumn. He said he’d done metalwork in a previous life.”
“And the storeroom,” said Agnes. “Could someone familiar with your greenhouse latch mechanism reasonably estimate how to open your storeroom lock with a thin instrument? They are, I believe, the same manufacturer.”
There was a long silence.
“I believe,” said Agnes gently, “that you should telephone Constable Dray.”
When Constable Dray — a sensible young man who had learned not to dismiss Agnes Plum — made quiet enquiries, a rather fuller picture emerged. Edmund Priory had a previous address in three different counties, an unresolved matter concerning a sailing club treasurer in Dorset, and a rather interesting collection of lock-picking instruments in the drawer of his bedside table.
The forty pounds in the petty cash tin was recovered from an envelope tucked inside a seed catalogue on Edmund’s kitchen shelf. He had not yet had occasion to spend it.
The village, on the whole, took the matter philosophically. Norma Blatch declared that she had always found him slightly too tidy. The Thursday quiz team regretted losing their best player on the geography round.
Agnes said nothing of the sort. She returned to her garden and deadheaded her roses with the quiet satisfaction of a person who has done a small but useful thing. The bowline knot had been rather beautiful, she supposed, in its way. Gerald would have appreciated it.
She made a mental note to pay closer attention to new arrivals in future, and went inside to put the kettle on.
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