Dust on a Bowl of Roses - Softcover

Vincent, Adele

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1490766200 ISBN 13: 9781490766201

Verlag: Trafford, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

An old-fashioned murder mystery with Hestercombe, a beautiful - and real - English garden as backdrop. The central character is a newly widowed middle-aged woman who has spent her married life traveling the world with her diplomat husband and now returns to an England that has changed much in her absence. As she ponders her future, she gets pulled into the vagaries of village life, its traditions, its characters and the mayhem that ensues with the discovery of a body in the garden.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Adele Vincent runs the women's spiritual group and writing workshop, Ask Angel. She also speaks at conventions in the US and UK. She lives in London, England.

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Dust on a Bowl of Roses

By Adele Vincent

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2015 Adele Vincent
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-6620-1

CHAPTER 1

"You haven't been to Hestercombe!"

"Not yet. I —"

"But you must go. It's a Gertrude Jekyll garden, one of her best. You know who Gertrude Jekyll is, of course?"

"Of course. And I —"

"Then go and see Hestercombe, soon. No excuses. It's open to the public."

On the train from London down to Somerset, Julia Dobson recalled this exchange with the elderly distant cousin who had been her hostess for an extended visit to the Chelsea Flower Show. It did seem odd that she had never been to Hestercombe, only a short drive from Flora Cottage.

She knew that it was reckoned one of the finest Edwin Lutyens-Gertrude Jekyll gardens, a marvelous congruence of design and nature set in the Somerset countryside. It was a curious collaboration. Sir Edwin Lutyens was a dapper young architect who, beginning in the 1890s, was commissioned by wealthy Englishmen to create houses and gardens that drew their inspiration from the Tudor period. Many of his most successful creations were renovations of existing houses, and the redesigned gardens were the crowning glory. Gertrude Jekyll, a stout woman of stern appearance, was old enough to be Lutyens's mother. Her role was to provide the flesh for Sir Edwin's architectural skeletons. His graceful terraces and steps, walls, and paths were a framework that she filled with sweeps of harmonious color, making lavish use of the humble flowers of cottage gardens and bringing her artist's eye and gardener's knowledge of plants to the task.

As the train sped toward Somerset that May afternoon, Julia knew that she would go to Hestercombe at the first opportunity. What she did not know was that she would make several visits to Hestercombe in the next few weeks and that she would find a body in the garden.

The first thing that she noticed on arrival at Flora Cottage was the clematis in bloom over the front door. It was a small-flowered variety, delicately colored, a scattering of fragile pink stars across the gray stone wall. I've never seen it in bloom before, she realized. I must not have been home before in May.

Is "home" the appropriate word? she asked herself as she fumbled for her key. Yet the gray stone cottage was beginning to seem like home. She walked up the short flagstone path with a proprietorial step, casting a disapproving glance at the crumpling red tulips lined up on either side. The white front door with its gleaming brass handle and slit for letters appeared to be welcoming her as resident, not visitor. After all, she reflected, I have learned to put down roots quickly. That was essential in the kind of life we lived. We couldn't let life slip by while we waited for a permanent home.

She pushed the door open to find four days' worth of post and newspapers on the mat. She put down her suitcase and picked up the post: a bill and an air letter from America addressed to her and several circulars and a catalogue all addressed to her parents. How long does it take before that stops? she wondered.

This was the reality of Flora Cottage despite the starry clematis and the welcoming front door. It was still strange to come into this house as her own, not theirs, to hear not their warm greeting but only the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall and the hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen. I should get a dog or a cat, she said to herself half seriously, forcing herself to cope as people expected. "Julia is such a strong person," she had overheard someone say at the memorial service. "She is badly hurt, but she will survive."

I suppose I must be a survivor, she thought. Frank had helped her through the terrible weeks last winter after her parents were killed in a car accident. But there had been no one to play that role when Frank's plane had slammed into an Andean mountainside. Emma had tried, but Emma had to cope with her own grief at the loss of her father. She was also beginning to shape an independent life for herself, embarking on a career in the north of England. It wouldn't have been fair to lean on her. And Emma wouldn't understand that Julia's keenest pain came from the guilt of her own survival, that she should still be alive, still delighting in the daffodils, while Frank would never see another spring.

It would be so easy to give in, to sink down on the stairs and cry, and perhaps she'd feel better afterward if she allowed herself to succumb. But she had acquired self-discipline along with other diplomatic traits. The steel core that others had observed took control, forced her to move on into the kitchen to put the kettle on for tea.

While waiting for the kettle to boil, she went back into the hall to hang up her coat. She paused for a moment in front of the hall mirror, scrutinizing the figure reflected there. The last few months had taken their toll on her face. The fine mesh of wrinkles under her eyes and the gray hairs now sprouting on her dark curly head undoubtedly owed something to her age. You couldn't escape these signs of maturity once you reached the midforties. But the weight she had lost under the strain showed in her face as much as elsewhere on her small frame. The clear brown eyes that stared back at her uncompromisingly were etched with pain. And yet, she told herself, I have not let myself go. I look after myself.

The whistling kettle recalled her to the kitchen. A few minutes later, Julia was sitting in the small conservatory at the back of the cottage, a tray beside her with teapot and milk jug and a plate of chocolate biscuits, the newspapers and post in a pile at her feet. She sniff ed the milk suspiciously, but it was still fresh.

Through the windows of the conservatory, she could see that the blossom had finally fallen from the huge apple tree that dominated the lawn. Two pots of geraniums in the corner provided a splash of color in what was basically a monochrome room defined by the gray stone wall of the cottage, the white painted doors and framework of the conservatory, and the black and white tiled floor. Julia had often chided her parents for not adding more plants. This could be used as a greenhouse, she decided, sipping the hot tea. I shall buy some tomato plants. Dare I try a grape vine?

It was time to start making some decisions. Everyone had warned her not to move too quickly, not to make hasty decisions. But it was now six months since her parents' fatal car crash, three months since Frank's plane went down. There were practical decisions she could make, small steps, not major moves, things like planting, rearranging, redecorating, anything that reinforced for her that life was going on without necessarily determining her whole future.

She drank a whole cup of tea before facing the letter. It was from Anne Sheldon. Dear Anne, she had been so anxious to help this past winter, even from thousands of miles away. "Do come over and stay with us for a while," she had pleaded over the phone. "It will help you get over the worst." Tempting as it was, Julia had resisted. Not surprisingly, this letter was a renewal of the invitation. But it continued with reminiscences about years gone by. "I still find it incredible that the circle has been broken. Even though we saw each other so rarely, we kept in touch, and I had visions of someday planning a marvelous reunion for the five of us — have you seen Nigel since you've been back in England? Next year, it will be twenty-five years since we went down, and I had thought...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Trafford
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1490766200
• ISBN 13: 9781490766201
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 242
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
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