The Garden of Forgotten Wishes - Trisha Ashley Page 0,128

be getting more stock in soon.

‘People seem very keen to part with their brass before they go.’

‘I know, there’s something about looking round a stately home or garden that makes you want to try to take a piece home with you,’ I said. ‘A souvenir to remind you how lovely it was, I suppose. I do it myself.’

‘Well, we need a bit more choice.’

‘I know, I kept telling Ned, but he can see it himself now, so there’s going to be a lot more stock soon – including some aimed at the children, with a galleon logo.’

Then I asked him if Ned had seemed OK, because he’d been to have it out with Wayne about those holes in the lawn.

‘He didn’t say anything but “thank you” when I took him a cup of tea down, but he’d been digging like fury and he’s probably down to Australia by now.’

‘Oh dear, that doesn’t sound too good. Perhaps Wayne denied it all and they argued?’ That certainly wouldn’t make Ned warm to my loathsome relatives!

‘Quite likely,’ James said, a Job’s comforter.

Ned didn’t look angry when I saw him later, but his face darkened alarmingly when I asked him if he’d spoken to Wayne.

‘Yes, he was up at Risings – and I’m certain the spade he was using was one that went missing when he was working for me. But I couldn’t prove it, any more than that it was he who dug those holes all over my lawn, and he knew it.’

‘So … he didn’t admit he’d done it?’

‘No, but I don’t think he’ll try anything like that again. I’ve warned him that if I ever find him on my property, he’ll be sorry. I think I scared him, but he was still cocky, even when I’d finished tearing him off a strip.’

‘I suppose he’s just like that,’ I suggested.

Ned frowned. ‘There seemed to be a bit more to it than that, as if he knew something I didn’t and then, when I was leaving, he asked me if I was happy with my new gardener and I said it was none of his business.’

‘It isn’t,’ I said, feeling deeply uneasy. ‘Did he say … anything else?’

‘Yes, that perhaps I wouldn’t be so happy with you, if I knew what he knew.’

I went hot and cold. ‘What … did you think he meant by that?’ I asked, trying to stop a slight quiver sneaking into my voice.

‘I was about to ask him – or possibly shake it out of him – when we saw Audrey Lordly-Grace’s car coming up the drive and he walked off and started digging again. So I thought I’d better leave before Audrey came nosing over to see why I was there.’

I must have looked odd, because he patted me as if I was a nervous dog and said, ‘Don’t look so worried, Marnie. Don’t forget, Wayne does a lot of gardening jobs around the area, so he’s probably picked up some version of the story about your resignation from the Heritage Homes Trust and thinks I took you on without knowing about it.’

That was a possibility, and I certainly preferred it to the alternative!

I smiled weakly. ‘I suppose he must have, but I was hoping it wouldn’t become common knowledge.’

‘Local people will take you as they find you, and we all know the truth, so I wouldn’t let it worry you,’ he said reassuringly.

Little did he realize what I was really worried Wayne might know!

It was still the school holidays, so the village continued to be busy and, if we didn’t get quite the hordes of visitors crowding in that we’d had over Easter weekend, it was still busier than we could have hoped for.

Roddy came in early in the afternoon and went round with the first of Ned’s tours, to see how it was done. He’d already studied the plan, guidebook and information boards – in fact, he told me he’d taken pictures of the information boards so he could mug them up.

He and Ned seemed to be getting on very well and went off into the office to set up the old desktop for the business and induct Roddy into the ways of a PA. Roddy seemed a quiet, scholarly man, who said he’d be happy to work mostly in the office between taking guided tours around, but in any free time, he would work on his own laptop. He was writing a book about the legacy of Oliver Cromwell: the intermarriage of the Cromwell