Part 14 (1/2)

Something was wrong, because it was clear she was upset by my presence. Before I could say anything, she reached for one of the information sheets on the table and pa.s.sed it to me. A map of the garden. ”This ought to get you oriented.” She pointed to a patch of dark green squares surrounded by what looked like dirt paths next to a pond rockery. ”I suggest you start here.”

I looked at the legend on the map. Garden of World Medicine. Next to it: Pharmaceutical Beds. ”I'll do that.”

I followed her into the other room and entered a gift shop filled with books, potpourri, seeds, calendars, and plant-related souvenirs. Half a dozen Easter lilies, the flowers just beginning to open, sat in pots wrapped in lavender or pale yellow foil on a table in the middle of the room. Will stood behind a counter at the cash register, sorting through receipts.

”The door to the garden is in the next room,” Zara said to me. ”Do go through.”

The Chelsea Physic Garden was larger than I expected, an expansive private park with well-swept tree-lined gravel paths converging at a moss-covered statue of Sir Hans Sloane, the wealthy benefactor who bought the garden in the 1700s to ensure it could be maintained in perpetuity as an herbal garden and a place to teach. According to the map, I was looking at a large rectangle that was slightly squashed at the far end where the boundary followed the contours of the Thames and the Chelsea Embankment on the other side of a high redbrick wall. Here, as everywhere else in London, the trees were bare, but spring seemed more imminent in this rich garden with its peaty aroma of fresh mulch, vivid green carpet of gra.s.s, and the new growth of plants that had pushed through the soil.

The Garden of World Medicine was laid out in a way that reminded me of Monticello, with the same gra.s.sy pathways separating neat, tilled beds. Zara Remington found me on one knee, reading about a plant called Hyssopus officinalis among the Western European medicinal plants. The description on the little black-and-white marker read For all cold griefes of diseases of the chest and lungs, helping to expectorate tough phlemn. It sounded a lot like the hyssop plant William Coles described in Adam in Eden.

I stood up and said, ”I'm sorry if I've come at an inconvenient time.”

She pressed her lips together. I couldn't tell if she was worried or upset, or both. ”I was rather hoping you would have looked at your e-mail before you arrived and found one from me asking you to delay coming until half four. Unfortunately, I didn't have your number or I would have rung you. I a.s.sumed we'd be through with the lily sale ages ago. Will stayed around to help me finish totaling the receipts . . . I suppose it'll be all right. He doesn't know why you're here and he's also one of my most trusted and loyal volunteers. He's been with me for years.”

She was the first person so far who brought up the need for secrecy in discussing Kevin's letter. Maybe that meant she knew something, that Kevin had confided in her.

”I'm sorry,” I said again. ”I should have checked. London used to be my home and it's my first visit back in a while . . . I'm afraid I got sidetracked.” I pointed to the hyssop. ”About this plant-”

”Yes, we'll come back to that later.” She folded her arms across her chest and studied me. ”And before we go any further, I need to know about your relations.h.i.+p with Brother Kevin Boyle and how you managed to acquire the Fairbairn letter.” She gave me a pointed look and added, ”If you have the letter, you also have the book, do you not?”

Ryan had made the same request two days ago at Monticello. Explain yourself. The difference this time was that Zara Remington knew about Kevin's copy of Adam in Eden.

”I do have it,” I said. Then I answered her questions, except I left out telling her about Bram Asquith and that the book was now safely in his vault in Was.h.i.+ngton. But I did tell her I was fairly certain Kevin had left the Solander box with the book and the letter in a locker at the Natural History Museum because he needed to hide them.

”Kevin hid them for a good reason.” Her voice was grim. ”And now he's dead. He rang me the day before he pa.s.sed away and told me he was convinced someone else was looking for the book. Was that person you?”

A seagull screeched and wheeled overhead, disappearing over the wall in the direction of the Thames. ”No. It wasn't,” I said, taken aback.

Zara gave me a searching look. ”I'll have to take your word for it, won't I? And Ryan vouched for you.”

I said a silent prayer of thanks to Ryan. ”I'm afraid there isn't anyone else to ask. Ryan didn't know any of this before I visited him Friday at Monticello. And Kevin told me roughly the same thing he told you, that he believed someone was stalking him. You're the first person I've spoken to who knew he was worried about being followed.”

That seemed to surprise her. ”Do you have any idea who it was?”

”None.”

”There was a rather gorgeous coffee-table book published a number of years ago called The Beauty of Marlborough Gardens,” she said. ”Would it be too great a coincidence to a.s.sume you're the same Sophie Medina who took the photographs for that book?”

”When my husband and I lived in London, we rented what used to be the gardener's cottage on the old Marlborough estate,” I said, ”before the garden was turned into a private communal park for the homes in that neighborhood. I put together that book as a fund-raiser for the garden club.”

”Your photographs were stunning. I bought a copy at the Chelsea Flower Show and then I went to see the garden for myself.” She paused. ”Now I'm really curious what brings you here. You obviously have no professional connection to Kevin.”

”I'm not a botanist or even a very good gardener, if that's what you're asking.” Her lips curved in a small smile for the first time since we'd met. ”But I have a personal connection. He was a dear friend. And to answer your question, I thought you might be able to tell me about the letter, and since you know about it, the book as well.”

”I see. Do go on.”

”Ryan Velis was interested in the Fairbairn letter because it seemed to substantiate a theory at Monticello that Thomas Jefferson kept a seed press, either a portable one or an actual cabinet, in the White House during his presidency. Perhaps the seeds he and George Was.h.i.+ngton collected for an American botanic garden, plus new specimens Jefferson added from the Lewis and Clark expedition.”

Zara shoved her hands in her jacket pockets. ”Let's walk, shall we?”

Walking suited me, too. Zara's initial suspicion that I was Kevin's stalker, her request that our meeting be kept a secret, and her concern that one of her colleagues had seen me arrive was making me jumpy. I nearly looked over my shoulder to see if Will Tennant was watching us with his peculiar stare through the gift shop window.

”So are you here because you believe I can help you find these seeds, or that I might know where they are?” She gave me a smile like we were a pair of conspirators.

I didn't take the bait. ”It still hasn't been established that they even existed.”

”Kevin believed they did.”

I stopped walking. ”He told you?”

”He did.” She gave me a significant look. ”And that, my dear, is the extent of my knowledge of the whereabouts of those seeds. A week after he left here, he was dead.”

”A week after-? I thought Kevin came to London in February to give a talk at Kew Gardens.”

”That's right, he did,” she said. ”And whilst he was here, he spent a morning on Portobello Road pottering around the book dealer stalls. That's when he found the copy of Adam in Eden at the bottom of a box with a jumble of books on English gardens. He crowed about what a lucky find it was, even though, at the time, he thought none of it was worth much.”

We were standing in front of the statue of Hans Sloane, who appeared to be smiling down on us with sightless benevolence. The pockmarked statue was covered with moss that looked like dark green trim on his long flowing robe, and Sloane's carved face was so weathered that his eyes had worn away and it looked as if he were wearing large goggles.

”At the time?” I said. ”Something changed his mind?”

”It did,” she said. ”But before I go on, where is the book right now? I do hope it's someplace safe.”

Zara Remington was the only person who knew the entire history of the book, and Kevin had trusted her. ”It's at Asquith's in Was.h.i.+ngton. Bram Asquith is a good friend of a friend of mine. He's appraising it as a favor.”

”Well, Bram will certainly know in a tick about the provenance of that book. I hope he doesn't talk.”

”He's not going to. However, there might be some question about who owns it now that Kevin is dead.”

Zara put a hand to her forehead as though she were ma.s.saging a migraine. ”Good Lord. Who are our options?”

I almost smiled at her use of ”our.”

”The Franciscans and an American billionaire named Edward Jaine. He was Kevin's benefactor.”

”I didn't know Kevin was involved with him,” she said with a faint note of distaste in her voice. ”There have been rumors in the British press recently that Mr. Jaine has some rather unsavory business dealings.”

”What do you mean?”

”I don't recall exactly, but I believe it had to do with computers that were being s.h.i.+pped to Third World countries. Perhaps they were substandard, I'm not sure. You can probably find the story on the Internet.”

”I'll look. But you were going to explain about Kevin's trip here the week before he died.”

Zara tucked a wisp of hair that had come down from her bun back into place. ”It had to do with the book. He brought it back to England because someone wanted to take a look at it. A collector. That's when he found out how extraordinarily valuable it was.” She lowered her voice. ”Did Bram say anything to you?”

We continued walking down a broad gravel path toward a gate set into the brick wall at the back of the garden. Except for the occasional chuntering of traffic along the Chelsea Embankment on the other side of the gate and the twittering of invisible birds in the trees above us, Zara and I were alone in what seemed like our own secret garden in this quiet tucked-away corner of London. Almost four centuries ago, apprentices of the Wors.h.i.+pful Society of Apothecaries had tilled this same soil, growing medicinal plants and studying their uses. Like Monticello, here the present seemed to recede to a gentler past that moved at the slow, unhurried rhythm of nature.