‘Have you thought of a window-box and some of the miniatures?’ asked Aldermann. ‘They can do astonishingly well, so long as the box is well drained and preferably south-facing.’
‘Is that right?’ said Wield, alert to the change from watchful reserve to lively enthusiasm, though it was so marked that he didn’t need to be very alert. ‘What varieties would you recommend?’
‘That’s hard,’ said Aldermann. ‘I can point out growing characteristics, but as for looks, every man’s his own arbiter. “Varieties” in roses means just that. Their variety is infinite; at least it appears so. Every year brings new advances. That’s the fascination of being a hybridist. You’re never really certain what you’re going to get. You select your stock according to the best horticultural principles, you do all the work, everything goes according to plan, but not until you see that first bloom do you really know what you’ve achieved. It brings a whole new range of excitement and uncertainty into our experience!’
‘I get plenty of that in my job already,’ laughed Wield.
‘Do you?’ Aldermann sounded mildly surprised. ‘I suppose policing is rather unique. But on the whole, isn’t most of life, outside the rose-garden, I mean, surprisingly unsurprising?’
‘My husband is an enthusiast and also an evangelist, Sergeant,’ interrupted Daphne with a slightly strained laugh. ‘I really must see to the dinner, darling. And it’s time that Diana was coming in, I think. Would you see to her?’
This was dismissal, polite but clear, and Wield stood up to take his leave.
Aldermann however came to his aid.
‘Diana sounds happy enough,’ he said, glancing down the garden where they could see and hear the little girl squealing in delight as Singh pushed the swing higher and higher. ‘And I must show the sergeant some of the miniatures he’s interested in. I’ve got a few in a raised bed down here.’
He set off down the steps which led from the terrace into the garden. Daphne Aldermann said, ‘Goodbye then, Sergeant,’ and held out her hand. Wield shook it, wondering where this well-bred lady drew the line. Would she shake hands when saying goodbye to a uniformed constable, for instance? And was he right in sensing an enthusiasm to be rid of him that would have made her shake hands with a leprous cannibal?
He followed Aldermann down the garden along a narrow path between two clumps of exuberantly colourful rhododendrons to a long windowless outhouse in rustic brick. As if the shrubbery were not screen enough, the building was almost covered by a huge climbing rose which seemed to support the walls rather than vice versa. It was laden with large, ruffled, soft pink blossoms which exhaled a rich perfume.
‘You like my Madame Grégoire?’ said Aldermann as he fitted a key in the door. ‘You’re seeing her at her best. Another month and she’ll be down to a handful of blooms.’
He opened the door and went inside, snapping on a light switch.
‘It’s very nice,’ said Wield, following, though to tell the truth he was finding all this colour and scented air a little cloying. His thoughts somehow drifted to his mother, a generously rounded woman who had been much given to gaudy blouses and musky perfumes and empty sentimentalities.
The outhouse was full of the instruments of gardening, all in neat array. Aldermann took a pair of gardening gloves and a pruning knife from a high shelf and removed what looked like a newspaper boy’s bag from a hook, completing the impression by draping it round his neck. Wield’s eye meanwhile was taken by a large wall-cabinet with a solid front held shut by a solid-looking padlock.
‘Good security, sir,’ he said approvingly.
‘What? Oh yes. It’s for the children’s sake, of course,’ said Aldermann. ‘I doubt if it would do more than slightly delay real burglars, Sergeant, but modern gardening uses modern substances and I’ve got enough stuff in there in the way of herbicides and pesticides to kill an army!’
He led the way out, carefully locking up behind him. When they reached the rose-garden, the function of his neck-bag became apparent. From time to time he paused to slice off a wasting bloom and drop it into the bag.
‘Sorry about this,’ he said, ‘but it’s the only way to keep control.’
‘You surely don’t take care of everything yourself?’ said Wield, who was still pondering the easy reference to the lethal contents of the locked cabinet.
‘Hardly,’ laughed Aldermann, looking round at the huge expanse of gardens. ‘In my great-uncle’s day – he actually created the garden, by the way – there was a full-time gardener. Times, and costs, have changed, of course. The old gardener’s son started a gardening contracting business and they come out here one or two days a week during the growing season to keep things under control. I do as much as I can and almost everything to do with the roses.’
‘Even that must be almost a full-time job,’ said Wield.
‘It occupies the centre of my life, yes,’ agreed Aldermann. ‘But there’s plenty of room round the edges for earning a living. Not that I don’t sometimes dream of being able to give all my attention here. What harm does it do a man, I wonder, when the harsh facts of existence hinder him from growing steadily into the fullness of his own nature?’
The brown eyes turned on Wield, not watchful now but vulnerably wide and full of frank, guileless innocence, yet arousing in the sergeant the uneasy feeling that Aldermann had somehow penetrated to the very heart of his own double existence.
‘You may be right, sir,’ he said. ‘That’s a fine-looking instrument.’
He nodded at the pruning knife and felt angry with himself for the deliberate cutting off of this potentially productive shoot of personal philosophy. It was a small act of cowardice, almost certainly unnecessary, but none the better had it been necessary. Defence too can be habit-forming. It is aroused by threat. It can be activated when no threat is intended. And it sometimes continues when there’s nothing left to defend. For almost a year now, since a long-established relationship had died on him, he had led a life of hermit-like celibacy. There were no roses at the centre of his existence, just a dark, destructive hiding place in which there was no longer even anything hiding.
Aldermann smiled as if he understood every thought in the sergeant’s mind and said, ‘Yes, I prefer it to secateurs. It belonged to my great-uncle, though curiously I was shown how to use it by my great-aunt who was strongly concerned for the good appearance of the gardens. So was my great-uncle, of course, but his motivation was not to impress others, but to express love. Removing the dying blooms is a sad but necessary task. Naturally a lover of the plants will want to use the quickest and kindest instrument available.’
He held the knife up as he spoke, in a gesture close to a chivalric salute, and the sunlight caught its curved and silvery blade.
‘Now, let me see; the miniatures! Of course, that’s what you want to see, isn’t it? Over here. I don’t have very many but you may get some ideas for your box. This Baby Masquerade is very pretty. The flowers change colour as they develop which would be interesting in a window. I prefer it as a miniature, myself. At full size, it’s a little too garish for my taste.’
‘I like the look of these,’ said Wield, finding the man’s enthusiasm infectious. ‘What are they?’
‘You have a good old-fashioned taste, I see,’ said Aldermann approvingly. ‘Those are dwarf polyanthas. That Baby Faurax is terribly pretty, don’t you think?’
Wield looked down at the clusters of tiny lavender and violet pompoms and nodded. They certainly appealed to him much more than the full-sized heavy-headed bushes. They brought into his mind a cottage garden with a stream running through it and a low-roofed building in glowing Cotswold stone.
He realized he was recalling a holiday cottage where he and his lost lover had spent a joyous fortnight many years before.