Free Serpent in the Garden by Janet Gleeson

gather the dead man was a stranger to these parts. Perhaps he came in search of work?”
    This question prompted Granger to remove his pipe and place it upon the bench, alongside the shards of broken terra-cotta. He gave Joshua a level gaze. “You are a stranger here yourself, are you not, sir?” he said.
    Joshua threw his traveling cloak back over his shoulder, allowing the gardener a flash of his brilliant waistcoat. “Indeed I am,” he declared, fanning himself with his hat, before banging his head with his fist at his own stupidity. “Forgive me, Mr. Granger, I haven’t told you who I am. I must introduce myself: Joshua Pope, come to Astley on commission to paint the marriage portrait of Mr. Bentnick and his future bride.”
    Granger nodded his head slowly, looking Joshua up and down, taking in his strangely plumed hat, his extravagant cravat, the sketchbook under his arm, as if weighing up this information to see if it tallied with what he had just been told. “An artist, is it?” he said slowly. “And what would an artist be wanting with a gardener? Fancy painting some of my flowers, do you?”
    “No. Yes. In a manner of speaking, I suppose I do,” Joshua replied frankly. Despite his disfigurement Granger had a pleasing face, strong bones beneath a skin colored by weather and life’s vicissitudes. Joshua imagined him dressed as a buccaneer or a brigand waving his curved sword aloft. He found himself itching to take out his chalks and sketch him. “But it wasn’t that which brought me here. I came because Mrs. Mercier asked me to.”
    “And why did she do that?”
    “She bade me ask you if you’d found anything about him.”
    “No more than she already knows, for I told her before what I knew of him.”
    “You met him before, then?”
    “He came walking in the garden two days ago. I accosted him and he said it was work he was after, and that he was expert in the cultivation of pineapples. It was my opinion he’d not done much in this line before, so I sent him packing.”
    “On what did you base your judgment?”
    “In part his shifty look. But mostly because of his hands, sir. They were more carefully manicured than your own.”
    Joshua looked down at his fingers, which seemed feeble compared to Granger’s long, earthy digits.
    “Forgive me, sir. But I can’t see what all this is to you,” added Granger with unexpected curtness.
    Joshua met his gaze. “People intrigue me, Mr. Granger. Just as I presume you take note when you encounter a strange plant, so do I when I encounter some human idiosyncrasy. I heard Francis Bentnick say Miss Violet recognized the fellow. Yet Herbert Bentnick believed him to be a stranger to Sabine and her daughter. And now you tell me he claimed to know about pineapples and that his hands were not those of a gardener. That strikes me as a rare and curious fact. And it is a rare coincidence too that he should turn up here at Astley, at the very moment you turn the conservatory into a pinery.”
    “What gives you the impression any of it was a rare coincidence? It was nothing of the kind. He said it was Mrs. Mercier who wrote and urged him to come on account of it. I didn’t believe him, but there’s no doubt in my mind that he knew her.”
    “What else did you learn of him?”
    “He was a destructive man.”
    “In what way?”
    “Is this not proof enough?” Granger waved at the broken pots before him.
    “Is that all? You can’t be sure this damage wasn’t accidental. He might have staggered about in his last moments and broken the pots unwittingly.”
    “The pots were half buried, sir. I think not. The damage was certainly deliberate. And there’s more. When he came here two days ago, he cut one of the most advanced fruits without my noticing, and took it away.”
    “How do you know he did it?”
    “Who else would have done it?”
    “And what did you make of such an action?”
    “I thought that I was correct to label him a rascal and that he can’t