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Once Mrs. Stone had solved the mystery to her satisfaction, there was the question of how to lay the charges and pronounce her verdict. She bided her time. One day when her daughter and granddaughter drove together to Winchester to do the shopping, her granddaughter’s husband stayed behind to work in the garden. She found him cutting brambles from among the hydrangeas.

“Robert,” she said, “would you be a dear and come have some tea?”

“What, now?” he said. He considered the hydrangeas. He had barely started. It was still morning.

“I would so appreciate your company,” she said, and she turned away so as not to give him further opportunity to refuse. By the time she had returned to the kitchen, the kettle was piping. She finished arranging the tea service, and when she carried things to the parlor, Robert was just untying his shoes in the hallway. He hurried after her and took the tray from her to set it down.

“You’re feeling all right today, then?” he said.

“Quite well, thank you. I could be seeing after the brambles myself.”

“Oh, now that’s hard work Mrs. Stone. And a hot day today.”

“I’m feeling quite recovered.”

“A lot still to be done hereabouts. The orchard has been neglected a long time.”

“Indeed.” She poured. She asked the ritual questions, though she already knew that he took his tea with milk and sugar. She squeezed a bit of lemon into her own tea. She sipped, then fixed Robert with her gaze. The cup was tiny in his big hands. He didn’t hold it correctly, though he seemed oblivious of this and, indeed, looked utterly at ease. “I believe we have established,” she said, “that you subscribe to a theory of life after death.”

He smiled. “Mrs. Stone, I thought we had finished this conversation years ago.”

“I was content to let it go. You, on the other hand, have brought it up again.”

He looked puzzled. Or he pretended to look puzzled.

She said, “I’m quite happy to save you some embarrassment, Robert, and so I think that we should conclude this business swiftly, before Anne and Rachel return.”

“What business do you—”

She held up her hand. “If, as I say, we are to conclude this conversation in due haste and in a satisfactory manner, I suggest that we not waste time with excuses or feigned misunderstanding. Do I make myself clear?”

He shrugged.

“Yes or no?” she insisted.

“Yes, I suppose,” he said. “I really don’t know—”

“All right, then. If I must spell it out, then I will. After Geoffrey died, some things began to happen here. Not immediately after he died, but after Anne came to help out, and you along with her. Do not imagine that I do not appreciate all the good things you have done around here. The doors and windows all work properly now. I have noticed the countless small repairs and been glad of them. But you have also attempted to fix that which is not broken.”

His face was passive. He watched her.

“I am entirely convinced that you know what I am talking about. When I was well enough to do some gardening again, I found again and again that the gate between the drive and the garden house was closed but not latched. I always latch it. It is quite easily done. I should say that it is almost instinctive to latch that gate. Except that Geoffrey would never do it. He had what I would call, were I not so fond of his memory, a perverse disregard for latching that gate. And since you have come here, at every turn I have been finding it unlatched, as it would have been were Geoffrey passing through it several times a day. And you are nodding because…?”

Robert smiled. “You used to argue about it, you and him.”

“So it was well known to you that Geoffrey often left the gate in this condition. And you also knew that it was his habit of a morning to sit in the garden house and smoke his pipe. He did not smoke in those last years, and I had not smelled pipe smoke in the garden house for quite some time, until there were lingering traces of it. After you had come.”

“Mrs. Stone, I don’t smoke.” He said it simply. One might have imagined that he thought he had nothing at all to answer for, when in fact she knew, she knew.

“You did at one time. When you and Anne were first married, you smoked after dinner with Geoffrey. And don’t deny that he gave you a pouch of his tobacconist’s blend. I know he did.”

Robert sipped his tea in silence.

“The daffodils gave you away,” Mrs. Stone said. “I count the pots that I plant them in. I have twenty-seven. They fit among the ground tiles in a precise fashion, and when I started to plant them with the hardened bulbs this spring, something felt amiss. I counted. Twenty-six. One pot was missing. At lunch, I asked Rachel to add one terra cotta pot to the shopping, but she couldn’t see to it that day. She had to return to London. When I went to arrange the finished pots in their places, I had twenty-seven. I supposed that I had simply miscounted. But, no, I didn’t miscount, did I? Someone had come, Robert, and taken one of the pots away, planted seed, and returned it. And when thistles sprouted in one of the pots that was supposed to yield daffodils, who pointed this out to me, Robert? As if he were afraid that I might not notice?”

“I thought it strange, is all.”

“You knew that Geoffrey used to always tease about planting thistles. It was his favorite joke.” She wagged her finger at him. “It’s no good, manufacturing these miracles for me. I won’t be fooled. I will, if anything, be somewhat insulted. To be thought so gullible as that is insulting, Robert.” She gave him a stare he would feel.

He met her gaze. “You’re convinced, then, that all of this is my doing.”

“Rachel is too sensible. Anne wouldn’t dare. And it wouldn’t occur to either of them that I would crave any such consolation. They know me. They know me as you do not.” She picked up the pot. “I do not require you to confirm your guilt, but neither will I credit any denial. More tea?”

He held out his cup. He said, “I think you’ll believe what you choose to believe.”

She poured. “Thank you. I believe that is an agreeable state in which to leave the matter. Nothing more need be said.”

Robert looked out the garden window. “You’re letting them grow,” he said. “The thistles.”

“It seems a fitting memorial to Geoffrey, after all,” Mrs. Stone said.

“I agree, Mrs. Stone.” He smiled and then covered the smile with his hand, as if it embarrassed him.

“I’m glad we had this talk.”

“So am I,” he said. Then he laughed a queer laugh.

“Indeed, so am I.”

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