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By Root 504 0

It was, Miss Marple thought, rather a sad progress. Here, there had once been a well kept, though certainly not in any way an outstanding or remarkable, garden. It had had the elements of an ordinary Victorian garden. A shrubbery, a drive of speckled laurels, no doubt there had once been a well kept lawn and paths, a kitchen garden of about an acre and a half, too big evidently for the three sisters who lived here now. Part of it was unplanted and had gone largely to weeds. Ground elder had taken over most of the flower beds and Miss Marple’s hands could hardly restrain themselves from pulling up the vagrant bindweed asserting its superiority.

Miss Anthea’s long hair flapped in the wind, shedding from time to time a vague hairpin on the path or the grass. She talked rather jerkily.

‘You have a very nice garden, I expect,’ she said.

‘Oh, it’s a very small one,’ said Miss Marple.

They had come along a grass path and were pausing in front of a kind of hillock that rested against the wall at the end of it.

‘Our greenhouse,’ said Miss Anthea, mournfully.

‘Oh yes, where you had such a delightful grapevine.’

‘Three vines,’ said Anthea. ‘A Black Hamburg and one of those small white grapes, very sweet, you know. And a third one of beautiful muscats.’

‘And a heliotrope, you said.’

‘Cherry Pie,’ said Anthea.

‘Ah yes, Cherry Pie. Such a lovely smell. Was there any bomb trouble round here? Did that — er — knock the greenhouse down?’

‘Oh no, we never suffered from anything of that kind. This neighbourhood was quite free of bombs. No, I’m afraid it just fell down from decay. We hadn’t been here so very long and we had no money to repair it, or to build it up again. And in fact, it wouldn’t have been worth it really because we couldn’t have kept it up even if we did. I’m afraid we just let it fall down. There was nothing else we could do. And now you see, it’s all grown over.’

‘Ah that, completely covered by — what is that flowering creeper just coming into bloom?’

‘Oh yes. It’s quite a common one,’ said Anthea. ‘It begins with a P. Now what is the name of it?’ she said doubtfully. ‘Poly something, something like that.’

‘Oh yes. I think I do know the name. Polygonum Baldschuanicum. Very quick growing, I think, isn’t it? Very useful really if one wants to hide any tumbledown building or anything ugly of that kind.’

The mound in front of her was certainly thickly covered with the all-enveloping green and white flowering plant. It was, as Miss Marple well knew, a kind of menace to anything else that wanted to grow. Polygonum covered everything, and covered it in a remarkably short time.

‘The greenhouse must have been quite a big one,’ she said.

‘Oh yes — we had peaches in it, too — and nectarines.’ Anthea looked miserable.

‘It looks really very pretty now,’ said Miss Marple in a consoling tone. ‘Very pretty little white flowers, aren’t they?’

‘We have a very nice magnolia tree down this path to the left,’ said Anthea. ‘Once I believe there used to be a very fine border here — a herbaceous border. But that again one cannot keep up. It is too difficult. Everything is too difficult. Nothing is like it used to be — it’s all spoilt — everywhere.’

She led the way quickly down a path at right-angles which ran along a side wall. Her pace had increased. Miss Marple could hardly keep up with her. It was, thought Miss Marple, as though she were deliberately being steered away from the Polygonum mound by her hostess. Steered away as from some ugly or displeasing spot. Was she ashamed perhaps that the past glories no longer remained? The Polygonum certainly was growing with extraordinary abandonment. It was not even being clipped or kept to reasonable proportions. It made a kind of flowery wilderness of that bit of the garden.

She almost looks as though she was running away from it, thought Miss Marple, as she followed her hostess. Presently her attention was diverted to a broken down pig-sty which had a few rose tendrils round it.

‘My great-uncle used to keep a few pigs,’ explained Anthea, ‘but of course one would never dream of