Jane was up as she spoke and moving away. She reached the door just as Raymond closed it and, turning, saw her.
“Oh, Miss Molloy—I was really looking for you. Is Garstin anywhere about?”
“I haven’t seen him,” murmured Jane, as if the absent gardener might be blooming unnoticed in one of the borders.
“He’s not in the potting-shed? I’ll just look in and see. I want to stand over him and see that he puts these black irises where I want them to go. They come from Palestine, and the last lot failed entirely because he was so obstinate. I’ll get a trowel and mark the place I think.” She moved forward as she spoke, and Jane, horror-struck, stammered:
“Let me look. It’s so dusty in there.”
She was back at the door of the shed, but Lady Heritage was beside her. “I want a trowel, too,” she said, and Jane felt herself gently pushed over the threshold.
They were both just inside the door. It seemed dark after the strong light outside. There was a row of windows along one side, and a broad deal shelf under them. There were piles and piles of pots and boxes. There were hanks of bass and rows of tools, There were watering-cans. There was a length of rubber hose. But there was no George Patterson.
Jane put her hand behind her, gripped the jamb of the door, and moved back a pace so that she could lean against it. The pots, the tools, the bass and the rubber hose danced before her bewildered eyes.
Lady Heritage put her basket of bulbs down on the wide shelf and said:
“Garstin ought to be here. He’s really very tiresome. That’s the worst of old servants. When a gardener has been in a place for forty years as Garstin has, he owns it.”