I parked on the part of the drive that circled the front portico. Nat was working on the hedges in front of the house, pruning off defiant shoots of green. He stood on a small stepladder. He was wearing overalls, his wide straw hat, long yellow rubber gloves that gripped a set of giant silver clippers shining in the sun. When I climbed out of the car he watched me for a moment and then stepped down the ladder. The sun was bright and the air was surprisingly clear. I imagined it was always fogged or rainy or wet at Veritas, but this was a brassy spring day.
“Howdy, Mr. Carl,” said Nat. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. Up close I could see the sweat dripping from his temples. The red ring around his eye was bright and proud in the sun. “Miss Caroline’s not here. We don’t know where she is.”
“I’m not here for Caroline,” I said. “I’m here to see her mother.”
“Also not here, I’m afraid. Still out of the country.”
“Then I’ll talk to Caroline’s father.”
He looked at me and then turned his head to stare up at the second floor and its shuttered windows. “Not a good day for a visit, I would guess. You’ve heard about Master Edward?”
“I heard.”
“We reached Master Robert in Mexico with the news, but we can’t find Miss Caroline. Any idea where she might be, Mr. Carl?”
“I’ll tell her what happened,” I said, “just as soon as I talk to her father.”
He lifted the long shiny shears and laid their pointed tips on his shoulder. “Like I said, not a good day for a visit.”
“We all have work to do,” I said, “just like you and your pruning.”
He nodded at the hedges. “Mrs. Shaw wants the grounds in shape for the guests. She’s arriving from Greece tonight, cutting short her vacation. It seems the brightest social occasions we have around here now are funerals.”
“That’s about to end.”
He raised his eyebrows when I said that and smiled. There was something charismatic in Nat’s smile. He didn’t smile often or easily, but when he did it was bright and inviting. It bespoke something shared instead of something hostile.
“Sit down a spell with me,” he said. He walked over to one of the stone benches that flanked the steps leading to the front door. I sat beside him. His head was turned to the left while he talked, as if examining the uneven hedges still to be pruned on that side of the house. I looked down the long wide expanse of green, large enough to plop in an entire housing development, and wondered, silently, at the price of real estate in that part of the Main Line.
“Mrs. Shaw, the younger Mrs. Shaw,” said Nat, “she named her children after the Kennedys. Edward and Robert and Jacqueline and Caroline. She wanted the glamour, I suppose.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“This was before all the scandals erupted, all the truths emerged about their crimes and infidelities. But still, you would have thought she’d pick a less tragic family to emulate.”
“Like the Pooles?”
He reached down with his clippers and snipped at an errant leaf of grass. “Hardly less tragic.”
“What’s your last name, Nat?” I asked.
“You know, Mr. Carl, the strangest thing happened. I was in the elder Mrs. Shaw’s garden and I couldn’t help but notice that the oval plot before the statue was dug up and put back down again.
“Is that a fact?”
“I wouldn’t have minded so much, but the plants were replanted poorly. You have to almost drown them in water when you put them back. If you don’t the roots won’t properly take. It’s a damn shame to kill a good plant.”
“Among other things.”
“Find anything interesting down there, Mr. Carl?”
“Just some ancient history,” I said.
“Yes, I suppose that’s right. For your generation ancient is anything before Reagan. And what is history, really, but the register of crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind?”
“Shakespeare?”
“Gibbon. Have you read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?”
“No, actually.”
“You should. Very encouraging.”
“Why, Nat, I didn’t know you were a closet Communist.”
“What do gardeners know of politics? How’d Miss Caroline take to learning all that ancient history?”
“Not so well.”
“Yep. That’s what I figured. Remember what I said about some things ought to being left buried?”
“But isn’t it better to know the truth, no matter how vile?”
He lifted up his head and cackled. “Whoever told you such nonsense? One kind lie is worth a thousand truths.”
“How much do you know about everything that has gone on with this family?”
“I’m just the gardener.”
“Who killed her, Nat? Who killed Charity?”
“Oh, Mr. Carl, you said it yourself. Ancient history. I didn’t show up here until years and years after Miss Charity Reddman disappeared. How could I know a thing like that?”
“But you do, don’t you?”
“I’m just the gardener,” he said, standing up, putting on his hat. “I’ve got work still to do.”
“Ever hear of a family called Wergeld?”
“Never.”
“Any idea why the elder Mrs. Shaw would leave a fortune in a trust entitled Wergeld?”
“We all have our secrets, I suppose.”
“You haven’t told me yet your family name.”
“Not too much call around here to know the last name of servants.”
“I’m just a servant too, I guess. No different than you.”
“Oh there’s a difference,” said Nat. “I may just be a servant, yes, but I care about this family and its fate more deeply than you can guess, Mr. Carl. What about you? Who are you here for? You here for Caroline or are you just here for yourself?”
“Mr. Shaw’s in, I suppose.”
“Always,” said Nat, taking his clippers back to the ladder by the hedges and climbing the steps wearily, one after the other.
I watched him for a bit and then pushed myself off the bench and started for the steps leading to the door of the Reddman mansion.
“You don’t need to drag it all up to Mr. Shaw today,” said Nat as he started in again with his clipping, the blades sliding one across the other with a small shivery screech. “It’s a hard enough day for him as it is.”
I stopped and turned around to look at him. He was still working, still clipping the offending branches one by one.
“What’s your last name, Nat?”
Without looking away from the dark green hedges that surrounded the house, without slowing the pace of his shivery clips, he said, “It’s not Poole, Mr. Carl, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
I took that in and nodded to myself. Nat kept working on the hedges, as steadily and as focused as if I weren’t there watching. I spun around and headed for the house.
My shoes scraped at the granite steps as I climbed toward the heavy wooden door and pulled the knob announcing my presence. I waited a bit before the door squealed open and Consuelo, dressed all in black, faced me.
“I’m here to see Mr. Shaw,” I said.
She squinted her eyes at me and gave me an up-and-down examination. “No. Mr. Shaw is not seeing anyone today.”
“It’s very important I talk to him,” I said, sweeping past her and into the decrepit front hallway of Veritas. Even though the sun was bright outside it was still dark and damp in here, the heavy riblike beams overhead catching so little of the reflected light they seemed lost in darkness. The floor of the front hallway creaked as I passed over it and made my way around the strange circular couch and toward the formal hanging stairwell.