Silent Bud Deadly Read online

  Silent Bud Deadly

  The English Cottage Garden Mysteries ~ Book 2

  By

  H.Y. Hanna

  Poppy never imagined she’d move to the English countryside and fall in love with a smug, demanding, ginger-haired male. Of course, that was before she discovered that she’d inherited a cottage garden nursery and before she met a certain talkative orange cat. Now she’s embracing a new life filled with rambling roses, fragrant herbs, warm summer days… and weeds (lots of weeds), as she attempts to restore the neglected cottage garden to its former glory.

  When she lands her first gardening job at a beautiful country house, Poppy is delighted to earn some much-needed money. But she barely sets foot in the flower bed before the meddling neighbour drops dead in front of her—murdered by a lethal poison. Before she knows it, Poppy is busy weeding out suspects, helped by mad scientist Bertie and his feisty terrier, Einstein, plus a whole host of nosy villagers… not to mention maverick crime author Nick Forrest.

  But with her clients’ flowerbed mysteriously dying and red herrings at every turn, Poppy soon discovers that neither gardening nor sleuthing are as simple as she thinks…

  The English Cottage Garden Mysteries

  Deadhead and Buried (Book 1)

  Silent Bud Deadly (Book 2)

  ~ more coming soon!

  Author’s Note:

  This book follows British English spelling and usage.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Doom and Bloom (The English Cottage Garden Mysteries ~ Book 3)

  The OXFORD TEAROOM MYSTERIES

  The BEWITCHED BY CHOCOLATE Mysteries:

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  Poppy Lancaster rose from her stooped position and groaned as she pressed a hand to her aching back. She felt as if she would never be able to stand up straight again. Gingerly, she rotated her shoulders, trying to ease the stiffness, and winced as a dull pain throbbed down her spine. Owww!

  Wearily, she gazed around her, at the reasons she had been reduced to this state: weeds, weeds, weeds everywhere. Pushing through the grass, poking out from between the paving stones, thrusting up amongst the bushes and smothering all the flowers… She had been waging war on them since early this morning, armed with a hand hoe and weeding knife, but she was beginning to feel like it was a losing battle.

  Sighing, Poppy leaned forwards once more and tugged at a stubborn green tuft wedged between two large rocks. The leaves tore away from the base of the clump as she pulled, leaving the root firmly embedded in the crack.

  “Aarrghh!” growled Poppy in frustration.

  She shifted her position to crouch closer and grimaced as her thigh muscles protested. Then the sound of rustling behind her made her turn swiftly around. She was alone here at the back of the garden and her recent brush with a maniacal murderer had made her much more wary than she used to be.

  The bushes rustled again, then parted, and Poppy smiled as she saw who had come to join her. If anyone had told her a month ago that she would give up her life in London to move to the country and fall in love with a smug, demanding, ginger-haired male, she would have rolled her eyes and laughed them out of the room. Of course, that was before she’d learned that she had inherited a cottage garden nursery, before she’d discovered secret green fingers, and before she’d met Oren.

  Okay… the cottage garden had been so badly neglected, it looked like Tarzan (and several of his apes) could have set up home here; her fingers were probably still more yellow than green; and Oren was a cat—a big, handsome ginger tom, to be precise. He strolled up now and butted his head against her shins, giving his trademark meow which—to Poppy’s ears—always sounded uncannily like he was saying “N-ow?” He twined himself between her legs, eyeing the limp pile of weeds and the disturbed earth around them with interest.

  “Hey Oren… fancy lending me a paw?” asked Poppy.

  “N-ow?”

  Poppy laughed. “No time like the present. What else have you got to do anyway—wash your face?”

  The ginger tom gave her a disdainful look, then stalked away to sit by a bush and pointedly began washing his ears. Poppy grinned and watched him for a moment, then turned to scan the garden around her again. The place still needed a lot of work—there were not just weeds to remove, but also overgrown shrubs to be trimmed, leaning roses to be staked, shrivelled flowers to be deadheaded, and wayward vines to be tied… but it was a vast improvement on when she’d moved in a couple of weeks ago.

  She flashed back suddenly to the first day she had arrived at Hollyhock Cottage and stepped through that rickety front gate. Even in its wild, tangled state, the place had radiated a certain magic—an enchanted garden filled with treasures, and hidden from the outside world by the high limestone wall around the perimeter—and she had instantly fallen for its unruly charm.

  But now she felt a familiar niggle of doubt. Had she done the right thing after all? A month ago, she’d had very different dreams—dreams of a life free from the drudgery of a dead-end job and the stress of crippling credit card debts, dreams of travel and excitement, and dreams of finding her father and belonging to a “family” at last. Oh, she’d always had her mother, of course—at least until Holly Lancaster had passed away last year—but despite the close bond between them, it had never felt complete. Poppy had always longed for more—for cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents—the things that other people took for granted.

  And while her mother’s free-spirited nature and relaxed attitude to parenting meant that she’d treated Poppy more like a best friend than a daughter, there was one thing Holly Lancaster would never talk about: her family. So when a letter from a lawyer had come out of the blue, with an inheritance from a grandmother she had never known, Poppy had jumped at the chance to connect with her long-lost family and maybe even find her roots at last.

  I just never expected to find my “roots” so literally, thought Poppy with a wry smile, looking down at the pile of weeds next to her, with their hairy roots bristling.

  And it was up to her now to carry on the Lancaster legacy. In fact—Poppy smiled to herself—she had already started. When she had received the small sum of cash left after her grandmother’s estate had been settled, the first thing she had done was rush out and buy a load of seeds. Then she had rummaged in the greenhouse extension at the back of the cottage—obviously added on by her grandmother to propagate and grow young plants for sale—and unearthed some seed trays, into which she had eagerly sown all the seeds. The wait after that had been tortuous, but the day she had noticed the first green shoots poking out of the soil had been the most exciting one of her life! And since then, she had been checking the seedlings impatiently every day, wishing they would grow faster.

  In fact, I might go and che
ck on them again now, thought Poppy, getting excitedly to her feet and making her way back to the cottage. She entered through the back door, which led directly into the greenhouse extension, and hurried up to the seed trays lined up on the long workbench in the centre of the room. But as she drew near, she caught her breath in dismay.

  The seedlings, which had been so green, upright, and healthy yesterday, had all wilted and collapsed, their leaves yellowed and withering. A few stems had even blackened and begun to rot.

  “No, no, no, no…” whispered Poppy, leaning down to look at them. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  She inspected the other tray and the other… they all showed the same thing: every seedling had died or was dying. Poppy was filled with confusion and disappointment. What had she done wrong? She had faithfully followed the instructions on the seed packet—well, bar a few small things—and it had looked like everything was going so well…

  Did I not give them enough water? Poppy rushed to fill a nearby watering can and began flooding the seed trays, only to pause and jerk back a moment later as she remembered the disaster she’d had with the office plants back in London. Those plants had nearly died because she had overwatered them. Maybe she had done the same thing here? But she had been so careful this time, feeling the soil with her fingers and making sure it felt dry before she had moistened it again…

  Maybe they need more sun? She glanced doubtfully up at the glass roof of the greenhouse extension. Sunlight was pouring in through the glass panes, straight onto the seed trays. No, it couldn’t be that…

  Perhaps if I just leave them alone, they’ll recover on their own, she thought at last with desperate optimism.

  She forced herself to step back and, with a last lingering look at the seed trays, she left the greenhouse and went outside once more. Slowly, she walked back to the spot where she had been weeding. The garden seemed to close in around her, even more wild and tangled than it had been before, and she felt a flash of panic as the enormity of what she had taken on struck her again.

  What had she been thinking? She had no plans, no skills, no real experience of gardening. She had nothing other than a few plant books left by her grandmother and a lifelong love of flowers. Why did she ever think she would be able to run a garden nursery?

  Her anxiety deepened as she thought of the credit card bills she still had to pay off. She might have a place to live rent-free now but she still had to keep up the minimum payments on the credit card each month, and with no job and no income, how was she going to find the money? That bit of cash from the estate was only enough to tide her over for a few weeks, but after that?

  A bee flew past her ear, buzzing merrily on its way back to its hive, and startling Poppy out of her agitated thoughts. She closed her eyes and took several deep, calming breaths. When she opened them again, she became aware of the faint sound of feline cries.

  Oren! She looked around for the ginger tom. He was no longer by the bush, washing his face. Instead, cries were coming from the very back of the garden. Hurriedly, she pushed her way through the undergrowth, following the cries until she came to the walled corner at the rear of the garden. Growing against the limestone wall was a monster of a rosebush—no, not a bush, but a huge rambler with enormous thorny canes snaking out in all directions, like the tentacles of some spiny sea monster. Clusters of creamy-white flowers decorated the prickly stems that arched out across the tangled mass, so that it looked like the sea monster was covered in foam, having a bubble bath…

  Poppy stared at it, wondering what to do. The rambler rose formed a huge mound, taller than her and several feet wide. Oren’s cries were coming from deep in the spiky mass. Had he wriggled in somehow and then got stuck amongst the barbed branches?

  “Oren? Are you there?”

  “N-ow! N-oooow!”

  “Hang on… I’m coming!” called Poppy

  She reached forwards tentatively and tried to lift one of the stems. “Ouch!” She jerked back as a sharp thorn embedded itself in her thumb.

  Poppy took a step back, sucking the wound on her thumb, and considered the monster plant again. She noticed a gap where its canes were draped over the wall on one side. The opening led into a hollow within the thicket of prickly branches. Slowly, she picked her way around until she reached the wall and, to her surprise, saw a wooden door through the opening.

  For a moment, all the childhood stories she had read of fairy groves and secret hollows in enchanted forests ran through her head… then, as she looked closer, she realised that there was a much more prosaic explanation. The door belonged to an old wooden shed. The rose must have once been planted next to the shed and expected to grow up and cover the wooden roof in a pretty manner, but with time and neglect, it had just kept growing and growing, until it was now eating everything in that corner of the garden. In fact, if she hadn’t come round to the side, next to the wall, she would never have even realised that there was a shed underneath.

  Oren was standing outside the door, pawing at the wood and demanding for it to be opened.

  “What do you want to go in there for?” Poppy asked. “It’s just a dirty old shed, probably full of cobwebs and spiders…” She shuddered.

  “N-ow!” said Oren, pawing eagerly again at the door. His tail twitched from side to side, and his whiskers quivered with excitement.

  What on earth could be in an old shed that could get him so excited? Poppy wondered. Carefully ducking under a thorny stem, she went up to the door and tried the handle. To her surprise, the door wasn’t locked, although it was stiff, the catch rusty. It took her several shoves to push it open. It swung inwards with a creak of the hinges that would have made any horror movie proud and Poppy felt an uneasy tingle creep up her spine, despite the sunny day.

  She peered through the doorway but the brightness of the sunshine outside and the tangle of rose stems covering all the windows made it hard to see anything in the darkened interior. Poppy took a deep breath and stepped in. Slowly, her eyes acclimatised. The place was crammed with old pots and seed trays, metal tins and glass jars, coils of rubber hose and lengths of twine, rusty shovels, bags of what looked (and smelled) like dried manure, and an assortment of decaying leaves, twigs, and other junk.

  Poppy took a few steps into the shed, wrinkling her nose at the musty smell. It looked like nobody had been in here for months: the cobwebs she had been dreading festooned every corner and a thick layer of dust lay on the potting bench by the window. Well, it was hardly surprising. With that thorny monster covering it on the outside, nobody would want to approach close enough to see the shed, never mind come in. Her heart sank at the thought of having to clear and sort out all this clutter and her first instinct was to back out and shut the door on all this mess. But before she could move, Oren streaked past her legs, making a beeline for the pile of burlap sacks in the corner.

  He sniffed the pile intently, then looked at her over his shoulder. “N-ow?”

  “No, Oren—we’ll come back and sort things out another day,” said Poppy, wanting to leave the grim, dusty interior and get back out into the bright sunshine.

  The cat ignored her, pawing at the sacks instead. “N-ow! N-ow!”

  Poppy frowned, then picked her away across the floor to the pile. “What is it?”

  Oren jumped up onto the top of the pile and pawed at the sacks again, his claws hooking in the rough fabric. Poppy lifted a corner of the burlap but saw nothing.

  “N-owww!” said Oren, climbing around the pile, his tail lashing with excitement.

  Poppy exhaled in exasperation. “What, Oren? There’s nothing here, just a heap of old sacks—”

  She broke off suddenly as her ears caught a sound. She froze. Was that… a squeak?

  Something moved in the pile. Poppy jerked her hand back, inadvertently knocking one of the burlap sacks off the top and exposing what was underneath. There was a scurry of movement, more squeaking, and Poppy found herself suddenly staring at several beady black eyes.


  It was a nest of rats.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Poppy screamed involuntarily, stumbling backwards. “Uuughh! Rats!”

  “Yee-ooowww!” cried Oren joyfully, pouncing straight on the nest.

  Rats squealed in panic and poured, like lemmings, out of the nest and over the pile onto the floor. Poppy shrieked and hopped from foot to foot, amid the sea of furry brown bodies scurrying around her. Oren yowled in delight, chasing a rat in circles, then darted between her legs, tripping her badly. Poppy gasped, stumbled, and reeled backwards, crashing against the potting bench. There was an ominous cracking sound, and the next moment, the bench broke, sagging to one side and depositing her with a thump on the floor, followed by half the contents of the shed wall.

  “Ow! Ugh! Uummghph!” mumbled Poppy as she was buried beneath an avalanche of empty pots, watering cans, rope, tools, twigs, and dried leaves.

  Dust filled the air in great clouds. Poppy lay stunned for a moment, then gingerly moved her arms and legs. Nothing seemed broken. She sat up and patted her head, feeling for injuries. She exhaled in relief. Somehow, she had escaped unscathed—other than a few minor scratches, and several leaves and twigs in her hair. She turned to glare at Oren, who was standing a few feet away, watching her with what looked like a grin on his cheeky feline face.

  “N-ow?”

  “N-OW yourself,” muttered Poppy, sticking her tongue out at the cat.

  “What on earth are you doing?”

  Poppy froze with her tongue still poking out of her mouth, then she twisted around as a shadow fell across the open shed door. The interior of the shed seemed to shrink as a tall man stepped inside. Dark eyes, saturnine features, a brooding, sensitive mouth…

  Nick Forrest looked the epitome of the moody author—and he usually behaved like one too, swinging from friendly neighbour to scowling stranger in a matter of seconds. Today, though, he looked to be in an unusually good mood; he also looked like he was on the verge of laughter as he surveyed her dishevelled state.