Henry took a seat behind the messy desk, moving a stack of seed catalogs off a spare chair and shoving some forgotten tea mugs to the side. There was a laptop on this desk, but it was half buried under a stack of paper, including what looked like a chemical analysis report, an old edition of the Saturday Telegraph, and a paperback book bent open at the spine.
“I’m guessing you can tell which side is Sue’s,” he said over the sound of a classic soul song.
“I think so. Charlie, who heads up my crew, and Sue would get along.”
“He’s the neat one, then, huh?” Henry asked.
“Comparatively, although I’m not as bad as you.”
Henry laughed. “No one’s as bad as me. Now, tell me more about what you’re hoping to find in my nan’s drawings.”
She explained a bit about her project and what she was hoping to find in his grandmother’s old sketchbooks. “Drawings can sometimes fill in the gaps between intention and reality.”
“Wouldn’t photographs be more helpful?” he asked.
“Yes, ideally, but this was 1907. It was still pretty rare for people to document a garden really closely unless they knew it was significant. Venetia Smith didn’t become famous until years later.”
“She wrote books, right?” he asked.
“Pardon?” she asked, leaning in to hear over a series of horn blasts from the music.
He snatched up his phone and lowered the volume on the speaker set on a bookshelf. “Sorry about that.”
“What was the song?” she asked.
“Jackie Wilson. It’s called ‘The Who Who Song.’ Dad used to drive up to Stoke-on-Trent to dance Northern Soul at the Golden Torch before he took over the farm from Granddad. Soul, Motown, Stax. He listened to all of it when he did the accounts, and I just sort of kept doing it after he died.”
That explained the James Brown shirt.
“I asked if Venetia Smith wrote books. The name sounds familiar,” he said.
“That’s right. She moved to America, got married, and lived there until she died. Highbury House was her last British commission.”
“Well, it’s decades later, but Nan was at Temple Fosse Farm during the war, and she used to do deliveries up to the big house. She didn’t get serious about her art until the fifties, after my mother was born.”
“Sydney said that your grandmother was a well-respected artist,” she said.
He grinned. “She wasn’t well-known enough for me to pack in farming and live a life of luxury, but she did sell to some galleries in London for a while. She used to take me up to visit her old favorites in the early nineties. A friend of hers used to travel all the time, so we would stay at her flat in Maida Vale.”
“I’m hopeful any sketches might give me some clues,” she said.
He leaned back in his chair. “My sister, Tif, and I cleaned out her house after she died. Tif didn’t take much—she lives in London so she has less than zero space. I ended up with the lot of Nan’s things. I’m sure I have at least a few of her sketchbooks.”
Emma sat up. “Could you dig them out? I hate to take up your time when you’re obviously busy, but…”
He laughed. “But you’re going to anyway. Don’t worry about it. I’m always happy to help Sydney and Andrew.”
“Have you known them long?” she asked.
“About a year since. I would see Sydney’s grandfather, Rob, around a fair bit. He wasn’t a talkative man, but we’d say hello.”
She frowned. “I would have thought you’d known each other longer. Sydney mentioned a pub quiz.”
“Have you been recruited to Menace to Sobriety yet?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It’s the team name. I come along most weeks, although unless the subjects are about farming, classic soul music, or British military history I’m not particularly helpful,” he said.
“I would be gardening, garden writers, historic gardens, so you’ve got a more diverse knowledge base than I do,” she said.
“We need to bribe the quiz master to start gardening. Even out your chances of getting some questions you could ace when you come along.”
“Oh, I’m not coming to the quiz,” she said quickly.
“Why not?”
“It’s not really my thing.”
He cocked his head to one side. “You don’t have to drink, if that’s what you’re worried about. You don’t really need to help with the questions, either. The same team wins every week. We never stand a chance.”