Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 799 & 800, March/April 2008

If there ever were another book. No words flowed. He knew that he’d been petering out the last few years. What more could he write about daisies? The damper it became outside, the more dried up Rimmer felt within, his brain parched as a lake bed cracked by drought. He stayed indoors. He nodded off in his chair and woke himself with his own snorts. His only real activity was to listen to Reverend Peach every morning. Much to his chagrin, he’d begun to take notes.

He let his eyes wander from the window to the wall. He stared at a framed print of a painting that depicted a woman in her island garden. The woman was none other than Celia Thaxter, who had lived on Appledore, created a lovely garden, and was famous in her day for writing about it. Rimmer’s agent had sent the picture as a gift when his first book was published. She said that his living on Appledore, which naturally associated his work with Thaxter’s book An Island Garden, added to Rimmer’s mystique.

“Like, you know,” Tina said over the phone, snapping her gum in his ear, “like your pages and hers are having a nice garden chat, from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Maxwell?... Hello?”

Rimmer neglected to tell his agent about Thaxter’s associations with things other than flowers. Murder, for instance. Thaxter had written an essay called “A Memorable Murder” about the gruesome deaths on Smuttynose Island, a spit of land near Appledore. The murders occurred in 1873. Thaxter’s essay was full of romantic nonsense, but Rimmer admired the prose with which she described the tale of woe:

Louis Wagner murdered Anethe and Karen Christensen at midnight on the 5 thof March, two years ago this spring. The whole affair shows the calmness of a practiced hand; there was no malice in the deed, no heat; it was one of the coolest instances of deliberation ever chronicled in the annals of crime. He admits that these people had shown him nothing but kindness. He says in so many words, “They were my best friends.” They looked upon him as a brother. Yet he did not hesitate to murder them.

Louis Wagner had rowed to Smuttynose on a cold, still night. The island was still encased in ice and snow. Wagner knew that the other men were out fishing. He also knew that they’d recently been paid, and he wanted to visit their homes and steal the money. Three women were asleep in the Christensen cottage, unprotected. Wagner felled Anethe with an axe and strangled Karen, but the third woman escaped. Wagner was captured, tried, and jailed. He admitted no guilt and expressed no regret.

And Celia Thaxter got her essay, Rimmer thought, peeved. Easy enough for her. She was a flowery woman in a flowery age. She was even famous for her poetry, for God’s sake. If such a murder happened on one of the Isles today, who would notice? It would be a blurb one day and a footnote the next, and might get a full minute on local news. Rimmer couldn’t even expect a newspaper byline, unless by some feat of divine intervention, the New Yorker called.

Rimmer raised his fingers to his typewriter, a sturdy Olympia with a working bell that dinged at the end of each line. He laid his fingertips on the keys, set his jaw, and tapped in time to the rain:

Of all Nature’s growing things, herbs are the most innocent. While some may sneak out of their quarters and propagate willy-nilly in flower bowers or vegetable beds, this spreading of seed is mere exuberance, not opportunistic lust.

He gnashed his teeth and crumpled the paper in his fist. “Lovely. Maxwell Rimmer, garden pornographer.”

He left the paper in a creased ball and placed it on the corner of his desk beside the other castoffs. They’d been accumulating for a month. One of them might contain the germ of an idea. He would need his stockpile of sentences to nourish it along.

The sound of a flapping rug grated on his ears. Rimmer shoved himself up from the desk and stomped to the back door.

“Must you?”

Elsa’s chapped hands snapped the rug in the air, sending dust and debris flying to settle in nearby puddles. Wattles of flesh under her arms flapped, too, but her thighs and buttocks held firm under the cotton dress.

Nice hams, sweet gams. The thought bubbled up in Rimmer’s mind unbidden. He swatted it away.

“I said, must you? I’m writing.”

Elsa faced him. “You better outside.”

Rimmer’s eyes skittered away from hers. He found it impossible to meet her gaze. For one thing, her irises were too blue. For another, her age was unfathomable. She could be a worn-out forty-something or a well-preserved sixtyish.

“I’ve told you a thousand times. I need quiet.”

She folded the rug on her arm like a maitre d’. She looked as if she expected to escort him outside and send him under the sodden arbor. “You need garden,” she said and brushed past him into the house. He stayed in the doorway and watched her firm calves disappear into the kitchen.

Elsa had appeared on his doorstep three years ago, after her former employer and Rimmer’s nearest neighbor keeled over at supper. The old man had bubbled his last breaths facedown in a bowl of pea soup.

Ba-bam. Ba-bam.

Rimmer remembered her knock as a terrible summons given with the force of law. He’d rushed to the door. A stout woman had commandeered his doorstep, holding two suitcases.

“McKintey dead,” she announced in a thick Dutch accent.

“S-sorry?” Rimmer stammered, blushing. He hadn’t seen the old coot in years and figured he was already gone. The housekeeper’s proclamation made McKintey’s recent passing seem anticlimactic. Bad manners, even.

Elsa looked Rimmer up and down, scowling. He’d rushed to the door wearing his writing garb: a new sunscreen hat; an apron with sturdy pockets for trowels and forks; kneepads; and spotless galoshes. They helped Rimmer get into the mood to compose and, besides, the corporations that provided them for free were desperate for his endorsement. Elsa sniffed.

“I clean now,” she said. She strode in with her suitcases and forced him to step aside. She found the guest bedroom, where no guest had ever stayed, and unpacked. Rimmer slunk back to his desk, minus the garden accessories that he squirreled away in a closet. He sulked for a day, prepared to send her off on the next boat. She wasn’t his responsibility. But she’d managed to clean the kitchen, cook a sublime meal of potatoes and meatballs, and then make the kitchen sparkling again before going off to bed. Her English was too limited to negotiate more than room and board, plus a small allowance. Rimmer wallowed in smugness. He dismissed the maid service that came once a month and prepared to live like an exiled king.

They butted heads over the garden. Elsa pestered him about doing his own planting and pruning. Said it would be good for him. Rimmer dug in. He’d hired out that sort of thing. Why would he tend his garden any more than he cleaned his toilet? He was an artist, not a laborer. Genius required cultivation. Let her mumble Dutch in the kitchen. Let Mexican Spanish be chattered in the hedgerows. Let their fingernails stay split and soiled. His readers needed him.

At least, they used to. Closing the back door against the rain, Rimmer sat down heavily at his desk and sighed. One eye squeezed out a tear. His early books were out of print. When the phone rang, it was a garden society, not a national magazine. His own agent had been hinting for some months that, if a great work were not forthcoming, perhaps Rimmer should consider appearances at state fairs. Farmers markets. Girl Scout troops. She even mentioned something about a blog. Rimmer despaired. Appledore Island didn’t even have roads.

His chest ached with dormant feelings. I’m root-bound. Withering. He plucked one of his crumpled-up papers off his desk and unfolded it.