The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree (Berkley Prime Crime)

neighborly fashion, changed tacks, and opened a new subject. “Have you heard about the ghost?”
    “What ghost?” Ophelia asked blankly, trying to get her mind around what Mrs. Adcock had just said about Jed and Ralph’s wife. Of course it was all a pack of lies. Jed would never—
    “Over on Camellia Street. The Cartwright ghost. She was wanderin’ around in Mrs. Blackstone’s garden Satiddy night, pretty as you please.”
    “Oh, really?” Ophelia murmured distractedly. She didn’t believe for a minute that Jed might be hiding any sort of—
    “Really.” Mrs. Adcock picked up her coffee cup. “Mrs. Sedalius saw her and told me all about it after church yestiddy mornin’.” Mrs. Adcock was one of the faithful at the Four Corners Methodist Church. “Mrs. Sedalius lives at the Magnolia Manor, you know, right next door to the old Blackstone house. She has a very nice second-floor room, facin’ south, where she can see out of her window into the garden. That’s where she saw her. The Cartwright ghost, I mean. The one that haunts the old mansion that was burned during the War.”
    “Hmm,” Ophelia said. Jed wouldn’t. Not with Lucy, not with anybody. But there was that telephone call—
    “Exactly, my dear. That one.” Mrs. Adcock sipped her coffee. “It was ’bout ten o’clock, an’ Mrs. Sedalius was gettin’ herself ready for bed. She looked out the window toward Mrs. Blackstone’s garden, and what did she see but the ghost, wearin’ a long, dark cape an’ carryin’ a spade, way she always does.” Mrs. Adcock leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Mrs. Sedalius said it was a full moon out there an’ she saw that ghost just as plain as if it was bright daylight”
    “What did she do?” Ophelia asked, wrenching her attention away from Jed and that phone call. Jed had said it was from Sheriff Burns, although that had struck her as odd at the time. Why would the sheriff—
    “Do? Why, she ran out in the hall an’ banged on Bessie Bloodworth’s door an’ called her to come have a look. But by the time they got to the window, the moon had went behind a cloud and they couldn’t see a blessed thing. Mrs. Sedalius said it was black as the inside of a wolf.”
    Ophelia didn’t ask how Mrs. Sedalius knew what the inside of a wolf looked like. “Well,” she said doubtfully, “I suppose she might have been—”
    Mrs. Adcock sat back in her chair. “That’s exactly what Bessie said, too. She was sure that Mrs. Sedalius was imaginin’ it. That ghost ain’t been seen for quite a while, you know, and folks’re figurin’ she found what she was lookin’ for and wouldn’t be around anymore. But later that night, after everybody had went to sleep, Bessie herself heard it”
    Ophelia frowned. “Heard what, exactly? How do you hear a ghost?”
    “Why, the sound of the spade, that’s what! The ghost was diggin’ out yonder, at the back of the garden where it’s all marshy an’ wet, by that cucumber tree. Bessie said at first she thought she was dreamin‘—you know, after hearin’ all about the ghost from Mrs. Sedalius. But she got up out of her bed an’ raised her window an’ heard it loud an’ clear. Clink-clink-clink.” Mrs. Adcock picked up a spoon and rapped it against her cup. “Jes’ like that. Clink-clink-clink.”
    “And then what?”
    “Well, I don’t rightly know, dear.” Mrs. Adcock put the spoon down. “Somebody come up to us jes’ then to ask Mrs. Sedalius ‘bout the Sunday School party, an’ she didn’t finish her story. But if it was me, I‘d’ve run right straight back to bed an’ pulled the sheet right up over my head. Wouldn’t you, if you heard a ghost diggin’ in the backyard?”
    “Probably,” Ophelia said. She was going to see Bessie in the next day or so, to help clean up the garden. She made a mental note to ask whether Bessie had looked around to see if there had really been any digging.
    Mrs. Adcock said she reckoned that the ghost was looking for the buried coffin of that dead baby, or a lost pair of shoes, or maybe a box of family silvef—she’d heard the story three different ways. She added that she was keeping all her doors and windows locked, so that if that escaped convict came around looking for food or money, he couldn’t get in. Then she thanked Ophelia for the coffee and borrowed an egg (so she’d have an excuse to come again, when she had another piece of gossip) and went back across the street, saying that she had