Doomsday by Warwick Deeping

With her sick grandee away fishing in Hampshire, Mary set out on her second pilgrimage into Sussex, with a hamper packed, and carrying an assurance from the foreman at the "Weyfleet Garage" that "Cherry" was in perfect condition. So was my lady. She felt sleek with an unconfessed curiosity. Her slim legs quivered. This would not be primrose time, but bluebell time. He had taken those primroses from the gate, for she had gone down the lane after dark to find the flowers had gone, and how was she to know that her bunch of primroses had played Ophelia in the "Doomsday" pond. Bluebell time in Gore Wood! She refused to think of it as Rose Wood. Not that she thought of working havoc among the bluebells like those beastly people who swarm up to Newlands Corner on Sundays, and tear up the flowers and leave their garbage upon the landscape. Bluebells amid the young green would be sufficient. They offered you their perfume. In Gore Wood greedy hands did not commit murder.

Yet "Doomsday" was no more than a great cloud floating over the Sussex hills. She did not pretend to give it her conscious attention; she was to stay a few hours at "Green Shutters," her country cottage in Sussex, and assure herself that the charwoman was doing her duty, and that old Hesketh's garden had been put in order. Nice sentiment. She proposed to have the garden kept just as her father had kept it, with the sweet peas in the same place, and the dahlias screening the winter greens.