The Blue Thumbprints in the Garden Shed

On Monday morning, Yasmin finds a blue thumbprint on the tap in the garden shed.

It is a clear print, as neat as a stamp. She looks at it for a while with a cup of coffee in her hand. Then she washes it away and starts her day.

Yasmin is the head gardener at Larkfield Cemetery. Her shed stands behind the chapel, between the compost heap and the old fig tree. It smells of soil and cut grass. Inside are rakes, shears, seed trays, and a tap over a deep stone sink. The shed is hers. She never locks it, because nobody else ever comes in.

That is why the thumbprint worries her a little.

On Tuesday, she finds a second print on the same tap. On Wednesday, there is a third. By Thursday, it is a real puzzle, and she decides to treat it like one.

"Someone is visiting my shed at night," she tells the groundsman, who is cutting a hedge nearby.

"A ghost with ink on his fingers?" he says. "I like that. It is a polite ghost."

"It is not funny."

"It is a little funny," he says, and he goes on cutting.

Yasmin takes a notebook from her pocket. She does not feel like a detective, but she likes lists. At the top of the page, she writes, "What do I know?"

The first clue is the ink itself. It is deep blue and a little shiny, the kind that comes from an old fountain pen. The prints appear only on the tap, never on the door or the shelves. So the visitor comes in, turns on the water, and leaves.

On Friday, she finds the second clue, and it is stranger than the first.

On her work table, beside the seed trays, lie twenty small wooden plant labels. She had left them there on Thursday evening with their old names almost gone. Now every label is rewritten. The letters are tall and careful, and the ink is blue. Lavender. Rosemary. Sweet pea. Foxglove. Nothing is spelled wrong. Even the Latin names are correct.

She sits down on her stool and reads them twice.

"A thief who corrects my labels," she says aloud. "That is new."

She puts the labels in a neat row, and for the first time all week, she smiles. Whoever this is, they are kind. And they have beautiful handwriting.

On Saturday, the third clue arrives, and it is the smallest one.

The towel on the hook behind the door has two long blue marks on it. Beside the sink, the soap is wet. Someone has washed their hands for a long time. A fresh bar lies on the shelf, still wrapped. It is not her brand.

Yasmin writes it all in her notebook. One: ink on the tap. Two: labels rewritten. Three: wet soap, blue towel, a new bar.

She taps her pencil against her chin. A person who writes with a pen like that has a job with paper. A person who has ink on their hands every day must wash them often. A person who leaves a gift of soap is polite, and probably shy. And a shy person would never knock on the door of a gardener who talks to plants.

She looks out of the window toward the white office building at the far side of the lawn. The records office. It has a very small kitchen and a very old sink.

"Aha," she says. "Maybe."

On Sunday, the cemetery is closed to visitors. On Monday, Yasmin forgets her gloves at home. She has to come back to the shed an hour early. She walks across the lawn with her keys in one hand. The sun is just rising behind the chapel.

She opens the door and stops.

A man stands in front of her sink with both hands under the tap. He is tall, with round glasses and a brown cardigan. A pen lies on the edge of the stone basin. His fingers are blue to the wrists. A blue line runs up one cheek where he touched his face.

He turns around slowly, and his eyes grow very wide.

"Good morning," says Yasmin.

"Hello," the man says. He gives a small, miserable cough. "I can explain."

"I hope so."

"My name is Orson. I work in the records office, on the other side of the lawn." He lifts his blue hands, as if to show proof. "My pen leaks. It has leaked for two years. I carry it in my shirt pocket, and by eight o'clock my whole hand is blue."

"I see."

"The sink in our office broke last week. The pipe makes a noise like an angry cat, and the manager says we must not use it. So I looked for another tap." He looks at the floor. "Yours was the nearest one. The door is never locked, and I knew there was a sink inside. I only wanted to wash my hands."

"Every morning," says Yasmin.

"Every morning," he agrees. "And again at lunch."

"And you never knocked."

"You always seemed busy. You were talking to a rose bush, and I did not want to interrupt." He pauses. "I thought you might be annoyed."

Yasmin looks at the blue hands, the blue cheek and the sad face above them. Then she laughs. It is a real laugh, loud and warm. She has to hold the door to stay up.

"I thought I had a ghost," she says. "I made notes."

"I am so sorry."

"Don't be. It is the best week I have had in years." She wipes her eyes and points at the table. "Did you write all those labels?"

Orson looks at his boots. "Some of them were fading. I have a lot of time at lunch, and my writing is the only thing I do well. I did not want to leave your shed worse than I found it."

"And the soap?"

"To say thank you. Your soap was almost finished." He looks hopeful. "Is it a good brand?"

"It is perfect." She takes the pen from the basin and holds it up to the light. The blue ink runs down her finger, and she wipes it on her trousers. "You know, there are better pens in the world."

"I love this one," Orson says, with great dignity. "My father gave it to me."

"Then we must fix it, not throw it away." She opens a drawer and takes out a small roll of tape and a little jar of wax. "Come here. Gardeners can mend almost anything."

They work together for twenty minutes, at the table, while the light grows stronger over the lawn. When the pen finally holds, Orson writes his name on the back of her hand to test it. The letters are dark and clean.

"No more thumbprints on the tap," he says.

"Leave one," says Yasmin. "Just so I remember."

When he goes back across the grass, she turns on the water to wash her hands. On the metal tap, a single clear thumbprint shines in the early light. It is small, blue and a little crooked, like a flower that has just opened.