The Forgotten Garden

In 2005, Cassandra and Christian go to the nearby village of Polperro to visit Mary’s daughter, Clara. Clara remembers how close Mary and Eliza were. She talks about Adeline’s death from blood poisoning a few weeks after Rose’s funeral. Clara also says that Linus squandered his remaining fortune on trips to foreign places in search of Ivory. After he died in 1935, Blackhurst Manor went up for auction. Several boxes of Eliza’s possessions were part of the sale, so Mary bought them and kept them for the rest of her life. This was how she acquired the sketches of the illustrations for Eliza’s book. The boxes also contained a letter in 1936 from a publisher in London. Eliza had written one final story before her departure in 1913 called “The Cuckoo’s Flight,” and Mary had mailed it in for publication years later.

Clara finally comes to the reason she asked to see Cassandra. Cassandra says she already knows that Mary was Ivory’s mother. Clara disagrees and discloses that Mary miscarried her first child. Ivory’s real mother was Eliza. When Cassandra and Christian leave Clara, they’re very confused about why Eliza would send Ivory to Australia if the child had no actual kin there.