The Woman in the Garden

Eustacia Amelia Rose was once a botany professor, but the year her father died, she lost her job and became even more eccentric. Now she tends to her poisonous plants on her rooftop garden and spies on her neighbors through her telescope. She has problems recognizing faces and remembering names, but she fills 20 notebooks of observations about the people around her. One is a young woman in the flat across the way who hosts a number of men, including a man who hits her and a man whom Eustacia recognizes from years earlier. Although Eustacia views toxic plants as her addiction, she’s just as obsessed with the young woman. When the woman is pushed into a car and disappears for three days, Eustacia reports a kidnapping to the police, but they seem more interested in Eustacia’s toxic plants and a possibly related poisoning than in the disappearance of her neighbor. When the poisoning victim dies, Eustacia is arrested. Forced out of her private life, she sets out to find a killer.