Dead on Dartmoor

by Stephanie Austin

  But it would have to wait for another day now. I’d promised this day to Ricky and Morris and I was already late. I turned and began to jog back the way I had come, towards the roadside where I had parked the van.

  As my parking spot came into view, I could see a jeep had drawn in behind it. Someone was walking around my van, taking a lot of interest in it. Someone was surveying the damage, trying the doors. I’d already packed my damn binoculars back in the rucksack, thinking that I’d finished with them and I could only just about make out a figure in a flat cap before he climbed in the jeep and drove away. But I was sure it was Moss.

  I waited a few minutes before I set off down the road. I didn’t want to catch up with him. I slowed down as I came to the turn off for Applecote Farm. The gate was open, and I just glimpsed the back of a silage lorry as it trundled down the track.

  ‘The DOs are doing Iolanthe,’ Ricky explained as I arrived.

  Dartmoor Operatic Society, known hereabouts as The DOs, are generally held in great affection because of the enthusiasm with which they tackle the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. Their voices still sound lovely, but most of them are far too old to be gondoliers, pirates or little maids from school. Ricky says they really ought to be known as the DON’Ts, but that’s typical of him.

  ‘They don’t usually hire costumes from you, do they?’ I asked. For years they’d got their togs from a G and S specialist in London.

  ‘No, but they’re not happy with what they’ve been sent.’

  ‘Well, the men’s costumes are all right,’ Morris interrupted, coming into the workroom carrying a plastic skip full of rolled-up ribbons. ‘It’s the ladies that are the problem.’

  ‘Specifically, the fairies,’ Ricky went on, eyes twinkling with mischief as he held up an example of the costumes sent.

  ‘Oh!’ I exclaimed. ‘They sent costumes for real fairies!’ Obviously, the costume company in London didn’t appreciate that there was not a fairy in The DOs under the age of fifty. The dainty little outfit held up by Ricky, flimsy and transparent in places, would have suited a slender young sylph but was not suitable for the bingo wings, sausage-meat arms and cellulite-dimpled thighs of the ladies of the DO’s chorus.

  ‘They are not happy,’ Ricky said. ‘They’ve asked us to help ’em out.’

  ‘How many fairies are there?’

  ‘Twenty.’

  ‘We can’t possibly make them all new costumes in the time,’ Morris sat down, taking the lid off the skip. ‘So we asked ourselves, what have we already got a lot of? We had a look at the ball dresses from Cinderella but …’ He shook his head, pulling down the corners of his mouth. This idea was obviously a no-no.

  ‘Then we thought of those Victorian nightdresses we’ve got dozens of,’ Ricky went on, ‘we thought we’d put wings on them. Well, they looked more like angels from some bleedin’ school nativity than fairies—’

  ‘So, then we thought—’

  ‘So then we thought,’ Ricky carried on, ‘about long petticoats. We’ve got hundreds of them. We could team each one with a pretty white blouse, and make sashes to go round the waist …’

  ‘Coloured sashes—’ Morris put in.

  ‘Coloured sashes. With wings. And trim the petticoats and blouses with flowers and ribbons.’

  ‘We might even have time to make them little bonnets,’ Morris added. ‘They’ll look very pretty and demure.’

  ‘Course, half of them will keep their specs on, which will ruin the effect,’ Ricky finished, ‘but at least they won’t look like something in a geriatric porn video.’

  ‘So, where do I come in?’

  Morris shoved the skip of ribbons in my direction. ‘You’re making flowers from ribbon, please, Juno. We’ll need a couple of hundred.’ He peered at me over his half-moon specs. ‘You remember how to make them?’

  I did. So all day, between cups of tea and pieces of cake, I sewed pink ribbon, blue ribbon, lilac ribbon, lemon ribbon, red ribbon − if a colour came in ribbon, I made flowers from it, whilst Ricky cut twenty pairs of wings from very stiffly starched net and Morris rattled away on the sewing machine, creating sashes.

  They didn’t talk much – well, comparatively. I didn’t want to be drawn into discussion about Olly and fortunately they’d forgotten our talk about his family and didn’t ask. I didn’t mention what had happened the day before with Messrs Moss and Pike. I had a story ready about how the van came to grief, but I’d parked it up the drive a bit and, so far, they hadn’t noticed it. Mostly I kept quiet, working away at my ribbon flowers until my fingers were sore.

  They did ask how things were going at the shop, specifically if I was selling any of their vintage clothes. I had to admit I didn’t know. I’d hardly been near Old Nick’s all week. Sophie had been holding the fort. But now she’d finished the portrait of the Old Thunderer, she wanted a day off. It would be my turn tomorrow.

  At the end of the day, Morris offered me supper, but I declined. I had to go and fetch Olly.

  He was full of it, sliding into the van beside me, bursting to tell me about ferrets and hedgehogs, ducks, baby owls, donkeys and all the other critters he’d dealt with.

  ‘D’you know, they’ve got a llama?’ he asked me excitedly. ‘They just found it one morning, tied to the gate. They don’t know where it came from. Anyway, it’s a lady llama, so they could put it in the paddock with Bam-a-lam and he doesn’t mind it. Bam-a-lam’s a ram,’ he explained. ‘Ken says he’s an old bugger, butts anything that moves.’

  ‘Oh, I know Bam-a-lam.’ He was a black-faced ram sporting particularly impressive headgear. He’d been useful to me more than once. Any dog who took it into its head to start chasing sheep needed only half an hour in a pen with Bam-a-lam to seriously go off the idea.

  Olly pulled a rumpled paper bag from his pocket and began chewing a rather limp sandwich.

  ‘Didn’t you have those for lunch?’

  ‘We all had roast dinner,’ he told me happily. ‘Chicken and peas and carrots and roast potatoes and cabbage. Pat cooked it. And apple pie and ice cream.’

  I tried not to think of the Moroccan tagine, whose spicy aromas I had been savouring all day as it cooked slowly in Morris’s oven, and which I had turned down so that I could pick Olly up; not to mention the glass of red wine. ‘Would you like to go there again?’ I asked.

  ‘Ken says I can go anytime. So I’m going to go at half-term, every day.’ He chuckled. ‘That’ll be better than going to bloody Lanzarote.’

  I could only assume that was where one of his classmates had boasted of going. I let him out at Daison Cottages and he waved to me cheerily as he bounded up the garden path. I was glad he’d enjoyed himself. As I turned White Van towards home, I tried to remember what food I had in the fridge for my supper; or if I had any at all.

  My luck was in. When I got back home there were several offerings on the table on the landing outside my door – two promising plastic boxes and three interesting-looking objects wrapped in foil. There was also a ladder leading up into the loft. I could hear voices coming from the roof space and footsteps thumping about, so I stood at the foot of the ladder and hallooed upward.

  Kate’s little face appeared framed in the hatch, her black plait swinging down towards me like Rapunzel. I thanked her for her offerings.

  ‘Veggie curry and homity pie,’ she informed me, ‘and a couple of cheese scones.’

  ‘Fantastic. What are you doing up there?’

  ‘Adam’s worried about your kitchen ceiling, about where the damp’s coming in. He thinks we might have dry rot. So he called in Roy the roofer. Hang on.’ She climbed down the ladder. ‘Go up and have a look whilst I make him a coffee.’

  Well, if I must. I climbed the ladder obediently and stuck my head and shoulders through the hatch. There was no sign of Adam, just a thin man in overalls who must be Roy the roofer.

  He beamed when he saw me, showing large front teeth, like a beaver. ‘Hello! You must be the lady in the upstairs flat.’ />
  ‘Yes, I am.’ I climbed into the loft.

  ‘Well, as I explained to Kate, there is nothing much to worry about. No dry rot, I could tell that immediately, just a few slipped slates where the rain is getting in.’

  ‘Well, good, I suppose.’ I frowned. ‘But I don’t know anything about these things. Why would damp give you dry rot?’

  ‘Ah, well, there has to be a certain amount of moisture present,’ he informed me, ‘because dry rot is, in fact, a fungus.’

  ‘I see.’ For the first couple of minutes I was genuinely interested. But Roy’s high-pitched nasal monotone could render the most fascinating subject boring. After a minute or two my eyes glazed over, quickly followed by my brain.

  ‘I could tell at once there was no dry rot in here because there was no dust,’ he intoned. ‘Well, I don’t mean your usual dust. To the uninitiated it looks like a brown powder, but it is, in fact, the fungal spores …’

  I wondered where the hell Kate was with his coffee. I suspected her of deliberately taking her time. I endured at least twenty minutes as Roy aired his knowledge. ‘The fungus draws all the moisture out of the wood, you see, in fact, eats it from the inside …’

  I was convinced by the time that Kate finally appeared with his coffee that there wasn’t a thing about dry rot I didn’t know.

  ‘I have seen rafters disintegrate with a single hammer blow …’ he was saying as her head finally appeared through the loft hatch. It was too late. I had lost the will to live by then.

  I glared at her and she gave me a guilty look as she handed Roy his coffee.

  ‘They call him Boring Roy,’ she admitted when he had finally taken his leave.

  ‘Well, you might have warned me before you encouraged me to go up there with him.’

  ‘Sorry, but I knew if he had no one to talk to, he’d follow me down to the kitchen.’

  ‘How on earth did you manage to get him to call on a Sunday evening?’

  ‘Oh, he offered. I think he’s lonely.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I forgive you,’ I told her magnanimously as I gathered up the offerings from her kitchen, ‘but only because of these.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I was late opening Old Nick’s next morning, didn’t get there until ten o’clock.

  At least there was no queue of customers waiting outside: fat chance of that, frankly. I didn’t like being forced to waste the entire day waiting to serve non-existent customers when I had more urgent things I could be doing. But it was my turn. Not for the first time I cursed Nick for leaving me the shop.

  Then I stepped inside, let the door close behind me, experienced a moment of total quiet, absolute calm, and realised that a day in the empty shop was just what I needed: a day without rushing around, a day when all I could do was sit and literally take stock. I looked around me and let out a breath I didn’t realise I’d been holding in.

  For a start, the shop looked fantastic. The portrait of Old Thunderer stood on an easel in Sophie’s window. She’d done a magnificent job. You could almost touch his matted hair, feel his hot breath, almost smell him. Pat’s window looked great too. Soft, knitted shawls in rich autumn colours lay in undulating folds on the wide windowsill, whilst suspended above them on fishing line hung stuffed felt pumpkins and cute, funny little witches on broomsticks, which she’d obviously crafted herself. It was a good job she was more awake to the sales opportunities of approaching Hallowe’en than I was. Even Mavis the mannequin was sporting a witch’s hat. It was just a pity all this talent and enterprise would go largely unnoticed in the quiet of Shadow Lane.

  I locked the door behind me whilst I nipped up to the kitchen and made myself a coffee. Then I brought it down, turned the sign on the shop door to Open and sat at the counter for an overdue look at the ledger to see if I’d taken any money that week.

  My day had not started well. I’d overslept, gone rushing out of the house without breakfast and walked the dogs through the woods. Schnitzel the sausage dog had run off amongst the undergrowth and I’d lost him for half an hour. When the smug little Schweinehund deigned to return he’d obviously been rolling in badger shit and I had to clean him off before I could take him home. This made me late returning the dogs, which pissed off one owner, who was waiting to leave for a dental appointment and gave me a right earful.

  I had dumped the last of my doggy charges and was driving back towards town, trying to make up time, when I was forced to screech to a halt. Amongst the shaggy heads of old man’s beard that twines itself amongst the yellowing leaves, the clusters of blackberries and tight clumps of green ivy flowers buzzing with wasps, and all the other things one expects to see in an autumn hedgerow, there was something big and blue that definitely shouldn’t have been there: Judith-Marianne in her dressing gown, attempting another escape from Oakdene Nursing Home, was stuck in the bushes.

  As I climbed out of the van, she began trying to attract my attention, waving ineffectually with one hand, the only part of her that wasn’t completely hitched up on surrounding thorns. ‘Help! Oh, help!’ she was mewing softly. I surveyed her for a moment, wondering whether it would be easier to pull her forward into the lane or push her back the way she’d come, into Oakdene’s gardens. I decided on the former. I reached cautiously through the cat’s cradle of branches, trying not to snag myself on the surrounding armoury of thorns.

  ‘Silly me!’ she kept repeating. ‘Silly me!’

  ‘Well, you’ve got that bit right.’ A long bramble, vicious with thorns and laden with juicy berries was tangled in her woolly blue sleeve. I unhooked it cautiously, leaving a purple smear. She began singing softly to herself, rocking backwards and forwards, her blue eyes staring into a place and time that had nothing to do with here and now. It would have been much easier if she’d kept still. As soon as I’d unhitched her from one lot of thorns, she was getting caught up on others.

  I was beginning to think my attempt to rescue her was hopeless and I’d have to call the cavalry, when it arrived in the short, curvaceous form of Barbara the care assistant and her colleague with the ponytail, whose name turned out to be Camille. They’d bustled along the lane in the hope of catching Judith-Marianne before anyone had realised she was missing. Between the three of us we managed to ease her free of enclosing brambles and pull her gently through the hedge onto the road.

  ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ she told us solemnly as we were standing on the road, picking off bits of twig and flakes of leaves that crowned her silver hair and clung to her dressing gown.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, as we checked her over for scratches, ‘you were just like Sleeping Beauty, imprisoned by thorns.’ She frowned at me, picking at some thread of her unravelling memory, trying to place who I was.

  ‘This is Juno,’ Barbara told her. ‘Remember? She found you the last time.’

  ‘Are we going back to the hotel?’ Judith-Marianne asked suddenly.

  Camille took her arm. ‘That’s right, back to hotel.’ She spoke with a Polish accent.

  ‘Do we have to dress for dinner?’

  ‘Yes. We must get you dressed. But we have breakfast before dinner,’ Camille told her. ‘There’s lovely breakfast waiting for you.’

  Barbara turned to smile at me as they began walking their docile prisoner back to Oakdene. ‘You’ve changed your van.’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ I sighed at its bent doors and buckled bumper. ‘I’m not having much luck with vans, lately.’

  I sat behind the shop counter, going through the sales ledger, copying out my sales and adding up my takings, which did not take long, and then counting up sales of vintage clothes for Ricky and Morris, which took a bit longer. I found that the money in the cash box was all mine, Pat and Sophie having already sensibly removed anything owing to them, so I counted out Ricky and Morris’s money and pocketed the rest.

  It was only as I picked up my shoulder bag and wondered why it weighed so much, that I remembered the packag
e I’d grabbed off the hall table that morning before I’d rushed out of the front door. It seemed like I’d been waiting ages for it to arrive. Feeling like a kid at Christmas, I tore open the padded envelope and unwrapped my job lot of hatpins and their two porcelain holders. I’d been successful in my bid for them on eBay, although I’d lost out on the 1920s handbags. I inspected each pin carefully. Some were small and dainty, some were long with wicked points and weighty, knobby ends. None of them was very expensive, but sold individually they’d fetch far more than I’d paid for them, and they’d look pretty displayed in their holders, once I’d given each of them a jolly good scrub with a child’s toothbrush, followed by a buffing up with some silver polish: that was my evening sorted.

  I remembered I was supposed to have phoned my mechanic. Dave is a proper, old-fashioned mechanic, who’ll have a go at anything. He’d managed to smuggle my van through its MOT on the last two occasions. I don’t mean White Van, the bent and battered one, I mean the previous one, the burnt-out hulk. I explained White Van had been in an accident.

  ‘You’re not having a lot of luck, are you?’ he commented.

  No, I’m not, Dave, funny you should mention that. Apart from the fact that Green Bastard Hat in the truck had smashed one of my rear lights and buckled my bumper, the newly dented back doors didn’t line up as they had before. They were sticking slightly when I tried to open them and as there was no way I was going through another experience like the one I’d had with EB, I wanted them fixed.

  ‘I’ll have to pay you,’ I told him. ‘This isn’t an insurance job.’

  That reminded Dave that the assessor had finally turned up at the garage and declared my burnt-out hulk a write-off. I’d had to wait nearly three weeks for that assessment. Still, now at least the cheque would be in the post.