Rose Cottage

by Mary Stewart

  ‘I thought you were coming riding again,’ put in Harry.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t. It’ll just be the two days I owe you for. But thanks for today, it was great.’

  ‘Why don’t you both come?’ he persisted. ‘The day after tomorrow? Saturday? We could go out by Low Beck, and get a good canter—’

  ‘I can’t ride,’ I said.

  The familiar, charming smile. He really was very attractive. ‘I could teach you. I’d give you Maudie, she’s very quiet, and we can forget the canter. You’d enjoy it.’ Then under his breath, but quite audibly, ‘And so would I.’

  ‘I’m sure I would. But I can’t, thanks all the same.’ I turned back to Prissy, raising my voice above the sudden clatter as Davey threw the bag of tools into the back of the van, and slammed the doors shut. ‘And it’s no good for us, either, I’m afraid, Pris. I’m packing the place up for Gran. She’s at Strathbeg now, did you know? and she’s decided to stay there. I’ve really only come to Todhall to get her stuff moved for her. Uncle Jim’s fixing it with the movers for me, and he said something about Saturday, but I don’t know yet. I’ll be packing up tomorrow. So how about Monday? If the movers do come, we’ll be a bit short of furniture, but we’ll have a table and chairs and something to cook on, and what more do we want?’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I can’t. We’re leaving on Saturday. Tell you what, I’ll come over tomorrow and give you a hand, and we’ll go and eat somewhere good—’

  ‘Such as?’ I said, and laughed. ‘Spam sandwich at the Bull? You’ve forgotten, haven’t you? Come over at lunchtime, anyway, and we’ll eat at home, if I can remember to keep back some knives and forks. It’d be lovely to see you, and don’t worry about the packing. Davey’s going to help with that.’

  ‘Sure. Whatever you say. I’ll be there.’

  Harry started to say something then, but just behind us Davey started up the van’s engine, which was a noisy one.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said. ‘Nice to see you, Harry, and I hope things go well. You’ve a lovely place here. Tomorrow, then, Pris, any time you like, and that’ll be wonderful. Okay, Davey, sorry to keep you waiting.’

  I climbed into the van, and we were off.

  ‘Did you know Prissy Lockwood had friends at Bishop Auckland?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yes. Her husband and Major Heslop served together in the war. In Burma, I think. They go over there quite a bit, but this week’s the first time I know of that she’s been back to Toad Hall.’ A sidelong look that took me straight back to primary school. ‘Quite an Old Toddlers’ Reunion, wasn’t it? Do you think she came over here for Harry? She was always a bit sweet on him.’

  ‘Be your age, Davey, that was centuries ago, and anyway, it was just kids’ stuff.’

  ‘For you, too?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, I was in my teens, and as silly as they always are!’ I rounded on him. ‘If it comes to that, what about you and Peggy Turner? You used to trail about after her like a puppy dog, and what you ever saw in her—!’

  ‘Okay, okay, skinch!’ Skinch was the local children’s word for ‘pax’, and I hadn’t heard it for at least ten years. I laughed and, quite suddenly and for no reason that I knew of, felt like crying. I turned quickly to look out of the van window. The park stretched away, summer pasture studded with big trees, their lower branches, grazed flat by the cattle, stretching smoothly parallel to the ground. Each tree made its own island of shade, where sheep and cattle clustered. No change here, not yet. The same yesterday, and today. But tomorrow?

  Davey said no more as we turned out through the main park gates and rattled along the half mile that led to Lane Ends, the northern limit of the village street. No one was about. The place drowsed in the sun. The geese had disappeared, and Muffin was back by the pond. Cause and effect, no doubt.

  ‘What time are you seeing the vicar?’ asked Davey.

  ‘Half past three, at the church.’

  ‘It’s getting on for three now. If you like, you can wait at our place.’

  ‘No, no, I’ll be fine. If you just put me down at the shop, I’ll see what I can get for Prissy’s lunch tomorrow, and then I’ll sit in the sun till he comes.’

  ‘Okay. This do?’

  ‘Yes thank you. Thanks again, Davey, I enjoyed it.’

  ‘Don’t mention it. Do you still want me to come down and help with the packing up tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, of course, if you have time.’

  ‘I’ll have time. And if you come by the workshop after you’ve seen the vicar, I’ll run you home.’

  ‘Well, thank you, but—’

  ‘See you,’ he said, and drove off.

  I stared after him for a moment or two, then said something polite to Muffin, and went into the shop to see what I could find to feed Prissy on the morrow.

  18

  It was almost a quarter to four when the vicar at last came hurrying across the green into the churchyard, where I was sitting on the warm stone of the wall, waiting for him.

  ‘I really am very sorry, Mrs Herrick, but we were over at Sedgefield for lunch, and then my wife needed the car, so I came home by bus, and the bus was late, and then there was someone waiting for me at the vicarage, and I simply couldn’t get away. Have you been here long?’

  ‘Not really, and anyway, who minds waiting on a day like this? I’ve enjoyed sitting in the sun.’

  ‘It is a lovely day, isn’t it?’ But he had hardly the air of anyone noticing. He wore his cassock, and carried a clean surplice over his arm. ‘Shall we go inside? The papers are in the vestry.’

  I slid from my perch and went with him. Inside the vestry it was cool and dim. He laid the clean surplice carefully over a chair, then took a key from a pocket and unlocked the old fashioned safe – little more than a metal cupboard with a padlock – that stood in one corner. I caught a glimpse of books, registers, I supposed, stacked inside, and some objects wrapped in green baize that were presumably the Communion silver, and a cash box. He turned with a long manila envelope in his hand.

  ‘Copies of what records we have,’ he said. ‘There may be others, but I looked up the dates you gave me, and came up with these.’

  ‘That’s wonderful.’ I took the envelope. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘I was glad to be able to help. I did speak to Bob Crawley, by the way, and he told me some tale he had heard from the Miss Popes about a stranger at Rose Cottage this last weekend, but apparently he went all round the place and saw no sign of a break-in.’

  ‘I knew about that. Miss Mildred told me she thought she saw something, but that was all. I don’t think it was anything to worry about.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ An inquiring look over the half-moon glasses. ‘Have you any clue yet as to what happened to the missing objects?’

  ‘None at all. I’ve been asking around, but no one knows anything, and I’m sure the thief wouldn’t be anyone local. Even if someone broke in and pinched the coins and medals and so on, they’d hardly take the papers, once they saw that the envelopes didn’t hold cash. Well, thank you again, vicar. Is there – I mean, I think there’s something called a search fee?’

  ‘Indeed, indeed. I must charge you an exorbitant fee for my very valuable time.’ He smiled. ‘Six and eightpence, if you can manage it, and would be good enough to put it in the poor-box at the south door?’

  ‘Of course. But if I may – there was just one more thing while I’m here—’

  ‘Yes?’ He had already turned away to pick up the surplice. Through the half-open door leading to the chancel I could hear sounds of people coming into the church. The christening party, presumably. I said quickly: ‘My grandfather’s gravestone. My great aunt is buried there, but they haven’t yet put an inscription up. I wondered – they seem to have taken a very long time. I did wonder if my grandmother had forgotten to make arrangements for it, or if there had been a holdup of some sort? I understand that the – well, the wording has to be approved by you?
’

  He stopped, with his head protruding from the neck of the surplice. With his hands sticking out of the sleeves he looked like a travesty of someone in the stocks. His spectacles had slipped right to the tip of his nose. Above them his eyes, unfocused, looked puzzle and, uncharacteristically, vague.

  ‘I have no recollection of any letter from Mr Well and, but I may be wrong. It is certainly sometime since Miss Campbell died, and I would have thought … Oh dear. How remiss of me not to have followed it up sooner.’ A wriggle, and the surplice drifted into place. He pushed the straying spectacle back into place and straightened, in all the dignity of his robes.

  ‘I think I hear the christening party now, so I must leave it, but if you like to go over to the vicarage and ask Lil to give you Paterson’s address – it is beside the telephone in the hall – you can find out what, if anything, has been arranged. In fact, I seem to recall Lil saying there had been an inquiry quite recently so you may find that your grandmother has been in touch with Paterson herself. Or Mr Pascoe might know. Paterson is the stone mason, and I am afraid he tends to be … shall we say dilatory? Please use my telephone if you wish – I know you have none at Rose Cottage.’

  I started to protest that there was no hurry, and that Mr Pascoe had already asked me about it, but he had turned away to gather his things together, with his eye on the vestry door, and his mind already on the party waiting at the font, where the star of the show could be heard already yelling blue murder. ‘Oh dear,’ he said, ‘one of those. Now if you will excuse me, Mrs Herrick—?’

  ‘Of course. Thank you again. You’re very kind. I won’t forget the poor-box. Good afternoon, vicar.’

  I left by the outer door, amused to find myself automatically turning right off the gravel walk, following the rough grassy track that wound through the ancient gravestones to encircle the church. Another flicker of memory, rolling the years back. Coming out of Sunday School, ready for the long walk home – in those days one had run almost all the way – we children had always turned that way. One walked round a church clockwise, never widdershins. Just as one never stepped on the joins of paving stones. And never forgot to cross one’s fingers while telling a lie. And cried ‘skinch’ to stop being teased or bullied …

  Old Toddlers’ Day.

  The poor-box was in the south porch. I folded a ten shilling note and pushed it through the slot. The child who had run all the way home to Rose Cottage had never seen a ten shilling note in her life. So? That was then. This was now. I brought myself sharply back to the present and walked across to the vicarage.

  I had not thought it worth telling the vicar that the stone mason’s number was on the letterhead of the paper Mr Pascoe had given me, but I wanted to see Lil, and preferably while there was no chance of coming across Mrs Winton Smith.

  Lil was in the back yard, feeding the hens. She greeted me cheerfully, and I told her what the vicar had sent me for.

  ‘Paterson’s?’ she said, looking surprised. ‘Your Auntie’s grave? Well, yes, the number’s there. Will I get it for you?’

  ‘Don’t bother, Lil, thanks. There’s no hurry after all this time, but there was something else the vicar said, and I wanted to ask you about it.’

  She stood there in the sunshine with the bowl still half full of the hens’ corn clutched to her breast. ‘Ask me?’

  ‘Yes. He told me that there’d been someone else equiring about the gravestone, fairly recently, he said. Do you remember?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I was just thinking that it was funny, with her being buried all that time ago – I mind that, because she died just before I come here to work, and that was straight after I left school – and now you’ve come asking about it, when only last Sunday there was a man here asking the same thing.’

  Absurdly, in spite of the heat of the sun, I felt a shiver go over my skin. ‘Last Sunday? Do you know who he was? What did he want to know? I gather he didn’t speak to the vicar?’

  ‘No. He just come to the back door here. He didn’t want to see the vicar nor the mistress, he just talked to me. I don’t know who he was, but he was a foreigner.’

  ‘A foreigner? Do you mean a real foreigner, or just a stranger to Todhall?’

  ‘A real foreigner. He spoke funny. He was a tall chap, thin, with a short kind of coat, and—’

  ‘He didn’t give you his name, or say where he was from?’

  ‘No, miss.’

  ‘Could he – did he look like a gipsy?’

  ‘Oh, no, miss. Well, I mean, he was kind of sun-burned, but his hair was grey, and cut short, and his clothes … well, they were foreign, too, but they looked good, and he was a gentleman, for all he spoke funny.’ She added, as if to prove the point, ‘He come in a car.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He asked what the vicar’s name was, and I told him, and did he want to see him, because he was over at evening service and wouldn’t be back till late, and so was the mistress, but he said no. Then he asked who lived next door, and I said the Pascoes, but they were away for the weekend to a wedding. I said did he know them, and he said no again. Then he said about the grave, why wasn’t there anything carved on it, and I said I didn’t think anything had been arranged because there was nobody left to see about it since the old lady died and her sister had left and gone back home to Scotland. That was all, miss. Are you all right, miss?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, I’m fine. Was there anything else?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I asked if I would tell the vicar and he said it didn’t matter.’

  ‘And he never said where he was from, or what his interest was in the grave? Did he say … Did he mention Rose Cottage, for instance?’

  ‘No, miss.’

  ‘And he was alone?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t see no one else, but I think there was someone in the car. He had a car outside the gate, and I thought I heard him talking to someone before it started up and drove away.’

  I was silent for so long that she began to look worried as well as curious, but then the cockerel created a diversion by flying up to grab food from the bowl she was carrying, and in the ensuing scuffle I took a pull at myself and managed to say, easily enough, ‘Well, thanks very much, Lil. It’s certainly a bit odd and I’d love to know who the gentleman was, but he’ll probably be in touch again, and if he knows I’m at Rose Cottage he can come to see me there. No, I won’t come in. It doesn’t matter about Paterson’s, I’m sure their number’s on the letter Mr Pascoe gave me. I’ll not keep you, and thanks again. Goodbye.’

  And, parrying the offer of a cup of tea, I managed to get away and head for the workshop next door.

  * * *

  It was a long room, which had been a hay loft in the days when the vicarage had owned and run its own farm. It was lighted mainly from windows let into the roof, but at one end there was a double door, used formerly for loading and unloading, and this was open, letting in air and light. The floor was carpeted with shavings and sawdust, and the place smelled deliciously of pine and cedar and other woods, with undertones of varnish and linseed oil.

  Davey was there, busy with a plane over a long piece of timber gripped by the vices on the bench that ran down the centre of the loft.

  He glanced up when my shadow crossed the light, but without checking the smooth run of the plane along the plank’s length. The sliver of wood, paper-thin and silvery, curled up and back, then floated down to join the sweet-smelling carpet on the floor. Davey straightened and turned.

  ‘Well, did you get what you wanted from the vicar?’

  ‘Yes. And something rather interesting from Lil at the vicarage.’

  ‘Oh?’ He laid the plane down. ‘What was that?’

  I told him about Lil’s visitor, and he listened, head bent, while he ran a finger absently along the smooth surface of the planed wood. When I finished he gave a grunt and was silent for a few moments, then he said:

  ‘And someone else in the car, eh? The lady?’

  ‘Of
course. And I am thinking what you’re thinking.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Only that they went down to Rose Cottage and found it empty, and so they broke and entered. This man saw Lil during Sunday evensong, she says. So later, when Miss Linsey paid her visit to the cemetery, they were there.’

  ‘Again.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Aye. They surely must have been at the grave earlier, before they came here to ask about the gravestone. Then they went back.’

  ‘Taking flowers for Aunt Betsy?’

  ‘There’s that, isn’t there?’ He turned and put the plane up on the tool rack that ran along one wall. ‘When your Mum was killed, was that gipsy with her?’

  ‘I believe so. All I ever heard about it was what Aunt Betsy told me. I do know she said he was going to marry her, but Gran never knew his name, except she called him Jamie. There’s nothing about the crash among the cuttings in her album.’

  ‘We could find out if we had to, I reckon. What I was thinking was, if he survived her, or if they’d parted before she died, then it’s likely he’d marry again. Do gipsies “talk funny”?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. But if this was Jamie, and he’d come back for whatever reason to Todhall – to show it to the new wife or to look in the safe that my mother had told him about, or whatever – why, again why, the flowers for Aunt Betsy? And why take the papers from the safe? Why not just rob it?’

  ‘From the sound of it, he’d not need to go stealing a few poundsworth from your Gran,’ said Davey. He reached his jacket down from its peg by the door. ‘We’ll get no further by chewing things over now. Seems to me that what you need’s a bit of time to see what the vicar’s turned up for you, and then maybe start thinking about your Gran’s packing.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Whoever this chap is, if he’s really bothered about anything in Todhall, he’ll be back, and it would clear a whole lot of things up if you were there to talk to him … Prissy’s coming to see you tomorrow, isn’t she? Well, I’ll be along in the afternoon to give you a hand, so don’t try shifting anything, just get the small stuff sorted ready. Coming?’