The Winter Mystery

by Faith Martin

  She pointed it out, and Bert nodded. She turned away as he caught and casually dispatched the bird with a single, humane twist to the neck with his big strong hands. City slickers would have fainted on the spot.

  It made even Jenny feel slightly sick.

  Finally sensing another alien presence in his barn, the gander left the cowardly mutt to his hayloft and came hissing out of the night, wings stretched out to an impressive length either side of him. Jenny turned and watched his approach, not in the least put out. As the gander gained the last five yards, she moved rapidly to one side, and put her hands on her hips. The surprised gander slid past her, skidded to a halt and turned around, neck extended, beady eye trained on her shin.

  Before it could give even one honk, she said quietly, ‘I’m here to pick out the Christmas goose.’ She leaned down, looked the bird in his gimlet eye and said even more quietly, ‘But I could always make it a Christmas gander.’

  The bird blinked. He took a step back, then another, then blinked again.

  Jenny nodded.

  She’d always had a way with animals.

  * * *

  It was Bert who showed her to her room that night, apologizing as he did so for nobody thinking to see to her comfort earlier. ‘Think nothing of it,’ Jenny said airily, following his solid frame up the stairs.

  Her room, as she’d expected, was as cold as sorbet but spacious enough, with plenty of blankets on a fair-sized bed. Bert rubbed his hands and blew on them, for perhaps the first time playing the part of host, and running head first into the fact that Kelton Farm was not the most hospitable of places.

  ‘There should be a fire lit in here,’ he muttered, and stared at the empty grate as if he’d never seen it before. He never even seemed to question the fact that there should have been central heating installed years ago. ‘I’m surprised Uncle Sid didn’t light one. He’s usually the thoughtful one around here,’ he added, with a twist of his lips. ‘After Janice left . . .’ he began, then abruptly cut off the sentence, as if expecting a reprimand.

  Janice was probably his absentee wife, Jenny guessed, and no doubt mention of her around here was strictly taboo. Stan Kelton would have made sure of that. He wouldn’t have taken kindly to one of his minions escaping from under his very nose, of that Jenny was convinced.

  So when the new cook made no comment, but merely looked at him curiously, Bert sighed and shook his head. ‘My wife,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘She walked out on us. But if she’d still been here, you would have had a fire in your room.’

  He said nothing more, but turned and left, just a little greyer, just a little more tired, than before. Yet those few simple words of his said more about Janice, and Bert’s feelings towards Janice, than anything else could have done. She wondered, sadly, how Jeremy had felt about his mother’s leaving and why the boy hadn’t gone with her. He looked to be about eighteen now. How long had Janice been gone exactly? Not long, she would have thought, not with Bert still pining so strongly for her.

  She did not ask herself why Janice had left. That was obvious, and could be summed up in two words: Stan Kelton.

  * * *

  She awoke around six. It was still dark outside, and snowing lightly. She rose and dressed in a hurry, the cold nipping at her skin like tiny pincers. And she had a lot of skin on her large frame to be nipped.

  In the kitchen she quickly got the fire going and the stove lit with the plentiful supply of logs kept by the grate. Without a thought she went to the door, unlocked it and opened it. The dog shot in and vanished. He no doubt had a secret gander-free exit from the top of the hayloft. Besides, any dog would rather jump for his life than risk the pecking beak of the white wonder.

  Jenny made herself a cup of tea, and decided on porridge. Just because, she was sure, Stan Kelton was a bacon-and-eggs kind of man.

  It was still practically dark when Mrs Jarvis arrived, the chip on her shoulder accompanied by a mass of snowflakes. Without a word, Jenny made the woman a cup of tea, and rose to see to the porridge. The men would be down soon, she was sure, and anxious to make the most of the meagre winter light.

  ‘I see you’ve got the goose then,’ Mrs Jarvis said, nodding to the bird that was hung up just inside the open larder door.

  ‘Bert reminded me last night,’ Jenny agreed, and hefted a milk churn from the cold cellar.

  ‘Ah, Bert’s a good lad,’ Mrs Jarvis agreed, shucking off her coat and curling her cold hands thankfully around the mug. ‘And I notice the devil is beginning to realize the same thing. Last year, when I first came to this hellhole, he was all for young Bill. Young Bill was the brains, the one with the get-go.’ Mrs Jarvis frowned down into her mug. ‘And I suppose he is, really. Poor Bert’s never been the same since Janice left. Poor lass could stick it no more. Can’t say as I blame her. Twenty years in this place is more than any flesh and blood can stand.’

  Jenny measured out the oats, and recalled last night’s ugly little scene. ‘Bill doesn’t seem to be in favour anymore,’ she commented thoughtfully.

  ‘Oh, he’s all for Bert now, and takes every opportunity to jump down Bill’s throat,’ Mrs Jarvis agreed. ‘He does it on purpose, of course. Keeps them at loggerheads, I mean. All for one of them one moment, then cosying on up to the other the next. I reckon he wants his two sons fighting each other, instead of teaming up against himself.’

  Jenny staunchly ignored the paranoia that was building up all around her, and concentrated on her porridge.

  ‘The road’s clear to the village now at any rate,’ Mrs Jarvis carried on chattering, but the relief in her voice was obvious. ‘It’ll mean I can get to the shop for my Christmas stores. You don’t mind if I take an hour off a little later on, do you?’

  Jenny had just assured her that of course she didn’t mind — and besides which, it was none of her business anyway — when, from outside, came a sudden cacophony of sound that was a mixture of honk, yell, thud and swearing.

  ‘That’ll be the postman,’ Mrs Jarvis said matter-of-factly. ‘The gander gets him every time.’

  From above came the sound of feet clumping down the stairs, quickly followed by a lighter set of feet. Stan Kelton came in, the post in one hand, a pipe in the other. Behind him, Delia sulked her way into the kitchen, her eyes fixed on the post.

  As they all watched, Stan Kelton sorted through the mixture of Christmas cards and bills and then paused, his eyes narrowing on one envelope, which was obviously a personal letter. He tossed the rest of the mail on the table and then tore the envelope, unopened, in half, then in quarters. He turned to the fire and threw them into the flames, waiting to see them curl up and turn to ashes.

  When he turned, Bert was stood in the doorway. ‘What was that?’ he asked, his face a pasty white.

  ‘Nothing that concerns you, lad,’ Stan Kelton said. ‘Sit down and have some breakfast.’

  At the mention of breakfast, Jenny rushed to her porridge, but it was simmering nicely. As if it’d dare do anything else.

  ‘That was from Janice, wasn’t it?’ Bert persisted, as Bill sidled around him.

  Bill’s face tightened. ‘What was?’ he asked, coming to his brother’s aid, as if Bert was the younger, and he, Bill, owed him the protection of an older sibling.

  ‘Dad threw an envelope on the fire,’ Delia piped up, all three Kelton children united in their mutual dislike for the man who was their father.

  Jenny hastily reached for some brown sugar. Porridge needed brown sugar. She did not, most definitely did not, want to get mixed up in any more Kelton dramas.

  ‘Was it from Janice?’ Bill asked, and stiffened as his father gave him a sneering look.

  ‘Nothing to do with you, boy. Keep your nose out.’

  ‘If it was from Janice it had nothing to do with you, either,’ Bert said, his hands clenching and unclenching into fists by his side. ‘Was it from her? Was it?’ he roared, goaded beyond endurance.

  Stan Kelton shrugged and turned to the table, ignoring Bert
’s pain. ‘Who’s to say now?’ He sat down and then frowned. ‘Hey, you, cook. What’s that you’re doing?’

  Sid came into the room, the last down, and sniffed appreciatively. No doubt he would be able to manage porridge much better than a fried breakfast, and she smiled at him widely as she returned to the table with a huge saucepan of porridge in her hands. She placed it carefully onto the wooden mat she’d put in the centre of the table. ‘Porridge,’ she said, with satisfaction. ‘Creamy and a little sweet, with plump sultanas and piping hot. Just what you need on a morning like this.’

  ‘Porridge?’ Stan echoed, his eyes narrowing. ‘We have bacon and eggs for breakfast round here.’

  ‘Oh really?’ Jenny said, her eyes widening innocently. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Janice always liked porridge,’ Bert said, his eyes still on the fire. ‘She must have bought some oats before she left.’

  With that, he turned and headed for the door, going out into the cold of the day with not so much as a cup of tea to warm him up. Bill and Delia looked at one another helplessly, then joined their father at the table. Jenny, lips pressed into a grim line, dished out the porridge.

  Stan Kelton would just have to like it or lump it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jeremy was the last to finish his breakfast, since he’d asked for a third bowl of the delicious porridge, and when he glanced up, still licking his lips, it was to meet his father’s fond eyes. For Bert had returned after about ten minutes’ absence, sat down at the table and without a word helped himself to porridge, all the while carefully avoiding his own father’s eyes.

  Now Jeremy grinned shyly. ‘Going down to the pub tonight, Dad? Seeing it’s Christmas Eve and all,’ he added hopefully, his brown eyes shining in anticipation. A night out was obviously a rare treat for him, and Jenny marvelled anew at the restricted lives that all the younger Keltons seemed to lead. Did they not realize that it was the twenty-first century, and that serfdom had gone out in the middle ages?

  Bert smiled and nodded, and started to say, ‘Why not?’ when Stan Kelton, in the process of selecting his wellingtons from the line-up of similar footwear by the door, turned sharply.

  ‘There’ll be no pub crawling for you tonight, my lad,’ he said coldly, and thrust one foot into a depth of smelly welly. His eyes glittered as they turned on his crestfallen grandson. ‘Don’t think I don’t know why you’re in such a lather to get to the Lamb and Dog, boy,’ he carried on, thrusting his other foot into the other wellington before turning back into the room, one solid mass of implacable bulk.

  His face, Jenny noticed curiously, was just slightly flushed.

  She glanced back at Jeremy, who, in contrast, was a stark, chalky white. Hastily, she began to inspect the porridge dregs in the saucepan, relieved for once that porridge could set like concrete and required a lot of hard work and attention to remove it. She reached for the scrubbing brush and set to. Vigorously. She managed to make a lot of noise as she did so, hoping that they would take the hint and leave her to work in peace.

  No such luck.

  ‘Leave the boy be,’ Bert said, but his voice was tired and limp, as if all the fight had gone out of him. Although she didn’t turn to see, Jenny could just imagine the stricken, unhappy look his son must have cast his way. Obviously, there was to be no protection or help from his father. The cook wondered briefly what the lad had done to earn his grandfather’s displeasure, then shook her head. What business was it of hers?

  Besides, as far as she could see, it didn’t take much to rile Stan Kelton into making sure that you fell into line. That line being right under his thumb of course.

  She began to hum, loudly, something from Abba. She’d been to see Mamma Mia at the theatre last month and the tunes were sticking, maddeningly, in her head.

  ‘That flighty daughter of Jack Grantly’s ain’t for you, boy, I’ve told you that before,’ Stan continued gruffly. ‘Liz Ashcroft’s been making eyes at you since you went to school — and she’ll inherit her dad’s farm one day, what with that useless wife of his never having had any boys. If you had any sense in that head of yours, you’d make your way over there tonight and give her a Christmas present, along with a kiss. You do know how to kiss, boy, don’t you?’ he taunted.

  Jeremy’s head sank lower. ‘I ain’t got her a present,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Well, go into town and get her one,’ Stan roared, running out of his meagre supply of patience. ‘A proper one, mind. Something a gal would like. I happen to know that she brought yours over a week ago.’

  Jeremy flushed. Though naturally timid, he seemed reluctant to cower totally before his grandfather’s intimidating authority, even though Stan had moved back to the table and was now towering over him.

  ‘I want to see Mandy tonight,’ he mumbled insistently, but even more quietly, his voice so soft it was almost inaudible.

  ‘Forget Mandy Grantly!’ Stan Kelton’s voice on the other hand echoed around the stone-flagged kitchen with all the drama of a Zeus-like thunderbolt accompanied by a lightning strike.

  Jeremy’s neck had disappeared into his shoulders altogether when Jenny eventually turned around. Her saucepan was immaculately clean, and the table needed clearing. She thrust out her chin and walked determinedly forward. As she did so, she saw Sid reach out and pat his nephew’s arm.

  ‘You go to the pub tonight, lad. If the road was clear, I’d even come with you.’

  Stan Kelton glanced at his older brother, shook his head in contemptuous dismissal and tramped to the door.

  Bert stood up heavily. ‘Go to the pub,’ he agreed briefly, and followed his father silently out of the door. There were pregnant sheep to be seen to; he’d just spent another sleepless night, and those few, brief words of encouragement for his beleaguered son were all that he could muster. If Janice had been here, then together, the two of them could have protected Jeremy from his father’s manipulations. But Bert knew that he lacked the strength on his own.

  He lacked everything, it seemed.

  As he left the room, tears were streaming down his face, but nobody saw them. And once outside, they quickly froze onto his face and dropped away into the snow.

  No doubt Delia would have echoed the same sentiments to her nephew, had she not already fled the family farm for her friend’s house in The Dell. Jenny had watched her go. Delia’s colour had been high and her eyes were unnaturally bright. She’d wondered, briefly, if today was going to be the day when Delia and her other trapped friend would finally flee to London. Perhaps, Jenny had thought hopefully, watching her go from the kitchen window, today was finally the day when Delia would not return home.

  She’d certainly looked excited enough, and was far more tense and twitchy than usual. Something was definitely in the air, and Jenny felt herself tensing up, in the hopes that nothing went wrong for her. She’d only been there a day and a night, and already she couldn’t wait to get away herself.

  But even as she gave up a little prayer for Delia, Jenny felt the onset of a deep feeling of unease. In her heart, she couldn’t see any of the Keltons getting out from under the yoke of the farm and the man who ran it. They were too brainwashed, too beaten down, like flies trapped in a particularly viscous form of amber.

  Jenny sighed.

  Suddenly, someone thumped the table with a hard walloping whack. She jumped and watched Bill push his chair away and spring to his feet. ‘That old sod won’t be happy until we’re all as miserable as he is,’ he gritted, his teeth clenched in fury.

  Sid looked up at him in alarm. ‘Take it easy, lad. Things will work out, you’ll see. Things will start changing around here soon, I promise you.’

  But Bill wasn’t in the mood to listen to such platitudes. Instead he threw on his coat as if he hated it, as if he hated the whole world in fact, and stormed out of the farm, slamming the door behind him with a vicious bang. Jenny winced as yet another blow thundered through the kitchen, then let out her breath in a wavering sigh.

  Forcing a
ll thoughts of the Keltons and their problems from her mind, she set to clearing the table, giving it a good hard therapeutic scrub, and set about assembling the ingredients for her mince pies. She’d already made and thoroughly mixed her mincemeat last night, since she’d added a fair amount of brandy, which needed an overnight period to really soak into the raisins, sultanas, currants, orange peel and suet.

  Jeremy was the last to slouch out, watched openly and anxiously by his uncle, and surreptitiously by the cook. Both of them hoped that the lad would go and see his Mandy tonight, but both of them secretly doubted that he would.

  When the door closed behind him, Sid sighed sadly. Jenny met his glance and raised one eyebrow, and Sid shrugged tiredly. He rubbed a hand across his forehead and leaned back in his chair, exhausted by all the various family tensions. ‘Stan wants Jeremy to marry Liz Ashcroft because her father owns the farm that joins our land out on the west border. Ashcroft has a fair few acres, of course, but to be fair, I suppose Liz is far more likely to make a good farmer’s wife than the pub landlord’s daughter anyway,’ Sid explained, trying to be scrupulously fair to his brother but failing miserably.

  Jenny put down a large empty glass mixing bowl. ‘Mandy is pretty, is she?’ she asked bluntly, and Sid began to chuckle softly.

  ‘Like a picture.’

  Jenny put down her wooden spoon. ‘Whereas Liz . . . ?’ she trailed off, one eyebrow raised in an invitation for him to finish the sentence.

  ‘Has a good heart,’ Sid obliged sadly and tellingly.

  The two looked at one another for a moment, then Sid sighed and rose to leave. ‘I’d better get on with the books. That’s my job around here — all the admin. I do the form filling, and apply for the grant applications, pay the bills and order supplies and so on. It’s something I can do in the warm by the fire, see. Besides, accountancy isn’t our Stan’s strong point.’

  Jenny could well imagine.

  Minutes later, she jumped when, from the shadows by the sink, Mrs Jarvis came into view, her face creased into a spiteful smile. Jenny had forgotten all about her presence. She’d kept herself very quiet and unobtrusive during the breakfast entertainment. No doubt, though, she’d been lapping it all up.