“Suppose,” ventured Miss Seeton, “he were to come to me? If he didn’t mind, that is.” She blushed. Had that sounded rude? “You yourself are, of course, more than welcome; but if we telephoned, he might agree to come down when he could and—and, well, lift it out of the boot, to begin with. If,” she reiterated earnestly, “he didn’t mind.”
“What a very sensible idea.” Lady Colveden drew the car into the kerb outside Sweetbriars and applied the brake. “I’d love to come to tea, if it isn’t putting you out, and I’m sure Nigel would, as well. You know how men love to show off their muscles, and he’s particularly good at humping bales of hay and bits of tractors about. The two of us couldn’t carry that box of yours into the house—at least, not if we wanted to walk upright tomorrow morning.”
“It is certainly heavier,” agreed Miss Seeton, “than first impressions would suggest.”
“Which means it should be safe enough locked in the boot until Nigel turns up with his toolbox. He can bring your box inside, and with any luck he’ll be able to open it for you. Goodness, it’s like Christmas all over again, isn’t it? And Christmas is always far more fun in your own home. I can hardly wait to phone the Hall. If Nigel’s indoors having a cup of something, it shouldn’t take him more than a few minutes to drive down here, should it?”
To which Miss Seeton happily replied that it shouldn’t.
The geography of Plummergen is simple. The village’s main thoroughfare, The Street, runs in a long, gentle curve from north—where Lady Colveden encountered the speed-limit sign—to south, where Sweetbriars overlooks the right-angled Marsh Road bend. Directly opposite Miss Seeton’s cottage, looking north, on the left-hand side of The Street one finds the bakery, formerly an independent establishment, but now part of the Winesart chain. The bakery is run by Mrs. Wyght, who has recently assigned half her premises to an excellent tea shop which faces, on the other side of The Street, that popular hostelry the George and Dragon. Beside the George, to the south, stands the church, with the vicarage next to it; to the north, looking up The Street, lies the house of Colonel Windup, renowned for his leather liver and eccentric epistolary habits.
Yet farther to the north—even more important to Plummergen than bakery, pub, church, or vicarage—is Mr. Stillman’s post office.
Plummergen’s shoppers are spoiled for choice in the matter of where to buy groceries (fresh or frozen, bottled, tinned, or dried) and sundry necessaries in the hardware or haberdashery lines, in those of confectionery or alcohol or tobacco. Three main establishments tempt a local shopper to shop locally, rather than in nearby Brettenden or in Rye, over the marsh. Grocer Takeley, though welcoming and helpful, carries the smallest stock of the three, and his floor space for extras is limited; Mr. Welsted the draper has a wide selection of picture postcards, china souvenirs, Manchester goods, and clothes.
But it is to Mr. Stillman and his post office that the palm, by unanimous consent, must be awarded; for the post office is situated halfway up The Street ...
And so is the village bus stop.
Which means that the windows of Mr. Stillman’s emporium afford (to those inside) an excellent view of whoever might come or go by bus around the village; and, with this excellent view, these insiders are afforded equally excellent—indeed, almost unlimited—opportunities for speculation as to the purpose of such comings and goings. The only limit imposed upon this speculation is that of Mr. Stillman’s opening hours, which are from eight in the morning until six at night, without closing for lunch as his competitors do. It can easily be seen that, during those six hundred minutes, speculation has ample opportunity to run riot.
And not only run. Given the right stimulus, speculation will gallop: and gallop at such a rate that, were there ever to be an Olympiad for gossip, gold medals would be commonplace among the Plummergen contingent. In field events, too, the village scores highly: more highly, indeed, than on the track, for the leaps of imagination to which the liveliest speculators are inclined must rate platinum, at the very least. Speculators are restricted in their speculation by nothing so mundane as a regard for accuracy: enthusiasm is all. Even when the post office is shut, they continue their busy tongue-wagging as they walk homewards up or down The Street, peering over one another’s fences ostensibly into their gardens, but in truth into their front windows. The tongues still wag as camouflage while the eyes observe, the brain cells ponder the sights and sounds of Plummergen-in-private; speculation spices mealtime conversation with its preliminary conclusions, easing overnight digestion so that the recipes—suitably, and individually, embellished—may be exchanged next morning, once Mr. Stillman has unlocked his doors. It is a rare occurrence that is reported on the telephone rather than in person: Plummergen likes to savour its scandal at leisure. Moreover, telephone calls cost money. A trip to the shops costs no more than shoe leather—and the occasional grudging purchase of a tin of baked beans, or an ounce or two of cheese.
It was not quite closing time when one of the juiciest titbits in years was served up to those of Mr. Stillman’s customers who hadn’t yet gone home to prepare a good hot supper. The post office counter was shut: behind the grill, Postmaster Stillman balanced his books. Outside among the groceries, ironmongery, kitchenware, cosmetics, and stationery the last few stalwarts were contentedly shredding the characters of their absent acquaintance with a relish their culinary skills so often lacked.
“... poor, starved-looking little thing,” said Mrs. Henderson, of the Hosigg baby. Young Lily had popped in later than usual for a packet of rusks and a new dummy for her much-loved Dulcie Rose, whose birth had been a difficult one from which her delicate mother had taken too long for the doctor’s liking to recover. “I’m sure Len keeps her short, for all that Sir George pays well. She’ll be cutting back on the babby’s food to save the rent, o’ course, while he drinks it.”
“Supposed to pay well,” said Mrs. Skinner darkly. It was as automatic for Mrs. Skinner to contradict Mrs. Henderson as it was for Mrs. Henderson to snipe at Mrs. Skinner. There had been a dispute over the church flower rota which neither lady would ever forget, or forgive: they both enjoyed it far too much. “And if he’s drinking, there’s none have said they’ve seen him at it in the pub, have they?”
“He’ll be buying it off-licence in Brettenden,” said Mrs. Spice in support of Mrs. Henderson, though she could never make up her mind from one day to the next which side of the feud she really favoured. “Not as if he can’t afford to, is it? With Sir George such a good employer.”
“So they say,” retorted Mrs. Skinner with a meaningful look. “Has Len Hosigg ever shown anyone his wages slip?”
“No reason why he should,” snapped Mrs. Henderson. “Your mum,” she said, turning to Emmy Putts at the cheese counter, “hasn’t gone about telling all and sundry what they pay at the biscuit factory, has she?”
“Brettenden work’s different,” said Mrs. Skinner at once. “But if it’s here in the village, we’ve a right to know, I reckon ...” Then she realised she was on dangerous ground, and retreated. “When it’s a question of a babby not getting enough to eat, that’s to say, and needing to know why so’s summat can be done about it once we do. Not in the normal course of events, though. After all, we got to respect people’s privacy, haven’t we?”
This virtuous sentiment must, of course, be approved by everyone: even by Mrs. Henderson, who felt that Mrs. Skinner had taken mean advantage. She was casting about for some way of levelling the score when there came a rattle and a jangling behind everyone’s back, and all heads turned in the direction of the door.
In came the Nuts: tall Miss Nuttel—bony of limb and equine of visage—and Mrs. Blaine, black-eyed, plump, and temperamentally inclined to flashes of anger followed by long, brooding sulks. Nutty by name, nutty by nature. The pair are strict vegetarians, their holistic regime imparting (so they believe) a certain spirituality that shields them from the moral contamination of even the worst excesses of village life ... whatever thes
e might be. The best way to find out—the easier, of course, to avoid contamination—has proved to be the keeping of a round-the-clock watch on their fellow villagers, lest they should indulge in excess unobserved, and leave the watchers unprepared. Forewarned is forearmed. The Nuts live in what Plummergen wits call the Nut House, more formally Lilikot, a conveniently plate-glass-windowed house of modern design which stands even more conveniently opposite the bus stop, on the other side of The Street, affording that clear view of arrivals, departures, and all intermediate activities essential to moral self-preservation. Opinion in Plummergen is divided as to which of the pair has the more energetic tongue: it is generally agreed that—for all Erica Nuttel’s abbreviated mode of speech—the honours are about equal.
The turned heads, having nodded to the Nuts in greeting, seemed on the point of turning away again as the shoppers went back to their shopping.
“Oh, Eric, please, I must catch my breath!” Mrs. Blaine held a dimpled hand to the middle of her coat, beneath whose respectable woollen check it must be assumed that her heart palpitated with the horror of whatever shock she had just received. “Too, too awful,” moaned Mrs. Blaine, having first assured herself that her audience, for the moment at least, consisted of more than one. She closed her eyes, shuddering, and somehow contrived to turn pale.
“Glass of water, Bunny?” Miss Nuttel directed a forceful look upon the gaping Emmy Putts as she stood with the cheese wire in her hand. “Can’t have you fainting all over the place, old girl. Should really have taken you straight home, but ...”
Bunny’s black eyes snapped open. A soulful expression appeared on her face as she said bravely, “You know I never like to burden you with more than your fair share of the chores, Eric, no matter how my nerves have been—oh!” A too, too awful remembrance made her shudder once more. Miss Nuttel patted her on the shoulder, and glared again at the slow-witted Emmy.
“Mrs. Blaine feeling a bit poorly, Miss Nuttel?” It was Mrs. Spice who spoke. “Emmy, luv, how about a quick glass o’ water for Mrs. Blaine? And then you can serve me my half of Cheddar before you shut—if you don’t mind,” she added to the Nuts, “us carrying on, seeing as you’ve only just come in, and Mrs. Blaine most evidently not up to it at present.”
This was very clever of Mrs. Spice. The other shoppers, following her lead, crowded close about the counter with a distinct air of urgency, their shopping lists in plain sight, their bags and baskets ready to be filled. It was well known in Plummergen that to ask the Nuts a straight question about whatever news they seemed minded to impart almost always made them change their minds about imparting it. Let the village, however, ignore even the most tempting of hints, and no amount of holistic self-control could stop the Nuts from spilling the beans.
“Oh—no, thank you, Emmy.” Mrs. Blaine, feebly waving the water away, allowed a note of plaintive martyrdom to enter her voice. “Too ungrateful of me, you’ll say, I know, but with our own well just across The Street—and so many dreadful chemicals in tap water—and what a second shock would do to my system when I’m barely starting to recover from the first ...”
“Over-imagination, Bunny, that’s your trouble.” Miss Nuttel shook her head, mock-scolding. “Be honest now. Not as if you saw it clearly, is it?”
Mrs. Blaine, sighing, acknowledged that she had not; then added that, for one as sensitive to such things as she was, a glimpse had been more than enough.
“Mug of chamomile tea, and you’ll feel better in no time. A good night’s rest, and you’ll be a new woman.”
The prospect of a new Norah Blaine intrigued every member of Miss Nuttel’s audience save that one for whom the remark had been ostensibly intended. Bunny, quaking, bleated that she didn’t see how Eric, of all people, could possibly dream of suggesting she could have a good night’s rest, when she knew she could never sleep a wink. “I’d be terrified to close my eyes,” said Mrs. Blaine. “Too sinister in the dark. I shall have nightmares about it, I know I shall—should, I mean, if I even tried to sleep, so naturally I shan’t try. You, being so much less highly strung ...”
The highly strung insomniac here broke down completely, burying her nose in the handkerchief she had pulled out of her coat pocket to make her waving away of Emmy’s aquatic offering a truly dramatic gesture. Miss Nuttel, patting her on the shoulder again, struggled for soothing words.
“Cheer up, Bunny. No good looking on the black side. Besides, two of us with imagination wouldn’t do, scaring each other into fits all the time. I’m sure,” said Miss Nuttel with rather less conviction than compassion might require, “you must have made a mistake.” Mrs. Blaine intimated, with a wordless but eloquent moan, that she had not. “Well ... hope you did, anyway.” Now it was Miss Nuttel’s turn to shudder. “I mean—only out for a breath of fresh air. Not as if you saw a raven or anything, was it?”
“Harbingers of doom,” responded Mrs. Blaine in hollow tones. “But you can’t tell me a ... a coffin’s not just as bad when you see one.”
“Worse,” said Miss Nuttel. “If that’s what it was.”
“Oh, it was!” Mrs. Blaine, in her emphasis, was oblivious to her fascinated audience as it crowded, open-mouthed and panting with curiosity, close about her. “Far worse, to see it come looming up out of the dark that way, carried by those—those ghostly white hands, right by the church ...”
Nigel Colveden, in dark jacket and trousers, carrying the treasure chest into Miss Seeton’s cottage, would have been insulted that anyone should consider him—a hardy, weatherbeaten son of the Kentish soil—white and ghostly; but Nigel wasn’t there.
A chorus of gasps had greeted Mrs. Blaine’s revelation. Spectral sarcophagi, it was evident, rated high as harbingers of doom in Plummergen opinion.
“Right by the church? Mark my words,” said Mrs. Spice, as the rest could only shudder, “a haunting at that end of The Street can mean nothing but ill luck for the village—and worse for them as saw it ...”
“Death,” Mrs. Blaine corrected her bravely. “Death—oh, Eric!”
“Death,” repeated Mrs. Spice, not to be outdone. “Death—and disaster for all concerned ...”
And everyone shuddered once more.
chapter
~ 9 ~
BRETTENDEN, THOUGH DEEP in the heart of Kent, lies no more than forty miles from the nation’s capital. At around the same time that Lady Colveden and Miss Seeton were driving home through the first dry weather for days, in London, likewise, the rain had finally stopped.
In the basement of a tall Georgian house in the middle of an up-and-coming street of Georgian houses, a little grey cat, roused from his slumbers by the longed-for sounds of silence, uncurled himself luxuriously from the cushion on which he had just spent a most comfortable week. He yawned, stretched, and padded purposefully to the door. His claws raked the clean white paint as his mouth opened in a yowl; his master, immersed in classical music on the fireside sofa, leaped at once to obey the command.
“So the forecast was wrong for once. Aren’t you lucky? Off you go, then. Make the most of it—and have fun.”
Fun? Did the man think he’d asked to be let outside for fun? It was almost a week since he’d felt like spending more than the necessary few ablutionary minutes in the open air; almost a week since he’d been in the mood to go on patrol. He took his duties seriously, of course, in the normal run of things—but it wasn’t normal for a cat to have soaking wet fur and whiskers drenched with rain the moment he popped his nose out of doors. He hated having to paddle through puddles to his private bathroom; he hated feeling cold and clammy, and having his beautiful fur plastered flat against his body instead of fluffing out round it in the soft, warm haze his man loved to stroke by the hour. He hated being wrapped in a towel—never mind it was the man’s best terry—and rubbed, no matter how gently ...
But these pet hates—the little grey cat flicked his tail with pleasure at the pun—could be forgotten now. The rain had stopped. It was high time he checked on how his
kingdom had survived during his absence: there was a lot of catching up for him to do.
He ran lightly up the area steps to ground level, where he paused, his nose twitching. Grey, rain-laden clouds had smothered the evening sun from sight; the air was heavy and damp, and the world was a riot of smells—enticing, disgusting, intriguing. Dogs on routine tours of inspection had marked their appointed lampposts; oil and leaking petrol, washed from the road into the gutters, swirled there gently in the gleam from wakeful lamps and the breeze from passing cars. Twigs and small branches from the trees that lined the road lay, smashed by the weight of rain and traffic, exuding a rich, green, dying scent.
Dying? No. His nose twitched again. Not dying: dead. The breeze had strengthened suddenly, wafting a whiff of death in the direction of the little grey cat: and it wasn’t death of the kind to which he was accustomed, the kind he himself so often caused. No mouse or rat or bird, this dead creature: larger, he thought. The scent was so much stronger ... Stronger—and familiar, somehow ... But wrong, in the natural order of things ...
And where things were out of order in his kingdom, it was his duty to see how they could be put right.
And when he came clawing at the basement door with something in his mouth, it took the man only a few seconds to realise that this was no mouse, or rat, or bird that hung limply from the small, but powerful, jaws. Yes, there was skin: but no bone, or fur, or feather.
And the skin was—or had been—tanned, and dyed, and shaped by skilled hands ...
Into the wallet which the little grey cat had nosed from the pocket of a dead man’s coat.
“Screwdrivers, nil: treasure chest, four.” Nigel Colveden sat back with a weary sigh, dropped his assortment of tools beside him on the carpet, and rubbed a hand across his brow. “I think anyone would have to call that a pretty conclusive result, Miss Seeton. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, no, it is I,” said Miss Seeton at once, “who must apologise, for putting you to all this trouble when I know how busy you are on the farm.”
Sold to Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 19) Page 7
