And the result had been wonderful. An artist with his enormous digger! By the end of the morning, he had carved out the most beautifully shaped, roughly oval, but completely natural-looking pond that within weeks began to look as though it had been there forever. He even made an island for ducks, placed artistically off-centre, and about two-thirds of the way down the pool. He built the island high about the level of the water and furnished it with a bushy hazel bush extracted from a nearby hedge and then used up the rest of the excavated earth, what he seemed to call the ‘spoil’ by constructing a low bank with which he surrounded the pond, smoothing the top and making it somewhere to sit on summer days. And, even more cleverly, he had brought along some old stakes which he had acquired somehow and hammered them into the ground at intervals of about four feet apart and about three foot high, all around the perimeter of the pond, managing to convey to her that a fence should be built all around it so that no child could fall in, but could fish safely over the top of it.
And Flora and he became friends. Each time, during her years at Willowgrove School, when she managed to raise some money, she got Alf along. He built a Norman Motte — a wonderful little hill, fun to run up and down, and with a flat top where various castles could be built from all sorts of material, sticks, painted cloth, old fencing, anything which took the children’s imagination. He dug circular ridges, as accurately as any giant compass could have sketched them, filling up the other corner of her soggy field, for a grove of red, yellow and dark crimson willows, and made it into a maze. And from time to time he turned up with some things, thrown out by the council, according to him; such as eighty small concrete slabs, half of them brown and the other half cream, from which she picked out the best sixty-four pieces and showed him how to make an outdoor chess board.
The school had become fanatical about chess ever since winning the semi-final of County Junior Chess Championship. Jenny and Anthony, or Mole and Ratty, as they called themselves, were both gifted players, but by dint of their strong personalities and with the stimulus of the outdoor chess board, they had brought the other four players up to the standard until they succeeded in winning the County Championship.
Flora blushed a little, even sometimes now, when she thought of how Jenny had ensured a victory for the Willowgrove School at the finals of the Kent Under-Eleven Chess Championship. It had been a strong team that year. The photo had stayed for the next few years on the wall in the corridor. Anthony was on board one, Jenny, board two, Simon, board three and the other three were almost equally good.
They were all strong players, the team from Willowgrove School, and they may have won the Kent final in any case, but deep down Flora knew that their sweeping victory had been ensured by Jenny. Jenny was a good chess player and probably could have been a better one were it not for an ingrained restlessness, an inability to sit still and ponder a move rather than to move quickly and chance to luck. But as a trainer she was superb. She could always put her finger on what was wrong with another player’s game, when restlessness had driven her to abandon studying her own game and to inspect the other five boards.
This restlessness was very apparent on the day of the championship game; in between each move Jenny was touring the other boards, seemingly paying more attention to the games on board one, three, four, five and six than to the game on board two.
It took me a while before I realised what was going on, thought Flora, looking back on that day. There had been nothing that she could do at the time. Teachers were discouraged from approaching the boards during play, and because this was the county final an outside invigilator was supervising. He, certainly, was not going to object to a child quietly studying other games while waiting for an opponent to move, but would frown on a teacher approaching that child.
It was all so subtle! Jenny was working psychologically on the opposite team: a quick intake of breath before an opponent’s move, a widening of eyes, a sudden movement of a hand, a tiny shadow of a smirk, nothing that anyone could object to. But time after time, a Canterbury player, about to make a good move, panicked, changed his mind and hastily moved something else. And time after time, a piece was lost, an advantage forgone, an opportunity missed.
There was nothing anyone could challenge; it was definitely not against the laws of chess to look at other games while waiting for your opponent to move and the boy on Canterbury College’s board two, Jenny’s opponent, was a slow, ponderous player; the son of the president of the local chess club, had explained the head of the school; apparently carefully trained by his father to play at a snail’s pace. Jenny, who always played at lightning speed, had lots of time to wander up and down the row, lots of time to disconcert the other team.
And so they had won the final and then, during that idyllic hot June of 1983, the Willowgrove chess team, practised for the South-East of England Championship and planned how to defeat their opponents in London.
Occasionally whenever Alf was working in Willowgrove, repairing roads, or sorting out drains, he turned up at the school, munching his sandwiches and watching the children play chess.
He took a great fancy to Rosie, treated her like a delicate piece of china, loved to watch her and listened eagerly to her chatter. He understood that chess was incomprehensible to her, that she was excluded from the group and he took his own way to make her special. He brought along an enormous specimen of a rose-pink Dorothy Perkins bush, dug from the side of the road near to the ruins of an old cottage, and indicated that it was for her, planting it so carefully that, although it was in the middle of a heatwave in June when he brought it, the bush went on flowering happily until autumn. It was always known as Rosie’s bush, even after Rosie herself had left the school. And, noticing that she seemed to want to be near to the crowd around the chess board, he brought along a rusty bench, discarded by the council, rubbed it down and painted it a pleasant green. And that, of course, became Rosie’s bench while her sister Jenny honed the chess team’s tactics nearby.
And somehow Alf seemed to understand the relationship between the two sisters, gently nodding praise at Rosie when she said anything and ignoring Jenny when she made one of her clever jokes for Anthony Osmotherley’s benefit. Rosie was always going to be his little favourite.
And it was of Rosie that he spoke, just as Paula’s car swept into the carpark.
‘Police,’ he said, or at least she thought that was what he said. He had great difficulty with letters like p, and b, but he nodded in the direction of Dewhurst Lane and she guessed that, as usual, he had heard all that was going on in the village. ‘Nasty ’oman,’ he said with such comparative clarity, that Flora hoped Paula, who had just got out of her car, would not take the words as directed towards her. ‘’Udn’t ’urt a fly,’ he added, forcing his tongue and lips into comparative clarity.
‘Goodness, we are keen!’ said Paula, efficiently unloading her poodle, a selection of leads and a cluster of posters at the same time as she called across a greeting. ‘You’re the first to arrive. Don’t go in, though, will you. I plan that he will come in when we are all settled down and doing the “circling the hall on a loose lead” exercise. When your monster sees all those dogs behaving well, then he will just fall into line. Oh, good-evening, Mr Barfoot. Don’t worry, we’ll leave the place spick and span. I always insist on that. No point in giving our dogs a bad name, now is there?’
And then Paula, after a few dubious looks into the back of the car from where Piper was barking energetically at the very well-behaved poodle, sped across to where Alf was unlocking the front door of the village hall. He had, Flora heard, taken on the job of caretaker amongst his other jobs. More, she thought, to get some company during the evenings, than to make money. He would have a decent pension from the county council and many of the villagers had taken to employing him for ponds, septic tanks — even to dig a grave for a very beloved dog on one occasion. Flora, herself had found him invaluable for making a garden when she had moved back into Willowgrove when she retired
.
Alf walked back over to her, now, as cars drove up and unloaded dogs, most of whom seemed to take umbrage at the sight of Piper’s head protruding from the back window and barking a challenge at them.
Paula, thought Flora, might regret her invitation. The other dogs, who had, in her apprehensions about the evening, formed a well-trained background to her dog’s initiation into the wonders of walking politely on a loose lead, now seemed to be quite ready to start a fight with Piper. Something about his sheer size and the fact that all of him, except his head, was safely cordoned off behind the bars of the back section of the estate car, seemed to set up a belligerence in almost every dog who arrived. She daren’t shut the window, the evening was too hot, and Piper totally ignored her commands to be quiet and only desisted when Alf gave him a very horny callused hand to lick. When the next car arrived and a belligerent boxer jumped smartly out, Alf was ready for Piper and encircled the dog’s muzzle with one enormous hand and blew gently into his ear, something which startled Piper into silence.
Flora began to regret coming. There was no way that she could handle Piper if all of those dogs were going to bark at him. ‘Should I take him home?’ she asked the question half of herself and half of Alf, but he answered immediately, nodding his head vigorously.
‘Take ’im ’ome. Too big. Goo’ dog.’ He patted Piper with an enormous hand and then strode off. Flora, with a quick guilty look at the door to the village hall, from which emerged some barks, got rapidly into the driver seat and made her escape.
She wanted to think, in any case. Why had Alf Barfoot called Mrs Trevor a nasty woman? Had she angered him in some way? Had she perhaps repulsed him if he had brought a gift to Rosie to their bungalow? Or had Jenny made some trouble? Simon’s words about Jenny had made her see the girl in a different light. In any case, she hoped that Paula had not heard those words. Villages were funny places and if Alf, not from this village but from somewhere over the border with Sussex, made clear his dislike of Mrs Trevor then suspicion, once lifted from Rosie, could fall upon him, an outsider. People were embarrassed by Alf and tended to slide away from him, while acknowledging his usefulness and his skill.
Chapter 9
‘I have a bit of gossip for you.’ Paula was an early morning visitor, standing on the doorstep soon after nine o’clock.
‘Or else you’ve turned up to make sure that I haven’t committed suicide out of sheer embarrassment,’ said Flora, shutting the front door behind her visitor as Piper came bounding out from the kitchen. She thought about explaining that Alf had advised her to take the dog home because he was too big, but then knew that would not make her case any the better. It did sound very feeble and, in any case, Paula was occupied with repulsing Piper and so she decided to say no more.
‘Nonsense. We’ll soon have that dog of yours whipped into shape,’ said Paula, standing back a little from Piper as he tried to jump up on her. ‘Don’t let him do that,’ she added when he succeeded. ‘He’s far too big a dog to be allowed to jump up on people. Off, bad dog! Sssit!’
‘Yes, I know.’ Flora tried to sound penitent, but inwardly, to her shame, she was a little pleased to see that even the efficient Paula could not stop Piper in an exuberant mood. He had greeted their visitor with immense enthusiasm but refused, to her secret satisfaction, to obey commands to sit or to give the paw. I’m no poodle, he seemed to be saying as he placed his paws on the waist of the dog training expert’s cotton skirt and licked her face. He then made a couple of play bows in front of the visitor, crouching down and then running away barking merrily, before rushing back again. When he tired of that game, which she didn’t seem to understand, he jumped up on her again; pretended intense fear when she told him to sit and skidded down the hallway, with flattened ears, barking to such a degree that Flora thought the noise would crack the overhead chandelier. Paula tried a few more crisp commands, but what worked with her poodle, certainly did not work with this hyperactive German Shepherd. On the contrary, he took it that she wanted to play and fled to the kitchen, returning instantly with a large rubber bone sticking out from one corner of his mouth like a giant cigar and went skidding up and down on the hallway, his bright red tongue dripping from his jaws, and his brown eyes alert with a mixture of fun and of pretend alarm.
‘Come and sit down, Flora. Ignore him. He’ll calm down in a minute,’ said Paula.
Flora had a horrible feeling that she had heard the sound of tearing stitches, but decided that it would save time not to enquire. After all, Paula was an expert seamstress. As for sitting down and ignoring Piper, well, she knew that would not work. Piper was not the kind of dog who was happy to be ignored. And people sitting down was an invitation to climb on their lap. He always insisted that his presence should be acknowledged. There was only one kind of thing that worked with Piper and that was bribery. She went to the fridge and took out a piece of liver.
‘Go into the sitting room, Paula,’ she said. ‘I’ll put him in his kennel. He’ll settle down there. He’s always quite good there when Simon is out.’
Simon, she thought, had not gone out, but had not yet come home. It frightened and worried her, but, although Paula was quite a friend, she did not want to admit to her son’s absence. Better, she thought, to imply that he, like an employed boy of his age, had just gone off to work.
By the time that she re-joined Paula she had made up her mind to say nothing about Simon. That, after all, was not the business that had sent her to get Paula’s expert opinion. Paula had lived in Willowgrove all of her life, knew all of the village gossip. Surely she could supply a few names of people who disliked Mrs Trevor, some red herrings that would distract the police from the girl.
Rosie, Flora was certain, or, at least, virtually certain, had nothing whatsoever to do with her mother’s death. It was, then, imperative that the police should be diverted onto a few different scents before they made up their minds too firmly that the poor girl was guilty. There had to be, thought Flora, another solution and she was resolute in using all endeavours to find it. Not a pleasant woman, Mrs Trevor, she thought, as she made the coffee. A woman who had managed to get herself disliked in all sorts of places. Certainly not very well liked in the village, although there had been a lot of sympathy for the girls: for Rosie, because of her disability and for Jenny, because most people recognised that she did not have a fair deal, but was forever having to be responsible for a sister who was a good year older than she, but who, intellectually, dragged a long way behind her younger sister. Poor Jenny, people said. That mother of hers drove her out of the house. Wouldn’t allow her to choose her own boyfriends. Jenny, said village gossip, had to accept her mother’s judgement on who was suitable. And that, Flora told herself, must have aroused a lot of ill-feeling among the young men who found Jenny to be attractive.
And then again Mrs Trevor was expert at stirring up ill-feeling in the village, at starting campaigns and bullying people into joining. The sort of woman whom quite a few people might want to murder. The thought lingered as Flora prepared the coffee and added a packet of digestive biscuits.
‘Sorry it’s just instant,’ she said as she came into the room. ‘But we can have it in peace as I’ve put Piper in his kennel with an enormous bone. Mrs Osmotherley saves the largest bones for me. She’s very good.’
‘Instant will be fine,’ said Paula. She had a slightly hesitant note in her voice. Flora hoped that she would not discuss Piper’s training. Or make enquiries about Simon. She would prefer to concentrate on Rosie.
‘So, tell me the gossip, then.’ Flora rushed into the sentence.
‘Well, I was in Mrs Barrow’s shop this morning,’ began Paula, and then seeing the startled look, she added reassuringly, ‘just buying some spaghetti.’
‘I see.’ Flora nodded her head. That was tactful. Mrs Barrows kept a most unhygienic shop, full of flies, but she supposed Paula, being a diplomat, felt that she had to give her some custom occasionally. Mrs Trevor, now that she came to remember
, had got up a petition to have her shop inspected, but few of the villagers had wished to sign it. Live and let live, Paula had said to Flora at the time. Wrapped spaghetti was probably pretty safe if one did not want to risk food poisoning.
‘Well, we were chatting about Mrs Trevor and about the murder and how we couldn’t imagine a girl like Rosie doing such a thing as that, then Mrs Barrows said to me — there was no one else in the shop of course — she leaned over the counter and hissed in my ear: “Did you know that Mrs Trevor and Mr Rice were having an affair? I wonder if he had anything to do with the murder. Mrs Rice wouldn’t have been too pleased, would she?” And then she went back to packing the spaghetti into one of those filthy plastic bags of hers.’
‘What! Benjamin’s father!’
‘That’s right, Michael Rice.’
‘Do you think she’s right?’
‘Well, she said that she saw him popping in there a few times. And he had left his car down on the main road, and walked up the hill through the lane, through that little alleyway at the back of the houses on Dewhurst Lane. Why should he do that if he wasn’t visiting her secretly?’
‘Is she sure? Could it be a mistake?’ Flora knew the alleyway, very narrow, with a high, bramble-filled hedge on either side, dog mess underfoot and used condoms in a gateway to a field beside it — not a place that Michael Rice would walk for pleasure, she thought.
‘I’d say not. Mrs Barrows doesn’t live too far away. She’d see him. And she has a great nose for gossip.’
False Accusations: Nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide... (Willowgrove Village Mystery Book 1) Page 7
