by Ann Granger
Yet the thing which struck her most of all here in the drawing room was that Harriet seemed to have a passion for photographs. In every kind of frame and occasionally jammed, a smaller snapshot in front of a larger, in the same frame, they spilled across the mantelshelf and over tabletops, shelves and cupboards. Several of them pictured Harriet or others with horses.
‘Do you keep a horse yourself?’ Meredith asked.
‘Old Blazer.’ Harriet picked up a newish picture. ‘This one. Tom Fearon keeps him for me at the livery stables. He’s a nice old chap.’
Meredith wasn’t sure whether Harriet meant the horse or Mr Fearon so she murmured politely.
Harriet poured out the coffee. ‘You certainly need something to buck you up after dealing with that scrum in Bamford. I loathe shopping. But none of the shops delivers and there’s no village store around here.’
‘Do you live in Pook’s Common all the time?’ Meredith asked as she took the cup. It was pretty bone china sprigged with rosebuds. ‘Some of the cottages look like weekend homes.’
Harriet had returned to the kitchen. Her voice came muffled. ‘Some are. There are only eight of them all told, four on each side, as you’ve probably observed.’ She came back, this time carrying a plate with homemade biscuits on it which she held out to Meredith. ‘Help yourself, “Viennese whirls” they’re called. My problem is that I like to make the things but can’t possibly eat them all myself. Well, if I did, I’d need to sell old Blazer and buy a shire horse to carry me! Hang on, I’ll get you a napkin.’
The napkin was damask and perfectly laundered. Harriet did everything right. Efficiency about the house on the part of others always inspired wistful envy in Meredith who was efficient about the office and rather at sea about the home. I, she thought disconsolately, offer people packet biscuits if I’ve remembered to buy any and generally only have paper napkins. But Harriet had returned to Meredith’s query about the cottages.
‘The semi-detached pair on the right of yours, looking at them from the road, belong to one of the Oxford colleges. One of those gets used by various people, no idea who any of ’em are. But the other is used by Dr Krasny. He comes down when he has a lot of writing to do because it’s quiet. One doesn’t see much of him even when he’s here. He’s a pleasant enough chap, though, and generally looks in to say hullo and have a glass of sherry on his way out to tramp over the common looking for flowers. I believe his subject is rare wild orchids.’
‘There is an actual common, then?’
‘Oh yes. Although it’s not strictly grazing land any more. More like open moorland. The cottagers of Pook’s Common used to have grazing rights but I’m the only one to keep an animal now and I keep mine in a paddock belonging to Tom. Turning out a valuable beast on the common today would be asking for trouble. We had rustlers round a year or two back. Sounds like the Wild West, doesn’t it? It still goes on, quite a bit. The poor brutes go for slaughter, horsemeat steaks for the continent.’
Harriet sipped at her coffee. ‘The one on the left of yours is Mrs Sowerby’s. She’s elderly and hardly ever puts her nose out of the front door. Her daughter drives out from Bamford once a week but around this time of year she goes to stay with some other relative, I’m not sure where, so I dare say she isn’t there at the moment and you haven’t got any immediate neighbours resident. This is a pretty lonely spot, As regards this side of the road, looking towards mine. The cottage next door to this on the right, it’s got a ghastly fake wishing well in the front garden, belongs to the chap who runs the garage up on the main road, Joe Fenniwick and his wife. They’re permanent residents, like me. Joe’s a good mechanic incidentally and you can take your car to him with confidence. The cottage on the left here was bought by some business type who was going to weekend here with his girlfriend. He spent a fortune doing it up and then his girlfriend bolted and now he wants to sell. Bottom’s fallen out of the market, though, just now. That only leaves the one at the far end, which belongs to a couple who plan to retire here in the spring. Hope they like things quiet. In the meantime it’s empty, although they generally turn up at weekends and mess around the place, painting bite and pieces and knocking in nails. So it is rather deserted. I like it that way myself.’
‘I’m going to have to travel up to London every day of the week,’ Meredith said with some regret. ‘I don’t start until after New Year. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.’
‘Rather you than me,’ Harriet said frankly. She paused. ‘What do you do?’
Meredith explained. Harriet gazed at her thoughtfully. ‘I admire anyone who can hold down a job,’ she said suddenly. ‘I worked for a bit when I was about eighteen. It was in Liverpool, because I lived in the Wirral then and I used to travel over there every day to put in my hours. I say I worked, but I mean it was for a charity which ran one of these centres where they try and help the socially deprived. They had an old people’s day room and a young mothers’ club and a crèche and all kinds of projects for youngsters. I’ll be honest, I couldn’t stick it out. I only did mornings but even the mornings were too much for me.’ She pulled a slight grimace. ‘I have independent means. You haven’t to say that these days. People look at you as if you’d said you had plague. I have turned my hand to trying a bit of writing and I keep meaning to take it up again. I prefer being out of doors, though, that’s my trouble, and writing takes up so much time. Wish I could say I did do something organised and worthwhile on a regular basis.’
‘You could!’ Meredith said promptly. ‘You just haven’t found the right job for you.’
Harriet looked thoughtful again. ‘Perhaps I will one day. And perhaps I’ve found the thing for me already. I don’t mean a job, but something which needs doing, all the same.’
Her gaze had drifted as she spoke and seemed to rest on one of the photographs displayed nearby. Meredith followed her line of sight and saw that it rested on an oldish-looking photo. It showed three little girls in sandals and sundresses grouped together with a spaniel dog. One little girl had familiar red curls.
Harriet glanced at Meredith and saw that she was looking at the picture. ‘That’s me,’ she said pointing at it. ‘You can always tell by the carrotty hair.’ She got up and picked up the frame and brought it over to Meredith. That’s my cousin Fran next to me. We were much the same age and more like sisters than cousins, really.’
‘And who is that?’ Meredith pointed at the third child, a pretty little girl with dark hair and an engaging, impish grin. ‘She looks a happy child.’
‘Oh, that’s Caro, Caroline Henderson, a friend of ours.’ Harriet’s voice was still casual but it struck Meredith its carelessness was now a little forced. ‘She was a happy child. We all were. It was a good childhood. I’m glad Caro was happy then because she sure as hell wasn’t later on!’ She withdrew the photo abruptly and returned it to its place on a table.
‘I’m sorry,’ Meredith said awkwardly.
Harriet looked slightly abashed. ‘I didn’t mean to snap. Sorry. It was just that we were all so fond of her. Caro was a diabetic.’ She seemed to be making an effort to speak in a dispassionate practical tone. ‘And just to make things more difficult, an heiress. Her father died when she was a kid, as did her uncle, which meant that her grandfather who was as rich as Croesus had no one else to leave his ill-gotten gains to. It wasn’t a blessing!’ Harriet’s voice had grown bleaker as she spoke and finally broke off on a clipped note of finality.
‘I can imagine that. Diabetes is quite a burden to carry through life.’
‘The money was a worse one. But she didn’t carry it for long,’ Harriet drained her cup and set it down noisily on the tray. ‘She was only twenty-three when she died from an overdose.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Meredith said awkwardly. ‘Was it to do with the diabetes?’
‘Not really. They said it was depression. She had been treated for depression. The doctors prescribed all kinds of pills. I told her to throw the lot away. I
wish she had done. You know, once a woman’s got a name as a neurotic no one takes her seriously any more. No matter what’s wrong, they prescribe more pills and tell her to take it easy. Nobody listens to her. No one believes her any more but they’re ready to believe anything anyone else says about her!’
‘It’s a tricky problem,’ Meredith said cautiously. ‘Dealing with a neurotic person is well-nigh impossible. They do go off the deep-end and tell you extraordinary tales. I’ve had to deal with a few.’
‘Oh, I know it’s like crying wolf,’ Harriet nodded. ‘But if you know that person, you can generally disentangle what’s really happening from the rest. I’m not a fanciful person. I suppose I’m quite hard-headed in a way. But I don’t lack sympathy. The reason I packed in the charity job wasn’t because I didn’t sympathise. It was because I got so frustrated. I’d slave my guts out on a case and think I’d got it settled and a week later the woman would turn up in my office with the same dreary tale. Working for an outfit like that helps you tell the real from the fraud.’ She paused. ‘But you still get it wrong, sometimes. I don’t like being made a fool of!’
Outside in the little hallway, the telephone rang. Harriet said ‘Excuse me!’, got to her feet and went out to answer it. She closed the door behind her and the conversation came to Meredith as the muffled indistinguishable sound of Harriet’s voice. Meredith was relieved to be spared the embarrassment of unavoidable eavesdropping. Harriet’s voice rose aggressively and then the receiver was slammed down. She returned, flushed, and walked to the drinks cabinet. ‘Would you like a glass of sherry? Or something stronger? Wish each other Merry Christmas and all that!’ She was reaching for the glasses already. Clearly, she meant to have a drink.
‘All right, a sherry would be fine,’ said Meredith who really didn’t like drinking in the middle of the day.
Harriet pushed back the whisky bottle and poured out two sherries. They toasted one another in Croft Original.
‘Absent friends,’ Harriet added before drinking hers. ‘May they never be forgotten.’
As foreseen by the dark clouds, it began to rain during the afternoon and by the time the headlights of Markby’s car illuminated the front windows of Rose Cottage, it was fairly tipping down. He dashed up the short front path at a run and shot through the door Meredith held open for him.
Squashed against her in the tiny hall, he dripped water and spluttered apologies. She thought that he hadn’t changed a bit. It was the same thin, intelligent slightly wary face and as far as she could tell the same old Barbour jacket. He was the sort of man who loathed new clothes. His hair fell over his forehead in a damp straight lock and his blue eyes were screwed up as if in concern or alarm.
‘Have you got a mac?’ he asked anxiously. ‘We have to get from the pub car park into the pub. It’s bucketing down.’
‘I’ve got my anorak and it has a hood. I was afraid it might rain for Christmas.’ Why was it when English people met again after an absence, they talked so determinedly about the weather? But he had spotted the wreath, hung up in the hall.
‘That’s a bit – bright.’ He stooped over it, peering down. It hung at the level of his chest.
‘It’s Mrs Brissett’s. She threatened to bring a plastic Father Christmas too. As it is, look in here.’ Meredith threw open the door to the living room.
‘Good grief,’ he said faintly.
Paper chains, turquoise, acid yellow and flaming scarlet, were draped about the room from corner to corner and back and forth. A large puce Chinese lantern dangled from the ceiling and a silver tinsel Christmas tree stood on the coffee table.
‘She did it all while I was in Bamford shopping this morning. It’s so kind of her and she must have worked so hard . . . I can’t possibly take any of it down. She said she was sure I must have missed an English Christmas abroad all these years. I don’t know how she got up to fix the ceiling chains.’
‘It’s, ah, cheerful . . . and talking of Christmas—’ He broke off and looked embarrassed, then said, ‘I’ll explain later. Shall we go and get that steak?’
He took them by a tortuous route to a pub called The Black Dog, which made a change from horses and pookas, until she recollected uneasily that a black dog was one of the devil’s traditional earthly disguises. Meredith, trying to use her bump of direction thought they had gone in a circle and as far as she could tell through teeming rain and darkness, were in the middle of the open moor or common. For all its slightly sinister name and the murk and the remoteness of its location, The Black Dog presented a brightly lit oasis suggesting welcome and hospitality. A string of multi-coloured lights gleamed beneath the overhanging thatch and bright yellow light was streaming from its tiny windows. Several cars were already parked in the yard at its side.
‘Christmas,’ said Markby gloomily. ‘Mind you, I think we’re getting the “don’t drink and drive” message across. Not so much by getting them to understand as frightening them with a Breathalyser test and losing their licence. Everyone needs to drive these days.’
A blast of warm smoky air struck Meredith’s face as she preceded him into the one large room inside. The Black Dog had abandoned the old distinction between saloon and public bars. The ‘public’ which frequented it had become an amorphous mass. Very few true locals could be distinguished here: a car-borne young-ish, free-spending town-based clientèle supplied the bulk of the trade. They were sharp-faced and casually clad. The older people there looked well-dressed and prosperous. All mingled together and jostled for their drinks or huddled round tables over plates of food. Food was obviously as important a commodity as drink in The Black Dog. It would be interesting, thought Meredith, to know at what point exactly a ‘pub’ became a ‘restaurant’. But in the latter establishment customers would have demanded more space and comfort. Here they accepted others cannoning into their backs as they ate and occasionally dripping overflowing beer glasses on to their tables or even down their necks.
The bar was against the far wall, plentifully stocked and presided over by a bleached blonde in a white beaded sweater. A slim youth with curly hair pushed his way round, collecting used glasses, and a young girl with a notebook was taking orders for food at the bar. The place was fairly crowded and noisy with chatter. There was the inevitable piped Muzak but it was mercifully unobtrusive.
The building itself was obviously very old. Its walls were of thick stone blocks and bulged and its low ceiling criss-crossed with smoke-blackened oak beams. A fire blazed in a huge hearth beneath an oak lintel which, to judge by its thickness, must have come from a tree already at least a hundred years old when it was felled to help build this ancient building. Horse brasses had been tacked along the length of the oaken lintel and gleamed in the firelight. There was a framed poster above it, advertising a livestock sale of the 1860s. Meredith craned her neck and saw behind her an even older notice announcing a trio of public hangings, two of them for offences which in some circumstances would not even have warranted a custodial sentence today. She wondered if it was an original or a reproduction. It was brownish-yellow and very tattered and looked as if it might be the real thing. An unpleasant thing, too.
Meredith wrenched her gaze from the sad little scrap of paper and looked about her. Despite the noise and the modern dress of the customers, it was not difficult to imagine men with clay pipes sitting around the hearth of The Black Dog on windy, wet nights. But modern marketing had laid its hand on the old taproom. The chairs were upholstered in crimson dralon ‘velvet’ and a newer, brighter, and considerably less literate notice on the wall advertised the coming attractions of regular Saturday ‘gigs’. The menu, judging from plates already on tables, was surprisingly sophisticated for such an out-of-the-way establishment.
‘It’s getting popular,’ said Markby as they squeezed into a corner settle near the fire. ‘You all right there? Not going to be too hot? Give me your coat, there’s a place to hang them over there. What would you like to drink?’
‘I’m sorry, I w
as gaping at all the knick-knacks!’ she smiled up at him. ‘I’ll have a glass of white wine if I may.’
‘I was hoping you’d like this place.’ He gave a rueful grimace. ‘Just sorry it’s so crowded. Hang on, I’ll be back in a jiff.’
She watched him fight his way across the room to hang up the coats and then to the bar. He did it without pushing and shoving but with competent authority. People moved out of his way and didn’t seem to mind doing so. He always thanked anyone who did, she noticed, and felt a return of the respect he had inspired in her at their first meeting. Not, she recalled, that he couldn’t be awkward. But then, she admitted honestly, so could she!
Meredith sat back, feeling the heat of the flames play on her face and relaxing. It was noisy and crowded but it was nice to have it so and Alan needn’t have worried that she’d dislike that. A large black cat with tattered ears appeared and strolled unconcernedly through the maze of feet to rub itself against her legs. Not a dog, devilish or otherwise, she thought with some amusement but then remembered tales of witches and their black feline familiars. All this superstitious nonsense was getting to her.
‘Hullo,’ said Meredith, stooping to scratch one battle-torn ear. The cat mewed up at her, displaying a fearsome and off-putting set of teeth. A voice from a nearby table floated towards her.
‘Keep them out of the hands of the police, that’s the thing. What we need are proper assessment centres. They need help, not locking up. Once they’ve served any kind of custodial sentence so much damage is done . . .’
A fresh burst of noise cut off the end of the sentence. Meredith lifted her head from her feline acquaintance, pushed back the curtain of dark brown hair which obscured her vision and looked curiously in the general direction of the voice. But it was impossible to tell now who had been speaking or even to be sure at which of the small crowded tables the speaker sat. Of the two tables nearby, one was occupied by a mixed group of men and women, all young and casually clad, the other by two men, one with a beard and guernsey sweater in which, in this warm room, he must be sweltering and the other with thinning hair, bespectacled and somehow familiar.
