The Tale of Castle Cottage

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Bosworth put a gentle paw over Primrose’s. “She’s right, you know,” he said. “It’s her job. You have to let her go.” He glanced at Rascal. “Who else might you find helpful, Rascal?”

  Rascal looked down the table, his glance going from one animal to the next. “Well, in addition to Hyacinth, there’s the fox, Thorvaald, the Professor—”

  “Whooo did yooou say?” the owl inquired, looking down his beak. “I?”

  “Yes, sir,” Rascal said. He always spoke deferentially to the owl. “I know how fast you are when you swoop down out of the sky to catch voles and squirrels and—”

  There was a chorus of high-pitched squeals, as the two squirrels and several voles abandoned their chairs and dove under the table.

  “Sorry to alarm,” Rascal said apologetically. “But if you could come with us, Professor, I’d be personally grateful. And you stoats and weasels—”

  The group of animals at the end of the table stopped muttering amongst themselves and stared at him with narrowed eyes. “What-t-t’s that-t-?” asked the weasel-in-charge, in his clicking, chattery voice. “You’re ask-k-king us t-t-to volunt-t-teer to rout-t-t out-t-t rat-t-ts?”

  A rat-tat-tat chorus of excited weasel and stoat voices rose around him. “Rout-t-t out-t-t rat-t-ts! Rout-t-t out-t-t rat-t-ts!”

  “Are you sure about that, Rascal?” Bosworth asked, concerned. “Weasels and stoats can cause more problems than they solve, you know.”

  “I am asking them,” Rascal replied staunchly, “but only as long as they behave themselves and take orders.”

  “I’ll szsee to that,” the dragon hissed, glaring down his smoking snout at the weasels and stoats, who flinched under his fiery gaze. “If you don’t behave, you weaszsels and stoatszs, you’ll anszswer to me!”

  “Very good,” Rascal said. “I saw their weapons outside the front door. Thorvaald, please see that they’re appropriately armed.”

  Bailey Badger had been listening silently, but now he raised a tentative paw. “I’ll go,” he said. Bailey was a bookish badger, but he was strong and stout and had no fear of rats. “Briar Bank is on the other side of the tarn, but we still consider ourselves a part of the village. I feel it an obligation.”

  “I’ll go, too,” Thackeray squeaked.

  “No, Thackeray,” Bailey said, shaking his head. “You’re much too small.”

  Thackeray pushed his hair back and turned his beady black eyes on Rascal. “I know I’m small, but I’m brave. Will you have me?”

  When the question was put that way, Rascal had to say yes, even though he had misgivings. “As long as you promise to stay out of the way,” he added in a cautioning tone.

  “Anyone else?” Bosworth asked, adding apologetically, “I’d be glad to volunteer, too, but I’m afraid I’m a little too old to be of much use.”

  Rascal gave the badger an understanding nod. “You’ve done your bit in your time, old friend. Remember the raid on the badgerbaiters in the barn behind the Sawrey Hotel a few years ago? You organized that, you did, and carried it off in grand style.”

  “Ah, yes. I was a young chap then,” Bosworth said with a reminiscent smile. “And reckless, very reckless. But it was a worthy cause.” His glance went to Primrose, who nodded, her eyes misty. Badger hunters had pulled Primrose and her two young badgers, Hyacinth and Thorn, out of their sett at Hill Top Farm and carried them off to face some horribly fierce dogs in a violent badger-baiting. All three would have been killed for sport if Bosworth and his animal friends had not mounted a rescue, as you will recall from The Tale of Holly How.

  Bosworth looked down the table toward the owl. “As I remember, Professor, you sent us off on that dangerous expedition with a rousing speech. Do you remember?”

  “Dooo I remember?” intoned the Professor, lifting his wings imperiously. “Of cooourse I remember! It is my favorite dramatic monologue. Revised by myself,” he explained to a nearby stoat, who was watching him with a gaping mouth. “King Henry’s famous St. Crispen’s Day speech. Delivered tooo his troooops before Agincourt and thereafter immortalized by Shakespeare.”

  “Well, then,” said Rascal, who also remembered the occasion, “p’rhaps you’d be willing to recite it again.” He looked around, feeling proud of the group that was assembled. “After all, we are setting off to do battle with an invading army. It isn’t quite like Agincourt, but perhaps it is close enough.”

  “Of course,” replied the owl without hesitation. He hopped up on the table, whilst around him the smaller animals rolled their eyes at one another and one or two covered their ears with their paws, protesting that they should not have to listen to Shakespeare, of all things, when what they really wanted to do was to finish their puddings.

  But when the owl began his speech, the entire assembly fell silent, and even the squirrels and the voles crept out from under the table, for the Professor spoke with his best Shakespearean intonation and an admirable fervor, although with quite a few of his own revisions, to fit the occasion. The speech went on for quite a while, but the animals found the recitation stirring, and every one of them was deeply touched. By the time the Professor had got as far as “No winter’s night beside the fire . . .” the animals’ eyes were wet and many were sniffling and reaching for their pocket handkerchiefs:Nooo winter’s night beside the fire shall e’er gooo by,

  From this day tooo the ending of the world,

  Without our story told, and we in it remembered:

  We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

  For he tooonight whooo sheds his blood, whatever kind

  Of animal he be, shall be my brother!

  And with that, a great sigh gusted around the table and then a mighty cheer erupted, the animals applauding and thumping each other on the back and saying how marvelously brave everyone was to go off and fight those filthy rats, and shaking paws and dancing and chanting Highland war cries and singing “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” and generally urging themselves and one another to do something splendidly brave and glorious, the way soldiers do when they’re getting ready to go into battle.

  Hyacinth waited for a lull in the noisy rabble-rousing. “Excuse me,” she said firmly, “but shouldn’t it be ‘We band of sister and brothers’?”

  “Whooo?” asked the owl.

  20

  A Dinner Party at Tower Bank House

  At the very moment that the animals in The Brockery are being inspired to battle by the stirring words of Professor Owl, Captain and Mrs. Woodcock, Miss Potter, and Mr. Heelis are enjoying their dinner at Tower Bank House. Unfortunately, the Kittredges were not able to come, because little Flora Kittredge had developed a very bad cough that afternoon. Her mother would not leave her, and Major Kittredge would not come without his wife, so at the very last minute, they had sent an apologetic begging-off note. Disappointed, Margaret had hurried to remove their place settings from the table and rearrange the chairs. She was sorry that Dim and the major couldn’t come, but it would mean that the evening would be a little less formal and certainly more fun. Miles and Will were not only friends but hunting and fishing companions and always easy together, while she and Beatrix were fast friends.

  Beatrix and Will arrived under the shelter of Will’s big black umbrella, for there was an intermittent rain. Margaret thought that Beatrix was looking exceptionally pretty tonight, with a fresh color in her face and tendrils of brown hair escaping around her cheeks and her eyes as blue as her blue silk blouse. The four of them settled comfortably in the sitting room, where they enjoyed a glass of before-dinner sherry and the stuffed mushrooms, which were very tasty, Margaret decided, and certainly worth the trouble of gathering them.

  But despite her best efforts to keep the conversation focused on pleasant dinner-party topics, the talk quickly turned to something that was obviously on the minds of the guests. Will reported what Beatrix had discovered when she compared the items and charges in the invoices for the Castle Cottage construction materials. Then Beatrix reporte
d that Henry Stubbs had bought a pair of brass door handles—handles that she thought must be the “extra” pair that had been ordered for Castle Cottage—from Mr. Maguire.

  Miles raised his eyebrows. “From Maguire?”

  “The construction supervisor at Castle Cottage,” Will told him.

  “Yes, yes, I know the man,” Miles said. “Maguire supervised my stable renovation.” Frowning, he looked narrowly at Will, then at Beatrix. “You say those invoices have Maguire’s initials on them. You’re thinking that he is the source of our little criminal problem—and not Biddle?”

  Beatrix tilted her head, studying him. “You had concluded, Will tells me, that Mr. Biddle was the one who was doing the double-billing.”

  “It seemed logical,” the captain said, a trifle defensively. “After all, Biddle is the owner of the construction company.”

  “But not an owner who pays a great deal of attention to what his men are doing on the job,” Beatrix remarked. “As I have learnt to my distress,” she added wryly. “I have often thought that Mr. Biddle’s workmen are left to get on with things as whim and whimsy take them.”

  “That may not be good business practice,” Will said with a crooked grin, “but it isn’t a crime.”

  Margaret put down her sherry glass. “You mean, Mr. Biddle is not a swindler after all?” She leaned toward Beatrix and said, in a confiding voice, “Earlier today, my husband was insisting that he was.”

  The captain gave Margaret an injured look. “I was speaking from the knowledge I had at the time.”

  “I thought so, too,” Will defended his friend. “In fact, all the evidence I dug up seemed to me to point directly at Biddle, and I told Miles as much. It wasn’t until Beatrix showed me the initials on those invoices that I even considered another possibility.” He turned to the captain. “I think you need to talk with Maguire as soon as possible, Miles.”

  “But not tonight, please, dear,” Margaret put in hurriedly. “At least, not until after dinner. And do remember that it’s very wet. Perhaps tomorrow?”

  “But I do agree that it should be soon,” Beatrix replied. “You may take my invoices as evidence.” Her handbag was at her feet, and she reached into it, pulling out a sheaf of papers and laying them on the table beside her. “I imagine that Henry Stubbs will be glad to tell you who sold him the door handles—Sarah Barwick says he is quite proud of his bargain.”

  Margaret chuckled. “I am sure he is. Henry Stubbs is always glad of a bargain.”

  Beatrix nodded. “Oh, and when you question Mr. Maguire, Captain, do please try to find out where he is hiding my duplicate construction material. Since I have paid for it, I should like to have it back. I’m quite sure it isn’t at Castle Cottage—although,” she added thoughtfully, “I have not looked in the loft at the barn. I suppose some of it might be there.”

  Miles glanced at the invoices and shook his head. “Our Miss Potter does it again,” he muttered ruefully.

  “I’m sorry?” Beatrix asked.

  As Will laughed heartily, the captain had the grace to look apologetic. “I just meant that, once again, you have pulled a rabbit out of the hat. It was quite an admiring remark, believe me. I don’t know how you do it.”

  “Miles,” Margaret said in a rebuking tone, “whatever can you be talking about? Hats? Rabbits?”

  The captain ducked his head. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be offensive. It’s just that I have often suspected our Beatrix of being a female Sherlock Holmes, and now I am quite sure. Quite, quite sure.”

  “I can hardly lay claim to that kind of detective skill,” Beatrix said, frowning a little. “There’s nothing very Holmsian in reviewing invoices from one’s construction site, I should think. And no sleight of hand, either. It’.s all very straightforward. One does not like to be billed twice for the same thing.”

  “Miles,” Margaret said, now very serious, “I think you should tell them the rest of it.” To Beatrix and Will, she added, “Just a few moments before you arrived, Constable Braithwaite brought a message from Dr. Butters.”

  Will spoke sharply. “From Butters? Was it the—”

  But he was interrupted by a light tap at the sitting room door. Elsa Grape put her head through and announced, in her bluff, peremptory way, that dinner was served in the dining room. Further conversation on the subject was suspended until they were seated, the soup—tomato bisque—and fresh bread had been served, and Elsa had closed the dining room door and returned to the kitchen. And even then, they all spoke with hushed voices. Everyone knew that anything Elsa heard left her lips and flew straight into the ears of two dozen of her very best friends.

  Will immediately returned to the question he had begun. “The message that the constable brought. It was Butters’ autopsy report, regarding Mr. Adcock?”

  “It was the autopsy report itself,” the captain said.

  “And?” Will prompted.

  “It wasn’t Adcock’s doing.” Miles glanced at Beatrix, as if to assure himself that she would not be offended at hearing this tragic business discussed over the soup. “He was struck above the right ear, hard enough to render him unconscious. The rest of it was apparently meant to make the death look like suicide.” He sighed. “The vicar, at least, will be relieved.”

  “I’m sure,” Beatrix said sympathetically. “Reverend Sackett must have been worried about the burial, poor man.”

  “He was, yes,” Miles said. “Very much. But this does leave us with a question. An urgent question.”

  “Indeed.” Will put down his spoon. “Who? And why?”

  “Quite naturally, I thought first of Biddle,” the captain replied. “He had a motive, I believed. Adcock had learnt about his thefts of construction material and planned to tell, or was asking for money to keep quiet, or something like that. And when I questioned Biddle this afternoon about his whereabouts at the time of Adcock’s death, he gave me what I thought was a cock-and-bull story about going fishing at Moss Eccles. He implied that he might have been with someone but wouldn’t say who.”

  “Moss Eccles?” Will asked in surprise. “Why, Biddle is an expert angler. He’s won quite a few competitions. What under the sun was he doing at Moss Eccles? The fish in that lake hardly present what I would consider an angling challenge.”

  “Exactly,” Miles said. “Moss Eccles, on a Thursday morning, when everyone else was hard at work? With a companion he preferred not to name? You can see why I thought it was a trumped-up story. But then Margaret informed me—” He paused, looking at his wife. “Tell them, my dear.”

  Margaret put down her soup spoon. “Well, you see, I saw him.”

  “Saw Biddle, you mean?” Will asked in great surprise.

  “At Moss Eccles?” Beatrix asked with interest.

  “Exactly. I went to gather mushrooms for tonight’s starters, and there he was. Fishing, from that old green rowboat that’s kept up there. He wasn’t alone, though. He was with Ruth Stafford, the pretty barmaid at the pub. They were”—Margaret felt herself blushing—“kissing.”

  “Ah,” Will said, and cast a laughing look at Beatrix. “It is as you said, Bea. Biddle had other fish to fry.”

  “Three of them,” the captain said thoughtfully. “Three brown trout.”

  “Beg pardon?” Beatrix asked.

  “After I finished interviewing Biddle, I went round to his kitchen,” the captain explained, “and there they were. Three fresh brown trout. Evidence, I now suppose, of his morning’s fishing.”

  “But not the only evidence, surely,” Beatrix replied. “I imagine that Miss Safford will be glad to testify to Mr. Biddle’s whereabouts, even if he prefers to play the gentleman.”

  “No doubt,” Miles replied. “Which leaves us—”

  “With Mr. Maguire,” Beatrix said.

  “I suppose it does,” Will said thoughtfully.

  Beatrix shivered. “And to think that I spoke with the man this afternoon!”

  “I don’t quite see—” Margaret began.


  But Elsa came in at that point to remove the soup and convey the golden-brown roast duck, stuffed with sage and onions, as well as a dish of braised ham and spinach. She was followed by the tweeny carrying the vegetables: new potatoes and peas in a cream sauce, vegetable marrows, baked tomatoes (a rather bold recipe from Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management), and salad. When the food was served round and the two servants had left, Miles looked at his wife.

  “Mrs. Grape doesn’t wait until the bell is rung?” he asked plaintively.

  “Mrs. Grape is a law until herself,” Margaret replied, which was entirely true. She put a fork into her tomato to see if it was baked through, and was glad to see that it was. Baked tomatoes were new to her, but if Mrs. Beeton thought they would do, she was sure they would.

  “As you were saying, Margaret,” Beatrix prompted. “You don’t quite see—”

  “I don’t quite see what Mr. Maguire has to do with Mr. Adcock’s death,” Margaret said.

  “It’s possible that Adcock found out that Maguire was the one who was stealing construction supplies,” Miles explained. “Which would give Maguire a motive for wanting Adcock dead.”

  “Don’t forget about Gilly Harmsworth,” Beatrix said to Will.

  “Gilly Harmsworth?” Margaret asked, puzzled. “Who is she?”

  “She’s a friend of Deirdre and Jeremy,” Beatrix replied. “She was helping with the birth of Deirdre’s baby early this morning. She looked out the window and saw a strange man in the Adcock garden.”

  “Ah, yes.” The captain was thoughtful. “If Miss Harmsworth could identify the man she saw—” He did not have to finish his sentence. Everyone knew what he meant.

  “But this doesn’t explain why Mr. Biddle sacked Mr. Adcock,” Beatrix said thoughtfully. “He told Constable Braithwaite that the man couldn’t be trusted. And there was a fight, too.”

  “I asked Biddle about that,” the captain said, working on his roast duck. “He said Adcock stole a tool—a carpenter’s level, which struck me as fishy.”

  “Three brown trout,” cautioned Margaret.