Old Moorhen's Shredded Sporran: The Belchester Chronicles Book 4

by Andrea Frazer

  ‘As your ladyship insists,’ the man agreed reluctantly. He wasn’t at all happy about this. It was an area notorious for fights on a Saturday night, and some of the residents didn’t always wait for dusk to start their alcoholic over-indulgence for the day.

  Lady Amanda closed her notebook, shoved her pen behind her ear, and stumped off to the breakfast room to await her repast. She had planning to do; it was going to be a busy day.

  On the way through the hall, she picked up Grandmama’s silver-topped cane from the stick stand and rested it against the back of her chair ,before sitting down and beginning to plot their programme of visits, starting with the location of the various travel agents’ offices.

  When Hugo entered the room, her thoughts were thoroughly disrupted. He’d discarded the pair of walking canes he had been using the day before and had reverted to his old Zimmer frame, which he had not used for ages.

  ‘Hugo, is the pain really that bad?’

  ‘I’ll be OK once the jolly old pills take effect, then I can go back to my sticks.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that. I’m supposed to be getting you mobile, not bedridden again. Now, whoever can that be at the door at this time of the morning?’ she queried, as she heard the jangle of the pull bell in the portico. ‘I expect Beauchamp will be along in a moment to tell us, when he brings in the victuals.’

  On cue, a couple of minutes later, both Enid and Beauchamp appeared with the trolley of bacon, eggs, kidneys, et cetera, and the manservant informed them that the police must have released their tricycles, because the garage had just delivered them back, looking much better than they had before – in fact, they looked as good as new.

  ‘How perfect, Hugo. If Beauchamp uses the estate Land Rover and trailer instead of the Rolls, he can drop us in the city centre with the tricycles, and yours has a little motor, so it won’t be anywhere near as painful as having to walk, and we can affix our sticks on somehow for going into travel agencies and up and down garden paths.’

  ‘But I haven’t ridden for ages,’ stated Hugo apprehensively.

  ‘You’ll soon get the hang of it again. It’s as easy as falling off a bike … or perhaps that wasn’t quite appropriate – as easy as falling off a log.’

  ‘But not with the same amount of bruising, I hope.’ Hugo really did not sound enthusiastic. He’d never been over-fond of the vehicle allotted to him.

  ‘Don’t make a fuss. You’ll love it once you get back in the saddle.’

  ‘I’ll print you out a little map from my computer and mark the three addresses on it with a highlighter pen,’ offered Beauchamp.

  ‘I didn’t even know you had a computer,’ said Lady Amanda, surprised at this up-to-datedness that her manservant had begun to display, first with his iPad now with a computer. Whatever next?

  ‘One has to keep up with modern technology, your ladyship, otherwise one gets left behind. I have even ordered a satellite navigation system for the Rolls, so we shall never get lost again.’

  ‘Whatever is a satellite navigation system, Beauchamp?’

  ‘It’s a bit like you, your ladyship. It tells you where to go.’ And he didn’t even have a twitch of a smile as he said this.

  Beauchamp was as good as his word, and printed off a map on which, not only the three addresses were marked, but all the travel agencies. There was no way he could dissuade his employer from looking for an exotic honeymoon destination, and at least the activity would keep both her and Hugo out of his hair for quite some time.

  At the Market Cross in the city centre, he unloaded the tricycles from the trailer as the two oldsters struggled out of the Land Rover, then he strapped their sticks to their mode of transport, before driving off, extracting a promise from Lady A that she would call him on her mobile phone when they wanted picking up.

  Hugo was rather wobbly with his steering at first, and slightly panicked when he first fired up his auxiliary motor, but he soon got the hang of it again, although Lady Amanda firmly believed that one lad, out walking a pair of miniature Dachshunds, would never be quite the same again after his encounter with Hugo at full thrust.

  He overshot the first travel agency, having forgotten how hard he had to tug on the brakes, and that he had to turn off his engine, when he wanted to stop. Lady A rode serenely after him and shouted instructions until he’d managed to come to a complete halt, then supervised his about-turn.

  Several travel agents and sundry members of their staff went off to lunch that day rather bemused at the visit they’d had from an ageing whirlwind with the enthusiasm of twenty, and an elderly man trying desperately to keep up with her, both physically and verbally.

  At one o’clock she decided that they ought to call into an establishment that served food for lunch. This could be the start of their investigation of the eating places, on their hunt for Jimmy the Jemmy.

  ‘But we haven’t seen a picture of him, yet,’ pleaded Hugo who, although hungry, didn’t want to be challenged for staring at people as he ate. Getting involved in a ‘are you lookin’ at me, mate?’ brawl was not his idea of fun.

  ‘I’ll know a convicted criminal when I see one,’ declared Lady A with unquenchable confidence. ‘Now, where shall we go?’

  Belchester had a concentration of eating places to the north and south of East Street. There was a choice of a Chinese takeaway on Tobacco Road, a chip shop, Indian take-away and Italian restaurant actually on East Street, and The Cat and Footstool pub, which had its main doors on Beggars Road.

  There were two other pubs to add to the choice, The Clocky Hen next to the police station on South Street, and The Witches’ Cauldron on West Street, and it was this latter that Lady Amanda decided was perfect.

  ‘It’s not just got the perfect location, just across the road from the entrance of Twixt-the-Ways, but I understand that that Jemmy person has actually been seen in there.’

  Hugo wasn’t so enthusiastic. The pub was known as having quite a rough clientele, and he was rather nervous, having been bullied at school. He could feel all the trepidation of the beginning of term flooding back through his body, a sensation he hadn’t experienced since he was a teenager.

  To be quite honest, he’d have been as full of trepidation, had she chosen The Clocky Hen. There was a similar slightly rough area behind that, contained in Lumpen Lane, Butts Ben, Moggs End, and Rag-a-Bone Road. It was certainly an area he wouldn’t like to find himself in after dark, even with the pub being next door to the police station and the long arm of the law.

  ‘Come along Hugo, stop dilly-dallying.’ This shrill order brought him out of his miserable reverie, and it was with misgivings that he slowly dismounted from his tricycle. Lady A already had her stick out of its strap, and was tapping it on the ground with impatience. ‘Now, which bar, Hugo? The public or the saloon?’ she enquired.

  ‘Definitely the saloon,’ he replied, blanching at even the thought of what things would be like in the public bar. OK, so he was a coward and didn’t like confrontation; so what? It was his life, and that was the way he liked things; nice and peaceful.

  His braver companion threw open the door of the saloon bar and tootled, ‘Good day, everyone. May we have a luncheon menu, please, as she approached the bar. Hugo creeping along in her wake, looked terrified.

  A hush fell over the whole bar, and all eyes turned to investigate whence this terribly upper-class voice had issued. If these were the clientele of the saloon bar, thought Hugo, trying to become invisible, then the public bar must be an even worse nightmare. Some customers weren’t even wearing ties, and there wasn’t a hat in sight, on either man or woman, not that there were many of the latter in here.

  The barman hooked his thumb towards a blackboard on the wall which listed the food of the day, and asked, ‘Are you lost or something, love?’

  ‘No,’ declared his new customer. ‘I am neither lost, nor am I your love. I am merely hungry. I and my friend … Hugo?’ she called, having looked to her side, then behind her, and not found
anyone she knew there. ‘Where are you, Hugo?’

  ‘Here, Manda,’ came a hoarse whisper from the far side of a one-armed bandit.

  ‘Well, get yourself over here and choose something from the food board, before I faint from lack of nourishment.’

  She was disconcerted to hear this last phrase repeated in whispers around the bar, with some fair attempts at her accent. What was it with these people? ‘And we’ll have a couple of glasses of lemonade while we’re waiting, if you’d be so kind, landlord.’ Again, ‘if you’d be so kind, landlord’ was whispered round the bar like an echo.

  Trying to ignore it, she gestured to Hugo to get to her side so that they could study the choices together. ‘I think I’ll have the fish and chips,’ she declared, and Hugo was in full agreement.

  ‘And mushy peas,’ he augmented the order. It was these two words that did the rounds of the bar this time.

  ‘And would you like a silver spoon with your ketchup?’ asked the landlord, with a sarcastic leer.

  ‘Absolutely not. I should prefer tartare sauce, and a spoon with that would be most useful.’ Lady Amanda would not be intimidated. Hugo would, however, and cringed at this exchange. ‘And we’ll eat it over there,’ she finally declared, pointing at an empty table in the furthermost corner. ‘Bring our order over when it’s ready.’

  With that, she turned abruptly on her heel, ignoring the whispers of Madam La-Di-Da that followed her and a cowed Hugo across, to sit down. ‘Not a bad little bar, if you ignore the customers,’ she commented, while Hugo replied in a whisper,

  ‘I’m absolutely terrified. What are we going to do if one of them tries to talk to us?’

  ‘Make conversation,’ she stated baldly, and sipped at her lemonade, which had just been placed on the table, her hand hardly displaying a tremor.

  Chapter Nine

  Hugo was so relieved to leave the pub that he accidentally passed wind as the door closed behind them, and a cheer went up from inside. Whether this was due to Hugo’s unexpected social faux pas or because they’d left, neither could tell, but not a word was said about the incident.

  Although they had been fed and watered, both of them felt a little achy about the joints and muscles as they set off for Twixt-the-Ways. Neither had taken exercise on the tricycles since well before Christmas, and the fact made itself known to both of them in the form of pain.

  Luckily for them, 15 Twixt-the-Ways was not far down the lane. And it was with relief that they dismounted from the infernal machines and hobbled along the path to knock on the door, neither of them willing to discuss their lack of fitness or their age.

  Their knock was answered by a man who looked totally unfit for manual work. He was even older than them, bent and twisted with age, his face a curtain of wrinkles, his hair, white as washing powder, but without the little blue speckles that particular substance seemed to sport these days.

  ‘Mr Drake?’ enquired Lady Amanda, hardly able to believe her eyes. ‘Mr Edgar Drake?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. At your service. What can I do for you?’

  ‘You’ve been working in the grounds of Belchester Towers?’

  ‘That I have.’ Here, the elderly man leaned towards his visitors and stared hard right into their faces. ‘Why, it’s your ladyship and Mr Chumley-umley-umple, if my eyes don’t deceive me,’ he declared in triumph.

  Lady Amanda flashed Hugo one of her looks, which he took to be querying where this man kept his white stick and whether his guide dog attacked on command. Hugo himself looked utterly scandalised at this complete ruination of his family name. This was the man who should have been called Mangel, because he was certainly good at it.

  ‘I wonder if we could come in for a few minutes, to talk about the recent deaths that have occurred up there?’ asked her ladyship.

  ‘Help yourself,’ he invited them, turning aside and tripping over the doormat. Lady A put out a hand to catch him and helped him into his living room, delivering him safely to an armchair near the log fire. What on earth did this man do to earn his keep on the estate? He wasn’t even capable of getting round his own home in safety.

  ‘How well did you know Victor Mangel, the man who was found dead in the suit of armour?’ she asked, feeling thoroughly dispirited.

  ‘I didn’t really know him at all. He worked on shrubs and trees, and I only saw him when he brought me clippings and such,’ he replied, as if he was keeping a scrapbook rather than gardening, ‘to burn,’ he finished.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Drake …’

  ‘Do call me Ed. Everyone else does,’ he entreated her, with a shy smile.

  ‘Tell me, Ed, what exactly is it that you do on my estate?’ She felt entitled to ask, as he seemed so unfit for any sort of physical activity that didn’t involve braille.

  ‘I’m responsible for bonfires. Always plenty to burn on an estate that size. I burns all the bits removed in the tidy-up,’ he replied. ‘I likes fire.’ There was a dodgy statement, if ever she’d heard one, thought Lady Amanda. ‘I have my little patch behind the stables, and everyone else brings me whatever they’ve removed or cut orf, be it branches, twigs or weeds,’ he continued.

  ‘I puts the weeds on to a special pile to dry them out, and I burns all the dry stuff. Grass clippings go into a special pile for composting. We don’t put the weeds in there in case they takes and grows, and blows their seeds all over the grounds,’ he explained, suddenly becoming garrulous in his enthusiasm.

  ‘Did you know either of the women who were killed?’

  ‘No, yer ladyship. I has nothin’ to do with the indoor staff, except sometimes I has a word with that Beecham fellah, if he’s takin’ the air, like.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Mr … Ed, and that’s Beauchamp, if you want to pronounce his name correctly.’

  ‘That’s funny, yer ladyship; he told me the exact opposite. Well, you lives and learns. Good day to you both.’

  The two visitors approached their tricycles to remount in quite a dejected manner. This visit had been a waste of both time and effort, and Lady A resolved to speak to Evergreen about the quality of the casual staff he employed. The poor old chap they’d just visited wasn’t really capable of anything, and she hated to think he was left in charge of bonfires. If things got out of hand, he could be responsible for the Great Fire of Belchester.

  ‘He’ll have to be let go with a small pension,’ she declared, as she consulted the map Beauchamp had prepared for them, once again.

  ‘Even I’ve got more go in me than that, and at least I can see where I’m going,’ commented Hugo.

  ‘OK,’ said his companion, putting the map back in her coat pocket. ‘If we turn left out of this property, then take the first left, we’ll be in The Butts; then we need to look for number seven. Hi ho, Silver, and away!’

  Her pedal-away wasn’t quite so dramatic as her last words, but the thought was there, and Tonto was right behind her, head down, giving it all he had left which, admittedly, wasn’t an awful lot.

  Their next port of call was a well-cared-for cottage in a fairly derelict road. It had smart paintwork, and clean net curtains hung at the front window, through which issued the sound of a television at very high volume, broadcasting what sounded like sport.

  Lady A rang the doorbell, but there was no response. She then knocked on the door, with similar results. Her next move was to ring the bell while simultaneously knocking at the door, to which she added a call of, ‘Mr Darke. Mr Darke, you have visitors.’

  There was still no response, so she beckoned Hugo to follow her round to the back. There was no point in showing her face at the window, as she would not be seen because of those sparkling net curtains.

  Yes, just as she thought. The back door was unlocked. Without a twinge of guilt, she let herself in and headed for the front room, where she flung open the door and called loudly, ‘Mr Darke? I’ve been knocking and ringing at the front door, but you didn’t answer.’

  The old man in the armchair looked up in surprise to
see a stranger entering his living room, and grabbed the controller to turn down the television. ‘I’m sorry,’ he almost shouted. You’ll have to speak up. I’m rather hard of hearing. And who the hell are you, bursting in on a man on a Saturday afternoon when he’s trying to watch a bit of telly?’

  ‘Lady Amanda Golightly: your employer,’ she replied, fortissimo and with very exaggerated mouth movements. He obviously understood this, and he turned off the television and rose arthritically to his feet. ‘How can I be of service, ma’am?’ he enquired, actually tugging at a ratty forelock of iron-grey hair.

  ‘Edmund Darke at your service, ma’am, but everyone calls me Edds, and I’d be honoured if you’d do the same.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Edds. This is my friend Mr Cholmondley-Crichton-Crump, and we’re looking into the recent tragic deaths at Belchester Towers. I wonder if you’d be good enough to tell me anything you know about poor Mr Mangel.’

  All this time, Edmund Darke had had both of his hands cupped round his ears, to magnify any speech that came his way. He had obviously understood what was asked of him, because, with a smile of triumph, he replied, ‘Arternoon, Mister Chumley-Critchy-Chump. Mangel be dead, you know. Found in a suit of armour ’e was.’

  ‘We know that, Mr D … Edds. I was wondering if you could tell us what sort of person he was.’

  ‘’Eʼd better ’earin’ than me, that I can say, and ’e’d better sight than poor old Ed, and ’e were much spryer than old Eddie. Really, ’e were the fittest of all of us, exceptin’ for Mr Evergreen oo’s powerful fit!’

  ‘What sort of person was he?’

  ‘’E were a terrible old gossip, that ’e were. ’E picked up anything ’e could and tittle-tattled it all over the estate, though I couldn’t ’ear most of what ’e said, thank goodness. ’E were a bit of an old woman in that respect, and I don’t ’ave time for stuff like that. ’Ad enough of that when my old woman were alive, if truth be told. Many’s a time I’d just turn off my ’earin’ aids if there were just ’im around, ma’am.’