An Unholy Whiff of Death

by Joyce Cato

  James had then taken the car through the snow-clogged roads to one of the more remote villages to visit a parishioner who was nearly crippled with chilblains. Finding her fire nearly out and nothing cooked, he’d stayed far longer than he’d intended, doing much needed jobs for her about the house and calling the local Age Concern centre to arrange for somebody to visit more often.

  By the time he’d set off for home, the expected fresh snow had arrived and he’d had to dig the car out of several snowdrifts. He’d finally arrived home very late to find that a worried Wendy had already called in the local doctor. A terse note left on the kitchen table had informed him that Tommy had been rushed into hospital.

  He’d driven straight there, of course, where he and Wendy had spent the night in the intensive care unit, each of them holding one of Tommy’s little hands in one of theirs. The doctors did everything that they could, but by the time it was light, Tommy was dead.

  James could still clearly remember walking down to the non-denominational chapel and praying. Wendy, unusually, had refused to come with him, and had instead sat, stiff-backed and dry-eyed in one of those hard plastic chairs that filled the public spaces in such places. He’d put that down to shock, of course, and hadn’t left her alone for long.

  But those few minutes he’s spent in the small, quiet room had been like a balm on his shattered soul.

  Afterwards, once the initial numbness had worn off, he’d been desperately angry, but then, needing the release that he knew it would bring, he slowly came to accept that it was God’s will. This had enabled him to pass through the next few weeks – the funeral and all its attendant duties – with a stoical acceptance that was remarked on by more than one.

  But the pain, of course, never left him. He simply became more and more used to it.

  ‘Well,’ he said softly, bringing himself back to the present, and the bird-like, but not unkind curiosity, of Gladys Jarvis, ‘he’s with the Lord now, and I dare say it’s a far better place than this.’

  ‘And that’s a fact,’ Gladys agreed, heaving a sigh. ‘A wicked world, this is,’ she added judiciously. ‘I often say, our generation has seen the best of this world. Second World War or no Second World War.’ And with that pronouncement, she thanked him again for the peaches and watched him walk over to the patient in the bed opposite.

  Gladys didn’t reckon the old woman was long for this world, and it warmed her heart to see her face light up when James sat down beside her. Caulcott Green was lucky when it came to their vicar, Gladys reckoned. He’d been there nearly twenty years now, and was the best the village had ever had. Even old Mrs Basted, ninety-five and still going strong, said so. And she should know. She’d lived through the reign of no less than twelve vicars.

  Pity about young Tommy being taken like that, she thought. It fair turned your stomach to think a vicar’s kid could be taken. She’d lost none of her own, thank the Lord. But, she supposed, it just goes to show… .

  As Gladys began to nod off, she thought how hard it must all be on poor Mrs Vicar. Her husband was a good man, one of the best, but Gladys often thought it must be hard to be married to him. He was so busy, he could hardly ever be home. And she never saw them out together, not even at the pub for a meal. And losing her only babe like that… .

  No doubt about it, Mrs Vicar was but a shadow of her former self. She’d lost so much weight, too. Luckily for her, her husband was coping much better. A pillar of strength he must be and she, poor lady, needed someone to lean on.

  In the converted stables at the old mill house, Ross Ferris poured himself a large cognac. It was good stuff – old, mellowed, and expensive. The glasses were from a set that his wife had chosen, and were of the finest cut crystal.

  The new cook he’d hired seemed to be working out, and as he thought about the dinner he’d just enjoyed – scallops, followed by lamb and one of those fancy foreign desserts covered in alcohol and set alight – he felt good.

  The interior designer he’d hired to transform the single-storey building had kept to an original rustic theme, and had been careful to preserve the exposed old beams and the white-plastered walls. He’d gone wild with brasses, and throw rugs were definitely the order of the day. The result was rustic chic on a grand scale. Ross quite liked it. It suited the image he had of himself as the new squire. Once Sir Hugh finally kicked the bucket, there’d certainly be no other contender to the throne, and Ross was quite looking forward to getting his knighthood.

  He had no doubts that, sooner or later, a New Year’s honours list would find his name mentioned. He sure as hell gave enough to charity, and when that new computer gizmo of Gordon Trenning’s finally hit the market, he would be a bone fide captain of industry.

  And wouldn’t it just make Melissa choke, he thought, with a gust of savage laughter, to miss out on being Lady Melissa. He laughed so hard, imagining the chagrin on her pretty little face that he had to wipe away a tear or two.

  His lawyers had told him only that morning that she was cutting up rough, angling, no doubt, to keep the flat in Notting Hill. He grunted at her gall and took his cognac to the armchair in front of the inglenook fireplace, which was unlit on this warm August evening. He stretched his rather short legs out in front of him, and contemplated the grate.

  He was forty-two, a squat, heavy man, with a mop of blond hair and rather striking grey eyes. He was attractive, in an unusual sort of way, and was rather vain about it. He wore, even at home alone, a Versace jacket and Italian-made loafers.

  He supposed, in the long run, it would probably be worth letting Melissa keep the flat just to be rid of her. The trouble was it grated; letting go of anything that was his rubbed him up the wrong way. And it was almost a physical pain for him to see money leaving his coffers.

  And last year he’d already come such a cropper over that Cook business. That had cost him plenty. Or rather, it had cost his insurance company plenty, but since they’d promptly hiked up his contribution payments, it amounted to the same thing.

  One of the men working in the loading area at the labs had been killed by falling containers. The health and safety people had swooped like bloody vultures, of course, and had found that the forklift truck involved in the accident had been ‘improperly maintained’, and was directly responsible for the fatality. They’d also criticized the training system in place for the drivers.

  Ross’s insurance company had fought it, but in the end had had no choice but to pay out compensation, and pay out big. It had been just his luck that the man killed had been a life-long inhabitant of Caulcott Green, which had put the villagers up in arms. And, would you believe it, the dead man had been no less than the son of Sir Hugh’s gardener!

  Ross grunted as he remembered the flack he’d taken over that, and tossed back the last of his brandy angrily. The negative publicity had been a nightmare and he was still dogged by bad feeling from some of the villagers wherever he went.

  To make matters even worse it now looked as if this damned lawsuit with Featherstone was going to go against him as well. And another big compensation payout was going to see his insurance company getting very nasty indeed.

  Next time, Ross was damned well going to go with another company for all his business enterprises. See how they liked them apples!

  He got up and re-filled his glass, pouring an overly generous measure and walking with it to one of the windows. Through the screen of weeping willows, he could just make out the big manor house beyond. Sourly, he wondered what Sir Hugh was doing right now.

  Gloating, he’d be bound.

  ‘Oh, screw it,’ Ross growled, and walked to the telephone. Although it was long past office hours, he had no compunction in ringing up his divorce lawyer at his home and telling him that Melissa would get the flat in Notting Hill only over his dead body.

  He was in no mood to be generous today. No mood at all.

  And so, over the coming week, the village of Caulcott Green began to gird its collective loins and gear itself u
p for the spectacle that was the annual Caulcott Green fete and flower show. Over at Miss Simpkins’ house on Thursday night, the WI ladies gathered to organize their baking schedules. There was a bit of a tiff over who got to do the flapjacks, with both Vera Gant and Mrs Toynbee insisting that they each had the best recipe, but Miss Simpkins refereed brilliantly like the old hand that she was.

  At the Cadge-Hampton Arms, the landlord opened up his big storage shed where the stalls and other paraphernalia were always kept, and Ernie Gant and other long-time stallholders busily checked the equipment for any necessary repairs that might be needed.

  Friday saw old men out and about measuring marrows, pulling up onions, and polishing shallots. Mrs Collins stitched the old effigy of Aunt Sally where the stuffing was coming out, sneezing copiously as she did so. The musty, smelly, rotten old thing! Still, it was ancient, and it was a tradition that it be set up beside the skittles to oversee fair play.

  Over in the converted vicarage at Heyford Bassett, Carole Anne Clancy finally decided on what she was going to wear then studied the picture of the famous photographer who lived in Caulcott Green, just so that she’d be sure to know him when she saw him at the fair. She’d got one of his later, more arty books out of the Cheltenham library and wondered if the photograph on the back had been touched up, maybe by himself, to give him a younger-looking vibe. As a wannabe model, she was wise to all the tricks of the trade. But she’d know him when she saw him, which was all that mattered.

  Ross Ferris slept like a baby.

  Gordon Trenning slept not at all, but lay staring up at the ceiling, listening to Linda Gregson snoring beside him and telling himself over and over again that tomorrow, tomorrow, he was going to do it. He was. He was. Linda stirred, flinging an arm across his chest and muttering in her sleep, and he felt abruptly irritated. They’d taken a room at the Windsheaf Inn in a nearby town, but he still had no idea why Linda had insisted on it.

  James Davies was called out to the old woman in the John Radcliffe Hospital, who was dying and asking for him.

  Wendy Davies got up and made herself a cup of tea.

  In London, Melissa Ferris got very drunk and took a bank manager home to bed with her. Unfortunately, she was too drunk to realize he didn’t even work at her particular bank.

  Monica and Graham Noble made gentle love and fell asleep early, entwined in each other’s arms.

  Malvin Cook sat up all night guarding the gladiolas. He didn’t think anyone would sabotage them, but it was a fine night and the moon was full, and nowadays he didn’t seem to need to sleep so much anyway. Besides, he was as anxious as Sir Hugh to win the gladiola cup that year. It had become something of an obsession by now for both of them.

  Sir Hugh himself slept the sleep of the just.

  And it was just as well that none of these people had the gift of prophecy. Because tomorrow, before the day was out, two of them would be dead, murdered in ways both fantastic and crude.

  CHAPTER 5

  The day of the annual Caulcott Green flower show dawned as bright as a new penny. By ten o’clock it was already blazingly hot, and as the playing field became gradually more and more crowded with busily working people, tempers frayed, were repaired and frayed again.

  In the tea tent, Vera Gant surveyed the rows of rather mismatched cups and saucers, the packets of as yet unopened biscuits and bottles of squash with a gloomy eye. ‘We’re gonna need more squash, Ernie,’ she yelled over to her spouse, who was the show’s unofficial odd-job man. But he only grunted vaguely and carried on industriously hammering in tent pegs, his brawny hairy arms glistening with sweat.

  Around the outskirts of the playing field, stalls were being erected at a cracking pace, and the WI ladies, worried about the heat, fretted about the best time to bring out their cakes from Miss Simpkins’ huge fridge. There was a brief break at lunchtime, when several of the lesser minded skived off to the pub for a cold pint. But by two o’clock, everyone was back at their posts, and the gates were being duly guarded by the two dragons who wouldn’t have let in their own grandmothers unless they paid the fifty pence entrance fee.

  Monica and Graham arrived more or less on time, but already the field was full.

  ‘The usual scrum around the jumble sale, I see,’ Graham whispered in his wife’s ear, as she forked over their money. ‘If you were thinking of getting a bargain, for— Ooof,’ he grunted, as her well-placed, but not quite fatal elbow caught him nicely in the ribs.

  Carole Anne shot one of the dragons a bedazzling smile, just for the hell of it, but also because she knew her mother would appreciate her making the effort, but nevertheless felt their eyes boring into her back all the way through the rusty gates. It was not, in truth, all that surprising, since Carole Anne was wearing a bright white mini skirt that really was, coupled with a pair of high-heeled white sandals that showed off her long, tanned legs to perfection. Over this she had donned a floaty chiffon blouse in a white and mint green floral pattern, which was almost, but not quite opaque. Her long, straight, silky blonde hair had been left free to cascade around her face and shoulders and her face was artfully applied with make-up stolen from her mother’s more expensive bag of tricks.

  She wondered if the photographer she’d come to solicit liked the windblown look. If not, she had pins and combs in her shoulder bag and could quickly pin her tresses up into a chignon, if asked. She’d been practising the art for days.

  Already she could see herself on the cover of Vogue. Well, maybe one of the lesser known mags to start off with, she corrected herself a little guiltily, remembering one of her step-father’s more recent sermons on vanity.

  ‘They’ve certainly attracted a good crowd,’ Monica mused thoughtfully, looking around. There were indeed plenty of stalls, from the modern to the more arcane. She spotted the ‘Bowling for a Pig’ stall, and her eyes widened in alarm. If there was a live pig involved… .

  ‘Relax,’ Graham said, catching her appalled expression and grinning widely. ‘The pig is already in nice packs of cutlets and bacon at the butcher’s in town. Whoever wins has to go in and collect it, all hygienically sealed in polythene bags.’

  ‘Ugh, yuck,’ Carole Anne said, wrinkling her nose. ‘Oh by the way, did I tell you that I was thinking of becoming a vegetarian?’ she added loftily.

  Monica gulped slightly, then consoled herself with the thought that Carole Anne’s fads never lasted long. She might pile her plate with veggies for a while, and sniff disdainfully at the rest of them eating roast beef, but after a week or so, the lure of a bacon sandwich would be bound to bring her to her senses.

  Now Monica watched suspiciously as her daughter craned her neck around, ogling the crowd intently. Very sweetly, she said, ‘Looking for someone in particular, Carole Anne?’

  ‘Huh? Oh yes, Marc Linacre,’ she said, as nonchalantly as only a found-out teenager can.

  ‘Who’s Marc Linacre?’ Monica demanded archly, fearing the worst.

  As befits a vicar’s wife, it went without saying that she was dressed far more modestly than her daughter, in a pretty calf-length, sleeveless summer dress of off-white, patterned with tiny sprigs of scarlet poppies and blue cornflowers. Nevertheless, it hugged her trim figure and showed off her slender waist. When she’d bought it, it had come with a floppy hat to match, but she hadn’t quite dared to wear it. She wasn’t totally sure that she could carry it off. Like her daughter, she too was wearing white sandals, but her heels were wedged and modest, making walking over the grass a much easier proposition.

  ‘Oh, just a photographer,’ Carole Anne said in answer to her mother’s shrewd questioning, and airily shrugged a shoulder in dismissal.

  ‘Carole Anne …’ Monica strung out her name in a telling tone. ‘If you’ve come here just to pester Mr Linacre into taking pictures of you, I’ll—’

  Graham, sensing ructions, coughed gently. ‘Oh, he’s not that kind of photographer, Mon,’ he said quickly. ‘He’s won loads of awards for things like black-and-whit
e pictures of old garages and run-down industrial estates. That sort of thing.’

  Carole Anne hid a smile. All that Graham had just said was true, but he’d missed out the most important bit. Before becoming so arty, he’d been a fashion photographer, and in the nineties, had ‘invented’ the supermodel Olivia Gee. Linacre had been her manager as well as her favourite photographer, making her one of the most photographed women on the planet. And what he’d done once, Carole Anne thought hopefully, he could do again!

  She shot Graham a grateful smile for coming to her defence, and then spotted the ice cream van. Surely she wouldn’t put on a pound just by licking a lolly, would she?

  Monica sighed as she watched her daughter saunter off. No wonder she was dressed like something out of a schoolboy fantasy.

  Just then, a piercing shriek, like an animal in agony, rent across the field, paralyzing everyone who hadn’t been quick enough to slap their hands over their ears. Ernie Gant quickly adjusted the microphone (he gave it a hefty thump) and the noise mercifully abated. ‘Testing, like, one two… .’ Screech!

  ‘I thought they was gonna get that damned thing fixed?’ someone near the Aunt Sally stall muttered darkly.

  ‘Costs money,’ his companion muttered back, which explained everything, since several of those overhearing this exchange nodded their heads in sympathy.

  A WI luminary approached the podium and gingerly took over. She cleared her throat nervously. ‘Er … ladies and gentlemen… .’ Everyone paused, expecting the screech. It never came. The WI luminary let out a very audible sigh of relief. ‘Thank you for coming to our sixty-fifth annual flower show. Now, to open for us, I’d like you to …’ Screech! ‘… put your hands together for Her Ladyship the …’ Screech! ‘… Dowager Countess of Fulcome.’

  And so saying, she stepped with some alacrity away from the microphone and a vision straight out of a gothic horror film stepped up. Until then, the dowager had been hidden by the crowds, and this first glimpse of her had Monica’s jaw dropping.