Jam and Jeopardy
First published in 2006 by Birlinn Ltd
This ebook edition published in 2012 by
Birlinn Limited
West Newington House
Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
www.birlinn.co.uk
Copyright © Doris Davidson, 2006
The moral right of Doris Davidson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.
Print ISBN: 978-1-84158-465-2
eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-209-2
Version 1.0
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter One
Saturday 12th November
Flora Baker pulled her well-worn three-quarter-length Persian lamb coat closer round her ample form – a waste of time, really, since she’d been steadily growing out of it ever since it was bought. ‘Oh God, Ronald,’ she muttered, through teeth that chattered from the cold, ‘I’m absolutely freezing. Why don’t you get the heater repaired?’
Her husband scowled. ‘I’ve told you over and over again. I can’t afford it.’
‘Why don’t you buy a newer car, then? You could pay it up by instalments. Easy terms. The never-never, you know.’
‘I still couldn’t afford it, however easy the terms were. Now shut up. You’re like a dripping tap once you start.’
‘Ach, Ronald, you’re always going on about being on the breadline when all you need to do is tap your old auntie. She’s rolling in it and she gave Stephen something last year. Why shouldn’t you get something, as well?’
‘For pity’s sake, Flora, I’ve enough to worry about at the minute with watching out for black ice on the road, so shut up, will you?’
Sniffing, his wife lapsed into offended silence. She hated coming to see Janet Souter anyway, and her husband falling out with her didn’t help matters. If it wasn’t for the fact that the old besom had no other relatives except Ronald and his cousin Stephen, she would opt out altogether. But if they got on Janet’s wrong side, they might be disinherited and end up with absolutely nothing.
‘You’ve turned up at long last, have you?’ Janet Souter’s voice was heavily sarcastic. ‘I’d given up hope of seeing you today.’
Ronald Baker smiled placatingly. ‘We’re not that late.’
‘I’ve had my afternoon cup of tea, anyway, so you’re too late for that.’
‘We were held up by a flock of sheep on the road.’
‘You’ve always some excuse ready, I’ll say that for you, but I know what’s going on.’
Flora tried to smooth the old woman’s ruffled feathers. ‘Have you been doing anything interesting this week, Aunt Janet?’
‘What do you care?’ Janet glared at them, but couldn’t resist telling them. Talking about herself was her favourite pastime. ‘I went to see the youngest Munro girl’s wedding on Wednesday. I wasn’t invited, of course, so I stood outside the kirk with Grace Skinner and Violet Grant to watch them all going in.’
‘They’re the two sisters from next door, aren’t they?’ Flora made a show of being interested.
‘You know that perfectly well. Anyway, who should turn up among the guests, as bold as brass in a fur tippet, but Mabel Wakeford.’
‘She’s next door on the other side,’ Flora explained to Ronald, who wasn’t in the least interested.
‘She thinks she’s a cut above the rest of us, because her late husband was a major in the Coldstream Guards, but, as I said to Grace Skinner, Mabel has nothing to be so uppity about. She was only a nurse when she met the Major and, in any case, she was born illegitimate. There was a great scandal at the time, of course. Mary Dewar, Mabel’s mother, was the minister’s daughter, and she never did get married.’
This was too much for Ronald, who felt obliged to say something. ‘You shouldn’t go raking all that muck up now, Aunt Janet. It must have been fifty years ago, at least, judging by what I’ve seen of Mrs Wakeford.’
The thin, frail figure turned on him abruptly. ‘I know when it was! I’m not in my dotage yet, even if some people would like to think I was. I’m eighty-seven years old, but my memory’s as clear as a bell. It was sixty-one years ago, though Mabel tries to make out she’s not much over fifty, with her dyed hair.’
Her nephew wished that he had kept his mouth shut, and tried to change the subject. ‘My firm’s going through a bit of a sticky patch at the minute, but I could wangle a big contract with a consortium in Leeds if I’d some capital to lay out on materials first.’ It was a wasted effort.
‘There was Mabel going into the kirk wearing a fur tippet, so I said, “People don’t wear tippets to weddings”.’
‘Who did you say that to?’ Ronald’s grammar deserted him, and he shrank from the inevitable answer.
‘To her, Mabel, of course. Who did you think I said it to? A fur tippet! Pure swank, that’s what it was, and it was a mangey looking thing into the bargain.’
A deep sigh escaped from her nephew before he tried again. ‘Ten thousand would see me through, and it would just be for a short time, because the Leeds company usually makes a quick settlement.’
The relentless, whining voice went on, undeterred. ‘And that young Mrs White down the Lane, May Falconer she was, her husband’s away working overseas somewhere and she’s carrying on with Sydney Pettigrew’s youngest son. A lad of eighteen and she’s about about forty, disgusting, I call it. I saw him running up the Lane from her house at five o’clock one morning, when I rose to make myself a cup of tea.’
‘Aunt Janet . . .’
‘I met him down the High Street later on that same day, and told him what a fool he was making of himself.’ Her triumphant look faded when she saw the expressions on the faces of her listeners. ‘What are you gaping at? Somebody’s got to do it.’
‘Oh my God!’ Ronald muttered.
‘He gave me the height of cheek, though. Youngsters are getting more and more ill-mannered, and that man in the ironmonger’s was a bit nippy with me as well when I went in there.’
‘What did you say to him, to upset him?’
‘Nothing. I went in to get my usual stuff to kill the rats in the garden, so I told him about May White and young Pettigrew, and he said it was a pity some folk couldn’t mind their own business. I didn’t know who he was meaning, exactly, but I didn’t like the tone of his voice. I won’t have to go back there for a long time, anyway . . .’
Although the little room was jam-packed with furniture, it was almost as cold as the weather outside, but Janet didn’t seem to feel it, Flora noticed. Not much wonder, really, she mused, for she had on umpteen layers of underclothes as well as a felted woollen twinset, with a shawl on top of that. And her legs were encased in hand-knitted stockings, so there was hardly an inch of her bare to the draughts.
She realised with a jolt that the monologue was still going on.
‘Anyway, Davie Livingstone said he used arsenic to kill his rats, and he brought a wee bagful up to me that night. He used to use it when he worked in the crystal factory. That was before he retired, of course.’
‘Arsenic?’ Flora screwed up her face. ‘It’s illegal to have arsenic, I think, and it’s very dangerous stuff. You’d better be careful with it, and watch where you keep it, because even if it just gets into a cut on your finger, it can kill you.’
The small, beady eyes regarded her balefully. ‘That should please Ronald, then. He’d get all the money he’s needing if I died suddenly, but there’s no chance of that. I put it at the back of my shed.
Flora glanced at Ronald for help out of this situation, but he was staring thoughtfully into space, so she searched wildly for something to say. At last, she found inspiration. ‘We were making the arrangements for our Christmas party at the Guild this week.’
As she’d hoped, her husband’s aunt launched into a detailed account of the recent activities of the Tollerton Women’s Guild, and kept it up until Ronald rose to his feet.
‘We’ll have to be going. I said I’d phone George Low at six with an estimate, and I’ve still to finish it.’
‘Oh? . . . Yes . . . well . . . OK.’ It had taken a full ten seconds for Flora to catch on, but she stood up thankfully. ‘We’ll see you next Saturday, Aunt Janet.’
‘If you can manage to come a bit earlier you’ll get a cup of tea.’
‘Don’t bother to come to the door with us, it’s too cold outside.’ Flora struggled into her Persian lamb, while her husband made for the door.
‘And Ronald . . .’ There was a malicious twist to the old woman’s mouth as she called him back. ‘You’ll see the bag of arsenic if you look in the shed window when you’re passing.’
‘So what?’ He frowned as he turned on his heel and walked quickly through the passage into the kitchen, with his wife trotting behind him. Both were conscious that the old dragon was still watching them.
They always used the back door, having parked their car in the Lane, where it wouldn’t cause any obstruction. At some point in Tollerton’s past, a far-sighted council had provided this area for the use of the occupants of the three cottages, but none of the present owners possessed a vehicle of any kind.
‘Sometimes I feel like killing her.’ Flora had to let her seat belt slide back and ease it out more gently before she could click it into position.
Ronald nodded. ‘Me too.’ He looked pensive suddenly, and turned the key in the ignition of the aged Audi, but even the smooth purr of the engine didn’t give him the usual satisfaction. ‘The old bitch gets on my wick with all her moaning.’
Manoeuvring a U-turn, he reflected, sadly, that his Aunt Janet was about the only topic of conversation on which he and his wife were in complete agreement these days.
‘You’d think she could have lent you a measly thousand, she’d never miss it.’ Flora shifted the webbing more comfortably round her 46-DD bosom. ‘Of course, you didn’t ask her straight out, did you? I sometimes think you’re scared of her.’
Her husband didn’t argue. He had turned his full attention on the road ahead. Ashgrove Lane was a devil to get out of, an absolutely blind corner where it met the High Street.
Once safely on the straight, he snapped, ‘I’m not scared of her, but she keeps going on about the twenty thousand she lent Stephen when his shop was going down the hill. She charges him a helluva lot of interest on it, as well.’
Flora shrugged impatiently. ‘So she keeps telling us, and laughing because Barbara gets mad about it. Your cousin’s wife’s as common as dirt, but give her her due, she’s the only one of us who can speak back to Janet. I think Stephen hoped Janet would kick the bucket after she lent them that money, so he wouldn’t have to pay it back.’
‘Huh! Fat chance of that! She’s got it all written down, and she marks off what they give her every month.’
‘It’s not through a solicitor, though, is it? If she died, nobody’d know about it except us, so it would be our word against theirs. And they don’t realise we know, I shouldn’t think.’
‘Stop worrying about it, Flora. We can sort it all out when the time comes, but, as far as I can see, they’ll have paid it all back before the old bitch decides to pop off.’
‘She could easily have given you something, though.’ His wife harped back to her original line of thought. ‘It’s not fair, making more of Stephen.’
‘She’s always been the same, singing his praises to make me jealous. And she’s so bloody sadistic, I wouldn’t put it past her to be praising me to Stephen to cause trouble between us. She’s a born troublemaker.’ Ronald paused, his eyes taking on a calculating look. ‘She gave me a hell of a brainwave today, though.’
Chapter Two
Sunday 13th November
Stephen and Barbara Drummond arrived at Honeysuckle Cottages a little later than usual the following day and Janet Souter’s greeting was almost a repeat of what she had said to her other nephew and his wife.
‘So you’ve managed to come at last, have you? I’d given you up altogether.’
‘Sorry, Aunt Janet.’ Stephen was about to make an excuse, but the old woman tossed her head and pulled her woollen cape more tightly round her shoulders.
‘Nobody considers me. It’s always self, self, self. Ronald and Flora are exactly the same.’
Barbara looked down at her hands, with their covering of cheap rings, and braced herself to endure another unpleasant afternoon. She was proved correct. Aunt Janet was at her most obnoxious, and waded in straight away.
‘That Mrs Valentine, the minister’s wife, came round on Friday afternoon collecting things for the Sale of Work, but the chiropodist from Thornkirk was here at the time, so I told her it wasn’t convenient and she’d have to come back later. She was quite annoyed, and it was raining, so, of course, she didn’t appear again. A fine sort of wife for a minister, I must say.’
‘Did you have anything for the Sale of Work?’ Barbara asked idly, not really caring one way or the other.
‘Oh yes.’ The old woman laughed gleefully. ‘I’d made a cherry cake, and I was going to give her what was left of the raspberry jam I made in the summer, but she didn’t have anything. The sale was yesterday, so I’ll just keep the three jars for myself.’
Her childishness annoyed Stephen, who had other things on his mind. ‘Aunt Janet, here’s ten pounds towards the money we owe you. It’s all I can manage this month, I’m afraid.’
The white head spun round. ‘Ten pounds? Chicken-feed! That’s not even paying off the interest. You’ve a poor head for business, Stephen, that’s what’s wrong with you. Well, it’s your lookout, for you’ll be paying me back for years to come.’
‘Will I go and put the kettle on for a cup of tea, Aunt Janet?’ Barbara was trying to avoid further lectures.
‘Tea? Oh no, I had my flycup before you came, and it’ll soon be my suppertime.’
This was no time to fall out with her – not when they owed her so much money and she might demand instant repayment – so Barbara swallowed the tart retort that sprang to her lips. With a great effort, she smiled instead. ‘We’re sorry about being late, but Stephen didn’t get home for lunch till after two, the shop was so busy.’ She regretted the last few words as soon as she uttered them.
The old woman tutted with disapproval. ‘If women can’t buy what they need through the week, it’s their own fault. You shouldn’t trade on a Sunday, Stephen, it says so in the Bible.’
Where in the Bible did it say that, Barbara wondered, and a smile crossed her face at an imagined eleventh commandment: THOU SHALT NOT OPEN A GROCER’S SHOP ON THE SABBATH DAY, NEITHER SHALT THOU SELL POTATOES, NOR ONIONS, NOR CIGARETTES. These were the items most requested by Stephen’s customers, who were not particularly good at forward planning. Her amusement was cut short.
‘It’s maybe funny to you, Barbara, but if everybody flouted the teachings of the Good Book the world would be in
an even worse state than it is now, and that’s saying something.’
The Drummonds were saved from further philosophic gems by the peal of the front doorbell, and when Janet went to answer it, Barbara turned impatiently to Stephen.
‘She’s getting on my bloody tits!’
‘Barbara!’ His wife’s choice of words often upset him.
‘She gets worse every damned week, and I can’t stand much more of it.’
‘You’ll have to think up a convincing excuse so we can leave.’
‘We could say we’ve got guests coming for dinner at seven.’ Barbara reflected, not for the first time, that her husband needed a good kick up the rear end to make him show some initiative.
A rather vicious smile played across the old woman’s face when she returned to the room. ‘That was Violet Grant from Number Three. Grace Skinner’s sister, you know.’
‘They’re the two widows, aren’t they?’ Barbara asked.
‘Violet’s the older one. She was asking if I’d seen their dog, seems he’s disappeared. Maybe he’s eaten some of the arsenic I laid in the garden yesterday morning. Davie Livingstone gave me some to kill the rats. I’ve told them umpteen times I wouldn’t be responsible for what happened if I caught their mongrel in my garden again. I can’t stand dogs.’
‘Nor people,’ Barbara muttered under her breath.
‘I sent her away with something to think about, anyway.’
Stephen cleared his throat nervously. ‘I’m sorry, Aunt Janet, but we’ll have to be going. We’ve some friends coming for dinner at seven and Barbara’s still a lot to prepare.’
‘You always consider other people, never me. I’m only the old aunt with all the money.’
‘Now, that’s not fair!’ Barbara couldn’t stop herself from saying it, and the other woman wasn’t to know that the dinner was a trumped-up excuse. ‘Tonight was the only night they could come.’
Janet Souter screwed up her mouth. ‘Huh! Arriving late and leaving early. You’ll soon not bother to come at all. I’d better keep an eye on that arsenic in my shed, in case you try to finish me off.’
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