Mrs. Malory and Any Man's Death (13 page)

While I was in the library I thought I might have a look at some of the other village books to see if there was anything there that I might use myself. They all seemed to follow the same pattern, which was useful because it gave me a framework to work to. I realized that I was becoming absorbed in the project and reflected wryly that I too was dancing to Annie’s tune, even though she hadn’t had to blackmail me.

When I got home I saw that Foss had been hunting again. The gallbladder of a mouse was laid neatly on the front doormat. This was not a tribute from a grateful pet but merely indicated that Foss had eaten the rest. For some reason he usually chooses to do this at the front door. I am grateful that he no longer goes after rabbits. In the old days visitors used to have to run the gauntlet of a Siamese crouched on the mat, meditatively chewing on a rabbit, starting with the head.

Over my cup of tea I thought again about Annie’s list, which I now had safely locked away in my desk. Annie was dead. She couldn’t “influence” any of those people ever again. As William had suggested, there must have been a collective sigh of relief when that happened. A persistent thought was nagging away at me; reluctantly, I brought it out into the open and confronted it. Was there, among all those trivial secrets, one so big that the person concerned was prepared to silence Annie? Was her death, in fact, not accidental? Annie and the mushrooms—we all assumed it was an accident. The dark kitchen, the resemblance of the deadly fungus to the harmless variety. But no, that didn’t explain it. If Annie had picked those fungi, it would have been in broad daylight; surely an expert like her would have been able to differentiate between them. So someone else had picked the poisonous ones and substituted them for the harmless variety so that in the dark kitchen, etc, etc.

I put the thought from me and got up and began to prepare supper. But cutting up the mushrooms for my omelette brought the whole thing forcibly to mind. I remembered that Annie always left her front door unlocked and, although it was unlikely that anyone with a nefarious purpose would boldly go in that way, it was highly likely that she left the back door unlocked too. I thought of the little gate leading out into the field beyond and wondered whom the field belonged to and if it was easy to get into it unobserved.

Next day I was walking along the village street, looking for the gate that led from the road into the field, when I was joined by Jim Fletcher, who, like Judith and Captain Prosser, seemed to keep up a patrol on the lookout for visitors.

“Hello, Sheila. Can’t keep away?”

“I had a few things I wanted to check,” I said, “but it’s such a nice day, I thought I’d just have a little stroll before I got down to work.”

“Well, don’t forget, Mary’s happy to help. As you know, that sort of thing’s right up her street.”

“That’s very kind and I’ll be really glad of her help when I’ve collected some more material. I’m hoping she’ll help me arrange the photos and so forth, and generally help with the layout and the technical side. I believe she said she’d done some sort of course when she was in the library in Farnborough.”

“That’s right; she did.” Jim looked gratified. “She’s right up-to-date with all that sort of stuff.”

“I expect she misses it,” I said. “The library, I mean. Though perhaps you both miss Farnborough—it’s quite a wrench to leave somewhere you’ve lived for some time.”

“Oh well, you know, we always wanted to move to the proper country when we retired, and Mary used to come down here—well, Porlock, actually—when she was a child.”

“Still, you must have left a lot of friends behind.”

“Oh, we’re still in touch, you know.” He broke off. “Forgive me; there’s Judith—I just want a quick word with her. I’ll tell Mary what you said.”

I continued along the street until I came to a gap between the cottages where there was a gate. I went to look and, leaning over it, I could just see Annie’s fence. The gate wasn’t padlocked or anything, so it would be easy to go into the field, but I wondered whether that would be remarked upon. There was a path leading diagonally across the field, which was down to grass, and I wondered where it led to and whether there was a right of way. The two horses were still there, but although they turned to watch me, they didn’t approach.

“Aren’t they lovely! I do like to see horses in a field.” It was Judith. “Jim said you were in the village and I wondered how you were getting on.”

“They’re beautiful horses,” I said, ignoring the question. “Who do they belong to?”

“They’re Diana’s—Thoroughbreds, of course; she knows all about horses.”

“Does she own the field?”

“Oh no, it’s one of the Tuckers’ fields; Diana just rents it.”

“And does that path lead up to the woods?”

“That’s right. Annie always used to say how convenient it was for her—she could go straight out of her back garden across the field and up into the cover. She used to get all the wood for her fire there and, of course—those mushroom things . . .” Her voice faltered.

“I wondered,” I said, “do many people gather them, up there in the wood?”

“A few, sometimes. No one from the village, though; we’d none of us know which ones to pick—not like Annie, who’d been picking them all her life.” She sighed. “It just goes to show, doesn’t it. I mean, if even someone like that can make a mistake. No, I wouldn’t touch them.”

She leaned forwards confidentially. “And do you know, I can’t even face proper mushrooms now—not after
that
.”

“I can quite understand it,” I said sympathetically. “It was a shock to everyone, but especially to you, who knew her so well.”

“I do like to think I was a special friend,” Judith said earnestly. “I couldn’t say we were close, exactly—well, you know, Annie always kept herself to herself, as they say, but I think I can say that I knew her better than anybody.”

“You’ve been in the village quite a while now.”

“It must be ten, no, eleven years—how time does fly. We came here when Desmond retired. We both fell in love with the cottage but, of course, he didn’t have very long to enjoy it, poor soul.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Oh well, you carry on, don’t you? It would have been easier if we’d had children, I suppose, but that wasn’t to be . . .”

“Were you still in touch with your old friends—in Birmingham, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right. Well, yes, we did stay in touch for a bit, but a lot of them were Desmond’s friends—through work and so on—and we didn’t have a lot in common. But still,” she continued brightly, “I’ve made lots of friends in the village. I’ve always been interested in people, and I think that counts for a lot, don’t you?”

“I’m sure you’re right. I was talking to Jim just now about that and he said they’re still in touch with their friends from Farnborough. Do they come and visit?”

“Well, I’ve never known anyone to come and stay with Jim and Mary—not even their son. Though, of course, they’d only just moved here when he went abroad.”

“I didn’t realize they had a son.”

“Oh yes, Richard—they call him Rick. He went to Australia. Such a good-looking boy. He sent them a lovely photo of himself taken in front of that opera house place in Sydney.”

“That was nice.”

“They do miss him. I said why don’t you fly out there and visit him; you can get quite cheap flights nowadays. But no, Mary won’t fly—well, I can’t say I blame her. Desmond and I went to Italy one year, to Rome that was, and I swear I held my breath the whole time that plane was in the air!”

I laughed. “I know what you mean. I don’t like flying myself. I suppose they might go by boat—there seem to be cruises everywhere nowadays.”

“I did think I might go on a cruise myself, after Desmond died, you know, to take my mind off things, but I thought it might be just my luck to be seasick all the time and, from what I’ve heard, all they seem to do is eat and drink all the time. That wouldn’t suit me. I’ve never taken much of an interest in food—Desmond used to say I didn’t eat enough to keep a sparrow alive. Annie, now, she liked her food, always having snacks, picking at things, even though she had three good meals a day. But, do you know, she never put on a pound in weight; some people are like that.”

“Well,” I said, “I’d better be getting on. I just want to pop into the shop before I go home.”

“I’ll walk along with you. I forgot to get my
Radio Times
, though there never seems to be anything I want to watch, all these violent things with people running about in the dark.”

The shop was empty and it was Margaret and not Maurice behind the counter. She greeted me brightly, but I thought she was looking tired and not very well.

“I just want some of that smoked eel pâté,” I said. “It really is delicious. Oh, and some of the special cheddar I had last time.”

“Yes, it’s very popular.” She leaned forwards and selected a piece of cheese. “Is that about the right size?”

Judith, who had been looking through the magazines, laid her copy of the
Radio Times
on the counter and said, “I’ll have a piece of that as well—I do like a bit of bread and cheese for my lunch. So, how are you, Margaret—have you got over that nasty cold?”

Margaret put my purchases in a bag and chose a piece of cheese for Judith before answering. “Yes,” she said, “I’m fine now.”

“Poor Margaret,” Judith said, “went down with this bad cold last week. Such a shame, she was going up to London to see Bridget’s show—she’s at this art school in London, such a talented girl!”

“Bridget?” I inquired.

“My daughter,” Margaret said. “She does theater design; it was the end-of-the-year show and she had several things in it.”

“What a disappointment for you,” I said. “Was Maurice able to go?”

“He couldn’t leave the shop—I wasn’t well enough to cope. Still, there’s always next year.”

A couple of walkers came into the shop, wanting biscuits and asking the way to Lower Barton, so I took the opportunity to say good-bye and go away.

At home I started to make some toast to go with the pâté for my lunch. As I did so I thought about what I’d learned in the village. There was the field, of course, where anyone might have gained access to Annie’s back door, but that was not what I found myself considering. Something about the way Jim Fletcher had abruptly broken off our conversation—not his usual style at all—puzzled me. We’d been talking about his friends in Farnborough and he hadn’t seemed to want to pursue the subject—again, very unlike him. Usually he’d have kept me talking for ages, giving me the ages and occupations of each and every one. And then, Judith said that none of these friends had ever visited. I suppose there might have been perfectly good reasons for that, though I would have thought he’d have enjoyed showing off their pretty little cottage. No, Jim had been uneasy about something I’d asked and had been anxious to get away. Was there a secret there? Was that the hold Annie had over them? There didn’t seem any way I could find out, and really, I had no right to pursue it. Besides, I couldn’t imagine that it was the Fletchers who had the major secret that might have put Annie’s life in danger.

A smell of burning recalled me to the task in hand and I remembered that my toaster was going through an unreliable phase, either barely coloring the bread or blackening it beyond all use. With a sigh I laid the carbonized slice to one side for the birds (who seemed to enjoy the novel flavor) and put another piece of bread into the toaster, standing over it until it achieved the requisite degree of brownness.

 

 

 

“We haven’t had a trip out anywhere for ages,” Rosemary said when she phoned. “You’ve been brooding over that tiresome book and I’ve been going mad trying to cope with Mother, so I reckon we both deserve a little treat.”

A bad damp patch had been discovered in Mrs. Dudley’s dining room and the house was invaded by workmen, both within and without. Rosemary’s suggestion that her mother might spend a short time in the care home, West Lodge, to avoid the disturbance was instantly dismissed (“I intend to keep a very sharp eye on things here”), which did not stop her from complaining constantly of the inconvenience and discomfort.

“Elsie is a saint,” Rosemary said, “and fortunately Mr. Preston has done work for her before and knew what to expect. Anyway, it’s finished now, so I haven’t got to be in constant attendance, so how about it?”

“That would be marvelous,” I said. “Would tomorrow be all right? The forecast’s fine, so we might really indulge ourselves and go and have a cream tea at that nice place in Dulverton.”

 

It was a lovely day, mild with mellow sunshine and, along the Exe Valley road, some of the trees had already turned golden.

“It’s really good to get right away,” I said. “I seem to have been
living
in Mere Barton lately!”

“You certainly seem to be taking this book thing seriously,” Rosemary said, skillfully avoiding a pheasant apparently intent on suicide. “I thought you might have abandoned it when Annie died.”