“Won’t you sit down,” Rosemary said. “It’s so much easier to manage a plate and a glass.” She led Diana away to an empty table and gave me a speaking look. Interpreting it correctly, I looked around for Toby. He was listening somewhat abstractedly to Captain Prosser and seemed relieved when I drew him away.
“I think Diana is a little unwell,” I said. “Perhaps she should go home.”
“Oh God, not again! I don’t know what’s got into her these days; she never used to get into this state.” He looked across to where Rosemary was urging Diana to eat some of her quiche. “Oh well, I’ve done my bit here, so I suppose I’d better take her home before it becomes too obvious. Thank God she didn’t drive down here. Bless you, Sheila.”
Their departure seemed somehow a signal for other people to go.
“I think we might get away now,” Rosemary said. “We ought to find Rachel and Phyll and thank them.”
“Rachel and Phyllis?” Ellen said when we asked. “I think they’re in the kitchen.”
The kitchen, like the rest of the village hall, reflected the prosperity of the village. There was a large catering-style cooker with two ovens, as well as a microwave, a big refrigerator, a dishwasher, a gleaming double sink, ample cupboards and fitted work tops all round. Phyll was unloading the dishwasher while Rachel and Judith Lamb were helping Annie sort out the remains of the food.
“Not a lot left,” Judith said.
“I’m not surprised,” I said. “It was gorgeous.”
“I’ve got a couple of boxes here,” Rachel said to Annie. “Shall I pack some stuff for each of you? It seems such a shame to waste it.”
“I’d be glad of some of it,” Judith said. “Save me cooking for lunch and supper tomorrow. How about you, Annie?”
“I hate seeing good food go to waste—I don’t mind using it up. This green stuff will have to go out—I thought at the time you were making too much, Rachel—and the fruit salad. It’s always a mistake to put bananas in a fruit salad; they only go brown. Pass me the rubbish bag, Judith, but don’t put it out tonight or the foxes will tear it open. There should be a collection tomorrow, but you never know with this council—useless lot!”
I turned to Rachel. “We just wanted to say good-bye and thank you so much for inviting us; it was a lovely evening.”
“Lovely,” Rosemary said, “and heavenly food. I’ll give you a ring and we’ll get together soon.”
Annie looked up from tying up the bin bag. “Don’t forget, Sheila, I need to go over those letters with you sometime soon—there’s a lot to do.”
“Yes, of course,” I said. “I’ll get the photocopies done so I can start reading them; then I can return the originals to you. Anyway, Mary Fletcher said she’d be willing to help—looking things up and so forth.”
“That woman—she won’t be much use to you. Thinks too much of herself.” She gave the string round the bag a vicious tug. “Thought
she
was going to do it all. Just because she used to work in a library. I soon put her straight about that!”
“I’m sure she’ll be a help in checking things, dates and things like that,” I said placatingly.
“Well, don’t blame me if she makes a mess of things,” she said, seizing a cloth and vigorously wiping down the work top.
“Well,” Rosemary said, edging toward the door, “it’s been a wonderful evening; we’ve enjoyed it so much.”
In the car going home Rosemary said, “What on earth got into Diana? Not like her to make an exhibition of herself on a couple of glasses of wine.”
“I rather think she’d been drinking before she came—she obviously hadn’t bothered to change after seeing to her horse. But I wouldn’t have thought she was the sort of person who’d hit the bottle. I wonder what’s wrong.”
“Being married to that clown Toby?”
“She’s put up with him for years and, anyway, he’s in London most of the time. Oh well, one more of life’s unsolved mysteries. And, I must say, if I have to have much to do with Annie Roberts, Diana won’t be the only one turning to drink!”
Chapter Six
I had the letters photocopied and rang Annie to arrange a time to see her. There was no reply so I gratefully put the matter to one side. But after a few days I thought I’d better go to call on her before she started to persecute me about them. As I drove cautiously along the narrow road to Mere Barton, I had to back awkwardly for quite a way to let an ambulance get by, so I was feeling a little flustered when I parked the car by the hotel and walked up the village street. When I approached, I saw that a few people had gathered outside Annie’s house. They were in deep conversation, but as I came up to them Judith Lamb turned and greeted me.
“Isn’t it terrible, Sheila—have you heard?”
“Heard what?” I said.
“Poor Annie—oh, it’s so awful . . .”
“What’s happened?” I asked. “Something to do with Annie? Is she ill?”
“Very ill,” Jim Fletcher said. “Some sort of stomach upset, but very serious. They’ve just taken her to hospital.”
“How dreadful. Was it a bug of some kind?”
“We don’t know yet. It’s been going on for a couple of days now. Judith found her on Monday in a terrible state.”
“She’d been so ill,” Judith said. “You know, sickness and so forth. She was really weak and still had quite a lot of pain, but she wouldn’t let me call the doctor, said it would go off, and told me not to stay. Well, you can imagine how I felt, leaving her like that, but she insisted.”
“How awful,” I said.
“Yes, it was. I didn’t know what to do for the best. I rang Jim here and he said leave her for a bit and then he and Mary would call the next day and see how she was.”
“We did call,” he said, “but she didn’t let us in—just called out to say that she was all right.”
“But she
wasn’t
all right,” Judith broke in. “She was dreadfully bad in the night and when I called in this morning I said I didn’t care what she said, I’d ring Dr. Macdonald, and, really, by then she wasn’t in any fit state to stop me! Well, I was just on my way into my house to phone when I saw Lewis Chapman passing in the street. He took one look at her and called an ambulance—he’s going with her to the hospital. They’ve only just gone.”
“I passed an ambulance on my way here,” I said. “That must have been them.”
“It was so lucky Dr. Chapman was around,” Jim Fletcher said. “If we’d had to wait for someone to come out from the surgery, we’d have been waiting still!”
“Oh, he was so good,” Judith said. “Such a nice man, knew in a moment what to do.”
“A real professional.” Captain Prosser, who had been silent up to now, made his contribution. “That’s what you need in a crisis. Someone who knows what he’s doing. Amateurs can sometimes make things worse.”
“Well, I don’t think we did that,” Judith said indignantly. “We did what would could—Annie wouldn’t let us do any more.”
“You can’t force help on people,” Jim said, “especially someone as strong-minded as Annie.”
“Oh, I wasn’t suggesting . . .” Captain Prosser said hastily, “not for a moment.”
“What’s the matter?” Rachel had joined the group. “Is something wrong?”
“It’s Annie,” Judith said, and began to tell her story again.
“How awful,” Rachel said. “It sounds really nasty. Thank goodness Lewis had the sense to get her to hospital.”
“I did think of calling you to look at her,” Judith said, “since you used to be a nurse and so on, but Annie was so set on no one coming.”
“Actually I wasn’t here then. Phyll and I have been down in Dorset, visiting Father’s cousin.” She turned to me. “You remember Grace, Grace Armitage—it was her ninetieth birthday so we felt we ought to be there. I’m so sorry about Annie, but I’m sure hospital is the best place for her just now.”
“I wonder,” Judith said, gesturing towards Annie’s door, “if perhaps I’d better just go in to see if things are all right—no fires left on and so forth. And”—she lowered her voice—“see if there’s any clearing up to do, if you know what I mean. I wouldn’t like her to come back from hospital to anything like that.”
“What a good idea,” Rachel said. “Shall I come and give you a hand?”
“Oh, that would be marvelous,” Judith said gratefully, “if you don’t mind.”
They went into the house and Jim Fletcher said, “Well, I suppose I’d better be getting along. Mary sent me up to the shop to get some bread—she’ll be wondering where I’ve got to.”
“I suppose I might as well go and get a few things from the shop as well,” I said. “I really came to see Annie about the Book—some old letters. I don’t know what will happen about it now.”
“Well, of course you’ll go on with it,” Captain Prosser said briskly. “Annie will want to know how it’s going when she gets back. I think I’ll come with you. Maurice won’t know what’s happening.”
Indeed, the exciting presence of an ambulance in the village had drawn a few people into the shop, the usual center of news and information. I remained silent while Jim and Captain Prosser (antiphonally) told their story, embellished with their feelings and reactions and prognostications as to the outcome.
“One of these superbugs, do you think?” Maurice asked. “There’s a lot of them about.”
“Or food poisoning,” Jim suggested.
“That’s not very likely,” Margaret said, quick to defend the purity of the food on sale in the shop. “Nobody else in the village has gone down with anything like that.”
“But,” Jim persisted, “you know what Annie’s like. She uses up every scrap of everything—stuff she’s cooked days before. Mary went in there once and found her hotting up some meat left over from a joint that must have been a good week old! It’s a miracle to me something like this hasn’t happened before.”
We all nodded wisely. Annie’s frugality (“I can’t abide waste. ‘Waste not, want not.’ That’s what my mother used to say.”) was a byword in the village as well as her contempt for those who ate ready meals or never used up leftovers.
“She cooks in batches,” Jim went on. “She says it saves electricity—which it does, of course, but there are limits.”
“And now,” Margaret said, “since she was given that microwave, she just hots things up all the time. That’s not healthy, surely!”
“There’s nothing like good fresh home-cooked food,” Captain Prosser (who considered himself something of an expert cook) said firmly.
We were all silent for a moment to consider the truth of this statement.
“Oh well,” I said tritely, “she’s in the best place now.”
Enid Stevens, who, with her husband, Norman, runs the hotel and who’s had some lively run-ins with Annie over the years, gave a little laugh. “Well, I wouldn’t want to be one of the nurses looking after her,” she said. “She’ll drive them mad, telling them how much better things were done in her day!”
“She certainly won’t be an easy patient,” Margaret said. “That’s for sure.”
As I came out of the shop, I saw Rachel.
“How was everything?” I asked.
“Things were in a bit of a mess, so we’ve sorted that and locked up properly. Judith has the keys. Oh, and she packed up some nightgowns and toilet things—Phyll and I will take them into the hospital tomorrow and see how she is.”
“Has Annie got any relatives?” I asked. “She never spoke about anyone.”
“Not that I know of. I believe there were no other members of the family, apart from Annie, at the funeral when her mother died.”
“How sad.”
“I suppose so,” Rachel said, “but I’ve never thought of Annie as sad exactly! She drives us all mad most of the time, but, really, she’s the heart of the village.”
“That’s true,” I said. “Anyway, how was Grace? I can’t believe she’s ninety.”
“Oh, full of beans. Still very active. She bought a new car the other day.”
“No!”
“Typical of Grace. It was a lovely party—a real mix of people from teenagers to other ninety-year-olds—a lunch party, because she likes to play bridge in the evenings. I suspect that’s why she was so keen for us to stay on for a few days, to make up numbers for her bridge.”
“Good heavens, it makes me exhausted just to think of it.”
“That generation is tough as old boots,” Rachel said. “Think of Rosemary’s mother!”
I was just washing out some cat food tins to go into the salvage, watched intently by Foss, who hoped it might inspire me to open another one, when the phone rang.
“I’m afraid Annie’s in a pretty bad way,” Rachel said. “She’s in intensive care. Phyll and I weren’t allowed to see her.”
“Good heavens, what’s the matter with her?”
“They wouldn’t give us details because we’re not relatives, but it does seem serious.”
“How awful. Will she be all right?”
“Again, they wouldn’t say, but I’d think it’s touch and go. I’m going to try and phone Lewis; he might be able to find out more about her.”
“Good idea. Do give me a ring when you have any news.”
All that morning I kept thinking about Annie and wondering how she was. As Rachel had said, she’s the heart of the village and it’s impossible to imagine Mere Barton without her.
“Oh, she’ll recover,” Rosemary said when we had lunch together. “She’s a survivor, no question about that. Anyway, she’s one of those small, wiry people, full of energy, who go on forever.”
“I certainly hope so,” I said. “From a purely selfish point of view I really need her help with this wretched book.”
“How’s it coming on?” Rosemary asked.
“Very slowly. In fact, I’ve barely started.”
“I can’t think why you agreed to do it in the first place.”
“Because I’m an idiot,” I said ruefully, “and because you know how difficult it is to say no to Annie—force of personality, I suppose. That’s how she manages to get things done. And that’s why I need her to bully people to produce material for the Book.”
“What about those old letters of hers? Are they going to be useful?”
“I’ve had them photocopied but I haven’t had a chance to read them yet. They’re from her grandfather, written from France in the First World War. I think he was a carpenter in the village, so they’ll certainly go in.”