Chapter 14
Many of the customers in the market hadn’t heard about Willie’s momentous effort to stop the stallholders getting into Turnham Malpas. So far as they were concerned, everyone was in their place and their stalls open for business at eight-thirty as expected. What they hadn’t noticed were two cyclists with large backpacks cycling by merrily,
innocently
, drawing no attention to themselves. They propped their bikes up in Dicky’s bicycle rack and wandered away, looking for all the world as though they were sightseeing, which, in a way, they most certainly were.
The cyclists slipped down behind the school, crossed Church Lane and came to the front of Glebe House.
‘Are we doing the right thing? Coming ’ere this morning when it’s so busy?’
‘Yes! This is the time to steal when there’s so many people about. Or’nary day and we’d stick out like sore thumbs. They’d all remember us.’
This Glebe House looked an enticing prospect, so they turned sharp left on to the side path and down the side of the house. One of them linked his hands while the other put a foot on them and then sprang over the side gate, landing athletically in the back garden. He silently unlatched the gate and his companion followed him in. They found the kitchen window still slightly open, as it had been when Jimbo and Titus gained entry that dreadful night.
What an amazing stroke of luck! Their technique was to take some things of value but not all, which meant that often the owners didn’t realize for weeks that valuable items had been stolen. Small but good was their motto. Not for them big bronze statuettes, or large paintings; they were all too bulky, too noticeable. So they raided the safe, which, to experienced thieves, was easy enough to open. It didn’t take long to find the key - they knew every conceivable place people chose for their safe keys - and removed Liz’s jewellery, which included the twenty-fifth anniversary diamonds, a gold necklace, a string of pearls and some good costume jewellery, just right for their purpose. Then they closed everything up as though the safe had never been touched. Experience taught them that one minute spent closing a cupboard or a drawer - or, in this case, a safe - and putting the key back where it belonged, delayed the discovery of the theft. They moved on to small ornaments, to the antique carriage clock, the silver cigarette box and the antique solid silver grape scissors. Then they looked at each other and acknowledged they’d got enough.
Moving next door, to Miss Parkin’s they got the back door open, but as soon as they surveyed the kitchen and the sitting room they shook their heads, knowing through experience they’d find nothing in this cottage. They also drew a blank next door at Bel Tutt’s.
Eddie, who was a lapsed religious fanatic, never ever stole from a church on principle, fearing heavenly retribution of some unmentionable kind, so they bypassed the Church by walking down the back, past the little wicket gate in the back wall, behind the church hall and then on to Willie Biggs’s house.
Sylvia had gone, as she’d said she would, to walk round the market, and Willie was upstairs sleeping as he hadn’t slept since Masher Murphy thumped his eye.
The back door was unlocked, so they just wandered in. But there wasn’t much to choose in this little cottage - just an old 22-carat gold gentleman’s watch, which had belonged to Willie’s granddad, in its velvet pocket in the sideboard drawer, and a lovely solid silver locket belonging to Sylvia’s great-granny, kept wrapped in a silk handkerchief in the same drawer and never worn. It would be a while before they realized they’d been burgled.
The next house in the row was the Rectory, and again there appeared to be no one at home, so they carefully prised the back door open and wandered in, automatically listening for sounds of occupation just in case they were mistaken.
But when Eddie saw Peter’s study and the rough-hewn wooden cross on the wall by his desk, he shuddered. ‘No! Out. Go on, out. Don’t touch a thing. He’s a vicar or a bishop or somefink. Hell fire! Get out quick.’
Eddie raced out through the back door, vaulted the back gate and squatted down with his back up against the stone wall in Pipe and Nook Lane, sweating with fear.
Tone, his mate, followed him closely, his backpack, badly strapped on, banging against his kidneys as he ran. When he got his breath back he said sharply, ‘You’re enough to scare the living daylights out of me. You’re a fool. I could tell that was a place for goodies, ornaments and that. There’d have been rich pickings there and not half. Anyway, you got your breath back?’ Eddie nodded. ‘Right then, we’ll stroll nonchalan’ like to our bikes and hop it. With you in this state, anything could happen.’
So they stood up, dusted off the seats of their trousers and endeavoured to look casual.
Perhaps they made themselves too obvious and tried too hard to blend into the crowds milling about in the road by the Royal Oak, but Mac (on duty for market day) took one look at them and their backpacks and quietly followed them.
Eddie, growing more nervy and furtive by the minute, turned his head to see if they were being followed and spotted Sergeant Mac taking a lot of interest in them. He took a flying leap for his bike, wobbled a bit, got his balance, and then began peddling away like mad. Tone, not quite so quick, also took a flying leap but missed and fell in the road. Then he picked himself up, got back on the bike just as Sergeant Mac’s hand was within a whisker of grabbing his saddle.
‘Stop!’ bellowed Sergeant Mac.
But he was too late. The pair of them had disappeared at some considerable speed down the Culworth Road.
A hue and cry grew, but it was all to no good. Sergeant Mac was fuming.
‘Who was it?’ a helpful member of the public asked. ‘Someone you knew? What’ve they done?’
‘I don’t know, but they were up to no good.’ Sergeant Mac swore under his breath. Damn and blast, he thought. Of course, they’d chosen the right day for thieving, with everyone so busy and the village so noisy, no one giving a thought to their homes. He was sure they had been thieving. After twenty years in the Force he could almost smell thieves, and they smelt. He decided to ring to Culworth Station, provide a description, and tell them to keep their eyes open. Especially around Mervyn’s pawn shop. They’d probably go straight there to get rid of whatever they’d stolen if his hunch was right.
Of course, the suggestion that burglars were in the area spread like wild fire, and more than one sped home to check, including Sylvia. As she dashed down Church Lane she tried to remember if she’d locked their front door. Had she? Or not? But the front door was locked. She had.
She crept in so as not to wake Willie and, to her relief, saw that not a thing had been disturbed. Even the aspirin packet and the empty glass were still there on the table. Not a drawer was opened, nor a chair out of place. She checked that her EPNS milk jug and sugar basin belonging to her mother were still there in the china cabinet. Yes, they were. Then she went in the kitchen and decided to open the back door to let some fresh air in and found it unlocked. Drat it!
Sylvia decided she wouldn’t worry Willie when he wasn’t well. Obviously no one had been in, because nothing was disturbed. Anyway, she’d only been gone half an hour.
The police in Culworth were at pains to catch the thieves, but Mervyn’s shop, though watched throughout the day, yielded nothing.
There was an altercation going on by the butcher’s van. Masher Murphy, dispatched by Mrs Murphy to get some steak for his supper, was challenging the butcher about the freshness of his meat.
‘I reckon this in’t fresh. More like last week’s meat masquerading as this week’s.’
‘Are you questioning the freshness of my meat? I tell you, it’s the best in the county. Fresh as fresh, it is. You smell it.’
‘It’s a very funny colour for fresh meat, is that. Not even fresh enough for my mastiff. I should have brought him along to test it, but he’d turn his nose up at it.’
The butcher, already upset by the struggle to get onto the green in the first place, couldn’t take any more of Masher’s lip. Not knowing his history, the butcher, from inside the van, leaned over his meat display, shoved Masher on his shoulder and shouted, ‘I wouldn’t sell meat to you if I had a van full and you were my only customer!’
He immediately regretted it.
For Masher, who had a long reach, returned the push. The butcher, Bryan, reciprocated with all his strength, except this time he almost shot head first out of the van, and finished up lying on his meat display. Masher laughed loudly and long, but hadn’t bargained on Bryan’s tough edge. He gathered his resources, pulled himself up from his meat display, pushed past his wife, who’d begun screaming and couldn’t stop, and raced out of the van. Then he tripped on the top step and fell out onto the green, catching the back of his head on the bottom step as he fell. Blood poured out of the cut and he sat moaning on the ground with the blood sheeting down the back of his T-shirt. His wife, our Bet, screamed, climbed over her husband and rushed around the van to accost Masher. He was 6ft 2in and big with it; she was 5ft 1in and built like a doll. She pounded him with her fists and, being at heart a gentleman, Masher didn’t even try to push her away, but stood like a statue taking her punches, laughing like a drain. Soon she ran out of energy, so Masher picked her up and carried her to the meat van door, stood her on her feet, patted her head and walked away.
This didn’t solve the butcher’s plight: he was still seriously covered in blood. Jimbo rang for an ambulance, and suddenly what had been a laugh turned into an incident. Sergeant Mac took out his notebook and made a note. Masher declared the butcher had struck him first and that he was acting in self-defence. A witness, namely Jimbo, agreed Masher was quite right.
‘Full name?’
‘Declan Ignatius Murphy. Number seven, Bracken Drove, Penny Fawcett. Aged fifty-nine.’
Mac took his telephone number and promised to be in touch.
‘See,’ said everyone, ‘we
do
need to get rid of this dratted market.’
Titus had had a worrying time that morning. One extra stallholder had turned up and there was no space for him; the rest of the stallholders were angry about the Culworth Road being blocked off and how hazardous it had been getting through the narrow Royal Oak Road - little more than a cart track, they declared, and what was he doing about it? And then the fight. Poor old Bryan had been carted off to A&E. Our Bet was really upset.
Titus eventually escaped to the village hall to meet Liz after nursery.
His heart lifted the moment he saw her. There was a hint of her beginning to look like her usual happy self and his worries about the market fell away.
‘Liz! My darling.’ There being no one else in the hall, Titus hugged her and kissed her cheek.
‘Titus, you’ve had an exciting time, haven’t you? I’ve been hearing all about it from the mothers.’
‘Devastating, but it’s all gone away now I’m with you.’ He held her close and felt all the familiar feelings for her rising in his heart. She was the best antidote for trouble anyone could hope to have. He just wished he could hold her and share a bed with her every day of his life. But she’d said no most emphatically, and he had to abide by that. ‘Any news on the Neville front?’ He didn’t really want to know but at the same time he did.
Liz stood back from him. ‘He’s at Hugh and Guy’s flat. Still not going out. Still not been to the office. Still refusing to mention my name. But he’s eating and sleeping, conducting proper conversations and answering questions about the business. So I suppose that’s all a plus.’ Liz smiled brightly at him. ‘Let’s go to the Wise Man for lunch.’
‘Great. I need to bank the money while we’re out, so that means popping into Culworth, OK?’
‘Of course.’ Liz finished locking the nursery cupboards, put the dustpan and brush back in the kitchen, gave a last check of the room, picked up her bag and took out the key to the main door. Titus watched her movements, every one so precise, so elegant. She moved, he thought, almost like a ballet dancer, smoothly and with poise, and she was always so attractively dressed. He was so lucky to have met her. So lucky. He adored her in a way he had imagined he would never adore another woman after Marie. She, Marie Margaret Bellamy, had filled his heart and his mind, and now he was experiencing that same uplifting joy with Liz.
Finally they were both standing outside with nothing to do but get their lunch. Liz gave him a wonderful smile and Titus felt his heart lurch. He would have loved to kiss her there and then, but they’d both decided not to give any demonstrations of affection in public - there was already enough gossip about them - although he could see in her eyes the promise of a kiss, and his heart thudded.