“No, she’s real enough. You can have a visit if you like — she’s got her own stable behind the pub. Sort of the Sulky Cow mascot.”
“I’ll be counting the moments,” I said. “But you were interrupted, I believe, as you were about to confide in your old Anty Boisjoly.”
“I was.” Barking eyed Soaky, who replied with the mischievous smile of the fifth form student who finds himself, suddenly and unexpectedly, under the naive watch of a substitute Latin master. “If you’re interested in making a modest investment in a sure thing, I may be able to make room for another backer in my chromium-plating venture.”
“Very kind of you, Mister Barking,” I said. “At the moment most of my capital is tied up in racetrack debentures and whisky futures.”
“Quite sure? Frankly, I could use a little nudge over the edge. Research and development has not proceeded as smoothly as hoped.”
“Quite sure. It’s my belief that bumpers, even those plated in chrome, will one day soon be rendered obsolete by safe driving and careful adherence to the posted speed limits.”
“If you find the new technologies daunting,” said Barking, lowering his chin and his voice ever further, “perhaps you’d be interested in another initiative of mine. Are you aware of the leisure trend which is sweeping the United States at the moment?”
“Bathtub gin?”
“The yo-yo.”
“Remind me,” I said. “Light rum, crushed ice…”
“It’s a children’s toy, Mister Boisjoly. A very successful and yet deceptively simple device formed of a wooden bobbin and a length of string. They’re selling them by the trainload in America.”
“I’m unsurprised,” I said. “I was in New York, once. People were lining up on Fifth Avenue to pay five cents for a boiled frankfurter from a man selling them out of a tin drum. I believe that Americans will buy anything so long as someone else buys one first.”
“You’d agree, then, that what’s needed is a gimmick,” said Barking, rounding to the other side of the table, possibly to prevent me from making a break for the door. “And that’s just what I’ve got. You see, in America, they’ve got these travelling yo-yo demonstrations. I propose to do the same here. Soon, every child in Britain will want one, and with a little working capital, say, ten thousand pounds, I can ramp up production and meet that demand.”
“Then I congratulate you, sir,” I said, raising my cup of mulled wine. “Particularly if, to you, ten thousand pounds is a little working capital. To me ten thousand pounds is eight months to a year of well-rehearsed debauchery.”
“The thing is…” Barking leaned back and drummed his fingers distractedly on the table, as though struggling with some weighty, internal deliberation. “...The thing is, with the passing of Major Fleming, I’ve lost my most important backer.”
“Flaps Fleming was going to give you ten thousand pounds to manufacture yo-yos?”
“Five thousand, if I’m being completely transparent with you,” confided Barking transparently. “With five thousand in reserve, should the pace of production need to be increased.”
“Strangely risk-averse, for a flyboy,” I observed. “Weren’t you a little dismayed, then, when he bade you farewell forever?”
Barking tipped up his cup and examined the remains. He plucked a raisin from the dregs and popped it into his mouth.
“You win some, you lose some, as the Americans say,” said Barking, now preoccupied with sifting the silt in his cup.
“Yes, as a nation it’s an endless source of penetrating philosophy,” I said. “I’m surprised to learn that Flaps had the means. Tannery Lodge strikes me as the cosy, unpretentious sort of abode preferred by men of undemanding tastes and limited resources.”
“Oh, no,” said Barking, with renewed interest. “He was the last of a line that still collects tribute on most of the farmland in Graze Hill and Steeple Herding. It just happens the major preferred to live modestly, out of the public eye.”
“Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, along the cool sequestered vale of life,” I paraphrased shamelessly. “Not sure I see the appeal, myself. I don’t know that I’d go through the whole bother of being shot down over open seas if there wasn’t at least a little madding crowd in it for me.”
“I think the major was coming round to that way of thinking himself.” Barking drained his cup and then rose from the table. “I’m afraid that I’ve got to be going — on top of everything else I’m expected to do, I’m verger of Saint Stephen’s, and there are hymn books and wine and wafers to be laid on before Eucharist.”
“Eucharist?” I asked. “What Eucharist?”
“Holy Communion,” said Barking. “Mister Padget goes in for the whole wine and crackers. We even do incense, while we’ve got supplies in.”
“I know what Eucharist is, Mister Barking, but didn’t all that get sorted out this morning?”
“Not in dairy country.” Barking spoke ‘dairy country’ as though it was a widely-established synonym for ‘wasteland’. “No one has time to come to church in the mornings. Services start tonight at ten.”
The blacksmith clad himself in lambswool and leather and made for the door. “I hope you’ll give my proposition careful consideration, Mister Boisjoly. ‘Til tonight, gentleman.”
A cold breeze swept quickly in and just as quickly back out again, taking Barking with it, and I was alone with a smiling, wobbling Soaky Mike. He waggled his eyebrows meaningfully at the clock.
“Quite right,” I said, relieved to note that the eyebrows were bang on the bell. “Allow me.” I ladled a generous portion of steaming glog into Soaky Mike’s cup, to my own disadvantage because little remained of the brew but a squishy deposit of citrus peelings and dried fruit.
“I’m afraid that’s the last of it,” I said, lowering myself onto a milking stool on the other side of the open fire from the old man.
“There’s whisky behind the bar,” he countered. Or he may have contended that there were “sixty beside the barn” or that it was plainly “risky to blind the tzar”, for the man spoke without the slightest hint of an upper palate, but with a winking, beguiling charm that made whatever he was proposing sound like a jolly conspiracy.
“I daresay you’re right,” I conjectured. “But let us content ourselves with what nature provides and Sally Barnstable will allow. Do I understand it that you were here this morning to benefit from the largesse of Flaps Fleming?”
“Arum,” said Soaky, earnestly. “He give me a whisky when he come, and another when he goed.”
“And this was out of character, you’d agree?” I was beginning to pick up on the unique cadence of Soaky’s personal dialect.
“Bloke was tight as a lady’s slipper on a Clydesdale.”
“Very colourful. And did he also bid you a fond forever farewell?”
“That he did. And very pretty it was, sir. Soaky, he said, I never give you more than a passing thought, never, but I believe that, someday, I may well do so again.”
“How moving.”
“Arum.”
The door burst open with a crisp intake of wind and Sally bustled into the bar, and then leaned back against the door, pushing it closed. She cast a dubious eye over the touching scene as she removed her big woollen mittens.
“All correct and timely,” I assured her. “And that’s the last of the elixir.”
“That works out well,” said Sally, unwrapping herself. “It’s time I was closing up, now.”
Sally busied herself momentarily behind the bar while Soaky savoured the last of his wine, and then she approached the fireplace. She lifted the cauldron off the chimney hook and prepared to sling the remains onto the fire but I stopped her, acting on what would turn out to be a far more consequential whim than I could possibly have anticipated.
“You’re not discarding all that high-calibre sediment, surely?”
Sally looked into the cauldron and then back up at me, as though I’d just enquired after the fate of he
r eggshells and coffee grounds.
“You want it?”
“I most certainly do,” I confirmed. “There’s no better base for a pot of mulled wine than the remains of a previous pot of mulled wine, and I have well-grounded suspicions that this is one of many Christmas traditions which my aunt will overlook. Entre-nous, I won’t be very surprised if she’s forgotten to lay on dinner.”
We three exchanged those warm assurances one feels compelled to convey on a dark Christmas evening that we eagerly anticipated seeing one another at church, and I was back in the crisp winter night.
I had been in the pub perhaps forty-five minutes, during which the scenery had been touched up with glitter and relit with a carefully positioned silvery spot. A fresh fall of snow scintillated where it lay and twinkled as more fell in slow, drunken trajectories against the darkness. I was enveloped once again in that inimitable silence afforded by the singular sound-absorption qualities of snow, and the magical fog of my own breath and the cauldron of hot raisins in my hand. In short, it was an enchanted moment to be alone.
Ahead of me lay the path home. An excellent choice, but lacking the promise of serendipitous moments and rather heavy with the promise of regaining Herding House before time. The other way lay Greater Graze Hill, with an unblemished blanket of snow, quiet, glowing cottages, and, it had just occurred to me, an actual living specimen of the Graze Hill Golden. Swinging my bucket like Little Red Riding Hood, I crunched through the snow toward the rear of the Sulky Cow.
I fell immediately into darkness. A small alley was formed between the pub and a low wooden manger. The space was narrow and crooked and the moon had difficulty finding it. I stopped in the darkness, partially because I didn’t know where the manger door was but mostly because my steps were echoing in a most suspicious manner. Somebody was following me. When I stopped the echo stopped, just slightly out of time, and when I continued it started up again. I stared hard into the shadows but the contrast against the moonstruck snow rendered them as the depths of an oil well. I could see my own footprints beyond the entrance to the alley, though, and they were no longer alone.
There’s something about still, silent winter nights that gives flight to the imagination, and I had little difficulty conjuring a vivid image of a knife-wielding madman, approximately six foot two, dark complexion, scar above the left eye, cauliflower ear, descended brow, and a subtle but unmistakable look of what I guess one would call a yearning. I turned on my heel and made for the light.
Once around the corner I was inspired, possibly by the sound of footsteps in quick pursuit, to continue around the manger. I turned the next corner and noted, in passing, the entrance, but banked the knowledge for some later enterprise. At the moment, I felt that my energies were best employed in dashing through the snow.
As I rounded another corner it occurred to me that I was being chased in a circle around the manger, and while I was quite confident in my ability to run literally all night if necessary, I also realised that the next turn into the darkness of the alley and a heavy iron cauldron in my hand presented the best I could hope for in terms of a last stand.
I stopped in the darkness and put my back to the wall of the manger. This positioned the cauldron in my left hand, so I broke against the back leg and prepared to bowl a googly the moment my murderer hove into view.
Nothing. Not the sound of mad, lunging footfalls in the snow nor even the feral snorts of a blood-thirsty killer. I calmed my own breathing and heartbeat, in the manner of what I imagine is that of the professional soldier or primary school teacher, and listened.
It was barely a tic, a stitch of sound, sharply expelled, and it was behind me: “Hic.”
I spun on the spot. My feet were solidly embedded in the snow, though, so I twisted like a damp dishrag. The cauldron bounced off the wall of the manger and fell into the snow and then I, robbed of even the dubious benefit of the graceless stagger, followed.
“Pox and spells, Soaky, you very nearly frightened me to death.”
Soaky Mike smiled impishly in the darkness.
“Thought you might be wanting of company.”
“Is that your idea of companionship? Stalking people in the dark? It’s a good job Mister Bell had Tom Watson on hand for his breakthrough rather than you, or we’d all be answering the telephone with a hearty ‘gaaahh!’”
“Didn’t know you was so skittish.”
“Well, I’m happy of the opportunity to set you straight on the point — I am.” I grasped Soaky’s hand and he pulled me from a Boisjoly-shaped indentation in the snowbank.
“My apologies.”
“No, no, my fault,” I said, reflecting on the simple fact that it was. “I suppose you were after the remains of the mulled wine.”
We looked down at the cauldron, which had spilled its guts onto the snow. The effect of blood red wine and slushy fruit splashed against the sheet of white made the cauldron look as though it had come to a violent end.
“I don’t suppose you’ll be wanting it now,” said Soaky, scooping the frosty remains back into the cauldron.
“I’ll take that,” I said, doing so. “Perhaps some sort of frozen dessert can be rescued from the debacle. In any case, I have no intention of inviting the disfavour of Sally Barnstable. I have a vague fancy that you feel the same.”
“Arum.”
“Then let no more be said about it,” I said. “Now show me this cow that’s got the bright set talking.”
The interior of the stable was balmy, compared to the cold night outside, and it was dimly lit by glowing embers in an iron brazier. The room smelled of straw and earth and the robust scent of large herd animals in their natural habitat. The effect transported me, briefly but fully, to the Juniper Gentleman’s Club during cocktail hour.
The little manger was a dedicated suite of rooms for its single VIP occupant. Separating man from animal was a low, simple wooden barrier, on one side of which was a barrel of feed and on the other a long trough. As we entered, the most peculiar animal I’d ever seen looked up from dinner.
Her enormous, brown, bovine eyes met mine and I was instantly charmed by her projected good nature, as though she was saying, in a glance, ‘Look here, I know we’ve never met but I can’t help feeling that we’re going to be jolly good mates, you and me.’ There was nothing unusual in that, of course — most beasts of field and foyer tend to grant me an a priori fellowship. What was odd about this particular fully grown cow was the way she looked up at me. Stranger still, the Graze Hill Golden is, apparently, a perfectly normally proportioned breed of cow — generous of haunch and with a comfortable, jowly countenance — but with stubby legs like a dachshund. She wouldn’t have been more than four feet tall in high heels. She was also uniquely stamped — apart from a dusting of white about the snout and ears, Hildy the midget cow was of a warm, coppery tone, not unlike the moustache of Constable Kimble.
“Hello Hildy,” I said with sincere amity. “Merry Christmas.”
Judging by her response, this was the first she was hearing that today was noteworthy, and if Hildy had already found in me a solid ally and friend she sealed the deal with her response, which was to dance excitedly from side-to-side, stamping her left and right hooves in alternating rhythm. I was seized by a desire to communicate my appreciation of this sincere bonhomie in a manner a creature of such sweet simplicity could understand and, not coincidentally tiring of my duty of care for an iron bucket of saturated orange rinds, I emptied the cauldron into the trough. Hildy’s eyes widened with feeling and then she set about the offering with a relish that I can only describe as moving.
“You’d have been better letting me have that, Mister Boisjoly,” said Soaky petulantly.
“I rather thought you might think that,” I said. “And so I’ve relieved you of temptation, you can go to your bed with a pure heart. Pax vobiscum.”
“You misjudge me,” insisted Soaky. “I only followed you out to tell you something about Major Fleming. Something I’ll bet yo
u a pint to a penny you don’t know.”
“I didn’t know who he was before this morning, Soaky. I imagine there are volumes I don’t know about the man.”
“But this, no one else knows neither,” said Soaky. “Major Fleming, whatever else he might have been, he weren’t no hero.”
CHAPTER SIX
The Candid Revelations of the Christmas Celebrations
Soaky Mike left me with that cryptic thought and disappeared into the night. I stood blinking after him, and might have given chase had Hildy not said “Moo” in that peculiar way some cows have of saying “moo” as though they’re reading it as written. Her meaning, in its purest sense, was simple benediction, but I took it as a reminder that I had a duty to a maiden aunt who at that very moment had doubtless been chased deep into the drapery by the ham-handed tactics of Inspector Wittersham.
“Right you are, Hildy old thing,” I said and bade her a merry Christmas night.
Herding House glowed a ‘welcome home’ amber against the ‘no, stay outside and throw snowballs at the chimney’ blue of the winter night. Puckeridge opened the door and I stamped into the warm, well-lit foyer in the primitive dance performed by all who are plagued by snow clinging to their trouser-cuffs.
“What ho, Puckeridge,” I said. “Jolly evening out there. Cold and crisp and all Kris Kingly. Has my aunty recovered sufficiently from the inspector’s generous application of rubber hoses and heat lamps?”
“Miss Boisjoly is resting in her room, sir. She says that you may expect her for dinner.”
“Not for cocktails?”
“Your aunt invites you to proceed at your chosen pace, sir.”
“I’m way ahead of her, Puckeridge. They serve a mulled wine at the Sulky Cow that’s decisively on the giggly side of the range between grog and laudanum.”
“I’m gratified that you appreciated it. I myself have enjoyed the traditional Christmas wine at the Sulky Cow. ”
“Yes, I understand you liven up the local from time to time,” I said. “Tell me, between all the bare-knuckle brawling and dancing on tables, did you get a chance to take the measure of Major Fleming?”
The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (Anty Boisjoly Mysteries Book 2) Page 5