‘Well, they’re nice things and they’ll love the mud. Or Darmera peltata. That’s another good marsh plant and it doesn’t spread too quickly. Rather pretty pink flowers. And you might consider putting some water lilies in the pond – give those frogs of yours somewhere to sit.’
The single frog who had made his home in the recovered pond last summer had become several frogs – much to his pleasure and satisfaction. After all, the village was called Frog End.
‘The other half, Naomi?’
She tipped up her glass. ‘Don’t mind if I do.’
He poured her another hefty shot and added a splash of water. ‘They seem to have done a fairly decent job of converting your former home. I hear all the flats have been taken.’
She grunted. ‘I can’t bear to see the poor old place myself – always look the other way whenever I’m driving past. It’s a bit of a Victorian horror, of course, but we loved it. If my sister and I had known we were selling to some property developer we’d never have let it go. We thought he was going to live in it – fools that we were. He never said a word about turning it into flats. Paid us a pittance, too, the twister.’
‘I’m afraid it’s the fate of a lot of big houses these days. Even if you had sold it as a private home, the next buyer would probably have turned it into flats just the same. Or knocked it down and built a dozen prestigious executive houses on the land.’
‘Is that supposed to comfort me? But I expect you’re right, Hugh. Anyway, we couldn’t stay. Needed an army of servants and gardeners to run it and a fortune to keep it in order and stop it falling down. God knows what it would have cost to heat it properly. We never did in our day. Jessica and I lived in the kitchen with the Aga when we were there on our own – before she died.’
He topped up his own drink. ‘I’m due to rattle a collecting tin round there tomorrow, so I’ll let you know what it’s like inside.’
‘Who’s roped you in to do that?’
‘Miss Butler. Major Cuthbertson usually does that end of the village but he’s down with flu apparently.’
‘Down with a hangover more like. I damn nearly collided with him coming back from Dorchester the other day. He’s an absolute menace now he’s got his driving licence back.’ The colonel suppressed a smile at the pot calling the kettle black. Personally, he would sooner not encounter either of them on the roads – Naomi crouched fiercely behind the wheel of her fire-engine red Metro or the major finally restored to the controls of his Escort after a year-long ban. ‘I’m rather wondering how successful I’ll be collecting. It’s in aid of donkeys. A Save the Donkey campaign. Miss Butler says that there are a great many that need saving in this country, not just abroad.’
‘I’ll bet there are! People buy them for their spoiled kids and then get tired of them. Forget they need feeding and looking after and company. I’ll put something in your tin, Hugh, but I wouldn’t count on the people in those flats at the Hall. Never see a sign of them round the village. All London types, I should think. Probably never set eyes on a donkey except on one of those awful foreign holidays they all go on.’ Naomi switched subjects abruptly. ‘Tell me, what do you think of our new vicar?’
He said cautiously, ‘He seems nice enough.’
Naomi snorted. ‘Can’t stand the type myself. Beard and sandals, guitars in church, happy-clappy, shaking hands with your neighbour and all that nonsense. He’ll try and get us using that New Series next. Over my dead body – and everybody’s else’s, I should think. I can’t see Ruth allowing it. She’d know how we’d all feel.’
‘Does she have any say in the matter?’
‘Well, the living’s in her name now. Surely she could veto it?’
‘I rather think the nearest bishop might be the one who decides those sort of things.’
‘God help us if you’re right, Hugh. They’re as bad as the rest, these days. They pander to all these guitar people because they want to be seen as trendy. All they do is scare off the faithful oldies who still go to church, and they’re not many of those left.’
He glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner of the sitting room and saw that its hands were close to midnight.
‘Nearly time.’
He got up to open the lattice window. It was still snowing and the outside air was ice cold, the silence complete – so complete that he felt that he could have reached out and touched it. These be three silent things . . . the falling snow, the hour before dawn . . . he still couldn’t think of the third one. Behind him the grandfather clock began its twelve silvery chimes and, as they stopped, the village church bells broke the silence outside, ringing out loudly across the snow. He turned to raise his glass.
‘Happy New Year, Naomi.’
‘Happy New Year, Hugh. Hope it’s a specially good one for us both. Though they’re all pretty much the same these days.’
Two
It must have snowed for most of the night because when the colonel drew back his bedroom curtains in the morning, a thick white blanket of the stuff was shrouding the garden and frosting the bare branches. The sun’s first rays emerging over the wood behind the cottage made the scene glitter like a cheap Christmas card.
Thursday had to be prised from his place on the sofa, claws forcibly detached one by one from the cushion, before he could be put outside the back door. There was a perfectly good cat flap that the colonel had had installed but the old cat couldn’t be bothered to use it if there was someone around to open and shut the door for him. He stood there in the deep snow, torn ears flattened, a front paw lifted in horror and disgust.
The colonel shaved, bathed and dressed before he boiled himself an egg – timed for four and a half minutes – and made himself toast and coffee. The disciplined army years had made the idea of slopping around in a dressing-gown unthinkable. When he had eaten the egg and the toast he stood at the window for a while, drinking his coffee and looking out at the garden.
Some animal had left neat tracks in the virgin snow across the lawn – a fox probably rather than a badger, and certainly not Thursday who was still crouched resentfully close to the door. Somewhere under the pristine white blanket the plants were sleeping their long winter sleep, including all those bulbs – daffodils and the narcissi – that he had installed so laboriously in the long grass by the apple trees last autumn. He had ordered them from a catalogue and when they had arrived he’d taken yet another leaf out of Naomi’s gardening book and chucked them down anyhow, and wherever they had fallen he had buried them. No regimented ranks allowed. At the back of the same catalogue he had come across illustrations of snowdrops – he’d had no idea that so many types existed – and another evening had passed pleasantly beside the fire while he made his choices. The common snowdrop, Galanthus nivalis, and some charming variations: Galanthus Merlin with its green inner; the yellow-centred Wendy’s Gold; Magnet with a single flower on a long stem, said to shimmer in the breeze; Ophelia, a double flower with outer petals lifted like wings; Augustus, which had wrinkled petals and pleated leaves. He had planted them in a sort of fairy ring around the white lilac where they would now be waiting off-stage, metaphorically speaking, to make their brave entrance – the first act in a long and ever-changing variety show that would play until the return of winter.
He washed up the breakfast things and put them to dry in the rack.
The army had trained him for many things, but not for domesticity, and after Laura had died he had learned the hard way. Beds he could make with military precision, shirts he could iron without a crease, brass and silver he could polish brightly, shoes he could shine to look like glass; but he had had to learn to clean and scour and dust and vacuum, and how to work a washing machine. With Naomi’s brisk encouragement and charmingly misspelled recipes, he had taught himself to cook simple dishes and tried to avoid the tins or microwaving meals-for-one, though he did not always succeed.
Miss Butler had delivered the collection tin the day before, together with the cardboard tray of Save th
e Donkey badges and a box of pins. A paper wrapper round the tin showed a photograph of a very sad-looking donkey with drooping ears, matted coat and sticking-out bones, and loaded with a horrifyingly heavy burden. The badges carried the picture of the same donkey’s head.
Freda Butler had clearly taken the cause very much to her heart.
‘Poor creatures. So cruelly treated – even here, in our own dear England, Colonel, where people ought to know better. We don’t use them as beasts of burden, of course, or work them to death, but there are some quite shocking cases of neglect and mistreatment, you know. You wouldn’t believe it.’
‘Oh, I think I would,’ he had said, having come across a great deal of mindless cruelty in his life. ‘Tell me, how exactly does the fund manage to save them?’ He felt he ought to know, in case somebody asked.
‘Well, it pays for mobile veterinary clinics overseas to help the poor suffering animals there. They find donkeys just left to die on the side of the road, you know, once they’re too weak to work any more. Quite shocking! And there are some lovely sanctuaries in this country where the ones that have been badly treated or abandoned can live out their days in peace and comfort. They are always in need of funds.’
‘It all sounds very worthwhile.’
‘Yes, indeed. The trouble is people don’t seem to care about donkeys very much. Horses and dogs, yes, and cats, too, of course, but not poor old donkeys. Considering that Our Lord rode into Jerusalem on one, you’d think they might give them more consideration and respect, wouldn’t you?’
He had agreed with her, though it was a long time since he had believed in the Lord. Not since he had watched Laura die slowly in pain and misery. But Miss Butler patently did. She was one of the legions of decent, faithful people who still went to church every Sunday, who dutifully echoed the beautiful words, chanted the Creed and sang the glorious hymns. One of the faithful oldies referred to by Naomi.
‘Well, I hope I won’t let you or the donkeys down.’
She had sighed. ‘I’m afraid you’ll find some people reluctant to donate much – just a few pence. They slip it into the tin very quickly so you can’t see how little it is but I can always tell by the sound it makes. Sometimes they won’t even answer the door at all. Of course, they might take more notice of you, Colonel. I don’t think Major Cuthbertson ever tried very hard. He always went round very quickly.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ he had promised her.
‘I know you will, Colonel. I can see that you have great compassion for God’s less fortunate creatures.’
They had both looked at the inert lump of black and tan fur on the sofa.
He had said, ‘Thursday seems to have taken me on permanently.’
‘It’s an unusual name.’
‘I gather he originally turned up on a Thursday when old Ben was living here and so he called him that. He disappeared after Ben died and then reappeared when I moved in – on another Thursday, by coincidence.’
‘Yes, I saw him. Cats are strange creatures. They always know what’s best for them.’
‘They’re survivors, Miss Butler,’ he had said with a smile. ‘And rather better at it than donkeys.’
He had watched the elderly spinster pick her way down the snowy path and out of the gate. A timid soul dressed invariably in navy blue – a nod perhaps to her long service in the Wrens – who lived in a cottage even smaller than his own on the opposite side of the village green. Her sitting-room window provided her with an unrivalled view of all the village comings and goings – which would have been how she had spotted Thursday’s reappearance when he had moved into the cottage. He had sometimes caught the glint of the powerful Zeiss binoculars, rumoured to have formerly belonged to a German U-boat commander and appropriated by her late father, an admiral, and which it was known that she used to see farther and better. Not that she was a malicious gossip. Far from it. She merely observed; and, doubtless, deduced.
He opened the back door to let Thursday in. The cat stalked past, flicking clumps of snow fastidiously from his paws, and sat down in front of his empty bowl. Breakfast was served. Fresh chicken mixed with a little liver, chopped small enough for the few remaining teeth and moistened with warm water from the kettle. Thursday sniffed at it critically before deigning to begin. It was a mystery how the old cat, who had almost certainly lived rough in his pre-Pond Cottage days, had acquired such pampered and picky tastes.
The colonel put on his heavy tweed overcoat, cap, scarf, gloves and boots and hung the Save the Donkey tray by its webbing strap around his neck. The collection tin already contained Naomi’s contribution and he added more coins of his own so that it made an encouraging rattle.
Outside, it was crisp and very cold; the snow sparkled in the sunlight and squeaked beneath his boots and his breath clouded the air. The cold didn’t worry him; he’d known far worse during his time serving in Berlin and, on the whole, he preferred it to the energy-sapping effects of tropical heat. He set off briskly on the route that Miss Butler had allotted him – the Dog and Duck; the beautiful old stone cottages clustered round the green; the cul-de-sac of new bungalows; the Vicarage; the Manor and finishing up at the Hall – Naomi’s former childhood home, bought for a song by the canny developer and turned into flats.
He started off at the Dog and Duck – probably the reverse order of the Major’s route. The pub was still shut but the landlord’s wife, Sheila, was busy with the vacuum cleaner in the public bar, pushing it to and fro across the red and green patterned carpet that had been laid over the old flagstones. The Dog and Duck, once a simple place of real ale, ham and cheese sandwiches and packets of Smith’s crisps, had moved with the times. The beer now came out of pipes and bottles and full meals were served in the dining-room extension. There was a good deal of very shiny new copper and brass and wipe-clean plastic. The Christmas decorations were still up – swags of fake holly nailed along the beams, the Christmas tree beside the inglenook decorated with pretend presents, silver and gold tinsel and winking coloured lights.
He rattled his collection tin and Sheila turned off the vacuum cleaner.
‘What’s it for, Colonel?’
‘Donkeys,’ he said. ‘A lot of them need saving.’
‘Well, that makes a change. It’s usually for people in countries you’ve never heard of and you wonder if they ever get a penny.’ She came over and picked up a badge. ‘Poor old thing, he looks really miserable. Like nobody’s said a kind word to him in his life. I’ll get my purse.’
She put several coins in the tin and he thanked her. ‘Sorry I interrupted you.’
She smiled at him in her friendly way – a thoroughly decent woman who worked like a dog, helping her husband to run the pub. He marvelled at how they stood the long hours, the physical grind, the effort of being nice to every customer every time.
‘Don’t worry about that, Colonel. I doubt if we’ll be busy today. Not with the snow. And they say there’s more to come.’ He trudged on towards the first of the old cottages on his route where old Mrs Peabody, who had to be at least ninety-nine, beckoned him into her sitting room. He stood, trying not to let the snow fall from his boots on to the threadbare carpet, while she searched in vain for her purse. ‘I put it somewhere, I know I did . . . let’s see now, it might be behind a cushion . . . or sometimes I put it away in a drawer.’
In the end he found it for her on the mantelpiece behind the clock and she insisted on him taking out a pound coin.
‘That’s rather a lot, Mrs Peabody.’
‘Nonsense. I don’t need much – not at my time of life. Besides, you know the old saying.’
‘Which one?’
She wagged a gnarled finger at him. ‘It’s in giving that we receive.’
What a dear old soul, he thought, as he made his way on to the next cottage where some children were shrieking and laughing as they built a snowman in the front garden
– a carrot for the nose, stones for eyes, a bent stick for the mouth. He was rather a
fine-looking snowman – very portly, as snowmen should be. As the colonel admired him, the children’s mother came out with an old hat to complete the outfit and there were more shrieks and laughter.
He knocked on the next front door, but without much hope. The owners lived in London and only came down for occasional weekends during the summer. They were probably sunning themselves on some Caribbean beach, or skiing in Austria. Two of the other cottages were also second homes and rarely used. High prices had been paid and a good deal of money spent on modernization. Out with the old stone sink, the ancient range, the claw-foot bath and the poky Victorian grate; away with the privy shed and the tumbledown hen house. In with the modern plumbing and wiring, the central heating, the gleaming bathroom and the country kitchen copied faithfully from a magazine – accurate down to the Aga, the scrubbed-pine table and the wicker basket artfully filled with corn stalks and dried flowers. He had done much the same himself with Pond Cottage – except for the country kitchen – but at least he lived in the place. By the time he reached the end of the cottages the tin was making quite a satisfactory rattle. So far, Miss Butler seemed to have been mistaken about the donkeys’ appeal.
‘I hear the colonel’s taken over your collection round, Roger,’ Marjorie Cuthbertson said.
‘Has he?’
‘Freda Butler told me. Let’s hope he makes a better job of it than you usually do. That shouldn’t be too difficult for him.’
THREE SILENT THINGS a cozy murder mystery (Village Mysteries Book 2) Page 2