From Devon With Death

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From Devon With Death Page 7

by Stephanie Austin


  He scratched behind his ear. ‘Well, that’s the story I’ve heard. Course, there may be others. Anyway, somebody’s having a bit of a joke, by the sound of it.’

  I chatted with him for half an hour and sorted out his shopping list. I offered to take his books back to the library but he shook his head. ‘I’ll stagger along with those. I’ve got to keep these bones moving and I can just about make it that far.’

  ‘You’ll be hopping about like a two-year-old when you’ve had this operation,’ I promised him. He grunted. ‘Still no date?’ I asked sadly, and he shook his head.

  After I’d dealt with Tom’s shopping, I popped into Kate and Adam’s cafe, Sunflowers, to blag a free coffee. My luck was in, and I got a free shortbread as well. Because of its quiet location, Sunflowers suffers long periods with no customers, a bit like Old Nick’s, and for a while I thought I was the only person sitting at a table. This suited me. It meant I could enjoy a quiet perusal of a paper someone had left behind, even if it was a copy of the dratted Dartmoor Gazette.

  On the front page was a photograph of a smiling couple: Digby Jerkin and Amanda Waft, with the headline Famous Husband and Wife Acting Team Settle in Ashburton. I couldn’t help smiling. Chloe would be furious. And she wouldn’t be the only one, I realised, as I read the accompanying article, in which Amanda stated that she and her husband hoped to introduce a little culture to the area. With this artlessly patronising remark she had without doubt alienated all the volunteers who ran Ashburton Arts Centre, the members of Dartmoor Operatic Society, Ashburton Players, the community choir, the Dartmoor Chamber Orchestra, all the local art and craft groups, the poetry society, archaeological society, International Cookery School and everyone else who had been enjoying a very fulfilling cultural existence without any help from her, thank you very much. Even Ricky and Morris would be miffed.

  As I sat there, having a quiet chuckle, I became aware of a light pattering sound, a delicate clicking of nails on the stone-flagged floor. I looked up to find Lottie the whippet gazing at me soulfully, her head cocked enquiringly on one side, as if she was wondering if it was safe to approach.

  I held out a hand to her. ‘Hello, Lottie,’ I said softly, and she came close, sitting by me and letting me stroke her smooth head gently. I heard another tapping noise then, and realised that around the corner, where I couldn’t see him, Mr Daniel Thorncroft was making use of Adam and Kate’s free Wi-Fi. Presumably, he couldn’t see me either. Lottie and I stayed quiet, while she laid her slender muzzle on my knee and I continued to stroke her head. Sophie has a dark, soulful gaze that can melt your heart − she’s been practising it for years − but she was barely a close runner up to Lottie. Her tragic stare was heartbreaking. She seemed such a sad little dog.

  ‘Lottie?’ Her master’s voice. He had just noticed her absence. I heard his chair scrape back. There was a note of near panic in his voice. ‘Lottie?’ He appeared around the corner, his specs perched on his nose, and grinned with relief at the sight of her. ‘There you are!’ The tip of her tail wagged, but she stayed where she was, her head on my knee. He frowned. ‘Are you seducing my dog, Miss Browne with an “e”?’ he accused me.

  ‘I am, Mr Thorncroft.’

  ‘She seems to like you.’ His voice indicated that he found this puzzling. All dogs like me, I could have told him, and cats. In fact, I’ve never met an animal yet that didn’t take to me. I’d like to think I give off some spiritual vibe that attracts them, like St Francis of Assisi, but it’s probably the way I smell.

  ‘I thought you’d wandered off,’ he told her, and Lottie, knowing where her duty lay, returned to his side. He crouched down and grabbed her narrow muzzle gently. ‘Can’t have that, can I, Lottie?’ he asked, and then added to me, ‘Lottie and I like to howl together.’

  This was said with a grin, but for a moment I read in his eyes the desperation of a man drowning in a sea of sorrow and clinging to a life raft. What he was saying was not a joke. Up there, in that lonely farmhouse with only the cold stone walls to hear them, they howled their grief into the wind.

  I felt an impulse to reach out to him, but before I could move the cafe door opened and a voice said, ‘Oh, there you are, darling!’ and in swanned Meredith, looking stunning in knee-high boots, jeans and a sweater, a red beret set on her dark, shiny hair, a cream pashmina thrown carelessly around her shoulders. As he stood up, she kissed him briefly on the lips. ‘I’ve been looking for you in all the wrong cafes,’ she confessed, smiling and taking his arm. She dropped her voice. ‘I didn’t know you meant this place.’

  ‘It’s quiet here,’ he responded. ‘Lottie gets nervous when there are too many people around.’

  She glanced down at Lottie briefly. ‘You and that dog!’ Her tone was all warm indulgence, but her raised eyebrow suggested something cooler. They went back to the table around the corner where I could hear the rustling of papers, the snapping shut of a briefcase, the jingle of a laptop shutting down. Mr Thorncroft was gathering up his things. A moment later the two swept by me.

  ‘Oh, hello, Juno!’ Meredith pretended that she was noticing me for the first time but I knew damn well she’d clocked me as soon as she came in.

  So much for the grieving widower, I thought, as I watched them go out, arm in arm, the sad little whippet trotting at their heels. And then I remembered the photograph I had seen propped on the mantelpiece in the kitchen of Moorview Farm, the face of the woman with straight dark hair, dark eyes and dazzling smile. Of course Daniel Thorncroft would be attracted to Meredith Swann: she and his dead wife looked so alike. The photograph had only shown me a face, but I was willing to bet that the deceased Mrs Thorncroft had the same strong, lithe physique. So, perhaps Mr Thorncroft was a grief-stricken man, after all, chasing the reflections of his dead wife in a mirror.

  Thursday took me to Torquay. I drove Chloe to her appointment with her consultant at Mount Stuart, a private hospital. She was booked in for various tests, which gave me a couple of hours to myself before I picked her up again.

  Torquay – jewel of the English Riviera, a gracious Victorian seaside spa set on a stretch of glorious Devon coastline, which a succession of short-sighted, blockheaded councils had done their best to destroy, allowing ugly sixties tower blocks to be built overlooking the harbour, ripping out the old shopping street, and replacing original shops with stores set in brutal blocks of concrete. Attempts to beautify by later, more enlightened councils have led to the mess which is the main shopping street today. I’m being harsh. It’s nothing that a few tons of Semtex wouldn’t fix in a jiffy. On the positive side, there is a pleasing selection of charity shops, and on any other day of the week I’d have happily truffled my way around these. But today was Thursday, which meant that the town hall would be hosting its weekly Grand Flea Market. I hied me thither in my never-ending search for stock.

  I did well. I picked up a very handsome carved Indian table with a brass top, a Carlton Ware buttercup design serving dish, some silver-plated button hooks, a pair of ivory glove stretchers and a fake crocodile handbag, circa 1960. I thought the bag was hideous, but the vintage clothes I sell on commission for Ricky and Morris in the shop mean that I often get customers looking for that kind of thing. I also found a small toque from about the same period, composed entirely of speckled green feathers. I dread to think whose feathers they had been originally and hoped it wasn’t an endangered species. But it was too late to return them to their owner, so I bought the hat along with the bag.

  As I was loading my swag into White Van, a gentle nudge from my mobile phone told me that Chloe had finished with her hospital appointments and wanted lunch. I picked her up and drove her down to the seafront and we ate tartes flambé in a smart bistro overlooking the sea. Under the January sky the water was flat calm, gunmetal grey, the tiny white triangles of sails in the distance. I’m not really a seaside person; I prefer my feet on dry land. But it was pleasant enough to gaze upon while Chloe told me all about the gallstones her scan had just rev
ealed and begged me not to allow her to eat anything rich as she tucked into chocolate torte.

  After lunch I persuaded her to walk the few hundred yards along the promenade to admire the expensive yachts and cruisers in the harbour, many of them gin palaces and floating tax dodges that never left their moorings, as ostentatious a display of wealth as you’re likely to find anywhere in the world.

  Around the harbour are some gift shops and galleries, as well as a smart independent department store where Chloe liked to shop. We emerged an hour later, Chloe exhausted and suffering from credit card fatigue, so I drove us to one of Torquay’s prettier suburbs, the little village of Cockington, where thatched cottages, tea shops and craft workshops exist aplenty. We enjoyed the inevitable cream tea, and I spent half an hour resisting Chloe’s attempts to buy me some handmade earrings in iridescent glass, which I had foolishly admired and which Chloe kept telling me would perfectly match the mint green pashmina she had bought me.

  I returned to Old Nick’s late in the afternoon, leaving Mrs Chloe Berkeley-Smythe resting on her sofa, moaning over a copy of the Dartmoor Gazette, a sherry at her elbow, proclaiming that now the famous thespians had arrived her life in Ashburton was ruined. I recommended a cruise.

  ‘Luke’s been taken on,’ Pat told me happily as I struggled into the shop carrying the Indian table, the feathered hat sliding about on its brass surface, the handbag dangling from my arm. She held the door open for me. ‘He’s been up with Ricky and Morris the last two days, working in their garden, you know, round their lake.’

  ‘Oh, that’s brilliant! I’m glad they’re giving him a try.’

  ‘Thanks to you,’ she said shyly.

  ‘Well, they need a regular gardener so let’s hope it works out. Any customers?’ I added hopefully, as I set the table down.

  ‘You sold a little jug.’ She consulted the label. ‘Torquay pottery.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Three pound fifty.’

  ‘All my troubles are at an end.’ I lugged the table down the corridor into my unit.

  I told Pat to go home, removed my meagre profit from the cash tin and locked the shop.

  The sky was fading to pink and I watched the rooks perform their evening swoop around the rooftops. They would fly around the town several times before they dropped down to roost for the night in the cedars and sequoias next to St Andrew’s Church. I love to see them wheeling around the sky and walked out to the corner of West Street so that I could watch them. They landed, gathering on the top of the church tower, raucously chattering, a cawing, fluttering brotherhood. Then the church clock chimed the quarter-hour and they took off again, a fountain of dark shapes, away over the rooftops, and I turned my steps back to Shadow Lane, to where I’d parked the van.

  As it happened, I came out again, when it was fully dark. I’d eaten my way through the last of the cafe leftovers the night before, forgotten there was nothing in the fridge except birthday cake and neglected to do any shopping. Despite lunch and cream tea, I was feeling peckish. I had to go out and get something for supper.

  I strolled back down through the town. I had a choice of three small convenience stores that stayed open all evening, but I lamented the loss of Mr Singh’s. The dear couple who had run it when Nick was alive had retired and gone to live with their daughter and her family in Plymouth. Their corner shop was now boarded up, a sign advertising it was to rent, so I trudged on down to the end of North Street.

  The rooks were now a-bed and the town was quiet. I could contemplate its uniqueness. In the old streets of Ashburton, no two adjacent buildings are alike. Many have been turned into shops, but above street level lighted windows show as golden rectangles beneath the steep and crooked gables of buildings that have stood for hundreds of years, next door to grand imposing townhouses, Victorian or Edwardian, with wide bay windows looking down over the street. Meredith Swann’s gallery was set on the ground floor of just such a townhouse, with an impressive stone frontage and three storeys above. I glanced up at its bay windows and wondered if she had the whole building to herself, lucky cow.

  No sooner was the thought out of my head than I saw her strolling down the street towards me, a rolled-up yoga mat sticking out of the bag she carried on one shoulder. We stopped and chatted. She’d just come from a Pilates class, she told me. With that and running and swimming she kept herself pretty fit. In fact, she had won a medal for competing in a triathlon. Well, good for her. No wonder she possessed such a disgustingly healthy glow. We said our goodbyes and she let herself in through the front door next to her gallery. It must take her to the flat above. After a moment the large bay windows lit up. I muttered enviously and moved on.

  By now, my guts were rumbling. It seemed a long time since my cream tea, so I decided to abandon the idea of shopping for groceries in favour of a nip to the Indian takeaway. I slipped down a side street to cut off a corner, down a lane where a terrace of cottages stood, their front doors edging the narrow pavement.

  I glanced right. Jessie Mole was standing in my path. She didn’t see me and I dodged back into a doorway where I could wait until she had gone. But she lingered. She must have been loitering in that lane a full two minutes, staring into the lighted window of one of the old cottages. Whether it was a living room or a kitchen I couldn’t tell from where I stood, but the curtains must have been drawn back despite the winter darkness, allowing Jessie to gawp her fill at whatever was going on inside. She took a white envelope from her bag, glanced guiltily over her shoulder, first one way, then the other, stepped forward and slid it through the letter box. Then she hurried off, as fast as her strange, hobbling gait would let her, turned a corner and was lost to sight.

  I’d love to have known what was in that envelope. Jessie’s furtiveness suggested she was up to mischief and I was willing to bet she wasn’t simply delivering a birthday card. As I passed by the cottage I couldn’t help glancing in the window, but the curtains were now drawn tight. I could hear the faint sounds of a television from within. Had whoever lived there spotted Jessie peering in, or had they just felt that uncomfortable itch between the shoulder blades, a suspicion of being observed? Well, whatever Jessie was up to was none of my business, and I carried on towards my objective: a sag bhaji, a garlic naan and a prawn vindaloo.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Just so you don’t think I’m disgustingly greedy, I saved half of my takeaway with the intention of having it for supper the following night. As it turned out, I’d rather gone off the whole concept of supper by that time, but it was no fault of the food.

  Next morning, after dog walking, I went back up to Druid Lodge to help Ricky and Morris, as I had rashly promised while drunk on Sunday. I parked in their drive next to a small pickup truck, which I assumed belonged to Luke the gardener. I could smell woodsmoke and see a faint cloud, darker than the grey sky, arising from a bonfire at the end of the garden. The buzzing of a chainsaw was coming from amongst the trees by the lake and I walked down the sloping lawn for a closer look. A figure in an orange checked shirt was working, sawing up a chopped-off branch. He paused for a moment, put down the chainsaw and lifted his safety goggles up onto his forehead. ‘You must be Luke,’ I called out. ‘Hello.’

  He turned to look at me. He was younger than I expected, probably a few years younger than me, his light brown hair cropped very short. He had a thin face, pale and slightly sallow. His rolled-up shirtsleeves showed one arm inked in faded blue from wrist to elbow with a tattoo of thorns and roses, the flowers just outlines, as if he was saving up to get them coloured-in. I know ink is fashionable, but you either love it or loathe it and I’m not a fan of it myself. He nodded in greeting, flicking a glance at me from light blue eyes, but he didn’t remove his leather work gloves so we could shake hands. ‘You must be Juno.’ His smile was a shy, fleeting thing. He looked awkward.

  ‘You’re making progress.’ I could see where he had begun his attack, working to clear an area hidden by the green foliage of thuggish rhododen
drons.

  ‘It’s a pity to chop these off,’ he said, pointing to the fallen branches.

  ‘The flowers are beautiful,’ I agreed, ‘but are very invasive.’ The spread of rhododendrons was a real nuisance on parts of the moor.

  ‘I’m going to clear all this lot here,’ Luke described a wide arc with his arm, ‘let the light in, give the native species a chance.’ For a moment I studied the overgrown copse, the dark lake with the tangled mass of grasses and weeds obscuring the bank, the Gunnera plant with leaves as big as parasols, the willow that bent low to admire its own reflection in the mirrored surface. He certainly had his work cut out.

  Luke pulled his goggles back in place. ‘Well, I must get on.’

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ I said.

  He nodded, started up the chainsaw and turned his back.

  I could only spare Ricky and Morris the morning, so concentrated on unpacking the latest returning panto costumes with only the briefest of stops for coffee and a chat about the good progress Luke was making down by the lake. As I was coming out of the house a couple of hours later, he was loading the chainsaw in the back of his pickup.

  ‘Finished for the day?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘Ken’s chainsaw’s knackered,’ he said with a fleeting grin. ‘I’ll have to take it into town and get it fixed.’ He flicked me a shy glance. ‘Fancy coming for a pint?’

  I really didn’t. I don’t drink at lunchtime. But I didn’t want to appear reluctant. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, or, more importantly, Pat’s.

  ‘Not if you don’t want—’ he began.

  ‘Of course I do,’ I said hastily, ‘but it will have to be a quick one. I’ve got a client this afternoon. Look, I’ll drive my van down and follow you. Where do you want to go?’

 

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