‘But didn’t the search-party visit the hut?’
‘They did – at least, Sam Kettle’s wife did. Sam’s one of the consortium, so she made sure she was one of the squad that went up the Railway. Someone actually shouted to her over a wall, asking what she’d found in there. “Only a couple of beer cans, rolling about on the floor,” she told them.’
Janie replenished Georgina’s cup.
‘You’re playing this in a very low key, Janie. On the quiet, you’re a bit of a miracle-worker, aren’t you? The only help you had was a geriatric bunch of creditors and creditors’relicts.’
‘And my lorry-driver.’ Janie grinned. ‘And don’t underestimate that posse of mine. They looked like a crowd-scene from one of Hell Bruegel’s more sinister visions. I’d told Wilson and Harvey that they were in the mood for a lynching: just made it sound like a silly joke at first, you know. Oh, and I’d warned them that there were going to be two women present who knew a great deal about the old days, and were thinking of having their memoirs ghost-written. The Misses Ledman: I felt sorry for the dirty looks they kept getting. But it was my lorry-driver who tipped the balance. A cadaverous-looking man – he happened to come by to collect the gallows that Emma Rawlings had sold to a Holiday Camp at Filey.’
‘Happened to come by –’
‘And he had a wonderful line of patter, Miss Crane. You could see those two men beginning to wonder what was a joke and what wasn’t. And there were a lot of people in that room – jamming it up – blocking all the ways out –’
‘And a chairperson who knew just how to galvanize the company.’
But Janie made light of that.
‘My brother Wilson paid out enough money to give a lot of local pleasure – perhaps even to alleviate a little hardship here and there. And the sum total of it was something that Wilson Goodwin will hardly miss. I could see when we got his nerves to the state when he’d have shelled out to reduce his stay in that house by half an hour.’
‘But how did he pay out? Cheques wouldn’t be much use to most of those people.’
‘I was carrying cash. The cheque was made out to me. It won’t bounce. Wilson knows I would stop at nothing.’
‘And what now, Janie?’
While they had been talking, Georgina had been looking attentively round the room. Janie was doing her housework to a system – and it was not the system of a woman who was simply flicking a duster and wielding a polishing-cloth. It looked more like the activity of one who was doing some large-scale sorting out of possessions – as if she were contemplating moving house.
‘What now? I’m not quite in a position to tell you that yet, Miss Crane.’
‘You mean it takes two?’
‘I mean I sometimes feel like that poor little cactus over there. I need potting down. My roots have had too much space for too long.’
She smiled. Janie had a very informative smile – when she felt in informative mood.
‘Do you know why we never lived together, Noll and I, Miss Crane? Do you know what we fell out about, on our way home from church? All I happened to say was how many spoonfuls of sugar I thought it healthy for a man to have in his tea. And all Noll said was that he hoped I hadn’t brought my fish knives and forks. That was enough for both of us; we recognized something. This was the moment we’d both been living for when we were going to start changing each other’s habits. And that was something neither of us would stand for. But maybe we’re wise enough now to run the risks.’
The Assistant Chief Constable handed back to Detective- Superintendent Grimshaw the definitive report that Sergeant Beamish had written.
‘He has quite a good classifying mind, this young man.’
‘Yes. I believe he could go quite a long way – if only –’
‘Quite.’
The ACC sat back in his chair. ‘When do we expect Mosley back?’
‘The end of next week, sir.’
‘There is nothing in Sergeant Beamish’s admirable summary that implicates Mosley in any way. In fact, Mosley is not mentioned.’
‘As you remember, sir, Mosley has been on leave throughout the operative period.’
The Assistant Chief Constable asked for the report back and affixed at the top and bottom of it a rubber stamp which he reached for without having to look what he was doing.
NO ACTION.
An extended family of squatters was moving out of the new stone house that had been built on the outskirts of Hempshaw End some years ago. Half of them were going to live in The Protectorate, the others in a small cottage in the heart of the village. Sounds suggestive of domestic commotion were carried across the roofs and copses on the evening on which Janie and Noll moved in together. For some minutes there appeared to be an interchange of kitchen utensils, and then an impact suggesting that a flying flat-iron had made contact with a pane of glass. But the occupants were still in residence the next morning, and appeared to be flourishing.
Copyright
First published in 1985 by Quartet Books
This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
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Copyright © John Greenwood, 1985
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Mosley Went to Mow Page 17