Although they had no orders yet, the buyers for a famous chain department store were showing interest in the newly-released Eliza Berkeley Designs trade catalogue, in particular Fruit ‘N’ Veg. Another large London shop was also talking of ordering. The factory workers had been laid off and put on half pay while Jay had struggled to keep the business afloat.
But manning the bat-a-rat stall took his mind off things. The player stood ready with the rubber bat while he dropped the rat (actually an old fluffy squirrel found in the Armstrong children’s toy box) down a vertical plastic tube. It required just enough of his concentration that it was difficult to dwell on his business worries.
Katie ran the tombola and Hamish was on the coconut shy. Bob was running an adult-only clay pigeon shooting competition in a paddock beyond the main garden.
In a smaller field beside the paddock, Eliza led Jock the pony to and fro with small children riding on his back. After an hour and a quarter she stopped as she felt the old pony was getting too hot and tired. Quietly relieved, she led him away from the fête and back along the lanes to Manor Farm.
Never one for large group activities and crowds, Eliza hadn’t enjoyed her afternoon any more than she felt Jock had, but like everyone else dutifully running the stalls, she had smiled and said the right things… all in a good cause. She took Jock to join Eeyore out of the sun in the last remaining stable at Manor Farm, where he could lie down on the bed of straw if he wished. She fed him a reviving meal of horse nuts and made sure he was watered before she drove back to the fête.
While Eliza was stabling Jock, Annie was giggling as she had a go at the coconut shy, with every throw landing short and wide. She took hold of the next ball, but it never left her hand because a high-pitched scream echoed across the garden.
“Someone help me!” A look of terror on her face, long blonde hair flying, Stella tore across the lawn dodging stalls shrieking, “Someone help! Someone’s killed my Baby! Someone’s killed her.”
In the folds of her chiffon cover-up she was clutching something wet to her chest.
Francesca reached her first and led her to a chair quickly brought forward by others. She gently prised Stella’s arms away from her bosom to see what the terrified woman was holding. The little Chihuahua’s head lolled, the tongue hung out, the eyes stared. Baby was very much dead.
“Drunkna! You see?” Stella burst into tears and sat howling in despair. It was obvious from the little animal’s soaking corpse that it had drowned. By now a few people had gathered round to comfort the hysterical young woman while a larger group of onlookers stood fixated, watching the horror unfold.
Through uncontrollable sobs Stella managed to explain.
“I… I left her in the kitchen. I went to collect her for the dog fancy dress competition, but she was gone. Disappeared.” She said she had run around the house and garden searching everywhere for her little dog. “And then, in the Contemplative Garden… At the bottom of the pond–” She broke off sobbing again.
Unable to think of anything to say and shocked by what Stella was saying, Francesca put her arms round her and clasped the distressed woman, whose fluency with the English language had slipped a bit at this time of crisis. “Somebody go and find Bob, please!” she announced.
A couple of men jumped into action and ran to Bob’s clay pigeon shoot. Francesca did her best to calm the distraught woman. But Stella appeared not to hear.
“Oh, I cannot believe what I saw. My poor darling. She was just lying on bottom of pool. I will never forget.”
“But if she was in the kitchen, how can that be?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Who would do this to my darling, to my Baby?”
“Who else was in the house, Stella?”
“No-one – everyone was at the fête. I don’t think any other people were there. Unless they came in through the French windows, I guess.”
“But were they open?”
“One was.”
The huge state-of-the-art kitchen at Heronsford Manor had four sets of arched French windows opening onto the garden, and off it, a scullery, a gunroom and a downstairs lavatory off a passage that led to the back door.
It suddenly occurred to Francesca to ask, “Has Baby ever been swimming before?”
“She never went near water. She was terrified. Very frightened.”
She broke off to stare at Baby who was now lying in her lap. The woman’s head drooped in misery. Tears fell down her reddened cheeks. Francesca turned to glance at the gathered crowd of people clearly moved by the calamity. Like the red sea, it parted as Bob and Jay came running up the lawn.
“My angel! My darling! Whatever has happened?”
Bob was on his knees on the grass beside Stella’s chair. “How can this be?”
Jay gasped in horror at the sight of the chihuahua while Bob gently removed Baby from Stella’s lap. He was about to take the body away when a further wail came from Stella. “Don’t you dare take my Baby away! You leave my Baby with me!”
Francesca squatted down to look Stella in the face. She gently took hold of her arm.
“Stella, Bob’s just going to wrap up Baby and put her somewhere safe. That’s all. He’s just going to take her away from all this… to some privacy in the house. Shall we go with him?”
Katie and her children arrived. Melissa Nicholson said, “Can I do anything to help?”
This appeared to bring Stella back from her despair and she replied, “You are kind, Melissa. Thank you for your kindness. You can come to the house with me? I cannot go into that house alone.”
“You could have a proper funeral for Baby. And bury her in a special place in your garden.”
“I need to find the bastard… beast who do this.” She started to sob again.
“How about calling the police? They could test for DNA and fingerprints,” Johnny was displaying the first hint of eagerness he had shown all holiday.
Katie interjected, “Yes, that’s a good idea.”
Stella shrugged. Through red-rimmed eyes smudged with mascara, she looked sadly at Katie. “Bob, I think would not want the police here, he didn’t…” she paused, “he only likes big dogs like Fritz.”
“Well, how about we suggest it to him?” said Katie.
“Yes, let’s do that,” Francesca echoed.
This was the first time Francesca and Katie had realised that all might not be well between Stella and Bob and they both wondered about this.
Katie told the children to wait behind while she and Francesca linked arms with Stella and led the trembling woman to follow Bob into her house. They went into the kitchen where Bob had found a cardboard box, wrapped the dog in a towel and put it in the box. Stella peered over the box and like a toreador, removed the towel with a flourish and pointed, “You see? You see?” she shrieked, “Something has broken her neck! Look! How could someone do this to an animal and to my poor little Baby?”
Head flopping, eyes staring, mouth open, tongue lolling out, now the others saw what Stella was saying. The chihuahua had clearly had its neck broken and had presumably been thrown into the pond.
Bob said quietly, “It looks like another dog got hold of her, angel. There are quite a few here.”
“Or Fritz?”
“Fritz would never touch Baby, you know that.”
“Well,” said Annie later to Eliza. “I will say this: whatever or whoever killed the dog, chose a good day to do it. There were over a hundred people and dog suspects at the fête.”
“And that’s another dead body in water,” said Eliza. “Things are going from bad to worse in this village.”
“Hmm. Could there be a link to Louise’s death?” wondered Annie.
12
Late July
Patrick and his daughter were sorting out the house, readying for their move to Cambridge in August. The sale on Sparepenny Place would not be completed until late November, so they were leaving a few of their least essential things to be collected later.
“Of course, I won’t,” Sinead snapped at him. The more she had to rely on him since her mother’s death, the angrier she felt that he was the one of her parents left alive. Since her mother’s horrible death, she refused to go near the swimming pool, feeling faintly nauseous every time she had to glimpse it in the garden. Unanswered questions buzzed inside her head that she kept to herself. Her feelings had become distorted. She knew it wasn’t logical, but her twisted thoughts told her that her father was to blame. So, she sometimes felt, were all her mother’s village friends.
While she was clearing her bedroom, she hid some things in an ancient tiny cupboard near the chimney in her room. Patrick put his head round the door. She slammed the cupboard door shut and he took it that it was something private she didn’t want him to see.
“Oops, sorry, women’s stuff,” he smiled. “Wasn’t snooping, just checking you’re getting along okay?”
“I’m eleven, not six,” Sinead growled. “I think I can manage to clear my room, thank you.”
As he so often had to these days, Patrick slunk away from his daughter feeling a mix of hurt and pity. He prayed that time would do its stuff and that moving would be the first step to helping his poor child get through what had happened to her.
Louise’s money was still working its way through the legal processes and the delay in completing the sale left them short. But Bob McKenzie had been only too happy to bridge the gap with a loan to Patrick.
For McKenzies, the Ryans’ move was a win-win situation. They had two house sales going through in what was otherwise a bleak time for the housing market. Bob may have been generous and kind-hearted, but was a businessman through and through.
Since some things were too large for their new house, Patrick planned to sort out what to get rid of and what to keep. Apart from anything, he needed to clear Louise’s clothes while Sinead was not around. But for now, they hung in their dusty wardrobe untouched.
Meanwhile, the rest of those in Heronsford who could afford to, took holidays. Bob and Stella visited friends on a Greek island while Katie and Hamish took their children for a week’s holiday to Cornwall and then to stay with Hamish’s parents in Dorset. Eliza managed to persuade Jay to visit his sister in Cheshire for a few days and Francesca took off to Italy to see family for a fortnight.
For adults, the British weather was hot, sticky and uncomfortable, particularly for those who did not enjoy heat. But for the schoolchildren who spent a large amount of time splashing about in hastily purchased, blown-up paddling pools, parents were grateful that they could let them spend days out of doors and out of their way.
Events and the school holidays meant Eliza had forgotten her insistence on taking Annie to the doctor. The woman’s back got worse and she finally made an appointment and took herself to the village surgery. Just as Eliza had suspected, Dr Gordon had diagnosed osteoarthritis and prescribed painkillers.
Various people with children invited Sinead over for days or to stay for a few nights. Patrick had to go back to manning the shop in Cambridge and when no other option was available, he took Sinead with him.
As it does in England, once the heat had mounted, the air became humid and heavy. This accumulated over four days and eventually gave way to a big thunderstorm that raged over Heronsford, strafing its houses and land with hailstones. A deluge followed. It came down as though some vast invisible dam above had burst its walls. When the rain abated, the air cleared and the inhabitants felt the first relief since the shroud of heat had draped itself over the country during the latter half of June.
Popping in to see her mother on Friday morning, as Eliza walked past Annie’s Ford Fiesta, she noticed vicious key marks criss-crossed and etched deeply along one side. She found the same thing on the other side as well as another couple on the rear door. These violent scratches implied rage… but against Annie? There wasn’t a person around who had anything but love or at least admiration for Annie, so Eliza guessed it must have happened in Cambridge. That anyone would pick out such an insignificant, everyday car to violate was strange. Unless Annie parked somewhere she should not have done? Her daughter thought this quite likely since the old girl was getting a bit absent-minded lately.
“Mum, did you know that your car has been keyed right along both sides?”
“Keyed? What is keyed? What do you mean?”
“Scratched with a key. Deliberately. It has three deep lines along both sides of it. I’m so sorry, Mum. Any idea when it could have happened?”
“Oh dear! I must go and have a look.” Annie walked to her front door and out to the car parked nearby. She walked round the car and stood gazing at the damage in surprise.
“Kids, Mum, punk kids,” said Eliza, following her back into the house. “Must have happened recently as it definitely wasn’t like that on Thursday. Been into Cambridge?”
Such matters did not much bother Annie. Taking it in her stride, she said she had only been to Heronsford to have lunch with her friend Pam on Thursday and to the village shop and then church on Sunday morning but nowhere else.
That was strange but Eliza didn’t want to harp on it and worry the old girl. “’Fraid it will mean a trip to Thompsons. What a bore for you, Mum.”
“Oh well. Not sure I’ll bother, darling.” For Annie, a car was a machine for getting from A to B, not something to be proud of or that warranted much care, as long as it worked. What interested her more was who the culprit might be. She thought about whom she had seen in the village when she’d had lunch followed by the habitual games of chess with Pam on Thursday. She had parked in Pam’s driveway while she had lunch and she had stayed for an hour or so afterwards playing her favourite game with her friend. She thought it unlikely anyone had carried out this pitifully vicious act then.
She thought back to when she had visited the village shop on Sunday morning to get her paper, as did many in Heronsford. Katie Nicholson had been in the shop and when Annie had left, she had seen the Nicholson children milling about outside. Could it have been one of them? Unlikely in broad daylight, when anyone could have caught them at it.
“And then I went to matins,” she told Eliza. “There were just a few older people there.” The congregation was decreasing all the time. While Annie would say that her churchgoing was purely out of a sense of duty to the village, perhaps it was also an old habit. Childhood bedtime prayers, Bible readings, Sunday school and books about Jesus had left an invisible imprint on her young brain.
Later, the left hemisphere of that brain rejected religion, but its limbic system retained memories that still propelled her towards maintaining some tiny connection with her childhood. She attended matins about once a month but never took communion.
Eliza’s ancestors and Annie’s husband were buried in the graveyard of that church. She felt strongly that while people such as herself happily buried their old, christened their young, married one another and went along to the Christmas carol service as much for the camaraderie as the mince pies afterwards, that the institution deserved supporting. And if the heavenly grace it purported to impart was less rewarding to her than her contribution to the collection box was to it, the fact did not bother her at all.
Annie decided that it might have been during the Sunday service that some likely village lads had walked past her car and left their macho little marks of aggression.
That week Pam Sowerby brought her West Highland Terrier to lunch with Annie B. After lunch, they took their little dogs for a walk before the obligatory games of chess.
They walked across the field in front of Rooks Wood. Instead of taking Annie’s usual route through the wood, since it was post-harvest, they followed the path round to its right. They walked along the east side of the wood where they followed the edge of the stubble field round to make their way back along the other side. Round bales of barley straw like giant corks dotted the flat surface. Occasiona
l scraggy poppies had made a brave appearance. Fascinated by the nests of mice exposed by the combine, the dogs snuffled through the six-inch high cut stalks.
The usual village matters happily relegated to bottom of the Heronsford gossip agenda, the women discussed the latest horrible event to have happened in the village.
Earlier that week, Rose had come to clean Annie’s house and had been very shaken up. “I’m all right, Mrs Berkeley,” she’d told Annie, “but someone has destroyed my front garden.”
“Destroyed? Good Heavens, Rose. Whatever do you mean?”
Annie knew Rose tended her little front garden with devoted care and she had been so proud of the petunias, lobelias, marigolds, marguerites and other bedding plants she put in every summer.
“They beheaded every single flower and left the heads in a pile by the front door,” said the woman, obviously shocked to the core.
She was shocked indeed, Annie saw, and frightened too. As she cleaned she chattered on about her feelings. As far as she knew, she had never had an enemy in the village. Why and how such a thing had happened had greatly distressed Rose. Annie had done her best to comfort her.
“It has to be the same child or children who damaged your car, Annie,” said Pam.
“Well, yes, indeed it could be.” Years as a barrister defending both the innocent and the guilty had taught Annie that nothing is ever as obvious as it seems. “But then again,” she added, “it could be an adult with a grudge or a mental problem. In fact, there are a number of possibilities.”
“But surely a grown up wouldn’t do anything so ridiculous as scratching the paint on your car and cutting the heads off plants?”
“I don’t believe one can ever be sure that an adult would not do something equally as silly or sillier than a child.”
As they made their way back to Manor Farm Barn, the two women continued to discuss these nasty occurrences and the sad death of Louise.
The Decoy Page 8