by H. Y. Hanna
“What? Hang on—I’m coming over.”
A few minutes later, the front gate of the cottage garden creaked open and Nick hurried in, his long legs carrying him quickly over to the section of the wall where Poppy was standing. She was still staring down at the box, her mind whirling with a mass of thoughts and questions.
“What’s that?” asked Nick, coming to a stop next to her.
“I think this belonged to my mother,” murmured Poppy. “It was in a hole in the wall. I think she must have put it in there when she was a child or teenager. The ivy wouldn’t have been as overgrown then and a lot more of the wall would have been exposed. Maybe she found the hole and used it as a secret hiding place.”
“What’s inside?”
“I don’t know—I haven’t looked.” Poppy hesitated, then gave him an embarrassed smile. “I know she’s dead and this was from a long time ago but… it felt a bit wrong opening it without her permission, you know?”
Nick smiled with unexpected gentleness. “Yes, I know what you mean. But I’m sure your mother wouldn’t mind.”
Poppy took a deep breath and carefully prised the lid off the round metal tin. They both peered inside. There was an assortment of odds and ends, the kind of keepsakes that a young girl would treasure. There were several blank greeting cards and stickers portraying unicorns and rainbows, a keyring in the shape of a shamrock, a half-filled notebook that looked like it could have been a diary, several hair ribbons, a little bottle of nail polish with the remnants of pink enamel paint clinging to the sides, a home-made bracelet made of pretty glass beads, a few dried flower heads, and—at the top of the pile—a yellowed photograph.
Poppy pounced on the last item and held it up to the light. It showed a group of girls of about sixteen or seventeen, sitting in a row, some smiling self-consciously at the camera, others hunched over shyly. Poppy recognised her mother immediately: even in the old, faded image, Holly Lancaster stood out as the prettiest girl in the group, with her honey-blonde hair tossed over her shoulders and her blue eyes bright and intelligent. She had an arm around one of the other girls and her lips were spread in a wide smile.
Behind the girls stood several young men, some holding guitars, and all looking handsome and moody. Poppy felt her pulse quicken as she peered closer at the photograph, scanning the faces of each of the men and searching for any sign of familiar resemblance. But the picture was too dark and the quality too poor to make out much detail.
“Is that your mother?” asked Nick quietly.
Poppy nodded, pointing Holly Lancaster out in the photo. “I’m guessing the other girls are the groupies she used to hang out with.”
“And the men behind them? Are those the rock musicians they followed around?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Poppy hesitated, then added in a small voice, “One of them might be my father.”
She half expected Nick to make a mocking comment, like he usually did, but to her surprise, he said nothing. Instead, he reached out to take the photo gently from her and look more closely at it.
“I would have been able to pick your mother out even if you hadn’t told me,” he said with the ghost of a smile. “You look like her.”
“Me?” Poppy stared at him in astonishment.
“Your hair is dark and you have more freckles,” Nick conceded, looking from Poppy down to the photograph and then back up again. “But otherwise, you have the same eyes and that pert nose and generous mouth—”
“Don’t be silly! My mother was beautiful whereas I’m very ordi—” Poppy broke off, flushing.
Nick looked amused. “Oh, I doubt Henry Farnsworth would have been so keen to ask an ordinary girl out on a dinner date.”
Poppy looked down, not knowing how to reply. She didn’t know why but the thought of Nick noticing her looks suddenly made her feel very flustered.
“I have a friend who restores old photographs. If you like, I can ask him to work on this and see if he can produce a cleaner copy, one that might give you more details,” said Nick.
“Oh… thanks,” said Poppy, surprised again. “That’s… that’s really kind of you.”
“N-o-o-ow…” came a familiar petulant cry behind them.
Poppy glanced at Oren, then back to Nick, and said with a rueful laugh: “You know, I almost have to thank Oren. I would never have found this box without his antics. You could say he’s a hero.”
Nick looked at the ginger tom and scowled. “Don’t give him any ideas. That cat has too great an opinion of himself already!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Poppy was up early the next morning, partly because she was keen to pop into the village post office shop before she went to Duxton House, but also partly because she was still excited by the discovery she’d made behind the ivy. It had taken her a long time to fall asleep last night as she tossed and turned, and thought about her parents. She had given Nick the precious photo, but she had carried the tin with the rest of her mother’s teenage belongings back to her room, eager to pore over them once again.
After the photo, the most exciting thing was the notebook filled with Holly Lancaster’s handwriting. She had started to read it with eager expectation before she realised that it was not so much a diary as a place where her mother had written down all sorts of random things, from song lyrics she liked to fragments of poetry that she was composing, from drawings of dresses she admired to doodles of flowers and plants in the cottage garden. There was no coherent chronology to the entries—it was as if her mother had simply chosen a blank page at random whenever she felt like recording something; plus she seemed to have added to and written over older entries with careless abandon. Which meant that it was all very confusing. At last, Poppy had rubbed her tired eyes and switched off the lights. She could see that deciphering her mother’s notebook was not going to be a quick job. She would have to take her time and go through it slowly.
Poppy arrived at the village shop to find it already buzzing with activity. Like many similar institutions in small English villages, the post office shop wasn’t just a place to buy stamps and send a parcel—it was also where you could pick up newspapers, everyday groceries, stationery, over-the-counter medicines, local baking, fresh farm produce, and—most importantly of all—the daily gossip.
There was a large group of village ladies congregating by the counter and Poppy was conscious of them all listening avidly as she handed over the USB drive with the leaflet she had designed and asked the postmistress to print out several copies. They also all watched with admiration and envy as she presented the postmistress with the bouquet that she had picked from the garden the day before.
“Ooh, ta, dear—that’s lovely! They’ll look beautiful here on the counter. And I’ll be sure to let everyone know where they’re from,” added the postmistress with a big smile.
“Thanks, that’s really kind of you,” said Poppy, delighted.
“So you’re offering fresh flowers, are you?” said the postmistress, taking the first leaflet from the printer and eyeing it with interest.
“I saw your arrangement at the fête,” one of the ladies by the counter spoke up. “It was absolutely gorgeous! And this one too… Where did you learn to arrange flowers like this?”
“Um… nowhere, really,” said Poppy with an embarrassed laugh. “I just sort of follow my instincts.”
“Well, they are fabulous instincts, dear.”
“Thank you,” said Poppy, blushing. “My mother had an amazing way with flowers. She could pick a bunch of weeds from the roadside, stick it in a jam jar, and somehow make it look a million pounds,” she said with a laugh.
“Well, now, I always think flowers in a jam jar look delightful,” said another lady.
A third lady nodded emphatically. “Oh yes, I’ve never liked those fancy arrangements from the florists nowadays, with bits of twisted wires sticking up everywhere and strange seed pods and things from Australia—”
“Quite right,” her friend agreed with
a superior sniff. “A nice, simple bunch of English country flowers is what I want, looking like they were just cut from the garden.”
“Oh, that’s exactly what I’m offering!” said Poppy. “My arrangements will all be sourced from the Hollyhock Cottage garden, picked fresh and delivered straight to you.”
“Do we get to choose the type of flowers?” a new woman spoke up from the back of the group.
Poppy turned a regretful face to her. “Um… well, not really, I’m afraid. I’ll just be working with a seasonal selection of what's in the garden. That way, you get the freshest flowers… But if you tell me your colour preference, I’ll do my best to accommodate that,” she added brightly.
“That sounds great. I'm having a birthday party for my little girl tomorrow and I’ve invited several of her friends and their mothers, and it will probably be mayhem with a house full of under-fives,” she said, rolling her eyes and laughing. “I know I won’t have much time to make the house look nice, but it would be lovely to at least have a big bunch of fresh flowers on the table.” The woman reached into her handbag and pulled out a chequebook. “So how do I put in an order? Do you take cheques?”
“Oh… er…” Poppy fumbled. She hadn’t expected to be getting orders so quickly! “Um… yes, of course.”
“And can you make it mostly pink flowers? My little girl loves pink,” said the lady with a fond smile. She held a hand out. “I’m Moira, by the way. I live in that big Tudor house at the edge of the village.”
“I’ll do the best I can,” Poppy promised, shaking the woman’s hand and giving her a smile.
“How much are the arrangements?” asked another lady with interest. “And do you do smaller posies too? I don't need a big bouquet, but I’d like to have a small posy to take when I'm visiting my mother at the nursing home tomorrow. She loves fresh flowers and she’s missing her garden.”
“Oh… of course, yes, I can do smaller posies,” said Poppy.
She did some rapid mental calculations in her head and named some prices with trepidation. When she saw how happily everyone accepted them, she wished she’d dared to quote higher! By the time all the leaflets had been printed, Poppy already had a list of orders tucked into her pocket and a busy time of picking and arranging ahead.
She was just paying the postmistress for the printing when the bells attached to the door chimed. Conversation ceased as suddenly as if someone had hit a mute button. Poppy turned in surprise to see the thin, angular woman with wispy orange hair who had just come in the door. It was Sonia, and she looked nervously around as everyone stared at her.
“Hello, Sonia!” called the postmistress with forced cheerfulness. “How are you today?”
“I’m… I’m fine…” said the woman, coming hesitantly forwards. The group by the counter parted to let her through. “I’m just on my way to Duxton House to help Mrs Peabody with the take-down of the fête stalls, but I wanted to post this first.”
The postmistress took the envelope and looked at the address with nosy interest, then said: “Another job application, Sonia? Was the last one not successful then?”
“N-no,” said Sonia, flushing dark red.
“But I thought you said they were considering offering you the job and were just checking references?”
“They… they changed their mind,” Sonia mumbled, looking down. “Anyway, I’m not sure I’d like to live in a city.”
“Yes, I totally agree,” said the postmistress heartily. “My niece wanted to get a job in Oxford, but I told her a nice secretarial position in one of the local offices would do her just as well. Oxford’s not that big a city but it’s busy enough.”
“Oh, village life is much better,” one of the other ladies piped up. Then she exchanged glances with the other women in the group and said in an affected voice: “I do hope you’ve got over your traumatic experience at the fête, Sonia. It must have been such a shock finding a dead body like that!”
“Yes, I don’t know what I would have done,” chimed in another lady.
“Did you realise it was Ursula straightaway?” a third lady asked.
“Er… no… I mean, yes… I… I…” Sonia looked around helplessly. “I… I don’t remember much about what happened… It was all a blur…”
“Well, I can’t blame you for wanting to put the whole thing out of your mind,” said the postmistress. “That’s the kind of thing that could give you nightmares for life!”
“I heard that Ursula had been stabbed in the chest,” said the first lady who had spoken.
“No, I heard that it was in the back,” said her friend.
“In her heart—definitely in her heart,” said the third lady.
“Was there a lot of blood?” asked another lady in the group, a ghoulish gleam in her eye.
Sonia swallowed. “Y-yes, there… there was blood everywhere… I never realised there would be so much blood…” She shuddered and squeezed her eyes shut, as if trying to blot out the memory of the day. “It was that knife—that dreadful knife! If it hadn’t been there, none of this would have happened.”
“What do you mean?” asked the postmistress, looking confused.
“That knife was bad luck!”
The group of ladies tittered. Obviously, the village residents were used to Sonia’s hysterical outbursts and superstitious paranoia, and didn’t take her seriously at all. She flushed again and wrung her hands, her eyes going around the room and alighting at last on Poppy. “You were there! You heard me tell Mrs Peabody that the knife would be bad luck, didn’t you? I knew it the moment Ursula dropped it and it landed sticking into the ground. It was a death omen! You saw it too, didn’t you?”
“Well, I… er…” Poppy didn’t know what to say, especially as the other ladies in the group were rolling their eyes and looking unimpressed. “I don’t know if it really meant anything—”
Sonia made a sound of anguish, like someone who had been terribly betrayed, and pushed roughly past Poppy, rushing out of the shop. They heard the sound of sobbing before the door swung shut behind her. Poppy stumbled backwards and regained her balance, startled by the woman’s vehemence.
“Don’t mind Sonia,” said one of the ladies in the group, making a twirling motion with one finger by the side of her head. “She’s completely batty.”
“Oh yes, one sandwich short of a picnic,” declared a second lady.
“One? I’d say more than three!” shouted another lady
They all burst into malicious laughter and began making fun of Sonia, mimicking her words and copying her mannerisms. Poppy felt slightly uncomfortable; she had been startled by Sonia’s abrupt behaviour, but she didn’t really mind it. It had reminded her of a frightened animal lashing out, like a horse kicking or a cat scratching—a reflexive action, with no genuine ill intent behind it. Besides, she felt a certain compassion for the neurotic woman. She knew what it was like to be poor, with no job prospects or financial security. That would be enough to make anyone anxious and insecure, without the added stress of fearful superstitions. And then to be shunned and ridiculed everywhere you went in the village…
Poppy noticed that the postmistress wasn’t joining in with the group; in fact, the woman seemed to share her compassionate thoughts.
“Ah… poor Sonia,” she said quietly to Poppy. “I do feel sorry for her. It must be very disheartening to keep getting rejections. She’s been applying for months now, you know, and I don’t think she has much savings, poor thing, so she’s getting quite desperate.” She glanced at the group of gossiping ladies and made a face. “She does bring it on herself, though, you know, with her ridiculous babbling about death omens and things like that… it’s just not the way to make friends in the village.”
“Does she have any friends?” asked Poppy.
“Ursula was her only friend, really. I mean, I think Ursula just felt sorry for her, but Sonia was completely dependent on her.” The postmistress sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know what she’s going to
do now that Ursula is gone.”
Poppy started to reply, then overheard something the other ladies were saying:
“…do you think there really was a knife or it was just Sonia’s imagination going loopy again?” one of them was asking.
“No, there really was a knife,” Poppy spoke up. “I brought it myself—I mean, I fetched the box that it was in. It was with a collection of things that Norman Smalle had donated for the raffle.”
“Ah… Norman…”
“Norman… of course…”
Poppy saw several of the women exchange meaningful looks. The postmistress, however, made an impatient noise in her throat and said to the group:
“Oh for goodness’ sake, you’re not still thinking that Norman could have anything to do with the murder, are you? The police have already arrested a man.”
“That ex-robber fellow?” said one of the other ladies scornfully. “He’s not the murderer! The police have got it completely wrong.”
“Yes!” Another lady nodded. “Everyone knows that most people are murdered by someone they know.”
“And Norman was always following Ursula around like a sad puppy, wasn’t he?”
“Ooh, yes, almost a bit creepy.”
“Obsessed, that’s what he was.”
“I heard that Norman got arrested for stalking once!”
They all turned to see a younger woman standing at the back of the group. She looked a bit embarrassed to suddenly have all the attention on her and fidgeted self-consciously.
“What d’you mean?”
“Heavens—really?”
“Arrested!”
“Well, I’m not sure if he was actually arrested,” admitted the young woman, backtracking slightly. “But he was definitely reported to the police and then he got served with one of those legal things—you know, when you can’t go near someone or talk to them—”
“A restraining order?” said Poppy.
“Yes, that’s right!” said the young woman, nodding. “A restraining order, so he couldn’t go near the girl.”