A Whiff of Scandal

by Carole Matthews

  ‘I think you mean ghetto, Anise.’

  She ignored her sister’s comment and continued, ‘If you don’t want to save the old village hall, why are you here?’ she asked tartly.

  ‘I thought it was supposed to be a discussion, not a foregone conclusion. And I’m not altogether sure that it is worth saving.’

  ‘You’re being very vociferous today, Angelica.’ It wasn’t like her sister to disagree with her. Especially not in public. ‘Are you sure you haven’t been trying this aromatherapy?’

  Angelica flushed. How could Anise make innocent words like aromatherapy take on connotations of dancing naked in the moonlight and satanic worship?

  Melissa came to her rescue. ‘Why don’t we have a social evening? The village hasn’t had a get-together for ages. We could see what money we raised, then either use it to do up this place or perhaps buy stuff to kit out the new place.’

  ‘That sounds like a jolly good idea,’ Angelica enthused.

  Anise didn’t look the least bit enthused.

  Melissa continued, addressing her comments to the other ladies present, who hadn’t so far dared to speak. ‘I’ve had a word with Dave and he thinks it’s a goer. He suggested a Viking evening. You know, fancy dress and all that.’

  ‘What’s wrong with a nice harvest supper?’ Anise was affronted.

  ‘You can’t have a harvest supper in March,’ Angelica observed reasonably.

  ‘You’ve got to move with the times, Anise,’ Melissa advised. ‘People like theme evenings. I went to a dinner party the other week and we all dressed up like people out of the war and ate boiled mutton with mashed potatoes and spotted dick. We had to guess which one was a murderer.’

  ‘I’d plump for the caterer,’ Anise said.

  ‘It was a real laugh.’

  ‘It sounds ghastly,’ Anise retorted.

  ‘That’s because you remember the war and boiled mutton the first time round,’ Angelica suggested sweetly.

  Anise slammed down her redundant pencil. ‘This is what you get when you have a vicar that wears an Aran sweater. The last vicar would never have stood for a Viking supper. It was always a barn dance or a harvest supper, no argument. Those were the main features on the church calendar.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why the church was always empty,’ Melissa said. ‘At least Dave’s got some new ideas. And at the end of the day, it’s up to the church whether they want to sell the land to Dan or not. There’s not much we can do about it.’

  ‘You may be able to dress up in wartime clothes, young lady, but that wasn’t the spirit that defended this country from the Hun. You youngsters have no backbone these days.’

  ‘Perhaps we should put it to the vote?’ Mel suggested.

  ‘I’m the chairperson, Melissa. I’ll say when we vote.’ Anise picked up her pencil again with deliberate slowness. She would make them all wait. The gingham curtains fluttered in the breeze. ‘Shall we vote then?’

  Everyone at the table nodded. ‘The motion is that the village should hold a Viking evening,’ Anise said with a sneer. ‘All those in favour raise their hands.’

  Mrs Devises bravely shot her hand in the air, followed by the other ladies on her side of the table, most of them members of the church flower committee. Mrs Took, emboldened by this display of overt rebelliousness, edged her hand skyward, until Anise noticed and fixed her with a withering stare. The hand was returned under the table from whence it came. Anise made a show of counting their hands. She wrote the number of dissenters on her pad, next to the Spud-u-Like. She put on her Betty Boothroyd voice. ‘I think, unfortunately, the ayes have it. Lord help us all!’

  ‘It will be rather fun,’ Angelica said, putting her hand in the air slightly belatedly.

  ‘I think I would rather spend three hours locked in a shed with Roy Hattersley and a Rottweiler,’ her sister replied.

  The ladies pushed away from the table and formed an excited little huddle. Anise clapped her hands. ‘We will reconvene next week to discuss the catering arrangements, ladies,’ she instructed. ‘Perhaps then the vicar will grace us with his presence.’

  Anise watched the cosy huddle of ladies, tittering and giggling together like silly schoolgirls, and felt curiously isolated. Angelica was in the middle of them and was clearly enjoying the attention. Her sister had been deliberately non-compliant today and it wasn’t a trend Anise was keen to encourage. Someone would have to be on her side for this battle. She had the sneaking feeling that she was not only the spearhead of this campaign but, at the moment, also the sole reinforcements – apart from Mrs Took who could always be relied on to do as she was told.

  Mrs Devises sidled up to Angelica. ‘I’ve heard that the nice young lady at number five does Sacha Distel.’

  ‘So have I,’ Angelica said with a nod.

  ‘And Cliff Richard,’ added Mrs Took, not wanting to be outdone.

  ‘And Mick Hucknall from Simply Red,’ Melissa said.

  ‘And Michael Ball,’ came a joint offering from the ladies of the church flower committee.

  ‘Have you seen any of them yet, Angelica?’ Melissa asked.

  ‘No,’ Angelica mused. It didn’t seem appropriate to mention that they logged all of Rose’s visitors and there hadn’t been even a minor celebrity in sight yet, apart from the man that looked suspiciously like Melvyn Bragg. ‘I expect they arrive incognito.’

  Melissa gave an unconvinced shrug. ‘I would have thought they’d arrive in chauffeur-driven limos,’ she said.

  A small silence fell over the group as everyone wondered whether Melissa had a point.

  Chapter Fourteen

  STOPPING SLEEPLESSNESS

  Lavender, Marjoram, Vetiver, Valerian.

  When pressure of work or some more specific anxiety won’t let you rest, this potent mixture of essential oils can help to lull you to a sound and refreshing sleep when all else has failed.

  from: The Complete Encyclopaedia of Aromatherapy Oils by Jessamine Lovage

  Rose, very much awake, flung her arm across the pillow and stared at the luminous green numbers on her alarm clock. It was exactly midnight. She hated looking at the clock at exactly midnight. Normally, she wasn’t a superstitious person; she could walk on cracks in the pavement, under ladders, forget to say ‘white rabbits’ on the first of the month, all of those things, without a second thought. But there was something that made her flesh creep if she saw the hand of the clock brush past the witching hour.

  It was one thing living in a quaint detached cottage down a lonely country lane surrounded by rolling fields during the day, at night, it was a different beast altogether. Nasty things might lurk in the hedges and neighbours couldn’t hear you scream. Melissa had told her that when she was first married to Frank she could never sleep when he was on a night shift and had always kept the radio on low so that she couldn’t hear the pings and creaks of the house settling down for the cold of night. Anything was worth a go.

  She had a full appointment book tomorrow and had deliberately come to bed two hours ago to get a good night’s sleep. What a waste of time that was; she might as well have stayed up and watched Prisoner Cell Block H until her eyes were gritty and she was totally exhausted. She switched the radio on. It was tuned to Bucks County FM in the hope of catching the Cassia Wales’ chat show which had, so far, eluded her. There was the exaggerated sound of a creaking door and the maniacal laugh of Vincent Price. ‘Murder at Midnight,’ the DJ announced in Hammer House of Horror tones. Rose slammed the radio off and slammed her hand into her pillow.

  It was a spooky night. The moon was bright and clear and bathed the room in a chill, pale light that bleached the colour from the walls and the furniture. Even her cheerful Laura Ashley duvet looked wan and ghostly. The wind whistled emptily in the eaves and she wondered whether there was enough insulation in the loft. Clouds scudded across the sky and were thrown into shadow relief on her walls. There were no curtains at her windows. They were a really awkward shape because they were tin
y dormer windows that jutted out into the roof. Aesthetically, very pleasing. Practically, downright impossible for curtain hanging.

  Icy, stabbing rain hurled itself at the leaded panes – mock ones, not real ones. A lone tendril of ivy had curled itself along the window ledge and, with the rhythm of the wind, it tapped against the glass with a thin skeletal finger, a hollow, insistent, nerve-shredding noise. She would have to get Basil up there to cut it down. He had already told her, with some disgust, that it was growing into her gutters. Such misdemeanours could make you public enemy number one in Great Brayford.

  Basil, all things considered, had been a great success. She didn’t know exactly what he did for his five pounds an hour, but there always seemed to be bonfires smouldering damply at the bottom of the garden and the lawn now looked like real grass, green grass rather than a combination of brown wet leaf mulch and moss. The door of the potting shed was always open and rows of tools – hoes, spades, rakes – leaned expectantly against it. As Angelica had warned her, it did take some getting used to talking to a man wearing a trilby and Nike trainers without laughing.

  Another scrape on the window from the ivy brought her back from her mental meanderings about Basil and the nonexistent curtains. The clock was reading twelve fifteen and the wind was just winding itself up to full throttle. It was the sort of night that no one in their right mind ventured out in, thus making it ideal for rapists, murderers, serial killers and Freddy Krueger.

  This is a wonderful train of thought, she chided herself. Just the sort of thing to keep you wide-eyed and buzzing until dawn. She turned up the heat setting on her aromatherapy oil diffuser. Even her trusty oils were determined to be untrustworthy tonight. To start with she had burned lavender oil – its gentle clinical fragrance was perfect for soothing and calming anxieties. It had failed miserably. She had simply lain there getting more and more uncalm and anxious. Then she had upped it a gear to marjoram – warming, comforting. Nothing. So she had added a few drops of vetiver – heavily sedative and good for releasing deep-felt tension. Her deep-felt tension went even deeper when, after another half an hour of tossing and turning, vetiver failed to do its stuff.

  In desperation she turned to valerian. It wasn’t her favourite oil. Not these days, anyway. Perhaps it was because Hugh’s surname happened to be Valerian. It had a smell like ripe dog poo, which reminded her of Hugh because he was a complete shit too. But for the terminally wide awake, valerian could succeed where all else failed.

  She could hardly blame the oils, though. It was the telephone call that had unsettled her. There hadn’t been one for over a week and she had hoped, fervently, that whoever it was had got bored with terrorising her and had gone on to pick on someone less vulnerable who would give him a flea in his ear and not sit there whimpering pathetically, pandering to his sick power kick. Who could it be? One of her clients would be the most likely. They knew she lived alone and that she was new to the area. Perhaps one of them thought it would be fun to give her a personal welcome. Rose considered each of them in turn. They all seemed perfectly sober and respectable. Not one of them groaned in that certain way that made you realise they were enjoying being massaged just a bit too much. She couldn’t think of anyone who had erected a telltale tent in the nether regions of his towel while she was effleuraging their spleen.

  She had always been very lucky in her dealings with clients in the past. At the last clinic she had worked in, they had regularly endured phone calls from men looking for ‘extras’. On the whole, though, they were very polite and when they were told, equally politely, that the only ‘extra’ they were likely to get was a cup of herbal tea or decaffeinated coffee, they usually apologised profusely and hung up.

  If it wasn’t one of her clients, perhaps it was someone closer to home. Maybe someone had started taking seriously the allegations of wild goings-on and blatant prostitution that Anise Weston had been bandying about the village. Her bedroom certainly smelled like a busy night at a brothel with all the different oils she had been burning.

  It was a problem. She couldn’t go ex-directory because she needed her number in the book for business and yet, as Dan pointed out, it left her at the mercy of strangers. Maybe she shouldn’t be working from home. Maybe she shouldn’t have bought this house at all. She didn’t need anywhere this size. In the day it was fine. Perfectly proportioned. At night it grew, so that she rattled around its emptiness like a frozen pea in a tin can. Maybe she shouldn’t have left Hugh at all.

  The shrill ringing next to her ear made her jump. Her heart pounded double-time and her mouth went as dry as dirt. The pervert obviously couldn’t sleep either. Rose switched on the bedside light. It seemed better to talk to the pervert in the light rather than in the dark. On the other hand, if he was one of the nasty things lurking in the hedges he would have seen the light go on. She wondered if perverts had embraced twentieth-century technology and now used mobile phones. Reluctantly, she picked up the phone. ‘Hello,’ she said, dismayed at the quiver in her voice. There were jellies that would kill for a wobble like that. There was no reply, just an empty threatening silence that stretched into the night. She took a deep, unsteady breath. ‘I know who this is,’ she said bravely. ‘If you don’t stop hassling me, I’ll go to the police. Stay out of my life!’ she shouted and slammed the receiver down.

  It felt good having stood up to her pervert. If only her body would agree and stop shaking. She got out of bed with trembly legs and grabbed the teddy from the rattan chair in the corner of the room. Taking him back to bed with her, they snuggled beneath the duvet, Rose shivering slightly against his fat, furry body. He had been a Valentine’s Day present from Hugh last year. The teddy and a set of red sexy underwear. Not the harloty kind. Tasteful red sexy underwear. There were no peephole nipples and the crotch was definitely where it should be. The teddy was a Forever Friends bear. He was cute, smiley, and sported a blue bow tie with large pink spots. There was a faint blush to his cheeks and his nose was round and coloured a rich burgundy-brown, like an overripe morello cherry. It just begged to be kissed. His tummy was rotund and comforting and it made her think of Hugh – simply because Hugh’s tummy wasn’t rotund at all. There were days when she still missed its concrete concave contours desperately. She called him Casanova. The teddy, not Hugh.

  Rose stared at the ceiling. It was steeply sloped and a cobweb of hairline cracks ran across the faded white paint. There were three beams in the room which gave it a homely, cottagey feel. They looked genuine enough, solid, dependable, take-me-as-you-find-me beams. But they were false. False, false, false. Hollow, weak, insubstantial compared to solid oak. They had been chipped and scarred and painted as black as coal and disguised as real beams. But they were false. Like her.

  Rose hugged Casanova tightly to her. Thirty-two years old and still frightened to sleep alone. So much for wanting her independence. For wanting to stand alone. Could it really be classed as independence when somebody else had given her the money to pay for it – and under extreme duress at that? No wonder the villagers thought she was a hooker. All she had wanted was to be free of Hugh. To get off the dizzy roundabout of endless adultery.

  She had chosen a strange way to do it. She had blackmailed Hugh. She had threatened to tell his wife, his kids, his colleagues. She had demanded a fee – a substantial fee – for her freedom and her silence. And he had paid her off, casually, coldly, without question, as though she was a taxi driver at the end of a particularly unpleasant ride in a cab stinking of vomit from last night’s drunks. Except he hadn’t given her a tip. Or a backward glance. Or even a ‘thanks for the ride’. He had slammed the door on their relationship and walked out of her life.

  Rose let out a long, unhappy sigh into the back of Casanova’s head. She had slept with Hugh for two long years. Eager to be his plaything at the click of his smooth, well-manicured fingers. And he had settled her account in full with this house. But how could she ever be truly independent when the roof over her head, the curtainless
windows and the too big, unruly garden was paid for by someone else? Someone who didn’t, at the end of the day, love her.

  Rose took the phone off the hook and suffocated the receiver with her spare pillow to blot out the droning disconnected tone. Turning the light off, she slid down into the depths of the bed with Casanova and pulled the duvet over her head. Hopefully, if the caller was watching from the hedge, he would take it as his cue to settle down for the night too. ‘Goodnight,’ she said to Casanova. It was when she shut her eyes that Rose realised how relieved she was that no one answered back.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Detective Constable Elecampane’s bottom was smarting. He was tied to the bedposts of Melissa’s Hänsel and Gretel pine bed while she set about his buttocks with the spatula that had come free with her Kenwood food processor. It was wonderful, she said, for getting that last little drop of cake mix out of the bottom of the bowl and also, it appeared, for smacking buttocks.

  To be honest, DC Elecampane couldn’t say that he was enjoying it as much as Melissa appeared to be. In fact, he couldn’t say anything at all. Melissa had taped up his mouth with that horrible brown tape they used for parcels, the stuff that refuses to co-operate with even the sharpest scissors and you usually have to resort to ripping the package apart with your teeth. He wondered, with a vague sense of unease, what it was going to do to his lips when she eventually decided to pull it off.

  They had fallen into a pattern of regular weekly meetings. He was still referred to as ‘the ironing’ in her diary and he still resented it. She still insisted that he had the Spanky Panky treatment each week and he still didn’t have the heart to tell her that he wasn’t keen to be beaten by the entire contents of the Argos catalogue. Melissa probably had more kitchen utensils than Mrs Beeton. And a great deal of them appeared to be sharp.

  His mother had always warned him that women would only hurt him but until now he had never known one who charged him £69.99 for the privilege. Mel insisted that Spanky Panky wasn’t her favourite and that she only did it to please him. For someone who wasn’t keen, Melissa entered into it with a relish that he had previously only seen exhibited by women on a hockey pitch. She was all flying hair and flailing arms and he just had to lie there and brace himself for the next blow. And another thing, he was getting fed up with his bottom smelling of the Germolene that he was having to smear liberally on his rear end to prepare himself for next week’s onslaught.