by Purser, Ann
• • •
AFTER LUNCH, IVY walked briskly up the road from Springfields to the Manor House, with Roy in his trundle keeping up with her, urging her from time to time to take it more slowly. “It isn’t a race, Ivy,” he said. “They won’t start without you.”
Ivy said she had been sitting down all morning and needed some exercise before doing the same all afternoon. At the top of the drive to the Manor House, she kissed Roy on his cheek and disappeared through the front door.
Turning around and trundling back down the drive and into the main road, he approached Blackwoods Farm and slowed down. Perhaps he would take another look around, now the windows were boarded up and the whole place looked deserted and sad.
He shook himself. He mustn’t fall into fanciful imaginings. That could be left to lovely Deirdre! No, he would mosey round the farmyard and see if anything odd caught his eye.
• • •
THE MONDAY MORNING session at the college had been taken up with a lecture on careful planning of material. Assuming that each one of the students did have something to write about, Rickwood the tutor summed up for Ivy what had been said, and stressed once more that serious planning was vital.
“And so, Miss Beasley, since I know you are intending to write your memoirs, you will, I am sure, have given some thought to organising your memories already. So shall we start with questions on this branch of creative writing, and see what thoughts we have?”
Teacher’s pet, the know-all student Alexander, put up his hand immediately. “I’d like to ask Miss Beasley first why she thinks anyone will be interested in reading her memoirs?”
Ivy bristled, and Rickwood said quickly that he was sure Alexander would want to rephrase that more politely.
Grudgingly, the student said he supposed Miss Beasley had had a long and fascinating life, and all his fellows would be curious to know how she would arrange her material. Would it be chronological or sequenced?
“Easy,” said Ivy. “I shall sit down, begin at the beginning, and write, honestly and interestingly, until I get to the end. Which will not be too soon, I hope.” Ivy folded her arms and stared at Alexander, who subsided in his seat.
Her friend from last week smiled, and said could she ask Miss Beasley about the honesty bit. “Do you think we do tell the real truth when we are remembering things from a long time ago?”
“Good point,” said Rickwood. “This is a really good starting point, because in creative writing, of whatever kind, the matter of honesty is bound to crop up. Honest memoirs? Not necessarily. Many august memoirs have been spiced up or judiciously edited to make them more palatable to the reader. But it is a dangerous practice, vulnerable to being exposed.”
“So watch it, Miss Beasley,” said Alexander. “No bending the truth.”
Rickwood ignored him. “In plotting a murder mystery, or a romantic fiction, you can lie as creatively as you like! But your characters must be convincingly drawn. Behave with some consistency. Rounded figures. They must be likely to have reasons for committing the crime, or for falling in love with unlikely people.”
“But isn’t that the fun of reading?” said another student. “We like to guess all these things, work them out for ourselves? Surely each reader forms his own picture of what the characters are like?”
And so the discussion caught fire, and lasted until Ivy said it would be time for Roy to escort her home, and Rickwood drew the session to a close. She gathered her papers together, and went quickly out to where Roy would be waiting. But he wasn’t there to greet her with his lovely smile, and she walked all round the college and ended up by the front door with a sinking heart. What could have happened to him? She fumbled in her bag for her seldom used mobile phone and dialled his number. The message taker came on, and she said in a squeaky voice that she hoped he was all right and she was waiting for him.
The students left one by one, with Alexander offering her a lift in his vintage Morgan. But she turned him down and said to everyone that Roy would be there any minute. He must have been held up.
Finally, the high master, Mr. Rubens, appeared, and looked alarmed. “I will phone Springfields for you,” he said. “They will surely know what has happened.” He returned with a serious frown. “They thought he was up here with you,” he said, adding that Rickwood would take her home in his car, and they would keep a lookout for Roy on the way.
Thirty
ROY SAT ON an upturned pail in a barn in Blackwoods farmyard, cursing himself for being an overconfident idiot. It had started to rain, but it promised to be a light shower only, and he had looked for a place to shelter for a few minutes. He had gone round to the back of crumbling cowsheds, out of sight of the road, and found a large barn, housing a vintage, if not antique, Ferguson tractor. He had been delighted, and parked his trundle outside with an electrically operated waterproof cover drawn over the seat.
Walking over to the tractor, he had stared at it, not noticing that the heavy barn door had swung shut behind him. Then he realised the light had gone dim, and was coming only from a dusty skylight in the roof. Never mind, he had told himself, the rain will soon pass over, and I shall open the door. It had been open when he came to it, so all would be well.
He had climbed stiffly into the tractor’s worn seat, and long-forgotten memories had come flooding back. Had he been about four or five when his father first lifted him into such a seat? He had always loved farm machinery, and when others reminisced nostalgically about the days of shire horses pulling the plough, he had defended the excitement of modern machinery.
There were other relics of Ted Blatch’s farming days, and Roy had not noticed the time passing. Finally he had looked closely at his watch, and seen that there was still an hour to wait before Ivy would be ready to join him.
After that, things had not gone so well. When he came to open the door, there seemed to be nothing to hold on to. The latch was on the outside, and he saw a hole which would take a finger thrust through to grasp the big wooden bar. Roy was still strong in the arm, but even so he had failed to move it. The weight of the door as it slammed shut had wedged the bar tightly into place. Time passed, and he had finally decided to ring Ivy on his mobile and explain the delay.
Now he fumbled in his pocket, but it was not there. Then he remembered he had put it for safety in the small locked box that served as a secure place on the trundle. He groaned, thinking of his precious Ivy standing alone on the path from the Manor House, looking in vain for him to appear.
• • •
IVY, MEANWHILE, HAD accepted a lift to Springfields from Rickwood Smith, and they drove slowly through the rain, staring out of misty windows to catch sight of Roy on his trundle.
“He must have broken down somewhere and gone for help,” Ivy said. “But why doesn’t he ring me? We both always carry our mobiles with us in case we get stuck somewhere. Best thing ever invented for old people, Mr. Smith.”
Rickwood slowed down as they passed Blackwoods Farm. “Do you think he might have gone in there to shelter from the rain?” he said.
“Oh, no. We’ve been there so many times, he wouldn’t have done that. Anyway, Roy was a farmer, and a shower of rain wouldn’t put him off coming straight to the college to meet me. He may be old, but he’s tough as old boots.”
Rickwood said nothing, though he doubted Ivy’s description. He had noticed that Mr. Goodman had a slight tremor in his hands. And he had found it difficult to get out of a deep armchair in the high master’s office at that first interview.
“I think the best thing would be for us to go on to Springfields, get you dry and warm and see if they have heard anything. Then I strongly recommend calling the police.”
“Police!” said Ivy. “Certainly not! He would never forgive me. No, I know exactly what I am going to do. I shall call one of my colleagues, Mr. Augustus Halfhide. He will know exactly where to look. Ah, now, her
e we are, and there’s our gaoler at the door on the lookout. Thank you very much for the lift, Mr. Smith. I shall be with you on Friday, as planned. Oh, and by the way, I should very much like to call on your mother, if she would like me to. I understand she doesn’t get out much.”
Rickwood assured Miss Beasley that he would certainly ask his mother, but she was sometimes reluctant to have visitors. “A bit reclusive, you know, like her sister, Eleanor. And now, here we are at Springfields. You go in and make yourself comfortable, and I’ll continue to search. And don’t worry! Mr. Goodman seems an eminently sensible gentleman!”
• • •
ROY SAT DISCONSOLATELY on the tractor seat, thinking of ways he could try to escape. He had walked round the barn carefully, looking for implements he could use to move the wooden bar, but had found nothing. He had even looked up to the skylight to see if he could use one of the old wooden ladders to climb up and open it. But common sense told him that would be foolish, and more than likely end in disaster.
Finally he had given up, and trusted that very soon someone would come looking for him. His thoughts had roamed around Enquire Within’s latest discovery. Mary Victoria Winchen. He had a strange feeling about her, and now that he had nothing else to think about, he tried hard but failed to remember anything about her as a young woman.
He frowned. Stick to facts, he told himself. We need to turn up some hard facts about sister Mary. For a start, unless she married a cousin, or some such, was the “Mrs.” a courtesy title? Shouldn’t it be Smith?
A rustling noise from outside the door startled him, and he climbed down from the tractor with relief.
“Ivy!” he shouted, and then followed it up with a loud yell of “Help! I’m in here.”
“Coming!” said a man’s voice loudly. Then there was a noise as of hammering, and he realised someone was in fact slowly moving the heavy wooden bar.
“I’m still here, Ivy. Or Gus? Give me a shout to say you’re making headway!”
“Nearly there, Mr. Goodman!” shouted the man’s voice. Then the bar suddenly lifted and the door moved. “Ah, there you are, sir. No wonder you were trapped. This bar needs a circus strongman to move it! But here you are, and I shall accompany you back to Springfields.”
“Thank you so much,” said Roy. “It’s Mr. Smith, isn’t it? My Ivy’s tutor? How kind of you. I have my trundle, and I shall be fine to go back to Springfields. I do hope Ivy has not been worrying.”
“A little,” said Rickwood. “But you wouldn’t want it otherwise, would you?”
Roy laughed. “How true, Mr. Smith. How very true!”
• • •
FINALLY REUNITED, THE happy pair sat in front of a roaring fire at Springfields, drinking hot tea, while Roy went over once more his extraordinary experience.
“Mr. Smith was so kind, my dear,” he said. “Very calm and capable. An excellent fellow.”
Thirty-one
AT BREAKFAST NEXT day, Ivy was pleased to see that Roy was none the worse for yesterday’s adventure. She was relieved that he had resisted the temptation to scale a wobbly wooden ladder up to the skylight, and believed him when he said he had spent most of the time pretending to drive the Ferguson tractor.
“So what next?” she said, helping herself to another piece of toast. “We’re expecting Deirdre and Gus to come after tea to pool ideas?”
“Good idea, beloved,” said Roy. “You go now and confirm with them and I will meet you in the lounge to plan.”
Deirdre had been looking forward to a quiet cup of tea and her favourite soap on the telly. She agreed reluctantly, said good-bye to Ivy, and dialled Gus. Engaged. He was probably receiving the same reminder. She put on the kettle for a quick cup of tea, and began to look at the newspaper, delivered ten minutes earlier by a straw-haired youth with the most engaging grin. George, it was, from an old village family, the Robsons. The father had a small business fixing the multitude of small failures in the inhabitants’ daily lives. Nothing too small, was his motto, and he had been in and out of most houses, changing fuses, mending leaks, painting and decorating for years.
She looked out of the window at a blackbird consuming a worm on the lawn. Robsons, she thought. In and out of people’s houses. The old grandmother would remember the Blatches when they were still farming, surely. Perhaps she would call and talk to her. The charity collection box stood on the kitchen table, and Deirdre saw an excuse to visit. She had yet to go up Robsons’ lane. It would be something to ask the others about, anyway.
She was the first to arrive at Springfields, and Ivy said that Gus would be coming as soon as Whippy had had her walk. Meanwhile, the small conference room had been warmed up, and Katya was preparing a tray of tea and buns. It was Mrs. Spurling’s day off, and Miss Pinkney had taken a scarlet potted poinsettia and placed it on the conference table.
Gus arrived, puffing from having jogged all the way from Hangman’s Row to Springfields. “I shall have either sharpened my brain or exhausted my body. Or both. In any case, Roy, sir, what is it that gets us here this afternoon?” Roy gestured towards Ivy. “Ask the boss,” he said.
Ivy then described what had happened to Roy in the old barn yesterday, and at the mention of the Ferguson tractor, Gus came to life.
“Wonderful!” he said. “Do you think we can buy it and get it going again?”
“Please concentrate, Gus!” said Ivy. “In spite of all our excitements, it has occurred to me that we are no nearer finding out exactly what happened to cause Eleanor to tumble to her death, or whether it was accident or murder. I am sorry to be so blunt, but these are the facts.”
Gus reflected that he had never known Ivy to be anything less than blunt, but she was quite right. He postponed all further thoughts of the Ferguson tractor, and said that they had moved a little way forward, in discovering Mary Winchen. Eleanor, a woman with a sister and nephew, however much estranged, was a very different cup of tea from a sole widow with no apparent relations or friends. Or, he added, potential enemies.
“On another tack,” Roy said. “I have been thinking about Rickwood Smith. He was on foot, without a car, when he found me. And as I turned to wave him good-bye, he was heading for the gate into the field. I do hope he didn’t get too wet and muddy.”
Ivy said she knew where he was going. Samantha had discovered a footpath from Spinney Close, across the field and out through Blackwoods farmyard, and then directly to the college. “Anyway, dearest, I shouldn’t worry about him. He seems well able to take care of himself.”
Then it was Deirdre’s turn to make a proposal, and she told them about the Robson grandmother and what she might remember of the Blatches at Blackwoods Farm.
“Excellent idea,” said Roy. “She worked in the farmhouse at one time as a kind of dogsbody, doing anything and everything. She could well have heard or seen something of the Winchen family, who must have visited once or twice, surely.”
“As for me,” said Gus, “I think I feel a trip coming on. A couple of days on the Lincolnshire coast, Deirdre? Do you fancy it? And some investigating into the pork butchers in town?”
“Be serious, please, Augustus,” said Ivy. “You may be needed here in Barrington.”
“Wait a minute, Ivy,” said Deirdre. “I think Gus is being serious, even if he doesn’t sound it, especially since we know about the existence of a sister. It’s a really good idea, and we may find out much more about Eleanor’s background. I don’t think all the conversations in the world with Mrs. Winchen can guarantee giving us a clue to the reason for the feud. And that, after all, is what most concerns us at the moment.”
Ivy was taken with Deirdre’s mention of the Robsons. “Would it be a good idea if I called on Grandma Robson, and see what she remembers?” she said. “She and I must fall into the same age group, just about. I’ll go later on.” Ivy was smiling at Roy, who duly said Ivy must be years younger, if looks
had anything to do with it.
“And then,” continued Ivy, “I shall see Rickwood Smith tomorrow, and I can check that he is none the wiser for rescuing my fiancé!”
Gus and Deirdre then went into a huddle to decide on travel plans, and Roy left the room to, as he said, point Percy at the pavement.
• • •
AFTER THEY HAD disbanded, agreeing that useful things had been decided and nothing more needed to be discussed, Ivy said that as she would be going out later she would now sit comfortably for the rest of the afternoon with Roy and finish the rib in her knitting. “If you persist in getting shut in cold barns for any length of time,” she said, “I must finish this warm jumper for you as soon as possible.”
“Thank you, dear,” said Roy. “You know, thinking about this day’s work with the four of us, I realise that I have nothing in particular to do enquiry-wise. Gus and Deirdre are off to Boston, Lincolnshire, and you are bearding Grandma Robson in her den.”
“Why don’t you come with me?” Ivy said. “Your old-fashioned gentlemanly charm might work wonders.”
Thirty-two
AGREEING THAT THERE was no time like the present, Ivy and Roy set off in the bright sunlight of a late-summer evening. Ivy knew where the Robsons lived, and as she stood waiting for the bell to be answered, she wondered how it had accommodated three generations of one family. She had got as far as mentally arranging for Grandma to sleep in the box room, mother and father in the best double bed, and George and his smaller brother in what used to be called the guest room, when the door opened. Ivy quickly said she had a message for Grandma, if she could have a word?