The Wild Wood Enquiry

by Ann Purser

  Time to get in touch with his contacts, he decided, and quickened his pace, pulled along by his small grey dog, Whippy. “I don’t altogether agree, Ivy,” he said. “I had a call this morning from an old colleague, and it looks like something for us could well be in the pipeline.” A white lie in a good cause, he reassured himself, and jogged back home with renewed enthusiasm.

  As he approached the Hangman’s Row terrace, where he rented the end cottage from the squire, he saw his spinster neighbour, Miriam Blake, knocking at his front door. He stopped. Ever since he moved in, she had persisted in a campaign to snare him into marriage, pointing out that they could knock through and have a much bigger house as a result. She had wooed him with hot suppers, bottles of primrose wine, bunches of sweet new carrots and, in season, tiny scarlet tomatoes from her greenhouse. He had held out without much trouble. Miriam was not bad-looking, but she couldn’t hold a candle to Deirdre Bloxham. Without any pangs of guilt, he strung Miriam along, enjoying her hospitality and making excuses for keeping her at bay when she became too overwhelming.

  Now he walked on, knowing that in any case she would turn and see him, and decided that if she was offering supper, he would accept. Deirdre’s salad had been all right in its way, but Miriam was a meat and two-veg cook. The thought of it made his mouth water.

  “Ah, there you are!” she gushed. “Just when I had given up hope. Now, Gus, how would a roast chicken and all the trimmings appeal for your supper?”

  IVY SAILED PAST Mrs. Spurling who was glowering at her from the reception desk, not forgiving her for being out to lunch with half an hour’s notice. Roy parked his trundle and followed. He and Ivy planned to retire to their rooms for a snooze. This had become a pleasant habit since they became engaged. “If we spend all day every day glued to each other,” Ivy had said, “we shall soon be fed up. It ain’t natural, you know. But in this place…”

  She hadn’t finished her sentence, because Roy knew exactly what she meant and had applauded her common sense.

  Upstairs in her room, Ivy did not lie down on the bed as usual, but sat by the window watching the harvest traffic filling the air with dust and noise, and thought about Posy Moon. Two alternatives, she reckoned, could account for her disappearance. Either she was off hunting rabbits and had become trapped or stuck in a burrow or she’d been stolen.

  Then another thought struck her. She could be shut in somewhere. A little used garage, perhaps, or somebody’s potting shed. James would have looked all round his own property, but cats wander. Farmyards were good hunting grounds, and there were at least two within striking distance for a cat. Then there was the stable yard up at the Hall. Rats and mice galore. That would be a good place to start, Ivy decided, and retired to her bed to make a plan.

  GUS RETURNED TO his cottage, replete with chicken and trimmings, followed by gooseberry pie and custard. He was in a good mood. Perhaps now would be the time to start his memoirs. Nothing much else to do, except look for a mislaid cat, but he could safely leave that to Ivy. She was the expert on cats. His eye was caught by the message light winking at him. He picked up the receiver and his heart sank. It was his ex-wife, and whenever she telephoned, it meant digging into his pocket for money he did not have.

  “Hello, Gus. It’s Katherine here.” There was urgency in her voice, and he listened more closely. “Gus, something terrible has happened, and I need your help. It’s serious, Gus, and I think I might be in danger. Ring me back, please, as soon as you get back. Please.”

  He frowned. He had never heard Kath sound so scared. “Oh God, what now?” he groaned, and dialled her number.

  “There is no one here to take your call at the moment,” the mechanical voice said, and he put down the phone. Her mobile, then, would certainly be on. She never switched it off. He pressed the right button, and again a message service clicked in.

  How unlike Kath! he said to himself. And her voice, sounding so frightened…

  Gus left a message on her mobile and began to worry.

  Four

  NEXT DAY, A brilliant summer morning with clear blue sky and a light, cool breeze had enticed Ivy out into Springfields garden before breakfast. As she stood looking over the fence and across open fields, she felt a pang of homesickness for Round Ringford. Her garden at Victoria Villa had similarly looked over fields, and sometimes young horses had been there, waiting at her fence for fallen apples or an occasional Polo mint.

  “Penny for ’em, my love,” said Roy’s voice behind her. He knew from the way she was standing that her thoughts were far away. That’s love, he said to himself. I know her better than she knows herself.

  “You made me jump!” she said. “Isn’t it lovely, Roy? Mind you, if you ask me, it’ll be fine before seven, rain before eleven.”

  “Then it’s lucky we decided to visit the Hall first thing,” he said. He took her arm. “Come on, Ivy girl, let’s go and see what our jailer has dished up for prisoners’ breakfast.”

  Ivy felt it was only fair to defend Katya and Anya in the kitchen, and said she had caught a whiff of frying bacon, which, she said, could be the best smell in the world.

  Roy laughed, and said he was pleased his beloved was in such a good mood, and hoped nothing would dampen their outing this morning.

  As they set forth, with Ivy walking at a slow pace beside the trundle, they met Gus outside the shop. “Morning!” said Roy cheerfully. He was surprised at Gus’s reaction. He looked at Roy as if he had never met him before and said absently, “Oh yes, good morning, um…”

  “What’s up with him?” said Ivy as they continued on their way.

  “Too much primrose wine?” suggested Roy. “Probably wined and dined by Miriam Blake last evening. That homemade stuff is lethal, you know.”

  They arrived at the main gates to the Hall and found them shut. “Ah,” said Roy. “First hurdle. What do we do now, Ivy?”

  But Ivy was already fishing in her capacious handbag for her mobile phone, an advance in technology that she had at first regarded with deep suspicion but soon relied on for what she called “private chats” almost every day.

  “Mr. Roussel? Miss Beasley here. I wonder if you could help us. Mr. Goodman and me are looking for a lost cat, and your stable yard is a favourite hunting ground. Do you remember my Tiddles being found there? You don’t. Well, never mind. Now it is the shop cat, and we are commissioned to find it. I am sure you would allow us to look around the stables? Ah, well, that’s the thing. Your gates are shut. Five minutes? That would be most satisfactory. Thank you.”

  Theo Roussel, hereditary squire of Barrington Hall, stood at his study window, looking down the long drive to where the gates had opened. He saw an intriguing sight. A very smart Roy Goodman, one of the farming family Theo remembered, now driving along in his motorised shopper, accompanied by an old lady in a good grey suit and black straw hat. He smiled and went downstairs to meet them.

  “Morning!” he said, and Roy raised his hat. “Nice to see you again,” Theo continued. The old lady was, of course, Miss Ivy Beasley. The pair of them had been part of an odd investigating team who had efficiently sorted out the very nasty drama featuring the death of old Mrs. Blake and his former housekeeper.

  “We shall not keep you long,” said Ivy firmly. “Come along, Roy, we’ll go straight round to the stables.”

  “Not sure you’ll find anything,” said Theo. “No murder victims this time!”

  Roy smiled, but Ivy said severely that she hoped not, and if anyone asked her, she would say the death of a cat was just as tragic as that of an evil-minded housekeeper.

  She began to open stable doors, and Roy signalled to Theo to stand back and leave her to it. They began to talk about old times, when Theo was a boy and Roy still farming at School Farm.

  “Ah!” interrupted Ivy. “Just as I thought.” She had opened the old tack room, seldom used nowadays, and out stalked a very pale version of Posy Moon, the shop cat. Ivy picked her up and stroked her, talking in the special voice she
kept for Tiddles.

  “Well done, Miss Beasley!” said Theo, and Roy added his congratulations.

  “Enquire Within triumphs again,” he said. “But how strange she looks. All her lovely tortoiseshell colouring has gone.”

  “Not for good,” said Ivy. “She’s been in the dark. You’ll see, once out in the sunshine she’ll soon be her old self. So, thank you, Mr. Roussel,” she added. “We won’t keep you any longer. I shall carry her safely back to the shop and suggest to James that he takes more care of her in future.”

  Five

  GUS HAD LISTENED to the news from Ivy and Roy with a pronounced lack of enthusiasm. “Jolly good,” he had said. “James must have been thrilled. Free boxes of chocolates all round?” He dreaded that awful feeling of having nothing of importance to do and nothing to think about but Katherine.

  His solution, one he had made many times before, was to start writing his memoirs. Now he sat staring at his ancient portable typewriter, and having typed “Chapter One,” he was stuck. Then, with determination, he began again: “One snowy evening…”

  The telephone rang. He rushed to answer it, hoping it would be his ex-wife to set his mind at rest. It was Kath, but he had hardly said hello, when in a peculiar sort of disguised whisper she said, “Gus, don’t say anything, and don’t ring back. Am on my way. Should be with you by six.”

  Gus got to his feet, pushing his chair back so violently that it fell, narrowly missing Whippy, who had curled up behind him as he worked.

  “What?” Gus yelled so loudly that the little dog scuttled out into the kitchen and through the old cat-flap, which just about accommodated her, into the garden at the back of the house.

  Miriam Blake heard Gus’s voice, witnessed the quick exit of little Whippy, and at once pushed open the gate between the two houses, knocked loudly at the back door and walked in.

  “Gus? Are you there? What happened? Are you hurt?”

  “No,” groaned Gus, now returned to his typewriter with his head in his hands. “Don’t worry, Miriam. Just writer’s block, you know. All we writers get it at some time. Could you shut the door as you go out? And perhaps you could check that Whippy is all right. Now I must get on. Bye, dear.”

  Somewhat mollified by being called “dear,” Miriam returned to her house. She had said nothing more but was not fooled. Gus’s yell had been one of great alarm, much more than not being able to think of a few words. She decided to go back around teatime to make sure he was quite fit.

  ABOUT SIX, KATH had said. Gus did not move for several minutes. He went over and over what she had whispered in that stupid voice. Was it all some foolish game? Something to amuse her idle friends. Well, maybe it was, and perhaps this would be the best explanation. The last person in the world he wished to see stepping over his threshold was his ex-wife, Katherine. She never communi-cated unless she wanted something from him or was cheering herself up by abusing him with blistering words. If she really intended to tackle him face to face, then it would be a matter of such grave importance that he should start running for the woods straightaway.

  But first he must finish his first sentence. “One snowy evening, a dark-haired, slim woman stepped on to a train at Liverpool Street Station, and…” He swore, ripped the paper from the typewriter and screwed it up. He threw it across the room, and it landed in Whippy’s basket.

  “Good dog,” he said as she began to chew it to pieces. “We’ll watch a bit of telly,” he told her. “Take our minds off ex-wives,” he added, and sitting down in his scruffy armchair he found the remote control and switched it on. In minutes, he had shut his eyes and drifted into a troubled sleep.

  AT TEN PAST six, Gus woke to a sharp rapping at his window. His befuddled brain told him he was sleeping at Wuthering Heights and it was the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw at the window, begging to be let in. Then his sleep cleared away, and he realised it was his very own ex-wife, Katherine Halfhide, peering in and gesticulating to be admitted.

  He felt sick. He had not seen her for God knows how long and had almost forgotten what she looked like. Slender, tall and dark-haired, that much he remembered. He braced himself and went to open the door.

  “You took your time, Gus!” she said, and then glanced along the terrace. “What on earth are you doing in this hole? And don’t tell me you can’t afford to live anywhere else. Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

  She came into his sitting room and looked around with an expression of distaste. “My goodness, how are the mighty fallen!” she said. “Have you got water laid on? If it doesn’t come out of a bucket in the garden, I’d love a cup of coffee.”

  “What do you want, Kath?” he said, without moving.

  “Oh, come on, Gus. I’m not here to fight for my alimony, you’ll be relieved to hear. I just need a place to stay for a few days. Please.” Her voice had changed, no longer the old challenging Katherine but more vulnerable and pleading.

  “Stay? Are you tired of your old friends? Which one now have you misled?” he asked stiffly. He remembered now how well she could dissemble.

  “Doesn’t matter who. I do need to rest awhile, just for a bit. Friends have told me there’s a hunt ball up at the Hall, so I might go to that if I feel like it.”

  At this moment, there was a knock at the back door, and in came Miriam, saying as she came into the room that she was just checking that Gus was all right. She faltered as she saw the elegant Katherine staring at her. “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realise you had visitors.”

  “I’m not a visitor,” said Katherine in icy tones. “I’m his ex-wife. Who are you?”

  Miriam looked helplessly at Gus, who took pity on her and said, “Let me introduce you, Kath, to my very helpful neighbour, Miriam Blake. Miriam, this is Katherine, my ex-wife. She is calling in on her way back to London.”

  Katherine looked at him in surprise. “But you said I could stay for a few days. I need some country air, you see, Miss Blake,” she said apologetically.

  Gus shook his head at the barefaced lie. “Try Switzerland,” he said.

  Then Miriam coughed in an embarrassed way and said she quite understood that Gus must not be disturbed in his writing work, but next door she had a very nice spare bedroom and would be delighted to have Mrs. er… as a lodger for a week or so, if that would help. Gus could vouch for her cooking skills.

  “Not possible—” Gus frowned deeply, but Kath said at the same time that she was most grateful and smiled winningly at Miriam.

  That smile! Gus had fallen for it the first time they met, and now here she was, intruding on his hard-won peace of mind, guaranteed to turn his world upside down once more.

  “If you would like to fetch your things, Mrs. er…”

  “Do call me Kath. Everyone does, except Gus when he’s cross with me. Then it’s Katherine.”

  Oh God, please help me, Gus groaned inwardly. She’ll be bosom pals with Miriam in no time, and then what shall I do? Vanish, he told himself. You’ve done it before and it would be easy. Then he thought of Deirdre, and Ivy and Roy, and Enquire Within. How could he leave them in the lurch? No, this would have to be got through, and he must make the best of it. Country life would soon pall with the urban Katherine, and she would be gone again.

  The two women went off chatting happily, and Gus watched them go. He knew Kath was putting on a false and rather cruel act of friendship, and he had a pang of guilt. Miriam had never shown him anything but kindness and hospitality. He hated to see her so gullible in the face of the famous Kath charm. Ah, well, if she hadn’t gone in a week, he would get rid of her himself. Somehow.

  UP AT TAWNY Wings, Deirdre was thinking about Gus. Their relationship had rather cooled off lately, with no investigating to bring them together. She still spent pleasant evenings, and sometimes whole nights, in the company of Theodore Roussel up at the big house. She had been close to him as a young woman, though the difference in their social standing had prevented anything serious from developing.

  Now, i
n these days of equality for all, she had renewed a light and affectionate friendship. The fact that she was a rich widow had more than a little bearing on Theo’s attentive attitude. He was an impoverished aristocrat, and Deirdre, still pretty and fun, and wealthy to boot, was an attractive proposition. He would cheerfully have married her now, but she made it clear she was not interested.

  She looked at her bedside clock, saw that it was ten o’clock, and decided to phone Gus, just for a chat. He answered after some time, with an abrupt “Yes?”

  “Hello, Gus. It’s me, Deirdre, calling to see how you are. How are you?”

  “Terrible. Was that all?”

  “Gus! What’s wrong? Are you ill? Shall I come down?”

  “No, for God’s sake don’t! I’ll explain it all tomorrow.”

  “Gus, I’m worried about you. Can’t you tell me now?”

  “Okay, here it is. My ex-wife, Katherine, has turned up, asking to stay for a few days. I refused, but dearest Miriam from next door has offered to put her up. Need I say more? No. Right then, if you see a strange, hangdog-looking man creeping into Springfields tomorrow, it’ll be me. Good night, Deirdre.”

  Six

  FOR A FEW minutes, Gus felt cheerful. The sun was streaming through his bedroom window and last night’s weather forecast had promised another hot, dry day. “Never mind about the farmers praying for rain,” he said to Whippy, curled up at the bottom of his bed. “You and I will take our ease in my untended garden, served with refreshment every so often by our friendly neighbour, Miriam—”

  He sat up suddenly, remembering all the horrors of yesterday evening, and shot out of bed yelling, “Miriam and Kath!” There would be no solitary lazing in the sun with Whippy for him. He had lain awake for a long time last night, trying out all the scenarios that might have driven Kath out to Barrington and Hangman’s Row, to him, her ex-husband. An exclusive hideaway hotel on a remote island would be more in her line. In the end he had given up. He had no idea who her friends or, come to that, enemies, were these days.