Pompomberry House

by Trevithick, Rosen

“You! You make a great detective!”

  “I do?” I blushed a little.

  “All you need now are some tights and a cape.”

  “That’s not detectives, that’s superheroes!”

  “Exactly!” he said, winking at me. I did a happy quiver. He was flirting with me, wasn’t he?

  When we got to the farm, I was disappointed to find that the farmhouse itself was a bit rubbish. I’d been hoping for a thatched roof, climbing roses and white-glossed shutters. Instead, I got beige walls, mould, and a weathered, garish conservatory.

  Gulls circled in the sky, like vultures. Shivering, I remembered Cornwall. But though these Dorset birds squawked and swooped in a predatory fashion, they didn’t chill me to the core like the monsters near Pompomberry.

  “I bet the National Trust is chomping at the bit to run this place,” joked Gareth, with dimples. The daylight really illuminated the red tones in his scruffy hair.

  I scolded him through a giggle.

  “What do you want?” demanded a voice. Although the farmhouse had fallen below my expectations, the farmer did not. He sounded exactly as he had on the news, with a broad Dorset accent and a faint hint of hostility. He was old with craggy skin and grey, wind-swept hair. His clothes were grubby and complemented perfectly by a pair of cracked, green wellington boots.

  “Mr Groober!”

  “Yes, who’s asking?”

  “Mr Groober, my name is Dee Whittaker, and I’m here to take you seriously about your pig.”

  His whole figure softened. He put down his imaginary pitchfork. He didn’t go as far as smiling, but his eyebrows shifted from sloped inwards to almost horizontal. Ah, horizontal eyebrows, the international facial expression of peace.

  “I’m Gareth Whittaker,” said Gareth, and then added, “Dee’s husband.” Dammit.

  “It’s a travesty!” cried the farmer. “My pig turns up five miles away, and the police don’t think that’s even slightly odd.”

  “Well, I do,” I said. I felt the urge to touch his arm to show sincerity, but it looked as though there might be warts beneath its muddy coating.

  “It’s bloody typical!” he cried. “This is the fourth reporting in the last year, and not one of them has been taken seriously!”

  Fourth reporting? Well, if pigs often went missing, then perhaps this event really was a coincidence, and not connected to the anthology in any way.

  “I keep telling the police about it! They do nothing!”

  Outrageous!

  “I’m a tax payer! I’ve paid tax all my life! Yet when my pig is the victim of attempted murder, they don’t respond. Failing to investigate a crime reported by a tax payer, can you believe that?”

  “I can, Mr Groober.” The police had treated me in the same way. We were kindred victims, Mr Groober and I.

  “They’ll be the first to complain when we’re invaded.

  “Invaded?”

  “By the aliens.”

  And there it was, the reason the police refused to take Mr Groober seriously. Perhaps not kindred victims after all.

  I tried not to look at Gareth. I knew exactly what expression he’d be making — a false stern mouth with snickering eyes. Oh! I loved that expression; it was so cute! I took a quick peek and instantly regretted it. A wide smirk escaped onto my lips. I struggled to rearrange my features.

  “Did you come here to laugh at me?” he asked.

  “No!”

  But he’d already turned away.

  “No, I didn’t! I’m sorry, I just wasn’t expecting ... I really do believe that something ... unexplained went on.”

  “Well, that’s stating the obvious!” he barked.

  “Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”

  He grunted, which I took to mean, ‘Of course, go ahead, madam’.

  “When did you first realise your pig was missing?”

  “When I went out to feed her.”

  “And at what time was that?”

  “After dark.”

  “Okay ...”

  “That’s why I didn’t see the footprints until the morning!”

  “Footprints?”

  “Yes. Alien footprints!”

  I frowned. I was at a loss for what to do.

  Suddenly, Gareth intervened. “What did these footprints look like, Mr Groober?”

  “Triangular! Triangular, with dots!”

  “Dee ...” began Gareth, then he looked at my Converse shoes and trailed off. Instead, he knelt down on the ground and fashioned the imprint of a high-heeled shoe on the lawn.

  “Yes!” cried the farmer, with excitement. “Yes! Just like that!”

  Gareth looked at me and smiled, knowing that I was impressed. It was an attractive, satisfied smile. If only he could apply some of that wisdom at the Job Centre.

  “Were there any other markings?” I asked.

  “Just me own wellies,” he said.

  “And how big were the ...” I paused, wondering if I could bring myself to use the words, “alien footprints?”

  “Smaller than me wellies.” Not Dawn then.

  “Did you notice anything else suspicious?” I asked.

  “Yes! Pig was gone!”

  “No tyre tracks, peculiar noises, anything like that?”

  “It’s a tarmac drive!” whispered Gareth.

  “Oh yes, so it is.”

  “And I had the radio on. Otherwise, I might have heard the ship!” explained the farmer

  “Ship?” Oh yes, the ship.

  I felt truly fortuitous to have gotten anything of use out of the deluded old chap. Shoeprints weren’t exactly DNA evidence, but it was a good start, and it ruled out Montgomery Lowe.

  * * *

  “You didn’t say we were going to a garden centre too!” moaned Gareth, from behind the wheel of his Golf.

  “Well, we may as well, while we’re down here, now that we’re on a roll.”

  “Bognor Regis is in Sussex!”

  I decided to disarm him with some gentle flattery. “Good thinking about the shoeprints, Sherlock! I’d have never have gotten that from triangles and dots.”

  He seemed soothed.

  “Thanks,” I added, quietly.

  “So who do you think did it? Dawn or Annabel?”

  “Well, it can’t have been Annabel; Dawn must just have unusually small feet for a woman of her size. I didn’t think she’d be back from Spain yet, but ...”

  “Why not Annabel?”

  “She isn’t capable of hurting a fly. You should have seen her; she’s far too afraid of ghosts to be a murderer. She wouldn’t want to release any more dead people into the spirit world.”

  “Perhaps it’s a ruse.”

  “You have to have depth for that kind of thing.”

  “And Annabel hasn’t?”

  “This is a woman who thinks that the male protagonist being the female protagonist’s boss constitutes a plot twist.”

  “Fair point.”

  “I need to find more evidence.”

  “At the garden centre?”

  “Well, they’ll know whether there have been any large orders of gnomes recently, won’t they?”

  “You do realise there’s more than one garden centre in Sussex, don’t you?”

  “We have to start somewhere.”

  If truth be told, I was enjoying spending time investigating crime with my sexy sidekick. I hadn’t felt this alive in months. Had I felt this in love in months?

  “Have you heard back from Netta yet?” he asked.

  “No, not yet, but I’ve told her that I think she’s in danger. Only three more days until the voting closes. She could be killed at any time!”

  “She’s obviously got more important things on her mind,” said Gareth, with a wry smile.

  “Like fame.”

  “Exactly.”

  * * *

  According to my iPhone, there were a number of garden centres within a ten-mile radius of the site where the gnomes were found. However, o
nly one had a website plastered with cheeky gnomes. That seemed like a worthy place to start our search.

  When we got there, I found that it was a rather quaint place. I rather liked it. It was spacious with odd ornaments dotted around in unexpected places. An orange, concrete frog spat fluid down a water feature between the gardening books and the tropical fish. Plastic squirrels lined the paths.

  “Looks as though whoever runs this place is on the same planet as Groober,” mused Gareth.

  “I love this place!” I purred.

  My husband rolled his big blue eyes.

  It was then that I spotted the first member of staff. A young man wearing wellies and a ladybird-print apron. He opened his mouth to cough, and revealed the most crooked teeth I’ve ever seen.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “Yes?”

  “I like your apron!”

  “Thank you,” he smiled, and turned away.

  “No! Wait! That wasn’t why I said ‘Excuse me’; that was just the small talk!”

  He turned back, and grinned. “Sorry.”

  “Do you know whether anybody has ordered any large quantities of gnomes recently?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Well, can you call somebody who might?”

  “I mean ‘No, there were no large orders.’”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because we haven’t sold a gnome in months.” This fact seemed to upset the man so much that he needed to sit down. He perched on the pink stones marking the end of a shubunkin pond and shook his head in despair. “Nobody wants gnomes anymore.”

  My compassionate side took over, and I squatted down to reach his level.

  “It’s the meerkats,” he said glumly. “Meerkats are killing the garden gnome.”

  An academic meerkat in a mortarboard grinned at me from above the shubunkins. I looked behind me; a flasher meerkat peered out from behind a flowerpot (or was that supposed to be Sherlock Holmes?) By Gareth’s feet was a meerkat on skis.

  “We weren’t going to stock them. Bert promised we’d never stock them. But we were losing out on the garden ornament trade, so in the end, he sold out.” The man actually looked as if he might cry.

  “Well, I came here to buy a gnome,” I lied.

  Gareth rolled his eyes and smiled to himself, as usual.

  “Would you show me your selection?”

  The man brightened instantly.

  “Dee ...” warned Gareth.

  I ignored him. As if he could talk about wasting money, at least it was mine to spend.

  The man took us down past a purple fountain containing swan necks without bodies, until, finally, we reached a clearing, full of gnomes. My God — they’re hideous.

  One gnome had his willy out, peeing into a pond. Another was bent over, flashing his bum. I began to see the appeal of a meerkat.

  “Have you got anything more ...” tasteful “... conventional?”

  “How about a gnome fishing?”

  “We ... I don’t have a pond!” And if I did, I wouldn’t want a bearded pixie threatening it with a rod!

  “How about a gnome with a hoe?” he asked, pointing in the general direction of a cheeky gnome giving one to a lady gnome. Annabel’s story sprang to mind. Then I saw a gardening garden gnome just to the left. I hoped the man was referring to that one.

  “How much is it?” I asked.

  “Twenty pounds.”

  “What?!”

  “It’s hand painted.”

  “Can I get one to paint myself?”

  “No.”

  I felt a sudden urge to ask how much a meerkat cost, but decided it was more than my life was worth.

  “Got any baby gnomes?” I asked, hopefully.

  “No.”

  Eventually, I left the garden centre carrying the only gnome that cost less than a fiver — a poorly painted defecating gnome. I was not happy. To make matters worse, Gareth was looking particularly amused.

  “You realise he probably does that routine every day, don’t you?” he asked, smirking.

  “He seemed genuinely upset.”

  “Of course he was upset, he had over two grand’s worth of repulsive gnome stock to clear.”

  * * *

  We visited three further garden centres, to no avail. Only one other nursery stocked gnomes and they hadn’t taken any large orders recently.

  As Gareth drove us back, I watched him. Over the last few weeks, he’d shown more activity than he had in eighteen months. He was positively vital. Why couldn’t he have been like that before I asked him to leave? If only he hadn’t become a lazy, selfish slob, we might not have broken up. It was too late now. Wasn’t it?

  “So, if you’ve discounted Annabel, and Dawn was in Spain, it must be some other woman,” he offered.

  “The only other suspect is Biff’s killer and I’d always assumed that that was a man.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Statistics I suppose. It was a violent stabbing. And Biff was a large man.”

  “Was there anything that proved categorically that it was a man?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, we have to consider that his killer might have been female.”

  “What I don’t understand is, what Biff’s murder has to do with the book anyway. He was just the handyman.”

  “Perhaps somebody didn’t like him being there.”

  “But who?”

  “I don’t know. Is there anybody else who was involved with the book. Any contributors who weren’t there?”

  “No, not that I know of. There are only six stories in the book. No, wait!” I had a light bulb moment. There was somebody else who would have read the text before it came out! “Emily Whistlefoot!”

  “Who?”

  “She’s the proofreader!”

  “Wait, that book was proofread?” He sounded shocked.

  “You read it?”

  “Of course I read it. I thought there might be some clues.”

  “Did you read my story?”

  “Yes.”

  I allowed my head to flop onto the dashboard.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It was only a first draft!”

  “I enjoyed it!”

  “You did?”

  “It was hilarious!”

  “You mean the typos were hilarious.”

  “No, the story was hilarious. It was a good read, Dee-Dee-Dee!”

  I blushed a little. Gareth always managed to make me feel good about my work. Even now, when there was no implied obligation to read my work, he had devoured one of my shorts. Mind you, it was research ...

  “Tell me more about Emily Whistlefoot.”

  “I don’t know a great deal about her. Wait! I’ll look her up on the forum.” I grabbed my phone. “She’s a crazy stalker fan apparently.”

  “Crazy? Well that fits.”

  “I know!”

  “So why did they employ her to proofread?”

  “Well that’s the thing — they didn’t employ her.”

  “Oh, slave labour?”

  “Something like that. She probably loved it though — she has a crush on Rafe, and Montgomery apparently.”

  “The old man?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is Rafe attractive?”

  “No.”

  “You answered that a bit quickly.”

  “Because it was an easy question.”

  “He looked attractive in his photo.”

  “Well, you go out with him then.”

  “There’s no need to get defensive.”

  “I’m not!” I sat there fuming for a few moments, until Emily Whistlefoot’s profile popped up on the screen. “Oh my God!”

  “What?”

  “It’s Emily Whistlefoot! Her profile picture is a meerkat!”

  “My God!”

  “Quite! Well this is conclusive.”

  “It is?”

  “She must have gone to a garden centre
to buy gnomes, and fallen for the charms of the meerkats.”

  “Does it look like a plastic meerkat?”

  “Hard to tell on my phone.”

  “You need to talk to Emily.”

  “I know! This meerkat situation cannot be a coincidence!”

  “More importantly, she’s female, saw the text before it was published, and is, in your own words, crazy.”

  Chapter 10

  Emily Whistlefoot was a lot more responsive than Netta Lewis, responding in less than ten minutes and agreeing to meet me the very next day. She was also not having any of that trendy wine bar nonsense that Annabel was into, being more than happy to agree to a meeting in a café.

  The venue was a classic Caffè Nero — varnished redwood chairs, blue and brown painted walls and marble-topped podiums for water and napkins. Good old Nero’s. Another stamp for my loyalty card.

  I wondered what Emily was like. Was she overweight, old and desperate, as the others had suggested? Or was she skinny and librarian-esque, with horn-rimmed glasses? Or maybe, she was disguised as an average person, with crazy bubbling beneath the surface.

  I didn’t have to wait long to find out. Emily was an exceptionally good timekeeper. At first, I disregarded the skinny teenager before me, but when she grinned, and offered me her hand, I realised that this was Emily — she couldn’t be more than seventeen. She looked nothing like the hardened eccentric that the writers had predicted.

  Emily was a cute, fair-haired bookworm type, with intense green eyes and a huge, youthful smile baring slightly crooked teeth. She was clearly at that pre-goddess phase. With a few more pounds and a little self-confidence, she would be fighting men off with a stick (if she so wished.)

  “I’m so touched that you wanted to meet me!” she grinned. I detected a faint Birmingham accent beneath the timid over-excited tones, and wondered how long she’d been living in London. She smelt faintly of Ribena (or was that the scent of a berry smoothie getting made at the counter?).

  “Thanks for coming,” I said. I already doubted that she was the killer. She was far too young to have nurtured enough cynicism to become a murderer.

  “I loved The Red River,” she said, beaming.

  You read my book? Oh my God, I love you! “Thank you.”

  “I loved the references to lads’ mags!”

  “Thank you! Those bits were fun to write.”

  “I keep meaning to read The Book of Most Quality Writers, you’re in that, aren’t you?”