The Food Detective

by Judith Cutler

  Mention a dog in the village, and of course everyone goes doolally. The topic of Tregothnan was swamped in enquiries about the animal’s health and anecdotes about dogs – and vets – the speakers had known. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself by offering my real opinions of what Tony used to call mobile poo factories, so I simply took my paper from Claire, Lindi’s older and more responsible sister, and slipped out. Sue was just parking – or rather, abandoning her poor vehicle with its front wheels jammed into the kerb. The rear ones were still calling for help from the middle of the road. It would have made an interesting project for Nick to teach her a few police driving skills. Even cleaning the headlights – necessary on a day as dark as this – might have made a difference.

  She got out slowly, hunching her shoulders and turning up her raincoat collar. The wind lashed her hair across her face: she had to pick strands from her mouth between sentences, which meant her coat flew open. Why didn’t she simply button it and have done? But that was Sue for you.

  ‘What’s this about you and the hunt, Josie?’

  ‘You’ve heard already?’

  ‘From about ten different people.’

  ‘Pleased or otherwise?’

  ‘Mrs Coyne was chuffed. But too disgusted with you to admit it. I suppose the rest were divided fifty-fifty. I’m surprised no one buttonholed you after morning service yesterday.’

  I wasn’t. I’d long since perfected the art of catching only the eyes I wanted to catch.

  ‘Sunday lunch to supervise,’ I said tersely. ‘Anyway, there’s more news to put mine in the shade. Fred Tregothnan’s done a flit.’

  If only there’d been enough light to read her face. Or less wind, so I could have worked out whether she really was swaying on her feet. ‘Why?’ she asked after a perceptible delay. Though it might have been caused by that flying hair.

  I shrugged hugely. ‘Maybe because I told him off. Maybe because he’s got a new girlfriend in Plymouth. Who knows?’

  ‘But – missing? Really a missing person?’

  ‘That’s what rumour says. Hey, let’s go round to his house and have a look. Come on, Sue, it’s your morning off. Come and do something schoolgirlish and then I’ll brew you your best cup of coffee this week.’

  In the half-light, which was obviously all we were going to get this morning, Tregothnan’s house looked unexpectedly forlorn. He’d never maintained it to the picture postcard standards of most of the village. Judging by the slippery moss beside the front door, one of his gutters had been blocked for some time. The paint was peeling, too, and what we could see of his curtains suggested they hadn’t seen a cleaner’s since they’d been hung. The side entrance, to his surgery, was better maintained, and his brass plate was like a beacon.

  Sue set off round the back like a greyhound

  ‘Hey, where are you going?’

  ‘To look for the key, of course,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘His mother always used to keep it under a flowerpot. I’ll bet he does too.’

  He did. We stood and stared, Sue at the key, me at Sue. ‘You really can’t use it, you know,’ I said. ‘Go on, cover it up again.’

  ‘But if –?’ She was wild-eyed, pointing at the house.

  I patted her arm – time to bring her back to reality. ‘If he’s officially a missing person, the police will have checked he’s not lying ill inside,’ I said, quite gently.

  ‘But if they haven’t –’

  ‘And if they found us in there we’d have a lot of explaining to do. I’m sorry, Sue, it was a stupid idea. Really stupid. Let’s go and have that coffee.’

  Her lower lip trembled into a stubborn line. ‘As the village pastor –’

  Trying to sound grudgingly reluctant, I said, ‘OK. I’ll come with you.’ The key almost leapt into my hand.

  Leaving our muddy shoes on the mat, we stepped from a tiny scullery, still with a crock sink and a utility electric cooker, into the kitchen. Apparently he’d shared the house with his mother, inheriting it when she died in her late eighties. He must have been a child of her middle age. It looked as if she’d stopped decorating the moment he was born, and he’d made no changes since her death. It smelt of damp and toast and bacon. The kitchen led into a short passage to the front door. To the right was a door that must lead to the surgery – I wasn’t interested in that. The bedrooms and living room were more my line. Especially the latter – though just for the record I went upstairs first, to make sure we weren’t sharing the place with a corpse. No, the bathroom, cheerless as you’d imagine a monk’s, and both bedrooms, were unoccupied. There was a frowsty male smell, bedclothes including an old-fashioned quilt tumbling onto the unvacced floor as if he’d just got out of bed. The back bedroom, once his mother’s to judge from the floral wallpaper and framed prints, was just a junk room.

  Downstairs, then.

  To my amazement Sue was ferreting through his bureau. ‘Address book. Bank details. The police’ll need them.’

  And would have been happy to find them themselves, no doubt. However, her good-heartedness gave me the chance to look at his books – he had a row of what looked like first editions of scientific books, with a scattering of philosophy – not at all what I’d have expected. If ever a man was a porn man, it was Fred. I’d bet a week’s takings there’d be some highly dubious stuff on the hard disk of the state of the art computer sitting uneasily on a fifties table next to a well-worn armchair. I could almost see him sitting there perving away. What I couldn’t work out was why a professional man with a decent small animal practice, not to mention his farm work, should live in such a museum piece. What did he spend his money on? Not clothes, not car, certainly not home.

  ‘Have you found anything?’

  Sue shook her head. ‘I wonder where else I should look.’ She peered round the room.

  ‘His dispensary? I mean, he’d have to keep all his practice records somewhere – perhaps he lumped everything together.’ I went through into the hall and stared at the door. It had a couple of serious locks – all the drugs he needed to keep, I suppose. I put my nose to one of the keyholes and sniffed. No, nothing but the smell of doggy wee that veterinary disinfectant never quite eradicates. Not a body, I’d stake my life on it.

  There was a loud rattle at the front door. Sue and I grabbed each other. I twigged first. ‘Post, I suppose.’ I toddled off to have a look. Yes, a heap of what looked like circulars, nothing personal. I leafed through it twice, just to make sure.

  Shrugging, I called, ‘Time we left the experts have a go, Sue.’

  She followed me reluctantly, hugging her coat round her and slipping her shoes on as slowly as a bullied kid on the way to school. She was clearly in two minds over the key. With an ambiguous glance at me, she replaced it under the pot.

  ‘You said you’d told him off,’ she said, turning back slowly to the street.

  ‘I found him with his hand in Lindi’s knickers. Literally. Broad daylight. Stupid girl stood there giggling. God knows why she didn’t tip his drink over his head. I would have.’

  She laughed, the sound brushed away by the wind. ‘I’ll bet you would.’

  Tuesday night was WeightWatchers night in Taunton, and it would take more than a drop of rain to put me off. Actually, it was rather more than a drop. It hadn’t stopped all day. Much to my disappointment at lunchtime the snug had been almost empty – I’d have loved a good turnout of settle men, all seething with speculation about Fred and eyeing me meaningfully. I doubted if there’d be many more that evening. All the regulars knew there wasn’t much in the way of food on Tuesdays, and there’d be no passing trade, not if people had any sense. So I took myself into Taunton early, scuttling to the library so I could carry on checking Luke Greville. Actually, now I’d met his mother, I didn’t want him to be an out and out villain. Perhaps if he’d just committed a sexual peccadillo with a consenting adult I wouldn’t have objected. Especially one with a happy ending. But it was frustrating, all the same, to find that althou
gh the Fraud Squad had reportedly investigated his affairs, no charges were ever pressed. The papers were very cagey about making direct allegations – hadn’t they ever heard of Publish and be damned? There was nothing obvious about Nick Thomas, either, though I noted a number of crimes in Brum that had been dramatic enough to creep into the Times. I’d get Nesta on to all of them.

  After a cup of tea – yes, literally that, no milk, no sugar and certainly no sticky bun – I dropped into the WeightWatchers session and had the satisfaction of having lost another two pounds and a bit of an ounce. I stopped long enough for a natter with a couple of women I know by sight, before paddling back to the car.

  Despite my elation, I wondered if I’d been foolish to come out. No. I didn’t wonder. I knew. The A road was awash, and we got diverted well before Kings Duncombe. It was hard to tell road from puddle, and at times I was scared by the feeling that the car was being sucked away even as I drove. On one corner the flashing lights of a fire engine illuminated the ghostly figures of householders trying to rescue their furniture as their house was pumped out. Poor sods. Thank God the White Hart stood at the higher end of the village. I wouldn’t give much for the shop’s chances if the stream overflowed its banks.

  Someone from the council, swifter to respond to an excess of water than the water company had been to an excess of colour in water, had already dropped off ROAD CLOSED signs. I got diverted several more times, before I saw the lights of the village ahead. Even as I pulled into the pond that was my car park, they started to gutter. Candles? Yes, I had plenty of those. Open fires. Food. Drink. No problem. I could hole up here as long as it took, and make the White Hart the centre of the community it was supposed to be. My predecessor had boasted that he’d never closed even when the village was cut off for eight days by six feet of snow. If he could do it, I could do it. Even if the water lapped and swirled round my feet as I stepped from the car, it was well clear of the four steep steps to the back door.

  I stepped into total darkness and a girl’s scream.

  ‘Lucy? Is that you?’

  ‘Mrs Welford?’ A hand gripped my arm. ‘It’s only you!’

  ‘Who were you expecting it to be?’

  ‘I dunno. But –’

  ‘Just pass me the torch from the hall table. Where it always is. Thanks. There, that’s better. Hang on, what the hell’s that lot?’ I pointed the torch at a heap of white at her feet.

  ‘Sheets, Mrs Welford. And blankets, like. I’ve been airing them.’

  ‘Airing them? Why? And why you? Where’s Lindi? Oh, light some candles, girl, and then you can tell me exactly what’s been going on.’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘It’s not Lucy’s fault,’ a gruff voice from the darkness said.

  I swung the torch. ‘Nick Thomas!’ The beam must have hurt his eyes. After a moment I shifted it. ‘What are you doing here?’ If I’d expected anyone to be needing a bed it might have been Tom Dearborn’s girl, Sharon. So why hadn’t she come? I must phone Tom. ‘The candles are under the bar, this end, Lucy. And matches.’ I pointed with the torch.

  ‘Orphan of the storm,’ he said, his clothes dripping on to the flagstones. Had he been swimming? He couldn’t have been wetter. ‘And Lucy said she was sure since you did B and B, you’d put me up for the night.’

  Lucy returned, looking like Lorna Doone in the glow of a pair of candles she’d had the sense to put in pint glasses. As if in role, she almost curtseyed. ‘I was just making up one of the en suite rooms.’

  ‘Good girl.’ I smiled, but seethed. It wasn’t me but my predecessor but one who’d put up the B and B sign. I didn’t know how he’d dared. I’d hung up a ‘No vacancies’ notice, but someone had absconded with it and I hadn’t got round to replacing it.

  The rooms were in a very poor state, and I didn’t like to charge for them. I had nowhere to offer a guest breakfast – you could cut up the stale air in the bar and carry it out in chunks. This might pass as rustic atmosphere if you were downing a lunchtime drink but wouldn’t go with cereal and skimmed milk. On the other hand, if I offered Nick free accommodation, it might put us both in an awkward situation.

  ‘Leave one of those candles down here,’ I said, passing her the bundle of bedclothes. ‘Good girl. Careful how you go.’ She was half way up the stairs when I realised something was wrong. ‘Where’s Lindi?’

  The poor kid said awkwardly, ‘She phoned to say… she couldn’t come tonight.’

  Did she indeed? ‘Well, it was considerate of her to warn me. And to have the gumption to phone you. Off you go.’

  Nick didn’t watch her up the stairs. Brownie points for that, at least – unless he was afraid I’d throw him out if he did. ‘The campsite’s flooded. I waded over to get out as much as I could, but then the caravan just floated away, boxes and all.’ He was taking great pains not to let his voice break.

  All those little things he couldn’t bear to leave in store. If I was kind, he might weep. I was brisk. ‘Clothes?’

  You could see the deep breath, the brace of the shoulders. ‘Got a rucksack full. And some photos and things. But most of it’s gone.’ He swallowed hard.

  I couldn’t help myself. ‘You poor bugger. Go on, upstairs with you. Lucy’ll run you a hot bath and then I’ll rustle up some food for you. No, leave all those wet things down here – I’ll stow them in the boiler room. Oh, for God’s sake, man – don’t you think I’ve seen a man in the dark in his knickers before?’

  At which point the lights came back on.

  The really wet stuff still dripping in the boiler room, and his shoes stuffed with yesterday’s Guardian, I’d ended up putting all the stuff in his rucksack through the tumble dryer. Though I drew the line at ironing it myself, I was happy to provide him with the wherewithal. I set up the board at one end of my own kitchen, and busied myself starting the living room fire – not so much to keep us warm as insurance against another power cut – and then preparing vegetables. He’d have to eat what I was going to eat, which was not necessarily stuff I served in the bar. Not that there were any clients tonight. If any was fool enough at this stage to venture out for a drink, Lucy could call me. Otherwise she could sit in front of the fire and do her homework uninterrupted, which may have been the reason she volunteered to take Lindi’s shift. As for getting her home, I supposed I’d better chauffeur her. Usually she was happy to walk, on the understanding that her dad would meet her halfway, but I didn’t see him leaving his fireside just for my peace of mind. His line was that Lucy was used to being on her own. He regarded as downright eccentric my city take on girls wandering solo down lonely lanes.

  ‘The funny thing,’ Nick said, resplendent in my black silk kimono, ‘is that the far end of the village – you know, the shop end – is dry.’

  ‘Torrential rain apart.’

  ‘OK, not actually flooded. The stream’s fuller than you said it was earlier, but certainly not to overflowing. Whereas this end, where you’d have expected it to be flood-free, the lanes are like sluices.’

  ‘Not funny at all if someone rearranges the watercourse,’ I said. ‘Which is what I bet your nice Mr Bulcombe was doing when I saw him.’

  ‘Why should he want to do that?’ A rare smile told me I was interesting him.

  ‘Come on, you’re the copper – work it out. Either he doesn’t want other people to know that the stream’s running pink, so he sends the water another way. Or he’s found out what you really do – and not, before you ask, from me – and he wants you out of here.’

  ‘You sound like a cop yourself,’ he said, taking the hanger I passed him.

  ‘You spend as long as I did with a man the wrong side of the Law, you learn to think like a cop. Studying the opposition’s tactics, you might say.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable.’

  ‘So who knows you’re with the Food Standards Agency? No, don’t tell me – Fred Tregothnan. Well, you were a fool to tell him.’

  ‘I didn’t tell him. One area of our work is mea
t hygiene. He’s the vet responsible for checking a food packing company’s premises near Barnstable.’

  ‘Which you had to check out?’

  ‘In a friendly sort of way, I told him I’d be paying a visit in the next few months.’

  ‘If that was the conversation I saw you having last Friday morning it didn’t look very friendly. Watch your iron, Copper! That’s a decent shirt.’ So he was rattled, was he? Any moment now I’d find myself offering. ‘Was he upset enough to do a bunk?’

  ‘What the hell do you mean?’

  I passed him another hanger. ‘Only that Fred’s gone walkabout – and the police have logged him as a Missing Person.’

  His reaction was much the same as mine had been. ‘Misper? But he’s a grown man – they don’t usually start worrying this early.’

  ‘Perhaps they know things about him we don’t. Or I don’t?’

  He concentrated on the next shirt, taking great pains with the right sleeve.

  ‘Come on, Copper, any moment now your little pals’ll come knocking on the door asking what you were arguing about –’

  ‘Why? Who’ve you told?’

  ‘All those years married to Tony, and I tell anyone anything I don’t have to? But it stands to reason, doesn’t it – if I saw you, half the village will already have blabbed. They’re probably after me, too, because Fred and I had a pretty audible row about five hours after yours. He was groping young Lindi.’

  ‘Which might explain why she didn’t turn up tonight and Lucy filled in?’

  ‘If she’d been upset. She seemed more anxious about my yelling at him than about having his fingers up her bum. Tried to say it was only a bit of fun,’ I added in a Lindi-bleat.

  ‘Did she mean it or was she afraid of offending Tregothnan?’

  ‘She made me sound like a spoilsport,’ I admitted. ‘How much more ironing have you got to do? When the end’s in sight, I can start on the supper. While it cooks, I’ll run Lucy home – I’ll put you in charge of the bar while I’m off.’