The Case of the Missing Morris Dancer

by Cathy Ace

  David grinned. ‘Yeah, yeah, I know. I tell you what though, I don’t miss the commute. Not one bit. I sat down to look at that mess they had this morning, and the solution just came to me. I’m so much calmer than I used to be. And there aren’t the distractions, either. You do feel that too, don’t you? We were right to do this, weren’t we? Even though I’m not earning as much now. Right?’

  Carol reached up and held the face she loved so much in her cupped hands. ‘David Hill, I promise you’ll look back in six months and find out you’ve got just as much in your pocket working here as an IT consultant for our old employer as you would have done sitting on the Tube going back and forth across London. Our income is down, but so is our expenditure. I don’t think either of us will need to buy clothes ever again, and our eating and travel costs are next to nothing. Of course Bump will cost a bomb once its born, but that would be the same either way, and I still think raising a baby here is going to be a lot less expensive than raising one in London. So, let me get off and back to my duties – and I’ll let you get back to saving reinsurance executives who don’t know one end of a piece of code from another, wherever in the world they might find themselves working today.’

  They kissed, and Carol pulled her rather inadequate duffel coat as far around her belly as it would reach, in an attempt to keep the winter chill off Bump.

  By the time she’d reached the center of the green, her wellies squelching on the sodden grass, Carol finally lifted her head and turned to look at the house she now called home. It stood proudly in the middle of one of the four sides of the square that surrounded the green. To its right was a row of mismatched detached homes, then the Lamb and Flag pub. Turning again she took in the vista of St David’s Church, its graveyard and the Chellingworth Arms, then she turned again and gazed along the hotch-potch of cottages and houses that sat either side of the market hall – with its delightful sixteenth century, Tudor brick-and-beam original building and its much less appealing Victorian brick “extension” – and the abandoned Jacobean Coach and Horses pub at the corner. Finally she looked across at the infants’ school and the Georgian, Edwardian and Victorian buildings along that edge of the green, punctuated by a couple of cottages built during a more bucolic age. The two tea rooms that stood empty, with brown paper blocking out their windows, at the corner near the bus stop made for a rather morbid corner of the square, but she liked the rest of it very much.

  She rubbed her belly. ‘This is your home, Bump. You’ll live in that house, go to that school, we’ll buy sweets in that shop, and, one day, you’ll probably have your first drink in one of those pubs. The families in these houses will be your neighbors. Your friends. Maybe your husband or wife will have lived in one of them for their whole life. The people who own the shop might offer you a Saturday job. You’ll go to cubs and scouts in the market hall – or maybe in the church hall if they manage to mend the roof before the whole thing falls down. You’ll be a donkey or an angel, or maybe even Mary or Joseph, in a nativity play in that church which has stood there for over five hundred years, and where you’ll have been christened, and your father and I will love you no matter how many ballet or rugby or singing or cycling or football or sheep-dog training classes we need to drive you to as the years pass. But for now, you’re going to be a good Bump and let Mam get on with her enquiring – because otherwise Mam might go a bit do-lally-tap and that wouldn’t be good.’

  Finally arriving at the hall that had stood to one side of the village green since the fifteenth century, Carol tackled the big double doors which were the ‘new’ entrance, housed in the Victorian edifice that had been unceremoniously added to the original structure. Carol checked her watch; she knew the ladies making Welsh cakes on the rota for Monday would have been at it for an hour or so. She decided her best approach would be to act confused and offer to help, making out she’d mixed up her time and day for volunteering, and blame her pregnancy hormones. She was pretty sure she’d get away with it because the Young Wives group which had cavalierly offered to make them for the wedding celebrations had only just realized what they’d let themselves in for: making a couple of thousand Welsh cakes – by Friday.

  Upon entering the hall Carol was overwhelmed by two things – the wonderful smell of warm Welsh cakes and the military style with which they were being prepared, cooked and cooled. Marjorie Pritchard ran the Young Wives group – which Carol found odd because she was neither young, nor a wife; now in her early fifties, Marjorie had been divorced for a decade, but had never been ousted from a group which valued a leader prepared to organize, arrange and manage the funds for any activity they chose to undertake. Marjorie loved it, and everyone benefitted so, as Carol was learning was often the way in Anwen-by-Wye, no one saw any point in changing anything.

  Carol homed in on Marjorie who was telling one of the volunteers that she was putting too many currants in her mixture. Her strong local accent and booming tones made Marjorie’s voice unmistakable. ‘You’ve got the weights written down, and the scales are right there. Weigh everything. Every batch has to be the same. Come on now … oh, Carol, I didn’t see you there. Are you supposed to be here today? I thought you were Tuesday, not Monday.’

  Carol adopted a ‘confused puppy’ face, and rubbed Bump. ‘Oh, was it tomorrow? I don’t know, I think the baby’s sucking all the sense right out of my head.’ Since moving to the village Carol had found that allowing her natural Welsh accent to blossom, rather than reining it in as she had done when she lived in London, worked wonders. Coming from a village in Carmarthenshire, she knew outsiders were often treated with some level of suspicion, and she wanted to fit in, and fast. Bump would be born a local, and she wanted Bump’s parents to be treated the same way.

  Marjorie pulled a notepad out of her apron pocket, consulted it and said, ‘Tomorrow. You said you couldn’t make it today,’ she chastised.

  Carol smiled sweetly. ‘How about I just pitch in? I can come tomorrow as well. Maybe two short days rather than one long one would help me and the baby.’ She wondered if Bump knew it was being used as cover for her enquiring duties.

  Marjorie looked along the rows of tables set up along each of the two longest walls of the hall. On one side of the hall the dough for the Welsh cakes, which had been made by the women up on the stage, was being rolled out, cut into rounds and placed on platters; on the other, dozens of wire racks had been set out and were covered with cooked Welsh cakes cooling off, ready for packaging. Carol could see through the hatch into the kitchen that only two burners on the stove top were in use; the large, round, cast-iron ‘bakestones’ were too large for more than a couple to be used at once. The volunteers tending the cooking dough looked hot and bothered.

  ‘I don’t think you’d be good going up and down the steps to and from the stage all the time, so would going up there once and measuring out the ingredients suit you? You could sit down for a bit now and again, if you needed it.’ Marjorie looked at Carol’s pink cheeks and her rounded middle as she spoke. ‘Feeling alright, are you? Due any time now, aren’t you? Bit hot over here by the kitchen, isn’t it. Yes, you’ll be best on the stage, as far from the heat as you can be. Keeping it cold up there we are, to help the butter rub in better. Janet can bring you the butter from the fridge in the kitchen so you can cut it up a couple of pounds at a time, alright?’

  Carol glanced up at the stage and realized the three women there were likely to be a good source of information about Aubrey Morris, so agreed to join them – but not before she was given a pinafore by Marjorie, who casually mentioned there was a seat due to become available on the parochial church council, and that she’d be happy to put Carol’s name forward for it, immediately followed by precise instructions about following the list of ingredients and weighing things properly. Carol edged away from Marjorie Pritchard feeling she’d been ambushed, and worrying about how she could get out of joining the PCC where, by all accounts, Marjorie and Tudor Evans often went at it hammer and tongs for hours.
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  Finally escaping, Carol managed to settle herself on the stage, surrounded by bags of flour, pounds of chilled butter, dozens and dozens of eggs and what looked like half the world’s supply of currants and sugar, and got to work. She thought it best to do something before she began to ‘gossip’ so worked as fast as she could – which meant she got ahead of what the women she was supplying needed and she was able to relax a bit and put her plan into action. She wasn’t as much of an expert as Annie at this part of the job, being more comfortable with a keyboard than a group of women, so she made up her mind to channel her good friend as she enquired.

  ‘Did you hear about Aubrey Morris?’ she asked, placing a collection of ingredients next to one of her co-volunteers named Lynette.

  ‘Morris the Van? Gone off, I heard,’ replied Lynette, huffing and puffing as she laboriously worked the butter into the flour and sugar with her tiny hands and bird-like arms.

  ‘Is that like him?’ asked Carol as casually as possible.

  ‘Not at all. His mam’ll turn in her grave,’ replied Lynette. ‘Below me in school here, he was. Quiet boy. Reliable though. Big in the church.’

  ‘He phoned me to cancel my gutters next week,’ piped up the woman at the end table named Mair who Carol always thought of as ‘comfortably plump’.

  ‘What’s wrong with them?’ asked Lynette.

  ‘What’s right with them, more like. Might as well be colanders, the lot of them,’ replied Mair. ‘But there, that’s what happens when you put off getting new ones as long as you can. Can’t sleep a wink at night now when it rains. Sounds like there’s a waterfall right outside the bedroom window. Came and looked at them two weeks ago, said he’d get the stuff, then phoned up and cancelled he did. Said he’d ask a bloke from Hay to come and see to them. Haven’t heard a dicky bird since. Rude, if you asks me.’

  Carol listened with interest; why had Aubrey cancelled an appointment for a job?

  ‘He does most of the odd jobs round here, doesn’t he?’ pressed Carol.

  ‘True,’ replied Lynette. ‘My John’s pretty handy with most stuff, but he’s out all week at work, and the weekends just seem to disappear, so, yes, he’s done a few bits and pieces for us. John won’t touch electrics. Good job too. Got to know what you’re doing with electrics.’

  ‘And plumbing. And gas. And gutters,’ added Ruth, the tallest and oldest of the three women on the stage with Carol. ‘Not everyone’s good at everything. Bit of painting’s easy enough, but there’s so many jobs you need special equipment for. Haven’t got most of it ourselves. Morris the Van’s got everything, for every job. Been at it years his family has, so they would, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘It’s a shame he’s gone away. I could do with some help getting the house ready for the baby,’ said Carol, rubbing Bump as though it was a magic lamp.

  All three women stopped their kneading and looked at Carol’s glowing face with a smile.

  ‘Aww, first one’s always special,’ said Mair with a wistful look. ‘Had Harry when I was just twenty. Didn’t know what I was doing. You’ll be fine. How old are you?’

  Carol answered quietly, ‘Thirty-four.’

  All three women rolled their eyes.

  ‘I heard you had a big job in London, but gave it up. That why you’re so old having this one?’ said Lynette.

  Carol didn’t think thirty-four was that old to have a first child, but she said, ‘I had a big job, yes, but I didn’t have a husband which is more the point. David and I have only been married for five years …’ Carol paused, and decided to be open with the women she was trying to pump for information. ‘I’d have happily had a baby right then, but not everything happens when you want it to.’

  Returning to their tasks the three women agreed with Carol, and several moments of recollections about first, second and even third pregnancies followed. Carol felt compelled to allow the conversation to run its natural course before she finally took a chance to say, ‘So if Morris the Van cancelled his appointment to work on your gutters next week, do you think he was planning on leaving to go somewhere after the wedding, Mair?’

  The woman held her floury hands up in the air and pushed aside some stray hairs as she considered her answer. ‘Well, it sounds like it, doesn’t it? Not normal for him to cancel without a good reason.’

  ‘No, you’re right there,’ added Lynette, ‘never one to turn down a job, and never one to let you down neither. Doesn’t charge the earth, and steady as Gibraltar. I wonder where he’s gone.’

  ‘And why he’d go now, when he was supposed to be playing the music for the Morris dancers on Saturday,’ added Carol.

  All three women stopped in their tracks.

  ‘He’ll be back by then for sure,’ said Ruth, ‘he’d never let them down like that.’ She sounded shocked at the idea. ‘Can’t do it without him, they can’t. Wouldn’t be right with no music. They’d just all look like they was twp.’

  The four women shared a laugh as they imagined the Morris dancers skipping and swooping with no musical accompaniment.

  ‘Be calling the men with the white jackets they would,’ giggled Lynette.

  ‘Any girlfriend on the scene for Aubrey?’ asked Carol as innocently as possible.

  Returning to their tasks all three women smiled and giggled knowingly.

  ‘What?’ asked Carol. ‘Not into women, is he?’

  Ruth tutted. ‘No, nothing like that. Just a bit quiet is poor Aubrey. We all call him Morris the Van because his grandfather was the first man in the village to have a van, not a tractor or a Land Rover. His father drove the same van till it finally gave up the ghost and they bought the one that Aubrey drives now. But, although we call him “Morris the Van”, we probably all think of him as “poor little Aubrey”. Always quiet. Always on the slight side. Glasses. Didn’t play football or rugby. Never mixed in with the other kids at school. Right, Lynette?’

  Lynette nodded. ‘Like I said, we overlapped at infants’ school. Just one year. He was in the babies’ class when I was in the final year before going off to big school in Builth. Even then he was – well, I don’t think kids that young can really be swotty, but if they could be, he was. Maybe it was because he was an only child and he grew up in his grandfather’s house surrounded by mechanical bits and pieces, but he never played with building blocks, he tried to build things – you know, like proper things – with them. Always knew something the other kids didn’t. Even then. Pretty boy, he was. Red hair back then, though I know he’s sandier now. Still got those freckles though, hasn’t he?’

  Chuckling, Mair added, ‘Poor dab, runs away from the slightest bit of sun, he does. Says he’ll burn to a crisp, like a vampire. He was doing some stuff in my back garden last summer, and he was wearing a get-up that covered him from head to foot. I asked him why he didn’t just cover himself in suntan lotion and be done with it. You’ll never guess what he said?’

  Carol was all ears. ‘What?’

  ‘He said, The thought of the dirt adhering to the cream on my body is very unpleasant, he did. Always talked a bit posh. Mind you, I don’t know why. Doesn’t come from a fancy family, like I said – he’s the third generation of handymen in that Morris family. Now the other Morrises, they’d be the ones with the land and the money.’

  ‘Other Morrises?’ asked Carol.

  ‘Up near Hay-on-Wye. Big farm they’ve got. His grandfather’s older brother. When the grandfather’s father died, the older son got the farm, the younger one – Aubrey’s granddad – got nothing. Though they do say it was his brother, the one who inherited the farm, who bought him his first van and gave him the money to buy his house. Sort of pay-off. Sad mind, when a family breaks up over money, isn’t it?’

  ‘Was it much money?’ asked Carol.

  Lynette looked up toward the ceiling and gave the matter some thought. ‘I don’t know, really, but the Morris farm is one of the biggest sheep farms in the area, and that’s saying something. Now I’m not saying they haven’t had it rou
gh with all the disease and so on, but I know they’ve got a lot of land, and the house is pretty big too. Not like Chellingworth Hall, or anything, but, you know, for a normal house – it would put ours to shame. Married an English woman he did, the Morris who got the farm. But there, you did that too, didn’t you? You know, married an Englishman.’

  Carol nodded. ‘For an Englishman, David’s very nice.’ She grinned. ‘And the baby’ll be born in Wales, so pretty soon there’ll be a majority of Welsh people in our house.’

  As the laughter died away and the women returned their attention to their dough, Carol wondered if a quiet little boy, who’d grown into a reliable man with wealthy relatives but a hard-working lifestyle, would have planned to leave the village at such a time. She wondered if there were any other cancelled appointments that might bolster the theory that he had, in fact, planned to leave Anwen-by-Wye after the wedding.

  ‘Need more butter up there yet?’ called Marjorie from the floor of the hall.

  ‘Yes, but I’ll come and get it – I need to pop to the loo in any case,’ replied Carol, wiping her hands on her apron.

  Carol made her way down to the main hall, and ambled toward the loos. Once there, she shut the door behind her and pulled out her mobile phone. Dialing Mavis’s number she waited, got the voicemail option and left a message passing on the information she’d gleaned.

  Washing her hands, Carol decided she’d try to find out if Aubrey Morris had cancelled any other jobs in the village. To do that, she’d have to invent some reason why she needed to mix with the women working on rolling out the dough and cutting it into rounds. She hoped Marjorie would be amenable to her suggestion.

  FIVE