“Has Enid ever been known to be wrong?” John asked drily.
“If she has,” Fiona answered, “nobody would dare to remember. Jilly—oh, do take those things out of your ears!” she added irritably, raising her voice. Jilly removed the earphones that attached her to her Walkman, and Audrey did the same.
“Extraordinary, the way young people today seem to require a musical background to every activity,” said Alice.
“If you care to call that music,” Fiona snorted.
“Lumme, Fiona, it’s Radiohead!” Audrey exclaimed, as if the evocation of Oxford’s homegrown rock stars should end all argument.
Fiona rolled her eyes. “I was going to ask you, Jilly, if that carpenter of yours had told you anything about the new people coming today.”
“Who, Bert?” She blushed, and Audrey grinned and nudged her with her elbow. Jilly had taken up with one of the young workmen while the house was being built across the road. “No, we never talked about that.” The two girls looked at each other and giggled, putting the earphones back into their ears.
“Nor about anything else much, I’d wager,” Fiona said shrewdly. “I hope that girl’s got a mite more sense than Audrey had. But there’s not much sign of it, is there?”
Audrey’s pregnancy was not concealed by maternity clothes and was pretty obvious now. I had to admit, I didn’t appreciate the current fashion for letting the abdomen swell under nothing but a skintight T-shirt. At least she didn’t wear just a halter top, as I’d seen pregnant celebrities doing in magazines.
A black Cortina pulled over to the shoulder of the road, next to my wall, and Reverend Ivey’s pale, ascetic face smiled out of the open window.
“Good afternoon,” he called. “Most sensible of all of you, to take advantage of such a beautiful day! My radio tells me a storm is expected tomorrow. Oh dear, how awkward I am, bringing bad news into your little party, I do apologize—”
“Not at all, vicar,” I responded. “Come and join us.”
“I only stopped to tell you that the headstone is to be delivered tomorrow,” he said diffidently. The village had finally got up a collection for a nice granite headstone, with inscription, for George Crocker’s grave. “I thought you might want to come and see it erected. And I have another announcement, as well. May I indeed join you?”
“Do, please,” I called to him.
“We’re awaiting the arrival of the new inhabitants,” Alice said, waving her arm toward the house.
“Ah, they arrive today? I should be here to meet them, shouldn’t I?” he asked, as if seeking our advice. “Yes, yes, if you’re sure I won’t be imposing, it would certainly be appropriate for me to welcome them to the village.”
Poor man, nobody had thought to tell him they were coming. He got out of his car, soliciting our opinions on whether it was safely parked, and once reassured he dithered over to join us. I had to stifle a smile at the way he abruptly averted his eyes when they strayed to Audrey’s belly, and how pink his face became. John went into the house and brought out a kitchen chair for him.
“Extraordinarily kind of you!” said the vicar. “It is good to see you, Sergeant Bennett, a very rare treat indeed.”
John looked slightly uncomfortable, and the rest of us smiled at one another, because he almost never went to church. Apparently Mr. Ivey noticed, and he started apologizing again.
“Oh, I am most awfully sorry, I was not referring to—I mean to say, it is purely a matter of conscience whether one attends services or not, that is, free will is a most important—”
“It’s all right, vicar,” John said with a smile.
“What I referred to, of course, was your very demanding vocation, which allows you so little time at home. In point of fact, I’m particularly glad to have a chance to talk with you, because I’ve been anxious to learn one result of your latest coup—I mean the Aubrey case.”
“Not exactly a coup,” John said ruefully. “Actually, we fixed on the wrong suspect twice.”
“Ah, but you did bring the right one to justice at last,” the vicar went on regardless.
“But how about your other announcement?” I reminded him. “First tell us that.”
“Ah, yes. That one is most gratifying. My son, Tom, and his beloved, Gemma, have asked me to conduct their wedding, at the end of this month. Of course you are all invited!”
Congratulations and best wishes rose all around. Jilly and Audrey took out their earphones belatedly and the news had to be repeated for them.
Then John said, “Very well, vicar, what’s this question you have about the Aubrey case? Don’t know if I can answer it, mind, but I’ll do my best for you.”
“Well, I’ve been wondering whether there are any plans to place the Ur-Hamlet on public view? Quite understandable that the police should want to use it as evidence at the trial, but it would be a rare treat actually to see such an important piece of our literary history before it is consigned to a museum.”
“Well, vicar,” said John, settling back and taking his pipe from his pocket, “I’m afraid I’ve some bad news for you there.”
“Good heavens, it has not been lost again!”
“No, we’ve still got it. The problem is, when we turned it over to a well-known expert in disputed manuscripts, it took her less than a day to pronounce it a fake.”
“A fake?” I sat up and stared, appalled. “You mean two people died, Peter almost lost his freedom, and I could have been shot—over a forged manuscript?”
“Afraid so.” He had finished packing the pipe bowl with tobacco and paused to light it. When he took it from his lips he couldn’t repress a wry grin. “Mind you, very skillfully done. Only detectable by the most sophisticated technology. Must have taken Edgar Stone years.”
“Then the author of the real work is still unknown,” said the vicar, shaking his head sadly. “Perhaps it may always be so.”
“Well, I’ll be darned.” I sank back again, smiling too at the irony of it.
“Any more questions?” John asked, after another draw at his pipe.
“You know,” I said, “I was always suspicious of Perdita’s story about sleeping through the murder. Did you ever learn what she was really doing?”
“Oh, she was asleep, all right. Cecil Aubrey slipped a sleeping draught into her sherry at the party. He didn’t want her interfering with his carefully worked-out—”
“It’s them!” Jilly exclaimed, pointing toward the new house. John broke off his explanation, and we all gazed avidly at a dark green car, the kind the British call an “estate car,” longer than the usual sedan. It was just pulling up in front of the place, and we all rose and hurried down to my gate, led by the vicar.
There was a woman in the driver’s seat, a man beside her, and what looked like a couple of teenagers in the back. A moving van was coming down the road, pulling up behind the car. The woman got out and saw us, and her face broke into an irresistible smile.
She was plump and big-bosomed, in a bright blue dress with a pattern of large red flowers. Obviously she wasn’t worried about hiding her amplitude. Her hair was a brassy shade of blonde, in those big fat curls you have to set every night on rollers. Her blue eyes sparkled with delight.
“Hello, then!” she called in a north-country accent. “You lot the welcome committee?”
She started out to meet us halfway across the road, limping heavily on her right leg. But the man from the passenger seat now emerged, with some difficulty. The young man and woman each held one of his arms and almost lifted him out. He was dark-haired and white-faced, quite emaciated, and the look in his black eyes as they darted to the blonde woman gave me the shivers.
He yelled at her, quite savagely, “Get yer arse back here! Yer meant to be finding me med’cines, not lollygaggin’ in the road with some strangers!”
“Dear me!” said the vicar.
The woman’s smile shrank and her happy expression turned fearful. We stopped on the shoulder of the road, and three
of the newcomers looked over with embarrassment. The teenaged girl threw us a little pinched smile. She was very pretty, slight and graceful with long dark hair hanging nearly to her waist.
Jilly called over to her, “Need any help, then?” and the girl shook her head silently.
The young man resembled her, the same brown eyes and full lips, but otherwise they were a contrast. He looked none too clean, there was a growth of stubble on his jaw, his hair was dragged back in a tail tied with a string. But he called to us, “Thanks for the thought, but Dad’s not been very well the past week or two and we—”
“Sorry,” the woman broke in abruptly. “Me husband’s fallen ill, as Michael says. After we’re settled in—”
She stopped and shrugged helplessly at us, then limped back to open the trunk of the car. After a few minutes of rummaging she emerged with a handful of pill bottles. The young people had supported the man up the brick path and into the house by then. The blonde woman threw us a last smile and a wave and followed them inside while the movers started unloading sofas and chairs.
“Well, that was interesting!” said Fiona as we moved back to my garden. “Do you think we’ll ever get as far as introducing ourselves?”
“The poor man is ill,” Alice said charitably.
“How unfortunate for them,” the vicar said, “to have built in a village without a doctor! Of course, they weren’t to know a family member would fall ill. The gentleman did look very weak, didn’t he?”
“I don’t know that I’d call him a gentleman,” Fiona responded, “with the mouth he’s got on him!”
“Girl looked a bit of a prat,” said Audrey. She picked up her daughter, who had started to fuss, and stuck a pacifier in the baby’s mouth.
“Pre-Dead,” Jilly responded enigmatically. “But did you have a dekko at the brother? Wicked!” From the look on her face, I figured that was not a criticism.
“He’s all right,” said Audrey coolly. “Not a patch on my man, though.”
“Well, I’m going to give them a chance,” I said staunchly. “I need some nice neighbors, and at least they’re not weekenders! I’ll go over tomorrow, I’m sure they’ll be more approachable then.”
Everyone dispersed soon after and I turned back to the cottage, looking forward to starting the fourth act of The Duchess of Malfi, which Peter said would curl my hair. I’d picked it up at the public library in Oxford and was reading it slowly, one act a day, savoring the gorgeous poetry but always emerging with relief from half an hour in Webster’s merciless world.
Starting up the path, I caught a flash of black in front of me and focused on it long enough to see Muzzle going through the door with, I was pretty sure, a little gray corpse clenched in his teeth.
“Oh, hell,” I muttered. He hadn’t brought a mouse home for a couple of weeks, and I’d thought he finally understood I didn’t appreciate his generosity. But it didn’t bother me the way it had a month before. There was all the time in the world to get through to him, I wasn’t going anywhere. I stood on the path for a few minutes just looking around, thinking how close I had come to losing it all—Rowan Cottage, the perennial border I was definitely starting tomorrow, the robins in the apple tree, Far Wychwood and its people.
I heaved a sigh of relief and turned toward the potting shed to get the shovel.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Praise
Far Wychwood mysteries by Patricia Harwin:
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Epilogue
Slaying is Such Sweet Sorrow Page 22