by Kim M Watt
By the time Alice made it back to her car, her ears hurt. All she wanted was to go home and not talk to anyone – or rather not be talked at – for at least the rest of the day. She leaned on her car for a moment, savouring the sun and the silence and wondering if it was really necessary to stop at Morrisons. She didn’t think her ears could take it.
Movement across the car park caught her eye, and she looked around to see Len slouching his way along from the direction of the hall. He looked rumpled and mostly asleep still, which she imagined he would if he’d slept all through lunch. She hesitated, then tucked her hands into her pockets and let her shoulders relax as she strolled across the tarmac to intercept him.
“Len, isn’t it?” she said, smiling up at him.
He looked at her, then grunted and nodded, continuing toward his car. “Alice Martin, temporary representative for Toot Hansell.”
“That’s the one.” She fell into step with him. “Hardly thrilling, these meetings.”
“Nup.”
“You know, except for Thomas dying.”
He glanced at her, fishing his keys out of his pocket. “I wouldn’t call that thrilling. More unfortunate.”
“Quite.” She nodded, as if thinking about it, and looked up at the sky. “You know him well?”
“Not outside the council.”
“You think he was working on anything dodgy?”
He leaned against his car, following her gaze up into the high blue of the sky. “Lot of questions.”
“First day. One wants to know what one’s getting into.”
He smiled at that. “Read the minutes.”
“Is everything in the minutes?”
There was a pause, then Len said, “Everything you need to know.”
“So not actually everything.”
“Alice,” he said, the word almost a sigh, “you’re not here for long. Just make things easy on yourself. Come to the meetings, have a brew and a bit of cake, then go home. It’s all you need to do.”
“What if I decide to stay?”
“The council can be a very easy place to be if you just get along. Very rewarding, even. Or you can make it very hard for yourself.”
“Is that what I’m doing now?”
“You’re heading that way.” He beeped the car open.
“Nice Range Rover.” It was. Brand new, a glossy British racing green with gleaming alloys. It looked like it had the sort of engine that made her hands itch.
“Thanks.” He opened the door and got in. “Just get along, Alice. It’s easier on everyone.” He closed the door firmly, and Alice stepped back as he started the engine, giving him a friendly little wave as he backed out of the parking space and headed off. It really was a very nice car. She thought about Angela Pearson, who had been very committed and passionate about protecting Toot Hansell, and who also spent an inordinate amount of time clipping coupons from fliers and driving across half of Yorkshire spending more money on fuel than she was saving on the deals she hunted down. Angela, who had up and headed off on a world cruise which she was unlikely to have got on coupons. Alice wondered if any of the other councillors had nice new cars. She’d have to remember to check next week. Or, even better … She pulled out her phone as she wandered back to her car and pulled the detective inspector’s number up. Her thumb hovered over the call icon as she considered it. She didn’t exactly have anything concrete. So one person had a new car, and some indeterminate number of others were off on fancy holidays. And who knew if they were even fancy? You could go anywhere on a package holiday these days.
She hit the lock button instead and put the phone back in her bag. The last thing she needed was DI Adams accusing her of getting involved in an investigation when she hadn’t even got started. No, she’d wait until she had something a little more concrete before she went to the inspectors. And she knew where she wanted to start next.
As much as she wanted to drive straight home, she went to Thomas and Bryan’s pub first, parking in the empty car park and crunching across the gravel to ring the bell by the kitchen entrance. The grass was neatly cut in the garden, and the hanging baskets tumbled flowers from every corner of the building, but the big chairs and benches were devoid of cushions and life, and there were crates of bottled beer and wine stacked by the door with an invoice stuck to them. She pulled it off as she waited, noting that none of the delivery seemed to be missing as yet. Even in Toot Hansell, it was a bit of a temptation leaving it all outside like this.
She rang the bell again, and this time she heard reluctant footsteps shuffling to the door. Locks rolled, and Bryan peered out at her, his face red and blotchy.
“Hello, dear,” she said. “I’m so sorry to disturb you. You must have had just everyone coming by this week.”
He nodded, but stepped back from the door. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Oh no. I don’t want to bother you.”
“It’s no bother. It’s all I seem to be doing. Drinking tea and crying.”
“Ah.” She patted his shoulder, not quite sure how to respond, and barely held back a squeak of alarm as he hugged her, his face heavy and hot on her shoulder.
“I can’t believe he’s gone!” Bryan wailed. “It’s not possible!”
Alice rubbed his back gingerly. From the smell of him, he’d been drinking more than tea. Not that she blamed him, but still. “I can see how you must feel that way.”
“I keep thinking he’ll come in the door from one of his stupid council meetings any minute!”
“Ah, yes.” His tears were wetting her shoulder, and it was all rather distasteful. She should have brought Miriam. Miriam was much better at this sort of thing. “Come on. Let’s sit down and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.”
“But I was going to make you one.” Bryan straightened up and wiped his nose, snuffling noisily. Alice decided her blouse was going straight in the wash when she got home.
“Let me do it. You just sit down. Come along.” She ushered him ahead of her into the shuttered pub, and decided that, despite his state, whisky would probably be better. For both of them.
8
Miriam
Miriam hurried around the pub and let herself in the back door, hoping nothing awful had happened. The text from Alice had been even terser than usual – it just said, At pub come quick. Oh, what could have happened? She hoped Bryan hadn’t done anything foolish, like getting drunk and falling down the stairs. Not that the getting drunk part was necessarily foolish, not with what he was going through, but he’d be better to remain downstairs if he was going to do that sort of thing. Oh, but what if someone had been after both Bryan and Thomas? What if it was some sort of pub warfare? She paused at the door between the kitchen and the pub, preparing herself for the worst, and pushed through into the dim-lit room beyond.
For a moment she couldn’t see anyone at all, then her eyes adjusted to the shadows after the bright afternoon outside, and the sound of muffled sobbing drew her to one of the big sofas in front of the unlit fireplace. Alice was sitting in it with her back stiff and a glass resting on the table in front of her. The sobs were coming from somewhere in the region of her lap, and Miriam crept closer, unsure whether to say something or not.
She stepped on a creaky floorboard as she passed the bar, and Alice craned around to see her.
“Miriam,” she said, the relief unmistakable in her voice.
“Is … is everything alright?”
“Not really.” Alice looked down at her lap as a fresh gust of sobbing broke out, and Miriam inched her way around the chair to see Bryan with his head buried in a cushion that Alice had balanced on her knees.
“Um. What should I do?” Miriam asked.
Alice patted Bryan’s head awkwardly, the way someone scared of dogs pats a very persistent Labrador. “If I knew that I wouldn’t have had to call you. More whisky, perhaps?”
Miriam looked at the bottle on the table and leaned over to sniff Bryan. “No, rather the opposite, I should say.”
“Well, please do something, Miriam. My leg’s going to sleep.”
Alice’s voice had a strained note to it, and Miriam tried not to feel a very teeny bit smug. Alice was always so good at everything. But then, she realised, as she hurried around the sofa to crouch in front of Bryan, calming crying men didn’t really rank that highly on valuable life skills. Or maybe it did. Maybe not enough people were good at it, just as not enough men were good at crying. She placed a hand on Bryan’s neck and said softly, “Bryan? Sit up for me a moment, dear.”
Bryan turned his face out of the pillow and snuffled at her. “He’s gone.”
“I know.” She wasn’t surprised to find her own tears sneaking up on her. “And it’s okay to be sad, and it’s okay to cry – it’s more than okay – but Alice’s leg’s starting to cramp.”
“Oh.” Bryan wiped his face and sat up. “I’m sorry. I’m a mess.”
Alice stood up and gave a little stretch, a look of enormous relief on her face. “I’ll put the kettle on,” she said, and almost jogged out of the room. Miriam didn’t think her leg looked very asleep at all.
Miriam took Alice’s place next to Bryan and folded her hand over his. “When did you last eat?”
He shrugged, reaching for the whisky bottle. Miriam moved it away.
“We’ll get you some food,” she said. “Then I think a good sleep is in order.”
He looked at her, then down at his crumpled shirt. “I suppose.”
“Do you have any family coming to stay?”
“My sister. Not until tomorrow, though. She couldn’t get away.”
“Well, then. That means you’ve got tonight to get organised.” Miriam got up, still holding his hand, and pulled him up with her. “Now how about you have a quick shower while I get you a bite to eat?”
He sniffled. “A shower does sound good.”
“There we are, then. Deciding to do it is the hardest part.” She turned him around and guided him to the door marked Private. “Do you want me to come start it for you?”
He wiped his eyes, and gave her a reluctant smile. “I’m grieving, not helpless.”
“Sometimes it can feel like the same thing.” She watched him wander unsteadily through the door, then went to find Alice.
Alice was sorting through a mountain of Tupperware in the pub kitchen, the colours glaring lime greens and yellows against the stark stainless of the worktops and polished cabinets.
“Should they be in the fridge?” Miriam asked.
“No, they all seem to be cakes and things,” Alice said, opening yet another and setting it aside. “There’s more in there already, anyway.”
“Really?” Miriam opened the double doors on the big commercial fridge and found multicoloured containers shoved in higgledy-piggledy around crates of vegetables and jars of conserves, and balancing on massive tubs of cream and spread. “Ooh. There’s even more than when the vicar died.”
“Well, I think rather more people came to the pub than the church,” Alice pointed out, just as the kettle clicked off. “Tea?”
“Yes, please. Bryan’s gone to have a shower.”
“Well done, Miriam.”
“That’s alright.” Miriam watched Alice topping three mugs off with boiling water. “What were you doing here, anyway?”
Alice sighed. “I wanted to find out if Thomas had mentioned anything about the council. Anything that wouldn’t have been on the minutes.”
“It’s barely been a week, Alice.”
“Yes, well. I realise now that I might have been a bit premature.” She fished the teabags out. “But one does have to return to real life at some point.”
“But everyone has a different point.” Miriam started hunting through the Tupperware. “Do you think any of these are any good?”
“The ones that were on top are to the left. I think the others might be a bit old.”
“Ugh. Yes.” Miriam had opened a box of carrot cake that was forming its own ecosystem in the bottom of the tub. “I think we might need to do some clearing out.”
Alice handed her a tea. “That’s a very good idea.”
By the time Bryan came downstairs the Tupperware mountain had, for the most part, made its way from the counter to the sink, and Miriam had lugged a bag full of dubious (as well as beyond dubious) food out to the bins. Alice had put a cottage pie in the oven, and the kitchen smelt of gravy and potato and comfort.
“Oh no,” he said, hesitating in the door. “You didn’t have to clean up!”
“It’s quite alright,” Alice said. “You sit down and I’ll bring a cup of tea through in a minute.”
“I can’t.” He picked up a tea towel and started drying the Tupperware. “Let me get these done, at least.”
“If you want.” Alice went back to clearing sprouting vegetables out of the fridge, and Miriam smiled at Bryan, her arms soapy up to the elbows. Commercial sinks were terribly deep, and she thought she might have got less wet if she’d just climbed in.
“Are you feeling a little better?”
“A little. I’m terribly embarrassed, though. I’m sorry, Alice. I didn’t think anyone would come by today. The whole village seems to have been by over the last few days, and the staff don’t start again until tomorrow, so I just thought … you know. Kind of indulgent, I guess.”
“Not at all,” Miriam said firmly. “Very sensible of you to take some time for yourself.”
“And don’t be embarrassed on my account,” Alice said, handing Miriam a crate with the remnants of squished tomatoes still clinging to the bottom. “We all have our lows.”
Miriam wondered if Alice did indeed have any such thing, but she kept that thought to herself and concentrated on getting the tomato seeds out of the ribs in the crate.
“Please don’t worry about those,” Bryan said, dropping the tea towel to take a bag of rubbish from Alice. “Really! The staff’ll be back tomorrow, and we’ll tackle it all together.”
“Nonsense,” Alice said. “We’re almost done.”
“Well,” he waved his hands vaguely. “What can I do to repay you?”
“There’s no need,” Miriam said. “It’s just what you do, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” Bryan asked. “I mean, bringing food, yes. But this?”
“Of course it is.” Alice gave him another one of those awkward arm pats. “Now take that outside and I’ll plate you up some cottage pie. It looks excellent.”
Bryan pottered obediently out the door, and Miriam frowned at Alice. “You’re not still going to ask him?”
“Of course I am. It’ll do him good to be doing something toward catching his husband’s killer.”
Which rather confirmed for Miriam that Alice was not as familiar with lows as she made out, but she just set the crate to drain and put the kettle on again. She felt it was too early for cottage pie, but she’d spotted some shortbread biscuits that looked very like Rose’s, and it was always the right time for them.
They sat at one of the old wooden tables in the pub, and the cottage pie smelt so good Miriam almost revised her opinion that 4 p.m. was too early for dinner. Bryan took the first bite tentatively, but by the time he’d eaten quarter of the plate he seemed to have rediscovered his appetite. His cheeks had lost their hectic colour, and he was smiling as Miriam recounted a problem she’d been having with an Etsy client.
“So she wanted to buy fifty boats, but claimed they were all for gifts! And she wanted a sixty percent discount, so it was obvious she wanted to resell them.”
“A victim of your own success, Miriam,” Alice said.
“Well, it’s hardly me,” she began, then spluttered on her tea.
“Do you have a business partner?” Bryan asked. “You said you didn’t make the baubles yourself when we bought ours.” There were eight of them drifting sedately around the pub, fine-petalled flowers lit from within by a flame that burned cold and never went out unless you closed the flower up again. Miriam had sold Bryan and Thomas twelve last Christmas, bu
t after four had been liberated during the busier Christmas services they’d tethered the rest permanently to the heavy wooden beams that ran through the building.
“Um, yes. Business partner. That’s it,” Miriam managed.
“Not in the village then?”
“No, he’s, um—”
“From abroad,” Alice said. “That’s where he gets the unusual material from.”
“Oh.” Bryan took another forkful of mash, doused liberally in brown sauce, and Miriam slumped into her chair. She had to remember not to talk too easily about the bauble business. Dragons seemed such an everyday occurrence these days that she sometimes forgot not everyone knew about them. Never mind talking cats and invisible dogs and bottomless ponds. She gulped tea and helped herself to another shortbread biscuit. But really, such things were easier to deal with than Investigations. Even the goblins were better than that.
“Bryan,” Alice said, folding her hands on the table (Miriam took a moment to wonder how her friend’s nails stayed so neat and clean with all the gardening she did. Her own had a permanent rim of earth under the nail, no matter how hard she scrubbed). “I’ve stepped into Thomas’ place on the council, just to keep an eye on things.”
“Oh. Yes. That’s … well, that’s quite right, of course. You’ll be very good at it.” Bryan looked at his plate as if it had suddenly snapped at him.
“Well, it won’t be permanent, but we do have to make sure all his hard work to support the village is continued.”
“Yes. Yes, you’re right.” Bryan looked up at her and gave a very small smile, more willpower than feeling. “He cared very much about this place.”
Alice reached across the table and put her hand on Bryan’s with much more confidence than she had earlier. “We all do, dear. So I need to ask – did Thomas mention anything about the council that maybe wouldn’t be in the minutes? Gossip about the members? Any problems? Anything that might help me do his job better?”
Bryan put his fork down and pushed his plate away with his free hand. “The police already asked me about any clashes on the council.”