by Anne Morice
‘And I think you were wise.’
‘Good! Subject now closed.’
The coffee had arrived and while we were drinking it I said: ‘The only thing that bothers me is how far you’ll succeed in sticking to this sensible resolution. I have a suspicion that it takes more than a flock of sheep on a sunny morning to change one’s outlook on life and send all the built-in disciplines packing.’
‘This will be a new sort of discipline and I mean to have a damn good try.’
It was now beginning to sound more like a spiritual exercise than a pleasure trip and I was at a loss to understand how he expected to enjoy his holiday by turning it into a private battlefield. However, I accepted it as a passing phase in the early stages of unwinding and changed the subject:
‘They’re leaving now and Mr God has signed the bill without so much as a glance. How far would you say this has set him back?’
‘Quite a lot, judging by the à la carte. He wasn’t drinking wine himself, I noticed, but some of the others more than made up for that, notably your Mr Symington. Something between three and four hundred, I daresay.’
‘Oh, my goodness!’ I said, throwing a lot of horror and disgust into it, although in fact I was not displeased. It was a comfort to discover that Robin still had some way to go before he became so unlike himself as to fail to keep a critical eye on the behaviour of those around him.
(3)
Back in Numbers Two and Three, which were rapidly becoming our home and refuge, we debated for a while whether to work off the post-luncheon lethargy by going for a walk, or to surrender to it and collapse. Our physical and mental states making such decisions hard to arrive at, we agreed to toss for it. Robin flipped a coin in the air, but I cannot remember whether it came down heads or tails. I think we may both have been asleep before it fell to earth.
The next three hours provided a fine example of the snares that lie in the path of those attempting to break out of the routines which circumstances have imposed on them. Over the years, I have trained myself to drop in and out of cat naps and siestas, where and when I could. It has become second nature to me now, but things are different for Robin. He so rarely finds an opportunity to sleep in the afternoon that when he does so the alarm clock inside his head has a way of losing its bearings and concluding that it must be the middle of the night.
So, after two frustrating, wakeful hours, I decided not to waste any more of the holiday, but to set forth and explore the countryside on my own.
The lobby was deserted. No Verity behind the desk nor, I was thankful to see, an alsatian in front of it, so I availed myself of the opportunity to glance through the Visitors’ Book.
The most recent entry was Robin’s and no one else had checked in on that day, although a Mr and Mrs Fellowes had arrived on the Saturday before. I assumed them to be the elderly couple I had seen in the dining room, who had marked themselves out as residents by not waiting to be directed to their table. The entry above theirs was dated a week earlier.
This information was somewhat at odds with a remark of Louisa’s, for it hardly measured up to the accepted idea of a rush period. However, I concluded that we were now in the lull before the racing weekend storm and that Verity had been recruited in advance to be groomed for stardom.
It was also a disappointment to discover that the elderly couple were only plain Mr and Mrs. In the brief intervals between listening to Robin’s true, if grudging, confessions and keeping tabs on Mr God’s party, I had been able to spare a modicum of attention for the Fellowes and to play the guessing game about their relationship and background. The first had presented no difficulty because people who have been married for a long time often have a way of speaking to, while not looking at, each other, which had been the first give-away. The rest was harder to establish, but on the whole I had been inclined to put him down as a retired ambassador or governor-general. Although probably in this mid-seventies, he was tall, stately and upright, with snow-white hair and noble features, all of which made it easy to picture him taking the salute in his fancy dress on state occasions. Furthermore, his complexion, in contrast to the hair, indicated long sojourns in tropical climes. The fact that his wife had pale hair and a junket-coloured complexion did nothing to interfere with this image, because that is the unfair effect which the same tropical climes often do have on women. Also, although superficially unostentatious in every way, there was poise and self assurance in her bearing and I could just imagine her putting the junior diplomats’ wives in their places with the gentlest and most deadly of rebukes.
However, had my guess been right, a KBE must surely have been the least of the handles he would have acquired along the way, so, for want of better employment, I was setting myself to rearrange Mr Fellowes’s career for him, as I walked, by way of the french windows, on to a brick terrace, from where the garden sloped down to meld with the meadows stretching away into the distance.
I had reached the point of re-casting my hero as an old style explorer or anthropologist, setting up camp in the African swamps, with Mrs Fellowes treating the babies for colic and converting the cannibals to vegetarianism, when the train of thought was broken by the sight of another human being striding up the lawn towards me.
This was Verity and she had the alsatian on a leash, although, as they came nearer, the impression grew that the alsatian had Verity on a leash, for he was straining forward like a dog possessed and she appeared as helpless to restrain him as if he had been a tank in top gear. Since he was obviously making for the house, I could not understand why she did not drop the lead and let him get on with it, until it struck me that he might be making for me, in which case I had cause to be grateful to her.
‘Hallo, there!’ she said, when she had flopped into a basket chair and recovered some of her breath having, to my relief, hooked the lead round an iron table leg, leaving the alsatian on the other end of it. ‘Are you all right? Anything you need?’
‘No, thanks awfully, everything’s fine. I was bracing myself for a stroll round the garden.’
‘Oh, good! I saw you come out and the staff have a way of evaporating during the afternoon, so I thought I’d better dash up and do my stuff.’
‘How very kind of you! I’m sorry to have interrupted your walk.’
‘Oh well, you see, one of my jobs is to give this brute some exercise, when I can fit it in, but of course he didn’t fancy coming back when we’d hardly gone a hundred yards, so I put him on the lead and you saw what happened then? Almost went berserk. He really is retarded, that animal. Anyway, he’s had his lot for today. I’ve done my bit.’
‘I don’t imagine there are many receptionists who’d consider it their job to take him for walks at all. Your union must be slipping.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind, when he behaves himself. It’s an excuse to get out of doors and I need the exercise just as much as Fido here. You can’t let a dog with his IQ go roaming off on his own, with all those fat sheep just waiting to be chased. And Louisa and Jake haven’t time to do much about it. They’re rushed off their feet, as it is.’
‘Oh, are they?’ I asked, twisting my head round to glance at the deserted rooms behind me. ‘I was beginning to wonder if they’d evaporated too.’
‘Oh Lord, no. Lou’s taken the Land Rover into Chissingfield to pick up some compost Jake needs for the garden. They grow all their own vegetables, you know. It’s one of their proud boasts.’
‘Is that what he’s up to now? Hoeing the lettuce bed?’
‘No, actually, he’s restoring the summer house to its full glory. It’s down there, past the stables on the left, behind that great clump of rhododendrons. I don’t think you can see it from where you’re sitting, can you?’ she asked, springing up and stationing herself behind my chair. ‘No . . . well, that is, not if you’re sitting down, I imagine.’
‘I can just see a bit of roof, now that you’ve pointed it out,’ I told her, wondering why she was making so much of it.
‘If you�
��re going for a stroll, you could do worse than make that your objective. It’s really awfully charming and Jake would be glad of a chat to break the monotony. I wasn’t much use in that way. I did look in for a moment, but I couldn’t stop because my intuition told me that at any moment Towser would take it into his head to knock the tin of creosote over and start paddling his great paws in it.’
‘What’s his name really?’
‘Lupus. Known to some as Loopy. Not that he answers to either, I might say. Well, I mustn’t keep you from your walk. Your husband’s evaporated too, I take it?’
‘Yes, but I think he might be ready for a cup of tea by now, if you could organise it?’
‘Shall be done,’ she answered, stooping down to unhitch the lead. ‘You may depend on me.’
‘How’s it going?’ I asked from the doorway of the summer house, which was not so strikingly charming, after all. ‘Oh, sorry! Am I blocking your light?’
‘Not to worry, I’ve almost done now. Just got to finish undercoating this window and then I can leave it to dry out.’
I had been hoping to see what he looked like without his chefs uniform, and was disappointed to find him now wearing an overall over dungarees, an old felt beret stretched down over his ears and a pair of household gloves. I assumed that the purpose of all this protective clothing was to prevent him from smelling like a walking paint pot when he got to work on the fillet of beef and sauce béarnaise.
‘Is there anything you need?’ he asked.
‘Only to see how you’re getting on. Verity thought you might be in the mood for company.’
‘Yes, I saw her out there in the garden, at one point. Out on her rounds with old Loopy, I expect.’
‘That was the intention, but she’d only just started out when she saw me and came all the way back to see if there was anything I needed. I must say, you’re all very attentive.’
‘We aim to please,’ he said, attacking a blob of paint which had landed on the window pane.
‘And succeed, I imagine. Most people love to feel cosseted. I’m sure it pays off?’
‘We have our ups and downs, like everyone else, I suppose.’
‘Have you been in the business long?’
‘Not here at Mattingly. We only bought this place two years ago, when it was falling down from neglect, and spent about six months working on it before we opened.’
‘That was pretty good going, wasn’t it, if it was really in such a bad state?’
‘Well, luckily, the plumbing and wiring had been modernised a few years before. I imagine that’s when the owners ran out of money and had to sell up. Anyway, it meant that we were able to do most of it, decorating and conversion and so on, in our spare time. Still at it, actually, as you can see.’
‘Where were you before that?’
‘Little pub called the Weston Arms, on the outskirts of Chissingfield. That was another run down place.’
‘And did you do that up too?’
‘Not on anything like the same scale. It was only a tiny place. Attractive, in its way, but they’d had a succession of rotten landlords, including a couple of alcoholics, which is an occupational hazard in our line of business. Anyway, it was losing money, so the brewery sold it off as a free house, if you know what that means, and we stepped in.’
‘And transformed it into a going concern?’
‘We did pretty well, yes. We turned one of the bars into a restaurant and started serving lunch and dinner to the carriage trade. The word got round and there wasn’t any competition to speak of. In next to no time we were serving two sittings at dinner and packed out every night of the week.’
‘Must have been hard work?’
‘Yes, it was tough going, but we worked as a team and Lou took care of all the business end. That’s her strong suit.’
‘How long were you there?’
‘Couple of years. Good years they were too, in a way. Then this place came on the market. We were about ready to spread our wings, by then, and Lou’d always had dreams of taking on something really big and making it into a four star de luxe hotel. The pub was worth three times what we’d paid for it, so it seemed the right moment to move on.’
‘And it’s been a huge success, I’m told.’
‘Like I say, we have our ups and downs. For one thing, to run a place of this size you need staff and that brings problems we hadn’t had to deal with before. The horses take a lot of looking after, too. Still, we get by and Lou takes care of all the management side, among a lot of other things.’
‘And of course it must be an advantage to have stayed in a neighbourhood where you were so well known? I expect a lot of old faithfuls still rally round in your new splendour?’
‘Some do, but loyalty cuts both ways, you know. This is very up-market, compared to the last place, and lots of people prefer that cosy, informal atmosphere. Suits their pockets better too, in these hard times.’
He was now engaged in the task of cleaning brushes and replacing lids on the paint tins and, realising that my time was running out, I said:
‘I suppose you must have been in the thick of it when they had that murder in Chissingfield a few years ago?’
‘Oh, that! The race course murder, as the popular rags used to call it. Yes, it was quite soon after we took over the pub. Bit of a bonus, really. The public bar was packed out every night with people exchanging the latest rumours. Got us off to a good start, in a way. Was your husband concerned in that one?’
‘Yes, but he’d rather not think about it. One of his few failures, I’m sorry to say. As you probably remember, they never discovered who did it, although I bet a lot of people round here had their own ideas about that, didn’t they?’
‘Expect so. Can’t remember all that much about it now. Four years is a long time. Which reminds me: you wouldn’t happen to know what time it is now?’
‘Twenty to six.’
‘Then I’d better get moving. Thanks for dropping in. Enjoy your walk and don’t forget to let us . . .’
‘I won’t,’ I promised, before he could complete the tag line.
(4)
Robin was emerging from the shower, having drunk the tea, which Verity had brought up to him in person and, to my critical eye, appeared to be in a less aggressively relaxed mood than when I had last seen him.
‘Where did you go?’ he asked.
‘Only to the summer house and back.’
‘What’s special about the summer house?’
‘Nothing much, but there’s a lot going on there. In fact, you’ll be relieved to hear that you’re no longer in immediate danger of being urged to behave as nature intended you to. You may surrender to the joys of the pastoral scene and to repairing the ravages to your soul and I shall not complain. Dismiss all thoughts of getting and concentrate on spending.’
‘Thanks. What’s brought this on?’
‘I have stumbled on a little mystery of my own. Very prosaic, I’m afraid, but perhaps my feverish imagination will be able to twist it into something more sensational.’
‘Yes, well, you must tell me about it some time, but first I want to apologise for the bad tempered things I said at lunch. I didn’t mean half of them, but the fact is that when you started going on about the Chissingfield murder, I’d just had a most unpleasant shock and I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle it.’
‘What shocked you?’
‘I’d recognised someone. And that wasn’t the only thing to rock the boat either. I had begun to feel that the Furies were gathering.’
‘Someone in Mr God’s party?’
‘As a matter of fact, it was Jake. He was one of the people I interviewed.’
‘Are you sure, Robin? He didn’t seem to remember you.’
‘I wonder? I had the impression he was just as thrown as I was. Probably like me, better at faces than names, and I certainly haven’t forgotten his. Curiously enough, it was that outsize cap which clinched it. It had the effect of emphasising the long nos
e and chin, which is what I remember most clearly about him.’
‘It’s odd,’ I said, ‘but I hadn’t connected until now, but of course, you’re right, he must have recognised you. When I was talking to him in the summer house, I mentioned the murder and he asked me if you’d had anything to do with it. But when you booked our rooms you just gave your name and no other details, so it can only have been when he saw you in the dining room that he realised who you were. And, as you say, he did give the impression of being knocked all of a heap. Although he wouldn’t have any reason to feel alarmed at meeting you again, would he?’
‘None whatever, as far as I know. That’s mainly what fidgeted me. I saw the flash of recognition and I was waiting for him to say “Well, fancy meeting you!”, or something of the kind. After all, he was only one of scores of witnesses who had to be worked through in the early stages in his case, simply by virtue of his job, which brought him into contact with so many people in and around Chissingfield. But instead of behaving naturally, he looked guilty and uncomfortable.’
‘You may be making too much of it, you know. Perhaps he felt a bit of a fool trying to carry off his maitre d’hotel act with someone who’d known him as a humble publican. It’s not surprising that you should have jumped to the wrong conclusion, because it’s been so much on your mind just lately, but I daresay it’s only a vague memory to him. It was nearly four years ago, after all.’
‘No, it wasn’t. Not much more than two.’
‘Oh, are you sure?’
‘Of course I am. It’s not the kind of mistake I’d be likely to make.’
‘So what do you mean to do about it?’
‘Nothing whatever. There’s nothing I could, or wish to do about it. I was simply offering an excuse for my bad temper. I was annoyed with him and with myself and I took it out on you.’
‘Well, that’s very handsome of you, Robin, but you really shouldn’t blame yourself for feeling annoyed by the fact that someone from your unhappy past is now bobbing about, looking guilty and begging you to let him know if there is anything you need. It would be enough to get anyone down.’