This stern directive had cut down petty pilfering considerably but there was still a certain amount of leakage. Mr. Boast, who watched his young customers as would a hawk a fledgling dove, could not understand this. It never occurred to him or Doreen, his “good lady wife,” that the culprits might be grown up.
The shop was very Tudory. The price tickets were written in Olde English, as was the notice behind the tilclass="underline" Pray Do Not Ask For Credit As Ye Refusal Oft Offends. Originally all the s’s had been f’s which was, as Mr. Boast tirelessly explained, authentically correct. But no one was impressed by this conceit. Customers kept winking and asking for “a pound of foffages” and “fome tomato foup” so, after a while, Nigel and Doreen reluctantly reverted to more contemporary Elizabethan.
Cubby Dawlish, who was encouraged by Mrs. Molfrey to sell surplus produce from her garden to eke out his pension, came in around half past ten with several pounds of broad beans. Handing over the laden wooden tray, Cubby forbore to haggle over the going rate, even though he was aware the eventual mark-up would probably be three times as much.
While the beans were being weighed, Cubby looked about him at the whitewashed walls and wooden beams. The latter, though artificial, were nothing like as false as the beam in Mr. Boast’s eye as he offered ten pence a pound, there being a glut at the moment. There was always a glut. Or an unexpected surplus. Cubby sometimes thought if he came in during the depths of winter with freshly picked raspberries some miraculously cheap source of such a delicacy would only that second have franchised itself to Ostlers.
While putting the coins in his pocket and commenting pleasantly on the sweet and balmy weather, he was asked, in his capacity as a very near neighbour, if he knew how Mrs. Hollingsworth’s mother was prospering after her stroke.
Cubby begged the shopkeeper’s pardon and, when the question had been repeated, asked if it was in fact the case that Mrs. Hollingsworth’s “sick relative” was, in fact, her mother.
“Verily,” replied Mr. Boast who often slipped into high Tudor, especially after a session with the Civil War Society. “Alan told the vicar in person.”
After declining to spend his earnings on some reduced Jamaica ginger cake, Cubby made his way back to Arcadia where his first task was to make a cup of banana-flavoured mineral-enriched Vita Life for Elfrida’s elevenses. Whilst getting out the remains of the lemon drizzle, he passed on this snippet of information. She stared at him for a long moment in complete surprise.
“This is most disturbing, Cubby.”
“Why is that, my love?”
“Simone doesn’t have a mother.”
“Doesn’t ...” He stood, a scoop of the vitamin supplement tilted near the opalescent beaker.
“You’re spilling some.”
“Sorry.” He sprinkled in the rest of the powder. “How do you know?”
“It’s all over the draining board.”
“I mean,” Cubby blew the spillage into the sink, “about Mrs. Hollingsworth senior.”
“Simone told me herself. I was in the greenhouse a few weeks ago dividing some narcissi and she came wandering by. You know what she was like, poor girl. Always looking for something to do.” Mrs. Molfrey spoke in the uncomprehending tones of someone who had so far been vouchsafed eighty-three years and had not found them nearly long enough to pack in all that she wanted to do.
“More to make conversation, I suspect, than out of real interest, she asked what I was about. When I explained, she said narcissi had always been her mother’s favourite. And that she—Simone, that is—had ordered a wreath, a harp I think it was, made entirely of Pheasant’s Eye, on the occasion of her mother’s funeral.”
“How extraordinary.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I should have thought a harp entirely suitable under the circumstances.”
“I meant—”
But Elfrida was retreating to her favourite armchair. Cubby followed, carrying her drink and his own, a mid-morning pick-me-up of elderflower cordial, freshly squeezed lemon and English clover honey.
“So,” said Elfrida as she rested her thin, trembly shanks against the embroidered unicorns and dragons and roses with golden thorns, “Alan Hollingsworth has been deliberately lying. Hmm.”
Cubby put the beaker carefully into Elfrida’s hand, gently pressing her fingers round the glass, then sat down himself in a large, Chinese basket chair. He knew what was coming and the pointlessness of attempting any diversion.
“This would explain why she went the long way round on the bus and took no luggage. After all, even for the briefest of visits, one hurls some cologne and a few unmentionables into a Gladstone. There was no journey, as such, at all. She was simply going into Causton, either to shop or meet someone. So where is she now?” Elfrida paused for breath and a swig of her drink. “It’s all very slippery-snakery.”
“But not necessarily sinister, dear.” Cubby hesitated, unsure how to continue. The truth of the matter was that this sort of situation was not unfamiliar. Ever since he had persuaded Elfrida to buy a television set almost five years ago she had been passionately addicted to all programmes, whether fictional or no, which had even the most slender connection with crime. Her dearest wish was to assist the police with their inquiries and if she had so far failed to do so it was certainly not for want of trying. Cubby had had great difficulty, after Elfrida’s last foray, in saving her from an assault charge.
It had all come about after she had seen an Identikit portrait on Crimewatch and became convinced that the miscreant, who had held up a building society with a sawn-off shotgun, was none other than Fawcett Green’s relief Christmas postman. She had been dissuaded with great difficulty from contacting the authorities and had agreed only on the condition that Cubby be present at the cottage from that day onwards at delivery time.
Once, he had been a few minutes late. Elfrida, quaking with panic, had armed herself with a broom handle. When the postman attempted to insert tidings of comfort and joy into the letter box, she had thrust the handle violently back. Emerging from his caravan, Cubby had discovered the poor man staggering blindly round the garden, bent double in agony.
“The quinces are ripening up well,” Cubby said now, very firmly. “Would you like me to make some lemon and japonica jelly?”
The attempt was futile as he knew it must be. Being firm with Elfrida was like speaking to someone in a completely alien language. She could hear that your voice had got rather louder than usual (providing her box was switched on) and that you were standing four square in a very sturdy sort of way. She just didn’t understand your problem.
“All this talk of jelly is by the by,” said Elfrida. “The point at issue surely is what we are going to do about Simone.”
“I don’t see why we have to get involved at all.”
“Bosh! Show some gumption, Dawlish.”
“What do you think we ought to do then?” asked Cubby, anticipating and dreading the reply.
“It’s plain as a pikestaff.”
“I was afraid it would be,” he sighed and put his cup down. “Righto. I’ll bike over to Ferne Bassett and—”
“Forget Ferne Bassett!” cried Elfrida. “Ferne Bassett is small potatoes. We’re almost certainly describing a serious crime here. Mark my words, that man has done away with his wife. And with calumny of such magnitude there’s little point in pussyfooting around with the infantry. It’s not the local boys in blue we’re after. It’s the top brass.”
“But Elfie—”
“On the blower hotsy totsy, Dawlish, and order a Hackney carriage.”