I awoke the next morning to find some comfort in the offing. Nothing-meaning Georges-was going to persuade me to participate in that afternoon’s archery contest. A half hour later, I informed Mrs. Malloy of this decision on meeting her in the hall. I was wearing my outdoor jacket-the weather having looked sufficiently dull to suggest the possibility of rain-and was going out for a prowl around the village.
“Well, don’t make a week of it, Mrs. H!” She eyed me through lashes given a furry application of mascara, which brought into lurid play the neon eye shadow, brick red rouge, and purple lipstick. Whatever her despondency of last evening, she had her war paint on today. “You owe it to me to be there to watch, and don’t go denying it. Who got me reading them silly romance novels? And who’s going to cheer me on to a bull’s-eye if you don’t? Won’t be Mr. H, he’ll be inside busy preparing a spread for those as feels like a little something to celebrate the winner. Which I’m not saying will be me, seeing as the Bible says boasters will taste the bitter ashes of despair and wallow in the welter that is the land of Woebegone.”
Although I can’t claim to be a biblical scholar, this sounded more like Doris McCrackle to me, but I did promise to return to witness the event.
“However, don’t expect me to stay if you’re wearing a Robin Hood hat and calling people Friar Tuck, Maid Marion, and Little John.”
“No need to make jokes, Mrs. H!”
I reminded her that I’m always nastiest at dawn, which to me includes nine in the morning, asked her to tell Ben I would be gone with luck for the entire morning, and set off for Grimkirk. After not much wandering down the high street, I came upon a café with an overtly ye olde worlde exterior that suggested more than prepackaged sandwiches and instant coffee. Over very satisfactory bacon, sausage, fried tomatoes, and cups of tea that helped ease the memory Mrs. Foot’s tepidly nasty brew, I again allowed my thoughts to wander down dark alleys. The only sanguinity I could arrive at was that if Mrs. Malloy and I were alone in our suspicions that Suzanne Varney’s death had been engineered, no immediate danger appeared to loom. I pictured myself marching into the police station and pouring out my concerns to the man or woman at the desk and the winking side glance directed at a cohort.
I killed-such an unfortunate word under the circumstances-the next half hour wandering in and out of shops, avoiding the sweetshop on principle. On the brink of buying a couple of finger puppets for Abbey and Rose at the Jack and Jill’s, I reached into my jacket pocket for my purse and felt the piece of plastic I had taken from Thumper when he returned from his excursion into the ravine. The memory was so achingly poignant that I left the puppets on the counter and set off in the direction of Tommy Rowley’s house. What harm would there be in asking Mrs. Spuds if she knew how Thumper had settled back with the Dawkinses? Besides, a longer walk would revive the appetite presently sated by the kind of breakfast I ate at home only on weekends. I planned to stop for lunch before my return to Mucklesfeld and a possible attempt at ensnarement by Georges. Turning onto the long drive off the leafy lane, I wondered if Monsieur Malevolent had hoped that yesterday’s challenge would cause one or both of the more timid contestants to follow Wanda Smiley’s example and flee Mucklesfeld. I doubted he could have guessed that the lure of a dance floor for Molly, and Livonia’s burgeoning feelings for Tommy, had enabled them to withstand all he had dragged out of his sleeve thus far.
I found Tommy prowling around the flowerbeds at the front of the house and explained that although very pleased to see him, it was Mrs. Spuds I had come to see, telling him why.
“She’s gone down to the butcher’s, always does on a Monday. Talked about lamb chops for dinner, very nicely she does them, too, makes the mint sauce herself, famous for it. But you should see her this afternoon, if that helps; she’s planning on going with me to watch the archery contest. Imagine one being held again at Mucklesfeld after all these years; of course there’s no telling if Giles would have been pleased or not. There was no reading him at all during the last twenty years.” Finally drawing a much-needed breath, he stood staring at me in awkward schoolboy fashion. That he was aware he’d been babbling, I doubted. Some strong emotion had him by the throat, forcing a series of gulps as he now looked pleadingly at me.
“Miss Mayberry… Livonia… how is she? Last night in bed, I remembered the skeleton I loaned Georges LeBois. I’m afraid I didn’t think much about it at the time, not then being acquainted with any of the contestants. It seemed a harmless enough prank, since I’m given to understand that a show like Here Comes the Bride must have some scary moments; it’s why I never watch that sort of program. But this seemed mild after someone told me they’d watched one where the contestants had to eat slugs and…”
“That would have been a straight survival show; this one is a mix of romance, if you can call it that, and life’s nitty-gritty.” I studied the weeping willow. “Livonia did seem a little upset at the thought of your lending the skeleton, but I don’t think she will hold it against you if you want to be her… friend.”
“A friend! Dear Mrs. Haskell, my feelings for her go so much deeper! But would one so lovely…” he went on in this vein at such length that I couldn’t not help wondering how much of his reading was confined to medical journals, but he was a dear man-or I was prepared to assume he was, so I listened, made sympathetic noises, was tempted to pat him on the head and tell him he was a good boy, and tried not to look relieved when he wound down. I didn’t mention lunch for fear he would invite me in and offer me a Marmite sandwich while continuing to wax rhapsodic about Livonia. I could have told him about every quivering breath she took, but a perennial schoolboy had to grow up sometime and do his own finding out.
Remembering his providing the tablets that had cured my headache, I wished him well before bidding him a firmly motherly goodbye.
The weather had now turned sufficiently chill to make me glad of my jacket, and thinking that another decent cup of tea would be welcome, I returned to the same café. Shepherd’s pie sounded good and just right for a Monday that had seen said meal served up in many an English household when what was left of Sunday’s joint wasn’t sufficient to be served cold.
The place was crowded, and I was joined at the table for two by a woman in a pink wooly hat and beige raincoat who proceeded to surround her legs and mine with shopping bags that should have needed six arms to carry them. She very kindly told me the haddock would have been a better choice, and then seemed to feel she owed me her life history, which I would have reveled in at any other time. The son-in-law with the ring through his eyebrow who’d never worked a day since the first kiddy was born, and them all three of them such sweet little things, though it was shame Emma-just four as of last Wednesday-every now and then showed signs of a temper that had to come from her other granny who’d had trouble with all of her neighbors going back years, but of course it did no good saying anything…
The waitress, rushed off her feet, was a little slow bringing out our meals, so to show her I hadn’t been in any rush, I ordered the treacle tart and coffee, heard about Mrs. Pink Wooly Hat’s other daughter-the one who’d never given a moment’s worry, except that she did keep changing jobs, and although it couldn’t be said she was living above her means…” Sneaking a look at my watch, I discovered it was a quarter to two, fifteen minutes before the archery contest was due to start. And start on time I knew it would. One of those unpleasant rules of life is that nothing starts late when you hope it will. Also the contestants would be galvanized to punctuality either in the hope of gaining points for themselves or because of a growing team spirit.