Bowood House, like The Yew Tree, was not in the village of Four Ashes; with some other cottages —The Thistles, Rose Dene, Ladysmith, and Aleppo —it comprised a nameless hamlet on the village’s fringe. Four Ashes (one of the original trees still stood) had some local fame as a place of great charm, but the charm was all on the main road, Hogshill Street: in the market cross and the several antique shops with plates and prints in the windows; in the chemist’s, White’s, where in his first week Munday had bought a bottle of Friar’s Balsam for his cold; in Watkins’ Bakery, the two tea shops, the sweet shops, all severely old-fashioned; in Pines (“High-Class Groceries & Quality Vegetables”) which displayed in a glass case whole wheels of cheeses, and sold Stilton in stone jars, unusual spices, and freshly ground coffee; in Lloyd’s of Four Ashes, the men’s outfitter: and in the hotel, The White Hart, a former coaching inn, which retained the look of another century in its heavily rendered and whitewashed front, its archway and courtyard and mullioned windows. The church, St. Alban’s, on the crest of Hogshill Street, had a Norman font and some thirteenth-century stonework, and a vast yew tree in the cemetery which spread itself over the deeply pitted gravestones.
But Mrs. Seaton’s house was at the back of the village, in an unexpectedly crowded settlement of new and old terrace houses and cottages—the old ones leaning into the narrow street. There was a tiny pub, with a swinging sign, “The Eight Bells,” on one corner, and a low block of new council flats stood at the end of the street, a dead end, next to a coal yard.
“I had no idea the village was this big,” Emma said. She saw another street, packed with houses, running off Mrs. Seaton’s, and like Mrs. Seaton’s hidden from the main road.
“Funny little place,” said Munday. He knocked on the scarred door.
A boy of about ten opened the door. He wore an undershirt and pajama bottoms. He stared at Munday.
“Hello,” said Munday. “We’re looking for Mrs. Seaton.”
The boy shook his head. “Not here,” he said softly, and started to close the door.
“Hold on,” said Munday. “When will she be back?”
“She don’t live here.”
“Where does she live?”
Again the boy shook his head.
“What’s your name?” Munday asked.
“Peter Tuck.”
“Is your mother at home?”
The boy nodded, jerking his head forward.
“Tell her I’d like to have a word with her.”
The boy shut the door.
Munday whispered to Emma, “I think he’s a bit simple.”
The door opened. A middle-aged woman stood there with a baby on her hip. The woman’s fatigue looked like suspicion. The baby plucked at a button on her dress.
“Mrs. Tuck?”
“Yes.” She lifted the child and held it tightly to her shoulder, shielding herself with it.
“We’re looking for a Mrs. Seaton,” Munday said. “We were told she was at this address, and—”
“Over there,” said the woman. She pointed across the street at a house with a green door.
“Thanks very much,” said Munday. “We must have misheard the number.”
“Welcome,” said the woman, and shut the door. Munday was knocking on the green door when Emma said, “I didn’t mishear the number—she wrote it down. Look.” The penciled address was distinct on the scrap of paper.
An old lady answered the door. “What do you want?” she asked.
Munday told her.
“I’m Mrs. Seaton,” said the woman. She wore a frayed sweater—it was buttoned to her neck—and she carried a large wooden spoon.
“Perhaps a relative of yours,” said Munday. “Your son’s wife? You’re not the woman we’re looking for.”
“My children are dead. There’s only Sam.”
Munday laughed, but without pleasure. He said, “This is all very confusing.”
The woman looked closely at Munday. She said, “Are you from the Water Board?”
“No,” said Munday. He explained his errand and showed the woman the scrap of paper with the address written on it.
She said, “That’s over there.”
“They sent us over here.”
“I’m sorry,” said the woman. There was a cry from within the cottage, an old man’s voice cracking with impatience. The woman said to Munday, “Sam.”
“Is there any other family by the name of Seaton in the village?”
“Used to be. This was years ago. But they went to Australia.” The woman was closing the door. “Bye now—mind how you go.”
Munday said, “Are we losing our minds?”
Emma closed her eyes.
“Looks like we’re stuck with that Mrs. Branch,” he said.
Emma called her by her first name, Pauline; Munday called her “Branch,” and sometimes “Mrs. B.” She began work the week before Christmas, and her first chores were those hard ones, the neglected windows, the rugs that had lain unbeaten for over a month, the jumble of boots and walking sticks in the back passage that needed sorting out. Mrs. Branch had been nervous in the interview; occupied with housework she was calm, single-minded, but apt to overdo things. She washed the windows in the shed and she beat the hall carpet so hard she broke the rope on which it was suspended. Munday took an interest in her and watched her closely, but his unfriendly humor only bewildered her.
He saw that she carried envelopes of artificial sweetener in her handbag, for the tea she drank in the middle of the morning. She explained that she was dieting.
“Then you won’t want a lunch hour, will you,” said Munday, masking his irony with briskness.
“Sir?” Mrs Branch was uncertain. She gave Emma a slow puzzled look.
“Don’t pay any attention to him,” said Emma. “He’s joking.”
“I was wondering,” said Mrs. Branch, and seemed glad to return to scraping soot from the stovepipe.
She had a full round face and grew hot when she worked, and heavy arms, and when she sat she pushed her hands together, hugging herself with her elbows to hide her bulk. She wore high leather boots with her plain clothes, and eye make-up—green lids and black streaks on her plucked eyebrows. She said she was twenty-three, but she had the careworn movements and sighing obedience of a woman twice that age. After a day or two Munday knew her habits. She was noisy, and appeared bewildered when Munday called attention to her noise. She banged pots and slammed doors and dragged chairs back and forth on the hard kitchen floor. She walked through the house setting her feet down as if she were dropping bricks. Munday detested her boots and told Emma that she knew how to go up the wooden stairs on her heels. He said angrily, “Listen to her!” She played the radio and murmured to the music, and when she was vacuuming she turned the radio louder so that she could hear it over the racket of her cleaning. Munday, calling out “Branch!” put a stop to the radio, and he urged her to be quieter. She said, “Yes, Doctor” in the broad accent that Munday associated with ridicule.
But she was useful, she was of the village, a local. She brought them news; of deaths and accidents, of animals she had seen flattened on the road on her way to work. She was their only link with the village, so after the first few days Munday approached her with inquiries, about his stolen dagger and the mysterious Mrs. Seaton—but she said she couldn’t help him. She was cheerful and came each morning with a weather report; her predictions were usually accurate. Apart from her talk of the weather she said very litde.
Munday refused to eat with her, but he still attempted to engage her in conversation. She let it drop that she had been bom in Toller Porcorum. Munday said, “Tell me a little bit about it.” It was from Mrs. Branch that Munday learned the pronunciation of local place-names, Beaminster, Puncknowle, and Eype. And Munday often found himself (holding up a pair of secateurs or an axe from the shed) asking, “What do you call this?” Like the Africans whom he had also questioned in this way, she was at first suspicious of his interest in details of puzzling insignificance.