Today, Mumblesby was a village rescued and transformed. The church boasted a congregation once more, albeit a small one; the inn, a merry company (it had been re-named the Barleybird). Most of the cottages had been rebuilt and enlarged, some quite extravagantly. The millhouse was a restaurant. The primitive little school on the corner of Church Lane had become Gallery Ganby, where one could scarcely swing a chequebook without knocking down a spinning wheel or a warming pan. As for Mumblesby Manor, in 1960 as derelict as the squirearchy whose horses, dogs and women it once had housed, Rich Dick Loughburys money and the fancifulness of his builder—a Mr Ned Snell, cousin of the deputy town clerk of Flaxborough—had restored the fabric and embellished it with enough bows and bottle-glass to make it look like a Hollywood set for Pride and Prejudice.
The transfiguration of Mumblesby was, not unnaturally, the topic of conversation between Miss Lucy Teatime and her business associate, Mr Edgar Harrington, when their motor car drew into the village market place and halted facing the house of the deceased solicitor. They did not alight immediately, but sat at ease, gazing at the pristine brickwork, the flawless white paint, the elegant little skirt of railing before the front door.
“It is a saddening thought,” said Miss Teatime, “that most of these changes have come about in what I suppose I am in the habit of calling ‘my time’.”
“Since you came here from London, you mean?”
“Do you know, Edgar, it is all of fourteen years.” She turned to him, her eyes suddenly wide.
“I don’t believe it.”
“True, alas. I emigrated, as one might say, in 1967.”
Mr Harrington seemed to be doing a sum, but all he said was: “Harrods.”
The far-away look in Miss Teatimes eyes faltered, but only for a second. “I, too, have known bereavement,” she murmured.
“Uncle Macnamara?” suggested Mr Harrington, with every indication of concern. She made no reply. “But he is, ah, with us again now, surely?” he persisted, gently.
“Perhaps we should make our presence known at the house of mourning,” suggested Miss Teatime, removing the key from the ignition. At once, her companion left the car and was opening her door before she could put the key in her handbag.
She gave a little smile of gratification. “What a nice mover you are, Edgar.”
Mr Harrington lightly supported her elbow until she stood on the broad-paved market place. The support was a courtesy but in no degree a requirement. Miss Teatime, in her own, slightly old-world way, was a nice mover too, even if she entertained private doubts of her capacity these days to outdistance a determined store detective.
They walked to the front door. Miss Teatime glanced at a squat, not very clean black Ford van parked a few yards away. “Oh, dear—tradesmen,” she said, and looked for a bell push.
There was none. Choice lay between a laurel-wreath knocker in forged iron and, suspended from a little gallows at the side of the door, a brass stable bell. Edgar briskly wielded the knocker.
It was the owner of the van who opened the door.
“Yes?” whispered Mr Bradlaw. He was in full kit. In the breast pocket of the cutaway coat were his folded rule and, tucked beside it, a pair of thin black cotton gloves.
Miss Teatime leaned confidentially towards him. “Callers,” she breathed. “Old acquaintance. Pay respect.” A wisp of handkerchief hovered a moment by the corner of her mouth. Mr Bradlaw quite liked the suggestion of fragrance that reached him. He did not know that it was called Liaison plus tard.
After brief consideration, the undertaker made a movement with his head indicative of inner rooms. “You know Mr Loughbury’s, er...” (he was whispering still) “his...you know the lady, do you?”
Miss Teatime allowed a watery smile to break through her grief. “I believe that to understand is to know,” she said. “Don’t you?”
Before Mr Bradlaw could think of a reply adequate to such profundity, he realized that the lady and gentleman had both stepped past him into the house.
“Who’s that?” A woman’s voice, not far off, cheery and with a certain roughness. Youngish. Decidedly local accent.
Mr Bradlaw felt the back of his head with full palm, as if deciding whether it was ripe enough. He looked at Miss Teatime. “You’d better go through,” he whispered.
The coffin was the first thing they saw. Set upon draped trestles in the centre of the big, light room, it dominated everything else. Not for the first time, Miss Teatime wondered at the sheer bulk of what Mr Bradlaw called, almost affectionately, one of his “overcoats”. One expected something about the length and girth of its occupant with just a bit added on so as not to look mean. In the event, the thing was overpowering—not so much a box as a blockhouse. Why so deep! All that wood incongruously new-looking, unnaturally glossy...rather like toffee...
“Have you come to see him?”
The question was put flatly but with a hint of shyness. A girl with slight physique and rather dingy clothes was standing by an open cabinet at the far side of the room.
“I’m sorry?” Mr Harrington assumed an expression of anxiety to please, tempered by hardness of hearing. Miss Teatime took over. “I rather think that will not be necessary, my dear,” she said.
The girl shrugged. She had thin, but not weak shoulders. The arms, too, were thin, more so than the wrists promised; they, like the ankles disclosed by ragged grey flannel slacks, had been hardened and thickened by work.
She came nearer. An open, fresh-complexioned face; straight, light hair, randomly brushed; narrow nose and pale lips; eyes grey, interested, bold and wary at the same time. Narrow also the lively neck. Age somewhere between thirty-five and forty. Miss Teatime saw a girl; Edgar Harrington a woman.
“You can have a look if you want,” the girl offered again. “Nab won’t mind. I mean, if you’re relations...” Bradlaw, who had followed them in, stepped past them busily. Suddenly there was a screwdriver in his hand.
Miss Teatime shook her head. She touched his arm. “Oh, no, it is most kind of you, but...”—she groped for the prescribed formula—“...but we would rather remember him as he was.”
The girl glanced quickly from one to another. She gave her nose a rabbit-twitch of puzzlement. “Hell, he’s not gone off, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Miss Teatime held out her hand. The girl seized it forthrightly. Her smile prevailed over nervousness; it was diffident, boyish. She heard out the introductions and said: “I’m Mrs Loughbury. Zoe. Well, Zoe Claypole, actually. But Dick had a sort of special licence thing going.” She made a mock-posh face at Bradlaw. “The neighbours, don’t you know.”
Mr Bradlaw took his leave after rehearsing the rest of the day’s programme in solemn undertone. Zoe watched the departure of his van. It made a lot of noise and a lot of smoke and seemed to be difficult to steer.