About the Author

GREG MOSSE is a ‘writer and encourager of writers’ and husband of internationally bestselling author, Kate Mosse. He has lived and worked in Paris, New York, Los Angeles and Madrid as an interpreter and translator, but grew up in rural south-west Sussex. In 2014, he founded the Criterion New Writing playwriting programme in the heart of the West End and, since then, has produced more than 25 of his own plays and musicals. His creative writing workshops are highly sought after at festivals at home and abroad. His first novel, The Coming Darkness, was published by Moonflower in 2022, followed in 2024 by The Coming Storm. Also published in 2024, Murder at the Fair is the fourth book in his successful cosy crime series featuring the charming and perceptive ‘fans’ favourite’ amateur sleuth, Maisie Cooper.

Also by the Author

The Maisie Cooper Mystery Series:

Murder at Church Lodge

Murder at Bunting Manor

Murder at the Theatre

The Alex Lamarque Trilogy (Moonflower):

The Coming Darkness

The Coming Storm

The Coming Fire

Secrets of the Labyrinth

Murder at the Fair

Greg Mosse

www.hodder.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2024 by Hodder & Stoughton Limited
An Hachette UK company

Copyright © Mosse Futures Ltd 2024

The right of Greg Mosse to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Cover photographs © Shutterstock

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

ebook ISBN 978 1 399 71523 2

Paperback ISBN 978 1 399 71524 9

Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

www.hodder.co.uk

For Ollie

Contents

About the Author

Also by the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Maisie’s Map of Bitling

Cast of Characters

Prologue

I Rowan: Signifying Strength in Solitude

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

II Oak: Signifying Thunder but also Wisdom, Patience & Trust

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

III Willow: Signifying Sadness, Mourning and also Rebirth

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

IV Hazel: Signifying Flexibility, Wisdom and Inspiration

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

V Blackthorn: Signifying Betrayal and Aggression, but also Protection

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Maisie’s map of Bitling

Cast of Characters

Chichester & Bunting

Maisie Cooper

Sergeant Jack Wingard of the Chichester police

Florence Wingard, Jack’s grandmother

Phyllis ‘Phyl’ Pascal, owner of Bunting Manor

Zoe Pascal, Phyl’s ward

Archie Close, Phyl’s farm manager

Mr Hume, manager of the Dolphin and Anchor Hotel

Mr Chitty of Chitty’s Cycles

Maurice Ryan, solicitor

Charity Clement, assistant to and wife of Maurice Ryan

In and around Bitling

Harold Farr, an elderly farm labourer fallen on hard times

Adam Farr, farm labourer, Harold’s nephew

Lady Catherine Peahorn, feudal landlord of Bitling village

Dilys Prime, Lady Catherine’s companion

Montague Meek, antiques dealer and insurance valuer

Sergeant William Dodd of the Chichester police

Edith Dodd, née Moore, William’s wife

Bill Dodd, butcher, their elder son

Micah Dodd, butcher, their younger son

Vaughan Quinn, vet

Miss Ada Strickland, spinster

Rayan Ramsi, owner of Ramsi’s Fish & Chips

Sara Ramsi, his sister

Jill Finch, infant school teacher

Fiona Grieve, infant school teacher

Arthur Tate, shopkeeper and ex-offender

Old Mr Littlegreen of Littlegreen Sawmill

Muriel Littlegreen, his older daughter

Timothy Littlegreen, his son and middle child

Linda Littlegreen, his younger daughter

Zachary Sawbridge, tenant farmer

Doctor Newman

Prologue

Bitling Fair was an extravaganza of woodland crafts, outdoor cooking, Morris dancing, cider and ale drinking, fiddle music and – usually – at least two or three dalliances unsanctioned by the bonds of matrimony. Tradition dictated that it should take place at the midsummer solstice and, for Christian communities, its importance was reinforced by the coincidence of the nativity of John the Baptist.

This was all very well but, unfortunately, tradition also dictated that the fair should find its home in the pretty but rundown village of East Bitling – not far from Framlington, where Maisie Cooper’s brother Stephen had been so callously murdered. And East Bitling was a feudal throwback, wholly owned by a minor Sussex aristocrat, populated by an entirely dependent community of what she doubtless thought of as her ‘serfs’.

Every door and every window frame of each poorly maintained East Bitling dwelling was painted the same shade of sickly green. Every resident, whatever their station – housewife, pensioner, labourer, entrepreneur – was only permitted to reside within the village boundaries at the whim of a
penny-pinching autocrat with a judgemental cast of mind and a vicious tongue.

In this mild summer of 1972, Lady Catherine Peahorn was close to eighty years old. None of her ‘serfs’ knew for certain when she had been born, but it was generally accepted that it must have been in the previous century. No one knew either what awful life events had contrived to warp her mind, making a woman of enormous financial means into a sad and withered miser, ‘jealous of every last farthing’ as Sergeant Dodd of the Chichester police put it.

Lady Catherine lived in chilly isolation, attended by a vague and put-upon ‘companion’, in a frigid mansion known as Baffins. Baffins was built atop a hill that had the advantage of fine views but, for three or four months of each year, it was scoured by winter winds.

But the threat of a ‘beast from the east’ or a ‘storm from the north’ was not currently a problem. The year of 1972 had almost reached its midpoint, approaching the longest day. Even lackadaisical gardeners had their pick of fragrant flowers in their Sussex gardens: sweet peas, ox-eye daisies, sweet rocket, lilies, peonies and – of course – roses.

Woe betide, though, any who allowed their lawns or verges to become overgrown. They could expect a terse phone call or – if they were not so equipped – a peremptory note in a spiky hand on Baffins-headed paper, instructing them ‘to remedy this neglect forthwith’.

The origins of Bitling Fair were documented by papers held in the crypt of Chichester cathedral, dating back to Tudor times. Some historians even suggested that the fair might predate the Norman Conquest, finding its roots with either the Anglo-Saxons or their intermittent enemies, the Vikings.

The fair was habitually enjoyed by the whole put-upon village of East Bitling, as well as by the residents of its counterpart on the other side of the road, West Bitling, and by the people of more or less every settlement for five or even ten miles roundabout, including Framlington, Bunting and Harden, including the city of Chichester. Once comprised of only a single evening’s festivities, Bitling Fair was now a midsummer party lasting two long days and, in between, one brief – hopefully warm and dry – night.

As costumes were sewn and pies baked, however, all was not well. In addition to the justified recriminations of the East Bitlingers concerning their feudal landlady’s neglect of their tied homes – and perhaps because of the unhappy and oppressive framework Lady Catherine imposed on their lives – many of the villagers were at loggerheads.

The Dodd brothers, butchers by trade, had recently come to the conclusion that their previously congenial working relationship could not endure. Because of their falling-out, the Bitlings now played host to two failing butcher’s shops, serving a population previously supplied by a single prosperous one. This was particularly painful for their aforementioned father, Sergeant Dodd of the Chichester police, a man whose many decades of exemplary, placid service were about to come to an end.

Sergeant Dodd had hoped, as the Bible promised in the Book of Micah, chapter four, verse four, that he should sit ‘under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make him afraid’. His wife had to get used to hearing him muttering as he brushed his exemplary but threadbare woollen uniform and shined his constabulary boots: ‘Well, I never did. Whoever would have thought. Where we’ll end up, the Lord knows.’

There was trouble, too, at Littlegreen sawmill, overseen as a fourth-generation enterprise by Old Mr Littlegreen, the sole village resident of comparable age to Lady Catherine herself.

The sawmill was on the brink of bankruptcy. Old Mr Littlegreen’s business acumen – more than adequate for a previous, gentler age – had been found wanting by the passing of time. His three adult children declared themselves unable to agree on the best course of remedial action. The only thing on which they did agree was that it was urgent.

Muriel Littlegreen, the oldest and the most optimistic of the trio, favoured refurbishment and ‘moving with the times’, expansion and more debt. Linda, the youngest and most pessimistic, favoured selling up and moving on. Timothy, the middle child – inevitably – found himself caught between these two extremes. He reminded Linda that they owned
neither the land nor the buildings, that all they had to sell was the goodwill of the business and there was precious little of that left. In turn, he urged Muriel to consider the possibility that new loans might simply be a way of sending good money after bad.

Trouble and upset were not limited to the butchers and the sawmill. East Bitling accommodated three separate farming families whose livelihoods depended on the vagaries of the weather as well as the strength of their backs and the sweat of their brows. Back in April, at the start of the new financial year, Lady Catherine had raised their rent-per-acre and the effects were beginning to pinch.

Meanwhile, at the East Bitling public house, the Silver Garter, sorrows were drowned, talking politics was forbidden and skittles were routinely sent flying in the long back room. Somebody – only the perpetrator knew who – cut out a black-and-white photograph of Lady Catherine from the local paper, the Chichester Observer, and pinned it to the dartboard. It remained there for a full eight days until, at last, just a few shreds of newsprint were left, so often had it become a victim of the patrons’ joyous, vengeful accuracy.

The only resident of East Bitling whose life continued unaffected by all these stresses and disappointments – and there were more, lurking beneath the surface – was Adam Farr.

Adam was an unusual young man, very pale with gingery curls cut close to his scalp. Abrupt and hectoring in speech, clumsy in movement, he had no use for television or radio or cinemas or public houses. Friendless and, yet, self-assured, Adam seemed content in solitude, wandering the woods, setting traps for rabbits or birds, watching the night sky through a telescope he had purchased on a whim from a jumble sale.

Unknown to the other Bitlingers, though, Adam had a plan – a clever and picturesque plan. He had not yet put it in motion because it had to be timed to coincide with Bitling Fair and with the darkness of the one short night of midsummer. And it depended on the well-known but little exploited fact that, beneath the soft turf of the Sussex Downs, lay a bed of bright white chalk.

And, although he did not foresee it – how could he, after all – it would be Adam who would provide a murderer with their long-desired opportunity for violent retribution.

I – ROWAN

Signifying strength in
solitude

One

Maisie was astonished to realise that only six weeks had gone by since the extraordinary dénouement of the investigation into the murder at Chichester Festival Theatre, resulting in what Sam Smithers, the chief electrician, referred to in court as a ‘show stop’, albeit right at the end as the audience were on their feet applauding. Since then, the wheels of justice had been turning, like the stones of a flour mill, little by little testing and grinding the evidence, until finally the guilty had been judged and their sentences handed down. Likewise, all the distressing sequels to the trials ensuing from the Murder at Church Lodge and the Murder at Bunting Manor – the appeals and secondary convictions – had at last been deemed complete.

Maisie was finally free.

She left the courthouse in company with Sergeant William Dodd, a rotund man on the brink of retirement in a worn but well-kept police uniform. He told her: ‘You’re a marvel. You saw things no one else did, in all three investigations.’

‘Thank you, William.’

‘Of course, being with you throughout, I saw that the theatre trial was less onerous for you. And I was very sorry about your brother, though he was a scamp and no two ways about it.’

‘He was,’ admitted Maisie, smiling.

‘Scamp’, though, was an odd way to refer to a man in his forties who had dabbled in fraud and theft.

‘And it wasn’t fair,’ Sergeant Dodd persisted, ‘for you to get drawn into another upset up-along in Bunting, all the more painful with Mrs Pascal a relative of yours, I dare say?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘Of course, your insight and excellence as a witness were a boon every time for Jack Wingard. You’ve got a knack of reading people that’ll serve you all through life, I’ll be bound.’

‘You have it, too, William, surely?’ she suggested. ‘Looking back on your career, there must be dozens of times character was more important than fingerprints or alibis.’

‘I won’t say you’re wrong. What’s next for you, then?’

‘I’m meeting Jack,’ she said with a smile.

‘I won’t stand in the way of young love,’ said Sergeant Dodd, laughing kindly. ‘What a change you’ve made in that man.’

‘For the better, I hope.’

‘Oh, yes. There was a moment when I thought . . .’

He didn’t finish and Maisie assumed his abrupt change of mind was because he was wary of overstepping with police station gossip.

‘We both found it hard,’ she told him.

‘Yes, I dare say. But it’s been a right treat getting to know you by looking after you in the courthouse and all that. Would you come and see me and my Edith and my boys in Bitling? The fair’s coming up. Would you have known Bitling Fair when you were a littl’un back in Framlington?’

‘No, I don’t remember it. But I’d be honoured to visit. Thank you, William.’

She left him and walked happily up South Street, past the hunting and shooting and fishing shop that – up on the first floor – also sold children’s toys and games. On the other side, the greengrocer and the fishmonger were conveniently side by side, the latter with a marble slab as a windowsill, open onto the pavement. A little grey-haired woman with an upright tartan shopping trolley was haggling over what she called ‘an extra shilling’ but which the fishmonger, in his blue-and-white-striped apron, insisted was ‘a very reasonable five new pence’.

Maisie hesitated for a moment outside the travel agent, seeing advertised a three-day ‘1972 midsummer’ coach trip to Paris. She expected to feel an ache of loss for the life she had decided to leave behind: her flat in Place des Vosges; the wonderful food and drink; the fun and satisfaction she had as a high-class multilingual tour guide to the city’s attractions. To her surprise, the hollow feeling didn’t come.

She checked her watch and then the clock on the south side of the medieval Market Cross, the traditional Chichester meeting place at the intersection of its four cardinal streets: North, South, East and West. Either her watch was two minutes fast or the one on the cross was two minutes slow. It didn’t matter. She was early, in any case.

She went to look through the window of the shoe shop, Russell & Bromley’s, wondering why people wore such uncomfortable-looking contraptions on their feet: narrow winkle-pickers in aggressively shiny red leather for men; high platform shoes or stiletto heels for women. Then, reflected in the plate glass, she saw herself, looking trim and fit in her knee-length black-and-white-check dress, gathered becomingly at the waist. She had successfully overcome the diet of healthy – but copious – food provided by Jack Wingard’s grandma Florence by embarking on an early morning swimming regime at the local baths.

The cathedral bells rang for four o’clock and, suddenly, she knew she was no longer alone in the busy street. Of course, she was surrounded by shoppers and children in the green blazers of the twin high schools – one for girls and one for boys – on their way home for tea. But this was different. There were important eyes upon her, a gaze she could feel that warmed her inside.

She turned and saw Jack, a little above her, standing on the step beneath the Market Cross, looking like he had been watching her for some time.

She smiled and skipped across the road, dodging between a milk float and a single-decker Southdown bus. Despite the fact that he was on duty and, therefore, wearing his sergeant’s uniform, he put his arms round her and kissed her as if it had been a week since they’d met, rather than just that morning at the front door of the courthouse, before the usher came to call her inside.

‘It’s over, then?’ he asked, finally breaking away.

‘It’s over.’

‘And you’re not going back to Paris?’

‘I’d rather be here with you,’ she said simply. She dropped her eyes. It had been true for weeks. Why had she taken so long to say so out loud? She looked up again. ‘If you’ll have me.’

He took a step back and, to her surprise, knelt on the worn stone.

‘Maisie Cooper,’ he began, his right hand in the top pocket of his dark blue uniform, ‘will you . . .’ He broke off. ‘Damn, it’s stuck.’ He struggled for a few seconds then drew out a small black ring box. ‘As I was saying, I mean asking, Maisie Cooper, will you—’

He opened the ring box to reveal a silver band set with blue stones that twinkled in the warm sunlight.

‘Obviously,’ said Maisie, smiling. ‘Stand up, you daft apeth.’

‘No, we have to do it properly,’ said Jack.

A small crowd began to gather, including the grey-haired lady from the fishmonger’s and a couple of people Maisie recognised, including her friend Charity Clement – looking like she was on the way to the bank from the solicitor’s office where she worked – and Harold Farr, an elderly farm labourer fallen on hard times who lived in one of the villages, but often mooched around Chichester to beg. There was also a little knot of schoolchildren, appalled at the extraordinary behaviour of grown-ups.

‘Go on then,’ she told him.

Jack held up the ring box.

‘Maisie Cooper, love of my life, ever since we met when we were sixteen, and come back to me in 1972 after all these years, will you marry me?’

Maisie let the words hang in the warm June air, revelling in the certainty she felt, at last.

‘I will.’ She helped Jack stand up and invited him to kiss her again to a round of applause from the bystanders. ‘Shouldn’t you put the ring on my finger?’ she asked, innocently, not wanting the moment to end.

‘Oh, yes, of course.’

Maisie felt a tiny pang of disappointment as he removed his arms from round her shoulders to take her hand and slide the beautiful silver band onto the third finger of her left hand. Maisie noticed that the metal was worn, although highly polished and the stones beautifully clean. As usual, Jack was able to read her thoughts.

‘Yes, it’s Grandma’s engagement ring. Her husband Jack gave it to her, then almost immediately set sail for South America.’

‘Doesn’t she wear it ever?’

‘No, she wears her wedding ring. Apparently, that’s what you do. Her wedding ring superseded her engagement ring and, ever since, this one has lived in a paper bag underneath her tights in her chest of drawers, unseen for nearly forty years. I got Austens the jewellers to buff it up, but there was really no need.’

‘It’s beautiful, Jack. I couldn’t be happier.’

Maisie realised that the people who had gathered to eavesdrop on their public display were moving away, even Charity who blew Maisie a kiss and called: ‘Venez me voir.’

‘I’ll come and see you soon,’ Maisie replied. Then she fished in her purse for a green one-pound note. She went and put it in Harold Farr’s rough workman’s hand. ‘They say it’s good luck to share your happiness, Harold.’

Overwhelmed, he looked at the ground and said: ‘Thank you, miss. Or should I say missus?’

Maisie laughed. ‘Not yet, but soon I hope.’

‘You were a great help in the Chichester Festival Theatre business, Mr Farr,’ said Jack with the respectful formality that was one of his trademarks, whoever he was speaking to.

‘Thank you, Sergeant. I was sorry to give up those gloves.’

Harold was referring to a pair of string-backed driving gloves that had formed an important clue.

‘Well, it’s summer, now. You’ll not need any for a few months. When the weather gets cold, come and find me and I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Thank you, Sergeant.’

Harold Farr wandered off. Maisie wondered how he would fill the rest of his day and if he could possibly be happy, living from hand to mouth on charity and scraps.

‘Are you feeling sad, now?’ asked Jack.

She smiled at him. ‘No, not sad, just sympathetic.’

Left alone under the clock of the Market Cross, the provincial cathedral city of Chichester seemed to have made space for them to speak to one another unobserved and un-eavesdropped. But, instead of speaking, she put her arms up over his broad shoulders and brought his mouth down to hers.

For Maisie, time stopped once more and there was only now – and now lasted a long time. Still, though, in the end, it was not long enough. Jack pulled away and told her: ‘Perhaps we should get on.’

‘Get on where?’

‘To share the good news.’

They walked together hand in hand up North Street, receiving the congratulations of grey-haired Mr Chitty, the owner of Chitty’s Cycles who, busy changing a tyre in front of his shop in his impeccable brown warehouse coat, had heard the news from Charity.

‘If you need a pageboy, my grandson Nicholas would be delighted. I know you have no nieces or nephews, either of you.’

‘Thank you,’ said Maisie, ‘but we’ve made no plans as yet.’

They walked on and she felt Jack had stiffened a little and wondered aloud why.

‘Oh, nothing. Just people do like to sort of muscle in, don’t they? And their thoughts are always on the future, not the here and now. Let’s just enjoy the moment.’

‘Yes, let’s.’

As they went past the Chinese restaurant, two fourteen-year-old boys from the high school came out with a bag of thick chips and a pot of curry sauce to share, making Maisie peckish.

‘Are we going to tell Florence, Jack?’

‘She knows, obviously, because of the ring, but yes.’

‘And do you have no other responsibilities, Sergeant?’ she asked, smiling.

‘I went off duty when the bells chimed four. But I’m on again overnight. We’re short-staffed because of summer colds.’

They left the confines of the city walls and carried on up
St Paul’s Road, past the post office and general store, then Strickland’s second-hand warehouse – closed up and padlocked – that had played such an important role in the investigation into Maisie’s brother Stephen’s murder. Then they turned left into Parklands, a pleasant suburban street of bungalows with tidy gardens of lovely flowers in full, midsummer bloom. They headed for number 147, where Jack lived with his grandmother. A brand-new Land Rover was parked outside.

‘You assumed I would say “yes”, then?’ she teased. ‘You invited other guests.’

‘I did. Was that rude and presumptuous?’

‘I’ve been saying “yes” inside my head ever since that day in the graveyard. I just didn’t know it.’

‘Maisie, I do love you so much,’ Jack told her.

He looked like he was going to fold her in his arms and kiss her again, right there on the pavement, with one of the neighbours watching with a trug on her arm and her secateurs poised to snip off a white rose. But the moment was broken by another voice and a rapid tread as Zoe Pascal, the sixteen-year-old ward of Phyl Pascal, came running out to meet them.

‘Come inside, we’ve been waiting for ages.’ Zoe stopped and blurted: ‘You did say “yes”, didn’t you?’

‘Obviously,’ replied Maisie for a second time.

The neighbour with the secateurs asked Zoe what was happening and the young woman shared the happy news, drawing Jack into the conversation. Maisie looked from one to the other.

Yes, it’s obvious and, yet, how is it that so much upset and drama and unkindness could have led me to such profound contentment?

She lightly shook her head.

Surely there’ll be some kind of price to pay, like needing to give Harold Farr a pound note to share our happiness.

‘Zoe, tell Grandma and Mrs Pascal that we’ll be in shortly,’ said Jack. ‘There’s one more thing Maisie and I have to talk about, first.’

‘Oh, all right,’ said Zoe.

Once she had gone, Maisie realised that Jack’s face had become serious.

‘What is it?’ she asked, a shadow on her heart.

‘Let’s go and sit down somewhere and I’ll tell you.’

Two

‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’ asked Jack with a worried frown.

‘Absolutely not,’ Maisie told him. ‘You deserve your promotion. It can’t happen soon enough.’

Maisie and Jack were sitting on the garden seat beneath the Laxton’s Superb apple tree, in the back garden of his grandma’s house. They had been intercepted by Florence on the way past the kitchen and she had given them an earthenware bowl and instructions to fill it with peas. Later on, Maisie would always associate the moment when she discovered Jack’s news with shucking the perfect little green spheres from their crisp pods.

‘What persuaded you, at last?’ she wanted to know. ‘Fred Nairn has been telling you to do it for years.’

‘Just because Fred’s an inspector already never meant that I had to go for a promotion, too,’ said Jack. ‘It was old William Dodd. He told me he could see himself as a younger man in me. I told him I was honoured to hear it. Then he said that he’d always regretted not making the move himself and that I would find it a breeze because I was “quicker on the uptake”.’

‘William always seems very happy in his lot.’

‘Appearances can be deceptive.’

‘I know. Anyway, what do you have to do?’

‘First up, there’s a residential course in Exeter.’

‘Why Exeter?’

Jack shrugged and told her: ‘It’s the first step and, I suppose, they have a training centre all the way down there.’ Maisie smiled, hearing Jack refer to the county town of Devon as if it was a world away from Chichester, the county town of West Sussex, rather than a mere hundred and forty miles of picturesque roads due west. ‘I’ve written down the address for you.’

He gave it to her and she put it in her handbag.

‘Is William really full of regret?’ she asked, not sure why the question bothered her.

‘He is.’

‘I’ve always thought of him as the most stolid and straightforward . . .’ Maisie stopped. ‘Actually, I’m reducing him to a “Dixon of Dock Green” cliché, aren’t I? But perhaps he has a difficult home life?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Jack. ‘But the village he lives in isn’t the easiest. It’s a kind of feudal throwback. He told me he was going to invite you to Bitling Fair. Did he do so? Will you go?’

‘He did and, yes, of course.’ Maisie pushed her thumb along the seam of another pod, decanting the fresh green peas into the earthenware bowl. ‘You’ll be away until . . . ?’

‘Till Sunday, if there’s a late train. Otherwise, Monday.’

‘And you won’t take up with some gorgeous West Country milkmaid while you’re there?’

‘Are there such things?’ Jack asked.

‘Oh, yes. Rosy-cheeked and generous-hearted.’

‘Well, I never did,’ said Jack and they both laughed at him using his grandma’s old-fashioned Sussex expression. ‘I’ll have to stay in touch with Fred because of an ongoing investigation around the antiques dealer, Montague Meek. I’m just telling you because there may be a connection to Bitling. Meanwhile, Maisie, you should perhaps try and avoid investigating another murder, don’t you think?’

Maisie frowned, not wanting him to make light of the series of extraordinary events she had – despite herself – been drawn into.

‘You know I don’t seek it out?’ she told him. ‘Trouble just seems to find me.’

‘I know, my darling.’

They kissed again, then went indoors to share their news properly with Jack’s Grandma Florence, Zoe, and Zoe’s guardian Phyl Pascal, starting with Jack’s decision at last to embark on the pathway to promotion, following that up with the engagement band and confirmation that Maisie and he were ‘betrothed’.

‘That’s such a beautiful ring,’ said Zoe, wistfully.

‘My own Jack gave it to me so many years ago I daren’t count,’ said Florence.

‘Get on with you, Grandma,’ said Jack. ‘You’re not so old.’

‘When did he die?’ asked Zoe with the brutal matter-of-
factness of youth.

‘That’s a sad story,’ said Florence. ‘We were promised to one another when I was just fourteen. Things were different then.’

‘When was that?’ Zoe insisted.

‘At the end of the war, in 1918. He was two years older and completing his Royal Naval training to become an able seaman. But, with the armistice, he was laid off and went into the merchant navy instead, with a company that traded with South America. Two years later he was signed up for a long voyage, more than six months, so we got ourselves wed and took a three-day honeymoon. We went to Lyme Regis on a charabanc. The road down into the town was that steep I thought the poor old bus would never climb out again.’

‘Then what?’ insisted Zoe.

‘Another time,’ said Florence. ‘This is Jack and Maisie’s day.’

‘I want to say that I’m very grateful,’ Maisie told her. ‘You’ve been a special friend to me, Florence, even when I was a foolish schoolgirl. Why was that?’

‘Because,’ said Jack’s grandma with a warm smile, ‘I always hoped this day would come. I don’t know why Jack’s been so slow about it.’

‘That was my fault—’ Maisie began.

‘No, it wasn’t,’ Jack interrupted. ‘Circumstances were against us.’

Maisie looked at Phyl, sitting very upright on a hard chair, and realised she was feeling excluded.

‘You being here makes it more special,’ she told her. ‘But let’s talk about other things. Do you have the planning permission for Bunting Manor to become a respite home?’

Phyl opened her mouth to reply, but Zoe didn’t let her.

‘No,’ said Zoe. ‘I want to know what happened next to Mrs Wingard.’

Florence put a lined and liver-spotted hand over Zoe’s youthful fingers. ‘He never came back, dear.’

‘Oh.’

‘Very sad I was.’

‘Your Jack died and you were left on your own to bring up Sergeant Wingard?’

‘Hang on,’ said Maisie, laughing. ‘How old do you think my fiancé is?’

Zoe frowned, doing some quick mental arithmetic: ‘Oh, no, that doesn’t work. There must have been another generation in between? Who was that?’

‘I had a daughter. I named her Pamela. Much later, she fell pregnant and Jack was born.’

‘Who did she marry? Where did she live?’ Zoe demanded.

‘She never married,’ said Florence very quietly. ‘But Maisie’s right. We can talk about all that another time, if you’re itching to know.’

‘Is it a sad story?’ asked Zoe, simply.

‘It is,’ said Florence, nodding.

There was a tiny pause, as if everyone was wondering about or remembering the ‘sad story’ of Jack’s mother Pamela, then Phyl spoke in a loud voice: ‘You may all be interested to know that I climbed down into my cellar this morning and liberated two bottles of champagne from 1952 for our celebration, as an apéritif.’ She left a pause. ‘You’re all supposed to say: “Fifty-two? That’s an excellent year.” Never mind. They’re in the Land Rover. Zoe, go and fetch them, will you?’

‘Of course.’

Zoe left and Phyl embarked on a clumsy apology for her ward’s inquisitiveness. Florence didn’t let her finish.

‘It’s natural for children to want to know things about where people come from and how they got to be who they are. They’re not sure who they’re going to be themselves and they mostly haven’t learned to separate curiosity from prying.’

‘Zoe means well,’ said Maisie.

‘Of course she does,’ agreed Florence.

‘So, is no one interested in engagement rings and promotions any more?’ asked Jack.

Zoe came back in and, over the next forty-five minutes, between the five of them, most of the twenty-year-old champagne was drunk. After everyone had drained a second glass, Florence saw a couple of inches left in the second dark-green bottle and told everyone that she would keep it ‘for gravy’.

‘That’s a noble vintage,’ said Phyl, ‘so, if you don’t mind, I’ll take it home and finish it in the kitchen at Bunting Manor. Now, it’s time to go. Dinner at the Dolphin and Anchor on me.’

They all bustled about, Florence putting on outdoor shoes and removing her apron, Maisie and Jack washing up the glasses and putting the bowl of fresh-shucked peas in the pantry on a cold shelf, next to the butter and cheese, by the wire-mesh window that opened onto fresh air on the north side of the bungalow. Maisie complimented Phyl on her new car and Phyl drove them with careless abandon into town, parking conveniently at the back of Woolworths. They were met at the front door of the Dolphin and Anchor by the hotel manager, a wiry man named Hume who always wore a dark-blue blazer that seemed to hang from his bony shoulders as if on a wire coat hanger.

‘Good evening, Mrs Pascal. How delightful to see you. Our best table is ready. And Sergeant Wingard. How are you, Sergeant?’

‘Very well, thank you, Mr Hume,’ said Jack.

The manager turned to Maisie. ‘And a little bird tells me congratulations are in order?’

Maisie didn’t know which gossipy passer-by had told Mr Hume of her and Jack’s engagement. In truth, she was uncomfortable that the news already seemed public property. It was another unfortunate repercussion of having been several times in the local newspaper, the Chichester Observer, as ‘bereaved sister’ and ‘brave young woman’ and ‘amateur sleuth’. All the same, she dutifully showed him her lovely ring and accepted his kind good wishes.

They sat down to dinner in the hotel restaurant, choosing from menus that had been Roneoed that afternoon, with a distinctive spirit smell and the ink smudged from a badly maintained machine. Zoe slipped away to put on her uniform because she was working and would serve their table rather than sit at it.

Jack had an appetite and ordered three courses, as did Phyl. Maisie and Florence watched them devour their melon and Parma ham starters, then joined them in a main course of beef carved from the bone at the table on a heated trolley. Zoe accomplished this feat of waiterly dexterity beautifully. They finished with profiteroles. Maisie couldn’t finish her portion and passed the remainder over to Jack.

‘Please, no,’ he told her. ‘I don’t want to be putting on weight. The training programme will keep me off the beat and behind a desk. I’m already worried about what you’ll say when I come home flabby and unfit.’

‘I don’t think that’s likely,’ said Maisie with a smile. It was true. Jack was naturally slim and strong. ‘And you could join me in my morning swims.’

‘Isn’t it very cold,’ said Phyl, ‘and don’t you come out smelling of chlorine?’

‘Yes and yes,’ said Maisie.

‘You’re lucky your hair is naturally curly,’ said Florence, ‘or it would undo your perm.’

Zoe was back at the table in her own clothes. ‘Mr Hume’s allowed me off early to celebrate the big day. You won’t have to wait around for me, Phyl.’

She pulled a chair over and sat down. Maisie saw that she had a letter in her hand, addressed ‘care of the Dolphin and Anchor Hotel’ in the distinctive handwriting taught in all French schools.

‘Is that from Adélaïde?’ asked Maisie.

‘I don’t know. It’s for you,’ said Zoe.

Feeling rather self-conscious, Maisie opened the envelope, learning that Adélaïde Amour, star of screen and stage and a central figure in the murder investigation at Chichester Festival Theatre, was now employed – to Adélaïde’s very great satisfaction – in a new theatrical production in Paris. She told Maisie that her appearance on the Chichester stage had boosted her career, making her ‘much less likely to be cast as a mere clothes horse’. Adélaïde asked – demanded, almost – that Maisie come to Paris ‘to look after me as you did in Chichester and I promise there will be no murder’.

Once more, Maisie felt that making light of the series of crimes she had been involved in was an error – a way of tempting fate. But she hid her disquiet, translated the letter for her companions, putting it in Phyl’s hand because she was capable of reading it for herself.

‘Do you want to go?’ asked Jack, apparently lightly, but with concern in his eyes.

‘No, Jack. I’m with you, now, forever, whether you want me or not.’

‘Maisie, you are all that I want.’

Zoe finished Maisie’s profiteroles, pronouncing them ‘not bad, but too much sugar in the cream’. Phyl paid and they went outside into a still-pleasant evening, the street lamps only just coming on, the sky still light.

‘It’s nearly midsummer,’ said Maisie.

‘Bitling Fair,’ said Phyl.

‘That’s a coincidence,’ said Maisie. ‘William Dodd was talking about it earlier this afternoon. He’s invited me to lunch and to see what’s what.’

‘Bitling is an unhappy place,’ said Phyl. ‘I have land and other responsibilities over that way.’

‘Then let’s not talk about it,’ said Jack. ‘Today is a celebration.’

The three other women said they would wait by the Land Rover, round the corner by the back door of Woolworths, leaving Maisie and Jack to say goodbye to one another alone.

‘We’ll just have a turn round the cathedral cloister,’ Maisie told them.

She and Jack walked hand in hand through the nine-
hundred-year-old stone passageways. Maisie didn’t speak and she thought Jack was remaining silent in deference to her mood.

‘I couldn’t be happier,’ she finally told him. ‘No, not happy, content.’

‘I agree. You make me happy every time I see you, but happiness lasts only as long as you are by my side. Now we’re “promised”,’ he said and Maisie could hear the smile in his voice as he used another of his grandma’s expressions, ‘I feel contentment, too, and that’s a longer-lasting thing.’

They retraced their steps, pausing beneath the trees that shadowed the eastern end of the cathedral green to embrace, then he left her to make his way to the police station at the southern end of the town, by the canal, where he was on night duty. Maisie went to find the others.

They went via Parklands Road to drop off Florence, then Phyl drove erratically out into the darkening countryside, through Framlington where Maisie’s brother Stephen had been killed, then the right turn just after the pub, the Fox-
in-Flight, and into the narrow, winding lanes of the Downs to the village of Bunting, the site of Maisie’s second adventure in crime.

They drove with the windows open, smelling the sweet air, feeling a touch of dew on their cheeks. As usual, Phyl drove too fast, but it was a relief not to hear the crunching of gears and sudden lurches of speed Maisie had become unhappily used to in the previous unreliable Land Rover.

Just before Bunting village green, Phyl swung sharply onto her gravel drive. Maisie heard small stones sent flying by the wheels into the waxy leaves of the rhododendrons. Then Phyl slowed as the ugly-but-impressive Jacobean manor house emerged from the trees, giving Maisie her usual smiling delight.

‘I’m glad you decided to leave that awful hotel and stay with us again,’ said Phyl.

‘I am, too,’ said Maisie.

‘Can I practise driving tomorrow, please, Phyl?’ asked Zoe.

‘Yes. Of course. We’ll stay on the tracks round the manor.’

‘Not on the roads?’ asked Maisie.

‘I’m too young,’ said Zoe in a sulky voice. ‘And when I’m seventeen there’ll be a huge backlog for licences.’

They all got out and went round the side, through the kitchen garden to the back door. Phyl opened it without unlocking.

‘Can’t find the keys?’ asked Maisie, lightly.

‘No one locks up round here,’ said Phyl. ‘You know that. And, since you fixed everything with your brilliant sleuthing, there’s no need.’

Maisie sighed audibly so that Phyl knew she didn’t agree, but said nothing.

‘I’m on late again tomorrow,’ said Zoe. ‘I’m going to bed and I’m going to sleep in. I probably won’t see you till lunchtime. Goodnight.’

Maisie and Phyl sat down at the untidy wooden table in the stone-flagged kitchen with its rudimentary Calor-gas stove and battered fridge, so out of keeping with the magnificence of the rest of Bunting Manor.

Phyl poured the last two measures of champagne from the unfinished bottle into glass tumblers. ‘I have a bit of a scratchy throat. I hope it’s nothing serious. I’m expected at Bitling Fair.’ She sipped the excellent vintage. ‘No regrets?’ she asked.

‘About what?’

‘Turning Adélaïde down. That would be quite the adventure and you’d be back in Paris.’

‘But away from Jack.’

‘He’ll not be as available in any case. It seems to me the promotion path he’s about to embark upon will keep the two of you apart. He might end up in Liverpool or Carlisle.’

‘Exeter for the time being, though,’ Maisie replied. ‘But, yes, what you say is true.’

‘And you’re free, now. There are no more trials to attend or statements to give.’ Phyl drained her glass. ‘You know I’m not telling you to go? But I do want you to take any opportunities life offers you.’

‘I know, Phyl. That’s what Mum and Dad would have said, too.’

There was a pause as – Maisie hoped – both of them thought about her parents, Irene and Eric, with affection and regret, but without rancour or recrimination. The family wounds Maisie had uncovered during the investigation into the murder at Bunting Manor were, she thought, no longer raw.

‘I was so glad when Charity told me you had accepted my little donation, at last,’ said Phyl.

‘A hundred pounds is a tidy sum, Phyl. And I was paid the same from Chichester Theatre for looking after Adélaïde so I’m in funds and was able to send my flatmate in Paris some money for bills.’

‘What will you do about that in the long term?’

‘Sophie has a friend at the temping agency who needs my room.’

‘What about all your things?’

‘Sophie will pack them up nicely and put them under the bed or something. I don’t have much.’ Maisie frowned. ‘I never have had much. It’s as if I’ve always known I might not be staying, wherever I was.’

‘It’s the training you got in the Women’s Royal Army Corps – a few essential bits and pieces and nothing extraneous, no more than you can carry on a day’s march.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said Maisie, quietly.

‘I’m sorry. Have I made you think about Stephen?’

‘He would have been my best man.’

‘It’s the groom who has a best man, not the bride.’

‘Well, I would have had a best man whatever anybody said,’ Maisie insisted with a smile. ‘And it would have been my wastrel brother.’

There was another brief silence. Maisie let it stretch out. She wondered if Phyl was building up to another apology for how she had behaved when Maisie had been a tiny child. Maisie hoped not. It was all so long ago. What could it possibly matter?

Then she thought about Jack, no doubt busy with overnight business at the police station, drunks or break-ins or traffic violations. Nothing serious.

Nothing like murder.

Three

The walled Roman city of Chichester – Noviomagus Reginorum – was home to all the usual shops associated with everyday commerce in 1972 in a market town in provincial England. There was a Woolworths, of course, and a Boots the Chemist, a Marks and Spencer’s, a city-centre Tesco and its rival, Sainsbury’s. There were three butchers’ shops, all independent, one of which specialised in pork, the other two generalists. The newsagents – of which there were five – all made more money selling tobacco products than keeping the public informed of events outside of their control at home and abroad. Chitty’s Cycles was one of a number of specialist outlets where craft skills or design experience were sold, as well as objects that the proprietors had bought cheap in order to sell dear. In the same arena were the furniture store, the soft- furnishings specialist, two countryside outfitters, Moss Bros where suits and shirts could be bought or hired, nine or ten ladies’ clothiers with interchangeable garments in bright tones and loud patterns. For youngsters, there were two toyshops, one at the top of North Street and the other at the bottom of South Street – one the first floor of the outdoor sports specialist – as if they had signed some kind of non-aggression pact.

In addition to all these charming and practical concerns – which drew visitors to the cathedral city from thirty and even fifty miles round about – there were two auction houses that faced one another behind the Granada cinema, across the small gap of tarmac known as Baffins Lane. On the east side was Stride’s and on the west side was Meek’s.

Montague Meek was a smallish man who wore tweed three-piece suits as if it was expected of him, rather than because he liked them. Certainly, he was never to be seen out in inclement weather where the warm, water-resistant weave might prove useful. He was much more at home indoors, perusing sale-room catalogues of second-hand goods – antiques, ephemera and genuine tat – which he ordered by post from his competitors in other picturesque cities: Arundel, Wickham, Salisbury, even Dorchester. In that way, he kept on top of the evolution of prices and could, with confidence, make offers to his distressed clients that undercut the price at which he would later sell their treasures.

Montague Meek had no conscience. He knew that, very often, he was relieving people of possessions of enormous sentimental value that they would rather have ‘kept in the family’. But they were driven by taxation and inflation to sell up ‘Mother’s engagement ring’ and ‘Grandfather’s fob watch’ and ‘Uncle’s Toby mug’. If challenged, Montague would always remind his challenger that, if not him, then somebody else would profit from their desperate need.

On this particular evening, Montague was working late. He wouldn’t be up all night, as Jack Wingard would. His wasn’t a night shift. He simply enjoyed his premises when no one else was present, not even his loaf-haired secretary.

In the lobby, just inside the draughty front door, he turned on his secretary’s desk lamp – a brass one with an old-fashioned dark-green glass shade, such as one saw used by accountants in Hollywood films. Having done so, he looked through the papers on her desk and opened her drawers, seeking titbits of personal knowledge. There was very little beyond a shopping list and an unfinished letter of unparalleled dreariness to a sister in Stoke that, Montague assumed, she would finish the next day at lunchtime as she ate a cheese roll and a slab of bread pudding from the baker in the Butter Market.

Done with prying into his secretary’s private affairs, Montague made a circuit of his auction room in which a phantasmagorical array of diverse valuables was laid out for inspection by dealers and the general public. He would earn a percentage on every object sold. It was in his interest that each item should go for the highest possible price but, at this point, that was largely out of his control. There was nothing of special interest.

He went to sit at his desk in the office beyond the lobby. There were six or seven letters that needed replies, three of them asking why certain accounts had not been settled. There was no good reason, except that Montague liked to see his clients’ money sitting in his own bank account and would delay its egress sometimes until the threat of legal repercussions forced his hand.

More interesting than these letters was a brown-paper package from Baffins with a gummed slip carrying Lady Catherine Peahorn’s embossed address. He had recently visited the big house that overlooked the feudal village of Bitling, in company with Maurice Ryan, the solicitor, who acted on her ladyship’s behalf. For some reason, it seemed, Lady Catherine wanted an inventory of all the valuables distributed about her gloomy dwelling. Montague had pressed her for a motive. None had been forthcoming.

Had Montague been someone endowed with a conscience, Lady Catherine’s request would have caused him moral disquiet. An assiduous member of the cathedral congregation, he was worried not for his mortal soul, but for his reputation. He had endured a very sticky moment three years earlier. His clever plan to sell, on the black market, goods for which he had already claimed theft insurance had been on the point of backfiring. Luckily, he had been able to manoeuvre Arthur Tate – a man of suitably meagre moral fibre – into carrying the can alone. Now, Arthur Tate was out of prison and, perhaps, no longer quite so pliable. Time would tell.

Could there be a link between a petty criminal’s recent release and Lady Catherine’s abrupt request?

Montague sat down, holding the postal package in his hands. It was about the size of two packs of cards and, probably, the same weight. It was marked urgent in a spidery hand.

Is it possible that Lady Catherine has come to doubt the provenance of a jewellery box or a set of silver-backed hairbrushes?

The parcel was sealed with Sellotape – a modern product for which Montague had no affection. He would have preferred it tied with twine, as all parcels used to be in his youth. He had to root about for scissors sharp enough to open it. Finally, once the package had revealed its contents, he smiled in surprise, unfolding the note that accompanied the contents.

With thanks, in advance, for your forthcoming kind visit.

It was, in every way, unexpected.

Still, it would be foolish, he thought to himself, to look a gift horse in the mouth.

In this, he was wrong. Within less than a quarter of an hour, he was dead.

Four

The next lovely June morning, in Bunting, Phyl felt under the weather – ‘just a summer cold’, she said, though it seemed much worse – so it was Maisie who accompanied Zoe, driving the Land Rover over rutted farm tracks, clinging to the passenger seat as the young woman bounced her way from pothole to verge.

‘I’m getting good,’ said Zoe.

‘You don’t lack confidence,’ replied Maisie, judiciously.

‘Can we go on proper roads, if you’re finding it bumpy?’

‘Not without your licence.’

‘But nothing will happen.’

Maisie shook her head. ‘Except it might.’

Zoe drove a little more carefully on the way back home, parking sedately at the foot of the steps to the impressive front door of Bunting Manor, then ran in to change. Maisie slid across, preparing to drive into Chichester by making an efficient three-point turn, almost meeting Archie Close, Phyl’s farm manager, nose to nose with his tractor on the drive. She got out and he got down.

‘How are you, Archie?’

‘Too much to do but the days are long and most of it’ll get done.’

‘I understand from Phyl that you’ve got old Harold Farr to give a hand? That’s very kind.’

‘For what he’s worth,’ said Archie.

‘Where’s he working?’

‘On the turkeys.’

‘Turkeys?’ asked Maisie.

‘Mrs Pascal’s got a turkey shed over Bitling way. I’d have thought you’d know that by now.’

‘Turkeys for food?’

‘Not for pets, Miss Maisie.’

‘I’d like to see them. Are they out of doors?’

‘No, they grow up in the barn.’

‘Oh,’ said Maisie, disappointed. That was much less enticing. ‘So you’re not glad to have Harold as a spare pair of hands? It’s true he doesn’t have a very good reputation.’

‘No, but that’s where ’tis,’ said Archie, using the characteristic non-committal Sussex expression for not knowing how things will turn out, accepting that fate would take a hand. ‘Good labour is always in short supply. Harry’s what we’ve got.’

Zoe came skipping down the steps in a clean top – having applied eyeliner and a pale lipstick – with a five-pound note and a brief shopping list from Phyl. They set off, through the pleasant country lanes and villages, past brick-and-flint cottages warmed by the sun. In Chichester, Maisie dropped Zoe at the back of Woolworths, getting out as well. Zoe asked when Maisie would next see Jack.

‘He’ll be at home in bed now, after the night shift.’

‘Oh, yes, of course. And you don’t mind coming to pick me up later?’

‘No, I’m going to see him at teatime before he gets his train. Then I’ll sit with Florence until you finish or, perhaps, we’ll go to the pictures.’

Maisie locked the Land Rover and did her shopping at Boots the Chemist, Good’s the haberdasher, Fourboy’s the newsagent and Bancroft’s the bakery. She put her shopping in the back, then walked along West Street, past the post office and the Morant’s department store, to the solicitor’s office. Charity was behind her desk, wearing a tangerine twinset, signing and folding letters to slip into Maurice Ryan’s monogrammed envelopes.

‘What’s this?’ asked Maisie.

‘Maurice likes to send all his contacts a midsummer greeting.’

‘But you’re signing them?’

‘Don’t tell anyone,’ said Charity with a wink.

‘I suppose it makes a change from Christmas and new year,’ said Maisie, lending a hand. ‘Any post for me?’

Maisie had given her Paris contacts the solicitor’s office as a poste restante.

‘Nothing new,’ said Charity.

For as long as it took to sign and fold the letters and stuff all the envelopes, Maisie and Charity chatted in French, mostly about how well Charity thought Maisie was looking.

‘Is it really swimming that does that or is it also essential for a person to fall in love?’

‘Come swimming with me,’ Maisie suggested. ‘Eight o’clock they open.’

‘Peut-être,’ said Charity. Perhaps.

They bid one another goodbye and Maisie emerged into the street just as the Prebendal choir came marching along two by two in tiny red cassocks, on their way to rehearse in the cathedral. Despite the charming prospect of listening to their sweet treble voices raised in song, Maisie didn’t follow them inside. In truth, she didn’t know quite what she wanted to do.

The end of the last trial had taken her by surprise, the closing remarks needing less time than the court usher had predicted, the judgement of the jury being handed down after only twenty minutes of deliberation and absence from the courtroom. All the time the hearings had detained her in Chichester, Maisie hadn’t needed to imagine a future for herself beyond the bottleneck of the court action. She now felt – though she didn’t like to admit it, even to
herself – unprepared for her new life. Jack’s imminent absence would only exacerbate the problem.

She walked back past the Market Cross into East Street to the Granada cinema – previously the Corn Exchange – where she learned that there was a showing that evening of an adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson adventure novel Kidnapped, set in the Jacobite rebellion in eighteenth-century Scotland, starring Michael Caine and Trevor Howard, both actors Maisie admired. She filed the information away, intending to suggest it to Florence later on. From there, she went down the side street, Baffins Lane, to take a look at the premises of the antiques dealer Jack had mentioned: Montague Meek. The door was locked and the windows dark – odd for a working day.

Feeling herself observed, she noticed a policeman in his dark-blue uniform in a doorway on the opposite side of the street. She boldly crossed the road and said: ‘My name is Maisie Cooper. I’m afraid I don’t recognise you, though I’ve worked with the police myself several times.’

‘I’ve been drafted in from Brighton to help out.’

‘Can you tell me why Meek’s Auction Rooms are locked up and dark?’

‘Not without proper authority.’

‘But it is police business?’

‘I shouldn’t say,’ he told her, looking pained.

‘No, of course,’ she told him. She tried another tack. ‘Who is in charge of investigating his suspicious death?’

‘Inspector Nairn, miss,’ said the constable, then he frowned and told her: ‘But you didn’t hear it from me.’

Feeling guilty for tricking the truth out of the tired police officer, Maisie realised it was lunchtime and she hadn’t eaten. She was lucky to find a table in the St Martin’s Tea Rooms in another side street where she was served Welsh rarebit with Worcester sauce and a side of drooping salad leaves. Emerging unsatisfied but full, she decided to drive back to Bunting via Bitling. Jack’s remarks about William Dodd had piqued her interest, as had Archie’s comments about Phyl’s turkeys. She wanted to understand how it was that such an extraordinary ‘feudal throwback’ could still exist in 1972.

The drive out of town was slow because of farm vehicles on the roads, harvesting and moving early crops: new potatoes, strawberries, overwintered onions, broad beans, asparagus. But it was only three or four miles.

Taking into account the new ‘development’ on the west side of the road, Bitling was almost a town, certainly bigger than Framlington or Bunting. At the entrance to the village she saw a hand-painted sign: Turkeys. She indicated and turned off into a deep lane bordered with overgrown hazel hedges where she had to slow to walking pace for fear of meeting something coming the other way. When the gateway appeared on the right-hand side it didn’t take her by surprise because, through her open window, she could already smell the ammonia in the air from the birds’ waste.

Why is it so strong, though?

She turned in, over a cattle grid, finding the yard deserted. An old harrow stood unused and rusting to one side. Beyond it was a barn about thirty paces long, clad in overlapping timbers, looking quite rustic and pleasant. But the sound from within was anything but, the voices of many birds raised in frustrated complaint, thankfully muffled by the walls.

Maisie got out and listened for human activity. She heard scraping from behind the barn and followed the sound, passing a lower, smaller building made of modern materials, a steel frame and aluminium siding, without windows. She had an idea that must be the slaughterhouse.

The noise turned out to be the work of two men, one youngish and unknown to her, the other very thin and elderly – Harold Farr. The young man was shovelling turkey mess out of a wheelbarrow, with a handkerchief knotted around his face, presumably to lessen the stink. The older man was working with one hand, pinching his nostrils shut with the other, using a rake to spread the turkey guano across the concrete.

Neither noticed her presence, so she slipped away, leaving the Land Rover in the yard, taking a bridleway across the opposite field in the direction of a clock, visible in the V-shaped eaves of a chapel roof, over the hedges.

She came out through a kissing gate onto a road that ran parallel to the lane to the turkey barn. The chapel was opposite, a few feet above the level of the road, with several stone steps up to the door, either side of which was a lovely rose bush in a planter. To the north of the chapel was a hill surmounted by a lonely house and an even lonelier tree, covered with white blossom.

Maisie explored the village, finding a public house with a peeling sign that depicted a horn-shaped wicker basket full to overflowing with what looked like some kind of grain. It reminded her of classical paintings of the cornucopia, the horn of plenty, but it was hard to see clearly because of its poor condition. Then she connected it with another sign displayed over the front door in green paint: The Silver Garter – Property of the Peahorn Estate. She smiled. The dark grains were, in fact, peas. Then she frowned.

Shouldn’t the sign show a silver garter, not the landowner’s emblem?

Maisie took in the adjacent buildings: a vet’s surgery and country-goods store; a butcher’s shop with the name Sparkes above the window; uneven houses down either side of the road; the chapel with the high V-shaped eaves and clock. All the woodwork was painted the same green.

To mark the feudal possession.

Maisie enjoyed looking at bits and pieces of country ware, so she pushed open the door of the vet’s, making a bell ring enthusiastically on a metal spring. A pleasant-looking man was stacking a pyramid of tins of Friskies dog food next to a pile of carboard boxes of Bonio biscuits. The image on the packaging told her that Bonios were bone-shaped.

‘Good afternoon, can I help you?’

‘Just having a look round. Is that all right?’

‘Yes, please do. Call me if you need anything.’

She browsed some excellent labouring clothes, thick and warm and hard-wearing, and a display of expensive riding boots, both short and long. On a high shelf were hard hats for horse riding in brown and black and, beneath on hooks, were bridles and other leather tack, all of it soft to the touch and slightly shiny with saddle soap. Near the front window were three hessian sacks of feed: cob nuts, pony oats, dry mash that needed to be soaked before ‘serving’.

The shop, of course, smelled delicious, reminding Maisie of the stables in Framlington and of the grey stallion that Stephen’s neighbour Nigel Bacon had kept there – though Nigel had been too frightened to ride the muscular animal. It was groomed and exercised by Bert Close, brother of Phyl’s Archie. Maisie had taken it out twice and, the second time, it wasn’t too much to say that it had saved her life.

Of course, the stallion had only been able to save her because she was a fine horsewoman herself with, as Bert Close had told her, ‘an excellent seat’. In the army, Maisie had ridden more or less every week, including competitively in the inter-regimental pentathlon events sponsored by the Women’s Royal Army Corps, though she had never competed seriously, unlike Stephen, who had been to the Melbourne Olympics in 1956.

Without breaking off from what he was doing, the vet began chatting to her, beginning with ‘the marvellous weather’, then asking if she was new to the village. When she admitted she was staying nearby, he didn’t pry, but told her about his own business. She assumed his shop served as an antechamber for an antiseptic treatment room at the back.

‘My preferred work is with larger farm animals. You know, out of doors, on the properties round about, though I enjoy treating domestic pets and I’m always keen to help out when I can.’

Maisie thought there was a slight shadow of weariness or disappointment in that statement, but she was pleased to make the vet’s acquaintance. He seemed a charming man, dressed as if for a day at the beach in a cheesecloth shirt and sagging cotton shorts with sockless sandals on his feet. She was about to introduce herself – though she knew it would be risking an inquisitive glance if he recognised her name from the Chichester Observer – when a wiry middle-aged woman came in wearing slippers and a grubby pink housecoat, carrying a basket covered by a tartan blanket. She placed it gingerly on the counter and said: ‘I don’t know what’s wrong, Mr Quinn, but you’ve got to help. She’s all somehow.’

‘Let’s take a peek, shall we?’ said the vet, springing up from his pyramid of tins of Friskies, leaving one to roll away across the polished floorboards. ‘I don’t expect it’s anything to worry about.’

Maisie picked up the escaped tin and balanced it on top of the others. She approached the counter. Mr Quinn vet lifted the blanket from the basket revealing a tabby cat that did, indeed, look very down in the mouth, curled round itself as if trying to appear as small as felinely possible. When he gently lifted it out, the cat barely acknowledged his presence.

‘Perhaps I’d better take her through,’ he said.

The vet gently carried the tabby away through a swing door, reminding Maisie of the one that led from the restaurant to the kitchen at the Dolphin and Anchor.

‘I’m sure she’ll be all right,’ she told the unhappy, worried woman, wanting to be supportive. The poor thing looked frail herself. ‘Have you had her long?’

‘She came in from the back garden one day just after New Year. I think someone gave her as a Christmas present, perhaps for a child who had promised to look after it but then they didn’t, so the parents took her off, far away from where they lived, and left her at the side of the road.’

‘How awful.’

‘Hoping she’d be run over and that would be an end of it.’

‘Oh dear. Do you know that actually happened?’

‘I can’t say for certain. It’s just the time of year makes me think it – or made me think it, back when it happened. Of course,’ she added, lowering her voice as if about to utter something risqué or slanderous, ‘that was when people started moving into the new development over at West Bitling, so it could have been one of them.’

She stopped, as if nothing more needed to be said. Maisie kept her face neutral. She didn’t want to argue with the poor woman, worried as she was for her tiny tabby – a cat that she had taken in out of the goodness of her heart – but Maisie hated when people were distrustful of strangers without any good reason. She asked, rather weakly, she thought: ‘Have you got to know any of the West Bitling people since? Do they come to church or will they take part in the fair?’

‘Some of them,’ said the little grey woman, grudgingly.

‘And your cat is very dear to you?’

‘Oh, yes. I don’t know what I’d do without her. I’ve got nobody left, you see?’

‘Your relatives are all deceased?’

‘Dead or in prison,’ she replied.

The door swung open and the vet came back through, his hands behind his back, looking like a severe headmaster about to give a naughty pupil a formal telling-off.

‘I gave her an emetic to make her sick,’ he said, a serious expression on his face. ‘Can you think why?’

‘No, Mr Quinn, I can’t.’

‘You know I can smell that delicious bacon you had from Bill Dodd for your lunch on your clothes?’

‘Why shouldn’t I have a nice bit of bacon?’

Mr Quinn laughed. It was a lovely, warm sound. It almost reminded Maisie of Jack.

‘I’m not saying you shouldn’t. I’m telling you that you shouldn’t give the rinds of your rashers to a tiny little tabby cat that doesn’t have the stomach for them and doesn’t know what’s good for herself.’

‘Who says I did?’

Maisie realised why the vet had his hands behind his back. Like a conjuror, he showed them a kidney-shaped stainless-
steel dish in which two stringy rinds of bacon rasher lay curled, like sinewy worms.

‘I rinsed them off before bringing them through so don’t worry. Really, Miss Strickland, there isn’t any point me giving you good advice if you aren’t going to take it, is there?’

‘Did you say “Strickland”? Are you related to—’

Maisie stopped and there was a pause. She glanced from one to the other. Miss Strickland looked guilty about her cat and Mr Quinn indulgent. But neither of those things interested her right now.

‘Yes, my brother, good-for-nothing though he is. How do you know him? Is it because you read about him in the paper?’

‘No,’ said Maisie, not wishing to get any deeper into what was clearly an unhappy family situation – and intimately connected to her own. ‘I just know the name because I’m local.’

Miss Strickland – clearly an unmarried spinster – gave her a sharp look; then her eyes widened.

‘No, but it’s you, though, isn’t it? You’re the one who solved the murder at Church Lodge.’

Maisie’s heart sank. She’d wanted to glide through Bitling unannounced and unrecognised, and it was her fault she’d given herself away.

‘I had much less to do with any of that than the paper made out.’

‘That’s not what I heard from Archie and Bert Close,’ said Miss Strickland. ‘So, it’s your fault about my brother.’

‘I can’t be held responsible for other people’s actions.’

‘No, you can’t, and I’m not saying he hasn’t got what he deserves.’ She turned back to the vet. ‘Anyway, Mr Quinn, I don’t expect you’re going to charge me for a drop of medicine and five minutes of your time, are you?’

‘I’ve a good mind to charge you for not following medical advice,’ he told her, feigning severity. ‘But no, it’s on the house. Come back at the end of the afternoon and I’m sure she’ll be right as rain.’

‘Thank you, Mr Quinn.’

With a furtive look at Maisie and a sly smile of triumph over the vet, Miss Strickland left the shop, the bell on the door sending her jauntily on her way.

‘I recognised you, too, of course,’ said Mr Quinn. ‘But I didn’t like to say. I’ve met her brother – an awful man.’

‘Yes,’ said Maisie, feeling trapped, both by the abruptly personal nature of the conversation and by her memories. ‘Least said soonest mended.’

‘You’re very photogenic, by the way, even in poor-quality newsprint, though you are much more beautiful in real life.’

As he said this, he lowered his eyes to a cash book on the counter, turning the pages, she thought, in order not to appear too forward, despite his compliment.

‘I’m sorry to have interrupted your pyramid-building,’ said Maisie. ‘It’s been a pleasure to meet you.’

‘Will you come back to Bitling any time soon, Miss Cooper?’ asked Mr Quinn quickly, his eyes still on his accounts. ‘My first name is Vaughan, by the way. You might enjoy the fair, you know, our “midsummer madness”.’

‘Perhaps I will,’ she said lightly. ‘Goodbye.’

She went outside, carefully closing the door behind her, wondering what it was that had been said or done that had caused the hairs on the back of her neck to bristle.

Five

Maisie took a few steps out of the line of sight of the vet’s window, towards the chapel. Had it been Vaughan Quinn’s pushy gallantry that had made her feel so ill at ease, or was it something else?

‘Why, if it isn’t Miss Cooper,’ said a sonorous, friendly voice.

She turned to see William Dodd, on his knees at one of two stone planters, either side of the door of the chapel, reaching in through the stalks and thorns to snip out a blown purple bloom in the heart of the thorny bush. He was wearing green corduroy trousers and a frayed check shirt.

‘Hello,’ she said, her mind elsewhere.

‘Now let me just . . .’ William grunted, leaning in. ‘Nearly there.’

Maisie climbed the steps, waiting patiently for him to achieve his goal. She heard the snick of the secateurs, then watched him squish the withered petals between his fingers and drop them on the soil before carefully withdrawing his arm.

‘It all adds to the mulch,’ he said. ‘Do you know roses?’

‘Not in the slightest,’ she told him.

‘Would you like to look inside?’

‘The chapel? I’d be delighted.’

Maisie waited while William wrestled with the catch on the heavy oak door, thinking about how many times she had shown interested – or indifferent – tourists around Notre Dame de Paris and the Sainte-Chapelle. All that seemed very far away.

‘Follow me.’ He stepped inside, holding the door for her. ‘Watch out, it swings back under its own weight.’ She dodged through and he let it so do. ‘Now, what do you think?’

‘It almost seems bigger inside than out,’ said Maisie, truthfully.

‘It does, doesn’t it?’ agreed William. ‘I think it’s because of the lack of adornment and because the street outside is so crowded and higgledy-piggledy. Of course, the chapel is set back and raised up – as a place of worship, a sacred place, should be, don’t you think?’

‘I suppose so.’

The chapel comprised a single open space with plain arched windows. Pews made from dark-red timber occupied almost every inch, with a narrow central aisle and a tight passage left and right along the white-painted walls. At the far end, eight or nine steps led up to a central pulpit in the same dark-red wood.

Maisie watched William approach these steps with placid reverence, making a sort of involuntary bow before gingerly climbing up and turning his head, as if about to address a ‘full house’ of a hundred or more devoted congregants. Gripping the front rail of the pulpit with two meaty hands, to her surprise he gave her a wink and then launched into a ferocious diatribe.

‘But the cowardly and unbelieving, the immoral, the sorcerers and idolaters, the liars and the abominable murderers – they shall all take their places in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.’

When he stopped, his voice reverberated for a few seconds due to the excellent acoustics.

‘Good heavens,’ said Maisie.

‘Judgemental heavens,’ said William, with a laugh. ‘From The Book of Revelations, chapter twenty-one, verse eight, though I may have mangled it a bit in remembering.’ He carefully picked his way back down. ‘These steps are
like ice.’

‘Are you a lay preacher,’ Maisie asked.

‘Ordained, since I was a young man.’

They went back outside and William insisted on taking Maisie to meet his elder son Bill in the butcher’s shop, learning that ‘Sparkes’ was the name of the previous owner. Given William’s sunny, avuncular disposition, Maisie was surprised to find Bill taciturn and uninterested. Then, apropos of nothing at all, it seemed, he barked at William: ‘Don’t go prying and questioning Micah, will you, Dad?’

‘Never mind that now,’ said William, clearly embarrassed.

‘And we need to go and talk to her up the hill about the rents. It’s terrible cruel.’

‘Not now, Bill.’

They went back out into the lane and William invited Maisie to cross the road to a well-looked-after terraced worker’s cottage. At the open front door, William called out: ‘We’ve company, dear.’

In the kitchen, Maisie was introduced to William’s wife, Edith, who was wrapping a scarf round the curlers in her hair. Maisie told her not to worry, that she was never certain if her own naturally curly hair was a blessing or a curse: ‘Perms will soon be out of fashion again, don’t you think?’

‘I expect I’ll do my hair like my old mum did hers till the day I die,’ said Edith.

William insisted they should ‘have a nice cup of tea’.

Edith told him: ‘Go and open up the front room that we keep tidy for best.’

Maisie persuaded them not to trouble, that it would be more pleasant to sit outside, which they did, in a happy triangle in the back garden round a rustic table, made from a slice of what must have been an enormous beech tree. She complimented it and William told her it came ‘from up-along at Littlegreen’s sawmill’.

‘What a lovely spot,’ she told them and was rewarded with a detailed rundown of every delightful flowering plant, some of which she thought of as weeds: cowslips, restharrow, sky-blue field scabious, purple knapweed, pink sainfoin. ‘You both must have green fingers.’

‘The garden will really come into its own later on,’ William told her proudly, ‘in late summer and autumn, you know, with the toadflax and the meadow cranesbill.’

‘Lovely,’ said Maisie, hoping he wouldn’t ask her to point these plants out.

‘Will you still be here, Miss Cooper?’ asked Edith. ‘I understood your work was in Paris.’

‘Please call me Maisie, Edith. Yes, I will still be about.’ She felt herself smiling. ‘It’s my intention to marry Jack Wingard.’

‘That is good news,’ said Edith. ‘Sergeant Wingard’s been a very good friend to my William.’

‘In what way?’ asked Maisie, innocently.

‘William was a CO in the war, a conscientious objector. People have long memories and don’t forgive.’

‘I had no idea.’ She turned to William. ‘Was it due to your religious conviction?’

‘That’s right,’ said William. ‘The Lord’s sixth commandment tells us: “Thou shalt not kill.” But you have to sympathise. When people were hostile, it was because they remembered the shortages and the Battle of Britain and the Blitz and the threat of invasion.’

‘But that was all in the past.’

‘People,’ said Edith, as if pronouncing an incontrovertible truth, ‘they like to bear a grudge. They enjoy it because it makes them feel better about themselves.’

‘Did you go to prison?’ Maisie asked.

‘No, I wasn’t an absolutist,’ said William. ‘I did what they called alternative work. That didn’t help, though. When the war ended and I was back in my police uniform, I found I was shunned and couldn’t join the Rotary or the Masons or the even the crown green bowling team in Priory Park. No one would have me. So, there ’tis . . .’ he told her, his voice fading away.

‘William was very lonely out of hours,’ said Edith.

‘At the station, too,’ said William. ‘It was a hard row to hoe. In the end, it was your Jack joining up with Fred Nairn and both of them making an effort. In time, the others sort of softened and . . .’

Maisie was astonished to see a tear in William’s eye.

‘That must have been a very difficult time for you both,’ she said.

‘It was a blessing we didn’t live in town,’ said Edith. ‘Up here in Bitling, with chapel and everything, William was known to be a good man and the village accepted he had different ideas.’

‘People don’t understand an experience not their own,’ said William, unembarrassed, wiping his tears away with his handkerchief.

Maisie thought it might be a good idea to change the subject. ‘Do you get on with the incomers in West Bitling?’

‘Some yes, some no,’ said Edith. ‘People are the same everywhere, don’t you think, and there must be some good among fifty-odd houses?’

Maisie nodded agreement.

Edith went on: ‘But we shouldn’t be talking about the sad past. We should be thinking about the future. Will it be a summer wedding?’

‘It’s June already. I’m not sure there’s time.’

‘No, not this summer, next summer. Florence will need those months to make your dress.’

‘Oh,’ said Maisie, taken aback. ‘Won’t I just buy one?’

Edith laughed and told her: ‘Florence Wingard has been thinking about making your wedding dress since you came back in February, I’ll be bound. Haven’t you seen her measuring you with her eye?’

‘No, honestly, I had no idea.’

Maisie moved the conversation on from weddings and dresses and, soon, she got up to go, thanking them for their hospitality. Pressed by both William and Edith, she accepted their invitation to come back the next day for lunch.

‘I’ve taken the week off for the fair,’ he told her. ‘I was only in court with you as a favour to Jack, looking after you at the trial. I’ve got that much holiday saved up, it’s going to be hard to get through it all before I retire.’

Maisie walked back through the kissing gate and across the field to the turkey yard. Harold and the younger man were having a break, sitting on the old harrow as the sun slid down the sky in the west. Harold thanked her once more for the pound note she had given him by the Market Cross and added: ‘Will you please send all my gratitude to Mrs Pascal for giving me another chance?’

‘Of course.’ She held out her hand to the younger man. ‘My name is Maisie Cooper.’

‘I’m Adam,’ he said, ‘but you don’t want to shake my hand till I’ve given it a rinse.’

‘No,’ said Maisie, smiling. ‘Perhaps not. Nice to meet you.’

She got into the Land Rover and drove back down to the Framlington Road but, instead of turning left to return to Chichester, she went straight across into the development of – so Edith had said – ‘fifty-odd’ red-brick houses, arranged in a series of crescents and cul-de-sacs. At the heart of the development was a green with a playground in one corner made up of a slide, a roundabout and a set of swings. Beyond the green was a small parade of shops.

Out of curiosity, she drove round and parked in a small lay-by in front of the one on the right. Getting out, she saw the name over the window: Micah Dodd – Butcher. There was also a lovely set of antique ceramic panels depicting an old-fashioned butcher at his trade.

Not wanting to appear nosy, she went in and bought half a dozen green – unsmoked – streaky rashers. Micah Dodd turned out to be a man in his thirties, wearing a grey shirt with a plain blue tie, protected by a long blue-and-white-striped apron. He was the spitting image of the taciturn Bill Dodd, but a more cheerful and smiling version.

Intrigued by what the conflict might be between the two brothers, she went back outside, strolling past Ramsi’s Fish & Chips – closed mid-afternoon – and a sweet shop that reminded her of Jenny Brook’s dismal premises in Bunting, with cobwebs in the corners of the smeary window and sparsely stocked shelves. She turned when she heard the happy voices of three children playing on the slide and deduced that the school day at the local primary must have come to an end.

Time was moving on, so she got back in the Land Rover and drove directly to Parklands in Chichester, where she found Florence on her bench in the front garden of the bungalow, watching the world go by, framed by the vivid orange blossoms of her aggressively thorny pyracanthas.

‘I come bearing a gift of bacon for our tea.’

‘Lovely. Who from?’

‘Micah Dodd in West Bitling.’ Maisie frowned. ‘Can Bitling possibly support two butchers?’

‘You wouldn’t think so,’ Florence agreed.

Jack came outside in a blue suit, white shirt and burgundy tie in which he cut a fine figure, well rested from his daytime sleep after the night shift. Maisie told him and Florence about all she had seen and done in Bitling, including the fact that there seemed to be a dispute of some kind between William’s two sons. Jack couldn’t tell her why.

Florence went inside to ‘get things ready for tea’ – in other words supper – and Maisie and Jack drove down to the railway station at the bottom of South Street.

Having fifteen minutes to spare and finding it was opening time, they popped into the Globe where Maisie ordered a vodka and tonic with lime and received one with lemon. Jack put his small suitcase by his feet and drank a half of Harvey’s, a local ale, while they discussed what he expected from the training programme. Then Maisie told him what Edith Dodd had said about Grandma Florence measuring her up by eye for a wedding dress that she would sew by hand.

‘Well, yes,’ said Jack. ‘I expect that’s true.’

‘They think very well of you, the Dodds. How did you get to know one another?’

‘Just circumstances,’ said Jack, airily.

Maisie didn’t press the point. She admired Jack’s reticence about his work for charity and ‘good deeds’. His support for the surprisingly tearful William Dodd had clearly been very important to the older man.

‘Bitling village means a lot to him.’

‘Yes, it does. I don’t think I told you, last year, I was what they call “special guest” at Bitling Fair.’

‘Really? What did you have to do?’

‘Judge the competitions, award the prizes, kowtow to the lady of the manor, all the time dressed in a peculiar green robe.’

‘How extraordinary. What else—?’

Maisie didn’t find out any more because the publican came over to thank Jack for sorting out a ‘closing time ruckus’ the previous evening. Once that was done, Maisie remarked: ‘Night shift wasn’t all tea and biscuits and your feet up, then?’

Jack smiled and told her: ‘It seldom is. You know that.’

They drained their glasses and left the Globe, heading for the south side of the station and the westbound platform. They found the railway gates shut against them, so they climbed up onto the pedestrian bridge over the lines. Alone at the summit, they embraced, dazzled by the sun, with eyes only for one another in any case. The moment of intimacy lasted so long that, when the Southampton train – where Jack would have to change – thundered in, he had to run down in order not to miss it.

Maisie stayed where she was. Beneath her, the wooden railway gates swung open, releasing a build-up of traffic. She watched the train pull out, taking Jack away from her for a few lonely but – she hoped – unexceptional days.

Back at the bungalow on Parklands, she and Florence ate bacon omelettes for their tea, then Maisie drove into town alone, Florence preferring to stay home and watch a murder mystery on ITV whose lead character she described as ‘a bumbling but brilliant detective in a crumpled mackintosh’. Maisie parked in her habitual spot behind Woolworths and made her way to the Granada cinema.

Maisie was surprised to have to queue to get in, standing under the ostentatious white columns on the pavement. Inside, she bought a ticket to sit in the front row of the circle and enjoyed the film enormously, despite the fact that, halfway through, a girl nearby screamed and an usherette had to come and explain that the sensation the girl had felt brushing past her legs was just the cinema cat, Bridget, essential for catching mice that fed on scraps dropped by the patrons.

Because Kidnapped had been preceded by a short documentary – a surprising forty-minute film about molecular biology entitled The Silent Revolution – Maisie was a few minutes late and found Zoe waiting by the car.

‘Good day?’ she asked, lightly.

‘Work is so tiring when you’re sixteen,’ replied Zoe in a desperate voice.

‘I know,’ Maisie told her, sympathetically. ‘You’ll get used to it.’

They drove home in silence with Zoe half asleep in the passenger seat and Maisie thinking about all the people she had met, arranging them into a kind of ‘cast of characters’. Doing that made her think about the murder investigation at Chichester Theatre and, of course, the previous ones around Church Lodge in Framlington and Bunting Manor.

But this is different, she told herself. Nothing like that could possibly happen again.

Six

A little after midnight, a summer storm broke, trapped in the downland valley.

Asleep in her attic bedroom in Bunting Manor, Zoe didn’t hear the thunder or the rain or see the lightning, because she was dead to the world, her narrow sixteen-year-old frame not yet attuned to the strain and endurance required by the hotel trade.

In her untidy, dusty master bedroom at the back of the house, Phyl was oblivious, too, thoroughly dosed up on aspirin, all her ‘tubes’ – ears, nose and throat – blocked by her summer cold. Thankfully, though, sleep was her best remedy.

In her pleasant first-floor bedroom, at the front of the manor house, with a wigwam of kindling laid ready in the grate of the unneeded bedroom fireplace, Maisie had been unable to sleep. To beguile the lateness of the hour, she had been reading a detective story, barely aware of nature’s crescendo outside her window, so intensely was she gripped by the suspense and the mystery in the imaginary world.

It was a classical whodunnit, written by the New Zealand theatre director, producer and author, Ngaio Marsh, named for a native shrub of that distant land. Zoe had given Maisie the book back in April, for her birthday, and she had begun it, then put it aside because, in the midst of the drama and upset at Chichester Festival Theatre, it had struck too close to home.

The novel was called Opening Night and, as she reached the final pages, Maisie was struck by the cleverness of the mystery coming to a head with the detective asking the stage manager a question, in German in the text. With that, all ought to have become clear. But, of course, it hadn’t and Maisie had felt obliged to read on to the end in order to find out what she had missed. Eventually, after a satisfying dénouement, she had put the finished novel aside, just in time to see a flash of lightning across the dense clouds and to hear an almost simultaneous rumble of thunder.

Good heavens, that’s directly overhead.

Overstimulated by her novel, with the rattle of the near-vertical rain, Maisie felt restless. She thought about going down to the kitchen. She had been meaning to give it a good deep clean. Neither Phyl nor Zoe were the noticing kind, so it badly needed it. Then a rent in the clouds allowed a shaft of lovely moonlight to shine across the blotter on the desk in the open window and she decided to write Jack a letter – not out of duty, but because it would make her feel closer to him, even though they were one hundred and forty miles apart.

Maisie got off her bed – in the warm, close evening she hadn’t yet undressed or slipped under the covers – and sat at the desk with the lovely scent of newly damp leaves filling the room, accompanied by the soothing sound of precipitation. There was another flash of lightning, glinting off the stainless-steel case of a lovely Art Deco calendar. Three seconds later she heard another rumble of thunder, indicating that the storm was moving away.

Although the bright moonlight was almost enough to write by, she turned on the forty-watt bulb in the little table lamp with its grubby brown-and-orange shade and took up her pen.

Dear Jack,

You’ve only been gone a few hours, so please don’t assume, when you read this, that I’m about to become a desperate and clinging wife. It’s just that I’m awake and no one else is and I feel a need for conversation, even if it’s only with the ghost of you on this page and I’m not going to get any reply.

Once you’d gone, Florence and I ate the bacon I bought in West Bitling in an omelette for our tea, then I went to the pictures . . .

She filled three sides and, once she had signed off with several suitable, heartfelt terms of endearment, she took another piece of Bunting Manor notepaper with a different task in mind – a list of the new people she had met and the impressions they had made.

William Dodd, unhappy but hiding it out of habit

Edith Dodd – salt of the earth; let me in on why William is so very devoted to Jack (objector); worried for her husband?

Harold Farr – another beneficiary of Phyl’s generosity like me (!), working alongside a younger man (Adam something) who snapped at him

Vaughan Quinn – a nice man, reminds me of Jack

Ada Strickland – extraordinary coincidence; village life, though, maybe I should have expected it . . .

Bill Dodd – very down in the mouth and not at all friendly

Micah Dodd – looks the spit of unhappy Bill; something going on there?

In the drawer of the desk, she found some elderly but high-quality Bunting Manor envelopes, a little yellowed with age. In her handbag, she located Jack’s slip of paper with the address of the training centre in Exeter and carefully copied it out. She folded her letter, put it in the envelope, licked the flap and sealed it.

Then she looked at her list of names and questions and judgements, feeling suddenly foolish.

What on earth did I write all that for? I’m making something out of nothing. Just because the windows of Meek’s Auction Rooms were dark . . .

She stopped, thinking about the weary constable standing outside, the one she had tricked into confirming that there had been a ‘suspicious death’.

In any case, it isn’t my business.

She twisted the paper into a spill and pushed it between the sticks of kindling, laid ready in the grate of the bedroom fireplace for the colder days to come. Then she undressed and got into bed, unaware that she would soon need those notes because she no longer had a choice.

Maisie would soon become a central character in the murder at Bitling Fair.

II – OAK

Signifying thunder but also wisdom, patience & trust

Seven

Maisie woke, as was her habit, at seven o’clock. She went out onto the landing and listened. There was no noise, either from Phyl’s room or from Zoe’s attic bedroom. She descended the impressive staircase to the large and gloomy hallway, wondering whether she might be able to persuade Phyl to get Archie Close to prune or even remove some of the trees that, over the years, had encroached on the front of the house and cast it into profound shadow.

In the kitchen, she lit the front-right ring on the stove, hearing the hiss of the Calor gas, immediately feeling the humidity that combustion left in the air. She raised the sash window behind the butler sink and opened the back door onto the ill-kept herb garden. The air that came gently through was mild and fragrant, a combination of the scents of flowers, damp earth from the thunderstorm and, she thought, a faint hint of distant stubble-burning where early wheat must already have been harvested.

Remembering her late-night idea of deep cleaning the slovenly kitchen, she looked under the sink for suitable equipment, pulling back a scrap of dingy curtain to reveal a dark and seldom-touched space, crowded with elderly products. There was, however, a tall cylinder of Ajax powder that seemed still useable – not caked solid in the cardboard tube by damp – so, while she was waiting for the whistle kettle to boil, she sprinkled a good quantity on the wooden draining board and had at it with a scourer.

At first the results didn’t seem too promising, but she persisted, judging that elbow grease would help if she worked assiduously with the grain of the oak. The kettle whistled and, instead of making her coffee, she used the boiling water to rinse and scald the draining board and was delighted with the result.

Happily, there was just enough hot water left to make a cup of Maxwell House – two spoons of coffee powder, the same of demerara sugar, mixed with the top-of-the-milk. She stirred it and went to sit on the back step in a small patch of sun filtered by leaves, remembering similar moments of pleasure, even as far back as February, before she had learned that Stephen had been murdered, when his death was still, as far as she knew, just an unhappy accident.

The coffee was soon all gone so she put the kettle back on to boil while she had a quick wash in the bathroom on the landing. Hearing sounds from Phyl’s master bedroom, she gingerly opened the door and peeped in. It was very gloomy, of course, because it faced west and the curtains were drawn, but she could see the oval of Phyl’s drooping face propped up against the headboard.

‘Any better?’ she asked.

‘Perhaps,’ said Phyl, then she sniffed, giving the lie to her words. ‘I don’t want to let them down at Bitling Fair. It’s bad enough they’re all at one another’s throats as it is. I don’t want them after me, too.’

‘How come?’

‘Never mind. Could I have some tea with a glug of whisky in it?’ requested Phyl with a splutter. ‘And honey, if we have any.’

‘We do have honey because I went and bought some,’ said Maisie. ‘One day soon, I’ll manage to teach you about buying things ahead of when you want them, not after.’

‘Don’t grumble,’ said Phyl, weakly. She sniffed again. ‘And another hanky?’

‘I’m sorry. Of course.’

The kettle was whistling downstairs so Maisie ran back to the kitchen and turned off the gas, using a little water to warm the pot, then three generous spoonfuls of PG Tips for a good strong brew. She put milk and honey, teapot and mug on a tray, carried it through to the library on the far side of the hall where she found a whisky bottle on Phyl’s side table and carried the lot upstairs. Phyl was marginally more upright and able to take the tray on her lap, but she looked very poorly. Maisie gave her the clean hanky from her own pocket.

‘All right if I pop out?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’ Sniff. ‘Go on with you.’

‘What shall I bring back for your lunch?’

‘Oranges.’ Sniff. ‘Some Ski yoghurts. Zoe likes those.’

‘Will do.’

‘You are disgustingly cheerful, Maisie,’ said Phyl, ironically, wheezing in a congested voice. ‘Have you had some good news?’

Maisie smiled, broadly. ‘Yes, I have.’

Although it was only seven-thirty in the morning, the day was already warm enough for Maisie to drive into Chichester in just her black-and-white-check dress and a pale blue summer cardigan, with the window down. She parked and put her missive to Jack in the post at a convenient letter box, arriving as the door of the swimming baths was being unlocked. Steeling herself for the damp and chilly interior, she made her way inside to the frigid changing rooms. Once in her costume, she stepped through the obligatory anti-verruca footbath into the poolside’s echoing cavern.

First to arrive, she went up to the deep end and dived in, managing two twenty-five-yard lengths before she had company, an older man with a crooked leg who she had seen before.

After two more lengths, she saw Charity, shivering on the side, dressed in a lime green one-piece swimsuit, her dark skin a vivid contrast. Maisie swam over and encouraged her into the water. They swam ten lengths side by side and Maisie was impressed but not surprised by Charity’s powerful stroke, learned at the seaside in Guadeloupe. When they got out, they changed and sat for ten minutes in the café overlooking the water with cups of strong tea in their hands. Maisie asked Charity if her husband, Maurice, remained determined to retire and move abroad.

‘Is he still talking about cooking fish on the beach somewhere in the tropics?’

‘I think that was a winter daydream,’ said Charity. ‘He’s happy in his work and on the golf course, but we’ll see.’

The elderly man with the crooked leg came painfully slowly up the stairs to the café, as did two teachers, paying no attention to the thirty or so eleven-year-olds they had brought from the Church of England secondary school and who were down at the poolside in their pyjamas, ready to practise life-saving and survival with one of the pool attendants.

‘How well do you know Lady Catherine Peahorn?’ Maisie asked, switching to French, fairly certain no one would understand what they were saying if she didn’t raise her voice. ‘Maurice works with all the poshest people, doesn’t he?’

‘I know a little about her.’

‘For example?’

‘Well, not long ago she asked Maurice for help and he got Montague Meek to go and value some bits and pieces for her. You know him? He runs one of the auction houses.’

‘Yes,’ said Maisie, thinking of the locked premises and the information she had enticed the constable to share.

‘In fact, Maurice went too,’ said Charity. ‘And Lady Catherine made quite a performance of it, giving them lunch or dinner – I don’t remember which.’

‘But you’ve never met her?’ asked Maisie.

‘No. As you know, the nobles don’t come into the office; Maurice takes the office to them. When he came back, he told me a funny story about the companion trying to make crème caramel – which isn’t easy even for a good cook – and serving a kind of sickly scrambled-egg soup.’

‘Oh dear. But what does Maurice think of the set-up in Bitling, where she’s in charge of all those lives and can tell them what colour to paint their windows and raise their rents whenever and however she feels like it? Phyl told me they’re all at one another’s throats.’

‘Maurice would say “noblesse oblige”.’

‘Meaning?’

‘That it is the duty of those who have the good fortune to have been granted rank and wealth and status to behave honourably and charitably.’

‘I have no reason to doubt Lady Catherine’s morals, but it seems she’s pretty high-handed and I wouldn’t say charitable.’

‘Unfortunately, the “noblesse oblige” idea isn’t a rule, it’s just a recommendation. Maurice would never say so, but it’s important as a way of maintaining the lower classes’ respect and, therefore, their compliance.’

Maisie smiled and told her: ‘You sound almost radical, Charity. I don’t think revolution is round the corner in Bitling.’

‘You never know. I’ll ask Maurice if there’s anything brewing.’

‘Will he be at the office? Could I do so myself?’

‘Perhaps, but he’s due in court.’

They walked through the centre of the waking city, most of the shops just opening up with quite a few people out and about. Charity unlocked the front door of Maurice Ryan’s solicitor’s office and led Maisie into the reception area, a bland, neutral space with three mixed dining chairs positioned along the apple-green wall. Maisie sat down and Charity went through the narrow doorway into the kitchen to fill and turn on the electric kettle, just as Maurice himself arrived, red-cheeked and smiling, larger than life in a becoming navy-blue suit with wide padded shoulders.

‘I wasn’t invited to the swimming party and I can’t run.
I just don’t have the physiology. I’ve been stomping round the city walls.’

‘He was invited swimming, Maisie,’ called Charity in an indulgent tone. ‘He refused. His precise words were: “Bathing is an afternoon activity – better still, an evening activity.” You two go ahead and I will bring tea.’

Maurice took Maisie’s hand and kissed it.

‘Congratulations, however, must come first. I’m sure you and Sergeant Wingard will suit one another to a T.’

‘Thank you, Maurice.’

‘It’s cruel and sad and unfair that poor Stephen will never know of your happiness.’

Maurice had been a good friend to Maisie’s wastrel brother in the years of their estrangement. Maisie felt guilty that she had not been present to keep Stephen on a better path. She felt gratitude that Maurice had done what the solicitor himself admitted was his ‘poor best’ as Stephen’s friend. Just now, though, Maurice’s words in this unexpected moment of intimacy quite robbed her of speech.

‘That’s enough, now, husband,’ called Charity. ‘You are a sentimental man but Maisie won’t like to . . . what is the word, Maisie? Patauger.’

‘To wallow,’ Maisie replied with a laugh to release her tension. ‘But, yes, I agree, Maurice. It is sad and unfair. Thank you for thinking of him, as I do.’

Maurice opened the door to his inner sanctum, furnished with low mahogany bookcases and a desk in the same wood, very tidy as usual, with just a heavy beige rotary telephone and a leather blotter. He pulled out yesterday’s used sheet of absorbent paper, revealing a pristine one beneath.

‘What’s cooking, doll?’ he asked in a cod-American accent, slumping into his office chair. Then, as Maisie took one of the two club armchairs, he leaned forward, preventing her reply: ‘Oh, whatever Charity thinks, I must say this again. I congratulate you, one more time. In all seriousness, you were excellent in court again.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I wish I could persuade every witness to simply answer the questions they are asked and let the lawyers spin the silk of their legal arguments from that raw thread.’

‘Beautifully put,’ said Maisie. ‘Now, do you have ten minutes?’

‘I do.’

‘Can you tell me about Bitling village and Lady Catherine Peahorn?’

‘In confidence, obviously,’ he said, his face serious. ‘She’s a client.’

‘Yes, of course.’

Charity brought in the tea and bourbon biscuits, then left them, saying: ‘I have my post to deal with. You carry on.’

Maurice jumped up to thank his wife and close the door behind her, smiling endearingly. When he was again seated, Maisie asked: ‘How is it that Lady Catherine has such power in this day and age?’

‘Is it so rare?’ asked Maurice. ‘I imagine there must be dozens of places like Bitling. And tied professions aren’t so odd, are they? There are jockeys who live grace-and-favour on their stud, teachers in private schools whose employment grants them a right of residency, together with a twenty-four-hour responsibility. These sorts of traditions are strong, like oak trees, but gnarly when examined too closely.’

‘How do you mean, “gnarly”?’

‘The pressures cause ugly resentments and rivalries.’

‘Yes, I see that. But this is different from a tied job with a house to live in. As I understand it, she owns every business as well as every brick and field.’

‘I would say two things to that. She can’t own the goodwill in a business because that’s something accrued by the persons running the concern. For example, when old Sparkes retired and Bill Dodd took it on—’

‘When was that, by the way?’

‘Fifteen years ago, perhaps? Bill went into the butcher’s trade out of his national service. Apparently, he found a taste for it by working in the Catering Corps, in addition to the usual pointless square-bashing. Anyway, Sparkes was able to sell it as a going concern and Bill Dodd – just between you and me – took a chunk of William and Edith’s savings to do so.’

‘How do you know all that detail?’

‘Because there’s a duty of disclosure in the village as well and I’ve dealt with Lady Catherine’s affairs since I took this practice on.’

‘You mean Bill had to reveal all the details of his deal with Mr Sparkes to Lady Catherine,’ said Maisie, astonished, ‘even though they were nothing to do with her?’

‘I do.’

‘How very intrusive. Carry on.’

‘What was I saying?’

‘That there were two things.’

‘Yes, that was the second one, the disclosure.’

Maisie frowned, feeling she was missing something. She took a punt on a vague idea that had been brewing in the back of her mind.

‘Do you know why Bill and Micah fell out?’

‘How would you know about that?’ asked Maurice. ‘Are you so deep in with old William that he poured out his heart to you?’

‘No, not at all.’

‘Surely Jack wouldn’t have revealed—’

‘No. Jack might well be in William’s confidence but Jack would never have passed on something personal and secret to me without direct permission. Anyway, I’m not asking about William. I’m asking about the sons. There’s a rift of some kind, isn’t there?’

‘I don’t know how you do it,’ said Maurice.

‘Do what?’

‘See to the heart of things. And people. By the way, don’t you want that biscuit?’

‘No, thank you.’

Maurice took the fourth and final bourbon biscuit, having already eaten the other three, and dunked it in his tea.

‘It was a question of disclosure, again. Micah stayed on in the air force after his national service, two tours of three or four years. I don’t know exactly why he then left.’

‘It might have been the government deciding to downscale the military.’

‘Yes, that would chime with the dates. Anyway, it amounted to him coming back late, as it were, to village life.’

‘How old?’

‘Early thirties?’

‘Six or seven years ago?’

‘The date isn’t important, as far as I know. What was important was that Bill had been waiting for his brother to come back in the fond expectation that they would go into business together, that Micah would help him expand. He had a plan drawn up and hoped it would be approved by Lady Catherine.’

‘For what, exactly?’

‘Well, that’s where it connects a little closer with you. The idea was to go into a sort of secondary partnership with Mrs Pascal. You know she’s got a turkey shed up there?’

‘Yes.’

‘And other livestock elsewhere?’

‘I’ve never looked into it but I’ve always assumed . . .’ Maisie stopped. ‘The turkey barn must be on her own land, not the Peahorn estate.’

‘That’s right. She bought it from the family.’

‘Lady Catherine doesn’t seem like the type to divest herself of a single acre—’

‘That’s something I can’t talk about,’ interrupted Maurice.

‘All right. I won’t press you,’ said Maisie. ‘What were you going to say about William’s sons?’

‘Bill and Mrs Pascal drew up paperwork with Micah as co-signatory.’

‘And Micah said “no”,’ Maisie anticipated. ‘He decided he’d rather escape the clutches of Lady Catherine and start again in the new development in West Bitling.’

Maisie nodded to herself, unaware that Maurice was gazing at her in admiration.

‘How do you do that?’ he asked, again.

Her eyes flicked up. ‘What?’

‘Get there one step ahead?’

‘Oh,’ said Maisie. ‘I suppose it all adds up.’

‘Only if you’ve got a special gift.’ Maurice shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Maisie. Maybe it’s like doing the cryptic crossword. Some people have it and others don’t and it isn’t easy to teach.’

‘It seems to me,’ said Maisie, getting back to the point, ‘that Micah was right. What benefit did Bill see in staying in Bitling?’

‘Family connections, tradition, a kind of quality-mark, you know, from the ancient name.’

‘Sparkes?’

‘Yes, but Bitling, too.’

‘And that wouldn’t apply to West Bitling by extension?’

‘No, not for a good few years. Maybe not ever.’

Maisie dropped her eyes again, pondering. ‘All that happened some years ago, you said, but the upset seems very much alive.’

‘You’re aware how country people are with their grudges? They tend to keep them simmering.’

‘Could there be something else between them?’

‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t know.’

‘No. Why would you?’ Maisie remembered another strand of what she had been told. She decided to be circumspect because the antique dealer’s death didn’t seem to be general knowledge yet. ‘Oh, what about Mr Meek?’

Maurice laughed and asked her: ‘How on earth do you know about old Monty?’

‘It just came up in conversation. Jack told me there’s an ongoing investigation and a connection to Bitling. He owns one of the auction houses behind the Granada cinema, doesn’t he, and you recommended him to do some valuing at Baffins – that is what it’s called, isn’t it, the Peahorn house on the hill?’

‘It is.’

‘Which is a coincidence, because the road down the side of the cinema leading to the auction rooms is Baffins Lane.’

‘Coincidence, definitely, I think,’ said Maurice. ‘Just another old Sussex place name.’

‘Fair enough. Why did Lady Catherine want her things valued? Is she unwell? She’s very old, isn’t she?’

‘Born in the last century.’

‘Do you know what year?’

‘Not off the top of my head. But, as for the valuing, perhaps it was a regular thing, you know, given inflation and so on, making sure she had up-to-date figures.’

‘Does she have a lot of very valuable heirlooms?’

Maurice looked coy. ‘What would you guess?’

‘I suppose she might. Jewellery and silverware, perhaps. Art on her walls?’

‘You said it, not I,’ he said, discreetly, but with a brief nod.

‘Not a Michelangelo or a Leonardo, but perhaps a Constable or an early Turner, you know, when his stuff was more representational?’

‘I don’t know what you mean by “representational” but you’re probably right that it would be in character for her ladyship to own one or two landscapes, being a member of the landed gentry.’

‘How “gentry” is she?’

‘It’s a minor inherited title.’

‘Will it die with her?’

Maurice gave her an ironic glance. ‘Ah, here we come to it, Maisie. You’re wondering, with your usual flair, if someone is going to bump her off in order to—’

‘Please don’t joke like that, Maurice. I don’t think it’s right.’

‘I apologise.’

Maisie relented: ‘No, forgive me. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have suggested it,’ she told him with a smile. ‘I seem to have been conditioned by circumstances to wonder about root causes and motivations.’

‘I can’t talk about that anyway – client privilege.’

Maisie was sure Maurice knew something he would have liked to share, but couldn’t.

‘She has a will?’

‘Of course, but drawn up by my predecessor. I’ve not had sight of it but, even if I had . . .’ He gave her a meaningful look.

‘I know. Professional secrets. Could there be a distant cousin or second-nephew or niece?’

‘The title can pass in the female line,’ he told her and, again, his words seemed freighted with some additional meaning. ‘But even the trees with the deepest roots eventually fail.’

‘Beautifully put, again,’ Maisie told him. ‘If you were to look into it, how would you go about it?’

‘Somerset House, of course.’

‘The registry of births, marriages and deaths.’

‘Yes.’

‘Was she ever married?’

‘No.’

‘You’re certain?’

‘That would have come to my attention,’ said Maurice, ‘in amongst her other dealings in which I have had the honour to serve. Oh, there was one thing that I think will interest you.’

‘Yes?’

‘It isn’t sinister in any way. She had a damaged antique coffee pot sent out to your friend and mine, Jon Wilkes, the farrier in Framlington, to put right. You remember he dabbles in fine metalwork?’

For a moment or two, Maisie said nothing. She was thinking about what Florence Wingard had said about her husband leaving her pregnant, sailing away on his merchant ship and never coming back. It made her wonder if there might be a kind of parallel in Lady Catherine’s life. It would help to know her precise date of birth in order to make sure it was feasible.

Charity came in to remind Maurice that he was due in court. Maisie stood up, thanking him for his time and patience, thinking he looked worried – perhaps that he had been indiscreet about an important client? – and tried to allay his fears.

‘I’m not sure what I expected you to tell me, Maurice. In a way, I think I’m reassured. Everything you’ve said makes complete sense, alongside what I’ve seen and heard.’

‘Nothing “lurking beneath” as they say on the horror film posters?’ asked Maurice. ‘No little acorn of suspicion?’

Maisie wanted to say: No, nothing at all.

But it wasn’t true. The truth was in the pattern, already beginning to reveal itself, and she couldn’t bring herself to pronounce the lie.

Eight

In Bitling, meanwhile, passions were running high, much to William’s dismay.

‘I could kill him,’ said Bill.

‘Don’t say that,’ his father admonished. ‘You’re just being silly.’

‘He deserves it.’

‘No one deserves that. You sound like a child, Bill.’

‘You’ve always stood up for Micah, just because he’s the younger. We’re not children any more.’

‘I know that,’ said William, wearily. ‘You’re both grown men. The fact you’re two years apart shouldn’t make any difference when one of you is past forty.’

‘You don’t understand. He’s only gone and . . .’

‘What? What has he gone and done?’

‘Never mind,’ said Bill, mulishly. ‘I don’t want to trouble you and Mum with it.’

They were sitting in the kitchen of William and Edith’s modest home. Theirs was the nicest kept of the old workers’ cottages because William was assiduous in maintaining the woodwork, rubbing down and repainting, even though the owner, Lady Catherine Peahorn, was entirely neglectful of her responsibilities. He had even turned his hand to repointing the old Sussex flints of the walls with grey mortar.

Though not recently. The imminence of retirement seemed to have made him tired.

Bill’s strong right hand was wrapped round a mug of tea, his left holding a leaf of parchment-coloured witing paper, screwed up into a ball.

‘You should smooth that out, Bill,’ said William, with a police officer’s attention to detail. ‘You might want to refer to it later on.’

‘What for? Micah’s been and stolen my customer. This is just telling me what’s done is done.’

‘I suppose Micah thinks he’s got the right,’ said William, mildly.

‘Has he though? The butcher’s shop was my business first when I took it on from old Sparkes when he retired. Then Micah came out of the air force and set up in competition over in the new development and it’s not fair. I was here before he was.’

‘You’re talking like a child again,’ said his father. ‘It’s not like that in the grown-up world and you know it. It’s not “bags I get first go” and there’s an end of it.’

‘Yes, I know that,’ said Bill in a surly tone.

‘You don’t sound like you do,’ William told him. ‘Who’s the customer, anyway?’

‘It’s the Dolphin and Anchor in town.’

‘Oh,’ said William, taken aback. ‘That’s a good deal of your turnover and profit, isn’t it?’

‘Exactly. That’s what I’ve been banging on about.’

‘I wish you’d tell me what else it is the two of you have fallen out over.’

‘Has Micah been hinting?’ asked Bill with a dark look.

‘Calm down, now, boy,’ said William. ‘Micah’s said nothing and hinted nothing. But don’t you think it would be better if you told me straight out? A problem shared is a problem halved.’

‘It isn’t your business, Father.’

William gave an incredulous snort.

‘It isn’t my business that my own two sons are at each other’s throats and can’t bear to look one another in the eye? Haven’t I seen it at the Morris rehearsals? I’d like to know what is my business.’

‘That’s not what I mean.’

‘There you go again, talking like a teenager. You know what? I’d like to bang your heads together and knock some sense into them.’

‘Of course you would,’ said Bill, sounding deflated. ‘But there’s nothing you can do.’

Bill drained his mug of tea and left, out into the street from the hall, leaving the front door open for the fresh air. William watched him cross the road to his butcher’s premises, right opposite, with the name ‘Sparkes’ in curlicued gold lettering on a bottle-green background above the display window. Over the door was a large bare patch of render from which a decorative panel had been removed. William heard the bell ring as Bill opened his shop door and went inside, thinking that not one customer had wanted his son’s wares in all the time they’d been sat at the kitchen table arguing the toss.

‘I don’t know,’ William muttered. ‘What it’ll come to, the Lord knows. The development at West Bitling should have been a blessing, not a curse.’

Edith came in from the back garden with a basket of sweet-smelling laundry that had been drying in the sun and the warm south-west breeze. Dutifully, William got out of his chair with a creak of the wooden frame and a crunch of his old knees to help her fold the sheets.

‘What was all that about?’ Edith asked him.

‘You know what it was about, my dear. You were listening, I’ll be bound.’

‘I was, and a good job, too. Somehow they’ll have to be made to see sense.’

‘I know but, unless one or the other tells us where it started, that’s easier said than done.’

They worked in silence for a few minutes then, when the job was done, William bent down to put two small logs on the fire, despite the warm June day, because the back boiler was the only source of hot water in the old-fashioned dwelling.

‘Put the brick against the garden door, will you, Edith, to keep the through draught?’ She did as he asked. ‘Thank you, my dear. Now, I think I’ll just pop out.’

‘Chapel, is it?’ asked Edith.

‘Yes, dear.’

‘Will you find any answers there, do you think?’ she asked.

‘I might,’ said William, carefully. ‘And, if I don’t find any answers myself, perhaps the Lord will take a hand. Heaven knows, we don’t deserve all this upset at our time of life.’

Edith proffered her cheek to be kissed, as was their habit, then William went out into the street. Through the window of the butcher’s shop, he saw Bill serving one of their neighbours, Miss Ada Strickland, a wiry middle-aged woman in a grubby pink housecoat, buying a few chipolatas for her lunch. Bill wrapped them in a fold of greaseproof paper. Miss Strickland paid and shuffled out onto the narrow, winding street in her slippers and slouched off home. Through the impeccable glass, William watched his son miserably count the handful of coins into his till and slam the cash drawer shut with a shake of the head.

William moved on, not wanting Bill to know he had been spying on him, past the veterinarian – who also sold country goods and animal feed – to the chapel. It stood a little back from the road, with a tidy paved courtyard decorated with two stone planters, home to two flourishing moss-rose bushes with deep purple flowers, each impressive bloom a hand’s width across, with a delicious strong scent.

The varietal was ‘William Lobb’, named for a famous British plant collector of the nineteenth century and, each time he saw them, William Dodd felt a tiny tinge of self-doubt, knowing that he had chosen them in part through pride, thinking ‘William Lobb’ was reminiscent of his own name. It was William who pruned them in winter, mulched them in spring and dead-headed all summer to keep new flowers coming.

The chapel door was shut. He unlocked it with the long iron key that – as resident preacher and leader of his waning flock – he always kept on his person. The latch was tricky if you didn’t have the knack. William pulled the heavy oak towards him to release the pressure, turned the shiny brass hoop-handle and let himself in.

The air inside was cool and musty, almost damp. There was no scent of incense such as would be found in the High Church Chichester Cathedral because William and the dissenting denizens of Bitling Chapel didn’t hold with such fripperies.

William approached the altar rail – a beam of sober, dark-stained oak on stone supports – and knelt down, his weary knees creaking as they settled on the cold step. Clasping his hands together in prayer, he wondered if, on this occasion, given a lifetime of devotion to a distant and uncommunicative God, he might be granted some hint of practical succour in his troubles.

Nine

Maisie left Maurice to organise his papers for his court appearance. Charity was busy typing in the reception area, but looked up to promise that she would arrive on time at the swimming baths at eight o’clock the following morning. A little distracted and once more missing Jack, Maisie crossed West Street into Tower Street and made her way to Chichester Library, a round modernist building in concrete and glass, designed like a wheel with the bookshelves as its spokes. She climbed the lovely curved staircase to the first-floor reference section and asked a helpful librarian where she might find reference books regarding inherited titles.

‘You mean Debrett’s.’

‘Yes, I think I do.’

The librarian took her towards the far end of the stacks to a shelf low down by their knees and pulled out a gorgeous volume with bright gilt lettering on red cover boards: Debrett’s Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage and Companionage 1960.

‘This is the most recent one we have. Is that all right?’

‘I’m sure it will be,’ Maisie reassured her.

She took the book to one of the desks that overlooked Tower Street and settled herself for a long perusal of the arcane tome. It was full of language and abbreviations that meant little to her, but she found the page quite quickly and learned that the Peahorn family coat of arms included battlements, wheat sheaves and a cornucopia, a horn of plenty.

In her younger days, it seemed Lady Catherine had been a member of three different London clubs and had been appointed to the boards of four different charities. All of this activity had, it seemed, ceased, prior to the publication of this edition of the Debrett’s catalogue of British nobility in 1960. And, whereas other noble families had entries with separate paragraphs headed ‘Sons Living’ and ‘Daughters Living’, Lady Catherine had none. She did, however, have a brother whose given names were an odd alphabetical sequence, ‘Augustus Barnaby Cecil’, but whose listing did not extend beyond his date of birth.

Has Augustus Peahorn died between 1960 when this volume was published and the present day?

Maisie returned the book to the low shelf, wondering what else she could usefully do while the accumulated knowledge of the ages was within reach. At eye level, she noticed the twenty-
four august volumes of the 1924 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. She took down the appropriate alphabetical volume for ‘Baffins’ and went back to her desk in the window to read.

The etymology of the name was Welsh and had a connection with the term of endearment ‘bach’, meaning ‘little’. Deformed by time, parallel surnames included Baugham, Baughan, Bagham and Bigham. The most notable family member was the seventeenth-century English navigator and discoverer William Baffin who took part in a voyage of 1612 to Greenland and made a number of enterprising but failed attempts to locate a north-west passage to the Pacific. Several important geographical features were named after him, including Baffin Island and Baffin Bay, but Maisie could discover no connection to Sussex in general or to the Peahorn family in particular.

Maisie thanked the librarian, exited onto Tower Street and went to the Tesco supermarket on East Street for oranges, orange juice and Ski yoghurts. Driving back out into the Downs, she was obliged, once again, to creep along behind a selection of farm vehicles, feeling this was an apt metaphor for her life, moving annoyingly slowly without any urgent destination.

She wondered what precisely Jack had meant by an ‘investigation’ connected to Montague Meek and Bitling, before eventually turning off towards Harden and Bunting, a beautiful valley whose residents benefitted from the fact that their road went nowhere else and was, in consequence, almost always quiet. Pulling sedately to a halt at the top of the drive of Bunting Manor, she found Zoe in her underwear on the front doorstep, her face upturned to the sun.

‘Zoe, go and put some clothes on.’

‘There’s no one about.’

‘What about Archie?’

‘He doesn’t count.’

‘Archie definitely does count, and so would the postman. Off you go. Do you want a yoghurt?’

‘God, no. Phyl’s always trying to make me eat those things.’

‘Why?’

‘She thinks I’m too thin. What do you think?’

‘That you are lovely as you are.’

‘Phyl doesn’t understand that fat is no longer considered healthy, if it ever was.’

‘You’re neither thin nor fat, Zoe. Put the question out of your mind but do get dressed.’

‘All right.’

Because of her early start, Maisie had time still before her luncheon invitation in Bitling. She hoped Edith Dodd would serve some of the delicious-looking runner beans from the hazel canes at the foot of their garden.

She put the shopping away in the fridge, donned a floral apron that was hanging on the back of the door, found some rubber gloves and cleared the large farmhouse kitchen table of newspapers and parish newsletters and unopened post, piling it all on the seat of a chair. She set to, giving the table the same treatment that she had applied to the draining board – a good scour with Ajax powder. It came up beautifully, revealing a lovely even grain in what she thought was century-old pine.

There was a knock at the front door and, answering, Maisie was surprised to see a doctor, recognisable from his manner and his medical bag, but also because she had half-met him at Chichester Festival Theatre when he had climbed up on stage in response to the traditional request for emergency assistance: ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’ He had made a good impression on her, efficient and plain-speaking.

‘I received a call from Mrs Pascal. Is now a convenient time?’

‘Of course,’ said Maisie. Zoe came skittering down the stairs in a dressing gown. ‘Did you know about this?’ Maisie asked.

‘Yes, Phyl feels awful. She got me to ring.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ said Maisie with a rush of anxiety.

‘Should I have?’ Zoe asked, looking confused.

‘No, I suppose not.’ Maisie was torn, her Marigold rubber gloves covered in Ajax, needing to finish what she was doing but sad that Phyl had been obliged to call for medical assistance without her help. ‘Will you take the doctor up, Zoe? I’ll follow. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.’

‘Newman,’ he told her. ‘From Almondcote. Don’t hurry. I’ll be down shortly and report back.’

Zoe led the doctor upstairs to see his patient and Maisie tried to focus on her deep clean of the grimy kitchen. She found it hard. She couldn’t shake the idea that she had failed to take Phyl’s ‘summer cold’ seriously enough.

What if it’s something more severe, like bronchitis or even pneumonia?

She removed the iron frames from the hob of the stove and set about them with her scourer, a horrible echo of mourning for her parents deep in her chest. Quite soon, she heard Doctor Newman coming back down to the hall, pulled off her Marigolds and ran through to meet him in her apron.

‘It’s bronchitis. I happened to have some antibiotic powders in my case, samples, you know. She’s taken them and I’ve left her further doses, one every four hours. In between, lots to drink: orange juice, tea with honey for her throat.’ He left a small pause. ‘But not whisky.’

‘I understand,’ said Maisie, feeling even more on edge.

‘Will you have time to go out and get her prescription made up? She’ll need it when the sachets I’ve given her are all used up. It’s not an unusual medication. Anywhere will have it.’

‘Of course, Doctor. Should I be worried?’

‘No, you shouldn’t,’ he said, confidently, giving her a brief professional smile. ‘You’ll see a swift improvement, I’m sure.’

Once Doctor Newman had gone, Maisie ran upstairs, opening Phyl’s door very quietly in case she was disturbing her rest. Phyl was sitting up, however, more or less as Maisie had last seen her.

‘Ah, I’m glad you’ve come in,’ she wheezed. ‘This is very inconvenient.’

‘You sound awful. Don’t speak. I’ll clear away last night’s things and bring you back some—’

Phyl interrupted her by waving a hand and said weakly, in a strained voice: ‘I need you to do one or two things for me. I’m afraid it’ll be rather a pain.’

‘Of course. Whatever you need.’

‘You’ll have to replace me.’

Maisie frowned and asked: ‘In what sense?’

‘At Bitling Fair.’

Maisie was taken aback by the sudden intersection of several different strands of her life, coming together in an entirely unexpected way that was also a long-planned fatality. She tried to look positive and interested, but quickly understood that she had failed.

‘Do you not want to?’ Phyl asked, wearily. ‘I’m sorry to have to ask—’

‘No, whatever you need, of course.’

‘There’s the planning meeting in the chapel. I’m supposed to be there. And there’s a ceremonial tea with Lady Catherine. Plus “special guest” for the whole weekend. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t worry. It will be fine.’

Phyl wheezed and asked: ‘Did you get any orange juice?’

‘Not fresh,’ Maisie apologised. ‘They only had bottled.’

‘Would you bring it?’

Maisie heard Zoe going past on the landing so called out for her to take down last night’s tea tray and come back with what was needed.

‘OJ and a glass,’ confirmed Zoe.

Maisie turned back to Phyl who was fumbling with a packet of aspirin, trying to release the tablets from the fiddly packaging.

‘Let me help with that. In fact, I’ll open the curtains and the window. That will make you feel better.’ She did so and, turning back in the better light, thought Phyl looked very grey and unwell indeed. ‘The doctor told me not to worry,’ she said, trying to believe it. ‘I’m sure you’ll perk up soon.’

‘Do I look like death?’ asked Phyl, weakly smiling.

‘You do, I’m afraid.’

Zoe came back. Maisie extracted the aspirin tablets and Phyl took them, wincing as they passed her sore throat, then asked: ‘Will you have time to run Zoe into town again?’

‘Of course,’ Maisie assured her. ‘Don’t worry about that.’

‘And tell Archie I’m laid up.’

‘I will but, before we go, what did you mean by “replace” you at Bitling Fair?’

‘It hurts to speak,’ said Phyl with another wince. ‘Zoe, you know all about it. I’m their “special guest”. Will you tell Maisie what has to be done?’

‘Yes, Phyl.’

‘Now go away and stop breathing my germs, both of you.’

*

Realising she had been wearing the same shirt-waisted black-and-white-check dress for several days, Maisie changed into one with a similar shape but in a slightly heavier mustard-coloured fabric, hoping it wouldn’t be too warm. Because time was beginning to run short for her to arrive in Bitling at midday for her lunch with the Dodds, she ran up to the top floor to make sure that Zoe was getting ready. She found her in her underwear again with what looked like every piece of clothing she owned spread about across the bed, the bedside chair and the thin brown carpet.

‘What on earth has happened?’ Maisie asked.

‘I don’t know. I was having a tidy and started sorting things into piles and it just seemed easier to get everything out.’

‘Well, there’s no time now. You’ll be late and so will I. What if I help you tomorrow morning?’

‘Oh, yes, please.’ Zoe’s face fell. ‘Am I completely useless at being a grown-up?’

‘Time will tell,’ said Maisie with mock seriousness. ‘Get dressed. Be down in two minutes, please.’

‘Yes, Maisie.’

Zoe was as good as her word and they were soon on their way into Chichester once more. To avoid the farm traffic, Maisie took a different route on roads through Forestry Commission land – rather than arable – coming in from the north.

‘Why did Rayan and Sara Ramsi come to England?’ asked Zoe.

‘Who are they?’ asked Maisie.

‘They’re Indians from Kenya. Can that be right? I think that’s what Phyl said. Have you met them?’

‘No. Should I have?’

‘They run the chip shop in West Bitling. That’s why they were in my mind. You’ll need to talk to them about the fair and the things Phyl has promised to do because they’ll be a part of it.’

‘Yes, how am I going to replace Phyl? Jack told me that he was “special guest” last year. I assume it’s the same thing?’

‘Exactly. A different person does it every year and Phyl promised. You have to judge the Best Duck and measure Chucking the Welly and the other games. You have to be a sort of umpire for it all. Sergeant Wingard will have been chosen because of his role as community copper,’ said Zoe. Then she added, as if making an oracular pronouncement: ‘I think he likes that sort of thing more than he likes telling off vandals and checking on after-hours drinking.’

‘I’m sure you’re right.’

‘But you’re better off asking Sergeant Dodd if you’re going over for lunch. Oh, and Phyl promised a prize for something that didn’t have one, of course, so you’ll have to buy that and find somewhere to put it, I suppose, and hand it over. I’m not sure. Phyl did go on about it but I wasn’t really listening a lot of the time.’

‘But, in summary, judge the competitions and provide a prize is the bulk of it?’

‘I think so,’ said Zoe uncertainly. ‘And there’s this ridiculous robe.’

‘A robe?’

‘Sort of like a green tent.’ There was a small pause, then Zoe asked, reverting to their previous topic: ‘Why would they have come from Kenya, though, Sara and her brother?’

‘I don’t know but I can probably guess. You were still with your foster parents four years ago. Did they not have a radio with the news on?’

‘I was twelve,’ said Zoe with a brief laugh. ‘Do you think I used to listen to the news on the radio?’

‘No, perhaps not,’ said Maisie, smiling. ‘All right. I’ll try and make it simple.’

‘Good, because I’m very thick,’ said Zoe, ironically.

‘Don’t say that,’ said Maisie with a concerned frown.

‘Just kidding. I mean, I know where Kenya is, East Africa, so they would have crossed the Indian Ocean to get there from India. They were immigrants, I suppose?’

‘Exactly, and the Kenyan government introduced new laws taking away their right to work, even people whose families had been there for generations. And, because of the ties of Empire and Commonwealth to the UK, they came here. There was a big debate in parliament and some politicians thought it would cause civil unrest and a man called Enoch Powell made a scaremongering speech about “rivers of blood”.’

‘How many came altogether? Dozens?’

‘Oh, no, many more. I’m not sure but definitely thousands. And I don’t know how your ones ended up in West Bitling of all places. Do you know them well?’

‘Yes, actually. Sara helps in the hotel restaurant on Fridays when most people want fish and the regular chef has lunchtime off because the evening service is always manic. I saw Sara the other day getting out of Micah Dodd’s butcher’s van like he’d given her a lift in.’

‘Their shops are side by side,’ said Maisie, nodding. ‘Okay, here we are. Out you jump.’

‘Work is so relentless,’ said Zoe.

‘Every day, one after another,’ sympathised Maisie. ‘Go on.’

Zoe got out and went straight to the Dolphin and Anchor. Maisie made her way to Boots to get the prescription filled out. As the doctor had predicted, it only took a minute or two. Soon, with the enormous brown bottle of pink linctus in her hand, she was on her way again, not quite resenting being a professional driver and shopper for Bunting Manor, but wondering how it had happened, all the same. She bought petrol and went back out on the Framlington road she usually used.

At the turn marked Turkeys, she had to wait for a van in front of her to turn off. When it did so, she saw Dodd’s on the side in signwriter’s script and wondered if it was Bill or Micah. Then she realised that it must be the younger brother because Bill still traded under the name ‘Sparkes’.

Driving on, it came into her mind that perhaps Bill had been unfriendly because he knew that she was connected to Phyl and, perhaps, because Bill resented the fact that Phyl was trading with Micah by supplying him fresh turkey and . . .

She shook her head, trying to dispel the speculation.

None of this is your business.

In Bitling, she parked in front of the chapel where there was a shallow lay-by at the edge of the gravelly tarmac, pulling tight to the low wall by the steps so as not to block the thoroughfare. Looking up at the eaves, she saw a dedication stone and, above it, the clock, telling her she was ten minutes early.

She decided to have another look round. She got out and climbed the steps to the graveyard alongside the chapel, looking at the names and dates on the stones, most of them illegible. A pathway ran past the building to a tall hedge with another kissing gate. She came out onto a smaller lane with a few more houses, marking the very edge of the village, with the pond and the green beyond. She took a moment to orientate herself, realising that the two lanes – the one she was now on and the one with the pub and the vet’s premises and so on – came together at the foot of the hill, next to the end of a chalk lane that led steeply up to the big house: Baffins.

The pond was surrounded – ‘embowered’ she thought the word was – by willow trees. Beyond the pond, the village green was enclosed to the west by a low hedge with bright red berries and to the north by longer grasses and a much more ragged frontier of hazel, blackthorn and weeds. She crossed the narrow strip of tarmac and pushed in beneath the hanging strands of the first and largest willow, a beautiful spreading tree with, as Archie Close would have said, ‘its feet in the water’.

Maisie felt very calm inside the fringe of drooping branches, separated from the world in a private place where nothing could touch her and all was calm. She saw that she was not the first person to have thought so. There was an old tree stump that someone had dragged in to perch on when the grass was wet.

Maisie sat down, thinking about the fact that three dry weeks in June hadn’t dried up the pond. She remembered from geography classes at Westbrook College how the rain that fell on the Downs slowly filtered through the chalk, then bubbled up in the valleys below, in springs and streams and ponds, by ‘artesian pressure’. She had a brief, bright memory of Jack as a teenager, slighter and blonder, raising his hand to answer a question in geography class – and marvelled with delight at how fate had brought them back together again.

Then she heard a desperate wailing, a voice that sounded utterly broken and lost.

Ten

Maisie pushed her way through the curtain of drooping, flexible willow branches, pushing them aside like a beaded curtain. Ada Strickland was kneeling close to the water, reaching out a desperate hand for something floating in the water.

‘What is it, Miss Strickland?’ Maisie asked. ‘What has happened?’

‘It’s my little puss. She’s there, look. That woman’s thrown her in.’

Maisie came closer. It was hard to see. The pond was overgrown with all sorts of greenery, some of it striving up from the bottom towards the light, lots of it floating on the surface – wide waterlily pads and large expanses of a smaller oxygenating leaves.

‘Where do you mean?’ Maisie asked, the toes of her sensible shoes almost wet.

‘There, can’t you see?’ Ada pointed and Maisie tried to follow the direction with her eyes. ‘Next to that waterlily flower. You can see her poor brown fur.’

Maisie managed to pick out something that might have been an animal. The object was just where the trailing branches of the willow dipped their ends.

‘It looks too dark.’

‘That’s because she’s wet – wet and drowned. She tried to poison her the other day and now she’s thrown her in there.’

‘Who do you mean and why would anyone do that?

‘And she can’t swim. Cats can’t swim, can they?’

‘I think some cats can,’ said Maisie. She scanned the bank, finding a piece of timber – a discarded cherry-wood fence post. ‘Look out,’ she said, stepping close to Ada and reaching across the water. ‘I can’t quite . . .’

‘I’ll help you.’

Ada got up off her knees, surprisingly agile, and took Maisie’s left hand, allowing her to lean out further with her right. Maisie prodded with the fence post, not quite reaching, teetering at the soft edge of the turf, managing to graze the very end of the fence post on whatever it was. She was relying more than she really wanted on the grip of Ada’s unexpectedly strong fingers and the object moved infuriatingly away.

Maisie tried again, holding the fence post in her fingertips, and lost her grip on the timber. It splashed down in the overgrown water and flipped the object over, bringing it more clearly into view. The brown fur bobbed and settled, revealing the sinister finger-like paws of a rat, sticking out stiffly from its distended body, inflated by decomposition and fermenting stomach gases.

‘Oh, that is a relief,’ said Ada, letting go of Maisie’s hand.

‘Hey, watch out.’

For a couple of seconds, Maisie hung suspended. Just as she thought she was going to lose her balance and fall face forwards into the water, a strong arm wrapped around her waist and drew her back onto the bank.

‘Don’t worry. I’ve got you.’ It was Vaughan Quinn. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘I heard the weeping and wailing.’

‘You arrived in the nick of time.’

Still holding onto her, he laughed and said: ‘I say, there goes Ada Strickland through the gravestones with her tabby in her arms. Would you credit it?’

The embrace had gone on longer than was necessary.

‘I’m quite stable now,’ said Maisie.

‘Oh, yes. Excuse me.’ He let go of her and took a step away. ‘Forgive me. I wasn’t trying to take advantage.’

‘I didn’t think for a moment that you were, Mr Quinn.’

‘Please, call me Vaughan.’

He crouched and got hold of the fence post, managing to manoeuvre the bloated rat into the bank, hooking it up onto the grass. Maisie shuddered as he picked it up by its smooth, leather-shoelace tail.

‘Imagine if it had been here for Beating the Bounds. That would have been gruesome. And after dark, as well, illuminated by candles in jam jars.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘People really are extraordinary. You came to help Ada and now she’s just stumped off without as word.’

‘I think she has a grudge against me.’

‘Really?’ he said encouraging her to continue.

‘It doesn’t matter. Why would she think someone had thrown her cat in the water?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Is she well liked, Mr Quinn?’

‘Vaughan, please. Good heavens, I wouldn’t have thought so.’

‘Because, Vaughan?’

‘She’s not very nice,’ he said simply.

‘Will you tell me about her one day?’ Maisie asked.

‘I would be absolutely delighted. Yes, indeed. When would you like?’ He put his free hand to his mouth as if he’d had a brilliant revelation. ‘Come to the fair and I’ll tell you all about everyone, one after another. I’ll give you the full benefit of my penetrating observations. How about that?’

‘Actually, I will be at the fair. I’m to be “special guest”.’

‘Really? How very lovely for us all.’

Maisie was beginning to tire of the vet’s insistent gallantry, but she did like the idea of hearing more.

‘I’ll come to your shop after lunch. I’m expected at the Dodds’.’

Vaughan looked shame-faced. ‘So am I. When I heard you were coming, I got myself invited.’

‘That was very forward of you,’ said Maisie, lightly. ‘What about your shop?’

‘I’ve put a note on the door. Would you like me to decorously back out?’ he asked, very politely.

Maisie, considered. Would she? Did it really matter? She was a married woman, after all – well, nearly.

‘No, there’s no need. What time is it? Are we late.’

He glanced at his watch – a cheap, chunky timepiece.

‘A couple of minutes, yes. After you.’

Vaughan went and chucked the dead rat over the ragged hedge into the field. Maisie walked back across the lane and through the gravestones, thinking about how she might write Jack another letter, explaining how circumstances were drawing her further and further in to the strangely absorbing world of Bitling and its complicated residents. Vaughan followed a sensible distance behind, but making her self-conscious with the idea that he was watching her. They met William Dodd outside the chapel with a watering can.

‘From our rain butt,’ he said. ‘Nothing like it for healthy tub plants in a dry spell. The tap water is too chalky. Oh, so you’ve met up, have you?’

Maisie saw a glimmer of not exactly suspicion but intrigue come into William’s eye.

‘There was a small drama at the pond. Ada Strickland thought someone had thrown her tabby in, of all things, that it had drowned,’ Maisie told him, hearing herself talking too quickly, as if she had something to hide. ‘And we both went to her aid.’

‘Miss Cooper was there well ahead of me,’ said Vaughan. ‘I only arrived in time to rescue her from toppling into the slimy depths.’

‘How did you manage that, then?’ asked William.

‘Bodily,’ said Vaughan, obviously enjoying himself.

Mortified by a nagging – entirely unjustified – feeling that she had done something indecorous, Maisie asked William the same question she had asked the vet: ‘Why does Ada think someone is likely to throw her tabby in the pond?’

‘Perhaps because she’s not very nice to people,’ said William, very quietly.

‘Anyone in particular?’ Maisie insisted.

‘Let’s not be gossiping in the street,’ the police officer told her.

Maisie felt herself redden, embarrassed at not realising that William couldn’t be overheard discussing his neighbours in such bald terms. She reminded herself that she had no business prying and assembling character studies as if she was an official, ‘making inquiries’.

‘I’m sorry, William,’ she replied, also very low. ‘I’m so looking forward to lunch. Will there be runner beans?’ she asked with a smile.

‘Happen there might,’ said William gloomily. ‘Come on then.’

She and Vaughan followed him across the road, the empty watering can in his hand. Indoors, they found the table laid for four and Edith Dodd poking at the fire.

‘I’ve damped it down. We can ginger it up again when we want hot water for the evening.’

‘Good idea,’ said William.

‘It’s still very close. We might get more thunder,’ said Vaughan. ‘In a couple of months, though, with the valley a frost pocket, you’ll be glad of your bit of warm.’

Maisie noticed that, now he was in company with the Dodds, Vaughan sounded much more ‘local’.

‘Have you lived here long?’ she asked.

‘All my life,’ he replied.

‘I was just noticing your accent for the first time. I didn’t realise.’

‘No, I know you didn’t,’ he said with an oddly knowing expression, as if there was more to what he said than first appeared. ‘But I realised who you were straight away.’

Maisie wanted to ask him what that meant, too, but William was pressing glasses of home-made lemonade into their hands and proposing a toast: ‘To the success of Bitling Fair.’

‘To the fair,’ they all chorused.

‘And the forthcoming nuptials,’ said William smacking his lips. ‘It couldn’t happen to nicer couple. It’s a crying shame Jack’s not here, too.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Vaughan.

‘Miss Cooper and Jack Wingard are engaged,’ said Edith. ‘Show him the ring, my dear.’ Maisie held out her hand. Vaughan took in the silver band and blue stones. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ said Edith. ‘Now, you stay there and chat, the three of you, while I get some fresh radishes from the garden.’

Edith slipped out the back door. Vaughan hadn’t moved. In fact, he seemed unnaturally frozen.

‘Jack Wingard that we were in school with?’ he asked.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Maisie.

‘Vaughan was at Westbrook College as well as the two of you,’ said William. ‘Do you not remember him?’

Maisie frowned and told them: ‘No, I’m very sorry, I don’t.’

‘What are the odds?’ said Vaughan. ‘You turned up in my shop like an answer to a prayer and now . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Do you remember that terrible play, The Beggar’s Opera? I was Mr Peachum. I was livid, having to play your father.’

‘Why were you livid?’ asked Maisie, not keeping up.

There was an odd little pause as Maisie racked her brains trying to remember a boy called ‘Vaughan’ at Westbrook College. It was an unusual name, but there was the complication that the pupils were usually referred to by their surnames. Then William, no doubt using his years of experience in ‘reading’ suspects and witnesses, broke the silence.

‘Oh dear, Vaughan,’ he blurted. ‘Don’t say you’ve been holding a candle for Miss Cooper all these years just like Jack has.’

‘Of all the luck,’ said Vaughan, exasperated. ‘And Jack Wingard got to play Macheath and even pretend to kiss you, while I was standing by like a lemon as your fictional father.’

Vaughan’s words reminded Maisie that the kissing hadn’t been ‘pretend’ at all.

‘Quinn is quite an unusual name,’ she told him. ‘I’m sorry I don’t remember you.’

‘Does it remind you of Harley Quin in the Agatha Christie short stories?’

‘I don’t think I know the ones you mean,’ said Maisie, uncertainly.

‘He solves crimes with a kind of supernatural prescience but . . . Oh, God, what am I talking about Harley Quin for? I’ve been making a fool of myself. Sorry, William, to be taking the Lord’s name in vain under your roof, but I’ve been playing up to you, Miss Cooper, and I can see from your face that my attentions have not been well received and, though I can quite understand that not every young woman might be susceptible to the Vaughan Quinn charms . . .’ He seemed to lose his way. ‘Forgive me. I have a tendency to overenthusiasm—’

‘There’s no need—’ Maisie interrupted, truthfully, but he didn’t let her finish.

‘No, there is a need. It’s quite clear I’ve gone too far with the . . . the . . .’

‘The gallantry?’ asked Maisie, offering him a smile.

‘Yes, that. It is true that I thought . . . Never mind what I thought. Jack Wingard is a fine fellow and I imagine he deserves you. Now, that’s enough clumsiness from me. I think, after all, I’ll leave you to your lovely runner beans and go and do something more useful and less embarrassing.’

With that, he got up and left.

Oh dear, thought Maisie, wondering if there was any way she could have anticipated Vaughan’s embarrassment. But was it up to me to do so?

‘That was a turn-up,’ said William.

Edith came back in from the garden with a bunch of radishes, held by their stalks.

‘Just run these under the tap, would you, my dear . . .’ she began, giving them to William. ‘Where’s the vet?’

‘There’s been a contretemps,’ said William, ‘or do I mean a malentendu.’

‘The latter,’ said Maisie. ‘It seems, Mrs Dodd, not knowing of my engagement, that Vaughan was pleased to see me and was perhaps thinking of asking me out, as we used to say when we were sixteen.’

‘More than thinking of it,’ said William at the sink.

‘So that was why he invited himself,’ said Edith, nodding. ‘I thought it was a bit forward.’

‘I’m afraid I hadn’t recognised him from school and had no idea . . .’ Maisie frowned. ‘Even now, I can’t visualise—’ She stopped, then told them: ‘Oh, of course. He had these enormous braces on his teeth and he was a poor, weedy thing.’

‘He’s filled out nicely, then,’ said Edith, comfortably.

Maisie didn’t answer. Instead, she sipped her lemonade.

‘Was Jack a friend of his?’ William asked, shaking the water from the radishes.

He asked his question in what Maisie thought was a suspiciously inconsequential tone, as if he was beginning to be worried about Maisie’s commitment to his good friend Jack.

‘I suppose we were all friends in school, you know,’ she said. ‘But we girls didn’t see the boys all the time. We were in separate classes until we were in the final years and, even then, not every lesson.’ Maisie stopped, once more internally rebuking herself for rattling on, as if she had something to apologise for. She decided to change the subject. ‘Actually, he was about to tell me about the fair. I’m afraid I have bad news.’

William brought the radishes to the table with a little cruet of mixed pepper and salt for dipping. Out of politeness, Maisie took one. It was delicious.

‘You can’t come?’ asked Edith. ‘That’s a shame. You would have enjoyed it.’

‘No, quite the opposite. I’m afraid you’ll have me here from start to finish. Mrs Pascal is in bed with bronchitis and she’s asked me to take her place as your, er, I think you call it “special guest”. Will everyone be very disappointed?’

‘No, dear,’ said Edith. ‘You’re a celebrity round these parts.’

‘Oh, no, don’t say that, please,’ said Maisie in a pained voice. ‘I’m just standing in for someone much more important who makes a true contribution to the villages, for Mrs Pascal. But would you mind telling me what I’ll need to prepare? For example, I don’t really know what Beating the Bounds means. Can we start there?’

‘We can,’ said William. ‘It’s a tradition that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times, a bit like dogs doing you-know-what against all the trees and walls near where they live, if you don’t mind the allusion.’

‘William,’ rebuked Edith with a titter. ‘What’s come over you?’

William laughed and insisted: ‘It’s true. It was a restatement of boundaries, making sure everyone knew who lived where and the extent of their lands and orchards and access to water and whatnot. Then, of course, because that’s the way of things, the churches got involved and it became a ceremony of blessing crops and praying to the Almighty for a list of favours, for warm sun, timely rain and good harvests.’

‘You don’t sound like you approve of that,’ said Maisie taking another radish and seasoning it. The other two did the same. ‘Am I wrong?’

‘I’ve always felt religion to be a matter for individual consciences. Yes, there’s communal worship,’ said William. ‘But, in the long run, churches trying to weasel their way into every aspect of life is a mistake.’

Maisie ate her delicious crunchy radish while he was speaking then took a third, realising she was very hungry.

‘I see. But what does it entail?’

‘We’ll walk the parish boundary and we’ll beat the markers – you know, like milestones set in the ground – with our sticks. The Morris side will be there and the schoolchildren with candles in jam jars. And we’ll help them push some acorns and withies – that’s sticks of willow – into the ground.’

‘Will they grow?’

‘The acorns will bide their time and, perhaps, come up as slow-growing saplings, but each withy will take and sprout green within the year. We’ll have a meeting in the chapel soon to decide but I reckon we’ll be setting off at nine-thirty on Saturday evening, just as dusk is falling.’

‘Will I have any responsibilities on behalf of Mrs Pascal in that?’

‘You’ll have done your part, by then. You finish with giving the blessing – a pagan one, not a religious one – just after we’ve had our own little picturesque addition to the ceremony here in Bitling. Have you heard about Best Duck?’

William asked the preposterous question in such a serious tone that it made Maisie laugh.

‘It was mentioned,’ she told him with a smile. ‘I believe it’s a competition?’

‘That’s the ticket, yes. Littlegreen Sawmill provides some nice soft wood for carving and the contest begins on the Saturday morning and, if you don’t mind, you’ll have to judge on the afternoon once they’re all painted up and drying. Then the Best Duck has to be launched in the pond, you know, over behind the chapel yard at the edge of the village.’

‘That sounds easy. Do I need to find a prize for the carver?’

‘No, that one’s just for the honour.’

‘But there isn’t much time to get things together for the other events. I’m worried I’ll let you down.’

‘Never mind that. Let’s eat our lunch,’ said Edith. ‘I’ve got finest pork-and-apple sausages from Bill to go with our greens.’

‘No potatoes at all, then,’ asked William, visibly drooping.

‘One slice of bread and butter will do,’ said Edith, firmly.

As she ate, Maisie thought Edith was correct in her estimation of her son’s produce. The sausages were superb and the greens fresh and perfectly cooked. She might, though, have enjoyed a second slice of the crusty white bread – or a slice cut rather thicker. She wasn’t surprised to see William – who was a big man, after all – gazing enviously at the loaf.

Once they’d finished and Edith had cleared, William brought his official notebook to the table and talked Maisie through the events of the weekend. Most of the prizes had been organised already and she would simply have to hand them over.

‘Have you told her about the robe?’ asked Edith, returning to the table with some early raspberries from the garden. ‘Won’t she look a daisy? It’s like one of those Greek things, you know, what are they called? The thing that man was wearing on the telly . . .’

‘You mean Demis Roussos,’ said William. ‘Do you know him, Miss Cooper?’

‘Please remember to call me Maisie. Yes, I do. He’s quite a star in France. He lives in Paris and I think you’re talking about his kaftan.’

‘That’s it,’ said William. ‘Our kaftan, our robe, is green and it’s got patterns of leaves embroidered on it.’

‘Like a sort Green Man costume?’ Maisie asked.

‘Yes, that’s the ticket.’ He paused then added, carefully, as if testing her permission: ‘Maisie.’

‘And Jack wore it last year?’

‘It’s very voluminous and ties with a belt and has a sort of hood affair. You could be anybody, once you’ve got it on.’

‘Except if you were being impersonated, it would have to be someone with your figure,’ said Edith, approvingly. ‘It’s fortunate you’re quite tall so it won’t drag on the ground. What does the weather forecast give for the weekend, dear? Will it be more thunderstorms?’

The local paper, the Chichester Observer, was on the sideboard. William hauled himself up off his hard dining chair and fetched it, his knees clicking loudly as he sat heavily back down.

‘Let me see, now.’ He opened it up, licking his thumb and forefinger to turn the leaves. ‘This has only just come out, of course, the paper, so it should be accurate enough.’

Maisie – watching him laboriously try and find the correct page – felt a frisson of anxiety.

I’m about to discover something unsettling and dangerous.

‘Ah, here we are. “Risk of thunderstorms.” So.’

‘How much risk?’ asked Edith, reasonably.

‘It doesn’t say, but it could come on Friday or Saturday or both.’ Then, in a sudden change of tone, he added: ‘Oh, would you look at that?’

‘What is it?’ asked Maisie.

‘In the obituaries, there. Monty Meek’s died.’

‘Who’s that?’ asked Edith.

‘The auctioneer,’ said Maisie, feeling a sense of déjà vu. The Brighton police officer she had met outside the auction rooms had admitted as much. ‘Does it say how or why?’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ said William with a frown of displeasure. ‘It’s annoying they never tell you. They just go on about the life. And not much of that in this case. It must have been very recent and they didn’t have time to get anyone to provide a biography, perhaps just before they went to press.’

‘Read it out, William,’ said Edith.

Her husband cleared his throat and did so.

Montague Meek, a popular figure about Chichester, well known for the auction house that bore his name on Baffins Lane – which he ran from the age of thirty, having been brought into the business by his father – has died. A confirmed bachelor, Montague ‘Monty’ Meek passed without issue. Details of funeral arrangements will be published subsequently.

‘You said someone would be asked to provide a proper biographical obituary,’ said Maisie. ‘Do you have any idea who that might be?’

‘My guess would be someone from the cathedral. Mr Meek was very involved in the High Church. He was close to the retired town clerk who runs the servers and lives in the Bishop’s Palace. What’s his name now?’ William looked frustrated. ‘I never used to forget a name.’

‘It’s natural, dear,’ said Edith. ‘Your mind’s been busy all these years, never missing a trick. It’s time to let things go, not hold on to them.’

‘That’s true,’ said William, comfortably. ‘You’re right, my dear. But there is something I do remember. I was supposed to take Mrs Pascal up to see her ladyship this afternoon. She gives tea to the special guest in the run-up to the fair.’

‘And you took Jack last year?’

‘Yes, and he made a very strong impression on her ladyship. She almost melted, if such a thing were possible. Of course, when Jack wants to be charming, he’s very good at it.’

Maisie felt a faint unease at Jack being a long way away and, perhaps, exerting all his charm on someone who wasn’t her. Or the opposite, a magnetic, gorgeous chance acquaintance in Exeter who . . .

This is silly. Haven’t I just endured Vaughan Quinn making a beeline for me? In similar circumstances, Jack, too, would be politely uninterested.

‘Shall we?’ said William.

‘What’s that? I’m sorry. I was thinking of something else.’

‘Up-along to Baffins.’

Eleven

Adam Farr was walking along ancient paths, lined with blackthorn, beneath a dense canopy of horse chestnut trees. He was carrying an elderly rake, three of whose tines had been lost over its long working life. Several times, he used it to disturb the litter of twigs and leaves, revealing the chalky soil beneath. Apparently satisfied with what he saw, he leaned the long handle of rowan wood on his shoulder and wandered on, his eyes darting this way and that, as if anxious not to be caught out in some devious act.

The paths through Bitling Wood ran quite level and, the weather having been sunny and warm for almost three weeks, they were bone-dry. Reaching the edge of the ancient plantation, emerging into sunlight, he snagged his coarse corduroy trousers on the spines of a blackthorn. He bent to release the fabric, frowning at a tiny tear where years of wear had worn the knees paper-thin.

Because the sun was so bright, it made him screw up his eyes as he walked down the deep lane between hazel hedges almost overrun with bramble and bindweed. After a furlong, he turned in at the gate of a farm – or, rather, a place where Mrs Pascal’s turkeys were raised in a big barn, never going outside from the day they arrived as tiny chicks to the day they were taken next door to a clinical tiled slaughterhouse and killed.

Adam hadn’t been in any particular hurry to eat his doorstop sandwich of yesterday’s leftover sausages and home-pickled onions. But the stroll through the woods had now given him an appetite. He sat on an old iron harrow, long unused, with spindly summer grass growing up through its rusting frame. He could smell the ammoniac odour of the turkey shed, but was so used to it that it failed to put him off his food.

Slowly, he munched, his eyes unfocused, fixed on nothing, his mind turning over his plan, thinking about timings.

It won’t do to do it early or it won’t be no surprise.

Ten minutes went by. The doorstop sandwich was almost gone.

I’ll do it at night so nobody knows.

Adam picked a shred of pickled onion from his teeth and flicked it off his thumbnail into the spindly grass. The cacophony of an approaching tractor came rattling up the lane and swung into the yard over the cattle grid with Mrs Pascal’s farm manager, Archie Close, in the open driving seat, wearing a handkerchief knotted on his head to keep off the sun because the tractor had no cab. Archie trod on the brakes, climbed down and came to sit next to Adam, taking a perch on the rusty metal without a word, taking out his rolling tobacco and papers. Once his cigarette was made, he put it on his ear.

‘You’ll be going back in?’

‘I will,’ said Adam.

‘Nearly now?’ said Archie, meaningfully. ‘Mrs Pascal won’t want to hear you’ve been slacking off.’

‘I never.’ Adam pointed over the hedge that bordered the yard towards the clock on upturned V of the eaves of the chapel, visible above the fresh new twigs of hazel, reaching up for the light. ‘I’ve got five minutes yet.’

Archie peered in the same direction. ‘What eyes you’ve got,’ he told the younger man.

‘Can see in the dark, too,’ said Adam. ‘Better than most.’

‘Got a light?’

Adam delved into the deep pocket of his corduroy trousers for a packet of Swan Vestas. ‘You can keep them. I’ve got more in the caravan.’

‘Thank you kindly.’

Archie lit his cigarette. Adam leaned back and stretched. After a few moments, an older man with a distinct likeness to Adam came shambling into the yard, wearing a seedy brown suit, stretched at the knees and collapsing at the shoulders.

‘All right, Uncle,’ called Adam, more a statement than a question.

‘You’ve made it back, then,’ said Archie.

‘I just popped into the Silver Garter,’ said Harold, looking like he’d been caught out.

‘I’ve got to be honest with you, Harry, I told Mrs Pascal that there wasn’t any good thinking she could rely on you, not with the times you’ve let me down in the past.’

‘No, Mr Close,’ said Harold, looking at the ground. ‘But I was only away half an hour for a bag of Ready Salted and a glass of ale. Mrs Pascal says everyone deserves a second chance.’

‘How many chances?’ snorted Archie.

Adam looked from one to the other, not sure why it was that no one had a good opinion of his uncle. Yes, he could see that Harry was old and tired, thin as a rake with bad teeth and untidy hair. But did that mean he couldn’t be useful in the turkey shed? No, not at all.

‘What’s on this afternoon?’ asked Archie.

‘Me and Uncle’s going to carry on shovelling out the turkey mess from under the cages and move it out to the concrete round the back.’

‘Spread it nice and thin so it dries out quick and loses its stink,’ said Archie. ‘Then, later on, we can use it on the fields.’

‘Of course,’ said Adam, annoyed that Archie thought he had to be told.

‘And once it’s done, you’ve got the waterproofing tar to apply to the timbers. We need to take advantage of any fine weather. It doesn’t go on right when it rains.’

‘Yes, Mr Close,’ said Harold. ‘You won’t be disappointed.’

Archie stood up, gave them both a nod, trod on his cigarette stub and climbed back onto his tractor, restarting the cacophonous engine, turning a tight circle out of the yard and rattling away over the cattle grid.

‘He’ll be up-along to see his brother Bert,’ said Adam. ‘He’ll meet him in the Fox-in-Flight in Framlington for a half. Then he’ll be up Bunting.’

‘That sounds right.’

‘Where did you get the money for the pub, Uncle?’

‘I told you, Miss Cooper gave me a pound note.’

A robin came and perched precisely where Archie had sat, close to Adam’s left hand. Quick as a flash, he snatched out a fist and half-closed it round the dainty, red-breasted bird. It cheeped in panic, caught in the prison of his fingers.

‘Look at that, now,’ he told Harold. ‘Did you ever see someone move as quick as me?’

‘No, I never did. Shall we get on, then? I don’t want to let anyone down.’

The chapel bell chimed, as if in response to his uncle’s question, indicating that their lunch hour was over.

‘Shall I squeeze it?’

‘Squeeze what?’ asked Harold.

‘Ickle robin.’

Adam saw his uncle frown and knew that, once again, he had said the wrong thing, though he couldn’t work out why. Didn’t they have a whole shed full of birds that were only being fed up in order to be killed?

How is ickle robin different?

He had a vague idea it was because the robin was free, not a prisoner.

But he’s a prisoner, now, isn’t he, in my fist?

‘No, boy. Let ickle robin go,’ said Harold.

Adam opened his fingers. The robin darted away, its wings flapping faster than a human eye could make out, disappearing into the ragged hedge.

‘Can’t do right for doing wrong, me,’ he said.

Twelve

Despite herself, Maisie realised that she had begun to resent taking on Phyl’s role as ‘special guest’ at Bitling Fair. Her time, it seemed, was no longer her own. Furthermore, she feared the special guest was, in reality, a sort of Green Man figure, an avatar of fertility whose function was to bless the crops and the livestock and the people, that they should all ‘bear fruit’ in their different ways. There were examples of such figures, she knew, that were unashamedly phallic, like the enormous Cerne Abbas giant, carved in the turf of a green hill, revealing the white chalk beneath. She hoped there was nothing of that sort associated with either the robe she would be obliged to wear or the duties she would be expected to perform.

When she and William were halfway up the hill, on the rutted chalk lane that led to Baffins, they paused for him to ‘take a breather’. Maisie bit her tongue, trying not to hurry him along. They were going to be late, she could see, and she hated unpunctuality.

Hesitating halfway up the steep slope, Maisie felt very aware of the house’s isolation, apart from the magnificent rowan that stood alongside. The tree was in full blossom – equally exposed but strong and noble in its solitude – with what she imagined were deliciously fragrant bunches of fine white flowers. Each one of which – in the fullness of time, as summer ripened into autumn – would bring forth a shining red berry, tart but rich in vitamins and goodness.

‘Now, let’s press on,’ said the police officer.

They did so and Maisie could see that it wasn’t lack of puff on the hill that was holding him back, but the pain he was clearly suffering from his knees.

‘Shall I go on alone?’ she asked.

‘You could. You’ll handle her as well as anybody, I don’t doubt. But it’s my duty and going down is worse than going up, in any case. It’s the jarring. So, I might as well . . .’

He grimaced as his foot slipped on a lump of flint emerging from the chalk, smooth like a ball.

‘Nearly there,’ Maisie reassured him.

The going became steadier underfoot as they entered the lawn in front of the house, bordered by close-clipped hedges with bright red berries, cut low so as not to obscure the view, she supposed. Apart from the magnificent rowan tree, there were no flower borders or banks of shrubs, just the well-kept grass all the way up to the walls of the building. The lawn was very firm underfoot. Later, she supposed, every blade of parched summer grass might be coated with evening dew.

That’s a thing in detective stories, isn’t it, the fact that the dew can be a give-away how an assailant approached the property where the body was found?

Maisie frowned, wondering why she was thinking about bodies again.

Habit and Mr Meek, I suppose.

Maisie wasn’t a historian of Sussex architecture by any means, but she could see that Baffins must have been built much later than Phyl’s Jacobean mansion, a manor house since the sixteen-hundreds. Baffins looked like early Victorian architecture in the French style, very symmetrical, built in pale stone with a curved leaded roof, all in all not dissimilar from fine homes she had seen in small towns outside Paris.

Before they reached the front door, it opened, revealing a vague-looking woman who seemed to be dressed for a much cooler period of the year, with a shawl over the top of her blouse, a tweed skirt and drab, opaque tights. Having opened the door too soon, she seemed at a loss how to fill the space in distance and time before Maisie and William finally arrived, so she put up a hand to shade her eyes and gave a performance of inspecting something on the far horizon.

Without breaking stride, Maisie glanced back in the same direction and, with a delighted smile, realised that, through the perfectly clear and still June air, she could see the distant sparkling sea and the Isle of Wight beyond.

Beside her, William called out: ‘Good afternoon, Miss Prime. Her ladyship is expecting us.’

‘Of course,’ came an eager reply. ‘We are both expecting you.’

‘Nearly there,’ he wheezed. Finally at the porch, William put a grateful hand on a pillar of the stone, explaining: ‘We’ll apologise for being a few minutes late. It’s a year since I made the climb up Baffins Hill and I’m not the man I was, clearly.’

‘I hope you’re not coming down with anything, Sergeant,’ said Miss Prime. ‘There’s a lot of it about and I’ve advised her ladyship not to go to the chapel for fear of germs. Germs are everywhere, aren’t they, and can’t be avoided, but there’s no sense going and seeking them out. And, lo and behold, if she doesn’t have a sniffle.’

‘Good afternoon,’ said Maisie. ‘My name is Maisie Cooper. I’m pleased to meet you.’

‘Are you the special guest? Are you to wear the robe?’ asked Miss Prime.

‘Yes, that’s right. Do you look after it?’

‘I hand-wash it and put it by. I hope it doesn’t smell of moth balls.’

‘You’ll air it, I suppose?’ asked Maisie, hopefully.

‘It’s draped over a rosemary bush in the kitchen garden right now.’

‘How lovely,’ said Maisie. ‘That sounds perfect, Miss Prime.’

‘Call me Dilys, please.’

‘You must call me Maisie.’

‘Oh, no, I mustn’t. That wouldn’t be right.’ She made a gesture with her hand, indicating a bay window that incorporated two tall glazed doors that opened onto a small terrace of York stone slabs, on which stood an elderly cast-iron table-and-chairs set with rust peeking through the white paintwork. ‘We’ll sit out, perhaps?’ She led them to the threshold of the French windows, peering in from the bright outdoors to the relative gloom inside. ‘Ah, her ladyship isn’t yet down. Would you like to take a seat, Miss Cooper, Sergeant? I will return with the tea things.’

She bustled away through the gloomy living room, crowded with knick-knacks and objets d’art. William sank gratefully onto the nearest cast-iron outdoor chair. Maisie stayed standing, transfixed by the magnificent view all the way from the Downs to the island city of Portsmouth, the stretch of sparkling water called the Solent and the green undulations of the Isle of Wight beyond. She remembered a training camp with the Women’s Royal Army Corps, scaling some easy chalk cliffs with ropes and pitons, setting up tents in an unexpectedly strong south-west wind, warm but uncooperative as the tent canvas flapped and snapped.

‘Now, a word of advice,’ said William, drawing her out of her reverie. ‘Mrs Pascal and her ladyship don’t get on. There’s no harm in it, just two strong-willed ladies with differing points of view.’

‘I’ll have to admit that I’m replacing Phyl.’

‘But best to skirt around certain topics, though, just for the sake of—’

Maisie was about to ask which topics he meant. She wondered what he was about to add – ‘for the sake of politeness’ or ‘for an easy life’ or ‘to spare Mrs Pascal’s feelings’ – when Lady Catherine appeared in the doorway, dressed in a grubby Edwardian walking coat in silver-grey cotton, draped in multiple pleats and folds, with a soft belt of the same material. Her extraordinary bird’s nest of grey hair surrounded her deeply lined features like a frame. Maisie thought she had probably applied setting lotion several days before, but whatever shape she had originally contrived had collapsed.

She addressed them in an imperious voice.

‘Are we outside, then? Stay in your seat, Dodd. Save your knees.’

‘I will, ma’am, and thank you.’

‘Good afternoon,’ Maisie said. ‘Miss Prime is fetching the afternoon tea things. I’m Maisie Cooper and, I’m sorry to say, I will be replacing Mrs Pascal at the fair. She has a chest infection. Would you prefer us to come inside?’

‘No, sunlight is good for one. Poor children used to get rickets, didn’t they, because their parents failed them, keeping them indoors, growing up in the shade? They were better off working in the fields.’

‘That and malnutrition, I think,’ said Maisie who had strong ideas about welfare and an effective safety net for the poorest in society. ‘I’m very glad to meet you, your ladyship. I was just admiring the magnificent view. From the village, it wasn’t clear why the house is set so far apart, but now—’

‘You’re right but I seldom look at it,’ interrupted Lady Catherine, dismissively. ‘Bright vistas hurt my eyes whilst, at the same time, disappearing into a blur.’

‘How unfortunate,’ said Maisie, without feeling very much sympathy.

‘Cataracts,’ blurted Lady Catherine. ‘I’ve been offered surgery. I went up to Harley Street and met a very smooth gentleman – in what even I could see was a ludicrously expensive Savile Row suit – who told me that science had moved on from what happened to Ginny. Do you know Ginny?’

‘I don’t think I do.’

‘Virginia Masterson-Cox. She’s dead now, of course. They all are,’ she added with a sort of bemused contempt for contemporaries who had failed to live as long as she. ‘Not from the cataract operation, of course, but she told me about it. They inserted a probe cooled by liquid nitrogen, would you believe, to sort of drag out the occluded lens. She was never the same. Now, though, according to my well-dressed specialist, it’s done by ultrasonic energy, which I thought just meant loud noises.’

‘That sounds marvellous,’ said Maisie, just to be polite.

‘Take the plunge and one is in and out in a day. Of course, that would mean rising early – a modern fad that I find uncongenial.’

‘So, you don’t want to have it done?’

‘I’d rather see badly than not at all and there’s a chance it might go wrong. What would you say was an acceptable risk?’ asked Lady Catherine with a penetrating look.

‘Five per cent, perhaps,’ Maisie guessed. ‘And they might do the two eyes separately, so the risk of losing sight in both, from two consecutive botches, would be very small indeed.’

Lady Catherine sat down and Maisie did the same, feeling the uncomfortable cast iron through her mustard-coloured dress and wondered if Dilys would bring cushions.

‘One in four hundred,’ said Lady Catherine, surprising Maisie by accurately calculating the probability of two consecutive operations going wrong. ‘And what if one is that unfortunate statistic? The doctor told me thousands of people are operated upon across the globe each day, meaning – if your estimate is correct – there are a significant number of victims of surgical arrogance out there.’

Maisie wasn’t a fan of small talk but, given she didn’t have anything to add to what the very well-informed Lady Catherine had to say about cataract surgery, she asked: ‘Have you lived here all your life?’

‘That rowan was planted at my birth.’

‘How delightful,’ said Maisie. ‘You both seem the picture of health.’

‘Fresh food, fresh air. What about you, Dodd? How are you going to shed your fat?’

‘I expect I’ll get more time to garden and so on when I’m retired,’ said William, taking no offence.

Dilys returned without any cushions but with a tray on which were balanced a large brown teapot, a separate mismatched jug of hot water, a stack of gold-rimmed saucers and cups of excellent quality but clumsily laid out. There was also a small blue-and-white jug of milk and a box of Silver Spoon sugar lumps, the cardboard stained from culinary spillages.

‘Be careful, Prime. We don’t want another disaster like the coffee jug.’

‘No, your ladyship.’

Maisie helped Dilys balance the tray on the small garden table, meaning it overhung the sides, and assisted in pouring, feeling tensely aware that the whole thing might at any moment overbalance. Finally, though, all four of them had been served and conversation turned to the fair as they sat with their cups and saucers in their hands.

‘Prime has retrieved the robe from storage, laundered it by hand and spread it on the rosemary on the west side.’

‘Yes, Miss Prime told me.’

‘It will look ridiculous. It always does. But it will smell fragrant.’

‘Thank you,’ said Maisie, because it seemed to be what was expected.

‘Tell me, how are you related to Phyllis Pascal of all people? You seem a well-bred and intelligent individual.’

Maisie understood that she was expected to take the compliment and ignore the side-swipe at Phyl, but she couldn’t quite let it go.

‘Phyl is my mother’s sister,’ she told Lady Catherine, avoiding sharing more intimate details. ‘A remarkable woman who works tirelessly for a number of charitable causes. Are you aware she is in the process of adapting her home, Bunting Manor, to become a respite centre?’

‘Respite from what?’ demanded Lady Catherine.

‘Homelessness, broken marriages, broken lives, that sort of thing.’

‘Because she believes that life is unfair and people don’t deserve what comes to them?’

‘I hesitate to speak for her—’ Maisie began.

‘In which you show tact, but I wish you would, all the same,’ interrupted Lady Catherine.

‘As I understand it, she is of the opinion that an individual’s circumstances play a role. You, for example, have lived in this glorious house all your life, but not one of the inhabitants of East Bitling has, and their lives have been poorer for it.’

‘Bitling, not East Bitling,’ said Lady Catherine, leaning towards Maisie, as if to inspect her more closely with a kind of leer on her deeply lined face. ‘You’re a feisty one, aren’t you.’ She turned to William. ‘No wonder she’s solved crimes that baffled the police.’

‘Miss Cooper has been very helpful – that’s for certain,’ said William.

Maisie was wary of butting heads with Lady Catherine and definitely didn’t want to discuss the three murder investigations, so she asked in a conservational tone: ‘Did you see in the local paper that Mr Meek has died?’

‘What?’

‘The auctioneer.’

‘I know who Meek is. Prime, fetch the paper. Has it come?’

‘Yes, Lady Catherine.’

‘And bring the text of the blessing while you’re at it. It’s on my desk.’

Maisie watched Lady Catherine’s companion clumsily balance her cup and saucer on the tray and bustle away.

‘Did you know about Meek, Dodd?’

‘I read it after lunch, not half an hour ago,’ said William.

‘How very inconvenient. I wanted him to come and do a full inventory of my chattels. Who am I going to ask now?’

‘There’s Stride’s in town,’ William suggested. ‘They’re in the same line.’

‘Yes, but I don’t know them. At my time of life, you don’t want new relationships. You want to plod along with what you’re used to. You’re old – you must see that.’

‘I’m happy with my lot, if that’s what you mean,’ said William with a ghost of – if not resentment – at least self-assertion.

Dilys returned with the Chichester Observer and a separate sheet of paper on which was typed the blessing that Maisie would have to read at the fair.

‘You won’t find it difficult but do make sure people can hear you,’ said Lady Catherine. ‘Prime reads in a gabble.’

‘By the way, your ladyship,’ said William, ‘we’re to have an extra event after Beating the Bounds with a treasure hunt in the chestnut woods.’

‘On whose authority?’ demanded Lady Catherine.

‘No one’s authority,’ said William, placidly. ‘But that poor scrap Adam Farr has organised it and it’ll be a kindness if at least some people take part.’

‘Will it?’

‘Yes, I think so. He and his uncle don’t have it easy.’

‘I imagine they receive what they deserve.’

During this back and forth, Maisie thought she was beginning to understand Lady Catherine. The autocratic landowner was, for whatever reason, highly aware of her own mortality, didn’t want to waste time and was feeling a need to ‘leave things tidy’, as Florence Wingard would no doubt have said. Phyl, Maisie thought, would inevitably leave an almighty mess for Maisie or for Zoe to clean up, thinking it wasn’t her business ‘what came after’. William, on the other hand, was a different case again. He hadn’t yet accustomed himself to the idea of retreat from active life – but then he was at least fifteen years younger than her ladyship.

Maisie put the blessing away in her handbag to practise later and Dilys Prime was ordered to read the sparse obituary – actually just a notification of death – out loud. She did so in a breathless voice, as if she had run back from wherever she had found the newspaper.

‘Is that it?’ demanded Lady Catherine when she had finished.

‘Yes, your ladyship.’

‘It must have been just before the paper was printed,’ said William. ‘They didn’t have time for anything else.’

‘Is there any way of learning more?’ Lady Catherine wanted to know.

‘Shall I call Mr Ryan?’ asked Dilys.

‘Yes, Prime. Tell him to come up.’

‘What if he doesn’t know anything?’ queried Dilys.

‘Then he will take steps to know more before he comes. Really, Prime, must I explain everything?’

‘Yes, your ladyship,’ said Dilys, foolishly. Then she realised her mistake and elaborated: ‘I mean no. That is, I’m grateful when you explain if I haven’t understood, but I will make more effort to preclude that necessity.’

‘What’s that, Prime? “Preclude that necessity.” Have you swallowed a dictionary?’

‘I’ve been reading the dictionary. I borrowed a volume of the Oxford from the library in order to read with more method, as you advised me.’

‘I am astonished, Prime. Well done,’ said Lady Catherine, surprisingly warmly. Then she undercut her approval by rudely adding: ‘Take away these things. We need to discuss the fair.’

‘Yes, your ladyship.’

Provoking in Maisie the same tension as before, Dilys precariously stacked their cups and saucers and went tottering away, through the bay window into the gloomy living room and the hallway beyond. Lady Catherine shared a few remarks with William about the upcoming planning meeting in the chapel.

‘I hope no one will take advantage of the public forum to air their private grievances.’ Maisie didn’t know what this meant but didn’t have an opportunity to probe. Lady Catherine went on: ‘Now, Miss Cooper, you are aware of your responsibilities as special guest?’

‘I believe I am.’

‘Is Phylis Pascal very ill?’

‘She has bronchitis.’

‘Then she is at home?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hm, I think . . .’ Lady Catherine pursed her lips, as if coming to a secret decision. ‘Tell her I hope she gets well soon. We may not agree on much, but the county needs women like her and like me.’

‘I will,’ said Maisie. ‘How is your own cold?’

‘I don’t have a cold. What are you talking about?’

‘Miss Prime said you were suffering—’

‘Prime thinks a paper cut is a wound. Pay no attention.’ Lady Catherine shivered. ‘Is it my thin old blood or has it become less pleasant?’

‘A little,’ said Maisie, glancing up at the sky. A veil of cloud had dimmed the sun and the Isle of Wight was no longer clearly visible. ‘Perhaps a cool sea mist.’

‘We’ve finished in any case. You look weary, Dodd, despite your sit-down. Shall we take the car?’

‘That would be very thoughtful. Have you had that eye examination for driving like I asked you to?’

‘No.’

‘One day soon there’ll be a law, I shouldn’t doubt.’

‘With the glacial pace of our incompetent government I’ll be long gone by then,’ she told him, standing up by leaning her bony knuckles on the edge of the cast-iron table. ‘Don’t forget, Miss Cooper, that you have to be here on Sunday afternoon to bring the robe back to Baffins when the villagers come to give thanks.’

‘Give thanks for what?’

‘For my patronage and guidance.’

How incredibly self-important, thought Maisie, offering William her hand.

‘Here we go,’ he told them, refusing Maisie’s aid and rising with a crunch of his knees and a wince. ‘Let me just . . .’ Holding on to the edge of the table, he flexed each joint. ‘Takes me a moment or two to get going, but we’re all right now.’

Lady Catherine was also on her feet, straightening the grubby folds of her Edwardian walking coat with finicking fingers. She led them round the west side of the house, off the lawn onto a gravel drive, revealing how expansive the building was, with a large utilitarian extension giving twice as much depth as width to the property. A venerable Morris Minor convertible with all manner of dings and scrapes was standing outside the kitchen door, with its roof down, alongside some well-kept brick planters full of nicely tended herbs, onions, garlic and salad leaves. Beyond that were the rosemary bushes, spread with the green robe.

Is this kitchen garden Dilys Prime’s doing? If so, she’s got green fingers like William and Edith.

Lady Catherine got in the front of the Morris Minor, alongside William.

‘Would you mind if I walked down?’ asked Maisie.

‘As you please,’ said Lady Catherine, starting the car.

Thinking about the martyred bodywork of the car, Maisie remembered William’s mild enquiry.

Have you had that eye examination for driving like I asked you to?

Hoping they didn’t come to grief, Maisie watched them pull away with an unpleasant sensation of having been dismissed like an irrelevant child, with no opportunity to say goodbye or ‘thank you for having me’.

The Morris Minor bumped away down the track. Left alone, Maisie decided not to follow them straight away.

This is too good an opportunity to miss.

Thirteen

Maisie heard footsteps beyond the open kitchen door and followed the sound inside. Lady Catherine’s companion, Dilys Prime, was at the table, grinding ingredients in a large mortar with a heavy pestle. For some reason, it made Maisie think about what an excellent weapon either item would be, heavy, solid and – in the case of the pestle – designed to be brandished.

‘Hello,’ she said.

Dilys jumped back, dropping the pestle on the floor with a thump and putting her hand to her breast. ‘You scared the life out of me, Miss Cooper. Truly you did.’

‘I’m so sorry. I should have knocked.’

Dilys bent down to pick up the pestle. Maisie looked in the bowl of the mortar, seeing a wholesome-looking powder with some flecks of brown, presumably from the casing of some seeds.

‘They’re coriander,’ said Dilys. ‘Lady Catherine loves her coronation chicken and I put it in with the mustard.’

‘Delicious. Do you look after the kitchen garden?’

‘No, Harold Farr comes up and does that.’

‘The herbs and things all look absolutely lovely.’

‘He does a good job,’ said Dilys with a doubtful smile.

‘Is he not reliable?’ Maisie asked.

‘He’s never let her ladyship down, even in frost and snow. Always there on his day. He mows the lawn as well and that’s like a bowling green. But don’t you think he might have been allowed to stay on?’

‘Stay on where?’

‘In the end cottage on the terrace down from the chapel. It’s no more than a hallway and kitchen downstairs and one stark room above with a privy in the garden. Harold and his nephew were no trouble, I’d imagine, even if they couldn’t pay much rent.’

‘So, Harold works for Lady Catherine but no longer has accommodation in Bitling. I thought the two things went together.’

‘He and Adam sleep in the caravan that Mrs Pascal brought in next to the turkey shed.’

‘Oh,’ said Maisie, slotting a few disparate facts into a clearer pattern. ‘Are they happy there?’

‘Would you be? It’s nice enough now, but winter in the Downs can be cruel. It’s a frost pocket, I shouldn’t doubt, and little better than living in a tin can.’

After this pronouncement, Dilys seemed to have nothing else to say and simply stood patiently at her mortar, waiting to be allowed to continue.

‘I don’t want to keep you if you’re busy,’ Maisie told her. ‘I’ve been delighted to meet you. I hope you enjoy your coronation chicken. I’ll no doubt see you at the fair.’

Dilys beamed. ‘I love the fair.’

Again, there was a pause. Maisie thought that Lady Catherine’s companion would elaborate, but she simply stood, vaguely smiling.

‘Did you like Mr Meek?’

‘He was very self-possessed,’ said Dilys.

Maisie thought that probably meant he didn’t pay much attention to the ‘companion’. Could she ask anything else? She thought it might begin to look odd. Then Dilys spoke up of her own accord.

‘He left me these catalogues.’ She indicated a small pile of three sales booklets of second-hand goods. ‘From antique dealers in Arundel, Wickham and Salisbury. Very interesting.’ Dilys’ eyes creased with worry. ‘Did she say she wanted me? Is that why you came through?’

‘No, she’s gone out in her Morris Minor, giving Sergeant Dodd a lift back down to the village.’

‘I’m not in trouble,’ said Dilys, with obvious relief. ‘Do you like blossom?’

‘I do,’ said Maisie, taken aback. ‘Of course.’

‘The other day, I rose early to do something nice for her ladyship and it turned out I was quite wrong.’

‘I’m not sure exactly of your role. Do you have medical training? Does Lady Catherine need that sort of care?’

‘I was employed as a companion, but I work as a housekeeper.’

Maisie could hear the sadness in the older woman’s voice.

‘Is it lonely?’ she asked.

‘Oh, Miss Cooper, it is. You see those stairs over there?’ She indicated some steps in the corner of the kitchen. ‘That leads up to my room and facilities. I’m not to go in the main house unless called upon.’

‘Never? You don’t keep one another company in the evening?’

‘Not once in all these years.’

‘And you brought in some blossoms and—’

‘She was so cross. I don’t like to think of it.’

‘No,’ said Maisie. ‘Perhaps she didn’t appreciate it because her sight is so poor.’

‘She’s worn out her eyes with reading. That’s what I think.’

‘Really?’

‘She says: “Reading gives structure to one’s thoughts.” She tells me I ought to take the trouble to do so myself so my thoughts “would acquire greater clarity and order”.’

‘Do you like to read? I do.’

Dilys smiled with unexpected enthusiasm. ‘Will you come up?’

She set off and Maisie had no real choice but to follow up the bare steps of a narrow kitchen staircase to a dismal, uncarpeted corridor. A frigid bathroom with a patch of worn linoleum in front of the washbasin was visible through an ill-painted doorway to the right. On the left, Dilys led Maisie into her bedroom and, perhaps out of habit, went to sit at the dressing table, addressing Maisie’s reflection in the mirror.

‘I got this from the library van, the last time it came through Bitling.’ The room was dark with only one small window that hadn’t been washed for a long time. Dilys turned on a table lamp under a beaded shade. ‘It isn’t true that I don’t read. It’s just that Lady Catherine doesn’t value the books I find diverting.’

Dilys’ book was the Reader’s Digest Compendium of English Trees (& Their Meanings).

‘It looks very interesting,’ said Maisie.

‘Oh, it is. I’ve learned so much about our native woodland. The rowan, for example, provides timber enduring enough to fashion tool handles, walking sticks and fine furniture. It thrives at altitudes higher than any other native British tree and is also known as quickbeam. The Greeks believed that Hebe, the goddess of youth, once lost her chalice and an eagle was sent to retrieve it and was wounded and, with every falling drop of eagle blood, a rowan tree grew, each one with leaves the shape of the eagle’s wings. Isn’t that lovely?’

‘It is,’ said Maisie.

‘And the berries – properly known as “sorbs” – are employed by herbalists as a traditional remedy for colds and digestive calamities. They turn fiery orange-red in autumn. Did you know, it grants protection against dark magic, so is often found alongside ancient burial sites or great houses?’

‘I did not know that,’ said Maisie, wondering if Dilys really believed in country legends. ‘You admire Lady Catherine a great deal, don’t you?’

‘How could I not?’ wondered Dilys. ‘Now, can I tell you more about their meanings – the trees, I mean? Do you have time? Have I kept you from more important things?’

Maisie felt very sorry for Lady Catherine’s unhappy companion and agreed – with concealed reluctance – to hear more about what she had gleaned from the Reader’s Digest Compendium of English Trees (& Their Meanings). Dilys had written some of it out on a sheet of expensive Baffins notepaper that she insisted Maisie read aloud:

Rowan – signifying strength in solitude

Oak – signifying thunder but also wisdom, patience and trust

Willow – signifying sadness, mourning and also rebirth

Hazel – signifying flexibility, wisdom and inspiration

Blackthorn – signifying betrayal and aggression, but also protection

‘You read very well,’ Dilys told her, wistfully, ‘like an actress in a play.’ Then her poor face crumpled. ‘I wish I’d known that milk stirred with a rowan twig will never curdle.’

‘Why, Miss Prime, what’s the matter?’ Maisie asked.

‘It was such a disaster,’ said Dilys, almost in tears.

‘Do you not want to tell me?’

‘Oh, but I do. You seem such a very good listener.’

Maisie sat down on the corner of the bed. ‘Then I have all the time in the world.’

‘Well, it was on the day Mr Meek came. And Mr Ryan, too, the solicitor. Lady Catherine demanded – I mean, requested – that I should prepare a crème caramel because they are both, apparently, very fond of sweet things. I did my best, following the recipe instructions to the letter, to the minute.’

‘Did it not set nicely?’ guessed Maisie.

‘When I removed the pudding from its mould at the dining table, I found myself serving a mixture of sugared scrambled eggs in warm milk. That’s why I say I wish I’d known the efficacy of stirring the ingredients with a rowan wand. Don’t you think that might have made it turn out all right?’

‘I think that crème caramel can be tricky even for experienced cooks.’

‘It’s kind of you to say so. If Lady Catherine wanted a cook, rather than a companion, why didn’t her advertisement say so?’ Maisie wondered how long Dilys Prime had been a kind of unloved pet at Baffins, but didn’t have time to ask. The older lady went on: ‘Last year, when the rowan berries came, there were more than we or the birds needed and her ladyship let them rot.’

‘That’s the nature of seasonal fruit, though,’ said Maisie, wanting to soften Dilys’ unhappiness. ‘Too little and then, suddenly, too much.’

‘I have to beat the rugs, you know?’

‘The rugs?’

‘It’s terribly hard work. Her ladyship likes Turkish carpets. She calls them kilims. They’re very heavy and I bring them down and beat them on the washing line.’

Maisie was more and more sympathetic to Dilys Prime’s solitary existence, taken advantage of by her unsympathetic employer.

‘And you never enter the main part of the house?’

‘Only if called upon.’

‘You don’t take breakfast to Lady Catherine’s room in the morning?’

‘She often doesn’t rise until eleven and prefers to make her own. Oh, but that was another thing, the coffee pot, I mean jug.’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s such a lovely thing. Mr Meek it was who told me to call it a jug. You can’t put it on the stove or the Calor gas rings. You know, I’m not permitted to light the Aga from the thirty-first of March until the first of November? Which is a shame because it provides a little warmth to this chilly bedroom, being on top of the kitchen.’ Dilys sighed. ‘There I go, losing the thread. I was going to say, Mr Ryan had seen the jug before and was very interested. He said in that lovely warm voice of his, you know, “deep chasing cut by hand with fine chisels”, leaves and scrolls and a really very fearsome eagle.’

‘Why were Mr Meek and Mr Ryan here?’ asked Maisie, innocently.

‘Well, Mr Ryan – who is a very nice man and seems always so pleased to see me, though I don’t know why – is Lady Catherine’s solicitor. Mr Meek was making a visit in relation to valuing certain items, but he told her ladyship that he was too busy and couldn’t begin the task straight away. She was very displeased – by that and by the damage.’

‘The damage?’ prompted Maisie.

‘The silver coffee jug wasn’t there. You see, it had a dent in the bulbous lid, you know, like an onion shape, and it would no longer seat itself properly in the opening. I sent it up to the farrier in Framlington, Jon Wilkes. He’s very good with jewellery. He doesn’t only deal with horseshoes and farm tools.’

‘Yes, I know, said Maisie, truthfully. ‘Jon is a friend of mine.’

For a moment, Dilys looked uncertain: ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you about her ladyship’s private affairs.

‘I’m very discreet,’ Maisie assured her.

‘Lady Catherine was angry, again, like with the rowan blossoms, and said that a blacksmith wasn’t the right person to be restoring an eighteenth-century heirloom that had been used by noble Peahorns for two hundred years.’

‘I see,’ said Maisie, making an effort not to smile at the faintly surreal idea of a long line of ‘noble Peahorns’. ‘Do go on.’

‘Well, she promised to send it down to Mr Meek when Jon Wilkes returned it and . . .’ Dilys’ voice tailed off. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this story.’

Maisie had the distinct impression that, had Lady Catherine’s companion gone on, she might have learned something important.

‘What were you going to say?’ she asked.

Dilys stood up. ‘Do you hear that? It’s the postman’s van bouncing up the lane. I mustn’t miss him.’

Dilys bustled out into the dismal corridor and Maisie followed, down the bare stairs. The postman was at the back door, his little van pulled up where Lady Catherine’s Morris Minor had been. Dilys fetched two letters from the tall Welsh dresser and put them in his hands.

‘One for The Times on the subject of the striking miners,’ Dilys told him, ‘and another to the Chichester Observer about potholes.’

‘That’s more stamps than they probably need,’ remarked the postman, weighing them professionally in his hand.

‘It’s best to be sure,’ said Dilys, patting her grey bun in what looked to Maisie like a habitual gesture of self-protection. ‘I don’t want to be in trouble again.’

‘No,’ said the postman. ‘I’ve more than once been the victim of that old besom’s sharp tongue. I don’t expect you do.’ He caught sight of Maisie. ‘Well, if it isn’t Miss Cooper from the newspaper. Are you investigating another murder, then?’

‘Dear me, no,’ said Maisie, feeling uncomfortable about being recognised, but also because she very much thought she might be. With Jack away, however, she didn’t know how she would manage to get access to the police investigation into what the relief constable had confirmed was the ‘suspicious death’ of Montague Meek.

‘Are you sure?’ insisted the postman.

She smiled brightly and told him: ‘Good heavens, no. I’m done with all that.’

III – WILLOW

Signifying sadness, mourning and also rebirth

Fourteen

The postman got back into his van and drove away. Maisie said goodbye to Dilys Prime and stepped outside into the warm afternoon sunshine.

She enjoyed yomping on foot down the rutted chalk lane, stepping carefully so as not to turn an ankle on a rogue lump of flint, expecting at any moment to see the open-topped Morris Minor bouncing back up towards her, but Lady Catherine had clearly driven – no doubt erratically – on.

At the end of the unmade lane, she rejoined the junction of the two tarmac roads through the village, the one on the right leading to the pond and the one on the left constituting the main street with the vet’s premises, the pub and the butcher. She took the left and, before entering the village, she found herself opposite the gate of the sawmill, an untidy place with no apparent order to the heaps of logs, tree trunks, uncut branches and bits and pieces of machinery. She saw an elderly man in olive green moleskin trousers and a check shirt, struggling to get a grapple attached to a lifting device around one of the thickest trunks. He seemed to have managed it but, when he actioned a lever on the hand-powered hoist, the grapple slipped off and flung itself at his face. He was thrown backwards against a heap of mossy timber and lay there without moving.

Maisie went quickly to his aid, genuinely worried that he might have been seriously injured by the failed mechanism of his log hoist, the flailing metal grapple. But she found him lying back against the pile of mossy logs, laughing to himself with a hand to his brow, simply to blot out the glare of the sun, not to staunch a wound.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘I’m a silly old fool,’ he told her. ‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Maisie Cooper. I just happened to be passing, on my way down from Baffins, and saw your accident.’

‘One day,’ he said, levering himself up, ‘I’ll have an eye out. That’s what Linda would say.’

‘Linda?’

‘My youngest.’

‘Is she also a, what do you call yourselves, Bitling-ite?’

‘We’re Bitlingers – and yes, she is.’

The elderly man still hadn’t managed to get himself righted so Maisie offered both her hands. Gratefully, he took them and she leaned back against his weight – there wasn’t much of him – to pull him upright.

‘From the gate, it looked very dangerous.’

‘Can you help me?’ he asked. ‘It’s the one thing I can no longer manage, getting the heavy trunks onto the saw table, especially if they’ve still got a lot of sap in them.’

Maisie took a moment to examine the equipment. She had some experience of hoists because, in the army, she had done exercises using similar devices for moving artillery pieces.

‘Of course.’

‘My name is Littlegreen. I would tell you my first name but there’s no point because everyone refers to me as Old Mr Littlegreen. Do you know my eldest, Muriel?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘She’s the most capable of the three.’

‘The three?’ asked Maisie, struggling to keep up.

‘Timothy is my middle one. He likes the sawmill best, but he’s the clumsiest, too. Anyway, just push it along a little, would you.’

The hoist could be moved quite easily on large rubber tyres. Once closer to the trunk, Maisie soon worked out how to position the grapple so that, when upward pressure was applied, the mouth of it closed around the timber. Then, between the two of them, they shunted it along the sole clear path through the untidy yard into the barn, levering the trunk onto the rollers of the cutting table, ready to be pushed against the rotating blade of the saw. Before they could do that, though, Old Mr Littlegreen sort of flinched and told her he felt dizzy, that perhaps his tumble hadn’t been entirely without consequence.

Maisie helped him into his office – a shed adjoining the cutting barn – and made him sit down while she prepared a cup of tea using a plastic kettle and some Red Label teabags on a tray on top of a small fridge. By the time it was ready, Old Mr Littlegreen looked very poorly. Maisie knew a delayed reaction was sometimes a symptom of concussion and began to feel anxious.

‘Three sugars?’ he told her, sounding a little vague. ‘Please, don’t fill the cup. My hands aren’t steady.’

‘Would it be impolite to ask how old you are, sir, working the machinery of the sawmill?’

‘Are you being critical of me, Miss . . . Forgive me, I’ve already forgotten who you are.’ He left a little pause, then asked: ‘Did you say a friend of Linda? No, Linda doesn’t really have friends. She has a very abrupt personality . . .’ Again, his voice drifted.

‘My name is Maisie Cooper and I just happened to be passing by.’

‘So, I don’t know you?’

‘Not before today.’

‘Dear me . . .’ She put the mug of tea in his hand, closing his finger around it. He brought it slowly to his lips, blowing on the liquid to cool it down and drinking with a suction effect, between his lips. ‘Very nice,’ he told her. ‘Miss . . .’

‘Cooper.’

There was a second chair so Maisie sat down, wondering if Old Mr Littlegreen was quite compos mentis, in addition to the shock of his tumble. His eyes were very vague. She looked inside the fridge for something other than the long-life milk she had used and found an iced bun in a paper wrapper.

‘Do you think you should have bite of this?’

‘Oh, dear me no. That’s been there such a long time. I wouldn’t even feel safe touching it.’

‘Shall I get rid of it?’

Old Mr Littlegreen smiled at her so she took that as approval, stepping outside and picking her way through the logs to the tall hazel hedge that surrounded the yard, tipping the iced bun out of its paper bag in the roots for an animal to find and devour. Back in the shed, Old Mr Littlegreen was lolling in his chair and spoke to her as if they had been conversing for some time.

‘Only I, you see, really know her. There’s no one left from those days. There used to be Virginia Masterson-Cox, for example. Do you know her? But she died. So, now there’s just me.’

Maisie remembered hearing the unusual double-barrelled name in Lady Catherine’s conversation, in the convoluted story about cataracts. Did that mean that Old Mr Littlegreen was a peer of Lady Catherine, despite the difference in apparent status? He spoke with a similar refined accent and a very precise vocabulary. She was glad to see he had finished his tea and offered to make more.

‘No, thank you. I feel . . .’ Maisie was about to ask him what, when he abruptly became more lucid. ‘It’s rather late in the day and I do like to limit what I drink after lunch so as not to be constantly up and out of bed in the night. But we were talking about Baffins, about poor Catherine, weren’t we?’

Maisie was becoming more and more certain that Old Mr Littlegreen was suffering from, at the very least, a mild concussion. On the pretext of looking at the calendar on the wall, she managed a glimpse of the back of his head. The thin, grey hair was clotted with blood, not flowing freely but a significant quantity.

‘You have hurt yourself, you know,’ she told him.

‘Am I bleeding?’

‘You are. Is there a doctor in Bitling, someone I can call?’

‘I’ll tell you the number. You get the phone.’ Maisie picked up the heavy receiver and he recited: ‘Eight-two-seven-two-seven.’

Maisie spun the rotary dial with her forefinger and heard the answering ring at the other end. A pleasant voice with a slight local timbre responded by confirming the number: ‘Eight-two-seven-two-seven.’

‘Good afternoon. I’m at the sawmill with Old Mr Littlegreen. He’s had an accident and hurt his head. He suggested you might be able to look at it – the wound, I mean.’

‘I’ll be right there,’ said the voice.

‘Who am I speaking to—?’ Maisie began, but her interlocutor had hung up.

To Maisie’s dismay, Old Mr Littlegreen had put his head down on the desk and closed his eyes. She eased him upright, talking in a loud voice: ‘You can’t go to sleep with a potential concussion. You need to need keep your wits about you. Do you understand?’

Dreamily, Old Mr Littlegreen told her: ‘Catherine never understood. She never could grasp any way of living that wasn’t her way.’

‘Do you mean Lady Catherine?’ Maisie asked.

‘Now we’re old and nothing really matters any more, does it? You’d think she’d want people to think well of her, wouldn’t you?’

‘Do people not think well of her?’ Maisie probed, with a tinge of guilt that she was taking advantage of his disorientation.

He didn’t answer, looking on the verge of sleep once more. Maisie told him, with as much energy as she could muster, about being related to Phyl and stepping in as the special guest. He seemed to be taking in all she said, though he didn’t say anything in reply. Finally, she was relieved to hear a voice calling and footsteps in the yard.

‘Where are you?’

‘We’re in the office,’ she replied, raising her voice.

Old Mr Littlegreen sat bolt upright as if shocked back into full consciousness. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Did you take a tumble?’ came the voice from outside then, all of a sudden, to his and Maisie’s mutual stupefaction, Vaughan Quinn was framed by the doorway, carrying a leather satchel. ‘Good heavens. What are you doing here?’

Maisie told him that it was she who had called and repeated her tale of having been passing and Vaughan told her: ‘You’ll think this is deliberate, that I’m chasing you up and down the merry byways of south-west Sussex.’

‘I won’t think anything of the kind. Are you a physician as well as a vet?’

‘No, but . . .’ Vaughan seemed to realise that he was neglecting his patient. ‘What’s happened, Mr L?’

‘The hoist,’ said Old Mr Littlegreen, as if that were self-explanatory.

It seemed it was sufficient because Vaughan immediately told him off: ‘You know you aren’t to try using that thing on your own. If you were ten years younger, I’d say the same thing. If anyone tried to manufacture a device like that in this day and age, they’d not get a licence.’

‘This lady and I managed it quite well,’ said Old Mr Littlegreen quietly, then added: ‘But that was after I hit my head. Would you . . .’

Maisie stood back as Vaughan examined the wound, pronounced it ‘not serious’, but opened his leather satchel and thoroughly cleaned it with some strips of bandage and a volatile disinfectant whose aroma quickly filled the office. A little nauseated and feeling she had become a spare part, Maisie went outside.

The sun was dipping in the west and she thought she had stayed out too long, neglecting Phyl. Furthermore, she would have to go into Chichester later in order to pick up Zoe as the last chore of what would turn out to be a very long day. In between, she wondered if she might have time to write to Jack again.

No, I’m not sure I can because I’d have to mention the death of Montague Meek and that would only worry him.

Standing in the untidy woodyard with the delicious scent of cut timber all around, she realised she was smiling at the thought of her fiancé. She tried to imagine him dressed up in the Green Man robe that she had seen draped over the rosemary bush. She went back inside.

‘He’ll do,’ said Vaughan. ‘But we should take him down to the Silver Garter. It’ll be open any minute.’

‘The pub. Is that a good idea?’

‘Not for a drink. His daughter Linda works there. She can keep an eye on him. You only just caught me. I was about to go out on a call for a difficult delivery.’

Maisie frowned and asked: ‘Forgive me, but do you mean animal or human? I feel I’m being very stupid.’

‘Cow,’ he explained with admirable concision. ‘Mr L has known me all his life and helped me through my medical training, especially when I changed tack from humans to beasts of the field. And, of course, small injuries are not so very different from one mammal to another.’

‘He knew if I called you that he could trust you and I wondered . . .’ Maisie stopped, mentally searching for some connection that seemed necessary to make sense of all she had heard. ‘Never mind.’

‘I’ll get him up and give him an arm.’

‘I could help.’

‘Do you have time? It might be easier with one on each side.’

Maisie told him she was heading back into the village for her car in any case. They escorted Old Mr Littlegreen, one on either side, Vaughan with a strong hand in his armpit, Maisie allowing him the more dignified posture of offering her his arm. She made sure she held it, though, in such a way as to assist his balance, several times feeling him lean into her from an undulation in the tarmac. At the door of the Silver Garter, they coincided with a woman in her forties, opening up. When she noticed their approach, she burst out: ‘What on earth have you done now?’

‘Linda, you worry too much,’ said Old Mr Littlegreen. ‘All will be well.’

Keen to get back to Bunting, Maisie bid them all goodbye, but Vaughan Quinn ran after her.

‘I just wanted to apologise once more. Country life is quiet and there just aren’t that many . . .’

‘That many . . . ?’ she prompted, confused.

‘Oh, God, here I go again. I was going to say “beautiful young women” but, as I can’t do right for doing wrong, I’ll leave you in peace with the observation that I know Jack Wingard is an excellent fellow and I would never have been so, you know, forward, if I’d had even the faintest inkling that . . .’ He stopped, heaved a great sigh and said with complete finality: ‘Goodbye.’

He marched back to Old Mr Littlegreen and Linda – they were still locked in debate outside the door of the pub – and chivvied them inside. Maisie climbed into the Land Rover, engaged first gear and carefully pulled away down the deep lane, her mind full of new questions.

What is the relationship between Old Mr Littlegreen and Lady Catherine – the woman he refers to simply as Catherine, as if she were an old friend?

Why was Lady Catherine so concerned about Montague Meek’s death – a death that the paper clearly considers unremarkable.

Why is Dilys Prime so nervy and breathless and clumsy? Is it merely the result of years of brow-beating from her mistress, or is there another reason why she might be afraid?

Maisie nosed out into the main road to Framlington, taking advantage of a gap between a potato lorry and the single-decker Southdown bus. Pootling along in that sandwich, she contemplated a fourth question.

If I have to spend an entire weekend in Bitling village – dressed up in an ancient embroidered robe as, in effect, a fertility symbol – what on earth am I going to do about Vaughan Quinn?

*

At Framlington, the potato lorry took the same right turn that she did, then pulled off into an adjacent field, allowing her to accelerate into the more isolated valleys of the Downs. To her surprise, she saw Lady Catherine’s open-topped Morris Minor – with its unmistakable pattern of bodywork damage – going the other way.

Soon after, she took the rarely used road through Harden to Bunting. She parked in front of Phyl’s Jacobean manor house, noticing that the air was a little damp from the descending dew, making the varied foliage and early summer blooms more fragrant.

She climbed the three stone steps to the front door and found it unlocked. With an expression of frustration on her lips, she went inside and listened for any sign of human activity. Then she saw Phyl struggling along the landing, looking very out of sorts, hunched over with a tooth-glass of water, clearly on her way back from the bathroom.

‘Are you all right?’ she called up. ‘What can I get you?’

Phyl started and spilled some of the water from her glass, then answered in a weak and wheezy, complaining voice. Maisie wasn’t sure, but it sounded like she said: ‘You told her, didn’t you?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

Phyl shook her head, then winced because it looked like it hurt to do so. ‘Come up,’ she whispered. ‘Bring me a honey and lemon, please.’

Maisie made the drink as quickly as she could and took it upstairs. Phyl was just getting back into bed, having changed into a different nightdress.

‘I was sticky and gross.’

The window on the western sky beyond the woods was wide open, but the room still felt stuffy.

‘Have you been sweating with fever?’ Maisie asked, putting the hot drink down on the bedside table.

‘Yes, but I couldn’t bring myself to bathe,’ said Phyl with almost no voice. ‘I thought I might slip over and hurt myself.’

‘Very wise. Have you taken all the little sachets of powder the doctor left you?’

‘About to take the last. Did you get the linctus?’

‘Here,’ said Maisie, producing the large brown bottle from her handbag and putting it on the bedside table next to the hot drink. There was a book there, too, one she recognised from the investigation into the murder at Bunting Manor. ‘That’s some strange sickbed reading,’ she said lightly. She picked it up and read the title aloud: ‘Phytotoxicology: a field guide by Owen P Royburg.’

‘It was all there was to hand and I was too weary to get out of bed,’ croaked Phyl.

‘What did you say on the stairs just now? Was it that I told someone something?’

‘Catherine Peahorn. She came.’

‘Good heavens. What did she want?’

‘To tell me to give up on the respite home,’ whispered Phyl. ‘You spilled the beans.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise I wasn’t supposed to. You’ve announced it in public, after all.’

‘She’s hard work at the best of times. Somehow, she hadn’t heard about it and . . .’

Phyl stopped, coughing. Maisie tore open the last sachet of the doctor’s antibiotic powders and tipped it into the honey and lemon. Phyl drank half of it and leaned back, looking very drawn and old.

‘Was she very difficult? Can she stand in your way?’

‘Any local person can object to the change of use in the planning application and her word certainly carries weight. Never mind, though. Que sera, sera. It was just bad timing, Maisie. Any other day I’d have met fire with fire and sent her packing.’

Maisie felt awful. ‘If I’d known, I’d never have said. I had to go up there with William Dodd to meet her because of the fair and replacing you.’

‘Really, never mind,’ said Phyl, her voice a little less scratchy now she had drunk.

‘Can I make you some dinner?’

‘Oh, God, no,’ said Phyl, with a wave of her hand.

‘You should eat.’

‘I couldn’t.’

‘Cheese on toast with no crusts.’

Phyl finished her hot drink and sighed. ‘All right. Help me downstairs, just for a little while for the change of scene.’

Maisie levered Phyl out of bed and downstairs, taking the field guide on poisonous plants with them. Phyl subsided on a hard chair at the kitchen table. The sun had been on the south window all day but the stone flags on the floor were cool, she said, on her bare feet. ‘And that’s delicious. By the way, what’s happened in here? It looks like a new kitchen.’

‘I had a blitz.’

Maisie lit the gas grill, returned the book to the library on the far side of the hall, came back and cut two slices from the white bloomer and grated a small hill of cheddar on the breadboard. Once the toast was ready, she used lots of butter and a dash of Worcester sauce and put it back under with the cheese on top, telling Phyl about her day.

‘When you’re better, I would love to hear all about your good works over there for Harold and his nephew and others. I met Old Mr Littlegreen who took a tumble in his yard and,’ she added, making her voice light, ‘the vet. They’re all very interesting characters.’

‘Maybe tell me tomorrow,’ Phyl wheezed.

Without the crusts, the two pieces of cheese on toast were quite small and Phyl managed to eat them without any complaint. Then Maisie escorted her back to bed, sitting her up against her pillows.

‘Do you want the curtains closed?’

‘No, I’ll wait and watch the sunset.’

‘Another book?’

‘Nothing.’

Maisie contemplated her. The sunlight was changing colour, becoming less stark as the evening came on, making her look less grey and ill.

‘I have plenty of time before I go and pick up Zoe. Are you sure—?’ she began.

‘Leave me now. I’ll just sit and digest.’

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have been out so long. But you’ll enjoy it when I tell you about all the people I met.’

‘West Bitling, too? How was Arthur Tate?’

‘Who’s that?’

‘I’ve set him up in the sweet shop,’ Phyl whispered. ‘I hope he does well. Catherine’s causing trouble there as well.’

‘You have such hidden depths,’ said Maisie, sitting down on the corner of the bed. ‘Shall I tell you now? It’s so boring being ill.’

‘No, actually,’ Phyl breathed. ‘Leave the sickroom and go and live your life.’

With regret, still feeling guilty about her long absence, Maisie made another hot honey and lemon drink and left it on the bedside table and brought one of Phyl’s favourite books, The Guinness Book of Records 1971, thinking it suitable if she didn’t have much attention span. Phyl’s eyes were closed, though she was still sitting up. She was breathing fairly deeply, however, her hands relaxed upon the eiderdown.

Maisie went to the bathroom on the landing for a wash, noticing a splash of mud on the hem of her mustard-coloured dress. She took it off and cleaned it in the handbasin, dabbed it with a towel then hung it in the open window of her bedroom. On a whim, she retrieved from the grate the list of brief character studies that she had turned into a fire-lighting spill, smoothing it flat.

I threw this away because I thought none of it was my business. Now, I’m not so sure.

She put a pale blue dress on and, to pass the time, she went and found a book of her own in the library, a collection of short stories by Guy de Maupassant that she had never read before, though she knew who the author was, very celebrated and prolific. The first two tales weren’t particularly to her taste because they had supernatural elements – or, rather, possible supernatural elements, neither the characters nor the narrator were quite certain. The third was gruesomely realistic, about a doctor who, puffed up with his learning and pride, persuades a servant with a club foot to allow him to operate on the deformed limb, making it much worse, ruining the man’s livelihood.

Maisie put the book aside with a shudder, regretting becoming emotionally involved in such a tragic outcome.

It was time to drive back into Chichester along mainly quiet roads, parking in her usual spot. Zoe was out just a few minutes late, yawning and telling her: ‘Some Americans are staying and they give amazing tips. By the way, did you write to Adélaïde?’

‘Oh, no, I forgot. I ought to tell her it’s no go.’

‘I wish I could do it, be her assistant and meet all kinds of famous and wonderful people.’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea at sixteen years old, but I will take you to Paris one day, Zoe, I promise. Maybe in August, when half the city shuts down for the summer holidays.’

‘All right,’ said Zoe, yawning again and tipping the seat back. ‘Wake me up when we arrive.’

Maisie drove on, thinking about the gruesome Maupassant story and the hubris of the doctor. It reminded her of Lady Catherine’s thoughts on modern cataract surgery and, for some reason, made her feel bad.

I always think I know best, don’t I?

She drove on, mentally qualifying her self-criticism.

But I usually do know best.

She remembered the older man with the crooked leg that she had seen several times at the swimming baths and realised she was looking forward to getting up early for some proper exercise, seeing Charity and perhaps Maurice, if he was in the office afterwards.

There’s more to all this than meets the eye and it’s closely connected to Lady Catherine and to Bitling Fair. Maurice will know the ins and outs.

The trouble was, as a lawyer, Maurice Ryan’s professional code of conduct might well prevent him from sharing privileged knowledge.

Did Montague Meek know something important or dangerous about Baffins – or about Lady Catherine? If so, might that knowledge have had something to do with his death?

For a little while she couldn’t sleep so she amused herself with drawing a sketch map of Bitling and its newish sibling, East Bitling. It amused her to see all the different locations laid out on the page but, when it was finished, she was no nearer to knowing why it felt so important – or so threatening.

Fifteen

Maisie woke at seven o’clock on the dot without needing to set an alarm. She put on a dressing gown and brushed her teeth in the bathroom on the landing, then went to look in on Phyl. The bed was empty.

She went downstairs, taking the big steps two at a time, calling out: ‘Are you there?’

She found Phyl in the kitchen, looking extremely sorry for herself, filling the whistle kettle at the sink.

‘Did I wake you?’ she asked, her voice raspy. ‘Can you do this? I must have tea.’

‘Go back up. I’ll bring it.’

Phyl slouched away, barely lifting her feet. As she left the kitchen, Maisie just about heard her say: ‘If you hear a crash, it will be me.’

Maisie prepared a pot of tea and a slice of toast with a lot of butter and honey, taking it all upstairs.

‘Before you ask,’ said Phyl from her bed, ‘no better but no worse either.’

‘Do I need to get the doctor back?’

‘They take a couple of days.’

‘What do?’

‘For antibiotics to work.’ Phyl tried the toast but put it aside with a look of self-pity. ‘I want something else.’

‘Do you know what?’

‘Sweets for my throat, with sherbet in, for the vitamin C.’

Maisie wasn’t sure that was what sherbet was but it seemed an innocent request from someone who hated being ill and asking for help.

‘I’m not going to stand over you,’ Maisie told her. ‘I know you don’t want that. Would it be all right to leave you while I go onto town and swim and I’ll come back with some sweets? Did you sleep by the way?’

‘I coughed all night,’ said Phyl miserably. ‘Didn’t you hear me?’

‘Don’t worry about that.’

Just then, Phyl was racked by a series of dry, unproductive wheezing convulsions that made Maisie quite worried. When it was over, though, Phyl said: ‘Maybe I’ll have an appetite come lunchtime. Leave me in peace and don’t look at me.’

‘Okay. I’m going.’

To their surprise, Zoe appeared in the doorway, fully dressed in jeans and jean jacket, answering their questioning looks with a cheery: ‘Day off. Want to make the most of it. Need toast.’

She disappeared, Maisie made sure Phyl was as comfortable as possible then went to get dressed herself, the mustard dress being quite dry. In the kitchen, she noticed Zoe had a rolled-up towel.

‘Is it all right if I come with you?’ asked the teenager. ‘It’s not a grown-up thing I’m going to spoil, is it?’

For a moment, Maisie reflected on how much younger Zoe seemed than when she had first met her. A few months before she had been older than her years – sad, neglected and angry.

‘Of course, not. It will be lovely.’

Because of the kerfuffle with Phyl, they were a few minutes late parking the car, getting changed and splashing through the frigid verruca bath. They plunged into the chlorinated waters. Zoe, it transpired, wasn’t a strong swimmer and preferred jumping in and climbing out and bravely diving from all three boards – one metre, three metre and five metre – to the repetition of lengths. The man with the crooked leg was there, as was Charity who swam alongside Maisie with such ease that, doing breaststroke, they were able to talk as they went.

So much time passed that, all at once, there was a gaggle of secondary children in pyjamas at the poolside and two teachers that Maisie liked the look of because they were encouraging and attentive, not like the uninterested examples from the previous morning.

They all got changed and dried their hair using the coin-operated dryer on the wall. Then they adjourned to the café for a cup of tea and, in Zoe’s case, two Penguin biscuits. When they left, Maisie was disappointed to discover that Maurice would not be in the office first thing but might be there at ten. As they walked along East Street, however, she saw a stately Mark II Jaguar car she recognised, parked on the side street, Baffins Lane.

‘You go on, Charity. I have to talk to someone.’

‘Must I come?’ asked Zoe.

‘What would you rather do?’ Maisie asked.

‘Go shopping. I have money these days.’

It was just after nine o’clock so the first shops would be open.

‘If you spend it, you won’t have it any more.’

‘Spoilsport,’ said Zoe and stuck out her tongue. ‘See you at the Cross in half an hour?’

‘Perfect.’

Charity and Zoe carried on into the centre of the city while Maisie walked down Baffins Lane, towards the white-painted premises of Meek’s Auction Room. Once there, she hesitated, putting a hand on the bonnet of the Jag to see if it had been there long, if it was warm. Just then, a prematurely aged man in his thirties, with a fuzzy ring of strawberry blond hair, emerged from the auction rooms, his eyes on a rectangular notebook that he held in his hands.

‘Hello, Inspector Nairn,’ said Maisie.

He looked up and smiled. ‘Isn’t that the happy coincidence. I was talking about you only this morning and how not every witness pays attention or has a memory like Miss Cooper does.’

‘Thank you, Inspector.’

‘Did we not say you could call me “Fred” at the end of the theatre business?’

‘You just called me “Miss Cooper”.’

‘Fair enough. Yes, I did. But I wonder, Maisie . . .’ He looked concerned. ‘Have you heard from Jack down in Devon?’

‘I suppose he might write at some point but there’s no need. I imagine he’s very busy. Is something wrong.’

He was still frowning. ‘We spoke on the phone first thing with one or two bits of station business to discuss.’

Maisie felt cross that Fred and Jack should have been speaking while she was obliged to count the passing of the days till he returned. And she was perturbed that Fred looked so anxious.

‘Did he say anything else?’

‘He asked me . . . Oh, I’m not sure I should say. Congratulations, by the way – that comes first.’

‘First before what?’ asked Maisie, a little shortly.

‘Well, he wanted to know if . . . Should I say it?’

‘If you don’t, I’ll have to ring him myself,’ she complained.

‘Well,’ said the inspector, with a broad grin, ‘he asked if I would be his best man and, and . . .’ Fred Nairn had become red in the face with emotion. ‘I hope you don’t mind. We don’t know one another very well, you and I, outside of the cases where you’ve helped, and you’re a very glamorous and well-travelled person. Perhaps you would have liked someone better.’

‘Fred,’ said Maisie with relief, ‘that’s lovely to know. You’re the ideal person.’

‘And I’ll make sure it goes off with a swing with all the uniformed lads there in their best, white gloves and everything.’

‘That sounds marvellous.’

Maisie really meant it. She felt herself grinning at the sudden turnaround from frustration to an unexpected confirmation of what was, after all, the most important thing in her life right now – her engagement. She felt a little guilty at the idea that it had sort of slipped down her priorities, what with everything else that had happened.

‘Fred, are you here because of Montague Meek?’

He became serious as he glanced round to see if anyone was within earshot. As it happened, there were two painters working on the sash windows of a townhouse not twenty feet away. He invited her by gesture into the lobby of the auction rooms. She followed into a dingy space, lit only by a table lamp with a green glass shade, on a dark kneehole desk.

‘There’s no one here,’ he told her. ‘The business is closed for the foreseeable future. Wilson and Tindall have done their forensic examination. Shall we?’

Maisie nodded. She knew Wilson and Tindall from the murder at Chichester Theatre.

Fred indicated a church pew set against one wall, clearly intended as a seat for people waiting to be admitted into the presence of Mr Meek. They sat down and Maisie told Fred about Lady Catherine’s frustration that he was gone.

‘Her ladyship is right,’ Fred surprised her by saying. ‘When you’re set in your ways with people you can rely on, you don’t want change. Look at Jack. I’ve been telling him to go for a promotion for years. But, now he is, I wish he wasn’t gallivanting off to all parts instead of next to me at the station.’

‘Exeter isn’t all parts,’ said Maisie.

‘No, but after Exeter, it might be Newcastle. Did he not tell you?’

‘No,’ said Maisie, aggrieved. ‘He didn’t.’

‘Or it could be Bristol, apparently. Perhaps he didn’t want to broach it until he knew what was likely.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Maisie, dubiously. Then she asked, as innocently as she was able: ‘How did Mr Meek die?’

‘That’s for the post-mortem to decide,’ said Fred.

‘Can you not tell me?’

Fred smiled and told her, indulgently: ‘I think I can trust you to be discreet. He was working late and found the following morning by his secretary, at his desk. It was all a bit of a state, so he may have had some kind of convulsion or a heart attack. That’s a layman’s view, of course, I mean a non-medical person, just from the scene.’

‘But you’re here because . . .’ She left the question hanging and Fred looked very serious. Maisie remembered something William Dodd had said about Montague Meek being tightly connected with the cathedral. ‘Has someone from the Bishop’s Palace asked you to take an interest?’ she wondered aloud.

Fred nodded but also told her: ‘There’s a lot of valuable bits and pieces in the auction rooms, owned by dozens and dozens of different people, all of whom are going to start worrying. It’s a good idea to be on top of it. For example, there’s an empty parcel with the return address of Baffins. I’d very much like to know which objet d’art belongs to her ladyship and keep it safe for collection.’

‘Lady Catherine sent him something?’ said Maisie. ‘Was it a coffee pot?’

He took her behind the dark reception desk with its green-shaded lamp where they could stand on the threshold of Montague Meek’s office. It was true that his desk was untidy and that there were several pencils and pens and a stapler on the floor, as well as some headed notepaper and other scraps.

‘Don’t go in,’ said Fred, ‘but you see that unfolded brown paper, by the telephone? That’s the Baffins package.’

‘Not very big then. You know, I’ll see her this weekend, Lady Catherine? I could ask her and help you work out . . .’ Maisie’s eyes went to the shelves behind Montague Meek’s desk. They ran wall to wall and floor to ceiling and were chock-a-block with all kinds of precious things. ‘It’s probably in amongst all that, isn’t it,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Fred agreed. ‘If you did find a way to get a description, that would be very helpful, Miss Cooper, Maisie. Yes.’

‘I’ll ask at a convenient moment.’

He surprised her by touching her arm, saying: ‘There is the possibility of suicide.’

‘Oh. How?’

‘A poison, perhaps, that brought on the convulsions? I’m just saying, so that if anyone mentions it, best to go careful. He may have had things in his life to be guilty about or ashamed of.’ Fred withdrew his hand. ‘But here we are, talking about sadness when you’ve made my best friend as happy a man as ever I’ve seen.’

‘Thank you, again, for agreeing to be a part of the wedding,’ said Maisie.

‘I must get on. There’s no peace for the wicked.’

He ushered her out, locked up, repeated his good wishes and got into his Jaguar. Maisie went to find Zoe waiting at the Cross with an extraordinary dark make-up round her eyes, reminiscent of Brigitte Bardot.

‘The lady in the shop did it for me. Do you think it suits?’

‘No, not for a good couple of years, if then.’

‘I like it. Can I show you the clothes I thought were good?’

‘Where are we going?’ asked Maisie, indulgently.

‘Dorothy Perkins,’ said Zoe, shrugging. ‘There’s nowhere else.’

Maisie was happy to spend twenty minutes watching Zoe try on clothes – most of which seemed much too old for her – because it would pass the time until Maurice came in. By coincidence, when they came back out into the street, they saw Charity at the Cross with a handful of letters to exchange with other assistants and secretaries from other professional employers around the town.

‘Yes, he’s there and free,’ Charity said, ‘until eleven.’

Maisie gave Zoe two pounds and told her to get ‘food for the fridge’ from Tesco and meet her back at the car.

‘What, for example?’

‘Things a recovering sick person might like. Phyl’s going to get her appetite back when all the shops are shut at the weekend.’

‘All right. Meet you at the car.’

‘Nothing that will melt like ice cream. I’ll only be ten minutes.’

‘Doing what? Talking?’

‘Yes, Zoe,’ she replied with a smile. ‘You know very well that’s what grown-ups do.’

Maisie went quickly down West Street to the solicitor’s office. Maurice was indeed free and practising his putting on the carpet between his desk and the door, quite unashamed of his idleness. Maisie came straight to the point.

‘What’s the connection between Montague Meek and Lady Catherine and the cathedral?’

‘Is there one?’

‘All right, Montague Meek and Lady Catherine.’

‘Just the professional one. Her ladyship was keen for a number of objects to be valued but Montague was a pernickety old stick – God bless him, requiescat in pace and all that – and hadn’t yet found the time to take two days out of his calendar to, as he said to me, “take pains over it”.’

‘So, he was due to do it but hadn’t yet done so.’

‘Correct.’

‘And the cathedral?’

‘What have you heard?’

‘Nothing, just that William Dodd thought it might be someone from the cathedral who would do the full biographical obituary.’

‘Yes, well, William is chapel and, therefore, isn’t fully au fait with goings-on there.’

‘You sound very serious.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t ructions of a shameful and undelicious kind.’

‘What does that mean?’

Maurice put his putter in the corner of the room, leaning it against the bookshelves, and sat down, swinging his desk chair.

‘I can’t speak about it,’ he said, ‘and, before you try to persuade me, know this.’ He left a pause then repeated himself, word for word. ‘I can’t speak about it.’

‘Something scandalous?’ Maisie insisted.

‘No comment.’

Maisie looked at the floor, thinking about what it might be. She visualised all the paraphernalia of High Church worship: the candles and cassocks; the fine vestments and the offertory plate; the choirboys and the soaring, powerful organ. She remembered Fred Nairn raising the possibility of suicide as if it was something she should consider seriously.

‘Whatever it is,’ she asked carefully, ‘this undelicious thing, could it be connected to Bitling and Lady Catherine and all that?’

‘Absolutely not. It’s internal to the cathedral and not something you should get involved with. Honestly, I cannot imagine circumstances in which it would touch on your life or the lives of anyone you know.’

‘Except for Montague Meek,’ said Maisie.

‘But you didn’t know him, did you?’

‘No,’ she said, meditatively. ‘But I wish I had.’

When Maisie got back to the car, Zoe was sitting on one of the fenders, leaning back against the windscreen, her heavily made-up eyes closed and her face turned towards the sun, a paper carrier bag alongside.

‘I got a load of tins, Heinz tomato soup, Green Giant peas, Ambrosia Creamed Rice, Del Monte peaches, some tinned fish and things,’ she said.

They got in, drove out of town and Zoe was surprised when Maisie turned off towards West Bitling.

‘I’m going to get some sucking sweets from the shop there. Do you know it?’

‘No. Well, yes, I know it’s there.’

Maisie parked, as before, in front of Micah Dodd’s butcher’s shop. In addition to meat, Micah had a rack of everyday vegetables indoors, potatoes, carrots, turnips, cabbages and so on. She thought what a help that would be for the West Bitlingers to have on their doorsteps.

Zoe went to ‘have a go on the swings’ and Maisie looked more closely at the exquisite set of ceramic panels above Micah’s door, depicting in glazed, hand-painted artwork a butcher at his trade with a heavy wooden bench covered with choice cuts, and a lady in a bonnet looking pleased. Maisie wondered where it could be from. Micah’s shop dated from just the last few years, like the development of red-brick houses. The old-fashioned sign lent an air of tradition and authenticity to the modern premises.

The fried-fish shop next door was closed once more, but there was a light on and movement within. At the third premises, Maisie had to wait for two children to come running out, sucking on the liquorice ‘straw’ that protruded from their Sherbet Fountains, a tube of yellow paper with orange-red writing.

Maisie went in, pleasantly surprised by the change since her previous visit. The windows were clean and sparkling, without a trace of cobwebs or dust. The glazed front door now had an open-and-closed sign, carefully headed with the words: Arthur Tate, Confectioner. Inside, the equally clean shelves were no longer sparse, but were stocked with pristine jars of boiled sweets of all kinds. On the counter was a set of scales and a counterweight that Maisie knew would be for four ounces, a quarter of a pound, the most common serving size. Behind the counter, a small man with very narrow teeth in an equivalently narrow mouth looked up at her five-foot-eight-plus-one-inch heels with an air of polite enquiry.

‘Yes, miss?’

‘I see you have sherbet strawberries. Do you have lemon ones as well?’

‘I do.’

‘Four ounces of each, then, please.’ He served her in silence until Maisie found the lack of interaction oppressive and told him: ‘Mrs Pascal sends her regards.’

Her words made him stop and stand stock-still in the act of pouring the boiled sweets from the stainless-steel dish on the scales into a paper bag.

‘Is she checking up on me?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Checking up,’ he repeated.

‘I’m not sure what you mean?’

‘I wouldn’t blame her, but I’m finished with all that. You follow?’

‘I, er . . .’ Maisie, began. ‘Should I tell her that?’

‘Tell her I’m grateful, that I’ll do my best. I was up until all hours finally getting things shipshape. It was in a terrible state and now, at last, it’s clean and tidy. She can send someone any time she likes. I won’t hold it against her.’

Something Phyl had said came back into her mind.

I set him up in the sweet shop. I hope he does well. Catherine’s causing trouble there as well.

‘Right,’ said Maisie, making a mental note to memorise Arthur Tate’s actual words. ‘Thank you for the sweets. I’m sure she’ll enjoy them. They’ll help her sore throat.’

She paid with a few coins, working out what had happened. It seemed that Arthur Tate assumed that she was some kind of inspector sent by Phyl to see if her charitable generosity had been well received, if he was working hard and likely to make a go of the opportunity he’d been given.

That speaks to a lifetime of doing the wrong thing, doesn’t it? And a certain degree of . . .

She didn’t want to think ‘paranoia’, but certainly a habit of being found in the wrong, provoking a need to be purer than pure, now someone had offered him a lifeline.

Maisie found Zoe outside the chippy with a woman of about thirty, or maybe a little more, with very beautiful long dark hair, wearing a pale blue dress that reached almost to the ground.

‘This is Sara,’ said Zoe, simply. ‘I told you she helps at the Dolphin and Anchor on a Friday when it’s mostly fish and the main chef is off. This is my sister, Maisie.’

At the word ‘sister’, Maisie saw Sara’s eyes flick back and forth between them, trying to work out how that might be. They were eighteen years apart, after all.

‘It’s a complicated story,’ Maisie prevaricated.

‘She saved my life,’ Zoe added.

‘Will you tell me about it in person one day?’ asked Sara. Her voice had a trace of the local accent, as well as an echo of something more unusual that made Maisie want to travel and see the world. ‘Zoe has told me,’ Sara went on, ‘that you are a very clever and brave person who sees things others don’t. She has shown me the articles about you in the local paper.’

Maisie turned to her ‘sister’. ‘Please stop doing that, Zoe.’

‘Why? You should be proud.’

Maisie wanted to say: You’ll understand when you’re older. But the words sounded so foolish and middle-aged in her head that she didn’t. Arthur Tate appeared in the doorway of his shop, half hidden by the frame, as if unsure of his right to be a part of their chatter.

‘What did you get?’ asked Zoe. Maisie showed her the two unmarked paper bags containing lemon and strawberry sherbets. ‘She’ll like them,’ Zoe confirmed. ‘Can we have fish and chips for lunch?’

‘We’re too early, aren’t we?’ said Maisie.

It was a good idea, though. A fillet of cod in batter would probably be reasonably easy for Phyl to swallow and good for her, too, better than toast or tinned soups and puddings.

‘The fryers are on for the lunchtime,’ said Sara. ‘My brother is busy indoors. He doesn’t need me right now. We could come back in fifteen minutes? I would like to hear about Paris.’

Maisie gave Zoe a look that said: More gossiping about me?

Zoe laughed and told her: ‘You have to accept, Maisie, that you’re the most interesting thing that has ever happened in my boring life in this godforsaken corner of Dullsville, West Sussex.’

Arthur Tate cut in, clearing his throat: ‘I’m very sorry if I misunderstood, Miss, er . . .’

‘Cooper,’ said Zoe.

‘I just assumed . . . Well, you know what conclusion I jumped to.’

‘Please don’t give it another thought,’ said Maisie. ‘Have you any previous experience of shopkeeping?’

‘No, Miss Cooper,’ said Arthur, sadly.

‘What did you do previously?’ she asked.

‘I was detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure,’ said Arthur. ‘I paid my debt, but I’m left with the regret. I knew the Lord would provide, and He has done so, beyond what I deserve, perhaps, through his instrument, Mrs Pascal.’

Zoe laughed at the word ‘instrument’, making Maisie feel uncomfortable for the poor man, so she was pleased when a mother with two small children under five came and interrupted, taking Arthur back inside.

‘Sara,’ said Zoe, ‘tell Maisie about the trouble.’

Because this was the same word Phyl had used about Lady Catherine, Maisie was instantly very alert: ‘Trouble?’

‘Do you understand the law, Miss Cooper?’

‘Maisie, please. And no, but I do know people who do,’ she said, thinking of Charity and Maurice.

‘Can she take these premises back?’ asked Sara.

‘Can who do what?’

‘Lady Catherine,’ said Sara in a strained voice. ‘Can she throw us out? That’s the question. Do we have to lose everything again?’

Sixteen

Sara popped into the fish-and-chip shop to place Maisie’s order with her brother, then they walked over to the corner of the green, to the playground. There were benches on each side for the parents’ use, watching so that their offspring didn’t undertake anything too dangerous. Maisie thought the slide was very high and the chains on the swings likely to pinch small fingers. And the roundabout, surely, was a death-trap, the curved metal frame spinning round at head height for a young child. Plus, the activities were all set in hard tarmac, not grass which would have been softer.

The only children there for the time being were the two under-fives, each one in a swing with a cage around the seat to keep them secure. The mother was pushing one then the other, swinging them out of sync, laughing as they tried and failed to touch hands with their little arms each time they crossed.

Maisie sat on the end of a bench that faced away from the sun. Zoe plopped down beside her with Sara on her far side, then jumped back up and said: ‘No, you’re talking. You should be next to each other.’

Maisie was grateful because Sara spoke very quietly, beginning by answering Maisie’s questions about how long they had been in England and what ‘the awful experience’ of being expelled from Kenya was like.

‘We came in the first groups. The plane we were on was specially commissioned and there were just twenty-five people on board for hundreds of seats. We were very unhappy but very glad, too, because there was nothing left for us.’

‘What did you do in Kenya?’

‘Our father had a haulage business with a dozen trucks, up and down the east coast, as far as Mozambique in the south and Ethiopia in the north. Now he is a common driver in Portsmouth.’

‘And you lost it all.’

‘We lost the right to work and that was as good as saying: “Goodbye, you are not wanted.” In England, because we were first, or almost first, we benefitted from assistance and kindness. Later on, people we know who followed us found it much harder. Patience and charity are things that can be exhausted. There are limits, though all are deserving.’

Maisie said she believed that was true and asked: ‘Did you have links to this area?’

‘Our father worked sometimes for the Royal Navy, provisioning ships, so he thought of Portsmouth.’

‘Do you think the British government should have done more?’

Sara shook her head. ‘There is no “should”. It is kind to do anything.’

‘But there was a responsibility from the colonial tie,’ said Maisie.

‘Kenya has independence,’ said Sara. ‘It can’t be both. A country can’t be both an adult and a child.’

‘This isn’t important,’ said Zoe in a disgruntled tone. ‘Sara, tell Maisie about now.’

‘This one,’ said Sara, indulgently, ‘is always in a hurry to do the next thing, to live her life.’

‘I’ve been a prisoner since the day I was born,’ said Zoe as if it was the most normal thing in the world. ‘When you grow up in care, on sufferance, you understand that. Actually, that’s why we’re friends,’ she told Sara. ‘Because we’ve both had everything taken away.’

Again, Zoe spoke with such simplicity and candour that both Maisie and Sara laughed.

‘You are very special, Zoe,’ said Sara.

‘I agree,’ said Maisie. ‘But the time is moving on. What is this “trouble” you were going to tell me about?’

‘She wants to take back this land, this parade of shops,’ said Sara, quietly, then added in a louder, incredulous tone that made the mother of the under-fives glance over: ‘Three little shops making a life for three little families – I count Arthur as a little family all on his own – and she wants it taken away.’

‘You’re talking about Lady Catherine?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Do you know how or why?’

‘There is something in the covenant or the lease that she allowed and now regrets. This is her land, where all these houses were built. But she doesn’t want the shops.’

‘That seems odd,’ said Maisie.

‘I told Sara that you would ask her, Maisie,’ said Zoe. ‘No one frightens you. You could just say to her: “Why do you want to ruin all those lives?” See what she says.’

Maisie looked from one to the other. Zoe clearly thought this was a wonderful idea. Sara seemed more dubious.

‘Do you have no inkling why she’s taking this action? I assume you and your brother have had a “notice to quit” or something of the sort?’

Maisie was on the point of explaining the meaning of ‘notice to quit’ when Sara replied: ‘I will file papers in the county court to delay the process if I can. In Nairobi, when things began to become hard for our family, my father allowed me to begin studying for the law, seeing it would not be enough for me to remain at home. The Kenyan system is based upon the English. I have no problem with the technical language, no difficulty in understanding. It is her absolute right, enshrined in historical documents some of which go back to the twelfth century, for Lady Peahorn to do as she wishes with what is hers.’

In her head, Maisie made the mental correction: Lady Catherine not Lady Peahorn.

‘Have you spoken to Mrs Pascal about this?’

‘It isn’t anything to do with Phyl,’ said Zoe. ‘She doesn’t have any power.’

‘But she set up Mr Tate in the sweet shop?’

‘She paid and took on the lease, that’s all. If the parade is shut down because of the old covenant or whatever it is, he’ll be out and, I suppose, Phyl will get some kind of compensation or won’t have to pay any more rent or whatever, but that’s it.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Maisie, ‘Lady Catherine doesn’t want the competition for the businesses in Bitling proper.’

Sara nodded. ‘That is possible. It is not a good idea to have two butchers, for example. Poor Bill.’

‘You know Bill Dodd?’

‘Of course.’

‘Sara’s going to marry his brother, Micah,’ said Zoe. ‘Oh, sorry. That’s a secret until Micah gets his father’s blessing.’

‘Zoe, I should never have told you,’ said Sara with a frown. ‘In all the trouble of the eviction, this is the only ray of hope. But, if Micah loses his shop, how will he pay his debts for setting up in business and then how can we ever be married?’

Sara, composed as she was, seemed on the brink of tears.

‘I will ask Phyl for advice,’ said Maisie, ‘but not necessarily today. She has a bad go of bronchitis and might not be in a state to . . .’ She frowned and pursed her lips. ‘Anyway, I will ask her when I can and I will try and find out exactly what’s happening from other people I know. Charity might have seen court papers because Maurice Ryan, her husband, represents Lady Catherine.’

‘They are your friends?’

‘Yes.’

‘But they will not disclose anything confidential,’ said Sara, touching a handkerchief to her eye.

‘No, but one or the other might be able to give me a pointer. And I will try and find out, perhaps from Lady Catherine herself, the reasoning behind her action. But I can’t promise anything.’

Sara didn’t look like any of what Maisie had said was cause for optimism. Maisie supposed the threat of losing everything – both the fragile material success she and her brother had achieved in the four years since they arrived, but also her married life with Micah – was far too great to be assuaged or mollified by mere words. But Sara quietly replied: ‘Thank you.’

They walked back to the little parade of shops and Maisie was briefly introduced to Rayan who was already busy behind the counter. He was a man of similar age to Sara with the same strong features and dark eyes, serving a little queue of four people, two of whom Maisie knew from Framlington. She exchanged hellos and a few bits and pieces of inconsequential small talk, then paid and left, Rayan having put their order aside to be first.

Back outside, Maisie was introduced to Micah who had come to the door of his butcher’s shop, confirming that he was, in personality, the opposite of his brother, despite the close physical resemblance – warm and friendly, interested in who she was and, above all, the fact that, like himself, she was ‘born and bred in the villages’. He wanted to know what she thought of the various woods and walks and if she knew the back way from Bunting to Bitling.

He was impressed when she told him that she did: ‘From working as a pheasant beater when I was a teenager.’

‘But you must get on with your lunch,’ he told them. ‘Here am I making it go cold.’

‘Just before I go, can you tell me where you got your beautiful sign?’

‘She’s very fine, isn’t she,’ said Micah with evident pride.
‘I got her from Meek’s Auction Rooms.’

‘Did you? That’s a coincidence. Did you know he died?’

‘I did. Everyone reads the obituaries first in the paper, don’t they?’ he asked with a frank and hearty laugh.

Maisie and Zoe bid their goodbyes and got back in the Land Rover. As she pulled away, Maisie said: ‘We’ll light the stove and give the food another a good five minutes so it isn’t lukewarm.’

‘Did you notice?’ asked Zoe.

‘Notice what?’

‘Micah.’

‘What about him?’

‘The thing he didn’t say.’

‘You’re being very gnomic. What was it that he didn’t say?’

‘That beautiful ceramic sign used to be above Bill’s window. Apparently, they came to blows over it.’

‘How come Micah got it from Montague Meek?’ asked Maisie, baffled.

‘I have no idea.’

Back at Bunting Manor, Maisie dealt with the rapidly cooling meal, finding it disappointingly soggy in its newspaper wrappings. She laid the three pieces of cod on the grill tray so that they would crisp up in the oven, with the chips in a Pyrex dish on the shelf beneath. She put away the bits and pieces of shopping from Zoe’s carrier bag, then Zoe came downstairs with Phyl on her arm, looking thin and washed out.

‘Not better, not worse,’ she said, but Maisie thought she might just be beginning to turn a corner.

Phyl asked Zoe to fetch a bottle of red wine from the damp and spidery cellar, confirming Maisie’s idea that things were looking up. Apparently, Phyl was at the midpoint between glugs of her antibiotic linctus so Maisie hoped the alcohol wouldn’t undermine the efficacy of the drug regimen and accepted a glass herself. Zoe asked if she might, also, and Maisie could think of no reason why not.

‘Alcohol shouldn’t become a habit, though, you know? French children are used to there always being wine at the table so they don’t go suddenly overboard when they get access to it.’

‘I know. You’ve told me that before,’ said Zoe.

Because Phyl seemed a little better, Maisie asked if she knew about how the beautiful butcher’s shop sign had migrated from Bitling to West Bitling.

Her answer was the same as Zoe’s. ‘I have no idea.’

‘You must, though, be aware about Lady Catherine’s plan to take back the parade of shops and evict them all.’

Phyl nodded, then winced: ‘Ow, my head.’ She took a deep breath, then told them, hoarsely: ‘As concisely as I can, as far as I understand it, Catherine wants the businesses on her side of the road, in Bitling proper, because of the income that brings in to her estate, and because she sees “her” bit as the real village. The development is a necessary evil.’

‘But she must have sold the land to the council? It is a council estate, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but there was the threat of compulsory purchase as well. I imagine she gouged them for a fortune.’

‘Space for fifty-odd houses,’ mused Maisie.

‘People need places to live,’ said Phyl. ‘It’s all very well for those of us who’ve never had to wonder how we’ll make ends meet or what to do when the kids grow out of their one decent pair of shoes . . .’ She sighed. ‘You know what I mean. Is that fish ready? I think I could actually eat it.’

Zoe served very skilfully, replacing the contents of the oven with plates to warm, then dividing the three pieces of fish onto them, leaving the chips in the middle of the table in the warm Pyrex dish. Phyl didn’t take any chips but Maisie was pleased to see her eat three-quarters of her cod with lots of salt and vinegar. She drained her tumbler of red wine and Zoe helped her back upstairs with a large glass of orange juice.

‘Because I’ll be thirsty from the salt in a minute,’ Phyl said.

Maisie tidied up, enjoying the fact that it returned the kitchen to the pristine state in which she had left it the other morning, when the doctor came. Doing so, she realised that she had no more responsibilities that day, no appointments, no social engagements. It was another lovely afternoon. She wondered what Zoe might have planned.

Just then, the young woman was back in the kitchen with a determined look in her eye. ‘I want you to teach me French. I did some at school and the teacher said I had a good ear. You told me yourself that musical people are often better at foreign languages.’

‘I did. That’s true, but not always. What brought this on?’

‘I don’t want to look like an idiot when you take me to Paris. You are still going to do that, aren’t you?’

‘Of course. I promised, didn’t I? What’s that you’ve got there?’

‘It’s my old school textbook. Is it any use? It has a dictionary in the back?’

‘How about we go for a lovely walk in the sunshine and I’ll teach you some things on the way.’

‘People learn better by sitting down with a pen in their hand, don’t they?’

Maisie laughed. ‘All right, we’ll do an hour, but then you have to come for a walk. It’s summer. You ought to be out in the fresh air or Lady Catherine would say it’s my fault when you get rickets.’

‘Deal.’ Zoe sat down and opened the book at the first chapter about asking for directions. ‘Is this textbook any good?’

‘Let’s see,’ said Maisie, pulling a chair close to her.

*

The hour spent with Zoe’s old school textbook passed quickly and encouragingly. Maisie discovered that Zoe’s lively mind and good memory had already amassed a good stock of vocabulary. Even though schoolteachers always seemed determined to focus on arcane details of grammar, being able to name things was the soundest basis for effective communication.

The lesson went so well that, afterwards, as they walked for twenty minutes through Phyl’s woods, they continued and Zoe was soon able to maintain a simple conversation about who she was, where she lived, what job she did, what she wanted to do in the holidays.

‘Aller en France,’ she said, with determination. ‘Aller à Paris.’

‘You do have a very good ear,’ Maisie told her when they got back. ‘Tu peux faire du thé?’

After a moment’s hesitation, Zoe nodded and put the kettle on for tea. Maisie went upstairs to check on Phyl who was sleeping soundly. Maisie washed her hands in the first-floor bathroom and, when she got back downstairs, found Zoe writing out the phrases they had used on some of Phyl’s best writing paper with the Bunting Manor address embossed at the top. Maisie made a mental note to buy Zoe a hardback notebook to continue her studies.

Seeing Zoe hard at work with pen and paper made Maisie want to do something similar herself. She had a number of questions she wanted to find answers to and quite a long list of promises that she had inherited or been asked to take on. She couldn’t sit at the kitchen table, though, because she didn’t want Zoe to see what she was doing.

‘I’m going to write Jack a letter upstairs in my room and tell him about how clever you are. All right?’

Engrossed in what she was doing, Zoe made a noise of approval but did not look up. Once at her desk in the window, out of direct sunshine because it was past midday, Maisie took out the text of the blessing she would have to speak aloud after the al fresco dinner on the green. As William had promised, it wasn’t difficult and had no religious element. Then Maisie looked at her crumpled list of character studies – the one she had discarded then rescued from the grate – wondering if she might be able to relate any of her ideas to the death of Montague Meek.

William Dodd, unhappy but hiding it out of habit

Edith Dodd – salt of the earth; let me in on why William is so very devoted to Jack (objector); worried for her husband?

Harold Farr – another beneficiary of Phyl’s generosity like me (!), working alongside a younger man (Adam something) who snapped at him

Vaughan Quinn – a nice man, reminds me of Jack

Ada Strickland – extraordinary coincidence; village life, though, maybe I should have expected it . . .

Bill Dodd – very down in the mouth and not at all friendly

Micah Dodd – looks the spit of unhappy Bill; something going on there?

She thought she knew why William was unhappy. It was because of the bad blood between his two sons, enough to upset any parent. And then she remembered what Sara had said about Zoe not telling anyone about her engagement to Micah until he had obtained his father’s blessing.

Maisie wondered if William’s approval would be forthcoming. Wouldn’t there be a problem with the father being so firmly ‘chapel’ and Sara, as was evident from her long dress and potted biography, Muslim?

Living in Paris, Maisie knew quite a few people of Islamic faith who had to navigate the collision of cultures on a daily basis. And, of course, she was close to Mohammed As-Sabah, Stephen’s good friend from his army days. She wondered if she might be of some use as a kind of mediator for William.
She had grown to like the sentimental old sergeant very much.

Concerning Edith, she thought she had nothing to add. Her initial impression had been correct. Next on her list was Harold Farr who she now knew worked for Lady Catherine, doing a very good job with the herb garden and the lawn at Baffins. Despite those labours, she had evicted him and his odd nephew, Adam, leaving Phyl to pick up the pieces by providing a frail caravan for them to sleep in.

Maisie made a dubious face as she read what she had written about Vaughan Quinn. The vet no longer reminded her of Jack. Despite his repeated apologies and his kindness to Old Mr Littlegreen, she no longer felt warm towards him. In fact, she wondered if she might soon discover something to discredit him.

How would I do that?’

The line about Ada Strickland made her think about how, in the villages of south-west Sussex, everyone had a connection to everyone else – more than one connection, in fact. It was disconcerting, though, that Ada was so closely linked – though without any responsibility – to Stephen’s murder at Church Lodge.

Moving on to ‘the Dodd boys’, as she thought of them, even though they were forty if they were a day, she had learned a lot but wanted to know much more. She didn’t think there was anything to be gained by talking to Bill. He, she thought, would clam up, unless she found a very good reason for him to trust her. Micah was a much more likely candidate, open and friendly, but it would look odd if she went back to West Bitling without any real pretext. She had made that mistake in previous investigations, arriving on a witness’s doorstep without any real reason and finding her actions rebuked by, well, by Jack.

At the foot of her list, she added a few more lines, making her focus the characters’ potential reasons for resenting Lady Catherine, amending Micah’s entry with additional information.

Micah Dodd – looks the spit of unhappy Bill; something going on there? (threat to shop and, therefore, livelihood AND marriage)

Arthur Tate (ditto; ex-offender – connection to Baffins?)

Rayan and Sara Ramsi (ditto) plus Sara and Micah’s marriage

‘Old Mr’ Littlegreen (rent, again, but is there an extra connection, there?); his daughters Linda and Muriel?

Dilys Prime (mercilessly browbeaten)

Having done this – but feeling she had missed someone important off the list – she took a new sheet of paper and wrote her fiancé a brief note, telling him that she loved him, that she was delighted that Fred Nairn would be their best man, and hoping that he was ‘top of the class’. She addressed and sealed the envelope, applying a stamp from her handbag, then went to check on Phyl once more. She was awake, sitting up in bed, reading the Guinness Book of Records 1971.

‘Thank you for this.’

‘Have you taken your medicine?’

‘Yes, Mum,’ said Phyl, sarcastically, her voice still scratchy and thin.

‘Anything else required?’

‘A biscuit and tea to dip. I’ll just go to the bathroom.’

‘I’ll wait in case you’re dizzy.’

Phyl was a little unsteady and, when Maisie touched a hand to her brow, clearly still running a fever.

‘I know,’ said Phyl hoarsely, once she was back in bed. ‘But I am a little better. Pass me two aspirin. We’ll need some more tomorrow.’

Maisie did so, then went to fetch the tea and biscuits. Zoe was still at the kitchen table, working hard.

‘Look,’ said the young woman. ‘I wrote a story about what we did today in the past tense. Is it any good?’

While the kettle was boiling, Maisie read it through, impressed with the fact that it said clearly what they had done – swimming, meeting Charity, driving, going to the shops, eating fish for lunch and so on – despite the grammatical errors.

‘How did you do this?’ Maisie asked.

‘I looked for sentences in the textbook and swapped out the words I didn’t want for those I did from the dictionary at the back.’ Zoe frowned. ‘But it’s not a dictionary, is it. It’s just a glossary of words that happen to be in this book, not like a proper one.’

Maisie added ‘French-English dictionary’ to ‘aspirin’ and ‘notebook’ on her mental shopping list and said: ‘I’m impressed with your hard work. You remind me of myself.’

‘Do I?’ asked Zoe, delighted.

‘Yes, I was a boring swot, too,’ said Maisie with a laugh. ‘More interested in schoolwork than friends and having fun.’

‘Then how did Jack notice you?’

‘I often ask myself that,’ said Maisie.

She took the tea and biscuits up and tried to amuse Phyl with tales of what she and Zoe had been doing, but Phyl was tired again and wanted to sleep.

‘Draw the curtains, please.’

Maisie did so, leaving the room in relative darkness, albeit with the afternoon sun on the fabric. Downstairs, Zoe had finally put aside her studies and was leaning back in her kitchen chair, looking like she was at a loose end.

‘Perhaps we should tidy your room together. I did promise I would help.’

‘No, I’ll do it,’ said Zoe, jumping up. ‘I want to listen to music and you won’t like what I like.’

‘Okay,’ said Maisie, drily. ‘If you say so. I’m going to walk over the Downs to Bitling for the planning meeting in the chapel. Then, perhaps, I’ll have a drink and maybe something to eat in the Silver Garter. Would you like to come?’

‘Another walk?’ replied Zoe, pulling a face. ‘No chance. Bye-ee.’

Zoe skipped away and Maisie felt a sense of pride at the contribution she had made to helping the teenager get over the deep trauma of the murder at Bunting Manor and all of its surprising and unhappy repercussions. She tidied Zoe’s papers and books, setting them straight at right angles to the grain of the wood of the large kitchen table. Then she paused.

Is this a good idea to be walking through the woods? I’ll be coming back late, after dark. I could drive, after all?

She remembered what Phyl had said about how there was no need to lock up Bunting Manor, even when everyone was out, because she, Maisie, had ‘fixed everything with your brilliant sleuthing’.

I might need a cardigan, though. It could be chilly once the sun goes down.

Seventeen

Maisie knew the path across the Downs and through the woods from Bunting to Bitling. She had told Micah the truth. But there was a difference between knowing a path by using it every week, say, and knowing it because you had walked it a couple of times, years before, when you were just sixteen.

She put her letter in the post box by Bunting green, then set off. The first two thirds of the path were part of what local historians called ‘the pilgrim trail’. If she carried on that way, she would end up in West Dean near the halfway house that had played such an important role in the murder at Bunting Manor. She didn’t want to do that, to overshoot and then have to retrace her steps – or, worse, come back via the main road. She hoped there would be signs that told her more than just ‘bridleway’ or ‘public right of way’.

The early evening was warm and bright. She set off with her cardigan tied round her waist, up the lane beside the house, past the clearing where Phyl’s homeless ‘lodger’ had built her sordid encampment. There was no trace left of it now. Archie must have dealt with the mess: the bits of old tent; the forklift truck pallets; the hand-dug ditch that served as her latrine; the ring of stones where she had cooked. Maisie wondered if Archie had given back the tarpaulin stolen from a local farmer that had formed part of the shelter – and a vital clue.

She walked on, heading east, under the trees, enjoying the birdsong and the occasional rustles of small mammals in the bracken and leaf litter. Then she entered an area planted with conifers whose acidic needles suppressed the undergrowth and she saw, to her delight, a family of deer, easily visible through the tree trunks, grazing on self-sewn saplings. She stood stock-still for perhaps half a minute until they caught her scent and moved away, downhill and out of sight.

The path wound on in a rightward curve, leading out from the spruces or larches or whatever they were into arable fields that allowed her a view down towards the coastal plain and the sea, through occasional gaps in the hedges. This was comforting because she was able to confirm her location from fixed points in the landscape, including the tower of the church at Framlington.

She reached the junction of footpaths she was looking for and a fingerpost that gave her the direction into Bunting, coming round the north side of Baffins Hill. The woods closed in, deciduous trees in full leaf, beech, oak, ash and yew, plus numerous silver birches that she knew to be ‘incomers’, non-native species that some people wanted to grub up and remove. The idea reminded her of her conversations with Zoe and Sara about the Indian population being driven out of Kenya. That set her wondering about how long a family would have to be established somewhere for its members to be considered ‘native’.

Two generations? Five generations? Never?

The path continued gently downhill and she thought she must soon arrive as she entered a new section comprised entirely of horse chestnut trees, possibly her favourite with their tall, thick trunks, their sticky buds in winter that opened out into huge leaves like big green hands, spreading their fingers. Because it was June, most of the ‘candles’ of blossom had browned and dropped, but a few remained in darker corners, the winter having been cold and damp and prolonged, delaying the formation of the hard husks of autumn’s conkers.

The land levelled out and she found herself on a flat path under a very complete canopy, blocking out most of the light. Of course, the sun had gone further down but dusk was still a couple of hours away. It was still remarkably gloomy, though. The track was deep in last year’s leaves, too, and those of the preceding seasons. Everything smelt clean and wholesome and Maisie allowed her pace to drop, removing her cardigan from her waist and holding it in her hand because the humidity under the trees was making her too warm.

Her sense of direction told her that the village of Bitling was close at hand, but she began to fear she was going round in a circle in the chestnut wood. It seemed to have multiple gloomy loops walked by humans or animals since time immemorial. Then she saw open country through the trunks of the mature trees and emerged, going carefully so as not to snag her dress on the spines of the blackthorns, into a pleasant warm evening, feeling relief from the oppressive weight of the damp in the air, sucked up out of the soil and breathed out by the green chestnut leaves.

Despite the lowish sun making her screw up her eyes, she enjoyed the deep lane between hazel hedges, festooned with bramble and bindweed. She followed it to the entrance to the turkey yard, then took the bridleway across the field towards the village proper, homing in on the upturned V of the chapel roof. Negotiating the kissing gate, she felt a sense of pride that she hadn’t got lost. Then, for no reason that she could see, she felt an ache from missing Jack.

She stood still, with her hand on the cold swinging frame of the gate, thinking about the weeks and months that had passed since that first glimpse of him in the graveyard at Framlington, standing beneath the yew tree. From February to June, their renascent relationship had had to take second place to the murder investigations, so she had been reasonably comfortable with his absences. Now they were committed to one another, she didn’t want ever to be apart.

Maisie came out alongside the pub, the Silver Garter, with its peeling sign depicting a cornucopia of little green peas. The image made her briefly laugh, then she stopped, thinking about the cruelty of the owner, her autocratic authority, reinforced by the oppressive message painted over the door: The Silver Garter – Property of the Peahorn Estate.

If there is to be a murder, Lady Catherine is the obvious victim.

She frowned, standing stock-still in the quiet street, trying to tell herself that there was no reason to fear anything of the kind.

But there has perhaps already been a murder: Montague Meek.

Her eyes dropped, unseeing, to the poorly maintained tarmac of the road, wondering why it was that she felt so certain that the auctioneer’s death was a crime, unable to find an answer. Then she saw Ada Strickland tottering past with her little tabby cat on a string so it couldn’t slip away and she felt foolish, loitering for no reason.

Maisie knew the planning meeting for Bitling Fair was to take place in the chapel so she made her way there, discovering the Morris ‘side’ – meaning a team of gentlemen dancers – practising their robust choreography between the tottering gravestones, alongside the house of worship. William Dodd led the rehearsal, standing on an ancient tomb, mimicking their rhythmic stepping but without the bell pads that the others wore on their shins. As they stomped and turned and hopped, they clashed their wooden sticks together – each one had a white handkerchief pushed through a hole in the end – in a stylised imitation of sword-fighting, the hankies whipping back and forth above their heads. During a pause, William reintroduced Maisie as ‘our special guest’ to Bill and Micah Dodd, Adam Farr, Rayan Ramsi from the chippy in West Bitling, plus Vaughan Quinn, the vet, and Zachary Sawbridge, a bachelor farmer, and two other agricultural tenants.

Maisie found a tombstone to perch on. After twenty minutes, William pronounced himself satisfied and told his six Morris men: ‘There’s lemonade being served by Mrs Dodd inside the chapel and biscuits baked by her own fair hand.’ They all trooped in, except his younger son Micah who stayed behind to help him down off his tomb.

‘I need a word, Dad.’

‘Here?’

‘No, best go indoors.’

Maisie could see Micah didn’t mean inside the chapel. William led him the short distance home to sit in the kitchen. William insisted Maisie come with them but, seeing that Micah’s conversation might be private, she went out to sit in their little garden, but could still hear their strong masculine voices. Because of her chat with Sara, the topic wasn’t a surprise.

‘What is it then?’ asked William.

‘I’m wanting your permission to wed,’ said Micah. ‘And you’ll maybe not like it.’

‘Why won’t I like it?’

‘Because she’s not chapel.’

‘What is she then, cathedral?’

‘No, not that.’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve found a Roman?’ said William, laughing. ‘You must’ve searched high and low to find one of those in the villages.’

‘No, not a Catholic, either,’ said Micah. ‘She’s Rayan’s sister.’

‘He’s got a sister?’

‘Dad, if you ever asked him anything personal or talked to him about anything other than the Morris steps, you’d know,’ said Micah, exasperated. ‘If you came to the Silver Garter after rehearsals—’

‘You know I’m temperance,’ said William.

‘So’s he. But would it hurt to sit with us over a lemonade? Do you even know where he’s from?’

‘From down-along in West Bitling.’

‘No, before coming to Sussex. How do you think he spells his name?’

‘R-Y-A-N, like the solicitor?’

‘No, it’s R-A-Y-A-N and his second name is R-A-M-S-I not R-A-M-S-E-Y. He came over from Kenya when all the Indians were thrown out.’

‘What’s he doing in Sussex?’

‘Opening a chippy.’

‘Why here, though?’

‘I don’t know. What difference does it make? And soon he’ll think you’ve got something against him. Why haven’t you ever been to his shop? You used to love a fish supper.’

‘Your mum won’t let me,’ was the abrupt answer.

There was a pause and Maisie thought, perhaps, Micah was sympathising with his overweight dad. He asked: ‘Not ever? Not once in a blue moon?’

‘Not here, not there, not ever, not anywhere. It’ll be runner beans and bread and butter for tea tonight, with a ration on the butter.’

‘You have put weight on, Dad. If you weren’t retiring, you’d need a new uniform before you burst out of your silver buttons,’ said Micah.

‘I know.’ There was a pause, then Maisie heard William ask carefully: ‘So, they’re Hindu or Muslim?’

‘Muslim.’

‘Not chapel at all,’ mused William, slowly. ‘Far from it. Should I have known about this?’

‘About what?’

‘About you courting? You’ve told me before when someone’s caught your eye.’

‘This is different.’

‘Different how? Because it’s more serious?’

‘Happen it is.’

Maisie heard Edith Dodd came bustling in from outdoors, asking: ‘Why’s Miss Cooper on her own in the garden? Come in, dear.’

Maisie went inside, feeling sheepish for eavesdropping. Edith was carrying a tray with two empty blue-and-white jugs from which all the home-made lemonade had been drunk and a large dinner plate on which only a few crumbs remained of the home-made biscuits.

‘I was quite happy outside—’ Maisie began.

‘Yes, but her ladyship will be coming down,’ Edith chivvied, then stopped, catching a hint of the odd atmosphere. ‘Now, what have you been saying to one another? It isn’t more upset, is it?’

‘It’s nothing, Mum. Everything’s fine,’ said Micah, leaving the house without another word.

William watched him go, then stood up, leaning on the edge of the table.

‘Do I have to tell you again that you’re putting on weight?’ said Edith. ‘You need to get more exercise.’

‘Yes,’ he said, distractedly. ‘I know.’

‘Too much kneeling in prayer and not enough healthy activity,’ said Edith. ‘Why don’t you dance the Morris? That’ll get your blood pumping.’

‘My knees,’ he told her, almost as if to himself.

Edith pursed her lips, picked up a tea towel and flicked it at him: ‘Go on with you. But I’ll want to know what you and Micah were saying to one another when you get back. I’m going to pick some runner beans for our tea. You and Miss Cooper will be wanted, soon.’

‘Yes, dear.’

William kissed his wife’s cheek then Maisie followed him out into the lane. The sun was still high enough to dazzle them, shining down between the roof of the vet’s and the steep upturned V of the chapel roof.

‘We’ve a few minutes yet,’ said Maisie.

‘Edith’s right. Her ladyship is on her way down.’

Maisie followed his gaze. The ancient, open-topped Morris Minor was trundling down the slope from Baffins, moving left and right, perhaps to avoid the worst potholes in the chalk lane.

‘She’s what we call in the force an erratic driver. If re-examined, I doubt she’d pass the vision test. I’m blessed with fair sight. Do you see there?’

Again, Maisie followed his glance, this time to the dedication stone above the chapel door.

A place of Christian worship to be frequented and enjoyed by a congregation of Protestant Dissenters – 1805

‘You’ve worshipped all your life in this building?’ she asked, sensitive to his unhappy mood.

‘I was born in 1907, so I was old enough to understand the carnage of World War One, then of an age to be conscripted and to object in World War Two. Throughout, faith has been my steadfast protection, my oaken staff.’ He slapped a meaty palm to his forehead. ‘Oh, I am an old fool. I never asked Micah anything about the woman he wants to marry, not what she’s like, not how they met.’

‘I suppose it was quite sudden and your mind was on other things?’ Maisie offered, sympathetically.

‘I’ve betrayed his trust when he came to me for my blessing.’ William shook his head. ‘But can I give it? If he goes ahead, what happens to Micah’s faith? And he’s no longer got his brother’s strength to rely on either.’

Maisie was prevented from replying as a crocodile of neighbours came filing up the road from more distant houses and from the development, headed by three or four ladies William said were leading lights in the Women’s Institute. As they passed by, Maisie heard them discussing the criteria for judging the pies and jams and cakes. Behind them came two schoolteachers. William told her that each was responsible for a class of mixed ages, because there weren’t enough children to have a whole classroom for every year group.

‘Jill Finch takes the four- and five-year-olds and pretty with it, surely a more suitable bride for Micah?’

‘But he’s made a different choice.’

‘I know.’ He sighed. ‘With Jill is Fiona Grieve, the older one, who looks after the six- and seven-year-olds. She’s married to a woodsman with the Forestry Commission.’

Fiona gave William a wave and called out: ‘Will you win Best Duck this year, Mr William? Have you been practising?’

‘Just now and then,’ he replied, mournfully. Then he seemed to tell himself to buck up. ‘I’ll do my best, though.’

‘I’m entering,’ said Fiona, making a little bow as she passed by. ‘Maybe a lady will scoop the prize to make a change.’

Behind the schoolteachers came ten or twelve further residents of West Bitling, including Arthur Tate. Maisie asked William if he knew anything about the confectioner.

‘It’s public knowledge that he has a criminal record,’ said William, quietly. ‘He’s fallen on his feet, though, released from prison with a benefactor to set him up with the sweet shop in the hope he’ll escape his pattern of recidivism. But he’s fifty-three. It makes me think of old dogs and new tricks. In my opinion, he neither has the application nor the acumen. Anyway, shall we?’

As the villagers all climbed the steps and filed into the chapel, Maisie followed William to stand by the left-hand rose planter. Lady Catherine arrived moments later, bringing the open-topped Morris Minor to an abrupt and dangerous halt with a little skid on the gravelly tarmac. She dragged an aviator’s leather flight cap from her head, releasing her extraordinary bird’s nest of grey hair, and opened the door with a thump into the low wall at the foot of the steps.

Maisie thought the impact had probably made a new dent to go along with a dozen others in the chrome detailing and the cream bodywork.

But she’s rich enough on other people’s labour that she doesn’t have to worry about things like that, thought Maisie, rebelliously. It’s all right for some, I suppose.

Eighteen

Maisie didn’t want to just stand there next to William, her hand on the big rose planter, as if paying homage to the autocratic landowner of Bitling Village, but she thought it would be rude to slip away without a word.

‘Come round, Prime,’ Lady Catherine shouted.

The dowdy companion got out on the passenger side and came bustling round, twittering to her mistress: ‘Yes, Lady Catherine. Here I am.’

‘Good evening, your ladyship,’ William said. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Help me? You’re almost as old as I am, Dodd.’

‘Perhaps so, ma’am,’ said William, though Maisie knew that wasn’t true. He proffered his arm. ‘It would be an honour.’

‘All right. If you insist.’ She gave her companion a peremptory dismissal: ‘Prime, you can sit in the car. I won’t need you.’

‘But I would very much like to hear all that is planned,’ said Dilys, wistfully. ‘Might I come in?’

‘All right. Bring my gaberdine from the back seat.’

‘I don’t see it, my lady.’

‘Then grovel, Prime. It may have gone down on the floor.’

While Dilys collected these items and Lady Catherine and William ponderously advanced, Maisie said hello. Halfway up the path, Lady Catherine directed them both to look up the hill towards Baffins and told them a confused story about how ‘Dilys Prime took it upon herself to disfigure my rowan’.

‘Oh, dear,’ William murmured, neutrally, when she had finished.

‘I merely thought,’ bleated the companion, ‘that the blossoms would look well in the hall?’

‘They would look well anywhere, but appear to most advantage on the tree,’ snapped Lady Catherine. ‘Where they belong. That rowan tree has lived alongside me all my life. It was planted for my birth, as I believe I have told you, more than once, to conjure protection for my house and my person.’

‘Yes, yes, you have.’

‘Would you, then, creep up on me in the dank dawn and cut bits off me?’

‘I really don’t think that’s the same thing—’

‘It isn’t the same but, to me, it feels so. There is no one left from those days. That tree – that noble and solitary rowan – means more to me than any of my friends or acquaintances, most of whom are dead, in any case, and far more than any one of my dependent inhabitants in Bitling village.’

‘East Bitling surely?’ suggested Dilys, pedantically, patting her grey bun in a gesture of self-protection.

‘Bitling village, Prime,’ insisted Lady Catherine. ‘There was a Bitling before there was a West Bitling. Just because that monstrous development of crescents and cul-de-sacs, constructed in cheap red brick, has usurped the name does not mean that my Bitling must be re-baptised.’

‘It’s a lovely view – quite the picture,’ said William, emolliently.

Maisie added: ‘The house and the rowan tree make a lovely composition with the warm slant light from the west.’

‘Resembles a painting by Caspar David Friedrich,’ said Lady Catherine.

‘It does,’ confirmed Maisie.

‘Do you know who I mean, Dodd?’

‘No, your ladyship,’ said William.

‘I have one in my room,’ said Lady Catherine. ‘But don’t tell.’

Good heavens, thought Maisie.

‘No, your ladyship,’ repeated William, obediently.

Just then, a latecomer slipped past them. It was Sara, very slim and elegant in her long, pale-blue dress down to the ground. Maisie wondered if William had made the connection with Micah.

‘Shall we?’ said Lady Catherine.

‘Of course,’ William replied.

With exemplary patience, William escorted the owner of Bitling village up the aisle to sit in the front row where a pew was set aside for her. Maisie supposed it was kept empty even when she was not in attendance. Maisie found a seat near the front so she could turn and see the congregation’s faces. Once Lady Catherine was settled – her companion having made a cushion of her gaberdine – William gingerly climbed up into the pulpit and began.

‘Thank you, all, for coming. Bitling Fair this year is going to be the biggest and best ever, I think we’re all sure of that?’ He left a pause for nods and smiles and murmurs of approval. ‘First of all, a reminder of the dates. Midsummer is the twenty-first, of course, John the Baptist, and we would have liked to make that our day, but it falls midweek, so, we’ve shunted it along to the weekend, Saturday and Sunday.’

He glanced down at Lady Catherine who gave him an almost imperceptible nod.

‘Good. Anyway, I’ve checked with Adam Farr who’s as good as an almanac because of his stargazing and there’s no difference in the timing of sunrise and sunset between the twenty-
first and the twenty-third – a minute at most. But, I think we need to set off a mite earlier than usual for Beating the Bounds,’ he told everyone. ‘It used to take no more than twenty minutes, even for the littl’uns, but we’ve all agreed to run round West Bitling for the first time this year as well. We need it darkish so the candles in jam jars look something. There will be the acorns and the withy to put in the ground but we don’t want anyone so awful tired they trip up on a root or something.’

Bill broke in, asking: ‘Why are we changing something that goes all the way back to Anglo-Saxon times?’

‘Because Bitling’s grown, Bill.’

Rayan Ramsi raised a hand. William called on him and he asked: ‘Can you tell us the precise times of sunrise and sunset so I know when to stop serving in the fish-and-chip shop?’

Adam Farr called out: ‘I can.’

William reminded him he needed to ‘address the meeting through the chair’.

Adam apologised: ‘Yes, I remember. Sorry. But I was saying I know it from my Old Moore’s Almanac. Saturday will see sun-up in the east-north-east at a quarter to five in the morning and it won’t go down in the west-north-west until twenty past nine but it’ll be light for half an hour after that and—’

‘So,’ William approved, cutting in, ‘for Beating the Bounds, we should set off at nine-thirty and be back again by ten so that those who want to can go home to bed. And that will leave half an hour until last orders in the Silver Garter for those who, er, well . . .’ Adam had raised his hand and was squirming in his pew in his desire to be called upon. ‘Yes, young man, go ahead.’

‘I was going to say, that means that the day will be more than sixteen hours long and the night less than eight, and the moon will be bright as anything, so long as the sky’s clear, because the full moon is the very next day, so near as makes no difference.’ William tried to retake control, but Adam pressed on. ‘Moonrise at quarter to eight on Saturday. I’m telling you all this because, later, after the sun’s set and the moon’s high, I’ll have a surprise for everyone.’

‘Yes, you did say something about that,’ said William.

‘What kind of surprise?’ asked Bill in an unsympathetic tone.

‘Wait and see,’ Adam told him with a sly smile.

‘All right then,’ said William, dubiously. He looked round the congregation. ‘Where are our excellent lady schoolteachers? Are the children ready with the games?’

Fiona Grieve spoke up from halfway back on the far side of the nave: ‘Everything is prepared. We’ve got Apple Bobbing and Pin the Tail on the Donkey and Blind Man’s Bluff. We’ve decorated the skittles. Tomorrow, I’ll go up to see Jon Wilkes, the blacksmith in Framlington, for half a dozen old horseshoes for the Stick-and-Toss.’

‘Try and make sure they’re thin ones, racehorse shoes. When they’re thick like for carthorses, the kids can barely lift them.’

‘I will. He knows. And the older children have made Splat the Rat.’ Several people laughed and William invited Fiona to explain. ‘It’s a bit of old drainpipe fixed to a board. Someone drops a rat down it and—’

Jill Finch chipped in: ‘They’re not real rats, obviously. We made them out of old scraps of material stuffed with newspaper. The children enjoyed that.’

‘Someone drops a rat,’ repeated Fiona, ‘down the pipe and someone else with a little cricket bat tries to splat it on the way out.’

‘That sounds very good,’ said William. ‘How much will you charge and will there be prizes?’

There was a brief discussion of what would be appropriate and, in the end, Rayan Ramsi offered a free bag of chips for the five best ‘splatters’.

‘But kids only, mind,’ he said, beaming round at his fellow adults.

Arthur Tate put his hand up and, when called on, offered: ‘I could do some boiled sweets, four ounces of gobstoppers, for example.’

‘Thank you, Arthur. We might need that elsewhere,’ said William, gravely, then led the conversation on to How Many Sweets in the Jar.

‘That, then,’ called out Arthur. ‘I’ll donate that prize.’

Maisie contemplated his pinched face, his oddly narrow teeth.

‘Splendid,’ William agreed.

The meeting moved on to the Hook-A-Duck. Maisie imagined a small fairground game but soon realised that it was much bigger, using the village pond. Fiona Grieve’s forester husband would provide long flexible hazel branches with which contestants would try to remove the Best Duck from the dew pond.

‘That brings us on to the carving,’ said William with a glance at his notebook. ‘Are we all set for timber from Littlegreen Sawmill?’ A hand went up. ‘Ah, Muriel, is your dad not well?’

Maisie liked the look of Muriel Littlegreen – about fifty-five years old, with a happy round face and curly brown hair just mixing with grey. She stood up in her floral print summer dress and addressed the room, very at ease.

‘Just a summer sniffle.’ Several people agreed there was ‘a lot of it about’. She went on: ‘We’ll set up good and early and bring chisels and rasps and things. We’ll be ready for nine o’clock on Saturday morning. We’ve put aside some nice cedar. It’s soft and carves nicer than white pine – though it’s more expensive and Linda has something to say on that – with a lovely fragrance as you work it.’

‘Good,’ said William. ‘The ducks will all be painted up and dry in time for Beating the Bounds when we’ll put the winner in the pond. Entrance is a pound, proceeds to the Fordwater School.’

‘That’s very generous,’ interrupted Lady Catherine in a critical tone.

‘They’re very needful,’ explained William.

Maisie watched with interest as the woman next to Muriel Littlegreen – Linda, she remembered – stood up. Narrow-
shouldered, she had the same broad features, but more lined and unhappy, from what looked like a habit of pessimism. Linda seemed a little younger and spoke nervously, almost in a gabble.

‘I just want to say it might be the last time Littlegreen Sawmill runs Best Duck or anything else for that matter. As Lady Catherine knows, the new rents that came in last April are too much for the business. It’s not just us struggling to make a living. If you want the village to die, this is how to go about it.’

Linda and Muriel sat down and there was an uncomfortable pause, during which Lady Catherine stood up and turned painfully slowly to look round the nave, struggling to pick out the Littlegreens with her clouded sight. Muriel seemed unmoved by the general awkwardness. Linda almost cowered from the patrician gaze. Lady Catherine sat down again.

‘That’s not really the business of this meeting—’ William began. He was interrupted by a trio of bass voices, all with a similar complaint. One voice carried most strongly. ‘Go ahead, then. The meeting calls on Zachary Sawbridge.’

Maisie picked out a burly, handsome man, also around fifty, with old-fashioned sideburns.

‘I’m speaking for all three sets of tenant farmers. I’m agreeing with Linda Littlegreen. Our livelihoods, as you all know, depend on things we don’t have control over, like pests and the weather, the sun and rain – and those are often not fully in our favour – but also on the sweat we put into the soil and into the care of our livestock. We understand, better than most, not owning the land, that means we have to share our profits with she that does, meaning her ladyship, but April’s rent rises put us in trouble, no mistake, and I don’t know where we’ll all end up, with fields lying fallow, maybe, and no income for anyone, not even for Baffins.’

The same dumbshow played out, with Lady Catherine painfully dragging her old frame upright, peering round to confront her critic in person. Because he was bigger and closer, she located him more quickly.

‘Perhaps you should come and speak to me in person, Zachary Sawbridge, instead of raising your voice in a public forum.’

‘I didn’t raise my voice, ma’am, except so as to be heard clearly by everyone present.’

‘All right,’ said Lady Catherine. ‘Have it your own way.’

Maisie felt bad for William as he struggled to get the meeting back on track, eventually finding success by inviting the Women’s Institute ladies to describe what they had planned. That led to details of some more entertainments including a Best Dog competition – for which Vaughan Quinn said he would provide Bonios as prizes.

Then Adam Farr had his hand up again. ‘My idea is a kind of treasure hunt, but it has to be at night, in darkness.’

‘Yes, you tipped me the wink about your idea. Why’s it got to be dark, though?’ asked William.

‘That’s my secret,’ said Adam with the same sly look.

William pursed his lips and argued: ‘It’s hard for the meeting to tell you yea or nay, Adam, if you don’t let us in on what you’re planning.’

‘I don’t need no help. I’ll just get on with it.’

‘I’ll give Adam a hand if he needs it,’ said Harold, sitting slumped at his nephew’s side in his crumpled brown suit.

‘Yes, well, all right,’ said William. ‘So, you mean properly dark, after Beating the Bounds?’

‘Maybe after last orders, when everyone’s had a drink?’

‘Happen people will want their beds by then. And there’ll be a prize?’

‘Course there will,’ said Adam, miffed. ‘It’s a treasure hunt, isn’t it? There’s got to be a treasure.’

William glanced once more at his notebook. Maisie thought he looked uneasy about what Adam Farr had planned. He turned the pages, holding the paper at angle to get the fading light from the arched window.

‘That seems to be all,’ he said, ‘unless there’s any other business?’ Maisie heard a few murmurs of thanks. ‘Let me just say, mind, that I’d like to see the chapel this full for worship, not just for civic business, but happen that’s only at Christmas.’ Maisie saw Arthur Tate nodding enthusiastically, then William cleared his throat, shut his eyes, clasped his hands together and raised his voice in blessing: ‘Lord, we pray for grace and peace for one another and for ourselves, for our hopes and dreams, our work, and for the plans we have made together, in the name of our saviour, Jesus Christ, upon whose sacrifice we sinners rely.’

Maisie hadn’t closed her eyes for the prayer so was able to pick out Rayan and Sara Ramsi joining in the ‘amen’.

‘Thank you, everybody,’ William called.

In the crescendo of standing and shuffling as the congregation prepared for departure, Lady Catherine and her companion, Dilys Prime, were allowed to go first, the latter clumsily encumbered with her mistress’s leather flight cap and voluminous gaberdine raincoat. Maisie stayed where she was, watching William consult his notebook once more, as if he was concerned that he had forgotten something of importance.

Soon, the chapel was almost empty, with just Arthur Tate, kneeling in his pew, apparently lost in prayer. William climbed carefully down out of the pulpit, almost slipping on the glassy wooden steps. Arthur’s lips moved, pronouncing his own ‘amen’, then he stood up, his head still bowed.

‘Will you join us on Sunday, Arthur?’ William asked him.

The shopkeeper looked up and met William’s eye, a surprised smile revealing his narrow teeth. ‘I didn’t know I’d be welcome.’

‘God’s house is open to all.’

‘Even to the likes of me?’

William nodded and said: ‘Acknowledge unto the Lord that you are a sinner, as I do, and He will grant you forgiveness in the name of His Son, who died for us all.’

‘What’s that, then? I don’t recognise the text, though I read my Bible every day.’

‘It’s my own,’ said William. ‘I call it my Sinner’s Prayer.’

‘Amen,’ repeated Arthur. ‘Thank you, Sergeant.’

With a nod, he left. The door swung closed behind him with a thump because, of course, Arthur didn’t know its peculiarities.

Maisie approached.

‘Can it be true,’ William was asking himself, aloud, ‘that Arthur Tate didn’t feel he would be greeted with kindness? Has he been too ashamed to attend chapel?’

‘He was here this evening,’ said Maisie, encouragingly.

‘It’s me should feel ashamed,’ said William. ‘Oh well, what’s done is done. At least we’re all set for the fair.’ They went outside, William gently closing the heavy oak door and locking it with the long iron key from his right-hand trouser pocket. ‘I always carry this as a reminder of my responsibility to my diminishing flock.’

Maisie felt very sad for him.

‘You’ve brought everyone together, William. I’m sure the whole village appreciates your hard work and community spirit – and your diplomacy.’ She saw that there were a few people still about, including the Littlegreen sisters, talking outside the pub, the Silver Garter, each holding a half-pint glass of ale. ‘And the fun and games of the fair will bring people together.’

‘Perhaps.’ William crossed the road and Maisie followed. ‘I’m not looking forward to telling Edith what Micah had to say or how I reacted.’ They stopped at the open front door. ‘Will you come in?’

Maisie could smell the wholesome fragrance of the runner beans in butter and salt and pepper that Edith had prepared for supper.

‘No, thank you,’ she told him, using a white lie to excuse herself. She wanted to observe and speak to as many villagers as she could before yomping back home through the woods. ‘I’m expected at the Silver Garter.’

He went indoors with a sad smile, leaving the door open for the fresh air. Maisie saw him sit down to eat and heard Edith – out of sight – ask in a tone of surprise: ‘No Grace, then?’

‘You say it. I’m that tuckered I don’t think I’ve got the strength.’

‘For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.’

‘Amen,’ said William.

Maisie saw his weary hand reach for a slice of bread and butter, then was distracted by raised voices from the Littlegreen sisters outside the pub. She moved away as William began his story, his voice faint on the evening air.

‘So, my dear, here’s how ’tis . . .’

IV – HAZEL

Signifying flexibility, wisdom and inspiration

Nineteen

For a few moments, Maisie hesitated, out of sight of the Dodds, but able to hear the topic of their conversation – Micah’s request for his father’s blessing in marrying Sara Ramsi, and William’s unhappiness about what it might mean and how he hadn’t reacted ‘as a father ought’.

She moved away, out of earshot, crossing the lane to the façade of Bill Dodd’s butcher’s shop. She was intrigued at the area of bare cement where something had clearly been removed, almost as though Bill had an expectation the missing object might one day return. Once again, she thought about Montague Meek and that led her on to the package whose wrapping Fred Nairn had shown her at the auction rooms.

Not the coffee jug. It was much too small.

Fred’s words about suicide came back to her.

A poison, perhaps, that brought on the convulsions?

Maisie shuddered, thinking about how much sadness and upset was concealed beneath the day-to-day flow of existence. Then she remembered Fred’s warning.

If you mention it to anyone, best to go careful.

Had Jack been there, he wouldn’t have told her to ‘go careful’. He’d have encouraged her not to get involved.

Just then, she heard her name being called. It was Muriel Littlegreen who was still standing outside the pub with her sister, Linda. Maisie went to join them.

‘My sister’s told me what you did for our dad,’ said the older, more positive sister. ‘Thank you. He is an old fool,’ she added, and laughed.

‘I was glad to help. It’s very impressive that he’s working out of doors with heavy equipment at his age.’

‘I can’t agree with that,’ said Linda, gloomily. ‘Father’s been running the business into the ground since he twisted his back when the saw blade snapped on him. Since then, all the profit’s been taken up with paying people to give him a hand, Harry Farr and his nephew – or better men when they’re available. But, of course, whenever we’re busy, the better men aren’t available. And we’ve not got the margin and others can pay better and entice them off, leaving us with—’

‘Yes, you said, Linda,’ Muriel interrupted, smiling as seemed her wont, whatever the ambient mood. ‘Leaving us with Harry and Adam, turn and turn about.’

‘Why can’t you see it, though?’ snapped Linda, clearly following a train of thought that had been their focus before Muriel invited Maisie to join them. ‘We should sell up for what the goodwill and the machinery and so on is worth.’

‘And where will Dad live then?’ Muriel asked, quietly.

‘We’ll find him somewhere. Timothy will help.’

‘I’m afraid I’m intruding,’ said Maisie.

‘What we really could do with,’ said Muriel, ignoring Maisie’s offer to leave, ‘is a landlady like Mrs Pascal. She’s your aunt or some such, I heard?’

That was how Phyl had been described in the Chichester Observer, in relation to the murder at Bunting Manor. Maisie let it go and said: ‘I don’t think I’ve met Timothy. Is he your brother?’

‘He’s the middle child,’ Muriel explained. ‘He was expected for the meeting in the chapel. He lives in Havant, over the border in Hampshire, and he works with his clever wife at IBM.’

‘Under her thumb,’ said Linda, ‘with two spoilt teenage children.’

‘Could they help – with your father, I mean?’

Muriel shook her head.

‘I’ve an idea,’ she said, ‘that Timothy would like nothing more than to work the woodyard, but that’s no good with mouths to support and holidays on the Costa del Sol.’

‘And his children playing him and his wife off against one another,’ added Linda with a snort.

This seemed to be something the sisters could agree on, because Muriel nodded, then moderated the implied criticism by saying: ‘Of course, Timothy will help, but there’s another thing that neither you nor me nor he will be able to fix. I’m talking about Dad’s broken heart when you take the sawmill away from him and leave him with no value or purpose.’

‘That’s not my fault,’ protested Linda. ‘That’s what life is – at least, it is in Bitling with her ladyship’s unreasonable demands.’

Muriel merrily tutted and, beaming, told Maisie: ‘I’ve a better idea than Linda’s. We should move with the times and refurbish and retool, then we’ll make a go of things better than ever before, not just kindling and logs, but oak garden furniture and who knows what else. If we only had a drying kiln, for example, it would be running night and day to keep up with demand, seasoning the firewood and preparing the green oak for the building trade.’

‘That sounds very exciting,’ Maisie told her.

‘More debt,’ snapped Linda, contemptuously.

A brand-new Austin Eleven-Hundred pulled up close by and a middle-aged man with a strong likeness to both sisters got out, full of apology. His wife had been at her keep-fit class and he had been busy with the children’s homework. Muriel told the story of Old Mr Littlegreen’s accident once more, praising Maisie’s involvement.

‘It was nothing. I was there only by chance.’

Linda summed up the dispute between herself and Muriel over the future of the sawmill. It seemed to Maisie that Timothy – as middle children often do – felt obliged to steer a middle course.

‘There’s precious little goodwill in a failing business, Linda, so what would we sell? But it’s true that retooling would be a big risk, Muriel. The issue, really, is him doing himself a mischief being on his own.’

‘Can’t he live with you?’ asked Muriel.

‘You know we’re in town, right in the centre of Havant and nothing like what he’s used to.’

‘You can’t expect us to have him?’ said Linda.

Muriel told Maisie: ‘Linda and I share a tiny worker’s cottage, next door to William and Edith Dodd, and we’re both out in the evenings.’

Maisie found it incongruous that Linda was, despite her habitual negativity, a fixture behind the bar in the Silver Garter, managing the village pub with what her sister called, with a peal of laughter, ‘exemplary downbeat efficiency’. Meanwhile, Muriel was a successful representative for the Kleeneze firm, providing door-to-door sales of domestic cleaning products, ‘buzzing about in my little Mini Cooper’, alongside operating as a saleswoman for another company that required her to visit ‘leads’ in the customers’ own homes, selling electric showers.

‘Linda’s right,’ she concluded. ‘He can’t be on his own every evening.’

‘What if you took it in turns to go out?’ asked Timothy, looking for compromise.

‘And make a living on three nights a week?’ snorted Linda.

Muriel laughed again, as if his idea was an excellent joke. ‘That won’t do. Evenings are when people are in, you see?’

‘It’s all the fault of that grasping old baggage up the hill,’ Timothy began, angrily, then moderated his tone. ‘I’ll have a word with Dad and see what’s what, but we can’t have him in Havant. The kids share a room as it is.’

The Littlegreen sisters’ glasses were empty. Linda took them inside, leaving Maisie with Timothy and Muriel. She had been taken aback by the intensity with which the brother had spoken, on the point of revealing his deeply held anger and resentment at Lady Catherine.

‘Dad’s in, by the way,’ said Muriel. ‘But I’ll have to love you and leave you. I’ve an appointment in Almondcote. Goodbye, Miss Cooper – and thank you again.’ She left them, calling cheerily into the Dodds’ front hallway as she passed: ‘Bon appétit, Mr William and Mrs William.’

Left alone with Timothy, Maisie asked if the rent rises had indeed hit the business so very hard.

‘I’m afraid so. It seems there’s no future in the timber trade,’ he replied with such a tone of desolation that Maisie felt rather desperate for him and wanted to find some glimmer of optimism in reply. But he went on: ‘I don’t think Dad understands the seriousness of the situation.’

‘Perhaps I could buy you a drink,’ she suggested. ‘If you have time?’

‘Thank you, but I’ll be buying. We’re in your debt.’

He pushed open the door of the Silver Garter and Maisie followed him inside, finding the place surprisingly busy, laid out as a single long room with windows on the road, rather than divided into ‘saloon’ and ‘public’ bars. They approached the counter and she ordered a half-pint of cider because she was thirsty from her walk. Timothy asked for a gin and tonic. Linda served them with barely a word.

Maisie noticed Old Mr Littlegreen sitting in a faded armchair close to the enormous open fireplace, which wasn’t lit, of course. A decorative collection of twigs and blossoms stood in a galvanised bucket in the grate. She suggested to Timothy that they go and join him, both perching on low wooden stools. She reminded Old Mr Littlegreen who she was and was glad to discover that his eyes were bright and alert.

‘My knight in shining armour,’ he told her. ‘You’ve caught the sun, Miss Cooper. Do you enjoy being out of doors?’

‘I do.’

‘So does Timothy. I sometimes wonder how he ended up in an office with computers and things.’

Old Mr Littlegreen’s son gave a heartfelt sigh and said: ‘So do I, Dad, so do I.’

Maisie glanced from one to the other. Old Mr Littlegreen had a kind of ‘settled’ look about him, whereas Timothy seemed anxious and uncertain. She couldn’t follow this up, however, because Old Mr Littlegreen had a sheaf of papers he wanted to show his son.

‘You can help me get to the bottom of all this.’

‘What is it, Dad?’

‘It’s the suppliers and the bank and the receipts. It all seems to come out wrong.’

‘In what way, “wrong”?’ Timothy asked.

‘You know,’ said his father, with what Maisie thought was an inexplicable twinkle in his eye. ‘Too much of one and not enough of the other and the bank doesn’t like it.’

‘All right. Let me have a look. The problem’s the rent rise back in April, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, Linda changed the standing order. I meant to tell her to put it down again.’

Timothy shook his head, speaking gently, as if to a child: ‘It’s not up to you, Dad. You’re not in charge.’

‘No,’ said Old Mr Littlegreen. ‘Perhaps not. But I can ask.’

Feeling she should leave them alone with their private business affairs, Maisie excused herself and took her drink to the bar where she fell into conversation with the two schoolteachers, Fiona Grieve and Jill Finch. Maisie had a good chat to them about what they called ‘the kids raised in the villages’ and what a shock it always was for them when they ‘went to big school in Chichester’.

‘Have you worked in West Bitling long?’

‘Not that long,’ said Jill, the younger of the two, very pretty and neat. ‘We came when the school was built at the same time as the houses.’

‘Have you heard about the threat of closing down the little parade of West Bitling shops?’

‘Yes,’ they said in unison, then Fiona, perhaps a decade older than her friend, added: ‘It would be a scandal, tearing the life out of the community, just when it’s getting going.’

‘It wouldn’t happen in a better regulated society,’ said Jill with a dimpled smile.

‘In what sense?’ asked Maisie.

‘There’s a difference between productive and unproductive.’

‘I don’t expect Miss Cooper wants to hear this,’ said Fiona.

‘It’s important to face facts,’ insisted Jill.

Maisie examined her pretty face, seeing a steeliness about the eyes, and said: ‘I promise I won’t take offence or be shocked.’

‘I’m not Catholic,’ said Jill, ‘but even the Vatican, in 1957, proclaimed that passive euthanasia wasn’t a sin, that it could be “a merciful end”. They were thinking about terrible diseases and long-drawn-out suffering, but what about the suffering of the young caused by the old who grasp their wealth to them and will not share with those who have the greater need and the greater potential?’

‘Are you talking about anyone in particular?’ asked Maisie, innocently.

At that moment, Linda Littlegreen appeared and admonished: ‘We don’t talk politics in the Silver Garter, Jill. You know that. It only leads to upset.’

Incongruously, Jill Finch giggled and apologised. Fiona led her away to sit at a table near one of the windows. Left alone, Maisie wondered if Jill had been speaking for herself alone or for the other schoolteacher, too. She also asked herself if the surprisingly cold-eyed Jill Finch would consider Old Mr Littlegreen ‘a burden on society’? She was certain that Lady Catherine would be deemed ‘unproductive’.

From the bar, Maisie could hear the conversation from a nearby table where three heavily built farmers were playing dominos with sharp raps on the wooden tabletop, while discussing the turn of the seasons as revealed by the depth of fresh water in ‘the Bitling borehole’. Apparently, it had never been known to be so low at midsummer. The strongest voice belonged to Zachary Sawbridge, the farmer who had politely challenged Lady Catherine at the meeting in the chapel. He was a burly man with a pleasant rhythmic voice.

‘It were a nasty winter and spring, and the rain was ever-times drizzle, not downpours, so it was wet without being any good to you nor to me. We need to dig another borehole over the far side of Baffins Hill, where it would be fed by the north slope, but there’s fat chance of finding permission for that.’

‘Perhaps we could ask Mrs Pascal about it on her field, behind the turkey barn?’ suggested the second farmer. ‘Then we could take pipes to where it’s needed?’

‘But that’s the south side again and we’re already tapped into that aquifer,’ said the third.

‘Wherever we dig,’ said the second farmer, ‘the pipes would have to cross you-know-who’s land and she’d put a stop to it, making it work to no purpose.’

‘Why does she have to be so awful hard?’ said the third.

Neither of the others answered but the burly Zachary Sawbridge got up and went to the bar, arriving alongside Maisie. Seeing her cider glass was empty, he invited her to order first.

‘Thank you. I am still thirsty. I walked over from Bunting. Could I have a glass of water, please?’

Linda Littlegreen gave her a look that Maisie thought meant: ‘You could pour yourself a glass of water at home.’ But she complied, adding ice and a slice of lemon to the glass. Then she said: ‘I know what you want, Zachary. Three pints of HSB.’

‘That’ll do nicely,’ said the farmer.

Maisie knew that Horndean Special Bitter was the flagship ale of the Gales Brewery just over the border in Hampshire, with a satisfying four-point-eight per cent of alcohol by volume.

‘I’ll carry them over,’ said Linda. ‘Will that satisfy you?’

‘You do bring the cheer, don’t you?’ said Zachary with a wink. ‘It’s a good job we’re used to you, Linda Littlegreen. What a stranger would make of your conversation, I couldn’t rightly say.’

Maisie said: ‘Your father looks very bright, Linda.’

‘He’ll do, talking the hind legs off a donkey with anyone cares to listen, but he’s wearied, now. Still, he’ll have to wait till I finish before I take him back home.’

‘To the sawmill?’

‘That’s right. He’s got a sort of cabin there. Before our mother died, we had a second worker’s cottage in the village, but he likes to be among the trees.’

‘It’s delightful, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose,’ said Linda, doubtfully.

‘And you’re the lady came to the rescue,’ said the burly farmer. ‘Old Mr Littlegreen told me there was a glamorous stranger. I thought he was exaggerating. Happen he was right.’

‘Good evening. My name is Maisie Cooper.’

‘The one from the newspaper,’ he confirmed.

Maisie nodded and tried to smile. She thought about what Fred Nairn had told her about Jack being sent to Newcastle or Bristol for his promotion and decided she might perhaps like to go with him, somewhere nobody knew who she was.

‘Miss Copper,’ said Linda, making a mistake with Maisie’s name, ‘got Vaughan to see to the bang on Dad’s head.’

She was called away to attend to a table of ladies drinking spritzers of white wine with lemonade who had an unmistakable look of being in committee, perhaps the flower rota or the Women’s Institute.

‘My name’s Zachary Sawbridge. I did read you’re local, then?’

Maisie confirmed that she was and, like Micah, Zachary seemed to need her to prove her village credentials with intimate knowledge of the highways and byways through the Downs, but he had a pleasant manner and a ready smile and Maisie began to enjoy his company. She decided to take the plunge.

‘Is it difficult, living according to Lady Catherine’s rules?’

‘Difficult isn’t a big enough word,’ he told her, his face darkening with emotion. ‘It’s a downward spiral and I warrant I don’t understand it.’

‘In what sense?’

‘Why she wants to destroy what’s hers.’

Maisie took a moment to absorb the unexpected ferocity of his words, then asked: ‘Does she need money for something in particular? Is that why she raised the rents?’

‘You want to know what I think?’ asked Zachary.

‘I do.’

‘She’s pure evil. She likes to see us squirm.’ Zachary’s friends called out to him, tapping their dominos on the table with sharp sounds. ‘Excuse me, Miss Copper, they need me to finish the game.’

‘Cooper,’ corrected Maisie. ‘But Copper is a good old Sussex name as well.’

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘The Copper boys give a fine folk tune.’

Surprisingly, he burst into song and, within a few words, his friends and both the schoolteachers, Fiona Grieve and Jill Finch, had joined in:

‘One May morning early I chanced for to roam

And strolled through the field by the side of the grove.

It was there I did hear the harmless birds sing,

And you never heard so sweet, and you never heard so sweet,

You never heard so sweet as the birds in the spring.’

‘That was “By the Green Grove”,’ Maisie approved.

‘It was,’ he agreed. ‘We’ll have that and a good few more at the fair.

Zachary went to rejoin his game and accepted a round of congratulations for bravely ‘putting that old Gorgon in her place, telling her how ’tis’. Linda carried over their drinks, a triangle of straight pint glasses in her steady fingers, bringing further conversation to a halt as whistles were soundlessly wetted. Then Maisie heard the three men debate whether there would be ‘time for another’, but Zachary’s friends had wives at home, each with the wisdom, it appeared, to keep a sharp eye on the family finances. The consensus was negative.

‘We should do something, though,’ said Zachary. ‘If we stick together, we’re as strong as she is, aren’t we?’

His friends didn’t look like they were entirely convinced. By an odd telepathy, their eyes all went to the dartboard where Maisie saw a photograph of Lady Catherine Peahorn, torn from the Chichester Observer, with a pockmarking of multiple puncture wounds.

The farmers resumed their game of dominos. Left alone at the bar, Maisie was able to contemplate the ‘Bitlingers’, as Old Mr Littlegreen had told her to think of them, wondering if she might see Harold Farr and his nephew Adam shamble in.

Perhaps they don’t have any spare money to spend – at least, not until the end of the week when Archie Close pays them on Phyl’s behalf. Though I did give Harold a pound . . .

She wouldn’t see William and Edith, of course – and probably not Bill or Micah either – because they were chapel and, therefore, abstainers from alcohol. For the same reason, she wouldn’t see Sara or Rayan Ramsi.

Quite soon, Maisie began to feel like a spare part. It seemed there was nothing more to learn. The time on the clock behind the bar said just on nine and she supposed she ought to be going. She drained her glass of water and slipped outside into the street, remembering she had intended to eat something – but no one else had been eating. She supposed they all had their ‘tea’ early, before they went out for company.

There was enough light to navigate the kissing gate and recross the field, turning left through the deep hazel hedges for the chestnut wood, wary of the spiny blackthorns around the entrance. Once under the canopy, it was much darker and she went very slowly – so dark, in fact, that she took a wrong turn, anticipating the left fork that would lead her up behind Baffins Hill.

The mistaken path led her in a circle and, just as she was about to get back on her way, she heard noises that couldn’t come from a bird or an animal, because they were accompanied by a low monologue, someone talking to himself in an insistent mutter.

Maisie took another two careful steps and pressed herself against the thick trunk of a centennial tree, her hands on the scaly bark, peering round. It was Adam Farr, looking like he was digging, no, raking the path, but it was hard to say for sure, so sombre had the night become beneath the canopy of dark leaves.

She edged forward and broke a twig beneath her shoe. He whirled round, holding his rake out like a weapon, shouting: ‘Who is it? What do you want? Don’t you go telling.’

Twenty

‘Hello, Adam,’ said Maisie, calmly.

‘Are you spying on me?’ he blurted, his eyes darting around to discover if she was alone.

‘Of course not, Adam. I’m just walking back home to Bunting on the woodland paths. There’s nothing to be worried about.’ She glanced at the rake that he still held out like a weapon. ‘You can put that down.’

‘I’m always in trouble, me,’ he told her, lowering it. ‘Then you came on me sudden-like, in the darkness.’

Maisie remembered something William had mentioned to Lady Catherine.

‘Are you making preparations for the treasure hunt?’

‘What if I was?’ he countered, suspiciously.

‘I understand that it would have to be secret. I’ll just be on my way. You carry on, Adam. I think it’s a lovely idea.’

‘Do you, really?’ he asked with childish innocence.

‘I absolutely do.’

A good half hour later, as Maisie made her weary way down past the clearing where Phyl’s ‘lodger’ had lived in early spring – back when, as Zachary Sawbridge had said, ‘the rain was ever-times drizzle’ – she was thinking about how frightened Adam had been. Much more frightened than she, in fact. But not because he feared for his safety.

Why is his secret so important to him? It seems an innocent thing, after all. Is it because it makes him a part of his village community for once – and that’s not an easy thing for him to achieve?

It had been an odd conversation, beneath the horse chestnut canopy, and Maisie had been left, above all, with a feeling of sympathy for the young man, a classic ‘outsider’ who didn’t seem to know what it was that made him so different from everybody else, shaped as he was by unhappy circumstances but also by an idiosyncratic way of seeing the world, inspired by a deep understanding of the natural world, ‘red in tooth and claw’, as the poet laureate Tennyson brutally put it.

She passed the corner of Bunting Manor, where the external staircase led below ground, down into the wine cellar, feeling pleased to be home. She walked all the way round to the opposite corner and came in through the kitchen – unlocked, as always, unless she took a hand – and put on some milk to warm in a small pan, deciding it was too late to eat. Before the milk came to the boil, she added three teaspoons of Ovaltine, then took the malted drink upstairs to her bedroom, briefly inspecting the notes on her writing table by the light of her bedside lamp. Before getting into bed, she added a new line to her list.

Adam Farr – an innocent who could easily do the wrong thing without knowing quite why.

She realised that she hadn’t turned the little dials on the stainless-steel Art Deco calendar for several days. She did so, hearing the mechanism give a satisfying sequence of clicks, seeing the black-and-white cards flip over until they showed the correct day and date for the following morning: Saturday, 24 June.

Good heavens, she thought. Already?

Settling down against her pillows with her mug of malted milk in her two hands, she experienced a moment of complete stillness and calm.

Jack will be back soon.

Then that feeling was erased or superseded by another.

I wish I knew more about the investigation into the death of Montague Meek and that I didn’t have to go to Bitling Fair. How can that go well with so much resentment and anxiety flying around?

*

Waking on Saturday morning, Maisie was thrilled to see that Bitling Fair would be blessed with the most wonderful weather. Before leaving her room, she added a few more lines to her list of local characters.

Zachary Sawbridge and his colleagues (rent etc.)

Jill Finch (proponent of euthanasia for the unproductive elderly)

Fiona Grieve (shares Jill’s ideas? Unknown)

Elsewhere in Bunting Manor, Phyl was ‘on the turn’, as she put it – and as the doctor had promised – after a couple of days on the antibiotic regime. Archie Close delighted Zoe by offering to take her into Chichester on his tractor, promising to pick her up again early evening because she was on the day shift and would therefore be able to join in the late events at Bitling Fair, including the dinner on the green and Beating the Bounds.

Maisie drove over to Bitling, parking the Land Rover in front of the chapel. Preparations were in full swing. The only negative – or perhaps positive, depending on one’s point of view – was when Dilys Prime came down from Baffins with the news that Lady Catherine would not be able to attend because ‘her summer sniffle is much, much worse’.

Maisie felt frustration that she wouldn’t be able to confront Lady Catherine about the West Bitling evictions. This emotion was immediately – perhaps unkindly – followed by a sense of relief. She would be able to throw herself into her duties without worrying about the – perhaps critical – presence of the autocratic and overbearing landowner. She asked William if Lady Catherine’s absence would make a big difference.

‘She’s not one for joining in and, anyway, her most important role is when we all troop up to Baffins to—’ Whatever he was about to say, he stopped and changed tack. ‘Look out. You need to get set. We’re beginning.’

Maisie put on the long green robe that Dilys had brought down with her and enormously enjoyed the enthusiasm with which all the residents, young and old, approached the day. She said hello to the two schoolteachers, Jill Finch and Fiona Grieve, who were busy corralling the children. Other participants included some of Maisie’s friends from Framlington and Bunting, including Jon Wilkes, the farrier, who won the very first competition, Chuck the Welly, by several feet, despite the best efforts of Zachary Sawbridge. She awarded Jon a prize she had liberated from Phyl’s wine cellar, a bottle of ten-year-old Burgundy. While she had the chance, she asked him: ‘Did you manage to mend Lady Catherine’s coffee pot?’

‘What’s that then?’

‘Maurice said she sent it to you for repair. Was it very fine?’

‘Happen it’s not turned up yet,’ said Jon.

Apart from Chuck the Welly – the traditional curtain-raiser – most of the Saturday morning activities were for the children, organised by Jill Finch. Maisie was kept busy in her voluminous costume, giving the starting signal, encouraging the competitors, judging distances and so on. Everyone got wet in the Apple Bobbing and both Pin the Tail on the Donkey and Blind Man’s Bluff generated lots of laughs as the children became disorientated and dizzy. She was prevailed upon to take part herself in the Stick-and-Toss, lobbing horseshoes at a short post pushed down into the turf, and found she was very good at it, but she gave the prize to the child in second place.

Now and then, Maisie was able to go and check up on the carvers in the Best Duck competition, learning some more about the charitable beneficiary of the expensive one-pound entrance fee – new sensory equipment for the Fordwater School for children with severe learning difficulties.

Nine people had each ‘stumped up a quid’, as William said, in order to take part. They were sitting on tree stumps that formed a line on the far side of pond, using a variety of implements to gouge and shape their blocks of soft cedar. The fragrance of the cut timber was gorgeous, especially as time passed and the sun grew warmer, drawing out the sap. She was sad to see that William Dodd seemed to be making heavy weather of his work.

Hot under her green robe, Maisie looked round the green, wishing Jack was with her – not just because she liked him to be nearby, but because she would have been relieved to discuss with him all that she had learned. She had a sense that she recognised from previous mysteries – of events accelerating towards a climax. The death of Montague Meek would not be the final calamity, she was sure of that.

She watched Jill doing great business with the Splat the Rat game the children had helped to make. It was ‘five goes for a penny’ and Maisie remembered from the meeting in the chapel that Ramsi Rayan had offered free bags of chips to those who did best. Just then, a small girl with a very quick eye got five out of five.

Maisie thought about the little parade of shops in West Bitling and the terrible upheaval it would be if it was closed down. She realised none of the shopkeepers was present and dearly wished that they were, that she could talk to them and find out precisely what they were thinking.

And what they intend to do.

Twenty-One

In the fish-and-chip shop in West Bitling, the Ramsi siblings were busy preparing for the lunchtime service. They knew that there was a certain amount of suspicion – or perhaps wariness was a better word – about them as ‘incomers’. So, they needed to preserve a spotless reputation, both literally and figuratively.

The shop was hard work. The floor needed to be cleaned of all the dirty footprints from people traipsing in from the green. The greasy fingerprints of children needed to be expunged from the glass of the door, from the Formica tabletop and from the vinegar bottle and the salt shaker. Then there were the appliances themselves, large expanses of glass and metal. Everything had to be perfect, every single day.

Ramsi knew that Sara was holding something back, working with an angry focus. He asked her for a second time what was on her mind. Because they were alone, they spoke in their first language, Urdu.

‘If we have to lose everything again and move away, people will speculate why and they will assume the worst,’ Sara said.

‘There is nothing we can do about that.’

‘They will gossip and say it was something we did wrong, that we were slovenly or unclean or didn’t pay the rent or we were rude to the customers. We will have to go far away where their words cannot reach us.’

‘These ideas that are making you so angry and unhappy, they have not happened.’

‘How can you be so calm? Have we not suffered enough? Must we be always the victims?’

‘We cannot be victims while we have our faith.’

Sara tutted, rubbing vigorously at the counter. ‘Look at Father, driving a lorry for a mean-spirited drunkard in Portsmouth when he used to run a fleet of trucks. How can you be so—’

‘How many Kenyans died in the war for independence from the British?’ asked Rayan, looking up from his book of accounts. ‘Many, but not us. Should we not be joyful and grateful, therefore?’

Sara sighed, heavily. ‘I know.’ She finished polishing the stainless-steel warming cabinet above the vats of the deep-fat fryers and stepped back, pleased with the result, but sad to see her own sullen face reflected back at her.

‘Very good,’ said Ramsi. ‘Let’s go and have a cup of tea.’

The stairs at the back of the shop led to a spartan first-floor apartment comprised of Sara’s bedroom, a kitchen with a narrow single bed in one corner, and a poky bathroom. The siblings had borrowed as much as they could possibly afford to fit out the shop downstairs, sacrificing their own comfort ‘for the time being’, as Rayan had said.

Sara made tea by boiling water in a saucepan on the electric stove, using the cheapest teabags from the cash and carry where they bought cooking oil and condiments. She served it black with a spoonful of sugar and a sprig of mint from an indoor plant on the windowsill. Rayan perched on the end of his bed and Sara took the only chair, salvaged from outside a café in Chichester that was being refitted, discovered one Friday when Sara had completed her lunchtime shift at the Dolphin and Anchor.

‘Each of us is but a tiny speck in a giant universe,’ said Ramsi from the bed. ‘Through kindness to others we rise above selfishness. When we are charitable, we fill our own bowl. What does the poet Rumi say?’

Sara sighed again and recited. ‘That patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing – looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day.’

‘And lovers?’

‘They know that the moon needs time to become full. Will it, though?’

‘Now,’ said Rayan, ‘I have made you think about Micah. He is a good man.’

‘Of course he is,’ said Sara, defensively.

‘You should not stir him up to anger.’

‘I haven’t,’ said Sara, but without conviction. ‘I promise.’

‘But you have shared your own frustration?’

‘Once or twice. He, like you, looks for solace in prayer.’

‘There would be no need for prayer in a perfect world, but there is no such place. So, we must strive for goodness – in our own and others’ lives.’

‘We?’

‘All of us. All who have faith.’

They drank in silence; he perched on the bed, she on the salvaged chair.

‘You should have been a holy man,’ said Sara, quietly.

‘Our faith is being tested. You are frightened of losing this life we have made, but also for what your anger might make Micah do. Isn’t that right?’

Sara couldn’t meet his gaze. Rayan was right. She had been unmeasured in her speech, demanding that Micah should confront ‘that witch on the hill’, all the while knowing that it was not in her fiancé’s nature to do such a thing. And, for Micah, the conflict with Bill was already a deep wound. Rayan’s words made her worry that the two things together – the rift with his brother and Lady Catherine’s persecution – might cause Micah to do something they would all later regret.

‘I’m sorry, Brother. I am making things worse.’

‘No, Sister,’ said Rayan, in a harsher tone. ‘You are only voicing the unkind thoughts that fester in my own heart. The words of consolation I am offering you – I am in greater need of them myself.’

Sara looked up and was shocked to see that his face was suffused with anger, his fists clenched tight and white-knuckled on his knees. He looked like he might spring up at any moment and, as Micah would have said: ‘do someone a damage.’

‘Remember,’ she told him, almost in a whisper, ‘we must be whiter than white.’

‘I know that,’ he told her.

‘Then what are you thinking?’

‘That, though we must be seen to be whiter than white, there may be steps we can take in darkness.’

Twenty-Two

Next door, in the butcher’s shop, Micah was busy with customers who needed bits and pieces for the weekend. Several ladies wated ‘a nice bit of brisket like you gave me last week’.

He gave them the same advice he always did: ‘It’s the cut with the best flavour but it needs very slow cooking for it to be tender.’ He also sold three half-pounds of sausages that he had prepared himself to a recipe he and Bill had perfected together, including a little apple in the mixture before extruding it out into the delicate natural casing he and his brother liked to use because ‘it’s not tough in the mouth’.

There was a lull and Micah felt his spirits droop. To try and buck himself up, he opened the cash drawer on his till with a jingle of the bell and was able to look down on compartments full of coins ready to be bagged up and taken to the bank. He would do that next Friday when he opened late after giving Sara a lift into town.

He pushed the drawer shut, feeling no better. It was the visit of Mrs Pascal’s niece that had unsettled him. Though she had been as pleasant as could be, she had a way about her, a penetrating look in her eyes that made you wonder what it was you were thinking about that you shouldn’t.

But I’ve got nothing to reproach myself for.

It wasn’t the first time he had told himself that. As on each previous occasion, thinking it wasn’t the same as believing it.

Yes, he had known that the antique ceramic tiles were from Sparkes in Bitling. Yes, he had known that Bill had been obliged to sell them to make ends meet. Yes, he had known that Montague Meek had a reputation for sailing close to the wind. Micah had asked their dad, Sergeant William Dodd of the Chichester police, to enquire and he had found no reason for Micah not to spend the last of his severance money from the army on something to brighten up his West Bitling shopfront.

And I was trying to keep it in the family, too. But that was when it all went wrong.

Micah had invited Bill round to see the beautiful ceramics with, on the tip of his tongue, an invitation to go into business together in West Bitling, leaving the old Sparkes shop behind, and to escape the clutches of Lady Catherine, the ‘witch on the hill’ as Sara had surprised him by saying. But Bill hadn’t given him a chance. He’d seen ‘his’ tiles above the window and flown off the handle.

‘Is that why you kept it so close, what you were up to? And now you’ve got me round here to rub my nose in it?’

‘Don’t be silly, Bill—’ Micah had begun.

‘Silly, am I, you little sneak?’

To Micah’s surprise, Bill had swung his heavy right hand, intending to land a punch on Micah’s cheek. But Micah had spent two gruelling tours in the air force, living in crowded barracks where tempers boiled over every few days, not once in a blue moon. He had dodged out of the way, infuriating Bill further, who had tackled him to the ground, the scuffle drawing Sara out of doors, running out of the fish-and-chip shop, telling them to stop making such fools of themselves, ‘brawling like children’.

And that was that. Bill had lifted himself up and spat on the pavement before trudging away across the green, back towards Bitling proper. In the run-up to the fair, they’d been practising their Morris steps without ever quite meeting one another’s eye.

And, now, Micah was perhaps to be turned out of his shop by Lady Catherine and couldn’t, as a fallback, go in with Bill at the old Sparkes premises.

That bridge has been burnt.

Another customer came in, wondering if Micah had ‘some of those nice pork-and-apple sausages’.

‘Last half-pound,’ he told her, wrapping them in greaseproof paper. ‘But I’ll be making more next week. And some lamb-and-mint, if you fancy a change?’

‘Oh, no, that sounds more like the sort of thing your neighbours might like.’

The customer left and Micah pondered the idea that lamb-and-mint sausages might seem unforgivably ‘exotic’ to someone who had perhaps never left this green and leafy corner of south-west Sussex. For himself, there was nothing in the whole world he liked more – loved more – than Sara Ramsi. If people thought her exotic or strange and, perhaps, thought less of him, too, as a consequence, he could live with that.

No, that’s not completely true. There is someone who’ll have to come round. Sooner or later, I’ll need Dad’s blessing before we make our match.

The telephone rang in the back hallway, at the foot of the stairs. It was Mr Hume, the manager of the Dolphin and Anchor with his order for the following week. It took Micah a few minutes to write it all down, thinking to himself that it was a good eight or even ten hours’ labour he had ahead of him, butchering the carcasses and preparing the individual cuts. It was work for two, really.

It should be Bill and me together, but I can’t see a way to making that happen.

Micah hung up and ran a finger down the list. Would he have a word with Archie Close from up at Mrs Pascal’s and find out if he might be willing to lend a hand?

Archie’s a dab hand with a filleting knife.

The bell over the front door rang again and he went to serve a small thin woman who he knew struggled to make ends meet, dragging up three boys on her own with a divorced husband who wouldn’t pay his weekly ten quid maintenance and who had gone to jail for it. He sold her some scrag end and reminded her to let it cool once cooked, so as to be able to skim off the fat before she reheated and served it.

‘Kids don’t appreciate the fat, though it’s often the best part,’ he told her.

‘Thank you, Mr Dodd,’ she said.

He wondered if she’d noticed that he’d added an extra piece after weighing it, seeing she didn’t have enough silver coins in her hand to feed three growing lads. She also took two pounds of potatoes and one onion and Micah supposed that was going to make a hearty meal, if not a particularly tasty one. The door closed behind her. He wondered about how the poor woman would manage if Lady Catherine got her way and the three shops were closed down.

What a palaver to be bundling the kids up on the bus into Chichester – and the expense, too.

His thoughts returned to the need for his father’s blessing. It wasn’t the only potential impediment to his conjugal happiness. He couldn’t very well ask his fiancée to stick by her promise to marry him if he lost his shop and his livelihood.

I’ll need to do as Sara says and confront the ‘witch on the hill’. Then we’ll see what’s what.

Twenty-Three

On the other side of the flourishing fish-and-chip shop was the more recent addition of Arthur Tate’s confectionery store. Like Micah, Arthur was having a good morning, but he, too, was out of sorts.

Arthur felt he was doing his best, but he knew that his appearance was off-putting. It was a combination of things. First, his skin was sallow and unhealthy-looking from the long hours spent in his cell in jail on the Isle of Wight. Second, his manner wasn’t a sympathetic one. Third, there was the problem of his teeth that had grown too close together, giving him a squished look that small children found disturbing. Why, only the other day, a toddler had asked her mother: ‘What’s wrong with that man’s mouth?’

On the other hand, he thought the inhabitants of West Bitling were getting used to him. Wasn’t that the important thing? Once everyone got the hang of the fact that he was polite and kind and wished everyone well – that he was grateful, above all, for this second chance – the little shop and its meagre first-floor apartment might turn out to be his ‘forever home’, like people said about stray dogs rescued and fostered by kind-hearted strangers.

And who was his kind-hearted stranger? Mrs Pascal, of course, who had even told him he could defer half his rent to her until the new year, giving him time to get established.

But now we’ve all had our thunderbolt from Lady Catherine blooming Peahorn.

Arthur frowned, internally rebuking himself for swearing, something he was determined to leave behind, especially if he was to become a part of William Dodd’s chapel community. But the emotion behind it suited his own robust understanding of Christian charity – ‘an eye for an eye’ and all that.

Perhaps I’m justified in a few choice words.

Lady Catherine seemed determined to undo all the good that Mrs Pascal had done in giving him a new start. As for Montague Meek, it was the antiquarian’s fault that he had gone to jail in the first place.

Why did I ever think to get into business with that old creep?

On this occasion, Arthur managed not to pronounce any kind of expletive, however mild, even inside his mind.

A little girl with bows in her hair and a red nose came in sniffing, asking for: ‘Two sherbet dabs, please.’

She put her coins on the counter while Arthur found what she wanted in the glazed display. He remined himself he ought to day something, that he had to remember to play his new role of avuncular shopkeeper.

‘There you are. Now you run on home but be careful when you cross the road.’

‘Yes, I will,’ said the little girl, who had been in several times before, including with her mother, and took Arthur’s odd appearance in her stride.

She left the sweet shop skipping and Arthur thought: I can do this. I can become a respectable confectioner, a friend to all, a churchgoer and . . .

Arthur clenched his jaw. It could all fall apart, though. He felt consumed by something he knew to be a deadly sin – wrath.

I’m glad Montague Meek is dead and I wish Lady Catherine was, too.

Twenty-Four

Back at Bitling Fair, Maisie was watching the children writing down their guesses for How Many Sweets in the Jar and thinking about Lady Catherine. She was, according to Dilys Prime, very under the weather. Maisie wondered if she might have caught Phyl’s bronchitis.

And she’s all alone up at Baffins, perhaps stumbling about, hindered by her poor eyesight, and . . .

‘Will you do the honours, Miss Cooper?’ called Jill Finch.

Maisie gathered the two dozen children around her and read out all their guesses, telling them if they were ‘hot’ or ‘cold’. Finally, she found one that was spot on, a gross, a hundred and forty-four, and presented the prize of four ounces of gobstoppers from Arthur Tate.

It was close to midday and that was the end of the children’s games for the time being. Maisie went to see how the carvers were getting on. She realised that William hadn’t been struggling at all. He had been working slowly and methodically towards an admirable likeness of the classic shape. The only one that rivalled what William was producing was that carved by Fiona Grieve, whose forester husband was watching her over her shoulder, giving advice and, on two occasions, even helping her wield her chisel.

Jill Finch called out to Fiona to help corral the children – who were as much hindering as helping – set up the lunch things. Fiona’s husband sat down and took over for five minutes. When Fiona returned, she scolded him playfully that he would ‘get her disqualified’. Maisie wondered if Fiona was right and if she ought to censure the schoolteacher for having extra help.

This officious thought was interrupted by Linda and Muriel Littlegreen arriving with food prepared at the Silver Garter. Maisie was glad because she was very hungry. Their brother, Timothy, bustled in just in time to lend a third pair of hands, with apologies that his wife and teenage children could not be there ‘because it’s judo on Saturdays’.

The outdoor meal was soon in full swing on the green, at long tables brought out from a storeroom behind the pub. Maisie, as special guest, was obliged to rotate round the groups. She paid most attention to the children, asking them what their favourite toys were and if they liked school. It turned out that the girls mostly enjoyed their doll’s houses while the boys preferred Action Man. Their teachers, Fiona and Jill, received a unanimous vote of confidence from their tiny charges.

It was difficult to eat properly while socialising, but Maisie managed a few fish paste sandwiches while the children ate their green jelly from rabbit moulds, served with sickly vanilla ice cream. Then lunch began to be cleared away and Maisie was relieved to discover that there would be a pause in the programme of activities so that the younger children could be taken away for their naps while the sun was at its hottest.

Maisie was glad of the respite herself and drove home to Bunting Manor to check up on Phyl who had made her own cheese on toast and was sitting up in the library, reading over business post that she had neglected over the last few days. Maisie took off her green robe – in which, not really thinking, she had driven back to Bunting – and sat with her, soon finding herself dozing. Coming back to her senses with a start, she stretched and said: ‘I’m quite stiff from the walk over the hills last night.’

‘Where did you go?’ asked Phyl, her voice still hoarse.

‘To Bitling by the pilgrim trail.’

‘Lovely,’ said Phyl, ironically. ‘Rather you than me. I’m going to have a lie-down.’

Maisie decided she would do the same. She went upstairs and set her travel alarm for five-thirty. She would be needed back at the green at six-thirty for the evening events, beginning with judging the Best Duck. She knew it would be between William and Fiona and would probably depend on how well they had painted their creations.

*

Maisie woke before her alarm, well-rested but a little bleary. She drank two cups of tea, washed and went outside to the Land Rover, almost forgetting her green robe. Back in Bitling she discovered there was nowhere to park without blocking the road because so many people had come in for the meal and other events by car, so she drove back round on the main road to the turning for the turkey yard and left the vehicle there.

Getting out, she ran into Harold and Adam. The younger man said to her: ‘Thanks for keeping the secret. Uncle and me, we’re going to put out the prize while nobody’s about.’

Maisie thought Harold looked rather dubious about this, but put it down to him feeling old and tired. He certainly looked drained, perhaps from the unaccustomed hard work at the turkey shed.

No, that’s not fair. He does an excellent job at Baffins.

Maisie took the bridleway back into the village and was met – inevitably, she thought, with a wry smile – at the kissing gate by Vaughan Quinn who looked weary as if on his way back from an early appointment.

‘I wasn’t waiting for you,’ he said with a worried expression.

‘Of course not,’ she told him. ‘Would you excuse me?’

He stepped aside and she crossed the road to the chapel, skipping through the graveyard, out into the parallel lane, round the pond to the green. The lunch tables were still out and, on the central one, the eight ducks were stood side by side on a paint-spattered board, unattributed, so her judgement would not be influenced by who had carved each one.

The villagers were all assembling, including Dilys Prime.

‘How is Lady Catherine?’ Maisie asked.

‘Not well at all.’

As Maisie had guessed, two of the ducks stood out, beautifully painted as mallard drakes, with smooth green heads, yellow bills, a deep chestnut breast and creamy wing feathers. They were almost impossible to separate so, as more and more people gathered round expecting her judgement, she asked Muriel Littlegreen if she was allowed to call them joint winners.

‘No, there has to be one Best Duck. It’s tradition.’ Muriel grinned and began chanting: ‘Best Duck, Best Duck, Best Duck.’

Everyone joined in, including Muriel’s siblings, both Dodd boys, Sara and Rayan, Arthur Tate, even Dilys Prime in a diffident murmur. Maisie felt she ought to decide quickly.

‘All right,’ she said, loudly. ‘I’m not an expert but, because I’m here as a poor replacement for Mrs Pascal . . .’

The crowd stopped chanting and several people shouted out: ‘No, not a poor replacement.’ Someone with a loud country voice – she thought it was Zachary Sawbridge – called: ‘I’d say a definite improvement.’ Everyone laughed.

With a feeling of relief, Maisie saw Archie and Zoe arriving on foot. She beckoned Zoe over. She slipped in through the crowd.

‘I need help with this. Which one do you think is Best Duck?’ she asked.

‘They’re both very good,’ said Zoe, judiciously, ‘but the paint on this one’s head is shinier, more realistic.’

‘That’s true,’ said Muriel Littlegreen. ‘It’s iridescent, like the real thing. Can you all see?’

Maisie couldn’t pick it up and brandish it because the paint was still drying, but she pointed to the winning carving. ‘Best Duck!’ she shouted as she had been told to do. Everyone repeated the cry and, to Maisie’s relief – because she had hoped it would be him – William came forward, beaming. She announced: ‘Carved by William Dodd!’

‘Fiona’s is a marvel though,’ he said, generously.

‘Is that enamel paint on the head?’ Fiona asked. ‘I only used the poster paints from school.’

‘It is,’ said William. ‘From my Bill’s bits and pieces when he used to paint his Airfix soldiers and tanks and things.’

The board with the ducks on it was carried away and left beneath the low yew hedge with its crop of red berries. Maisie wondered if it was quite wise to leave the sharp rasps and chisels in full view. Surely, one of the children could easily pick one up and do themselves a mischief?

A new meal was made ready, charmingly comprised of baskets brought by the participants and spread the length of the tables, making an extraordinary and varied spread. There were so many people now present – at least a hundred, Maisie thought – that the tables were nowhere near enough to seat everyone. Lots of family groups spread blankets on the ground, mostly tartan, and she saw Dilys Prime, looking rather lonely and left out, slipping away as if she felt unwelcome.

Or she’s going to check on her mistress. Good.

Maisie was very hungry, having been intercepted many times over lunch by her duties. A seat had been reserved for her at the middle table, next to William. She enjoyed his genial and gratified company almost as much as a wonderful hand-raised pork pie. Jon Wilkes came over and poured her a glass of his prize, the excellent Burgundy from Phyl’s cellar, which was superb. Then, when William turned to Edith on his other side, out of the corner of her eye, Maisie noticed the tiny solitary figure of Lady Catherine’s companion climbing the chalk lane on foot, stepping through the close-clipped hedge onto the lawn of the isolated manor house, Baffins, through the shadow of the rowan.

Perhaps nothing bad is going to happen after all.

*

After the meal – throughout which alcohol was served by Linda and Muriel Littlegreen – there was singing as the sun began to dip down the western sky. It was led at first by Zachary Sawbridge with ‘By the Green Grove’: ‘as a thank you to our special guest because I know she likes it’. Zachary was followed by whoever else wanted to remind everyone of traditional country songs that they had learned at their parents’ and grandparents’ knees, including Vaughan Quinn in a surprisingly high tenor and Ada Strickland in a thin soprano.

It was a glorious celebration and succeeded in quite putting all Maisie’s worries out of her mind, especially because the usually taciturn Bill Dodd led the village in the most popular song of all, ‘The Larks They Sang Melodious’. Most people only knew the words of the title but, as it was repeated several times in every chorus, that didn’t matter. Everyone enjoyed it so much that, as the time came round for putting the Best Duck in the pond, a cry went up to sing it again, by which time Bill was nowhere to be seen so Micah led it in his stead. Beside him, Arthur Tate clapped his hands together in rhythm.

If we were indoors, Maisie thought, joining in with delight, we would be blowing the roof off.

She and William left the table and the whole crowd followed them to the edge of the pond. All the children still present – some of whom already looked fractious or sleepy, despite their afternoon naps – were wrangled to the front to get a better view. Then Maisie spoke the words she had been given as ceremonial leader.

‘All Bitlingers call on William Dodd to bless this pond with his Best Duck.’

To a great cheer, William threw his carving up into the air. It landed with a splash, in amongst the waterlily pads, settling nicely upright.

‘I put a stone in a hole in the base,’ he told her, his voice competing with the applause, ‘to weight it down so it swims upright. That will help when the kiddies do Hook-a-Duck tomorrow.’ Then he raised his voice. ‘Now, let’s ask for the blessing from our special guest.’

Maisie replied in a loud voice: ‘I hope I don’t get it wrong.’

‘Don’t worry,’ called out Zachary. ‘We’ll be saying it along with you.’

Maisie noticed Micah standing with Sara and Rayan over by the willow tree. They didn’t look entirely happy. She wondered why Bill had slipped away.

‘All right then,’ she said, speaking slowly, remembering Lady Catherine’s instruction not to ‘gabble’. The villagers joined in with her rhythm.

‘Small plants, leaves and buds,

Growing in the soil;

Small creatures, tall creatures,

Medium ones and all;

And you, fiery sun,

Source of light and warmth;

Bless us every one with your abundance.’

The ragged and joyful chorus of villagers added an almighty cheer, then William announced Adam’s plan for a treasure hunt through the chestnut woods after Beating the Bounds.

‘For those still with the puff and whose knees can take it,’ he said with a comic groan. ‘It’s been organised by young Adam and we’re very grateful for the extra enjoyment. There’s a good prize, so he tells me, but it will be late and after dark. On the other hand, he says he’s done something clever and . . . Well, I don’t know what the clever thing is, so we’ll just have to wait and see. Meantime, shall we go?’

Everyone called out in agreement and they trooped off for their circuit of the village, the grown-ups putting acorns and sticks of withy in the little ones’ hands, lighting the candles in jam jars for those old enough to be trusted with them.

As the green emptied of its picturesque crowd, carrying their rudimentary lanterns, Maisie was at last able to take off her long robe because, once the blessing had been spoken, it was tradition that the role of the ‘special guest’, the Green Man figure, was complete. Zoe and Archie came to speak to her, saying they wouldn’t stay on.

‘Good. Someone should look in on Phyl. Will you do that?’

‘Of course,’ said Zoe.

Twenty peaceful minutes went by with Maisie nibbling a few choice leftovers as the sky began properly to darken. Now and then, she caught a glimpse of the illuminated procession in the distance, between the buildings and beyond the hedges, the candles more and more distinct as night fell and the air became chilled by the falling dew.

She pushed her chair back, thinking about Sara Ramsi and her own promise to speak to Lady Catherine about the threat of eviction. That would have to wait. She imagined Dilys tending to her autocratic mistress – assuming the companion had been summoned from her second-class status in the kitchen wing of Baffins.

Then, to her surprise, she caught sight of the distant figure of Lady Catherine, moving surprisingly quickly in her gaberdine raincoat and her leather driving cap, trotting across her parched lawn and out through a gap in the low hedge. Maisie had the unkind thought that she might be coming down specifically to disrupt the treasure hunt, to spite Adam Farr.

But why would she have a grudge against poor Adam? He’s a kind of unhappy innocent, isn’t he?

Twenty-Five

At that same moment, Adam Farr had a much better – magnified – view of the progress of the elderly woman as she descended the chalk lane. But still not a very good view because the sky behind her was dark, the setting sun having descended into a bank of thick cloud over towards Portsmouth.

He took his eye from his telescope, calling down to his uncle from the roof of the slaughterhouse: ‘If that thunderstorm comes in, it’ll spoil everything.’

‘No, Nephew, she won’t come over until after midnight. Your idea’s a good one, still.’

Adam swung his telescope round and picked out the moon, looking big and bright and yellow through the powerful lens.

‘I hope so, or no one will find the treasure under the trees.’ He took his eye away again and pulled a tarpaulin into position, protecting his telescope, securing it with four bricks. ‘But rain’s coming.’

‘Not for an hour or two, Nephew,’ said Harold, with the certainty of a man who had spent most of his life out of doors. ‘I don’t know about your prize, though. Couldn’t it have been a bit of paper with the name writ upon it, instead of the actual thing?’

‘It’s got to be the thing itself,’ said Adam, shinning down the ladder, ‘or it’s not treasure.’ Once he was on the ground, he sniffed the air and asked again: ‘No rain for a bit, you say, Uncle?’

‘There’ll be plenty of time for Sergeant Dodd to bring everyone who’s going to try, up to the fringe of the trees. By the time they’re underneath, even if there are a few drops, they won’t feel them. The canopy’s that thick it’ll be good as a roof.’

‘That’s true.’

‘But someone’ll get frit – that’s all I’m saying. You know you think different from normal people, Nephew?’

Adam took no offence at the idea that he was not ‘normal’, but he complained all the same. ‘Can’t I have it my own way, this time?’

‘Yes, all right, calm down.’

‘Just for once?’

‘I said you could, didn’t I?’

In uneasy silence, they exited the yard and walked along between the looming hazel hedges to the entrance to the chestnut wood. Adam had found a bit of old plywood and painted ‘Tresure Hunt’ on it using the black waterproofing tar he and Harold had been applying to the external timbers of the turkey barn. Neither of them noticed the spelling mistake.

‘Is that blood still on your hand?’ asked Harold.

Without a word, Adam went and wiped his fingers on the dry grass of the verge.

Twenty-Six

Beating the Bounds ended at the front door of the chapel and Maisie picked her way carefully through the darkening churchyard to meet the procession. She discovered that the majority of the residents of West Bitling and even Bitling village proper had had enough of the long day of joyful celebration.

All the parents with children needed to get them home and calm them down, if they were to have any chance of putting them to bed before midnight. Quite a few had already peeled off from the main procession after pushing their acorns and willow sticks into the ground on the novel part of the circuit on the West Bitling side of the Framlington road. The ‘outsiders’ from Framlington and Harden and Bunting and elsewhere all had a few miles to travel by car, by bike or on foot, so they all left, too. Several even regretted departing so late, telling those who would listen that they didn’t like ‘being out and about after dark’. Others said they had dogs to walk before they would be allowed to sleep themselves.

Edith Dodd said, with a winsome smile: ‘You can all see very well how much I need my beauty sleep.’

Vaughan Quinn apologised to William: ‘I know you want as many as possible but I was up at the crack of dawn. Sorry, boss.’

Zachary Sawbridge agreed: ‘I’ll only have four hours’ sleep as it is if I’m to wake with the sun – which I will.’

Arthur Tate slipped away without a word, as did Jill Finch, though Fiona Grieve stayed with two friends Maisie hadn’t met. Maisie thought it was a shame that even some of the ‘true’ Bitlingers declined the opportunity to take part in the treasure hunt.

All these departures made Maisie uneasy. She had an odd feeling that she needed to keep them all ‘under observation’, as Jack would say, in order to prevent something bad happening. Also, the remainder comprised an odd and potentially antagonistic group.

William led them all through the kissing gate and across the field towards the turkey barn where Maisie put the green robe away in the Land Rover. Then she ran quickly after them, along the lane, able to follow easily because William was using his regulation constabulary torch to illuminate the way.

And they all know where they’re going and the moon is high and full.

She walked slowly at the back of the group with Old Mr Littlegreen and his two daughters, Linda and Muriel, who mentioned they weren’t surprised that their brother,
Timothy, was not with them.

‘He’s a homebody, in the end,’ said Muriel.

‘His wife loves to keep him close to hand,’ said Linda.

Micah, Sara and Rayan were just ahead, talking too quietly for Maisie to make out every word, but she understood that they had decided that Rayan would speak to William on the couple’s behalf. In front of them were Fiona and her two friends from West Bitling that Maisie didn’t know. Ahead of them, Bill walked stolidly beside his father, his shoulders hunched, very much turned in on himself.

They reached the entrance to the chestnut wood and Maisie smiled indulgently to see Adam’s misspelled sign. William turned off his torch and Maisie was struck by how very dark and eerie it seemed on the path under the trees, but she could see a faint patch of white, almost glowing, on the ground between the trunks.

‘Is that all?’ asked Adam, clearly disappointed.

‘This is us,’ said William. ‘Let’s get everyone in and find this treasure. Tell us what we have to do.’

Adam began explaining but, between his unhappiness that so few people had come and his own personality and manner, it wasn’t clear what was expected. Because she knew from having met him in the dark the previous evening, Maisie offered to elaborate.

‘Go on, then,’ he said with a mixture of resentment and relief.

‘Adam has done something very clever,’ Maisie told them. ‘He’s been through the wood with his rake, scraping away the leaf litter and the dry dirt here and there to reveal the chalk beneath. Even though it’s dark night beneath the trees, the moonlight through the leaves will show you the way if you follow those patches of white underfoot.’

‘The closer you get, the better the chalk arrows,’ said Adam. ‘But you’d better be quick because Peahorn’s already gone in.’

‘Her ladyship’s in those trees looking for the treasure?’ asked William.

‘That doesn’t sound like Catherine,’ said Old Mr Littlegreen.

‘She doesn’t need treasure,’ said Linda.

‘She came rushing down and dashed in with hardly a word for the likes of me and Uncle.’

‘That’s just her way,’ said Harold.

‘Anyway,’ said Adam, ‘if you’re all set, there’s several ways in and the paths go separate and wind round about like a proper maze. Uncle will take some of you along to the other gaps and you should spread out. The treasure isn’t easy to find, mind.’

‘I’ll wait here,’ said William. ‘My old knees can’t take it.’

‘It’s flat, Sergeant,’ said Adam, peevishly. ‘I did that on purpose. You’ll be all right.’

‘Fair enough,’ said William, disappearing wearily beneath the trees. Maisie thought it was kind of him to concede the point. ‘Good hunting, all,’ he called.

Harold led Micah, Rayan and Sara plus the Littlegreens up the road and they entered the woods through two different gaps. Fiona and her two friends skirted the blackthorns and disappeared into the darkness. Adam made Maisie wait for a count of twenty, then she followed, walking alongside Bill. Even though she tried to exchange a few pleasantries, he was as taciturn as on their previous meeting, which she didn’t think was much fun.

‘I’ll take this path,’ she said, branching off. ‘Good luck.’

Twenty-Seven

At that same moment, Timothy Littlegreen was in his Austin Eleven-Hundred, on his way back to Havant, thinking about how, as a younger man, he’d dreamt of following his dad into the timber business, working with his hands at something meaningful, out in the open air, a part of nature. But he had done well at school and the careers officer had told him he’d find his niche at IBM and . . .

I found a nice, boring, safe niche. Couldn’t I change, though?

Timothy had arrived late to help with the dinner on the green because he’d been looking once more through his dad’s accounts, in the little shed office. Then he’d gone outside, smelling the delicious scents of sap and sawdust on the dew-damp air, stumbling on a few offcuts of low-quality ‘lump wood’, crescents of unseasoned timber from the outside of the trunks, with bark and moss still attached.

Perhaps I could find time to put the lump wood aside for those who can’t afford better. If they buy it in summer and show a bit of patience, it’ll be dry by the time they need it at Christmas.

Then, with a quiet curse, he circumnavigated a roundabout and headed back towards Bitling, knowing he was doing the wrong thing, promising himself that he would control his temper, aware that this was not something he had ever been good at.

The sawmill’s more or less bankrupt, so I can’t go back and it’s all the fault of that grasping old crone . . .

*

Arthur Tate was walking alone round the green in West Bitling, thinking about the scriptures, wondering how to reconcile a just but vengeful Old Testament deity – ‘an eye for an eye’ and so forth – with the more modern New Testament idea of infinite charity.

Montague Meek had ‘played him for a fool’, as they said in the gangster films at the Granada cinema. But Meek hadn’t been alone. Somehow Lady Catherine had been involved, though Arthur couldn’t work out how.

For two pins I’d go up there and ask her. If I’m to be chucked out, what have I got to lose?

*

Under the chestnut trees, Micah and Sara and Rayan
weren’t really paying attention to the treasure hunt. Rayan was troubled, admitting that – for the first time in his life – he was finding it hard to pray, telling Micah and his sister: ‘The voice of an unquiet soul cannot reach heaven.’

‘I feel for you,’ said Micah. ‘Dad always says prayer is his oaken staff and I agree with him.’

‘Something has to be done,’ said Sara, tentatively. ‘It can’t be right that one woman can cause so much unhappiness.’

‘And to think she’s in here somewhere, fossicking for treasure she doesn’t need,’ said Micah, disgusted.

‘Yes,’ said Rayan, ‘something must be done.’

*

In her mean and poorly maintained cottage, Ada Strickland was stroking her restless tabby, happy to hear its purrs, hoping it would continue to accept her caresses and remain in her lap, her one comfort in a lonely life.

And Lady Catherine tried to take my puss from me, not once but twice. I’d teach her a lesson if I ever got the chance.

She fell to thinking about her disreputable brother in his lonely prison cell.

And that’s thanks to Miss busybody Maisie Cooper. She should watch out what might happen to her one dark night, too.

*

Vaughan Quinn was in his shop, going from shelf to shelf with a damp cloth, removing every last speck of dust from the items that he kept perennially on sale for a non-existent public, unaware that he was anxiously grinding his teeth.

Vaughan, my boy, you’ve got to get out from under the thumb of that witch on the hill.

*

A little outside the village, in a bedroom with low, dark beams in his flint-and-brick farmhouse, Zachary Sawbridge was yawning and tossing and turning in his lonely bed, feeling that – though he put a brave face on things – he would be nothing if his farm failed, no kind of a man, an utter waste of space.

Zachary sat up and dragged his strong legs out from under the covers. He went to the window, gazing up to the one illuminated window of Baffins.

Couldn’t I make her see sense? She can’t really want the village going to rack and ruin, can she?

Twenty-Eight

Walking quickly to put some distance between herself and Bill, Maisie was soon quite alone, away from everyone else under the thick canopy. Beneath her feet, though, as Adam had promised, rather miraculously, the chalky soil did, every ten or twelve paces, glow white in the gloom. Some of the patches were just blobs but others Adam had taken more care over and they were shaped like arrows.

At a junction between two paths, Maisie found one that indicated the direction towards the far side of Baffins Hill. She followed it and the sounds of the other searchers – crunching footsteps, whispers and, from Fiona Grieve and Muriel Littlegreen, excited voices – faded in several directions, becoming more distant.

The path branched again and she found a patch of chalk that was less distinct, as if someone had passed that way and tried to cover it up by scuffing it with their feet. Her sense of direction told her she had come round in a semi-circle and was now not far from the lane below Baffins Hill, close to the sawmill. She heard footsteps ahead and found another patch of chalk, a very clear arrow, cut quite deep. Then she realised there was someone moving along behind her, a rather dragging tread that she found disturbing and creepy.

Maisie followed the arrow and it took her to another junction of pathways. She thought she could just see the roof of the turkey barn through a fortuitous gap in the branches and realised that Adam had cleverly placed his treasure near the main entrance to the woods, so the victor would be close at hand, but had led everyone far in before bringing them back almost to the start.

Then, up ahead, she heard a scream in a quavering soprano that made her remember that, somewhere in these woods, Adam had said, Lady Catherine was also searching for the treasure.

After a moment’s pause, she ran towards the sound, remembering Jack castigating her for doing just that in the past, instead of holding back or, better still – he would have told her – running in the opposite direction, away from danger.

Although the bright chalk underfoot made moving at walking pace quite safe, running was a different matter. She snagged the skirt of her dress on some thorns and was pulled back. The heavy tread behind her had accelerated, too, and was coming closer. She wanted to pull away, but it wasn’t safe in the gloom. Then, beneath her feet, she discovered that the entire path had been cleared, a milky-white glow in the moonlight that filtered in more strongly because they were not far from the edge of the trees.

She heard another scream and saw the unmistakable silhouette of Lady Catherine’s gaberdine raincoat and leather cap, from which grey hair stuck out in all directions, scuttling away, pushing through the last few trunks with a tearing sound as her clothes caught on the undergrowth and away up the lane.

Just then, puffing like a grampus, William Dodd arrived, fumbling for his regulation torch. But Maisie had already seen what had caused the screams.

Pinned up with nails against the trunk of an enormous horse chestnut tree was a turkey, looking as though it had been crucified, its wings drawn out wide and its head lolling on its breast, dark lines of blood running down the white feathers of its breast, all of it sort of blurred by a faint cloud of buzzing insects.

‘Are you all right there, Miss Cooper,’ said William, foolishly shining his torchlight in her face.

‘Yes, of course.’

She put out a hand to move the beam away and he refocused it on the crucified turkey.

‘He’s a foolish lad,’ said William with a sigh, ‘but, if you’d known him from a mite as I have, you’d believe this was meant well. He doesn’t see things as others do.’

‘No,’ agreed Maisie. ‘That’s absolutely clear. Poor Adam.’

Twenty-Nine

Not everyone accepted the disastrous end of the treasure hunt with the same good grace as William and Maisie. Bill, in particular, expressed himself cruelly, Maisie thought. She was pleased to see Harold stand up for his nephew.

‘It takes all sorts, Bill, and who’s to say your sort is the best sort when all’s said and done?’

Bill took issue with this, wanting to know ‘who would do such a thing to a poor bird’.

‘Don’t you do the same every day, butcher?’ asked Adam, quite reasonably, Maisie thought. But then he inflamed things by adding: ‘Though not for long if people don’t go in your shop no more.’

Bill tried to take hold of Adam but Micah prevented him, whispering in a persuasive, calm tone that had an undertone of steel: ‘You and me better have a chat, Brother. Let’s sort this out once and for all.’

For a second, Maisie thought Micah was suggesting that they climb Baffins Hill together and . . .

No, that’s ridiculous.

A breeze had got up, blowing in from the south-west, bringing with it a bank of cloud that made the air heavy and oppressive. Eventually, the unhappy party broke up with everyone going to their respective homes. Maisie accompanied Harold and Adam to the turkey barn because that was where she was parked. She tried to engage the young man in conversation.

‘It was a good idea and kind of you to take so much trouble.’

‘Right.’

‘It really was magical under the trees, being able to find one’s way despite the darkness.’

Adam remained monosyllabic and, back in the yard, he went directly to a ladder that led up onto the roof of the slaughterhouse.

‘What’s he doing?’ Maisie asked Harold.

‘He’s got his old telescope what he bought from the bric-a-brac at the jumble sale. He likes it up there, looking at the sky . . .’ Harold stopped for a second, then added, as if sharing a shameful secret but one that shouldn’t be misconstrued: ‘And the people. He means no harm by it.’

‘Would it help if I talked to him some more?’

‘Happen it might. You’ve got a calm way with you.’

Wondering if this was, indeed, the right thing to do, Maisie climbed up behind Adam, just in time to see him folding a tarpaulin that she supposed protected the telescope from the weather. She thought she felt a couple of fine drops of rain on her face, but wasn’t sure if it might not have been that evening’s dew flicked off the waterproof fabric.

‘I’m just going to check up on her,’ said Adam, in a sullen tone.

‘On whom?’

‘She what screamed,’ said Adam. ‘I didn’t mean for no one to be frightened. I tried to make it nice for everyone. Not many came, anyway.’

‘It was a very good idea. Next year, you could do it again but have a different thing as a prize.’

‘That’s what Uncle said,’ Adam admitted. ‘I didn’t believe him. I should have known . . .’ He sighed and put his eye to his telescope. After a moment or two, he asked her: ‘Do you want to see the moon?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Maisie. ‘I would like that very much.’

He angled the tube of the telescope to the east and adjusted the focus, saying: ‘She looks like a great yellow biscuit.’

He stepped aside so that Maisie could see and she agreed, enthusiastically: ‘A delicious yellow biscuit – you’re right. People say it looks like cheese and that there’s a face but . . . Oh, she’s gone.’

‘Clouds come across,’ said Adam.

Maisie stepped away, asking: ‘What did you mean by “check up on her”?’

‘Let me get in there,’ he said, taking her place and angling the telescope towards the black outline of Baffins on top of its lonely hill above the village. Again, he fiddled with the focus then said: ‘There she is, then. It’s the top-left window.’

He invited Maisie to take his place. Through the impressive magnification, she could see a figure, as Adam said, in the top-left window, profiled as a silhouette against the light behind. Maisie wondered why on earth Lady Catherine had taken it into her head to come down and take part in the treasure hunt. Then, in a blur of movement, the figure drew the curtains across the glass and, a few seconds later, put out the light.

‘Has she gone?’ said Adam.

‘Yes,’ said Maisie, stifling a yawn. ‘What a long day.’

The rain began properly to fall. Maisie hurried down the ladder, with Harold at the foot, encouraging her to take her time because ‘there’ve been enough upsets’. She bid them both goodnight and trotted over to the Land Rover, getting in just as the rain became a torrent, cascading down the windscreen.

Maisie made an efficient three-point turn and pulled out across the cattle grid into the deep lane. At the bottom, turning right onto the Framlington road, she saw the first flash of lightning and, simultaneously, heard the first crack of thunder. Unbidden, a new idea came into her mind.

I’m right in the heart of the storm.

Thirty

Adam Farr climbed inside the frail caravan and pulled the thin door closed behind him. His uncle was slumped wearily on the bench seat, tipped over on his side, an arm folded under his head for a pillow.

‘Come on, let’s get the bed out,’ Adam said, shaking him roughly by the shoulder.

‘All right, I’m not stopping,’ said Harold, in distress. Then he came to his senses. ‘Oh, Adam, I dreamt you were that policeman come to move me along again. What did you say?’

‘I’m getting the bed out. Shift yourself.’

The caravan was small, only just big enough for a rudimentary kitchen and a double bed formed by pulling the cupboards together to make a base and unrolling a thin, feather-packed mattress that smelt of mildew. By the time it was ready, with the candlewick counterpane pulled across it, Harold had removed his disreputable brown suit and was standing in a narrow corner of the awkward space in his vest and underpants.

‘Get in, then,’ Adam told him.

‘I’ve not had a wash.’

‘You rinsed off at the outside tap, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Me too and that’ll have to do,’ said Adam.

Harold did as he was told, lying on his back with one of the bench seat cushions as a pillow, the counterpane up to his chin. Adam undressed and pulled on some striped jumble-sale pyjamas, as the rain drummed increasingly heavily on the roof. He, too, got under the covers, alongside his uncle, and turned away.

‘Goodnight, he said.

‘Goodnight, Adam. I’m sorry we got chucked out. I wish I—’

‘Don’t go on about all that again,’ said Adam.

‘I ought to have done something, spoke up.’

‘It wasn’t your fault.’

There was a flash of lightning, easily visible through the ill-fitting curtains on the small square windows. They both sat up, counting the seconds, with the torrent of rain very loud indeed on the lightweight metal skin of the caravan.

‘Three miles away,’ Adam told his uncle.

‘Moving away over past Baffins,’ said Harold.

They sat in silence, listening to the rain, then Adam said: ‘One of these days, someone’ll have to squeeze that old besom like I was going to squeeze ickle robin.’

V – BLACKTHORN

Signifying betrayal and aggression, but also protection

Thirty-One

The following morning Maisie woke to find that the storm had blown itself out overnight, leaving the air fresh and cool. And it was a great relief to discover that Phyl was very much better and keen to attend chapel in Bitling.

‘Not because I’m giving thanks for my recovery, but because I know it will bring pleasure to William Dodd. Before that, we’ll see the Morris side do their thing.’

‘You mustn’t overdo it,’ Maisie cautioned.

‘I won’t. Perhaps we’ll have dinner at the Dancing Hare in Bunting. I’ve not been in for a week. Ernie Summers will be wondering what’s become of me or if I’m sulking over something.’ Maisie didn’t think the recently teetotal landlord was likely to have assumed that. Phyl went on: ‘He and I can have a good chat about racing. I fancy Pat Eddery on Erimo Hawk for the Goodwood Cup.’

‘You seem absolutely full of beans.’

To disprove this, Phyl launched into a long peal of wet productive coughing. Maisie gave her a glass of water. When it was over, Phyl drank and said: ‘That’s so much better.’

‘What time is chapel in Bitling?’ Maisie asked.

‘In the afternoon. William always hopes he’ll get a good crowd because everyone’s happy with their neighbours after the previous day’s festivities.’

‘Ah, yes, well,’ said Maisie, ‘that may not be entirely the case, this year.’ Phyl raised an eyebrow and she hurried to add: ‘Nothing to do with me as special guest. I was just an innocent bystander.’

Maisie made breakfast – poached eggs on toast for Phyl and tinned sardines on toast for her, a habit she had picked up from Adélaïde Amour during her stint at Chichester Festival Theatre. Meanwhile, she told Phyl about everything that had happened over several days, not quite able to get it all in strict chronological order, but beginning with her first conversation with the Dodds where she had learned about William’s history with Jack and the older man’s status as a conscientious objector in World War Two.

‘You did mention that before but I wasn’t really in a state to hear it,’ said Phyl. ‘What next?’

Maisie went on to explain about Montague Meek’s demise and what she thought were the suspicious circumstances around it. Phyl didn’t see anything strange, remarking: ‘He probably had something he was ashamed of and did himself in, in order not to have to face the music.’

‘You don’t seem much concerned for your fellow man and his possible desperation?’

‘Montague Meek isn’t – wasn’t – a nice man. You know about the simmering scandal at the cathedral?’

‘No, I don’t. But Maurice told me that can have nothing to do with Bitling.’

‘I expect he’s right. But let me tell you another story.’ Phyl put aside her empty plate. ‘Bill Dodd took over Sparkes butcher’s shop and had to incur a deal of debt to buy the goodwill and the customer list and so on, even after William and Edith staked him. He had a bit of a cashflow crisis and, much to his and his dad’s dismay, he sold the lovely historic ceramic panels from the frontage to an antiquarian to make ends meet. Can you guess who?’

‘Montague Meek.’

‘Correct. Then there was a robbery from the auction rooms for which another of your protagonists was eventually sent down.’

Maisie frowned then said: ‘Oh, Arthur Tate.’

‘Precisely. Among other valuable items that were never recovered, the ceramic panels went missing for a time. Between you, me and the gatepost, I think Monty organised the whole thing.’

‘Why would he have done that?’

‘In order to sell the valuables on the quiet himself without having to declare to the tax man, as well as pocketing the insurance money for the loss.’

‘And Arthur Tate?’

‘Arthur doesn’t necessarily know all the ins and outs, how he was played. Anyway, it’s only my suspicion, not fact.’ Phyl shrugged. ‘People love money but, of course, it’s easy for me to look down my nose at them. I have money, don’t I? Go on. What did you do next?’

‘I’m out of sequence now but can I just tell you what Arthur said? I memorised it, specially.’

‘Go on.’

‘I agree, he said: “Tell her I’m grateful, that I’ll do my best. I was up until all hours finally getting things shipshape. It was in a terrible state and now, at last, it’s clean and tidy. She can send someone any time she likes. I won’t hold it against her.” Poor man, he was all somehow.’

‘I agree, he is a poor man.’

‘But is he trustworthy? You don’t think he’ll let you down?’

‘We’ll find out, won’t we – but he deserves a second chance.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Maisie. ‘By the way, I’ve seen those ceramic panels you were talking about. How were they recovered? They really are lovely.’

‘They were found in Arthur’s possession and I think Montague Meek persuaded Arthur to “take the rap”, as they say in the gangster movies, for trying to sell them on as stolen goods. Arthur agreed for fear of being landed with a much longer sentence for the whole original robbery. How on earth have you seen them, though?’

‘They’ve recently been installed outside Micah’s shop in West Bitling.’

‘Good heavens. That I did not know,’ said Phyl, ponderously, shaking her head. ‘That must be a bitter pill for Bill to swallow.’

‘And that,’ said Maisie, putting two and two together, ‘is a pretty good reason for Bill and Micah to be at each other’s throats.’ She stopped and rephrased the thought. ‘No, Bill is at his brother’s throat but I think Micah wants to pour oil on the troubled waters. Oh, speaking of families . . .’

Maisie went on to describe studying the Peahorn lineage in the reference section of Chichester Library and finding nothing of any value.

‘You weren’t interested in the brother?’

‘There was so little about him.’

‘He didn’t want the prestige and the formality, so he changed his name and took a different path.’

Maisie had a flash of revelation, remembering seeing the pub sign with its little green peas, tipping out of a horn of plenty, a cornucopia.

‘Old Mr Littlegreen,’ she said in a tone of triumph. ‘I knew there was another connection. He always calls her Catherine, not “her ladyship” or anything like that. He’s her brother. And he took the name Littlegreen because that was a sort of memory of who he had been, like the little green peas. Who else knows about this?’

‘Maurice Ryan, but it’s a very solemn professional secret.’

‘Of course. I was talking to him about Lady Catherine in his office and he said to me: “The title can pass in the female line.” I thought at the time that he meant something extra by it but couldn’t allow himself to explain out loud. He was putting me on the track of the fact that Old Mr Littlegreen must have renounced the title in her favour. How do you know all about it?’

‘Village life. And I’m very old. And it was Augustus – Old Mr Littlegreen, as you call him – who sold me that bit of land for the turkey barn.’

‘When was this?’

‘Oh, aeons ago, before Augustus renounced, not long after my husband left me.’ Maisie knew the complicated story of Phyl’s brief marriage to a member of the Free French Forces during and after World War Two. Phyl continued: ‘I had an idea that I might sink another borehole to help the farmers in the Bitling valley. It’s very prone to drought and hard to scrape a living, but Catherine told me that, if I did, she wouldn’t allow the water to cross her land so there was no point.’

‘Why is she such a monster?’ asked Maisie.

‘Some people just are,’ said Phyl. ‘Looking for reasons is a waste of time and energy. Would you make me some coffee to take away the taste of the linctus? It’s time for another glug.’

Maisie put the kettle on and ran up to find the bottle of medicine in Phyl’s bedroom. On the way back down, she was overtaken by Zoe on the stairs who told her Archie was taking her in to work, then he would come back and have ‘lunch and skittles’ with his brother, Bert, in Framlington.

‘So, don’t worry about us,’ she said with a smile. ‘We’re gone.’

Zoe slammed the front door behind her and Maisie returned to the kitchen. Phyl drank a measure of linctus from the neck of the bottle and tapped her fingers impatiently – just in fun – for her Maxwell House instant coffee. Maisie handed it over and resumed her narrative with the odd drama at the pond with Ada Strickland and her tabby, marvelling at the family connection to the murder at Church Lodge. Phyl shrugged and told her such a thing was to be expected, if Maisie was ‘determined to hang around the villages’.

Maisie left out meeting Vaughan Quinn and his precipitate departure from lunch at the Dodd house, but gave Phyl all the detail she could recall from the formal introduction to Lady Catherine up at Baffins. Phyl seemed to find all that dull, remarking: ‘That’s what she’s like. I don’t know why Dilys Prime puts up with it.’

‘Oh, did you know Harold Farr keeps her gardens lovely and yet she evicted him all the same?’ Maisie frowned. ‘Oh, of course you did, because you found him and Adam that caravan.’

She went on to describe Old Mr Littlegreen and his fall, unable to leave out the assistance Vaughan had provided, but skipping over the detail. They discussed the Littlegreen family once more, the three mismatched children who, in fact, made a set, because of their balanced attitudes to life.

‘Timothy, despite appearances, has a fierce temper on him,’ said Phyl. ‘He got up to no end of mischief at school and elsewhere.’

‘But he seems so sober and self-contained, now.’

‘Still waters run deep,’ said Phyl.

Maisie remembered what she had learned at the meeting in the chapel. Had that been a kind of coded appeal to Lady Catherine, or were the Littlegreen siblings unaware of the family connection?

‘And Timothy and his sisters don’t know that they are, in fact, Peahorns?’

‘It sounds unlikely that the secret could have been kept, but Catherine and her brother were still young when he left Baffins to set up the business at the sawmill. Is this giving you ideas? Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you.’

‘What happened to his wife?’

‘She was a lovely woman. Local, too, but she died in her thirties.’

‘Suspicious circumstances?’ Maisie asked lightly.

‘Some horrible cancer,’ said Phyl, shaking her head. ‘Go on.’

Maisie skipped forward to the next day and the chance meeting with Fred Nairn at the auctioneer’s premises, concluding with a detail that seemed very important, though she didn’t quite perceive how.

‘Lady Catherine sent him an object for valuing, but we don’t know what it was.’

Because they’d already spent some time talking about Montague Meek, Phyl encouraged Maisie to move on. She narrated her conversations with Arthur Tate and Sara Ramsi in West Bitling, revisiting Arthur’s panicked assumption that Maisie was checking up on him. Then she told Phyl about Sara’s distress.

‘Of course. She could lose everything for a second time. How did her brother seem?’

‘I barely spoke to him,’ said Maisie. ‘What’s your impression?’

‘Like Timothy, still waters run deep. I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of him.’

Maisie briefly digressed on Zoe wanting to learn French and how cleverly and assiduously the young woman had put her plan into action, then Maisie admitted, rather shamefaced: ‘Then I turned my attention to creating a list of . . .’

She stopped and Phyl raised her eyebrows: ‘Go on?’

‘I’ll fetch it. You’ll see. It’s a mess, with brackets and strange punctuation and disconnected thoughts and . . .’ She gave a self-deprecating smile. ‘I’d never show it to Jack, not without having time to tidy it up. And, when I woke up this morning at my usual time, early for swimming, but the baths are closed on Sunday, I did a sort of calendar, too.’

Yet again, she ran up and down the impressive stairs of Bunting Manor, then smoothed out the crumpled sheet of character descriptions.

William Dodd, unhappy but hiding it out of habit

Edith Dodd – salt of the earth; let me in on why William is so very devoted to Jack (objector); worried for her husband?

Harold Farr – another beneficiary of Phyl’s generosity like me (!), working alongside a younger man (Adam something) who snapped at him

Vaughan Quinn – a nice man, reminds me of Jack

Ada Strickland – extraordinary coincidence; village life, though, maybe I should have expected it . . .

Bill Dodd – very down in the mouth and not at all friendly

Micah Dodd – looks the spit of unhappy Bill; something going on there? (threat to shop and, therefore, livelihood AND marriage)

Arthur Tate (ditto; ex-offender – connection to Baffins?)

Rayan and Sara Ramsi (ditto) plus Sara and Micah’s marriage

‘Old Mr’ Littlegreen (rent, again, but there is an extra connection, there?); his daughters Linda and Muriel?

Dilys Prime (mercilessly browbeaten)

Adam Farr (and Harold – eviction)

Zachary Sawbridge and his colleagues (rent etc.)

Jill Finch (proponent of euthanasia for the unproductive elderly)

Fiona Grieve (shares Jill’s ideas? Unknown)

‘I see what you mean,’ said Phyl. ‘That is all very haphazard. And Timothy Littlegreen isn’t even on the list. Tell me more about Micah and Sara. People are a mystery, endlessly surprising, aren’t they? I’d have thought he’d choose a local woman, village and chapel and so on.’

Maisie told her: ‘I’ve thought about that, but he did have that extended time in the air force, “seeing the world”, like they say in the recruitment adverts.’

‘True.’ Phyl frowned, making a connection Maisie hadn’t quite voiced aloud. ‘Are you thinking someone’s going to do away with Catherine?’

Maisie felt foolish, but she repeated the precise words that had come into her own head when she had asked herself the same question.

‘If there is to be a murder, Lady Catherine is the obvious victim.’

Maisie showed Phyl a second sheet of headed Bunting Manor notepaper – her ‘calendar’.

‘I’ve written a sort of blow-by-blow account of my week. I’m not sure why. I think I’ve become infected by Jack’s desire for method and systematic thinking.’ She put the page on the table between them. ‘I’m not sure it’s worth anything.’

The list included all the events and conversations they had just discussed. Phyl read it with a distracted air, then she surprised Maisie with the detail she picked out: ‘Why did you mention Florence Wingard’s unfinished story about her daughter Pamela?’

‘It just came back to me,’ said Maisie. ‘I was wondering if Lady Catherine could have had a secret child in similar circumstances, you know, where the husband died.’

‘It’s worth considering.’ Phyl frowned. ‘Who would be the right age?’

‘Well, assuming Lady Catherine is eighty, for example, someone around fifty or sixty, perhaps?’ She had a sudden revelation. ‘What about Muriel Littlegreen?’

‘No,’ said Phyl, categorically.

‘You’re sure? You can’t have been that old yourself.’

Phyl shook her head: ‘I knew the family, remember.’

Maisie abandoned the idea, giving the gist of her chats in the Silver Garter.

‘Not much in that,’ was Phyl’s judgement.

‘Except for Jill Finch’s rather rabid euthanasia ideas. I wish Linda Littlegreen hadn’t put a lid on that. I might have found out if Fiona Grieve was of the same mind. Oh, and while I was eavesdropping, your borehole idea actually came up between Zachary Sawbridge and his friends.’

‘Did it?’

‘You see what I mean by “obvious victim”? With Lady Catherine out of the way, so much in so many people’s lives would become easier,’ said Maisie. ‘Can’t you just buy Bunting village and be done with it? Lady Catherine can stay in Baffins with her fusspot companion, living the high life on the proceeds.’

‘You overestimate my wealth, Maisie,’ said Phyl, ‘and the gentry don’t sell. That’s what keeps them on top of the pile.’

Phyl was very interested in Maisie’s chance meeting with Adam in the ‘creepy, dark woods’ that gave her a foretaste of the following evening’s disastrous treasure hunt. Then Maisie gave Phyl a blow-by-blow account of Saturday’s festivities, amusing Phyl enormously with her comic appreciation of Bitling Fair.

‘It was exhausting, though, and I was so relieved to be able to come back for a rest in the afternoon and discover, with more relief, I might add, that you were up and beginning to feel better.’

‘I was dealing with my post.’

Maisie frowned, thinking about the package from Baffins to Montague Meek.

Have I got that the wrong way round or up?

‘So,’ marvelled Phyl, interrupting Maisie’s train of thought, ‘Catherine came lurching down the hill and joined in the treasure hunt?’

‘It surprised me, too. Then, after everyone had tottered off home and I was feeling sorry for Adam that it had all gone pear-shaped, he showed me his telescope up on the roof of the slaughterhouse and . . .’

There was knock at the door. Maisie went to answer it, feeling frustrated.

What was I about to say?

With a vexed expression on her face, she swung open the heavy front door and, to her surprise, found Fred Nairn on the rubber outdoor mat.

‘Ah, Miss Cooper, Maisie.’ Seeing her frown, he apologised. ‘This is a bad time. I ought to have phoned ahead but the lines are—’

‘No, Fred, it’s all right. I was thinking of something else.’

‘Something vital?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure. It’s sort of on the edge of consciousness. Anyway, how can we help you?’

Fred Nairn smiled and Maisie was not deceived by the suspiciously airy tone he gave to his answer.

‘I just thought it might be good idea for me to pop by. Could I come in?’

Thirty-Two

As it happened, the first thing Maisie, Phyl and Fred Nairn discussed was Bitling chapel.

‘I’ve already been to church in Chichester,’ Fred told them. ‘But I’ll attend in Bitling, too. I want to be there for William. I know he finds the fall-off in his congregation painful. By the way, Sam sends his regards.’

Sam Smithers was the chief electrician in charge of lighting at Chichester Festival Theatre and, Maisie knew, he attended the same church as Fred.

‘Please thank him for me and give him my best wishes,’ Maisie told him.

The next thing Fred wanted to talk about was the after-
effects of the overnight storm.

‘There was a lightning strike on the telephone exchange and you’ll find you’ve got no dial tone. And I’m afraid there might be problems on the railways for Jack. There was another strike on the signal box at Havant and trains up from the West Country have been disrupted.’

‘Won’t they put on buses or something?’ asked Maisie, feeling suddenly bereft.

‘They would if it was a working day, but Sundays are tricky.’

‘Of course.’

‘The same Sunday problem applies,’ said Fred, ‘to our investigating of Montague Meek’s unhappy demise. The first result of the post-mortem is inconclusive and, try as I might, I couldn’t get the medical examiner to pronounce one way or another.’

‘Why are you telling me that?’ asked Maisie.

‘Well,’ Fred began, a little uncertainly, ‘I was mulling over our chat the other day and began to think that perhaps there was something going on that hadn’t come clear to the surface and, of course, you won’t be surprised to hear that I got to thinking about Montague Meek’s prior relationship with Arthur Tate and—’

‘You mean,’ snapped Phyl, ‘you started thinking poor Arthur might have done Monty in? Just because a man’s done one thing wrong, doesn’t mean you can pin—’

‘Now, now, Mrs Pascal, I never said anything of the kind. If you ask me, Arthur’s turned a corner. I’m a fair judge of character and – though I wouldn’t stake my pension on it – I’d be surprised if he did anything that risked sending him back to jail.’

‘Why do you say that?’ asked Maisie and was surprised by Phyl’s answer.

‘He had a breakdown inside.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I go in now and then as a visitor. Lots of them don’t know how to read and write. I do my best to help.’

‘Mrs Pascal is very appreciated by the prison service,’ said Fred.

‘Anyway,’ said Phyl typically brusque in reply to any compliment, ‘Arthur was a shaking shadow of a man in prison on the Isle of Wight. I vowed I would try and make things better for him if I could. Hence the sweet shop in West Bitling.’

‘There’s so much I don’t know about you,’ said Maisie with admiration.

‘But you do know I once did something I was ashamed of and I’ve tried to make up for it in other ways all my life.’

Maisie glanced at Fred who was politely averting his eyes, clearly aware that Phyl’s remark was for Maisie’s attention, not for general consumption. She decided to move the conversation on.

‘Tell us what you meant, Fred, about the “prior relationship”.’

‘Everywhere you look, the people seem connected like a tightly pulled knot, you know, impossible to disentangle.’

‘Yes,’ said Maisie. ‘We were just saying the same thing.’

She talked him through her two sheets of Bunting Manor notepaper. Fred was extremely interested in the events of the fair and Maisie’s character notes. He questioned her closely and, depressingly, Maisie found herself less and less certain of her ideas, finally apologising.

‘This is all meaningless, Fred. I think it’s just the coincidence of having been involved in the other investigations but, when you think about it, they were nothing to do with me. I was just a bystander, arriving after Stephen died at Church Lodge. Then, in a way, I turned up too late at Bunting Manor to make a real difference.’

‘That’s not true,’ said Phyl.

‘No,’ said Fred, equally quickly. ‘You were instrumental in—’

Maisie didn’t let him finish.

‘Then, in the murder at the theatre, I just happened to be there. It was no better than a random event. I was useful to you because I saw things first hand where you and Jack weren’t present. What I mean is, I think I’ve somehow got it into my head that I have a special gift for solving mysteries when it isn’t true. It’s just been luck and guesswork with you, the police, doing the real work.’ For a few seconds, neither Fred nor Phyl spoke. The pause went on so long that Maisie felt compelled to speak again herself. ‘I should have offered you a cup of tea, Fred. I’m sorry.’

To her surprise, he leaned in and put a hand on her arm, preventing her from getting up.

‘Maisie Cooper, now you’re worrying me.’

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘There’s a look in your eye that contradicts your words. I can see that you don’t believe what you’re saying. The truth is, you’re convinced that something bad is going to happen and you don’t know how to go about preventing it.’

Maisie pursed her lips.

Is he right?

‘No, Fred, that’s not it.’

‘What is it then?’ he wanted to know.

Maisie took a deep breath, then told him her secret fear. ‘I think somehow it already has.’

Thirty-Three

They drove to Bitling in convoy, Maisie leading the way in the Land Rover, tossing the green robe into the back and Phyl taking it easy in the front, ‘glad to be sat down’. Fred followed in his stately Mark II Jaguar saloon. When they arrived, parking at the turkey shed and walking across the field and through the kissing gate, they discovered that the chapel service of thanksgiving for the fair and for ‘the Lord’s bounty’ and so on would take place at the traditional hour of evensong, at four in the afternoon. It would follow on from a village pilgrimage up to Baffins to deliver a similar – though surely less justified – message of thanks to Lady Catherine.

On the green, there were additional fun activities planned for the children, including the competition to see which of the little ones could hook William Dodd’s Best Duck out of the pond with the long, whippy hazel branches to which Fiona Grieve’s husband had tied loops of string.

Maisie, Phyl and Fred arrived just in time for that, sidling between the many visitors’ cars that lined the two narrow streets of the village. They found themselves in the midst of a horde of West Bitlingers, including a couple of dozen children, and Maisie managed to have a brief talk, in an undertone, with Fiona Grieve.

‘No,’ said the older woman. ‘I don’t agree with everything Jill says. There’s a euthanasia society in Chichester and I’m a member, but our focus is on the relief of distress and pain for those without hope of remission – the right to die. Jill has quite other thoughts.’

‘Do you find that difficult, you know, working so closely together?’

‘Many people have strong views on the subject, for and against,’ said Fiona. ‘Are you aware of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society? We took the word “voluntary” out of our name a few years ago. Quite recently, we had to put it back again because people wilfully misconstrued our position.’

Tentatively, Maisie asked: ‘You don’t think she would do something unilateral?’

‘Jill? What an extraordinary question?’ said Fiona, her usually equable countenance darkening.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Maisie quickly. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking. Excuse me.’

Maisie hurried away, not for the first time telling herself that she needed to be more careful in general conversation. It was one thing to discuss possible past and future murders with Fred Nairn, but making unsubstantiated accusations to people she barely knew was quite another.

Soon, everyone was gathered round the pond and the village’s giant version of fairground hook-a-duck began. Maisie was touched to see that Arthur Tate had half a dozen paper bags of sweets to give to the children who managed to retrieve William Dodd’s carved bird by catching its head in a loop of string that pulled tight if they got the timing just right. The trouble was, the hazel branches were long and whippy and the littlest ones couldn’t manage to keep them under control as they swung out over the water. Two began to cry and it was decided that the children could each have an adult to help. Vaughan Quinn even went so far as to take off his boots and Morris bells and wade into the pond to bring William’s duck closer to the bank.

Once all Arthur Tate’s sweets had been distributed, Maisie realised that there were more dogs present than the previous day. The reason soon became clear, with a kind of procession round the green, once more led by the children, trying to keep their overexcited Jack Russells, border terriers, Labradors and spaniels in line. Vaughan had brought a large bag of Bonios that he distributed – smilingly – to each of the canine companions on the flimsiest of pretexts: longest ears, fluffiest feet, biggest smile, saddest eyes. Eventually every single dog had won something and the villagers moved on in an atmosphere of delighted bonhomie.

From the conversation around her, Maisie learned that people seemed much more interested in the Morris men’s performance than she had expected. In order to perform their immemorial steps in the centre of the green, Maisie smiled to see yesterday’s tabletops lifted off their trestles and laid on the grass in order to provide an improvised dance floor, so that the stamping and scraping of the Morris men’s boots would make an impressive percussion accompaniment to bells on their calves and the swinging and swishing of their sticks.

Observing with her usual acuity, Maisie wasn’t certain but she thought there might have been a thaw in the relations between Bill and Micah Dodd. She felt a shimmer of unease at what might have brought that about.

Have they done something they’ll later regret?

William, on the other hand, still looked worried. She remembered what she had written in her brief character notes.

Unhappy but hiding it out of habit.

At this moment, perhaps, he no longer had the strength of mind or self-possession to conceal his anxiety.

The first dance was delayed while Vaughan Quinn dried his feet and put his bells and boots back on, giving Maisie a chance to add up in her mind who was there. The list included everyone she had discussed with Phyl and Fred, apart from Lady Catherine – who she knew to be a late riser and was, in any case, ill – and Edith Dodd who didn’t seem to take part in any kind of social event that wasn’t enclosed within her own four walls. Harold Farr and his nephew Adam were sort of lurking on the periphery, looking fairly content and laughing with the crowd. Ada Strickland was holding her tabby in her arms.

Ada’s a loose end. She doesn’t seem connected to anyone else in a meaningful way.

Apart from William, they all looked – that is, everyone on Maisie’s list looked – at ease with one another and with life, making Maisie feel foolish, almost certain she had made something out of nothing.

But, if that were true, why did Fred tell me that he was worried, too?

Rayan – in costume as a Morris man – approached
William, whose expression grew extremely serious, as if he was learning some new facts that he found hard to assimilate. Maisie assumed Rayan was speaking up for his sister’s betrothal to Micah and wondered if that was good idea, after all, on a day when William was already busy with the events of the fair.

Sara was taking part in the construction of the dance floor. Zachary Sawbridge – also in costume – was doing likewise, but seemed more interested in an ongoing banter with Linda Littlegreen, whose brother and sister, Timothy and Muriel, watched on with an indulgent eye.

Is that another middle-aged romance? And, if it is, what might that mean?

To Maisie’s surprise, Bill and Micah Dodd came and buttonholed Timothy Littlegreen, drawing him aside and conversing in a worried undertone. Old Mr Littlegreen was perched on one of the pub chairs with his hands closed over the top of an elderly walking stick, with Phyl on his right and Fred Nairn on his left, the inspector unaware of the surreptitious conversation taking place behind him.

To Maisie’s dismay, a little apart, Fiona Grieve seemed to be sharing her intemperate question with Jill Finch who glanced over with a look of embarrassed surprise. Maisie tried to go and speak to them, but was waylaid by Dilys Prime who wanted to know: ‘Might there be any sundry repairs required to the robe because her ladyship will want to know that?’

Maisie assured Lady Catherine’s companion that, as far as she was aware, no damage had befallen the precious garment.

‘I suppose I’ll bring it up later when the villagers all climb up to Baffins to pay their respects.’

‘Oh, er, yes. Of course. That’s true. With her being unwell, perhaps she’ll say not to bother?’

The first dance of the Morris men got underway. Maisie could no longer think of making her apologises to Fiona and – more importantly – to Jill because she was on the outside, at the back of the crowd, and they were close to the action. She wandered away to the largest willow tree and ducked under its fringe of drooping branches so that she could sit for a moment, concealed from view on the old stump. She could hear the pounding of the dancers’ feet, but she felt relieved to be separate from it and from the evidence of all of her inchoate worries and fears.

For some reason, a memory of Adam and his telescope came into her mind – the innocent pleasure he seemed to take in his observation of the big midsummer moon. What had he said?

She looks like a great yellow biscuit.

Maisie took a deep breath and emerged from the bower of the willow, not wanting to be discovered hiding from everyone. She saw Jon Wilkes getting out of his farrier’s van, parked in a tiny gap between two other vehicles behind the chapel. She went to speak to him.

‘I was fretting in my bed for what you told me,’ he told her.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Maisie apologised, unhappy at the idea of another misstep. ‘What did I say?’

‘If there was a valuable sent over from Baffins and I never received it, I want to get to the bottom of that. I’m going to tramp up and see what’s what.’

‘Won’t you drive?’

‘I’d rupture my sump on those flints, that’s where ’tis.’

He gave her a nod and set off up the lane to the foot of Baffins Hill, then embarked on the steep chalk path.

There was a round of applause for the end of the first Morris dance. Maisie joined the crowd as the second got underway. William announced it as Hunting the Hare and it began with a chorus of shouts from the villagers to punctuate the steps. Maisie edged round for a better view, over the heads of some children, and was struck by how much the steps resembled a kind of stylised combat.

Who are they fighting, though? One another? Or is it symbolic, only – defeating the powers of darkness and corruption in an ancient ceremony of rebirth? If so, what is the hare they are hunting? A kind of mad spirit of nature, untameable and wild?

The second dance came to an end and William announced: ‘Now we come to the partner dance.’ To Maisie’s surprise, Vaughan Quinn made a beeline for her.

‘Would you please show me there’s no hard feelings from my importunate advances?’ he asked, winningly. ‘We all have partners for this one.’

‘But I don’t know the steps,’ she protested.

‘I’ll provide the steps. You just have to make a circle with the others. Please, I feel awful.’

Maisie wasn’t sure she liked Vaughan’s excessive apologies any more than his oppressive advances, but she could see no way politely to refuse.

‘All right.’

She allowed him to take her hand and lead her onto the boards, along with Linda Littlegreen who – she wasn’t surprised to see – had been chosen by Zachary Sawbridge, whose two farming colleagues both called up women who looked very much like they were their wives. Micah drew Sara into the ring and Rayan offered a hand to Fiona Grieve. Bill seemed not to know who to choose but the ever-smiling Muriel Littlegreen put herself forward and he looked relieved to find himself not alone.

Maisie and her fellow partners were cajoled into a circle and the dance began, with the Morris men moving around and through them in a complicated but satisfying choreography. Now and then, the partners were twirled and swapped places, so that Maisie was able to look each of the dancers in the eye, turn and turn about, making sure she maintained an expression of innocent pleasure while her thoughts were churning behind her eyes.

After the second chorus, the rhythmic movement seemed to have begun to stimulate her brain to make new connections, to see new possibilities for the interpretation of what, previously, she had imagined were innocent statements and actions – not least Adam’s joyful remark.

She looks like a great yellow biscuit.

The ‘Partner Dance’ came to an end and, dizzy from all the twirling and turning, Maisie felt herself stumble as she stepped off the boards onto the grass. She went to join Phyl and Fred who were listening to a long, confused tale from Old Mr Littlegreen about his hazel coppices and how he had organised them to be cut and to regrow ‘on a cycle corresponding to the moon and the tides’.

In order not to lose her train of thought like she had in the kitchen at Bunting Manor, Maisie wandered away to the top of the green where the grass rose uncut to her knees. Here and there, tall red poppies reached up for warmth and light, looking very glamorous above the dry brown stalks. By the time she reached the ragged hedge – overgrown like most of those in and around the village with bramble and bindweed, the latter very decorative with its bell-shaped white flowers – she had an unencumbered view up the hill towards Baffins.

To her surprise, she saw a tiny Jon Wilkes on the parched lawn, profiled against the stone of the building, waving his two strong arms above his head in apparent alarm, and she could just hear a faint rumour of his loud voice, wanting her attention.

So, I was right, thought Maisie. It’s as I feared.

Quickly but, she hoped, discreetly, Maisie went to speak to Fred Nairn, drawing him aside on the pretext of discussing his best-man duties. She indicated the big house at the top of the hill. Jon Wilkes, though, was now on his way down.

‘We should go and meet him,’ Maisie told Fred, ‘without anyone thinking it’s odd.’

‘Why?’

‘Because something’s happened and I think it’s something bad.’

Thirty-Four

Maisie held Fred’s gaze, hoping he wouldn’t blurt out something to draw the attention of the other Bitlingers.

‘Who are you worried about?’ he snapped.

‘Lady Catherine or Dilys Prime. Who else?’

She led him past the pond and up the lane behind the chapel. Because Jon was stomping quickly downhill, they met halfway up.

‘Go on,’ said Fred.

‘Well, I knocked and got no reply,’ said the farrier, ‘so I walked round the back. There was no one about. I came back to the front and noticed the French doors to the living room were open on the terrace so I peered in and there she was in her chair.’

‘Who was?’

‘Her ladyship.’

‘Why were you looking for her?’ asked Fred.

Maisie gave a succinct explanation of the story of the damaged coffee pot that Jon had never received.

‘But her ladyship couldn’t tell me why,’ said Jon. ‘Because she’s dead as a doornail.’

‘You’re sure?’ asked Fred, very serious. ‘Did you ring for a doctor?’

‘I didn’t want to go in,’ said Jon, ‘but I suppose there wouldn’t have been any dial tone. I’d tried to call Baffins this morning from my forge, and it was no calls in or out. That’s why I trundled over. Now, I wish I hadn’t.’

‘Why do you wish you hadn’t, Mr Wilkes?’ asked Fred, looking suspicious.

‘Police business is pettifogging work and I don’t want to waste my Sunday giving statements about something that’s as big a mystery to me as it is to you.’ He stopped and frowned, then gave Maisie what Florence Wingard would have called ‘a straight look’. ‘Happen Maisie here knows what’s what, though?’

‘I don’t know anything really,’ Maisie told him. ‘But I was worried.’

‘Never mind that for now,’ said Fred. ‘We need a doctor, even if she’s truly gone, to confirm what you saw, Mr Wilkes.’

‘I could ask Phyl to drive over to Almondcote for Doctor Newman,’ suggested Maisie. ‘That would only be ten minutes there and back. He’ll probably be at home on a Sunday.’

‘Yes, do that. We’ll wait for you here.’

Maisie slipped away, finding Phyl applauding as the Morris men completed their set to a volley of cheers.

‘Something’s happened,’ said Maisie, forcing her face into a bland smile. ‘Can you drive over to Almondcote and get your doctor to come to Baffins as soon as possible; I mean, right now?’

‘Why?’ snapped Phyl.

‘For the reason you can probably guess,’ said Maisie. ‘Please, Phyl, do it without drawing attention to yourself. There’s no need for anyone else to get involved for the time being.’

With a nod, Phyl acknowledged that she understood and moved away. Maisie watched her go, admitting to herself that Lady Catherine’s death was inevitably going to involve many of those present, destroying the carefully nurtured bonhomie.

There’s no escaping it.

She glanced over at the tables, already being rebuilt on the trestles, with everyone mucking in to set up chairs and cutlery and crockery, bringing pies and sandwiches and trifles out of wicker baskets and cardboard boxes, spreading them out, ready for serving. She wished she could stay and be a part of it, but that was impossible.

She hurried to join Fred and Jon, halfway up the hill on the way to Baffins. They hadn’t waited. She accelerated her pace and came level with them as they passed through the low, close-clipped hedge with red berries that surrounded the well-kept lawn, past the spreading rowan.

‘What I don’t like,’ Fred was saying, ‘is that anyone can see what we’re up to from down on the green.’

‘They’re all starting lunch,’ said Maisie, a little breathless from her rapid climb. ‘I’m not sure they’re paying any attention to us. They’ll probably think we’ve come to invite her ladyship to the feast.’

Jon led them to the open French windows on the terrace and pointed inside: ‘There she be.’

Fred entered the room, gesturing to them to remain outside. Maisie watched him as he skirted the furniture, approaching by walking on the exposed floorboards beyond the edge of an enormous kilim rug. This brought him close enough to reach an awkward hand over a side table, his cuff almost knocking an empty side plate to the floor. He grasped one of the wings of her easy chair for balance and touched Lady Catherine’s wrist with his other hand. Maisie expected him to maintain the position for some time, feeling for the elderly lady’s pulse, but he immediately drew back.

‘Quite cold,’ he said. ‘She’s definitely gone. And not recently.’

‘I could see that,’ said Jon. ‘I’ve put down enough horses to know what death looks like.’

The telephone was accessible from the edge of the room, perched on a small round table with a pie-crust edge. Fred took out his handkerchief to pick up the receiver, listened then made a frustrated noise with his lips.

‘How far did you say for that doctor?’ he asked Maisie.

‘Almondcote,’ she replied in distracted tone. Then she asked: ‘If she’s so very cold and she was with us last night in the treasure hunt, you know, after sunset around nine-thirty, just gone ten o’clock in the evening by the finish, she must have died, what, soon after midnight?’

Fred sidled back out of the room – the ‘crime scene’, as Maisie was beginning to think of it – and told her: ‘The doctor will give us chapter and verse. What are you working out, Maisie?’

‘Nothing,’ she told him, weakly. ‘I was just thinking aloud.’

‘Let’s sit down to give ourselves a countenance,’ said Jon, unexpectedly. ‘In case anyone’s looking up the hill.’

‘Good idea,’ said Fred.

They each took one of the cast-iron chairs, sitting in a triangle as if, for all the world, they were friends having a chat in the warm lunchtime sun, perhaps waiting for Dilys Prime to bring them a glass of sherry each. Fred asked abruptly: ‘Lady Catherine’s companion. Surely, she would have seen?’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Maisie.

She explained that Lady Catherine was in the habit of rising late and that Dilys was only permitted beyond her own shabby quarters above the kitchen when summoned.

‘She was a tough old bird,’ said Jon, ‘though advanced in years, and might have sat up late after her exertions in the woods. Is it right that she had a screaming fit after her shock with the turkey-bird crucified by that daft apeth Adam Farr, all sinister under the dark trees?’ Maisie told him it was. ‘Then maybe, with a kind of delayed reaction,’ Jon suggested, ‘her heart gave out. Did you see her lips are blue?’

‘I did,’ said Fred, ‘but that might have occurred post-mortem.’

‘And the hum that’s coming off her?’ insisted Jon.

‘What do you mean, “hum”?’ asked Maisie.

‘Mr Wilkes means the smell,’ said Fred.

‘She’s soiled herself in that there chair,’ said Jon.

‘Oh dear,’ said Maisie, feeling a great wave of sympathy. ‘How awful.’

The sun had come round a little further and the shadow of the rowan was just creeping across the table between them.

‘While we’re waiting,’ said Fred, ‘tell me again about who was where – and when.’

Maisie ran through the events that had followed Beating the Bounds, concluding: ‘But anyone could have crept back under cover of darkness. Not long after the screams and the recriminations at the edge of the chestnut wood, it came on heavily to rain so no one would have been out and about without a purpose, nefarious or otherwise. Adam had just shown me Lady Catherine silhouetted in the window of her bedroom.’

‘How’s that?’ asked Fred. Maisie told him about the telescope on the roof of the slaughterhouse. He shook his head and told her: ‘I don’t like the sound of him peering in people’s windows. You agree, don’t you, Mr Wilkes?’

‘Like I said just now, he’s a daft apeth, but there’s no malice in him, except by accident or foolishness, never design.’

Maisie looked from one to the other, not certain who was right, then continued her own train of thought. ‘I was just going to say that, as I drove away, the thunderstorm broke, you know, the one that took out the phone lines, so it was dark under the clouds with no more moon. Nothing could have been easier than to climb up to Baffins, perhaps sticking close to the hedgerows for the additional darkness. I don’t expect they lock up.’

‘If I’m mistaken and she didn’t just expire with a heart attack,’ said Jon, ‘how did someone do her in, without a scuffle or anything, the whole room with its dainty bits and pieces all shipshape, sat up in her wing-back chair like a queen?’

Fred didn’t answer. Maisie found her imagination caught by Jon’s phrase – the ‘dainty bits and pieces’. She told them both about the fact that Lady Catherine had wanted Montague Meek to come and value her possessions.

‘Yes, you said,’ Fred told her. ‘Back in Mrs Pascal’s kitchen.’

‘I know, but I was going to add that, perhaps, she knew she was unwell and didn’t have long to live. She might have taken it into her head to, I don’t know, leave things tidy for whoever came after.’

‘Who would come after?’ asked Jon, innocently.

Maisie felt she didn’t have the right to share the private information she had discovered about Old Mr Littlegreen being Lady Catherine’s brother, so she went on: ‘I happen to know she’d been talking to a medical specialist.’

‘Oh, yes?’ said Fred, looking more interested.

‘It came up when I was here with William Dodd, discussing the role of the special guest at the fair and so on. She’d been considering a cataract operation and decided against it. Perhaps, in the tests she was doing beforehand, she learned that there was no point because, however poor her sight might have been, she wouldn’t live long enough to get the benefit.’

‘How bad were her eyes?’ asked Fred. ‘Do either of you know?’

‘Not me,’ said Jon.

‘I remember,’ said Maisie, ‘we were discussing – or rather I was admiring – the beautiful view down to the coast.’ Automatically, they all three turned their heads to see the distant gleaming water of the Solent and the green hills of the Isle of Wight beyond. ‘And she told me: “Bright vistas hurt my eyes whilst, at the same time, disappearing into a blur.” I think those were her exact words.’

‘I expect they are,’ said Fred. ‘You’ve a gift for that, I know.’

‘And William wanted her to get tested for driving. Her car is all knocked about but she seemed safe enough on roads that she knew well.’ She changed tack. ‘If someone did creep up the hill in the dark, wouldn’t we see footprints in the dew? I remember thinking about that the other day.’

‘You might have done first thing but it would have been all burnt off well before we arrived. Unless Mr Wilkes here noticed anything?’

‘I didn’t pay attention but I don’t suppose there was any dew because there was the thunderstorm, remember? But the chalk lane was already dry underfoot and then the grass was crisp like tinder, with the sun already high and a warm breeze blowing.’

Maisie saw Phyl’s Land Rover nosing in where the lane met the junction of the two tarmac roads through Bitling village. Phyl drove with her usual lack of care, bouncing through the potholes, no doubt shaking the teeth of her passenger, Doctor Newman.

The Land Rover wasn’t able to come close to them as the chalk lane led round the side of the house so as not to spoil the smooth lawn. Fred went to meet Phyl and the doctor, leaving Maisie and Jon alone on the hard, cast-iron chairs. But only for a moment. Jon got up and said: ‘That’ll be me gone, then. I’ve done my civic duty. There’s no need for me to fester up here.’

‘What about the coffee pot?’

‘She’ll not be needing it.’

‘Jon, did you know Montague Meek at all? Did you mend things for him for resale, for example?’

‘I knew who he was but I’ve never spoken to him in my life.’

‘So why did Lady Catherine want you to mend the thing?’

‘We’ll never know. That’s where ’tis.’

With that, he gave her a brief nod and set off, lurching down the steep lane, his heavy frame rolling from side to side with each pace.

‘What if Fred wants to you to make an official statement?’ Maisie called out.

‘He’ll know where to find me,’ Jon called back without turning his head.

Fred, Phyl and the doctor appeared round the corner of the building. Despite being dismissive of footprints and things, Fred led them slowly, examining the ground before their feet. Maisie thought there was little to be gained. Jon had been right. The grass was dry as tinder, hard and wiry, albeit giving a good ground cover because of Harold Farr’s assiduous attention and . . .

She had a sudden idea.

‘To keep a lawn as good as this,’ she asked, ‘with barely a blade out of place and no weeds, that must need lots of fertiliser and plant poisons, isn’t that right?’

It was Doctor Newman who answered: ‘Definitely, Miss Cooper. Mine’s a mess year round, but I don’t like to put chemicals in the soil. It’s bad for the insects and, therefore, bad for the birds.’

‘Should we look for it?’ she asked. ‘The poison, I mean?’

‘Under normal circumstances, I’d be calling the station for assistance but I can’t do that,’ said Fred.

‘I can drive into Chichester, if that’s a help,’ said Phyl.

‘Perhaps not quite yet. How about I deputise the pair of you,’ he said, putting on an American accent as if he was a sheriff in a western adventure film. ‘While Doctor Newman has a look-see, you can do just that. There are some sheds outside the kitchen door round the side. That’s where we’ll probably find poison, if there is any.’

Maisie went to look and Phyl accompanied her. There were two sheds, one larger, its rear wall actually the stonework of the house, like a big lean-to, and they both went inside, their eyes taking a moment to adjust to the darkness. It was part potting shed and part storeroom for garden equipment: a petrol mower, a hand-driven mower, shears, an edging tool, forks and spades, a set of trowels and miniature forks for weeding under the hedges, four pairs of wellington boots, two trugs and a soil sieve.

Empty-handed, they went next door to a smaller wooden structure, abutting the first. It was shaped like a galley kitchen, with a narrow corridor in which they could both stand and, on the other wall, racking that went from floor to ceiling: seven shelves, each about a foot deep, made of strips of timber with gaps between. On the lowest one were bags of grass seed and, when Maisie looked closer, granular fertiliser that, she supposed, Harold broadcast by hand across the lawn, waiting for a wet day so it didn’t blow away on the wind. There was a conspicuous absence of clay pots or root compound for propagation.

The garden is quite austere – just the tidy lawn and the close-clipped hedges, no evidence of bulbs or border planting.

Phyl abruptly spoke, making Maisie jump: ‘Look, it’s up on top.’

On the highest shelf of the racking was a large metal can, marked with the traditional symbol for poison; a skull-and-crossbones, drawn on a piece of paper and sellotaped to the side. Maisie reached up and lifted it down, finding it wasn’t quite full but it was stoppered with a bit of rag, presumably to prevent evaporation in the absence of a proper bung. Phyl tugged the rag out and sniffed at the opening.

‘Are you sure you ought to do that?’ asked Maisie.

‘Salt, soap and a lot of vinegar,’ said Phyl.

‘How do you know?’

‘It’s a traditional method for people who don’t like putting weedkiller on their vegetables, you know, because they might not manage to wash it all off when they come to eat them.’

‘Home-made, then,’ said Maisie, beginning to smell the distinctive odour of the acetic acid herself. ‘But can you put it on grass? Surely, it wouldn’t be selective and only kill chickweed and clover? It would spoil the lawn more generally?’

‘You put it on in sunlight and it burns the leaves of the plant you want to remove. But, if you want to know how Harold keeps this lawn so perfect and smooth, it’s by hard work on his hands and knees. People talk a lot about weedkillers, but the best way is always to remove them by hand.’

Maisie shuffled things about on the other shelves, wanting to make sure that there were no other potions they had missed, then they went back out into the sun. The day seemed a little less bright.

‘You know,’ said Phyl, ‘I might be said to have as strong a motive as anyone. Catherine was against me turning Bunting Manor into a respite home and she made life difficult for me here with the turkeys.’

‘How did she do that?’

‘She basically blackmailed Vaughan Quinn into not working for me, telling him that she wouldn’t employ him on her own flocks and herds if he offered his services to me. You must have seen how limited his practice is. How many vets do you know that try and eke a living selling dog biscuits? I wouldn’t be surprised if, just for devilment, she played the same trick on him with other landowners round about, telling him who he could and couldn’t work for. That would be in her nature, her need to control and manipulate.’

Maisie thought about what Vaughan had said about doing domestic work on cats and dogs when he preferred the farm animal practice. There had been a sort of shadow of disappointment to his voice. And she thought about the fact that the shop was very tidy – sparse even – as though the things he had on sale had been there quite a long time, almost as decoration, rather than as a thriving commerce. And how much footfall would there be in a village off the beaten track like Bitling?

Maisie advised Phyl: ‘There’s no need to share with Fred that you despised Lady Catherine.’

‘Didn’t she come round, shouting at me in my own bedroom, in my sick bed? What sort of woman does that?’

‘Several times, I’ve found myself having sympathy for her, but that was wrong, wasn’t it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Phyl, with a sigh. ‘She was a monster but we are all what our circumstances make us, I suppose.’

‘You should probably try and temper your tone when you tell Fred,’ Maisie insisted. ‘He may be a sort of friend to both of us but—’

‘To you, Maisie, not to me.’

‘All right, to me, but there’s no point in making him think of you as a potential assailant with a wild temper.’

‘No, not an assailant, Maisie. From the look of that room, she just expired in her chair, perhaps from old age and the shock and being up late at night.’

‘That’s what Jon Wilkes said.’ They heard voices and went back round the house to see Fred and Doctor Newman emerging from the ‘crime scene’. ‘What have you discovered?’ asked Maisie.

The doctor hesitated and looked a question at Fred, as if seeking permission to share information.

‘Miss Cooper’s practically one of us,’ said the inspector.

‘Well, there’s no doubt that death was—’

Doctor Newman was about to tell her what he had deduced from his initial examination when Fred suddenly burst out: ‘Hell’s bells and Jehoshaphat, what in the name of all that’s holy is this?’

He was looking down the hill, an expression of complete exasperation on his face.

‘Oh,’ said Maisie, following his gaze. ‘William Dodd told me about this. The Morris side lead the whole village up the hill to present their compliments to her ladyship at the end of the fair. They must have finished lunch and . . .’

Maisie stopped, unable to prevent herself laughing at the raggedy troop of dancers and other villagers, wandering up the chalk lane at a slow pace, dictated by William Dodd and his ‘poor old knees’ who was creeping along in the lead.

Thirty-Five

While Fred Nairn quickly crossed the lawn to meet the village party, Maisie wanted to question Doctor Newman about his deductions, but he eyed her uneasily and apologised: ‘I don’t think I can speak up without the inspector present.’

For a minute or two, Maisie, Phyl and the doctor watched from a distance as Fred spoke to the village delegation, then she realised that the policeman was dismissing the majority of the gaggle of children and neighbours, but keeping others by him. Most of the procession turned round and went skipping away while the Morris men and a few others continued up the hill.

Maisie realised that Fred had asked everyone on her list – plus Timothy – to make their way to Baffins: William, Bill and Micah Dodd; Rayan and Sara Ramsi; Zachary Sawbridge; the Littlegreen siblings; Harold and Adam Farr; Fiona Grieve and Jill Finch. She was pleased to see Vaughan Quinn talking to Ada Strickland and thought that was kind of him. Arthur Tate followed, looking alone and friendless. Dilys Prime brought up the rear, apparently struggling with the steep slope.

‘Mrs Pascal,’ said Fred when he came within hailing distance, ‘would you do me a great favour and pop down in your motor and fetch Mr Littlegreen Senior? He went home to the sawmill a while ago, I’m told, but we’ll need him, no doubt.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘While you’re there, see if you can place a call. The telephones might be back in operation down there, if not up here.’

Phyl said she would try and left. Fred asked the villagers each ‘to make themselves comfortable’ on the lawn. They did so, as if they had assembled for a picnic and the food and drink had failed to appear. Only Dilys remained on her feet and Maisie heard her say: ‘I could organise some refreshment, Inspector? Would that be appropriate?’

‘Everyone’s had their lunch, haven’t they?’ said Fred shortly, clearly annoyed with her twittering. ‘Let them sit quietly.’

‘What about umbrellas and hats?’

‘I think we’ll all manage. The sun’s no longer so strong.’

It was true. A veil of cloud had drifted in from the south-west, nowhere near as thick as the previous evening when it had heralded the thunderstorm, but enough to take the ferocity out of the glare and the warmth. The Land Rover went past, skirting the low hedge. Doctor Newman said something, but Maisie didn’t hear the exact words – wasn’t even sure it was she that he was addressing. Her mind was sieving, as it were, all that she knew through the filter of what she thought the doctor had been about to tell her.

That would change everything. Or would it . . . ?

Maisie wondered if Fred would share Doctor Newman’s preliminary judgement more generally.

Probably not. He’ll want to save it for a dramatic moment in his interrogation.

‘Miss Cooper?’ said Doctor Newman. ‘Are you quite well?’

‘Excuse me?’ she said vaguely.

‘You seem rather distant.’

‘No, I am quite well, thank you, merely lost in thought.’ She gave him a bright smile. ‘I appreciate you asking.’

‘Yes, well, er,’ he began, looking rather dazzled. ‘You, er, there’s no reason we should not sit down, is there?’ He drew aside one of the cast-iron chairs, though she could easily have taken a seat without him doing so. It was simply gallantry. ‘Would you like that?’

Maisie sat down, aware that he was making an effort because she was what he would doubtless refer to as ‘a pretty young thing’, though he was probably no more than a decade older. There was a sort of premature ageing that took hold of the professional classes in provincial Chichester. Youngish men and – sometimes – women began dressing and speaking like their parents the moment they took on mortgages and all the rest of it.

Maisie realised Fred was speaking, telling everyone that they would wait for Phyl to return with Old Mr Littlegreen. Several voices wanted to know what was afoot.

‘Please be patient,’ Fred replied.

Doctor Newman asked Maisie about her life in Paris – ‘I’m aware of it from the newspapers, of course’ – and she told him as little as possible without seeming impolite. In the back of her mind, she was thinking about Edith Dodd who, once again, had remained resolutely apart from the village. She recalled Edith’s words about wearing her hair in the same style as her mother, a better version of Lady Catherine’s bird’s nest of grey.

The fanciful idea came into Maisie’s head that Edith had many reasons to hate Lady Catherine: the cramped house she and William lived in without proper hot water in 1972, for heaven’s sake; the prying, cavalier treatment of Bill; the potential eviction of Micah. Were there perhaps other grievances that Maisie knew nothing of? Was Edith Dodd the celebrated Mrs X of detective fiction?

Maisie realised Doctor Newman had just come to the end of a tale of his own experience of Paris, in the late Sixties, concluding with a heavy-handed compliment about how well Maisie must fit in ‘with the beautiful and chic Parisiennes’. She didn’t answer. She stood up and moved away, no longer troubling even to give a pretence of politeness.

Looking through the French windows into the living room, she pondered what she could see: the dark, good-quality furniture covered with knick-knacks of all kinds, many of them in pewter or silver; half a dozen china ornaments of various styles, but all of which spoke of their collectable status; the magnificent kilim rug underfoot which, on reflection, revealed unfortunate patterns of wear from the threshold of each door. At the centre of all these precious or not-
so-precious things, Lady Catherine sat enthroned in her wing-back armchair, a handkerchief – presumably Fred Nairn’s – draped across her face.

Maisie thought about Montague Meek and the coffee pot. She correlated Lady Catherine’s poor eyesight and her suspicious nature with the extraordinary conclusion to the misspelled ‘Tresure Hunt’. She vividly recalled Adam Farr showing her the silhouette in the upstairs window through his telescope.

A new pattern began to crystallise in her imagination. As always, the key was understanding the psychology of the different protagonists and placing the events in their proper order, discarding those that – although compelling – didn’t fit the design or refused to help in elucidating the mystery. It would be, as always in her experience, simultaneously more complicated and simpler than she at first imagined. Once more, she recalled Adam’s remark about the moon and—

‘I say, Miss Cooper,’ came Doctor Newman’s voice.

‘Yes,’ she snapped, without turning round.

‘The inspector is calling us over to join the others,’ he said, mildly, without taking offence.

‘Yes, of course. Excuse me. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. I was just—’

‘I quite understand,’ said Newman. ‘I learned from my tangential involvement in the murder at Chichester Theatre that you are, as well as being a very beautiful young woman, a force to be reckoned with in circumstances such as these.’

‘So, you agree?’ she asked. ‘Earlier you said there was no doubt. What were you referring to?’

‘Er . . .’

She read the indecision in his eyes – whether or not he had the right to speak – and didn’t need him to reply.

‘Never mind,’ she told him. ‘It is as I feared.’

Thirty-Six

Before Fred began addressing the villagers, Maisie had a few minutes more to contemplate the varied witnesses and suspects in two murder mysteries whose connected victims were Montague Meek and Lady Catherine Peahorn. They were spread out in clusters across the pristine lawn, gathered in family or friendship groups. A little apart, Dilys Prime and Ada Strickland seemed most obviously friendless and alone.

Oh, and Arthur Tate who looks rather like a garden gnome, cross-legged on the grass.

Phyl returned, driving without care on the bumpy track, even grazing the low hedge as she made the sweep round the west side of the lawn. An odd sort of hiatus followed with everyone’s faces turned that way, until Phyl re-emerged with Old Mr Littlegreen on her arm, telling all and sundry: ‘The telephones are still out.’

Timothy, Old Mr Littlegreen’s middle child, jumped up to go and fetch one of the cast-iron chairs so his father wouldn’t have to lower himself painfully to the grass. Old Mr Littlegreen asked him to position it with his back to the wan sun. Maisie and Doctor Newman took advantage and brought their own chairs to the edge of the circle, Maisie giving hers up for Phyl and sitting on the grass at her feet.

‘I am very grateful for your patience,’ said Fred. ‘Before I begin, I must advise you that you are all here of your own free will, that you are perhaps in a position to help the police in an ongoing investigation, that I may make written notes of whatever you say and, later, may ask you to dictate a more complete statement. The official words are . . .’

As he delivered the ponderous legalese, Maisie recognised the special tone of persuasive, calm authority of which Fred and Jack seemed to be masters. Then she wondered if, after all, Jack had managed to get a train back from Exeter, perhaps as far as Southampton whence she could fetch him in the Land Rover. Then she realised that there was a long way to go before she would be free to do that – free of the murder at Bitling Fair.

Fred spent a considerable time running through the events of the weekend, making sure that everyone agreed on who was where and when. Maisie was impressed at how accurately he marshalled the information she had given him. He itemised each step as if he had witnessed it first-hand. Now and then, one of the villagers would clarify a moment or a location, but nothing emerged that changed Maisie’s burgeoning ideas. Little by little, eyes began to turn towards her, questioning or understanding her involvement in bringing the inspector up to date. Vaughan, especially, seemed to want to see her reaction to all that was said. Maisie kept her eyes averted.

Once this summary was complete, Fred moved on to Montague Meek’s death and what the police believed they knew, ‘pending a complete post-mortem’.

‘He died at his desk and, it seems, not from natural causes.’

Maisie saw a question on the tip of William Dodd’s tongue and watched him decide not to ask it. She thought, as a policeman, he would want to know if there were similarities between the condition of Lady Catherine’s corpse and the auctioneer’s.

That’s something I would like to know myself.

Next, Fred narrowed his focus to the events after Beating the Bounds. He began with those who had taken part in the treasure hunt, each of whom could vouch for one another. Those who hadn’t joined in with the search for the crucified turkey on the chalk paths under the chestnut trees were harder to pin down. Many had no one to corroborate the fact that they were ‘in bed’ or ‘reading in my armchair’ or ‘doing the dishes’ or ‘walking the dog’. They included Vaughan Quinn, Zachary Sawbridge, Arthur Tate, Ada Strickland and, it appeared, Timothy Littlegreen.

‘I was on my way back home to Havant.’

Pressed on the matter, Timothy had to admit that no one could confirm at home what time he got in, his wife and children being sound asleep.

‘Safe in the arms of Lethe?’ enquired Fred, surprisingly, with a shade of irony.

Maisie wondered if he had noticed – as she had – an evasiveness in Timothy’s eyes and was trying to rattle his witness.

‘I don’t know what that means,’ snapped Timothy.

‘Very early, all things considered?’ suggested Fred, mildly.

‘Yes,’ said Timothy, ‘but that is our habit. I left straight after Beating the Bounds, so I would have had to drive around for some considerable time to allow every Bitlinger to get to bed, before coming back and creeping up the hill once the treasure hunt was complete.’

‘You make a good point,’ said Fred.

‘So why are we all here?’ demanded Timothy, belligerently. For the second time, Maisie perceived the ferocity of his nature, usually concealed beneath a practised veneer of calm. He went on: ‘It looks to me like you’re deliberately toying with us.’

Muriel Littlegreen obviously saw the danger in her brother’s obstreperous mood because she advised him, with a foolish laugh: ‘Don’t be giving the inspector ideas, Tim. You’ve got nothing to get on your high horse about. It’ll all come out in the wash. Everything always does, you know.’

She looked round, a vague smile on her face, inviting others to think as she did.

Maisie caught Fred’s eye and, in response, she felt he was giving her permission to make a dramatic contribution of her own. She stood up and asked: ‘Muriel, are you aware of your father’s relationship to Lady Catherine?’

For most of those present, the question clearly came as a surprise, but perhaps an insignificant one, such as a query about how one might have slept or whether one had a holiday planned, without special importance. For the three Littlegreen siblings, however, it was clearly a shock.

Muriel tried to hide her discomfiture by laughing some more and asking Maisie: ‘I wonder what you mean by that?’ Linda gave the game away by blurting out: ‘How dare you?’ Then, she went red with regret. Timothy looked at the grass in front of his crossed legs and muttered something Maisie couldn’t hear.

‘What was that, Mr Littlegreen?’ asked Fred.

‘Not until this morning,’ Timothy replied, without raising his eyes.

There were a lot of blank looks from those not in the know. Maisie asked Old Mr Littlegreen if he would be happy for her to explain what had prompted her question.

‘Good heavens, yes. Go ahead.’

Maisie began with Old Mr Littlegreen’s accident in his yard.

‘Mr Quinn and I assisted Mr Littlegreen Senior when he had his fall. After the meeting at the chapel, I had a chat with the three of you, Muriel, Timothy and Linda, and I learned that you were all very worried, both on account of the finances at the sawmill and your father’s health.’

‘More worried than ever,’ interjected Timothy.

‘Yes, understood,’ said Maisie. She turned to Old Mr Littlegreen. ‘Though advanced in years, you look fit as a flea, sir.’

‘Thank you, Miss Cooper.’

‘When we all talked it over this morning,’ said Muriel with a laugh, ‘Dad quoted the Bible, would you believe?’

‘Is that so?’ asked Fred. ‘Mr Littlegreen Senior, could you confirm what it was you said?’

‘Er, yes,’ he replied, frowning. ‘What did I say? William, what is that verse you told me about?’

William Dodd looked very uncomfortable.

‘In the police, we like to hear a witness’s recollections first hand.’

Old Mr Littlegreen screwed up his eyes and apologised: ‘I’m afraid it’s gone.’

William spoke up in a clear voice: ‘It’s from Matthew: “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” True it is, and a comfort in a way.’

Fred gave William a rather odd look, Maisie thought. Was it because the inspector didn’t want his sergeant to be qualifying the testimony of the witnesses, or was there more to it?

‘That’s the pigeon,’ said Old Mr Littlegreen.

Maisie asked: ‘Is it fair to say that you were advising your children to accept that death is inevitable?’

‘Yes, that’s it,’ said Mr Littlegreen Senior. ‘It’s foolish to worry about things one can’t control.’

‘And Muriel, Timothy and Linda,’ Maisie persisted, ‘also wanted to express their concern at how the sawmill business was trending, subsequent to the rent rises imposed at the start of April in the new tax year.’

Zachary Sawbridge, Bill Dodd and Vaughan Quinn mumbled a kind of indistinct chorus of agreement at this detail.

‘Where is this all going?’ asked Linda, grumpily. ‘Is it so very important? Wouldn’t a judge be asking you to get to the point?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Fred, severely. ‘But it’s more likely that a judge would consider all this matter for a jury to decide, as a question of fact, rather than a question of law.’

Maisie felt a sort of chill descend on the barren picnic party. It was the first time the possibility of a trial had been directly mooted.

‘Classic,’ said Arthur Tate.

‘What’s that?’ asked Fred.

‘Nothing,’ replied the confectioner with a shake of the head.

‘All right,’ said Fred. ‘Miss Cooper, would you continue?’

‘Of course.’ Maisie resumed. She tried to lighten the tone: ‘I’m sorry this is taking so long. I can see lots of blank faces so let me sum up. To get to the nub, for those of you for whom this is news, Mr Littlegreen Senior was able, this morning, to reassure his three children that the sawmill business was safe.’ Maisie paused, then added, meaningfully: ‘Because he could ask his sister, Lady Catherine, to reverse the rent rise.’

There was an immediate hubbub. A few phrases stood out.

‘What’s that?’ asked Vaughan.

‘Here, now, who said what?’ asked Zachary.

‘Oh,’ said Dilys. ‘All these years looking after her poor ladyship and I never knew.’

‘Yes,’ said Old Mr Littlegreen. ‘Isn’t it odd how everyone knows everyone’s business, on the surface, but deeper secrets can still be concealed.’

Fred smiled round the groups, as if inviting more questions, then gave Maisie an imperceptible nod. She asked: ‘Why did you say, “her poor ladyship”, Miss Prime?’

‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ twittered the dowdy, grey-haired companion, getting awkwardly to her feet. ‘We’ve been here all this time and, even for Lady Catherine, this is very late to lie abed.’

‘Yes,’ said Fred. ‘What do you think that means?’

‘I suppose, given the presence of Doctor Newman, that my unhappy mistress is dead?’

‘Yes,’ he told her gently, then looked round the lawn. ‘Were any of you in any doubt?’

Some of those present met his eye; others not.

‘Poor Catherine,’ said Old Mr Littlegreen.

‘God rest her soul,’ said William.

‘Yes,’ said Fred. ‘Lady Catherine has passed. Doctor Newman has inspected the body. In due course, either he or another specialist appointed by the police will issue a death certificate.’

‘I do feel, Inspector,’ said Dilys, revealing what Maisie thought was a rather touching need to be useful, characteristic of a browbeaten servant, ‘that I should serve some tea, at least. Her ladyship would have thought it improper not to provide refreshments, don’t you think?’

‘Her ladyship may have done, but that is no longer material. Could you sit back down, please?’

‘I would rather not.’

‘Are you not comfortable on the grass?’

‘I do find it difficult,’ she complained.

Fred fetched the fourth and last cast-iron chair from the terrace and placed it alongside her. She sat down, rearranging her drab tweed skirt and pulling up her opaque, laddered tights.

‘Are you better now?’ he asked.

‘Thank you. That was very kind. I am not used to such consideration. But may I just ask, is there any doubt?’

‘Any doubt of what, Miss Prime?’ asked Fred in an odd echo of Maisie’s conversation with Doctor Newman.

‘That Lady Catherine has been murdered?’

Thirty-Seven

Dilys Prime’s question caused a cascade of others. Maisie was reminded of similar moments in the investigations into the murders at Church Lodge, Bunting Manor and Chichester Theatre, when important information had slipped out under cover of a hubbub of shocked questions and commentaries. As far as she could tell, however, that was not the case on this occasion. Fred seemed to come to the same conclusion.

‘The answer to Miss Prime’s question,’ he said, imposing silence, ‘might be yes and might be no. We will not know for certain until – as in the case of Mr Meek – we have conclusive post-mortem evidence.’

‘If she’s dead,’ came Bill Dodd’s strong but rather defeated voice, ‘murdered or not – and I won’t say I’m sorry for the awful old besom – but who’s my landlord now?’ His unhappy eye picked out Old Mr Littlegreen. ‘Is it you, sir?’ He glanced from one Littlegreen sibling to another. ‘Will it be the three of you, in time?’

‘I suppose it will,’ said Linda, with a gleam of avarice in her eye.

‘And what about our parade of shops in West Bitling?’ asked Micah, indicating by gesture that he included Rayan and Sara Ramsi and Arthur Tate in his question. ‘Is that all up in the air?’

It took a little while for the true import of these questions to become clear to all present, at the end of which Old
Mr Littlegreen said: ‘You’ll all be welcome to stay wherever you are.’

Linda quickly contradicted him: ‘What’s that?’

‘These people are our friends and neighbours,’ said Old Mr Littlegreen, patiently.

‘But,’ argued Linda with a pained expression, ‘we should make up our minds on a case-by-case basis, shouldn’t we?’

‘Is that me out, then?’ asked Arthur Tate. ‘Am I the one you’re thinking about?’

Linda looked abashed: ‘I didn’t mean anything. I’m not saying you should worry, any of you. It’s just I don’t want to be taken advantage of . . . I mean to say, “we” don’t want . . .’ She looked round weakly. ‘That’s fair enough, isn’t it?’

Maisie felt bad for her. She understood Linda’s mindset – someone who had, all her life, been told what to do, how to live, all the time brought low by a depressive nature. Even with the delicious prospect of her elderly father inheriting the wealth and title of the Peahorn estate, her first thought was that someone might try to take advantage of her good fortune and do her down.

‘Really, Linda,’ said Muriel, for once not smiling.

‘It’s all right, sis,’ said Timothy, surprisingly. ‘Everything will be fine.’

‘But it’s not fine for Lady Catherine, is it?’ twittered Dilys. ‘Shouldn’t we listen to the inspector and find out what else he needs to know?’

‘Everything,’ said Fred. ‘That’s what I need to know. Everything.’ He looked round the groups, alighting on the pair of uncle and nephew, his gaze flicking from one to the other. ‘I was wondering if you two might be able to help me?’

Adam Farr seemed transfixed. Maisie was reminded of a description in Kipling’s Just So Stories of a mongoose hypnotising a snake.

Or was it the other way round?

‘Adam would be glad to help you, Inspector,’ intervened Adam’s Uncle Harold. ‘But you know, sir, if you please, you need to go one step at a time so Adam doesn’t lose the thread of what you’re asking and say something foolish. He’s not like other people. Will you do that, for the sake of the help I gave you in the murder at the theatre?’

‘Trust me, Harry,’ said Fred, kindly. ‘I’ll take it careful.’

‘Thank you, Inspector.’

‘Now, Adam,’ said Fred, ‘you like to look at the moon and stars, isn’t that right, in your telescope?’

‘Yes,’ said Adam, warily. ‘No one told me I shouldn’t.’

‘And it’s up on the roof of the slaughterhouse?’

‘Nobody said I had to take it down.’

‘I’m sure that’s fine. I wanted to ask this. After the treasure hunt – and that was a clever idea, by the way, the chalk glowing white under the trees.’

‘I did the wrong prize, though, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, perhaps. Anyway, you swung your telescope round from the moon and just happened to see into Lady Catherine’s window. Is that right?’

‘I did.’

‘And you showed it to Miss Cooper?’

‘Who’s that, then?’

‘The lady there,’ said Harold, pointing at Maisie.

‘She was kind to me after,’ said Adam and Maisie felt gratified.

‘How did you know it was Lady Catherine’s bedroom?’ Fred asked.

‘Because I’ve been up-along to Baffins when I helped uncle carry a picture that was very heavy in a wooden box for transporting to hang on the wall. Very valuable it was, so they said, but it was just a few hills and a man looking at them, all blurry and not like a proper photograph or the real thing.’

‘Where did it come from?’

‘It come from Meek’s.’

‘Mr Meek was there, too?’

‘He delivered it and Uncle was in the garden and I was waiting there for giving him a hand and we carried it up and hung it from the picture rail in her bedroom. It already had the chain and the hook.’

‘So, you knew which was Lady Catherine’s bedchamber and you saw the figure silhouetted in the window and you are certain it was the same room?’

‘Yes, I look in there now and then,’ said Adam, naively.

‘Do you look in other windows,’ asked Jill Finch, suddenly, speaking out alone for the first time. ‘I suppose my bedroom is visible from the roof of the slaughterhouse. Is that what you get up to?’

Maisie had a horrible idea that Jill probably considered Adam ‘a burden on society’.

‘I don’t look in at ladies’ windows,’ said Adam. ‘That’s not what I do.’

‘That’s easy for you to say now,’ said Jill.

‘I promise,’ said Adam, and Maisie thought he was on the verge of tears. ‘I’m not a Peeping Tom. I just like to see people doing things. We’ve got nothing, Uncle and me, and I like to . . .’ He rubbed his arm across his nose, sniffing. ‘I like to see people living.’

‘I understand,’ said Fred, quietly.

‘Doing normal things, not upset and unkindness,’ said Adam. ‘I don’t like it when there’s shouting and upset.’

His face was wet, now. Maisie wondered how Fred would manage the situation. Then Ada Strickland burst out: ‘It was the same day she went for my tabby with her spray.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Fred, looking bemused.

‘That’s what I mean,’ wailed Adam. ‘All that. I’m going.’

He stood up and went stomping off across the lawn and away through the low yew hedge. Harold asked: ‘Should I try and get him back, Inspector? I don’t know for certain if I’ll be able—’

‘Don’t fret, Harry,’ said Fred, looking like he was prepared to bide his time. ‘Miss Strickland, could you tell us what you mean?’

‘My tabby got out again and I was searching high and low and I thought I saw her on the chalk lane so I came up, following the Meek’s van and, God bless me, if she didn’t run under the wheels and come out safe and sound on the other side. But Lady Catherine was in the garden spraying the weeds under the yew hedge and came upon her, shivering and quaking and doing no harm to anyone or anything, and you all know what her ladyship’s like – what she was like, I should say – and she sprayed her weedkiller in the poor little thing’s face and she squealed and ran and I couldn’t find her.’

Several people tutted at this.

‘Anything else?’ asked Fred.

‘Then, on another day,’ Ada improvised, ‘Lady Catherine threw her in the pond and Mr Quinn pulled her out.’

‘Now, that’s not quite true,’ said Vaughan. ‘She wasn’t in the pond, Miss Strickland. You were just worried that she might be.’

‘Yes, I mean, no.’

Glad that the mystery of the unknown cat-assailant feared by Ada was solved, Maisie told her: ‘The episode with the weedkiller, though cruel, I don’t think was dangerous because I’ve seen the home-made mixture in the shed. So has Mrs Pascal. It seems to be just salt, soap and vinegar.’

‘Terrible cruel, she could be. I don’t know how you stood it,’ said Ada to Dilys.

‘She had her kinder side,’ replied the companion. ‘No one else really knew. She was always concerned for . . .’ She sighed. ‘I sometimes thought it was sad that she didn’t know how to express her . . . her . . .’ Dilys sighed. ‘She was like the rowan, there, “signifying solitary strength”.’

Several of the men laughed at this preposterous comment. Even Fred seemed not to know where to look. Maisie wondered if he might think it was a good time to allow Dilys to make some tea and serve it to everyone. It was possible he would think it a smart way of taking the companion out of the circle of statements, since she seemed inclined to interrupt.

Instead, though, Fred proceeded to summarise the facts he had learned. He was very direct with everyone present, detailing many of the possible motives for displeasure or jealousy or fear or hatred regarding Lady Catherine Peahorn.

Each of the people caught in his sights responded in character. Zachary, Bill and Micah all argued back with versions of: ‘Prove it if you can, Fred Nairn.’ Jill Finch told him she would never ‘take matters into her own hands’ – which Maisie thought a dreadful euphemism for involuntary euthanasia – and went on to make quite a speech about the fact that hers was ‘a philosophical position, not a programme of action’. Fiona backed her up. Vaughan Quinn told Fred: ‘I could work anywhere. Vets are always in demand. I happen to like it here.’

‘But that isn’t correct,’ said Maisie. ‘Lady Catherine has been dictating where and for whom you are allowed to work, hasn’t she?’

Vaughan looked pained. ‘Yes, she has. That’s true. But you can’t possibly think that I would—’

‘The innocent have nothing to fear from the truth,’ interrupted Fred.

Maisie glanced at Rayan and Sara, sitting quietly together on the parched grass. Fred’s train of thought mirrored her own because he asked them, very directly: ‘Mr Rayan, Miss Rayan, what precisely will you do if you lose the shop on the West Bitling parade?’

Maisie thought Sara was on the point of vigorously refuting Fred’s insinuation, but Rayan put a hand on her arm and said, quietly but very clearly: ‘We should perhaps reserve the right to remain silent.’

‘You’re right there,’ said Arthur Tate. ‘Me, too.’

‘But we are good people,’ said Sara in a tone of desperation. ‘I just . . .’ She looked at her brother and Maisie saw doubt in her eyes. ‘Unless . . .’

Rayan sighed. ‘No, Sara, I have nothing with which to reproach myself.’ He turned to Fred and Maisie, the only people standing. ‘My sister is worrying herself, remembering that I told her: “There may be steps we can take.” All I meant was that I would confront Lady Catherine and put our case, perhaps find a negotiated solution.’

That was my plan, too, thought Maisie, though I had no confidence that Lady Catherine would listen.

‘I see,’ said Fred, quietly.

‘I would have done so at the fair, but events overtook me.’ Rayan looked at Dilys. ‘We were told that Lady Catherine was unwell.’

There was a small pause while Fred seemed to weigh up who to challenge next, then he turned the full force of his questioning on the Dodd boys. All things considered, Maisie thought they answered sensibly, giving a convincing impression of having nothing to hide. All the while, though, Timothy Littlegreen kept darting guilty glances round the groups. Once, Maisie saw him begin speaking to his sister Muriel in an undertone. Fred noticed, too, and asked: ‘Do you have something to add, Mr Littlegreen?’

‘No, carry on,’ said Timothy in a tense undertone, giving Maisie an impression of a milk pan about to boil over. ‘Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.’

‘Don’t you think it would be a good idea,’ Maisie told Bill and Micah, ‘to explain the rift between you, given it relates to Montague Meek?’

‘That’s all done with now,’ said Micah. ‘Isn’t it, Bill?’

‘It is,’ replied the elder brother. ‘There was no need to fall out over those tiles. It was my fault, not young Micah’s. If I had to sell them, why shouldn’t Micah buy them back from Monty Meek?’

Maisie made sure that Fred understood the ins and outs of the story of the pictorial ceramics.

‘You didn’t resent Mr Meek for that reason?’ Fred asked.

‘Of course I did,’ said Bill. ‘Then, when Micah got my business from the Dolphin and Anchor, I lost my rag and wouldn’t listen to reason. But that’s all straightened out.’

‘Is it?’ asked William, their father, a touching expression of relief on his features.

‘Yes, Dad. I’ve got it clear now. Micah wanted me to come in with him in West Bitling. He wanted the tiles up as a surprise for me to see, and he wanted to give a big build-up to what he meant me to do, but I never let him finish. Of course, that was before her ladyship started in on him for closing the parade.’

‘Giving the two of you a good reason to want her out of the picture,’ said Fred.

For the first time, the two brothers looked uncertain. Their eyes darted this way and that, forming a triangle with Timothy. Maisie realised the three of them shared some secret knowledge.

‘You should advise the inspector what you know,’ she told them.

‘I’m not so sure,’ said Micah, tentatively.

‘I think Mr Ramsi might have the right idea,’ snapped Tim.

‘Of course he does,’ said Arthur. ‘Silence is always your friend with the police.’

‘You want to mind your own business, Arthur Tate,’ said Fred. ‘What did you mean, Miss Cooper?’

Maisie didn’t answer him directly. ‘It is true, you know,’ she told the three men, reassuringly. ‘You have nothing to fear and your knowledge could be more important than you imagine.’

‘What is it that you know, you three?’ insisted Fred. ‘Do I have to remind you that it’s an offence to keep back material information from an investigating officer?’

Maisie was certain that she knew what everyone was about to learn. She had had an inkling of it when she had seen Bill and Micah buttonhole Timothy just before the Morris men began their dancing. She kept quiet, though, seeing the Dodd brothers’ resolve crumble.

What they’re about to admit will clarify aspects of this mystery that I’ve already discarded as unimportant.

‘We all three had the same idea,’ said Micah, ‘me and Bill together, and Tim separate.’

‘And what idea was that?’ asked Fred, a very serious expression on his face.

‘To have a talk with her ladyship and try and put our side of things.’

‘After Beating the Bounds?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And after the treasure hunt,’ said Fred.

‘Yes,’ said Micah. ‘We crept up the hill together and we looked in and so we knew what it was, Bill and me.’

‘How long after the treasure hunt?’ demanded Fred.

‘A fair bit so people would be abed,’ said Bill. ‘Micah and me talked in the shop beforehand. While we were there, Tim came up all quiet in the darkness and we told him what we’d seen.’

‘I had driven away and only just come back,’ said Tim.

‘And you didn’t go in or look at her, Mr Littlegreen?’ insisted Fred.

‘No, I didn’t go near.’

‘He didn’t,’ said Micah.

‘But she was definitely already dead, you’re telling me,’ asked Fred meditatively. ‘Bill? Micah?

‘Dead and cold. It’s been a burden not saying so out loud,’ said Micah, regretfully, ‘and I apologise. It’s not in my habits to keep things back, even if I haven’t gone so far as to tell an untruth. I’ve been brought up better than that. But we wanted to see the lie of the land before we—’

‘Oh. Micah,’ said William, appalled. ‘Oh, Bill.’

‘It’s all right, Dad,’ said Bill. ‘We’ve nothing to be ashamed of, except being slow coming forward. We’ll stand together as brothers, whatever comes from now on.’

‘And the three of you are steadfast,’ said Fred, in the same mediative tone, ‘in support of one another?’

‘We are,’ said Bill and Micah together.

‘Absolutely,’ said Timothy.

‘Almost as if you’d worked it all out between you?’

‘Given I didn’t know about Lady Catherine being related to us until this morning,’ demanded Timothy, angrily, ‘have you got another fanciful reason for me climbing up to Baffins to do Lady Catherine a mischief in her wing-back chair?’

‘You are a proper fool, Tim,’ said Muriel, quietly.

‘That’s a good question,’ said Fred equably. ‘I’ll answer it with another.’

‘Oh, will you?’ snapped Timothy.

‘Your sister is right about you behaving like a fool, Timothy Littlegreen,’ Fred told him, mildly. ‘If you never went near, how is it that you can possibly know about the wing-back chair?’

There was a hush.

‘Well, because I’ve, er, I’ve seen it, in her drawing room, where she likes to sit and I just thought . . .’ Timothy lost his thread, then resumed, blustering: ‘Why is it Miss Cooper seems to know so much?’

Fred made a quizzical expression. ‘If you didn’t see the deceased in company with Bill and Micah Dodd, I suppose a jury might wonder if you’d already been there a while, by the time they got there.’

‘Are you accusing me?’

Maisie thought Timothy was making quite a good pretence of bluffing it out. Fred gave her an almost imperceptible nod.

‘Last night, Timothy,’ said Maisie, ‘after Beating the Bounds, you admit you drove away, just to give the impression of leaving, but you weren’t away long. You came back, climbed the hill before Bill and Micah, and looked in on her, didn’t you?’

‘Looked in on her,’ said Fred, very slowly, ‘and cold-bloodedly killed her.’

Suddenly, Timothy was on his feet, shouting and swinging his fists. Fred was retreating across the grass, taken aback by the ferocity of the attack. Bill and Micah were on their feet, too, trying and failing to restrain Timothy.

Maisie noticed Dilys say to Ada: ‘I insist on fetching some refreshments. Her ladyship would have wanted it, poor thing.’

Under cover of the commotion, Lady Catherine’s browbeaten companion slipped away and, in a flash, Maisie saw the last few elements of the pattern behind the kaleidoscope of bright fragments of knowledge – and she knew how Montague Meek had been killed.

And Lady Catherine, too.

Thirty-Eight

Maisie followed Dilys in through the front door, along the hall and into the rear of the house to the kitchen. The mortar and pestle were still there on the table. On an oven tray alongside were half a dozen biscuits, baked on greaseproof parchment, with room for three or four more. They looked delicious, crisp and yellow, perfectly round, like the moon Adam had shown Maisie through his telescope.

Dilys was facing away from Maisie, but the older woman spoke to her without turning her head.

‘You must be very clever.’

‘No,’ said Maisie. ‘Nothing is ever as complicated as it seems.’

‘Cleverer than me, by any means.’

‘I suppose I’m good at working out what’s important and what isn’t.’

‘That sounds like cleverness.’

‘For example, I think Lady Catherine was already dead when you came down yesterday morning, Saturday, at the very start of the fair. You told us that she was unwell and couldn’t attend.’

‘Yes,’ said Dilys.

‘And it was you who sent the package to Montague Meek, not Lady Catherine.’

Dilys sighed: ‘It was.’

‘Do you think it might be a good idea to speak to Inspector Nairn?’

‘A good idea from whose point of view?’ asked the browbeaten companion, reaching up and undoing her tight bun of grey hair. It straggled out like a bird’s nest, making her resemblance to Lady Catherine immediately very pronounced. ‘Not mine.’

‘In order to prevent any more upset,’ said Maisie, encouragingly. ‘Do you want people to be at one another’s throats, suspicious and unhappy?’

‘I’ve been unhappy since I entered this house.’

Dilys turned round, her eyes casting about for a place to sit, pulling a stool from beneath the table and perching her tweed skirt upon it.

‘You tore your tights in the chestnut woods, didn’t you,’ said Maisie, ‘on the blackthorns?’

‘Ah, yes. “Signifying betrayal and aggression, but also protection”,’ quoted Dilys. ‘That’s what it says in my Reader’s Digest book. I did look very like her with my grey hair all wild, wrapped up in her gaberdine and her leather driving cap. I scuttled past Harold and Adam Farr with a sharp word and they took me for her.’

‘And it was dark.’

Dilys picked up one of the biscuits and nibbled.

‘Is that what made you realise? Did the blackthorns betray me?’

‘I did notice the ladders in your tights, but no,’ said Maisie. ‘The first important thing was the coffee pot. Jon Wilkes never received it, you see. So, I began to wonder why you might say that you had sent it. I connected it to Montague Meek, of course, and the fact that he was known not to be entirely honest. You were in league with him, weren’t you?’

‘In league with him? In a way. I mean, I thought I would be. But he took advantage, then he blackmailed me.’

‘Oh?’ said Maisie, frowning.

‘It began when he asked me what I was paid for my attendance on her ladyship. It’s a pittance, of course, but I always thought I was reasonably well off, in the sense that I had room and board and nothing to worry about. By he put the idea in my head that I ought to have more, if only for some new clothes or a better soap or books of my own, not those from the library van. It grew on me and, in the end, I had to agree that it was a very good idea.’

‘What was?’

Dilys finished her biscuit and started on a second, mumbling through the crumbs: ‘Swapping her precious things.’

‘Because?’

‘Because her sight was so dim. Her poor car was all scratches and bumps, but she never had any real accidents.’

‘Yes, I see. Mr Meek suggested that you give him some precious objects from Lady Catherine’s collection, one after another, so that he could sell them, giving you something similar but of lesser value to put in its place.’

‘We began with a jewellery box and went on to a set of silver-backed hairbrushes,’ admitted Dilys.

‘I understand,’ said Maisie. ‘But why the pretence that Jon Wilkes had the coffee pot?’

‘More properly “coffee jug”,’ said Dilys, pedantically. ‘It was because Mr Ryan was there and he’s a solicitor and a very noticing sort of man. I had to find a reason for the jug not to be on the premises. Mr Ryan might have recognised the substitution.’

‘That’s true. Maurice is very sharp-eyed.’

‘Do you have any idea what Mr Meek sold the coffee jug for?’ Dilys asked.

‘No, that hasn’t come up.’

‘Neither did I, until I found it in the sales catalogue he gave me from the auction house in Salisbury.’ Dilys indicated the pile of sales booklets on the table. ‘The amount made me catch my breath and I challenged him, Mr Meek, in a private moment when he came to discuss the valuing with Mr Ryan, when he left the lunch room to use the facilities. I suggested that I deserved a larger proportion of the gains. He positively hissed at me that it was out of the question, that he wouldn’t hesitate to denounce me as a thief who had abused his trust, stealing from her ladyship.’

‘Did it cross your mind that Lady Catherine had invited him to come and value her things because she had begun to suspect something?’

Dilys began a third biscuit. ‘Yes, of course. That was why she had to die. Even with Mr Meek already gone. I had no choice.’

Dilys seemed to run out of energy, like a fading torchlight. Maisie wondered if she should call Fred. Then she saw the inspector at the back door, looking in through the dusty glass. He gave her a nod and silently turned the handle while Dilys munched her yellow biscuit. Once the door was ajar, Fred stayed where he was, alongside the telephone on the wall, watching and waiting.

‘So, Mr Meek drew you into his devious plan, putting copies of Lady Catherine’s precious knick-knacks around the house, selling the real ones and keeping the proceeds, only giving you a pittance.’

‘Yes,’ said Dilys. ‘I’ve already told you that.’

‘I was just making sure I understood,’ said Maisie, who had repeated it for Fred’s benefit. ‘And it was you who came stomping down the hill in the dark, wearing her gaberdine and her leather driving cap, to join in the treasure hunt, wasn’t it, not Lady Catherine?’

‘Yes, I thought it would be best if people thought she was still alive for as long as possible. Taxine poisoning looks like a heart attack, I understand. Would that have worked?’

Maisie knew about taxine poisoning because, during the investigation into the murder at Bunting Manor, she had read about it in Phyl’s book, Phytotoxicology: a field guide by Owen P Royburg. The active ingredient was present in yew-tree berries.

‘Perhaps for a time,’ said Maisie.

‘What else gave me away?’ asked Dilys, her eyes beginning to look a little vague.

‘You asked me if I was going to be able to return the robe in good condition after the fair. I reminded you that the village would be trooping up the hill to Baffins to pay their respects, and you looked worried, as if you hadn’t thought of that. I realised that you were hoping her death would be discovered much later – perhaps even after the weekend. When I mentioned the tradition of the villagers all coming up to Baffins to thank Lady Catherine for the fair, the idea unsettled you and you suggested she might cancel and that seemed very unlike her.’

‘Yes,’ said Dilys. ‘I would have left her until Monday. I had forgotten about the villagers paying their respects. It’s surprising how much there is to consider when you become a murderer.’

‘Just to be clear,’ Maisie continued, again for Fred’s benefit, ‘the package sent from Baffins to Montague Meek wasn’t more valuables. It was biscuits. You knew he was very fond of sweet things and would think it was a gift from Lady Catherine, a way of enticing him to do the valuation work she wanted.’

‘I’m not sure you need to know anything else,’ said Dilys. ‘Are you hungry, my dear?’

Dilys slipped awkwardly off her stool, picked up the tray and brought it to Maisie, her eyes wide and her expression ambiguous. Maisie noticed how unnaturally large her pupils were and remembered that was a symptom of taxine poisoning, too.

‘No, thank you,’ she said firmly. ‘You can put them back. No one else is going eat your biscuits.’

‘Oh, you are clever, aren’t you,’ said Dilys, vaguely.

She dropped the tray. The thin metal crashed and bounced while the biscuits shattered and crumbled on the floorboards. Maisie was unable to decide whether or not she had done it deliberately. Dilys tottered unsteadily on her way back to her stool.

‘So, that’s that.’

‘When I came in the other day,’ said Maisie quickly, wondering how much time she had left, ‘you told me you were grinding coriander seeds for Lady Catherine’s coronation chicken, but they were seeds from the yew-tree hedge, weren’t they, from the red berries around the lawn.’

‘The first time I tried, it didn’t work. They wouldn’t grind to flour. They were too wet inside. So, I tried again by drying them in the oven first.’ Dilys leaned forward, her head drooping, then seemed to re-establish her balance with a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I didn’t know how much I would need.’

Maisie felt a wave of sympathy.

‘You endured years of unkindness,’ she said.

Dilys whispered: ‘It grinds a body down. I wish . . . I wish I’d killed her years ago.’

‘How do you feel, now?’

‘Confused . . . I didn’t . . . I didn’t know it would work so fast.’

Dilys slumped off the stool and would have landed in a heap had Fred not lurched towards her, catching her under the arms. Maisie could see that Dilys’ lips had turned blue with the poison.

‘Did you hear enough, Fred?’ Maisie asked.

‘Yes, I did. Once I’d got Timothy Littlegreen settled, I saw you were gone and, blow me, if I didn’t think you’d come in to help her with the tea.’

‘No,’ said Maisie. ‘I followed because I’d worked it out by then. Tim did come up just before Bill and Micah, but it makes no difference. Lady Catherine was dead well before the treasure hunt.’

Fred laid Dilys gently down on the floor. She was still breathing but very slow and ponderous, as if time for her was stretching out towards eternity.

‘You’ll have to talk me through all the details.’

‘I will, Fred, but it’s better this way. Don’t you agree?’

There was a pause that Maisie found uncomfortable. Had she done something unforgivable, allowing Dilys to consume her own poisoned biscuits and escape justice?

Fred sighed and told her: ‘I suppose so. There’s no one likely to mourn Lady Catherine, after all, but don’t let on I said so.’

‘Thank you.’ There was a pause, then Maisie asked him in a weak voice: ‘Will Jack agree?’

‘Ah,’ he said, in a worried tone. ‘That’s another question.’

Epilogue

In hope rather than expectation, Fred tried the phone on the wall by the back door from the kitchen and found, to his delight, that it was in operation at last. He made three separate phone calls, putting all the wheels of justice in motion. Then he and Maisie went back to the lawn and dismissed the villagers.

‘It’ll come out soon enough,’ he told them all, ‘that Miss Dilys Prime has committed suicide by the same means that she used to murder both Lady Catherine and Mr Meek. There are some of you I’ll need to interview further.’ He gave Bill and Micah and Timothy a straight look. ‘But, for the time being, you’re all free to go about your business.’

Left alone with him to give her own statement, Maisie found Fred – as always – intelligent and sympathetic, but she was still deeply worried about how Jack would respond to what she had done.

Once Fred had all he needed, she pottered slowly back down the hill. She didn’t feel herself free to retreat back to Bunting Manor and take a break from people and upsets and dramas because there was one more event that she felt obliged to attend.

The service of thanksgiving in the chapel in the heart of Bitling village went ahead only a little later than planned. The house of worship was packed, perhaps because everyone had stayed around, gossiping about what had happened, a few of the participants only too pleased to take advantage of being the centre of attention for a span. She found Phyl had saved her a seat.

To Maisie’s surprise, Edith Dodd was there and went and sat in a previously unnoticed corner, behind the central pulpit and stairs. She lifted the lid of a battered harmonium and began pumping the bellows with her feet. Quite soon, the wheezy opening chords to ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ made themselves heard and, on the second time around, everyone joined in without having to refer to hymn books or orders of service.

There was, in fact, no order of service. Phyl whispered to Maisie between verses that there would only be the one hymn, then William would say a few words as a kind of brief homily before proceeding to the blessing.

The last notes expired on the heavy, still air, a good hundred pairs of lungs revelling in the final refrain. William climbed painfully up to the pulpit and set himself, an expression of deep worry on his face. His glance went to the empty pew belonging to Lady Catherine in the front and, from there, to Micah and Sara and Rayan and Bill who were occupying the seats behind.

I hope he’s not going to air his disapproval of the wedding in public.

William pronounced a ‘prayer for the dead’, citing a list of local people who had died in the previous twelve months – including Montague Meek, Lady Catherine and Dilys Prime – but without making any kind of reference to individual circumstances. He left a solemn pause.

‘I’ll have to come back to that,’ he said, uncertainly, taking out his notebook. Then he nodded, sadly. ‘We’ve got to go on, though, haven’t we?’

He ran through all the winners of all the competitions, his face and tone gradually brightening. As he announced the children who had been successful with the hazel wands, Zachary Sawbridge called out: ‘Three cheers for him what carved Best Duck, for William Dodd.’ Everyone followed his lead and Maisie saw that William had to wipe away a tear.

‘Thank you, all of you. Then we have to mention Adam’s treasure hunt, an excellent idea and one we should run again and it’ll be a fine addition to the fair.’

The reception to this idea seemed sadly muted but Adam and Harold beamed at one another.

William continued: ‘Then, as minister, I have to come back to our less joyful news and I thought I would take a text from Ecclesiastes, which most of you will know to be a difficult book, full of wisdom, no doubt, but a harsh and unforgiving lesson.’

He paused and the mood in the chapel became, Maisie felt, very quiet and expectant.

‘There’s not one of you doesn’t know about the upset up-along at Baffins and we all feel very sad for all three unhappy souls. Ecclesiastes asks us: “What profit hath a man for all his toil, in which he toils under the sun?” And it advises us: “Fear God and keep his commandments; for that is the duty of all of mankind. Since every deed will God bring to judgement, for every hidden act, be it good or evil.” Well, there have been a good deal of “hidden acts” that I won’t go into. We, the living, know we must die, but the dead know nothing any longer and, sooner or later, memory of them is forgotten. That must be for the best for: “Their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion of anything that is done under the sun.” Amen.’

The congregation repeated the solemn word, without, Maisie thought, fully understanding the difficult words. William paused once more and Maisie felt very sorry for him. She began to wonder whether he was more affected by his imminent retirement and his retreat from purposeful employment than he wished to admit. Were those emotions affecting his thinking? She almost wanted to climb up next to him in order to help him deliver the valedictory prayer, but he took a deep breath and spoke in a much more vigorous tone.

‘I’ve learned a lesson, myself. Everyone is looking forward to knowing how Baffins will run the village with Old Mr Littlegreen in charge. A sight better, I don’t doubt. But there’s more. Come up, Rayan.’ To general consternation, Rayan Ramsi climbed into the pulpit, squeezing in alongside portly William Dodd. ‘Tell them what you told me.’

In a very composed voice, Rayan said: ‘The five pillars of Islam are Faith, Prayer, Charity, Fasting and Hajj, that is Pilgrimage.’

‘Well,’ said William, ‘it would be a fine look-out if I couldn’t agree with all that, given I preach four of those virtues every Sunday to those of you with the time and inclination to listen. We confirm our Faith in our creed, which is one of our many Prayers. Bitling Fair just this weekend was for Charity, for the new sensory equipment at the Fordwater school. Our lives as Christians are a Pilgrimage towards God.’ He paused, then added, with impeccable comic timing: ‘And my Edith recommends I could do with taking up the Fasting.’ A warm wave of laughter filled the chapel. William waited for it to abate, then said, in a voice that cracked with emotion: ‘And now my boy Micah’s getting married.’

There was another cheer and William could barely pronounce the words of the blessing. Rayan helped him down from the pulpit so that William and Edith could receive the heartfelt congratulations of their neighbours and friends.

A little at a loss as a stranger, after all, to all this emotion, Maisie decided to go outside into the sweet, warm air of evening, feeling a need for solitude after all the dramas of the day – both positive and negative. She made her way through the chapel yard to the smaller lane and across under the largest of the willow trees by the pond.

Concealed beneath and within its dangling branches, she reflected on William’s words, in particular the idea that it was right that the dead should – finally – be forgotten. In her case, she knew that, even after justice had been administered and the guilty sentenced, she would remain uneasy that her contribution might come back one day to bite her.

Who was she, after all? Just a young woman with an enquiring mind and an ability to see to the heart of human emotions and desires.

She sat down on the old tree stump, hoping no one would disturb her – at least until everyone had left and it was time to go and find Phyl and drive her back to Bunting Manor. But she heard voices close at hand – two male voices, in fact – and her heart sank to recognise that one of them was Vaughan Quinn.

She sighed and steeled herself to give him a piece of her mind.

This really is too much. He needs to accept that—

The dangling fronds of willow parted and Vaughan appeared, opening them wider still to reveal Jack.

‘I told you she might be here, Sergeant Wingard. Can I just say what a lucky man you are?’

‘Don’t I know it,’ said Jack.

Vaughan slipped away discreetly without another word and Maisie was on her feet and in Jack’s arms before she knew it.

‘How did you—’ she began.

‘The train terminated at Southampton but there was patrol car at the station with nothing much else to do. They took me to Havant where another bobby drove me on here. I needed to see you. I understand you’ve had another adventure. Fred says you’ve surpassed yourself.’

‘I’m sorry, Jack. I didn’t mean to—’

‘You must never be sorry for being yourself, Maisie. You are who you are, and that’s enough for me, wherever it leads.’

‘I was worried you’d be unhappy with me.’

‘You, Maisie, are what makes me happy.’

For a few moments, they stood in silence, enclosed by the lovely downward-drooping strands of the willow, signifying sadness and mourning, adaptability and rebirth, listening to the distant sounds of the tired inhabitants of the village, making their way home from the annual jollity, charity and unexpected upset of Bitling Fair.

Yes, we’re happy, Maisie thought. But, more than that, we’re content.

‘You remember,’ said Jack, ‘what I said before I had to run for my train to the West Country?’

‘To try and avoid investigating another murder?’ said Maisie, laughing.

‘Pay no attention,’ he insisted.

‘Thank you, Jack. I am who I am.’ She held up her engagement ring. ‘Any regrets?’

‘Of course not,’ he told her, sounding shocked.

‘Good,’ she replied with a smile. ‘Then, if another mystery lands in my lap, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’

The End

If you enjoyed this book, don’t miss the third in the Maisie Cooper mystery series, Murder at the Theatre, available now!

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Luigi Bonomi whose idea it was that I should write cosy crime, and to the team at LBA; to my gifted and assiduous editor Cara Chimirri and all at Hodder & Stoughton; to the booksellers, festival co-ordinators, podcasters and all the others whose dedication and enthusiasm are so essential to a flourishing book industry; to the generous writers who have supported this playwright’s unexpected transition to novel writing.

And, of course, to the person from whom I learnt to write books – the best and only Kate Mosse.

Maisie Cooper is no detective, thank you very much. But she might just solve a murder . . .

Go back to where it all started with
Murder at Church Lodge, the first Maisie Cooper mystery novel.

Available now.

Something is afoot in the little village of Bunting . . .

Luckily, amateur sleuth Maisie Cooper is on the case.

Experience book two in the cosy crime series from Greg Mosse, where crimes and murder abound . . .

Available now.

Maisie Cooper knows that in the world of theatre,

the show must always go on.

Even if there's a killer amongst the cast . . .

Get the third book in the Maisie Cooper mystery series, available now!

Stay in touch . . .

Visit Greg Mosse’s website here

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