A Village Feud (21 page)

‘Oh, no. We were all looking forward so much to that.’

‘So was I. Anyway, I can’t think she’ll be able to do it. At least you’ve time to plan something else.’

‘Well, yes. Anyway, she can’t help it if she’s ill, can she? Thanks for letting me know, Dottie. Shall we chance it and hope she’ll be better by then? What do you think?’

‘Might be better to organize something in readiness. I can’t think she’ll be well enough to do something like a demonstration. She’s a nice girl, very kind, I just wish she hadn’t married that dreadful man. He’s ’orrible.’

Caroline had to smile at Dottie’s description of Andy, which echoed her own thoughts entirely. ‘You’re right, although I suppose he must have some good points. But I will call tomorrow with something to cheer her up. Thanks again for letting me know, Dottie. See you.’

Caroline closed the door and stood in the hall thinking. It was a surprisingly sudden bout of flu because last night Jenny was full of life, and to already have had the doctor calling? Not a hint of a fever or a bad throat or anything. Oh well, she’d better tell Beth.

As chance would have it, it was Grandmama who called at Jenny and Andy’s before Caroline got there. Some of their post had been delivered to the Charter-Placketts’ by mistake, and she’d promised Harriet that she’d pop across the road and put it through their letterbox.

But just as she was about to push it through, Andy opened the door to put out an empty milk bottle and wearing gardening gloves.

‘Ah! Here’s your post. It got mixed up with ours so I’ve brought it across.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Is Jenny there? I’d like to make an appointment for my nails.’

Andy shook his head. ‘Sorry. She’s in bed with flu. She’s very poorly. Would you ring next week to make the appointment, please?’

‘Oh! Of course. I’d no idea. When did this start?’

‘Yesterday. She’s very low.’

‘Yes, flu can knock you sideways and not half. I hope you’ve had the doctor.’ Andy nodded. ‘Give her my best wishes and I hope she’ll soon be better.’ Grandmama stepped away from the door, waved casually and left calling out, ‘Don’t forget to tell her I called.’

Andy closed the door and stood thinking he’d have a problem telling her that when she was wrapped in three black binbags in the cupboard under the stairs. Poor Jenny. He hadn’t meant to do it, but when he realized what he’d done he saw it as a very good move on his part. He could sense she was about to blow the whistle at the office in which case he’d be a goner.

In one fell swoop he’d satisfied his need to be rid of her, made certain the house was his with no questions asked, saved his job, prevented her from finding out they weren’t really married and stopped all these damn women knocking on the door for appointments, as though Jenny was some kind of guru or a female godhead able to solve all their problems.

He sauntered across to the store, intending to beg to be allowed to buy some food for Jenny as he couldn’t leave her to get into Culworth with her being so ill and she fancied a hot bacon sandwich and a glass of wine. He made a sorry picture with his drooping shoulders, wan expression and red eyes, well rubbed with juice from an onion to irritate them before he left the house. Jimbo had gone for a hospital checkup so it was Tom who’d been left in charge. Andy stood in the doorway and humbly inquired if in the circumstances he could …

Tom called from the Post Office cage, ‘All right. Just this once. I’m sorry she’s ill.’

Andy collected more than the bacon and the wine but Tom felt inclined to have sympathy with him. He guessed Jenny must be genuinely ill because Andy looked very downcast.

As Bel checked his basket at the till it did occur to her that a hot bacon sandwich and a glass of wine seemed a very odd choice for someone seriously ill with flu. Still, when you were feverish you did get curious fads.

Tom called across, ‘Will you tell her we’re all sorry she’s ill. Hope she’ll soon be better.’

‘Thanks.’

At home Andy sat down to bacon, a large portion of McCain Oven Chips, four sausages and two shiny fried eggs, thinking as he ate them that it was a relief not to have Jenny telling him how many carbohydrates he was consuming and how bad it was for his cholesterol. Hang his cholesterol, at least he could enjoy his food with her gone. As for that pile of salad in the fridge, that could go in the bin as of this minute; followed by the blasted carrots, fennel, tomatoes, chickpeas, aduki beans and taramasalata. The couscous, yes, that could go, too. Oh, yes! He’d eat whatever he liked from now on. He should have got rid of her last night straight after it happened, but he was so confused with the shock of it all that he didn’t think he was sane enough to carry it off – he sniggered at his choice of words – without being found out. In any case the storm would have made any disposal anywhere difficult to achieve. All evening he gloried in his freedom, eating a packet of biscuits and drinking two mugs of hot chocolate with plenty of sugar and no one to say no.

At 2 a.m. that morning after a good day in the office – my, but he’d stayed cool and calculating all day, what a triumph it had been – he went to get her body out of the cupboard under the stairs. His insides heaved with sick as he took the weight of her body in his arms and dragged her out. The back door he’d left standing open and with the tailgate of the car already yawning wide, he heaved her in, covered the binbags with a travelling rug and some carefully placed empty cardboard boxes made to look casually tossed in, and shut the back of the car. Letting off the brake, he slid quietly out down what passed as their garden and glided into Pipe and Nook Lane on his way to Culworth stone quarry, long since abandoned as a working quarry and now used as a tip by all and sundry.

He stood in the pitch-black for five minutes beside his parked car, checking for movements all the way across the quarry. What had been an active quarry for over a hundred years had been a ghost place for the last ten. People had complained to the council about how dangerous the whole site was with its steep sides, ramshackle buildings in the bottom, as well as along the top at one side, gradually falling into ruins and the vast amount of rubbish dumped by an uncaring populace.

Andy reckoned there was absolutely no one about, not even a loving couple in their car. He’d brought a powerful torch with him and plucked up the courage to swing its beam across the quarry in case he picked out someone moving about. It caught the glistening, shifty eyes of rats running about among the rubbish, which made him shudder. He smiled at his caution, then. After all, who would be wandering about the quarry this time of night? But absolute secrecy was essential if his plan was to work.

Satisfied he was safe he opened the tailgate and began sliding her out. His hands caught hold of her feet and he remembered how particular she was about keeping her feet beautiful, how diligent she was about waxing her legs. As he grabbed her hip bones he recollected how determined she was not to ruin her admirable figure by having children. The part of the quarry with the biggest heap of rubbish was about three metres to the left of him, and it was best to drop her there, because she’d be covered over all the sooner. He easily carried her over the necessary three metres – she was light he had to agree, the dieting had been all to the good for Jenny – and he let her roll down there on the least steep side of the quarry.

He followed her down slowly with only the light of his torch to guide him and made sure she was more than covered by the mattresses and the shopping trolleys and the filth of other people’s lives besides his own. The climb back up was not so easy but he managed it at last and told himself he’d done a good job.

He drove home, carefully keeping his speed down so as not to attract attention to himself. With the car neatly parked in their back garden and locked up he wandered into the house and felt liberated. Andy punched the air the moment he got inside. ‘Hallelujah!’ he shouted. He’d got away with it. His master plan had worked. No one had seen him.

He was completely safe.

The perfect murder.

But he couldn’t have been more wrong.

Beth had seen him leave and come back.

She was having one of her sleepless nightmare nights sitting at her bedroom window and was looking out at the deep black night with only the lights of the bypass far away across the valley. She had watched him but not realized what she was seeing.

Her mother, determined to keep her company, had unintentionally fallen asleep on Beth’s bed so she went to sleep in her mother’s bed. Doing so brought her father vividly to mind. And she wished – oh, how she wished – that her father were home and she could sit on his knee with his strong arms around her and tell him why she daren’t go to school, and why Alex was too afraid to do sport at school because he feared being out in the open, and what her nightmares were all about. Then at last Alex could tell him what happened in the sticky, steaming heat of an African night when they were in hiding, and both of them could lay their burden of guilt on their father’s broad shoulders.

As he had promised, Jimbo closed the Store on 31 January. He had a week-long sale of all his stock and, on 1 February, set about designing his internet site for selling Harriet’s Country Cousin products. He’d already visited all his suppliers, farmers’ wives, retired bakers, eager young housewives glad to be making money in their own homes, anyone and everyone who was prepared to work according to his strict rules of hygiene and quality. The result had been an increase in the number of workers and in the lines he could offer. His plaster was now off and hopefully the physiotherapy he was getting would finally put an end to his limping. As his working day no longer anchored him to stock and shelves and display he was beginning to feel at last that life was not the burden it had been previously.

‘Best day’s work I did closing the shop, you know, Harriet.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Yes, don’t you feel it is?’

‘No.’ She was quilting and needed to concentrate.

‘I thought you would love this new relaxed Jimbo.’

‘I do, but it’s a grievous blow to everyone else.’

‘They’ll get used to it. Thousands of villages have lost their Post Offices and convenience stores, they’ve all had to get used to it.’

‘Doesn’t mean to say it’s for the best, does it? Pension day they can hardly find a seat on the bus it’s so busy, all going to Culworth to spend their money instead of in the store.’ The corners of her mouth were turned down and she looked grim.

‘You really mean it, don’t you?’

‘Yes. I do. The only one who benefits is J.G. Charter-Plackett.’

‘Well, you’ll benefit this weekend when we all go to Chichester, Friday evening to Sunday.’

‘That’s right, but I can’t help but think we could have organized ourselves better than we did and kept the Store going.’

‘How? How to relieve ourselves of the six-day-a-week grind – well, seven if we really wanted to make a go of it?’

Harriet put down her needle and applied herself instead to Jimbo. ‘I am entirely sure that Tom Nicholls, with a bit of instruction, could have taken over a great deal of your burden. Look how he took to doing the Post Office after all the fuss and palaver Linda made of it. Two hours of training and he’s hardly put a foot wrong since. Stock maintenance would be a doddle for him because he has an organized mind, and he’s very quick off the mark if he spots someone he thinks is stealing. You missed a great opportunity there, Jimbo.’

‘Think so?’ Jimbo immediately began worrying that she could be right. After all, he had enjoyed the cut and thrust of the daily input of customers, and he had to confess he’d lost his main source of gossip, which had left a yawning gap in his life. ‘He’d never manage the window-dressing though, he hasn’t an imaginative bone in his body.’

‘Ah! But Evie has. I bet with a bit of practice she’d be a wizard at window-dressing. With her eye for colour and design—’

‘All right. All right. Maybe. But all that capital tied up in stock? No, thank you. Chichester here I come.’

Harriet grinned at him. ‘Aren’t you just a teeny-weeny bit sad that you’ve no Store to go to? Dozens of people are. All that gossip that used to go on behind the tinned soups? The chats over the coffee machine? Or that frequently asked question: “Is Jimbo in the back?” Or that time Muriel caught you hugging Venetia in your office? Remember?’

Jimbo went to look out of the window while he weighed up how much truth there was in what Harriet had just said. ‘I remember. However, I still maintain I’ve made the right decision. The figures for February already prove that the catering and the mail order are holding up very well now they don’t have, in part, to support the Store.’ He turned away from the window and, looking Harriet straight in the eye, said firmly, ‘No, I’ve made the right decision.’

Neither of them realized that Fran had been standing in the doorway listening to their conversation. ‘Yes, Daddy, but what about me?’

‘What about you?’

‘I’ve always wanted to run the Store for you, ever since I was small, and without consulting me, you’ve left me with no career prospects.’

Jimbo blustered his way through his answer. ‘I’d no idea that was how you felt. You should have said.’

‘Come on, Daddy, you never even consulted Mummy, never mind me. You just stuck up the notice and that was that.’