Pets on Parade (Prospect House 2) (8 page)

‘Oh, you mean Charles Venables,’ I exclaimed.

‘You know him?’

I did. Well, sort of. Only last month, I’d been coerced into judging the pets at St Augustine’s annual church fête – a last-minute replacement for their usual vet who had gone suspiciously AWOL. I could see why he had done so, once the judging got under way. It was a chaotic, shambolic affair and, in the end, suffering from the plethora of demanding, threatening owners and the seemingly endless number of fat, slobbering black Labradors that were presented to me, I decided the winner would be a lad with a well-behaved Labrador, not realising I’d chosen the Reverend Charles’ own dog. All very embarrassing.

Once the Spencers had departed, we awaited, with interest, the arrival of Mrs Venables. Not that we were being nosey, mind you. Just a little curious. I wouldn’t want anyone to think we suffered from what I call ‘net curtain twitch’. But Lucy and I were both standing to one side of the upstairs bedroom window – the best vantage point – mugs of coffee in our hands, when the removals men arrived and started unloading the lady’s belongings from the back of their van, which they’d conveniently reversed up really close, enabling us to peer straight down into it. Excellent.

‘Hey, look,’ exclaimed Lucy, using a finger to move the curtain slightly back to get a better view, ‘she’s got a piano.’ It was a small upright, nothing grand. ‘Wonder if she plays?’

‘No doubt we’ll hear if she does,’ I replied, thinking of the lack of sound-proofing.

‘That’s a nice dining table. Looks Victorian,’ she said, as the removals men manoeuvred an elegant, oval table with pedestal legs down the ramp. ‘And that chaise. Very classy,’ she added. ‘Although I don’t like the red brocade. Bit
old-fashioned.
Still, she’s certainly got some tasteful pieces.’

‘Honestly, Lucy,’ I said, pulling her away from the window. ‘Don’t be so nosey.’ But I couldn’t resist one last look and spotted a removals man carrying in a large aspidistra in an ornate, green-and-purple china pot. Nice.

When, the next day, Mrs Venables came round to introduce herself, she was very much as I’d expected a lady who owned a piano and an aspidistra to be. Mind you, we’d already sussed her, watching her the day before, trotting in and out to the removals van, giving orders in a crisp, no-nonsense tone of voice, very much in control – not that we could actually hear what she was saying, try as we might – the outer walls of the cottage were solid and over a foot deep, and we thought it a little too obvious to open the window. We weren’t that nosey. Besides, later, we could always put our ears to the partition wall.

‘Hello, I’m your new neighbour,’ she said when I opened the front door. ‘Eleanor Venables. Thought I’d pop round to make myself known.’ She held out her hand and we exchanged a very firm handshake. I judged Eleanor to be in her early sixties. She had a round moon face, a little wrinkled round the eyes, echoed by a deep line running down from each corner of her mouth, which had the effect of divorcing her chin from the rest of her features and gave the impression of a ventriloquist’s dummy being manipulated from behind – the chin jolted up and down when she spoke. The impression was maintained by brown eyes, flecked with grey, which swivelled past my shoulder as she took in the contents of our tiny hallway and then zeroed in to fix on me. But this lady was no dummy. You could tell from the cut of the heather tweed jacket and skirt she was wearing and the finely embroidered white blouse that Eleanor had taste. And the thick sweep of platinum-grey hair, tied back in a perfect chignon, gave her a slightly imperial image, which, coupled with the fragrance of lily of the valley – a perfume my mother adored – made for an attractive if slightly formidable lady – one who I envisaged could make an ideal president of the local Women’s Institute, and run it with charm and decorum while ensuring everything got done exactly the way she wanted.

Her way, at that precise moment, was to be asked in, and, having introduced myself, I felt obliged to invite her to step inside. ‘I’m afraid it’s a bit of a mess,’ I apologised as Eleanor surged past me and swept into our living room.

‘But charming all the same,’ she replied. ‘I do so like your fireplace. I have a similar one, although mine has the original brickwork.’ She walked over to the fireplace and ran her hand down the brick veneer. ‘That could always be taken off I suppose.’ She reached up and patted the oak bressumer. ‘Mine’s original. But at least this one’s in keeping.’

I felt the tic in my temple begin to start up. Ever so slightly, but there nevertheless.

‘Still,’ she said, turning to me, ‘we must feel privileged to live in something that’s part of our national heritage. Don’t you think?’ She arched her grey eyebrows imperiously.

I couldn’t argue with that; and didn’t dare.

The sound of the back door opening was a welcome distraction. Lucy’s voice called out from the kitchen. ‘Paul, Bugsie’s got the bloody squits again. I told you we should have cut down on his greens.’

‘Er, Lucy,’ I shouted, ‘our new neighbour’s just popped round to see us.’ I smiled weakly at Eleanor.

‘Oh shit, sorry.’ It was Lucy again. ‘Just get my boots off. Won’t be a sec.’

Eleanor’s chin worked up and down. ‘So tell me, Paul, how long have you and, er – Lucy, is it? – lived here?’

‘Just on three months,’ interrupted Lucy, emerging from the kitchen in stockinged feet. ‘Hello, I’m Lucy.’

Eleanor stretched out her hand.

‘Better not,’ said Lucy, ‘just been mucking out Bugsie’s hutch.’

Eleanor’s hand was rapidly withdrawn.

‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’

‘Er, maybe another time. When you’re not so busy.’

And not so dirty, I’m sure she was thinking.

‘Oh, we’re always busy, aren’t we, Paul?’ said Lucy, pushing a strand of hair from her eye. ‘That’s the way it is when you have animals.’ As if on cue, Nelson snuffled through from where he’d been snoozing in the kitchen and stopped a metre or so from Eleanor.

The terrier looked up at her with rheumy eyes and emitted a high-pitched woof.

Startled, Eleanor took a step back.

‘Don’t worry,’ I reassured. ‘Nelson’s perfectly harmless. A real softie. But he’s getting on and is a bit deaf.’ I bent down and tickled Nelson’s ears. He gave another little woof vaguely in the direction of Eleanor and then, having decided he’d done his duty by alerting us to the presence of a stranger in the cottage, he ambled back to his box in the kitchen.

‘Have you any pets?’ I asked her, thinking that she wasn’t really the type to have a pet; besides, I hadn’t seen any sign of one yesterday. So I was surprised when she told us that, yes, she did have a pet – a tortoiseshell cat called Tammy. As she mentioned the cat’s name, her face lit up.

‘She is very independent,’ Eleanor said. ‘But then aren’t all cats?’ She uttered a tinkling laugh.

Uhmm … I could foresee problems arising when Queenie and co. met the new cat on their territory.

‘You can say that again,’ said Lucy, heartily. ‘My Queenie can be an absolute bugger.’

Eleanor’s face dropped. Her chin snapped up and down. ‘Well, I’m sure we’ll all get along,’ she said, a little hesitantly, her confidence ebbing slightly. ‘Meanwhile, I mustn’t keep you. I’ve got lots to do as you can imagine.’

‘Do you need anything,’ asked Lucy, wiping her hands down the sides of her jeans. ‘Milk, sugar?’

Eleanor shook her head firmly. ‘Oh no, dear. I brought everything with me. I always like to be well prepared.’

I’m sure you do, Eleanor, I thought. I’m sure you do. But it turned out she wasn’t prepared for what occurred in the ensuing months.

I
t started with a decapitated mouse.

‘Tammy, how could you?’

I didn’t have to put my ear to the partition wall to hear our neighbour’s cry of anguish. Although muffled, it was pretty clear that Tammy had done something to annoy Eleanor. Later that Saturday afternoon, I discovered the cause of her vexation when, as I was doing a spot of weeding in the long border running down the back of our garden, I saw the top of Eleanor’s grey head over the panelled fencing that divided our two properties. She was muttering to herself, her tone of voice plainly reprimanding.

I was in a good mood, relishing my weekend off, taking advantage of the glorious, late summer sunshine to work through any hassles at the practice – and there had been a few – by venting them on some serious gardening; in particular, cutting back the edge of the lawn where it had encroached on the border and endeavouring to ensure I kept a straight line down from the cottage. It really was a pleasure to be working with such rich, dark, loamy soil, and I could imagine the owners or tenants working the same patch down the centuries. My unearthing, last week, of some shards of clay pipes just reinforced that feeling.

So seeing Eleanor walking down her garden prompted me to put a temporary halt to my spadework and, resting one foot on the heel of the spade, I called out cheerfully, ‘Hi there, Eleanor. Grand afternoon, isn’t it?’

The grey head stopped, approached the fence and Eleanor’s moon face rose over it. It wasn’t exactly radiant. ‘It would be if it wasn’t for the likes of this …’ A yellow, rubber-gloved hand appeared, holding between finger and thumb the tail of a headless mouse whose body swung beneath it. ‘Tammy brought this in and deposited it on my hearth rug.’ There was a visible twitch of disgust from the moon face. ‘I was just going to bury it.’ Her other hand appeared, equally sheathed in a yellow rubber glove in similar mint condition, but this one was holding a pristine trowel which caught the sun and flashed at me.

I rammed my spade in the edge of the border and walked over, stepping onto a small pile of bricks which I’d neatly stacked there, remnants of the edging to the patio I’d constructed earlier in the summer – with Crystal’s blessing, of course, as it wasn’t my property. Why stack them there, halfway down the garden, alongside the boundary fence? Well, no obvious reason, although it did make it easier to get a better view of my neighbour’s garden when no one was about. It was an attractive garden, twice the size of ours, being formerly two plots before the pair of cottages had been combined; the Spencers had obviously spent a lot of time redesigning it with the incorporation of a screened-off vegetable plot and a secluded patio – which became significantly less secluded if I stood on my pile of bricks. Right at the bottom of the plot, in one corner, they’d created a tiny wild patch, consisting of a pond flanked by a clump of reeds, with a couple of water lilies on its surface and a bank of native plants – pink campion, bergamot and meadowsweet amongst them – which were allowed to grow unhindered. It was to this spot that Eleanor was heading.

I was in the mood for a bit of a chinwag but Eleanor, waving the decapitated mouse at me, said, ‘I’d rather get rid of this first, if you don’t mind.’

I watched as she resolutely continued with her rodent disposal strategy, her tall, angular figure clad that afternoon in all the classic colours one would choose for such treks into the wilderness … even though it was only a patch of overgrown garden: spotless, green corduroy trousers; matching green waistcoat over a light-green linen, short-sleeved shirt; and soft, green rubber wellies, complete with buckles at their tops. The only accessories that clashed with her country image were the pristine yellow gloves – and, of course, the headless mouse.

Once the carcass had been disposed of by burial beneath a holly bush, Eleanor negotiated the circular slabs set round the edge of the pond; she did it with arms stretched out, gloves held up in front of her, and studied each stone circle before placing a boot precisely in its centre. She dithered a moment when the stones stopped at the edge of the lawn and then, having decided the dry turf was unlikely to foul her wellingtons, she crossed over to continue her chat with me.

‘I do wish Tammy would stop bringing in these offerings,’ she said, with a little shudder, waving her now slightly soiled trowel in the air. ‘Such a beastly habit.’

But, as with all habits, it was to be repeated. And only a few days later.

Lucy and I had just got home from Prospect House, having been on the early rota so that we finished at 5.00pm, which meant we had a few hours before it got dark to unwind; on such occasions we would often have a mug of tea on our little patio and soak in a bit of late afternoon sunshine. That day was no exception. There were a few straggling, pink roses still in flower over the kitchen door and, lying on my lounger, eyes half closed, I could hear the drone of several bees as they dragged themselves from bloom to bloom. From beyond the front of Willow Wren came the noisy cawing of the rooks returning to their nests in the beeches adjacent to Reverend James’ garden; but their cacophony was sufficiently muted by the intervening cottage walls so as not to be intrusive. The same couldn’t be said for the Reverend – he was driven to distraction by the daily onslaught, which he often blamed for his disjointed sermons, having been disturbed in the writing of them by the rooks. I’d often seen him from our front window, pacing up and down the rectory garden, with his notes in hand, waving them at the nests above him. Perhaps seeking divine intervention? But I guessed not. Unlike St Francis of Assisi, whose compassion for animals had elevated him to being their patron saint, James did not emulate this, judging by his incessant fist waving and the stream of invectives that poured out from his garden.

Feeling exhausted after another strenuous day at the surgery, with the sun still sufficiently warm on my face to lull me into semi-slumber, I began to nod off, vaguely aware that Lucy, on the lounger next to me, had also fallen asleep – there was soft, sibilant snoring coming from her direction.

Then came the scream … a high-pitched, wavering scream.

‘Bloody hell! What on earth was that?’ I exclaimed, jolted from my reverie with such a start that I found myself sitting bolt upright, staring wildly round me.

Lucy’s eyes fluttered open. ‘What?’ she said, yawning.

‘That scream. Didn’t you hear it?’ Further explanation was unnecessary, as from the other side of the fence adjacent to our kitchen came the distraught voice of Eleanor Venables.