Rose Cottage (9 page)

A shrill whistle from just behind me jerked me round, startled, and jerked the terrier, too, from his post. He came running to the shop doorway, which had opened to let a young woman – a girl of about sixteen – out onto the step.

She saw me and stopped in the doorway. ‘Oh, sorry! I never saw you. Come here, Muffin! You leave them ducks alone! Were you coming in the shop? He’d love
to get them ducks, but he’s frightened of the water. You can’t blame him, can you, all that mud and the weed and all. A fair disgrace I call it, and no one does a thing about it. Come in, then. I’m Jinnie Barlow, Mrs Barlow’s niece, from Ashhurst, and keeping the shop while she’s on holiday. I haven’t met you yet, have I?’

‘No. I’m Kate Herrick. Nice to meet you, Jinnie. Will Mrs Barlow be away long?’

‘Only a week. She’s gone over to Hartlepool, to her sister’s, my other Aunty’s. She’s just out of hospital, my other Aunty, that is, so I said I’d come and mind the shop, and the cat and dog. The shop’s the least of the troubles.’ She laughed merrily. ‘Whose are the ducks?’

‘I don’t know. They probably belong to Scurr’s, like the geese. I think they’re used to dogs – anyway, I’m sure they’ll know Muffin quite well. I wouldn’t worry about them.’

‘I won’t. What can I get you, then? Is it the rations?’

‘Yes, please. Here’s the book.’

‘Ta. Makes it easy, this does. This is only my second day, and I’ve not quite got the hang of Aunty’s shelves yet, but the rations are easy, and I’ve got some of them made up ready anyway.’

She chattered on as she served me. Ashhurst, where she lived, was about five miles away, and before this visit, she told me, she had done no more than call occasionally on her aunt, but she was enjoying this temporary job because one of her friends from home was working at the vicarage.

‘Lil Ashby?’ I said. ‘Yes, of course. Their farm’s over Ashhurst way. You’d be at school with her?’

I spoke absently, watching all the while through the glass of the door to see if I could catch a glimpse of the vicar coming away from his call on Mrs Foster at the post office on the other side of the green. Mrs Barlow’s absence was disappointing. She was a great gossip, and since most people who visited the village found their way at some time to the shop, I had hoped she might have some information for me.

‘That it?’ asked Jinnie, putting the last of the packages into my basket. ‘We’ve got some tins of Spam, if you’d like one, and what about flour?’

‘Oh, no thanks. I’ve got all I need, and I don’t want a lot to carry. It’s a long way to Rose Cottage. This’ll do me very well. How much is it?’

She told me and I paid her. As she counted out the change she asked, with the first sign of curiosity, ‘Rose Cottage? Isn’t that the place away down the station road? Where the old lady died and the sister went up north to stay? I heard about that.’

I hesitated, then put the question I had wanted to ask Mrs Barlow. ‘Did your aunt say if there’d been any strangers seen about there lately, or maybe asking about it?’

‘Not that I remember. Here, don’t forget your ration book.’ As she handed it to me she caught sight of the address on the cover. ‘Richmond, Surrey? Oh, you’re not from Todhall, then? And you’re lodging down at Rose Cottage? On your own? Isn’t it lonesome there?’

‘Not really.’ There was the vicar now, shutting Mrs Foster’s gate and setting out to cross the green. He appeared to be making for the church.

‘Are you just there on holiday, then? Related, maybe? Aunty did tell me—’

‘Excuse me. Someone I want to see. I must catch him. Thanks again, Jinnie. Good morning.’ Snatching my basket up I made hastily for the door, tripping over Muffin, who was waiting to be let out again, presumably for further contemplation of the ducks. In the ensuing scuffle as he was caught and held and apologised for, I made my escape from further questions and headed back down the green towards the church.

When I let myself in through the south door, there was no sign of the vicar. A woman was there, below the pulpit, with a bucket full of flowers and branches beside her, and a couple of big brass vases on the floor waiting to be filled. I recognised the massive vases that stood to either side of the chancel arch. On festival days my grandfather used to bring boughs of blossom or leaves from the Hall grounds. For ordinary Sundays the vases usually had to stand empty.

The church, the eternal centre of the village, was unchanged, not shrunken like Rose Cottage and the vicarage. The same yesterday, today and for ever. Just as it should be. I supposed – fleetingly, as I slipped into a back pew to say the brief prayer that was one’s civil greeting to the church’s owner – that the timelessness was the quality all churches shared; a matter admittedly, to some extent, of shadows and carvings and high groined ceilings and dim religious light, but also of the years of use, the words, the thoughts, the griefs and joys of countless people
through the years. Here in Todhall there had been some nine centuries of them.

I got to my feet and approached the flower-arranger. She had not looked round as I entered the church, but now she stood up and greeted me. She was tall, thin rather than slender, with brown hair that showed a hint of grey tucked back uncaringly under a felt hat. She looked to be somewhere in her sixties, and wore an elderly skirt topped by a cardigan over a white shirt blouse. She greeted me with a poise verging on condescension. Her voice was educated.

‘Good morning. A lovely day, isn’t it? Are you interested in our church?’

‘Good morning. You must be Mrs Winton Smith?’

‘Yes?’

It was a question, and she waited for an answer. I said: ‘I’m Kate Herrick, Mrs Herrick. I called at the vicarage earlier, but the vicar was out. There’s something I’m rather anxious to ask him about, and I thought I might catch him here. I was over there in the shop just now and saw him come across the green. I suppose he’s come in by the vestry door? Do you think I might go in there and have a word with him?’

‘I didn’t hear the door, but he may be there, he did say something about looking out some papers this morning, and I do know that he is very busy. But’ – she was gracious – ‘perhaps there is something I can do for you? You’re a stranger to the village, aren’t you? If it’s the church you’re interested in, there’s a very good booklet written by the last vicar. It’s down there on the
bench by the font. I’m afraid we charge threepence, but churches do have expenses.’

She must be practised, I thought, at defending her husband against time-wasters. I had to find some way through the defences. I looked down at the bucketful of flowers. ‘What lovely flowers. Do you grow them yourself?’

‘Yes. They’re all from the vicarage garden. Are you a gardener, Mrs Herrick?’

I smiled. ‘In a way. I work for a nursery firm in Richmond.’

‘Are you visiting friends here?’

‘I’m just here for a day or two. Staying at Rose Cottage. You must know it, it’s down—’

‘Oh yes, I know it.’ She had stooped over a vase again, and now looked up. ‘But surely you’re not there alone? Aren’t you nervous?’

‘Not a bit. You’re the second person today who’s asked me that. Why should I be?’

‘All I know is, when my grandchildren came to stay for their half-term, they wouldn’t go near the place. Someone had told them it was haunted.’

‘Haunted?’

‘Yes. I don’t know who by, something to do with gipsies. They used to camp there, I believe, and they were something to do with the people at Rose Cottage, some dreadful family that lived there, and some scandalous goings-on. Before our time, of course, the scandal, that is. Welland, that was the name. Welland.’

A conversation-stopper if ever there was one. And that was the moment when the vicar chose to come
bustling out through the vestry door. In sharp, and rather unkind, contrast to his wife he was a chubby, kindly-looking man with a thick mop of white hair and bright blue eyes peering over a pair of half-moon spectacles with gold rims, which had slid almost to the end of his nose.

He pushed them up absently, and they slid down again. ‘Ah, Muriel. I thought I heard voices,’ he said, and then to me: ‘Good morning. A beautiful day, isn’t it? A beautiful day.’

‘This is Mrs Herrick,’ said his wife. ‘She is visiting the village, and is interested in the church, and I think she wanted to talk to you about it, but I told her that this was a busy day for you, Wednesday, with the evening service to prepare for, and—’

She was interrupted. The vicar came hurrying down the chancel steps with his hand out in greeting. ‘Mrs Herrick? Mrs Herrick, is it? How do you do? How do you do? I was speaking with Lady Brandon on the telephone only yesterday, and she mentioned that you were coming to visit your old haunts. Indeed, indeed. So, you wish to talk to me? Of course, a pleasure. If you like to come over to the vicarage now we can talk there.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Mrs Herrick, my dear, must know this church better than either you or I. Her folk have lived here for a very long time. She was a Welland before her marriage. Kathy Welland, wasn’t it, from Rose Cottage?’

I said nothing. Mrs Winton Smith said nothing. The vicar said: ‘Shall we go?’ which seemed an excellent suggestion. We went.

The vicar’s study was much as I remembered it, a small room to the right of the front door, with a bow window from which, sitting at his desk, he could see who was approaching the house. Beyond the ivied wall of the front garden the church tower seemed very near.

There was a fire laid, but not lighted, in the grate. Above the mantelpiece hung a large engraving of an Oxford college, and on the mantelpiece itself were two silver cups and a college crest mounted on a wooden base. The other walls were lined with bookcases. It would have served nicely, I thought, for a stage set of ‘clergyman’s study’. It looked, in fact, exactly the same as it had in his predecessor’s time, save that Prissy’s father had been to Cambridge, and there had been an oar hung above one of the bookcases. There were even the same two baggy leather armchairs. Mr Winton Smith gestured me to one, himself taking the swivel chair at the desk, whirling it so that he faced into the room. Probably a practised manoeuvre; it put him with
his back to the window, and on a higher level than his visitor. Understandable; this room must have seen quite a few difficult or delicate interviews.

But I didn’t see that this would be one of them. Nor, apparently, did he. He picked up a box of cigarettes, offered me one, and when I shook my head said, ‘Wise girl,’ smiled, and took one himself.

I opened the batting. ‘You said you had spoken with Lady Brandon, vicar, and that she told you I was coming here to Todhall?’

‘That is so. Yes. I understood from her that you were to stay at Rose Cottage, and that she had asked Mrs Pascoe to open it up for you. I trust all is well there? It has been empty a long time.’

‘It’s fine, thank you. I don’t – that is, I didn’t – expect to be here more than a couple of days.’

‘Indeed, indeed?’ A look, disconcertingly quick, over the top of his glasses. ‘Does that mean that you plan now to stay longer?’

‘I may have to. There’s something – that’s why I came to see you. Did Lady Brandon tell you what I was here for?’

‘Certainly. She said that your grandmother had decided to stay in Scotland and make her home there, and had asked you to come here to clear the cottage and arrange for the rest of her furniture to be sent north. I must say, Mrs Herrick, that I was sorry to hear it. Your grandmother was a great character, a great character, and I always enjoyed my visits there.’

‘She wasn’t a very great churchgoer – at least I don’t remember it.’ I smiled. ‘She used to pack me off,
though, regular as clockwork, church, Sunday School, the lot, but she hardly ever went with me. Aunt Betsy did, though, sometimes.’

‘Ah. Yes. A worthy lady,’ said the vicar cautiously.

His expression of reserve was so marked that I laughed. ‘Don’t say you didn’t know that she used to sit outside in the churchyard till the service was over, in case the true faith – hers, that is – was contaminated? Surely someone would tell you – in fact I’ll bet she told you herself!’

‘And you would win. She, ah, she tended to make her opinions very clear. But at least you say she brought you, and fairly regularly, too.’

‘Only because she wanted to make sure I didn’t have any fun – that is, get into mischief.’

Another of those shrewd glimmers from above the half-moon glasses. ‘Indeed, indeed. The sins of children. Well, you were going to tell me why you were planning to stay longer. I hope there’s nothing wrong? I believe you said that all was well at the cottage?’

‘All’s well with me, certainly. But a worrying thing has happened. There were a few small things that Gran had put away in a private hidey-hole, and they’ve gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘Disappeared. Been taken. Things she specially asked me to take back to her.’

‘Oh, dear. I’m sorry to hear that. How very disturbing. I take it you’ve had a thorough search?’

‘Not yet, no. But they should still have been where she’d hidden them, and there’s no sign of them.’

‘Your grandmother couldn’t have been mistaken? Forgotten just where they were?’