With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed

  ‘He’ll be all right if he can have a drink, I expect. “Dunquenchin” doesn’t mean you don’t serve drink, I hope?’

  ‘No, only that I don’t put out fires.’

  Osborne looked at the uniform and said, ‘Ah.’

  ‘Just been giving a talk to some lacemakers. They loved the hatchet.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You on business?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘We booked under the name of Makepeace. That’s him.’ The fireman considered him for a moment. ‘What does your friend do, apart from impressions of Rumpelstiltskin?’

  ‘He’s a writer.’

  ‘You don’t say. What does he write?’

  ‘Book reviews, mostly.’

  ‘It takes all sorts.’

  Nobody else was staying at Dunquenchin that night, which was not surprising given the season. In the evening, therefore, Osborne and Makepeace sat alone in the small, chilly dining-room consuming a fairly good home-made soup, cream of cauliflower, and staring in glum silence at their host’s many fire-service mementoes decking the walls. Normal talk was impossible: for a start, Makepeace had overheard the Rumpelstiltskin comparison and was still sulking; but on top of that they both laboured under the usual inhibition of self-conscious visitors to guesthouses, a paranoid conviction that their conversation, however banal, was being not only overheard but possibly also written down.

  Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, since the fireman obeyed the corollary rule of guesthouses, which says that the host pays very little attention to the diners (‘Brr, are you sure you’re warm enough?’ he said, not waiting for an answer, as he whisked away the soup bowls), and that the meal must be prepared with the maximum rumpus and no self-consciousness whatever about kitchen conversation travelling straight to the ears of the guests. So, ‘I gave them the last of the cauliflower soup,’ they heard him say to someone on the other side of the thin swing door. They tried not to listen, but they couldn’t help it. ‘Oh,’ replied another, younger, male voice. ‘Hadn’t it gone a bit whiffy?’ Osborne scratched his nose and looked hard at a shiny helmet, a medal and a large full-colour photo of a warehouse conflagration in 1975 – presumably a fire with happy memories for his host. ‘What are they getting next, then?’ the conversation continued. ‘One of my famous risottos.’ ‘Blimey, Dad, is that all? You’re not exactly pushing the boat out.’ ‘Well, they’re a bit obnoxious, if you must know.’ ‘Oh, I see. How many nights?’ ‘Just the one, I hope.’ ‘Good.’

  ‘Shall we go out for a drink after this?’ asked Makepeace in a low whisper.

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘I was in a bit of a mood earlier on.’

  ‘I noticed.’

  ‘I get moods like that sometimes.’

  ‘Right.’ If this was Makepeace’s way of saying sorry, ‘Right’ was all he was getting in return.

  ‘I don’t like it here.’

  ‘Nor do I.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Did you think the soup was whiffy?’ asked Osborne.

  Makepeace didn’t reply.

  There was another long pause while they stared at the walls, and the word ‘obnoxious’ bounced around the room.

  Suddenly Makepeace let out a little shriek. ‘Oh, fucking hell,’ he rasped. ‘Look. You see the name on all this fireman crap? It’s Clarke.’

  Osborne looked puzzled. ‘Clarke? What do you mean?’

  ‘Look at it,’ hissed Makepeace. ‘Clarke. Of Honiton. You know. The flip-flops. It could be him, our friend with the shiny buttons.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ exclaimed Osborne, forgetting to keep his voice down.

  Makepeace signalled at him furiously, so he shut up. But Osborne was confused. Was this a joke, or what?

  ‘Listen.’ Makepeace now sounded urgent. He had picked up a spoon and was studying it carefully, as though thinking his way out of a dangerous situation. ‘Think back,’ he hissed, importantly. ‘Does he know who you are? Did you give your name or anything when you booked?’

  Osborne thought about it. ‘No, I gave yours. But –’

  ‘Whatever you do, don’t tell him, then. Funny letters are one thing, but he’s got a hatchet. Next thing you know, you’ll be on a one-way journey to the shed in a fireman’s lift.’

  ‘Listen, this is stupid.’ Osborne started to get up from the table, but at this point the door burst open and a young man with carroty hair entered with two bowls of steaming dinner, a side salad and a basket of bread, most of it precariously balanced on his forearms. He plonked it down, gave them a pleasant non-committal sort of smile, said, ‘Hello I’m Gordon, hope you’re warm enough in here, not very warm though is it,’ and promptly disappeared again, to rejoin the conversation off-stage.

  Gordon. They looked at one another. That made him G. Clarke.

  ‘It’s him, then!’ said Makepeace. ‘The boy! It’s him!’

  But by now Osborne had had enough. ‘All right, shut up,’ he said. ‘This is bloody silly. Just because his dad said you looked like Rumpelstiltskin, there’s no need –’

  ‘Come and “rummage in my shed”, big boy,’ Makepeace continued. “Phew, hot work, gardening”.’

  ‘I’m not listening.’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ commanded Makepeace, and jerked his head towards the door so vehemently that they stopped arguing and started listening again. Which was unfortunate, really, the way things turned out later on.

  ‘Have you sent those Come Into the Garden letters yet, Gordon?’ shouted the older man over the drumming of water in a washing-up bowl.

  ‘Not yet,’ his son yelled back.

  ‘You ought to do it soon. I mean, if it’s urgent.’

  ‘I know.’

  Osborne gulped. Makepeace, astounded, burst out laughing. ‘Urgent!’ he repeated, and pointed at Osborne’s face.

  ‘You know I don’t like to interfere,’ Gordon’s dad continued. ‘But I just wonder whether you’ve got mixed feelings. You could ease up, you know.’

  ‘Ha!’ exclaimed Makepeace in triumph. ‘Mixed feelings!’ And he slapped his thigh.

  ‘Listen, Dad,’ said Gordon, ‘I know what I’m doing. I know when I’m out of my depth. Trust me. You remember how you worried about Digger?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I can handle it.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘I’ll see to the plates.’

  Gordon kicked the swing door and marched into the dining-room, the fixed B&B smile already planted on his face. But what he found was that the dinner on the plates was hardly tasted, let alone finished.

  ‘That’s funny,’ he shouted back to his dad. ‘They’ve gone.’

  6

  Angela Farmer put down the detective novel she was reading, breathed a large blue plume of smoke and consulted her watch. Eleven fifteen. Jeeze. She would definitely have to get dressed soon. Or at least visit the bathroom. Something. For now, however, she stubbed out her cigarette in one of the ashtrays resting on her upper chest and fractionally shifted her position in the bed – just enough to feel the benefit, but not so much that she disturbed the rabbit sleeping on the eiderdown, or toppled to the floor any of the books, papers or cake boxes that seemed somehow to have piled up in heaps. Idly she thought of all the people who were currently doing healthy outdoor up-and-at-’em things, such as weeding and golf, and gave a loud, barking laugh, something along the lines of ‘Arf, arf’.

  Woman’s Hour played at her elbow on a large portable radio. In a moment, Jenni Murray would announce, ‘And now, Angela Farmer reads the second instalment of –’ but the prospect gave her little satisfaction. She picked up the book again and studied the cover. It was Trent Carmichael’s new title, Murder, Shear Murder (the latest in Michelle’s favourite death-by-garden-implement series, which included Let Them Eat Rake and the bestselling Dead for a Bucket), but she put it down again. Trent Carmichael had been a buddy ever since she starred in the TV
movie of S is for … Secateurs!, and he always sent her a complimentary copy of each new book, with a friendly inscription. But that didn’t mean she had to like his goddam fiction. ‘Ah,’ she sighed, ‘fuck him if he can’t take a joke’.

  ‘Ya OK down there – bunny?’ she barked.

  The rabbit made no move.

  ‘Sure you don’t wanna go – walkies?’

  It didn’t. Or not so as you’d notice.

  Swell.

  ‘And now,’ announced Jenni Murray pointedly, ‘Angela Farmer reads the second part of –’

  ‘Oh no, she do-on’t,’ sang the listener gruffly, and switched herself off. Strange to feel less than contented, really. Here she was, with a new hardback, no work today, as much cake as she could eat and a faithful rabbit at her side. She could stay in bed, have a ball, sing all the songs from Showboat, anything. ‘You could make believe I love you’ (she loved doing duets); ‘I could make believe that you LOVE ME.’ Maybe the problem really was the book. For a third time she tried to concentrate on the deductive puzzle confronting the much-loved Inspector Greenfinger and his earthy sidekick (Pete), but for a third time failed to raise the necessary enthusiasm. ‘The gardener did it,’ she announced. ‘My money’s on the goddam gardener.’ And exasperated, she threw Murder, Shear Murder down the bed, where it hit the bunny and woke it up.

  When she had given an interview about ‘a day in the life’ to a Sunday magazine, by the way, it had strangely mentioned nothing of all this. Up at seven, with a healthy half-grapefruit and a few knee-bends, that’s what she had told them. ‘Here’s my knee,’ she growled, ‘to prove it.’ A couple of hours’ light toil on the long-awaited theatrical memoirs (as yet unstarted, actually), a half-hour answering fan letters with a hunky male secretary (Gordon’s dad had obligingly posed for the pictures), a low-cholesterol lunch, plus a long walk in the fresh air, and all before The Archers at 1.40 p.m.! It was only because her imagination ran out, and she had to invent a rather far-fetched interest in fell walking, that the interviewer ever smelled a rat.

  ‘Oh,’ he had said politely, ‘fell walking. But there are no fells in Devon.’

  ‘Sure there are. They’re just so good they blend naturally into the landscape.’

  ‘Actually, um, there aren’t, you know.’

  ‘You sure? Jesus, what a gyp.’ She lit a cigarette and tried to think fast. So many daylight activity hours still to account for.

  The interviewer broke the silence. ‘Perhaps I could say that you do the flowers at the church, or something?’

  She thought about it. ‘Does that sound OK to you, not too creepy?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Well, it’s a deal. Say I do the flowers, but not every day. No one would buy that. Can you say I have a dog, too? I’d like a dog, but I never got around to getting one. And maybe an Aga where I bake cookies.’

  ‘Fine by me, Ms Farmer. What do you want me to call it?’

  ‘The Aga?’

  ‘The dog.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Archie.’

  ‘Nice name.’

  ‘Thanks. I think so too.’

  She could not understand actors who fretted about ‘resting’. There was nothing shameful about putting your feet up; especially when, by and large, the rest of your life was hell on wheels. Yesterday she had driven to a London studio and done voice-overs all day (‘The warmth of a real fire’ – it was amazing how many different ways you could say it); by the weekend she had to read several lousy no-hope scripts for proposed TV sitcoms; and sometime this week she had a guy visiting from a little chicken-shit magazine to talk to her about her outhouse, for some cockamamy reason. So why not enjoy the peace and quiet when you had the chance?

  Except that it wasn’t particularly peaceful at this moment, because all of a sudden there was someone running up the stairs, and the rabbit, startled by the noise, had jumped off the bed with a thump, and was charging towards the wardrobe for cover. For Christ’s sakes, what now?

  ‘It’s only me,’ shouted Gordon from outside her door. ‘Auntie Angela, can I come in?’

  ‘Sure. But wait till I call off the bunny. We thought you were a burglar, and he’s all riled up.’

  Gordon let himself in.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘Hi yourself.’

  ‘Been busy?’ He waved at the chaos on the bed, the floor, the bedside table and all the available surfaces around the room. ‘Good job Dad isn’t here, he’d throw a fit.’

  ‘He would.’

  Gordon cleared a space carefully and sat down. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I just thought I ought to warn you. There’s a couple of blokes staying with us, and I heard one of them mention your name this morning. I think he’s coming to see you.’

  ‘Now why would he do that?’

  ‘Don’t know. But I think he’s coming at twelve.’

  Angela pursed her lips and looked at the ceiling as if to say, ‘How I pity me,’ but said nothing.

  ‘Shall I check in your diary?’

  ‘You’re a doll, but I wish you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Come on, where is it?’

  Angela waved a hand vaguely. ‘The rabbit had it last.’

  Quickly surveying the room, Gordon spotted the diary lurking in exactly the place he expected it: under a Mr Kipling Victoria Sponge. He grabbed it and riffled.

  ‘Now, hang on … right. Tuesday, midday. Come Into the Garden,’ he read cheerfully, and then went terribly quiet.

  Angela didn’t notice the change in his demeanour. Having heaved herself out of bed, she was now kicking debris out of the way, to clear a path to the wardrobe. ‘Give me strength,’ she yelled. But at the same time as Gordon appreciatively watched her performance, laughed and started tidying things into piles, he felt oddly detached from his surroundings. Come Into the Garden had come to Honiton? This was dreadful. These people to whom he had just served breakfast, were they his own employees, the ones he was going to sack? No wonder they had given him odd looks. No wonder the big one looked nervous all the time, and the little one so aggressive. How they must hate him.

  ‘How’s the book?’ he asked as he tidied it into a neat stack of Battenbergs and Madeiras. He needed time to think.

  Angela called out from inside her walk-in wardrobe.

  ‘Borrow it if you like. But it’s gruesome, I warn you now. These two misfit guys turn up at a house in the country, behave in such a weird manner that they attract lots of attention, and then a young red-headed nineteen-year-old squire is found dead, stabbed fatally with a pair of shears.’

  Gordon looked thoughtful.

  ‘What’s the motive?’ he asked tentatively.

  ‘Some grudge.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It’s kinda hazy.’

  ‘But did they do it?’

  ‘Good question. I figure the gardener. It’s usually the disgruntled employee, in my experience.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I think the trouble is he writes too much. Trent Carmichael, I mean. He’s a kind of production line. When he rang me Saturday, he told me he’d already half-finished the next one – I don’t know, Dead-head Among the Roses, or some such miserable thing. Oh, but he told me something interesting. He’d had the same guy around to interview him about his goddam shed. I mean, your pal from Dunquenchin.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Said it was strange, though. The guy never asked any of the obvious questions – about the shears and rakes in the stories. Trent figured he was either very deep or very stupid, so he rang up and asked for a copy of the piece. But when they faxed it to him, he said it was amazing: the guy must have been a huge fan, with a real taste for this stuff. He catalogued all the murders, including even the shears in this one, and the book’s only been out a week. He’d done some big heavy-duty homework. Trent was very impressed. Said the guy had a real understanding of the mad, vengeful, homicidal mind.’

  Gordon broke a Victoria Sponge in half, stared at the cream and jam, and felt su
ddenly very lonely and small. He wanted his daddy. He couldn’t stop thinking about how he had just served breakfast to two men who quite conceivably wished to kill him. It was silly, obviously. People didn’t go around killing people, not because a little magazine folded. Get serious. But on the other hand, something was definitely going on with these guys. Why else, at breakfast, had the big one visibly flinched when Gordon touched his hand by mistake as he put down the toast rack? ‘Aagh!’ he had cried. ‘Lay off with that!’ the other one had shouted, jumping to his feet. They were edgy all right. It all made horrible sense.

  Dad must be told at once. Gordon had left him on his own in the house with them. There was just one little problem with Gordon’s theory: how on earth could these men know about Digger Enterprises’ plans for the magazine? Surely nobody knew, besides Dad (who was currently faxing an official letter to the editor of Come Into the Garden, to put everyone in the picture). But the individual letters of dismissal had only just gone in the post.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  Gordon looked up to see Auntie Angela stunningly attired in a bright blue pullover, smart leggings and long boots. ‘Terrific.’

  She kissed him. ‘Thanks, Gordon, baby. Next to the rabbit, you’re my favourite person.’

  He smiled.

  ‘Now, skedaddle while I put on my face, and I’ll come see you later. How’s that?’

  ‘Right you are,’ he said, and made for the door. But he turned back. ‘Will you be all right on your own?’

  ‘Why? Do you want to stay?’

  Gordon thought about it. Auntie Angela alone in the shed with two dangerous desperadoes, and all those shears and trowels and buckets lying about. ‘Actually, it might be an idea,’ he said.

  ‘Fine, if you want to. Listen, you can double for me at the interview too, if you like. Put on a frock or something. This nightie would suit you – catch. You know more about that goddam shed than I do, that’s for sure.’

  Back at the offices of Come Into the Garden, a fax was coming through. Since Lillian kept the machine beside her desk, between the standard lamp and the magazine rack (in front of the framed reproduction of The Haywain), she was in a position to turn it off most of the time; but today, by some stroke of misfortune, she had forgotten. She hated the disruption to her concentration (she was knitting a cable stitch in fluorescent orange – she always wore bright colours), but since she was frightened to turn it off once it had started operating, she now merely glared at the missive as it slowly and noisily emerged, bottom first, and tried to imagine what life was like before the invention of telecommunication. ‘Honiton, Devon’, it said; then, after a bit of high-pitched whirring, ‘G. Clarke’. This was going to take for ever. ‘Yours sincerely’. Lillian fretted impatiently, but then saw the final line of the letter: ‘I am sorry to bring you and your staff such bad news.’