T Kinsey - A Quiet Life in the Country (A Lady Hardcastle Mystery Book 1)

‘Mornin’, miss,’ he said jovially. ‘How can I help you this fine morning?’

‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘I have Lady Hardcastle’s meat order. I wonder if you would take care of it for her, please.’

‘Certainly miss,’ he said, reaching across the counter to take the paper I offered him. He looked at it carefully. ‘Hmm,’ he said, with evident disapproval. ‘I a’n’t got Lincolnshire sausages. Not much call for ’em round here. I got me own Gloucestershire recipe. Will that suffice?’

‘That will be fine, I’m sure.’

‘Would you care to try some faggots?’

‘Oh, that would be lovely,’ I said. ‘I haven’t had faggots since I left home. I’m sure Lady Hardcastle would love them if she hasn’t already experienced them.’

‘Where’s home, then, miss?’ he said, making a note on the order.

‘My mother is from South Wales. Aberdare.’

‘Sorry to tell I’ve never heard of it, but if they has faggots, they can’t be bad people. How are you settling in up at the new house?’

‘Quite well, thank you. I think we shall be happy there. And everyone in the village has been so charming and friendly.’

‘They’s mostly a friendly bunch. One or two bad uns, mind, but that’s like anywhere, really, i’n’t it?’

‘It is indeed.’

He looked at the order once more. ‘I can get the boy to bring this lot round this afternoon if you likes, though you might have to wait till tomorrow for the sausages – I’m making some fresh tonight.’

‘Tomorrow will be fine, Mr Spratt, thank you,’ I said. ‘Good day to you.’

Before I could turn, he spoke again. ‘’Fore you goes, like. I heard tell it was you and your mistress as found young Frank in the woods.’

‘We did,’ I said.

‘He was hanging from a tree, they says.’

News always travels fast in a small place. ‘Yes, that’s right. The poor fellow.’

‘I heard tell it was made to look like suicide, but that he were murdered.’

News travels very fast indeed. ‘I’m not at all certain what the official police view is,’ I said, ‘but it certainly looked that way to us.’

He nodded sagely. ‘Bad business, that. Bad business. Nice lad, young Frank. Bad business.’ He stared pensively at his blood-stained butcher’s block for a few moments. I felt uncomfortable about leaving him in the middle of this rumination on the badness of the business but then he suddenly brightened. ‘Still, don’t do to dwell on it, eh? Things was getting right cheerful round here what with news of the engagement and all.’

‘Ah, yes. I gather it’s causing some excitement,’ I said. I wasn’t entirely certain it was but Lady Hardcastle had said something about it.

‘Ar. Young Miss Farley-Stroud from up The Grange. She’s going to be marrying Mr Seddon’s son from over Chipping Bevington. Your mistress will be going to the party, I ’spect?’

‘I’m not certain,’ I said. ‘She hasn’t mentioned anything.’

‘She’s bound to get an invite, important lady like her. It’s going to be quite a do. I’ve got an order long as your arm from Mrs Brown, the cook up at The Grange.’

‘It sounds like good news all round, then,’ I said. ‘I look forward to hearing more about it. Good day to you, Mr Spratt.’ This time I managed to get out of the door without being called back.

Holman, the baker, proved to be no less well informed.

‘. . . hangin’ up there all night, they said. A night in the pub with his pals, and then murdered ’fore he could get home. Hung up out in the woods. Addin’ insult to injury, that was, makin’ it look like suicide.’

‘I gather he was quite well liked,’ I said, trying to turn the conversation back to the man himself rather than his tragic demise.

‘Lovely chap,’ said the baker. ‘Terrifyin’ bowler, mind. Frightened the life out of many a visitin’ batsman, that lad.’

He rattled on for quite a while as he bagged the rolls and buns I’d bought for the afternoon. His enthusiasm for cricket in general, and for the skills of the late Mr Pickering in particular, was seemingly boundless. As he chattered, I actually began to wish I’d seen this prodigy in action, though I knew I’d have understood little of what was going on.

I extricated myself from his cricketing talk as politely as I could and made my last call of this trip. So far both the butcher and the baker had buttonholed me about the murder and if there’d been a candlestick-maker in the village I’m sure he’d have done the same. As it was I had to make do with being interrogated by Mrs Pantry who ran the grocer’s shop. She did sell candles, though, so I decided that was good enough.

She made the same comments as the others had about what a well-liked chap Frank Pickering had been but then her conversation took an entirely different turn.

‘What did the body look like, dear?’ she asked. She leaned forwards and spoke more quietly. ‘Was his face bloated and blue? Was his tongue lolling out?’ She performed a grotesque mime to represent her idea of what a hanged man might look like.

And then I thought about it. ‘Actually, no,’ I said, after a few moments. ‘No, he didn’t look too bad at all. His face was a little purple, I suppose, but nothing gruesome.’ Perhaps that should have given us our clue that he was already dead when he was hanged from the tree, I thought.

She looked disappointed. ‘Ah, well,’ she said. ‘We don’t get much excitement round these parts, so you were lucky. Most thrilling thing to happen round here is the engagement. Load of old nonsense.’

‘You disapprove?’ I asked. ‘I heard about Miss Clarissa and Mr— I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten his name.’

‘Teddy Seddon,’ she said, with a sneer. ‘Useless article. All them toffs is useless if you asks me.’ She looked up at me sharply. ‘’Cept your mistress, of course. I’m sure she’s all right. But the rest of ’em? I wouldn’t give you two farthings for the lot of ’em.’

She enumerated the many shortcomings of the moneyed and titled classes in colourfully explicit language for a while longer before I was able finally to bid her good day. I found myself back on the pavement without several of the things I had intended to buy, but I couldn’t face a renewal of the tirade so I resolved that we could do without them for another day.

It was a pity the conversation was so strongly biased towards violent crime and the inadequacies of the bourgeoisie. I had been desperate to find out if Pantry was really her late husband’s name or if she’d changed it for business reasons. I might never find out.

Lady Farley-Stroud’s interview candidates were due at eleven o’clock. I had a long list of all the things that needed to be done to get the place shipshape before we hired the new staff.

In the fourteen years I had been working for Lady Hardcastle I’d had plenty of time to learn her ways. I decided it would be easier to get the house the way we liked it and then just to instruct the new servants on how to keep it that way. This seemed like a splendid idea at the time, but for every item crossed off at the top of the list I seemed to add two more to the bottom. I began to despair of getting things done in time.

Lady Hardcastle had more or less settled into the orangery, so she was ‘helping’ around the house. When there was a knock on the side door on the stroke of eleven o’clock, I was more than ready to take a break.

I answered the door to see two women, plainly dressed and clearly nervous.

‘Edna Gibson and Blodwen Jones,’ said the older one. ‘We’ve come about the jobs.’

‘How do you do?’ I said. ‘I’m Miss Armstrong.’

‘How do you do, miss. Lady Farley-Stroud said you were looking for a cook and a maid.’