I had another chance to examine the psychological condition of my suspect – my study, my promising prospect – when we went down to the village. Mummy got tired of being bothered about milk, tea and other odd things, and sent V to get yet more food. I went along to cheer her up with banter, cherry pie and my company. If you took her word for it, she does not like me around, but she really cannot do without me. Of course she resents my being younger, prettier and smarter, but she cannot resist my wit and charm, and she benefits from stimulation, like an old dog: if not for me, nothing would ever happen in her life. Also, she does not know, but I am always talking her up around the school, trying to make her seem more interesting than she really is. What does she ever do for me? Well, she did save my life that day, just about, though I shall keep my professional judgement all the same. She still looks guilty.
On the way down, V was distracted. Her insults were half-hearted as well as half-witted. The pie perked her up, but she still failed to complete her circuits of the chestnut trees and made no effort to race me to the lane. She is getting old and worried about her dignity: she need not have bothered – she looked her normal shocking state.
It was a gorg. afternoon though. The lane was like a tunnel with a sunshine ceiling and walls decorated with pixie beards and hanging with blackberries. V stomped along, sweating in her black jeans and a sort of tent that she must have hoped would hide her fat bum and jelly belly. She stuffed herself with blackberries as she went. In a lapse of professionalism I gave her some sisterly advice: she needs to get the cat on her side. Of course she will get no more out of it than Detective Tickham did, but I would like to see her try. She was more concerned about getting cakes from Mrs Baker to replace the one that the worms were feasting on in the parsley patch.
Signs of guilt: general grouchy attitude;
shifty behaviour at the crime scene and since;
obsession with food;
desire to atone by delivery of fresh cake supplies.
Marcus, on the other hand, seemed to be able to rest peacefully, but then he has always had a talent in that direction. He has had to sleep off whole steamed puds and joints of beef in the past.
V panicked when we got to the closed bakery, but I stepped in, hurrah for me. Mrs B took some persuading, but the Great Detective is good with people. Once she was convinced, there was no stopping her. She was like a big fat baking missile. When Mummy is cooking she buzzes about like a fly at a window, bursts of furious activity with moments of aimless circling, panic and dithering in between. Mrs B has a professional directness: 1-2-3-done.
Either way, something good emerges from the clouds of flour, and Mummy's cakes are way better.
I left them to it – Mrs B rattling bowls and trays with intent, V sucking back tea – and went to check around the village for clues. Pretty thin picnics. I took a stroll through the churchyard and met no-one but a tribe of ancient Tickhams, including aunt Hettie (great aunt Hettie? great grand aunt Hettie?). Lots of women. Mummy says most of the men are buried in some corner of a foreign field; “the ones that were any good” she says. Daddy should be safe, then.
Tickham is Mummy's name. There have always been lots of Tickham girls, and the family has worried about the name being lost, so it has been hyphen-ated lots of times, Tickham women being tagged to men of more-or-less reputable families. Grandma T made a deal with Grandpa Lackwit: girls would be Tickhams, boys Lackwits. And guess what – no boys, just Mummy and Auntie Bobbie. And V and I got the same deal, so one day we will lie down alongside the whole lot of them, a neat row of Tickham girls, a whole college of Tickham Ladies. Nice to know where you are going.
I swung by the old mill and peered down into the race. It was bristling with angry, late-season nettles, their leaves curled at the edges and sharp at the tips. I did not fancy getting stuck down there, and a quick glance around told my trained eye that in any case no scuffle had occurred nearby, no body had been lugged to the edge and tipped over. The ground was damp and the long grass would have been stomped down by the heavy boots of wicked men if any had been by. I was not sure why I was looking for a body, but I had a nagging feeling or hope that there was more to the mystery than the broken cake. When it comes to detecting, the more gruesome the crime the better.
I doubled back, casting about all the while for clues, and wandered up the main street towards the millennium horse trough. A boy sat there. Smallish, pointy-nosed, dark-haired. He was picking a stone out of the sole of one of his grubby trainers and did not notice me until I was nearly upon him, but he looked up slowly, his eyes hooded.
“A-wight,” he muttered.
The Great Detective is renowned, among many other achievements, for her command of the patois of the criminal class. Mummy has often commented upon it. “A-wight,” I replied.
He nodded, I nodded. He shifted across on the edge of the stone trough. I sat down.
“I'm looking for clues,” I offered.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Seen anyfink? Anyone been abaat?”
“Nuffink. What sort of clues?”
“Just anyfink surpicious,” I said warily, unwilling to tell him too much.
“What do you fink you are – p'lice?”
“Nah. Just curious. Threelance Detective.”
I could see this was getting me no-where, and was preparing to leave when he said, “I got some pie.”
Aha! The baking connection. “What kind?”
“Jest apple.” He had it wrapped in a bit of tin foil. It was more squished up than the cherry pie I had brought and V had scoffed earlier. “Me Mum made it, or one of ve uvvers. These days, they are always a' it, but I get to eat it, so it's okay. Sometimes looks pretty ... surpicious though.”
I glanced at the mess in his hands, and agreed. “Evva make cakes, do they?” I asked sharply.
“Not so much, not lately. Jest apple pies, cos of there's lots of apples about. Us kids get the apples, they cook 'em,” boasted the boy, and then looked about, worried that he may have revealed a secret. But I was not interested in pursuing petty apple theft – I had bigger cakes to bake.
“No choclit them?”
“Mo chamce.”
Then the oddest thing happened. Finishing the pie, the boy wiped his mouth on his sleeve, leaned sharply towards me and planted his sticky lips on my mouth. Jeezus. Really anti-social behaviour. I shoved him away and then just sat there for a second, shocked. When he lunged again, though, I was ready for him: with the back of my hand I smacked him hard in the mouth. That did not stop him and I had to grab at his nasty track-suit as I fell backwards off the trough and he fell with me. There was a blur of action, clashing elbows and panting apple pie breath as we rolled on the floor. I was winded from the fall but as my attacker hesitated – unsure whether to try to kiss me again or hit me – I got my knees up under his skinny ribcage. My knees are pretty pointy things; also, having them in his belly put my feet within striking distance of his groin, and strike I jolly did. With a grunt, he rolled away, and I scrambled up. Though he was in no fit state to chase me, I made off as fast as I could. Because he lay groaning between me and the green (and the bakery and my sister), I dashed off the other way, back towards the church and the graveyard.
“Fah … hah!” he tried to shout after me, which could have meant anything, but probably nothing kind. I neither stopped nor looked back at the gate, nor at the Tickham plot; did not stop until I tripped over a stone and fell flat on the grave of T.E. Wilson Beloved Husband 1842 – 1886 He Lies With Our Lord. And I lay on him a while, pressing my ear to the earth or (in graveyard terms) the sod, listening for the pounding trainer-shod feet of my attacker (the sod). Nothing. No-one came. But it was a shaken and angry Detective who eventually climbed to her feet, set her jaw and marched out of the graveyard (and a relieved one who reached the Bakery without further assault).
V, thinking about her belly as usual I suppose, did not notice that I was not as smart as accustomary. She just grunted and loaded me up with food and dragg
ed me off in the direction I knew we should not be headed. The woods; and to get to the woods, Marsh Row. Haunt of apple thieves and sex-pests. Who no doubt had older brothers and sisters and perhaps dogs. I may have let my imagination go a little: rustics with pitchforks and flaming torches featured. Unlikely in this day and age, but even so, in the circs I should not have gone to check the den. You would think I had never seen a film or an episode of Scooby-doo. Anyway, lulled by the peace of the afternoon, and thinking I had passed safely through the territory of my enemy, I left my trusty sidekick or chief suspect to waddle along at her own pace and whizzed up the hill. And whizzed down much faster. Detection is brain-work, but often involves associating with classes of people who are more inclined to look for a physical solution to a problem, so the detective must be prepared to take action – of the running away kind, if necessary. Call it a tactical withdrawal, and with some fine hopping of tree-stumps, ducking branches and a tremendous leap across the river. My pursuers crashed clumsily after me, shaking sticks, screeching and drooling, rolling their eyes, like chimps after a colobus.
“Ah, V,” I said, “Glad to see you. Talk to these people for me, won't you?” Something like that – but I was a little breathless and the ululululating of the mob may have rather drowned me out. I pressed Mummy's fork into V's hand as she stepped in front of me, and the skinny boy was pushed forward. Him, I was not too bothered about. I could see blood between his teeth from where I had hit him earlier. Even with his stick he was not a threat, but the girl was scary and I did not like the look of the thicker set boy: he was their dog, their jagged weapon.
It is for these situations that every Great Detective needs a side-kick. To feed her lines, to spout exposition, to provide a steel on which to sharpen her wits and in a tricky back-to-the-wall (or tree) confrontation, to fight off ruffians. V was bigger than the kid, which helped, and she had the fork, held very close between their two faces, and that helped too. And she screamed at the brat, red-faced and sweating, looking crazy enough to fork out his eye: that did it.
We trotted off home, they skulked back down to Marsh Row with their tails tucked under. I felt like a bird; like a diamond released from an age of rocky imprisonment; like a shooting star. V did not seem so cheerful, but then she is not a naturally cheerful sort. Give her lemonade, and she'll make lemons.
We arrived home to find Mummy chatting with the staff. The guests were scattered about the house, unrolling my clues, cleaning their blunderbusts, running flustered from the study and so on, but there in the kitchen was a whole new batch of suspects:
1 and 2. the Cook or Chef and her assistant
3. an actress playing the Cook
4. an actor playing the Butler
5. an actress playing the Serving-maid
6. an actor playing the Stable-boy
The Butler was a suspect, I immediately remembered. “So, you have gambling debts,” I said to him, startling him into dropping the whiskers he was sticking to his face.
“What?” he answered, and then, seeing my gimlet eye, gathered himself to say “Of course not, Mistress Tickham. A misunderstanding, a tax matter. It is all settled now,” and he winked. The un-whiskered side of his face was not very old, not really butler-ish at all. Note: further questions for the Butler to include 'Are you now or have you ever been inclined to water the port?' This would be an opportunity to test Grandpa's theories on butlers.
The rest buzzed around Mummy. The Chef wanted to clear space in the kitchen for her cooking, and she wanted Marcus out, though he was not in the way, just watching hopefully. Her assistant wanted to know how she was to keep the food warm on its long journey to the dining room. Of course, we normally eat in the kitchen, except for the Drip in the east wing who generally slopes down to pick up a plate of left-overs to take back up to his room.
“If we are all to be presented at dinner to be questioned,” asked the actress-Cook, slapping on her puffy hat, “how am I to cook it?”
“Oh, you need not actually cook,” Mummy laughed, “The Cook will do that.”
“Chef.” said the Chef, jamming on her rather smaller hat.
“But for the sake of verité,” wailed the Cook, “I should be seen to have cooked … perhaps I might shadow – what's your name darling?”
“Verity,” scowled the Chef.
“… shadow Verity a while here and be presented at the end of the meal.”
“You can help serve,” the Chef's assistant said to the Maid hopefully.
“I don't think so,” came the curt reply. The Maid was less method than the Cook, and more interested in eyeing up the Stable-boy. She was dark and short and looked like three dumplings stacked one on top of the other; he was a tall, hungry-looking chap with pale ginger hair. V thumped the supplies down on the table and Sandy glanced at her. She blushed and stomped off upstairs.
The old Colonel wandered into the kitchen from the salon. “What-ho! Tea's up eh?” he bellowed.
“Think of this as a prop,” said Mummy, handing the Maid a tray and piling it with teapots and cups. The terrace is that way.”
“Follow me, my gel,” roared Rooting-Compound, and staggered off.
“Stable-boy: go and lurk about a bit,” Mummy continued, “Butler, look serious in the dining room. Polish silver or something. Cook, stay here if you must.” She clapped her hands and the actors turned on the spot like automata and clicked away obediently. Two days of work is two days of work, and you do as the director says.
“We have a trolley,” Mummy told the Chef's assistant, and added in my direction, “Go to the door Tabitha dear I think our late guest has arrived show her to her room upstairs and then bring her down to the terrace for tea and … scones is it? good … and try not to badger the staff.”
The doorbell clanged just as I set off (how does Mummy know?).
Chapter 7