The potting shed murder, p.4
The Potting Shed Murder, page 4
Having folded his clothes and taken note of her dinner preferences, Charles would descend the medieval staircase that went directly into the kitchen, grab a trug and a pair of secateurs from the bench under the utility window, peck his wife dutifully on the cheek once more and exit the house via the back door to make his way towards his allotment in the north-east corner of the village. A pipe, a box of matches and a tin of tobacco would be in the single pocket of his shirt. It was a daily ritual in a village filled with pleasant and uncomplicated daily rituals. The residents of Pepperbridge seemed to have settled into a steady set of polite—and rather old-fashioned, to the eyes of an outsider—routines that had been born out of years of unchanging village life.
Augusta could have prepared the evening meal herself, of course, and had it waiting for her husband’s return from school. After all, it was he who had been through the trials and tribulations of running a school filled with whiny village children all day . . . but there was an unspoken and rather chivalrous need that Charles felt to look after his wife, and Augusta in turn accepted his desire quite willingly. There was no submission involved; Augusta was not a timid or fragile woman. Quite the opposite, in fact. She was simply a woman who believed in her right to be held up on a pedestal by her husband (and any other individual within her scope). She also believed that coming home to cook and clean was Charles’s way of letting the stresses of the day drain away. Yet she could think of several other more pleasurable ways of letting off steam . . . She may have been an agile woman of sixty-five who practiced yoga and played tennis, but she had long since resigned herself to the fact that grandiose displays of romance had been absent from her husband’s mind for years. She had learned to respect the fact that whatever passions he’d once harbored for her had now been channeled into his love for the village, and his dutiful feelings towards the pupils and parents at the village school.
It was a shame, in Augusta’s not-so-humble opinion, since Charles had seemed destined for greater things in his youth. The local council and then an MP, perhaps. The inheritance of her father’s money could easily have subsidized any political ambitions of Charles, but her husband’s own ambitions had always involved this community where he had been born and the helping of others—particularly those less fortunate than himself—rather than his own advancement. He was a local boy whose father had been headmaster at the same school when Charles himself was a boy, and despite the illustrious education that followed, including attending Cambridge, Charles had chosen to dedicate his life to keeping the school alive and thriving, stopping the little village from ageing too fast and dying too quickly.
Augusta sometimes felt that they were ageing too fast and dying too quickly. At one point in their early courtship, they had been physically demonstrative to the point of being a public nuisance, although Augusta had never been quite sure whether it was early passion or pent-up anger that had spurred him on. In fact, it was his one-time obvious desire for her that had led Augusta to sacrifice her need for a more exciting, more adventurous life in favor of her husband’s love for this quaint village. She had forgone the things that might have been, the places she might have visited and the friends she might have kept—quite willingly at the start, she had to forcibly remind herself. The truth was that she still loved her husband dearly. He was a loyal and steady man. A man of principle and dignity—such good, solid traits. She had proudly stood by his side at prizegivings and country fetes throughout the years, lending her support to the well-respected headmaster who had returned to the village rather than fleeing to the city. Over time, her own role had grown beyond that of the headmaster’s wife. The committee heads, the fund-raising galas, the Women’s Institute and charity runs. These increasing little snippets of power had somewhat filled the gap where her own ambitions had once lived, and she had learned to quell her frustrations by whipping the various committees into shape.
As the years passed by, long after they had regretfully accepted that they would not have children of their own, Augusta’s impassioned love for her quiet husband took on a more complicated form. He had retreated into himself long ago and, in the growing absence of physical affection, Augusta had slowly adjusted her requirements for indicators of love from her husband. She imagined deep down that he still loved her—he’d just forgotten how to express it without assistance, that was all. She littered their life with enough small and discreet tests to prove that he did. She hadn’t always sat waiting for him to finish work and return to organize supper. She had once been eager to please him and show off her own culinary skills, taking pleasure as he enjoyed her offerings. She was, in fact, a very good cook—but there was only so much lasting joy to be had from a man whose head was more often than not stuck in a textbook or an exam paper. At first, she allowed him to come home only occasionally to a quiet and empty kitchen—just to see if she could induce some sort of a reaction. Anything to acknowledge that he had a strong sense of feeling—or, failing that, an indicator that he felt a modicum of interest. However, the ever-patient, always polite Charles would merely observe the situation with stoic acceptance, and not a word of displeasure would be uttered. It didn’t take him long to fall into line and ask whether she would like him to make something for supper. Time passed by—years even—and Charles simply adapted to this new change in his evening routine, using it as an excuse to grow more interesting produce on his allotment.
Where he would have once made a delicious yet straightforward cottage pie, Charles now prepared a spiced North African–inspired Moroccan stew, complemented by mash made from minty potatoes that he had grown himself, or roasted kohlrabi with goat’s cheese and tarragon or some other such herbs and vegetables grown in his meticulously cared-for allotment.
Augusta had rather begrudgingly enjoyed her husband’s cooking, and so had added to her tests by gaining an increasingly childish pleasure in making Charles do other unnecessary things for her. The more unfair it appeared, the better it felt. The tests were never too unreasonable. Never too challenging. She didn’t want him to become frustrated with her—but asking him to go downstairs and make her a cup of tea once he was settled in bed, only to appear to be asleep when he returned, couldn’t hurt every once in a while. She wasn’t angry with him, she assured herself—just a tad bored with his decades-long lack of interest in anything physical beyond those pecks on the cheek.
Today, she pursed her lips as Charles exited through the back door on his way to the allotment. Frustration turned to the familiar suppressed anger, and suppressed anger turned away from the direction of her husband, and towards uncharitable thoughts—any suitable target annoying her in the village. That simpering, anemic-looking traveler woman was particularly irritating at the moment. She didn’t understand why Charles gave her or her Victorian-waif-like child the time of day. He’d indulged that group of travelers for years. Accommodating their presence and practically bending over backwards to be civil towards them. People like that brought no added value to the village—it was clearly the opposite, whether they’d had a presence on the outskirts of the village before Augusta herself had arrived or not.
There were many residents who got on her nerves. Especially newcomers who appeared to get on with everyone far better than she had when she’d first arrived four decades ago. Surprisingly, the new Black woman seemed acceptable. She appeared to be well spoken, well educated, and the children were always smartly dressed despite being from crime-filled London. What was her name? Daphne, was it? Daphne Brewster? She could be a prime candidate for a useful new—and pliable—PTA member, and her presence would look good on the school brochure for Ofsted too . . . She certainly seemed to be far less obnoxious than that other Londoner—the ridiculously entitled and social-climbing Marianne Forbes.
She had been so disappointed in Marianne. The inane woman thought it was wise to flirt with Charles in order to flatter him into writing a glowing recommendation for the St. Jude’s school scholarship. Well, that recommendation would be written over Augusta’s dead body. Marianne had made her bed by overstepping the mark, and now she could jolly well lie in it.
Augusta stretched her face into a humorless smile as she poured another slug of vodka into her teacup, tipped it back in one gulp and stared stubbornly at the pile of potatoes on top of the Aga waiting to be peeled. The potatoes could bloody well stay there until Charles returned. “Small battles . . .” she sighed into her now-empty teacup; such a pretty and delicate pattern on their wedding china. She stretched to pour herself another generous glug and returned the bottle to its hiding place behind the Royal Dorchester soup tureen with its matching bone china ladle. “Fortnum & Mason Earl Grey Infusion my arse,” she muttered under her breath, slurring slightly.
* * *
A mile or two away to the north, in the sister village of Pudding Corner, a rather less frustrated Daphne Brewster was busy cleaning paintbrushes in her own traditional country kitchen. The doors were flung wide open, and the milder spring weather was now well on its way. The chairs that she had painted for her new “friend” Marianne had set off a rather swift, surprisingly intense chain reaction among the parents and local community surrounding the village school. Despite the area being prime antiques territory, it was as though every household for miles around had breathed a huge sigh of relief at the thought of being able to refresh their timeworn interiors without having to leave their front door. It wasn’t just painting things, either; Daphne was being asked to source vintage items and style them in her own distinctive way in a few local homes too. She was more than happy with her sudden reputation as a budding interior stylist—a moniker that Marianne had first used—and vintage trader “up from London, you know.” Whether it was the novelty factor of getting to interrogate the new Londoner, or simply a sudden collective dislike for three-piece suites, Daphne did not know. What she did know, however, was that she had miraculously and quite unexpectedly been given a shove into a new potential career, and her ambitions had once again been stoked.
It had not been Daphne’s intention to move to the countryside and never work again. Her ex-colleagues and London friends had looked at her pityingly on the occasions when they’d discuss what could possibly come next for her. It was true that she had isolated herself from the possibility of being able to travel to the city to continue working as a shoot producer for an interiors magazine, the Stylish Home. She had been determined to draw a line beneath her old life and this new one, and the idea of once again producing advertising shoots for demanding people made her shudder.
She had left the city for a reason, and that reason did not involve attempting to emulate her career in the reassuringly un-flamboyant backdrop of deepest rural Norfolk. The thought of sullying these beautiful and tranquil surroundings with the same stresses and drama of London was quite frankly a wholly depressing idea. Not only would her nerves not be able to handle it, but her husband and children would have more than a few words to say on the matter themselves. The children, in particular, preferred this calmer and less absent version of their mother. The move had been all about being present for the family . . . but it hadn’t tempered her ambition or her need for independence. Painting and sourcing vintage furniture was nothing like the responsibility of organizing a four-day shoot for a high-end furniture brand, but at least it gave her a dedicated mission, and allowed her a certain amount of creative fulfillment. (She shuddered at the memory of one brand insisting on painting the walls of a location house a bright and garish pink to complement their new collection—then refusing to return it to its original color when they decided not to use the wall as a backdrop after all, thus forcing an exhausted Daphne to repaint the entire wall herself with three coats.)
She was about to start work on an unusual request for one of the more unassuming mothers at the school gates. She was the mother of Silvanus, the child with the large eyes and baggy clothes whom Immy had first introduced her to several weeks back and who was now proudly described as her daughter’s “best ‘boy’ friend.” To be honest, Daphne had been rather surprised by this particular commission. Silvanus’s mother, Minerva Leek, had not seemed the type who would want to pay for a painted piece of furniture. It appeared, however, that her son felt otherwise, and had requested a sleigh-style bed painted in rainbow colors and stars for his sixth birthday, and who was she not to oblige? Daphne had not failed to notice the disapproving glances of a few other disgruntled mothers who had assumed they would take precedence over Silvanus and his mother. But Daphne was nothing if not fair. Minerva had asked her fair and square, ahead of the other commissions, and had been extremely polite about it—almost shy, even. Immy had been invited to her first pajama party and, having a hunch that there would be few attendees at this particular birthday celebration, it was the least Daphne could do to help out someone who appeared to be a fellow outsider in the village. Besides, over the past two months, Minerva and Silvanus had increasingly become the subject of Marianne’s scorn and, for that reason alone, Daphne felt a desire to be on her side. It was always Daphne’s first instinct to defend the excluded and overlooked, and if giving priority to painting a child’s bed was what that took, then that was what she would do.
She had already sanded down the wood. Thankfully, it was a solidly made bed, structurally sound with no signs of woodworm, and painting it would be a straightforward job. An undercoat to stop the knots showing through, and then two coats of color on top. The tricky bit was going to be the intricate design and lettering, but after that followed the simple task of varnishing it to seal her artwork. It was all new territory to Daphne, but it was a skill that she had been practicing for months and she was determined to master it. Getting this one perfect was important for more than her own personal professional pride.
Daphne hated bullying of any kind, and school-gate bullying—involving parents ganging up on other parents—was a particularly unpleasant behavior. It was often sly and insidious, featuring seemingly small slights and innocent topics. Not being invited to a coffee group may appear nothing to some, but to a young mother feeling misplaced and lost, hovering alone at the school gates, it was a potentially devastating blow to an already battered confidence. Daphne knew the feeling very well. She had always appeared confident at the school gates in London, but the manic dash though the gates to catch the train to work, while noting the mothers who were able to head straight out to coffee mornings and bonding yoga sessions, always left her feeling like an outsider. The irony was that in the months preceding the “big move,” when Daphne stood at the school gates with no job to dash off to, she had felt a similar pang of regret at seeing how confident and together the working mothers appeared as they multitasked, carrying school bags and talking into their smartphones while negotiating a child in each hand through the playground. That had been Daphne once. Had she too made it look so effortless while inside she was flapping? Had the coffee mothers back in London not seen her own constant panic hidden just beneath the surface of an artificially cool and controlled exterior?
She had noticed the familiar glimpse of controlled anxiety behind Minerva’s eyes. She never actually allowed herself to appear in an outwardly panicked state but, like Daphne, Minerva often arrived in the playground at the very last minute and had usually disappeared by the time the crocodile lines of paired-up under tens began to snake their way into the classrooms once the bell had been rung.
What had been unexpected was Minerva’s willingness to approach Daphne despite her unwillingness to interact with anyone else. Her smile had been warm and friendly. A little shy perhaps, but open and welcoming. Daphne wondered whether it was an acknowledgment of being an outsider in the area. Daphne was the only Black woman with children at the school, it seemed. In fact, apart from one of the GPs at the local surgery in Pepperbridge; Mrs. Brinton, the British woman of Chinese heritage who co-owned the local chippie with her husband; and a lady who owned a florist in Burnham Market, Daphne had seen hardly any people of color at all. She didn’t doubt that there were more people of color out there, but the thing that she had come to realize with village life was that people seemed to stick with their own community, and where you landed was what you got. It was certainly a change in demographic, but as long as everyone remained as polite and open-minded as they had been so far, then she could cope. The main problem that locals seemed to have was with the people they called the “Townies”: second homeowners—particularly Londoners. The type of people who contributed nothing to the local economy and arrived with their prepacked shopping for two weeks in the summer, but kept their price-inflated houses empty for most of the year.
Minerva may have been white in a very white demographic, but what set her apart was a distinct lack of convention. She wasn’t a Boden wearer or covered in tweed and Dubarry boots like the other mothers. She wore all black, from head to toe. Often full-length skirts that dragged over her feet so you had no idea whether she was wearing shoes at all. The darkness of her clothes contrasted with the translucence of her skin, as though she had remained out of sunlight for her entire life. She was so pale that you could see thin blue veins though the skin on her cheeks, only partially hidden by her poker-straight hair, which hung down to her waist in two great swathes on either side of a center parting.
Marianne had immaturely joked that “Manky Minerva” and her son lived in a commune near the woods on the outskirts of the village, with a bunch of other deluded women who believed themselves to be witches but were probably just hippies growing weed. Despite her relatively new village status, Daphne felt that both assumptions sounded ridiculous, and were obviously an incredibly unfair attempt to exclude a shy woman and her child simply for living in a different way. During Daphne’s short time in the school community, she had even noticed the headmaster’s wife giving Minerva several disdainful side glances.
