Just Desserts (6 page)

She was surprised when he rang back almost straight away. ‘What's the problem?' asked Leo.

‘I didn't mean to disturb you,' she said.

‘You're not. Daniel's gone to bed and my parents are starting to look at me worriedly because I'm not working. They're not used to it.'

Penny heard laughter in the background and felt better. ‘It's this Women's Institute paperwork. I just don't know where to start. The first entry in the minutes gives the names of those attending the inaugural meeting – including my grandmother, by the way – and the date of the next. But that's just
facts
, Leo, and stilted little newspaper reports. A history shouldn't be completely boring, should it?'

‘Try fast-forwarding through the routine stuff until you get to anniversaries. One year on, five years, ten years. Quite often those are the times when reports are compiled. No sense you working things out from scratch if someone who was actually there has already written it up for you.'

Penny was stunned at such a simple solution. ‘That's brilliant!'

‘I know,' Leo said modestly. ‘It's not foolproof, but it's a good start.'

‘Thanks. I'll let you know how I get on. Are you having a nice weekend?'

There was a slight pause. ‘Yeah. It's good. See you next week.'

‘OK.'

She put the phone down. He wasn't very happy, she thought. Oh, but
what
a good tip about looking for already-written accounts of the WI history. All of a sudden, the project had become far less daunting.

Penny didn't have to work too far forward to strike gold. At five years in, she found a history written by a Mrs Ingle, who had apparently been the one to put forward the idea of forming a Women's Institute in Salthaven in the first place. Young and lively – to judge by the energetic tone of her writing – Henrietta had been off visiting friends and brought various cosmopolitan ideas back with her. She was at pains to point out in the account that the WI was a
complementary
organisation to the Women's Voluntary Service. Penny guessed there had been comments about diluting the war effort! She hadn't been the president, though. That honour had gone alternately to Lady Ribblethwaite and Mrs Barnes for the first few years.

Penny sat back at that point. How interesting. The Ribblethwaites had owned Thwaite Hall for generations before death duties had forced them to sell it to be used as a retirement home. The Barnes family were prominent in the local business community. Neither set of descendants were friendly with the other and it looked as though, in those early days, the WI presidency had been a power struggle between old families and new money. It wasn't the sort of tussle that could go into a sober account of the history of Salthaven WI unless she worded it very carefully. It was a pity Grandma Astley was no longer alive to ask. She'd have known the ins and outs of it for sure.

Penny returned to Henrietta Ingle's report. The first few years of the WI seemed to have been a lot livelier than they were now. There had been worthy lectures on Wartime Cooking, Make Do and Mend, and Writing Diaries in Code. But there had also been morale-boosting dances, birthday parties, and – intriguingly – exercises in diverting the enemy forces.

Penny eyed the piles of paper on the table that she'd skipped over. It was no good. Her appetite had now been whetted. She was going to have to read through them anyway!

‘I might have found your Famous Daughter, but you'll have to work for it,' said Penny on Monday. ‘I'm not going to have time to go through this lot, what with the show at the end of the week.'

She was amused to see Leo look greedily at the Women's Institute records. ‘Just my sort of thing,' he said. ‘Who is she?'

‘Henrietta Ingle. Only they all called each other Mrs and Miss in those days. Mrs Ingle got them fired up to start the WI and seems to have been the prime mover in some of the more adventurous escapades.'

‘Escapades?' Leo's voice rose in disbelief. ‘Adventurous? The WI?'

Penny chuckled. ‘You may well be startled. Listen to this:
‘May 1941: At this week's meeting, Mrs Ingle and Miss Fell demonstrated the anti-tank device. It was not an unqualified success and more development is needed. It was agreed that a puncture repair kit should be purchased so that volunteers can get home.'
Isn't that fabulous?'

Leo was laughing. ‘An anti-tank device? And a puncture repair kit?'

‘That's what it says.' Penny looked at him expectantly. Had he missed the name of the other woman?

He frowned and took the book from her. ‘Hold on a moment. Mrs Ingle and
Miss Fell
? As in Grandad Fell's sister?'

‘I reckon. Do you fancy a trip up to the farm?'

‘I certainly do. I want to rattle his cage about that plane as well. Jack Scrivener must have seen more than was in the paper. Mr Fell may know what.'

The old gentleman was delighted to see them back. When Penny asked about the ‘anti-tank device', he wheezed so hard he had to be revived with a fresh brew of tea.

‘That were Mrs Ingle's idea, that were. Not but what our Elsie wasn't as bad. Powerful fired up, they were, thinking what they could do if the Germans landed and the Home Guard off protecting the gasworks. Daft women came up with the idea of strewing tin tacks across the road.'

Leo yelped with laughter. ‘Tin tacks? Against a tank?'

‘Told you they were daft. I knew nothing about it until afterwards. They were that much older than us and Elsie said we boys wouldn't say what we were up to, so why should she tell me her doings? They tried it out down at St Mary's, then the pair of them hid by the side of the wall lying in wait for the butcher's boy – he'd cheeked Elsie twice that week and she reckoned he needed taking down a peg. They heard his bell, lobbed the tacks over the wall, then blow me if the Ministry farm inspector didn't overtake the lad on the corner and bust his tyres!'

‘Oh no! What did they do?'

‘Do? They legged it. Mrs Ingle biked for home as fast as she could and my fool sister scurried up here by the back way and was near through feeding the hens when the inspector finally arrived. Did Fellrigg Farm a favour though. He was that grateful to me for mending his spare and to Ma for giving him a bottle of beer and a bite to eat he wasn't nearly so particular about us from then on.'

‘The Ingle Cup,' said Penny suddenly.

Leo looked at her enquiringly.

‘Sorry. I've just remembered. One of the novelty classes in the Salthaven Show is for the Ingle Cup. The best use of unusual ingredients. I won it one year for chocolate-dipped mackerel.'

Grandad Fell chortled. ‘She'd have liked that, all right.'

‘I suppose she moved away, did she? I don't know anyone nowadays by the name of Ingle.'

‘Her husband got promotion and was shunted on after the war. She and Elsie always wrote though. Letters were always full of some madcap stunt for charity.'

Leo was scribbling in his notepad. ‘I don't suppose you'd have an address? She sounds just the subject for a column in the
Messenger
. Even if she isn't with us any more, her family might have memories.'

Rachel Fell had come into the kitchen while they were talking. ‘She's on the Christmas card list, Grandad. Will I take it off the computer?'

‘Do that, lass.' He chucked again. ‘Haven't thought of those days for years.'

‘It's doing you good,' said Rachel. ‘Are you going back via Lowdale, Mrs Plain? Can you drop this envelope off for Tom? He needs to sign some forms. I was going to do it myself, but I'm that busy with orders for ice cream, not to mention my entries for the Salthaven Show.'

Penny was aware of Leo stirring alertly at the mention of Lowdale. ‘Call me Penny, please. I'll be happy to take it. What are you entering for the show?'

‘Cakes. Loaves. Some of my hedgerow jam. To tell the truth I was going to give it a miss this year, what with the ice cream taking off, but your Lucinda gave me a rare talking to about use-it-or-lose-it and the money for library books benefiting us and the kids. Billy and Grandad still say I'm mad, but she's right. You have to support the show, don't you? Otherwise it folds. I'm having a trade stall too, so I ought to have faith in my own products being placed. It all gets the word out there and helps in the long run. Here's Mrs Ingle's address. London. Funny to think of her and Auntie Elsie getting up to all those antics, isn't it?'

‘Very strange,' said Penny.

‘Talking of London,' said Leo casually. ‘I was in Hendon with my boy at the weekend and went to the Air Museum. They had a plane just like the one that crashed up here. Tiny thing, compared to today's aircraft. Tell me again what Jack Scrivener said about that night?'

Grandad Fell's eyes unfocused. ‘It would have been round about this time of year, but dark and overcast. No more harvesting that day, so there we were in the Drovers when Jack comes in. That was a surprise in itself, because he didn't usually turn up until near closing. He might get caught for a round otherwise! ‘Plane's come down,' he said, jerking his head up the road. He said he didn't hear it at first, what with the noise of the waves crashing, but then he looked up and saw a dark shape, then it seemed like a bit of it flew off, then there was this hissing boiling burst as it came down in the tarn.'

‘A bit flew off?' said Leo. ‘That wasn't mentioned in the newspaper.'

The old man cackled. ‘That would be due to Jack Scrivener having a win on the football pools next day and being rare confused when it came to the questioning.'

Leo grinned. ‘It happens. There must have been a number of you in the pub. Did you not go up to the crash as soon as you heard? To see if anything could be done?'

‘Jack said the tarn had swallowed the plane. He'd told the police. Nothing more we could do, so we got on with giving Andrew Collins a good send off.'

‘You knew it was him? How?'

‘We thought it must be, it being his cousin's wedding next day and him having been borrowing aeroplanes to fly home since the beginning of the war.'

Leo flashed a glance at Penny. So it was what they'd thought. Andrew Collins had ‘won' a plane for the weekend and the flight had gone wrong.

Penny, however, had seen the sly amusement in the old man's face earlier. ‘Jack Scrivener doesn't sound like the sort of chap who'd have a lot of money to spare for the football pools,' she said. ‘Did he do them often?'

The old blue eyes met hers. ‘Just that once, lass.'

‘I knew it,' said Leo as they left. ‘The aftermath of the crash was fixed. I
knew
that miserable, niggardly paragraph in the paper didn't ring true. Normally you find a character like Jack Scrivener and you can't shut them up.' He stared at Penny, not really seeing her. ‘But why?' he said, thinking aloud. ‘Planes came down all the time in the early fifties. Pilots borrowed them illegally because that's what they'd got used to. Why was this time different? Why would the authorities cover it up instead of making an example of Collins? Can we go to the tarn again?'

There was wry understanding in her face. ‘Sure.'

They drove the short distance to peaceful, serene Long Tarn. It was completely quiet. Dogs frolicked on the far side. There were kids skimming stones by the water's edge. Any place less like the setting for a dreadful air crash was hard to imagine.

‘Perhaps it was the plane itself?' suggested Penny in a practical voice. ‘Maybe the model was one the company were trying to sell? Could they have covered it up because they didn't want it known that it was dangerous under certain circumstances?'

‘That's one possibility. I can find out.' Leo stared around in frustration. ‘I just … I just have a gut feeling that there's something more. I'm missing something.'

‘Come on,' said Penny. ‘Let's deliver Rachel's forms to my son-in-law and then get home. I could do with lunch – and I daresay you wouldn't say no to a bite to eat.'

He quirked a sideways look at her. ‘Never do.'

She stopped outside Tom's lab and took the envelope inside. Leo stayed with the car, leaning against it to stretch his legs, listening to the seagulls and the sound of the waves slapping against the cliffs below. He kept his eyes on the horizon, carefully not watching the men working at the Lowdale Screw Fittings site directly, but noticing the comings and goings with a minuteness that would have surprised anyone observing him. Which they were. He had no doubt of that. Just what
was
going on here? Maybe Penny was right and he was thinking of too many things at once to make sense of any of them.

‘Sorry,' he said when she came back out. ‘I'm being a complete grouch over this Andrew Collins story. I need to push it to the back of my mind and wait for the thing I've missed to surface.'

Penny rolled her eyes. ‘I am so glad I don't live in your head. I've got some nice chicken soup at home – it'll do you the power of good.'

Leo laughed. ‘Don't. You sounded just like my mum then.' A thought suddenly struck him. ‘Listen – I'd like to interview Henrietta Ingle in person. Do you want to come too? My parents would put you up overnight.'

‘I … ‘ Penny stared at him, clearly flustered. ‘All I had in mind for the WI history was phoning her or writing.'

‘But wouldn't it be nice – as part of the project – to meet the woman who started it all?'

‘Maybe. I'll think about it. There's no hurry.'

He grinned. ‘There is, you know. Didn't you say the Salthaven Show was struggling for entries? If I can get Mrs Ingle into this week's paper as a ‘Famous Daughter of Salthaven', it will ramp up the publicity for the show no end.'

She bit her lip. ‘Oh, you wretch, Leo. You're right. And now I'll feel guilty if I don't go.'