Passing Strange (2 page)

“That I can't say,” answered Hebbinge smoothly.

“Who …” began the Honorary Secretary even more delicately. “There'd been a family quarrel, hadn't there? Before my time, of course.”

“Enquiries are being made,” was all that Edward Hebbinge would say to that at the time, “by the solicitors.”

So the Show had gone on.

And only one of the many and various consequences of that fact was that Fred Pearson and Ken Walls were this minute standing before a long trestle table studying the name card placed in front of the inferior tomatoes but beside the splendidly engraved red card with the magic words ‘First Prize' clear to see.

“Mrs Eleanor Wellstone,” read out Fred Pearson carefully, “Tanglewood Cottage, High Street, Almstone.” He scratched his head. “Where the devil's that, Ken? I thought I knew the High Street like the back of my hand.”

“Billy Carter's old place. The Wellstones have done it up.”

“Cor!” Fred's eyebrows shot upwards. “Tanglewood Cottage! That would have made Lily Carter laugh, that would. How many kids did they have in that old hovel – seven?”

“Eight,” said Ken Walls, “if you count the first.”

“I expect Lily did,” said Fred realistically, “even if Billy didn't.”

Ken Walls returned to the tomatoes which were the sore point with him. “Now if it had been the Beginners' Class those tomatoes had been top of I could have understood it.”

“They're new people anyway, aren't they?” said Pearson. “The Wellstones …”

“It doesn't always go together, does it?” said Ken. “Being new here and a Beginner? Remember when Derek Turling first came and we thought he was only a first timer? Before …”

“Swept the board,” said Pearson feelingly, “at his first Show, didn't he?”

“Including potatoes.” Ken sniffed. “All's fair in love, war and showing.”

“And tomatoes,” Pearson reminded him, “seeing as you're mentioning individuals.”

“The Wellstones have retired here,” said Ken Walls, returning like a homing pigeon to the tomatoes of today.

“Ah.” This was not a point in their favour. Retired people arriving with a clean slate seldom got a good credit rating in the Almstone book. The village liked to be able to judge for itself the work a man had done in his lifetime.

“From somewhere in Luston,” added Walls.

“Oh, I see.” This was, if anything, even less of a testimonial. The suburbs of the industrial town of Luston in the north of the county of Calleshire were not, in Almstone's view, the ideal background for a new countryman.

Or countrywoman.

This point had not escaped Ken Walls.

“It's not even as if it was Flower Arrangements,” he said obliquely. “My wife says that she can never understand the judging of Flower Arrangements.”

Fred Pearson was an essentially practical man. “What are we going to do about it, Ken?”

In the end they decided to do what the inhabitants of the parish of Almstone had been doing with their problems – secular and religious – ever since one Roger de Someri had come to the village in the year 1261 as its earliest recorded incumbent.

And that was to take it to the Rector.

They weren't the only members of the parish with a problem seeking out the Rector that afternoon.

Edward Hebbinge, the agent for the Priory estate, had been on the look-out for him too. He finally ran him to earth just where he had expected him to be – by the White Elephant Stall.

“Ah, Rector,” he said rather breathlessly, “we've been looking for you.”

“Why they always put the second-hand books with the White Elephants defeats me,” said the clergyman. “It's not logical.”

“Rector, we can't find the District Nurse anywhere.” He mopped his brow. “Anywhere,” he repeated.

“Is someone ill?” The Rector turned away from the books. “I think I saw the doctor over by the cactus display, if he'll do instead.”

The land agent shook his head. “It's not that. She's just missing, that's all.”

“Missing?” echoed the Reverend Thomas Jervis. “Nurse Cooper?”

“Well … not so much missing,” admitted Hebbinge, “as not where she's supposed to be.”

“And where's that?”

“The Fortune Teller's Tent. She's meant to be gazing into a crystal ball or some such nonsense and the secretary can't find her anywhere.”

“Dear me,” said Mr Jervis mildly. “Is that serious?”

“There's quite a queue outside her tent and they're getting restive.”

“If she's not there I can see that they would be. Well, I'm sorry I can't help.” He started to thumb through the second-hand books again. “If I should see her …”

Edward Hebbinge cleared his throat. “I was looking for you actually, Rector.”

“So you said.”

“Norman Burton said if I found you I was to ask you if you would mind – er – holding the fort while we find Nurse Cooper.” He ran a finger round the inside of his collar. “She must be about somewhere.”

Thomas Jervis gave him a curious look. “I'm sorry, Edward. Not there.”

The agent looked surprised. “Not there?”

“The Fortune Teller's clients might think there was a connection with my own firm,” explained the Rector lightly, “if they saw my clerical collar behind the crystal ball.”

Hebbinge's face cleared. “Oh, I see what you mean.”

“I can't deputize for anyone dabbling with the occult, even in fun.”

“Even in a good cause?” asked Hebbinge wryly.

“The Bishop wouldn't like it,” said the Rector, blithely invoking his spiritual superior. (There was, he felt, no reason why that good man shouldn't come in handy sometimes.)

“No, no,” protested Hebbinge hastily, “of course not. I must say we hadn't thought of that aspect at all.”

The Rector stroked his left cheek with a gentle finger. “I have enough trouble getting my flock to understand that the Devil is a fallen angel without confusing them by appearing to change sides …”

But Edward Hebbinge had already gone. The Rector turned back to the second-hand books only to find Fred Pearson and Ken Walls by his side.

“We've got a little problem, Rector, if you don't mind,” began Fred.

The Reverend Thomas Jervis didn't mind. In fact he was old enough and wise enough to welcome little problems as being more likely to be capable of solution than big ones.

“About tomatoes,” amplified Ken Walls.

The Rector bent his head attentively. Ken Walls was married to a querulous, complaining creature for whom there was no real solution this side of the grave. The man never even referred to the big problem in his life and the Rector was only too happy to help him with a manageable one, recognizing that the pursuit of the perfect tomato was an alternative to committing a homicide that, if not exactly justifiable, would at least be comprehensible.

“Tell me all …” he began.

It wasn't very much later that the Rector met his own wife in the tea tent.

“At least,” said Mrs Jervis, when she had heard about the tomatoes, “it's one thing that can't be laid at the door of the Church of England.” She was a staunch defender of the faith at grass roots level.

“I have known parishes,” declared the Rector, “rent asunder …”

“Split,” interrupted the Rector's wife automatically. She did her best to keep weekday and Sunday phraseology separate.

“Split,” amended the Rector equably, “on such fundamental issues as who runs the cake stall.”

“Or plays Boadicea in the pageant,” supplemented his helpmeet, who had heard it all before.

“Quite apart from the academic point of whether she should be unclothed.”

Mrs Jervis regarded her husband fondly. Any man who thought that point academic was best in the church. As a man of the cloth he could be as unworldly as he liked. She chose an iced bun. “Always supposing,” she added drily, “that Boadicea was as young as the Pageant Committee thought.” Almstone Pageant had been two years ago but reverberations from it still echoed round the parish like the grumble of thunder in mountains.

“I think,” said Thomas Jervis mildly, “that they were confusing her with Lady Godiva.”

“Ivy Challender wasn't a day over seventeen at the time. My guess,” said the Rector's wife, who had a position of her own to keep up, “is that no one – queen or not – could lead a tribe – civilised or not – at seventeen.”

“Lady Godiva wasn't leading a tribe.”

“It wasn't Lady Godiva they were confusing her with,” said Mrs Jervis triumphantly.

“No?”

“No,” she said. “It was someone else in a chariot.”

“Jehu?” he said, surprised.

“Jezebel,” said Mrs Jervis, biting into her iced bun. She tasted it critically. “Rose Burton made this. She leaves them in the oven too long.”

“Does she?” The Rector eschewed the buns and reached for a rock cake instead. “Jezebel didn't drive up in a chariot.”

Mrs Jervis ignored this. “And as for Ivy Challender …”

“Yes?” said the Rector with interest.

“I don't need a tent and a shawl and a crystal ball to tell what's going to become of her and neither does Nurse Cooper. That reminds me, Thomas, have you seen Joyce Cooper? She doesn't seem to be anywhere and that's not like her.”

“It isn't,” he agreed heartily. “She usually seems to be everywhere.”

“Now, Thomas …”

“A good woman,” he said at once.

“And that's not a compliment, the way you said it, Thomas Jervis.”

“Perhaps she's gone home with a headache.”

“She's never ill. Besides, someone's been to check. There's a note on her door which says ‘At Flower Show'.”

“Then I expect she is,” said the Rector reasonably.

“But whereabouts?”

It was a question that wasn't answered until later.

2

Stopped diapason

Ken Walls and Fred Pearson weren't looking for Joyce Cooper. They were hunting Norman Burton, the Show Secretary.

“He might not be able to do anything,” said Ken.

“The Rector said he should be told,” said Fred.

“He also said that there were Mrs Wellstone's feelings to be considered as well,” pointed out Ken.

“He had to say that, didn't he? He's a Christian.”

“Well, she's going to think her tomatoes were best now, isn't she? Bound to.”

“But they weren't,” said Pearson flatly.

“At least,” noted Walls with approval, “she wasn't standing beside them.”

The practice of an entrant demanding the winner's meed of praise by hovering within congratulatory distance of the winning entry was roundly condemned in Almstone, Calleshire. If there was a lower standard of behaviour at Chelsea, London, the village of Almstone neither knew nor cared.

The pair caught sight of a man called Maurice Esdaile looking at them.

“What's he doing here?” demanded Fred.

“Search me,” said Walls.

Pearson hailed someone else he knew. “'Afternoon, Mr Kershaw. You haven't seen the Show Secretary anywhere by any chance, have you?”

Herbert Kershaw was one of the leading farmers in Almstone. Abbot's Hall Farm, which he ran with evident success, was one of the three large farms which made up the Priory estate. The others were Home Farm and Dorter End.

“He's somewhere about, Fred. You could try the Decorative Classes tent.”

“Mrs Kershaw do well this year?” asked Pearson promptly. He could get the message as quickly as the next man.

“Two Firsts and a Third.”

Pearson nodded. It was known that Mrs Kershaw liked to win.

“Perhaps now,” said Herbert Kershaw with mock ruefulness, “I'll be given a proper meal for a change. Haven't had one for days. You couldn't move in our house for flowers.”

Fred Pearson acknowledged this politely. The rising prosperity of farmers had affected their wives too. Time was when the farmer's wife had worked as hard as her husband, with the profit from the poultry and the hand-turned butter as her only prerogative. Fred Pearson, who knew most things about Almstone, was prepared to bet that the nearest Mrs Kershaw got to nature was searching in the hedges for likely teazles. She went in for flower-arranging in a big way.

“Did the judging go well?” asked Ken Walls cunningly.

“Two Firsts and a Third,” repeated the farmer.

“I meant were there any complaints about it.”

“None that I've heard,” said Kershaw, shrugging his shoulders, “and I wouldn't know myself. I can't tell a good flower arrangement from a bad one and I'm damned if I know how anyone else can either.” He threw his head back. “Now if it had been sheep …”

Both the other men nodded dutifully. While Mrs Kershaw went in for flower arranging, Herbert Kershaw had gone in for sheep.

“I've just been up to Scotland,” added the florid-faced farmer.

“Oh yes?” said Fred unencouragingly.

“And bought myself a real winner.”

“Good.”

“The best ram at the market – a prize Border Leicester Cheviot.”

“That'll help the flock along,” said Fred Pearson.

“So the Secretary might be with the Decorative Classes, then?” said Ken Walls with more pertinacity.

“He was there,” said Kershaw, beginning to move away. “He was looking for the District Nurse.”

When the farmer had gone Pearson exploded. “I don't know how he does it,” he said, with all the poor man's contempt for the rich one. “I really don't.”

“Cedric Milsom at Dorter End isn't doing too badly either,” said Walls. “He's driving a Range-Rover nowadays and he's bought something new on four legs for his wife, too.”

With Mrs Milsom it wasn't Flower Arrangements. It was horses.