The Tale of Holly How (13 page)

18

“Blood!”

As Miss Potter and Miss Barwick drove the pony cart up Stony Lane on their way to Tidmarsh Manor, Sawrey Village was already beginning a busy summer’s day. Cottage windows were flung open wide to the softest of breezes on this fine summer’s day, quilts were hung to air in the sunshine, dust mops flapped from open doors, hearths were swept, ranges stoked, kitchens tidied. Youngsters were sent to the vegetable gardens to pull onions and cut lettuces for the noonday meal, wives walked down to the butcher shop in Far Sawrey to purchase their midweek knuckle of beef, and husbands bent to their various industries in workshop, barn, and field.

Rose Sutton, the wife of the veterinary surgeon, opened the door to the surgery at the back of Courier Cottage and said good morning to young Jeremy Crosfield, who lived with his aunt near Cunsey Beck. Jeremy occasionally brought injured wild creatures to be repaired by Dr. Sutton. Today he was carrying a badger cub, a small, gray animal with a striped head and a short, round snout.

“Oh, poor baby,” Rose said, clucking sympathetically, bending over for a close look. As the mother of six young Suttons and a regular assistant in her husband’s surgery, she was well acquainted with the needs of infants, human and otherwise. “He wants feeding up, he does. He looks as if he’s starving. And one hind leg’s been chewed, I see. Where’d you get him, Jeremy?”

“Somebody dug out the badger sett at the Hill Top rock quarry,” Jeremy said with a kind of grim ferocity. “The mother and the other cub are gone. I found this little fellow wandering across the meadow. He’s almost big enough to survive on his own, but that bad leg needs to be seen to.” He stroked the badger’s stubby snout. “I thought p’rhaps Doctor Sutton could mend him. And tell me how to manage him until he’s old enough to manage for himself. I don’t have any money to pay,” he added matter-of-factly, “but I’d be glad to run errands and clean cages.”

“Well, bring him in, then,” Rose said cheerfully, “and we’ll ask the doctor what’s best to be done.”

At Belle Green, Mathilda Crook pegged her freshly washed sheets to the clothesline in the yard, with an ear cocked to the usual village sounds: the metallic clang-clang-clang of her husband’s hammer in his smithy just down Market Street from their house; the buzzy rasp of Roger Dowling’s carpenter’s saw in the joinery next to the smithy; and the irritated tone of Hannah Braithwaite’s voice as she called one of her children from the door of Croft End.

Hanging the washing was a pleasant task on a warm day when there was just enough breeze to shake out the wrinkles, and Mathilda Crook dallied, keeping an eye out to see who might be passing up and down Market Street. She had some interesting news, and she was anxious to share it. If a suitable person did not happen along in the next little bit, she might just take off her apron and walk down to the post office, where she was bound to meet someone or other.

But she didn’t have to. Next to Belle Green, at High Green Gate, Agnes Llewellyn put her granddaughter into her brand-new wicker pram, covered it with a cheesecloth drape to keep off the flies and thunderflies, and pushed it into the garden so Baby Lily could get some sunshine and fresh air. Lily’s mother had gone into Hawkshead to do some shopping, leaving the baby in her mother-in-law’s care. Agnes was always delighted to oblige, since Lily was her first grandchild and the object of enormous grandmotherly pride.

Taking a basket, Agnes went to pick some raspberries for a tart for supper, noticing with annoyance that the magpies, those rascally birds, had been at the berries again. She picked all there were (not quite a cup) and went to see whether there were enough strawberries to eke them out. But the magpies had got them, too, the naughty things. She was turning to go back to the house when Mathilda Crook came hurrying to the fence, a damp shirt over her arm and several wooden clothes pegs in her hand.

To Agnes’s annoyance, Mathilda didn’t say good morning or how are you or even inquire about the baby’s cradle cap, which Agnes had been treating with a salve made from elder flowers and calendula. “S’pose you’ve heard all about poor old Ben Hornby’s accident,” was what she said, in that irritatingly triumphant voice she used when she had some especially savory bit of news.

Agnes was forced to admit that she hadn’t heard anything about Ben Hornby, accident or otherwise.

Mathilda clucked pityingly, whether at Ben’s fate or at Agnes’s ignorance was not quite clear. “Tumbled down Holly How and broke his head on the rocks,” she said in an authoritative tone. “That’s what Miss Potter said, last night at supper. She and Jennings found the old man when they went to look at some sheep Miss Potter bought. Likely he’d had a bit too much to drink.”

Agnes said she was greatly distressed to hear this, although she ventured the opinion that there might be some in the village and the surrounding countryside who would not be terribly unhappy to learn of old Ben’s demise.

“Oh?” Mathilda asked. She made a show of shaking out the damp shirt and running her thumbs across the collar to press out the wrinkles. Her “Now, who would that be, Agnes?” was light and unconcerned, but Agnes could hear the curiosity burning in the question.

She tossed her head. “You mean,” she replied, feigning great surprise, “you don’t remember what happened last winter? Why, I thought that you, of all people, Mathilda . . .” She let her voice trail off and shook her head as if in disbelief.

Mathilda frowned. “What was it about?”

“About cider,” Agnes replied knowingly, drawing it out. “December, it was.”

“Cider?” Mathilda asked, puzzled.

With great patience, Agnes said, “Why, the cider that Toby Teathor stole out of old Ben’s cider house, of course.”

Mathilda was forced to admit that she couldn’t remember anything about Toby Teathor’s stealing cider, which gave Agnes the opportunity to be pitying in her turn.

“Well, p’rhaps you never heard it. Mr. Llewellyn sold one of our cows to Isaac Chance, at Oldfield Farm, and Isaac was the one who told him. Toby was working for old Ben, and helped himself to a keg of Ben’s cider. Ben caught him red-handed and had him up before the magistrate. Expect Toby won’t be sorry to hear about the accident.”

“Oh,
that,
” Mathilda said in an airy tone. “I thought you were talking about something
important.
” She gave the shirt a good shake. “Well, I s’pose I’d best get back to my clothes-hanging.”

“And I’d best get on with these berries,” Agnes said, feeling put out.

She carried the raspberries into the kitchen and put them into a bowl. Then she took off her apron, smartened up her hair, and pushed Baby Lily’s pram down Market Street to the village shop.

The shop, which was located in Meadowcroft Cottage and run by Lydia Dowling (the wife of Roger Dowling, the village carpenter), stood at the corner of Market Street and the road that went east to the Windermere ferry and west to the market town of Hawkshead. It occupied two downstairs rooms, and was stocked with the sorts of things that the villagers needed on short notice: bacon and sausages, eggs, tea and coffee and sugar and snuff, tins of treacle and condensed milk, fresh vegetables and fruit from the village gardens and orchards, needles and threads and buttons, candles and boot-laces and hairpins and three-a-penny candies for the children. Lydia and Roger lived over the shop with their niece Gladys.

Agnes parked Baby Lily beside the shop door, adjusted the pram’s wicker bonnet to keep out the sun, and went inside, where she found Lydia filling a jar with peppermint candies and Gladys measuring a length of white lace. Agnes bought a tin of tea, a packet of soap powder, and some red buttonhole twist, and then turned to see a small basket of luscious-looking red raspberries, displayed beside a box of dewy fresh lettuce, a pyramid of purple plums, and several heads of cabbage.

“Fresh-picked?” she inquired cautiously, with a covetous look at the tempting raspberries.

“This very mornin’, before breakfast,” Lydia Dowling assured her. “T’ magpies have been that bad, goin’ after them even a-fore they’re ripe. But I managed to get enough for Mr. Dowling’s dinner, and thought as how somebody else might as well have the rest, or t’ birds’ll get them, too. There’s not quite enough there for a tart, but if you had a few to go with them—”

“How much?” Agnes asked.

“Tuppence ha’penny,” said Lydia.

Agnes nodded. “That’ll be all right, then.” As she paid for her purchases, she remarked, “I s’pose you’ve heard about Ben Hornby’s accident. Had a bit too much to drink and fell down Holly How.”

“’Twa’n’t no accident,” Lydia said firmly. She blew her dark, fly-away hair out of her eyes. “That’s accordin’ to Hannah Braithwaite, who got it from Constable Braithwaite, who went up to Holly How with Captain Woodcock, after Miss Potter and Mr. Jennings found t’ poor auld soul.” She paused to take a handkerchief out of her pocket and wipe her forehead. “My, it’s warm today. Wonder if it’s fixin’ to storm.”

“It wasn’t an accident?” Agnes asked, her eyes widening.

“Oh, you haven’t heard?” Gladys asked, with barely suppressed excitement. “Mr. Hornby was yarked hard, ‘crost the shoulders. And he was holdin’ a tobacco pipe in his hand when he died.” Gladys was a plump, full-figured young woman in her twenties, with thick auburn hair that she twisted into ringlets. She had a habit of smiling widely (flirtatiously, her aunt thought), so as to show off her very white teeth.

“Gladys,” Lydia said, frowning. “I don’t know that you should be tellin’ folk what t’ constable—”

“Oh, tush, Lydia,” Agnes said, waving her hand impatiently. “What does Mr. Hornby’s pipe have to do with it not bein’ an accident, Gladys?”

“I’m sure Mrs. Llewellyn woan’t tell anybody, Aunt.” Gladys leaned across the wooden counter and lowered her voice. “It wa’n’t
his
pipe, y’ see. Mr. Hornby had bad trouble with his lungs and had to give up ’bacco years ago. And what’s more—”

“And what’s more,” put in Lydia, not to be outdone by her niece, “t’ pipe had some letters scratched on t’ stem. An H an’ an S.” She looked at the raspberries. “I doan’t have anything to cover these with, Agnes. Can you just set them in t’ peramb’lator with t’ baby? You can bring t’ basket back t’ next time you’re down this way.”

“That’ll do,” Agnes said. “An H an’ an S?”

“That’s what Hannah Braithwaite says,” Lydia replied. “T’ constable saw it himself.”

“Has to be t’ person t’ pipe belongs to, wouldn’t y’ say?” Gladys put in eagerly. “Which means that it must have been somebody named H-something S-something who pushed Mr. Hornby down Holly How and killed him.”

“Pushed him!” Agnes exclaimed with great interest.

“Well, yes,” Gladys said. “How else would t’ poor auld man have ended up at t’ bottom, with a clay pipe in his hand?” She looked solemn. “Seems t’ me we’ve got a suspect, and his name is H. S.”

“H. S.” Agnes mused. “Well, it’s not Toby Teathor, that’s for sure. His initials are T. T.”

“Toby Teathor?” Gladys asked.

“He stole some cider out of Mr. Hornby’s barn last winter, and was had before the magistrate over it,” Agnes replied importantly. “Toby’s not o’er-fond of the old man, I fancy.” She frowned. “But since it’s an H and an S we’re lookin’ for, Henry Stubbs is the first that comes to mind. I can’t think why Henry would’ve done it, though.”

“Or what he’d be doin’ up Holly How,” Lydia said. “Our Henry’s not the sort for goin’ out of his way, if you know what I mean.”

Agnes knew what she meant. Henry, a bow-legged, weak-eyed little man with sandy whiskers, was Bertha Stubbs’s husband and a well-known frequenter of the Tower Bank Arms, the local pub. He helped operate the Windermere ferry, except on days following an especially convivial evening at the Arms, when he was, as Bertha delicately put it, “under the weather.”

At that moment, Baby Lily put up a cry, and Agnes gathered her purchases and said goodbye to Lydia and Gladys. She put the packages into the pram with the baby, and the basket of fresh raspberries, and, still thinking about the mysterious person with the initials H. S., pushed the pram up Market Street and around the corner and down the side street to the post office. There, she parked Baby Lily’s pram in the narrow garden in front and joined the queue, which also included Mrs. Lythecoe, the widow of the former vicar, and Rose Sutton, the wife of the veterinary surgeon. Two of Rose’s younger children, a boy and a girl, were playing under the hedge outside.

Rose was buying a stamp and telling Mrs. Lythecoe over her shoulder that some badger diggers had pillaged a sett at the rock quarry on Hill Top farm and only one little cub had survived, and that one badly chewed, and Jeremy Crosfield, who was quite a nice boy, had brought it to Dr. Sutton to be mended.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Lythecoe said sympathetically, “those wretched badger diggers. The wild things have a hard enough time of it. They ought to be left alone.”

“You’re cert’nly right,” Agnes agreed, joining the conversation. “There’d be less of it, if ’tweren’t for the badger-baiting. It’s against the law, and Captain Woodcock stops it whenever he can. But too many men come home with their pockets inside-out, and there’s nae a penny for milk the next seven days.”