“Why would the villagers give you the stink-eye?” I asked.
“Because the Hargreaves family is on the wrong side of the great divide that separates the decent people of Finch from Tillcote mafia,” said Emma.
“The Tillcote mafia?” I said with a snort of laughter. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Derek’s word, not mine,” said Emma, referring to her eminently sensible husband. “He thinks the feud is ridiculous and he jokes about it when we’re alone, but he steers clear of Tillcote nevertheless. He doesn’t want to be accused of consorting with the enemy.”
“Good grief,” I said. “You make it sound like West Side Story.”
“If a Tillcote girl dated a Finch boy, or the other way around,” said Emma, “it would be exactly like West Side Story. Except for the singing. And the dancing. And, I would hope, the murders.”
“You would hope?” I echoed, gaping at her. “How serious is this feud?”
“It’s serious.” Emma set her glass aside and sat upright, folding her legs beneath her like a Girl Scout perched beside a campfire. “Derek and I found out about it a couple of weeks after we moved into Anscombe Manor. We’d spent a day driving around, as you do when you’re new to an area—”
“Bill and I did our share of aimless driving when we first moved to Finch,” I broke in, “but we never made it to Tillcote.” I glanced at Bill. “I’m not sure why.”
“There’s no direct route between the two villages,” Emma reminded me. “You have to make an effort to reach Tillcote, or stumble across it by accident, which is what happened to Derek and me.”
“Is it anything like Finch?” I asked.
“It’s bigger than Finch,” said Emma, “thanks to the council housing built there in the fifties. It’s hemmed in by two major roadways as well. Derek and I didn’t think much of it.”
“Emma,” said Bill, “what happened on the day you and Derek spent driving around?”
“Oh, right,” said Emma. “Back to the story.” She paused for a moment, then picked up where she’d left off. “On the way home from our drive, we stopped at the Emporium to buy a few groceries.”
“Did Peggy Taxman offer you a warm welcome to Finch?” Bill asked. “She must have been pleased to meet two new local customers.”
“Peggy Taxman was Peggy Kitchen then,” said Emma, “and she was nice enough to us until we made the mistake of telling her that we’d visited All Saints Church in Tillcote.”
“What did she do?” I asked.
“She gave us the stink-eye,” said Emma. “If we hadn’t been newcomers, I think she would have shown us the door. Thankfully, she made allowances for our ignorance and did her best to educate us. She explained that, if Derek and I wished to be on friendly terms with our neighbors in Finch, we wouldn’t have anything to do with Tillcote.”
“Scary,” I said. “Her voice alone must have rattled you. I’ve seen it rattle the windows in the Emporium.”
Emma laughed.
“Did you ask Peggy why Tillcote was off-limits?” Bill inquired.
“Derek did,” said Emma. “She gave him a list of reasons as long as her arm. Tillcote folk, as she called them, were arrogant, deceitful, dishonest, lazy, greedy, ill-mannered . . .” She raised her hands in a helpless gesture, as if words had failed her. “Basically, she told us that they were the spawn of Satan and that we would be tarred by the same brush if we spent too much time with them.”
“If I know Derek,” Bill said shrewdly, “he ignored Peggy’s advice.”
“He went straight back to Tillcote the next day,” Emma confirmed. “And he was treated to an encore performance by the woman who ran their general store, only in reverse. Her speech about Finch folk was almost exactly the same as Peggy’s speech about Tillcote folk. In the end, we decided to give Tillcote a wide berth.” She shrugged. “Derek and I didn’t wish to be at odds with our new neighbors.”
I squinted at her incredulously.
“Your decision wasn’t based solely on the ravings of a pair of competing shopkeepers, was it?” I asked.
“Of course it wasn’t,” said Emma. “Derek threw out feelers to every villager he came across and the response was always the same. It still is.”
“It certainly is,” said Bill. “The tearoom was buzzing with resentful chatter this morning. Christine Peacock told me—”
He broke off and Stanley raised his gleaming black head as the baby monitor lit up.
“It’s okay,” I said, recognizing the sounds emerging from the small speaker. “She’s talking to herself.”
Stanley went back to sleep.
“Is Bess talking already?” Emma asked, her eyes widening.
“Yes,” said Bill, without cracking a smile. “She’s scheduled to deliver a lecture on semantics at the Bodleian Library on Friday morning.”
“He’s teasing you,” I said to Emma. My friend sometimes misunderstood my husband’s puckish sense of humor. “The only language Bess speaks at the moment is baby.”