She told Bea and Havers to follow her, and she took them through the cobbled courtyard of which the mill formed one edge. The other edges consisted of a jam kitchen, a cider museum, and an empty stall, presumably for the draft horse. In the middle of the yard, a pen housed a pig the approximate size of a Volkswagen Beetle. He snorted suspiciously and charged the fence.
“I could do with less drama, Stamos,” Aldara told the animal. Understanding or not, he retreated to a pile of what looked like rotting vegetation. He stuck his snout into this and flipped a portion of it into the air. “Clever boy,” Aldara said. “Do eat up.”
He was an orchard pig, she told them as she ducked through an arched gate that was partially concealed by a heavy vine, to the far side of the jam kitchen. PRIVATE was fixed onto a sign that swung from the gate’s handle. “His job used to be to eat the unusable apples after the harvest: Let him loose in the orchard and stand aside. Now he’s supposed to add an air of authenticity to the place, for visitors. The problem is that he wishes more to attack them than to fascinate them. Now. What can I do for you?”
Had they thought Aldara Pappas meant to make them welcome by leading them towards her house and offering them a nice steaming cuppa, they were soon corrected in that notion. The house was a farm cottage with a vegetable garden in front of it, odoriferous piles of manure sitting at the end of raised beds neatly defined by wooden rails. At one side of the garden was a small stone shed. She took them to this and dislodged a shovel and a rake from its interior, along with a pair of gloves. She brought a head scarf from the pocket of her jeans and used it to cover and hold back her hair in the fashion of a peasant woman or, for that matter, certain members of the royal family. Thus ready for labour, she began to shovel the manure and the compost into the vegetable beds. Nothing had been planted there yet.
She said, “I’ll continue with my chores while we talk, if you don’t mind. How might I help you?”
“We came to talk about Santo Kerne,” Bea informed her. She jerked her head at Havers to indicate that the sergeant’s usual brand of ostentatious note taking was to begin. Havers obliged. She was watching Aldara steadily, and Bea liked the fact that Havers didn’t seem the least bit cowed by another?and decidedly more attractive?woman.
Aldara said, “Santo Kerne. What about him?”
“We’d like to talk to you about your relationship with him.”
“My relationship with him. What about it?”
“I hope this isn’t going to be your style of answering,” Bea said.
“My style of answering. What do you mean?”
“The Little Miss Echo bit, Miss Pappas. Or is it Missus?”
“Aldara will do.”
“Aldara, then. If it is your style?the echoing bit?we’re likely to be with you most of the day, and something tells me you’d not appreciate that. We’d be happy enough to oblige, however.”
“I’m not sure I understand your meaning.”
“The gaff ’s been blown,” Sergeant Havers told her. Her tone was impatient. “The chicken’s flown the coop. The orchard pig’s in the laundry. Whatever works.”
“What the sergeant means,” Bea added, “is that your relationship with Santo Kerne has come to light, Aldara. That’s why we’re here: to sort through it.”
“You were bonking him till he was blue in the face,” Sergeant Havers put in.
“Not to put too fine a point on it,” Bea added.
Aldara thrust her shovel into the pile of manure and hefted a load of it onto one of the beds. She looked as if she would have preferred hefting it at Havers. “This is your surmise,” she pointed out.
“This is what we were told by someone who knows,” Bea said. “She, evidently, was the one to wash the sheets when you didn’t get round to it. Now, since you had to meet at Polcare Cottage, may we assume there’s a middle-aged Mr. Pappas somewhere who wouldn’t be too pleased to know his wife was having it off with an eighteen-year-old boy?”