‘Because the village will notice you aren’t there. They won’t like you for it.’
‘They don’t like me anyway. And they’ll like me even less when they hear about Dingle Dell. What do I care? I never set out to win any popularity contests and anyway, that’s the trouble with living in the country. All people do is gossip. Well, they can think what they like of me. In fact, the whole lot of them can go to Hell.’ He clicked the locks shut with his thumbs and sat back, panting slightly from the exertion.
Frances looked at him curiously and for a moment there was something in her eyes that hovered between disdain and disgust. There was no longer any love in their marriage. They both knew that. They stayed together because it was convenient. Even in the heat of the C?te D’Azur, the atmosphere in the room was cold. ‘I’ll call down for a porter,’ she said. ‘The taxi should be here by now.’ As she moved to the telephone, she noticed a postcard lying on a table. It was addressed to Frederick Pye at an address in Hastings. ‘For heaven’s sake, Magnus,’ she chided him. ‘You never sent that card to Freddy. You promised you would and it’s been sitting here all week.’ She sighed. ‘He’ll have got back home before it arrives.’
‘Well, the family he’s staying with can send it on. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not as if we had anything interesting to say.’
‘Postcards are never interesting. That’s not the point.’
Frances Pye picked up the telephone and called down to the front desk. As she spoke, Magnus was reminded of something. It was the mention of the postcard that had done it, something she had said. What was it? In some way, it was connected with the funeral that he would be missing today. Oh yes! How very strange. Magnus Pye made a mental note for himself, one that he would not forget. There was something he had to do and he would do it as soon as he got home.
8
‘Mary Blakiston made Saxby-on-Avon a better place for everyone else, whether it was arranging the flowers every Sunday in this very church, looking after the elderly, collecting for the RSPB or greeting visitors to Pye Hall. Her home-made cakes were always the star of the village fête and I can tell you there were many occasions when she would surprise me in the vestry with one of her almond bites or perhaps a slice of Victoria sponge.’
The funeral was proceeding in the way that funerals do: slowly, gently, with a sense of quiet inevitability. Jeffrey Weaver had been to a great many of them, standing on the sidelines, and took a keen interest in the people who came and went and, indeed, those who came and stayed. It never occurred to him that one day, in the not too far-off future, he would be the one being buried. He was only seventy-three and his father had lived to be a hundred. He still had plenty of time.
Jeffrey considered himself a good judge of character and cast an almost painterly eye over the crowd gathered around the grave that he had himself dug. He had his opinions about every one of them. And what better place than a funeral for a study in human nature?
First there was the vicar himself with his tombstone face and long, slightly unkempt hair. Jeffrey remembered when he had first come to Saxby-on-Avon, replacing the Reverend Montagu who had become increasingly eccentric in old age, repeating himself in his sermons and falling asleep during evensong. The Osbornes had been more than welcome when they arrived even if they were a slightly odd couple, she so much shorter than him, quite plump and pugnacious. She certainly never held back with her opinions, which Jeffrey rather admired – although it probably wasn’t a good idea for a vicar’s wife. He could see her now, standing behind her husband, nodding when she agreed with what he was saying, scowling when she didn’t. They were definitely close. That was for sure. But they were odd in more ways than one. What, for example, was their interest in Pye Hall? Oh yes, he had seen them a couple of times, slipping into the woodland that reached the bottom of their garden and which separated their property from Sir Magnus Pye. Quite a few people used Dingle Dell as a short cut to the manor house. It saved having to go all the way down to the Bath Road and then coming in through the main entrance. But normally, they didn’t do it in the middle of the night. What, he wondered, were they up to?
Jeffrey had no time for Mr and Mrs Whitehead and never really spoke to them. As far as he was concerned, they were Londoners and had no place in Saxby-on-Avon. The village didn’t need an antique shop anyway. It was a waste of space. You could take an old mirror, an old clock or whatever, put a stupid price on it and call it an antique but it was still only junk and more fool those that thought otherwise. The fact was, he didn’t trust either of them. It seemed to him that they were pretending to be something they weren’t – just like the stuff they were selling. And why had they come to the funeral? They’d hardly known Mary Blakiston and certainly she’d never have had anything good to say about them.