The Cold Light of Mourning - By Elizabeth J. Duncan Page 0,4
her work tray, turned the shop sign, closed the door, and headed upstairs for lunch.
Two
Penny returned to the shop a few minutes before Mrs. Lloyd was due to find her waiting on the pavement peering in the window.
“Oh, Mrs. Lloyd, I am so sorry to have kept you. Do, please, come in. May I get you a cup of tea or coffee?”
Mrs. Lloyd entered the shop and, after the preliminaries were over, settled herself into the client’s chair. A robust, well-kept woman in her mid-sixties, with tightly permed grey hair and always conservatively turned out in a pleated skirt with a matching cardigan and a white blouse with a bit of detailing on the collar, Mrs. Lloyd had been the village postmistress for years. In her day, she believed, the job had been essential to the smooth running of the village. After all, it was she who made it possible for money to be transferred, bills to be paid, and anniversaries and birthdays to be remembered. Now, of course, with mobile telephones, e-mail and the Internet, all that had changed. But the one thing that hadn’t changed was her love of what she thought of as useful information but others might well have considered plain old gossip, and she liked to think she was almost as well informed of village doings in her retirement as she had been when she stood behind the counter with her weigh scales and currency conversion charts.
“I guess you heard about Emma Teasdale, did you, Penny? Of course you did. That was too bad, really it was. But still, at her age … she did have a good, long life. I wonder what will happen to the cottage. Be worth a bob or two what with the price of property these days. Bought that long before single women were buying houses, Emma did. I don’t know if she had any relatives left in England.”
Mrs. Lloyd paused for a moment to gather her breath and her thoughts.
“I think there was someone once, though, but nothing ever came of it. They certainly never married, did they?”
Penny, who had never even thought about Emma having any kind of romantic involvement, was astonished, but couldn’t bring herself to say anything. Because Emma had never volunteered any details on this part of her life, Penny felt it would be disrespectful to her memory to push Mrs. Lloyd for details.
After a few moments of silence, Mrs. Lloyd moved on to the other main topic of conversation in the village, the Gruffydd wedding. Like the rest of the villagers, Mrs. Lloyd was not impressed by Emyr Gruffydd’s choice of a wife.
The son of a wealthy landowning family, Emyr was well liked and respected in Llanelen. In his early thirties, he had been living in London for several years, but six months ago, with his father in failing health, he had returned home to oversee the family’s business interests, which included real estate, farming, haulage, and investments.
The Gruffydd family lived about ten kilometres outside the village in a large stone house with spectacular views over the valley to the Snowdonia mountain range, and it was to this house, formally called Ty Brith but often referred to as the Hall, that Emyr was planning to bring his bride.
“I don’t really know that much about her,” Mrs. Lloyd confided as she soaked her nails in a small basin filled with hot, herbal-scented water, “but I do know that people here haven’t taken to her. Folks in the shops say that she’s rude to them and comes across like Lady Muck. Much too grand for the likes of us! I’ve heard that the staff at the Hall, what’s left of them that is, aren’t looking forward to having her there, but of course, they have no choice in the matter, see. She’s from London, you know, and very posh with it. That’s where he met her. What she does there I don’t know. I think all the young people in London work in advertising or mass media—whatever that might mean—or some such.”
At a nod and gesture from Penny, Mrs. Lloyd pulled her right hand from the basin. Penny dried it carefully, as if it were a fragile porcelain heirloom, before beginning work on her nails.
“I haven’t met her yet,” Penny said, “this Meg Wynne Thompson, but Emyr’s mother used to come in regularly. She was a lovely woman.”
“Indeed she was,” agreed Mrs. Lloyd as she leaned in for a better look at her hand.