new. She was fit – after all, she marched up that hill every morning at dawn – and she was healthy. This was the first time she had tripped like that and she was sure it would be the last. She had just been unlucky.
Marigold wasn’t happy leaving Tasha to man the shop on her own and, even though she was still feeling a little fragile, her sense of duty prevailed. Nan and Daisy were adamant that she take the day off, but Marigold ignored their pleas and hurried across the cobbles.
No one was as pleased as Eileen to see her behind the counter. ‘I came in at nine and you weren’t here,’ she said in a mildly reproachful tone. ‘I hear you fell. Mary told me. She said her dog found you in the long grass like the St Bernards in the Alps find people in the snow. You’re lucky to be alive.’
‘I’m fine,’ said Marigold, taking out her red book to see what she had to do today. ‘It looks worse than it is.’
‘I’m glad to hear that. Because I’ve come with some terrible news.’
Marigold looked up from her book. ‘What news?’
Eileen shook her head. ‘Terrible, terrible news.’ She hesitated and took a breath. ‘Sir Owen is dead.’
Marigold’s mouth opened in a gasp. ‘What! Dead? How?’
‘This morning,’ said Eileen darkly, adopting an important tone on account of being the first to relay the news. ‘He saw the moles the Commodore has been letting out on his farm and wham, just like that, dead. A heart attack.’
‘I don’t believe it!’
‘It’s true. Sylvia called in tears. She’s in shock, poor lamb.’
‘Are you sure it’s because of the moles?’ said Marigold, knowing how Eileen enjoyed exaggerating a story.
‘Of course it’s the moles. What else could it possibly be? Sylvia said he was up in the fields, walking his dogs, when he keeled over and died. He was found by the gamekeeper. I’ll bet he suffered a heart attack when he spotted the molehills all over his fields. I hope, for the Commodore’s sake, that no one tells the police.’
‘Does the Commodore know?’
‘Everyone will know by now. I bumped into Cedric on my way here and told him. Between me and Cedric the news will have reached town by teatime.’
‘This is terrible. Poor Lady Sherwood. Poor Taran. Sir Owen was so young.’
‘He was too young to go, that’s for sure. To think of poor Lady Sherwood up there in that big old house on her own. Maybe Sylvia will move in for a time, to keep her company. He was a lovely man, Sir Owen, just like his father. A lovely man.’
Marigold thought of Daisy in the middle of the drama and hoped that she was all right. It must have come as an awful shock to her too.
Eileen slowly shook her head and sighed. ‘To think Sir Owen might have been done in by a mole. If it had been the Commodore, I would have called it karma.’
Chapter 12
Sir Owen’s sudden and untimely death diverted Marigold’s attention from her fall and her memory loss. When Daisy returned home at the end of the day, Nan, Dennis and Marigold took their tea into the sitting room to hear all about it.
‘Poor Lady Sherwood is beside herself,’ Daisy informed them gravely. ‘She asked me to keep her company while the police were there. Obviously they needed to rule out anything sinister. Then the ambulance came to take away the body. Lady Sherwood, or Celia as she is to me now – she specifically asked me to call her Celia – telephoned Taran. He’s flying home this very minute. Poor thing, hearing that his father’s dead like that over the phone. Dreadful shock.’
‘Do we know how he died?’ Dennis asked.
‘Eileen thinks he saw the Commodore’s moles and had a heart attack,’ Marigold told her.
Daisy looked doubtful. ‘Well, they do think he died of a heart attack, but no one has said anything about moles.’ Her eyes filled with tears and her shoulders slumped. ‘I feel so sorry for Celia. She’s in so much shock, she can’t even cry.’
‘I know what that’s like,’ said Nan. ‘When Grandad died, my eyes were as dry as the Sahara Desert. The tears came later, when the body caught up with the emotions. Then they were like Niagara Falls. It was such a shock to wake up to a dead body beside me. Like a statue it was. Cold and clammy and stiff. Not like Grandad at all.’