came down with her shirt crumpled.’ Etta put one hand on her hip like Dora and thrust out the palm of the other.
‘Not platonic then,’ grinned Alan, wondering if it was worth ringing his old newspaper, but he’d lost the taste for selling stories. They always expected one to do more work following them up.
‘How’s the book going?’ asked Etta.
‘Backwards. I’m bored rigid with depression. Perhaps I should interview you.’
‘I’m fine. Today’s really bucked me up. There’s going to be tons to watch in the village. Everyone adores you and Trixie, according to Dora. The dear child sent me some glow stars to stick to the ceiling.’
‘That’s nice.’ Alan drained his drink, rinsed his glass and put it in the dishwasher. ‘I better go home, I’ve not done enough work yet.’
Kissing his mother-in-law, he went out into the night, but turned left to where he’d parked his car earlier, rather than right and home to Russet House. If Carrie was going to use Etta as a spy, Alan was going to use her as an alibi.
14
Later in the week, having spent an awful morning getting Drummond and Poppy off to school with suitably E-zero and organic lunch boxes, sending off change of address cards: ‘Mrs Etta Bancroft has moved to Blot on the Landscape bungalow’, and writing to insurance companies and people who hadn’t realized Sampson was dead, Etta was delighted to receive another visit from Dora and Cadbury in his new royal-blue collar. They carried her off on another familiarization tour. It was such a mild, sunny autumn morning that Dora pointed out two men, stripped down to their tight jeans, who were sunbathing in deckchairs on Valent Edwards’s flat roof.
‘That’s Woody Adams and Joey East, Valent’s site manager, the one who built his own house in the village. Woody’s the local tree surgeon, stunningly good-looking. If he appears at the window when old ladies are playing bridge, they promptly revoke.
‘In fact, if I hadn’t got a gorgeous boyfriend,’ Dora flashed a white blob on her mobile at Etta, ‘who’s at an audition as we speak, I could easily be tempted by Woody.
‘Joey, the other man in a deckchair, is a terrific boozer, probably sleeping off a hangover. He and Woody and Jase, the local farrier, who’s the worst tipster in the world, have a syndicate. They own a horse called Not for Crowe.
‘Such a sweet story: Lady Crowe, who’s a big owner round here, read the catalogue for Rutminster Sales and put in a bid for a chestnut gelding, but retreated in horror when she saw him in the flesh. So a label saying “Not for Crowe” was hung from the poor thing’s head collar. Woody, who’s such a softie, felt so sorry for him he bought the horse for the syndicate and they called him Not for Crowe.
‘I think Lady Crowe got it right,’ sighed Dora. ‘He’s a darling but he comes last in every race. They’ve got a second horse, a dark brown with a white face called Family Dog, who came third at the Penscombe point-to-point, but there were only three horses in the race. They’ve asked me to join their syndicate.’ Dora beamed with pride.
Willowwood was such a beautiful village, thought Etta, scattered as it was over the steep hillside, all higgledy-piggledy, so fields reared up above houses, and cars and cows appeared to be running along the rooftops. It had such a mixture of big houses on the green, terraced houses on the high street concealing charming gardens and winding paths leading up to other houses, jewelled by equally pretty gardens.
Etta felt so sad she hadn’t got a garden. But it was the beauty of the stone, like a looking glass, turning grey on cloudy dull days, platinum blond in the noon heatwaves, soft rose red at sunrise and sunset, rich gold on this sleepy, midge-flecked October morning, that made the place so lovely.
Reaching the very top of the village, Etta and Dora turned right, down into the high street, passing a statue of a handsome Cavalier with long stone curls, waving a plumed hat and astride a splendid pacing horse.
‘That’s Sir Francis Framlingham, Mrs Travis-Lock’s great-great-great-great-great or something who was a bigwig in the Civil War. It was all fought round here, you can see bullet holes in the church.’
Turning off the high street, Dora led Etta up a lane and some stone steps through the lychgate into the churchyard, on to mossy, springy grass cushioned by the dead.