detail.’ Etta ran back and put a couple of pounds into the collecting box. ‘This church is so beautifully kept.’
‘Painswick does the brass,’ said Dora, putting Cadbury on a lead as they walked back to the high street. ‘Have I told you about Painswick? Poor old duck’s dying of heartbreak over Hengist Brett-Taylor, our glorious ex-headmaster at Bagley Hall. She was his PA and when he went inside for some pathetically small crime she couldn’t stand working there without him so she retired here on an excellent pension, but she’s sad and lonely and misses the rhythms of school life. I’m sure the reason she allowed me to camp out at Ivy Cottage is so she can rabbit on about Hengist and the old days. I must rush back there and tart up before I meet Paris.’
Etta returned to her shade-tolerant plants, ashamed to be cast down by such a sense of loss. Poor Miss Painswick. Poor Sir Francis and Lady Gwendolyn, but at least those two had known reciprocated love, however briefly. As did Dora, running off in a glow to meet Paris.
Etta had loved Sampson so passionately at the beginning, but realized he’d never loved her except in a violently possessive way. All she felt now was guilt that she didn’t miss him, but she was conscious all the time of his disapproval, when she left the soap in the basin or ate a second piece of cake, or wrote her name in a steamed-up window.
But as she got home to the bungalow, she was greeted by Gwenny Pocock mewing round her feet, and the telephone ringing.
‘Joyce Painswick here,’ said a prim voice.
‘What a coincidence, I’ve just been admiring your wonderful brass in the church.’
‘Midsomer Murders is on tomorrow evening. I wondered if you’d like to come and have supper.’
‘How lovely!’ Etta perked up immediately. ‘I’ll bring a bottle. I might even bring two.’
19
Etta was excited and astounded at the end of November to receive an invitation to a drinks party at Willowwood Hall – so flattering when Alban Travis-Lock had only met her briefly in the Fox.
‘Sorry I haven’t called,’ Ione Travis-Lock had scribbled on the back. ‘Do hope you can make it.’
Romy and Martin were most put out to discover Etta had been invited as well as themselves. Who would babysit?
‘I will,’ announced their ravishing niece Trixie, who’d returned to Willowwood for a few days ostensibly to revise for exams.
‘I don’t see enough of my dear little cousins,’ she added, smiling sweetly at a disapproving but hopelessly susceptible Uncle Martin. ‘I need Dad to write my coursework and I’m going to take Granny shopping to buy her a fuck-off dress.’
‘Don’t be obnoxious,’ spluttered Romy. ‘Your grandmother is still in mourning.’
‘Mourning becomes Electra,’ mocked Trixie. ‘Then I’ll find Granny a fuck-off black dress. Dora said Granny had them all drooling in the Fox the other day.’
Fleeing to the kitchen, Etta reflected that Trixie must have inherited her fearless genes from Sampson.
Everyone in Willowwood was unbelievably flattered to be asked to the Travis-Locks’ ‘do’, as Debbie Cunliffe called it, until they discovered that absolutely everyone had been invited, even Craig Green, the village leftie, and Pocock, who loathed Craig. Martin, who had sacked Pocock, would have to face him.
Also invited were Old Mrs Malmesbury, who wasn’t on speaking terms with Farmer Fred because he was threatening to cull the badgers. His land lay to the east, between that of Marius and Harvey-Holden, who were also not speaking to each other or to Farmer Fred because he was always starting up noisy machinery when their stable lads rode out on nervous young horses. Mrs Travis-Lock’s parties were rather like the tapestry in the Cluny Museum in Paris, where the lion lies down with the lamb and the greyhound with the rabbit, and when warring factions, if not suspending battle altogether, agree to a temporary truce.
As Dora, who was waitressing, pointed out, ‘The Major and Direct Debbie, who can’t stand Ione, have cancelled a golfing weekend in Spain, your daughter Carrie is coming back from a conference in Tokyo and the Little Boltons, the porn billionaire and his ghastly chav wife, have booked into the five-star Callendar Hotel for the weekend because Primrose Mansions won’t be finished for another twenty years. It’ll be Playboy Callendar Hotel if Cindy has her way.’
All the women intended to dress up to the nines, thanks to a rumour that Valent Edwards and Bonny Richards had been invited because Mrs Travis-Lock wanted to shoot down