Unforgettable (Gloria Cook) - By Gloria Cook Page 0,65
hall when you’re there.’
‘We weren’t at the hall at the time,’ Greg retorted in the smarmy superior tone of one indulging in sibling rivalry. He resented Dorrie getting high-handed with him in company. ‘We were in the pub actually, having a drink with the landlord, Johnny Westlake. The three of us had been working our socks off plastering the hall’s inside walls. Johnny Westlake is a born and bred Nanviscan like me, and we’ve got the right to wonder about those who come among us.’
‘Only Mrs Newton did not choose to come among us. She wanted to retain her privacy, and Jack ensured she did, and that doesn’t make her life and sad demise anyone else’s business. The village can look forward to great things ahead thanks to your efforts in getting the hall built, Greg, concentrate on that.’
She had smartly put him in his place and Greg was flummoxed to find a word that would dig him out of his hole of embarrassment. ‘Where are the ginger biscuits?’ he demanded grumpily while stabbing his forefinger on the arm of his chair. ‘I made them specially for today. You said you would put them on the table.’
‘I’ll trot in and fetch them,’ Dorrie said sweetly. She had got into the habit of ‘forgetting’ to lay everything out for social occasions where Greg was included. It made the ideal excuse to escape a thorny subject he was set on analysing to dust. Affable and caring he may be, but he could be mulish in equal amount.
But in the eternal tug of the sexes, Guy came to Greg’s aid. ‘Can the ginger biscuits wait, Mrs R? I’m fascinated. Given Jack’s proclivity for sophisticated ladies, the sort not looking to tie him down, from what I’ve gleaned about Lucinda she was a very strange choice to take as his wife.’
Aha! Dorrie could read Greg’s mind exclaiming the word with satisfaction. Fiona was looking at Guy and nodding her agreement with him. All eyes fell expectantly on Dorrie. She considered them with a schoolmistress’s withering put-down stare. ‘Does it really matter?’
Faltering, the three glanced at one another hoping someone would come up with a suitable reply. Guy was the one to cough apologetically. ‘I suppose not.’
Smiling pleasantly, Dorrie said, ‘I’ll get the ginger biscuits.’
When she returned with the plate of delicacies, the others were chatting about Finn’s first time at Petherton. ‘I was just saying, Dorrie,’ Fiona explained, ‘that Finn’s having a glorious time rooting about in Mrs Mitchelmore’s cellars. He comes home very dusty, makes for extra laundry.’
‘Really?’ Dorrie peeped into the pram. Eloise was breathing deep and evenly and wouldn’t wake for a while yet. She was such a contented baby, and it was lovely to see Fiona enjoying mothering her now. Fiona had glanced in on her daughter every minute or so. ‘But boys do like anything dark, creepy and mysterious, I’ve found.’
Offering round the plate of his famed baking, Greg muttered drolly, ‘So it’s all right to find Petherton mysterious then?’
‘Any cellar that hasn’t seen the light of day for years is bound to evoke that kind of interest.’ Dorrie ignored Greg. ‘Tell us how Finn gets on with the redoubtable Mrs Mitchelmore, Fiona.’
Twenty
Wearing a cap pulled down tight on his head, Finn fought through a dusty curtain of cobwebs, which glowed eerily in the light from the three lanterns he had hung on nails from the overhead beams. By rights, the spiders that had made this clinging mass should be at least as large as sparrows, with hairy legs and feelers like pikestaffs. A mouse scuttled away from his feet and seemed bigger than the usual greyish variety. Its nails made loud scratching noises and Finn fancied those nails would make deep cuts through human flesh. This happened on the first day he had ventured down the narrow creaking stairs of the larger of the two storage cellars, this one running under the kitchen and ancillary rooms. The first thing he had come face to face with was a skeleton – a real one, he was to learn, for it was a relic of a former Mitchelmore who had been interested in medicine.
He could mention all this to Mrs R and she could form a funny or perhaps a spooky poem out of it. But Mrs Mitchelmore would not approve. She guarded the privacy of her not particularly historic home, striving for the same sense of mystery, Mrs R had remarked to Finn, that the Royals kept themselves in