Chapter 25
“Oh, dear, I wish that Mr. Morrell had not felt he had to arrest Amabel,” said Dr. Brinkley.
“I think it’s the best thing all round, though,” said Ida. “It stops her doing something stupid in her grief, like trying to burn down the Hall here, which would make things so much worse, and gives her time on her own to reflect, and moreover keeps her from being used as a hostage if Thripp is in her cottage.”
“Bless my soul!” said Brinkley. “I had not considered that possibility!”
“Campbell will stay in the car to protect her,” said Alexander.
Campbell was, indeed, remaining in the car. He had dropped Tim to nip through the churchyard and round to Glebe Cottages, a row of five modest cottages built on what had once been the Glebeland, in the gift of the incumbent vicar, and the rent contributed to his pay, even as once, crops or animals raised on the Glebeland were intended for the additional keep of a rector or his vicar. Amabel occupied one of these cottages, for a minimal rent. The cottages were fully detached, and each had probably been a pair of semi-detached cottages at the time when they were built, in the early seventeenth century, when people were satisfied with less room and considered it reasonable for a whole family to sleep in the same room. Now, each had kitchen and a parlour, a lean-to bathroom with toilet, and two rooms upstairs. Amabel’s cottage had a tiny toilet with corner sink built into the landing between the two rooms on the side that the second stairs had been removed and a landing put in. Tim could see the pipework as he came in the gate to the back garden. He waited, whilst Jeff, who had demanded Amabel’s key, went in the front. He looked in the kitchen, the sitting room, and the bathroom, built onto the sitting room. The cupboard under the stairs opened from the bathroom and contained cleaning equipment including a wash tub, glass washboard, and a mangle.
He went upstairs, and found that there were no signs of occupation in the second bedroom. So, Miss Brinkley was not harbouring a fugitive, which was good. He went out of the kitchen back door to wave all clear to Tim.
Back in the car, Campbell drove the short distance to the police house.
“Be thankful you were not harbouring a murderer; you would never have got your job back, I fear,” said Jeff. Amabel had fallen in on herself, and was sobbing.
“I’m going to keep you locked up for your own protection overnight,” said Tim. “As Thripp is on the loose, he might try to kill you if he thought you knew anything.”
“I... is he really the one?” Amabel asked, stricken.
“I’m afraid so,” said Tim.
Amabel burst into tears.
“I gave him all the money I had,” Amabel sobbed.
“You can make a statement, and let me know the amount,” said Tim. “We might be able to get it back or some of it, anyway, and what he stole from Miss Thripp before he beat her.”
Amabel gasped.
“What?”
“He hit Miss Thripp hard enough to black her eye and cause a nose bleed,” said Tim, grimly. “I want that bastard, she was always a kindly teacher, and when I was a little hellion when I was eleven or twelve, she paid out of her own pocket to take me to Oxford and look around a police station, at the cells, and to talk to how crimes always find people out. I’d been stealing. It turned me around and made me want to be a copper. She changed my life, because my family weren’t too good, and my father was a thief until he fell into a ditch when he was drunk and killed himself. It took Miss Thripp to get someone with the surname ‘Mapp’ accepted in the neighbourhood as a policeman, you know, and I look on her as more of a mother than my own.”
“Indeed, she has been so helpful to me, with tips and pointers on how to handle children, especially the more difficult ones.”
“Well, I have to lock you up, but I tell you what, it’s Tuesday, so the special of the day in Braithwaite’s is haddock-in-the-hole, or toad-in-the-hole, your choice, with mushy peas and a pickled onion.”
“Thank you,” said Amabel. “I’ve never heard of haddock-in-the-hole.”
“I think Mrs. Braithwaite invented it,” said Tim. “It’s haddock cooked in a pan with Yorkshire pudding batter, like you do with sausage for toad-in-the-hole. After all, we have haddock in ordinary batter deep fried, so why not?”
“Why not, indeed. Do they do other specialities?”
“Yes, Saturday night is pie night. Braithwaite has an ice-maker and he puts all the trimmings on ice and cooks them as mixed fish in a pie, or sausage and potato and peas in a pie.”
“And I never knew!”
“I don’t suppose Mr. Armitage knows, either,” said Tim. “I’ll have to tell him.”
“I need to apologise to him. Oh! How could Edgar behave so?”
“He was a little beast when he was a Boy Scout, and he hasn’t improved any,” said Tim. “He was boasting of he girls he slept with from about the age of thirteen.”
“So... so it’s true? He has a daughter?”
“Yes, little Millie Fringford. Ruth married someone else when Edgar wouldn’t, and he turned out to be a rotter. Poor Ruth, but I rather fancy that Inspector Morrell is sweet on her, which would be nice,” said Tim. “He’s a good man, and not as dour as he seems at first, and he seems very fond of Millie.”
“She is a sweet child; I have her in the first class. She reads better than most of the oldest ones I have.”
“You can tell good parents by the time they spend with their kids,” said Tim. “I was virtually illiterate until I was nine, and Miss Thripp took time with me, and I’d be illiterate yet if she hadn’t let me read ‘The Gem,’ and ‘The Magnet,’ with pictures to help out.”
“Oh, she takes the ‘Daily Express,’ just to cut out the ‘Rupert the Bear’ strips for the same reason,” said Amabel. “They have a short rhyming couplet under each picture, and a longer piece with more detail, so they can help people at different levels.”
“It hadn’t started when I was at school,” said Tim. “It didn’t start for a couple of years after the end of the war.”
oOoOo
Simon Armitage arrived, with a trailer on his Bentley, which turned out to contain an organ.
“What’s more, it’s yours if you want it,” said Simon. “I picked it up cheap when a church was upgrading to the real thing, and I had it fixed up because you mentioned that an organ would be desirable.”
“Oh, Dad! Bless you!” said Alexander. “I want to play it before we take it to the village hall.”
“Well, tough. I had enough trouble getting it onto the cart, I’m not getting it off and on tonight and then again tomorrow,” said Simon. “It’s a bit bigger than a parlour organ without being a full Wurlitzer.”
Alexander ran outside and peeked under the tarpaulin.
“Dad! Is that a Willis Scudamore organ?” he gasped.
“I hoped you’d like it,” said Simon. “Four and a half octaves; should be enough.”
“A Willis Scudamore, Douglas model four,” said Alexander, with reverence.
“Even so,” said Simon.
“I am looking forward to you playing it,” said Alexander.
oOoOo
Simon was installing the organ, which had an electric blower he had made, which Alexander privately thought looked a trifle Heath Robinson, when an extraordinary noise might be heard outside the village hall. It was a rattling, growling noise with intermittent pops.
“That’s Miss Goodie and Miss Harmon,” said Fred, who was eying the organ with reverence. It was too tall for the hall, so Fred had heaved up the floor boards and dug into the soil beneath, to be re-boarded in an organ pit rather than an organ loft.
“Their car sounds as if it needs Sid Smith,” said Alexander.
“Sid won’t touch it,” said Fred. “They bought two crashed cars and Miss Goodie put them together. The call it ‘The Bug’ or the Bugaustin for best, being the front end of a Bugatti and the back end of an Austin Seven. It looks and sounds like nothing on earth, but they get places without trouble.”
“Good grief!” said Alexander. “This I have to see.”
He ran out of the door to observe the oddest car he had ever seen.
Miss Goodie, Miss Harmon, and Miss Thripp were descending from the odd hybrid vehicle.
“What an interesting vehicle,” said Alexander.
“Someone rear-ended the Bugatti, and the Austin went into a wall,” said Miss Goodie. “I know how to weld. Learned during the war. Worked in a shipyard. We heard that Miss Brinkley is, shall we say, out of the running for music so I brought my guitar, and Winnie brought her flute, rallying round, as you might say.”
“Oh, that’s splendid,” said Alexander. “We do have some music, but if you can play a guitar solo to help out Dan on his guitar for ‘A Wandering Minstrel, I,’ it covers where his guitar’s disguise as a samisen makes him muff finger changes. And if Miss Harmon could do ‘On a tree by the river, a little tom tit,’ it would be so much more poignant than an organ.”
They walked in the door.
“Saints and angels, a real Willis organ,” said Miss Harmon. “Where on earth... no, you’d better not tell me, in case it should be locked up somewhere as evidence.”
“As far as I’m aware, my father came by it honestly, which as he’s the local magistrate, he ought to have done,” said Alexander. “But as well as playing, ladies, if you’ll stand by to pump if the electrical contraption he rigged conks out, that would also help.”
“Oy!” said Simon. “It’s a perfectly good contraption.”
Miss Goodie looked at it critically, stripped it down somewhat, and reassembled it.
“Now I trust it,” said Alexander. “It looks better. Dad, Miss Goodie can back Dan on guitar, and Miss Harmon would sound charming for the tit willow song.”
“Yes, that does need a light touch,” said Simon, meekly, who had planned on giving it a light touch, but knew when not to turn down volunteers. He would stand by to pick it up if she had a funk.
“How are you, dear Miss Thripp?” asked Ida. “Oh, that bruise is all the colours of the rainbow, thank goodness you will be in thick white grease-paint.”
“I have no intention of backing out,” said Miss Thripp, with determination. “Edgar expected me to fail, so I am going to succeed!”
“That’s the spirit,” said Alexander.
“I admit, it shook me up,” said Miss Thripp. “I was in the garden yesterday, on a hammock, where dear Margie and Winnie sorted me out, and I had dozed off, and when I awoke, I would have sworn I saw Edgar peering at me over the hedge, but of course I had been having a bad dream about him hitting me, so I doubtless imagined it, for by the time I had succeeded in untangling myself, as sitting up suddenly precipitated me into a wild swing, his face was quite gone.”
“He must have passed the cottages at that end around half-past midday,” said Alexander.
“Oh, no, dear, it was much later, nearer four o’clock and starting to get chilly,” said Miss Thripp. “How the mind plays tricks! But I am resilient, and as Mr. Gilbert said, in my part, ‘A maiden’s all the better when she’s tough,’ and tough I shall be.”
“‘As tough as a bone, with a will of her own,’” quoted Alexander, laughing. “I always think that with the last song, where Koko shows he can lay down law, and tells her she has a very good bargain in him, that Katisha might even have been happy with a man who did not let her walk all over him.”
“Do you know, I think that’s a lovely thing to think,” said Miss Thripp. “She needed a man as strong as herself, which is why she wanted Nanki-Poo, thinking him raised to be a leader, but all he wants is a quiet life.”
“And Pooh-bah wants to rule his own household,” said Alexander. “And meek little Koko comes into his own.”
Fred hurried away to get into his elaborate costume as soon as he was satisfied that the impromptu organ pit was stable, and the players all hastened to go and get ready, helping each other with costumes, wigs, and make-up, whilst the Girl Guides who were not involved acted as ushers when the grammar school boys arrived, managing admirably even without Miss Brinkley to oversee their efforts. True, there was a brief altercation in which small Velma Hodges whacked Tony Ambridge over the head with a folding chair for putting his arm around the waist of Velma’s older sister, but Simon’s appearance above the organ pit and a demand to know what was going on silenced any comeback there might have been, and all the boys scattered obediently to their places, herded by their masters.
And when everyone was seated, and Jeff stuck his head out of the curtains to nod, Simon launched into the overture as the lights dimmed.
