Friday, 12th June — 10.15 hours — Saturday 04.10 hours
Mrs Penny Merryweather revealed herself to be a slightly built and a warm and a bumbling personality. She was dark-haired and wore a ready smile and also instantly struck Yellich as indeed having a character which well befitted her name. She lived in a small council house set among six other similar houses in the village of Milking Nook. She smiled at Yellich upon him showing her his ID and stepped aside, inviting him into her house. Yellich entered and, following Penny Merryweather’s directions, found himself in a cluttered but neat and cleanly kept living room where he sat, as invited, in one of the two armchairs in the room. Yellich scanned the room and all seemed to him to be in perfect keeping with a householder of Mrs Merryweather’s age and means. The television in the corner was small and probably a black and white set having, thought Yellich, the look of that vintage about it. Framed portraits of children and adults stood along the mantelpiece in a neat row. The wallpaper had faded and, like the television, seemed to Yellich to belong to a different, earlier, era. The room smelled heavily of furniture polish. Mrs Merryweather sat in the second armchair and leaned forward, smiling in what Yellich thought was an eager to please and almost childlike attitude.
‘Mr Nicholas Housecarl,’ Yellich began, ‘of Bromyards.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Deceased. Recently so.’
‘Yes, sir, but you can’t say it wasn’t no surprise can you? I mean, his age. He did very well did the old gentleman, very well, all the village said so.’
‘I understand that you worked for him?’
‘Yes, sir, I was one of the staff at the big house and I was the last to leave. I was still there almost to the end I was. . even though in the last ten or fifteen years I used to work part time, just two or three afternoons a week and none at all in the depths of winter. . but still almost to the very end.’
‘One of the staff?’ Yellich settled back into the armchair. ‘How many were there?’
‘Oh. . quite a few at one time, sir, quite a few. . such a big house you see with huge gardens and grounds beyond the garden that needed looking after, not as much as gardens but looking after just the same. . a large field of grass that Mr Housecarl had scythed once every two years.’
‘Scythed?’ Yellich smiled.
‘Yes, sir, couldn’t use a motor mower on it because of stuff laying in the grass like rotting tree trunks and so it had to be scythed. You can believe me on that one, sir.’
‘How many men did that take?’
‘Just the one. . Brian Foot did that. He used to like working alone did Brian, and, with a huge field to scythe, and that he got paid when it’s done, no matter how long it took to do, it suited him. It wasn’t a crop you see, it just had to be cut but not gathered in. Dare say it’s waist high now, but Brian wasn’t on the staff, retired farmworker brought in to scythe the ten acre once every two years. He didn’t gather the grass he scythed, just let it lay there to rot but that’s how Mr Housecarl wanted it.’
‘I see.’
‘So, not only was there quite a lot of people employed by Mr Housecarl at Bromyards, but there was work enough to do that he had to hire in extra help like Brian Foot. He went before some years ago now. . good age though. . but not quite Mr Housecarl’s age to be sure. But one by one he had to let us go. . good days they were. . very good days.’
‘What was Mr Housecarl like as a person?’
‘As a person,’ Penny Merryweather exhaled and then replied in a fairly, but not hard to listen to, high-pitched voice, so Yellich felt, believing Penny Merryweather’s voice might best be described as ‘chirpy’. ‘Well now, see. . see. . now what was he like as a person? He was a nice enough old boy. He did like his own way but it was his old house, I reckon fair play on that one. I like my own way in this little house of mine, so I do, but he always had time for his staff and he took an interest in us, yes he did. You see it seemed to be the case that if you worked for Mr Housecarl then he felt he had more of an obligation to you than just to pay you at a fair rate. He helped quite a few people over the years. . someone needed a new pair of spectacles, then he’d pay for them. . over and above paying their wage and then there was the Head Gardener. . Jeff Sparrow. .’
‘Yes, we’ll have to talk to him. . but please, do carry on.’
‘It was then that Jeff’s son, his only son, fell ill while he was in Australia. . the son that is. . Jeff had never been more than five miles from Milking Nook in all his days, but when his son was in Australia he fell ill.’
‘Oh. . long way from home.’
‘Yes, and it was the fact that he fell ill in here,’ Penny Merryweather tapped the side of her head, ‘in here so he did. . mental. . and he got locked up in a mental hospital. . and do you know what Mr Housecarl did?’
‘Tell me.’
‘He only paid for Jeff to go to Australia and bring his son back to the UK, everything, airfare for the both of them plus spending money for food and rail fares and that. .’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, he did that. It was just like Mr Housecarl to do that for one of his own. He got a lot of loyalty that way. There were other similar things like that he did, but what he did for Jeff Sparrow is the biggest one. The village still talks about it.’
‘I see.’
‘So the staff loved him, they did. . old army officer type, always in tweeds. If you got a job at Bromyards you were in a good way of employment. He paid fair wages but it was that he cared for his workers, took an interest in us and was really sorry when he had to let us go one by one, and we were sorry to have to go, especially old Jeff Sparrow.’
‘So you left at different times?’
‘Yes, sir. . at different times over many years. . it seems as he sort of retreated he let his staff go, old Mr Housecarl, God rest him. I mean at first it was the grounds, so the under gardeners went, then the garden got too much. I mean he had staff to look after the grounds but in here,’ for the second time in the interview she tapped the side of head, ‘I mean in here he couldn’t cope with the grounds. Then he couldn’t cope with the garden in his head, he couldn’t, that’s when he let Jeff Sparrow go. Then room by room it all got too much and so the domestics went, one by one, until I was the last one. He lived in just two rooms by then. Then I heard he just lived in one room. . lived. . I mean ate and slept in one room within that huge, huge house. He was the last of his line, you see, no more Housecarls after him. . not from him anyway.’
‘So we understand.’
‘But he didn’t betray his ancestry, no he didn’t. A proud man he was, sir, principled, a real gentleman of the old school. They say he was camping in the end, cooking on a camping gas stove, getting Meals on Wheels a few days each week and had a nurse looking in on him.’
‘But no one bothered him?’
‘Tormented him, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, sir. The village wouldn’t have stood for it. It kept its own children in check, sir, well in check, you can believe me on that one, and if any youths from another village tried to torment him then they would have been well sorted out. They would have gone home with very sore faces; you can believe me on that one, sir. The men of the village poached his land, sir, tables in this village have all been laid with a roast pheasant or a duck taken from Bromyards, but in return, the poachers kept an eye on him. They would have seen any strangers well off the land.’
‘Poachers?’ Yellich inclined his head.
‘This is the country, sir, poaching happens. You hear shotguns being fired around here each day, they’re not toffs shooting clay pigeons, no they’re not, you can believe me on that one, sir.’
‘Understand that, and I am not going to get anyone into trouble for shooting a pheasant or setting a rabbit snare, but I am interested to learn that men went on to Mr Housecarl’s land at night, and, as you say, kept an eye on him and would have recognized a stranger.’
‘During the day time also, sir. Poaching goes on twenty-four hours. Bromyards. . that is Bromyards estate,
