Charity Ends At Home

junctions and crossroads with banter and shouts of farewell. The older men, riding alone or in pairs, let the others pass while they sat in straight-backed dignity on their saddles and showed off their skill at lighting pipes with one hand. They affected not to notice the antics of the boys, who stood on their plunging pedals like rodeo performers or crouched, chin to handlebars, and furiously raced one another, with the squeals of the cannery girls as prizes.

The shops were closing. Not brusquely, as in a city, but with an accommodating casualness. Time in Flaxborough was like most other things, a matter of compromise. Thus at twenty to six Sergeant Malley was not in the least surprised to find unlocked the door of a butcher whose trading was supposed nominally to cease at five o’clock. He went in and bought some pressed beef for his supper. In natural deference to the Coroner’s Officer’s calling (and perhaps the butcher’s, for that matter) the small talk was of bodies. “Two this week,” the sergeant confirmed. “One natural, as it turned out. The other was young Perce Hallam.” “Oh, aye: the motorbike business.” “Trouble is, they always come in threes. Always. And now I feel I can’t get on with anything. You know—like the bloke in the hotel bedroom waiting for that bugger upstairs to drop his other shoe.” “What bugger upstairs?” “The one with three legs.”

As the sergeant emerged from the butcher’s shop, a blue town service bus went by on its way to Heston Lane End. He was not to know the destiny of a passenger who sat three seats from the driver on the left-hand side. Otherwise he certainly would have given more than a fleeting, indifferent glance at the woman who was going home to become the subject of the third inquest.

She was Mrs Henrietta Palgrove, aged forty-three, housewife, of Dunroamin, Brompton Gardens, Flaxborough: charity organizer, voluntary social worker, animal lover. She would, as the Flaxborough Citizen was to affirm the following Friday, be sadly missed.

The bus drove slowly through the emptying town and stopped to pick up its last passengers at St Lawrence’s Church and Burton Place. Then it entered Burton Lane and began a rambling tour of two council estates. Ten minutes later, its load reduced and, in the opinion of Mrs Palgrove, refined, it turned towards the complex of avenues south of Heston Lane malevolently described by envious occupants of less substantial and secluded residences as ‘Debtor’s Retreat’.

Mrs Palgrove alighted at the stop nearest the upper end of Brompton Gardens and made her way home. Except for her, the road was empty. It usually was. The people who had settled here had done so expressly in order to avoid sight of one another. They were as apprehensive of being ‘overlooked’ as their mediaeval ancestors had been of coming within scope of the evil eye. Only from an occasional flash of red tile or brick through high foliage could one have guessed that Brompton Gardens was populated at all.

Dunroamin was the last house but one on the left before the road narrowed abruptly to become a gravelled track through open fields. This track eventually doubled back towards town and joined the main road into Flaxborough from Chalmsbury. The house was screened not only by the thick beech hedge, more than ten feet high, that bordered its surrounding gardens, but by a pair of enormous old chestnut trees in the middle of the front lawn. A drive of new-looking concrete skirted the lawn and ran past the side of the house to open out into a broad, paved area, a sort of courtyard, brightened by geraniums and begonias growing in cast concrete urns. From the courtyard’s opposite side, a path wide enough to give passage to a car led between rosebeds and more lawns to a two-car garage. This was built of concrete blocks roughened to simulate stone and was half hidden by creeper. Just beside it, a gate in the beech hedge opened to a back lane.

As Mrs Palgrove approached the house, she heard the murmur of a car engine. Suddenly the sound expanded to a roar. It died, rose again, died.

Frowning, she looked across to the end of the garden. More bursts of noise, like the protests of a teased and tethered beast. And with each, a little cloud of azure smoke came rolling out of the open garage.

Leonard Palgrove, aged forty-four, company director, chamber of commerce member, amorist manque, sports car enthusiast, was making love to his Aston-Martin.

Mrs Palgrove smiled, but not fondly, and walked on. In the court of the concrete urns, she paused to set something down. It was a dog, but one so diminutive that it had been invisible in its carrying place between the crook of Mrs Palgrove’s arm and the overhang of her bosom. Released, it pranced like a high-stepping rat to the nearest urn and lifted against it a leg no bigger than a pigeon’s drumstick. She spoke to the dog, calling it Rodney. She crooned it a number of questions. Rodney made no reply.

Leaving the door open, Mrs Palgrove walked through the cool, grey-carpeted hallway and entered the kitchen. This was an impeccable, gleaming laboratory in saffron and white. Mrs Palgrove set down upon the central table the square cardboard box that had hung by its looped ribbon from her finger all the way from Penny’s Pantry. She untied the ribbon and carefully lifted the lid of the box. There rose the sugared, buttery smell, faintly tinged with violet and almond essences, of freshly made cakes. Mrs Palgrove reached across to the window and pulled the cord of the air extraction fan. Then she lifted the cakes one by one from the box and arranged them on a plate fashioned to resemble a huge glossy vineleaf. After regarding the collection for a few moments, she transferred a Chocolate Creme Log to a saucer which she put down on the floor. “Rodney!” she cried.

At third calling, the dog appeared. It licked some of the icing off the cake, then wandered away, bored. Mrs Palgrove stooped and cut the cake into small, neat cubes. The dog returned to sniff at them. “Cakey,” declared Mrs Palgrove. “Nice!” Despite her repeating both these observations several times, and quite vehemently, Rodney did not respond. Mrs Palgrove called him a naughty boy in the end and went off into the lounge on her own, carrying the rest of the cakes.

Her husband joined her ten minutes later, just in time for a solitary Coconut Kiss. He ate it quickly, standing up. Mrs Palgrove watched with distaste the absent-minded way he rubbed his stickled fingertips on one of the chintz chair covers. She picked up the empty plate and took it to the kitchen, where she washed and put it away.

“Got to go to Leicester tonight,” Leonard announced as soon as she was in the room again. He was still standing: he believed that standing was a sound way to keep weight down.

Leicester. Seventy or eighty miles. So that’s why he had been tinkering with that car of his...

“Why should you want to go to Leicester?”

“I don’t want to go. I said I have to. Business.”

“You’ll be late back, then?”

He turned, shrugging. “Lord, I’m not dragging back here the same night. I’ll stay over. Perhaps Tony can put me up.”

“Tony?” The tone implied that this was the first she had ever heard of a Tony, in Leicester or anywhere else.