“Look, Rita, I don’t want a row with you. Are you going to let me in or shall I come back later?”
She played with one of the three necklaces she wore. It was beads and feathers with the wooden head of a goat as its pendant. “I can’t think we got anything here as will interest you.”
“Perhaps. When did you come this year?” He saw his error in vocabulary from the way her mouth twitched in response. He headed her off by saying, “When did you arrive in Winslough?”
“Twenty-fourth of December. Same as always.”
“After the vicar’s death.”
“Yeah. Never got to meet the bloke. From the way Polly talked about him and everything that happened, I would’ve liked to read his palm.” She reached for Colin’s hand. “Have yours done, luv?” And when he freed himself from her grip, “Scared to know the future, are you? So’s most people. Let’s have a look. The news is good, you pay. The news is bad, I keep my mug tight shut. Sound like a deal?”
“If you’ll let me in.”
She smiled and waddled back from the door. “Have at me, luv. Have you ever poked a woman weighing twenty stone? I got more places you can stick it than you got time to explore.”
“Right,” Colin said. He squeezed past her. She was wearing enough perfume to permeate the entire lodge. It came off her in waves, like heat from a coal fire. He tried not to breathe.
They stood in a narrow entrance that did duty as a service porch. He untied his muddy boots and left them among the Wellingtons, umbrellas, and mackintoshes. He took his time about this process of untying and removing, using the activity as a means of observing what the porch held. He made particular note of what stood next to a rubbish bin of mouldy brussels sprouts, mutton bones, four empty packets for Custard Cremes, the remains of a breakfast of fried bread and bacon, and a broken lamp without its shade. This was a basket, and it contained potatoes, carrots, marrows, and a head of lettuce.
“Polly’s done the shopping?” he asked.
“That’s day before yesterday’s. Brought it by at noon, she did.”
“Does she bring you parsnips for dinner occasionally?”
“Sure. ’Long with everything else. Why?”
“Because one doesn’t need to buy them. They grow wild hereabouts. Did you know that?”
Rita’s talon nail was tracing the pendant-head of the goat. She played with one horn, then the other. She gave a sensual stroke to the beard. She regarded Colin thoughtfully. “And what if I do?”
“Did you tell Polly, I wonder. It would be a waste of money to have her buy from the greengrocer what she could dig up herself.”
“True. But my Polly’s not much for rooting, Mr. Constable. We like the natural life, make no mistake there, but Polly’s a girl who draws the line at grubbing round the wood on her hands and knees. Unlike some as I could name, she’s got better things to do, does Polly.”
“But she knows her plants. It’s part of the Craft. You have to know all the different woods for burning. You’d have to recognise your herbs as well. Doesn’t the ritual call for their use?”
Rita’s face became blank. “Ritual calls for the use of more’n you know or understand, Mr. C. Shepherd. And none of it I’ll be likely to share with you.”
“But there’s magic in herbs?”
“There’s magic in lots of things. But all of it springs from the will of the Goddess, praised be Her name, whether you’re using the moon, the stars, the earth, or the sun.”
“Or the plants.”
“Or water or fire or anything. It’s the mind of the petitioner and the will of the Goddess that make the magic. It’s not to be found in mixing potions and drinking’m down.” She lumbered through the far doorway and into the kitchen where she went to the tap and held a kettle beneath a dismal trickle of water.
Colin took the opportunity to complete his examination of the service porch. It held a bizarre variety of Yarkin possessions, everything from two bicycle wheels minus their tyres to a rusty anchor with one prong missing. A basket for a long-departed cat occupied one corner, and it was heaped with a mound of tattered paperback books whose covers appeared to feature women of impressive bosom caught up in the arms of men on the verge of ravishing them.
Colin joined Rita in the kitchen. She’d gone to the table where, among the remains of her mid-morning coffee and crumpets, she had returned to painting her nails. The scent of the polish was making a valiant effort to dominate both her perfume and the smell of bacon grease that seemed to be crackling in a frying pan on the cooker. Colin switched the pan’s place with the kettle of water. Rita gestured her thanks with the nail-polish brush, and he wondered what had inspired her choice of colour and where she had managed to purchase it in the fi rst place.
He said by way of edging cagily towards the purpose of his visit, “I came in the back way.”
“So I noticed, sweet face.”
“I mean through the garden. I had a look at your shed. It’s in bad shape, Rita. The door’s come off its hinges. Shall I fix it for you?”
“Why, that’s a first-rate, bang-on idea, Mr. Constable.”
“Have you any tools?”
“Must have. Somewhere.” She examined her right hand, languidly holding it out at arm’s length.
“Where?”
“Don’t know, sweet.”
“Would Polly?”
She waggled her hand.
“Does she use them, Rita?”
“Could be. Could not. But it’s not like we’re dead interested in home improvement, is it?”
“That’s typical, I’d think. When women don’t have a man in the house for a long period of time, they—”
“I didn’t mean me and Polly,” she said. “I mean me and you. Or is that part of your job these days, popping through back gardens and checking on sheds and offering to fix them for helpless ladies?”
“We’re old friends. I’m happy to be of help.”
She sputtered with a laugh. “I bet you are. Happy as a ram at the rut, Mr. Constable, just being helpful. Bet if I ask Polly, she’ll tell me you been stopping by once or twice a week for years, ready to help her out with her chores.” She laid her left hand on the table and reached for her polish.
The kettle began to boil. He fetched it from the cooker. She had already prepared two thick mugs for the water. A glittering heap of what appeared to be instant coffee crystals lay at the bottom of each. One mug had already been used, if the ring of red lipstick was any indication. The other — printed with the word
Rita eyed him and gave him a wink. “G’on, luv-bunny. Take a little chance. We all got to go sometime, don’t we?” She chuckled and bent her head to the work of painting her nails.
He poured the water. There was only one teaspoon on the table, already used by the look of it. His stomach felt queasy at the thought of putting it into his mug, but considering the boiling water as a steriliser, he dipped it in quickly and made a few rapid, conciliatory revolutions. He drank. It was defi nitely coffee.
He said, “I’ll have a look for those tools now,” and took the mug with him to the dining room, where he placed it on the table and intended to forget it.
“You have a look for whatever you like,” Rita called after him. “We got nothing much to hide but what’s under our skirts. Let me know if you want a look there.”
Her shriek of laughter followed him from the dining room, where a hasty exploration through a dresser disclosed a set of dishes and several tablecloths redolent of moth balls. At the foot of the stairs, a battle-weary Canter-bury held yellowing copies of a London tabloid. A quick glance proved that one of the Yarkins had saved only the more delectable issues, featuring two-headed babies, corpses giving birth inside coffi ns, wolf-children of the circus, and the authorised account of extra-terrestrial visitations to a convent in Southend-on-Sea. He pulled out the single drawer and found himself fi ngering through small chunks of wood. He recognised the scent of cedar and
