Chapter Nine
From the Twitter feed of Rainton Farm Shop:
Did you know that a curry can actually COOL you down? The active ingredients send messages to the brain, which then stimulate the sweat glands. Vindaloo anyone? Here at the Rainton Farm Shop, don’t sweat. We’ve deals on all our main range curries!
‘So where did she go?’ Liz frowned perplexedly.
‘There’s only one place I can think of,’ said Pat, fumbling for the coral-pink handbag fan. ‘The main house, right?’
Thelma nodded. ‘It was the only logical place she could’ve gone,’ she said. ‘If, of course, she had a key.’
‘But why?’ Liz frowned.
Thelma shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ Grimly she swilled ice cubes round the remnants of her iced mango. ‘I thought she simply wanted moral support. But now … well, I can’t help wondering if there was more to it?’
‘Like what?’ said Liz.
Thelma shook her head. ‘Again, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘And for the moment I don’t plan on finding out.’
Once again, it was almost as hot inside the garden centre café as it was outside, despite the presence of several large floor fans racketing away.
Virtually every customer had ordered a cold smoothie or iced coffee.
Outdoors a pink-faced employee could be seen watering the various ranks and stands of plants; almost as soon as the water hit the ground the stains began shrinking and fading in the relentless sunshine.
They’d been there an hour, were on their second lot of iced drinks and were getting to the end of their ‘debrief’.
‘Maybe Jax knows something?’ said Liz. ‘About Ffion?’
Thelma shook her head. ‘If she did, I’m sure she would have told me,’ she said. ‘She had plenty of opportunity. And there’s certainly no love lost between her and Ffion.’
‘You were lucky not to be caught!’ said Pat. ‘I’m telling you, if Madame Shally dares show her face anywhere near me, she’ll get her cleaning brush shoved where the sun don’t shine. Landing you in it like that.’
Liz cast an uneasy glance to the café entrance. ‘Do you think she will?’ she said.
‘I wouldn’t put anything past that woman,’ said Pat, reaching down into her bag and getting out her phone.
Liz opened her mouth to speak but thought better of it.
Not whilst her friends were in this bullish mood.
Yes, Jax was all the things they were saying, but she remembered those tears in her eyes when she spoke about Neville.
There never had been anyone else in her life.
Surely the woman was bound to be upset, and in her considerable experience upset people did all sorts of silly things.
‘As I say,’ said Thelma again, ‘I didn’t answer her calls, nor did I ring back, so I’m hoping she’s got the message.’
Pat snorted. ‘You could spray-paint it on the walls of Fountains Abbey and she’d still get the wrong end of the stick if it suited her, that one.’
She stole a surreptitious look at her Instagram – or more accurately Ms T.J.
Rox’s Instagram feed. The latest post was showing her and Justin sat in the garden brandishing sludge green drinks at the camera.
Enjoying some together time in the sun with these delicious organic O2H smoothies!
the caption read; already the post had had over seven hundred likes. All seemed to be well.
‘Anyway, these rumours about Neville.’ Liz’s voice recalled Pat to the moment. ‘Do you think Chris Canne has any idea who was spreading them?’
‘If he did, he wasn’t saying,’ she said. ‘But he seemed pretty bothered about the whole thing, which makes me think not.’
Her phone pinged and she dropped her eyes to yet another image of Justin and Tiffany, this time leaning on the gate across the lane from the house looking like something from a fashion shoot.
Tiffany looked a world away from the bare-faced, peaky-looking figure Pat had glimpsed in Leeds – was it only two days ago?
Had there perhaps been some row, which had subsequently been made up?
‘The thing that strikes me about what Chris Canne was telling you,’ said Thelma, ‘is the nature of these rumours.’
Liz frowned. ‘But there wasn’t anything concrete, unless I’m missing something,’ she said.
Pat took a gulp of her iced raspberry medley. ‘I’m telling you everything Mr OBE told me,’ she said in take-it-or-leave-it tones. ‘Which is: a load of people getting in touch with Lodestone saying they’d heard bad things about Nev Hilton.’
‘But what bad things?’ persisted Liz. ‘There’s nothing specific.’
‘Exactly,’ said Thelma. ‘That’s exactly my point. There’s nothing specific.’
Her friends both looked at her. ‘Okay,’ said Pat. ‘I know I’m being thick here, but so what?’ She resolutely turned the phone over to avoid being distracted by any more Instagram posts.
‘Think about it,’ said Thelma in her best Key-Stage-One-planning-meeting tones.
‘If some specific accusation had been levelled at Neville it could have been investigated, countered – disproved, even. But with something as vague as this’ – she gestured at her green planning book and the entry detailing Pat’s account – ‘there’s enough to cast a shadow over Neville’s reputation without giving any chance for any sort of redress. ’
Liz frowned.
Pat sighed. ‘And?’
‘And,’ said Thelma, shaking the ice cubes in her glass, ‘it looks like someone was deliberately setting out to cause harm for Neville by spreading these unsubstantiated rumours. Especially when you take into account the way in which this rumour was spread.’
‘Like all rumours are,’ said Pat. She was beginning to feel decidedly exasperated; it was too hot a day to be playing Miss Marple. ‘Someone told someone, who told someone else.’
Thelma drummed her fingers on the notebook. ‘Yes, someone tells someone else, but no one ever knows who the first someone was.’
‘Hearsay,’ said Liz, light dawning.
Thelma nodded. ‘It’s quite simple,’ she said. ‘The person who started this rumour would tell it to a number of people but say they heard it from someone else …’
‘So, you’d never find out who the original source of the rumour was,’ said Pat.
‘Exactly.’ Thelma nodded emphatically. ‘There was a case in our church some years ago – the last church warden but two – quite an upset it caused, and no one ever knew who was behind it.’
‘I bet you had an idea,’ said Pat.
Thelma shrugged modestly, failing to suppress a slight smile playing round her lips. Liz and Pat both knew exactly the sort of thing Thelma was talking about. Working in the community as they had all these years, it was impossible not to.
‘It’s bad enough when it’s just folk talking,’ said Liz. ‘But once you throw emails and Facebook and whatnot into the mix, it’d be virtually impossible to work out what was behind it all.’
‘Who was behind it all,’ corrected Thelma.
‘Okay,’ said Pat. ‘So, someone had it in for Neville. But didn’t we sort of know that already?’
‘But this with the emails all goes back months,’ said Thelma. ‘To February – long before Neville died.’ She looked at her drink in mild frustration. Iced raspberry lemonade was all very well for a day like this, but it didn’t really lend itself to indulging her favourite habit of stirring.
‘At the risk of sounding like a stuck record,’ said Pat, ‘why do all this in the first place?’
‘The answer to that lies with Neville himself,’ said Thelma.
‘That’s what gets me.’ The words burst from Liz with frustrated force. ‘From everything we’ve heard – everything we know – Neville was more annoying than anything else. Not giving that kiddie her attendance award—’
‘Objecting to the playing field,’ agreed Pat. ‘A bit of a pain in the arse.’
‘But you don’t kill someone for being a bit of a pain in the arse.’ Liz spoke slightly louder than she intended and blushed slightly as more than one customer turned to look at her.
‘You might,’ said Pat. ‘I can think of several people in Borrowby, off the top of my head.’
‘But they’re probably people you might suddenly lash out at,’ said Thelma.
‘Someone takes a parking space you’re heading to, for instance – or rubs you up the wrong way somehow.
You might say or even do something there and then, in the heat of the moment.
But not when you’ve had time to calm down and think about it.
And this with Neville – if I’m right – was very carefully planned. ’
‘Which brings us back to why,’ said Liz.
‘Sex,’ said Pat, ticking off with her fingers. ‘Money. Blackmail—’
‘Surely not,’ said Liz. ‘Not Neville. I just can’t see it.’
‘Things happen,’ said Pat. ‘We all know that. He could have had an affair; he could have been helping himself to money from somewhere.’
‘Yes, but if he did do something like that,’ said Liz, ‘I couldn’t see him covering it up. Not Nev. With Nev Hilton – what you saw was what you got.’
Pat stepped out of the air-conditioned Yeti onto her driveway, heat washing over her.
Her mind was puzzling over Neville Hilton and what it was he could possibly have done to warrant someone attempting to blacken his name, and then confront him in a life-ending way.
Blinking in the afternoon glare, she fumbled in her bag for her sunglasses.
The light really was brutal this afternoon.
What she needed was a shower. It had become her habit since the really hot weather had kicked in, to have a long cool shower late in the afternoon.
At the moment she was getting through two sundresses a day.
Which reminded her, she needed to get yesterday’s ones off the washing line.