Chapter Six
SIX
REACHER IS BACK today, his motorcar left in the turning circle, full in the way of where Tom and I are trying to pull weeds.
He drives a modest Singer Ten – not what you’d imagine for an aristocrat.
The paintwork’s a pretty forget-me-not blue.
Undercarriage splattered with the inevitable countryside mud; I’m sure Tom will be called on to clean it soon.
‘He used to live here, did you know?’ Tom says, nodding at the car as if it’s a symbol of its owner.
‘Yes, Mr Reacher mentioned that before.’
‘His father died before he was born, then his poor mother passed away when he was just a child. She was the former Lady Lascy’s sister – always very close to the family, spending her summers here, so they made sure that Mr Reacher had a home after she passed.
Mr Reacher took it hard, mind; he was such a fragile boy, and the older children weren’t always that nice to him.
But he and Lady Lascy are close as anything these days, which just goes to show … ’ Tom doesn’t specify what it shows.
I wrestle with a stubborn dandelion. ‘But he lives half the time in London now?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And manages Harfold for Lady Lascy?’
‘Yes, she leaves all of that to him. She’s never had a head for numbers.
’ His voice drops, so I have to lean in to hear.
‘Between you and me, the numbers aren’t nearly so large as they used to be.
After all the misfortune the family’s suffered, to rub salt in the wound, they had to pay the death duty every time – since those boys died in inheritance order.
That’s been a real blow. I’d hate to see her Ladyship have to sell Harfold, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it went that way in the end.
’ I’d guessed some of this from the manor’s shabby gentility, the small and informal staff, the closed wing, but I didn’t realize things were as bad as that. ‘Not to mention—’
Footsteps approaching. We both straighten up as Reacher draws near. Conversation over.
‘You two are a pair,’ says Reacher, smiling broadly. ‘We have been watching you go up and down, up and down, just like clockwork. And what a divine clock that would be!’
‘Oh, get on with you,’ Tom laughs.
Reacher presses a solemn hand to his chest. ‘I swear it. Perfectly picturesque. But listen, I do have an ulterior motive. Are you aware we have mice?’
Tom shrugs with an air of apology. ‘There’s no keeping the blighters out, sir.’
‘Yes, well, out of the dining room at least would be ideal. There I was, eating my toast, and one of the chaps ran right across the table. The cheek of it!’
‘They’re too clever for the traps, that’s what it is.’
A pout from Reacher. ‘Don’t we have poison?’
Spasming bodies. Froth at the mouth. I hold back a wince.
Tom pauses to think. He’s still clutching one of the dandelions, absently pulling fragments from the leaves.
‘If we have any, it’ll be in there somewhere’ – he nods to the old coach house and stables – ‘but I reckon we’re out.
Can’t remember when I last did the rounds.
Let me have a look.’ Beckons to me. ‘You might as well come and see the collection while I’m at it, Vee. ’
‘The collection?’
Tom doesn’t elaborate, just leads us over to the block of outbuildings.
‘Do you like motoring, Miss Morgan?’ asks Reacher, as Tom unlocks the doors.
‘Love it,’ I tell him, though I can’t imagine why the question’s just come to his mind.
I still remember the first time I rode in a car.
I’d been around eight years old and Dad’s boss at the time had driven his Rolls-Royce through town for Easter, inviting all the children to have a go in the passenger seat.
I’d been too frightened at first – with the man’s round goggles and leather driving gloves, he’d looked like a strange insect creature that might eat little girls for dinner.
But Dad had told me not to be silly, pushed me up into the carriage with an exaggerated groan.
My fears had disappeared as soon as I was in that seat.
That feeling of power as the engine rumbled through my bones.
Mr Reese had a lovely car, too: a new Austin Twenty in white.
It looked ever so smart when it was clean, but it would get smeared in dirt almost the moment Mr Reese started it up.
I was forever washing it for him, then he’d take it right back out and get it filthy again.
He had that sort of careless attitude. It was a beautiful motor, all the same, and his little boy, Kenneth, would often come out to watch me at work on it.
If the child was good, I’d lift him into the seat when I was done and we’d pretend he was driving, me doing the noises for him.
If I ever had the money for it, I think I’d get an Austin.
When Tom opens the coach house, I see why Reacher was asking my thoughts on the topic: inside, there are five cars, huddled together like nesting chickens.
Unlike Reacher’s Singer, these are a higher quality of automobile: a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, a Renault race-car, an American Cadillac, a Daimler, a funny old steam-powered Serpollet.
‘These all Lady Lascy’s, are they?’ I ask.
Reacher laughs. ‘They would be wasted on her. No, most of them were Charlie’s.’
‘They could do with a wash, mind,’ says Tom, rummaging through a set of shelves behind the cars. ‘There’s bats in the roof, so …’ As I look closer, I do indeed see the bat shit, but even so the cars maintain a certain dignity.
‘I don’t know about that,’ says Reacher, ‘they have been very well cleaned over the years.’ An odd way to phrase it – not ‘well kept’, but ‘well cleaned’. His smirk implies a private joke – although not one he shares with Tom, who is too engrossed in the search to be listening.
‘No poison,’ Tom confirms at last, coming back over to join us.
I’m still stuck on the motors, though. ‘Her Ladyship never takes them out?’ I almost feel sad for them, as if they’re aware that they’re languishing among the bats.
If I had such a collection, I’d be driving about every day, even just to go up the track.
That’s the problem with rich people, though: they never put their money to the right use.
Reacher must catch my dejection, as he pricks up all of a sudden, like Mutton when he’s excited.
‘Tell you what,’ he says, ‘I need to run up to Warminster for a meeting later – how about we take one of these old beasts for an outing, and buy that poison while we’re at it?’
I realize he’s still speaking in my direction. ‘Me, come with you?’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, that’d be brilliant, that would! But you’re sure Lady Lascy won’t mind it?’
Reacher waves a hand. ‘Pish-posh. They’re as much mine as they are hers.’
Tom looks like he may argue, but a clap on the back from Reacher is enough to win him over.
As Reacher moves his own motor out of the turning circle, Tom sets about refilling the tank, oil and water in the Renault for us.
Winds up the clock, setting it against my pocket watch.
Checks the kerosene tail light. Adds a little fuel to the primer cups.
The vehicle is really quite beautiful – a doorless two-seater in cherry red, with a bronze stripe on either side of its sloping snout. ‘Charlie’s favourite,’ Reacher tells me.
Once the engine is readied and we’ve cleared the worst of the bat shit, Reacher lets me turn the car’s crank. It takes a few attempts to coax her into asthmatic action, but then we’re purring away up the lane, Tom receding behind us, waving his hanky in a comic farewell.
When we reach Warminster town, Reacher parks up in the marketplace.
He has a meeting at the bank, he says, and will meet me back here in an hour.
He’s gone before I can say I don’t know my way around.
Apart from the night I arrived by train, this is the first time I’ve been here.
Still, it shouldn’t be hard to find a chemist’s in the town centre. I pick a direction and walk.
Warminster’s a small market town, nowhere near as large as Penarth, although next to Harfold village it seems sprawling.
The high street’s a hodgepodge of three-storey Georgian and Victorian buildings, fronted with soot-blackened limestone like rows of grubby urchins.
There’s an aura of decay: missing panes of glass, faded signs, shuttered shop-fronts.
The day’s overcast, flattening everything further to a dreary grey.
Even so, a fair number of people are out and about.
In all the excitement over the car, I hadn’t thought to de-muddy myself, and now I can sense curious eyes all over me.
Harder to blend into the crowd here than in Cardiff.
Up East Street, I’m thrilled to discover a seed grower’s, Wheeler’s.
Takes me a moment to realize it’s the Wheeler’s, of the renowned Wheeler’s Imperial cabbage variety.
I have to tear myself away from a twenty-minute conversation with the proprietor during which I place several orders on the Harfold account, and I’m still riding that good mood when I find the chemist’s.
The shop window stacked high with colourful bottles sends an immediate chill through my guts.
It’s just started to drizzle, but even so I hesitate before I enter. Take a handful of deep breaths.
Inside, a short queue prolongs my agony.
I find myself rehearsing my order as the woman in front coughs wetly into a sleeve.
Good morning, I need to deal with some vermin.
Does the shopkeeper’s expression flicker when I ask him for the arsenic?
Just my imagination. It’s not a crime to buy rat poison.
Still, a cold weight of guilt as I carry the tin back to the Renault.
People looking at me. Whispering. No, they’re not, I tell myself.