Chapter 2
‘Oh, just listen to the lovely crunching sound the tyres make on gravel!’ Jess said in delight when Julia turned off the lane and rumbled up the drive to Greystone Manor.
‘It’s funny, the things you don’t even think to miss when you’re away from home, but when you see them, or hear them, or taste them, you realise how much you love them.
And then you almost start to miss them, like, retrospectively. ’
‘Like English tomatoes,’ said Julia with a smile. For lunch, Jess had eaten a plate of sliced tomatoes picked from Julia’s own garden, sprinkled with salt and pepper. She’d munched away blissfully, making ‘mmmmm’ noises, as if it were the finest meal in the land.
‘Yes, and that delicious farm yoghurt you bought.’
The crunching noise faded out as Julia slowed in front of the manor house.
It did indeed have a grey hue, unlike most of the old houses in the area, which tended towards the golden.
The house was large and elegant in its lines, with a big, well-manicured garden.
A man in khaki trousers and shirt was working the soil with a garden fork.
He stood up in a flowerbed and raised his hand in acknowledgement, straightened his sun hat and then got back to work.
He looked like he might be in his mid-thirties – a good-looking fellow and had a happy smile, like someone who was exactly where he wanted to be in the world.
Julia parked a little way away from the front door. She had a car full of empty cardboard boxes – reused for the millionth time. Wilma had arranged for a Man with a Van – also known as Big Stu – to come in the afternoon to collect the first load of filled boxes and take them to the shop.
Jess and Julia got out of the car and crunched their way to the front door.
Julia rang the doorbell. From inside came the sound of footsteps on a hard surface, coming closer.
The door was opened by a thin, sombre-faced man in late middle age, his thinning hair bearing the rake-marks of the comb that had smoothed it down on his head that morning.
‘Colonel Loxton? Hello, I’m Julia Bird, from Second Chances. My condolences…’
The man interrupted to say, ‘Ah, no. I’m Garforth.
The colonel is in a meeting. He can’t be disturbed.
He told me to expect you – please come in.
’ He stepped back from the door to let them into the hall.
The way that he said his name made it clear that he expected them to know who he was in the household, but Julia couldn’t hazard a guess.
The colonel’s brother, perhaps? He looked the age that she imagined the colonel to be, and he had something of the military about his bearing.
His neat moustache and slightly haughty expression added to this general impression.
From the door behind him came a woman of about Julia’s age, short and stocky, with a round, pleasant face and steel-grey hair scraped back in a bun.
‘Hello,’ she said, with a friendly smile. ‘You must be the ladies from the charity shop.’
‘Yes, we’re from Second Chances. I’m Julia Bird and this is my daughter, Jess. I think we might have spoken on the phone?’
‘Yes, you spoke to me. I’m Biddy Glenn; I’m the housekeeper.’
She turned to the sombre fellow and said, ‘Thank you, Garforth. I’ll show the ladies where to go.’
He nodded to her and then to them, wishing them a curt, ‘Good day,’ before disappearing into the house.
Biddy Glenn ushered them inside, saying, ‘Colonel Loxton is in a meeting, but he thanks you for coming. Come in, and I’ll take you to Mrs Beacon’s apartment.’
They followed her into the hallway and across the flagstone floors, through the kitchen and out the other side of the house.
‘It’s huge, Mum,’ whispered Jess, looking about them. ‘I hope that I don’t lose you – I’ll never find my way out.’
‘Marigold Beacon lived in the Coach House,’ said Biddy, oblivious to Jess’s fears.
Across the pretty kitchen garden was a small, double-storey house. It would once have housed a carriage and a horse or two on the ground floor, and a groom or two on the upper floor, but it had been sensitively renovated into an elegant modern dwelling. Biddy opened the door without using a key.
Julia was stunned at how pretty it was inside.
It was compact, yet with a feeling of spaciousness, and fresh and airy, with soft colours and lots of pot plants.
One side was almost entirely glass: a huge arched window filled the space where the carriage door would have been.
Beyond were gardens, and then fields and woods. It was a delightful view.
‘How absolutely lovely,’ said Jess.
‘It is, isn’t it? Marigold was Colonel Loxton’s sister.
They grew up in this house. He was ever so good to her.
He let her and her daughter Emily stay on at the manor with him after Mr Beacon died when Emily was a baby.
And he completely redid the Coach House for her about five years ago.
Everything just so, exactly as she wanted it.
Double glazing, central heating, every comfort. ’
‘How kind of her brother to make such a beautiful space for her,’ said Julia.
‘Wasn’t it, just? I must say, I was amazed by his generosity…
’ She pursed her lips for a moment as if there was more she could say, but she wasn’t going to.
‘Anyway. The place is lovely, and she was very happy here. Happier than she had been living in the main house, At least she got a good few years here before she died.’
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ said Jess.
‘Thank you,’ said Biddy. She dropped her head and added in an oddly formal tone. ‘Marigold was a good woman. She will be missed. I will miss her. She was a friend.’
‘What did she die of?’ asked Jess. Julia gave her a sharp look, but Biddy didn’t seem to mind the direct question.
‘Heart attack. She got up in the morning and made a cup of tea, and walked out to enjoy it outdoors in the garden as she always did. Collapsed, right there outside the house. The teacup was still warm when I found her.’
‘How awful for you. It must have been a terrible shock, finding a body. And a friend, at that,’ said Jess.
Julia, of course, had found a number of bodies in her time, and always found it traumatic.
‘It was an awful shock. Her death was completely unexpected. She was healthy, and then dead. A quick death is something to be grateful for, though. Not like poor Mrs Loxton, the colonel’s wife, who lingered for years in a horrible state…’
They observed a moment’s silence after that sad story. Biddy rallied, and said, ‘Now, let me show you around the place, and what’s where, and you can get started.’
‘I’ll bring the packing boxes in from the car, Mum,’ said Jess, and went out the way they’d come.
Biddy Glenn took Julia upstairs, where there were two bedrooms. The larger, and fuller, was Marigold’s, she explained. The smaller was for her daughter Emily when she visited.
‘Lovely young woman, our Emily. She sends her apologies that she couldn’t meet you today.
She lives in Paris but she came back to see her mum regularly.
She came as soon as she could after Marigold died, and since then she’s been working remotely and spending some time with her uncle and cousins.
Terrible to lose her mum without a chance to say goodbye. ’
‘Poor thing,’ Julia echoed, and felt a surprising pang of longing for her own mum, all these years later. ‘But nice for her to be with her family.’
Biddy made a small grunt. ‘They’re not that close.’
They went back downstairs. On her way outside to check on Jess’s progress, Julia almost collided with a tall, ruddy-faced man, whose most noticeable distinguishing feature was a truly remarkable moustache which luxuriated on his upper lip like a polar bear basking on a rock.
It was full and thick and startlingly white – shades lighter and much thicker than his sparse, dull-grey hair – tapering dramatically at the ends.
Julia struggled to drag her eyes from the thing, and for a moment stood blinking at the man in wonder.
‘Colonel Clarence Loxton,’ he said, without offering a hand. ‘And you must be the lady from the charity shop.’
‘That I am. Julia Bird,’ she said, regaining her composure. ‘Thank you for your donation, and my condolences on the loss of your sister.’
Now she’d got over the shock of the moustache, she saw that he was quite formally dressed in a tweed woollen jacket, which must have been boiling in the heat. His brown leather loafers gleamed as if someone had buffed them that very morning.
‘Thank you,’ he said, briskly. ‘Everything in order, Mrs Glenn?’
‘Yes,’ said Biddy. ‘I explained when we spoke on the phone that the furniture will stay, of course. Everything else must be gone within the week.’
‘What about the personal effects?’ asked Julia.
The colonel answered: ‘Emily – Margaret’s daughter, my niece – has taken the items she wants. You can take everything else – clothes, kitchen items, books, the lot. What you can’t sell in the charity shop must be sent to the dump.’
‘Artworks, pictures, that sort of thing?’ There were some empty hooks where pictures had been hanging, but a lot were still in place. ‘Would your own children not like something to remember their aunt?’
‘No, take the lot,’ he said firmly. ‘Everything that’s here must go.’
‘Okay,’ said Julia. It seemed strange and sad to divest the place of every last trace of Mrs Beacon, but this haul of good-quality items would earn Second Chances a pretty penny. And every penny went to support a good cause.
‘Thank you, Ms Bird. I’ll be in my study, but I’m certain Mrs Glenn can help you with any questions you might have. Good day.’
‘Right, well, I’d best get back to the house,’ said Biddy.
‘I’ll be there if you need me, but you shouldn’t.
The instructions are quite clear, I think.
I’ll make sandwiches at lunchtime – I always do it for myself and for Ian, the chap who works in the garden.
I will make some for you as well. Come to the kitchen at twelve thirty to fetch them. ’
‘That’s very kind of you, thank you.’
Jess arrived back just as Biddy left. She had a sheaf of flattened boxes under her arm. The shopping bag containing packaging tape and black marker pens and labels hung from her elbow. The man who had been working in the garden when they came in followed with another, larger, stash of boxes.
‘Here we go,’ Jess said, puffing. She dropped her pile on the sitting room floor. The man placed his gently on top of them.
‘Thanks for your help. Ian, is it?’
‘Ian. That’s me.’ He smiled, his bright blue eyes lighting up.
‘I’m Jess. Thanks for your help, Ian.’
‘If you need anything else, I’ll be in the garden,’ he said. He seemed to linger a moment before he turned to go.
Julia and Jess started with the bookshelves.
It was clear that Marigold Beacon had been a cultured woman with wide interests.
Lots of good-quality new novels, and well-preserved editions of old classics, as well as biographies and cookbooks and nature books.
Not to mention the most fabulous collection of children’s books.
It was an excellent haul, from a resale point of view. Wilma was going to be delighted.
Jess was standing on a stepladder to reach the topmost shelf of books, when she called down, ‘Oooh, look. This shelf has a photo album, and what look like diaries or notebooks. What shall I do with them, Mum?’
Julia went over to her. From her ladder, Jess handed down a couple of leather-bound notebooks.
Julia opened the first one, and found it was a page-a-day diary filled with scribbled entries, notes and lists, and occasionally what looked like poems and quotes.
All written in pencil, and illustrated with whimsical figures and faces, and sketches of plants and animals.
‘We can’t just toss these books. Emily probably didn’t see them when she chose what she wanted to keep,’ said Julia. ‘These illustrations are quite beautiful, and I’m sure she will want them. Put them in a box, and we’ll give them to her or to the colonel.’
Jess packed up the personal notebooks and albums, and they moved upstairs to the bedroom to get to work on the wardrobe. Going through a dead person’s clothes always made Julia feel a bit sad. The ragged hem on a much-loved jumper, the worn soles of the shoes… There was a fragile intimacy to it.
Jess seemed unaffected, now sorting and folding and boxing with a brisk efficiency that tempered her mother’s vague sense of melancholy.
Oh to be young, with your life ahead of you, and no thought at all of death’s inevitable arrival!
thought Julia. They fell into an easy rhythm, chatting as they folded and sorted, packing away.
The sound of a door closing, followed by the sound of footsteps on gravel, made Julia look up from her task.
She looked out of the window, down at the drive, just in time to see someone get into a black car.
All she glimpsed was the top of his grey hat with its dark hat band, and one grey trouser leg disappearing into the car.
It made her smile, that bird’s-eye view.
‘I think that’s all the shoes,’ said Jess, closing the box. She reached for the tape and sealed the box, and wrote SHOES in big letters on the top in black marker.
Julia looked at her watch and was surprised to find it was almost twelve thirty. ‘Let’s break for a quick lunch,’ she said. ‘If we get straight back to work in the afternoon, we might even finish this today.’
‘Yes! I’m starving. I wonder what Biddy will have put in the sandwiches. Bet there’s cheese involved.’
‘I’m sure you’re right. The Cotswolds is a cheese-lover’s paradise.’
The two of them walked over to the kitchen door of the main house, where they found Biddy Glenn spreading mayonnaise on a pile of slices of bread. On a board next to her were slices of cheddar cheese and tomato, a plate of ham and a pile of lettuce.
‘Excellent timing! These will be ready in a mo. Everyone okay with a bit of mustard?’ Biddy held up a jar of seedy mustard.
‘Love it!’ said Jess.
‘We should wash our hands,’ said Julia, looking at her dusty palms. ‘Which way to the bathroom?’
They followed Biddy’s directions to a washroom off the main entrance hall, next to a flight of broad and highly polished stairs.
Jess pumped a good splodge of liquid soap into Julia’s hands, and then her own, and the little room was soon thick with a floral scent that was clean and sweet and expensive.
They rubbed and scrubbed and rinsed until the water went from grey to clear.
Julia dried her hands and handed the towel to Jess.
‘I was thinking,’ Jess began, ‘when we’re finished here—’
But Jess’s words were cut short by a long, deep howl of such anguish that it sent shivers down Julia’s spine. She rushed into the hall – Jess hot on her heels – and the two of them dashed down the passage in the direction from which the dreadful noise had come.