Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
The next day, she opened the front door to find a dead rat on her doorstep. It was lying on its side, its sharp teeth bared in a snarl. She couldn’t help jumping back, the same cry of shock and disgust springing to her lips as when she’d first seen them, that time in the fruit cage.
She looked around. There was no one there. And, of course, the pest controller had put down poison. So it could just be a coincidence – the rat might have died here, in this very spot.
Or someone might have found it and placed it here. Someone who knew how much she loathed rats.
Either way, it needed to be dealt with. She went inside and tore off some kitchen roll. Gingerly, she picked the rat up by the tail and swung it into a skip.
She’d just got back from getting the children off to the bus stop when her phone rang. She glanced at the screen and saw the caller’s name: Paul Finch.
Surprised and a little apprehensive, she put it to her ear. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s Paul, from The Old Tennis Court,’ he announced cheerily. ‘I was looking through the telescope just now, and I couldn’t help noticing – you’ve got moles.’
‘Moles?’ she repeated.
‘On Trade Cottage’s lower lawn. You’ll need to sort them out, or they’ll work their way up and ruin the whole damn thing.
’ He chuckled. ‘I spent years getting that lawn into the shape it’s in now.
It’s a lot more effort than it looks – you’re fighting moss, drought, mushroom rings, weeds .
. . But the blasted moles come back every autumn, when the males leave the nests.
You want to put a crushed garlic clove down every molehill, and stick one of those foil pinwheels in the top – they don’t like the vibration.
The village shop sells them. It’s perfectly humane.
The little blighters just go and annoy someone else. ’
There was a time when she’d appreciated his advice about Trade Cottage. Now, it just seemed patronising. ‘What if we don’t mind moles?’
‘Don’t mind them?’ He sounded baffled. ‘But they’ll spoil the look of the lawn.’
‘We’re digging the lawn up soon, anyway. For a drainage field.’
There was a short silence. ‘Yes, I saw an application had gone in for that. Along with all the other things.’ His voice, though still jovial, had a harder edge to it.
‘You don’t need one, you know. Those drainage chaps always try to talk people into them, particularly if they think you don’t know much about it.
That soil at the bottom of the garden is loamy – it’s a natural soakaway. ’
‘That’s not the advice we’ve been given,’ she retorted. ‘Particularly as there’ll be extra drains to connect from the outbuildings, once they’re converted.’
This time the silence was even longer. Then he said patiently, ‘Well, if you don’t get permission for that – and from what I’m hearing from various members of the committee, you don’t stand a chance – perhaps you should think about a cheaper drainage set-up, one that doesn’t trash the lawn I spent years nurturing.
I’d be very happy to recommend someone. In the meantime, take a look at those molehills, won’t you? Pinwheels and garlic.’
He rang off. She stood there for a moment, furious, phone in hand, wondering what the real purpose of his call had been.
To let her know he had friends on the planning committee?
To remind her that he was constantly watching?
Or was he genuinely offended by the sight of a few molehills?
Again, it was so patronising to be told that she and Matt were being taken advantage of by Mick, the drainage contractor.
She’d trust Mick’s advice over Paul’s any day.
Even so, the next time she went past the village shop, she went in and bought some pinwheels, then stuck one in each molehill, along with a crushed garlic clove.
Both Matt and Robert would be upset if the moles came any higher up the lawn.
And the little foil windmills actually looked quite jaunty, whirring away at the bottom of the garden.
As she went back up to the house, she remembered something.
When she’d thrown the dead pheasants over the beam in the barn that time, she’d noticed some curious metal contraptions hanging on nails hammered into the timber.
She went to take a look. Yes, she’d remembered right – there were five of them, each about eight inches long, with spring-loaded handles and sharp interlocking blades.
They were mole traps – she was sure of it. They looked like they’d been well used, too – some had dried earth on them. Or was that brown stuff really blood?
She looked at the blades, clearly designed to break a mole’s back, and shuddered.
It said so much about Paul and Rosemary’s time at Trade Cottage, she thought: the lawn, so effortlessly perfect on the surface, was kept that way by ruthlessly controlling anything beneath it that wasn’t to Paul’s liking.
What was the betting he told guests that his pretty pinwheels were gently shooing the little beasts away, even as his buried traps were lurking below to slice them in two?