10. THE COTTAGE IN THE WOODS Part 10

Two more steps in the story.

10, THE COTTAGE IN THE WOODS

10. The Two Lovers

“Are we really boyfriend and girlfriend, then?” asked Anthony of Enid, nervously. He knew that he really liked her, but he was afraid of liking a girl, bearing in mind what his parents liking each other as much as they obviously did had produced a king sized family and he was sure his mum was pregnant again. He’d done human reproduction in social sciences at school and he guessed that there was a real connection between the number of children in a family and the emotional attachment of their parents.

And he wasn’t too keen on being a member of a large family, with kids everywhere, siblings he knew that’s what they were, but there was always noise in the house, especially with babies crying at night. And another one (possibly) on the way now that little Suzie was beautifullybecoming a toddler rather than a noisy baby.

“Do you look on me as your girlfriend, then?” she asked.

“You’re my friend and you’re a girl,” he replied hesitantly, “in fact, I think you’re lovely!”

“Have you any boys as friends, and do you think they’re lovely?” she asked.

He shuddered. “I’m not gay!” he almost shouted. That was a common protestation in the playground at school with boys teasing each other.

“Then you’re my boyfriend, and I give you full permission to be my girlfriend, and if you are I’ll see about going on the pill,” she said with a gentle smile.

“The pill?” he queried, “the teacher told us about it at school but to be honest I don’t understand it,” he confessed.

“It’s easy. It stops a girl ovulating, which means she can’t get pregnant if she finds herself going beyond the kissing stage with a boyfriend,” she said, “and you’re my boyfriend. You said so.”

He was beginning to feel embarrassed when Constable Pierce saw them from the other side of the road, not far from his own home.

“I say, you two, do you want to hear the latest about Huckleberry Cottage?” he called.

“Yes please,” they replied in unison. Hand in hand, they crossed the road to talk to him. He grinned at them. “We’re at the hand-holding stage, are we?” he teased.

“It’s just that I want to make sure she’s safe on the road,” replied Anthony weakly.

“You mean I want to make sure you’re safe!” objected Enid, “Girls can manage roads quite safely, you knowwithout the help of testosterone!”.

“That’s like me and Amy. We hold hands when we’re crossing the road,” grinned Billy.

They reached him, and Enid asked “what’s the news then?” she asked.

“There was a suspicious looking hump in the back garden, the sort of hump that was exactly the right shape and size to be a grave,” he said, “and old Grimm had it dug up. There was another skeleton in it, dressed in very little that hadn’t rotted well away. He reckoned it much have been there a lot longer than Ada in the bedroom, maybe fifty or sixty years.”

“How gross,” murmured Enid.

“And the pathologist is pretty sure it was a man, middle aged maybe.”

“I thought the mother and daughter had lived there for ever on their own,” said Anthony, “two bedrooms, two occupants.”

“The older of the two, the skeleton of Ada, was in a double bed, wasn’t it? And double beds are usually bought for two people, usually married couples who like being close together when they sleep” suggested Billy. “Then there’s the contents of the wardrobe. Pushed almost out of sight and not many of them, but some male clothes.”

“So maybe Ada had a husband? After all, she did get a daughter!” suggested Enid, warming to the idea that the long loneliness that Winifred had suggested may not have been so single-sexed as all that.

“Men and women do need each other,” murmured Anthony“I’d say they do,” laughed Billy, “look at me and Amy. We’re getting married when we feel the time’s right, and I’ll make sure you two lovebirds are invited. But there’s more news about the clothes in the wardrobe. They’re all pretty old. Even those belonging to Ada, to be honest. There’s not much bought in the last thirty years, according to Felicia, you know, the woman constable who reckons to know a bit about fashion.” remembering his parents at home.

“If they’re Ada’s that might be a clue as to how long ago she died,” suggested Enid’

“That’s what Felicia suggested. But there’s more, something intriguing. One of the male garments is a uniform. A pilot’s uniform, but not RAF or anything local. It is German and we reckon dates from the second world war. What do you make of that?”

“Spooky,” breathed Anthony, “food for thought.”

“A great deal of food for thought,” agreed Billy, “a great deal indeed.”

Meanwhile, at Brumpton police station Inspector Greengage was being given what was euphemistically called a bollocking by Superintendent Partridge who didn’t particularly like him anyway. Partridge considered that not only did Greengage have a silly name, one that didn’t fit in with his idea of a smooth and modern police force, but he had too much of a brittle way of talking to the public, be they merely reporting something that annoyed them or suspects in an incident.

“It’s not good enough, Greengage,” he said brusquely.”

“What isn’t, sir?” asked the Inspector, at a loss at to what he might have done to displease his Superintendent.

“This,” barked Partridge, and he switched the recording of Greengage’s interview with the Winterbotham woman at the point where his Inspector had decided to bully Winifred into confession.

“That’s standard procedure,” muttered the Inspector defensively, “I was bog sure she was guilty and I thought it might ease her conscience if she got it off her chest.”

“Then the way you shouted at one of our brightest and best constables, Felicity Ruby,” sighed the Superintendent, “you made her look and feel stupid and you were the wrong one, not her!”

“She’s a woman and in my opinion women were never bred to be any good at police work,” Greengage decided to be brave enough to come out with, quite aware that it would sound ridiculous but saying it anyway.

“Then you’re offending my wife, and she’s a chief inspector in Marnford division, and if I tell her what your opinion is you’d better hope you never bump into her on a cold and draughty night or she’ll give your nether regions a lesson you won’t like. No sir, not like at all!”

Greengage decided that apology for everything under the sun was his best option if he wanted to cut the Superintendent's chastising to a minimum, and it worked.

“By the way, Inspector, what do you make of the unlawful burial in the garden at Huckelberry Cottage?” he asked.

“Unlawful burial, sir?” he asked, his stomach contracting when he realised that his own obsession with one suspect had left him to ignore fresh evidence as it came in.

“Wake up Greengage! It must be a good hour since Doctor Grimm discovered the body and I was expecting you to tell me who it is and how it got to be there!”

Inspector Greengage could have willingly watched the floor under his feet open and suck him down into a realm where there was no such thing as a sharp-tongued Superintendent or a nosy pathologist or even a wife.

“I’m on it, sir,” he squeaked, and made his way back to the Incident Room before the Superintendent could throw any more questions at him.

© Peter Rogerson 22.01.23

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