18. THE COTTAGE IN THE WOODS

We're becoming International! And remember, I've changed Enid to Emma...

THE COTTAGE IN THE WOODS

18. Friends in Germany

“What is it, darling?” shouted Anthony when the girl’s scream seemed to shatter the woodland and he could detect real horror in it.

“Ant, come here, I think she’s dead… quick, come on!”

Emma found herself stumbling backwards towards the gate, unable to take her eyes off the figure reclining in the freshly re-dug grave. The woman was lying still and Emma was quite sure the older woman had passed away.

Until, that is, she moved one arm and scratched her chin.

“She’s alive!” gasped the girl, “I saw her move, I really did, she scratched her chin! It must have been itching, and she scratched it, and I was scared because I was sure she was dead.”

Anthony had been startiing ro etch his and Emma’s initials in the soft bark of a young tree with a blunt penknife because in his mind he wanted their shared adventures to leave a mark for eternity, but he reacted to the girl’s agonised scream and was soon at her side, also staring in horror at where Emma was pointing.

“Why are you lying in there?” he asked, addressing the macabre image of the soiled and dirty elderly woman lying on her back in the hollowed out grave as if someone had gone to huge trouble to give her the posture of death.

Winifred didn’t reply. How could she? Her entire vocabulary had been created by endlessly misunderstanding her own mother who had ranted about everything under the sun and especially about Nazi hordes who had stolen the life of Winifred’s precious daddy.

She knew quite a lot about her daddy, especially that he was never a Nazi and never would be, and he had to keep, as she said, his head down so they’d never find him. And her mother had known they were searching, looking under every stone for him and would be doing that until they found him.

And Winifred supposed they never had.

“We need to get her on her feet,” suggested Andrew, “and that looks like it’s going to be no easy matter.”

“Can I help?”

That was a new voice, a sweet and gentle voice, and they both looked round wondering who it was that had come that way along the same overgrown lane as them when it was unusual for anyone to come that way.

“You’re that Constable,” said Emma, recognising her and relieved that there was no need for either they or Winifred to fear the newcomer.

But the still prostrate woman with blood still draining from a badly cut hand wasn’t so sure. Felicia Ruby might have been in plain clothes all right, but Winifred saw her as a threat none-the-less. Her awareness that there were evil forces all around her in the world was deeply ingrained. To her there was no such thing as safety outside their ramshackle cottage

“Nazi!” she swore, and she managed to raise herself up on one elbow so that she could see better and project her own voice all the more firmly.

“I’m supposed to be in plain clothes,” sighed Felicia, “keeping my eye on that woman. Poor soul. She doesn’t need a plain clothes copper, she needs real help by someone who knows what they’re on about. My Inspector back at the nick has no idea. He still reckons she killed anyone who came anywhere near this sad little cottage. Just a minute, I’ll radio for an ambulance.”

“It might be fun seeing her made to sit in one,” suggested Anthony.

“We’ll help her,” Emma told him.

“If she’ll let us.” Anthony could see real problems ahead should uniformed paramedics arrive in an ambulance and try to encourage her to climb into the back of their vehicle, or any vehicle, come to think of it.

It didn’t seem long before they heard the warning sounds of an emergency vehicle coming their way, the sound barely muffled by the cluster of trees that surrounded the cottage. Then it was in sight, it’s blue lights echoing from tree trunk to tree trunk as it crawled along at what looked like a snail’s pace.

If anything was going to encourage Winifred to rise up from her prone position in the empty grave it was that. The blue lights, the sounds of the siren blasting a two-tome warning through the woodland, blasting its hitherto peace into smithereens. So she sat up, visibly shaking, and then she moaned when she saw the ambulance doors opening and two paramedics climbing out, carrying their equipment in tidy bags.

“Nazis!” she shrieked.

Meanwhile, back in Brumpton Police Station the superintendent ordered a constable to send Inspector Greengage to his office. And that good inspector rather suspected he might have displeased the super because usually appointments were made more personally than via a humble constable.

“You asked to see me, sir?” he said after knocking the door to the Superintendent’s office and being invited to enter in a magisterial voice.

“I did indeed, Greengage,” replied the scowling Superintendent, “I believe you have Constable Ruby in your team?”

Greengage frowned. Who, in the name of goodness, did he mean by Constable Ruby? Surely not the young constable, the one with a gormless expression, because he would never have wanted him in his team at all. A gormless expression meant a gormless copper and the last thing he needed was one of those. It was bad enough having a woman…

And then it struck him. Constable Ruby was that woman.

“Of course sir,” he replied after a pause that was many seconds too long as judged by his superior officer who judged that the Inspector had no clear idea who was on his team and who wasn’t.

“Why have you done it, Inspector?” asked the Superintendent, “sent her off into the woods on her own in plain clothes, when she is not CID yet?

He’s up to date, then. She’s only gone this morning, thought the Inspector, surprise that his superior officer was so well informed on what, to him, was a trivial matter.

“Would you mind telling me what the thinking behind such a thing was?” superintendent Partridge.

“I was afraid the old bird was going to make a getaway before we could arrest her, sir,” mumbled Greengage wondering what he sounde dlike but knowing he was personally on the right track whatever the rest might think.

“By old bird I assume you are referring to a geriatric with half her marbles missing?” grated the Superintendent, “the elderly lady you already had in for interview, and who everyone except you seems to think is a poor old soul who has never done anyone any harm? That old bird?”

“She’s put it over so well that half the team are taken in by her,” replied Inspector Greengage, “whereas I have seen through the veil of lies she has skilfully erected in order to fool us.

“Are you sure of that, Inspector?” asked the Superintended. “I ask because the Chief Constable doesn’t share your opinion at all and has been in contact with his equivalent in Hamburg, which as you know well is in Germany, and that officer has information that might suggest a very different story. But first, Inspector, we require the good lady’s permission to send details of her DNA to Germany, which they believe will start to tell a most interesting story...”

“Permission, sir?

“Yes, Inspector. The good lady has committed no offences as far as we are concerned and so we have no right to be free and easy with her personal DNA, and cast it overseas to the winds. I would leave it to you to explain what we mean by DNA, for I’m certain she has no idea at all what those three letters mean, but…”

“But what, sir?”

“I suppose I’m quite right to judge from your attitude that you still harbour suspicions that science have proved to be false…”

“She’s pulled the wool over Doctor Grimm’s eyes, if that’s what you mean, sir,” growled Greengage.

“See what I mean, Greengage? Anyway, I’ve decided to instruct Constable Ruby to do any explaining that may be necessary. She’s a good one, is Constable Ruby, the right person for the job, sensitive and intelligent, you know.”

“And you’re going over me? Ignoring my opinions that may well be right? Can I presume to ask why?”

“It’ not me, Inspector. It’s the Chief Constable, and I cannot ignore his judgement, And he has friends in Germany as well as a deep regard for Constable Ruby!”

© Peter Rogerson 04.02 23

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