The Magic of Christmas

‘Actually, it looks as though one of the Citroën’s wheels came off.’ Her eyes were fixed on my face to gauge the full effect of this pronouncement.

‘A wheel came off? But would that have caused him to veer off the road?’

‘Not necessarily. It’s usually possible to drive on three wheels to a safe halt.’

A sudden, rather nasty, thought struck me. ‘Do you know which wheel came off?’

‘The front driver’s side.’ She looked at me intently again, and I realised I must’ve turned pale. ‘Why?’

‘I had a flat tyre … it must have been that same morning, so I changed the wheel for the spare and took it in to be mended. Jasper undid the last nut – it was stiff – but I changed the wheel and put the nuts on again,’ I said firmly. ‘Jasper had gone back into the house by then. And what’s more, it was absolutely fine on the drive to the dig and back!’

‘Mrs Pharamond, I’m not accusing you of anything!’

Wasn’t she? It began to sound amazingly like it!

‘Isn’t it just possible you didn’t tighten them up quite enough, so they slowly worked loose? Accidents do happen.’

‘You mean I might have accidentally killed my husband?’

Now I saw which way she was heading with this, I thanked God it was me who had tightened the nuts and not Jasper!

‘If they were a bit loose, then the tight bends of the quarry road could have completed the job,’ she said. ‘It’s a possibility. We haven’t found any of them yet.’

‘But I’m sure they were tight, because I used a wheel br—’ I stopped as Jasper came back in carrying a battered tin tray of mugs and an open carton of milk.

‘Yes, they were,’ he said, putting the tray down on the coffee table with a thump that slopped some coffee over the rims. ‘I could hear what you were saying from the kitchen and Mum put the wheel back on and tightened the nuts. And then when she went in to wash her hands, I tightened them up even more.’

We gazed at him, though presumably not with the same mixed feelings of affection and exasperation.

‘Oh, Jasper,’ I said, ‘I’m not being accused of anything except carelessness, so you really don’t have to try and protect me!’

‘I’m not, Mum, it’s quite true. I left you putting the wheel back on, but I checked it was tight enough later, when you weren’t about.’

I wondered how often he’d felt he needed to check up on me, and from my expression he deduced that he ought to add something. ‘It was fine – I thought it would be.’

‘Of course it was! Any idiot can change a wheel,’ I said indignantly.

PC Perkins had lost interest in the ins and outs of our dispute, and turned to Jasper, notebook at the ready. ‘So you are quite sure that the wheel was in a safe condition?’

‘Absolutely. And I often checked them and the tyre pressure since I passed my test, for the practice.’

‘So, how do you account for the same wheel coming off?’

‘I don’t – that’s your job, isn’t it? But we don’t know how long he’d been out, so he could have left the car standing about, and loosening the wheel nuts might have been someone’s idea of a joke.’ He shrugged. ‘Mum’s car was ancient, so who knows? Maybe the threads had gone or something, even?’

I stared at him, thinking that he certainly didn’t get his coolness and sang-froid from me or Tom – but, of course, my father was in the diplomatic service.

She closed her notebook with a snap. ‘Once the post-mortem has been completed, if everything is in order, an inquest will be opened and adjourned and an interim death certificate issued,’ she said briskly, by which I presumed she meant unless they found I’d been feeding him Cyanide Chutney for months. (Or Polly Darke’s poisonous tomatoes. Pity I hadn’t thought of that one!)

‘The funeral can then take place, and the inquest proper will open at a later date.’

‘Must there be another inquest?’

‘Yes, it’s standard procedure in cases of this kind.’

‘Which kind?’ I demanded, when I heard the kitchen door suddenly burst open and crash back against the wall, rattling all the china on the dresser. Then Polly Darke stumbled over the sitting-room threshold like a dishevelled, shrink-wrapped Bacchae, all billowing green chiffon sleeves, stick-thin legs and enormous boobs.

‘Well, stay me with flagons,’ I said, surprised (damson gin for preference), for even Polly wasn’t usually this avid to garner news.

Her slightly prominent eyes passed over the policewoman and fixed on me. ‘Is it true?’ she demanded thrillingly. ‘Is Tom really dead? They’re saying he had an accident – in your car!’

Presumably this was rhetorical, for with an anguished cry of, ‘Tom! Tom!’ she threw herself into the nearest chair and burst into hysterical sobs.

Jasper and I exchanged glances. Attention-seeking taken to extremes, combined with a raging desire to know what was happening was, I’m sure, our first thought.

‘This is Polly Darke, Officer,’ I explained resignedly. ‘She’s a novelist and lives near Mossrow.’

Polly looked up, her face like a drowned flower (a slightly withered pansy). ‘I can’t believe it. Only the night before last Tom was with me, and now he’s gone. Gone!’

‘Why was he with you?’ asked Jasper, puzzled. ‘I thought he’d finally finished those Celtic murals you asked him to do ages ago?’

‘Because he loved me!’ she exclaimed tragically and began to sob gustily again.

‘He was with you the night before last?’ I stared at her, my mind whirling faster than a tumble dryer. ‘Good heavens, don’t tell me that you, of all people, are Dark Heart? No, it can’t possibly be you!’

‘Yes it is! Why not?’ she demanded belligerently, straightening from her pose of utter despondency. ‘I could give him what he needed—’

‘Tie him up, tie him down?’ I suggested a bit numbly. You know, I’d never even considered her as a possible suspect, because to me she was a rather pathetic and ludicrous creature, though perhaps men might see her differently? But not young men, apparently, for Jasper looked even more incredulous than I was.

‘Dark Heart?’ he queried.

‘Yes, your father was having an affair with someone, but though I found a note in his pocket on the morning of the day he vanished, it was only signed “Dark Heart”, so I didn’t know who it was.’

‘You mean, Dad was having an affair with her?’

‘Evidently, but I certainly thought it would be someone younger.’

I’m quite sure Polly is much older than I am – well the other side of forty – even if she does try to hold back the years with every ancient and modern art at her disposal.

‘What do you mean?’ she demanded indignantly, glaring at me. ‘I’m only thirty-five!’

‘And the rest,’ Jasper said drily.

I’d entirely forgotten the policewoman was there until she interjected into the sudden lull in the proceedings, ‘So you knew your husband was having an affair, Mrs Pharamond?’

Her notebook was open again, I saw, pen poised.

I glanced uneasily at Jasper. ‘He … well, he had had lapses occasionally in the past, but they didn’t mean anything. Then I found out about a more serious affair about five years ago, when my son was ill – and I’m so sorry, Jasper: I didn’t want you to find out about your father’s affairs, especially like this.’

‘Oh, I knew all about the women, Mum,’ he said calmly. ‘I even caught him at it with that girl out of the Mummers once, when I walked in on them in the workshop.’

‘You did?’

‘That’s a lie!’ Polly yelled furiously, but Jasper just glanced coolly at her, one eyebrow raised, as though she were a failed soufflé. He looked terribly like Nick. I don’t think Polly is any kind of soufflé, though, more of a synthetic Black Forest gateau with poisonous cherries.

‘So you were not on good terms with your husband,’ the policewoman suggested to me, ‘although he’d had affairs in the past to which you hadn’t objected?’

‘Of course I objected!’ I exclaimed. ‘What do you take me for? And they were usually more in the nature of one-night stands than anything serious. For a long time I used to believe him when he said he loved me and they meant nothing.’

‘Yes, but that was the old Dad, not the nastier model we’ve had to live with lately,’ Jasper pointed out. ‘Even I’ve overheard him, taunting you about some woman he’s been seeing – and he’s not coming across as a very admirable-sounding character, is he?’

The police officer said patiently, ‘So this time he was having a serious affair, Mrs Pharamond? He would have left you?’

‘No, it had to be the other way round, because this cottage belongs to his great-uncle by marriage, Roly Pharamond. So I intended leaving, once Jasper was at university and I’d found new homes for the livestock and sorted out somewhere to go, some sort of job …’ I trailed off.

‘That’s so not true! I heard you arguing in his workshop that very morning and when I questioned him about it later, he told me he’d asked you to leave and you’d refused!’ Polly cried. ‘He was afraid Roly Pharamond would take your side and he’d lose the cottage and everything he’d worked for.’

‘Obviously you didn’t hear much, Polly!’ I said, surprised. ‘What I actually told him was that I’d had enough and was going to leave him as soon as I could. And if anyone worked around here and stood to lose everything, it was me!’ I added incautiously, and the policewoman’s pen skidded quickly across the page.

‘Well, at least you don’t have to do that now, Mum,’ Jasper remarked, and a small silence ensued.

I sighed. ‘We might still have to move, Jasper. It depends on Uncle Roly.’

‘Unks won’t put you out, Ma. He’s really fond of you.’

‘So,’ said the officer to Polly, ‘you overheard an argument, and what then?’

‘She came out,’ Polly said, with a venomous look at me. ‘So I said I’d brought her some field mushrooms to exchange for eggs, and she said, “Help yourself, I’m going for a walk.” She was really odd – she looked furious. When she’d gone I spoke to Tom briefly and he said he’d come over later, after he’d finished the board he was painting – which he did. And that’s the last time I saw him, because when I woke up early next morning he’d gone. He parks around the back of the house, out of sight, so I’d no idea he hadn’t come in his own van,’ she added. ‘I just assumed he had.’

‘No, it was still at the garage,’ I told her. ‘But if he hadn’t taken my car, when he knew very well I wanted it later, it might have been me and Jasper who had the accident.’

‘It should have been you!’ she said venomously. Her reddened eyes and sharp nose made her look like a particularly unsavoury rodent.

Jasper stood up slowly and said in a tone of menace I’d never heard from him before, ‘I think you’ve said – and done – quite enough. Why don’t you clear off?’

She floundered hastily and inelegantly out of the chair and backed towards the door. PC Perkins jumped up and stood between them.

‘If I could have your name and address, Ms Darke? I’ll follow you over and ask you a few more questions in your own home, if I may?’ She turned to me with a thin smile: ‘Thank you for your assistance, Mrs Pharamond.’

I had a horrible feeling she suspected me of loosening the wheelnuts on purpose, then leaving the keys out where Tom was sure to find them. And goodness knew what Polly would tell her!

‘Jasper,’ I said when they’d gone, ‘you were wonderful!’

‘Don’t worry, Mum, that cop may have a suspicious mind, but we know there’s nothing to find, so they can’t pin anything on you.’

‘Thank you, darling,’ I said weakly, then had a thought. ‘I wonder if Tom had anything to eat at Polly’s? Only if he had an attack of food poisoning, that might account for why he lost control of the car when the wheel came off.’

‘I don’t think he went there to eat, Mum,’ Jasper said, before vanishing back up to his Batcave.

In the kitchen I discovered that half the candied peel had vanished, presumably eaten by Jasper while waiting for the kettle to boil, but then, it’s very moreish. But it didn’t matter, I was only going to dip it in dark chocolate as a treat for later.

Meanwhile, there was a whole row of bolting lettuces (I’d planted too many, as usual) to toss to the hens, and fruit to pick: a fresh strawberry Pavlova would be wonderfully comforting.

Chapter 8: Well Braced

Once our bulk order for dried fruit, peel and all the other ingredients has arrived and been divided up among the five members of the Christmas Pudding Circle, you can tell where we all live by the rich aroma of cooking mincemeat wafting from the doors and windows. We tend to make it early and of course it’s useful all year round, for making mincemeat brownies, stuffing baked apples and a host of other things – not least the famous Middlemoss Marchpane tart.

I’m going to make a bumper quantity this time, before I really get going on all the bottling, preserving and freezing of garden fruits and vegetables that starts to build up momentum at this time of year: the making of chutneys, jams, curds and relishes …

The Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes

On the Monday Jasper returned to his dig (by bike) and I went to the Christmas Pudding Circle meeting. I was glad of any distraction from the turmoil of mixed emotions caused by Tom’s death and Polly’s revelations, though it would have been impossible to describe what I felt. It wasn’t even as if Tom had played a major part of our lives for the last few years, except in a negative, passing storm-cloud sort of way, but still, grief of some kind was an element and Jasper, I was sure, felt much the same. And also, I was increasingly uneasy at the direction the police enquiries seemed to be taking …

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