The Shift Key (11 page)

Besides, their kids were fretting dreadfully, because Boyo the dog still had not come home …

What with that, and the prospect of sorting out the returned goods and replacing them on the shelves –
and
reflashing everything with the proper price, for they added a penny or two to the cost of items for home delivery to cover what they paid Peter Lodd, the boy with a bicycle who took them round the village after delivering morning papers –
both of them had lost their tempers. Judy had accused her husband, one of the soberest men in Weyharrow, of being drunk because he had taken off a bare half-hour to go to the Marriage where, he said, he hoped to catch and apologize to a few of their regular customers. But it was true that during his absence she had carried on with the job, and he’d stayed out longer than he had promised, and by the time he got back she was ranting about all the food they’d have to eat that would otherwise be spoiled …

Roy Jacksett, being a stolid kind of person, and used to scenes of this sort if not on such a scale, kept trying to calm her throughout the rest of the evening, to such effect that she drank a second cup of the coffee he had brewed from a jar of instant returned by a customer who’d ordered a decaffeinated brand … and then said she couldn’t get to sleep, so he must bring one of the sleeping-pills Dr Tripkin had given her.

It had been months since she last asked for one, and the label Mr Ratch had stuck on the bottle said the capsules were only safe until March of this year. Now it was October. Having grown used to discarding stock when its time expired, Mr Jacksett pointed out the fact.

It was the resulting row that made him try and phone the Doctor’s House; he could see a light on. But there was no answer, and when he went to make apologies to Judy, she was snoring. Much relieved, he joined her.

But it was a long time before he got to sleep. Where
was
that bloody dog?

Business was slack this evening at the Bridge Hotel. Mr Mender decided to close the dining-room early and told Tim Wamble the chef he could clear up.

Having done so, and changed into ordinary clothes, Tim slipped into the bar for a nightcap. The landlord gave him a look of annoyance – he didn’t approve of his employees
mixing with the clientele – but said nothing. Staff were hard to find, and apart from his peculiar lapse this morning Tim had proved hard-working and reliable.

There were a couple of customers Tim didn’t know talking together in low tones, man and wife by the look of them, and another that he did, Mr Ratch the chemist, a roly-poly man with thick glasses and a shiny bald pate. Most uncharacteristically, he was indulging in a succession of pink gins that had unlocked his tongue.

‘I can’t get
over
it!’ he kept exclaiming, and then proceeded to describe what it was he couldn’t get over. By the weary expression on Mr Mender’s face, Tim deduced that this was far from the first time he’d said the same thing in more or less the same words.

‘I mean, in a village like ours, if you can’t trust the doctor and the parson, who can you trust? In the old days you’d have said the squire, I suppose, but with poor old Marmaduke Goodsir in the state he is, and Basil having behaved in that extraordinary fashion …’

He grew aware that Mr Mender’s attention was wandering, and cast about for a fresh audience. Spotting Tim, he twisted around on his stool and demanded, ‘What do
you
make of what’s going on?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,’ Tim answered diffidently. ‘I’ve been in the kitchen all day.’

‘You mean you haven’t heard that the locum tenens sent me a prescription for a still-warm chicken on the Health Service?’ Mr Ratch was delighted, and moved to the next stool, closing the gap. ‘You haven’t heard about Mr Phibson being possessed of the Devil, or what Basil Goodsir said about hanging people for sheep-stealing? No? Well, let me bring you up to date!’

Listening, while in some relief Mr Mender collected used glasses for Megan the barmaid to wash, Tim felt a stir of private anxiety. He’d had that strange conviction about the
day’s special, hadn’t he? It had given him a very odd feeling to discover that Mr Mender was right and he was incontestably wrong, despite his inner certainty. Not to be able to feel you could trust your own memory … Had Mr Mender mentioned it?

Seemingly not, for if he had Mr Ratch would certainly have included it in his long list of inexplicable events. To the ones already mentioned he added what Mary Flaken had done to the Blockets, and what Miss Knabbe had allegedly tried to do to Mrs O’Pheale, and some very odd stories that his children had recounted when they came home from school, the younger who went locally chuckling about the behaviour of the Surrean girls, the older who was at Powte laughing inordinately about some trick that had been played on one of those stuck-up Ellerfords …

‘Take all that together,’ Mr Ratch concluded triumphantly, ‘and what does it add up to? Does it sound to you like the Devil making mischief? Well, that’s what Mr Phibson’s saying, in so many words!’

Tim shook his head in polite wonderment, asking himself the while whether what had happened to him felt like a prank played by the Evil One. He decided that it didn’t, and drained his glass.

‘Well, I’m sure it’ll all blow over,’ he said, slipping down from his stool. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me …’

The moment the door swung to behind him, Mr Mender leaned confidentially on the bar.

‘Something just struck me,’ he said. ‘You know that boy’s my chef? Well, he was acting very strangely this morning. Though he seems to have got over it. Still, it was extremely odd.’

Mr Ratch was preparing to listen with interest when a siren sounded on the bridge. All eyes turned to the rain-smeared but uncurtained windows facing the street, and Megan paused with a wet mug in her hand to ask the air, ‘Fire engine?’

‘Ambulance,’ Mr Ratch said authoritatively – and there it was, rushing by with its blue lights flashing. ‘Hmm! I wonder what’s up. Mind if I use your phone, Nigel?’ – to Mr Mender.

‘Help yourself.’

He was back in a few moments, looking puzzled.

‘Apparently it’s Mrs Ellerford. Collapsed, or something.’

‘Mrs Ellerford? Do I know her?’

‘Secretary of the Weyharrow Society. Doesn’t mix much otherwise.’

‘Oh, yes. I recognize the name … Do you suppose she’ll be all right? I mean, after what you’ve been saying about the locum –’

‘At least he’s had the sense to call an ambulance. She’ll be taken care of. That’s another funny thing, though, that I forgot to mention earlier. According to my oldest, her sons arrived at school today complaining about the way she acted at breakfast. Gave them some kind of slimy muck and insisted it was what they always had. It wasn’t. They said they’d never seen it before.’

He wagged his balding head solemnly back and forth.

‘Devil or no Devil, Nigel, you can’t deny there’s something very fishy going on.’

‘Joe, where are you going?’ Yvonne Book demanded, leaning over the banisters. She was ready for bed, in a pink nylon nightie, slippers trimmed with nylon fur, and a quilted blue dressing-gown. Leaving the bathroom, she had expected to find her husband undressed also. Instead he was in the hall buttoning his jacket and reaching down his rain-cape from its peg.

She added suddenly, Has there been another phone call that I didn’t hear because the bath was running out?’

‘No,’ Joe sighed. The evening had been one long succession of phone calls, mostly reporting the fact that the Doctor’s
House wasn’t answering and the callers weren’t being transferred. But he’d got on to the exchange and sorted that one out. ‘No,’ he said again. ‘But while you were upstairs I heard an ambulance go by. I think it stopped on the green. I’m just going to check up.’

‘Must you?’

‘I think I’d better. I’ll be as quick as I can.’ He blew her a kiss and hastened out into the rain.

Left alone, Yvonne wondered glumly whether she’d been right to marry a policeman.

Particularly since, now they were older, their kids were getting an awful lot of stick from their school-friends …

But they were lucky that their father had a job. Any sort of job. So many of the other children’s fathers were unemployed. Probably it was mainly jealousy.

A little comforted by the idea, she made for bed.

‘Won’t it come right?’ Carol Draycock said anxiously, cutting off the
TV
sound with the remote control.

Returning to the sitting-room from the attic where he had spent the evening struggling to reconstruct the article he had written this morning with such fluency and impact, Victor scowled and shook his head.

‘I don’t understand what can have gone wrong!’ he said for the twentieth time. ‘I know all the main commands by heart! The only ones I have to look up any more are the rare ones that I scarcely have a use for. And I could have sworn I knew that one as well as my own name!’

‘Did you check it in the manual?’

‘Of course I did!’

‘And –?’

‘And it’s not the way I remember it!’ He slumped into an armchair, shaking his head bewilderedly.

Carol looked at him steadily for a long moment. At last she said, ‘You do so hate being wrong, don’t you?’

‘Show me someone who enjoys it!’ was his curt response.

‘Well, I think you ought to get used to the idea that you’re bound to make mistakes now and then.’

‘Haven’t I had that abundantly demonstrated today? First the bloody machine, then the bloody Ellerford kid, then the bloody Head – I’ve had a day full of bloodies!’

‘No need to snap at me, though …! I’m going to make some hot chocolate. Want some?’

‘Yes, please – No, even chocolate might keep me awake, the state I’m in. Bovril and milk, please. I didn’t eat much supper, did I?’

But after his drink he sat brooding for the best part of another hour before she could persuade him to turn in.

Phyllis Knabbe lay sleepless and weeping, alone in her cottage. Moira had not come back. Doubtless she had carried out her brutal promise to find a man for the night. At any rate she had repeated it when she set off for the pub.

Oh, the looks on the faces of the people when Miss Knabbe had finally ventured out this afternoon to do some necessary shopping …! The children had been worst. She had passed the bus-stop on the green just as Tom Fidger was bringing them back from school. How word had reached them, she could scarcely guess, but obviously it must have (had Tom told them? Would he have?) for they were grinning and passing mocking remarks, and she knew without needing to be told that they concerned herself. Why, Ursula Ellerford’s boys, who were normally quite polite, had brushed past her without a glance of recognition. Wasn’t that sufficient proof?

She had rung Ursula repeatedly. There had been no reply. She too must be shunning the idiot who had done so scandalous a thing.

And she didn’t even have the company of Rufus. He had not come back all day. Not even when the rain started.

At last she forced herself out of bed and went into the
bathroom. There was a nearly full bottle of sleeping-pills in the medicine cabinet. She filled a cup with water and shook two of the tablets into her palm. Having gulped them down, she hesitated for a moment, then reached a decision.

She shook out another, and another, and another, and swallowed, and swallowed, and swallowed …

In the small hours Rufus squalled his lungs out at the kitchen door. Miss Knabbe was far past hearing, and for good.

Ken Pecklow was laboriously writing out a description of the damage done to his turnips, chuckling now and then at what Mr Haggledon the lawyer had suggested he should try: put in an insurance claim and leave the insurers to get the money back from the Vikeses. He was a smart one, that Mr Haggledon! He’d never have thought of it by himself.

But now and then he paused, looking worried.

Harry Vikes wasn’t crazy. Or at any rate he’d never acted crazy like this before. Bad-tempered, maybe – given to drinking a bit too much now and then, though nothing like what overcame Joyce from time to time. There might be no love lost between the two families, but this wasn’t the same. This was different, and very strange.

And it wasn’t as though it was just another stage in a good live quarrel, either.

But …

Now and then in the
Farmer’s Weekly
he’d seen mention of harm that could come to people using certain kinds of chemical spray. Well, everybody used them – the insecticides, the herbicides, the fungicides – and you never heard about anybody dying, or falling ill, not really. Oh, there had been that case on telly the other week, but that wasn’t a farmer, just someone who’d been cycling past a field while it was being sprayed, and it hadn’t been on their kind of level because the stuff came from a plane.

On the other hand, Harry had bought that new insecticide and boasted about how much it had cost and how much it was going to save him in the long run. Boasted in Ken Pecklow’s hearing at the Marriage, more than once, knowing he couldn’t afford any this year.

Could that have something to do with –?

No. ’Course not. If the stuff was that dangerous, the government would never allow it to be sold. Besides, Parson had said … and if you couldn’t trust Parson, who could you trust?

He went back to his slow and unaccustomed task, promising himself that he would attend church on Sunday. He hadn’t been since Christmas.

Now and then his tongue sought out his broken tooth. It had been a small price to pay for punching Harry’s nose.

Harry Vikes had put Joyce to bed, where she lay snoring like a pig. Alone in the kitchen but for Chief, he supped homebrewed cider and reflected on the day, wishing he could scratch his nose under its tent of sticking-plaster.

Everything had been a disaster. He had even failed to save the sick calf; when this afternoon he’d had to call in Mr Backery the vet, she was past help. That meant a stiff bill and nothing to show by way of benefit.

Harry could well believe that – like Parson claimed – the Devil was at work in Weyharrow. It wasn’t natural, what had happened. He
couldn’t
have forgotten that the piece he’d used to rent from Mr Mender belonged to Ken this year. Nonetheless, there was proof that he had …