Bitter Poison Read online

  He did the honours, added another log to the fire and went back to his wing chair. ‘I’m wondering who’s going to play the Snow Queen?’

  ‘So am I. In the story she’s tall, slender, dazzling and very beautiful. None of the female Frog End Players exactly fits that description. It would have been so much easier casting an ordinary panto where you’ve got men playing women and women playing men, and all the rest of it. I suppose Monica Pudsey could do it, at a pinch, but she’s not tall, certainly not slender and there’s nothing remotely dazzling about her.’

  ‘Perhaps your make-up artist could work a miracle?’

  ‘She’d need to.’

  ‘How about a newcomer in the village? Someone who could be persuaded to join the Players?’

  Naomi frowned. ‘Unlikely. Most newcomers are as ancient as we are. Though there’s a London couple who’ve just moved into Hassels. Haven’t met them myself but I gather he’s something on television. Kenneth Dryden. Rather well known, apparently. Used to do travel documentaries about faraway places like Kathmandu. I don’t know what he does now. And apparently she was a famous model, once upon a time.’

  ‘That’s sounds promising.’

  ‘If she’s kept her looks. A lot of them go right off the boil, don’t they? It’s all to do with bone structure, so they say. If you’ve got good facial bones the skin’s got something to hang on to. I think that’s the general theory.’

  ‘She’d also need to be able to act.’

  ‘Not really. Most of the Players can’t act for toffee. So long as she looks the part from a safe distance.’ Naomi suddenly slapped her knee hard and Thursday jumped and glared. ‘Tell you what, Hugh, I’ve just had a jolly good idea.’

  ‘Oh?’ Naomi’s ideas had a habit of unsettling him.

  ‘You go and call on the new people. See what she’s like.’

  ‘Me? Why me?’

  ‘You’re a man, aren’t you? You’ll know at once whether she could pass muster, or not.’

  He said, ‘You’re seriously suggesting that I call on these people like some sort of casting agent, in order to decide whether the lady of the house would be right to play the Snow Queen?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And am I supposed to offer her the part if she looks satisfactory?’

  ‘No, we’ll leave that to Marjorie. You’ll just be welcoming them to the village. Showing them what nice people we are. Being neighbourly.’

  ‘They’re not exactly my neighbours.’

  ‘Close enough.’

  ‘And I’m a new boy myself.’

  ‘Not any longer. You’re a respected pillar of the community now, Hugh, as well as an old soldier. Just the one for the job. You mustn’t let us down. Once more unto the breach, and so forth.’

  ‘I don’t see the Agincourt connection. Has it occurred to you, Naomi, that this lady might not be the slightest bit interested in the Frog End Players’ Christmas offering, let alone taking part in it?’

  ‘Marjorie is very persuasive, Hugh.’

  She wasn’t the only one, he thought. ‘I’m not convinced that it’s a sound idea.’

  ‘It’s our only idea at the moment. The success or failure of the Frog End Christmas play lies in your hands.’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘Yes, it does. You can be very charming, Hugh. I’ve seen you in action. You’ll be able to convince her if anybody can.’

  He had never thought of himself as charming. ‘I very much doubt it.’

  ‘That’s precisely your charm. You don’t realize you’ve got it. Come on, Hugh. Do it for Frog End, if for nothing else. You owe it to us.’

  He knew it was true. Frog End had given him a new lease of life when he had almost given up on the old. ‘When do you want me to call on them?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  THREE

  The house called Hassels was on the other side of the village. It was built of stone with large, symmetrical windows, a slate roof and a porticoed front door. It was a cut above the poky cottages huddled round the village green like the Colonel’s Pond Cottage, and about two hundred years younger.

  He admired its uncluttered appearance. No beetle-browed thatch, no crooked beams, no lopsided little windows. The door was glossy white with brass fittings, the knocker heavy under his hand.

  A girl opened the door about a foot wide and peered round the edge. She was a teenager with long fair hair hanging in a tangle round her face, framing a teenager’s sulky expression.

  ‘Yes?’

  He said pleasantly, ‘I wonder if Mr and Mrs Dryden are at home?’

  She turned her head away and shouted over her shoulder, ‘Dad! There’s a man here to see you.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘No idea.’

  The girl disappeared and he waited in the porch until the door was opened wider by a man. He looked to be in his late fifties and was wearing a suede jacket and clothes of a style and quality rarely seen in Frog End. Something on television, Naomi had said. Used to do travel documentaries. Quite well known. The name was unfamiliar, and so was the face, but then the Colonel, like Naomi, watched very little television and was hopelessly out of touch in that respect, not to mention the many years spent abroad.

  He introduced himself, apologising for the disturbance. The response was brusque and not encouraging.

  ‘I’m Kenneth Dryden. You’d better come in, Colonel, though it’s not an ideal time. We’re still in complete chaos, as you can see. Most of this stuff has been in storage for years.’

  The hall was full of packing cases and he could sympathize, remembering the trauma of moving his worldly possessions from storage oblivion in Harrods Depository after he had sold the London flat. Things long forgotten and some that he could have sworn that he had never seen before had come to light. Furniture that had been passed on by his late mother-in-law and unwieldy or unnecessary items that had been left behind as he and Laura had moved from one army posting to another. Sorting it all out and getting rid of things that there had been no room for in Pond Cottage had been a nightmare.

  The girl was on her way up the stairs.

  Her father bellowed after her. ‘Ask your mother to come down, Clarissa.’

  ‘She’s having a bath.’

  ‘Well, she can come down as soon as she’s finished it.’

  ‘She’ll take ages. She always does.’

  ‘Tell her from me to bloody well hurry up.’

  The drawing-room windows were draped with lengths of different fabrics – all looked very expensive. Heavy books of wallpaper samples lay open like mantraps on the floor, paint colour cards scattered around.

  Kenneth Dryden said, ‘Joan’s got some fancy interior designer who’s left all this stuff. Of course, she changes her mind all the time.’

  ‘It’s her prerogative, I believe.’

  ‘Hmm. I’ve never understood why women can’t make up their minds and stick to it. I could do with a drink if I can find some. How about you?’

  It was only twenty past eleven, but so what? He’d been sent on a tricky mission which could take some time to complete. Kenneth Dryden produced a bottle of Laphroaig and glasses from a cupboard. Naomi would have been mightily impressed.

  ‘Say when.’

  He said it at the quarter full mark.

  ‘Are you the official village welcomer, Colonel?’

  ‘Far from it. I haven’t lived here very long myself. But if you have any questions, I might know some of the answers.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt we will have, once we think of them. English villages are something new to me. I’ve spent most of my life in a flat in London or travelling to remote places all over the world. You’ve probably seen some of my old TV programmes.’

  ‘Indeed.’ A useful word which meant almost nothing on its own.

  ‘The bastards decided not to commission any more of them. It’s always the bloody ratings, you see. That’s all that counts these days. Everything dumbed down for the masses whose
idea of travel is a package holiday or some unspeakable cruise. Everything done for them. Hand held every step of the way. Non-stop eating and entertainment. I imagine you’re retired, Colonel?’

  ‘For some time.’

  ‘How long have you lived here?’

  ‘Getting on for two years. I have a cottage on the green.’

  ‘What do you make of Frog End? It looks a bit quiet to me. As though nothing much ever happens here.’

  He smiled. ‘I wouldn’t say that. There’s quite a lot going on, in fact. Talks in the village hall, jumble sales, coffee mornings, film shows, yoga classes, art classes, a gardening club, a bridge club – all kinds of clubs, in fact. Then there’s the annual summer fête held at the Manor and, of course, the Frog End Players.’

  ‘Who the hell are they?’

  ‘The local amateur dramatic society. They put on two plays a year in the village hall. One in the summer, one at Christmas.’

  ‘It’s not compulsory to attend, I hope.’

  Naomi’s hopes were going to be dashed, the Colonel thought. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Thank God for that. It was Joan’s idea to get a place in the country, not mine. She likes the idea of having people down from London at weekends and dressing up in Barbours and Wellingtons – rather like Marie Antoinette playing at being a simple shepherdess. She was a rather famous model in her day, you know. Joan Lowe. I expect you’ve heard of her.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Once again, the useful word came to the rescue.

  ‘Of course, we’re keeping the flat in London and we’ll still spend most of our time there.’

  A telephone started ringing from somewhere and Kenneth Dryden eventually located it by the fireplace. The Colonel, to whom phone conversations still remained private affairs, moved tactfully away and stood looking out of a window at the winter scene of dormant plants and bare-branched trees. A silver birch provided the only highlight, its bark glistening white even on the dull grey day. No sign yet of any snowdrops emerging.

  The phone conversation seemed to be finishing and he turned round to see a woman coming into the room.

  ‘I gather we have a visitor, Kenny.’

  ‘The Colonel has come to welcome us to Frog End, darling.’

  ‘How kind of him.’

  She came forward, her hand extended palm down and he took it in his, wondering if he was perhaps meant to kiss it. The nails, he noticed, were unpolished, the clothes artfully country casual. Marie Antoinette at play, as her husband had put it. She would probably be in her late forties but there was no evidence of her going off the boil, like Naomi had feared. She was still a very beautiful woman, tall and blonde, and with the glacial quality that often accompanies perfection. An ideal Snow Queen.

  Freda Butler had observed the Colonel from the sitting-room window of Lupin Cottage as he had walked across the village green. She had tracked his progress and direction through the pair of powerful Zeiss binoculars which had been bequeathed to her when her father, the Admiral, had died. They had apparently belonged to a U-boat commander in the Second World War, though she was unsure how they had ended up in her father’s possession since he had only sailed a desk in wartime. Indeed, they had only come into hers by the chance of discovering them in a drawer of the old bureau, left to her by default. The remainder of his estate, including a large oil portrait of the Admiral, together with his uniform and his medals, had been willed to a naval museum. Fortunately, the binoculars had not been mentioned in the will and she had decided not to mention them either.

  She had watched the Colonel’s straight-backed, soldier’s bearing with admiration, and the way he strode along so purposefully. If he had been a total stranger, she would have known that he was a military gentleman, even though he had been retired for a number of years. Once a soldier, always a soldier. And he was very handsome, she thought. Tall and silver-haired and lean – not gone to seed like some men of his age.

  Miss Butler had served in the WRNS herself – an admittedly undistinguished career, unlike her father’s – and the navy had been her whole life until retirement. But, to her mind, there was something about a soldier. Even the Major carried himself well – unless, of course, he was returning from the Dog and Duck.

  She had kept the Colonel in her sights until he had disappeared out of range, presumably to pay a call on someone in the village. It was hard not to feel a little twinge of envy. The Colonel had been kindness itself to her, comforting her during a very unhappy and unfortunate patch of her life and respecting her confidence completely, not to mention helping her with the Red Cross collection, the Save the Donkey fund and the Help the Homeless cause. She knew that he was always exceedingly generous with his time when it came to doing things for other people and for the good of the village. They were very fortunate to have him. Not everyone was so willing to pull their weight. Of course, she and the Colonel shared a service background. He had paid a number of visits to Lupin Cottage to take a cup of tea, while she had been cordially invited into Pond Cottage, had sat in the sitting room and once quite informally in the kitchen so that she had been able to note his remarkable progress with the back garden, the terrace made with beautiful old flag stones, and the new shed.

  The shed was a bit of a puzzle. It was rumoured that the Colonel spent a good deal of time in it, though nobody seemed to know quite what he did there, in spite of efforts to find out. Whatever it was, it was entirely his own business, so far as she was concerned, although it would be interesting to know.

  She traversed the village green once more. It was not, she told herself, that she was spying on people, but her years in the WRNS had been spent involved in constant activity and in the company of other people. Retirement and living alone had left a void which could only partly be filled by charity work and village activities. Ironically, there were moments when she felt indebted to the unknown U-boat commander for providing her with, as it were, a new window on life; to be able to observe things so closely. She wondered sometimes what he had been like. What the U-boat crews had done had been terrible, she knew, but there was no denying their bravery. Very few of them had survived the war. The casualty figures were shocking.

  On the third sweep, Mrs Bentley came into view, walking her four undisciplined and overweight dachshunds and, as usual, in danger of being tripped up by their leads. Miss Butler watched their chaotic progress: Mrs Bentley jerked this way and that, the dogs’ leads encircling her ankles like maypole ribbons. Personally, she was not a dog lover, nor of cats who seemed to hold themselves aloof from humans. A case in point was the Colonel’s moth-eaten old stray, Thursday, who had been given a good home but never showed the slightest bit of gratitude for it.

  They were followed by Miss Rankin out exercising one of her riding school ponies and, after that, the vicar went by in his rather battered car, driving along the road round the edge of the green. He was a newcomer but seemed a very nice young man, though she would have preferred him without the beard. When he had first arrived he had had some unfortunate ideas, including a change in the old form and language of services. There were to be no more ‘thee’s’ and ‘thou’s’ and the ancient and beautiful words and phrases were to be replaced by up-to-date modern ones, said to be easier to understand. Naturally, there had been a great deal of opposition in the village. A positive storm of protest had soon put paid to the proposal. And a later plan to remove most of the pews to make space for community activities in the church nave, using stacking chairs instead, had been summarily torpedoed at a parish meeting; as ruthlessly, Miss Butler thought, as her U-boat commander would have dispatched his quarry to the bottom of the ocean. The poor vicar, so bewildered and confused that she had felt quite sorry for him, had seen the error of his ways and everyone had settled back into a normal routine.

  The binoculars were heavy to hold and she unhooked them from round her neck and laid them carefully down on the table, straightening her navy blue cardigan. She always wore navy. Her time in the WRNS had left her feeling uncomfo
rtable in any other colours.

  It was a little early for lunch but she felt rather peckish. On her way to the small kitchen at the back of the cottage she passed by the bureau with the studio portrait of the Admiral on the top. Miss Butler avoided her father’s stern and implacable gaze. Sometimes it was better not to be reminded of the disappointment she had been to him. A daughter, not a son. A failure, not a success.

  Lunch was roes on toast. Not one of her favourites, especially since she had discovered what they were, but they were cheap and easy. When she had finished and washed up she went back to the sitting room and picked up the binoculars again. As luck would have it, she had timed her resumed watch with the Colonel’s return. He was walking back across the green towards Pond Cottage and she saw him go up the path, unlock the front door and disappear inside. Within minutes, Naomi Grimshaw had come out of her cottage and was hammering on the Colonel’s door.

  ‘Well, Hugh, what was she like? Will she do?’

  He’d been hanging his coat up in the hall and when he went to open the front door, Naomi almost fell inside.

  ‘She certainly has the looks. Her professional name as a model was Joan Lowe.’

  ‘Doesn’t ring any bells with me.’

  ‘Nor me. But, in any case, I don’t think she’d consider the part for a moment.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They’ve kept their flat in London and, according to her husband, they’ll only be down here for the weekends. I wouldn’t count on her joining the Frog End Players. Or anything else.’

  ‘You can’t be sure of that, Hugh.’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ he agreed. ‘It’s just my impression.’

  Rather a strong one, in fact. Joan Dryden had struck him as a woman who might find village life amusing, but only from a safe distance.

  ‘Marjorie’s planning to call on them and you know what she’s like.’

  ‘I do, indeed.’

  ‘If she thinks Mrs Dryden’s the ticket, she won’t give up easily.’

  ‘I don’t think Mrs Dryden will either.’

  His conversation with her had been perfectly pleasant but he had been aware that during it Joan Dryden had been assessing him – deciding whether he was worth bothering with or should be shown the door as quickly as possible. He must have passed the preliminary test because, after a while, he was invited to sit down and the paint colour cards were removed to make the necessary space on a sofa. He had even been asked to volunteer an opinion on a shade of grey-green that was apparently under consideration for the drawing room.