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He tugged on a baseball cap then set off in the drizzle down the drive, walking at a faster stride than normal, on a mission. He was deep in thought and ignored the comic-looking alpacas in the field to his right, trotting inquisitively over towards him.
He looked up at the sinister wyverns on the gate pillars, as he walked through into the lane, then stopped as the red post van roared up the hill, its right-turn indicator winking. It pulled up beside him and the driver greeted him.
‘Mr Harcourt?’ He held up several envelopes, held together with a rubber band. ‘Want these or shall I pop them through the letter box?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind taking them up to the house?’
‘Not at all! Moved in all right?’
‘Just about! Tell me – what time do you collect the post from there?’ Ollie pointed at the small red Royal Mail postbox, half-hidden by the hedgerow on the other side of the lane.
‘One collection a day – around half past four weekday afternoons, about midday on Saturdays. If you need later your best bet would be the post office in Hassocks.’
Ollie thanked him, and the mail van roared off up the drive. Then he glanced up and down the lane, and was disappointed to see it was deserted. The wet weather had intensified the smells of the leaves and grasses and he breathed the air in, savouring it as he set off down the hill.
A few minutes later he pushed open the gate of Garden Cottage and walked up the path. The decrepit front door was, as before, ajar. He called out, ‘Hello!’
A
Ollie laughed.
He was soon seated at the small pine table in her kitchen. A
Finally, the coffee made, she sat down opposite him. ‘It’s good you’re here, you’ve saved me a trip – I’ve actually got the bottled cordial I was going to bring up to you, and some ginger marmalade.’
‘Thank you!’
‘As I said, it’s a delight to have new faces here in the village.’ She waited for Ollie to pour some milk in his coffee then helped herself to some. ‘So, you know, I’ve really been puzzling about this fellow you asked me about. I just can’t think who it could be.’
Taking his cue, Ollie removed his phone from his pocket, clicked on the photograph of the old man to enlarge it, and then showed the image to her. ‘This is him.’
She looked at it and frowned. ‘This?’
‘Yes.’
‘This is the man you saw in the lane last week?’
‘Yes. Do you recognize him now?’
She gave Ollie a very strange look, then she took the iPhone from him and peered closely at the photograph for several seconds. ‘You saw him in the lane last week? This man?’
‘Yes – er –’ he thought for a moment – ‘last Tuesday.’
She shook her head. ‘Last Tuesday? You couldn’t have done.’
‘I had a conversation with him. I think I told you yesterday, he said he used to work at our house.’
She studied the picture again then asked, ‘Where did you take this, Ollie?’
‘Do you recognize him?’ He ignored her question, deliberately.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Absolutely.’
‘Who is he? What’s his name?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m really finding this very strange. You say you saw him last week?’
He nodded.
‘You couldn’t have done – he must have a double.’
‘Why’s that, A
‘Well, this is Harry Walters, I’m sure of it. But there’s no way you could have seen him last week.’ She gave him a very frosty stare. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘you’re really making me feel very uncomfortable.’
Ollie raised his arms. ‘I’m sorry. I—’
‘What exactly is your angle here?’ Her voice had become cold.
‘Angle?’
‘Game? Are you playing a game?’ She stared again at the image. Ollie sipped his coffee. It was good but, perturbed by her sudden change of demeanour, he barely noticed the taste.
‘I don’t quite get what you’re trying to do,’ she said, eventually.
‘All I’m trying to do is to find out who this chap is, so I can find him and talk to him again.’
She gave him a bemused look, across the table. ‘You don’t strike me as a loony, Ollie.’
He gri
‘But you want me to believe you had a chat with Harry Walters last week and took his photograph?’
Ollie shrugged his shoulders. ‘Yup – well—’
‘And you want me to tell you where to find him?’
‘Please, I really do need to speak to him.’
She looked straight at him. Her eyes were a clear grey-blue. Very beautiful and honest eyes. ‘This conversation you had with Harry Walters – last week?’
He nodded.
‘He told you he used to work at Cold Hill House?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He told me that he’d been asked to house-sit for the owners – Sir Henry and Lady Rothberg. I googled them but couldn’t find much. He was a banker, and they both died in 1980.’
‘Yes, that was only a few months after we came here.’ She studied the photograph intently. ‘This is just unca
He hesitated, not wanting to tell a lie that could compound itself. ‘Well . . .’
‘This is definitely Harry. But he’s dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘He died – oh – quite a few years ago. I remember the date roughly because a property company bought your house and there was a lot of gossip in the village about what they were going to do with it. Some silly old fool put a rumour around that they were going to tear it down and build a tower-block of flats. Anyhow, they were doing a lot of work on renovating the place, and Harry went back to work as a gardener there – his wife had died and he was happy to have something to do. He was a jolly good gardener – helped us a bit when we first moved in. I learned quite a bit about growing vegetables from him.’ Her expression became wistful. ‘Poor old Harry.’
The cat wandered in and meowed.
‘What do you want, Horatio?’ she asked.
The cat meowed again and wandered disdainfully back out.
‘He actually died on your property,’ she said. ‘There’ve been a few tragedies there over the years, unfortunately.’
His unease deepened. ‘What happened to Harry Walters?’
‘Well, what I heard was that he was working around the edge of the lake, using one of those backhoes to pull reeds out. There’d been heavy rain in the previous weeks, and the bank just gave way under the weight of the machine. It toppled sideways, then rolled on to him and pi
‘Backhoe? A digger?’
‘Yes, that’s right, a mechanical digger.’
19
Tuesday, 15 September
Ollie stood in the steeply banked graveyard at the rear of the Norman church. Beyond the far wall, sheep grazed on the hillside. He stopped at this large marble headstone, with carved angels on either side. It had the air of a family mausoleum, and was much grander than the rest of the headstones here, many of which were so weather-beaten their engravings had almost faded completely, or were partially masked by lichen and moss. Some were leaning over at angles.
He read down the list of O’Hares. A whole family wiped out. Was it a car crash, he wondered. Very sad and poignant. For some reason the name ‘O’Hare’ rang a faint bell, but he couldn’t think why. He took a photograph of the headstone, then moved on with his search through the graves until he found what he was looking for.