Читать книгу Murder in the Mill-Race - Edith Caroline Rivett - Страница 7

Table of Contents

Raymond enjoyed telling his wife about his investigation into the moorland practice. “The village is only a small part of the job,” he said. “The outlying farm houses are scattered all over the moor. There are a few hamlets, clusters of cottages around some farm houses, and there’s one mining village where tin mining goes on on a small scale, out on the moor. It’s incredibly primitive so far as housing goes, but they look a fine healthy lot of toughs. In addition, there are a few minor gentry around, mostly elderly folks. I think it’ll be quite an experience. The moor provides a few deficiency diseases—enough to make it interesting.”

“And the Dower House?” asked Anne.

Raymond laughed. “It’s a lovely house, Anne, but much too big for us. However, I think I’ve arrived at a formula, if you really want to go there. The house is furnished, just as the last Dowager left it, and Lady Ridding wants to keep everything in it, ready for herself if Sir James pops off. Her idea was that you and I could provide heating, cleaning and skilled caretaking, and pay a good rent while we’re doing it. Moreover, there are no safeguards for ensuring continuous tenancy in a furnished house. She could have turned us out more or less at will. No sort of proposition.”

Anne nodded. “I agree. So what?”

“Well, after a careful inspection, I realised the ground floor was quite large enough for you and me. There’s a butler’s pantry and servery off the dining-room which will make a very natty kitchen for you; a morning-room which will make a good study for me, a drawing-room, and two other rooms for bedrooms, and a slip room for a bathroom. I proposed to Lady R. that I would pay her £150 a year for the house, though I only proposed to occupy the ground floor, and convert out-buildings for a surgery. I would let her the upper floor and the old kitchens at a peppercorn rent for her to store her antiques in, she to have access by the back doors and service stairway to reach her property. There’s a central heating plant in the cellars which her minions can stoke, and we pay pro rata for the fuel.”

“Well, you’ve got a nerve. She’ll never agree to that,” said Anne.

“She has agreed, in principle,” replied Raymond. “She’s enough sense to see that it’s a reasonable proposition. She gets the rent, is relieved of the rates, and has the larger part of the house for her belongings. The adaptations are comparatively inexpensive and the moving of her furniture not a large job. So there you are. Go and have a look at it and see if you like it.”

“Well, you do surprise me,” said Anne. “She must have been profoundly impressed by you to agree to such a radical alteration in her ideas of what’s fitting.”

“I’m rather amused with her,” said Raymond. “On the surface she’s all graces, graciousness and noblesse oblige. I suspect that she is derived from robber barons of the industrial revolution and a latent sense of profit-making is emerging in these hard times. Incidentally, you’ll have to keep your eyes open when dealing with her. She expects to supply us with milk, eggs, and birds from the home farm, and there were murmurs about cream, and butter if we’re pressed. Fruit and vegetables come from the Manor gardens, now being run as a market garden. Doubtless game, salmon, and trout are marketed also.”

“Cr ... ripes,” said Anne. “Does she think we’re plutocrats?”

“I gave her no grounds for such an opinion. My own bet is that she knows to a penny what the practice is worth, and she’s hoping for a rake-off. The whole show’s a comic turn, Anne: the feudal system wedded to modern business methods.”

“Who else is there in the village?”

“A few dozen inhabitants, the men mostly employed on the land and the estate—there’s a lot of valuable woodland: there’s a stream with a big fall which provides electricity and there’s a saw mill. There’s a decent Inn, run by an ex-butler, a smithy, one or two village shops and of course the vicar and his wife. In addition a few odd birds of the gentry class, mostly elderly, and the Warden of Gramarye, the children’s home. Sister Monica: she’s wonderful, everyone says so.”

“What’s the matter with her?” asked Anne promptly.

“Well, I’ve only just seen her, and the home’s not my department. Old Brown is keeping it on to give him a spot of interest in life. As for Sister Monica, she has the rapt withdrawn look of the religious fanatic, and I never fancied that breed. However, she and her set-up won’t be my pigeon anyway.” He broke off, and Anne put in:

“It all sounds a bit odd, not the typical village at all.”

Raymond laughed. “How right you are, my wench. It’s damned odd—that’s why it’s interesting. You see, the village hugs its remoteness. It’s out there on the hill-top with its back to the moor, cut off from the commonplaces of cinemas and chain stores and railways and tourists. There’s ten miles of road between Milham in the Moor and the world as we know it, and it cherishes its own ways, its own feuds and loyalties and way of life. And somehow it’s damned interesting. But it’s up to you to say yes or no. I’ll drive you there next week-end, and you can make the decision.”

“I think I’ve made it already,” she replied. “We said we should like something out of the way. Milham in the Moor appears to be it.”

“Think carefully, angel. It’s a long way out of the way.”

“With its back to the moor and the sea beyond that,” said Anne. “This is where we learn to cultivate our individual gardens and turn our backs on mass production.”