Pompomberry House (18 page)

“And you still think it was one of the writers?”

“I think it was Montgomery, but I don’t have a lot to go on.
I’m not even sure that I have a motive. I need more evidence.”

“Well, at least the best woman is on the job.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You! You make a great detective!”

“I do?” I blushed a little.

“All you need now are some tights and a cape.”

“That’s not detectives, that’s superheroes!”

“Exactly!” he said, winking at me. I did a happy quiver. He
was flirting with me, wasn’t he?

When we got to the farm, I was disappointed to find that the
farmhouse itself was a bit rubbish. I’d been hoping for a thatched roof,
climbing roses and white-glossed shutters. Instead, I got beige walls, mould,
and a weathered, garish conservatory.

Gulls circled in the sky, like vultures. Shivering, I
remembered Cornwall. But though these Dorset birds squawked and swooped in a
predatory fashion, they didn’t chill me to the core like the monsters near
Pompomberry.

“I bet the National Trust is chomping at the bit to run this
place,” joked Gareth, with dimples. The daylight really illuminated the red
tones in his scruffy hair.

I scolded him through a giggle.

“What do you want?” demanded a voice. Although the farmhouse
had fallen below my expectations, the farmer did not. He sounded exactly as he
had on the news, with a broad Dorset accent and a faint hint of hostility. He
was old with craggy skin and grey, wind-swept hair. His clothes were grubby and
complemented perfectly by a pair of cracked, green wellington boots.

“Mr Groober!”

“Yes, who’s asking?”

“Mr Groober, my name is Dee Whittaker, and I’m here to take
you seriously about your pig.”

His whole figure softened. He put down his imaginary pitchfork.
He didn’t go as far as smiling, but his eyebrows shifted from sloped inwards to
almost horizontal. Ah, horizontal eyebrows, the international facial expression
of peace.

“I’m Gareth Whittaker,” said Gareth, and then added, “Dee’s
husband.”
Dammit.

“It’s a travesty!” cried the farmer. “My pig turns up five
miles away, and the police don’t think that’s even slightly odd.”

“Well, I do,” I said. I felt the urge to touch his arm to
show sincerity, but it looked as though there might be warts beneath its muddy
coating.

“It’s bloody typical!” he cried. “This is the fourth
reporting in the last year, and not one of them has been taken seriously!”

Fourth reporting
? Well, if pigs often went missing,
then perhaps this event really was a coincidence, and not connected to the
anthology in any way.

“I keep telling the police about it! They do nothing!”

Outrageous!

“I’m a tax payer! I’ve paid tax all my life! Yet when my pig
is the victim of attempted murder, they don’t respond. Failing to investigate a
crime reported by a tax payer, can you believe that?”

“I can, Mr Groober.” The police had treated me in the same
way. We were kindred victims, Mr Groober and I.

“They’ll be the first to complain when we’re invaded.

“Invaded?”

“By the aliens.”

And there it was, the reason the police refused to take Mr
Groober seriously. Perhaps not kindred victims after all.

I tried not to look at Gareth. I knew exactly what
expression he’d be making — a false stern mouth with snickering eyes. Oh! I
loved that expression; it was so cute! I took a quick peek and instantly
regretted it. A wide smirk escaped onto my lips. I struggled to rearrange my
features.

“Did you come here to laugh at me?” he asked.

“No!”

But he’d already turned away.

“No, I didn’t! I’m sorry, I just wasn’t expecting ... I
really do believe that something ... unexplained went on.”

“Well, that’s stating the obvious!” he barked.

“Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”

He grunted, which I took to mean, ‘Of course, go ahead,
madam’.

“When did you first realise your pig was missing?”

“When I went out to feed her.”

“And at what time was that?”

“After dark.”

“Okay ...”

“That’s why I didn’t see the footprints until the morning!”

“Footprints?”

“Yes. Alien footprints!”

I frowned. I was at a loss for what to do.

Suddenly, Gareth intervened. “What did these footprints look
like, Mr Groober?”

“Triangular! Triangular, with dots!”

“Dee ...” began Gareth, then he looked at my Converse
shoes and trailed off. Instead, he knelt down on the ground and fashioned the
imprint of a high-heeled shoe on the lawn.

“Yes!” cried the farmer, with excitement. “Yes! Just like
that!”

Gareth looked at me and smiled, knowing that I was
impressed. It was an attractive, satisfied smile. If only he could apply some
of that wisdom at the Job Centre.

“Were there any other markings?” I asked.

“Just me own wellies,” he said.

“And how big were the ...” I paused, wondering if I
could bring myself to use the words, “alien footprints?”

“Smaller than me wellies.”
Not Dawn then.

“Did you notice anything else suspicious?” I asked.

“Yes! Pig was gone!”

“No tyre tracks, peculiar noises, anything like that?”

“It’s a tarmac drive!” whispered Gareth.

“Oh yes, so it is.”

“And I had the radio on. Otherwise, I might have heard the
ship!” explained the farmer

“Ship?” Oh yes, the ship.

I felt truly fortuitous to have gotten anything of use out
of the deluded old chap. Shoeprints weren’t exactly DNA evidence, but it was a
good start, and it ruled out Montgomery Lowe.

* * *

“You didn’t say we were going to a garden centre too!”
moaned Gareth, from behind the wheel of his Golf.

“Well, we may as well, while we’re down here, now that we’re
on a roll.”

“Bognor Regis is in Sussex!”

I decided to disarm him with some gentle flattery. “Good
thinking about the shoeprints, Sherlock! I’d have never have gotten that from
triangles and dots.”

He seemed soothed.

“Thanks,” I added, quietly.

“So who do you think did it? Dawn or Annabel?”

“Well, it can’t have been Annabel; Dawn must just have
unusually small feet for a woman of her size. I didn’t think she’d be back from
Spain yet, but ...”

“Why not Annabel?”

“She isn’t capable of hurting a fly. You should have seen
her; she’s far too afraid of ghosts to be a murderer. She wouldn’t want to
release any more dead people into the spirit world.”

“Perhaps it’s a ruse.”

“You have to have depth for that kind of thing.”

“And Annabel hasn’t?”

“This is a woman who thinks that the male protagonist being
the female protagonist’s boss constitutes a plot twist.”

“Fair point.”

“I need to find more evidence.”

“At the garden centre?”

“Well, they’ll know whether there have been any large orders
of gnomes recently, won’t they?”

“You do realise there’s more than one garden centre in
Sussex, don’t you?”

“We have to start somewhere.”

If truth be told, I was enjoying spending time investigating
crime with my sexy sidekick. I hadn’t felt this alive in months. Had I felt
this
in love
in months?

“Have you heard back from Netta yet?” he asked.

“No, not yet, but I’ve told her that I think she’s in
danger. Only three more days until the voting closes. She could be killed at
any time!”

“She’s obviously got more important things on her mind,”
said Gareth, with a wry smile.

“Like fame.”

“Exactly.”

* * *

According to my iPhone, there were a number of garden centres
within a ten-mile radius of the site where the gnomes were found. However, only
one had a website plastered with cheeky gnomes. That seemed like a worthy place
to start our search.

When we got there, I found that it was a rather quaint place.
I rather liked it. It was spacious with odd ornaments dotted around in
unexpected places. An orange, concrete frog spat fluid down a water feature
between the gardening books and the tropical fish. Plastic squirrels lined the
paths.

“Looks as though whoever runs this place is on the same
planet as Groober,” mused Gareth.

“I love this place!” I purred.

My husband rolled his big blue eyes.

It was then that I spotted the first member of staff. A
young man wearing wellies and a ladybird-print apron. He opened his mouth to
cough, and revealed the most crooked teeth I’ve ever seen.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“Yes?”

“I like your apron!”

“Thank you,” he smiled, and turned away.

“No! Wait! That wasn’t why I said ‘Excuse me’; that was just
the small talk!”

He turned back, and grinned. “Sorry.”

“Do you know whether anybody has ordered any large
quantities of gnomes recently?”

“No,” he said.

“Well, can you call somebody who might?”

“I mean ‘No, there were no large orders.’”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because we haven’t sold a gnome in months.” This fact
seemed to upset the man so much that he needed to sit down. He perched on the
pink stones marking the end of a shubunkin pond and shook his head in despair. “Nobody
wants gnomes anymore.”

My compassionate side took over, and I squatted down to reach
his level.

“It’s the meerkats,” he said glumly. “Meerkats are killing
the garden gnome.”

An academic meerkat in a mortarboard grinned at me from
above the shubunkins. I looked behind me; a flasher meerkat peered out from
behind a flowerpot (or was that supposed to be Sherlock Holmes?) By Gareth’s
feet was a meerkat on skis.

“We weren’t going to stock them. Bert promised we’d never
stock them. But we were losing out on the garden ornament trade, so in the end,
he sold out.” The man actually looked as if he might cry.

“Well, I came here to buy a gnome,” I lied.

Gareth rolled his eyes and smiled to himself, as usual.

“Would you show me your selection?”

The man brightened instantly.

“Dee ...” warned Gareth.

I ignored him. As if he could talk about wasting money, at
least it was mine to spend.

The man took us down past a purple fountain containing swan
necks without bodies, until, finally, we reached a clearing, full of gnomes.
My
God — they’re hideous.

One gnome had his willy out, peeing into a pond. Another was
bent over, flashing his bum. I began to see the appeal of a meerkat.

“Have you got anything more ...”
tasteful
“... conventional?”

“How about a gnome fishing?”

“We ... 
I
don’t have a pond!”
And if I
did, I wouldn’t want a bearded pixie threatening it with a rod!

“How about a gnome with a hoe?” he asked, pointing in the
general direction of a cheeky gnome giving one to a lady gnome. Annabel’s story
sprang to mind. Then I saw a gardening garden gnome just to the left. I hoped
the man was referring to that one.

“How much is it?” I asked.

“Twenty pounds.”

“What?!”

“It’s hand painted.”

“Can I get one to paint myself?”

“No.”

I felt a sudden urge to ask how much a meerkat cost, but
decided it was more than my life was worth.

“Got any baby gnomes?” I asked, hopefully.

“No.”

Eventually, I left the garden centre carrying the only gnome
that cost less than a fiver — a poorly painted defecating gnome. I was not
happy. To make matters worse, Gareth was looking particularly amused.

“You realise he probably does that routine every day, don’t
you?” he asked, smirking.

“He seemed genuinely upset.”

“Of course he was upset, he had over two grand’s worth of
repulsive gnome stock to clear.”

* * *

We visited three further garden centres, to no avail. Only one
other nursery stocked gnomes and they hadn’t taken any large orders recently.

As Gareth drove us back, I watched him. Over the last few
weeks, he’d shown more activity than he had in eighteen months. He was
positively vital. Why couldn’t he have been like that before I asked him to
leave? If only he hadn’t become a lazy, selfish slob, we might not have broken
up. It was too late now.
Wasn’t it
?

“So, if you’ve discounted Annabel, and Dawn was in Spain, it
must be some other woman,” he offered.

“The only other suspect is Biff’s killer and I’d always
assumed that that was a man.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Statistics I suppose. It was a violent
stabbing. And Biff was a large man.”

“Was there anything that proved categorically that it was a man?”

“No.”

“Well then, we have to consider that his killer might have
been female.”

“What I don’t understand is, what Biff’s murder has to do
with the book anyway. He was just the handyman.”

“Perhaps somebody didn’t like him being there.”

“But who?”

“I don’t know. Is there anybody else who was involved with
the book. Any contributors who weren’t there?”

“No, not that I know of. There are only six stories in the
book. No, wait!” I had a light bulb moment. There was somebody else who would
have read the text before it came out! “Emily Whistlefoot!”

“Who?”

“She’s the proofreader!”

“Wait, that book was proofread?” He sounded shocked.

“
You read it?
”

“Of course I read it. I thought there might be some clues.”

“Did you read my story?”

“Yes.”

I allowed my head to flop onto the dashboard.

“What’s the matter?”

“It was only a first draft!”

“I enjoyed it!”

“You did?”

“It was hilarious!”

“You mean the typos were hilarious.”

“No, the
story
was hilarious. It was a good read,
Dee-Dee-Dee!”