The Snowdrop Society’s Missing Tin
The morning of the Ashfield Spring Fair arrived cold and bright, the kind of morning that smelled of damp grass and woodsmoke and the faint sweetness of hyacinths just beginning to open along the village green. Bunting had been strung between the oak trees overnight, and it shifted lazily in the breeze, the red and yellow triangles of fabric clicking softly against each other. Edna Potts stood at her garden gate with a cup of tea she had not yet drunk, watching the stall-holders arrange their tables and wondering, as she often did, why people in a hurry always dropped things.
Across the green, Councillor Brian Harker was setting up the Snowdrop Society stall. He moved quickly, with the angular efficiency of a man who considered himself important, and he kept looking towards the church path.
Edna drank her tea.
She had chaired the Snowdrop Society for eleven years before handing over to Harker, and she still served as treasurer. The charity tin, a sturdy green biscuit tin with a slot cut in the lid and a small brass padlock, had been in her spare room since October. She had handed it to Harker last Tuesday, at his request, so he might count the winter total and prepare the deposit. He had collected it himself, standing in her hallway smelling of that aggressive pine aftershave he favoured, and signed the handover sheet she kept on her clipboard.
She had not seen it since.
At nine-fifteen, she crossed the green with her clipboard under her arm.
“Morning, Brian,” she said pleasantly. “Where shall we put the tin? I thought the left-hand corner of the table, as usual.”
Harker straightened a leaflet with one finger. “I’ve left it at home,” he said. “Couldn’t carry everything at once. I’ll fetch it later.”
Edna looked at the canvas holdall beside his feet. It was almost empty.
“Lots of room in that bag,” she said.
“It didn’t fit.” He smiled at her, a tidy, professional smile. “Nothing to worry about, Edna.”
She smiled back and said nothing.
She walked next to speak with Pam Grundy, who ran the village post office and noticed everything. Pam was unwrapping a tray of scones at the next stall and had, Edna suspected, heard every word.
“Brian was at the cash point on Thursday,” Pam said, without looking up. “Twice. The one on Gable Street, not the one by the butcher’s. Odd, because he never uses that one. He was in rather a hurry both times. I was posting a parcel.”
Edna wrote the time and date on her clipboard.
“And his car,” Pam added, breaking a scone in half with a small, decisive crack. “It was outside the building society on Friday morning. Not parked. Idling, like he’d only gone in for a moment.”
Edna thanked her and walked around the perimeter of the green, thinking. The tin had held, by her last reckoning, three hundred and forty pounds. A modest amount. But modest amounts mattered to the families the Snowdrop Society supported, and they mattered to Edna.
At ten o’clock, when the fair opened and the green began to fill with people and the smell of frying onions drifted over from the hot food van, Edna returned to Harker’s stall with a fresh cup of tea she had bought from the Women’s Institute.
She set it on the table in front of him.
“I’ve been looking at the accounts,” she said. She opened her clipboard. “I reconciled the figures this morning before I came out. The winter collection should be three hundred and forty-two pounds and sixty pence.” She paused. “I keep very precise records. I always have.”
Harker wrapped both hands around the tea. His knuckles were pale.
“Brian,” she said, more quietly. “The tin, please.”
He said nothing for a long moment. A child ran past shrieking with laughter. The bunting clicked overhead. Then he put the tea down, reached into the inside pocket of his wax jacket, and produced a folded envelope. He placed it on the table without meeting her eyes.
Inside the envelope was one hundred and twenty pounds in notes and a handwritten figure on a scrap of paper: two hundred and twenty-two pounds sixty.
Edna regarded it steadily.
“The remainder,” she said.
“I had a difficult month.” His voice was very quiet, almost swallowed by the noise of the fair around them. “I always meant to replace it. I would have, before the deposit.”
“I’m sure you would have liked to.” Edna tucked the envelope carefully inside her clipboard. “But intentions don’t feed anyone.” She looked at him for a moment. “You’ll resign from the committee today. You’ll transfer the outstanding sum by close of business Monday. And you will not stand for the parish council in May.” She picked up her tea. “I won’t involve the police, provided those three things happen in that order.”
Harker gave a single, small nod.
She walked back to her side of the green. The hyacinths along the path released their scent as she passed them, heavy and sweet, the smell of spring arriving regardless. She found an empty chair beside the Snowdrop Society banner, sat down, and straightened the clipboard on her knee.
The tin would be replaced. The accounts would balance.
Edna Potts finished her tea and waited for the next customer.
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