The Funeral Notice in the Parish Gazette
Agnes Plum had a habit, formed over forty years of marking essays, of reading everything twice. It was this habit — and not any particular appetite for local news — that caused her to lower her cup of Darjeeling on a Tuesday morning and peer once more at the Nettlecombe Parish Gazette.
There, nestled between the announcement of a jumble sale at St. Cuthbert’s and a notice about the blocked footpath near Heron’s Bridge, was a small obituary.
*It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of Mr. Gerald Fitch, of 4 Cowslip Row, beloved husband and retired postman, who died peacefully on Sunday the 14th. A funeral service will be held at St. Cuthbert’s on Friday at two o’clock. Donations in lieu of flowers to the Nettlecombe Bowls Club.*
Agnes read it twice, as was her custom. Then she set the Gazette on her kitchen table and folded her hands.
Gerald Fitch had been standing directly in front of her at Bramble’s bakery yesterday morning — Monday the 13th — buying a white tin loaf and two iced fingers. He had complained about the price of butter. She had agreed it was shocking. They had exchanged pleasantries about the weather, as neighbours in a village of four hundred souls invariably did. He had been, to every observable measure, entirely alive.
She put on her good cardigan and walked to Cowslip Row.
—
Number four was a tidy cottage with a hanging basket that had seen better days. Agnes knocked. After a moment, the door was answered by a woman in her late fifties with the careful composure of someone managing a great deal of strain.
“Mrs. Fitch?” Agnes said gently. “I’m Agnes Plum, from Larkspur Cottage. I’m so sorry to intrude. I wanted to offer my condolences about Gerald.”
The woman’s composure flickered. “It’s been quite a week,” she said, and Agnes noticed that her eyes, though shadowed, were not red.
“I saw the notice in the Gazette,” Agnes continued. “I confess I was rather surprised. I thought I saw Gerald only yesterday.”
Mrs. Fitch went very still. “You must be mistaken.”
“Possibly,” said Agnes pleasantly. “May I come in for just a moment?”
She had once managed a classroom of thirty-two eleven-year-olds through a production of *A Midsummer Night’s Dream*. A reluctant widow held few terrors.
Inside, the sitting room was orderly. On the mantelpiece sat a framed photograph of Gerald Fitch — a stout, cheerful-looking man — and beside it, quite conspicuously, an envelope from the Nettlecombe Mutual Insurance Society.
Agnes noted it with the calm efficiency of someone who had spent a lifetime noticing the things students most wished she wouldn’t.
“The funeral on Friday,” she said, settling into an offered chair. “That’s very soon after a passing.”
“We wanted to keep things simple,” Mrs. Fitch said.
“Of course. And Gerald — he wasn’t ill, was he? Only I saw him last month at the fête and he looked wonderfully well.”
“It was very sudden.”
Agnes smiled. “The iced fingers,” she said, quite conversationally.
Mrs. Fitch blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Gerald bought two iced fingers yesterday at Bramble’s. He told Mrs. Bramble they were for his lunch. I was directly behind him in the queue. Mrs. Bramble will certainly remember — she always remarks when anyone buys the iced fingers, because she makes them herself on Mondays only.” Agnes paused. “I think, Mrs. Fitch, that Gerald isn’t dead. I think the two of you may be in some difficulty, and I wonder if someone has given you rather poor advice.”
The silence in the room was absolute, save for the ticking of a carriage clock on the shelf.
Then Mrs. Fitch’s composure did not crack so much as quietly dissolve. She pressed a hand to her mouth, and when she lowered it, she looked ten years older and considerably more honest.
“It was Gerald’s idea,” she said. “The insurance. We’ve had trouble — the roof, and Gerald’s pension isn’t what we’d hoped, and someone told him the policy would pay out and there’d be no way to check if he simply — went away for a while. His brother has a place in Lincolnshire. He was going to stay there until—”
“Until the money arrived,” Agnes said, not unkindly.
“We were desperate,” Mrs. Fitch said. “I know it was foolish.”
“It was more than foolish. It’s fraud, my dear, which carries consequences considerably more distressing than a leaking roof.” Agnes stood, straightening her cardigan. “I’m not a hard woman. I was a schoolteacher — I have a great deal of experience with people who make poor decisions under pressure and are genuinely sorry for it.”
She walked to the mantelpiece and, without ceremony, picked up the envelope from the insurance society and handed it back to Mrs. Fitch unopened.
“Gerald should come home,” she said firmly. “This claim should not be submitted. And I’d suggest a conversation with Citizens Advice in Dorchester about what assistance may actually be available to you.” She paused at the door. “There are proper ways through difficult times, Mrs. Fitch. They are slower and less tidy, I grant you, but they do not involve hiding one’s husband in Lincolnshire.”
She left Cowslip Row at half past ten, stopped at Bramble’s to buy a small sourdough, and was home in time for a second cup of Darjeeling.
By Thursday, Gerald Fitch had returned to Nettlecombe. The obituary in the following week’s Gazette was replaced by a brief apology from the editor, citing a regrettable typographical error — though no one at the Gazette could quite explain how it had got there in the first place.
Agnes kept her own counsel, as she usually did. She did, however, begin buying two iced fingers on Mondays, leaving one on her windowsill for the robin who visited every morning without fail.
Some small kindnesses, she had always felt, cost very little and mattered rather a lot.
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