The Trouble with Tomatoes
The summer fete at Amberton had not changed appreciably in forty years, which was precisely why Edith Crane loved it. The same striped bunting threaded between the same oak trees. The same smell of warm grass and Victoria sponge. The same mild arguments about whether the tombola prizes were adequate. It was, she always thought, the village at its most honestly itself.
Edith had retired from her position as head librarian three years prior, but retirement had done nothing to diminish her habit of observation. She noticed things — the small, telling details that most people walked past without a second glance. Her late husband Gerald had called it her “quiet radar,” and he had not been wrong.
It was this radar that pricked at her shortly after two o’clock on the Saturday afternoon of the fete, when she heard raised voices near the horticultural tent.
Inside, the tent smelled of earth and canvas. Long trestle tables displayed the usual proud entries: dahlias, marrows of improbable girth, and jars of pale honey. At the far end stood the tomato display — or rather, where it had stood. The plate belonging to Bernard Holt, the undisputed champion of Amberton’s tomato class for six consecutive years, was conspicuously empty.
Bernard himself was red-faced and emphatic. “I set them down at half past twelve. Six perfect Brandywines, and now there’s not a one.”
Constable Derek Marsh, young and earnest, was writing in his notebook with the careful concentration of a man who suspects he may need to spell “Brandywine” correctly. “And you’re certain nobody moved them, Mr Holt?”
“Who would move them? This is the tomato table, Constable, not a self-service buffet.”
Edith slipped quietly to the side of the tent and began, as was her habit, simply looking. The empty plate. The small card reading *Bernard Holt, Brandywine, Entry 14*. The faint circular mark on the tablecloth where something wet had rested briefly beside the plate. She looked at the entries on either side: a rather splendid cluster of cherry tomatoes from someone called P. Finch, and a deep-red beefsteak entry from Dorothy Yates.
Dorothy Yates. Edith paused on that name.
Dorothy was a pleasant enough woman — efficient, capable, devoted to her garden. She was also, Edith recalled from a conversation at the post office in June, absolutely furious that Bernard had edged her out of first place last year by a single judge’s point. “His soil drainage,” Dorothy had said, with the tight-lipped restraint of someone expressing something much stronger. “He doesn’t deserve that cup.”
Edith found Dorothy near the jam stall, purchasing a jar of damson preserve with studied calm.
“Dreadful business about Bernard’s tomatoes,” Edith said pleasantly.
Dorothy looked up. “Is it? I hadn’t heard.”
“His Brandywines have gone missing entirely. The police are involved.”
“How dramatic,” said Dorothy. She paid for the jam, but Edith noticed that her fingers were slightly pink — the particular pink of hands recently scrubbed clean. And there, just below the cuff of Dorothy’s cream blouse, a faint reddish smear. The colour, Edith thought, of tomato juice.
She did not say anything further. She thanked Dorothy for her company and walked in a purposeful but unhurried way towards the far edge of the fete, where the car park bordered a thick hedge of hawthorn.
It took her less than five minutes to find them. Behind a recycling bin near the hedge — six Brandywine tomatoes in a paper bag, quite unharmed, nestled beside an empty wicker basket that bore a luggage label reading *D. Yates*.
Edith stood for a moment, thinking it through. Dorothy had not destroyed the tomatoes, which spoke to a certain restraint. She had simply removed them — presumably to ensure that Bernard could not win, that the cup might finally pass to someone else. Possibly to Dorothy herself, whose beefsteak entry was genuinely impressive.
It was petty, certainly. But it was also, in Edith’s experience, very human.
She carried the paper bag back to the horticultural tent and placed it quietly on the table near Constable Marsh. “I believe these are what you’re looking for,” she said. “I found them near the hawthorn hedge. I think you’ll want to have a gentle word with Dorothy Yates.”
Marsh looked at the tomatoes, then at Edith, then at the tomatoes again. “How did you—”
“Tomato juice on her cuff,” said Edith simply. “And her hands had been washed in a hurry. She’s not a malicious woman, Constable. Just a proud gardener who felt the contest had been unjust for too long.”
Bernard, upon recovering his tomatoes and confirming them undamaged, cycled rapidly through relief, indignation, and finally — to Edith’s quiet satisfaction — something approaching sheepishness.
“I suppose,” he admitted, examining his Brandywines, “I did take the long route past Dorothy’s garden last September. After the judging. To gloat, if I’m honest.”
“I thought it might be something of that nature,” said Edith.
In the end, Constable Marsh had a tactful conversation with Dorothy, who confessed with the exhausted dignity of someone who had known the game was up the moment Edith Crane looked at her cuff. No charges were pressed. Bernard, in an unexpected gesture of goodwill, suggested to the judges that Dorothy’s beefsteak tomatoes warranted a special commendation. Dorothy accepted with quiet grace. They were seen, later that afternoon, sharing a pot of tea near the refreshment stand.
The tomato cup went to Bernard for the seventh consecutive year, though the judges noted that the margin had been extremely narrow.
Edith bought a jar of chutney, found a pleasant chair in the shade, and watched the fete carry on around her — the bunting flickering, the children running, the mild arguments about the tombola continuing undisturbed. Gerald would have enjoyed the afternoon, she thought. He always had appreciated a mystery with a tidy resolution and nobody the worse for it.
She opened her chutney, admired the label, and decided it had been, on balance, a very satisfying Saturday.
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