The Wrong Afternoon for Watercolours
Agnes Peel had lived in Thornfield Parva for sixty-three years, which was long enough to know precisely what the village was supposed to look like on a Tuesday afternoon in October. The bakery shut at two. The postman finished his round by half past. Mrs. Dunmore walked her terrier along Coppice Lane at quarter to three, regardless of weather. And Roland Fetch, retired art teacher and self-appointed painter of all things picturesque, set up his easel on the green by the old mounting block and faced south-west, where the light caught the weathervane on St. Cuthbert’s church in a way he had described, on at least nine separate occasions, as “transcendent.”
Today, however, Roland’s easel faced north-east.
Agnes noticed it from her kitchen window while she was rinsing her teacup. She paused. The easel was quite definitely aimed at the dull brick side wall of the village hall, which had all the transcendence of a car park. Roland himself was dabbing at his canvas with an expression of furious concentration that she recognised, after six decades of reading people, as the expression of a man performing rather than painting.
She dried her hands, put on her coat, and went outside.
“Lovely afternoon for it,” she said pleasantly, stopping behind him. The canvas showed a half-finished study of the church — which was, she noted, behind him.
Roland startled. “Agnes. Yes. Thought I’d try a different angle today.”
“Mm,” said Agnes, in the tone she had once used on eleven-year-olds who claimed the dog had eaten their homework. She glanced toward the village hall. Its side door, which was usually kept locked except for the Tuesday craft group, stood very slightly ajar. “How long have you been here?”
“Oh, since about one.”
“Strange. I walked past at half past one and you weren’t here.” She said it without accusation, almost as an afterthought. Roland’s grip tightened on his paintbrush.
Agnes bid him good afternoon and walked home by way of the village hall.
She was a practical woman. She did not peer through windows or press her ear to doors. She simply noticed, as she passed, that the boot scraper outside the side entrance had been moved three inches to the left, and that there were two sets of footprints in the soft mud beside the path — one belonging to a large flat shoe, and one to something narrower, with a slight drag at the heel.
She recognised the second print. It belonged to Dennis Holroyd, the village hall treasurer, who had developed a slight limp following a hiking accident the previous spring and who wore, as a consequence, one orthopaedic shoe with a worn outer edge.
By four o’clock, Agnes had made two telephone calls and a pot of Earl Grey. By half past, she was seated in the front parlour of Dorothy Crane, who chaired the village hall committee with the focused energy of a woman who had never quite forgiven the world for underestimating her.
“I think,” said Agnes carefully, “that you might wish to examine the petty cash tin before this week is out. And perhaps the receipts for the Harvest Supper catering.”
Dorothy set down her cup. “What makes you say that?”
Agnes explained about the easel, the footprints, the side door, and a third detail she had not yet mentioned: that the Harvest Supper had been catered by a firm in Marlbrook at a cost — according to the minutes she had helped to type last month — of four hundred and eighty pounds. She had also, quite by chance, seen the lorry arrive on the Saturday morning, and it had been a local van belonging to the Thornfield Parva Women’s Institute kitchen team, who had charged two hundred pounds and a crate of apple juice, because she had been there when the invoice was written.
Dorothy’s expression moved through surprise, calculation, and resolution in approximately four seconds. “I see,” she said.
The following morning, Dorothy presented the discrepancy to the committee. Dennis Holroyd, confronted with both sets of receipts and a quiet, unarguable question about the missing two hundred and eighty pounds, went very pale and then very red, and produced — from the inside pocket of his jacket — an envelope containing two hundred and sixty pounds in cash, which he said he had meant to return before anyone noticed, as it was only a temporary borrowing, as his boiler had gone and he hadn’t wanted to trouble anyone.
The committee accepted the return of the money and accepted his resignation from the treasurer’s role with equal composure. Dorothy, to her credit, did not make a scene. Dennis, to his, did not make excuses after the first one.
Roland Fetch was not in any formal trouble. He had, it emerged, agreed to keep watch while Dennis slipped in to access the cash box, in exchange for Dennis not mentioning to the committee that Roland had accidentally reversed his car into the village hall’s newly painted fence in August and had not reported it. A small crime concealing a smaller embarrassment concealing a considerable weakness of character — which was, Agnes reflected, how most mischief in small villages tended to work.
She mentioned none of this to anyone except Dorothy, who had needed to know, and her own cat, who had listened with the patient disinterest of someone who found humans thoroughly predictable.
On Thursday, she walked past the green. Roland’s easel was back in its usual spot, facing south-west. The weathervane on St. Cuthbert’s glinted in the afternoon light.
Transcendent, she supposed, if one were inclined toward that sort of thing. Agnes herself preferred plain facts, neatly arranged. They were, in her experience, considerably harder to argue with.
She walked home, put the kettle on, and decided that the village was, on balance, exactly as it should be.
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