Jam and Jeopardy
Authors: Doris Davidson
Jam and Jeopardy
First published in 2006 by Birlinn Ltd
This ebook edition published in 2012 by
Birlinn Limited
West Newington House
Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
www.birlinn.co.uk
Copyright © Doris Davidson, 2006
The moral right of Doris Davidson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.
Print ISBN: 978-1-84158-465-2
eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-209-2
Version 1.0
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Saturday 12th November
Flora Baker pulled her well-worn three-quarter-length Persian lamb coat closer round her ample form – a waste of time, really, since she’d been steadily growing out
of it ever since it was bought. ‘Oh God, Ronald,’ she muttered, through teeth that chattered from the cold, ‘I’m absolutely freezing. Why don’t you get the heater
repaired?’
Her husband scowled. ‘I’ve told you over and over again. I can’t afford it.’
‘Why don’t you buy a newer car, then? You could pay it up by instalments. Easy terms. The never-never, you know.’
‘I still couldn’t afford it, however easy the terms were. Now shut up. You’re like a dripping tap once you start.’
‘Ach, Ronald, you’re always going on about being on the breadline when all you need to do is tap your old auntie. She’s rolling in it and she gave Stephen something last year.
Why shouldn’t you get something, as well?’
‘For pity’s sake, Flora, I’ve enough to worry about at the minute with watching out for black ice on the road, so shut up, will you?’
Sniffing, his wife lapsed into offended silence. She hated coming to see Janet Souter anyway, and her husband falling out with her didn’t help matters. If it wasn’t for the fact that
the old besom had no other relatives except Ronald and his cousin Stephen, she would opt out altogether. But if they got on Janet’s wrong side, they might be disinherited and end up with
absolutely nothing.
‘You’ve turned up at long last, have you?’ Janet Souter’s voice was heavily sarcastic. ‘I’d given up hope of seeing you today.’
Ronald Baker smiled placatingly. ‘We’re not that late.’
‘I’ve had my afternoon cup of tea, anyway, so you’re too late for that.’
‘We were held up by a flock of sheep on the road.’
‘You’ve always some excuse ready, I’ll say that for you, but I know what’s going on.’
Flora tried to smooth the old woman’s ruffled feathers. ‘Have you been doing anything interesting this week, Aunt Janet?’
‘What do
you
care?’ Janet glared at them, but couldn’t resist telling them. Talking about herself was her favourite pastime. ‘I went to see the youngest Munro
girl’s wedding on Wednesday. I wasn’t invited, of course, so I stood outside the kirk with Grace Skinner and Violet Grant to watch them all going in.’
‘They’re the two sisters from next door, aren’t they?’ Flora made a show of being interested.
‘You know that perfectly well. Anyway, who should turn up among the guests, as bold as brass in a fur tippet, but Mabel Wakeford.’
‘She’s next door on the other side,’ Flora explained to Ronald, who wasn’t in the least interested.
‘She thinks she’s a cut above the rest of us, because her late husband was a major in the Coldstream Guards, but, as I said to Grace Skinner, Mabel has nothing to be so uppity about.
She was only a nurse when she met the Major and, in any case, she was born illegitimate. There was a great scandal at the time, of course. Mary Dewar, Mabel’s mother, was the minister’s
daughter, and she never did get married.’
This was too much for Ronald, who felt obliged to say something. ‘You shouldn’t go raking all that muck up now, Aunt Janet. It must have been fifty years ago, at least, judging by
what I’ve seen of Mrs Wakeford.’
The thin, frail figure turned on him abruptly. ‘I know when it was! I’m not in my dotage yet, even if some people would like to think I was. I’m eighty-seven years old, but my
memory’s as clear as a bell. It was sixty-one years ago, though Mabel tries to make out she’s not much over fifty, with her dyed hair.’
Her nephew wished that he had kept his mouth shut, and tried to change the subject. ‘My firm’s going through a bit of a sticky patch at the minute, but I could wangle a big contract
with a consortium in Leeds if I’d some capital to lay out on materials first.’ It was a wasted effort.
‘There was Mabel going into the kirk wearing a fur tippet, so I said, “People don’t wear tippets to weddings”.’
‘Who did you say that to?’ Ronald’s grammar deserted him, and he shrank from the inevitable answer.
‘To her, Mabel, of course. Who did you think I said it to? A fur tippet! Pure swank, that’s what it was, and it was a mangey looking thing into the bargain.’
A deep sigh escaped from her nephew before he tried again. ‘Ten thousand would see me through, and it would just be for a short time, because the Leeds company usually makes a quick
settlement.’
The relentless, whining voice went on, undeterred. ‘And that young Mrs White down the Lane, May Falconer she was, her husband’s away working overseas somewhere and she’s
carrying on with Sydney Pettigrew’s youngest son. A lad of eighteen and she’s about about forty, disgusting, I call it. I saw him running up the Lane from her house at five
o’clock one morning, when I rose to make myself a cup of tea.’
‘Aunt Janet . . .’
‘I met him down the High Street later on that same day, and told him what a fool he was making of himself.’ Her triumphant look faded when she saw the expressions on the faces of her
listeners. ‘What are you gaping at? Somebody’s got to do it.’
‘Oh my God!’ Ronald muttered.
‘He gave me the height of cheek, though. Youngsters are getting more and more ill-mannered, and that man in the ironmonger’s was a bit nippy with me as well when I went in
there.’
‘What did you say to him, to upset him?’
‘Nothing. I went in to get my usual stuff to kill the rats in the garden, so I told him about May White and young Pettigrew, and he said it was a pity some folk couldn’t mind their
own business. I didn’t know who he was meaning, exactly, but I didn’t like the tone of his voice. I won’t have to go back there for a long time, anyway . . .’
Although the little room was jam-packed with furniture, it was almost as cold as the weather outside, but Janet didn’t seem to feel it, Flora noticed. Not much wonder, really, she mused,
for she had on umpteen layers of underclothes as well as a felted woollen twinset, with a shawl on top of that. And her legs were encased in hand-knitted stockings, so there was hardly an inch of
her bare to the draughts.
She realised with a jolt that the monologue was still going on. ‘Anyway, Davie Livingstone said he used arsenic to kill
his
rats, and he brought a wee bagful up to me that night. He
used to use it when he worked in the crystal factory. That was before he retired, of course.’
‘Arsenic?’ Flora screwed up her face. ‘It’s illegal to have arsenic, I think, and it’s very dangerous stuff. You’d better be careful with it, and watch where
you keep it, because even if it just gets into a cut on your finger, it can kill you.’
The small, beady eyes regarded her balefully. ‘That should please Ronald, then. He’d get all the money he’s needing if I died suddenly, but there’s no chance of that. I
put it at the back of my shed.
Flora glanced at Ronald for help out of this situation, but he was staring thoughtfully into space, so she searched wildly for something to say. At last, she found inspiration. ‘We were
making the arrangements for our Christmas party at the Guild this week.’
As she’d hoped, her husband’s aunt launched into a detailed account of the recent activities of the Tollerton Women’s Guild, and kept it up until Ronald rose to his feet.
‘We’ll have to be going. I said I’d phone George Low at six with an estimate, and I’ve still to finish it.’
‘Oh? . . . Yes . . . well . . . OK.’ It had taken a full ten seconds for Flora to catch on, but she stood up thankfully. ‘We’ll see you next Saturday, Aunt
Janet.’
‘If you can manage to come a bit earlier you’ll get a cup of tea.’
‘Don’t bother to come to the door with us, it’s too cold outside.’ Flora struggled into her Persian lamb, while her husband made for the door.
‘And Ronald . . .’ There was a malicious twist to the old woman’s mouth as she called him back. ‘You’ll see the bag of arsenic if you look in the shed window when
you’re passing.’
‘So what?’ He frowned as he turned on his heel and walked quickly through the passage into the kitchen, with his wife trotting behind him. Both were conscious that the old dragon was
still watching them.
They always used the back door, having parked their car in the Lane, where it wouldn’t cause any obstruction. At some point in Tollerton’s past, a far-sighted council had provided
this area for the use of the occupants of the three cottages, but none of the present owners possessed a vehicle of any kind.
‘Sometimes I feel like killing her.’ Flora had to let her seat belt slide back and ease it out more gently before she could click it into position.
Ronald nodded. ‘Me too.’ He looked pensive suddenly, and turned the key in the ignition of the aged Audi, but even the smooth purr of the engine didn’t give him the usual
satisfaction. ‘The old bitch gets on my wick with all her moaning.’
Manoeuvring a U-turn, he reflected, sadly, that his Aunt Janet was about the only topic of conversation on which he and his wife were in complete agreement these days.
‘You’d think she could have lent you a measly thousand, she’d never miss it.’ Flora shifted the webbing more comfortably round her 46-DD bosom. ‘Of course, you
didn’t ask her straight out, did you? I sometimes think you’re scared of her.’
Her husband didn’t argue. He had turned his full attention on the road ahead. Ashgrove Lane was a devil to get out of, an absolutely blind corner where it met the High Street.
Once safely on the straight, he snapped, ‘I’m not scared of her, but she keeps going on about the twenty thousand she lent Stephen when his shop was going down the hill. She charges
him a helluva lot of interest on it, as well.’
Flora shrugged impatiently. ‘So she keeps telling us, and laughing because Barbara gets mad about it. Your cousin’s wife’s as common as dirt, but give her her due, she’s
the only one of us who can speak back to Janet. I think Stephen hoped Janet would kick the bucket after she lent them that money, so he wouldn’t have to pay it back.’
‘Huh! Fat chance of that! She’s got it all written down, and she marks off what they give her every month.’
‘It’s not through a solicitor, though, is it? If she died, nobody’d know about it except us, so it would be our word against theirs. And they don’t realise we know, I
shouldn’t think.’
‘Stop worrying about it, Flora. We can sort it all out when the time comes, but, as far as I can see, they’ll have paid it all back before the old bitch decides to pop
off.’
‘She could easily have given you something, though.’ His wife harped back to her original line of thought. ‘It’s not fair, making more of Stephen.’
‘She’s always been the same, singing his praises to make me jealous. And she’s so bloody sadistic, I wouldn’t put it past her to be praising me to Stephen to cause
trouble between us. She’s a born troublemaker.’ Ronald paused, his eyes taking on a calculating look. ‘She gave me a hell of a brainwave today, though.’