SAY GOODBYE TO ARCHIE: A Rex Graves Mini-Mystery (4 page)

“We’re eight, is that right, Patricia?” Dot asked, diminutive next to her friend.

“Yes. Where’s Charles?”

“Setting out the table and chairs.”

“Anything I can take?”

“Perhaps Rex could take the tray?”

“Be glad to,” he said.

“Roger can take the cake.”

“I always do!” he joked, nudging Rex’s arm.

Patricia opened the kitchen door where a crazy-paving path continued around the house into an English cottage garden worthy of a picture postcard. A low wall of mellowed brick, matching that of the eighteenth century home, enclosed a border of flower beds surrounding a lush green lawn at whose centre stood an ornate bird bath carved in white stone. The word that came to Rex’s mind was “charming.”

“I put a bell on Archie’s collar so he couldn’t get at the birds,” Patricia informed him as they made towards the table beneath the spreading oak tree. “They’d hear him coming and take off. He had more success with field mice, which he’d bring to the kitchen door before I had the conservatory put in.” Jutting from the back of her cottage, the glass extension housed a couple of recliners and some exotic plants in large earthenware pots. A rubber cat flap in a bottom pane had enabled Archie to come and go as he pleased. “And he used to terrorize the squirrels in his younger days, but couldn’t quite get up to the top of the trees.”

On two sides of the garden stood a wood of birch and pine
. To the right, looking out, Rex could see the neighbour’s greenhouse and part of a two-storey home in the same brick. He asked Patricia where she had placed Archie’s bowl, and she pointed to a tiled spot near a corner taken up by one of the plants.

“Beside the fern.
I always kept it there.”

The bowl, angled a couple of feet from the cat flap, would have been too far
away for someone to reach in, spike the contents with poison, and then put the dish back in its place.

Charles was standing by
the tea table apparently pondering the disposition of chairs. These were wicker and padded with cushion seats. So far they had been arranged in a loose circle beside the table, capitalizing on the shade provided by the oak tree. Rex set down the laden tray.

“Delighted you could come!” Charles, transpiring under a short-sleeved shirt clinging to his chubby frame, stuck out a hand. “How’s your mother?”

“Quite well. But she has a phobia about travelling. She’s becoming a bit of a recluse, I fear.”

“So I heard. They get more petulant and childish with age, don’t they?” Charles s
poke in a conspiratorial tone, pointing his head in his mother’s direction. Patricia stood on the lawn talking to a dainty man with a thatch of snowy hair and wearing a light linen suit and yellow bowtie. “The dandy yonder is the neighbour whose dog was mauled by Archie, leaving a disfiguring scar on his nose. Cutie Pie is a fluffy white poodle. Noel was going to enter him at Crufts, but can’t show him now. Huge big row over it. The vet patched him up as best he could, but he’s an animal doctor, not a plastic surgeon. All hopes dashed of him winning Best in Show. Noel and my mother are still feuding about it.”

It looked like things were heating up between Noel and Patricia even as they spoke.

“I thought they’d buried the hatchet,” Rex said.

“Hardly.
She’s still incensed about her delphiniums even though they’ve all grown back. It’s so terribly petty!”

Rex glanced over to the length of wall dividing the two properties, where indigo, mauve, white, and pink spires swayed in the gentle breeze. Closer to the cottage, a profusion of purple foxglove enticed lazily buzzing bumble bees to their tubular flowers whose dark spots led to the nectar. In the gait of a younger man, Roger Dalrymple strolled toward the two men with his hands in his trouser pockets.

“What a heavenly day,” he said looking up at the hazy blue sky flocked with white clouds.

Charles did not appear convinced. “I’ll be glad when it’s over and I can get back to London. Got a pile of work waiting for me at the
office.” He mopped his ruddy face with a paper napkin from the pocket of his shorts, which made him look all the more like an overgrown schoolboy. “I’ll have to head back as soon as poor Archie’s in the ground.”

“So you’re not staying the night?” Rex asked
, glad Charles would not be required to sleep on the couch.

“No, but if you are, you’re more than welcome to my room.”

Rex thanked him. Charles nodded and ambled away in the direction of the house, leaving him alone with Roger.

“He can’t stand being under his mother’s roof for more than two days,” the illustrator said, nodding after Charles. “I expect Connie and Charles are a disappointment to her. Neither did particularly well in school or achieved anything remarkable in life. Sometimes I think Patricia cared more about Archie than she did her own children.”

Rex refrained from commenting, but he got the same impression. He could not remember who was the eldest, but each looked older than their years up close, even though Connie’s pixie-cut dark hair streaked with plum strived for a young and carefree look.

“It’s not just about the delphiniums, you know,” Roger was saying as he watched Noel and Patricia talking more civilly to one another now, but maintaining a rigid stance. The poodle could be heard yapping in its garden. “You see, I’m friends with both Patricia and Noel, and they each expect me to take sides. So I’m caught in the middle. I have a working relationship with Patricia, which makes things awkward and puts a strain on my friendship with Noel.”

“And it’s a very small village,” said Rex, suspecting that Roger enjoyed the drama and being at the centre of it.

“Exactly.
And to be honest, I can’t stand the dog. Cutie Pie!” Roger stuck two fingers in his throat and made a gagging motion. “At least Archie had some dignity. He didn’t slobber and roll over on his back for just anyone.”

“Tea, everyone,” Patricia announced, lumbering towards them. “Making any headway,” she asked Rex before he could follow Roger to the table.

“Just getting to know the characters in the plot, so to speak.”

“I knew you’d suss it out. Yes, here we have the chief suspects assembled. Noel only came because he can’t resist a free tea.
Such a detestable little man. What they say about dogs and their owners is true. If Noel were a dog, he’d be a pretentions little poodle! Now come along,” she directed. “Dot bakes a delicious cake.”

Rex followed her to the mouth-watering spread on the table. Connie brought out the tea tray loaded with plates of sandwiches covered in clinging film. She set it down and removed an envelope.

“Mum, the kids made you a card. They wanted to be here, of course, but as it’s their weekend with their dad...”

Patricia opened the envelope with a sigh. “Children need stability,” she opined. Inside was a homemade collage of a black cat clearly made by primary
-schoolers. “Very thoughtful,” she said. “Please thank Miranda and Matt.” She set it aside and gazed at the tea table as though overwhelmed.

“Shall I be mother?” Dot immediately began dispensing tea while Connie, clearly disappointed by her mother’s lukewarm reaction to the card, passed around plates of cucumber and watercress sandwiches.

“Archie so enjoyed his milk,” Patricia said to no one in particular. “Some people claim it doesn’t agree with cats, but Archie wasn’t lactose intolerant.”

Rex intercepted a glance of mild exasperation between Connie and Charles. He doubted their mother doted on her two grandchildren as much as she had her cat. She’d had her son and daughter late in life, a resigned spinster by the time she found love. Connie, too, had waited a long time to have children, and seemed exhausted by the process of motherhood. But perhaps it was the ex-spousal arrangements that were weighing her down. Whatever the situation, she and her brother regarded their mother with a measure of wariness. Connie now assumed a slightly bossy tone in her admonitions as Patricia started rearranging the chairs that Charles had set out on the lawn.

“Mother, you know you shouldn’t be exerting yourself. Remember what Dr. Beaseley said.”

“Everyone calls him Dr. Beastly,” Roger said in an aside to Rex, having returned from the house with his cardigan.
“The bedside manner of Hitler! I was evacuated during the war, you know. The children in our London borough were sent by train into the countryside during the blackout and bombings. I remember the sense of freedom and all the wonderful sights and smells. As soon as I retired from my advertising job in the City, I couldn’t wait to move to the country. At times it still feels like I’m returning to my boyhood.”

Roger certainly seemed young at heart, Rex
mused. “I used to stay in Swanmere, not far from here.”

“I go there sometimes to sketch the swans in the pond. So glad you could come down. I understand your mother was at school with Patricia.”

“Aye, but she doesn’t travel well, so I’m here
in loco
.”

They watched a woman stalking about the garden in heels that left dents in the grass. “Oh, how lovely,” she enthused over the cut flower beds and forest of foxglove, flitting to and fro and extending her arm in an arc to throw out crumbs for the birds.

“A Londoner,” Roger uttered with disparagement. “As once was I,” he added in a more light-hearted tone. “Still, ruining the lawn with those stilettoes makes me wince.”

“Who is she?”

“That’s our literary agent. Felicity Parker & Associates is a boutique agency occupying premises in one of the less smart addresses in London, not that you’d know it to look at her.” The trim, fiftyish woman in question wore what looked to be an expensive suit along with the high heels, both inappropriate for an informal garden party, in Rex’s view. She sported a modern haircut where the back was bluntly cut shorter than the sides, of an unnatural hue that clashed with the puce silk blouse frilled around the cuffs and throat.

“Oh, right. Patricia mentioned her.”

“She represents children’s, soft-boiled mystery and cookery books. Drat it, I lost a button off my favourite cardie.” Roger was looking down at the garment folded over his arm. “How did that happen?”

“Must have caught on something.”

“I suppose. But I only just brought it out of the house, thinking I might get cold if the sun went in. I didn’t notice the button was missing when I put it on earlier. Oh, well, I kept the spare it came with.”

“Run home and fetch it,” Dot said as if Roger were capable of running anywhere. She sat by the table blithely knitting away while she spoke. “I’ll sew it on for you. It won’t take but a jiffy.”

“Oh, thank you, Dot. What would we do without you!” Roger patted down the pockets of his trousers, found his keys, and made for the side of the cottage, leaving the cardigan on the arm of a wicker chair beside Dot’s.

From her patchwork bag she selected a small card wrapped with yarn.
“This will match closely enough,” she said holding it out to the cardigan whence dangled a thin wool strand. “They never secure the buttons properly.” She drew out a pair of sewing scissors from the bag and cut off a length of yarn in readiness for Roger’s return.

Rex helped himself to the delicate white triangles of watercress and cucumber sandwiches and a slice of the ginger cake, which was set on a plate covered with a paper doily. He took a chair beside Connie, who had heaped her plate full of food.

“Shall I be mother again?” Dot chirped from the table, standing over the tea pot decorated with roses. “There’s some left in the pot.”

The elderly woman was a dynamo, Rex reflected. It was as though she could not stand to be idle.

“Please do,” Patricia replied. “Perhaps Connie can help serve.” She looked pointedly at her daughter. The hapless woman set down her plate on her chair where the chocolate fingers soon began to melt in the heat.

Roger plopped onto a seat on Rex’s other side holding a wedge of cake. “Found the spare button,” he said, pleased. He looked around with a wry expression. “Jolly occasion, I must say. Have you ever attended a cat’s burial?”

Rex conceded that he had not.

“Patricia’s become a bit gaga, if you ask me. I’m surprised the editor didn’t send her last two stories back for a rewrite. I was embarrassed to put my illustrations to them, truth
be told. But then,” Roger said with a winsome smile, “greed wins over pride!” He bit into the cake and gave a murmur of approval. “One can always rely on Dot to provide a good tea, even if she is an interfering old busy-body.”