The Pebblewick Chronicles - Chapter 8 - Tuesday

Tuesday

A Quiet Morning

The following Tuesday began with an unease I could not quite explain.

I felt it almost the moment I stepped out of my front door.

Nothing was visibly wrong. The sky was clear enough, the sea beyond the rooftops looked calm, and Harbour Street lay where it always had. Yet there was something in the air, some faint disturbance beneath the ordinary rhythm of the morning, that refused to leave me alone.

The road into Pebblewick was strangely still.

No cars passed.

Few people were about.

Even the gulls were quiet.

That, more than anything else, unsettled me.

Normally I could hear them long before I reached the harbour. Pebblewick’s gulls considered dawn a suitable time to conduct lengthy and often heated debates concerning fish, territory, and matters known only to themselves.

That morning they seemed to have lost the urge to argue.

A handful perched silently upon chimney pots and rooftops.

One sat upon the harbour wall watching me with what I could only describe as suspicious interest.

For a moment I found myself remembering Hubert and his insistence that gulls understood far more than people believed.

I discarded the thought immediately.

Spending time with Hubert was evidently having a regrettable effect upon my judgement.

Even so, after an entire week during which Pebblewick had behaved itself with remarkable restraint, the silence left me uneasy.

I found myself wondering what Tuesday intended to bring.

Alf

As I approached The Salty Page, I noticed someone standing outside the shop.

At first he was little more than a shape in the distance.

A boy.

Thin.

Slightly stooped.

His hands buried deep inside the pockets of an old jacket.

As I drew nearer, I recognised him.

Alf.

Mr Milton-Price's boy from the farm.

I slowed my pace.

What was Alf doing outside my shop at that hour?

Mr Milton-Price had recently ordered another book.

Another book about sheep, naturally.

It had not yet arrived.

And even if it had, the shop was still closed.

Alf knew that perfectly well.

Then I came close enough to see his face.

Something was wrong.

Terribly wrong.

His eyes were red and swollen.

His cheeks were streaked where tears had cut paths through dirt and mud.

He looked exhausted.

Frightened.

Lost.

“Alf?”

He raised his head.

“Morning, Mr Quibble.”

The words emerged little louder than a whisper.

“Are you all right?”

His lips parted.

For a moment no sound came out at all.

I took my keys from my pocket.

“Come inside.”

He followed without protest.

I unlocked the door, pushed it open, and let him enter.

For once I left the sign unchanged.

The shop would not be opening yet.

Alf stood beside the counter while I set down my keys.

Then whatever had been holding him together finally broke.

He began to cry.

Not loudly.

That somehow made it worse.

The sobs were quiet and desperate, shaking his entire frame as he tried and failed to suppress them. He covered his face with both hands, as though determined not to let anybody witness his distress, yet unable to stop it.

I had seen Alf nervous before.

I had seen him uncertain.

I had never seen him like this.

“Sit down,” I said gently.

He lowered himself into the chair behind the counter.

I fetched a glass of water.

He accepted it with both hands but made no attempt to drink.

I waited.

There was little point in asking questions until he could answer them.

Eventually his breathing steadied.

A little.

“What happened, Alf?”

He looked up.

For several moments he struggled to speak.

Then the words finally emerged.

“It’s Mr Milton-Price.”

A knot tightened somewhere in my stomach.

“What about him?”

“I went to the farm this morning.”

He stopped and wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

“I always go early. He wasn't outside, so I went looking for him.”

Another pause.

“He was sitting in his chair.”

The knot tightened further.

“What do you mean?”

Alf stared down into his glass.

“He was dead.”

The words seemed to drain all sound from the room.

“Are you sure?”

Alf nodded.

Slowly.

“He was in his armchair. I called his name.”

His voice cracked.

“He didn't answer.”

A tear slipped down his cheek.

“I knew.”

The Harbour

I pulled up another chair and sat opposite him.

“What did you do?”

“I ran.”

“Away from the farmhouse?”

He nodded.

“I got scared.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being scared.”

“I didn’t know what to do.”

“What happened then?”

“I came into the village.”

“And came here?”

He shook his head.

“No. Not straight away.”

Now he seemed embarrassed, as though the next part of the story was somehow more difficult to admit.

“I went down to the harbour.”

“The harbour?”

“I just walked.”

“For how long?”

“I don't know. A few hours.”

A few hours.

The answer explained the exhaustion etched across his face.

He had found Mr Milton-Price dead, fled in panic, and spent the entire morning wandering around the harbour before finally deciding what to do.

“Why come here?” I asked.

Alf looked at me.

“I didn’t know where else to go.”

There are certain answers for which language provides no adequate response.

That was one of them.

“So I waited,” he continued quietly. “I knew you'd come.”

For years, opening The Salty Page had seemed no more significant than winding a clock.

To Alf, apparently, it had meant something else entirely.

Certainty.

Routine.

The knowledge that one dependable thing in the world would happen exactly when expected.

“Did you touch anything in the farmhouse?” I asked.

“No.”

“Move Mr Milton-Price?”

“No.”

“Call anyone?”

Another shake of the head.

“Talk to anyone?”

“No.”

“All right.”

I reached for the telephone.

His eyes widened.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting help.”

Two Telephone Calls

The first call was to the ambulance service.

The second was to the police.

Both conversations proved more complicated than I had anticipated.

I had not been to the farmhouse.

I had seen nothing for myself.

I could not declare Mr Milton-Price dead because, officially speaking, I did not know that he was.

All I had was Alf's account.

An elderly farmer.

Unresponsive.

Found in his armchair.

Several hours earlier.

Questions followed.

Was he breathing?

I did not know.

Was he conscious?

Apparently not.

When had he been found?

That answer required an awkward explanation concerning panic, flight, and several hours of wandering around Pebblewick harbour.

Eventually both services promised they were on their way.

When I put down the receiver, Alf was staring at the floor.

“Am I in trouble?”

“No.”

“I should've called someone.”

“You were frightened.”

“I ran away.”

“You came here.”

“Hours later.”

“Yes.”

The guilt sat heavily upon him.

“You told someone,” I said. “That's what matters.”

For a moment he said nothing.

Then, very slightly, he nodded.

Outside, beyond the shop window, the quiet morning continued.

But the peculiar feeling that had settled over Pebblewick when I left home had not gone away.

If anything, it had finally revealed its reason.

Mr Milton-Price was dead.

And before the day was over, I suspected Pebblewick would be talking of very little else.

Closed This Morning

I looked towards the front door.

The sign still read CLOSED.

For once, I decided it would remain that way.

There would be customers who wanted books.

Holidaymakers who wanted postcards.

Mrs Watkins would almost certainly appear in search of another murder mystery.

Mrs Thistlewood would undoubtedly wish to know why the door was locked.

They could all wait.

Alf was only seventeen.

He had found a man dead that morning, fled the farmhouse in panic and spent hours wandering around the harbour because he had not known where else to go.

The shop could survive without opening.

Alf could not be expected to face the day alone.

"I'm coming with you," I said.

He looked up.

"To the farm?"

"Yes."

"You don't have to."

"I know."

For a moment he seemed uncertain.

"The police will want to talk to me."

"They will."

"And the ambulance people."

"Probably."

His face tightened.

"I don't know what to tell them."

"You tell them exactly what happened."

"And if they ask questions?"

"I'll be there."

The answer appeared to help.

Not much.

But enough.

I fetched my coat from the hook behind the door and checked for my keys.

Then I found a scrap of paper and wrote:

CLOSED THIS MORNING

I considered adding further explanation.

Then I thought better of it.

In Pebblewick, explanations rarely reduced curiosity.

More often they fed it.

I pinned the notice inside the window.

Alf and I stepped outside.

I locked the door behind us.

The Road to the Farm

The strange stillness lingered over Harbour Street.

The gulls had begun calling again, but only occasionally, as though they too were uncertain whether noise was appropriate.

A handful of villagers passed us without much interest.

That was fortunate.

The last thing Alf needed was an encounter with somebody eager for conversation.

We climbed steadily out of the village.

Before long the houses thinned away behind us.

Hedgerows rose along either side of the road.

Beyond them stretched fields touched by the pale gold of the morning sun.

Several belonged to Mr Milton-Price.

Or so he always maintained.

The exact boundaries of his property had been the subject of spirited debate for many years, most of it conducted by Mr Milton-Price himself.

Today it seemed an oddly unimportant matter.

Alf walked beside me with his hands buried deeply inside his jacket pockets.

Neither of us spoke very much.

Every so often he glanced ahead.

And every time he did, his pace slowed slightly.

The closer we came to the farm, the less eager he became to reach it.

I could hardly blame him.

Then, beyond the next bend, the farmhouse appeared.

Alf stopped walking.

For several seconds he merely stared at it.

"That's it," he said quietly.

I followed his gaze.

The old farmhouse stood exactly as it always had.

Fields beyond.

Stone walls.

Weathered roof.

Nothing visibly different.

Nothing to suggest that one man's life had ended there during the night.

Yet somehow the entire place felt changed.

Somewhere inside that house sat Mr Milton-Price.

Still in his armchair.

Exactly where Alf had found him.

And somewhere behind us, making their way along the winding roads towards the farm, were the police and an ambulance crew.

Alf swallowed.

Then we started forward once more.

The Farmhouse

We had not been waiting long when the police car arrived.

The ambulance followed shortly afterwards.

Constable Moss emerged first.

He exchanged a few quiet words with Alf before turning towards me.

"Morning, Harold."

"Moss."

"You coming in?"

I looked at Alf.

Then at the farmhouse.

"I think I'd better."

Alf remained outside while the ambulance crew unpacked their equipment.

Constable Moss and I walked together towards the house.

The Milton-Price family had farmed the land for generations.

The farmhouse itself had been built shortly after the war.

There was nothing particularly remarkable about it from the outside.

It was practical.

Solid.

A house built by people who valued usefulness far above appearances.

The interior reflected exactly the same philosophy.

Crossing the threshold felt less like entering a home and more like stepping backwards through time.

The wallpaper had faded decades ago.

The carpets were worn.

The furniture belonged unmistakably to another age.

Nothing appeared fashionable.

Nothing appeared decorative.

Everything appeared to have remained in place because it still worked.

I suspected that principle had guided most of Mr Milton-Price's decisions.

Constable Moss led me into the sitting room.

A large window overlooked the fields.

Beyond them I could see Pebblewick itself.

The harbour.

The promenade.

A row of familiar shops.

Somewhere among them sat The Salty Page.

From this distance it looked surprisingly small.

The room around us seemed even older than the rest of the house.

Heavy wooden furniture filled the space.

An ancient sideboard stood against one wall.

A dark bookcase occupied another.

An old mantel clock ticked softly above the fireplace.

Photographs covered much of the remaining space.

Generations of Milton-Prices stared from the frames.

Parents.

Grandparents.

Farmers standing proudly beside livestock and machinery.

People who had spent their lives tied to the same land.

Their history hung upon the walls.

Watching.

Waiting.

Remembering.

And then my attention was drawn to a large table beneath the window.

Several maps had been spread across it.

Farm maps.

Some old.

Some newer.

Pencil lines crossed the fields.

Measurements.

Boundary marks.

Notes written in cramped handwriting.

Names of neighbouring farms.

Questions scribbled in margins.

Fields circled and recircled.

Constable Moss glanced at them.

"Looks like he's been busy."

"So it would seem."

I stared at the markings.

For years Mr Milton-Price had argued passionately about boundaries, ownership and forgotten field lines.

Now I was beginning to understand the scale of the obsession.

Beside the maps lay an open notebook.

Its pages were crowded with lists.

Livestock counts.

Dates.

Breeding records.

Scrawled comments.

The sort of meticulous record-keeping that only mattered deeply to the person creating it.

Then Moss moved further into the room.

I followed.

And finally saw Mr Milton-Price.

Mr Milton-Price

For a moment he looked asleep.

That was the first thing that struck me.

Not death.

Sleep.

He sat in the best armchair beside the fireplace.

Head slightly tilted.

Hands resting motionless.

Dressed exactly as he always seemed to be.

Shirt.

Cardigan.

Dark trousers.

There was something profoundly ordinary about the scene.

Beside him stood a small wooden table.

Upon it rested a glass of whisky.

Untouched.

Next to the glass lay a book.

I recognised it immediately.

I had sold it to him.

The livestock guide he had complained about only days earlier.

The book was open, turned face-down to preserve its place.

I bent slightly, careful not to touch anything.

The page concerned cattle.

I almost smiled despite myself.

The last time I had seen Mr Milton-Price he had been demanding books about sheep.

Apparently, somewhere along the way, he had progressed to cows.

The smile faded.

The maps remained spread across the table.

The livestock records lay open beside them.

The photographs of generations past looked down from the walls.

And at the centre of it all sat Mr Milton-Price.

Only a few days earlier he had stood inside my shop arguing about agricultural literature.

Now he would never collect the next volume he had ordered.

The room felt very quiet indeed.

Then footsteps sounded in the hallway.

The ambulance crew had arrived.

And shortly after them came Doctor Heal.

The day, it seemed, was only beginning.

Doctor Heal

Doctor Heal paused in the doorway.

For a few moments nobody spoke.

The ambulance crew had already reached the same conclusion Alf had reached hours earlier, but procedures were procedures, and experience had taught me that doctors preferred forming their own conclusions.

He looked towards the armchair.

His expression changed almost imperceptibly.

Not dramatically.

Doctor Heal was not a dramatic man.

Yet something in his face became still.

"When was he found?" he asked.

"This morning," said Constable Moss. "Alf found him before six."

Doctor Heal slowly nodded.

"Alf?"

"He's outside."

The doctor glanced through the window towards the yard.

Then his eyes returned to the old farmer seated beside the fireplace.

"I saw him yesterday."

Constable Moss looked up.

"Milton-Price?"

"Yes."

That caught my attention immediately.

Only yesterday.

Doctor Heal stepped closer to the armchair.

"He called the surgery."

"Was something wrong?" asked Moss.

The doctor considered the question.

"He said he wasn't feeling quite himself."

That sounded remarkably unlike Mr Milton-Price.

Complaining about government regulations.

Complaining about weather.

Complaining about sheep.

Those I could imagine.

Complaining about his health was another matter.

"I went out during the afternoon," Doctor Heal continued. "He wasn't keen on the idea."

"Of seeing a doctor?"

"Precisely."

That sounded far more familiar.

I could picture the entire conversation.

Mr Milton-Price reluctantly telephoning for medical advice, spending ten minutes insisting he did not require medical advice, and another ten explaining why medical advice was unnecessary.

Constable Moss opened his notebook.

"How was he when you saw him?"

"Alert."

"He seemed well?"

Doctor Heal hesitated.

"Reasonably."

It was not a word filled with confidence.

Moss noticed.

"So there were concerns?"

The doctor folded his hands behind his back.

"There are always concerns with a man of his age."

"Anything specific?"

Another slight pause.

"I advised him to rest."

That statement alone told me quite a lot.

Mr Milton-Price regarded rest as a personal insult.

Had Doctor Heal instructed him to spend the afternoon in bed, I suspected he would have spent it proving why such advice was unnecessary.

Moss scribbled something down.

"And you had no reason to expect this?"

Doctor Heal looked again towards the armchair.

"No."

His voice was quiet.

"No immediate reason."

The room fell silent once more.

Outside, somewhere in the yard, a sheep bleated.

Inside, the old mantel clock continued its steady ticking.

Twenty-four hours earlier Doctor Heal had stood in this very room talking to Mr Milton-Price.

Now the conversation was over forever.

Questions

The ambulance crew completed their examination and quietly packed away their equipment.

There was no urgency now.

No rush.

Merely formality.

The sort of careful routine that follows when life has already departed.

Eventually we all returned to the yard.

The morning had grown warmer.

Sunlight lay across the farm buildings.

It felt strangely inappropriate.

Days like this ought, somehow, to be grey.

Constable Moss looked around.

"Where's Alf?"

The place where we had left him was empty.

A flicker of concern crossed my mind.

For one unpleasant moment, I wondered whether he had disappeared again.

Then one of the ambulance crew pointed towards a nearby barn.

"Saw him go in there."

We found him sitting on an upturned crate just inside the doorway.

He was surrounded by sacks of feed, old tools, muddy boots and the familiar smells of farm life.

Oddly enough, he seemed calmer there.

Perhaps because the barn still felt normal.

The farmhouse no longer did.

"Alf," I said softly.

He looked up.

Constable Moss remained by the entrance rather than approaching.

"I just need to ask a few questions."

Alf nodded.

"All right."

We stepped back into the yard.

Moss opened his notebook.

"What time did you arrive this morning?"

"About half five."

"Your usual time?"

"Mostly."

"What happened?"

Alf explained everything.

Arriving at the farm.

Not finding Mr Milton-Price outside.

Calling for him.

Receiving no answer.

Checking the kitchen.

Then entering the sitting room.

Each answer came quietly.

Sometimes after a pause.

Sometimes with his eyes fixed firmly on the ground.

Nobody rushed him.

Not Moss.

Not Doctor Heal.

Not even the ambulance crew, who appeared to find reasons to remain nearby while he spoke.

"And that's when you found him?"

Alf nodded.

"In the chair."

"What did you do?"

"I said his name."

His voice became softer.

"I thought maybe he was asleep."

The words struck harder than anything else he had said.

Because of course he had.

A seventeen-year-old farm worker finding an old man apparently sleeping in his armchair.

That was what anyone would hope.

"I called him again," Alf continued.

"He never answered."

Moss waited.

Alf swallowed.

"Then I knew."

The constable closed the notebook slightly.

"What did you do next?"

"I ran."

"Straight away?"

"Yeah."

"You touch anything?"

"No."

"Move anything?"

"No."

Moss nodded.

Then he put the notebook away.

"You've done fine."

Alf looked at him uncertainly.

"I should've stayed."

"You were frightened."

"I left him there."

"Yes."

The response surprised me.

Moss wasn't softening the truth.

Nor was he being cruel.

He was simply allowing the facts to exist.

Alf stared at the ground.

Then Moss added,

"And none of that changes the fact you've done the right thing today."

The tension eased slightly from Alf's shoulders.

Not completely.

But enough.

A Problem

Doctor Heal stepped aside and made a brief telephone call.

"The undertaker is on his way."

A sentence that somehow seemed both ordinary and extraordinary.

Life ended.

Paperwork began.

The machinery of death moved quietly into motion.

Constable Moss looked towards the farmhouse.

"We'll need to locate next of kin."

Alf frowned.

"What does that mean?"

"Family."

"Oh."

"Do you know if Mr Milton-Price had any?"

Alf shook his head.

"I don't know."

"No children?"

"Never mentioned any."

"No brothers or sisters?"

Another shake of the head.

That did not surprise me.

Mr Milton-Price was not a man who regularly discussed personal matters.

For all I knew, he could have had relatives on the other side of the world.

Or nobody at all.

"We'll find out," said Moss.

The prospect seemed to reassure Alf.

Then the constable produced a form.

"I need a few details from you."

Alf nodded.

Moss filled in several boxes before handing over the sheet.

"Can you just check that's correct?"

Alf stared at it.

Several seconds passed.

Then he looked away.

The colour rose in his face.

"I can't."

Moss lowered the paper.

"Can't what?"

Another silence.

This one longer.

More painful.

Finally Alf said,

"I can't read it."

Nobody spoke.

"I know some words," he added quickly. "And numbers. Bits and pieces."

His embarrassment deepened with every sentence.

"But not properly."

Understanding dawned.

The note Mr Milton-Price had once sent to my shop.

The way Alf had handed it over without glancing at it.

The way he never browsed the shelves.

The way he always seemed uncomfortable around books.

I suddenly realised something I should perhaps have noticed much earlier.

Alf could barely read.

At seventeen years old.

For someone whose entire life revolved around a bookshop, it was strangely shocking.

Thousands of books filled my shelves.

To me, reading was as natural as breathing.

To Alf, the words inside them might just as well have been locked doors.

"Did Mr Milton-Price know?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"What did he think?"

Alf shrugged.

"Said it didn't matter much on a farm."

That answer was so perfectly Milton-Price that nobody questioned it.

Constable Moss quietly folded away the form.

"That's all right," he said. "We'll manage without it."

The relief on Alf's face was immediate.

And as I watched him standing there in the farmyard, I found myself looking at him differently.

Not with pity.

Never that.

But with the uncomfortable realisation that I had known the boy for years without truly knowing him at all.

And now the one man who had understood that secret was gone.

The Undertakers

We did not have long to wait.

The undertakers arrived in a dark vehicle that moved slowly up the farm track, raising little clouds of dust behind it.

There were two men.

Both wore black suits despite the growing warmth of the morning.

Neither seemed inclined toward unnecessary conversation.

They spoke quietly with Doctor Heal and Constable Moss before disappearing into the farmhouse.

After that, nobody had much to say.

The farmyard felt strangely suspended, as though the entire place was holding its breath.

Alf stood near the barn.

I remained beside him.

Occasionally one of the sheep called from a distant field.

Otherwise there was only silence.

Not uncomfortable silence.

Just the sort that accompanies events for which nobody possesses the appropriate words.

After a while the two undertakers emerged again.

Between them came Mr Milton-Price.

Alf immediately looked away.

I could hardly blame him.

He had already seen enough that morning.

The men moved carefully, with the practised dignity of people who understood that grief deserved gentleness.

Nobody spoke.

Nobody needed to.

They placed Mr Milton-Price into the vehicle and quietly closed the doors.

A few moments later they drove away.

We watched until the vehicle vanished beyond the hedgerow.

And that was that.

Mr Milton-Price had left his farm for the last time.

For more than eighty years his life had been tied to those fields.

His parents had worked the land before him.

The family had built the farmhouse after the war.

Generations of Milton-Prices watched from photographs hanging upon its walls.

Now the house stood empty.

The departure felt surprisingly final.

Until that moment some stubborn part of my mind had apparently expected him to reappear from somewhere, complaining about fences, sheep or doctors.

Instead there was only an empty road.

And silence.

The Empty House

Constable Moss returned to the farmhouse for one final inspection.

Doctor Heal remained in the yard making notes.

Alf kicked absent-mindedly at a loose stone.

Neither of us spoke.

Eventually Moss emerged carrying a small ring of keys.

He pulled the farmhouse door firmly shut behind him.

The sound seemed louder than it should have been.

Then he locked it.

The click of the lock echoed faintly across the yard.

A simple noise.

Yet it felt oddly significant.

The house had been the centre of Mr Milton-Price's life for decades.

Now it stood sealed and silent.

Waiting.

Moss slipped the key into his pocket.

"Nobody goes in until family are found," he said.

Doctor Heal nodded.

"Probably sensible."

Alf stared at the closed door.

I wondered what he was seeing.

The farmhouse he had worked in for years.

Or the sitting room beyond it.

The armchair.

The morning's discovery.

Perhaps all three.

The Sheep Problem

Then Alf spoke.

"What about the animals?"

Constable Moss blinked.

"What about them?"

"They still need feeding."

For a moment nobody answered.

It was such a practical observation that it felt almost absurd.

A man had died.

An undertaker had come and gone.

There would be paperwork, legal arrangements, questions regarding relatives, wills and ownership.

The sheep, however, remained profoundly uninterested in any of those matters.

Their expectations had not altered at all.

Breakfast was breakfast.

"Someone's got to do it," Alf continued.

"The feed won't put itself out."

Doctor Heal gave the faintest hint of a smile.

The first I had seen all morning.

"You planning on staying?"

"Yeah."

Alf glanced towards the fields.

"I know what needs doing."

There was something different in his voice now.

Not confidence exactly.

Something steadier.

A sense of purpose.

The frightened boy who had arrived outside The Salty Page seemed, for a moment, to recede into the background.

This was familiar territory.

Animals needed feeding.

Water troughs needed checking.

Gates needed inspecting.

These were problems Alf understood.

Perhaps they were the only things that felt normal anymore.

"You'll be all right?" Doctor Heal asked.

Alf nodded.

"Yeah."

"If you're not, come back into the village."

"I will."

The doctor looked unconvinced but accepted the answer.

Maps, Fields and Questions

Before leaving, I found myself glancing once more toward the farmhouse.

The maps remained fresh in my mind.

Those carefully marked boundaries.

The notes.

The circles.

The questions.

It struck me that Mr Milton-Price must have spent a great many hours studying them.

Possibly too many.

I remembered one conversation several months earlier.

He had arrived in the shop on a rainy afternoon carrying a rolled map under his arm.

Without even saying hello, he had spread it across the counter.

"That field doesn't belong to Barnes."

I had looked at the map.

"Which field?"

"That one."

"This one?"

"No, that one."

After ten minutes I had become no wiser regarding ownership while simultaneously learning a great deal about hedgerows, drainage ditches and an argument dating back to approximately 1978.

At the time I had assumed it was merely another Milton-Price grievance.

Now I wasn't so sure.

The maps in the sitting room had suggested something more substantial.

A long-running puzzle.

Perhaps even an obsession.

The thought lingered.

Then I reminded myself that a man's death on a Tuesday morning was not necessarily the beginning of a mystery.

Sometimes it was simply a death.

Pebblewick, unfortunately, had a habit of encouraging other possibilities.

Goodbye, For Now

Doctor Heal eventually checked his watch.

"I need to get back."

There would be patients waiting at the surgery.

Pebblewick might have lost one resident that morning, but the remaining population would continue inconveniently requiring medical attention.

Constable Moss had duties of his own.

Forms.

Reports.

Enquiries regarding relatives.

The endless bureaucracy that seemed to accompany every human event.

Even death, apparently, generated paperwork.

One by one, we prepared to leave.

Doctor Heal climbed into his car.

Constable Moss headed towards the police vehicle.

Alf remained standing beside the barn.

Neither man needed to tell him what to do.

He already knew.

The sheep had seen to that.

As I reached the gate and looked back, I saw him crossing the yard with a bucket in one hand.

His shoulders were still heavy with shock.

His face still pale.

But there was determination there now as well.

A few sheep called from the field beyond.

Alf disappeared into one of the barns.

For the first time that entire morning, he seemed certain of his place in the world.

I turned and began the walk back towards Pebblewick.

Ahead of me lay Harbour Street.

The Salty Page.

The handwritten notice still hanging in the window.

CLOSED THIS MORNING

I suspected that by now Mrs Thistlewood had already seen it.

More importantly, I suspected she was already explaining to somebody why it was there.

The only remaining question was whether her explanation bore any resemblance whatsoever to the truth.

A Strong Coffee

Before reopening The Salty Page, I took refuge in The Merry Teapot.

I needed coffee.

Not ordinary coffee.

The sort of coffee capable of convincing a man that the events of the morning had happened to somebody else entirely.

Molly looked up as I came through the door.

One glance was sufficient.

“Coffee?”

“Yes, please.”

“Strong?”

“Very.”

She nodded and disappeared towards the kitchen.

No questions.

No unnecessary conversation.

There are distinct advantages to living in a village where the person serving the coffee can recognise emotional collapse from twenty feet away and knows better than to investigate it.

I settled into my usual seat by the window.

Outside, the harbour looked deceptively peaceful.

The tide was making its slow way out beyond the breakwater, a handful of gulls drifted above the water, and a fishing boat rocked lazily against the quay.

Nothing in the scene suggested that a man had died that morning.

Nothing suggested Alf sitting alone in a farmyard trying to process what he had found.

Nothing suggested an empty farmhouse overlooking fields that had belonged to the same family for generations.

Molly returned and placed the mug in front of me.

The aroma alone seemed capable of reviving the dead.

Given the day's events, I immediately regretted that particular thought.

I wrapped both hands around the mug and stared out of the window.

Truthfully, I had little desire to reopen the shop.

Part of me was tempted to leave the notice in the window and declare the remainder of Tuesday officially cancelled.

After all, nobody had ever died because they were unable to purchase a paperback novel for a few extra hours.

On the other hand, if I left the notice up until Wednesday, somebody would almost certainly feel obliged to add a second one beneath it reading:

AND WHY?

And in Pebblewick, several people would already be drafting possible answers.

I finished my coffee, thanked Molly, and made my way back towards Harbour Street.

The village seemed to have resumed its usual rhythm.

A delivery van rattled past.

A pair of holidaymakers studied a map beside the harbour.

The gulls had rediscovered their enthusiasm for shouting at one another.

Pebblewick carried on.

Villages usually do.

I unlocked the door of The Salty Page.

The notice came down.

The sign was turned to OPEN.

Then I waited.

As it happened, only one customer arrived that afternoon.

Unfortunately, it was a customer who rarely arrived empty-handed.

Not because she carried parcels.

Because she carried information.

And information, in Pebblewick, was often considerably more dangerous.

Mrs Watkins Knows

The bell above the door rang.

Mrs Watkins entered.

By the expression on her face, she already knew.

How she knew was a mystery.

I had told no one.

Alf was still at the farm.

Doctor Heal had returned to the surgery.

Constable Moss had driven away.

The undertakers had departed quietly.

Yet somehow, within what could not have been more than a couple of hours, Mrs Watkins knew that Mr Milton-Price was dead.

There are certain forces in the world that operate beyond ordinary scientific explanation.

Weather.

Ocean currents.

Migration.

And the movement of private information through Pebblewick.

“Harold.”

“Mrs Watkins.”

“I heard about Mr Milton-Price.”

“Of course you did.”

She removed her sunglasses, adjusted her familiar red-framed spectacles and regarded me expectantly.

“What happened?”

Experience had taught me that telling Mrs Watkins something was none of her business merely encouraged her.

It was rather like attempting to discourage a bloodhound by pointing out that the trail belonged to someone else.

So I told her.

Not everything.

Just enough.

Alf had found Mr Milton-Price.

He had come to me.

The police and ambulance service had attended.

Doctor Heal had been called.

The necessary arrangements had begun.

Mrs Watkins listened in unusual silence.

For her, this represented extraordinary self-discipline.

When I finished, she nodded thoughtfully.

Then she said:

“He had a solicitor.”

The statement appeared so abruptly that for a moment I wondered whether I had missed part of the conversation.

“Who did?”

“Mr Milton-Price.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me.”

Naturally.

That explained everything and nothing simultaneously.

“Do you know the solicitor's name?”

For the first time, Mrs Watkins hesitated.

I stared at her.

She frowned.

“Well, I did.”

This was clearly troubling.

Mrs Watkins could remember who had won the raffle at the Summer Fête in 1999, what prize they had won and why they had subsequently complained about it.

Yet a solicitor's name had apparently escaped captivity.

“London,” she said.

“That narrows it down considerably.”

“Be patient.”

I waited.

She stared at the crime section.

Then suddenly clicked her fingers.

“Atkinson.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Simon Atkinson.”

The memory gathered momentum.

“Simon Atkinson. Atkinson and Carmichael. Somewhere in London.”

I located a scrap of paper and wrote:

SIMON ATKINSON

ATKINSON & CARMICHAEL

LONDON

Mrs Watkins examined it.

“That looks right.”

Lawrence Milton-Price

Then she delivered another surprise.

“His name was Lawrence.”

“What?”

“Mr Milton-Price. His first name.”

I blinked.

“Lawrence?”

“Yes. Lawrence Milton-Price.”

I repeated it silently.

Over the years I must have spoken to the man hundreds of times.

Yet it had genuinely never occurred to me to wonder what his first name was.

He had simply been Mr Milton-Price.

Like Constable Moss or Doctor Heal.

Some people seem born already carrying a title.

Their actual first names exist merely to satisfy official paperwork.

“Lawrence,” I said again.

The name felt oddly unfamiliar.

Mrs Watkins nodded.

“Mr Atkinson dealt with his will.”

“And you know that because...”

“He told me.”

“Of course he did.”

“He trusted him.”

That part interested me.

“Trusted him with what?”

“The farm.”

I looked up.

“The farm?”

“The deeds.”

Now I was paying attention.

Mrs Watkins folded her arms.

“Lawrence said Mr Atkinson held all the paperwork.”

“Original deeds?”

“I assume so.”

“Why?”

“Because he'd bought more land over the years.”

Immediately I thought of the maps spread across the farmhouse table.

The circles.

The notes.

The pencilled boundaries.

The question marks.

Mr Milton-Price had clearly devoted considerable energy to the subject.

Perhaps more than was healthy.

“He said he had documents for all of it,” Mrs Watkins continued.

“According to him.”

She gave me a sharp look over her spectacles.

“That is what documents are for, Harold.”

I decided not to argue.

The truth was that Lawrence Milton-Price had spent decades disagreeing with at least half the county about property boundaries.

Paperwork might settle matters.

Or it might provoke entirely new arguments.

Pebblewick had never shown much enthusiasm for simplicity.

The Cousins

Mrs Watkins became thoughtful.

“There was something else.”

I waited.

“The last time he spoke to me on the telephone, he mentioned cousins.”

“His cousins?”

“I assume so.”

“You assume?”

“He said 'the cousins'. I didn't request a family tree.”

Fair enough.

“What exactly did he say?”

“I don't remember.”

“That's unusually disappointing.”

Mrs Watkins ignored this.

“He was talking about family. Then he mentioned cousins needing to know something.”

“What sort of something?”

“That I don't remember either.”

Which was unfortunate.

Still, it was more than we had known five minutes earlier.

“Did he have much family?”

Mrs Watkins tilted her head.

“Not close by.”

“Meaning?”

“Lawrence had a brother.”

That surprised me.

“A brother?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to him?”

Mrs Watkins settled herself more comfortably.

The posture suggested a story was coming.

“The brother never wanted the farm.”

“What was his name?”

“I can't remember.”

A second memory failure in ten minutes.

I began wondering whether Mrs Watkins required medical attention.

“They argued,” she continued. “Then he joined the Army during the war.”

“The Second World War?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“For years everyone believed he'd been killed.”

“But he wasn't.”

“No.”

She shook her head.

“He survived.”

That changed matters considerably.

The Brother

According to Mrs Watkins, the older brother never returned to live in Pebblewick.

Lawrence stayed.

The brother left.

What disagreement existed between them seemed to have lasted years.

Then came the war.

The older brother joined the Army.

At some point word reached the village that he had been killed.

It was incorrect.

He survived.

Yet even then he did not come home.

“Did Lawrence know?”

“Oh yes.”

“How?”

“He came back.”

“When?”

“For the funerals.”

“Whose funerals?”

“Their parents.”

Now things became significantly more interesting.

Mr and Mrs Milton-Price had both been buried in St Bartholomew's churchyard many years earlier.

Apparently their missing son had returned on both occasions.

“Did he come alone?” I asked.

“The first time, I think so.”

“And the second?”

Mrs Watkins nodded slowly.

“No.”

I waited.

“He brought his wife.”

That was interesting.

Then she added:

“And children.”

That was very interesting.

“How many?”

“I don't know.”

“Boys?”

“I think there was a boy.”

“Girls?”

“Possibly.”

“Possibly?”

“Harold, these funerals happened years ago.”

A reasonable objection.

I looked down at the paper on the counter.

SIMON ATKINSON

ATKINSON & CARMICHAEL

LONDON

The pieces were beginning to form a shape.

Lawrence Milton-Price had never married.

He had no children.

But he had a brother.

A brother who had left, survived the war, married and raised a family.

And now Lawrence was dead.

Somewhere, perhaps many miles from Pebblewick, there might be relatives who had not seen the farm in decades.

People who might not even know they stood to inherit it.

The farmhouse.

The livestock.

The maps.

The disputed boundaries.

The deeds.

Perhaps everything.

I leaned back in my chair.

A few hours earlier I had expected nothing more demanding than reopening a bookshop.

Now I found myself contemplating long-lost relatives, solicitors in London and the future ownership of half the surrounding countryside.

Mrs Watkins looked distinctly pleased.

“You see?”

“What?”

“I told you I was useful.”

“Useful isn't the word I'd choose.”

“Essential, then.”

I sighed.

Outside, a gull landed on the harbour wall and immediately began shouting at another gull.

Pebblewick, at least, appeared to be returning to normal.

Unfortunately, I had a growing suspicion that the Milton-Price family was not.

Enough for One Day

With all that in mind, I came to the conclusion that I had done quite enough bookselling for one Tuesday.

Not that much actual bookselling had taken place.

I looked around The Salty Page.

The afternoon had been every bit as quiet as I had expected. Very few customers had appeared, very few books had changed hands, and yet somehow the day had become far more eventful than many busier ones.

Mr Milton-Price was dead.

Or rather, as I was now slowly teaching myself to think of him, Lawrence Milton-Price.

There was a solicitor in London.

A will.

Farm deeds.

Maps covered in disputed boundaries.

An estranged brother who had once been thought dead.

A wife.

Children.

Possibly grandchildren.

And, floating somewhere around the edges of it all, a mysterious reference to cousins.

For a Tuesday afternoon, that seemed more than sufficient.

"I'm closing."

Mrs Watkins looked genuinely surprised.

"It's early."

"I've had a long day."

That appeared difficult to argue with.

For once, she made no attempt.

Instead, she nodded thoughtfully and adjusted her spectacles.

I looked down at the piece of paper lying on the counter.

SIMON ATKINSON

ATKINSON & CARMICHAEL

LONDON

The name suddenly seemed rather important.

If Lawrence Milton-Price had trusted a solicitor with his will, his deeds and whatever family arrangements he had made over the years, then Constable Moss would certainly need to know about it.

I tapped the paper.

"Moss should have this."

Mrs Watkins straightened immediately.

"I'll tell him."

I looked at her.

"You?"

"Yes."

The enthusiasm in her voice suggested she had just received official promotion to Detective Inspector.

"Tell him exactly what you've told me."

"Of course."

"Exactly."

Mrs Watkins gave me a look normally reserved for people who had questioned her intelligence.

"Harold, I spent years working at the surgery."

"I know."

"I am perfectly capable of passing on information."

That was true.

The difficulty with Mrs Watkins had never been the transmission of information.

It was the quantity.

Information tended to acquire travelling companions.

Still, Constable Moss knew Mrs Watkins almost as well as I did.

He would understand.

Probably.

I gathered the paper from the counter and folded it neatly.

Then I walked over to the door.

The sign still displayed OPEN.

For a moment I considered leaving it.

Then I remembered what sort of day it had been.

I turned it around.

CLOSED

The little click against the glass felt unexpectedly satisfying.

Mrs Watkins had already reached the door.

Indeed, she appeared remarkably eager to leave for someone who had spent much of the afternoon asking questions.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

She paused.

"To find Constable Moss."

Naturally.

The response was delivered with such certainty that I felt rather foolish for asking.

Somewhere in Pebblewick, Constable Wilfred Moss was undoubtedly enjoying a peaceful few minutes of paperwork.

Those peaceful minutes were about to end.

Mrs Watkins opened the door.

The bell tinkled overhead.

Then she disappeared onto Harbour Street with the determined stride of a woman carrying important intelligence.

I watched her through the window as she set off towards the centre of the village.

There was purpose in her step.

A mission, even.

If she had been issued with a warrant card and a bicycle, nobody would have questioned it.

Eventually she vanished from sight.

I locked the door behind her.

The shop fell quiet.

For the first time all day, there was nobody asking questions.

Nobody delivering information.

Nobody discovering bodies, discussing wills or tracing missing relatives.

Just shelves of books and the comforting silence they generally preferred.

I stood for a moment in the middle of the shop.

Then I switched off the lights.

Whatever happened next with the Milton-Price family could wait until tomorrow.

For one day, I had attended a farm, spoken to the police, met undertakers, discovered an illiterate farmhand, learned that Mr Milton-Price's name was Lawrence, and acquired more information about his family than I had obtained during the previous ten years combined.

That seemed entirely enough.

Besides, somewhere out in the village, Mrs Watkins was now looking for Constable Moss.

And experience suggested that was a situation best observed from a very safe distance indeed.