Read Online Fete Fatale by Robert Barnard - Free Book Online Page A

preparation for the opening, which was set for eleven o’clock. I was organizing the vast array of junk we had collected for display on our stall, which was carefully situated in one of the best and most central positions in the marquee (good, it must be said, for chatting to people, as well as selling things). I say ‘our’ stall, but I had collected the stuff, and now I was being allowed to set it out—Mr Horsforth merely standing by and saying ‘You do it so well.’ The implication that this was ‘woman’s work’ seemed to hang unspoken in the atmosphere.
    If there is anything I loathe, it’s being watched while I’m working. I said: ‘I hope you’ve organized a few presentable boys to meet Father Battersby?’
    â€˜Heavens above, it quite slipped my mind,’ he fussed. ‘Timothy! Timothy!’
    Across the chaos of preparation in the marquee a fair head turned readily in the direction of the call. Mr Horsforth fussed off, and I saw him giving lengthy and peremptory instructions to his son. I wondered, idly, how many young men of twenty-three or -four would like being summoned and instructed in that manner by their father in a public place.
    I turned my attention to the junk. I call it junk because the majority of the stuff was Thyrza’s. I had, in fact, been able to pick up one or two good pieces of this and that from other people, but Thyrza’s junk surrounded me in cartons: whereas she would have had to pay the garbage men to come and cart it away, I not only had to collect it myself, but also to feign gratitude as well. And Thyrza would throw a fit of bad temper when she saw that not allof it was displayed. That was out of the question, however. I devoted one end of the stall to a selection of the stuff: souvenirs of depressing holiday-resorts, a stone hot-water bottle, a monstrous collection of hatpins, odd shoe-trees, moth-eaten tablemats, a broken brass fender and a Britannia metal inkwell and penholder. Still in the cartons was a bedpan. I thought of labelling that end of the stall Souvenirs of Thyrza Primp , but I did not think that her popularity with the public at large was such that they would want any keepsake of her after she had taken herself into her chilly retirement. The better things were given a better display at the other end of the stall, and I had a few of those in reserve, too, as soon as any of them should go. I priced them high. On Thyrza’s things I was ready to negotiate a give-away.
    Across the aisle I noticed that Mrs Nielson had priced all her homemade jams and chutneys at 40p.
    â€˜Too cheap,’ I shouted.
    â€˜No it’s not,’ she shouted back, patting Gustave, who was tied up under the table. ‘It’s rubbish, most of it. Why should people pay the same price as for good commercial jams, or more? I tell everyone that of course theirs was lovely, but not everyone’s was, and I couldn’t cause ill-feeling by setting different prices . . . ’
    Mrs Nielson seemed to be getting Hexton’s measure (though she was wrongly dressed: her powder-blue suit and hat were that bit too formal and old-fashioned for the fête, since that is the day when Hexton women celebrate the coming of summer in flowery skirts and cotton blouses—if it’s not raincoats and wellies weather).
    It was getting close to eleven o’clock, and soon it would be time for the raging mob to be let in. A brief trip outside the marquee (to get away from the babble, which was o’ertopped by the constant loud-hailing of Franchita, who was at her most bossy and unreasonable, and might have been masterminding D-Day) suggested that today there would indeed be a crowd. The sun had brought them out, and old and young were beginning to congregate in the meadows, casually dressed, good-humoured and flirtatious. Just the crowd to be indulgently disposed towards the home produce stall, the candy-floss bar,