Booted off the Front Page by Pickles the Dog

By Thom Vivien

C.C. Cottinger takes on a new challenge. It should be easy to run a small antiques shop, shouldn't it? But all too soon, she and her business partner are seeing the uglier side of the antiques trade and of some locals too. Death and deviousness threatened to spoil C.C.'s fun as Carnaby Street, The Beatles and World Cup soccer turn England into one huge party. Who was Booted off the Front Page and who was Pickles the Dog?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257509102

Book preview

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Chapter One

‘Oh no!" I muttered. I’d been checking my hair in the rear view mirror when I thought I’d caught a glimpse of a policeman making his way slowly along the High Street towards me. Turning awkwardly, I tried to make out just where he was. It would be the absolute limit to get a parking ticket when I was engaged on a mission of mercy. But, even as I peered round anxiously, the passenger door flew open and my friend Helena tumbled untidily into the car. Her apologies for keeping me waiting were a little muffled. She’d got her coat belt tangled up under the seat and was trying to pull it free.

Gosh, sorry to keep you waiting. I got held up by a customer. One of those who can’t make up their mind and keep asking endless questions before ... She broke off suddenly as I managed to get the car into gear and we leapt jerkily out into traffic. Knowing how easily I could be distracted, Helena wisely kept quiet until we were on the outskirts of town. Then she said, It’s very good of you to take me out for the afternoon. I have to admit that I’m in a bit of a state. Just when I was beginning to feel settled in my job too.

Hmmmm, I can imagine. What is Mr. Edgerton thinking about, selling off his shop now? I mean, he can’t be more than fifty, though admittedly he behaves like an octogenarian. Have you seen him secretively filling in football pools? Has he come into a vast fortune do you think? If he has, you should marry him and move him out to Warrens End. I can think of dozens of ways for you spend his money out there.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Helena give me a look. I’m sure money isn’t the reason he’s leaving, she said in a tone of voice matching her look. Besides, I shouldn’t marry him if it were. You’re entirely right about him being an old maid."

Yes, and one who’s causing real problems for you. Are there any other decent places to work the hours you want in Market Neeham?

Helena shook her head mournfully. No, there aren’t, she sighed. I’ve asked round and found nothing on offer at all. Besides which, I do like being involved with antiques.

Why Helena, I laughed, I thought we’d just agreed Mr. Edgerton wasn’t your sort! Naturally she ignored this poor attempt at humour, only clutching at the armrest as we circled the roundabout and swung on to the bypass.

I’ve been looking carefully as I cycle into town each day, but I haven’t seen much honeysuckle in the hedgerows, she remarked presently. She’d probably had enough of talking about her job prospects, poor thing. Although on second thoughts, perhaps she was just hoping that I would slow down to look at the hedges myself. When I quizzed her, she admitted she did prefer to travel at a more sedate speed.

But I’m only going at the speed limit now, Helena. Allowing for the discrepancies all modern speedometers show that is, I declared. She peered across at the dashboard.

You’d think that in this day and age, they could manufacture an instrument that would register closer than fifteen miles an hour off the right speed, wouldn’t you? she asked in mock innocence. Honestly! People are always being rude about my driving.

There are legions of small villages scattered round my home town of Market Neeham. Helena herself lived in one and we had visited many others on our sporadic days out. Some were nondescript and others far too taken over by tourism to be bearable. But our destination today, Duncot, managed to be both pretty and unspoilt. The long, wide street at its centre was blessed with some well-stocked shops, including three stuffed with antiques. After a brief tussle with reverse gear, I managed to get us parked fairly near to the curb. Come on, I said, grabbing my jacket from the back seat where I’d tossed it earlier. Let’s eat first, then walk round seeing what’s new, shall we? Minutes later we were sitting at a corner table in a not-too-quaint cafe, putting in an order for welsh rarebit and a pot of tea for two.

My companion, Helena Mitchell Flint, had just turned twenty three. I was a few years older but often felt she was half my age. I put this down to the differences in the way we’d grown up. After her father had been killed near the end of the war, Helena and her French mother had subsisted very quietly in a maisonette in London. They’d made no real friends, only acquaintances, like the people they nodded their heads to at church every Sunday. Four years earlier, her mother had died of influenza. Helena had to give up her hopes of a scholarship to university and take a job in a book shop; she’d had neither the time, nor the inclination since to make friends. My own mother had been killed in a traffic accident when I was twelve but, from what I had gathered, had been a much warmer, kinder person than Helena’s Maman. We had always lived a very comfortable life. Both before and after my mother’s death, we were involved in numerous social events so we knew and were friends with a good many people. When I reached my later teens, I added in my own hectic social life, thanks mainly to my mania for tennis.

Helena and I had met just over a year ago. My father had been her Great Uncle’s solicitor. When the Professor passed away and Helena inherited his house in the nearby village of Swythenham, I befriended her, despite our very different characters. Soon after she’d moved in, she became deeply involved in a murder mystery which completely overshadowed her early months in the village. Despite my father’s unease, I stuck by her and even helped a little in clearing her name. Once all that unpleasantness was over, she’d managed to find a much needed part-time job, working at Edgerton’s Antiques and Estate Valuations. Antiques play a fairly large role in the tourist economy of Oxfordshire. Although Market Neeham isn’t on the major circuit, Edgerton’s had been a going concern for many years. It seemed a safe enough haven. Now, after only six months, the job and Helena’s new-found contentment, were drawing to a close.

All winter long, I’d made a point of dragging her out for lunch or tea once a week. We sometimes added in a browse round a rival antique shop. With a customary ‘familiarity breeding contempt-ness’, I had never paid much attention to antiques, despite the many shops selling them all around me. My own tastes ran to the modern in everything. Many hours of wasted effort had been spent in the years since I had grown up, trying to persuade my father to change our own home’s decor. As he quietly pointed out each time I raised the issue, the furniture we owned was good, comfortable and suited the style of our house. There was no good reason for exchanging any of it, at substantial cost, for flimsier pieces which would be out of date in a very few years. While I secretly admitted the truth of this, it didn’t stop me from spending hours planning the re-decoration of the rooms I’d grown up in so happily.

Although, truth be told, I would have found it hard to part with a few of the furnishings myself. There was a small child’s chair with a woven wicker seat, for instance. It could instantly bring to mind my countless dolls’ tea parties as well as my younger brother Simon pretending to be a bus driver. Then there was the gate-leg table which had served as a fort, zoo, castle or cave depending on which game Simon and I were playing. Where would I find space for those treasures in a room centred on a sinuous Italian sectional upholstered in glossy red leather?

Nowadays, with Helena being so involved with antiques, I found browsing in the local shops with her fascinating. Not that I wanted to live with them. But she seemed able to answer my questions about anything and everything most satisfactorily. Not with dry-as- dust dates, but with tidbits about when certain leg shapes were in fashion, or what the codes on the bottom of porcelain bowls meant. During the upcoming summer we’d planned to continue our visits to some minor country houses. In the larger places, one was ushered around and lectured at. But the smaller ones usually allowed us to wander round quietly by ourselves. Helena would bring the rooms to life for me. No wonder Mr. Edgerton had allowed her to take over a good deal of the dating and valuing of pieces recently. Now, there was this sudden, depressing news about him closing down. It had taken me all winter to get her into a more optimistic frame of mind and I wasn’t prepared to let her slide back into acting like Pooh’s friend Eeyore.

Chapter Two

Hence this afternoon out, and thus far it was working well. The rarebit was delicious, the tea freshly-brewed and all was served on good china. Over in one corner stood the cake trolley which would be wheeled up to tempt us shortly. Once I’d taken the edge off my appetite, I began to take more of an interest in the other patrons. I’ve always been a people-watcher. And, even though I say so myself, I have an excellent eye for style. Something sadly lacking in many of those now sitting around us.

Mind you, Helena takes no interest whatsoever in fashion, and it shows. But in her case, ancient tweed skirts and classic cardigans are exactly right for her. She’s slim, verging on thin, and inclined to be mousy. My insistence on regular visits to my hairdresser has resulted in a becoming cut which frames her face. She used to wear it pulled back unattractively with a large slide. Unlike many in the tweedy set, she is always neatly groomed with her clothes pressed and straight-hemmed. All her cycling about in village and town has given her a wonderful complexion which even I envy. So there she sat opposite me, nice English Miss that she is, making shushing noises.

What’s the matter? I asked innocently. Can’t you hear me? I was saying that the lady over by the far window ....

Of course, I can hear you, Helena interrupted swiftly, her voice low, but crisp in tone. I should think she can too, not to mention everyone else in the room. If you must make caustic comments Caroline, do keep your voice down.

I’d be doing her a favour if she did overhear me, I grumbled back at her. She might give up wearing pink altogether.

Well I think she looks rather pretty. Rather like the pelargonium in pots on your patio, my companion replied, after a cautious glance in the woman’s direction. Momentarily distracted, I told her that the plants were actually geraniums.

Daddy insists on having them out early even though they have to put back into the cold frame every time it gets cold.

Actually, although people tend to call them geraniums, they are really pelargonium, Caroline. Geraniums are the perennials called cranesbill that you have in those beds at the front of the house. Guessing I was about to get a brief historical essay on the finding and hybridisation of the plants I jumped in quickly.

Honestly Helena, if you weren’t such a nice person, I’d have to stop being your friend! Full of the right names for things that don’t really matter like those plants but then saying that poor thing looks pretty. She doesn’t at all. She looks like a fat fairy in a pantomime. People with that shade of blonde hair, bottled or not, should never wear fuschia, I added sententiously.

To my surprise, Helena stopped frowning and chuckled instead. Oh Caroline, she spluttered, you’re so vain about your hair being the colour that it is. With no help from anything in a bottle, unless from a genie.

I pretended to pout at her but had to acknowledge the truth of the matter. My hair is a source of great satisfaction to me. I’m blessed with masses of it, all thick and beautifully fair. It always looks as though I spend hours styling it. Which I don’t. Added to which, I have a decent figure which frequent games of tennis help keep in top shape. Fashion matters to me so I wear decent clothes, as up-to-the-minute as I can find. I’m nowhere near model material, but I never lack for partners on or off the courts. At this point, my thoughts drifted momentarily but the arrival of the cakes brought me back down to earth.

Twenty minutes and a brief tussle over the bill later, the afternoon sun warmed our backs as we strolled along the full length of the village street. Two shops we went into were the real thing, filled with covetable antiques but the third was a glorified junk shop. We were uncomfortably aware that it was exploiting tourists mercilessly.

That’s something I could never be party to, Helena confided as we left that place in a hurry. Luckily Mr. Edgerton always keeps everything very open and above board. In actual fact, now that I come to think of it, that may have something to do with why he’s giving it all up.

How so? I asked.

Well, I’m not sure. But he has been making comments recently about being tired of pressure being put on him. He gave me the distinct impression that some of the rival dealers feel he is far too decent and honest.

An honest antique dealer! No wonder the others are upset with him.

By now, we were back by the car and it was more than time we were on our way home. I invited Helena to join us for supper. Janet, our daily housekeeper, always left something ready for me to reheat when Father arrived home from the office. There was bound to be enough for one extra, especially someone with as small an appetite as Helena’s. What with persuading her my invitation wouldn’t cause problems and her reluctance to talk while I was driving, the subject of Mr. Edgerton’s honesty was soon forgotten.

As I had assured her he would be, Father was more than pleased I’d asked Helena to join us. For years I’d badgered him about following him into the legal profession. But he judged that my intense interest in peoples’ personal lives would not stand me in good stead there. Instead, my younger brother Simon was carrying on the family tradition by joining Binns and Cottinger Solicitors. At least, he would be after he left university in a few months time. In the meantime, with just Father and me at meals, talk tended to fall into predictable channels. I was always curious about what he had been up to in the office, but never interested in what he wanted to tell me. Rather than arcane legal issues, I wanted to know what people had said, how they’d reacted to good news or bad. Recently we’d both grown tired of this jousting, but what else was there to talk about? The tennis season wasn’t yet underway and neither of us was political. Any mention of current fashions was likely to drive Father into his study so I was at a loss for alternatives. While Helena wasn’t a brilliant conversationalist, she brought with her a welcome change of air. Declining her offer of help in the kitchen, I sat her out on the patio with Father. It was barely warm enough there but it would be pleasant enough for fifteen minutes or so. Giving a brief summary of our day’s doings to my father, she was able to ignore my whispered aside about ‘how pretty the pink potted pelargonium looked’ as I went inside.

Later, after we’d eaten, Helena and I stacked the dishes ready for Janet to tackle in the morning. She was looking far more relaxed. Father hadn’t been able to suggest any alternative employment, however he was a kind and reassuring person to talk with. We had a couple of games of Scrabble, but Helena wasn’t aggressive enough for me to thoroughly enjoy myself. Then it was time for us to drive her home to Swythenham. It was quite dark so Father parked the car with its