Constable Over the Stile by Nicholas Rhea

Author:Nicholas Rhea [Rhea, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780709073901
Google: IopMOAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0750513632
Publisher: Robert Hale Limited
Published: 1999-06-14T14:00:00+00:00

A much smaller house provided another mystery for me in Aidensfield. It was one of those tiny village cottages that people tended to overlook because it was hidden behind others and access was by a narrow footpath between two larger properties on the main street. It was impossible to gain access with a motor vehicle, except perhaps a small motor bike, because the footpath itself was only one-person wide and quite overgrown with weeds. Some fifty yards along it, however, stood Jasmine Cottage with its yellow door, blue woodwork around the windows, red tiles and green wooden railings. On the few occasions I had to visit the house, I thought it looked like something out of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, or a house from some other part of Disney’s wonderful world.

The owner/occupier was Miss Gallant. Everyone knew her by that name and her house was sometimes referred to as Miss Gallant’s Cottage because she had lived there for as long as anyone could remember. I never found any living person who could recall the house without Miss Gallant. She was a short but sturdy woman of indeterminate age with a head of iron-grey hair always held in place on top of her head with a red ribbon and a huge bow. The possessor of a very loud voice and cultured accent, she dressed in long, flowing, very colourful clothes which were almost theatrical. This distinctive appearance was enhanced by her highly polished, black, lace-up boots of the kind Victorian ladies used to wear and the purple parasol she always carried whatever the weather.

I reckoned she was well into her eighties when I was policing Aidensfield and during the course of my work, I learned she had no family. There were no brothers and sisters, nieces or nephews and although she did have a wide circle of friends in the district who popped in to visit her, no members of her family ever called. For that reason, everyone assumed, quite naturally, that she was a spinster without any relations.

Miss Gallant was one of the village characters. She was always called Miss Gallant because no one knew her Christian name and even her friends referred to her in that rather old-fashioned formal manner. Nonetheless, she was universally liked; she appeared to be financially sound and she could often be seen pottering up to the shop or the post office for her daily provisions where she placed her orders in her booming, commanding voice. I discovered that, in her younger days, she was often away from Aidensfield, sometimes travelling overseas and sometimes leaving her cottage for two or three weeks at a stretch, or even for just a weekend. For that reason, she never kept pets or livestock, and was content to live in such a tiny home. Because she had no car, she travelled by train, but always walked to her village destinations or took Arnold Merryweather’s bus if she had to visit her bank in Ashfordly. In recent years,

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