I am of two minds on the obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana). It appears to be easily influenced—I move a flower on a stem in a certain direction and it remains. Or so it would seem, but when I turn my back, it returns to its chosen aspect. Perhaps it has a stronger will than I give it credit. BB
Ger continued to call “Oi! Oi!” as he ran into the field. For a moment, the bull was frozen, but then he took up the challenge and trotted toward Ger in a roundabout fashion as if checking out the competition.
Pru had frozen, too, but when Ger looked at her and yelled, “Go on, run!” she didn’t stop to ask questions. She dashed the rest of the way across the field, making it almost to safety until, just before she reached the stile, she stepped in a hole and fell splat onto her knees and into a fresh, steaming pile of cow manure. She heard panting behind her and leapt up, slipped once, and then scampered over the stile with Ger hot on her heels.
She looked back into the field and saw Custard—who had kept up the chase—veer off at the last minute to saunter back toward the cows, no doubt quite proud of himself. Pru collapsed onto the verge below an elder, and Ger flung himself to the ground a few feet away, both panting. Pru’s ankle gave her a twinge—she’d sprained it badly almost two years ago, and the injury occasionally came back to haunt her.
At last, she was able to ask, “Were you following me?”
Ger scowled at her for a moment and then said, “Yes.”
Pru moved her hand slowly to her bag, thinking to search surreptitiously for her phone, but her hands were covered in muck, and so first she wiped them on her thighs, the only clean spots she could find on her trousers. She did this without taking her eyes off Ger, who, she noticed, looked worse than he had the last time she had seen him—skin sallower, eyes more sunken, scruffier, and a bit shaky.
“So what was that about?” he asked, nodding back toward Custard. “Someone dare you?”
“No, not a dare,” she said crossly. “I’ve gone through the field before without him ever noticing—I don’t know why he’s suddenly taken against me.” A cow off in the field bellowed. “I’m not sure I would’ve made it if you hadn’t intervened—so—thanks.”
“You shouldn’t try to outrun a bull,” Ger warned, pulling out the tail of his shirt and wiping his face.
Her nerves jangled, Pru’s only response was to giggle. Ger’s frown deepened. But she kept giggling, and at last he grinned.
She abandoned the search for her phone, realizing if Ger had wanted to do her harm he could’ve let Custard do it for him. Instead, she contemplated her condition—she reeked of sweat and smoke, and now had cow dung smeared down her legs. A thought cut through her self-pity.
“Did you want to talk to me about something?” she asked. “Is that why you were following me this morning and now?”
Ger studied the ground. “I didn’t know he was here, see,” he mumbled. “And, I hadn’t met Bram, but then I did, and she’s been good to me.” He seemed to catch himself at this intimate confession and shot Pru an alarmed look.
“Bram told me about your sister,” she said. “I’m very sorry. I have a brother. I know how important siblings are.”
His alarm segued into wariness and then dissipated. He shrugged one shoulder. “Well, so that’s how it is. I didn’t know when I first arrived what this was all about. And so, what did I care if someone wanted to build in those meadows?”
“Build what?”
“Nothing you or I could afford, I can tell you that,” Ger growled.
“You’re telling me Mr. Bede wanted to build on the meadows?”
“The old man? Do me a favor,” Ger scoffed. “As if he’d touch that precious land of his.”
“If this is about Mr. Bede’s death, you should tell the police whatever you know,” Pru said.
Ger recoiled. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I know how they work—all ‘we’d like you to come in and answer a few questions to help us with our inquiry,’ and the next thing you know they’ve put the screws on you and you’re up before the—” He broke off and snapped his mouth shut.
“The meadows,” Pru said, “were precious to Mr. Bede. I thought they were precious to Bram as well.” She saw Ger flinch, and she grabbed hold of a slender connecting thread. “Does this have something to do with the badgers? Did you disturb the badger sett?”
Ger shook his head violently. “You don’t know what you’re talking about if you think I’d disturb a sett. Easy to blame me, though, isn’t it? Like that rock through that window. ‘Oh let’s see, why don’t we finger Ger for that one?’ ” He concerned himself with pulling at a piece of dry grass. “They aren’t there, anyway—the badgers. Not since I’ve been around. But there’s a sett in the next piece of wood just beyond that. Might be seven or eight of them. Two cubs born this year—I’ve seen them.”
Badger-friendly Ger Crombie? Pru tried to sort this out, but she couldn’t quite think in a straight line—fatigue and post-bull fear had left her baffled and more than a bit disoriented and light-headed. The last, she realized, could be because she hadn’t eaten anything since toast for breakfast.
“Is it Bram? But why would Bram want to build?” she asked.
“This is all wrong!” Ger shouted angrily. “Can’t I be left alone? No, apparently not. And now, this business with the old man’s will—what’s left for Bram?”
“Won’t Cynthia help her?”
Ger shut down—his eyes blank, all fear and anger gone. “She’s another one I don’t trust.”
He leapt to his feet, startling Pru, but he didn’t approach her. Instead he asked, “You all right now?”
“Yes, thanks.”
He turned to leave, but looked over his shoulder and said, “I won’t let them pin this on Bram, you can be sure about that.”
Pru had watched Ger stomp off, taking a footpath that led him in a different direction from the Copper Beech. After making sure he was well and truly gone, she proceeded on her way, unable to sort out the statements and accusations he had flung. She’d lay it all out to Christopher—perhaps he could make sense of it.
When she arrived at the B&B, Pru circled round to the door off the conservatory and caught Mrs. Draycott’s eye through the kitchen window. The landlady came out to the terrace, took one look at her, and said, “Well, Ms. Parke, you look as if you’ve been through the wars.”
She felt it, too. “Are you alone?” Pru asked. “I desperately need a bath, but I’d better take my things off out here.”
She gave the landlady a précis of the day while she stripped in Mr. Draycott’s shed. Leaving her clothes in a mucky, ashy heap, she dashed indoors, up the stairs, and into the bathroom.
“I am soon to be off on my walk,” Mrs. Draycott said through the bathroom door.
Five o’clock already, Pru thought. The day had slipped away.
“And, Ms. Parke, you say Dr. Cherrystone has seen Coral?”
“Yes, she was still sleeping when I left. Natalie will run her over later.”
“He’s a trouper, that man. Every day, all those months of Batsford’s illness, the three of us up in the lane would see Cherry crossing the meadows to Glebe House. Of course, he stopped that the day after Batsford died—no daily visits now.”
Pru paused with the shower nozzle in hand, ready to wash her hair before drawing her bathwater.
“You saw him on your morning walk?”
“Indeed—regular as clockwork. Our usual route and our usual sights. And equally delightful each time.”