Free Trouble in the Village (Tales from Turnham Malpas) by Rebecca Shaw

it and I daren’t.’
    Ralph said, ‘We’ll both go. The two of us. If it’s mice, well, Tom will have to do something about it.’
‘If it’s not?’
    ‘Well, if it’s not … it could be a tramp gone in there for the night out of the rain. Or … Muriel’s vivid imagination?’ He looked gently into her face and she felt both foolish and indignant.
    ‘I’m not in my dotage, Ralph. I heard those noises. I’ll finish this water and then we’ll go and we’ll sit quietly in a pew by the tomb and we’ll listen together. If you’ll hold my hand that is and I put my feet up on a hassock just in case.’
    ‘Gladly.’
    Ralph pushed open the heavy door and there was Tom in his bright orange overalls busy dusting round the heads of the statues with Willie’s special long-handled feather duster. Everything so ordinary and commonplace it was alarming in itself.
    ‘Good morning, Sir Ralph, Lady Templeton! Lovely morning. If you’re wanting a quiet moment I can come back later.’
    Tom’s cheerful greeting flinging her pell-mell back into normality somehow worsened Muriel’s fear. Ralph, clasping her hand firmly in his, found she’d started trembling again. ‘That’s all right, Tom, you carry on. We’ve come for Muriel’s brass-polishing box. She thinks she left it by the font.’
    ‘She did. I’ve put everything back in it, Lady Templeton. You’d dropped it.’ Tom sounded slightly puzzled but was too polite to ask why she’d obviously run away in haste. He went up to the font, picked up her box and took it across to her. ‘There we are. If you feel it’s getting more than you can fit in I’ll gladly take over and do the polishing myself.’ Tom’s smile was so kind, Muriel felt quite restored.
‘That’s very kind of you, Tom, but I do enjoy my polishing. There’s not much I can do for the church but this is something within my capabilities and I should hate to give it up. Thank you all the same.’
    ‘That’s fine.’
    ‘Have you been in here all the morning?’
    ‘No, I came in about five minutes ago. Before that I was clearing the weeds away from the old gate at the back that leads to the Big House.’ He went to the main door and opened it for them.
    Ralph carried the box in one hand and held Muriel’s hand with the other. She was gripping his fingers so tightly he had no circulation in them.
    When they were safely out on the path she whispered, ‘I wish he wouldn’t wear those orange overalls. They make him look like some kind of malevolent insect, made huge by a mad scientist in a laboratory somewhere and released to take over the world. Do you think there are more of them?’
    ‘Muriel!’
    ‘It’s true, they do. But you see I was in there by myself and I did hear those noises, but we couldn’t very well sit there to listen for them with Tom working, could we?’
    ‘No. Are you sure you heard noises?’
    ‘You have never doubted my word before, Ralph, so why do you doubt it now?’
    ‘I’m sorry, my dear. I’ll go back and ask Tom to put down some traps just in case. We have had mice in before, some years ago, so you could be right.’
    ‘Thank you. I’ll go home and get the lunch.’
Muriel went into the Village Store after lunch to collect the video of Shakespeare in Love which Jimbo had ordered especially for her.
    ‘Jimbo rang me yesterday and said it was in, Bel.’
    ‘Right, Lady Templeton. I expect he’s put it in the back office. I won’t be a moment.’ Bel trotted away into the back, leaving Muriel with Linda behind the Post Office grille doing her accounts and Sheila Bissett occupied with choosing a birthday card.
    ‘Good afternoon, Sheila.’
    ‘Good afternoon, Muriel. I was hoping to see you, Is it possible you could do my brass cleaning next week and I’ll do the next two weeks instead? Ron-ald is going up to London for a few days to some union meetings and I’d love to go with him, shopping and things, you know.’
    Somewhat disconcerted, Muriel