Disquiet at Albany Read Online Free PDF Page B

cottage of thatched roof and cob, set some distance from the road. The vicar had loaned us his bull’s-eye lantern, for by now it was completely dark and visibility, due to the lack of street lamps in these out of the way country places, very sporadic, causing me to narrowly avoid tripping into a chicken coop as we approached the front door through the garden.
    â€˜Do come in, sirs. Would you like tea? There’s plenty in the pot.’
    â€˜Thank you madam. A hot drink is most welcome on a bitter, rainy night such as this. We are new to the Broads and enjoying a bird-watching holiday. We stay at the Duck and Drake further down.’
    â€˜I will have a biscuit, thank you,’ said I, warming to the lady at once. She made us feel splendidly at home and seldom have I encountered such openness and genuine hospitality.
    The labourer’s cottage belonging to Mrs Weekes, a washerwoman by trade, who supplemented her modest income by the sewing and mending of lace and fabrics, consisted of a front parlour that, although cramped and smoky from the coal range, was kept trim and tidy and there was a homely, welcoming atmosphere to the place. Tommy, unaware that he was about to be unmasked and suffer reprimand for his art’s sake, chomped on a thick wedge of crusty loaf smothered in dripping.
    â€˜Well sirs, what can I do for thee?’ asked the chubby matron, beaming with goodwill, her face lit up by the oil lamp above. ‘Help your’sels to more tea.’
    â€˜We have just come from the rectory,’ said Holmes, taking out his pipe and tobacco pouch and placing them upon the chequered table cloth, ‘where, before taking sherry, we were given a tour of the vestry by your most courteous and engaging clergyman, the Rev. Marsden-Lee. He was anxious to show us a new portrait he had recently acquired – somewhat simplistic and yet altogether a most well orchestrated caricature. The face with its twitching whiskers stood out most particularly.’
    The boy, who was by now supping tea from his mug, went very bright red in the face and managed to spill scalding hot liquid down the front of his smock.
    â€˜Look at you, Tommy, you silly nitwit. What’s come over you? Drink they’se tea properly like a young gentleman, like I’se always taught you as a good ma.’
    â€˜I b’aint a nitwit,’ he fumed. ‘I’se cans’t knock up a coffin, can’t I, shave the planks, French polish the elm to a grand finish?’
    â€˜Course you can dear, now don’t get riled so. I know’st Simkins our local builder and undertaker is very pleased with your standard of work and he makes all the coffins for the villages hereabouts. He is of the opinion you are a skilful, worthy craftsman, but, like I says, don’t slop tea everywhere.’
    â€˜A craftsman in wood should be able to use a pen-knife else a sharp chisel most effectively. Perhaps that old windmill at Potters Ditch could do with a plank or two pegged into place,’ remarked Holmes.
    This time the lad visibly tensed. Once more his cheeks flushed, a quivering, nervous tic evident beneath his left eye. He scowled at my colleague, no doubt wishing he would disappear in a cloud of smoke up the chimney. He held his tea mug in a vice-like grip, so hard I thought his wrap-around fingers would crack the enamel.
    â€˜I shall be brief and entirely to the point, Tommy. I think you have considerable artistic talent and will go far. But the church vestry is hardly the best backdrop for your “free-fall” masterpieces. Neither should you go round defacing headstones, else daubing paint on doors. You have left a trail of etched graffiti in your wake, my dear fellow. Youthful angst, a need to express oneself by defacing property, is hardly a new phenomenon. You are not the first young man to rebel!’
    Tommy Weekes’s jaw dropped. A withering sigh escaped his parted lips revealing diseased gums with a