The House on Cold Hill

14

Ollie left the old lady, Annie Porter, his head spinning. She was wrong. She must be. Maybe her memory wasn’t too great.

He walked on down into the village, deep in thought, as the tractor driven by grim, surly Arthur Fears, local farmer and frustrated Formula One driver, rocketed by, blasting him with its slipstream. He passed the village store, then hesitated when he reached the pub. Much in character with the village, The Crown was a Georgian building, but with a rather shabby extension to the left covered with a corrugated iron roof. It was set well back from the road, with a scrubby, uneven lawn in front of it, on which were dotted around several wooden tables and benches — a couple of them occupied.

He walked up the path. In small gold letters above the saloon bar door, were the words: LICENSED PROPRIETOR, LESTER BEESON.

If he ever had to create the interior of an iconic English country pub for a website, Ollie thought, as the ingrained sour reek of beer struck his nostrils, this place would be it. Booths recessed into the walls, wooden tables and chairs, window seats, and a warren of doorways leading to other rooms. The ochre walls were hung with ancient agricultural artefacts, and there was a row of horseshoes along one side, along with a dartboard.

Presiding over the L-shaped bar was a massively tall man in his late fifties, with a mane of hair, a cream shirt with the top two buttons undone and a gut the size of a rugby ball bulging his midriff. Behind his head were rows of optics, a photograph of a cricket team, and several pewter tankards.

‘Good afternoon,’ the landlord greeted him warmly, lifting a pint glass up and drying it with a cloth.

‘Good afternoon!’

‘Mr Harcourt would it be, by any chance?’ He set the glass down.

Ollie grinned, surprised. ‘Yes.’ He held out his hand. ‘Ollie Harcourt.’

The landlord shook it firmly. ‘Les,’ he said. ‘All of us in Cold Hill are very happy to have you and your family with us. We need a little rejuvenation. What can I offer you as a drink on the house?’

Normally, Ollie avoided drinking alcohol at lunchtime, but didn’t want to look a prig. ‘Well, that’s very kind of you, thank you. I’d like a draught Guinness — and also a lunch menu, please.’

The plastic-coated menu appeared in front of him instantly, as if conjured from out of the ether by the landlord. The Guinness took some minutes longer. As Lester Beeson stood over the glass, which was steadily filling with black liquid and cream foam, Ollie ventured, ‘Do you by chance know an old guy in the village, with a briar pipe and walking stick?’

‘Pipe and walking stick?’ He thought for a moment. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell. Local, is he?’

Ollie nodded. ‘A wiry little fellow with a goatee beard and very white hair. In his seventies or even eighties?’

‘No, doesn’t ring any bells.’

‘I understand he lives here, in the village. I met him last week — I wanted to have another chat with him.’

‘I thought I knew everyone.’ The landlord looked puzzled. He turned towards an elderly, morose couple seated in a window booth, eating in silence as if they had run out of conversation with each other years earlier. ‘Morris!’ he called out. ‘You know an old fellow who smokes a pipe and has a walking stick?’

After some moments the man, who had lank white hair hanging down either side of his face, as if a damp mop had been plonked on his head, set down his knife and fork, picked up his pint of beer and sipped it.

Ollie thought at first he couldn’t have heard the landlord. But then he said, suddenly, in a northern accent, ‘Pipe and a walking stick.’ He licked froth from his lips, revealing just two teeth, like a pair of tilting tombstones, at the front of his otherwise barren mouth.

The landlord looked at Ollie for confirmation. He nodded.

‘That’s right, Morris. A beard and white hair,’ Beeson added.

The old couple looked at each other for a moment and both shrugged.

‘He’s as old as God, Morris is!’ Beeson said to Ollie with a grin, and loudly enough for the old man to hear, then turned towards him. ‘You’ve been here in the village — what — forty years, Morris?’

‘Forty-two it is, this Christmas,’ the old woman said.

Her husband nodded. ‘Aye, forty-two. We came down here because our son and his family moved here.’

‘Morris were engineer on the railways,’ she said, inconsequentially.

‘Ah,’ said Ollie, as if that explained everything. ‘Right.’

‘Don’t know of anyone like that,’ she said.

‘I’ll ask around for you,’ Beeson said to Ollie, helpfully.

‘Thank you. I’ll give you my home and mobile phone numbers — if you hear anything.’

‘If he lives anywhere around here, someone will know him.’

‘Old as God, did you say?’ the old man suddenly called out to Beeson. ‘I’ll have you know, young man...!’ Then he began chuckling.

Later that day, when Caro came home from work, Ollie again said nothing to her about the strange old man with the pipe.

Caro said nothing to Ollie about her encounter with Kingsley Parkin.