Murder on Monday

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In the damp, raw cold of a winter’s evening, the women sat in rows in Long Farnden village hall, not listening to an elderly Land Girl’s memories of ‘Life on the Farm During The War’. Most of them had switched off soon after she began, when it became clear there were to be no memories of passion in the pigsty or tumbles in the hay. Soon they were thinking of other things, of husbands, lovers…husbands’ lovers.

In the village hall kitchen, a gloomy room smelling of drains and unemptied rubbish bins, Miss Gloria Hathaway, small and trim and used to being obeyed, cursed and wrestled in vain with the control dial on a rumbling, rocking tea urn, full of boiling rusty water. It was her turn to make tea and she had laid out the cups and saucers, plates of cakes, sugar bowl and milk jug. Everything was ready, and now this wretched woman would not stop. She could hear her voice droning on about unwilling tractors and rampaging bulls, and tried again to calm the angry beast in front of her. The kitchen was full of steam and she could hardly see the numbers of the dial. In any case, it didn’t matter. Even ‘off’ made no difference. The thing was out of control and she backed away from it.

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