Tom Bowler’s Trail

Bel Handbasket drops a crumb*

This could be yours! (source)

I awoke with a muzzy head, vowing never again to accept the offer of mulled wine from a street vendor. On the tallboy I found my unremembered purchases from the Caridaweigh Christmas Market: a presentation box of local ales, a candle-powered tinplate steamboat, and a ticket for a Prize Draw. Something about that last item caught my attention.

“Here’s a coincidence,” I said to Lord Foolish over devilled kidneys in the East Breakfasting Snug. I waved the ticket at him. “I used to — ”

“Is that one of Lavvy’s?” he interrupted. “You’ve wasted your money there.” As if I didn’t know. Isn’t that what Christmas Markets are all about? “We only let her in because she’s family.”

I looked again at the promoter’s name. Miss Lavinia Horsebox, whose address in London took me way back, was connected to Dippy’s family? I shouldn’t be surprised. Dippy can trace connections to everyone who is anyone, or thinks they are.

He was still chattering about her. “She spends all of October and November going to these things, selling tickets to raffle off the tat she wants to clear out of her barns. The winners don’t always collect. What’s the top prize this year, the Governess Cart again?”

It was. I had to look up what that meant, and listen to Dippy’s amused recitation of its likely faults, before I could ask how he and Miss Horsebox were related. “Closer to Helena than to me,” he said. “Helena, dear,” he called to Lady Handbasket as she lolled on a chaise-longue, toying with a croissant, “whose nanny was Aunt Lavvy?”

“Whose nanny wasn’t she,” Lady Helena sniffed. “Georgiana Scruffles, Lucy Overbridge, Bel Pannier of course, Virginia Waterson, who else? Oh, Michaela Chatterley-Mellors.”

“Bel Pannier?” I asked as she paused for breath. “Your missing niece Bel? Belladonna?”

“No no no,” she snorted. “Have you been listening to Dippy? Well, no wonder.” For once Lady Helena’s disdain for me, and for the rest of the world, paid a dividend. “Here, find me some paper and I’ll draw it for you.”

The chart of Lady Helena’s extended family flowed over two A4 pages, and included several crossing lines. Some people appeared more than once. It was evident that the raffle-promoter had been the go-to nanny of the tribe for many years before she married into it. “She was on the way to being Lady Lavinia Horsebox until the Horseboxes fell on hard times and had to sell the title. Came close to selling Lavinia too, I heard.” She narrowed her eyes. “Oh, don’t look at me that way, of course it happens. What do you think advantageous match means?” She pointed further down the chart. “As you see here. Came to Tony Pannier as Belinda’s nanny after he lost Belle, got herself promoted to stepmother faster than you could say decent interval of mourning.” She swept the paper aside. “Didn’t last, of course.” The erstwhile Lady-Horsebox-in-waiting had been Countess of Middlewich for the briefest period compatible with the laws pertaining to divorce and inheritance. “Belinda kicked up a stink about the title, and Lavvy moved out to the Barns with as much of the money as she could carry.”

“Barns?”

“More of a warehouse,” said Lady Helena. “Got it from those Swedes, what are they called? IKEA.”

“IKEA sell barns?”

Lady Handbasket rolled her eyes at me. “Yes, when they move out of one. I said a warehouse, remember? Lavvy bought the whole works.”

The doorbell was simply labelled L H-M. The raffle business must be booming, I thought, looking around at the leafy Kensington square: it was quieter than I remembered, as if draped in invisible velvet curtains. After some time the door opened far enough for me to identify the woman-of-a-certain-age I’d met at the Market, now dressed in crisp white cotton instead of ragbag rainbow crochet. “Miss Lavinia Horsebox?”

“Come to claim, have you?” she asked with a glance at the ticket in my hand. “It’s not here, you know.” She looked me up and down, apparently judged that I wasn’t a threat, and opened the door wider. “Come on in, I’ll sort you out.”

The opulent interior matched everything the exterior promised. “I used to live across the square in my student days,” I offered as she waited for a laptop to fire up. “The kind of coincidence that you can’t put in fiction because it would imply significance.” She glanced my way, then back at the screen. “It wasn’t as nice as here.” Nothing. “There was a doctor’s surgery on the ground floor, as I recall.”

“Right,” she said, sliding my ticket under a scanner, “let’s see what you’ve — Oh, congratulations, it’s the Governess Cart. Well done.” She tapped some more keys. “We can get that to you next week. You’re on the mainland?” She looked again at the ticket for confirmation. “Good. So I just need a credit card for the delivery charge.”

The conversation was running away from me again. “I actually wanted to ask you about someone,” I said, fishing out my wallet. “A girl called Bel. I understand you would have been her step-grandmother?”

“Bel Pannier-Main? Friend of yours?” She smiled for the first time. “Mine too. Yes, she’s been staying here for a few days. You know how it is, you catch up, and they’re gone again.” The credit-card machine whirred and spouted paper.

“Do you know where she’d be now?” I inquired. I looked at the receipt. “Ninety pounds? I didn’t expect — ”

“It’s quite a large item, you see,” said Miss Horsebox, demonstrating her best nannying qualities. “They will look after it. They’re specialists.” She patted my arm reassuringly. “Somewhere you can get to from Heathrow Airport,” she added. “She left yesterday.”

I had just taken delivery of what I have to call my tombola trailer when Dippy called. “Great news,” he enthused. “Bel’s safe and well.”

“Congratulate her for me,” I said, wondering where I could find an old-fashioned carpenter with not much work on. The graveyard?

“Too late,” he said, “she’s moved abroad! Got herself a catering position in the Colonies. Sent us a postcard. Helena’s ecstatic.” In the Colonies. Well, I knew where he meant, to within a hemisphere.

There was a postcard for me too, care-of the Castle. I was able to inspect it on my next visit. Unsigned, but in the same handwriting as the address, it warned: Don’t follow me if you know what’s good for you. The stamp was obliterated by an indecipherable postmark.

I do know what’s good for me. What’s good for me is all the things I don’t get enough of — moderate exercise, dietary fibre, and staying out of the way of femmes fatales. This one was now at a safe distance. That’s a prize worth winning, I told myself.

I turned the postcard over. It was a standard giveaway, half cheap frill and half hopeful PR, from an establishment called Farrago Hotel.

The name rang a bell, but I couldn’t think why.

*Missed a clue? Meter Made Ink Credible Focus Group Mine All Mine Four Leaver Mechanism