Precious Like Rubies
by Soledad
Note: As I mentioned before, I had to screw a bit with the Miss Marple timeline, planting the old lady in the Sherlock era. Hence the fact that Miss Wetherby, who had already passed over by "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side", is still alive, if not exactly kicking in this story
No, this crossover does not include Torchwood – not in the traditional sense anyway. I just use some characters in wastly different roles because… well, because it is fun. David Clement is "played" by Jonathan Lewis Owen (Banana Boat from Torchwood). The old ladies are all based on my mother's best friends. *g*
Beta read by Linda Hoyland whom I owe my never-ending gratitude.
Chapter 02 – Gossip Girls
St Mary Mead was a village of proud traditions. Despite the inevitable – and heavily frowned-upon – changes brought by the so-called progress, there were some things that had been done exactly the same way for decades.
One of these things was the Wednesday afternoon tea at the Vicarage. Or, as the Vicar's wife – the dear Griselda, also well beyond fifty but still as vibrant and youthful as ever, despite having two grown sons – liked to call: tea and scandal at four-thirty.
Some things never change; not in St Mary Mead, Miss Marple thought thankfully as she navigated the pitfalls of the short path from her own cottage to the Vicarage. As the Vicar himself liked to say, their village thrived on humdrum scandal, and even a change in shaving foam was considered a sensation.
The dear Reverend Clement had always been such an innocent, of course. If anyone, Miss Marple knew all too well that even such a sleepy little village had its thieves, impostors, vigilantes, a lot of skulduggery, all sorts of evil… and the odd corpse on the cricket lawn.
That was what she, personally, liked about St Mary Mead, apart from her garden: that it was like a drop of water on a microscope slide, full of life under the seemingly smooth surface.
Her attention had wandered only for a moment, yet that treacherous knee of hers gave way at that very moment, of course. She held on, waiting for the pain to pass, as she knew it would. That wretched knee had been bothering her for nearly ten years, and it played up increasingly often these days.
Perhaps Carol Wetherby had been right. Perhaps she should use a cane, too; or, at the very least, a walking stick. Having something to lean on might help.
On the other hand, using a cane would not necessarily make things easier. Ever since she'd broken her shoulder some eight years ago, she had limited use of her right arm. Oh, she could use it perfectly well… as long as she didn't have to raise it over her head. Or to rely on it while descending any stairs. It didn't hurt – not unless the weather was about to change – but it didn't have the required strength to keep her from falling, to name just one problem. And in no way could she lean with it on a cane.
She shook her head in mild annoyance. Getting old was not always a pleasure, in spite of giving one the chance to make good use of the experiences of a long life. Especially not when one was alone.
"Hullo Aunt Jane!" a cheerful voice greeted her as David Clement caught up with her, offering his arm gallantly. "May I escort you to the Wednesday Tea Club?"
Miss Marple beamed at the young man. No, David was not related to her by blood, wasn't even one of her numerous godsons, but he'd always treated her as one would treat a favourite aunt: fondly, with just a hint of amusement.
"Oh, thank you, David dear, that is very kind of you." She accepted the proffered arm with unashamed delight; it was so much better to be supported by such a nice and caring young man. "I'm afraid my arthritis doesn't react well to these abrupt changes of weather; why, it's positively hot right now, at least compared with yesterday. I wonder if poor Miss Wetherby will be able to make it today."
Miss Caroline Wetherby, Carol to her friends (of whom depressingly few were still alive), was in a much worse shape than all the others. Although of the same age as Miss Marple, she had become a shadow of her old self in the recent years. Fragile and unsteady on her feet, due to the loss of too much weight and a broken thighbone two years previously, she couldn't even leave the house without help. She'd also lost sight in one eye as a result of an unexpected infection not so long ago, and even her hearing had deteriorated rapidly.
For someone who'd lived for gossip all her life, this was a cruel punishment indeed.
"Oh, I think she'll be there all right," David said encouragingly. "Mum spoke to that freakish nurse who lives with her, Elisa or Alicia or whatshername…"
"Erica," Miss Marple corrected. "Her name is Erica Biggs."
The live-in nurse had been employed by Miss Wetherby's loving niece, of course, and she was a strange creature indeed. Thankfully, she was also dutiful and reliable; otherwise Miss Wetherby would have ended up in one of those dreadful nursing homes where the patients were treated as if they were moronic children.
"Who else is invited?" Miss Marple asked, mostly to shake off those unpleasant thoughts, although the answers should have been obvious enough.
"The usual suspects, I'd think," David replied, grinning. "Miss Hartnell, of course; Mrs Price-Ridley; Miss Hubbard from the railway station…"
"She's not from the railway station," Miss Marple corrected pedantically. "She lives in her own, large cottage in High Street, and you know that. Marjorie Hubbard is a dear old friend of mine, and she doesn't like it when people talk about her like she were some homeless person, just because she happens to live near to the railway station, so please don't do it!"
"Yes, Aunt Jane. Sorry, Aunt Jane," David's apology sounded completely insincere but the puppy eyed routine going with it was perfection itself, and despite her iron principles, Miss Marple fell victim to it, like every time since David had first learned to employ it.
"Who else is coming then?" she asked, steering back the conversation to its original topic.
"Dr Haydock," David replied, achieving a mysterious look; for no apparent reason, in Miss Marple's opinion. After all Dr Haydock frequently joined his most faithful patients for the Wednesday afternoon tea at the Vicarage.
"He has news," David added in an ominous voice.
Miss Marple knew that voice all too well. It meant that David knew something the others didn't – not yet – but was unwilling (or forbidden) to reveal. In some things the boy hadn't changed since the age of five.
"Well, I'm sure he'll share that news with us, dear," she replied, waiting for David to hold open the door for her.
The usual suspects, as David had called them, had already assembled in the stuffy old drawing-room of the Vicarage when they entered. It was quite a gathering, under the presidency of the dear Griselda, who stood out of the flock of old crows like a peacock in her very nice floral tea dress. With her red curls (their natural colour now discreetly enhanced a little by artificial means), that did not quite touch her shoulders, she looked almost too young for the old, dusty Vicarage. She'd been wearing her hair in the same fashion for at least twenty years, but it still suited her perfectly.
The Reverend Leonard Clement had yet to make an appearance – as he would unfailingly, Miss Marple knew; the Vicar was diligent in his duties toward his flock, no matter how tiresome he might find certain members of said flock. All the others, however, were already present and accounted for.
There was Mrs Martha Price-Ridley, for starters, better known as "that dreadful Price-Ridley" among those who'd ever suffered from her sharp tongue (and honestly, in all those years she'd spent in St Mary Mead, who hadn't?) Once she'd been a tall, handsome, imposing woman, always smartly dressed and a weekly visitor of Mrs Jameson's hairdressing parlour, so that her hairdo would always be perfect.
At the age of eighty-four, she was still tall, smartly dressed and perfectly coiffed. Her hair didn't show the slightest touch of grey, having gone from the earlier pitch black to a softer, more moderate chestnut brown – beauty products were so much better and easier to apply in these days, one change that even the old ladies whole-heartedly welcomed.
But her face was wrinkled beyond what any amount of make-up could have concealed, she'd become somewhat bloated in her midriff, and she was suffering from a number of age-related illnesses, from arthritic joints through digestion problems to the occasional dizzy spell and an unreliable circulation. She was also wearing glasses that, unfortunately, no longer enabled her to do any stitching or knitting, and had picked up the habit of wearing lots of fake jewellery.
None of these inconveniences would hinder her in doing what she felt was right, though. She still worked in her garden as much as she could, despite Dr. Haydock's disapproval.
"That horrible old Leycock can't be left unsupervised," she explained to her friends. "He'd dig out all my rose bushes and plant cabbages instead." As this was, unfortunately, very true, not to mention widely known in the entire village, Dr Haydock found himself short of real arguments whenever the topic came up.
She still attended to every single church service, unless seriously ill. She still regularly visited the graves of her late husband and son in the churchyard. And, of course. She still came to the Wednesday afternoon tea at the Vicarage each week.
Poor Miss Wetherby was sitting a little aside, in the Vicar's own, most comfortable armchair. She had her hair freshly done for the only remaining event in her otherwise uneventful life, spent between hospital visits and sleepless nights. She had taken to wearing trousers lately, ostensibly to cover her dramatic weight loss, but could not quite hide her skeletal looks from the observant eye of her old friends. That she would still have her hair coloured was a bit pathetic, Miss Marple decided with tolerant sadness, but at least she was trying to beat age and illness that were ganging up on her.
Miss Amanda Hartnell, on the other hand – Mandy, as the others called her – was defiantly, gloriously full of energy, in spite of arthritic limbs, hearing problems and the glasses of which she needed stronger ones every other year. She, too, was of Miss Marple's age but certainly didn't look it. Short but trim, she concealed her hearing problem by paying special attention ("None of those hearing aids, dear, they are so clumsy; and they make the background noise much louder than anything you'd actually want to hear!") Her perfectly coiffed hair was a rich, vibrant bronze, and her boundless energy ("I don't have time to waste on arthritic pains, dear!") made her appear much younger than the other ladies, even if all that inner energy often couldn't force the aching joints to actually cooperate.
Not without help, most of the time.
The last in the… mature circle was Miss Hubbard, Miss Marple's best friend and the only other one who preferred greying to artificial hair colours. She was a friendly, somewhat child-like old lady, wearing a blue-and-white patterned dress that looked as if it had come from that cheap little second-hand shop in Market Basing, although Miss Marple happened to know that it had been custom made by a good, old-fashioned dressmaker in the same town.
Poor Marjorie, she always had such an unlucky result at choosing her wardrobe.
David Clement joined the gathering for a short while, much to the ladies' delight. He was very popular among the older generation, the reason for that being, in equal parts, his fleeting likeness to a younger Prince William, the fact that he was the Vicar's son and his willingness to help anyone who found the wonders of modern technology utterly confusing.
After discussing the possible future of Gossington Hall, now that Mrs Bantry had the estate back, after the tragic demise of that American actress, Marina Gregg, who had owned the Hall for a very short time – most of the ladies believed in turning it into an old-fashioned hotel ("Not everyone likes those horrible glass and concrete cubes, you see…") – the conversation turned to the actual sensation of the day: the new owner of Chatsworth.
The property one mile down Lansham Road from Gossington Hall had once been a very modern cottage, also known as the "Period Piece" and "Mr Booker's new house". It was a rather hideous mix of half timbering and mockTudor, situated on a building estate that had been bought by the enterprising Mr Baker just beyond the Blue Boar, with a view that – at that time – had been a particularly unspoiled country lane.
The fact that it had earned those names more than sixty years previously didn't hinder the ladies in still calling it so.
"I've just heard from Mrs Ponsonby, you know, my old school friend, who lives in Welford and whose nephew is a trainee lawyer at Mr Pretherick's – the younger Mr Pretherick, of course," Miss Hartnell leaned forward in her armchair excitedly, "that some American pilot's bought Chatsworth, less than a month ago. Some Captain Harmon or Harper or…"
"Harkness," Mrs Price Ridley corrected. "Captain Jack Harkness. That's what the boy's told that Janet girl, the one that works at Mrs Jamieson's,"
Miss Marple nodded in mute approval. Janet was one of those young girls already born in The Development; and a friendly and cheerful one at that, who appeared to absorb news like a sponge absorbed water. Which was a good thing, as since there no longer were servants and maids available to provide the old ladies with juicy pieces of gossip, one had to become dependent on shop assistants and the likes more than ever.
Plus, Janet was a level-headed girl who preferred to have reliable sources for her news. Like Mrs Ponsonby's nephew who, if one could believe Miss Marple's housekeeper, Cherry, had 'a thing' for Janet, and who worked for the local solicitors and therefore sat at the very source of a great deal of useful information.
"An American solider is coming to live in St. Mary Mead, of all places?" Reverend Clement asked in surprise. Miss Marple couldn't really blame him. Their sleepy little village wouldn't have much attraction for a worldly person.
"Nah," David said. "He's a civilian pilot, working for a private firm called Torchwood Airlines. And he isn't actually American, just lived there for a long time. Until his parents moved back to Scotland, that is."
Griselda Clement gave her son a stern look. "And how do you know about that?"
She wasn't against gossip on principle; life in St. Mary Mead would have been deadly boring without gossip – or without considerable efforts not to become the object of local gossip – but she didn't want it to start from the Vicarage. That would have harmed Len's reputation.
David shrugged. "Pub night at the Blue Boar with Idris Hopper," he replied curtly.
Idris Hopper was the trainee lawyer working for Pretherick & Son's; a well-mannered young man whom the old ladies watched with deep suspicion nonetheless, because he seemed to prefer male company. Which, of course, could have completely innocent reasons… unless one asked the retired furies of St. Mary Mead. "Innocent reasons" was a foreign concept to the formidable ladies.
"You shouldn't socialise with that young man, David," Miss Wetherby announced (after her caretaker had explained her what had just been said. "People might think you were of his kind."
"Of what kind exactly, Miss Wetherby?" David asked with poisonous sweetness. He liked the old ladies as a rule – especially Miss Marple – but there were times when their bigotry annoyed him to no end.
"Well, we all know that he's very close to that new librarian who works in the library of Market Basing," Miss Hubbard said, almost apologetically. "He has a strange name. Something Welsh, I think, but I can't remember…"
"Jones," David said. "Ianto Jones. And yes, they are close. They went to school together and kept in touch ever since. Is that a crime?"
"Of course not, but if two young men are too close…"
"… it could actually mean that they've known each other for quite some time and are good friends," Dr Haydock interrupted before the talk could have become truly malevolent, which was always a possibility when Mrs Price-Ridley and Miss Wetherby were in the same room. "Nothing wrong with that."
The ladies seemed less certain that they'd agree, so Griselda smoothly intervened.
"What kind of name is Ianto anyway?" she asked. "Sounds really strange."
"It's Welsh for Johnny," David explained. "Shortened from Ifan, actually, but counts as a proper name of its own by now. Anyway, Idris told me that this Captain Harkness does long-distance flights, to Thailand and other such places, and wanted a house closer to London, cause it would be a nuisance to drive up from that nest in Scotland where his parents live each time."
He named a tiny little place no-one but Miss Marple had heard of before. She, however, was familiar with that name. It was the same little town where her old friend, Elspeth McGillicuddy had lived for decades by now.
What a strange coincidence, she thought. Perhaps a phone call to dear Elspeth wouldn't be amiss. It's always reassuring to know who the people moving into the village truly are, and Elspeth would know the family, at least.
It was strange to imagine anyone new – especially one of those smart and handsome American pilots – moving into Chatswood. In Miss Marple's mind that place was bound forever to Basil Blake, the rebellious young film-maker from the Lenville Studios, to his wife, that peroxide-blonde actress, Diana… no, Dinah Lee; and, of course, that poor girl that had been found in front of the fireplace in the library of Gossington Hall, dead. Strangled.
She shook her head with mild disapproval. Lingering in the past was not a good thing. Chatswood had stood alone for a very long time; one should be grateful that people where moving into St Mary Mead again.
She found herself saying so, and her old friends nodded in agreement.
"Well, for that matter," Dr Haydock said contentedly, "Captain Harkness may not be the only one moving here. If we're lucky, I might get a partner for the practice, soon."
The news struck like a hand grenade thrown into a sleepy fishing pond. Especially Miss Wetherby was devastated by the thought of losing Dr Haydock as her personal physician. Not that Haydock could do anything else for her than keeping her relatively pain free, but still…
"I'm too old to get used to a new doctor," she declared crossly, and that ghastly nurse of hers, too, gave the doctor accusing looks.
"Oh, I'm sure Dr Haydock wouldn't abandon you, Carol dear," Miss Marple said a bit forcefully, which was the only way to keep Miss Wetherby from slithering into full-blown self-pity. "But he's not a young man anymore, and I imagine that all those young families in The Development give him too much legwork."
"Quite right, Miss Marple," Dr Haydock said, smiling. "Somebody younger is needed to deal with the younger generation. Somebody who can keep up with them."
"How much younger are we talking about?" Mrs Price-Ridley demanded. "We need somebody with proper experience, in case Doctor Haydock isn't available."
"Not that young, Mrs Price-Ridley," Haydock assured her. "Dr Watson went to medical school with Dr Stamford, if you still remember him. They're roughly the same age."
The old ladies did remember chubby, mild-mannered Dr Stamford, of course; him who'd always been so kind and patient with them, whenever he came to replace Dr Haydock during holidays. He'd been a bit young, true, but very thorough and reliable, with excellent manners – something of a rarity from the younger generation.
"Was it Dr Stamford who suggested this Doctor… Watson was his name?" Miss Marple asked, cutting to the core at once. Dr Haydock nodded.
"Yes, they're old friends. Look, I know that Mike Stamford isn't exactly the best judge of character, but…"
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Miss Marple interrupted. "He may be a little… naïve in certain things, but he's got a sharp mind under that placid surface; and he's very loyal. Just like the butcher's apprentice, David… David Nellist, yes, that was his name. Everybody thought him to be a bit… slow in the head, you know, and perhaps he was, too, that poor dear, but it seemed as if God had given him an instinctive feeling for people's true character in exchange. And he was very loyal, too, which saved his master from a false accusation in that terrible murder case, if you remember."
Several heads nodded in unison. The murder case of the chemist's wife was one the village would not forget easily.
"I wouldn't call Mike Stamford exactly slow in the head," Dr Haydock said mildly. "He wouldn't be able to teach in medical school if he were."
"No, of course not; that wasn't what I was saying," Miss Marple replied. "Now, can you tell us something more about this Dr Watson?"
"I don't know much more myself," Dr Haydock confessed. "Watson was an Army doctor, served three tours in Afghanistan, got shot when stabilising some gravely injured soldiers on the battlefield and was invalided home. Did some locum jobs in London and apparently wants something more permanent now. I can understand that a war veteran would need a little peace and quiet."
That actually made sense. But he wasn't telling them everything; Miss Marple was certain about that. There was something very unpleasant, perhaps even tragic behind the ex-Army doctor's sudden decision to leave London and bury himself in a sleepy little village. Something Dr Haydock didn't want to become the topic of local gossip.
Miss Marple understood that. But mysteries were a thing she could never withstand and, she admitted to herself ruefully, this case wouldn't be any different. Were she a cat, her curiosity would have killed her a long time ago.
And she did have the means to find out more. The library of Market Basing kept the most important papers for a year. She could look up more recent articles and search for possible reasons.
And then there was Chief Inspector Craddock, Sir Henry Clithering's godson. The dear Dermot had retired a few years ago, but he still had his contacts, and he'd doubtlessly use them to find the missing pieces of the puzzle for his beloved honorary Aunt.
Satisfied with her research plan, Miss Marple leaned back in her seat, accepted another cup of tea from the dear Griselda and rejoined the conversation that had turned to the robbery committed by the Skinner sisters in the block of flats that had once been the Old Hall, the mansion of the late Colonel Lucius Protheroe, the despised local magistrate.
Some aspects of that robbery still seemed a bit unclear, and the ladies presented their own theories with enthusiasm.
~TBC~