Creature Comforts. Trisha Ashley

      The next two witnesses in order of importance were Dan Clew, Simon’s father, the Sweetwell gardener who had pulled me out of the wreckage of the car, and Tom Tamblyn, who’d arrived just in time to see him do it. I dreaded trying to talk to the horrible Dan. He’d accosted me soon after I’d come home from my convalescence with Daisy and almost shattered my fragile and hard-won equilibrium by telling me no one wanted me back in Halfhidden and to leave Simon, alone. However, now, I was no longer a fragile sixteen-year-old but a confident woman of the world in her mid-thirties, so I would give it a go even though he probably wouldn’t tell me anything anyway, or if he did, it would be unreliable. But I’d believe Tom, if only I could get him to open up about what he saw. He was my friend Cam’s uncle and, along with his father, Jonas, keeper of the Lady Spring in the Sweetwell woods.

      Apart from them, there were just Lulu, Cam, Debo and Judy, who might add a bit of peripheral detail. I decided I’d get those interviews done first and out of the way, before I got to the trickier and more important ones.

      Judy was waiting patiently at Ormskirk station for me in her battered estate car, sitting on the open tailgate along with two old friends: a one-eyed, white bull terrier called Vic, and Ginger, a drooling rotty-boxer cross, who were the current house dogs. Also, staring mournfully out was a large, shaggy mountain of black fur.

      ‘What on earth is that?’ I said, holding back the two dogs from jumping out, and already slightly covered in dog drool and hair from their enthusiastic welcome. Judy, smallish and plumply pear-shaped, was clad in tartan trousers of a shrieking orange shade that was unlikely ever to have been worn by any Scottish clan, and which echoed the hennaed colour of her madly curling hair. When I kissed her, she smelled of roses as usual, though since she lived in the permanent doggy fug of the cottage, I could never work out how she managed it.

      ‘That’s Babybelle,’ she said. ‘There’s a Newfoundland in there somewhere, under the hair and blubber. She lay on her last owner’s small child and nearly suffocated it, so they were all for having her put down, till someone contacted Debo.’

      ‘She’s so vast I don’t suppose she even noticed the child was there and she seems friendly enough,’ I said, stroking her. She heaved herself up into a sitting slump and licked my hand.

      ‘Oh, she’s daft as a brush and wouldn’t hurt a fly on purpose. But I think she must have been fed a diet of junk food, because she was even fatter and in really poor condition. She’s already lost a stone.’

      ‘She looks very sad,’ I said, stroking her head. Her eyes were like lumps of dark, moist amber.

      ‘They’re supposed to be faithful, one-person dogs, so she’s probably missing her owners, even if they were useless – but she certainly seems to like you.’

      She pushed the dogs back and closed the hatch door. Then she added, as she turned the car out of the short-stay car park and headed towards home, ‘Perhaps you could be in charge of Babybelle once you’ve settled in? She needs encouraging to take exercise.’

      ‘I could take her out a bit,’ I agreed cautiously, because since my dog Patch died I’d avoided getting too attached to any of the dogs, mostly because I was away so much.

      I looked round, and saw a flat, black, furry face and two sad amber-brown eyes staring through the mesh of the dog guard at me. She whined. At least, I hoped it was Babybelle and she wasn’t lying on the other two dogs.

      We drove through the sizeable village of Middlemoss and turned into the high-hedged lane that would lead eventually to the Screaming Skull Hotel and the turn up the valley to Halfhidden.

      ‘How is everything?’ I asked. ‘Debo sounded very upset about Baz’s will and this new heir suddenly appearing on the scene.’

      ‘She certainly is, but I’ll tell you all about it when we get home, because Debo said we needed a council of war.’

      ‘Has this man actually arrived?’

      ‘Well, he’s been up a couple of times, but he hasn’t moved in yet, since he has to relocate his business from Devon first. Garden antiques, apparently.’

      ‘So, you’ve met him?’

      ‘I have, but Debo was away working when he was around. A magazine flew her to the Maldives for a shoot – it’s all right for some! – and then she had a cameo role in a film. Anyway, we’ll save that for later, or I’ll be repeating myself.And then you can tell us both what’s brought you home early, because I can see something’s up.’

      ‘Fair enough,’ I agreed, and she began to update me on the local gossip, though of course I’d heard some of it as Lulu and Cam had been emailing me all the time now they were back living in the village.

      ‘I was going to give a talk in the Village Hut tomorrow, on knitting with dog hair,’ Judy said, dawdling behind a slow tractor, ‘but Lulu’s plans seemed more urgent so she’s talking tomorrow and I’ll give mine later. You know about Lulu’s meeting?’

      ‘Yes, but she was very mysterious and wouldn’t go into details. The Halfhidden Regeneration Scheme sounds very grand.’

      ‘We’re all agog to know what she’s up to.’

      ‘I gather it’s part of her plans for expanding the Haunted Weekend breaks into week-long Haunted Holidays.’

      ‘Then it’ll be interesting to find out how that will regenerate the whole of Halfhidden, won’t it?’ Judy said. ‘Did you know that old Jonas has moved to live with his daughter, Lottie, behind the shop and Cameron has gone to take his place at the cottage by the Spring?’

      ‘No, but I thought Cam had been quiet these last few days! He must have been busy moving, though I do know about the art gallery he’s trying to set up.’

      Cam, after teaching art in a London inner-city school, had returned to Halfhidden to live with his widowed mother a few months ago, intending to create a studio and art gallery in the old garage next to her shop.

      ‘Jonas is into his nineties now and his rheumatism was playing him up, so he’s better living with his daughter. And Cam will take over the Lady Spring from his uncle one of these days anyway … or he should do, though of course it’s tied to the Sweetwell estate, like Dan Clew’s cottage, so until the new owner makes his presence felt, we don’t know what he intends.’

      ‘He can’t change how things are at the Lady Spring, because that’s how it’s always been,’ I said quickly. ‘They pay a peppercorn rent for the cottage, I remember Tom telling me once.’

      ‘Yes, they’re the guardians of the Spring, so long as there’s a male Tamblyn to carry on, as I understand it,’ Judy said.

      ‘Well, he is a Tamblyn, it’s even his middle name – Cameron Tamblyn Ross,’ I said.

      ‘There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm,’ Judy said deeply, and then we both giggled, for a love of reading was something we shared.

      The tractor finally rumbled off up a farm track just before the pub and Judy paused the car briefly so I could admire the huge, freshly painted sign outside, which boldly proclaimed: ‘WELCOME TO ONE OF THE MOST HAUNTED HOTELS IN BRITAIN!’

      ‘Is it?’ I said dubiously. ‘I thought really it only had Howling Hetty’s skull behind the bar, the footsteps on the backstairs at night and one haunted bedchamber.’

      ‘It is now,’ Judy said drily.

      ‘The car park’s empty,’ I commented, as she drove off again.

      ‘Monday’s always quiet, with the weekend visitors gone home and the restaurant closed, and I don’t suppose Tuesday is ever much busier, so it’s a good night for Lulu to talk to everyone.’

      ‘Yes, that’s true, though it sounds as if she’d like to fill the hotel every night. She just sent me a text to ask me to go to the Hut early tomorrow to help her set things up for the