16 - Gloria

If Dorothy had been hoping Mr Parsnip would be too distracted by family matters to interfere in her organization of the talent contest, she was rewarded in full, but she was nevertheless getting worried about it. Against her better judgement she would have to appeal to him.

15 - Trothplighting

After the committee meeting at which she had appeared out of the blue, Mr Morgan had started courting Clare von Klippen, though she did not know it.

Hearing that Clare was working at the library, he had skipped his organ practice and gone there. He was so conspicuous that Cleo almost asked him if he had a special reason for sitting diagonally opposite the counter, ostensibly reading a book while his beady eyes followed Clare’s every move. His antics were quite obvious to everyone and Cleo found them very amusing. She wondered if he thought it was Edith. He came every day and Cleo did not think he had his sights set on her.

14 - Unexpected

It was as if Karl von Klippen had smelled a rat.

No one had set eyes on him for years, but the week Clare started working at Middlethumpton library was also the week he decided it was time to make another effort at persuading her to return to the respectable life she had left a decade or so ago.

On discovering that Clare was no longer at the school, Karl drove to Upper Grumpsfield, hoping to find her there. He arrived just in time for elevenses with Edith, except that in his panic to find Clare he could have sworn it was her only pretending to be Edith.

13 - The Invitation

Robert did not waste any time pondering on the wisdom of taking part in a talent contest. He dialled Cleo’s number and was rewarded by the sound of her voice.

‘This is Cleo Hartley. Please leave your name and number after the beep and I’ll call you back...”

Beeeeeeeeeep.

12 - Deceit, Dilemmas and Diplomacy

Mr Parsnip had found Clare’s unexpected arrival at the vicarage inconvenient for reasons he preferred not to delve into. He had always found Clare’s visits inconvenient and confusing and did not even dare to consider whether he was sexually attracted to the vastly experienced Clare. Edith was in contrast to her sister tame and uninteresting and in his view only interested in the act of procreation. Edith had, in his priestly mind, now assumed the role of housekeeper. Her days of being a wife had ceased with the birth of the twins he had not wanted and, in his own words, ‘been tricked into fathering’.   

11 - Sisters

Sunday dawned with an ominously red sky. Heavy rain clouds rushed in and very soon the heavens opened over Upper Grumpsfield. Mr Parsnip remembered the leak in the church roof, jumped into his clothes and dashed to St Peter’s to make sure the bathtub was in place.

(Part 2) 10 - The Donation Box

Not long after the Eisteddfod, Cleo Hartley was weeding the flowerbeds in her front garden one evening when she was surprised to see the vicar getting off his bike in a terrible hurry.

“Oh Miss Hartley, Miss Hartley!” he wailed.

Mr Parsnip was obviously distressed. Cleo stopped what she was doing and looked at him.

“I need your help.”

“You’d do better to say a prayer or two,” she advised him, giving her rake a good shaking in his direction. “I’m not into church affairs.”

9 - The Songsters.

The weeks following the ghastly episode of the Duggy tour were to prove very arduous for Dorothy and Laura, despite their new-found mutual understanding. Part of their troubles lay in the nature and personality of the petulant and temperamental Mr Morgan who having been allowed to set free some of his Celtic enthusiasm was now getting on everybody's nerves with a surfeit of it.

8 - Plans, treachery and consequences

The day after that Sunday afternoon vicarage meeting at which Mr Morgan had for the first time felt he was achieving some degree of integration into village life over and beyond serenading the occasional births, marriages, and deaths that occurred there, he waylaid his landlord, Mr Davies the newsagent, to tell him about the forthcoming eisteddfod. They were not friends and Mr Davies was a lousy landlord, but he had Welsh ancestry and that was a good reason for sharing the good news.

7 - The Prophecy

Dorothy could not get to sleep for excitement that night. Now the feud with Laura Finch was over, she could give her full attention to the free holiday. She lay in bed gazing through the gap in the floral chintz curtains at the full moon. Minor hated full moons because they lit up all the secret corners where his juiciest bones were buried. On nights like this one, he spent anxious hours crawling under his hole in the fence to guard his bone sites next door, not even allowing himself to be distracted by somebody's roaming cat, which could reckon with a chase on moonless nights.

6 - Pastoral care

Mr Parsnip retrieved his rusty old velocipede from the pile in the bicycle shed, pumped up the tyres a bit, clamped his trouser legs in his bicycle clips and set off in a zigzag line towards Dorothy's cottage. He was postponing the moment he would have to face her by enjoying all the gardens along the way and wondering why no one bothered much about the vicarage garden.

5 - Ghost-hunting for beginners

When Cleopatra Hartley first came to live in a cottage in Monkton Way that had been in the Hartley family for generations, the Upper Grumpsfield community had been perplexed, so unusually dark-skinned was she. When it was pointed out that her nose was distinctly Hartley, and when it became known that the late Mr Hartley was actually her father and had left her his cottage in Monkton Way, people had to admit that her Hartley origins were genuine, whatever colour her skin might be.

4 - Minor transgressions and evasive action

Dorothy's cottage is half way up Monkton Way, just before the sign pointing the way to the Priory, monastery on a hill pasture leading to Monkton Woods. Nobody nervous cares to go anywhere near Monkton Priory after dusk, but Dorothy loves to walk in the woods and that is where she rescued her dog Minor. Mr and Mrs Barker live next door in a house called ‘Dunroamin’, which they bought from a commercial traveller who was tired of listening to Dorothy playing Beethoven at all hours. They don’t go for walks much even during the day because Mrs Barker says her legs won’t take it. Mr Barker walks to Middlethumpton and back to visit his old colleagues at the Town Hall. But sometimes he goes by car. That is when Mrs Barker goes with him to do her shopping.

3 - We all have dreams

Sometimes, hardly have we dreamt that something will happen than it does. It was fate steering the wheel again on this particular morning. Dorothy was reading the daily newspaper over breakfast when she came across a very interesting advertisement announcing

"The chance of a lifetime! A one-in-a-million opportunity to go on a mystery tour of the universe.”

2 - Events

The Annual Garden Fete

The jamboree on the vicarage lawn is one of the vicar of St Peter’s favourite events, not least because it awards prizes for the best cake, the prettiest baby, the largest tomato, the nicest neighbour and other astutely chosen challenges, some of which he is allowed to adjudicate..

Weeks beforehand, he calls a meeting of all the important ladies in the village, now including Dorothy, Cleopatra Hartley and anyone else thought likely to be able to contribute something useful The list also includes Laura Finch who, to Dorothy’s dismay, has taken up residence in the family home, a cluttered-up old house in Lower Grumpsfield.

(Part 1) 1 - Beginnings

There she goes, her hat perched rakishly on her head, her little dog Minor tugging at his lead, eager to reach the shops and the butcher’s in particular. Dorothy Price ‘Piano Teacher’ is quite tall, quite thin and quite straight, ageless and extremely energetic, like so many independent females.