1. The Community Library

The picturesque Cotswolds village of Bunburry had a range of attractions, including a gently flowing river, the Victoria Park with its Indian pavilion, a historic church, and The Drunken Horse Inn.

But there was no library: it had closed a good decade earlier, the victim of council cuts. Alfie McAlister, one of Bunburry’s newest residents after inheriting a cottage from his late Aunt Augusta, wondered whether it could be resurrected.

He casually mentioned his thoughts one evening to Liz and Marge, his aunt’s best friends. Marge rang him the very next day.

“Put on your best bib and tucker, my boy. Miss Radford-Jones wants to see you.”

“Who’s Miss Radford-Jones?” he asked.

“Alfie McAlister – born in Bunburry and you don’t know who Miss Radford-Jones is? Shame on you.”

He might have been born in Bunburry, but he was a Londoner through and through. His mother had moved to London for work before he was old enough to know where he was.

“Miss Radford-Jones,” Marge told him, “is the lady of the manor.”

“I had no idea that Bunburry had a manor, let alone a lady to go with it,” said Alfie.

“Well, maybe not the lady of the manor as such, but she lives in a very big house, and she’s what you would call formidable.”

Since Marge herself could be what Alfie would call formidable, despite her tiny size, he was apprehensive about his appointment with Miss Radford-Jones.

He dressed with particular care, choosing a charcoal-grey suit he had never worn in the country. He matched it with a cream shirt and a dark-green tie bought in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Adding black silk socks and perfectly buffed black leather shoes, he felt better prepared for the meeting.

He had just reached the end of the High Street when there was the sound of excited panting and something cold and wet was thrust into his hand.

“I’m so sorry, Alfie,” came a female voice.

Alfie turned to see Debbie, dressed in her pink crop top and black leggings, a pink sweatband round her platinum blonde hair, tugging at the pink lead attached to the black poodle snuffling round him.

“He thinks you might have a b-i-s-c-u-i-t,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper as she spelled out the word. The poodle sat down in front of Alfie, its mouth open expectantly.

“And I think Perro knows how to spell,” said Alfie. “You’re very clever, aren’t you, boy?”

The poodle’s feathery tail thumped against the pavement.

“Yes, poodles are very clever,” said Debbie. “Much more clever than Border collies.” She fished a dog biscuit out of the pink bag fastened round her waist and handed it to Alfie. “Here. Throw it in the air. He’s very good at jumping.”

Alfie did as instructed and the poodle leaped up, catching the biscuit deftly in its mouth and crunching it down in seconds.

“Is this you skiving off?” Another voice, this time Dorothy the postwoman, who was crossing the road to join them. The remark seemed to be aimed at Debbie.

“Certainly not,” Debbie said. “Poppy’s in the salon and my next lady isn’t due for an hour, so I thought I’d go for a run in the park.”

Dorothy shuddered. “I’m surprised you can bear to go in there, considering.”

Over six months ago, Debbie had found the body of Mario Bellini, the handsome gelateria owner, in the Victoria Park, and Alfie suspected she rather enjoyed the celebrity status it had brought her.

“It’s because of poor Mario that I go there,” said Debbie earnestly. “I hold him in my thoughts. I think about how I found him – it was Perro who found him, actually – poodles are amazingly intelligent-”

“Anyway, what are you up to, Alfie?” interrupted Dorothy, reluctant to hear about the intelligence of poodles yet again. “I’ve never seen you in a suit before.”

“Doesn’t he look smart?” said Debbie. “Oh, please don’t take that the wrong way, Alfie – you always look smart, you’ve got a wonderful dress sense. But I’ve never seen you in a suit either. Oh dear, are you going to a funeral?”

“Don’t be daft,” said Dorothy. “How could he be going to a funeral with that tie?” She peered at it. “What’s that on it? Morris dancers?”

The treasures of the Metropolitan Museum would be wasted on Dorothy, Alfie decided with a wry smile. He could imagine her reaction to the gilded statue of Diana: “That looks like Maisie Wilson in the buff.” He wondered anxiously what Miss Radford-Jones would make of his tie, and of him.

“It’s a design taken from an ancient Egyptian coffin,” he told Dorothy.

“Which would be very suitable for a funeral,” said Debbie with a hint of asperity.

“Thankfully, I’m not going to a funeral,” Alfie said. “I’m going to see Miss Radford-Jones.”

The two women exchanged glances.

“You’d have more fun at a funeral,” said Dorothy. “I’ll let you get on. You don’t want to be late.”

“Just pop into the salon if you want a therapeutic massage afterwards. I’ve got some lovely calming oils,” said Debbie.

Alfie went on his way with even more trepidation than before. He reached the outskirts of the village and turned right, as instructed by Marge.

There was the house, set in its own grounds: a vast rambling mansion in Victorian Gothic style. Part of it looked like a medieval castle, with turrets and crenellations; part of it resembled an ancient chapel, with a steep grey-slated roof; and part of it looked like an elegant stone mansion, with bay windows giving a view over the lawn.

Alfie had often passed by, but until this moment, hadn’t realised this was a private residence. He had assumed it was a country house hotel, so expensively discreet that there was no need to advertise a name at the roadside. He should have realised it was no such thing, since any visitors to Bunburry stayed at The Drunken Horse.

He walked down the gravel path and up stone steps to a porch, which was fully one-storey high, flanked by carved stone columns. The Gothic theme extended to the massive front door whose unpainted wood was studded with iron. Before he could reach for the antique door knocker, shaped like a lion’s head, the door swung open.

There stood a woman for whom formidable was the only possible description. Marge had told Alfie that Miss Radford-Jones was in her eighties. She had a walking stick, true, but the set of her jaw suggested it could just as easily be used as a weapon than as a mobility aid. Her steel-grey hair was drawn back in an elegant chignon, and she wore a stylish navy-blue trouser suit with a coral scarf at her neck.

Alfie expected her to talk like Dame Evadne Foster, grande dame of the British theatre, whom he had once met at a house party.

But when she spoke, her accent was local.

“Mr McAlister, I presume?”

Alfie resisted the temptation to say: “No, Dr Livingstone, actually.”

“I’m Irene Radford-Jones,” she went on, and it took Alfie a moment to work out what she had said. Eye-reen-ee, three syllables, a name he had only ever heard as Eye-reen. Her pronunciation was as Victorian as her house.

“A pleasure to meet you,” he said, respectfully shaking the hand that wasn’t gripping the walking stick. It felt frail and delicate, and he was careful not to squeeze too hard. “But please, call me Alfie.”

She gave him a cold stare. “I scarcely think that would be appropriate,” she said, turning on her heel.

Chastened, he followed her into the house, across a mosaic tiled floor and into a large room containing an enormous polished wooden table surrounded by high-backed carved wooden chairs that looked as though Anne Boleyn might have sat in them.

Miss Radford-Jones took her place at the table, her back ramrod straight, and indicated for Alfie to sit opposite. Visiting someone’s home in Bunburry normally involved tea and home baking or, in Liz and Marge’s case, gin and Liz’s famous fudge. No refreshments were on offer here. It was like a job interview.

“You’re Augusta Lytton’s nephew,” said Miss Radford-Jones. It was a statement, not a question, but Alfie nodded his agreement anyway.

He had virtually no memory of Aunt Augusta, whom he had last seen when he was a small boy. But when he arrived in Bunburry he found that everyone in the village remembered her with huge affection. Except none of them used her given name: they all knew her as Gussie.

“What brings you to Bunburry?” Miss Radford-Jones asked.

“Aunt Augusta left me her home, Windermere Cottage.”

She pursed her lips. “That doesn’t answer my question. You wouldn’t have had a problem selling it for a tidy sum. Why come here to live?”

Alfie was about to make some bland reply when he found himself deciding to tell her the truth.

“Someone very close to me died suddenly. It was difficult living in London without her.” That was as much as he was prepared to say about Vivian. “Windermere Cottage offered an escape. I thought it was just a stop-gap, but I’m planning to stay for the foreseeable future.”

Miss Radford-Jones’s expression gave nothing away.

“Margaret Redwood tells me you’re a businessman,” she said.

Nobody in Bunburry called Marge Margaret, apart from Liz when she was trying to make a serious point to her friend....