THE HONKEYMOON CAFE

A local farmer decides to take a wife, but didn’t allow for what came with her.  He hits upon a plan to ensure who gets the farm when he’s gone will be those who deserve it. Our village, as you know, is little more than a hamlet but has many of the facilities afforded to small towns for which we have to thank the Blythe estate. Besides the estate we are surrounded by farmsteads some rented, others privately owned, some of which do well, others do no more than scrape a living. Of the latter some years ago, one such was Todber’s Farm, a farming family with a history going back a century or more. The story goes that Michael Todber’s wife died during the sixties and for several decades ran the farm singlehanded due his only son being killed in a motorcycle accident. At seventy-six he decided that he could no longer manage the farm on his own and decided to look for a wife. There being no eligible women to marry in the vicinity, even if they wanted to, he decided to advertise. He receiv...

Where did Milton find his ‘three pound coin’?  Was it ever legal tender? Who are the mysterious callers?  Could they have some thing to do with the coin?  How many more questions can there be? Milton Peacock, the retired solicitor who lives opposite the Old Mill in our village and found the body of Mark Musgrave, passed by one Tuesday morning while I was dead-heading some roses in my front garden. He said he had heard that I had been in the antiques business and asked if I knew anything about coins. I replied that I was no numismatist but the house clearances I handled usually resulted in some coinage, and I could give him a name and number of a specialist.  Two days later he called in to say that the person I had put him on to had been quite short with him to the point of rudeness. I apologised on his behalf and asked Milton what had evoked such a hostile response. He produced from his pocket a small felt bag, within that some cotton wadding out of which he revealed...

A box found in a junk shop brings things to life - literally! Martin had taken the same route to and from work since he had started there. Why was it therefore that on this particular evening he found himself on a street he didn’t recognise? He had been lost in thought and had stopped opposite a grubby looking shop selling what for the most part appeared to be junk some of which spilled out onto the narrow pavement. In the window central to his gaze amongst the chaos was a wooden box. It was the kind in which, he recalled from TV shows, family bibles used to be kept. Martin, or his wife, had no real interest in antiques, and no bibles, but there was something appealing about it. A bell tinkled over the door as Martin entered and waited for the proprietor to appear.  ‘Hello, anyone there?’ Martin called but there was no reply and no sound from beyond the furniture and bric-a-brac piled almost to the ceiling. A gap left between the items turned a corner a few metres away ...

A genius counterfeiter doesn’t like the credit an ‘amateur’ is getting he himself deserves.  There’s pride in some crafts even though they are illegal.  And what does pride come before . . . ? Almost every week there seems to be a new coin minted to celebrate a person’s life, a historic event or some obscure anniversary. It may just be to give the designers something to do, the numismatists something to collect, or the forgers another challenge. Paul, who runs our village shop, due to his handling of change on a daily basis has a list of coins in circulation some of which are worth in excess of a thousand pounds. As a person steeped in antiques I find it unbelievable that a coin produced so recently could be worth far in excess of its face value, but Paul tells me it’s due mainly to minting errors, and rarity. As I was picking up my paper one morning, and being the only customer at the time, he called me to one side, ‘There,’ he said, ‘what do you think of that?’ So saying...

A wine tasting to end all wine tastings. George Villander’s wife wondered whether the beach hut which a neighbour had mentioned had been destroyed by fire that afternoon, could have been theirs. There were many along the Brighton seafront so the chance was remote. When her husband had not returned from his afternoon stroll by evening she began to fear there might be a connection. Visiting the local police station she was presented with the twisted remains of a cigarette lighter which she was able to identify as being her husband’s by his initials having been engraved upon it. The investigating officer was very consoling and had much sympathy for Mrs. Villander’s loss, nevertheless he was insistent on apprising her of all the details as a measure of his and his staff’s thoroughness. The intensity of the fire had severely damaged several other huts and there was little that could be identified in what remained other than the engraved cigarette lighter which had been returned to he...

An antiques expert discovers something peculiar which raises questions about a death.  Was it an accident or was a ghost involved? More to the point, was it murder?  A retired inspector admits there’s no proof. In the end it’s not needed. You may recall I was telling you about Lucy Musgrave and her husband Mark that had not long been living in the Old Mill before Lucy, who had become a friend, was found at the bottom of the stairs with her neck broken. She had been confiding in me, and the rest of the village, that her husband was being haunted by the ghost his deceased wife, Diana, who begrudged his marrying again. The Old Mill had a reputation for being haunted so to some this was no surprise. Lucy had described how he was being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and how he had been led half asleep to the top of the stairs several times from where eventually the ghost of Diana had pushed him down. An ambulance took him to hospital but he was released the same day ...

Mark and Lucy move into the Old Mill which is haunted. The husband suspects his deceased ex-wife, Diana, is haunting him.  After being pushed down the stairs, a medium is called to conduct a seance, and it’s definitely Diana.  When Lucy is pushed down the stairs, was it an accident, or was it Diana? It was a given that the Old Mill in our village would have the remnants of its past inhabitants still in occupation. That they were never seen, never heard and no evidence of any paranormal activity was ever revealed was not enough to prove to the locals that they didn’t exist. So it was expected that when Mr. and Mrs. Musgrave moved in and embarked upon some alterations that the disturbance would have some predictable consequences.   ‘They’ll pay for it, one way another, mark my words,’ was what Paul Goggin kept saying and ultimately I suppose he was proved right. He ran the local shop, the hub of the village and the font of all rumour and gossip. When the work was completed ...