Read The Lavender Lane Legacy free: the opening chapter

The Missing Melody

Dorothy Pruitt had lived at Number Seven, Lavender Lane for eleven years, and she could tell you the time of day by the sounds outside her window.

At seven sharp, Mr. Abernathy's gate gave its rusty squeak. At half past, the post van rattled over the cobbles. And every evening at six o'clock, without fail, came the sound Dorothy loved most of all. Margie's piano.

It drifted out of the open windows of Number Twelve, soft and sweet, curling down the lane like woodsmoke. Sometimes it was an old hymn. Sometimes a dance tune from long ago. The whole street seemed to breathe easier when Margie played. Dogs settled. Kettles went on. Neighbours paused at their gates to listen.

Dorothy would sit in her armchair with her tea going cold and let the music wash over her. It had carried her through the worst winter of her life, the first one without Harold. She had never told Margie that. Perhaps she never would. Some things were easier to feel than to say.

But this evening, something was wrong.

Dorothy looked at the clock on the mantel. Six twenty-three. The lane outside was quiet. No piano. No music at all.

She set down her teacup and frowned. Margie had not missed an evening in eleven years. Not once. Not even with a broken wrist, two winters back. She had played left-handed, slow and wobbly, but she had played.

"That's odd," Dorothy said to the empty room.

The room, as usual, said nothing back.

---

Earlier that morning, the lane had been its usual busy self.

Dorothy had been out front by eight, deadheading her lavender. The bushes lined her front path like a row of plump purple soldiers, and the bees were already at work. She liked to get out early, before the heat. It gave her an excuse to see everyone, though she would have denied it if asked.

"You're fussing over those plants again," came a voice over the hedge. "They'll grow whether you pat them or not."

That was Ethel Bean, Number Nine, out with her little dog Pickles. Ethel was seventy-six, round as a teapot, and sharper than a new pin.

"They like the attention," Dorothy said. "Same as Pickles."

"Pickles likes sausages. There's a difference." Ethel stopped at the gate and leaned on it. "Did you hear about Vivian?"

Dorothy sighed. News about Vivian Sterling was never good news, at least not lately. "What now?"

"She's put a notice on the board at the shop. The farm at the end of the lane. She's selling it."

Dorothy's secateurs went still. "Selling Lavender Farm? She can't. It's been in that family forever."

"I know it's been empty since the spring. But still." Ethel's voice dropped, though there was no one to hear. "And there's talk it won't stay a farm. Talk of developers. Flats, Dorothy. Flats at the end of our lane."

Pickles yapped at a bee. Dorothy straightened up slowly, her knees creaking. The farm at the end of Lavender Lane had sat quiet and empty for months, ever since old Margie's cousin passed. Dorothy had assumed it would just be sold to a nice family with a dog and a vegetable patch.

"Dorothy? You've gone a funny colour."

"I'm fine." She wasn't, quite. "It's only a notice, Ethel. Talk is cheap."

"Talk is all we have till something happens." Ethel clicked her tongue at Pickles. "Marge will have a thing or two to say about it. You know how she loves that farm."

That was true. Margie played the piano at every village do, and every summer the fête spilled out of the farm's big barn. It was practically the heart of the lane.

"I'll look in on her later," Dorothy said.

"You do that. And Dorothy?" Ethel's eyes twinkled. "Wear your good cardigan. Agnes from the shop says there's a new gentleman moved into Number Four."

"Ethel Bean, you are a menace."

"I'm a public service." And off she went, Pickles trotting ahead like a small hairy tugboat.

---

The village shop sat at the corner where Lavender Lane met the high street. Dorothy told herself she was only going for milk. The notice had nothing to do with it.

The bell over the door jingled. Agnes, the postmistress turned shopkeeper, was stacking tins behind the counter. She looked up and raised an eyebrow. She knew why Dorothy was there. Agnes knew everything.

"Milk," Dorothy said.

"Milk," Agnes agreed, and didn't move.

They looked at each other. Agnes lost first. She nodded toward the cork board by the door.

There it was. Cream paper, typed neat, pinned dead centre.

For sale by private treaty: Lavender Farm, Lavender Lane, Havenwood. All enquiries to Sterling Estates.

"'Private treaty,'" Dorothy read out loud. "That means she doesn't want anyone knowing the price. Or the buyer."

"That's what I said." Agnes came out from behind the counter, wiping her hands on her apron. "Tom Abernathy's been in twice already, asking questions. He's that upset. His grandfather worked that farm, you know."

"I didn't know."

"Half the village worked it, one time or another." Agnes lowered her voice. "And there's more. A man in a suit came in on Monday. Didn't buy anything except a bottle of water. Asked me how many houses the lane had, and whether the farm buildings were 'sound.' Sound, he said. Like he was measuring them up."

Dorothy felt a little chill, though the morning was warm. "Did you tell Vivian?"

"Vivian?" Agnes snorted. "Vivian Sterling hasn't set foot in this shop in thirty years. She sends her housekeeper. No, Dorothy, whatever she's planning, she's planning it alone."

Dorothy bought the milk. She also bought a loaf she didn't need, out of a vague feeling that news this dreary required toast.

---

On the walk home, she passed Number Four. The new curtains were up, blue and white checked. A man's bicycle leaned by the door. Dorothy slowed her steps, then caught herself doing it and walked on, cheeks warm. Eleven years a widow, and Ethel still had her blushing like a girl.

She passed Number Twelve. Margie's gate stood open, which was usual. Margie Pritchard said a shut gate was a shut heart, and she kept hers open to everyone.

The garden was lovely, as always. Roses rioting over the fence. A tabby cat asleep on the step. But Dorothy noticed something as she went by. The front window, the one above the piano, was closed. It was a warm June morning. That window was never closed in summer.

She almost stopped. Then she told herself not to be a busybody, and went home to make her toast.

She would regret that, later.

---

The afternoon passed the way afternoons did on Lavender Lane. Quietly, and with a good deal of watching through net curtains, which was the lane's oldest and dearest hobby.

Dorothy watered her pots. She rang her sister in Devon and told her nothing, because there was nothing yet to tell, only a feeling. She tried to read her library book and read the same page four times.

At five o'clock, Tom Abernathy hammered on his gate. Not the gate, exactly. A "Save Our Farm" sign, nailed to a stake by his hedge, crooked and painted in a hurry.

Dorothy watched him from her window. A big man, Tom, with a retired policeman's moustache and a worried face. He caught her looking and gave a grim little wave.

"You've seen the notice, then," he called.

"I've seen it."

"I'll stop it." He said it like a man daring the world to argue. "I don't know how yet. But I'll stop it."

"Tea?" Dorothy offered, because on Lavender Lane, tea was the answer to everything up to and including war.

He shook his head. "No time. I'm making a list." And he stumped back indoors, leaving Dorothy to wonder what sort of list stopped a rich woman from doing exactly as she pleased.

---

Six o'clock came.

Dorothy was in her armchair by the open window, tea in hand, the way she always was. She heard Mr. Whitcombe's radio click off next door. She heard the Finch children called in for their supper. The whole lane seemed to lean in, the way it always did, waiting for the first notes.

Six o'clock went.

Six ten. Six fifteen. Six twenty-three.

Nothing.

No hymn. No dance tune. No wobbly left-handed effort. Just the bees finishing their rounds and a blackbird tuning up in the sycamore, as if sent to fill in and not sure of the song.

Dorothy's tea went cold in her hand.

Eleven years, she thought. Eleven years, every single evening. Through colds and storms and that broken wrist. Margie played at six, the way the sun set, the way the tide came in. You could set your clock by her. Half the lane did.

She got up and went to the window. Number Twelve sat peaceful at the end of the row, roses over the fence, cat on the step, windows shut tight.

Shut. On a warm June evening.

Dorothy set her cup down. Her hands were not quite steady.

"Don't be silly," she told herself. "People play the piano late. People have visitors. People feel poorly and take a nap."

But her feet were already carrying her to the door. She took her cardigan off the hook, the good one, though why that mattered she couldn't have said. Habit, maybe. Or Ethel's voice in her head.

Out on the lane, the evening light lay gold across the cobbles. The quiet was wrong. That was the only word for it. A lane shaped around a sound, with the sound gone, like a picture with a piece torn out.

She was not the only one who felt it. Ethel stood at her gate with Pickles under her arm. Tom Abernathy had come back out, his crooked sign forgotten. Even young Mrs. Finch was on her doorstep, a tea towel over her shoulder.

They all looked at Number Twelve. Then they looked at each other.

"She play today?" Tom called across. His voice was too loud in the stillness.

"Not a note," Ethel answered. "Not since morning. And her window's been shut all day."

Dorothy's heart gave a thump. "She always opens it when she plays. For the lane."

"I know," Ethel said softly. "That's the thing, isn't it."

Mrs. Finch hugged her elbows. "Should we... should someone knock?"

Someone should. That much was clear. And by some silent agreement, made in the space of a glance, that someone was Dorothy. Dorothy, who had known Margie longest. Dorothy, who had the good cardigan on.

She walked down the lane. The others fell in behind her, a slow little procession, neighbours pulled out of their houses by a silence.

At Number Twelve, she pushed the open gate. The cat on the step watched her with green eyes. Up close, she saw the door was not latched, just resting against the frame.

"Margie?" Dorothy called. "It's Dorothy. Are you all right, love?"

Nothing. Not a footstep. Not a kettle. Not a single note.

She put her hand flat on the door, and pushed.

The door swung open on a dark hallway, and from the front room, where the piano stood in its patch of evening light, something small and bright lay broken on the floorboards.

Behind her, Ethel gasped, a small sound, quickly stifled. Dorothy held up a hand without turning, and the little procession on the path went still.

"Margie?" she called again, softer now, though her heart was going like a drum.

The hallway smelled of lavender polish and yesterday's baking. Of course it did. It always did. Dorothy stepped inside, and her eyes found the bright thing on the floorboards.

It was a teacup. Margie's best china, the roses-and-gold set that came out for birthdays and for the vicar. It lay in three pieces beside the piano stool, and there was a spoon near it, and a dark little spill of tea long since soaked into the wood.

Dorothy's knees went weak with relief and fear all at once. A dropped cup, not a body. A dropped cup was something you could come back from.

"Well?" Ethel whispered from the doorway.

"Her good teacup," Dorothy said. "Broken. And the piano lid is down."

"The lid." Ethel knew what that meant. Everyone on the lane did. Margie never closed the lid. The lid stayed up the way a flag stays up, proud and open, ready.

Dorothy moved into the front room. The house was tidy, unnervingly so. Cushions plumped. Music stacked. On the piano, where Margie's hymn book always sat open to the evening's first piece, there was instead a single sheet of paper, held down by the metronome.

She did not touch it. Eleven years of evenings had taught her many things, and one of them was that you did not go touching what was not yours. But she could read the first line from where she stood, written in Margie's looping hand.

It said: Dear Lane.

"She's written to us," Dorothy murmured. "To all of us."

Then, from the back of the house, came the smallest sound. A floorboard. A breath. The faint clink of a china cup being set down very carefully, as if by someone trying not to be heard.

Dorothy crossed the hall in three steps and pushed open the kitchen door.

Margie sat at her little table by the window, fully dressed, her cardigan buttoned wrong, one button off. She was alive. That was the first thing, the enormous thing, and Dorothy felt her eyes sting with it. But Margie sat facing the wall, not the window, and her hands lay in her lap like two folded birds, and she did not turn around.

"Margie, love," Dorothy said. "It's me."

"I know who it is," Margie said. Her voice was small and grey. "You all came. I heard the gate. You've all come because I didn't play."

"We were worried sick."

"I'm sorry." A pause. "I couldn't. I sat down at six, same as always, and I put my hands on the keys, and I couldn't remember a single note. Not one, Dorothy. Eleven years, and they were just... gone. Like they'd never been mine at all."

The kitchen was very quiet. Out in the lane, the rooks were settling into the elms, talking it all over.

Dorothy pulled out the other chair and sat down. She did not ask questions. That was not what you did first. First, you reached across the table and put your hand over the folded birds, and you held on.

"So I dropped the cup," Margie went on, thin and steady, as if reciting the weather. "And I shut the window, because I couldn't bear anyone to hear the silence. And I wrote to you all, because I thought, tomorrow I'll post it, and then it will be done, and the lane can find another clock to set itself by."

"Margie Hart, you listen to me," Dorothy said. "We did not come down this lane tonight for the piano."

Margie's eyes came up at last. They were red-rimmed and tired and terribly old, and terribly young too, like a child's the first time the world does something it should not do.

"We came for you," Dorothy said. "The music was just how we knew you were there."

Outside, in the hallway, Ethel was crying quietly into Pickles's fur, and Tom Abernathy was blowing his nose like a foghorn, and Mrs. Finch was already saying, in a voice that brooked no argument, "I'm putting the kettle on."

And because this was Lavender Lane, where a knock unanswered was a summons and a silence was never suffered alone, nobody went home until long after dark, and the note on the piano waited, unread, beneath the metronome, patient as the morning.

The sample ends here.