The Digger

    Miss Peacock, who lived alone, took little notice of her new neighbour, Mr.Green, who also lived alone, until the day a digger arrived. On her television set, Miss Peacock had seen diggers the size of houses digging goodness knows what in enormous mouthfuls and dumping it into enormous yellow trucks. The digger delivered to Mr.Green was red, and small - small enough to trundle up the path between Mr.Green's house and his garage. What on earth could Mr.Green's possibly want it for?  It looked extremely dangerous.

    'How much damage will your apparatus do,' Miss Peacock asked. She was in conversation with Mr. Green over the fence between their back gardens. 

    'My dear Miss Peacock. It is not my digger. It is on hire, merely.'

    'It will no doubt be noisy,’ Miss Peacock said. ‘It will disturb Vinegar and Mustard. They will seek refuge in the cupboard under the sink, poor dears.'

    'Vinegar and Mustard?'

    'My pussy cats. They are Abyssinian. They are valuable. They have sharp ears. The noise from your digger will disconcert them. Why do you want it?'

    'To dig a pond.'

    'A pond! Why do you want a pond?' 

    'A pond will be the main feature of my water feature.

    'But a pond is a danger to cats,' Miss peacock protested.

    'Cats can swim if they have to.  If one were to throw a cat into a pond, one would find the cat would swim.'

    'Don't be ridiculous, Mr.Green. A pond indeed! I shall telephone to the Council. This digging of ponds must be nipped in the bud. There are many cats in the neighbourhood. And small children. A child drowning, though welcome to some, would be a tragedy to others. To the parents, for instance.'

    'I do not need the Council's permission for a pond less than two feet high. And in my experience, Miss Peacock, ponds are not high, they are deep.'

    'Exactly.' Miss Peacock stared at Mr.Green, then asked who would drive the digger. 'Rough men with hard hats and tattoos, I expect. Always wanting cups of tea and bringing in mud and asking to use my lavatory. I shall not oblige them.'

    'I will drive the digger myself.'

    'You, Mr.Green? You are not a licensed digger driver, I'll be bound. I shall telephone to the police.'

    'I do not need a license to drive a digger on my own land.'

    'Do you know how to drive a digger?

    'It is not difficult. There is an exhaustive instruction manual, and a tutorial on a DVD.'

    'That's all very well, Mr. Green. But what, pray, will you do with the soil?'

    'What soil?'

    'The soil that was in the hole where the pond will be.'

    For a moment Mr.Green did not understand, and when he did he said, 'I shall dig another hole and bury it.'

    Miss Peacock turned away and went back indoors, calling for Vinegar and Mustard to get their treaty-weeties. Mr.Green stuck out his tongue at her retreating back and muttered 'Stupid cow.'

    Mr.Green spent the next day mastering the digger. At five o’clock, after much practise, he said ‘I can turn it round on a five-pence piece. I can raise and lower the arm and operate the digger bucket. I am really getting to know its ropes.' He said this to Miss Peacock who was watching him from her side of the fence, noting the times at which Mr.Green started and stopped the digger, how loud was the noise it made, and how much blue smoke, and the way Vinegar and Mustard reacted to the kerfuffle. Mr. Green drove the digger to where Miss Peacock stood by the fence and stopped but did not turn off the engine. He called to her from the throbbing cab. 

    'I shall start the dig tomorrow. It will take only one day. Unless I encounter boulders.'    

    'Do not dare to put your boulders over my side,' Miss Peacock said. 'I will not be contaminated. Good gracious no. I shall make a note of any transgressions and telephone to the Social Work, stating that you are an undesirable.'

    At this point two things happened. The digger lurched forward and at the same time the arm swung forward and the digger bucket smashed into the fence. Planks splintered. Miss Peacock skipped back in alarm. Mr.Green reclaimed control of his digger. He backed up a couple of feet and rested the bucket on the ground. 

    'Missed,' he said, sotto voce.

    'Outrageous,' declared Miss Peacock with hauteur. 'Incompetent. I shall telephone to my solicitor. Mr. Plumb will seek a restraining order. And damages for damage to the fence. You'll see.' She made a note in her notebook and went indoors, calling to Vinegar and Mustard.

    'This is war,' Mr.Green said. 

    Mr.Green laid aside the collection of objects his digging had unearthed:        

    A flint-lock pistol, last used in a duel, perhaps, or at a military engagement during the English Civil War.  The brass barrel was covered in verdigris. The firing mechanism was intact but in need of a good clean.

    A length of plastic hosepipe. Just the thing when the time came to fill the pond.

    A length of rope, the sort climbers used to hitch themselves to cliffs, to judge by its red, white and blue colours. 

    A tradesman's lunch-box, empty except for a tube of Polo mints.

    Some lengths of lead piping. Mr.Green concluded that his house had been re-plumbed and the old pipes, along with offcuts of copper and plastic tubing had been disposed of in his garden - by the plumber who abandoned the lunch-box, perhaps?

    And a butcher's boning knife, well rusted.

    Miss Peacock had been monitoring Mr. Green’s activity from her side of the damaged fence.

    'Look at that lot,' Mr. Green said. 'I should hire a metal-detector and sweep my garden and yours, Miss Peacock’s. There could be enough treasure-trove to pay for the hire of the digger. There could be Roman coins and amulets, Viking helmets, a hoard of Victorian sovereigns. You'll have made a note of these items, Miss Peacock?'

    'I have. Little escapes my notice, Mr. Green.'

    'A fine collection,’ Mr. Green said. 'Would you care for a Polo mint, Miss Peacock?'

    'I would not. What will you do with your bric-a-brac?'

    'Not bric-a-brac, dear lady. That pistol, for example, could be worth real money.'

    'Oh? Do you think so? How much?'

    'Hundreds. Maybe more. It is seventeenth century.'

    'Really? How very interesting.' Miss Peacock considered Mr. Green's items, and said, 'I tell you what, Mr.Green. While you complete the excavation for your ridiculous pond, I will give everything a good clean in return for my keeping that wicked-looking boning knife.'

    Mr.Green climbed down from the digger. 'It's a deal, Miss Peacock.' He gathered up the items, handed them across the broken fence and as Miss Peacock took them away, muttered 'Why would the old bat want a boning knife?’

    

    The manager of the equipment hire shop was suspicious enough to phone the police when an elderly lady drove a digger into the yard to return it. A favour to my neighbour Mr. Green, she told him. The manager explained they usually sent a truck to retrieve large equipment such as diggers at the end of the hire period. Miss Peacock said had she known that she would have telephoned. But she had found the DVD most helpful and driving a digger was much easier than she had imagined. 

    When the police asked why Mr. Green had wanted the digger, Miss Peacock grew flustered, saying something about finding items of interest in his garden, but she had made a list of everything in her notebook along with her conversations with Mr.Green. The police examined the notebook and soon extended their investigation to Miss Peacock's house and the two gardens, hers and Mr.Green's. They found  the rope, the lead (and other) pipes in Miss Peacock's kitchen and a lunch-box. They had been carefully cleaned. More significant was an ancient flint-lock pistol and a boning knife hidden in a cat's bed-basket. Though both items had also been carefully cleaned, the traces of blood residues on the knife were shown to be human, not feline.

    'There's something missing,' Detective Inspector Brenda Scarlett said.

    'What's that, guv?'

    'Mr.Green, that's what.'

   D.I Scarlett poked with her toe where there were signs of recently disturbed soil in Mr.Green's garden.

    'I think we need a digger,' she said.