The Studham Scarecrow with Two Left Boots

There was a scarecrow doing my job when I arrived in Studham that morning. He stood beside a downstairs window with a sponge in one hand, a bucket in the other and an expression suggesting he’d already had enough of Mondays. Someone had given him a salt-and-pepper beard made from unravelled wool. I rubbed my own beard. The resemblance was uncomfortable.

“That’s not meant to be me, is it?” I asked Mrs Fenella Prowse, who was kneeling beside him in her front garden.

“Certainly not,” she said. “He’s much less chatty.”

Then she offered me a biscuit, which softened the blow.

I know the lanes round Studham well enough to recognise most houses by their chimney pots, but Fenella was new. She’d moved into the little brick cottage in February, and so far our conversations had mostly concerned her stubborn window catches and whether the weather was thinking about improving. Today, there were six mugs arranged on a tray by her front door.

“Expecting company?” I asked.

“Possibly.” She adjusted the scarecrow’s collar. “I’ve invited a few neighbours for tea in the garden. Thought this chap might give us something to talk about.”

It was a good plan. Unfortunately, her conversation starter had a problem.

“He’s got two left boots,” she said.

I looked down. He certainly had. Both rubber toes pointed away from each other as though they’d fallen out.

Fenella explained that she’d borrowed old gardening clothes from two neighbours. In the muddle, she’d dressed him in one boot from each pair. Somewhere nearby were two right boots, and one contained a folded note with the names of everybody she’d invited.

“I wrote them down so I wouldn’t get flustered,” she admitted. “Now I can remember their dogs, but not which person belongs to which dog.”

Before I could help untangle that, a small terrier appeared at the gate carrying a rubber boot almost as long as himself.

“That,” Fenella said, “is definitely one of the dogs.”

The terrier marched past us, deposited the boot beneath the scarecrow and sat down proudly. Around his collar hung a tag reading TURNIP.

“Morning, Turnip,” I said. “Where’s Oswin?”

A breathless man in a cardigan appeared at the gate. “Has he brought his boot back? He’s been collecting it from here all morning.”

We looked beneath the scarecrow. Turnip looked beneath the scarecrow. Then, with impressive confidence, he selected a left boot and began dragging it towards home.

The mystery was less complicated than we’d thought.

I traded him a tennis ball from the van, kept there for another four-legged supervisor on my round, and retrieved the boot. Fenella checked inside the returned one. Out came her folded list, slightly damp but readable.

“Oh, thank goodness,” she said. Then her smile slipped. “Although now I’ve got to actually talk to everyone.”

Oswin glanced at the tray. “I’d settle for tea. Turnip’s had me up since six.”

That made her laugh properly.

While I finished the windows, Oswin fetched his wife, Rosabel, from next door. By the time I’d packed away my hose, two more neighbours had arrived, one carrying seed cake and the other the missing right boot.

I stayed for a quick cuppa. Fenella introduced everyone without consulting her list, and Turnip fell asleep beneath the table with his chin on my shoe.

As I left, Fenella was moving an extra chair into the sunshine. The scarecrow stood beside a sparkling window, finally wearing a matching pair of boots.

“Still think he looks like you?” she called.

“Not now,” I said. “He’s finished work and nobody’s asked him to shift his van.”