There was a mysterious man who called at my door the other day. He said he was a pathologist but he didnt look like one. His black trainers all muddy and torn by thorns held his sockless feet. He was wearing black tracksuit bottoms like the ones my PE teacher in the 80's used to wear. Nylon with a white tramline down the side. Not Adidas. His hairline receded as it tends to do at that age, the 50-60 age when a man too scared to shave off his hair just lets it fade away like the tide at Southport beach which goes out for miles. Except this mans tide is not coming back, its gone, waving goodbye.
He was carrying a cardboard box in his hands and he put it down to rest on the bonnet of my husbands royal blue van. I thought that was quite rude, just to put a cardboard box down on top of someones vehicle. It might have scratched it. Was it so he could see more clearly into my house? I could see very clearly into his cardboard box, you see, I was above him, peering down from my bedroom window. It had papers and envelopes in it but he told my mother in law who answered the door that it held important trays that he did not want spilling in the car, and did we have any tape he could use to tape up the box? He was renting a nearby cottage with his wife, he mentioned the name, something cottage, but my mother in law is not from round here and couldn't recall the name. I don't know of any holiday cottages to rent locally but the information washed over me.
My mother in law cheerfully obliged, as northerners tend to do, even though she was still in her nighty. She dashed upstairs to retrieve sellotape from her travelling bag, which is usually stuffed with things for every eventuality. She taped up the box for him as my husband slowly wandered down the stairs to eye up this stranger.
The stranger grew nervous as my husband looked him over silently, and thanked my mother in law shouting much obliged over his shoulder as he walked off back to his car which was parked further down the road.
I watched him closely as he left from my undiscovered vantage point. He arrived at his black BMW and opened the boot. He placed the cardboard box he had so carefully taped up into the open boot. Then he opened the drivers door, sat there for a while, minutes, opened the rear passenger door, removed the box from the boot and placed it on the rear passenger seat. He then took out a pad and pen and reached in again for the box, removed it from the car and locked the car. He then walked off down the hill.
Mysterious! With a capital Mmmmmmmmm. More of a Hmmm! than a Mmmmm. Unless you are Miss Marple of course in which case it definately would be the latter.
There are a few unanswered questions....
Why did he call at my house for tape? We are minutes away from the shops,
Why did he say the box had trays that may spill when I could clearly see it had papers and envelopes in?
Why did he move the box around so much in the car and then take it out?
Who did he call on this mobile when he first put the box in the boot?
Why did he say he was a pathologist when clearly he was a pathological liar?
We never did find out the answers to these haunting questions, his car sped off about an hour later. Had he managed to be invited in to someones house and then robbed them? We'll never know!
