"The Americans are coming next week," the Mayor muttered.
It seemed to Imogen that the papers were fluttering around him as if he were a Potterverse character. In the morning Imogen had jotted down a small to-do list for herself - twenty three points - and she picked up her sonic screwdriver shaped pen, while the Mayor started in his habitual machine gun manner.
The Americans coming, thus, tickets, accommodations, food, welcome packages for the welcome do, papers, reservations for a celebratory reception. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, went Imogen's pen in her daybook.
The moors, the benches, the arboretum, the fete to celebrate. Four more ticks followed.
The road constructions in three locations around the town. Tick.
His sister's birthday. No tick followed, Imogen had taken care of the present the day before.
Ms. Sanders' pre-sale renovations permit. Tick.
Bits and bobs of the official town nature followed, and Imogen finally looked down at the page, tearing her eyes off the Mayor with difficulty. The Mayor had hit twenty two out of twenty three. Only 'suit fitting' was left unticked. If not for Imogen, the Mayor would generally go around his day quite 'unattired' - and not in a good way. Just this morning she'd caught him by the tie while he was snatching a scone for his morning cuppa, and his Balthus had been put in order. Not to be misunderstood, Imogen could hardly claim she disliked this part of her job. Among other things the Mayor had a habit of sticking his left hand into his mane and ruffling it. He always finished that gesture with a strange twist of his wrist, fingers threaded in the soft curls, which would give him a hoopoe tuft behind his left ear. The Mayor had been sufficiently trained by now and would bend as soon as the brush - specifically kept in her desk for the 'un-hoopoeing' - would pop into Imogen's hand.
Imogen ensured the Mayor that they were on the same page, he nodded still looking into the papers in his hand, and turned around to leave.
Imogen had already stretched her hand to her phone to start on her twenty two tasks - and to reschedule the suit fitting - when the Mayor's voice made her look up at him.
"Where are we with the break-in?"
"The alarm firm is sending someone to look at the tunnel doors today. I've checked the papers and the valuables, including art, again, this morning. Nothing seems to have been touched."
The Mayor hummed - Imogen swooned - and then he stuck his hand into his hair. He had no meetings planned for the rest of the day, and Imogen decided to pass up the brush. She'd get understandably titillated when brushing the Mayor's dark brown tresses - but on the other hand, the brush grabbing felt strangely similar to her spritzing her cat from a spray bottle. The poor man soon would start expecting a biscuit after 'being such a good boy and standing still.'
"The only place I haven't looked at is the cellar," Imogen added, and the Mayor's blue eyes lost a distant look, and he tilted his head questioningly.
"You know, the one where we keep the pre-computer era archive?" she added. "I can't imagine anyone taking anything from there, but I'm planning to check it at the end of the day."
"We have quite a poor catalogue system for it," the Mayor grumbled.
"Yeah, but we have this," Imogen said pointedly, and tapped her finger to her temple. "Photographic memory, remember?"
The Mayor stared at her forehead, and Imogen giggled. His multiple times aforementioned silky, heavy strands - and his shoulders, and his waist, and his long strong legs, and his gorgeous hands; and anything and everything about his appearance, and all his adorable habits, and his charming quirks and idiosyncrasies, say, how he picked up his cup with the thumb and the middle finger, as if covering it with his palm, and then drank, turning and tilting his hand; or everything else about the man, for that matter - might have flustered Imogen and made her desperately loved up - but when it came to work, Imogen knew who was, quoting the Eleventh Doctor, 'da man.'
"I've familiarized myself with the archive when I started working for you. I won't remember every document in it, of course, but if something was removed, I might be able to guess what," she finished confidently.
The Mayor blinked.
"Just don't stay overtime, please," he said, tousling more curls behind his left ear. Imogen nodded with a smile. "I don't pay you enough," he suddenly muttered.
"You've just given me a raise," Imogen reminded him.
He studied her for a second, and then stretched his hand, and put something on her table. And then he turned around and disappeared in his office, once again rustling with his papers. Imogen stared at a small cone-shaped metal object on her table - and then she realized it was a Hershey's Kiss sweet. Holding her breath, Imogen touched the tip of her index finger to the end of the paper 'plume' jollily sticking up out of the foil pyramid. Contrary to Imogen's expectations, the treat wasn't a hallucination.
***
By the time she was supposed to go home, Imogen managed a third of the archive. Sneezing and coughing, she went up the stairs, back into the House. The office had been locked, and the Mayor was nowhere to be seen. Imogen picked up her handbag and headed out.
While she was pedalling home, Imogen's mind jumped between two quandaries she seemed to be most preoccupied these days. The question of the Mayor's kisses - which was now a pun Imogen hadn't intended - had been stuffed at the back of her mind. She might have been love stricken, but Imogen Fox knew when to put the labours lost of her daft heart aside.
Firstly, it was unclear what to do with the Mayor's father's presumable negative insight into the contract with the Americans. Imogen could - cataloguing the options from least comfortable to those Imogen's aforementioned daft heart demanded most - meet up with Mr. Oakby, the older and the scarier, without informing his son. Alternatively, she could go for the cuppa, and then tell the Mayor if whatever she found out rang true and important to her. Or she could share Mrs. Dyre's concerns with the Mayor and discuss the potentiality of hearing out what the older man had to say.
The second issue drilling into Imogen's temple had to do with the china statuette hidden under her bed. Imogen was a long-time, close friend of a policeman. She knew she had 'perverted the course of justice by contaminating the crime scene.'
Imogen's bike whirred. She'd quite forgotten about the said policeman, hadn't she? And just as the past turbulent thirteen hours - had it really been that little? - when Imogen's private life suddenly became, put simply, existent, she once again lamented the lack of a coherent manual to romance that humans surely should have developed long ago.
Imogen sighed, pushing her pedals industriously. Nothing seemed to have happened, to think of it. One man had sat on her sofa and leaned ahead, potentially aiming for a kiss. Another one had kissed her. She'd kissed him. They'd kissed, damn it. Despite all these thoughts about kisses - and damn the Mayor's unexpected gesture, which brought more 'kisses' into the equation - in reality, there had been one kiss. And it had no continuation. Meanwhile, the kiss that hadn't happened meant even less so. Was Imogen a silly cow? Yes. But had anything actually happened, or was she simply bedraggled by a murder, police questioning, and a break-in, and just reading too much into something that other people wouldn't probably spare a thought to?
Imogen huffed and puffed, and told herself to concentrate on not falling into a ditch - again. She was finally home; and she locked the bike in the shed, and went inside to let the sitter go, cook dinner, and think about everything and anything - but kisses!
***
It was on the second cup of her post-supper tea when the children were tucked in bed - she had only one bed in the cottage, her own, and she'd given it up to the little'uns - when Imogen emitted a triumphant 'ha!'
The file that was missing from the cabinet she'd looked through several hours ago contained the list of the buildings of the Fleckney Woulds that fell under The Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Amendment No. 2) (England) Regulations 2009, as well as the accompanying documentation, namely the wills and the contracts restricting the renovations and sale of the five listed houses in the heart of the town.
Imogen jumped to her feet, not even knowing where to rush and what to do - and then froze, her unseeing eyes fixed on the wall.
If the three previous vicars of Fleckney Woulds, the only keepers of the secret of the tunnel, had never broken their oath; and if neither Mrs. Harris, the clerk, and Mrs. Roberts, the cleaning lady, had shared it either - then Imogen knew who had slipped into the Town Hall the night before - and pushed the Mayor into the 'darkness of doom,' which then led to the kiss - but that hardly mattered, damn it, Imogen scolded her silly old self.
Out of the five historic houses, protected by the Conservation Act, only one was of importance to Imogen right now. That would be Number Six Oak Road - the location of Ms. Sanders' book shop, which Imogen loved so much - the book shop that had been failing financially in the last few years, and which Ms. Sanders, a perpetually suffering from a mild cold spinster, was looking into selling; and the permit for pre-sale renovations of which the Mayor had approved this very morning.
Ms. Sanders whose mother was in charge of the 'pillboxes' in the countryside around the town during the war - and who'd done the presentation on the 'war time Fleckney Woulds' at Imogen's school many years ago.
Imogen could remember sitting in the cold classroom, with Oliver by her side, listening to the tiny Mrs. Sanders, with her white curls and dry little hands with age spots, telling them about the 'stoplines,' and Operation Pied Piper...
...and hiding the children in the Old Mill, and that one night when they all had to run through a priest hole out onto the moors behind the building that was now none other but the Town Hall.