Or, The Case of the Absent Vegetable
Bertram Woollacott-Smythe stood in the golden light of the village hall, adjusting his tape measure with the solemn precision of a surgeon preparing for a critical operation. The marquee hummed with the quiet industry of competitors - old Colonel Pargiter muttering over his dahlias, Miss Witherspoon fluffing her chrysanthemums like a nervous mother sending her child to its first dance - but Bertram’s attention was fixed on the empty space where his aunt’s marrow ought to have been. It had, until this morning, resided in the potting shed with all the dignity of a monarch awaiting coronation.
The marrow was not merely large. It was, in the words of the local newspaper’s gardening correspondent, “a vegetable colossus, the sort of specimen that makes other growers question their life choices.” Aunt Mildred had nurtured it with a devotion usually reserved for sacred relics, whispering to it at dawn, measuring its girth thrice daily, and once, memorably, threatening to disinherit Bertram when he’d absentmindedly rested his teacup on its stem. Now, as he stared at the vacant spot on the trestle table, a single bead of sweat traced a path down his temple that had nothing to do with the warmth of the afternoon.
The judges were due in seventeen minutes. Bertram had rehearsed this moment for weeks. He’d polished his speech about soil acidity and lunar planting cycles. He’d even worn his second-best waistcoat, the one with the discreet cabbage-rose pattern that said “serious horticulturist” without shouting it. All that remained was to fetch the marrow from the wheelbarrow where he’d left it - neatly swaddled in cheesecloth, like a infant vegetable Moses - and present it for admiration.
The wheelbarrow was empty.
Bertram’s first thought was that this was one of Aunt Mildred’s tests, like the time she’d hidden his cricket bat to teach him the value of vigilance. His second thought was that the marrow, in a fit of vegetable agency, had rolled away of its own accord. His third thought, which arrived with the force of a dropped anvil, was that Reginald Peabody - his sworn rival in all matters horticultural - had somehow engineered this catastrophe. Peabody’s own entry, a pumpkin of frankly mediocre proportions, sat smugly on the next table, its stem jauntily angled as if laughing at him.
The search began with dignity and ended with Bertram on his hands and knees in the vicar’s prize petunias, where he discovered two things: first, that the marrow had indeed rolled, leaving a faint trail like the retreat of some enormous garden slug; second, that the trail terminated abruptly at the feet of the vicar’s terrier, who was regarding him with the serene expression of a dog who has just eaten something it absolutely should not have.
The clock ticked. The judges’ clipboards approached. Bertram rose, brushed petunia pollen from his knees, and did the only thing a Woollacott-Smythe could do in such circumstances: he straightened his waistcoat, assumed an expression of serene confidence, and prepared to explain to Aunt Mildred that her marrow had, in a final act of vegetable valor, sacrificed itself to spare the terrier from malnutrition.
On the judging table, a single caterpillar traversed the empty space where the marrow should have been, pausing midway as if to consider the aesthetics of the void.