Blood in the Cotswolds (10 page)

‘Chances are it’ll turn out to be a tramp that nobody missed, when it comes to it,’ Thea said.
‘Killed miles away and randomly dumped here. Nothing to do with the good people of Temple Guiting after all.’

‘Even if it is, it still has to be thoroughly investigated. They’ll be going through all reports of missing persons, trying to match him up. Tedious business. And of course you can’t trust anything anyone says about events five years ago. We might never have an identity for him.’ He paused. ‘But Pritchett’s given the game away, don’t you see? By coming to me as he did, he more or less told us he thinks it’s a local matter. Something must have been going on here, bad enough to involve murder and secret disposal of the body.’

‘Oh, well.’ She tossed her head, the long hair flying lightly, her expression sceptical. ‘Why don’t we go out somewhere before we have to be at Janey’s? Can you cope with a drive, do you think?’

‘I can if it’s in a good cause. Where did you have in mind?’

‘Naunton, or maybe the Slaughters. Both if you can stand it. I thought I might take some photos.’ She fished for her new digital camera and brandished it. ‘I told Jocelyn I’d try to get
some shots that she can use for her folksy cards. She’s really getting into it this summer.’

‘Folksy,’ Phil repeated. ‘Is that your word or hers?’

‘Oh – mine. She thinks they’re fine art. She’s being ever so clever with montage or collage, or whatever she calls it. I can email the raw material to her, and she plays with it on her computer. She’s got some amazing software.’

‘And people buy the result, do they?’

‘Evidently. She’s got a contract with three or four places, including one of the London museums. You know how people always buy cards, if nothing else, in those gift shops.’

Phil liked Jocelyn and worried about her. Thea’s younger sister, she had five children and a tormented husband who behaved very badly at times, although the last Phil had heard there were signs of real improvement. It was pleasing that she had found an outlet that sounded both absorbing and mildly lucrative.

‘Good for her,’ he said. ‘I suggest we do Naunton first and see how it goes. Backwise, I mean.’

‘OK – but I would like to make a little detour to Lower Slaughter, if there’s time. Did I tell
you I had an email yesterday from somebody wanting a house-sitter there in the middle of August? There’s several animals and the house is medieval.’

Phil groaned. ‘No, you didn’t tell me. I suppose you’ve already said yes?’

‘Well, I told them I was probably free,’ she said. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

Phil spread his hands speechlessly, and found himself thinking that with Thea’s track record, a place called Slaughter was probably very appropriate.

His slipped disc behaved moderately well, with only one seriously agonising moment when he turned too quickly to follow Thea’s line of gaze. Naunton was unarguably lovely, in the hot afternoon sun. Shadows were deep, and he was impressed by Thea’s skill at using them in her compositions. ‘Waste of time, really,’ she said when he commented on one of her efforts. ‘Joss can remove them completely if she feels like it. It’s like what you said about five-year-old memories – you can’t trust the camera remotely these days. Nothing is as it seems in the finished picture.’

‘Except I don’t suppose she can create shadows
where there never were any, can she?’

‘I’m not sure. Probably.’

‘You should send her some shots of that snake. That’d add an exotic element,’ he suggested.

Amicably, they mooched around the little settlement of Naunton in the sweltering heat. They encountered scarcely any other people, and not a single dog. ‘They’ve got more sense than to be out in this,’ said Phil. ‘I’m glad I brought my hat.’

‘I love it,’ Thea said, as if slightly surprised at herself. ‘It’s exactly right for a holiday.’

‘Except you’re not on holiday – you’re working. And I’m on sick leave. We shouldn’t be enjoying ourselves.’

She stared at him, trying to read the level of seriousness behind his words. They shared a thread of puritanism which made them uneasy if life was proving too enjoyable. ‘I’m sure it won’t last,’ she said eventually. ‘It never does, does it?’

They drove slowly eastwards the few miles to the Slaughters, and found themselves behind two well-filled charabancs. ‘Touristy here,’ Phil commented. ‘Much less peaceful.’

‘Well, that would make a nice change then,’ said Thea determinedly.

Janey Holmes lived in a handsome Georgian house standing on elevated ground overlooking the Windrush. ‘My God!’ Phil breathed. ‘Does she have all this to herself? I thought she was just – well, certainly not landed gentry. Look at this place – it’s incredible.’

‘She was married,’ Thea remembered. ‘She told me that on Sunday. Must have been his.’

‘And got to keep it as part of a divorce settlement?’ Phil was sceptical. ‘Who was he – MD of British Aerospace, or what?’

‘We’ll have to ask her, won’t we?’

Again they had used the car to cover the mile between Hector’s Nook and Janey’s house. There were two cars standing with their noses to a high stone wall, wisteria cascading along it, the mauve flowers almost finished. ‘I’ve seen that one before,’ Phil observed, frowning at a big red Mitsubishi.

‘Isn’t it Stephen Pritchett’s?’ Thea suggested ingenuously.

He smiled. ‘Doing my job for me again,’ he acknowledged. ‘Where would I be without you?’

‘I got a better view of it than you did, that’s all.’ How could he not love someone so casually generous, so uncompetitive and honest, he wondered fondly.

Janey let them in, quickly declaring that Stephen Pritchett was a fellow visitor. ‘I gather you and he have already met,’ she added.

They followed her through a large square hall that contained the stairway. The ceiling was two storeys above their heads, light flooding through a window that Phil suspected might be termed a ‘solar’. There was a seductive scent of summer flowers and beeswax. Everything gleamed as he looked around at the solid antique furniture and two bright modern paintings hanging on the wall above the stairs.

‘Lovely house,’ he said, in all sincerity.

‘And gorgeous
things
,’ contributed Thea.

‘Yes,’ said Janey. ‘I’m very lucky.’ Her tone implied that she felt rather otherwise, but was uttering the words expected of her.

Phil had the word
bovine
nudging at his mental tongue, but it actually didn’t fit Janey at all. For all her weight and bull-like neck, she was not slow moving, nor slow thinking. Bovine only in the sense that a Cape buffalo was bovine, he corrected himself. The most murderous animal on the African continent, which could eye you thoughtfully, chewing a rhythmic cud, and then casually blast you into Kingdom Come with a
sudden thump from the horn across its brow. Phil liked Cape buffalo a lot, and conjectured that this Janey Holmes person might demand the same sort of respect. But she was too fat to be seriously respected, his politically incorrect self insisted. Her body was
her
, when it came right down to it. It was within her power to alter it to something more acceptable. He found himself engaged in a circular internal argument which grew more and more uncomfortable as he walked behind the woman, marvelling at the sheer quantity of flesh. He could hear the mocking voices of male colleagues, the carelessly unkind things they would say about Janey if they saw her, the crude jokes about her as a potential partner in bed. However strenuously the arbiters of behaviour might try to outlaw the very word
fat
, he knew there would never really be a better way to describe her.

She led them into a genuine original Regency conservatory at the back of the house, where a hundred potted palms and vines and fruit trees crowded the cluster of chairs and low table into a small clearing against the house wall. It ought to have been unbearably hot on such an afternoon, but all the windows were open, and
the huge plants offered shade. A fan whirred exotically overhead, making Phil think of India or Singapore in the 1930s. He might not be as good a reader as Thea, but he had consumed the works of Somerset Maugham at one time, and suddenly found himself inside one of those stories.

A classic country garden could be glimpsed beyond, between the fronds and flowers. Stephen Pritchett was slumped easily in a wide cane chair, but jumped briskly to his feet as the newcomers entered. Thea was sandwiched between the two giants, looking like a fragile child as a result. Phil had to repress a smile, as his hand was seized and shaken by Pritchett.

‘I’ll go and get the tea,’ Janey said. ‘You can chat amongst yourselves for a few minutes.’

‘We meet again,’ said Phil to Pritchett.

‘So it seems,’ the man nodded. ‘Janey’s a hospitable soul. Likes to share this place with the less fortunate among us.’ He smiled weakly, knowing that it was a poor joke to characterise himself in such a way. ‘Funny, though, how little one’s material wealth matters in the end. We cling to it so tenaciously, terrified of losing it – or even a bit of it – and yet it can’t really shield you from tragedy.’

Phil could see Thea shaping up to disagree and decided to give her a free field. ‘But surely it cushions things?’ she challenged. ‘After all, if you were homeless and addicted to drugs and in trouble with the police, and then one of the only people you love disappears or dies, you’d be utterly annihilated. There’d be nothing left at all. If you’ve got a house and a bank balance and a car and a passport, you can find some sort of consolation for your misery.’ She looked at him. ‘Sorry – I expect that’s a bit rude of me, but I do think it’s true.’

‘I find, my dear,’ said Pritchett ponderously, ‘that it doesn’t do to make comparisons when it comes to suffering.’

Thea was visibly shaken, and Phil badly wanted to wrap his arms around her. ‘I am sorry,’ she said again. ‘I spoke without even thinking.’ She looked slightly wildly at Phil. ‘I forgot,’ she said in a thick voice. ‘I actually forgot Carl while I was saying all that.’

Pritchett raised his eyebrows, silently asking Phil for elucidation. ‘Thea’s husband died, two years ago in a car accident. We’ve all had our share, I suppose.’

‘But you’re right,’ Thea told the big man. ‘It’s wrong to make comparisons.’

They retreated from painful matters for the few minutes until Janey returned pushing a wheeled trolley loaded with a Worcester tea service, cream cakes, home-made biscuits and a dish of perfect glossy strawberries.

‘Wow!’ breathed Thea.

‘Good old Janey,’ chuckled Pritchett. ‘Always knows how to make a person feel better, eh?’

The sheer unapologetic
style
of the surroundings rendered Phil speechless. He would never have imagined there were still people who lived in this way. And hadn’t Thea told him the woman was a farm secretary? With all the images of muck and disarray and financial hardship that went with his idea of farming, there was a discrepancy that was causing him a growing unease.

‘I thought I’d show you some of the background to the Saints and Martyrs,’ Janey said, addressing Thea, once the tea and food had been duly distributed. ‘I’ve got quite a good collection.’

‘Saints and Martyrs?’ repeated Phil. ‘Is that what you call your club?’

Janey nodded. Pritchett uttered a melodramatic groan. ‘Oh – she’s got you onto all that nonsense already, has she? Sometimes she can be exactly
like the Ancient Mariner, boring your socks off with her silly old saints.’

‘I don’t think they’re silly,’ said Thea, gravely. ‘I think Janey’s right, and they have a lot to tell us. If nothing else, they give us insights into how the medieval mind worked.’

Pritchett blew out his cheeks in a wordless acknowledgement that he’d been told off.

‘Pre-medieval in most cases,’ Janey corrected her. ‘But thanks for the support. I knew you’d be interested as soon as I met you.’

Thea smiled sceptically. ‘Only because you already knew from Miss Deacon that history was my thing.’

Pritchett groaned again. ‘Polly’s even worse than Janey about it.’ He looked to Phil for some backing. ‘I mean to say – grown women charging about the countryside pretending to slaughter some forgotten character from a dusty history book. It’s not natural.’

Phil admired him for sticking to his guns, despite Thea’s obvious disapproval. ‘It’s typically British, though – don’t you think? Harmlessly eccentric. And it does seem a good idea to try to preserve some of these old stories.’ He preened slightly at his own diplomacy – surely everyone would calm down now?

‘It’s not just women anyway,’ Janey muttered. ‘There’s Robin.
And
Jasper, when he’s in the country.’

‘What about Rupert Temple-Pritchett?’ queried Thea, making her usual meal of the name. She giggled. ‘I love saying that. Rupert Temple-Pritchett,’ she said again. Then put a hand to her mouth with a look at Stephen. ‘Oh – he must be related to you? Sorry.’

Stephen Pritchett was watching Janey with a look of real anxiety, and Phil concluded that Thea had said something very much not to their liking. ‘Um,’ said Pritchett, confusedly, to be interrupted by a very forced change of subject by Janey. ‘Let me show you my collection,’ she said with a limp smile. ‘Much more interesting than trying to work out the local family trees.’ She shot Pritchett a look that clearly said,
Don’t talk
about it any more.

Thea turned to Phil. ‘Are you coming as well? It sounds interesting.’

He hadn’t intended to. The seat was comfortable, and the tea not quite finished. It seemed a pity to leave Pritchett all on his own. But then he caught Thea’s glance and began to lever himself out of the chair.

Janey escorted them into a room that could only be termed a library. A large Victorian desk occupied the middle of the floor, and shelves filled two walls. ‘Most of these belonged to my grandmother,’ Janey said, waving at the books. ‘Duller than ditchwater, some of them. But
these
are anything but dull. They’re the ones I wanted to show you.’ She tapped a shelf on which stood a row of brown-covered volumes that looked to Phil every bit as uninteresting as their neighbours.