Deception in the Cotswolds (12 page)

Higgins grunted down the phone. ‘And you’ve no other comment to make? Nothing else we ought to know?’

‘I don’t think so. I can see you’ve got a problem here, but I have no idea what you’re supposed to do about it. How do you decide whether or not it’s a murder investigation, anyway?’

‘We piece together as much as we can of the picture, and take it from there.’

‘Did the post-mortem show anything useful?’

‘Nothing conclusive. No bruises or signs of any struggle.’

‘Was he drugged?’

‘Sedatives, dissolved in a drink. The sort of thing you’d self-administer.’

‘Yes, but—’ What had she been going to say? Her tongue had operated without conscious thought.

‘But what?’

She thought hard. ‘Donny wouldn’t have had sedatives in the house, if I’ve understood him properly. He hated any kind of medication. He might have had a few aspirin and laxatives and Lemsip, but I can’t imagine him taking sleeping pills.’

‘As it happens, he did have a prescription for them, but not recently. We’ve checked with his doctor.’

‘A local GP, I suppose?’

‘Right. Not that he’d seen her for over two years.’

‘That fits. He hated the whole medical profession,
after what happened to his daughter. Maybe the pills were to get him through the awful time when she was dying.’

‘I’m still not really getting it,’ Higgins confessed. ‘How does an old sick man manage not to see a doctor for so long? It’s impossible.’

‘He was stubborn. He’d boxed himself into a corner over it, and infuriated his daughter in the process.’ It was coming more and more into focus for her as she spoke. ‘He was convinced there was no possible good outcome for him, if he let himself fall into the hands of doctors. As he saw it, they’d just cut him up, or starve him slowly, or pump him full of drugs. He believed he would become subhuman and lose all control of his own destiny. He hadn’t really any option but to take a short cut by killing himself.’ She paused, surprised at her own detailed grasp of Donny’s attitude. ‘At least – I’m embellishing a bit, I think. He didn’t quite say all that.’

Higgins grunted again. ‘I imagine a lot of people feel like that – but they don’t follow through on it, do they? If something hurts, they run to the doctor automatically. It’s inevitable. We’re all programmed that way.’

‘Not Donny. He reprogrammed himself.’

‘He must have had support. Somebody who was on his side.’

‘Edwina,’ said Thea promptly. ‘That was Edwina.’

‘Not Mrs Hobson, then?’

‘She didn’t like it, I told you. And she might have understood that she was on dangerous ground if she let herself be drawn in to what he said he wanted. She was effectively his next of kin, which I guess made it all more serious for her. She couldn’t show herself to be in favour of him killing himself, when she presumably inherits his house and any money there might be.’

‘Did he own the house?’ Higgins could be heard rustling papers at the end of the phone. ‘No – I thought not. He rented it from Miss Young. Three hundred quid a month.’

‘Really? I suppose that’s cheap for this area.’

‘A nice little income, all the same.’

It was obvious, Thea realised on a moment’s reflection. The Lodge would be part of the Hollywell estate in perpetuity, only available for rent. ‘So there wasn’t very much for Donny’s family to inherit,’ she concluded.

Higgins went on with his questions. ‘What do you know about Mrs Davis?’

‘His wife? Not as much as you, I imagine. She’s in a home somewhere, more or less abandoned, by the sound of it. Lost her marbles when Cecilia died. Jemima shows no sign of caring about her. Toby visits, apparently.’

The detective inhaled sharply, as if that snippet was indeed new to him. ‘Isn’t that rather odd?’

‘More like overload. Jemima has a husband, kids, a
farm and a stubborn old dad. A batty mother probably feels like a burden too far.’

‘I mean odd that the husband of a dead daughter should be the one to keep up the visits.’

‘I don’t see why. It isn’t unusual, surely?’

‘Maybe not. Thanks, anyway. You’ve been very helpful,’ he congratulated her. ‘This is absolutely the sort of thing we need.’

‘You could find it out quite easily for yourself.’ She felt a flash of resentment at being used in such a way. ‘Just ask them all.’

‘They wouldn’t tell us, would they? Not the way you have. People hold very tightly to their self-esteem. They don’t admit to neglecting their mothers or wishing their fathers dead. They assume we’re looking for guilt, so they’re defensive from the outset.’

‘I know,’ she conceded. ‘But I can’t see where all this is getting you.’

‘I told you – it creates the big picture. It throws up anomalies. It gives us some background.’

‘But it’s only my take on it. I could be completely wrong.’

‘Don’t worry, that’s understood. We’re not going to quote you.’

She examined her conscience for any betrayals she might have inadvertently committed. There didn’t seem to be any. ‘OK, then,’ she said. ‘Can I go now?’

‘Of course.’

The fact of Donny having taken ground-up sleeping pills niggled at her for the next hour or more. She tried to imagine him mixing them into a mug of black coffee and drinking it down, despite the bitter unnatural taste it surely had. What would his thoughts have been? Dogged determination that there could be no failure? Loneliness? Despair? Fear? Yes – fear must have been a large part of it. How could it not be? Sheer quivering terror, more likely. She could see his hands shaking even more than usual, the tremor in his neck keeping his head perpetually moving. At what point would he then have pulled the bag over his head and wound sticky tape several times around his own neck? When he felt himself slipping away? How in the world could anybody time it properly, all on their own? Too soon, and the instinct to survive would have you clawing at it, trying to pull it off again. Too late, and it would be impossible to do effectively. You’d be too woozy to get it all the way on.

Which indicated, yet again, that he had somebody there to help. And if she, Thea, could work that out, then the police would certainly arrive at the same conclusion, if they hadn’t done so already.

The afternoon was even sunnier, the whole house warming up. It was a day for being outside and Thea followed her instincts without hesitation. From the front garden, the Lodge was plainly visible, a fact that made her uncomfortable. She would rather forget
Donny and his friends for a while. So she went around to the back, where there were large trees and a very neglected vegetable garden. She found a folding chair in the utility room at the back of the house, and erected it on a small level patch in dappled sunshine. She had a book with her, but found it difficult to concentrate on reading. Instead she found herself comparing this garden with others attached to houses she had been left in charge of. The variety could hardly be greater, from immaculately kept showpieces to muddy areas colonised by ducks and geese. In some cases the weather had prevented her from scarcely getting to know the outside areas at all.

The spaniel flopped lazily at her feet, content to spend an idle afternoon in the sunshine, if that was her mistress’s choice. She had no better suggestions, needed nothing more to make life complete. If another person arrived, she would greet them cheerfully, but she had no craving for excitement. Thea watched her enviously, wishing she could so easily find satisfaction.

The adjacent property revealed no sign of life, the huge and perfectly cut lawn basking in the sunshine all by itself. On the other side, a track led away towards some fields, holding little of interest that Thea could see. A tractor had passed along it a few days earlier, and nothing more. Planes silently crossed the sky, leaving silver streaks now and then.

It was a very undemanding house-sit, by any
standards. Only the geckoes, with their unregistered breeding programme, called for supervision. Harriet was paying her the usual rate, which was a not inconsiderable sum for two weeks. It seemed daft. But such daftness was far from unusual in Thea’s experience. She had been similarly employed before, to do something a neighbour could easily have handled. There was some element of guarding, protecting, that was born of the general atmosphere of nervousness in British society. Burglars, vandals, marauders were lurking just out of sight, intent on intruding, wrecking and stealing your precious possessions. Hollywell Manor clearly had to be kept safe from any such predations. There was a large and beautiful stained glass window on the landing upstairs. It would be tragic if that got broken. The wood panelling was probably worth quite a lot on the reclamation market. There was good antique furniture and expensive carpets. There were oil paintings along the upstairs gallery. Perhaps in Harriet’s place, Thea too would have wanted to know somebody was standing guard over it all.

She thought of nightwatchmen, expected to stay awake from dusk to dawn, watching for robbers. They used television and all-night radio to pass the time, but how terribly long every night must seem to them. Did they phone their friends, and send emails and play computer games as well? At least Thea was allowed to go for walks and shopping trips and visits
to any people she might befriend during her stay. At least she had her dog for company, and plenty to think about.

But still the afternoon crawled painfully slowly along. The sun hardly seemed to move across the sky, the shadows barely shifting. She got thirsty, her book failed to engage her, and annoying questions about Donny persistently intruded into her head.

It was not quite three o’clock when she got up and padded restlessly into the house for some fruit juice. She collected her mobile, to check whether anyone had sent a text. The only person who ever did so was Jessica, and that wasn’t a frequent event. When she had been with Phil Hollis, he had nagged her relentlessly about keeping the phone switched on and within earshot, in case he needed to speak to her. Since they had parted, she saw little reason to maintain the regime. If Jessica needed her urgently, she would find a way of making contact. Thea routinely lodged the address of the current house she was sitting with her daughter, and left it at that. The mobile was superfluous, most of the time.

But there was a message on it. The voicemail icon was flashing. It took her a moment to remember what it meant, and how to access the recording. Eventually, she did it, and found herself listening to Drew Slocombe’s voice.

‘Thea? It’s Drew. Sorry to do this. I hope it works. It’s just that I’ve come across an interesting coincidence,
and thought you’d like to know about it. It seems that your employer is a successful author of a book about funerals. At least I think it must be her. Call me if you’re interested. Bye.’

Her employer? He could only mean Harriet. But she had seen nothing in the house to indicate that Harriet wrote books. There was nothing on the ground or first floors remotely resembling an office. A second floor remained unexplored, however. If Harriet had indeed produced a book about funerals, that might explain why Donny had paid such regular visits to her. He could have been consulting her special expertise – which could at a stretch surely extend to the subject of suicide. But why had he not long ago resolved the question of his own disposal, in that case? And where exactly had Harriet come by this particular interest? Had she worked as an undertaker, perhaps? Or had she been commissioned to write the book, as a freelance expected to turn her hand to anything that came along?

And why hadn’t Donny said something, when the subject arose on his first visit? She thought back, trying to recapture every nuance of the short conversation on the doorstep as he departed on that first afternoon. She had described Drew’s business and what he could offer, as she understood it. Donny had seemed excited, warmly receptive of the sort of service being offered. He had seized on her words, like a person finally getting something they had wanted for a long time.
When he had come back the next day he was more restrained, but still eager to meet with Drew. So what had Thea suggested that was different from Harriet’s contributions?

She could hardly hope to answer that until she had seen the book itself. Was it a good time, she wondered, knowing little of his daily routines. His children would be arriving home from school – but did he stay away from the family, working in his little office until it was time for the evening meal? Was his wife capable of cooking? Where would his intriguing partner, Maggs, be?

Arriving at the conclusion that it was as good a time as any, she returned his call. He answered on the second ring, giving the impression that he had been sitting by the phone just waiting for it to summon him.

‘Drew? It’s Thea. Thanks for the message. I only just found it. When did you ring?’

‘First thing this morning. I found a review of the book in a magazine. It didn’t mean anything to me until I noticed the name, Harriet Young. And it said she lives in the Cotswolds in a manor house, so I wondered if it could be her.’

‘Yes, it must be. What else does it say?’

‘Apparently the last chapter is highly controversial. It advocates a change in the law to permit assisted suicide, and people controlling the timing and manner of their death.’

‘Which chimes with what Donny wanted,’ said Thea, half to herself. ‘Can we get a copy, do you think?’

‘Already done. Maggs had heard of it anyway, and she dashed off to Yeovil to get one. She says the book’s selling really well. She was quite scathing that I hadn’t heard of it, actually,’ he added ruefully.

‘Even though it’s only just being reviewed?’

‘Oh … no. The magazine is six months old. They tend to pile up, and I was flipping through them before throwing them out. It’s not very busy here at the moment.’

‘It explains where her money comes from,’ said Thea.

‘Not really. At least, not unless she’s been writing bestsellers for a while. And I think we’d know if she had.’

‘Maybe she’s some sort of consultant. Maybe she helps people who want to die, and charges for it.’ It sounded unlikely, as she said it. Harriet had not struck her as any kind of consultant. ‘But I have to admit I’ve never heard of such people.’