Deception in the Cotswolds (20 page)

Except there was no sign of a telephone book in Hollywell Manor. People hardly ever used them any more, Thea had gradually realised. With the advent of universal mobile conversations, landline numbers were falling into disuse, except for businesses – and even they probably received more emails than phone calls. She rose cheerfully to the challenge. There was a free local paper in the neat stack of mail on the hall
table. Turning its pages and scanning their contents, she soon found a display advertisement for Hobsons Farm Shop and Pick Your Own, with a phone number at the bottom. Easy, she congratulated herself.

Without much preparation, she dialled the number on Harriet’s phone. A boy answered.

‘Is that the Hobson family?’ asked Thea.

‘Yeah. Who’s that?’

‘My name’s Thea Osborne. Is your mother anywhere about? I’d like a word with her.’

‘Yeah. Hang on.’ She heard him shouting ‘Mum!’ at some distance from the phone. ‘A woman for you. Don’t remember her name.’

It was half a minute or so before Jemima’s voice came through the receiver. ‘Hello? Who is it?’

‘It’s Thea—’

‘What do you want?’ The words came sharp and unfriendly. Thea entertained a groundless image of floury hands and hot dank hair needing to be brushed aside.

‘Just a chat. I’m all on my own here, and thought it would be nice to talk to somebody.’

‘Shouldn’t you have thought of that?’

‘Pardon?’

‘When you took on the job. You must have known what it would be like.’

‘Well, yes. But with what happened … I feel all unsettled.’

Jemima gave an unsympathetic
tut
, as if an
importunate child had interrupted her for no good reason. ‘I’ve got Toby here,’ she said, ‘feeling all sorry for himself. I can’t cope with any more whining Winnies, just at the moment.’

Whining Winnies?
Was that how she came across? ‘Oh,’ she said.

Jemima sighed noisily. ‘Oh bugger it. I didn’t mean that. It’s just … I don’t know. Saturdayitis, or something. They’re all milling about, trying to decide whether to go out or not, driving me mad. Matt’s furious because some stupid punter drove into our sign and knocked it over. You’d better come round. Maybe you can help to calm things down. I dare say you’re good at that.’

Thea was on the very brink of refusing, her pride damaged quite painfully. But she remembered why she had phoned in the first place, and accepted the grudging invitation. ‘How do I find you?’

The directions were far from straightforward, particularly as she still had only a very hazy idea of how Cranham connected to its neighbouring settlements. ‘I expect I can manage it,’ she said, with only moderate confidence.

Jemima repeated the directions with impressive patience. ‘It’ll take you ten minutes at most,’ she said.

Hobsons Farm was impossible to miss, once you got to the right road. For good measure, the sign announcing its presence, beside a wide gateway, was tilting
alarmingly. Quite how anybody had managed to drive into it was hard to understand – but then accidents after the event seldom did make very much sense.

The sun had almost set by the time she arrived, but there was still a sense of a summer evening, designed for carefree gatherings on the lawn, with nibbles and Pimm’s and some highbrow music playing softly somewhere. Or the gentle thwack of tennis racquets indicating the young things disporting themselves in the court behind the house. A scene Thea had to admit was no more recent than Edwardian times, a century ago, before Britain lost much of its self-confidence.

But as she drove up the long approach, there were definitely vestiges of just such an affluent lifestyle still lingering. The house was large and lovely, with a creeper over the facade for good measure. The expected polytunnels were an unavoidable blight, but she discovered that they could not be seen from the patio at the side of the house, where rustic tables and chairs were placed to catch the westering sun. Toby whatever-his-name-was sat at one of them, with a bottle of beer at his elbow. He watched Thea sullenly as she got out of her car and waved a greeting, giving no answering gesture. Three teenagers, aged roughly from fifteen to eighteen, sat at a separate table, two of them with mobile phones in their hands.

Nobody was playing tennis or drinking Pimm’s, but there was a big old garden with big old shrubs and well-maintained stone walls. Matthew Hobson, it
seemed, was doing all right, selling his summer fruits and whatever other agricultural pursuits he might be engaged in. There was a substantial flock of sheep in a big field behind the house, Thea noticed. She nodded and smiled at the youngsters, who nodded and smiled fleetingly back. There was a man standing in a doorway, broad-shouldered and complacent. He also watched her as she approached. When she reached the edge of the patio he called, ‘Mimm! Your visitor’s here.’

‘Come on in,’ Jemima’s voice floated from the house. ‘I’m a bit tied up …’

The man stepped aside and waved her into the big square room that opened onto the patio. As with Hollywell Manor, the proportions were perfect. It was an ordinary family room with a battered sofa and big rugs, television, and an oak table covered in papers, mugs, schoolbooks and a laptop computer, but the ceiling was high, the windows generous, lending an air of relaxed comfort and very little to worry about. ‘Through here,’ called Jemima. Thea followed the voice into a large kitchen, to find the lady of the house making sandwiches on a massive pine table.

‘They had a perfectly good meal an hour ago, but now they want more,’ she said with mock annoyance. ‘Helen’s friends are coming, apparently. She’s gone to fetch them.’

Wordlessly, Thea stationed herself at Jemima’s elbow and started spreading pâté onto the sliced brown bread that was waiting. She added slivers of
tomato and cucumber and pressed down the lid. She had the impression that none of the food was
home-produced
.

‘They’re all yours, out there, then?’ she asked, after a few moments.

‘Two of them are, last I noticed. The third one’s a friend who never seems to go home. We’ve got a few casual workers in a caravan, as well. They join us now and then. It’s all very informal. It means I never get a moment to myself, of course. They’re always wanting something to eat.’

‘Nice, all the same,’ said Thea sincerely, finding a romance in the easy-going rural idyll she had stumbled into. ‘That was your husband, I assume?’

‘Matt, yes. The master of all he surveys. He loves it. In his element he is, this time of year.’

‘A happy farmer! What a rarity!’ said Thea, thinking of some of the hostile curmudgeons she had met over the past two years. Then she remembered a man called Henry in Lower Slaughter, who had been another exception.

‘He was a swine when we had the cows. We never realised that his destiny was in fruit and veg and the sheep. He mostly keeps them for old times’ sake, although the lamb prices have improved lately, and that’s no bad thing. His father would be furious about selling up the herd, but we’ve got past that now. He’s been dead for seven years.’

The reference to dead fathers was inopportune.
They both fell silent as the spirit of Donny filled the room. Jemima was first to recover. ‘My dad liked it here. He would have liked to move in, I think, but we never suggested it, and he never asked outright. There really isn’t the space.’

‘He seemed OK in the Lodge,’ said Thea, trying to offer reassurance, assuming Jemima was feeling guilty about it.

‘Much better,’ Jemima nodded. ‘Or so I thought. Maybe I was wrong.’ Her eyes clouded, and Thea expected tears, but instead Jemima shook herself and handed Thea a large plate of sandwiches. ‘Here. Can you take these out for me? Go and talk to Toby. He’s driving me crazy.’

‘What’s the matter with him?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Says he’ll never work again, because the state won’t finance any retraining, or something. It’s all his own fault, pig-headed so-
and-so
.’

It was not the moment for eliciting the full story, but Thea was intrigued. ‘OK, I’ll try and cheer him up, then,’ she offered.

‘Good luck!’ Jemima called after her, with a little laugh.

Toby gave her a weak smile when she sat down opposite him and proffered the plate of sandwiches. He took one with an air of weariness and nibbled
half-heartedly
at it. ‘Isn’t it nice here?’ she began. ‘Great views. What’s that over there?’

‘Painswick Beacon,’ he said. ‘You can see for about a hundred miles in every direction from up there when it’s clear.’

‘Really? I should go up for a look, then.’

He nodded inattentively.

‘Are you staying here?’

‘For the night, you mean? No way. There’s no space here.’ She eyed him carefully. Here was another man well into early middle age, who acted more like somebody twenty years younger. It was high time he gave up saying things like
No way
.

‘Looks like a big house,’ she said.

‘Four bedrooms, two bathrooms,’ he recited. ‘They’ve got three teenagers, with a room each. Even when Helen goes off to college, she won’t let anybody use her room.’

‘Can’t blame her, I s’pose.’

‘No.’ He frowned. ‘Donny wanted to come and live here. Would have made things a lot easier if they’d have let him.’

She began to suspect that this had been a recent topic of conversation, with both Jemima and Toby telling her about it in the space of five minutes. Jemima had said something about Donny never directly asking her to house him, implying somehow that the old man’s real feelings had never been fully expressed to her. Perhaps he had confided in this son-in-law, who still maintained such a close connection. ‘Did he ever ask them if they’d have him?’

Toby shrugged. ‘Don’t know. But they could see it was the obvious thing to do. Anybody could.’

‘Instead of various relatives having to go and nurse him at the Lodge you mean?’

He grimaced unpleasantly. ‘Right.’

‘I see she put you to work, then,’ came a voice behind her. She turned to see Matthew Hobson eyeing the plate of sandwiches. ‘Feeding the five thousand.’

‘I volunteered.’

‘Good for you.’ He turned to look at the youngsters at the other table. ‘Gets more like a pub garden here by the day.’

Thea laughed, thinking she had been trying to work out what the set-up reminded her of. ‘Could be worse, I suppose.’

‘Certainly it could. I’m not complaining. You could say we’ve been having a bit of a wake for poor old Donny, in advance of the funeral. Should be an open coffin and all the grandchildren kissing the body, by rights I suppose. I quite like the idea of all that
old-fashioned
sentimentality.’

Toby made a small noise, attracting the attention of the other two. ‘What?’ said Matthew.

‘Nothing. Just …’

‘I don’t expect you agree with him, do you?’ she said.

He stared at her, his light-blue eyes bulging slightly. ‘Why shouldn’t I? What d’you mean?’

‘Sorry. That was stupid of me. I was thinking about what you were saying to me this morning … but
ignore me. I don’t know anything about anything.’

Toby shrugged as if she was making no sense at all, and he didn’t really care anyway.

‘At least the police don’t seem to be bothering you. Maybe they’ve changed their minds about Donny being murdered.’ As soon as she said it, she wondered how she could possibly have been such an idiot. Had she, deep down, felt a mischievous urge to shake these people up? Were they coming across as just a bit too complacent for comfort? If so, she had achieved the desired effect.

‘
Murdered?
’ Both men uttered the word in shocked disbelief. Hobson went on to demand, ‘What the bloody hell are you saying, woman?’

She gazed from one to the other, aware of a sudden hush on the other table, and Jemima just then coming to the door with two more plates of sandwiches. ‘Well – the phone call. Edwina … You know. Edwina saying she’d help him, if … I mean …’ She tailed off under the collective stares, harsher than any spotlight. Much too late she tried to recall just who would know about the phone call, and Edwina’s promise, and what each person had said to her over the past week. ‘Sorry,’ she faltered. ‘I’m completely out of order. Ignore me.’

‘You are, rather,’ said Jemima wryly. ‘
Bloody
out of order, if I may say so.’

‘Donny committed suicide,’ said Toby, loudly. ‘He said he would and he did. End of.’

Nobody looked at him, instead acting as if he had
given them permission to carry on as before, as if nothing had been said to spoil their summer evening. Jemima met Thea’s eyes warily, giving the impression she wished she had never invited her.

‘Edwina’s not well, apparently. She’s gone down with some sort of summer flu.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Thea flatly. ‘Poor thing.’ She remembered that she was due for lunch with Edwina’s nephew and his family the next day. The temptation to reveal this to the Hobson gathering was quickly suppressed. Much better say nothing for a bit, eat a couple of sandwiches and go.

But Jemima was more forgiving than expected. ‘We found Donny’s will, you know,’ she said chattily. ‘Rather a surprise, actually.’

‘Oh?’

‘He’s left everything to my mother, for her care. Once his things are sold, we can upgrade her to a better place, even if only a modest improvement.’

‘Things?’

‘Not much, admittedly, but he did have some useful bits of silver, that he collected years ago. We had it all valued when he moved, and it’s mounted up quite dramatically.’

Thea recalled the unlocked house and the spartan furnishings. ‘Oh?’ she said.

‘They’re all in a safe-deposit box in Gloucester,’ Jemima informed her, with a raised eyebrow. ‘If that’s relevant.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Thea smiled feebly. ‘You really don’t have to tell me.’

‘No reason not to, after all that’s happened,’ Jemima shrugged. ‘We did go through something big together, after all.’

‘Yes, we did.’ It felt as if permission had been granted, so she risked a further question. ‘And you didn’t know about his will?’ How was that possible, she wondered. Didn’t Jemima have power of attorney, or something? Wasn’t she the executor of the will?