The Sting of Death (27 page)

‘Even me,’ said Roma in a low voice. ‘Though I’d never have put it quite like that.’

‘I had a girlfriend,’ he confided. ‘We were going to get married. Then she left me for a farmer. It was as if he hypnotised her. It all came apart after a little while and we had another try, but it never really worked again.’ He sighed. ‘I still dream about her sometimes. How it all might have been.’

‘But I think Renton still loves his wife,’ Roma mused. ‘Justine says so, anyway. It makes Penn seem terribly
irrelevant
, somehow. As if she died for nothing.’

‘Everybody dies for nothing,’ Den said angrily. ‘How can it ever be for something?’

‘People think it is, though, don’t they? Suicide bombers; somebody saving another person; making a political point.’ They’d reached the apiary and Roma handed him the tub of sugar syrup. Then she slowly lifted the lid of the new hive and peered in. Evidently all was well. Taking the feeder from Den, she suddenly turned it upside down. Slow drips of syrup fell through
the nylon mesh in the centre of the lid. Quickly she popped it inside the hive and replaced the roof. Den continued their talk as she stepped away from the hive.

‘They’re fooling themselves,’ he said.

‘You’re right,’ she agreed. ‘Tell me, why did you come here today?’

He rubbed his long cheek thoughtfully. ‘It sounds daft, I suppose, but I’ve had the feeling all along that this business has really been about you. I wanted to see if I could work out how.’

She turned a stricken face up to him. ‘Surely not?’ she breathed.

He laid a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. ‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I was just tracing back the connections and that’s the way it seemed. But I don’t know it all – not by a long way. And I’m not talking about blame, either. After all, hardly anybody sets out to do deliberate harm.’

‘Don’t they? Is that what you believe?’ she asked him.

‘Don’t you?’

She told him, then, about little Sarah and her own implacable stand. About Justine’s breakdown and her, Roma’s, inability to face her daughter again after such hurt. ‘So is that where it all began?’ she asked him. ‘Is that why Penn
died? I feel bad, but not quite
that
bad. I really can’t see how it could be so.’

‘Only if Penn did deliberately kill little Georgia,’ he said. ‘And why would she do that?’

‘You’ve lost me,’ she frowned.

‘Penn remains a mystery. Even if Renton recovers enough to tell us everything, we probably still won’t understand her. How did she really feel towards Justine? And you? Was she simply manipulating everybody, or was she in thrall to Renton and doing what he told her?’

‘We’ve got visitors,’ she noticed. Three people were coming out of the french windows at the back of the house, waving towards her. Roma put a hand to her throat.

There were two men and a woman. The latter had honey-coloured hair and a broad face. ‘My God!’ breathed Roma. Surely it was Penn, returned from the dead?

‘That’s Mrs Slocombe,’ Den murmured. ‘With your husband and Drew.’

‘She looks just like Penn,’ Roma said weakly. ‘It’s like seeing a ghost.’

They sat together, the five of them, on the patio. Laurie fetched cold drinks and Pringles. The air was heavy with imminent thunder. Drew and Karen explained they’d left their children playing with Jane-in-the-village, who had twins and was
always a popular change of scene. Roma and Den said little, feeling a sense of interruption.

‘Having a party?’ came a cold little voice from the living room. Justine stood inside the french windows, looking out at the scene.

‘Join us,’ Laurie waved an arm like a traffic policeman, trying to usher her out. Slowly she obeyed.

Drew, as always uneasy in a prickly atmosphere, tried to dispel the gloom. ‘Karen wanted to meet Roma,’ he said. ‘And Laurie, of course. So we decided to drop in. Never dreamt we’d find Cooper here,’ he laughed.

‘It’s a long time since I last saw Karen,’ Justine said slowly. ‘Not that there’s any reason why we should see each other. It’s not as if we’re related.’ She examined Karen for a long moment. ‘You look like Penn,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t she, Mother?’

‘I thought I’d seen a ghost just now,’ Roma admitted shakily.

‘Yes,’ Justine nodded. ‘So did I. Horrible.’ She shuddered.

‘Sorry,’ said Karen, trying not to sound huffy.

‘Not much of a party, really,’ Justine observed. ‘More like a wake. Or a post-mortem.’

Den plunged in, aware of violating something fragile. ‘We were talking about Penn – wondering why it all happened the way it did.’

Justine met his eyes for several seconds and
he glimpsed a deep abiding agony in them before looking away.

‘You should ask Sheena,’ she said. ‘She understands.’

Everyone looked at her then. Drew was the first to speak. ‘She’s going to stick by him then, is she?’

‘Oh yes,’ Justine blurted bitterly. ‘Yes indeedy.’

‘Justine.’ Karen leant forward. ‘Did Penn
really
kidnap you?’

Exhaustedly, Justine nodded. ‘That’s really what did it, in the end.’ Meeting Den Cooper’s eyes again, she spoke directly to him. ‘She was a match, you see,’ she muttered, so indistinctly that he misheard her.

‘A smash?’ he repeated in puzzlement.

‘A
match
. Tissue type. Penn and Sarah were the same.’

Roma made a gurgling sound of disbelief.

‘That’s right, Mother. You needn’t have worried about getting yourself tested, after all. Penn had the test, but then buggered off to Poland before the results came through. I couldn’t contact her. Nobody had the address. And Sarah only had a few weeks left.’

‘But why didn’t you ever say?’

‘Because by the time the results arrived, you’d convinced me that it wasn’t worth all the
pain and misery and false hopes that the whole process would have let us in for. I
agreed
with you, Mother, and you still won’t let me tell you that. You were so convinced you knew what I was thinking and feeling, you wouldn’t listen to anything I tried to say.’

‘But, Penn. How could you ever forgive her?’

‘She punished herself so much that in the end she was in a worse mess than I was. We comforted each other. But then there was Georgia and I realised what Penn was really like.’

‘Which was what?’ asked Den.

‘A coward. Always running away, lying to herself, me, everybody. She knew she’d never be able to face a bone marrow transplant, so she left the country. But she had the test because she was afraid of my reaction if she didn’t. I didn’t find out for ages that she was having an affair with Philip. They must have been so careful to make sure I wasn’t around.’

Den remembered the ‘J’ in Renton’s letter, who had to be out of the way before they could use the house.

Justine went on, ignoring his slight intake of breath. ‘She spent her whole life dodging unpleasantness, until she had everyone else thinking
they
must be crazy.’

‘So you killed her?’ suggested Den reluctantly. ‘Was it
you
?’

Justine smiled and shook her head. ‘No. Philip did it. I knew right away, as soon as I heard she was dead. I think he did it for Georgia, mainly, in the end. Penn’s cowardice killed that little girl – I believe she kicked the ladder away when she heard someone coming up. She thought it was me. And then she made up that stupid plan of abducting me. I could have died in that hovel for all she cared.’

‘Well, no,’ Roma corrected her coldly. And she recounted her conversation with Carlos. ‘Penn would never have deliberately killed anybody.’

‘She and Renton made a fine pair, didn’t they,’ said Drew.

‘I don’t think any of us comes out of it very well,’ said Roma sadly. Laurie reached over and gripped her hand. She clung to him like somebody drowning. Den and Maggs caught each other’s eye, locked in a long gaze.

‘Come on,’ Drew said to his wife. ‘Time to go home.’

The geography in this story is a mix of reality and invention that sometimes requires challenging feats of logistics. Pitcombe, Bradbourne and North Staverton must be on the extreme westerly side of Somerset for it to work. This, we must therefore assume, is the case.

When the idea of bringing Drew and Den together first arose, in 2001, it also became regrettably apparent that their names are uncomfortably similar. So Den is often referred to as Cooper, in the hope of avoiding undue confusion.

This reissue, nearly ten years later, highlights many subtle changes, both in the world and in my style of writing. But I find the tone has
remained largely unaltered in subsequent novels, and I have very much enjoyed revisiting Roma Millan in particular.

There have been some revisions made along the way. In the original hardback version, I found some instances where people not merely travelled like lightning, but were literally in two places at once. I hope I have ironed all these out now. Never, before or since, have I attempted to portray so many different viewpoints in one book. It has produced a hectic, headlong story that I hope will entertain, amuse and horrify.

R
EBECCA
T
OPE
lives on a smallholding in Herefordshire, with a full complement of livestock, but manages to travel the world and enjoy civilisation from time to time as well. Most of her varied experiences and activities find their way into her books, sooner or later. She is also the author of the Thea Osborne Cotswold series.

www.rebeccatope.com

A Cotswold Killing
A Cotswold Ordeal
Death in the Cotswolds
A Cotswold Mystery
Blood in the Cotswolds
Slaughter in the Cotswolds
Fear in the Cotswolds
A Grave in the Cotswolds
Deception in the Cotswolds

Grave Concerns
The Sting of Death
A Market for Murder