Trouble in the Cotswolds (The Cotswold Mysteries)

The village of Stanton forms the setting for this story. The house in which much of the action takes place is an imaginary one, somewhere in the middle of the village. All the characters have been invented too.

Philip and Gloria Shepherd were going away for Christmas, leaving their house containing a large dog, three pet rats and a lot of glossy potted palms to the care of Thea Osborne, house-sitter.

‘But, Mum, you
can’t,’
protested Jessica, her daughter, when she heard about it. ‘You can’t spend the whole of Christmas in a strange house by yourself.’

Thea’s first reaction had been the same. ‘It does seem rather awful,’ she agreed. ‘But when I thought about it, I decided it would be quite nice in some ways. I can go to the local carol service, and maybe there’ll be some sort of happening at the pub. There’s a very characterful pub on top of a hill at the end of the street.’

‘What about
me
? Where am I supposed to go?’

‘You could probably come and join me in Stanton,’ Thea offered doubtfully. She had not asked the Shepherds
whether a second person would be acceptable. It had been hard enough to convince them to allow her spaniel to spend ten days in their house. ‘Except—’

‘What?’

‘They’ve got rats. Nice friendly pet ones.’ Jessica’s rat phobia was legendary in the family, thanks to an unforgettable incident when she was seven and had come face to face with a dying one on the front lawn.

‘That clinches it,’ she said decisively. ‘I’ll go to Auntie Jocelyn’s. She’ll take me in.’

Thea felt a pang of envy and remorse. Her younger sister had five children, making Christmas at their house a wild orgy of traditional celebrations. The Osbornes had never managed anything approaching such wholehearted zest. Jocelyn made scores of mince pies, filled five stockings with magical goodies and cooked a vast turkey with all the trimmings. Even when Carl had been alive and Jessica an enchanting six-year-old it had all been slightly flat. Carl had deplored the materialism and Thea had never been much of a cook.

‘I’m sure she will. You’ll have a lovely time there.’

That conversation had taken place in the first few days of December, when plans for Christmas had become suddenly urgent and Thea had been forced to decide about the Shepherds. They had approached her in September, offering extra payment for working over the holiday and assuring her that Stanton was a thoroughly splendid place to spend the holiday.
So why are you going somewhere else?
Thea wanted to ask.
The dates had been vague, and somehow Thea had failed to fully grasp the implications of actually being in a strange village for Christmas Day itself.

Now it was the 21st December, and they were off in their car to catch a flight to Bermuda. The weather was damp and grey, so there were no worries about snow on the runway or ice on the wings. ‘We’re due back early on the 31st,’ said Philip superfluously. ‘Just in time for the New Year party down the street. Don’t want to miss that. And with any luck the flu scare will have died down by then.’ News headlines were aflame with hysterical predictions of a pandemic just in time for Christmas. Earnest spokesmen warned against gathering in large groups, ignoring the realities of festive parties and crowded trains.

‘You’ll be all right, won’t you?’ asked Gloria, with the familiar anxiety that people so often manifested as they left their house in Thea’s care. ‘Blondie’s going to pine for a day or two, I’m afraid. She’s an awful wimp.’

Blondie was a white Alsatian, with a habit of curling her lip to reveal immense teeth. ‘It’s her way of smiling,’ Gloria had explained. ‘Don’t let it scare you.’

Thea wasn’t scared. She was extremely fond of dogs, even ones who appeared to be snarling at her. Blondie was gorgeous, her coat thick and clean, her big pointed ears demanding to be played with. ‘I expect Hepzie will cheer her up,’ she said.

Hepzie was a cocker spaniel, thoroughly accustomed to sharing quarters with assorted creatures in a
succession of houses. She had a chequered history behind her, in which she had run off with two absconding dogs, helped to find a missing snake, quailed at abuse from a parrot and endured the contempt of a number of cats. Rats, however, were new, and she found them deeply alluring. She stood to attention below their cage, wagging her long tail vigorously and emitting small yelps of excitement.

Gloria had watched worriedly. ‘Would she kill them, do you think?’

Thea paused. ‘Not once she gets used to them and realises they’re pets,’ she said bravely.

‘The thing is, we generally let them out for a run in the evening. They’d miss it if they had to stay in the cage.’ The awkwardness had been palpable. The Shepherds – quite understandably – had jibbed at the presence of a strange dog, for this very reason. Gloria’s affection for the domesticated rodents was plain to see. Here, thought Thea, was a trophy wife who had brought some of her earlier interests with her into this affluent Cotswold environment, and good luck to her.

Thea had made firm promises about keeping her spaniel under control and never letting dog and rat come together. But Hepzie’s behaviour on this final morning of departure was not creating at all the right atmosphere.

‘I’ll shut her out of the room when they have their run,’ she promised. ‘I assume Blondie’s all right with them?’

‘Oh yes. She thinks they’re miniature dogs,
apparently. They run all over her sometimes.’

Thea eyed the rodents speculatively. They were pale in colour and had palatial quarters in a room at the back of the house. It was furnished with a wall of shelves containing books and ornaments, a large table on which a Royal Worcester set of china was arranged in a display that was surely seldom seen by visitors, and carpeted with a faded wool Persian affair that looked as if it could have been handmade five hundred years ago. Did the rats not nibble the books, or knock into the china or pee on the Persian? Gloria pointed out a sort of trail around the room that was the rats’ habitual exercise run. ‘You just open their door at about seven, and leave them for an hour,’ she instructed. ‘When you come back, they’ll have gone into the cage again of their own accord. It’s fun to watch them, but you don’t have to.’

‘I expect I will. They do seem to be friendly.’

‘They’ll ride on your shoulder if you invite them.’

Thea smiled tolerantly, thinking she was unlikely to make such an invitation, if only because her dog might take real exception to a shoulder smelling of rat when they snuggled together in the living room on Christmas Eve.

Philip Shepherd turned out to be an incorrigible list maker, although he left it until after his wife had taken Thea through everything verbally, before presenting his ten printed sheets of information. Blondie’s bedtime routine figured prominently.
Turn off the light in the
living room, and say ‘Time for bed and widdles’. She’ll go to the back door, and you let her out, watching that she relieves herself. When she comes back, give her a small biscuit from the blue tin, and leave her in the kitchen with the door closed.

The rats got half a page of their own, echoing much of what Gloria had already said.

The locations of the fuse box, stop tap for mains water, time switch for heating and other domestic matters were meticulously listed. There were instructions regarding keys and phone numbers for doctor, vet, police, emergency electrical breakdowns, and a builder. Thea didn’t ask why she might want to phone a builder over Christmas.

And unlike many of her employers, Philip gave a detailed itinerary of where they would be on any given date, and how best to get hold of them. Getting hold of homeowners was something Thea very rarely did, even when there was news for them. She worked on the basis that they should be allowed to enjoy a restful holiday while they could, because virtually everything could wait until they got back again.

On the last page there was a list of local events that she might wish to investigate. A Dickensian Christmas Revel was scheduled for the Sunday before Christmas; and a Boxing Day Special Supper at an enterprising nearby pub sounded good. There were details including how to get to the venues and who to phone for further information.

Never since her first house-sitting commission in Duntisbourne Abbots had she been so comprehensively advised. To the best of her recollection, she had never felt the need to locate the fuse box in a house she was looking after or to know exactly how to put a dog out before bed.

Husband and wife both dithered on the doorstep for longer than was comfortable, plainly trying to remember whether they’d told her everything of importance. There was always a hiatus, sometimes of a month or more, between the initial visit in which the nature of the work was assessed, and the actual handover when the owners finally disappeared. In this case it had been almost three weeks since she had driven to Stanton for a guided tour of the house and its occupants. The Shepherds had sung the praises of The Mount public house and its spectacular views, as well as the delights of Stanway and Snowshill and several other nearby places. ‘I know Snowshill,’ said Thea. ‘I was there only a few months ago.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Philip, with a knowing look. ‘We did hear something about that.’

‘Did you?’ Thea readied herself to explain how nothing of what had happened had been her fault in any respect, but it seemed her defence was unnecessary.

‘We’ve done a little bit of research on you,’ he went on apologetically. ‘And it does seem as if you’ve landed up in some sticky situations over the past year or two.’

‘You could say that.’ She heard a note of bleakness
in her own voice that surprised her. Had the past two years really been so dreadful? She thought perhaps they had, on the whole – worse than she had fully realised.

‘But we also heard how good you are with animals and that you cope well in a crisis.’

She wondered where such accolades could have come from, but felt it wise to refrain from asking. ‘I have had plenty of practice,’ she smiled. ‘I just hope it doesn’t snow while I’m here.’ She looked out at the broad level village street, and added, ‘But even if it does, I suppose it wouldn’t be too disastrous.’

‘The neighbours will see that you’re all right,’ he assured her. ‘Whatever happens.’

‘Nothing’s going to happen,’ Gloria interrupted. ‘When did anything ever happen in Stanton?’

‘Except for poor old Douglas, of course,’ muttered Philip.

Gloria waved a hand sharply at him, in a gesture plainly designed to silence him. She turned smilingly back to Thea. ‘You’ll be
fine
,’ she said emphatically.

They left eventually, and Thea experienced her usual mixture of anticipation and abandonment. She had recently begun to suspect that her career as a house-sitter might not be doing her basic character very much good. She had noticed only gradually that she had no real relationships any more. There had been her friend Celia in her home town of Witney, but with so many prolonged absences, Celia had moved on,
found herself a new man and showed little continuing interest in Thea. Jessica, now twenty-three, was focusing intently on finishing her period as a police probationer and finding favour as a fully fledged constable. There were phone calls every week or so, and weekends spent together from time to time, but Thea understood that the ties had loosened, not least because of her own distracted behaviour. She had immersed herself in some of the house-sitting commissions, and when calamity had struck, took it upon herself to resolve the chaos and discover the truth behind various terrible events. When Jessica had suffered her own personal trouble, her mother had not been anywhere near as supportive as she ought to have been.

And then there was Drew. At some point during the previous six months or so, she had found herself thinking more about Drew than about her own daughter. When she entertained visions of Christmas Day in Stanton, they included Drew Slocombe playing Scrabble with her in front of a roaring fire, not Jessica.

But Drew lived in Somerset and had two young children in his care. His wife had died that summer, and the demands of family and work meant that Thea had heard very little from him since her stay in Winchcombe in September. His colleague, Maggs Cooper, had watched the blossoming friendship with initial suspicion, followed by outright hostility and
finally acceptance. Thea was made fully aware of these evolving reactions, unsure of what significance they might have. Maggs was somehow in the way, obstructing any natural developments that might otherwise take place. As were the children, of course. As a solo parent, Drew was seriously unavailable. And that was a pity, because he liked the idea of himself as an amateur detective, fleetingly joining up with Thea to ferret out the facts in Broad Campden, Snowshill and helping via the telephone when there was trouble in Winchcombe. She had very much appreciated the presence of somebody to share the thrill – if that’s what it was. More often it felt like utter chaos and confusion, laced with pain and shock.

The Stanton house was constructed of the ubiquitous Cotswold stone, facing boldly onto the single street that comprised the village. History leaked self-consciously from every facade, the square entryways constructed for coach and horses carefully protected. There were quirks, as Thea had come to expect, this time in the shape of wicker animals fixed onto the ridges of a few thatched roofs on the western edge of the settlement. A fox strolled bizarrely along a rooftop, silhouetted against the sky. An owl attracted the curious attentions of other large – and living – birds. Thatch itself was uncommon in the area, somehow not quite fitting with the honey-coloured stone. Where it did occur, it was obsessively preserved in perfect condition; a statement that Thea was still attempting to interpret.

The Shepherds had struck her as classic Cotswolds inhabitants: affluent, self-assured, friendly, she in early middle age and he ten years older. An unkind observer might add complacent and privileged to the epithets, she supposed. Their garden was tidy, their possessions of indisputable quality. Gloria was evidently well adapted, despite showing signs of not having been born to the life. She wore Cotswold-coloured clothes, made of wool and linen and well looked after. Even her hair had the same honey-and-caramel hue. Philip had a slightly unfocused gaze, as if perpetually calculating the value of his stocks and wondering which sort of car he should buy next. There had been no mention of children, until Thea had made a casual remark about her own daughter. ‘Ours is in Japan,’ Gloria had replied. ‘Her husband’s Japanese. We’re going out there at Easter.’