Trouble in the Cotswolds (The Cotswold Mysteries) (8 page)

‘Peaceful Repose Funerals,’ came a wholly unexpected voice. ‘How can I help you?’

‘What? Who’s that?’

‘Thea?’ The voice came gentle and questioning. ‘Is that you?’

‘Drew! I was calling Damien, not you.’

‘Both in the Ds,’ he said lightly. ‘Easily done. Are you all right?’

‘Not at all, no. I’ve got flu. It’s horrible. My head’s killing me. I can’t see properly.’

‘Where are you? Not house-sitting again, I hope?’

‘Stanton. Yes, I am.’

‘But it’s Christmas.’

‘I know. You sent me a card, and I sent you one.’

‘The flu’s a disaster. Maggs has got it, and Stephanie looks rather hot this morning, so she’s probably getting it. You’ll have to go home. You can’t work if you’re ill.’

‘It’s not exactly work. There’s only a dog and some rats. But I can’t just leave them.’

‘Well, at least there hasn’t been any murder, then.’ He laughed.

‘Actually …’

‘No! Don’t tell me.’

‘Next door. A woman. Yesterday. At least, it might have been an accident, or suicide. I don’t know for sure. I had horrible dreams about it,’ she remembered.

‘Thea, you sound pretty awful. How long have you had it?’

‘Um … Friday evening it started. It’ll soon be gone. I’m sorry about poor Stephanie. I hope it doesn’t spoil her Christmas.’

He made a sound that reminded her that this would be the first Slocombe Christmas without Karen, and likely to be somewhat flat accordingly. What would it be like, she wondered, trying to go through the usual traditions with two young children and no mother? ‘Have you got them lots of presents?’ she asked.

‘Nothing special. Steph suggested we ignore it completely, as a sort of memorial to Karen, but
Timmy thought that was the worst idea he’d ever heard. He’s right, really. Karen wouldn’t take kindly to such self-denial. She always liked Christmas – made everything herself, of course. Pudding, pies, trifle. It’s all bought stuff this year.’

‘I got myself a few nice things at a supermarket on Thursday. I think that’s where I caught the flu, actually. Now I can’t face eating anything. It’ll all get thrown away.’

He tutted and went quiet for a moment. ‘Isn’t there anybody with you? Surely you’re not having Christmas there by yourself?’

‘Don’t you start. I’ll be fine. I never meant to tell you about the flu. I haven’t told Jessica or Jocelyn or anybody. Only Jeremy Higgins, and he’s going to be busy with the business next door.’

‘Remind me.’

‘He’s a DI. I don’t think you ever met him. He shows up fairly often. He rescued me yesterday when I killed my car.’

‘DI? Don’t tell me … um … um … Detective Inspector! I knew really. Is your car dead, then?’

‘I put diesel in it instead of petrol. I think they can fix it. It’ll probably come back today.’

‘It all sounds like a great deal of trouble, one way and another. What’s the house like?’

‘It’s old and lovely. In the main street. The dog is gorgeous, but she’s depressed. Missing her people, I suppose. And I’m neglecting her terribly. I would have
taken them up onto the Cotswold Way if I’d been all right. We had a Great Dane here yesterday as well.’

‘Listen, Thea – I’ll have to go. We were in the middle of breakfast. Den’s coming soon, and babysitting while I go and see a man at the hospice. Funerals don’t stop for Christmas, unfortunately.’

‘Surely they do?’

‘I meant
dying
doesn’t stop.’

‘How will you cope if Maggs is ill?’

‘With great difficulty. It must have been like this in the Black Death – nobody around to do any of the vital work.’

‘Except they all died. Nobody’s dying of this flu, are they?’

‘Some are, of course. But not many. Apparently it attacks people under fifty for preference. You have to admire these viruses,’ he added whimsically. ‘They really are very clever. I sometimes think they’re the real rulers of the world, with proper societies and value systems, and long-term ambitions.’

‘You sound nearly as delirious as me.’

‘Are you delirious?’ He sounded worried.

‘A bit, in the night.’

‘I should come and look after you. It’s ages since I saw you. But … with Steph sickening, and Maggs … well, I don’t see how I can.’

‘Drew, I
promise
I phoned you by mistake. I absolutely intended to call Damien and tell him I was poorly. He’s the only person doing nothing, as far as I
know. He’s a bit of a pain, admittedly, but he’d come if I asked him to.’

‘I thought he was a thoroughgoing Christian? Doesn’t that mean he’ll be busy over Christmas?’

‘Ah – well, that’s the thing. He doesn’t really belong to any proper church. They meet in each other’s houses, and study the Bible and stuff like that. But they don’t do the ritualistic song and dance. The idea is to live like real Christians – which would definitely include rushing to the rescue of a sister in distress. The trouble is, he isn’t actually a terribly kind person, so he’d do it in a martyred sort of way, And he’d be all bossy and organising. But at least Blondie would get all her walks. If I told him that was the top job, he’d take it very seriously.’

‘That sounds pretty awful.’

She sighed and said nothing for a moment. ‘You’ve got to go,’ she reminded him. ‘You were going five minutes ago.’

‘I’m thinking. Stanton’s another village in the Cotswolds, right?’

‘Right.’

‘You know I’ve still got the house in Broad Campden. I was just thinking yesterday it was time I did something with it. It’s a wicked waste just letting it sit there. But after Karen died, I sort of forgot all about it. I’ve had it nearly a year now.’

‘It’s not that long. It took six months or more for all the legal business to get done.’

‘The house doesn’t know that,’ he joked. ‘It’s been gathering cobwebs and mice and wet rot for all these months. It’ll fall down if I don’t do something soon. I’ve already had letters about the garden from a neighbour. Apparently there’s a giant hogweed by the shed.’

‘Wow. I love giant hogweed.’

‘So do I.’ He spoke with a boyish wonder, which made her laugh. ‘But most people regard it as the spawn of the devil.’

‘So what are you saying? About the house?’

‘I don’t know. But let me get breakfast sorted, and the hospice visited, and I’ll phone you back. Midday sometime, I expect. I’ll have to find out how Maggs is before I decide anything.’

Her spirits leapt at the implications. Already her headache seemed to be fading. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Nice to talk to you.’

‘And you.’

She felt so much better after that conversation that she wondered whether the whole flu thing was psychosomatic after all. Had she been so full of self-pity at spending a solitary Christmas that she had made herself ill with it? Of course not, she decided – but perhaps there was an
element
of that, all the same. The pleasure at hearing Drew’s voice had quelled the activities of the sneaky virus for a while, at the very least.

It was Sunday, December 23rd, she reminded herself.
Before long the church bells were sure to start ringing. Outside, the sky was brighter than the past few days. When she opened the back door to let the dogs out, the air was crisper. A perfect day for a walk on the wolds, if she’d been up to it. The shortest day had passed, and slowly the year would turn. It was a moment for pagan reflections about the reliability of the seasons and the timelessness that came with their predictable repetitions. A day for musing on the human condition and what it all meant. Drew would be good at that – and Damien would be hopeless. The undertaker trumped the fundamentalist Christian when it came to facing the eternal verities. Drew had freely stated that he didn’t really believe in God, that he couldn’t see a place for that whole layer of additional explanation and power that went with the idea of a deity. ‘I prefer to think of everything just getting along by itself,’ he said. ‘No need for a higher intelligence controlling it all.’

Thea hadn’t argued with him, but somewhere deep down she still wondered whether they might be missing something, and in due course would choose after all to embrace an extra dimension involving interactions between people that somehow weren’t covered by Drew’s scenario. She found she was rather looking forward to a future in which matters spiritual might take a larger role.

So she did not phone Damien after all. She forced herself to eat two Weetabix and drink a large mug of coffee. When the headache came back in full force, she
took two more painkillers. They were half gone already, and there was only one sachet of Lemsip left. Only then did she remember her car, and how she was stranded in a village with no shop on a Sunday.

There were two police cars outside, and sounds of activity in the house next door. Plenty of scope for a whole team of SOCOs, she supposed. Who would be the senior investigating officer this time, she wondered? Most likely Sonia Gladwin, who would not want to give up Christmas with her twin sons and long-suffering husband. Thea had a confused picture of people like the detective superintendent and Drew Slocombe wading through a morass of obligations and distractions, determined to give their children the attention that other people’s had. Her sister Jocelyn was married to a civil servant who took the full complement of bank holidays without a second thought. He would throw himself into games with the children and abandon all thought of the outside world. The fact that he had once meted out violence to his wife had tainted him, admittedly, but as a father he was irreproachable.

And Jeremy Higgins was another thwarted family man, she supposed. He had referred briefly to kids once or twice, and gave every sign of being ordinarily married. He would have to interview and question a range of witnesses and suspects in this killing.

She found she was having difficulty in paying attention to the events next door. She had never met the woman who had died, and found little space in her
aching self to care about her. This was bad, a small voice insisted. It had clearly been distinctly horrible for the victim. There were factors that implied a painful, panicky and lonely death, to which Cheryl Bagshawe had almost been a witness. And Thea had shared the final moments at close quarters. She definitely ought to care.

It was suddenly half past ten and she had done nothing but let the dogs out and watch sporadically out of the window as dreamlike white-clad figures came and went. She should check the rats, poor things. They too were having an unusually restricted time, compared to the freedom their people generally gave them. Why had the Shepherds bothered to get a house-sitter, if not to ensure their animals had uninterrupted routines? The ferns could have lasted without water at this time of year. Blondie could have gone to kennels, and some local boy could have come in to feed the rats. It was an extravagance they might come to regret if they knew how feebly she was performing her duties. But at least she was a deterrent to burglars, she supposed – until she remembered the woman walking unimpeded through the back door on Friday evening.

She had not given Juliet and Rosa a thought for twenty-four hours or so, except to realise that the ransacked grave in Willersey had most likely been that of their relative. She had almost forgotten their names, in fact. They had comprised an odd interlude that she might almost have believed a figment of a fevered
imagination. There had been something dreamlike about them, anyway. They were like characters from a fairy tale. Perhaps they hadn’t existed in the real world. What was
real
anyway?

‘Don’t start that now,’ she muttered to herself. That way madness lay.

It was with inordinate relief that she heard the door knocker. Some white knight had come to save her sanity. And despite knowing it could not possibly be, she acknowledged a glowing hope that it might be Drew Slocombe.

It wasn’t Drew, of course, but a thin young man wearing a heavy sheepskin coat and a fur hat with earflaps. ‘Hello?’ said Thea.

‘Sorry to bother you, but I’ve been trying to get into next door and they won’t let me. I want to know
exactly
what happened, you see.’

‘Oh.’ She had to accept that she didn’t really see; nor did she care to. ‘Well, I don’t know how I can help.’

‘You’re her
neighbour,
for God’s sake. You must have things you can tell me.’

‘Actually, I’m not. I mean – I’m just a house-sitter. I only arrived on Friday. I don’t know anybody. Or any
thing
.’

He stared at her intently. ‘But you were here when it happened? Weren’t you?’

It was cold on the doorstep, and he looked almost
as shivery and sick as Thea felt. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said grudgingly. ‘If you don’t mind my flu germs.’

He laughed at this. ‘Not you as well. Don’t worry – I’ve got it already. When did yours start?’

‘Friday evening.’

‘I’m two days ahead of you. You’ll start to feel half human again by Christmas Day, then. I had to go to my father’s funeral with a raging temperature and a murderous headache. It’s a wonder I didn’t get fatal complications.’

She took him into the living room, where Hepzie flung herself at his legs and Blondie cocked one ear in disappointment that he was not her master. He fondled the spaniel’s long ears and then pushed her gently back to the floor. ‘What a pretty dog,’ he said.

Thea was reminded of Juliet, who had not only correctly identified the dog’s breed, but had also told Thea she was pretty. ‘Who are you?’ she asked baldly.

‘Sorry. The name’s Ralph Callendar.’

‘Thea Osborne,’ she responded, without extending a hand for him to shake. Slowly her brain was making the link. ‘I saw you on Friday. Were you the one in the second car?’

He nodded, with a grin. ‘Banished, you see, in case my mother caught my flu. To be fair, she does have a compromised immune system, so it would be a bad idea for her to get it. She’s had a fairly mild form of leukaemia for a couple of years now. She doesn’t usually take it seriously, but my brother Edwin is paranoid
on her behalf. My wife and kid came with me, on the assumption they were incubating the dreaded virus. As it turned out, they weren’t.’

‘He died in his bath,’ she said, without thinking. ‘I saw it in the paper.’

‘Bloody silly thing to do,’ he nodded. ‘Everyone had told him it wasn’t safe. He’d had that old radio for decades – the wiring was bound to be dodgy.’

‘Your mother found him – is that right?’

‘So she says. Can’t see any reason to doubt her. There’s only the two of them in the house in an evening. All the staff go home at seven.’

‘Staff?’

‘Just a cook and secretary, really. You don’t count the cleaning woman as technically staff, do you? And the gardener’s only part-time.’

‘Your father must have been popular. It looked as if the entire village showed up at the church.’

‘Don’t you believe it. They just wanted to snoop. We’re notorious, you know. And proud of it,’ he laughed.

She squared her aching shoulders. ‘So what do you want to ask me? I don’t imagine I’ll be of any help, but you may as well give it a try now you’re here.’

‘The woman next door – Natasha Ainsworth, she’s called. I gather she’s dead.’ The last word shot out with unnatural emphasis, as if he was determined to confront it, however great the effort might be.

‘So it seems. As far as I understand it, the funeral party was at her house on Friday.’

‘Well, your understanding isn’t altogether accurate,’ he corrected her. ‘Only about
half
the mourners went back there. The rest went to a very smart hotel for a late lunch provided by my mother. She sat at a table all by herself and didn’t eat a thing.’

‘
Two
parties?’ Thea said wonderingly.

‘We don’t call them parties,’ he reproved her. ‘It was very far from a party atmosphere, I can tell you.’

‘Sorry. But there were two – is that right?’

He gave a pained smile and nodded. ‘Natasha always did stand up for her rights, as she saw them. You have to admire her in a way.’

‘Somebody killed her. The police are going to focus on your mother and those around her, aren’t they?’

He seemed suddenly to wilt and turn terribly pale. ‘Can I sit down?’ he gasped. Before she could reply he had flopped onto the sofa, narrowly missing Hepzie who had jumped into a cosy corner after her initial love-in with the visitor. She gave him a friendly nudge and rolled her big spaniel eyes at him. He automatically put a hand on her soft head. The only thing Thea knew so far about Ralph Callendar was that he was good with dogs, and thereby earned her favour.

She waited for him to recover his colour before asking, ‘So that your boy in the car with you?’

‘Mikey, yes. He’s nine. We’ve got two more, actually. Girls, five and two.’

‘And a dog?’

‘Three dogs. One for each child. Corgis. Did you
say the police are going to think my
mother
murdered Natasha?’ He stared at her as if really wanting to know.

She sat down herself before answering. ‘Don’t take any notice of what I say. I have no idea how things were between you. I never even glimpsed Natasha. It’s only what I’ve heard.’ She sighed, noticing that her lungs hurt when they were inflated. Nearly everything hurt, in a low-level I-do-feel-poorly sort of way. ‘I’m not well enough to take much interest,’ she added, hoping it hadn’t emerged as a whine.

‘It’s an extremely stupid idea,’ he went on, with more force. ‘We all
liked
Natasha. She was a family friend for decades. We all grew up with her. She used to babysit me and my brothers. She’s like part of the family. Not to mention the business. She’s been indispensable in that department, as well.’

‘Okay.’ She tried to visualise how that could have been.

‘How many brothers?’ she asked, thinking of the funeral cortège she had witnessed.

‘Two. I’m the youngest. The others are Edwin and Sebastian. Sebastian’s been in disgrace, I’m afraid. He was caught cheating some of our customers, and they sent him to gaol for a bit.’ He frowned briefly. ‘Why am I telling you that?’

‘Sorry. It’s my fault. I always ask too many questions. I just like to get the picture. It makes me feel less defenceless,’ she added, startling herself by the admission.

‘I can see that, I guess. Well, Edwin’s got a wife and two boys. Sebastian is still single. He always says he likes women too much to get married. He thinks that’s an original joke. Basically, he’s the troublesome one.’

‘And your mother coped with your father’s other woman, did she?’

‘More or less. She freaked out a few times when he took Tash to local bashes instead of her. He did that rather often at one point. She managed to get him to be a bit more discreet.’

‘But essentially he was a bigamist,’ Thea summarised baldly, making no attempt to conceal her distaste. ‘Getting away with it. How undignified for your poor mother.’

‘My mother is a magistrate, a school governor and a campaigner against building on green fields, among many other things. Her dignity is very seldom in question.’ His own dignity took pride of place in this defence of his mother, Thea noted. Try as she might, she could discover no precedent for such a set-up in her own experience. As she had realised before, her family was remarkably monogamous on all sides. Not so much as an unfaithful aunt or cousin could be found. She supposed it amounted to some kind of steadfast moral code passing down the generations, and almost never openly acknowledged, let alone questioned. Much of the credit went to her father, she believed.

‘Good for her,’ she said sincerely. ‘So how has she taken your father’s death?’

Ralph shivered. ‘You don’t mince your words, do you? Most people say
loss
or
passing.
’

‘You said it yourself, about Natasha,’ she reminded him. ‘And besides, the language doesn’t alter the reality.’

‘It softens it, though. Don’t you worry that people might think you’re rather hard?’

She swallowed painfully. He had pressed a sensitive button, when she was least expecting it. ‘Ouch!’ she protested.

‘Sorry. That was mean of me, when you’ve got flu. One does feel so defenceless, I know. As if a layer of skin is missing. I did have to make myself say it, but it didn’t come easily.’

The onset of tears took her completely by surprise. Her face seemed to implode with a sort of crash, and a sob burst out quite beyond her power to control. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Oh, God. I didn’t mean to … Honestly, what a mess it all is. Here’s you, all on your own, with a dead woman next door and I turn up and tell you your character defects. Ignore me. I’m a monster. I don’t know what I was thinking of.’

She rallied with a great effort. ‘No, it’s not you,’ she sniffed. ‘It’s just the flu, like you said. I’m really quite all right.’

‘You’re not,’ he corrected her. ‘But then, which of us is? We just have to muddle through, don’t we? I see it was idiotic of me to think you’d know anything about what happened to Natasha. I had no idea the people were away – not that I know them at all. They’ve left
you to mind their dogs, of course. I get it.’

‘Dog, singular. The spaniel’s mine. She always comes with me.’

‘She’s lovely. They have such wonderful heads, don’t they?’ It was a skilful recovery, and very effective. By focusing on the dog, they both sidestepped the awkward moment. Ralph sniffed the air as if just noticing something. ‘Smoker, are you? Have a fag if it’ll make you feel better. Don’t mind me.’

‘No, I’m not. The Shepherds are. The house must smell of it, but I haven’t really noticed.’

‘I gave up a year ago. The smell still makes me happy.’

Thea smiled, but resisted any temptation to divert onto the topic of cigarettes. ‘What was Natasha like?’ she asked.

He answered thoughtfully, one word at a time. ‘Good-looking. Fit. Late forties, I think. Clever. A great walker. We used to tease her and call her “Ms Footpath” because she was always mounting some sort of campaign to keep paths open, or protesting at diversions.’

‘So people liked her?’

‘Oh, yes.’ He frowned. ‘Most people did. She was outspoken, of course, saying what was on her mind even if it upset people. She always seemed to know best, which could be irritating.’

‘Didn’t anybody disapprove of her lifestyle? I mean – the thing with your father …’

‘I think it just confused them. My mother never
wanted anybody’s sympathy about it. She put a good face on it, insisting they weren’t in competition.’

‘But they were when it came to the funeral,’ Thea suggested. ‘That must have forced people to take sides.’

‘Actually, not at all. The real family friends came to the meal at the hotel, and the rest had sandwiches at Natasha’s. It all seemed to work out more or less harmoniously.’

‘So you don’t think that’s why somebody killed her?’

He stared at her, with a half smile on his lips. ‘Of course not.’

She nodded an unavoidable acceptance of his superior knowledge and offered to make him a drink.

‘No, no,’ he declined. ‘I absolutely must go. I have a thousand things to do. Sarah’s been a martyr to my sickness for much too long already. Plus having to go to a funeral was the final straw. It took us ages to find anyone to watch out for the girls. The woman who generally does it was at another funeral, believe it or not. People dropping like flies.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Thea, thinking perhaps she’d fallen asleep and was in fact dreaming. ‘It was the funeral of a woman called Eva who had cystic fibrosis. At least I don’t imagine it’s her cousin Juliet who’s your childminder.’ She laughed. ‘That would take coincidence to a whole new high.’

‘Close,’ he said, with a seriously confused expression. ‘Juliet’s got a sister, Cordelia. She’s not exactly a childminder, but she’s fabulous with small children.’

‘Same funeral, wrong sister,’ said Thea. ‘Still a ludicrous synchronicity.’

‘Why?’ He was already up and making slowly for the door. Thea wondered whether she should feel flattered that he evidently found it so difficult to leave. He checked himself before she could reply. ‘No, don’t answer that. Don’t say another word. I’ll come back another time. Except – oh, God, isn’t Christmas a bloody nuisance? You can’t get a morsel of sense out of anybody for at least a fortnight. We’ve got a whole load of stray relatives coming, not to mention about four sherry parties, carols, and I don’t know what else.’ He went to run a hand through his hair and discovered he was still sporting the furry hat. He rubbed it anyway, making Thea smile.

‘It was nice to meet you,’ she said. ‘And I’m sorry about your father. It must have been a dreadful shock.’

He opened his mouth and closed it, putting a finger to his lips. Then, ‘Bye,’ he mouthed and was gone.

She had liked him for his sensitivity and politeness, as well as for helping her pass twenty minutes that might otherwise have hung heavy. She wondered whether they had given each other any help in terms of information about Natasha’s murder – not that she had any right to expect it, she reminded herself. Perhaps after Christmas they’d meet again. He was definitely the nicest person she had met so far in Stanton.

Jeremy Higgins put in an appearance at eleven o’clock, looking rumpled and rueful. ‘Can’t stay long,’ he said
without preamble, when she opened the door to him. ‘Just need to ask you what, if anything, you heard next door, during yesterday.’

‘Absolutely nothing. But Cheryl heard voices when she went round there. I thought it might have been a telly or radio. Somebody must have turned it off at some point. Probably the paramedics.’

‘Why did she go “round there”?’ He made inverted commas in the air, raising one eyebrow.

‘Um … to ask her if she’d keep an eye on me with my flu. There didn’t seem to be anybody else, with the next-door man going away.’

‘And how is the flu?’

‘No better. Not much worse. Everything aches. But I’m assured it’ll be gone in another day or so. I met Ralph Callendar this morning. He’s had it as well.’