Trouble in the Cotswolds (The Cotswold Mysteries) (9 page)

‘How long was she gone? Mrs Bagshawe?’

‘What? Oh – five minutes, maybe. Not very long.’

‘Five minutes is a long time to stand knocking on a front door,’ he corrected her.

‘Less, then. I was a bit blurry, actually. I nearly fainted. I can’t be sure of anything much.’

‘Let’s sit down a minute and I’ll run you through it. Tell me if anything sounds wrong.’ He was painfully matter-of-fact, and clearly assumed she would be the same. ‘Miss Ainsworth was found dead at 2.50 p.m., having lost a large quantity of blood from a severed artery after an apparent attack with a sharp instrument. The attack took place in a room at the rear of the house,
and the victim dragged herself into the front room and managed to throw a stone statue through the window onto the street. Before anybody could gain entry to the house, she was dead. It seems probable that she was attacked only minutes before she died.’

‘Which artery was it? What was the weapon? Did you find it at the scene?’

He paused. ‘I’m not supposed to say.’

‘Fine. I just wondered if she could have done it to herself.’

‘Very unlikely indeed, given the circumstances. And why would she try to get help if she was committing suicide?’

‘Panic. Change of heart. Or she might have done it by accident.’

‘We’ll know more when the post-mortem’s finished.’

‘Are they doing it today?’

He nodded with a half smile. ‘Starting any time now. It was a choice of today or Christmas Eve.’

‘I don’t think I’m going to be any use to you,’ she said, with an unfamiliar sense of relief. She didn’t
care
who had killed Natasha Ainsworth. Just at that moment she didn’t care about anything very much.

‘Did you see her at any point? Before or after she died?’ Thea shook her head. ‘She was a striking-looking woman,’ he went on. ‘Thick mane of white hair, even though she was not quite fifty. Very slim, deep-set eyes. You’d remember her if you saw her.’

‘Well I didn’t.’

‘Who
have
you seen, since you got here?’

‘Cheryl. Dennis Thingummy on the other side. Oh, and a person called Juliet Wilson, who barged in through the back door on my first day. I think she’s got some sort of mental trouble. Her mother came to collect her. She comes to talk to Gloria and the pet rats quite often, I think.’

He lifted his tired head and stared at her. ‘The mother’s not called Rosa, is she? Are we talking about the Wilson women from Laverton?’

She nodded. ‘I told you yesterday, in the car. You laughed at me. You said some rather hurtful things, actually.’

‘Did I? I don’t remember. Well, they’ve got nothing to do with all this. At least, I hope they haven’t. We’ve had enough complications with those two, over the years.’

‘Oh?’

Higgins gave no further elaboration, which left Thea assuming there had been complaints about Juliet’s uninhibited roaming around the area and police helplessness to stop her.

Higgins continued with his questions. ‘And that’s it? There’s nobody else you’ve bumped into?’

‘Just Ralph. He was nice.’

‘What did he want?’

‘Information, I think. The way relatives generally do. They’re desperate for it. I don’t think the police understand how that works, actually. Making people wait so long for proper explanations.’

‘Relative?’ he frowned. ‘He’s not a relative.’

She thought it through. ‘She babysat him when he was little. She’s been like part of the family. I said his father was effectively a bigamist and he sort of defended him. He liked Natasha.’

‘Or said he did,’ Higgins remarked darkly. He in turn spent some seconds in thought. ‘And Dennis Ireland? When did you see him?’

‘He came to the door while Cheryl was here, after you asked him to watch out for me. He wasn’t too happy to see Cheryl. She answered the door.’

‘Why wasn’t he? Surely she’d let him off the hook.’

‘Maybe he wanted to be a good Samaritan and she thwarted him. He’d geared himself up to come and offer help and was disappointed when he saw he wasn’t needed.’

‘Where did he go after that?’

‘Back to his house. We heard him shut the front door after himself. Somebody – Cheryl, I think – fetched him when Natasha was found. He must only have been inside for ten minutes at most. Quite a few other people showed up as well, once they realised something was going on. I don’t know who any of them were.’

He sagged in frustration. ‘The front and back doors were both locked. The whole scene was awash with blood that was well trodden about by all those helpful neighbours and paramedics. The murderer would almost certainly have blood on his – or her – clothes. Everybody liked the woman. And it’s
Christmas
.’

‘It must have been the wife. Mrs Callendar. She’d have found a key to the house in her husband’s pocket and sneaked in and out when nobody was looking.’

Higgins shuddered. ‘I bloody hope not. Marian Callendar’s a pillar of the community, best mates with the commissioner, mother of three upstanding sons. Or two. The third one seems to be under a bit of a shadow.’

‘All the more reason to dispose of the only part of her life that wasn’t so respectable, then,’ persisted Thea. ‘The funeral gathering must have been the final straw. I might have killed her myself, if I’d been Marian.’

He pondered again, nodding slightly. ‘Like Kevin said yesterday – the girlfriend getting one over on the wife. Right.’ He gave her an enquiring look. ‘Would that make a woman ballistic enough to kill?’

‘Maybe if she’s already off balance because of the husband dying like that.’

‘Kev would say she probably did him in as well, chucking that radio in the bath. There’s no evidence that she didn’t.’

‘You can’t prove a negative,’ said Thea absently.

‘Sometimes you can,’ he disagreed. ‘But it’s not easy.’

‘What about the boy?’ she said suddenly. ‘Was he all right?’

‘Boy … Which boy?’

‘The one who looked through the window and saw all the blood. It must have been a big shock for him. He only looked about nineteen. A student, I imagine. Somebody’s son, back for Christmas.’

Higgins scanned his memory. ‘Not ringing any bells,’ he said. ‘How do you recognise a student, anyway? He might have been a local bank clerk.’

She thought about stereotypes for a moment. ‘Wrong hair,’ she concluded. ‘And he had that listless sort of look that students have. You know?’

‘Sounds more like an unemployed layabout.’

‘He must have gone before you arrived, then. He did look very pale. I thought he might make a good witness. If I remember the timing right, he saw the inside of the room before anybody interfered with it.’

‘Damn,’ said Higgins with feeling.

‘Do you want coffee?’ she asked half-heartedly. Now she was comfortably back on the sofa, her body was begging her not to get up again.

‘No, thanks. No time for that. I have to get going.’

‘I haven’t been very useful, have I?’

‘You’ve made me think, as usual.’

‘Is Gladwin the SIO?’

‘Oh, yes. I dare say she’ll call in on you sometime soon. Is that dog all right?’ Blondie was somewhere at the back of the house, whining loudly. ‘Sounds as if it wants to go out.’

Thea sighed. ‘She hasn’t done a poo for days – not that she eats very much. She’s pining for her people, poor thing. I was hoping she’d wait a while yet, but I guess that’s mean of me.’

‘Stay there. I’ll let her out. The back’s secure, is it?’

‘I locked it.’

‘No, no. The
garden.
She can’t get out and run off, can she?’

‘Not according to the Shepherds. Thanks, Jeremy.’ She used his first name unthinkingly, because Phil Hollis had always used it, and he felt like a friend. But he stiffened when he heard it and she realised she’d transgressed. He never called her Thea. Not like Gladwin, who saw no difficulty in blurring boundaries.

The DI went out to the kitchen, and the next thing Thea heard was a shout and a female cry. Blondie barked and the cry came again.
Juliet,
Thea identified with a powerful sinking feeling. Juliet must have been standing outside, trying to gain entry through the back door, and Blondie heard her.

‘Come in here,’ she heard Higgins order.

‘Don’t bully her!’ she heard herself shout. Then she hauled herself upright and went to see for herself what was happening.

The back door was open and a muddle of people and dog were half in and half out. ‘Juliet,’ she said. ‘Why are you here again?’

Higgins failed to suppress a groan. ‘Hello, Miss Wilson,’ he said. ‘Remember me?’

Juliet gave him a nervous glance, quickly looking away again. ‘Policeman,’ she muttered.

‘That’s right. And you know perfectly well you ought not to be here like this. People don’t like it.’

‘They don’t mind,’ she disagreed lightly. ‘They’re my friends. I can trust them to look after me.’ She met
Thea’s eye. ‘You shouted at me,’ she accused. ‘I didn’t like that. I need to feel safe in this house, especially.’

Juliet’s last visit felt like weeks ago to Thea, but it had been less than forty-eight hours. She habitually walked to Stanton from Laverton, it seemed – but where exactly
was
Laverton? As had happened so many times before, she felt badly disadvantaged by her ignorance of local geography. Cheryl from Stanway, the grave in Willersey, a cottage in Laverton – they must all be within a short distance, and she did know where Stanway was, but the lack of accurate knowledge felt disabling.

‘I had to shout at you,’ she said, rather wanting to shout again. ‘I needed you to go. Why have you come back?’

Juliet widened her eyes and stood her ground. ‘The rats,’ she said. ‘I always come and play with the rats. Gloria doesn’t mind. She leaves the door unlocked for me. Now you’ve locked it,’ she accused. ‘That wasn’t friendly.’

The idea leapt into Thea’s head from nowhere. She glanced at Higgins, wondering whether he was sharing it.

It seemed he was. ‘Were you here yesterday?’ he asked. ‘Do you know the lady next door?’

Thea noted the
lady,
a word you’d use when speaking to a child, not a grown woman. Juliet pouted and shuffled one foot. Blondie was pressed against her, looking more in need of protection than wanting to provide it. That was one unhappy dog, Thea thought guiltily.

‘Can’t remember,’ said Juliet.

Higgins looked to Thea for help – which she made no attempt to provide. There had to be specific protocols for interviewing people with Juliet’s type of difficulties. Murkily she heard the words
post-traumatic stress
and
attention deficit disorder
floating around her head, and perhaps applying to Juliet. With little personal experience of any sort of mental illness, she had acquired
a very generalised grasp of what could go wrong via the normal run of reading and watching documentaries. Juliet appeared to be very nearly capable of ordinary life, but had an unsettling lack of inhibition. She apparently followed whims without due caution, and probably had a disablingly short attention span. There was no indication of potential violence. And yet Thea knew exactly what the detective inspector was thinking.

‘Will you come with me to the police station?’ he asked. ‘Would that be all right, if I call for a policewoman to come with us?’

‘What for?’ demanded Juliet. ‘You haven’t found the flowers, have you?’

Thea watched him tussle with the temptation to agree to this idea. ‘Not yet,’ he admitted.

‘I knew you hadn’t. You never will, either.’

‘Oh?’

‘Because
I
took them. I don’t know why, so don’t ask. Perhaps I just thought they were too nice to sit rotting on a grave. I suppose you’ll have to tell my mother.’ She sighed. ‘Am I going to be arrested?’

Higgins gave her a long thoughtful look. ‘Technically, if you’re one of the close relatives of the deceased, the flowers probably belong to you anyway,’ he said.

Juliet’s eyes widened, and then she laughed. ‘So why do you want me to go to the police station?’

‘Nothing to do with the flowers,’ he said evasively. ‘Something else … something more serious has happened.’

‘You’ll have to speak to her mother,’ Thea interrupted.
‘She’s probably looking for her, anyway. Last time, she showed up here within about ten minutes.’ Higgins turned on her angrily at the superfluous intervention, but Juliet answered the implied question quite calmly.

‘She’s out,’ she said. ‘Gone to get the turkey.’

Thea remembered that Juliet had a sister, who looked after Ralph Callendar’s children. ‘You know the Callendar family, don’t you?’ she blurted. ‘And you’ve got a sister. What’s her name?’

‘Cordelia. She’s married,’ she said. ‘She doesn’t live with us.’ Juliet was standing straight-backed, speaking with assurance, even a faint amusement. Thea wondered what Higgins made of her.

‘Your mum likes Shakespeare, then,’ she remarked. ‘Juliet and Cordelia.’

‘All right,’ barked Higgins, evidently sensing a loss of control. ‘That’s enough chit-chat.’

The women gave him similar looks to those that both dogs threw at him. Four females were permitting him a dominance that he was momentarily at a loss to capitalise on. ‘We have to get on,’ he said with a hint of apology. ‘I’ll call the WPC and we’ll be off.’

‘What about her mother?’ Thea repeated.

‘That’s for us to worry about. You just concentrate on getting over that flu, okay?’

She made no objection to being patronised, given the circumstances, but it didn’t go unnoticed. She was unable to resist a final word. ‘What about my car? I still haven’t got it back.’

Higgins almost lost it. He clung to politeness by a gossamer thread. ‘I’m afraid it’s no longer one of my primary concerns,’ he grated. ‘Given what happened yesterday. It’s Sunday. If they didn’t get it done yesterday, then it’ll have to wait until tomorrow. You don’t need it, do you? Haven’t the people texted you, like they said they would?’

She was well and truly outmanoeuvred, remembering that Higgins had clearly told her she was to keep an eye on her phone and deal with the garage direct. But she held her ground. ‘I don’t need it immediately, no. But I would like to know where it is.’

‘Have you checked for a text?’ He met her eye unwaveringly.

‘Well … no. It’s all been so busy. But you’re right, I ought to have done. I forgot. Sorry.’ No sense in antagonising him, she decided. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He merely represented many of the frustrations and confusions of recent days.

She watched him take Juliet out to one of the police cars cluttering the lovely old street of stone houses, and returned to the sofa to think. The spaniel jumped into her lap and snuggled down. Was it possible that Juliet had killed Natasha Ainsworth? Logistically, it seemed all too easy to imagine. If Juliet was in the habit of letting herself into the Shepherds’ house, then perhaps she did it all along the row. Gardens and alleyways, low walls and open archways were all highly accessible to an uninhibited visitor, who was apparently regarded as
harmless and readily tolerated. For all Thea knew, Juliet did casual gardening work, or dusting, or dog-walking for half the residents of the village. Reaching for the map lying on the window sill behind her, she checked the position of Laverton, where Juliet lived. There was a direct footpath connecting the two settlements, barely half a mile in length. It would be an easy stroll for anyone with the use of their legs.

And yet the images that filled her mind were from an earlier era, where a vulnerable young woman roamed at will down rural lanes and in and out of people’s homes. These days, there would be a plethora of official concerns; oversensitive householders with triple locks on all their doors; unrealistic fears for children and complaints on every side. The people of Stanton, just like the people of every Cotswold village she had seen, remained close to home, almost invisible to a visitor. They might be glimpsed trimming a hedge on a Saturday afternoon, or weeding a flower bed, but they did not mill about in the street or stand chatting on each other’s doorsteps. Somebody like Juliet would be regarded with intense suspicion, simply because she failed to abide by the innumerable unspoken rules.

But on the other hand, Thea argued with herself, there had been Cheryl Bagshawe and her huge dog.
She
strolled along the roads and footpaths, apparently with ample free time. She acted on impulse, walking a mile or more to discover why Thea had been in a police car. People would accept her, because she didn’t just
walk into their houses without invitation, but she
was
a bit weird, all the same. Her accounts of herself were minimal, but even then they seemed to contain certain contradictions. For a start, where exactly did she live? The pad with her address on was out in the hall, and Thea tried to visualise it. Stanway was definitely part of it, but Thea couldn’t think of any dwellings there, other than the great Stanway House, and a short row of old cottages across the road from it, which most likely accommodated staff who worked there. Cheryl was definitely not a farmer, either. Another scrutiny of the map gave little clue as to the answer. As far as Thea could see, there was no habitation between Stanway and Stanton. It was all open fields and the cricket ground. Much of the area probably comprised parkland belonging to Stanway House and was thereby preserved from development for centuries to come. Perhaps Cheryl had simply been trying to impress by claiming to live in Stanway. The word had definitely been on the bit of paper she had given to Thea, containing her name and address. Perhaps there was such local status to the address, that she used it to boost her own image. Perhaps that fitted with a person who would own a Great Dane, Thea thought, before reproaching herself for the unfairness. For all she knew, the dog had belonged to the errant husband, who had abandoned it along with his wife. Perhaps she had been left it by a dead parent. In any case, it was a perfectly nice animal.

She found herself wishing that Gladwin would put
in an appearance. The detective superintendent had a refreshing originality to her: a female take on the best way to solve murders that fitted well with Thea’s own approach. Apparently chaotic, with a tendency to sidestep rules and procedures, Gladwin seldom panicked or even made very much fuss. Quite how she behaved with other police officers was opaque to Thea, who generally saw her on her own. Her guess was that they found her confusing at times, even alarming, but that essentially they trusted her.

But Gladwin, like Drew, had children and work and determination to do the right thing by them both – leaving little or no space for Thea and her solitary flu-ridden state. Self-pity nudged at her, as she felt her feverish brow form beads of sweat. She was weak and useless and even poor Blondie had definite cause for complaint. As for the rats, they were unfairly imprisoned because their temporary minder couldn’t face the thought of having them run free, even for a few minutes. When it came to the point, she wasn’t entirely sure she could reach out and pick up a full-sized rat. It might bite her. She might drop it and lose it. A dog might get it –
her
dog, specifically. Dogs did kill rats, after all. That was a fact of nature. Even Blondie might forget herself under certain circumstances.

The world had shrunk around her, she realised. She had no car, and even if she had, she was too ill to go out anywhere. The village outside the door felt simultaneously claustrophobic and uncaring. Its people
would be shopping, wrapping parcels, keeping excited children amused. Its streets had become picturesquely Dickensian with the mullioned windows, thatched roofs and coach entrances. Many of the mullions had artfully sprayed fake snow in the corners, and coloured lights behind them, echoing a thousand Christmas card images. Even the fact of a very nasty murder in their midst could not seriously disrupt the festivities. Whatever the residents might have thought of Natasha Ainsworth and her shameless affair with Douglas Callendar, they were unlikely to permit her death to impinge on them for at least the next few days. Did they all know, without needing to discuss it, that Marian Callendar had done the deed? Or even poor Juliet? Or one of Douglas’s sons? Frustrated at being obliged to make wild guesses on the basis of virtually no hard information, Thea irritably forced her thoughts onto another track.

But none of the tracks she could think of were any more agreeable. Jessica would soon be arriving at Jocelyn’s – she couldn’t remember exactly when – and everything would be busy and noisy and warm and excessive. Food and wine and toys and games would keep the house reverberating with laughter and animation. The images made Thea’s head ache more fiercely, even as she conceded that she was jealous.

Thoughts of Drew were even more unsatisfactory. He wanted to be with her, as much as she wanted to be with him. It felt like sheer bad planning that they’d
ended up forcibly apart. Nobody would object to them spending Christmas together, if only they had managed it. Maggs, initially very hostile, had finally admitted that she thought Thea would be good for her boss, and that she would not make difficulties if anything were to develop. The children would inevitably compare her to their mother, probably to her disadvantage, but she had no serious worries that her presence would upset them. She had no intention of becoming their stepmother, in any case. The only obstacles were logistical, which seemed ridiculous. If the will was there, then they should be able to override such difficulties with a bit of careful thought. She had almost forgotten the Broad Campden property, until Drew mentioned it on the phone. It was obviously more than he could cope with at the moment, but the opportunity it represented could not be ignored. Even if he made a move to give it some attention, it was hardly going to happen the day before Christmas.

She spent an hour flopped on the sofa, letting her thoughts roam over a succession of depressing topics, before her natural resistance to inactivity asserted itself. Even though she was ill, she could still do
something
– although she didn’t quite know what. Let the dogs out, perhaps. Change the rats’ drinking water. Run the vacuum cleaner around the living room. She stood up slowly, noting the swimming sensation and the rubbery feel to her legs. She probably ought to eat something, she told herself. Since the virus took hold,
she’d consumed virtually no solid food. Could that be compounding the alarming weakness she felt? Was she up to scrambling some eggs? Or should she settle for bread and Marmite? A childhood memory surfaced, in which her father would cut very thin slices of white bread for the children when they were ill, and spread them with Marmite. Somehow he managed to make them taste utterly wonderful.

Eggs would be more nourishing, she decided, and embarked on the task of preparing them, startled to see that it was almost one o’clock. The events of the day swam in and out of focus – several people had been in the house since she got up. The first one, Ralph Callendar, seemed a very distant memory now. What had he wanted? Had he been pretending to be nice and caring about her flu, when all along he was a murderer? The idea seemed laughable. So did any notion of Juliet being a killer. She’d have given herself away instantly, splashed with bloodstains or still holding the weapon. Unless, of course, her appalled mother had quickly concealed all such traces and persuaded her daughter to say nothing at all about Natasha, or where she was on Saturday afternoon. And what about Dennis Ireland, who now became a sinister figure with his expensive waistcoat and faintly odd reaction to seeing Cheryl in the Shepherds’ house? He might quite easily have done the deed himself. Perhaps he had been madly in love with the woman, and been rejected when he tried to replace Callendar in her affections? Perhaps he so
profoundly disapproved of her liaison with the married man that he had flipped when she gave the funeral party so publicly.

The eggs were somewhat overcooked, but they went down fairly easily. She drank some cold milk with them, imagining herself as an Edwardian child doing Nanny’s bidding and taking wholesome food that would boost her energy. It was a new discovery that being ill returned a person to childhood, even when there was nobody there to nurse you. You became your own nurse, recapturing old injunctions that went back through generations, even if you hadn’t personally experienced them before. ‘Feed a cold and starve a fever’ had been echoing in her head for days. So had the slightly crazy controversy as to whether a person with a high temperature should be kept warm, or stripped of all bedcovers and encouraged to cool down. It was not an argument Thea had ever really engaged with, but she recalled Carl, her husband, insisting that nature knew best, and when the body got hot, it was for a reason, and so the sensible course was to go with it and pile on the blankets. It had seemed to work on the occasions when Jessica was poorly.