Slaughter in the Cotswolds

by Rebecca Tope

‘Was anything stolen?’ Oughtn’t she have asked Phil that question, she rebuked herself. Nobody had said anything about robbery, which now seemed rather strange.

  ‘I have no idea.’ Bruce had a small old-fashioned moustache, which he would nibble absently, catching at individual hairs and making his eyes water. Then he’d rub the sore spot with a finger. It was very distracting. ‘To be honest, Thea, I agree with Emily – the less that’s said, the quicker it’ll all fade. The man’s dead – that’s all I need to know. I’ll miss him, but we weren’t exactly best buddies. I only saw him five or six times a year.’

  ‘OK, but the fact remains that it was Emily who saw the whole thing, and it seems to me that it must have been pretty traumatic for her. And if I’ve got it right, you wanted to see me today precisely to talk about how upset she is. It might be about Dad, as you think, but it might just as easily be about Sam. Actually, I suppose it’s a combination of the two. She’s overloaded.’

  ‘I probably haven’t made myself clear. It’s worse than just being upset. She’s ill. She’s like somebody having a breakdown. I don’t know what to do about it.’ He caught another moustache hair and trapped it against his lip in a complicated process that must have hurt.

  ‘So call a doctor.’

  Bruce closed his eyes in a give-me-patience sort of way. ‘And what’s a doctor going to say? Take some anti-depressants or sleeping pills and give yourself space to grieve. Why waste NHS money?’

  For such a conventional man, Bruce could be surprisingly cynical, as Thea had discovered years before. He mistrusted institutions even more than she did herself, and the NHS had seldom earned a positive word from him, ever since his teenaged brother had died on a trolley from some obscure sort of blood poisoning. He didn’t like the police very much, either, presumably because they carried such unpleasant associations with violence and lack of control and other dangerous aspects of human society.

  ‘OK,’ she tried again. ‘From what Emily said on Saturday, it seems she feels guilty about Dad, that she never said the things she meant to and now it’s too late. She had a bit of a cry, and beat herself up for a bit, and then she seemed much better. It was all fairly normal stuff, as far as I could tell. She did have a more difficult relationship with him than the rest of us. He never seemed to approve of her quite as much – although I think she’s exaggerated it tremendously, the way people do in families. It’s turned into a myth in her own mind. If she’d ever managed to confront him about it, he’d have been mortified. I tried to tell her that.’

  Bruce nodded dubiously. ‘Good,’ he murmured vaguely. ‘Well, perhaps you’re right that it was what happened next that sent her off the rails. Because she is off the rails, you see.’ He looked forlorn and out of his depth, and oddly scared. Thea began to experience some reciprocal anxiety.

  ‘Well, she didn’t seem too bad on Sunday when she left. And then I spoke to her on the phone and she sounded all right. She went back to work, didn’t she, on Monday?’

  ‘I can’t work it out. The police came on Sunday to tell us it was Sam, and that was obviously a big shock to both of us.’ The moustache suffered a further attack, which presumably explained the tears in his eyes. ‘But things were more or less normal on Monday morning. Then when I got home, she was weepy and distracted. Didn’t make any proper supper and took no notice when Grant said he wanted to get his nipple pierced.’

  ‘Gosh!’ Thea murmured, with a wince of physical pain in her own nipples at the very thought. ‘That sounds bad.’

  ‘Then she tossed and turned all night, and when she did fall asleep she woke us both up with a dream that had her shouting out loud.’

  ‘It must have just hit her a bit belatedly. Delayed reaction.’

  ‘Possibly,’ he nodded. ‘That’s not really the point, though, is it? The point is what I am supposed to do about it?’

  ‘Hold on. What’s been happening between Monday night and now?’

  ‘Well, Tuesday – yesterday – she said she couldn’t face going to work. She would try and catch up with some sleep, and just stay quiet all day. I went off as usual, and when I got back last night, about half past six, she still wasn’t dressed, and looked as if she’d done nothing but cry all day.’

  ‘That’s still fairly normal,’ said Thea. ‘All hitting her at once. It was a bit like that with me when Carl died. You have to get it out of your system.’

  ‘And how long is it meant to take?’

  ‘Is she still crying today?’

  ‘No, she’s trying to act normally, which is almost worse. All glittery smiles and jerky sentences. But she’s so white and jumpy.’

  ‘Well it sounds to me like plain old post-traumatic stress. After all, it’s still terribly recent. She ought to talk to somebody professional, who can help her debrief. I wouldn’t worry too much, Bruce. It’ll all come right in the end.’ A thought occurred to her. ‘Although I suppose she might be scared that the killer will come and get her, in case she might be able to identify him. Did she say anything about that?’

  ‘Not exactly, although that might explain the jumpiness. Any loud noise has her acting like a shell-shocked soldier.’

  They’d talked right through their lunch, hardly noticing the food. The bar was well patronised, but most people were eating on a terrace outside, shielded from the damp day by an awning. It was the first time they’d been together, just the two of them, and Thea found him to be better company than she’d previously thought. There was something kind and solid about him; it was evident that he cared deeply for his suffering wife and was seeking advice on how best to help her.

  ‘Encourage her to talk about it,’ she offered. ‘Not bottle it up.’

  He looked doubtful again. ‘Hasn’t all that rather gone out of fashion? Don’t we think now that bottling up has its uses? She obviously doesn’t want to dredge it all up again.’

  ‘Well, you won’t be able to force her. Just let her know that you’ll listen quietly if she wants to dump anything.’ And it was a rare man who could manage to do that, she thought, with a twinge of envy at the knowledge that Bruce just might be one of them.

  He sighed and nodded. ‘I’ll do my best. But honestly, Thea, she’s in a real mess.’

  ‘Poor old Em. She’s always needed to be in control and have things predictable. She’s the worst person I can think of to have this sort of thing happen.’

  ‘And yet she coped magnificently. I told her that. She’s got nothing to reproach herself for. She couldn’t possibly have done anything else for poor old Sam. Everybody’s going to think she acted heroically.’

  ‘She ought to like that.’

  He cocked his head at the hint of sarcasm. ‘Well she doesn’t like anything about it. She’s utterly miserable.’

  Misery was catching, and Thea found herself feeling pretty gloomy herself as she kissed Bruce goodbye and got back into her car.

  The drive home passed in a blur as she mulled over everything Bruce had said. He had to be seriously worried to take an extra long lunch break and summon her as he’d done. Between Monday afternoon and Wednesday morning, Emily had apparently lost all composure, behaving alarmingly like a stereotypical madwoman. The speed of her collapse gave Thea an irrational hope that she would just as quickly recover. A momentary response to emotional overload, intimations of mortality, shock at the dreadful things that could happen – all had combined to send her reeling into a maelstrom of fear and guilt, but surely she’d come out of it again just as rapidly?

  Poor old Em, she thought. And a tiny nasty voice muttered, and about time too. Emily had always been the one who pointed out other people’s failings and weaknesses, how they brought trouble onto themselves, and everything could be traced back to some character defect. Where Thea herself could be cavalier about trivial anxieties and excessive attention to danger, she hoped she was essentially kind enough to show sympathy for anyone in trouble. Jocelyn, the spoilt complacent youngest, who whined and complained at the unfairness of life, had
nonetheless reared her five children in an atmosphere of good-natured affection. All three had had their share of setbacks and accidents – Thea outclassed the others by losing her husband to a speeding lorry, but Jocelyn had problems with her husband and Emily had suffered a miscarriage which came completely out of the blue, and which had left her and Bruce both very shaken.

  They were all over forty, and might be considered grown up. The death of their father was a source of sadness, a good man gone forever, but they had rich memories of him and when a man in his seventies died, there was no great convulsion to the natural order of things. The sadness was a gentle sensation, not so much a source of pain as a reminder of the essential human condition. The conveyor belt of life moved inexorably and everyone sooner or later was tipped over the edge into the abyss. Emily’s self-flagellation on Saturday had quickly passed. Thea had not seen it as a cause for concern. Her distress now could only be due to the death of Sam Webster – of that she was increasingly convinced.

  She was pleased with the advice she’d given Bruce, confident that it was all that would be needed to set Emily right again, after a few more days. If the police managed to catch Sam Webster’s killer, that alone might be enough to calm her down – although the probable need for her to give testimony against him could be stressful.

  Perhaps it was this thought that got her stomach roiling again. Small stabs of discomfort were occurring as she went over once more the account of how Webster had died. There was something unsettling about it, beyond the fact of the extreme violence employed. The filmic sequence in her mind only really acquired conviction at the point where the killer panicked and ran off into the darkness. That bit she could clearly visualise. The rest was still obscure – the kicking and shouting, the blood and brains and 999 call. The car parked in the gateway, the hooting horn and dauntless shouts – somehow that was harder to absorb. But it had to be true – Emily’s car did have a scratch on it, as Thea had witnessed on Sunday morning, but it had not been muddy. Presumably the rain had washed everything off.

  And then she was back on the small road to Lower Slaughter, choosing the one which took her through the village, and then off to the left for Hawkhill. Already it was familiar and easy, with no need to watch for landmarks or pause indecisively at junctions. She swept through the farm gates with an idea of taking Hepzie for a walk down a path labelled ‘Warden’s Way’ on the map, well clear of Galton’s sheep, and didn’t notice for some minutes that there was something important missing.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The dogs had gone. Freddy and Basil were not on their chains, there were no welcoming barks, no friendly faces peering from their shed. Fighting to remain calm, Thea went all round the yard looking into the various sheds and logpiles, then did a circuit of the house, calling ‘Dogs! Dogs!’ across the weedy jungle that was the back garden.

  They were not there. Their absence was tangible. Without even having to think about it, Thea piled herself and Hepzie back into the car and drove into the road, and quickly off again, down the track leading to Henry Galton’s sheep farm. Quite how she knew the way, she could not explain, except that she had stared anxiously across the fields to the lambing sheds and hay barns several times over the past few days, until the geography was familiar. The track was bumpy with potholes and ruts, and longer than expected. It dived down into a hollow and then climbed up a final incline to the farmstead tucked into the lee of a gentle hill, facing south and sheltered on the other three sides. Even in her rage and panic, Thea had time to appreciate the clever siting, and the impressive age of the farm. The house was quite possibly Elizabethan, a modestly sized manor that had not been extended or modernised since its creation. By contrast, the farm buildings were considerably more recent and of poor quality. There were sheep on all sides, occupying many of the visible fields.

  As she got out of the car, she caught her spaniel’s eye. Sitting cheerfully on the passenger seat, Hepzie was entirely oblivious to the danger she was in. If Galton had kidnapped the other dogs and taken them into a barn to be shot, he might well decide to finish the job and grab the third marauder as well. Shakily, Thea removed the key from the ignition and locked the car. ‘Stay there,’ she mouthed at her dog. What if Hepzie had been left behind at Hawkhill when Thea went to Lower Oddington to meet Bruce? Would she now be a stiffening corpse in the corner of a dark shed as well?

  But perhaps she’d arrived in time. Perhaps Galton was hesitating before he performed the execution. Perhaps he would, after all, abide by lawful procedure and wait until there was hard evidence against Freddy and Basil. And what would that evidence be? Matching toothmarks in the flesh of the sheep? DNA from the rams on the jaws of the dogs?

  She marched determinedly to the front of the house and banged the brass door knocker loudly. Ten seconds later the door opened, and Galton stood there in socks, his hair tousled. ‘What do you want?’ he said with a puzzled frown. ‘I’ve just been having a nap. Your car woke me. What time is it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said impatiently. ‘Where are the dogs? What have you done with the dogs?’

  He rubbed his face with a big hand. ‘What dogs? Wait a minute, I’m still half asleep. I’ve been all the way up to Shrewsbury and back today. Left at five, and got back just before two.’ He turned and peered back into the house, where Thea could see a handsome grandfather clock in the hall. ‘That was an hour ago, look. I haven’t even had any lunch yet.’

  She would not allow herself to doubt her own convictions. ‘The dogs have gone,’ she insisted. ‘Who else would take them but you? Have you shot them yet?’

  Galton seemed immensely more human than the last time she’d seen him. No longer intimidating, but genuinely bemused by her accusations, his story of the long drive might qualify as an alibi if Thea could accept it as true. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you’d better come in and sit down and tell me what you think I’ve done.’

  She followed him into the house, keeping her shoulders very square and her jaw tight. She was not going to take any nonsense from him, she promised herself. What he’d done put him completely in the wrong, and he should understand that. At the same time, concern for the dogs and the inevitable reactions from the Angells was undermining her resolve quite badly.

  He led her into a big tidy kitchen, with a monumental Welsh dresser taking up one wall and a matchingly enormous old pine table in the middle. The floor and the worktops were slate. Did this man have a wife, she wondered for the first time? On the dresser the chunky china looked clean and expensively collectable. ‘I need some tea,’ said Galton. ‘Wait while I make a pot.’

  She had no idea what to say. Her accusations had been made, and it was for him to confess or deny his crime. Much too late, she wished she’d phoned Phil and told him what had happened. But what would he have said? That a search for lost dogs was slightly below his remit? That she ought to have realised this could happen and just be thankful Hepzie hadn’t gone as well? For the first time, she felt the loss of him as somebody she could make unreasonable claims on. Now he was just a policeman, interested in anything connected with his murder investigation, but definitely no longer at her beck and call.

  Galton set a large mug of tea before her, and laid a plate of chocolate biscuits where they could both reach it. Then he sat at right angles to her and looked at her fixedly for a moment. ‘You are a very lovely woman,’ he said as if only just noticing. ‘I’m sorry if that sounds impertinent, but you are.’

  And he was quite a handsome man, she conceded, with his big square head and thick springy hair. Though nothing like as attractive as Peter Clarke, of course. This man’s eyes were a muddy mix of brown and green, not the vivid blue of the vicar’s. She smiled carelessly, and flipped a hand at the compliment. ‘So where are the dogs?’ she said.

  ‘You’re going to have to believe me when I say I have no idea. I have not taken them, nor shot them. I’ve been too busy even to think about them. Those dead tups have to be replaced by the end of this mo
nth or my lambing schedule is shot to buggery. That’s why I had to go to Shrewsbury and sort out a new lot. Luckily, it’s all a done deal and they’ll be here at the end of the week.’

  ‘And are the dead ones insured?’

  He nodded, with a grimace. ‘After I’ve filled in about fifty different forms and persuaded the loss adjuster they were the best in the flock. And then the premium’s going to rise and I lose my no claims. It’s a bit different from claiming for a broken telly, I can tell you.’

  ‘So where are the dogs?’ She was beginning to sound repetitive, even to herself.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea. Are we going to have to have this same exchange all day, because if so I warn you I’ll get sick of it quite soon.’

  ‘But – they’ve gone. I was out for two hours, two and a half maybe, and when I got back just now there was no sign of them. Somebody’s undone their chains and taken them away.’

  ‘Well it wasn’t me.’

  ‘Who else would do it? There’s nobody else. It must have been you. Or somebody working for you.’ She stared at him suspiciously. ‘You must have people who work for you, farm hands. You’ll have told one of them to do it.’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Sorry – but I don’t know your name,’ he said, suddenly. ‘You never told me your name.’

  ‘Thea Osborne.’

  ‘And I’m Henry Galton.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘And it’s Mrs Osborne, is it?’ He looked at the wedding ring she wore.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Right. So now we’ve got that sorted, I’m not sure there’s any more to say. I can see I might owe you some sort of apology for shouting at you the other night. But in the circumstances I think I was justified. Even if I haven’t stolen the dogs, I still think they’re the ones who killed my tups. Could be the police agree with me, and they’ve taken them away. Unlikely, I grant you, but possible. Otherwise, I can’t suggest any other explanation. People do steal dogs, of course. That’d be funny, if they were nicked for some fool who thinks they’d make good workers. That huntaway is a good-looking beast, once the mud’s cleaned off him. Huntaways are worth a bit these days.’