by Rebecca Tope
It was Janina, looking perfectly calm. ‘Why is there no doorbell?’ she asked. ‘I knocked for many minutes.’
‘Sorry.’ Thea rubbed her hair and tried to blink the fuzz from her eyes. ‘I was asleep. What time is it?’
‘Nearly nine.’
‘So why…? Have you got the boys?’ She peered out into the snow, expecting to see a snowball fight under way.
‘Benjamin is at school – although I think it wrong to send him. He is very upset about George, poor boy, and Nicky is at his nursery until lunchtime.’
‘So early?’
Janina shrugged. ‘They go at half past eight, for the working mothers’ convenience. Bunny believes Nicky should have social contact, so he attends for three mornings each week. I have him all the other time.’
‘Has Bunny come home yet?’
The Bulgarian girl heaved a deep contemptuous sigh. ‘I am wondering if she will ever come back. She has gone silent now, and I suspect another man, perhaps.’
Thea belatedly ushered her visitor inside and closed the door. ‘They must be desperately worried, then? Simon and the boys. Surely she wouldn’t do that?’ She spoke to Janina’s back as the visitor sauntered admiringly into the main living room.
‘This is a pleasant home,’ she commented. ‘So warm and with good proportions.’
‘Do you want some coffee?’ Thea’s hand went to her hair again, aware of the mess she was in, tousled and undressed. ‘I’ll have to go and put some clothes on, and see to the animals. Did it snow again in the night? Did you walk here?’
‘A bit. I left the car at the top of your track. I like to walk in the snow, but I should have brought my skis with me. I could travel faster then.’
The image of a person skiing across the English fields made Thea smile. ‘I doubt if it would have been worth it. This can’t last much longer.’ She went to the window and looked out. ‘It doesn’t seem much worse than yesterday, thank goodness.’
‘Excuse me, but I came to speak to you about George,’ Janina burst out. ‘I am disturbed about his dying, and I do not understand some things I heard about you seeing him in a field. Can you tell me the story, the whole thing?’
Thea began to feel harried. ‘I suppose I can, but first I really must get dressed.’ She could hear Jimmy whining from the conservatory, very much the first priority on a suddenly crowded agenda. ‘And before that I have to let Lucy’s dog out.’ She went quickly through the house to the back, where the lurcher was standing shiveringly by the French window that led out into the garden. This was highly unusual, and Thea felt instantly guilty. ‘Oh, Jimmy!’ she crooned, ‘I’m so sorry. Are you desperate?’
With a vestige of his customary politeness he went outside at the first opportunity and relieved himself as if turning on a tap. He did not cock his leg or squat, but simply stood where he was and relaxed the relevant sphincter. Thea was impressed at the degree of control that had prevented him from doing it indoors. A sizeable area of yellow melting snow was spreading beneath him.
‘Good boy!’ she approved, giving him a pat. ‘Very good boy. Do you want to go for a little walk?’ She looked round for her spaniel, but could see no sign of her. ‘Hepzie!’ she called. ‘Where are you?’
‘She’s here,’ came a new voice from a new direction.
Thea’s first thought was that it was very bad form to be seen by two different people still in her dressing gown. It was sure to get back to Lucy, and reflect poorly on her showing as a house-sitter.
‘Hello?’ she called. ‘I’m in the garden at the back.’
There was still an unsullied patch of snow around the western side of the house, and it was with a small pang of regret that Thea watched Old Kate stomp vigorously across it towards her in her stout rubber boots.
‘Morning,’ she said, ignoring Thea’s costume. ‘More snow in the night, then.’ It was a flat statement of fact, requiring no response.
‘You didn’t bring the tractor.’ Thea also spoke factually.
‘Too busy. The Herefords need feeding, and one of them looks like calving any time now. I should bring her in, but she’s being bolshy about it. I did wonder…’ she eyed Thea consideringly ‘…if you’d give me a hand. Lucy sometimes shows willing when it comes to this sort of thing.’
It felt rather like having to climb up a long ladder, carrying something heavy and needing to get to the top quickly. She remembered her dream, with the lead boots encumbering her movements. ‘I’ve got rather a lot going on, just at the minute,’ she said. ‘Janina’s here, and I haven’t done the donkey or the rabbits yet.’
Kate said nothing, merely waiting.
‘Hello,’ came Janina’s firm voice from the conservatory. ‘You did not come back.’ She fixed Thea with an accusing stare, only flicking a quick glance at Kate.
‘Sorry,’ Thea apologised, beginning to think it a word she was uttering rather too often this morning. ‘And now I really am going to get dressed, and then I must do the donkey. You two can stay and make yourselves some coffee if you like. I suppose you know each other?’
Both women nodded briefly, as if preferring not to make much of their acquaintance. Thea continued, ‘Everything’s more or less self-explanatory in the kitchen.’ And before either Kate or Janina could reply, she had kicked off her boots, carried them through the house and hurried upstairs to her bedroom, Hepzie following her.
‘We’re not used to visitors, are we?’ she said to the spaniel as she quickly pulled on several layers of clothes. The feeling of being invaded was strong, and with it came resentment and some resistance to the demands being made on her. Normally the dog would be delighted to meet new people, and she did seem to have warm feelings towards Kate, but Janina had failed to impress her. She followed Thea back down the stairs, placing her feet carefully on the bare wooden treads.
Without a word, Thea pulled open the front door and went outside, having stamped back into her boots, and grabbed the jacket hanging on the back of the door. This one was hers, not Lucy’s, only just warm enough for these wintry temperatures, and not at all waterproof.
The donkey’s paddock had clearly been sprinkled with a new fall of snow. The grass that had begun to show through was once again invisible. ‘Where will it all end?’ she asked Hepzie dramatically. ‘I’m fed up with it already.’
This was the fifth day, she calculated, since the first snowfall last Thursday. Less than a week, and she was already wondering how much more she could take. A foolish question, she knew – she, Thea Osborne, had long been rather a specialist in levels of endurance. She lived by the motto that if she was all right at this precise moment, then she was all right, full stop. It had been the mantra that she clung to in the first weeks after Carl’s death, focusing on it instead of asking herself how she was ever going to manage, how she could ever hope to recover from such a catastrophic blow.
And it worked, she reminded herself now. She was coping, wasn’t she? Carrying water to the donkey, cleaning out the worst of the muck around his stall, giving him fresh hay – all quite normal and efficient. But on another level it wasn’t working at all, because she was still quite uncomfortably scared.
What of, she asked herself? What was the source of the unpleasant sensation in her guts, the dry mouth and the semi-paralysis of her thought processes? As she approached the donkey’s shed, she had hardly been able to bring herself to go inside, convinced that a crazy attacker would leap out at her with a knife or a gun. Now she emerged again, unscathed, she was sure there must be someone lurking in the snow behind the building. The fact that two women were in the house, within easy earshot, hardly assuaged her fear at all. Ever since those shocking footprints on Friday morning, she had been frightened – pushing it aside for hours at a time, admittedly, but unable to quell it completely. Following those tracks the day before had been a courageous attempt to confront the fear, to discover a rational explanation for the various mysteries, and for a while it had done what she wanted – but since discoveri
ng the dead George, with the complete absence of explanation as to who had moved him and why, she had felt the same breathless panic as on Friday.
The unpredicted arrival of Janina and Kate had made it worse: the loud knocking, and then the sudden voice from around the corner of the house – it made her feel that she could be surprised at any moment by anything or anyone. It made her jumpy. It made her see herself as quite unbearably vulnerable to all sorts of ghastly attack.
When she finally got back to the kitchen, it was obvious that conversation had been in full swing. The two heads were close together, the room warm with female revelations and hypotheses. ‘Been talking about George, I suppose,’ Thea said casually.
‘Among other things,’ agreed Kate.
‘So I was right, wasn’t I? He was dead, and somebody had moved him.’ It was less important now that the police had already conceded the victory, but it still had to be said.
‘You were right,’ said Kate, with a nod. ‘I hoped you weren’t, but you were. I hope it makes you happy.’
Wrong-footed again. ‘Of course it doesn’t. But it’s horrible not to be believed.’
Janina was looking from one to the other, as if watching a tennis match. ‘Did nobody believe you?’ she asked Thea.
‘Well, they didn’t exactly say that, but it was fairly obvious when they decided not to set up a search for him. They definitely didn’t think somebody had come along with a sledge and dragged him home.’ There was still a warm glow of triumph inside her, at the way she had vindicated herself.
‘But who?’ asked Janina, her eyes wide.
‘I thought you might have an idea about that. Haven’t you and Kate solved the mystery while I was outside?’
The two restrained smiles were oddly alike on the faces of her visitors, as if she had trespassed on a taboo, and should be politely ignored. ‘We have no idea,’ said Kate. ‘There’s no sense in it at all, as far as we can see.’
‘Poor George,’ murmured Janina. ‘That poor man.’
‘Indeed,’ nodded Kate. ‘Though I have to say my conscience is clear.’
Thea looked at her sharply. It seemed a very odd thing to say. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ she asked.
‘No reason. What I meant was – we’d given him a roof over his head when he needed it. That’s our cottage, you realise. We let him live there rent free.’
‘I see,’ said Thea, thinking there might be unforeseen consequences to allowing someone to occupy such a prime property for an indefinite period. Perhaps Kate already understood that such an idea might well occur to people. That some might wonder at the convenience of George’s abrupt removal.
‘I do need to get back in a minute,’ Kate reminded herself, and the others. ‘About that Hereford…’ She cocked an eyebrow at Thea, who was still wearing her outdoor jacket.
‘Oh, God,’ sighed Thea. ‘I’m not sure I’d be much use. And I haven’t had any coffee yet. I’m desperate for a drink. And I wondered whether you know much about rabbits. One of them’s got babies, and I suppose that means the father is in with them. Does that matter, do you think?’
‘Rabbits!’ scoffed Kate. Janina laughed with an echoing note of contempt.
Thea found herself tiring of the Bulgarian girl’s disdain for everything she encountered. ‘Yes, rabbits,’ she said. ‘They deserve to be looked after as well as anything else. It’s what I’m being paid for, after all.’
‘If there’s a buck in with a group of does, there’ll be more babies, won’t there?’ said Kate, evidently willing to suspend her own priorities for a moment.
Thea smiled for the first time that day. She could feel the pull of the muscles loosening as she did so. ‘I hope you’re wrong – the shed’s not big enough for a whole maternity ward. We could end up with dozens of them at this rate.’
‘How many babies are there in this litter?’
‘Six, I think. I haven’t investigated much yet.’
An impatient ttchh from Janina interrupted the cosy distraction. ‘A man is dead,’ she said sternly. ‘And you talk of rabbits.’
‘Well, at least nobody killed him,’ Thea snapped back. ‘We don’t have to worry about there being a murderer out there, do we?’
She was speaking without prior thought – voicing the single element of reassurance that she had managed to cling to since Friday. The man had died either from misfortune or deliberate suicide. Sad, but nothing to be alarmed about, she had repeated to herself. So why did she feel so scared? came back the nagging persistent question.
‘Simon is hiding something,’ said Janina. ‘Since yesterday, he has been too quiet and serious.’
‘Probably the shock of finding George – or having his children find him. That’s enough for anybody to cope with. Not to mention his wife going AWOL.’
‘AWOL?’ Janina echoed, with a frown.
‘Sorry…absent without leave. Shouldn’t she have been back days ago? What’s going on there – do you have any idea?’
‘I suspect another man, perhaps. It is possible that she has phoned Simon to tell him, and he is keeping it a secret. He never answers me if I question him about her.’
‘Lucky kids to have you, then,’ said Kate heartily. ‘Mind you, Bunny always did exactly what she wanted to, ever since I’ve known her.’
Thea wanted to ask innumerable questions – how long had Kate known Bunny? What exactly was the general view of the woman? What about George – how had he come to be so beloved of the little boys? But she had little hope that Kate would stand for any further curiosity. What did it have to do with her, anyway? Where would it get anyone for Thea, the temporary house-sitter, to gain an insight into the complicated local relationships?
But she did have one question that she thought might elicit a reply. ‘Was George a heavy drinker?’ she asked.
Kate and Janina exchanged a look, and then Kate replied. ‘Not really. He had no money to buy drink.’ Then, after a beat, she added, ‘Why do you ask?’
Thea shrugged. ‘No reason,’ she lied. Until then she had given little thought to the empty whisky bottle half buried in the snow. It had disappeared along with the body, and this fact now felt significant in some indeterminate way. Was the person who moved George simply tidying up, she wondered wildly? If so, the bottle must be at the cottage somewhere, and the police wouldn’t realise it was an important part of the picture. It might be in the dustbin, or under the kitchen sink with other recyclables.
But the police weren’t going to go to any great lengths to examine the house. It wasn’t the scene of a crime, after all. They would puzzle over the mystery of who moved the body and why, but she doubted whether they would spend much time or resources on it – not unless the post-mortem revealed something unexpected: a lethal substance injected into George’s neck, or signs that he had been asphyxiated. Failing that, they would work methodically down the checklist required by the coroner and conclude that it was a suicide with unexplained overtones.
‘I’ll have to appear at the inquest,’ Thea said suddenly. The thought had not occurred to her until then. ‘Whatever happens, they’ll need me to do that.’
The other two women looked at her wordlessly. She smacked an annoyed hand on the table. ‘And it probably won’t be for months. Sometimes it’s nearly a year before they get around to it. What a bloody nuisance.’
‘And the boys?’ Janina said softly. ‘Are they to be witnesses, too?’
‘Of course not,’ said Kate scornfully. ‘What an idea! Would they do that in your country – cross-question a tiny child about a dead man?’
Janina frowned. ‘I think they might do it in any country, if they believed he had the key to the matter.’
‘I can’t believe they would,’ Thea insisted. She was trying to think whether such a young child as Nicky would ever be required to give testimony, and to remember what a four-year-old’s view of the world might be. Her sister Jocelyn’s youngest was eight – four was a long-forgotten aeon ago. But she did seem to recall
that at four they still hadn’t learnt to tell lies or worry about the consequences of anything they might say. In that respect, a child of four would make rather a reliable witness, she supposed.
The kitchen clock gave a shy tinkle to indicate that it was ten in the morning, and Thea was hungry. She was tired of her visitors, who had brought nothing in the way of relief, merely adding to the list of alarming questions and suggestions. ‘Rabbits,’ she said. ‘I have to do something about the rabbits.’
‘What about my cow?’ Kate asked. For a moment, Thea blinked blankly. ‘She’s going to have calved on her own at this rate, and I’ll lose the calf to hypothermia.’
Only Janina seemed to have nothing urgent to do. Presumably she had time to kill until due to collect Nicky from his playgroup. ‘I could help,’ she offered. ‘I am familiar with cows.’
‘Right.’ Kate jumped up as if a lever had been pressed. ‘That’s splendid. Just what I hoped to hear. Come on, then.’ And within a minute, the pair of them were marching away towards the lower field and the woods which now held such unpleasant associations for Thea.
Thea went back to the shed, to try to sort out the presumed male rabbit from the females. She examined each animal for a long time, turning it upside down and parting the long hair to scrutinise the genitals. None of the three in the main hutch was male. Fully functioning male rabbits had obvious testicles. She remembered that much with total clarity from Jocelyn’s pets. Somehow one of Lucy’s does had got itself pregnant immaculately, early in December. ‘Oh well, that solves a problem,’ she told them. ‘You can all stay where you are. Presumably Lucy let Jemima and Snoopy together, either by accident or design, and forgot to tell me about it.’
She yielded to the temptation to peer again into the nest of babies, noting how much they changed from one day to the next. At this rate, they would be out of the nest and playing well before she had to leave Hampnett.
