Cotswold Mystery, A

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘It has got blood on it,’ said Jessica in a low voice. ‘See.’ She pointed at the junction of handle and blade, turning the instrument towards the light. Thea could see a slight brown stain. The rest of the thing seemed very clean and shiny.

  ‘How do you know?’ she demanded, feeling no excitement or even much interest. ‘It could be anything.’

  ‘Mother,’ said Jessica, using a term reserved for moments of profound impatience, ‘does this look to you like a knife people would normally keep in a hall drawer?’ She brandished it in Thea’s face. ‘Look at it!’

  Thea did as instructed. It was an old-fashioned carving knife, sharpened so often that the blade had become narrow and curved, and very sharp. The sort of knife that cut through meat as if it were magarine in a tub. The tip was pointed.

  ‘But wouldn’t it bend?’ she wondered. ‘If you tried to stab with it? It isn’t intended for that. See how narrow it is, after so much sharpening.’

  Gingerly, Jessica fished a sheet of paper out of the drawer and wrapped it loosely around the knife. Then she tried to flex it. It would scarcely bend at all. ‘It would work perfectly well,’ she concluded. ‘And there is blood on it.’ She twisted it again. ‘It’s been recently cleaned, but they haven’t done a very good job. They missed a bit, look.’

  Thea gave a quick glance, feeling unexpectedly squeamish. ‘So why would the knife used to kill Julian Jolly be here?’ she asked, all her imaginative skill deserting her. ‘That’s crazy.’

  ‘First we have to find out whether it is the murder weapon. I’ll have to hand it in at the Incident Room. Did that chap say it was in the Village Hall? Where’s that?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. Past the shop and turn left, I think.’

  ‘Come on, then.’

  Before they left, Thea spent a few minutes worrying about Granny. ‘I ought to be sure she’s alive, at least,’ she said.

  ‘Why wouldn’t she be?’ said Jessica unfeelingly.

  Thea just gave her a look.

  ‘All right. Go and knock on her door, then,’ Jessica conceded. ‘Or whatever it is you usually do.’

  ‘There isn’t any usually about it. I have to make it up as I go along. At least the buzzer hasn’t gone off, so we know she hasn’t gone out.’

  ‘Tell me again why you can’t simply go through this door, and make sure she’s OK? It seems daft not to use it.’

  ‘I know. But those were Ron’s instructions. He said it would scare her if I just appeared through it without warning her.’

  ‘You could knock first, or sing, or something. After all, we used it yesterday.’

  Thea looked at the door consideringly. ‘It seems even more odd now,’ she said. ‘Finding the back door key like that in Julian’s pocket, and then this door being unlocked. And the knife right beside the door. We should be able to work out what happened from all these clues.’ She blinked at the idea which suddenly came to her. ‘What if somebody popped through from the cottage and put the knife in the drawer, as the first hiding place they came to? After they’d murdered Julian early on Sunday. We know that the door got unlocked at some point.’

  ‘You realise the obvious answer, I suppose,’ said Jessica.

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘I was right about Granny all along. She killed him, and came through the door with the knife while you were out or upstairs, and popped it in the drawer after she’d cleaned it. We have to remember this door was unlocked, when you assumed it wasn’t.’

  ‘If she did all that before seven on Sunday morning, she’s a bloody good actor,’ said Thea, wondering why she felt so cross. Then a memory flitted across her mind. ‘She said she had a knife,’ she recalled. ‘She threatened to cut Hepzie’s tail off with it. What if she’d already decided to kill Julian, the moment Yvette and Ron had gone?’ Her heart began to thump. Then she forced a laugh. ‘You’ve got me doing it now. We’re both mad, suspecting a little old lady like her of such a dreadful crime. It’s like a Grimm fairytale.’

  ‘It’s grim, anyway,’ said Jessica, missing the reference.

  ‘Grimm, as in Brothers Grimm,’ Thea persisted. ‘Dark forests and wicked witches.’

  ‘Right,’ nodded Jessica. ‘Sounds pretty much like this place, then.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  They walked, with the dog, to the police Incident Room, only to be disconcerted by the distance between the High Street and the Hall. The lack of intensity in the investigations was highlighted by the eventual discovery of two officers and a laptop computer in one corner of the building. Jessica produced the knife, neatly confined in a plastic bag, and told the story of how it had been found. Glad beyond expression at having something concrete at last, both men seized on it voraciously. They produced forms to be filled in, and carefully recorded every word that Jessica uttered. Then one of them literally ran outside to his car and sped off to more familiar urban territory where forensics could be recruited to examine the find.

  The remaining policeman almost clung to his visitors in his urgent need for company. ‘Weird place, this,’ he muttered. ‘Nobody’s been near us since yesterday morning. Where do they all go?’

  ‘To work,’ said Thea. ‘Junction Nine on the M5 is only about twenty minutes from here, and then the world’s their oyster. Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester. They leave at seven and get home again twelve hours later, tireder and richer than they started. And far too preoccupied to think about the murder of a quiet old man they hardly knew.’

  ‘Where are the farmers and the shepherds and all that sort of thing? I thought the country was all about that stuff.’

  ‘Where are you from?’ Thea asked, already having guessed from his accent.

  ‘Solihull.’

  ‘And you don’t get out into the countryside much?’

  ‘Days out with the kids,’ he said defensively. ‘Now and then.’

  Thea gave up. Somehow it seemed unlikely that he would wander the hillsides with his bored offspring who would complain about smells and tired legs. At most, they might take the car for a spin to some small town with a castle or a newly opened theme park.

  ‘It came as a shock to me, too,’ said Jessica, in support of the man. ‘There don’t seem to be many proper farms left any more. So far, I haven’t seen a single animal.’

  ‘We’ll go and look for some later on,’ Thea promised her. ‘There are still plenty of sheep around. Not many dairy cows, though. And you seldom see a pig.’

  Both the others winced at this. Pigs were not a subject for ordinary conversation. Jessica hurriedly covered for her mother’s lapse of protocol. ‘I’m a probationer, actually,’ she said. ‘It was me who found the body on Sunday.’

  The man nodded. ‘Yes, I know. Your name’s here on the screen, look.’

  He swivelled the laptop for her to read, and with a sense of being permitted into a forbidden territory, Thea also looked over her daughter’s shoulder. The font was too small to read properly, and the screen was divided into several boxes. It would take practice to interpret the information, and she found herself not sufficiently interested to pursue it.

  ‘So I am,’ said Jessica. ‘It’ll have linked to my personal file, I suppose.’

  The man nodded. ‘We’ve got everything about you right here at our fingertips,’ he said proudly.

  ‘But nothing on me, I hope,’ said Thea, feeling queasy.

  ‘Relationship with DS Hollis,’ said the man carelessly. ‘But that’s not on the official database.’

  It was too much for Thea. Frustrated rage threaded with fear threatened to loosen her tongue. This was not the place to deliver a lecture about human rights and personal privacy. It wasn’t even the appropriate trigger to start such a rant. The man seemed to be saying it was little more than gossip anyway. Unbidden, the voice of Carl sounded in her ears. Carl, whose automatic position was on the side of liberty and minimal state intervention, was speaking now. ‘This country is sliding into dictatorship, with the police as the main instrument o
f suppression.’ And yet he had made no objection when his daughter expressed the first hint of a desire to enter the police force. ‘Fight it from the inside, eh,’ he’d smiled, never questioning that she would remain firmly of his opinion.

  ‘Come on,’ she said roughly. ‘We can’t stay away too long. What about Granny?’

  ‘What about her indeed,’ said Jessica darkly. ‘I’m right behind you.’

  Granny was visible through her window when they got back. She had pulled the curtains aside, and her face was almost pressed to the glass. She was obviously looking out for somebody or something. Thea waved to her, and pointed a jabbing finger at the street door, suggesting she be admitted.

  The old woman leapt to comply and was at the door in seconds. Jessica hovered behind her mother, unsure what she ought to do. ‘She can certainly move,’ she muttered into Thea’s ear.

  ‘Have you seen Julian?’ came the shrill voice. ‘He’s terribly late. I’m waiting to do lunch for him and it’s going to spoil at this rate.’

  Thea made a soft moan, and Jessica went on muttering. ‘Lunch at half past ten in the morning? That’s a first.’

  ‘Mrs Gardner, let me come in a talk to you for a minute,’ said Thea. ‘Let me help you remember what’s happened in the last few days.’

  ‘And where did Yvette go to? I want her. She’s always going off, that hussy.’

  Thea remembered the word hussy occurring before. ‘And who’s that? That isn’t Frances, is it?’ Granny squinted at Jessica with a convincing show of perplexity.

  ‘No, that’s my daughter, Jessica.’

  ‘She looks like a nice girl. Kind. Friendly.’ Mrs Gardner beamed suddenly, her sharp black eyes softening. ‘Just like my Frances.’

  ‘She’s very nice,’ Thea agreed.

  ‘She can come in. And you might as well come too.’ Granny pushed her door wider, and beckoned them inside.

  ‘I forget things, you see,’ she explained as she led the way into her main room. As before, it was clean and tidy. ‘They melted parts of my brain with some dreadful drug. I’m suing them, but it won’t bring my wits back. They’re lost forever now.’

  ‘But you have your health,’ Thea observed. ‘You seem wonderfully fit.’

  ‘I keep busy. Up and down the stairs. Polishing, dusting.’ She laughed, a sudden witchlike cackle. ‘I was such a slut, you know. Filthy house, papers and books everywhere. I do remember that. People were very rude about it. Now I love to see it sparkling. Isn’t that peculiar!’

  Thea merely smiled. So much that Granny said left no room for a coherent response.

  ‘We went for a walk – you and me,’ the old woman suddenly remembered. ‘I fell over and hurt my wrist.’ She extended the affected arm, and twisted it dramatically. ‘Seems all right now.’

  ‘That’s right. And can you remember what happened to Julian?’ Jessica interrupted, staring intently into Granny’s face. ‘Your friend Julian was murdered at the weekend. Giles wrote it down for you, so you wouldn’t forget. Have you still got the piece of paper?’

  The old woman made a show of searching. ‘Try your bureau,’ Thea suggested, taking a step towards it.

  ‘Keep out of it!’ screeched Granny Gardner ferociously. ‘It’s private.’

  ‘Here it is,’ said Jessica calmly. ‘Behind the sofa cushion.’ She flourished a crumpled white sheet of A4. ‘Not a very good place to keep it.’

  Granny snatched it and peered closely at the large lettering. ‘“Julian is dead” it says here. Well, I knew that, didn’t I?’ She clamped her lips together and scowled at Thea. ‘Fancy thinking you could go in my desk,’ she reproached. ‘Where were you brought up, I’d like to know?’

  Thea adopted a submissive expression and mumbled, ‘Sorry.’

  The old woman consulted the notes again. ‘It says I have to speak to the police. When will that be, I wonder? I can tell them who killed Julian, of course, if they ask me.’ The air seemed to freeze, the only sound the loud clock on the mantelpiece. Jessica looked as if she couldn’t risk taking a breath.

  ‘Can you?’ she whispered. ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course. It’ll be Thomas’s doing,’ came the casual reply. ‘Awful old queen, always jealous of Julian and me. We said he’d do one of us in, one of these days. Thomas is your man, you mark my words.’ Granny’s small dark eyes flitted from face to face, assessing the effect of her words. Then she cackled, a parody of a wicked old witch. ‘You should see your faces,’ she spluttered. ‘What a hoot!’

  Thea’s mouth fell open, but no words came forth. The initial reasonableness of the accusation had silenced her, only for the following suggestion of malicious jokiness to utterly stun her. She looked to Jessica for rescue.

  ‘You don’t really believe Thomas could have killed Julian in cold blood, do you?’ the girl said gently. ‘After all, he loved him. He’s going to be lost without him.’

  ‘Love, love,’ tutted Granny dismissively. ‘Stupid word. Doesn’t mean a thing. Who wants love when they can have friendship?’

  ‘Good question,’ murmured Thea.

  ‘It’s going to rain,’ came a sudden non sequiteur. ‘Lucky I didn’t put the washing out.’

  ‘Is there a washing line in your little garden?’ Thea tried to recall whether she’d seen one.

  ‘Just a string for a few things.’

  ‘Would you show me?’ Thea had no clear idea why she made such a request, apart from curiosity as to how Granny felt about her imprisonment at the rear of the house.

  The old woman narrowed her eyes. ‘You know I can’t get out of there, don’t you?’ Again the sheer normality in the words and tone threw everything into doubt. ‘They built a cage and put me in it.’ She clasped her hands together. ‘Not that you can blame them. Who knows what I might get up to if I was free to do what I like?’

  Again there was no answer that Thea could think of, apart from a growing sense of agreement that Granny might be best kept confined, after all.

  ‘Why are you here?’ The question burst out like a gunshot. ‘Why are you bothering me?’ The old woman rustled the sheet of notes, crumpling it savagely. ‘Are you the police?’

  Jessica quickly shook her head. ‘No, we’re just friends. We’ll go now, if there’s nothing you need.’

  ‘You must be one of those celebrity people,’ Granny said with certainty. ‘That’ll be it.’

  It was like trying to track the beam of a very erratic lighthouse. When it did flash onto you, all was clear and lucid for a few moments, before darkness fell again. She looked at Thea. ‘Or have I got that wrong? It isn’t Frances, is it?’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Thea, less gently than she knew she should. ‘We’ll leave you now. Unless you need something? What about some shopping?’

  ‘The van comes,’ said Granny. ‘It’s in my notebook. You can depend upon the van.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Thea vaguely. ‘That’s all right, isn’t it.’

  ‘Mum,’ came Jessica’s voice, in a tone of alarm. ‘Look!’

  Thea’s gaze wavered from edge to edge of the area to which her daughter pointed, without any firm result. ‘What?’ she demanded.

  ‘That,’ said Jessica, and Thea was suddenly inescapably focused on a pale-coloured raincoat, hanging over the back of an upright chair. There were streaks down the sleeve that was visible, as well as the lower portion. Streaks that had the grainy browny reddish appearance of dried blood.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘What happened here, Mrs Gardner?’ Jessica asked, indicating the stains. ‘Something made a nasty mess of your coat, didn’t it?’

  The old woman eyed the garment with surprise. ‘Did it?’ she said. ‘That’s my best mac.’

  ‘It looks like blood,’ Jessica suggested. ‘All down the front and the sleeves.’

  ‘How revolting,’ said Granny, with no hint of emotion. ‘Will it come off, do you think?’

  ‘Would you like me to take it away and get it cleaned?’ Thea winced at he
r own subterfuge, wondering if it was justified. Mrs Gardner nodded.

  ‘If you like, dear. That would be kind of you. But I really shouldn’t let you go to such trouble. Cleaners cost the earth, don’t they.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘And they might ask awkward questions.’

  ‘Do you know how it happened?’ Jessica spoke with stern authority, suddenly in role as a police officer almost for the first time since she arrived in Blockley.

  ‘No idea,’ Granny shook her head. ‘Unless it was one of the lambs.’

  ‘Lambs? What do you mean?’

  ‘The sheep are lambing. I like to lend a hand if I can.’

  ‘Where?’ Jessica’s eyes were prominent with amazed impatience.

  Granny shrugged. ‘Mostly at the Hugheses. They call for me if they’re struggling. I’m First Reserve.’

  ‘You help with delivering lambs? Wearing your mac?’

  ‘Sometimes I do. Why not?’

  Thea could hear the unspoken protests. You’re supposed to be ninety-two, damn it. How do you expect me to believe a word you say?

  ‘It does look a bit sort of slimy,’ Thea noted, giving the stains a closer inspection. ‘Hardly arterial bleeding, I’d say.’

  ‘Well, let me take it, anyway.’ Jessica sounded defeated by the complexities of life.

  ‘Thank you, my dear. You’re very kind,’ said Mrs Gardner, with a complacent smile.

  ‘It could be true,’ said Thea for the third time. ‘All sorts of people pitch in at lambing time. The woman I met in Cold Aston last year did it. It gets so busy at times. Twenty or thirty lambs born in a day, apparently.’

  ‘So where are they? I haven’t seen any sheep.’

  ‘They keep them indoors these days,’ Thea said, feeling very unsure of her facts. ‘In any case, we haven’t been anywhere much, have we? This whole area was founded on sheep and wool, after all.’

  ‘OK.’ Jessica flapped a hand to indicate she’d heard enough about sheep and lambs. ‘The easiest thing is to take the coat for forensics to examine.’