Cotswold Mystery, A

by Rebecca Tope

  Thea laughed. ‘This is getting to be a habit. They’ll start wondering whether we killed Julian, at this rate.’

  Jessica didn’t smile. ‘It doesn’t look good for the old lady – that’s what they’ll think. If this is human blood, and turns out to be Julian’s, that’s enough evidence to arrest and charge her. Especially if she’s left traces on the knife as well.’

  ‘They’d never get her to trial, though. There can’t be many better cases of diminished responsibility in the history of murder investigations.’

  ‘They’d send her to a special prison,’ Jessica nodded. ‘For the criminally insane.’

  ‘How dreadful!’ The implications struck Thea for the first time. ‘We can’t let that happen. Jess, we really can’t.’

  ‘We’ll have to if it’s proved that she killed him. She might do it again.’

  ‘But what if she genuinely doesn’t know she did it? What would she think about being sent to some gruesome institution? What about Yvette?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘The scandal,’ Thea explained feebly.

  ‘Listen,’ said Jessica. ‘There must be something significant about the timing – the way it happened just as they went off to the back of beyond, where nobody can contact them. It can’t possibly be a coincidence.’

  ‘You think they had something to do with it? That they could even have paid someone to kill him and left the knife and the coat deliberately to incriminate Granny? Surely nobody would do a thing like that? They seemed really nice.’

  Jessica snorted. ‘Lots of people seem nice,’ she said sourly.

  It was a little after eleven, and Thea was already feeling it was to be another long day. ‘What is it about time, when you’re a house-sitter?’ she demanded rhetorically. ‘The days always seem endless, whether or not something’s actually happening.’

  Hepzie made no reply. Jessica had driven back to the Incident Room with Granny Gardner’s mac, leaving her mother and the dog in the house. ‘It doesn’t need both of us,’ she said.

  Thea’s head was full of visions of the arrest of a demented old lady, whose reaction was impossible to predict. She might laugh, or scream, or curse or weep. It would be intensely distressing whatever she did, and Thea had no wish to witness a development that was starting to feel inevitable. She was also tending to blame herself for the whole ghastly business. If she hadn’t asked Jessica to join her, Julian’s body would still be lying undiscovered next door. Not until the whiff of decomposition began to filter across the fence and through the kitchen window would anything be found. That, Thea judged, would have been a far preferable outcome. She would probably have gone by the time the stench began to be bothersome. Granny could have washed her mac, and probably nobody would ever have noticed the knife in the hallway drawer. Fiercely, she tried to rerun events, rewrite history, and make everything all right again.

  Then Phil Hollis phoned her and told her there was no way he would be able to take her and Jessica for lunch that day.

  ‘You sound a bit stressed,’ she said.

  ‘Pressures of work. There’s something brewing and we’re all on edge about it.’

  ‘What sort of something?’

  ‘You know I can’t tell you. If our information is right, you’ll be hearing it on the news tonight or tomorrow.’

  ‘And if it’s not?’

  He snorted. ‘You’ll be hearing about it on the news with knobs on. “West Midlands cops blunder again.”’

  ‘Fingers crossed, then,’ she said lightly, fighting to ignore the surges of anxiety afflicting her insides.

  Jessica’s return went some way towards improving her fears about Granny, at least. ‘They don’t think it’s human blood,’ she said, slightly crestfallen.

  ‘They can tell just by looking?’

  ‘No, but you were right that there’s a lot of mucus with it. The lambing story sounded fairly credible to them.’

  Thea’s eyebrows rose. ‘What does a bloke from Solihull know about lambing?’

  ‘Nothing, but there was a girl there as well, and her father’s a farmer.’

  ‘Right,’ said Thea, trying to imagine the family dynamic whereby a self-employed free-thinking farmer managed to produce a daughter who opted to go into the police. Uncannily similar, of course, to the independent rebellious Carl and his increasingly institutionalised offspring.

  ‘What about the knife?’ she added.

  ‘No word on that yet.’

  Thea produced coffee, and broached the subject of lunch. ‘Phil called to say he won’t be lunching today. He’s got a crisis or something.’

  Jessica shrugged. ‘I’m not sure I fancied being a gooseberry with you two, anyhow.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Thea on a wave of irritation. ‘I want you to get to know each other better.’

  ‘Just don’t force it, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ Thea sighed. ‘Now, the next thing to do is give Hepzie a run. She hasn’t been out at all today, except for the back garden.’

  ‘I hope you’re going to clean up after her before you go. The lawn’s already a minefield of doggie doo.’

  Thea bit back the sharp reply she was tempted to give to that.

  She took the dog along to the woodland, which was becoming increasingly familiar territory. The layout, which at first had seemed confusing, was now much clearer, thanks largely to the bird-watching expedition with Granny. It comprised a narrow band of trees forking in two directions at the end of the High Street, and then widening into the much larger Bourton Woods to the south. Tracing a path through them would take you to the small straggling town of Bourton-on-the-Hill, not in any way to be confused with Bourton-on-the-Water, several miles to the south.

  She traced the same path as she had with Granny, to begin with, intending to turn back after five minutes or so. But the spaniel had more ambitious ideas. Following an interesting scent, she veered to the right and climbed the steep tree-covered escarpment to the fields above.

  With some idea of testing her own fitness, Thea opted to follow, scrambling awkwardly over the slippery leaf mould, clinging to the lower trunks of the prevalent laurels, sometimes on all fours as the steepness increased. Looking back she realised it would be almost impossible to get down again the same way. At her call, the dog appeared, waggingly unconcerned at her mistress’s breathlessness.

  Emerging onto a broad field, she spotted the pretty farmhouse with its enormous barn some distance away, which confirmed her position. Again she had the sense of remoteness from civilisation, freedom from being overlooked and judged by spies in the sky. If she kept closely to the edge of the wood, she was surely invisible. Again, she slipped into a meditation on

  The lost villages were, she admitted, much more interesting as fantasy than actuality. On the ground there was little to see. Almost nobody would recognise them as being the remnants of thriving settlements, with homes and stables and food stores and sheep pens. The echoes of human activity had long ago disappeared. But the knowing was everything. Looking north to the area of hilltop on which the unremarkable bumps and channels lay, Thea found it easy to imagine the bustle of daily life. She called to mind a conversation she had had with a visitor from Alaska, who had been in some Internet group with Carl. This woman had demanded to be taken to the most ancient sites in Britain – Avebury, Cadbury and Tintagel, amongst others. She had worked hard at explaining to Thea how different it was in the two parts of the world. ‘Here in England, there is no inch of land that has not been trodden a thousand times by human beings,’ she had said. ‘Where I come from, there are places which have never known a human foot. It makes one hell of a difference.’

  Thea had failed to grasp the true import of this. She had looked down at the ground in front of her, a patch of featureless grass, and shaken her head. ‘We can’t hope to know, though, can we? Who has walked here, what they were feeling and thinking at the time. There could have been a violent death, right here, or a couple making love. It doesn�
�t leave any trace.’

  The Alaskan had smiled. ‘Oh but it does,’ she argued. ‘It truly does. It changes the very air around us. You’ve gotta believe me here.’

  But Thea could only see the grass, and could not feel the breath of a hundred ghosts on her neck. ‘It would be paralysing to carry all that history around with us all the time,’ she said.

  ‘Right,’ nodded the woman. ‘But I’m not so sure you have a choice. They’re here whether you admit it or not.’

  And now, on the expanse of this open wold, Thea thought she could perhaps feel something of the weight of that long history, the Romans and the yeoman farmers and everybody else who had worked the land and scanned the variable sky.

  And now there were only sheep. A dense flock of them picking feverishly at the new grass, with baby lambs at heel. The grey sky was brightening, she noted, and the air warming. Some of the lambs made exuberant little jumps, legs stiff, for no other reason than pleasure in being alive. Others burrowed under the dense fleece, tails wriggling crazily as they found the target.

  Sheep! With young lambs. Barely a quarter of a mile from Blockley High Street! The discovery made Granny’s claim to be involved in the lambing somehow much more credible. Calling to Hepzie, who was, Thea belatedly realised, in some danger from an irate shepherd as she trundled heedlessly across the field, she increased her speed, intent on finding an easier way down. ‘Come on Heps,’ she shrilled.

  It took longer than she’d expected, but they eventually located the path down through the woods that they had used the previous afternoon. ‘That’s all the walk you get today,’ she told the dog.

  ‘I found some sheep,’ she announced, as soon as she got inside. Jessica was sitting in one of the armchairs, her mobile in her hand.

  ‘Well done,’ muttered the girl. ‘And I’ve got a text message.’

  ‘Oh? Who’s it from?’

  ‘Mike. My tutor constable. I have to report at five o’clock on Thursday for a disciplinary hearing.’ She turned tragic eyes on her mother. ‘Just when I’d managed to forget about it,’ she wailed. ‘What am I going to do? They’ll dismiss me from the Force. I might have to go to court if the family press charges.’

  Thea too had almost forgotten Jessica’s trouble. The rapid return of the girl’s confidence had seemed to suggest she had overstated the whole thing anyway.

  ‘Oh, and Phil called again. Your mobile went off while you were out. I answered it and it was him. He seemed a bit upset not to speak to you. He doesn’t like it when you go out without your phone.’

  Thea felt unreasonably persecuted. ‘Tough,’ she said. ‘I’ve just had half an hour of perfect solitude and freedom. A ringing phone would have wrecked the whole experience.’

  ‘Tell him, not me,’ shrugged Jessica.

  ‘So what did he want? I only spoke to him less than an hour ago.’

  ‘To warn you, I think. The media have got the scent of this big operation of his, and he thinks there might be something on the lunchtime news. Something about a bomb factory.’

  ‘So I won’t listen to the news,’ Thea asserted. ‘If he gets blown up, someone’ll probably come and tell me.’

  ‘Yeah. I expect they will.’ Their eyes met, in a happy harmony, each knowing there was nothing more to be said.

  ‘So let’s go to that place on the corner and have something healthy for lunch,’ Jessica suggested. ‘They do wine, I notice.’

  ‘What place?’ Thea looked blank.

  ‘It’s called Murray’s. By the church. You must have seen it.’

  ‘Vaguely,’ Thea lied. She had completely failed to observe any such place, even though she must have passed it two or three times.

  The establishment turned out to be seriously surprising, much more suited to somewhere like Hay-on-Wye or Petworth or some other little town that attracted middle-class visitors eager to buy books or antiques. It was hard to imagine Blockley thronged with pilgrims keen to visit the church or the converted silk mills, pausing to take a slice of ciabacca and a glass of fine Riesling. But that was the Cotswolds – good living came before just about everything else.

  The service was friendly, as they sat at a table at the back of the small dining area. They had salad and cake and wine and coffee and felt replete afterwards. Nobody else patronised the place while they were there.

  ‘Quiet,’ Thea commented to the man who served them.

  ‘Steady,’ he corrected her. ‘And we sell a lot of stuff from the deli. Best of all worlds, you see.’

  She smiled encouragingly at him, and paid the modest bill.

  As they left, a loud voice hailed them from a distance of about two yards. ‘Hello! Fancy seeing you again. Remember me?’

  It was Gussie, the woman Thea had driven to Paxford on Mother’s Day, when she had the time wrong. Something about that mistake continued to rankle with her, colouring the whole of that day with a grey mist of confusion. But the woman looked strained, Thea noted, as if maintaining normal conversation was almost too big an effort. As if, perhaps, she was already regretting having drawn attention to herself.

  ‘Oh, hello. Did you get your tyres mended?’

  Gussie nodded distractedly.

  ‘And did they give you a good lunch?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your son and his wife.’

  With an eagerness that hinted at relief, Gussie launched into a lengthy reply. ‘Oh – my God, I was in disgrace, I can tell you. The bloody clocks going forward, caught me out. Never usually get that sort of thing in a muddle, but I forgot the whole business. Arrived really late. They’d started without me. I got tepid chicken and lumpy gravy and you could see they thought it served me right. How d’you like Murrays, then?’ She pointed her chin at the delicatessen.

  ‘Fine,’ Thea said. ‘And what a surprise, to find something like this out here.’

  ‘Tasteful place, Blockley,’ grinned Gussie. ‘Who’s this?’ She stared at Jessica.

  ‘My daughter. She’s here for a few days to keep me company while I’m at the Montgomerys.’

  ‘Mum got the clocks wrong as well,’ Jessica said, with a reassuring smile. ‘They can’t have announced it loudly enough on the media.’

  ‘Media,’ muttered Gussie as if the word offended her. ‘Can’t be doing with media, anyhow.’

  Jessica’s smile faded. Before she could think of a reply, Gussie was carrying on, ‘Managed to do any more exploring, have you?’

  ‘We went for a look at Upton, as you suggested,’ Thea nodded. ‘But we couldn’t find anything at all.’

  Jessica sniffed. ‘If you ask me, we were in the wrong field completely. And it isn’t a public footpath. I don’t know what to make of these abandoned villages, to be honest.’ She eyed Gussie closely. ‘Are you an archaeologist as well?’

  ‘Me? Of course not. I’m just a peasant farmer.’

  She did look the part, to Thea’s eyes. The red cheeks and network of lines around her eyes suggested a person seldom indoors. ‘Sheep?’ she asked.

  ‘Some,’ Gussie nodded. ‘And a herd of Gloucester cattle. Very rare, very pretty. And a few pigs.’

  ‘Gloucester Old Spots, I suppose?’ Thea asked, feeling witty and sharp.

  ‘Of course,’ came the flattening answer. ‘What other kind is there?’

  With a sense of crossing a barrier that Gussie was fiercely trying to maintain, Thea changed the subject. ‘You know about the trouble we’ve had, I expect?’

  Gussie’s face drooped, reminding Thea strongly of the same sagging features on Thomas Sewell’s face the day before.

  ‘Poor old Julian, you mean?’ she whispered. ‘Yes, I heard about that.’

  ‘We found him actually,’ said Jessica, glancing around for listening ears. ‘On Sunday evening.’

  ‘Did you indeed? And I suppose you think well of yourself as a result.’

  Jessica gave a jerk of outraged surprise. ‘I’m with the police,’ she said, as if this explained everything.

  �
�Bully for you,’ muttered Gussie.

  There was an awkward silence in which ruffled feathers slowly settled and Jessica eyed the church as if wishing she could go and explore it.

  ‘I suppose I was out of order,’ said Gussie stiffly. ‘You can’t be expected to understand, being strangers to the place. If anyone’s to blame, it’s Yvette and Ron for bringing you here.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Thea, meeting Jessica’s eye. ‘Do you mean it would have been better for Julian to lie rotting on the floor for a week?’

  Gussie shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and sighed. ‘Better for Gladys, if her daughter had been here to see she was all right. That’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘Is it?’ Jessica challenged. ‘Are you sure?’

  Gussie seemed to give up some sort of inner struggle. ‘You may as well know what the locals are saying,’ she told them, shifting weight again. ‘It might help put you in the picture, show you what you’re up against.’ She paused, her gaze directed along the High Street towards the Montgomery house. ‘Most people believe Gladys killed him. They think the police know full well she did, and are just assembling their case against her. The trouble, of course—’ her voice thickened, and a deep frown grooved her brow ‘– the trouble is, it would be shocking bad publicity to arrest a woman of her age for murder. Think of the headlines. In the media,’ she added for Jessica’s benefit.

  ‘Do you think they’d let her get away with it, then?’ Thea asked, with another nervous glance around the deserted street.

  ‘How well do you know her?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘As well as anyone, you could say. She hasn’t been out much in the past few years. Since her mind started to fail, they’ve kept her close to home. Not that you can blame them.’ She glanced at Jessica sideways. ‘You’ll see the problem, I’m sure.’

  Thea answered for her daughter. ‘They couldn’t keep her in gaol, could they? And they couldn’t release her on bail if she was guilty of murder. What would happen?’

  ‘If she’s guilty, she’ll have to be punished,’ said Jessica.

  Gussie took a deep breath. ‘Don’t be too sure about that. Cracked wits can cover a multitude of sins, I think you’ll find.’