Blood in the Cotswolds

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘I thought you said we shouldn’t touch them. You’ll be in trouble if you get them dirty or torn.’ He spoke idly, accustomed to her erratic approach to edicts from the owners of the houses she minded.

  ‘So, I’ll be careful. It’s too hot for any more exploring, anyway.’

  He knew she was making the best of things; that she would much rather be walking through shady woodlands or tracing the meanderings of the little River Windrush. He surreptitiously inspected the state of his back, and ventured a suggestion he thought he could tolerate: ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to try another local pub for lunch, rather than just going to Guiting power? We’re running out of days at this rate.’

  It felt like a small martyrdom compared to what he knew she’d have preferred.

  They ended up at The Butcher’s Arms in Oakridge Lynch, where Thea had been the previous year, on her very first house-sitting assignment. The garden had a peculiar hedge running down the middle, dividing the area into two distinct parts. ‘Better check there’s nobody we know on the other side,’ said Thea with a grin. ‘It’s a perfect place for eavesdropping.’ She casually walked around for a quick look, and reported it all clear. ‘Just an elderly couple with a labrador, sitting in the sun and smoking.’ The midday heat was such that most of the lunchtime drinkers had remained in the bar. Phil would have quite liked to do the same, but Thea led him to a table with at least some shade from a nearby tree.

  They found themselves talking about the Templars, although Thea had made little progress in her Internet research on the subject. ‘I did see somewhere that they were mostly celibate,’ she noted. ‘Which makes it a bit odd that people seem so keen to claim them as ancestors. They were massacred in large numbers and wiped out more or less overnight. Somebody called them “warrior-monks”, which sounds rather nice, don’t you think?’

  Phil did his best to pay attention. ‘Isn’t it mostly myth?’ he said. ‘After all, it’s a very long time ago.’

  ‘Eight hundred years,’ she nodded. ‘That just makes it more intriguing. They were fabulously rich and powerful for a while. That’s probably why people turned against them and exterminated them. There’s still a big mystery around why it all happened so suddenly.’

  ‘Like the Jews in Germany,’ he said with a nod.

  ‘I suppose so,’ she agreed, with the frozen look that often came over people when the Holocaust was mentioned. ‘Although the Jews were never warriors.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he said, thinking of the hawkish behaviour of modern-day Israelis, and deciding there was no sense in getting into that. ‘Stephen Pritchett seems to know quite a bit about the whole Templar thing. He said his father got Giles interested.’

  ‘You can see how people might get obsessed with proving they’re descended from one of the Knights Templar.’

  ‘Enough to make them commit murder? Surely not!’

  ‘You’d know more about that than me,’ she smiled. ‘I never manage to believe all the convoluted motives that make a person kill another human being. Mostly I think they must be mad.’

  ‘You know that isn’t true,’ he said, looking down his nose at her. ‘They do it because they think it’s the only answer to a huge problem, or because they’re so furiously angry they can’t stop themselves.’

  Their lunch was brought quickly, and they’d finished by half past one. Phil felt restless and hot, and began to think fondly of the comfortable garden lounger back at Hector’s Nook. ‘Can we go now?’ he said, as the conversation lapsed.

  The car, parked in full sun, seemed to shimmer in the heat. ‘It’s going to be baking in there,’ Phil groaned. ‘And no air conditioning, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll have to drive nice and fast with all the windows open. That’s much nicer, anyway. Carl used to love it, and Hepzie likes to put her head out and get her ears blown about.’

  Phil did not exactly wince at the mention of Thea’s dead husband, but he felt it as a sharp cold poke in the ribs, all the same. He had never met the man, but knew that if he had, he would have liked him. How could he not like someone who had valued Thea and played his part in a marriage that sounded to have been as good as it gets?

  She drove back to Temple Guiting, the sun high in the afternoon sky. They met perhaps a dozen other cars on the way, which almost felt like a rush. ‘Rather early for fetching kids from school,’ said Thea. ‘That doesn’t start till half past three or so. They drive me mad, where I live. All those short unnecessary journeys that shouldn’t be allowed.’

  Phil remembered that he was a policeman. ‘Let’s not ban anything else,’ he pleaded. ‘The smoking thing’s bad enough, without trying to force kids to walk to school. I can see it now – all the county’s PCs stopping every second car to see if it contained a mum and her five-year-old who’s too tired to walk half a mile home after school.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Far too many things are banned as it is. I still think the smoking ban is a wicked absurdity.’

  He already knew what she thought. Initially he had been surprised at the strength of her feelings on the subject, considering she had never smoked in her life. But her passion for civil rights and individual freedoms greatly outweighed any arguments about health hazards. ‘I don’t believe secondary smoking matters at all,’ she said sweepingly. ‘And people should be allowed their addictions, if that’s what they want.’

  As an ex-smoker, Phil had a rather more ambivalent attitude to the whole business, but he mainly refrained from arguing with her about it.

  The mood inside the car was slipping away into something quite oppressive. Phil tried to persuade himself it was due to the heat, and the returning ache in his back. Then he realised it was brought about by the fact of returning to the house, which was not theirs and which held mysteries that he had refused to confront. Not just the snake, but the stacks of old magazines, and the proximity of a fallen tree where a dead man had been buried, with a hole in the side of his head.

  But they found nothing sinister awaiting them and soon settled down on the lawn, as was their habit. Thea brought a small pile of journals out onto the lawn, placing them carefully on the garden table, weighed down with a pebble that she’d found beside the front door. Phil picked it up and turned it over in his hands. ‘This must be a souvenir of some kind,’ he noted. ‘It’s certainly not Cotswold stone.’ It was dark grey, very smooth and shaped in a flat oval. ‘Don’t forget to put it back where you found it.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Thea nodded absently. ‘There are a lot of others as well. Must be some sort of collection. This is the nicest one.’

  He would have liked to get up and go over to see, but his back urged him to stay where he was. He had collected stones himself in his youth; had even considered geology as his major subject at university for a short time. As it was, he’d taken geography and physics, which had never been more than mildly interesting, his results perpetually hovering around the minimal pass mark.

  Thea turned the pages of the old periodicals carefully and frequently. They dated mainly from the 1920s and were part of a set of The International Good Templar, which had been published in Glasgow.

  ‘It was a sort of teetotal Freemasonry,’ Thea observed, after a protracted examination of the contents. ‘They gave women equal footing, and had a lot of activities for children. All terribly worthy – and nothing to do with the Knights Templar at all, as far as I can see.’ She sat back in disappointment.

  Phil, a one-time Freemason himself, pulled one of the magazines across the table for a closer look. ‘They had processions, look,’ he pointed to a photograph. ‘And here’s something about Rosslyn Chapel. Isn’t that the Dan Brown place?’

  ‘Let’s see.’ She got up and looked over his shoulder. ‘It must be, I suppose. It’s all a bit confusing. But I haven’t found anything about Temple Guiting, and can’t believe I’m likely to. Mind you, this is a wonderful collection. Must be worth quite a bit, and she’s left them just sitting there for anybody
to help themselves to.’

  ‘Except she did ask you not to touch them.’

  ‘Oh, pooh,’ Thea said airily. ‘It’s far too tempting to resist.’

  ‘Thea!’ He reproached her in tones more like a father than a policeman and she responded girlishly.

  ‘Sorry,’ she lisped. ‘I’ll put them all back again, shall I? At least we’ve learnt something. I had never heard of the International Good Templars until now. They do seem rather sweet.’ She had a thought. ‘And I bet Miss Deacon’s teetotal. There’s no sign of any booze in the house.’

  ‘Deacon is a Scottish name, isn’t it? Maybe her father belonged to this outfit, and the magazines were his.’

  ‘Or mother. They had women as well, remember.’

  ‘So they did. Very enlightened.’ He gave her a knowing look, which reminded them both of events in Cold Aston the year before – a shared history that was not entirely comfortable.

  ‘I assume they’re defunct now?’ he said after a few moments of silence.

  ‘Probably – the magazines only go up to 1930 or thereabouts. I could Google them on the laptop to see. Remind me this evening.’

  ‘Why bother? You’ll have got your teeth into something else by then.’

  ‘Yes, I might,’ she agreed. ‘There are loads of other magazines in that room, I only brought these out because they had the word Templar on the cover. I ought to ask Janey more about the local involvement, I suppose. I can’t get a handle on how it all connects. The saints and the Knights and this Scottish stuff.’

  ‘How do you know it does connect? They might be quite separate interests. If you’re looking for clues about the buried body, I have to say it looks more like a random set of snippets you’ve picked up than anything that explains who and how and why.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But one of those snippets might be the answer. And if you’re not going to get down to any proper investigating, I might as well unearth what I can on your behalf.’

  He shook his head at her, smiling broadly. ‘Thea, my sweet girl – you know it doesn’t work like that. You’ve been around police operations enough to realise I wouldn’t be able to do any investigating like this, even if I wanted to. The best thing I can do is keep out of the way and let Gladwin have a clear run at it. She’ll come to me like she did this morning if she wants any specific advice, but I think she’ll manage well enough on her own. All I want is to get this back fixed and be at my desk again as soon as maybe.’

  She returned his smile, with her own hint of patronage. ‘You have your methods and I have mine,’ she said airily. ‘If this is an old murder, there are precious few actual clues to what happened. I’m as likely as anybody to unearth something important. Aren’t I?’

  He sighed defeatedly. ‘Probably,’ he said. ‘But you’re on your own. I’m going to read a book, if I can find one.’

  The limitations of his luggage had already become apparent, as his stay extended further and further beyond the original plan. He had not brought anything that might be classed as ‘amusement’, and minimal changes of clothes. Thanks to the quick-dry weather, this had not been problematic, but now he wished he’d brought the big fat thriller he’d started the previous week.

  ‘There’s a bookcase in the living room,’ Thea reminded him. ‘You could borrow something from that.’

  He knew he should keep moving, that remaining in the garden all day was not likely to improve the state of his back, but having got comfortable there was every incentive to stay where he was. ‘Do you remember what sort of books they are?’ he asked.

  She shrugged. ‘Not really. Hardbacks mostly. Probably from a book club.’ She sucked in one cheek for a quiet moment. ‘Do you want me to go and find something for you?’

  He struggled valiantly and finally conquered his own idle inclinations. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and have a look for myself.’

  The bookcase was an elegant glass-fronted affair with three shelves, mounted on top of a matching bureau. He felt a strong sense of intrusion as he opened the doors and perused the book spines. Thea had been right that many of them were book club editions, in pristine dust wrappers, showing no signs of ever having been read. They dated from the 1980s in the main, and failed utterly to attract his interest, being novels by people such as Joanna Trollope and Maeve Binchy. But the top shelf proved to be a lot more interesting. These were faded volumes from the early twentieth century: the lettering hard to read, and the pages, when he pulled one out, dusty along the tops. They all seemed to be about the English countryside. It took him a few minutes to understand that Miss Deacon’s interests lay very much in that which had been secret or hidden. Holy wells, tiny chapels, forgotten follies and lost gardens. Histories of eccentric architects or rich men intent on leaving a permanent mark, churchmen who had created bizarre graveyards, engineers who had found new ways of harnessing waterways, and ancient dolmens or cistvaens built by people whose motives were no longer comprehensible.

  Despite his decision to lose himself in a fast-moving adventure story, he quickly found himself tucking three of Miss Deacon’s more intriguing tomes under his arm and returning to the garden. Thea’s spaniel was sitting in his chair, curled on the cushion he’d used to pad his back, panting gently in the warm sunshine. ‘Off!’ he ordered, never doubting that he would be obeyed. But Hepzie merely cocked a half-open eye at him and stayed where she was.

  ‘She’s keeping it warm for you,’ said Thea.

  ‘And I’m very grateful. Now can she let me have it back, please?’

  ‘Off you get, Heps,’ said Thea, with a flick of a hand. The dog uncoiled and jumped to the ground, the top-heavy body landing gracelessly. Without any sign of resentment, she recoiled herself under her mistress’s chair.

  ‘Why wouldn’t she do it for me?’ he complained.

  ‘Because she loves me more. Obviously.’ Thea was engrossed in one of the magazines she had stacked on the rickety iron table beside her and gave Phil only the slightest attention. ‘This is fascinating,’ she said. ‘But nothing to do with your – our – murder.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ he said, and lowered himself onto the excessively warm cushion, trying to push it into the right part of his aching back. ‘I found some unusual-looking books. I’m going to read about holy wells until suppertime.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Thea. She sounded lazy and somnolent, but Phil knew differently. Thea never really did nothing. Even when playing Scrabble on her computer, she was not being idle. For a woman with no regular employment, and little to impress in her past work record, she was unusually industrious. She employed her brain in seeking out new areas of history to explore, or in developing well-considered opinions. She read the more serious newspapers and journals, and would not let arrant nonsense pass as genuine argument. She was an attentive mother, sister and daughter and a courageous widow.

  ‘You’re happy to stay here for the rest of the day, then?’ he asked.

  ‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘I like it here.’

  He met her eye and tried to convey his admiration and gratitude and understanding in a single long glance.

  ‘Besides,’ she added, ‘I’m being paid to watch over the place, so that’s what I’d better do. I need to keep an eye on those horses, remember. They might decide to escape again.’ The two beasts were standing idly under a tree, ears and tails flicking away flies every now and then, heads down in reverie. ‘Not that they look very much inclined to go anywhere,’ she added.

  ‘I bet that bloke had real trouble getting them back through that gap,’ said Phil. Then he had a thought. ‘In fact I bet they never even went through it at all. They were in the field when we got there – who’s to say they ever left it?’

  ‘Too devious for me,’ she said. ‘What if we’d driven up there and caught him out?’

  ‘He could still say he’d put them back for us while the girl was coming down here to call us.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ she shrugged. ‘I’m not going to worry abou
t it.’

  ‘No, no. You leave all the worrying to me,’ he said with a small chill in his voice.

  ‘I will,’ she said comfortably. ‘I know how much you like to worry.’

  Which he could not help feeling was distinctly unfair of her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rupert Temple-Pritchett was as shockingly handsome at second sight as he had been the first time. ‘So sorry to intrude again,’ he murmured, stepping onto the lawn so quietly that Hepzie quite failed to notice him. Thea turned her head, with no sense of alarm, soothed by the easy tones and the slow still afternoon.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ she said.

  Phil had been dozing, his mouth open and head back against the chair. His eyes snapped open when she spoke, and he looked around sharply. ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Only me,’ said the visitor. ‘I hate to disturb you, but there doesn’t seem to be any alternative. I might have telephoned, of course, but that can be every bit as much of a nuisance as a personal call, don’t you find?’

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Phil asked, finding the man irritating in the extreme.

  ‘Ructions, my friend, that’s it in a nutshell. Finding body parts in the open countryside – never a good idea.’ He directed a patrician gaze down at Phil for a few seconds. ‘Poor old Stephen and Trudy. They’ll be in a fine old tizz, after what you turned up, and who can blame them? They’ll have thought it was their Giles.’

  Phil dredged up the fact that Trudy was Mrs Pritchett ‘Really?’ he said shortly.

  ‘So?’ Thea interrupted impatiently. ‘What do you want us to do about it?’

  ‘Call off the hounds, in a word,’ came the reply. ‘They’ll be questioning every bally member of the village, from what I hear. I do find,’ he added with a world-weary sigh, ‘that sense seldom intrudes at a time like this. I wouldn’t put it past them to even start pestering the people staying at the Manor.’