by Rebecca Tope
‘Everybody wants to see Vonny,’ said Blake, watching her departure with no hint of his earlier fury. Even he, it seemed, was mollified by the arrival of Mark. Only Mariella appeared to have grown more uncomfortable rather than less. Apparently Mark liked her rather more than his sister did, sons being generally a lot more forgiving of their fathers’ peccadilloes than daughters were.
‘But why is she home so early?’ Thea mumbled. ‘What’s everybody doing here?’ There were some basic truths coming into focus, which she was trying to use as the foundation for a full explanation. Somebody had stabbed Victor, and his girlfriend had abandoned his dead body. Something suspicious involving Mark’s car had taken place on Sunday – the day Stevie Horsfall had been murdered. Blake thought she, Thea, was stupid for not seeing something obvious. Belinda … Here she ground to a halt. The role of Yvonne’s daughter remained obscure, beyond being the one to discover Victor’s body, prompted by Thea herself. Yvonne had aborted her trip to France and returned in a weirdly blithe mood, which quickly turned to an insane level of avoidance.
Somehow, the thread led to Mariella. Her behaviour was the most bizarre, and she currently appeared to be the most agitated person. Had she killed Victor after all, screaming as she did so, and disappearing for the next two days while she waited for someone to find him?
‘Do you think she’s hiding from … um … Mariella?’ Thea asked Mark. ‘I thought it was Blake, but if he wanted to confront her with her husband’s killer, that would be scary, wouldn’t it?’
Mark shook his head at her. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he said. Then he squared his shoulders. ‘Look – I know where there’s a broken window catch, round the side. I can get in and see if Mum’s okay. You all wait here.’ He spoke in a low voice, which could only mean he did not want Yvonne to hear him from inside the house.
It seemed as good a plan as any to Thea and she nodded. Blake was glaring at her, his scowl back again. She realised he might not take kindly to her remarks. ‘Do you think Mariella killed Victor?’ she asked him boldly.
For reply he merely sighed dramatically and spread his hands. At least he didn’t call her stupid again, she thought ruefully.
‘I did not,’ said the Filipina.
‘But the police might well think you did,’ Blake told her severely. ‘You were an idiot to run away like that.’
Mariella looked warily at Thea, seeming to hope for some female solidarity. ‘This man is very angry with me,’ she confided. ‘For my failings and cowardice. He shouted at me for it. Shouted and shouted.’ She put her hands to her ears at the memory. ‘I told you, both of you. I do not have the right papers to stay here. I cannot speak to the police.’
‘Irresponsible cow,’ said Blake calmly. ‘All this could have been settled days ago if you’d had any guts.’
‘How?’ demanded Thea. ‘How could it?’
The conversation had made a good smokescreen for Mark at least. He had disappeared around the side of the house, and might well already be inside. Blake gave no reply to her question, which was hardly surprising. They waited, in the last rays of the sun that came across the garden, turning the red and orange flowers vividly exotic. Thea wished she had simply driven home an hour ago, when she had the chance.
‘I still think I ought to call the police,’ she said stubbornly.
‘Whatever for? What good would that do?’
‘We have here a witness to the murder of Victor Parker. That in itself is reason enough. Now we’ve got Yvonne going off her head as well. I think we need backup.’
He laughed contemptuously. ‘Backup! Just who do you think you are, anyway?’
It did seem a fair question, now she paused to think about it. ‘Believe me, I never asked to get involved in all this. You can’t accuse me of that. My loyalties are to Yvonne, when it comes down to it. I think you should just leave her alone.’
‘You’re a fool,’ he said flatly. ‘And an uncharitable one, at that. Why did you turn this poor girl away?’
‘She’s not a poor girl, she’s an illegal immigrant. I’d be harbouring a criminal.’
He gazed at her probingly, his dark eyes searching hers. ‘Really? Is that really what you think? Look at her, damn it!’
Thea shifted uneasily from one foot to the other and glanced at Mariella. Was she truly such a cold-hearted bigot as Blake was suggesting? ‘Yes, I know,’ she muttered. ‘She’s probably a victim of the system. But … I’ve got a daughter in the police. The DS here is my friend. I had to make a choice.’
‘Rubbish!’ he scoffed. ‘You’re in an ideal position to argue her case for her, to make them see she’s no more a criminal than you are.’
‘Okay,’ she capitulated. ‘You’re probably right. But can we discuss it some other time? Mark’s in there trying to convince his mother that his father’s been killed. That’s the important thing now.’
Something softened in Blake’s fierce expression, and she was reminded of his kindness when the hornet stung her, and his affable manner on their early encounters. ‘Poor old Vonny,’ he murmured.
As if released from a strong grip, Thea stepped back, and gazed at an upstairs window, which she believed to be that of Yvonne’s bedroom. ‘She’s sure to let him talk to her, isn’t she?’ she said.
‘Who knows?’ he shrugged.
‘I thought you did,’ she shot back, needing to correct the balance between them, after his verbal mauling of her. ‘I thought you knew just what had to be done. I thought you had the key to the whole wretched business.’
‘You thought wrong,’ he said. ‘You heard Clara.’
She had forgotten Clara. Her accusations about Blake’s bossy interventions had gone unheeded. ‘Oh. Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose I did.’
The front door opened without warning and Mark’s face appeared. ‘Thea – will you come in please. Blake – you’ll have to go away. She’s not going to talk to you or Mariella, however much you try to force her.’
‘That was quick!’ Thea said, as she looked around for her dog, and made for the door. ‘You’ve only been gone a minute.’
‘Yes … well …’ he said unhelpfully, and almost dragged her inside, closing the door in Blake’s face.
‘I can climb through windows as well as you,’ Blake shouted from outside. ‘Just see if I can’t.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ Mark called back. ‘I haven’t locked you out. I’m relying on you to be sensible. Just go. I’ll come and see you in the morning. Nobody’s going anywhere before then.’
It seemed a very rash promise, to Thea. How could he be so sure? The whole surreal situation began to feel like a parody of a thriller film, where instead of people charging around with guns, shouting threats at each other and climbing onto roofs in a highly unintelligent bid to escape, they just stood around being very British and reasonable until somebody broke down and explained how and when and why they’d committed the crime.
There was no sign of Yvonne, but Mark pointed towards the kitchen, where Thea went to find her. She was sitting placidly at the table, as if nothing unusual were happening. A cat was on her lap and a sheet of yellow paper lay on the table in front of her. ‘Have you been in here all along?’ Thea demanded.
‘Most of the time,’ she said. ‘I locked you all out because you were being so noisy.’
Was the woman actually mad, Thea wondered? Should this thought not have occurred to her earlier? With responses so inappropriate to the situation, madness had to be the reason, almost by definition.
But what was the situation? Blake had been shouting. The Filipina was carrying vitally important information about a murder. Clara had been curious to learn why Yvonne had returned early. Victor was dead. There definitely was a situation to be addressed, but when she tried to grasp the essential bones of it, it evaporated into smoke.
Mark was tinkering with cutlery on the draining board, tapping two teaspoons together meditatively. Nobody would ever guess that he had just climbed in t
hrough a side window, Thea thought. ‘Mu-u-u-um,’ he said, very slowly, ‘Clara just told me she saw my car here in the village on Sunday. I thought it was in Evesham all day, while I was at the conference. Isn’t that weird?’
‘You came here in it on Monday,’ said Thea helpfully. ‘You told me you’d driven from where you live, on the Welsh border.’
‘No, I didn’t say that. I just told you where I lived. I was in Evesham on Saturday and most of Sunday, staying at the Royal William Hotel, which was holding the conference. I’d been looking forward to it for ages. It’s the high spot of my year. I came here early on Monday, straight from there.’
‘Why exactly did you come here?’ It wasn’t the question she wanted to ask. The important thing lay somewhere else, but she could not quite identify the spot.
‘Belinda thought something was up. I told you – I had to come and see if you were … I mean, exactly how you got involved with Gudrun and Stevie.’
‘But Clara said the car was here on Sunday, not Monday.’
‘It wasn’t. It was in Evesham.’
‘So Clara got it wrong? It can’t have been here, can it?’
‘Mum?’ Mark tried again. ‘Say something.’
Yvonne met his eyes with an untroubled gaze. ‘I borrowed it,’ she said simply. ‘You know I’ve got a spare key.’ She looked at Thea with a little smile. ‘It was mine originally, you see. I gave it to Markie when I got the new one.’
‘But you were in London,’ said Thea urgently, desperate to deny the implications of the three calm words – I borrowed it.
‘Yes. But I came back. After I’d seen Victor.’
‘And you went to France.’ Thea was almost pleading for confirmation that at least some of her most solid assumptions were based on firm ground.
‘I found the letter.’ Yvonne spoke dreamily, tapping the paper in front of her. ‘Victor had it in his Filofax. It’s from the DNA people.’ She looked at Mark as if expecting him to understand. ‘About Stevie.’
Something was happening to Mark. He had become sharper, his eyes tightening in sudden acute focus. ‘Letter?’ he repeated, in a low voice.
‘He dropped it, when he was looking for Belinda’s wedding list. I recognised it. It came here, five years ago, and I thought it was telling him he had cancer or leukaemia or something.’ She laughed. ‘I was worried about him. When he said he was leaving me, for no reason, I thought he was trying to protect me. I pleaded with him to explain, to give me something to tell the neighbours – and you and Belinda, of course. He just said the marriage was over and he was going to start a new life in London. I searched for this letter afterwards, but never found it. I thought he was dying.’
‘Don’t laugh, Mother. It isn’t funny.’
‘Hang on,’ begged Thea. ‘Are we talking about Stevie’s paternity?’
Mother and son both turned towards her. ‘It has nothing to do with you,’ said Yvonne politely. ‘I confronted him, of course, on Sunday,’ she went on. ‘He told me they’d muddled it up, and you were the real father.’ She looked at Mark. ‘He said you’d been to bed with Gudrun when you were nineteen.’
Thea’s mind was moving sluggishly, clogged with implications and wild guesses that led nowhere. But Yvonne’s transparent lie was unmissable. ‘Rather a big muddle,’ she remarked. ‘Seeing that Mark’s DNA would be totally different from Victor’s.’
‘Honestly,’ insisted Yvonne, with a dreadful little giggle. ‘That’s what he told me. I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe him for a few minutes.’ She looked timidly at Mark, as if hoping for his support.
‘He’s a bloody liar!’ roared her son, after a long silence in which it seemed his brain was as stunned as Thea’s.
‘Yes,’ nodded Yvonne, smiling. ‘That’s what I thought.’
‘But you’re something even worse,’ Mark choked out. Then he flung out of the room. Seconds later, sounds of terrible breakage came from the living room.
‘Stop him!’ cried Yvonne leaping up from her chair. ‘He’s smashing all my things.’
Drew had never been to Snowshill, but knew it was west of Broad Campden, which he could find with little effort. Every time he tried to focus on the right section of the map book on the seat beside him, he got no further than the crossroads at Moreton-in-Marsh before something made him drop it and watch the road ahead. It was only by luck that he spotted a sign indicating Snowshill to the left, off the A44, directly opposite the road he would normally take to his new burial ground. Reproaching himself for his deplorable lack of observation at never registering this sign previously, he turned left and followed the straight hilltop stretch, with a flamboyant red sky directly in front of him.
The abrupt alteration of landscape was disorienting. Within yards, hedges had vanished and there were long sweeping views on both sides, and virtually no hint of human habitation. The road narrowed and undulated and he wondered whether he might have missed another sign along the way. A small crossroads pointed out a lavender farm, and a National Trust sign to Snowshill Manor, and he continued slowly, wondering how he would ever locate the actual property that Thea was occupying. Somehow he had failed to plan for this final challenge, thinking he could simply circle the lanes until he saw her car outside a house. Eventually he would have to phone her, he supposed, but he very much preferred to take her by surprise.
Then, with scarcely any warning, he was in the village of Snowshill. He emerged from a T-junction, to see ahead and below a cluster of the familiar beautiful stone houses sitting in a charming jumble alongside a squat-towered church. He took the little street that plunged down amongst the buildings, crawling along slowly enough to inspect each house as he passed it. They were of a fairy-tale beauty, with gabled roofs and stone-framed windows, all built of the same extraordinary material that conjured words like honey and caramel, as if you could eat it.
Ahead was a long wall decorated with circular stones that gave it an odd character. They had been incorporated into the wall itself, at intervals, for no obvious reason. They could even be old cannonballs, he supposed, utilised as a way of making some sort of historical point. The house beyond could only be glimpsed, but it appeared to be substantial.
At random he turned left, still going downhill towards a patch of trees. The road snaked around again to the left and he expected to find himself back where he had begun in another few minutes. Instead, he was suddenly out of the tiny settlement and climbing upwards towards the far more open and treeless landscape he had traversed five minutes earlier.
A pair of houses could be seen on the right, with several cars parked outside. One of them was a green Peugeot – the same green Peugeot he had so cleverly found in Crouch End, only the previous day. And next to it was Thea’s red Fiesta.
Chapter Twenty-Three
He had found her! The relief was laced with delight and excitement. They were going to have another adventure; that was obvious. The reactions he felt at the prospect were becoming reliably predictable. Thea exuded something vibrant and magnetic, even when sitting placidly in a pub garden with her dog. She was not so much a distraction from his unhappy home life as a whole different realm of experience. It was like stepping into a dream or a story, relinquishing all control in the process.
There was, he noticed, another house set back behind the first one. Yet another car sat on a tarmacked area in front of a small garage attached to the further house. Daylight was almost gone, subduing the colours of the massed flowers in the garden, adding to his sense of unreality.
There was no reason to expect trouble, or even adventure, in this quiet little Cotswold settlement. He could see no signs of movement. And yet he knew with complete certainty that there was trouble close by. There had been a murder here, only a few days ago. Perhaps that accounted for his heightened adrenaline levels. The green car had somehow found its way home, trailing clouds of suspicion and violence. It was more than enough to render him cautious, eyes and ears strained for information.
There was barely space for another vehicle, but he pulled in onto the verge and hoped no large lorries would want to pass. He had to scoot over to the passenger side to get out, having left so little space between the car and the garden wall. Treading carefully, he went through the gate labelled ‘Hyacinth House’ and up the path to the front door. There he paused, hearing unusual sounds coming from the house. The owner of the green car was also the owner of this house – that much he remembered clearly. She was not supposed to come back for another week or more. And somebody inside was smashing china and glass, while somebody else howled in protest.
Before he could approach the front door, two people emerged from the other house. A dark-haired man and a small foreign-looking woman crossed the unfenced gardens and stood listening. Drew went up to them. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘Is Thea in there?’
‘Who are you?’ asked the man.
‘My name’s Slocombe. Drew Slocombe. I came to find Thea.’
The crashing sounds were continuing unabated. ‘Can we get in?’ Drew demanded. ‘We’ll have to do something.’
‘I’ve called the police. They’ll be here any minute now,’ said the man, with a glance at the woman. ‘From the sound of it, the truth about his father has just got through to young Mark Parker.’
‘Truth?’ Drew repeated. ‘Look – I need to make sure that Thea’s all right. It sounds nasty in there.’
The man stepped aside and swung his right hand in an inviting arc, plainly giving Drew permission to go ahead. ‘Feel free,’ he said. ‘I’m not stopping you. I’ve done all I intend to.’
Drew strode to the door of Hyacinth House and tried the handle. To his surprise it turned and the door opened. With a strong sense of trepidation, he walked in.
