by Rebecca Tope
Chapter Eleven
They returned to the hot car and drove away with the windows open, somehow enriched by the diversionary interlude, where nothing mattered but the images of an architecture that felt as if something greater than humankind had created it.
And then, standing in a gateway on the road back to Cranham, was a tall man with a grey dog and a small child. The child’s face was exactly level with the dog’s, which somehow emphasised the human qualities that poodles possess. Automatically, Thea slowed and stopped, pushing the excited spaniel off her lap. Hepzie always went into a frenzy at the sight of another dog when she was in the car. Outside, she was far more restrained.
Thea leant her head out of the window and gave the little group a broad smile. ‘Hello again,’ she said.
‘The house-sitter!’ Philippe gave her a friendly nod, wagging his head in a diagonal movement that suggested carefree bonhomie. ‘Nice to see you again. This is Tamsin – my daughter.’
Oh. The only gay in the village had a daughter? Had it been a sperm donation for a pair of lesbians? Or what?
‘Hello, Tamsin. Hello, Jasper,’ said Thea politely. ‘I’ve been exploring. Aren’t these long evenings lovely? You forget that it gets dark at four in December. How is that possible?’ She looked up at the sky, where the sun was still in full evidence at seven o’clock. ‘We only got as far as Painswick and then drifted slowly back. I stopped once or twice on the way. The time just seemed to go.’
‘I know just what you mean. Tam’s mum must be wondering where we’ve got to by now. Jasper’s such a keen walker, we just keep going.’
Tamsin had black hair and deep brown eyes, totally different from her father in colouring, but she had the same-shaped face, the long chin, low brow and familiar full lips. ‘She looks like you,’ said Thea.
‘Nonsense!’ he protested. ‘She’s the image of her mother.’
‘Mummy has light-brown skin, Granny’s pink, an’ I’m coffee,’ recited the child.
Thea had put the skin colour down to a few weeks spent in the sunshine. ‘Milky coffee,’ she suggested. ‘Cappuccino, maybe.’
‘Are you OK up at the Manor?’ asked Philippe, breaking into the chat about skin colour. ‘With everything that’s been happening?’
Thea remembered his uncharitable comments during their first meeting. Something to the effect that Donny was a nuisance and should get on with his suicide plans sooner rather than later. She had been left with an impression of a selfish, insensitive man, who took no account of Donny’s feelings. This time he seemed a lot nicer.
‘It was a big shock,’ she said. ‘A real surprise – to everyone, apparently.’
‘Not to me. Inevitable, as I see it.’
‘Yes, so you said before. I suppose you knew him better than I did. Even so …’
He glanced down at his little girl, who was probably no more than five, and Thea understood that she was not to pursue the subject in any detail. She would normally have few qualms about discussing death in front of a small child, but in this case it was not her decision. She ought to tread carefully until fully confident that she had the permission of the child’s father.
What’s more, this child was showing an unusual curiosity about the conversation. ‘Did you have a surprise?’ she asked Thea. ‘Was it a nice one?’
‘Not really.’
‘We’re talking about Donny,’ said her father. ‘He died. Remember we told you?’
‘Oh yes.’ The child was entirely matter-of-fact. ‘Aunt Edwina was sad.’
‘She still is, baby. She’ll be sad for a long time.’
‘I met your mother,’ said Thea with a little frown, alerted by the reference to Aunt Edwina to the close links these people had with Jemima and Donny. ‘And Toby.’
‘I know you did,’ he said as if this was obvious. ‘You seem to have come across the full cast of characters in this little drama.’
‘Except for your wife,’ she pointed out. ‘And Donny’s, come to that.’ The mysteriously banished Mrs Davis was beginning to niggle at her. She who ought to be the ‘chief mourner’, arranging the funeral and sitting in the front pew. By association, Drew Slocombe also came to mind.
‘The wives are notable for their absence,’ smiled Philippe. ‘Especially poor old Janet. I don’t think you need worry about her, though.’
‘But …’ The wholesale abandonment of the woman struck Thea for the first time as seriously unkind. ‘Doesn’t anybody other than Toby visit her?’
‘Nope. It’s much less awkward than it sounds. I mean – she has effectively been replaced by Aunt Edwina, for quite a while now. She’s done Donny a lot more good than Janet ever did.’
‘Yes, but …’ she tried again. ‘What does Jemima think about it? Doesn’t she feel any loyalty to her mother?’
‘Jemima doesn’t analyse things. That’s to say, she never goes more than a millimetre below the surface. So she doesn’t actually know what she feels about anything beyond the very simple basics. She sees no reason to resent Edwina. She reacts like an animal would – anger, pleasure, impatience, joy – she’s perfectly honest about it.’
‘Yes,’ said Thea slowly. ‘I noticed some of that. I was with her when we found Donny, you know.’
‘I know you were. And how was she about it?’
‘Efficient,’ said Thea after a moment’s reflection.
Philippe laughed. ‘Good word,’ he approved. ‘Now, we have to get home. Come on, kidlet. Definitely past your bedtime.’
The little girl grasped his outstretched hand and gave Thea a proprietorial grin, as if to proclaim her good fortune in having such a father. After all, a lot of children didn’t have one at all. Thea grinned back. ‘See you again, I hope,’ she said.
It had been a good day, on the whole, she judged. No further disasters, some social exchanges, and a deeper grasp of the interactions amongst the people around her – all slightly better than she might have hoped for when she awoke. The sunshine had been an omen, it seemed, bringing the beauty and goodwill that was part of the English June stereotype.
She went to bed in a calm mood, having visited the geckoes last thing. The eggs in their snug nests held a promise that she found exciting. She spent a few minutes conscientiously examining them. When they hatched, they would have to find food and shelter and companionship for themselves. It seemed a lot to expect. Harriet had written a brief list of instructions against the event of one hatching unexpectedly. Make sure it can’t escape. Give it a little bit of mashed fruit and a drop of water in a jam jar lid.
It would be thrilling to witness a little hatchling emerge, of course, but the responsibility would probably outweigh the excitement.
Friday was sunny again and Thea felt a fresh responsibility to get outside and make the most of it. She could finally go and investigate Slad, rectifying an omission that seemed to have gone on for a long time. Or she could go to Gloucester and have a look at the cathedral or canal basin. She wasn’t sure she’d ever actually been there at any time in her life. But that would make complications concerning the dog, and really she did not very much like cathedrals unless there was somebody with her to point out the main features. And a sunny day was more suited to open countryside, not city centres.
It was now three days since Donny had died, and there was a sense of limbo around the whole unhappy business. DI Higgins probably wouldn’t contact her again. Nobody had mentioned a funeral to her. The people involved seemed to have melted away, forgetting all about the temporary house-sitter who had just happened to be present when the body was discovered. Suppressing a flicker of resentment, she gave a mental shrug and told herself she ought to be pleased.
But she was not pleased. She wanted to get to know Jemima better, for one thing, her curiosity piqued by something Philippe had said the previous evening. He had confirmed Thea’s impression that Donny’s daughter lived in fear of the deeper realities; that she evaded the dark side of life with all her strength. Such an attitude was p
erfectly common, of course. Nobody wanted to dwell excessively on death and disease and betrayal and loss, unless they were abnormally morbid. And perhaps Donny himself had been rather the same as his daughter. He refused medical help, in case it led to painful and undignified treatment, as it had in the case of Cecilia – and his wife, come to that. Jemima had said nothing to suggest that she disagreed with this approach. Nobody had mentioned that she put pressure on her father to see a doctor. If anything, it appeared that she colluded with him in his avoidance of any such action. Was that not wrong of her, Thea wondered. It was certainly unusual. All the stereotypes had the family urging their sick relative to get to the GP as fast as they could. There was actually something quite brave in giving their support in doing the opposite. Jemima might be frightened, but she wasn’t a coward, it seemed. She had been prepared to stand by Donny’s decision, even if it resulted in acrimony and accusations. Because it would. It was regarded as virtually criminal to fail to see a doctor if you knew there was good medical reason to do so. Thea felt a moment’s rage at this idea. Doctors meant well, more or less, but they certainly had a very inflated idea of their own importance, thanks to society’s wholesale reliance on them.
And Donny himself had been frightened, or revolted, or horrified by the prospect of a post-mortem on his dead body, according to Jemima. That was another factor in the balance against his having killed himself.
She tried to recall exactly how Jemima had reacted to the discovery of her father’s dead body. Efficient, she had said to Philippe, but that wasn’t quite accurate. Relief had been there, unmistakably. A dilemma resolved, a long and miserable end escaped. After the first shock – and Thea could swear there had been shock – the implications had all looked positive. It was sad, even painful, but not unbearably so. An old sick man had killed himself, seemingly without much suffering, seemingly in accord with what he had been wanting for some time.
So what was wrong? Somewhere, something was quite definitely wrong. The anonymous phone call accusing Edwina of manslaughter, if not murder, was at the heart of it. But Thea’s own observations left her with profound misgivings. Donny had not wanted to die on that particular day. He had made an appointment with Drew. He was enjoying getting to know Thea. He was twinkly and spirited and witty. You didn’t kill yourself while those words could still be applied to you. You just didn’t. Drew himself had tried to suggest that, based on what he’d heard from her.
She should try to find Edwina again, and invite her to respond to the accusation that had been made against her. The police would surely have told her of it by this time; they had no choice but to confront her with it, albeit gently and non-judgementally. Quite how to arrange a meeting was tricky, however. She was not averse to simply walking up to the front door of a person’s house and inviting herself in for a cup of tea when the situation seemed to demand it, but this did not quite feel like one of those situations. Edwina Satterthwaite was elderly and under police suspicion. Although she had been entirely civil to Thea, there had been no real relationship established between them. She could hardly be expected to readily open up and tell the house-sitter everything – especially if she really had helped Donny to kill himself and then panicked when the implications hit her.
Besides, Thea didn’t know where Edwina lived, beyond the fact that it was somewhere in Cranham.
She opted for a stroll in the direction of the village centre and the pub, with Hepzie on a lead. She deliberately deferred another visit to the dog in the woods, in the hope of avoiding undue dependency on the part of the animal. If it could not rely on regular deliveries of food, then it might try a bit of hunting for itself – or even risk sneaking back to its own farmyard in the hope of finding something to eat.
Cranham had very few level stretches. The road took a dive downhill from the Manor, levelled briefly, and then surged uphill again. All the other roads similarly sloped upwards out of the hollow in which the core of the settlement had been positioned. The pub was up one of these smaller side roads, to the south of the main village street, and was as yet an unknown quantity. Perhaps she would be brave enough to call in and see if they provided coffee. It was not quite eleven o’clock, a time when village pubs would never have dreamt of opening in the past. Now some of them had embraced the relaxed regulations on opening times and invited people in from mid morning to late evening. In June especially, they were likely to want to attract any summer visitors who might fancy a drink.
It was a nice-looking little pub, unpretentious and tucked away. Across the street were a few classically lovely old buildings that she would have liked to examine more closely, if it hadn’t been for an old man watching her with unashamed curiosity from the doorway of one of them. She smiled and waved at him, and walked on. The pub was evidently not yet open, but even if it had been, she wasn’t sure she had the courage to go in alone. It probably didn’t allow dogs anyway, she thought sourly, remembering the inhospitable establishment in Broad Campden, which hid cravenly behind spurious hygiene regulations when banning perfectly clean spaniels from their premises.
‘Morning,’ came a breathless voice behind her. ‘Out for a walk?’
She turned to see Thyrza, mother of Philippe, grandmother of Tamsin, sister of Edwina. Like her sister, Thyrza had a faintly regal appearance, but was two or three inches taller than Edwina, with less covering on her hips. If you had to choose a queen with which to compare her, it would probably be the late Queen Mother, for the confident air and impression that her wish was most people’s command. There was a directness to her gaze that Thea found engaging. She reminded herself that a great deal had happened since they had last met, and it was incumbent upon her to do her best to be diplomatic in the face of so much sensitive emotion amongst Donny’s friends and relations.
‘It’s a lovely day for it,’ she said with a smile.
‘The pub doesn’t open for an hour or more yet,’ the older woman told her.
‘No problem. I wasn’t going in, anyway. I don’t like sitting on my own in a pub. And I don’t expect they allow dogs.’
‘They do. Of course they do. My son comes here a lot with Jasper. I could sit with you,’ Thyrza offered. ‘If they had been open, that is.’
They both eyed the pub door as if they might force it open by sheer willpower. ‘I’m not really thirsty,’ Thea admitted. ‘We just came out for a little stroll. Do you live in one of these lovely old houses?’
‘Just around the corner. It’s the house I told you about.’
In the family for three hundred years, Thea recalled. ‘Oh, yes. It must be one of the oldest buildings in the village, then?’
‘One of them, yes. There are a few that go back to the seventeenth century. Ours isn’t quite that ancient. And of course, it’s been so altered over the years, there is very little left that’s really original.’
‘I saw your son yesterday, with his little girl.’ Again, she had to bite her tongue to prevent it from voicing an unacceptable comment or question. It was such a surprise, because I thought he was gay.
‘Oh yes? He’s off work for a week or two, although he’s always on call. That’s why he can never go right away. Dedicated,’ she finished complacently. ‘He’s always been utterly dedicated.’
‘What exactly is his speciality?’ Thea asked, before recalling that Philippe had told her himself, days earlier.
‘Cardiac surgery,’ said Thyrza proudly. ‘He’s quite brilliant.’
‘And he lives on this side of the common, does he?’ Thea was still a bit shaky on the invisible delineations controlling the geography of Cranham.
‘He’s three hundred yards from my house, which is just far enough away for comfort. It wouldn’t do to try and live in the same house as a daughter-in-law. That would be disastrous.’
Thea laughed politely. ‘Very wise.’ She was struggling to refrain from asking more questions, mindful of the objection Thyrza made when they last met. Besides, there was enough information emerging unprompted to kee
p her happy.
‘And Edwina’s right over the other side of the common, near the allotments,’ Thyrza volunteered. ‘There’s more to the village than you might think at first. There are almost two hundred houses, you know. Doesn’t seem like that many, does it?’
Thea stuck to the central point, trying to make it sound like a remark, rather than a question. ‘But you both grew up in the house you now occupy.’
Thyrza turned her head away, her gaze on the rising ground to the east. ‘That’s right. Now, I think you’re starting to ask questions again,’ she said in a low voice. ‘And I really can’t see where it could get either of us. I did hear that you have close connections to the police, and I don’t like to feel that I’m being surreptitiously cross-examined.’
‘Oh!’ Thea’s heart thumped violently at the sudden change of mood and the familiar feeling of having gone too far yet again. ‘No … I’m not. Honestly, there’s none of that. I’m just nosy – I told you before. Interested. I’m sorry …’ she tailed off unhappily.
‘There are no mysteries or secrets in our family, I assure you. Neither my sister nor I have anything to hide. Nor does my son. We are ordinary, innocent residents of a small village. My sister had a very close friendship with Donny Davis for a great many years. She also knew his wife. She has nothing to feel guilty about, and has committed no crime. Can I make myself any clearer than that?’
