A Grave in the Cotswolds

by Rebecca Tope

  It wasn’t until we were in the house that I had another good look at Thea as she bent down to unclip the dog lead from her spaniel’s collar. Her face was at an odd angle, foreshortened, giving her an elfin appearance. But it was the fact that her lips were quivering that really struck me. When she stood up again, she dashed a finger under one eye, and sniffed.

  I had seen enough women close to tears to grasp instantly what was going on. ‘Are you OK?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘Take no notice. Don’t, for heaven’s sake, be nice to me or I’ll be a complete mess.’

  ‘Easier said than done,’ I warned her. ‘Besides, crying doesn’t bother me. Don’t bottle it up on my account.’

  She laughed then, a little explosive laugh that seemed to disperse the oncoming tears. ‘I’m fine, really. I just felt so sorry for that man, bleeding to death in a gateway. Somebody must have hated him intensely to do that to him.’

  ‘I can’t pretend to have liked him,’ I confessed. ‘I thought he was a hidebound little time-server, with a complete absence of common sense.’

  She laughed again. ‘None of which would make you want to kill him,’ she said with total confidence.

  ‘No more than I wanted to kill your wretched Jessica,’ I ventured, aware of stepping over a line.

  ‘I told you – she’s not usually so bad. Trying to impress the boyfriend, I suppose.’

  ‘Wasting her time there,’ taking another step into forbidden territory.

  ‘In more ways than one,’ she agreed. ‘I liked him at first – you know how it is. The mere idea of her having a handsome black boyfriend went to my head. It’s only now I’ve started to see him for what he really is, to my shame. And I don’t think he’s actually very nice. There’s a coarseness to him, somehow.’

  ‘I noticed,’ I said.

  ‘It makes me feel lonely,’ she said softly and completely ingenuously. It was as if she had only that moment identified the feeling.

  I thought about it. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know how that goes.’ My own little moment of insight had struck me between the eyes. That was what I had been feeling, ever since Karen’s injury, without ever putting a word to it. The shock of this shared revelation made me weak.

  ‘I suppose it’s the same for everybody,’ said Thea bravely. ‘When it comes right down to it. Like Mrs Simmonds. She was definitely lonely. You could see it in her eyes.’

  It was a clever move, and I followed it with a mixture of relief and disappointment. At least, I hoped I did. ‘Are you really staying another night here?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you want to go home?’

  She brought her elbows tightly into her sides, clutching herself in an agony of indecision. ‘Oh, I don’t know. It is rather bleak here. Charles is sure to get everything turned off at any moment. But now this has happened, I don’t think I can leave. I know it’s none of my business, and I’ll only get in the way, but I think I will have to hang on, just for another day or so.’

  The tea never happened. Restlessly, we went outside again, into the empty village, where the wind still blew. I was tense, she was indecisive – we walked, without the spaniel, down a stony path towards a big field. She pointed ahead and told me Chipping Campden was less than half a mile away. ‘Have you met many locals?’ I asked her. ‘Anyone you think might have done the dirty deed?’ The silly phrase was my deliberate attempt to lighten the mood.

  ‘One or two. I’ve been here a week, and we’ve done the walks, and been to Chipping Campden a couple of times. But the chances of my having encountered the actual killer must be tiny. I don’t imagine I’ll be involved at all. I used to go out with one of the West Midlands detective superintendents, you see. I got myself pretty much embroiled, once or twice. Then a new one turned up, a woman, and she and I get along pretty well. She’s clever, but wonderfully human. It might be her again, I suppose – as the SIO, I mean.’

  ‘SIO?’

  ‘Senior Investigating Officer.’

  ‘Ah.’

  There was a wistfulness to her, her voice trailing away as if still too shocked or upset to follow a thought through to the end. I was curious to understand her world – dog, daughter, weird rootless job, as well as a second reference to a former boyfriend and intriguing implications concerning the female detective, which made me wonder whether I was being told something significant. Jessica had told me about Thea’s dead husband, but I had not properly considered the grief and suffering she must have endured, the loss of the future she had no doubt envisaged for herself. Had he been in the police as well? I was gathering myself to ask her, when my mobile burbled at me.

  Chapter Six

  ‘How did that happen?’ was my first question.

  Thea grasped my meaning immediately. ‘We’re on higher ground here,’ she explained. ‘It only needs a few feet, apparently. The signals seem to come and go according to the wind direction, or something.’

  If only she’d told me that before, and sent me along this lane, instead of across the road to the field adjacent to the scene of a murder, things might be very different. I quelled the thought, and answered the phone. It was Karen. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked. ‘Will you be back for supper?’

  Supper? I looked at my watch, for the first time in many hours. It said three fifty-five. I stared at it stupidly. It couldn’t be so late. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I lost track of the time.’

  ‘You’re still there, then.’

  ‘I’m afraid so. There’s been an…incident. The police want to talk to me. It looks as if I’ll have to stay the night.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I’ll find a B&B. This place is full of them.’

  ‘Oh, Drew. How much will that cost?’

  ‘Fifty quid probably. I’ll try to get one for less.’

  ‘They don’t like singles. My mother was telling me – they often refuse to take somebody on their own.’

  ‘That’s crazy. Besides, it’s out of season. They’ll be glad of the business.’

  ‘Most of them are probably closed. What happened, Drew? Is all this about that grave? I don’t get it.’

  ‘It is, sort of. It’s all got very messy. I’ll explain everything when I get home. That’ll definitely be tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s going to rain all day tomorrow,’ she said bleakly. My wife was an avid follower of weather forecasts, checking online as well as staring intently at the TV weather maps. It was her last little ritual before going to bed every evening. And now what she was telling me was seriously bad news. A wet Sunday with two energetic kids was nobody’s idea of bliss.

  I groaned, remembering that I had the car, so she couldn’t take them out, even if she’d wanted to. ‘Shut them in their room,’ I advised. ‘Let them entertain themselves.’

  ‘Right,’ she said sarcastically. ‘And how long do you think that’ll work?’

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ I said again. ‘But it’s beyond my control. I’ll try and get away in the morning. It might work out better than I think. I’ll make a call now, and see if I can get some sort of promise that I won’t be needed. It’s all a bit unpredictable at the moment.’

  I could almost feel the hot breath of her long sigh down my ear. ‘I thought we weren’t going to have this kind of thing any more,’ she said. ‘I thought we were just going to be quiet and ordinary from now on.’

  ‘We are,’ I assured her loudly. ‘I didn’t do anything. It’s a complete coincidence.’

  ‘What is?’ Where once she would have spoken sharply, reading my mind and getting the truth out of me, now she sounded tired and slow. She sounded as if she did not actually want the whole story, had no spare energy with which to be interested in my troubles.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said gently. ‘It’s all going to be fine. I’ll do everything I can to get home quickly. Tell the kids I won’t let them play with the Wii if they’re not good.’ Karen’s aunt had bought us the thing the previous Christmas, for some incomprehensible reason. I h
ated it, but both my children found it so compulsive that Karen and I had agreed it should be rationed.

  She laughed faintly. ‘Fat lot of difference that’s going to make.’

  ‘Well, it’s worth a try. I’ll make it up to you when I do get back. You won’t see or hear them for at least three hours, I promise.’

  Thea had walked on, discreetly removing herself to look over a stile into a field while I was trying to pacify my abandoned wife. But I suspected she would have heard most of my end of the conversation, even so.

  ‘Poor old Karen,’ I said, having joined her. ‘This isn’t fair on her.’

  ‘How many children?’

  ‘Two. Stephanie and Timothy. Seven and five-nearly-six.’

  ‘Nice,’ she nodded.

  ‘She finds them a handful. They never stop, you see. Always wanting something to happen. They seem to get louder, too, as they get older.’

  ‘Do they fight?’

  ‘I guess it sounds worse than it is, but yes, they fight. They argue at the top of their voices and get each other into trouble. Karen used to be a teacher – she thinks everything should be educational. Makes it harder for herself, I suppose.’

  ‘Used to be?’

  ‘She can’t work any more. She was injured, three years ago. She had some brain damage.’

  ‘Oh, God. How terrible! You ought to get back to her. Why don’t we phone the police and insist they let you go? They can’t force you to stay here, unless they arrest you.’

  I had forgotten, for several minutes, how I stood in relation to the police. ‘They might arrest me if I do that,’ I said.

  ‘I wonder where Jessica and Paul have got to. They were going back to Manchester this afternoon. All their stuff is still in the house. I suppose they’re lending a hand with the enquiry somehow.’ She frowned. ‘Maybe they’ll stay another night, after all.’

  ‘They won’t be part of the investigating team, though, surely?’

  ‘No,’ she said distractedly. ‘They’re with Manchester. It wouldn’t work. Besides, what do they know about Broad Campden or the Gloucestershire Council? Nothing at all.’

  Suddenly there was a flurry of flapping dog, and Thea’s Hepzibah was scrabbling at her legs. ‘They must have let her out,’ she said, pushing the dog down. ‘Yes, there’s Jess, look.’

  Thea’s daughter was at the bend in the lane, waving to us. It was only twenty-five yards away, but I felt as if we were being contacted from a great distance – reeled in from our little interlude, and forced to rejoin the real world.

  Back in the cottage, Jessica and Paul were both voluble, competing to speak. Their excitement seemed to energise the air all around them. Even in Manchester, sudden violent deaths must be quite a thrill, rare enough to cause ripples and invoke little-used procedures.

  ‘Have they taken him away yet?’ I asked, knowing it could often be several hours before the body was removed.

  ‘Just,’ nodded Jessica. ‘They’ve been very quick. It can sometimes be a whole day.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I agreed. ‘I’m amazed.’

  ‘Actually, I think they were a bit too quick,’ said Paul. ‘I’m not sure they did a thorough job. The SOCOs were only there for half an hour.’

  ‘You think they should examine every blade of grass and bit of twig for a hundred-yard radius, do you?’ said Thea, aggressively. ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Mum.’ Jessica was more uncomfortable than I had yet seen her. ‘You know it isn’t like that. But they need to look for footprints and signs of a struggle. It’s a lot more difficult outdoors, especially with this wind blowing, and we thought they’d give it a bit longer, that’s all. They did take a lot of photos,’ she conceded. ‘And the scene is being guarded, so they can come back later if necessary.’

  The young police officer looked at me. ‘They want to know who was at Mrs Simmonds’ funeral,’ she said.

  ‘Oh? Well, I suppose that makes sense, after what I told that Basildon man.’

  ‘You think there’s a connection, then? Between the murder and Mrs Simmonds’ funeral?’ Thea was frowning at me.

  ‘The connection is me,’ I explained, with a twinge of embarrassment.

  Jessica made a wordless sound. When I looked at her, she appeared to have something like admiration in her eyes. Hope flared that she no longer assumed that I was a killer.

  ‘You told him about that, then?’ she asked me.

  ‘Of course. I wanted to be helpful.’ I tried to suppress the fluttering fears that swirled inside me. ‘I expect my footprints are right there beside the body. I walked through that very gate, before lunch.’

  ‘Oh Drew!’ moaned Thea. ‘You didn’t, did you?’

  ‘You were gone such a long time,’ muttered Jessica. ‘We’ll have to be honest about that.’ She sounded slightly defensive, glancing at her mother as she spoke. Was she worried that she’d made things even worse for me? ‘And I had to tell the DI about the argument. I know I didn’t overhear any actual words, but the way he was marching off, it was obvious he was angry.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘I already said we had words.’

  ‘Sometimes, Jess,’ Thea began, ‘you do worry me. Can’t you see that Drew’s not a murderer?’

  ‘I never said he was. But if there is a link between Mrs Simmonds’ grave and this murder, Mr Slocombe is that link, as he just said himself.’

  ‘But loads of other people might fit just as easily,’ Thea blustered. ‘After all, yesterday’s funeral wasn’t exactly a secret.’

  ‘Well…’ I began, ‘we do try to keep them quiet, actually. It’s part of my job, warning people not to spread the news. Neighbours tend to get very upset.’ I recalled a back-garden burial of six months earlier, where the whole thing had been arranged as if it had been a bank robbery. We had performed the interment after dark, as quietly as was humanly possible. ‘I have to admit I prefer it when they use my land. I know that’s going to be OK. In any case, Jessica’s right – Mr Maynard told me one of the mourners called the council because they were uneasy about the grave.’

  Jessica nodded in satisfaction, before turning to Thea. ‘How did you know about it?’ she asked. ‘The time and place, I mean.’

  ‘The sister, Mrs Talbot, phoned me, the day after Mrs Simmonds died, to say they were going to see the undertaker about a natural burial. After all, I was looking after her house. I said I’d like to be at the funeral, so she called back when it had been arranged.’ She gazed around the room with a little frown, as if she’d forgotten where she was, for the moment. ‘She said she supposed she would have to honour her sister’s wishes, but as far as she was concerned it was sacrilegious. “But then Greta always had been a strange person, with even stranger ideas.”’ The quotation marks around this little speech were entirely audible.

  I laughed. ‘Oh yes – that sounds exactly like Mrs Talbot. She said it all to me as well. And Mr Maynard would certainly agree with her about the sacrilegious bit.’

  Then I thought about the handful of mourners at the graveside. ‘Those two couples – her friends. Do you know them?’ I asked Thea.

  ‘I know the Watchetts,’ she nodded. ‘They dropped in here for coffee on Wednesday, to see if I was all right. They’re quite a nice pair, and they seemed to like the whole idea of the green burial. I thought they might ask you for your card, actually.’

  I shook my head. ‘I got the impression they didn’t much like it after all, when it came to the point. I can only assume it was them or the other pair who called the council.’

  ‘The others are Graham and Miriam Ingram,’ said Jessica.

  ‘How on earth do you know that?’ Thea demanded.

  ‘Because while you two were strolling around the village just now, Mr Ingram showed up at the scene of the murder, and spoke to DI Basildon.’

  ‘You’re joking!’ I spluttered, trying to envisage the wildfire village gossip that must have spread before such a rapid volunteering of informa
tion could have been possible.

  ‘I was a bit surprised myself,’ admitted Jessica. ‘After all, the body hadn’t even been formally identified.’

  ‘I bet that means they were the ones who contacted the council. They’d have been waiting to see what he would do about it, and rushed out for a look as soon as they heard something had happened.’ I paused, before asking humbly, ‘I know I’m being dim, but could you tell me exactly how far it is from the grave to the place where he was killed?’

  Jessica savoured her moment of superiority, before saying, ‘I would guess about a third of a mile. It’s along the same road, further towards Blockley.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I nodded. ‘And we know he was walking back along that road, after meeting with me. He left about ten minutes before we drove up here. Why didn’t we see him in the road? He couldn’t have got back that quickly. Where did he go?’

  ‘Wait,’ Jessica pleaded, confused. ‘This is important.’

  ‘I know it is,’ I said feelingly. ‘So?’

  ‘He must either have taken a detour across the fields, or gone home and out again,’ she surmised. ‘Because he couldn’t have already been dead, or you’d have seen him when you went out to make your phone call.’

  ‘Maybe he was there and I didn’t see him. Maybe I didn’t actually come out of that gateway at all, but a different one. I really wasn’t paying much attention.’

  ‘Drew!’ said Thea impatiently. ‘You can’t afford to be vague about it. Are there any other gates along there?’ She asked the question generally, but none of us knew the answer.

  ‘We should get the times straight,’ suggested Paul, who had been paying close attention. ‘Mr Slocombe…when exactly did you meet Mr Maynard?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ I snapped. ‘I left home just before ten, so it was probably eleven-thirty or thereabouts. We talked for ten or fifteen minutes, then Jessica turned up, and we all headed back here, towards the centre of the village. Jessica and I were driving, and Mr M was walking.’