A Grave in the Cotswolds

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Yes, I know. She phoned me.’

  ‘Oh…she never said. Anyway, she’s furious with the police, demanding to see his body and start arranging his funeral. They won’t let her, of course. The coroner’s officer must have told her that.’

  ‘People don’t always listen.’

  ‘Right. But there was something odd about her. She didn’t seem upset enough. I know shock does funny things to people, but she obviously had something on her mind that wasn’t just the fact that her husband was dead.’

  ‘I thought that as well,’ I recalled. ‘She’s angry.’

  ‘And scared.’

  ‘Oh?’ A crazy thought occurred to me, but I didn’t voice it. ‘I missed that.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I thought. And it could be simply that she’s afraid of living on her own, or getting through the coming weeks, with all the paperwork and so forth. The whole business can be frightening for some people. But this struck me as different, somehow.’

  She was speaking my lines. I was meant to be the expert on the newly bereaved. It made me chuckle silently to myself. ‘I’m still not sure where the problem is,’ I prompted. In my experience, women very often took forever to come out with the real reason for their sadness or worry. I’d taught myself to be patient about it, but I very much wanted her to get to the point.

  ‘Oh, sorry. Yes. Well, she says I should be very careful what I say to Charles Talbot. That I should not go along with his plans to sell the house, because it could get me into trouble.’

  ‘She told me some of that, as well,’ I said. ‘She seems to be pretty well acquainted with the planning laws.’

  ‘This isn’t planning. It’s ownership of the house. I don’t really get it, but somehow in her mind, this house is linked to her husband’s murder. Seems a rather poor motive to me, I must admit.’

  ‘I imagine people have killed in order to get their hands on a very nice Cotswold cottage, once in a while,’ I suggested.

  ‘Maybe. But how on earth does Mr Maynard fit into it?’

  ‘I have no idea – but at least it would get me off the hook, wouldn’t it?’ I brightened at the thought. ‘Nobody could accuse me of even knowing about it.’

  ‘Well…’ she said carefully, ‘they might. They might think Mrs Simmonds told you the whole story. They might think you and Mr Maynard argued about it on Saturday.’

  ‘Well, those things didn’t happen, and they would have to provide some sort of evidence, wouldn’t they? Evidence that doesn’t remotely exist.’

  ‘You don’t have to convince me,’ she laughed. ‘I’m just telling you how it might look.’

  ‘Is that what your daughter would say?’

  ‘Never mind her. She’s caused enough trouble as it is.’

  ‘Only doing her job,’ I protested. ‘Don’t be so hard on her.’

  ‘Don’t panic. It’s nothing like as bad as it sounds.’ There was a pause, during which I struggled to find something else to say.

  ‘When are you going home, then?’ I finally asked.

  ‘Later today, I guess. I don’t want to get involved in any more of this, and there’s no need for me to be here any longer. I’m dropping the keys with an estate agent in Chipping Campden, and hitting the open road.’ She sounded wistful.

  ‘But it’s like unfinished business,’ I hazarded.

  ‘Precisely. Just drifting off and abandoning it all. Who’s going to visit the grave? This is a nice house, with a lot of family history, and they’re just disposing of it as fast as they can.’

  ‘Mrs M’s right, though,’ I said. ‘There’s no way they can just sell it before the probate stuff’s been done. It’s not as if Mrs Simmonds expected to die when she did. Everybody thought she had decades to go yet.’

  ‘I wonder about that, actually. I have a feeling she knew she didn’t have very long. Why would she have arranged her funeral and made sure her will was all up to date otherwise?’

  ‘Peace of mind? Change of circumstances? It went with leaving that commune place.’

  She sighed. ‘There are so many loose ends. I hate that. It’s like losing a book before you’ve got to the end. I’m always going to wonder what happens next.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I told her, ‘it’s obviously not the end as far as I’m concerned. I’ve still got to convince them I didn’t kill bloody Mr Maynard.’

  She laughed, and I took not the slightest offence.

  ‘Sorry,’ she giggled. ‘It isn’t funny, I know. It must be a really horrible feeling, in fact. But I don’t think they seriously suspect you.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said gloomily. ‘I wish I could be sure. It would help just to know what the next step is. I’ve got business here, tomorrow and Thursday, that I can’t avoid. It’s unsettling to think they might cart me off at any moment, leaving Maggs to do everything.’

  ‘Maggs? Is that your wife?’

  ‘No, my wife’s Karen. Maggs is my partner. She’s a treasure. You should meet her—’ I stopped. What was I saying? I was never going to see Thea Osborne again, never introduce her to the people in my life, never going to get entangled in anything of that sort.

  ‘Well, maybe I will one day,’ she said, as if to reassure me. ‘And maybe you could keep me posted about what’s going on here? I have this insatiable curiosity, you see – I always have to hear the end of the story. Even if it means getting myself into trouble.’ Was that a coded message? It gave me a cold shiver, along with the thought, It wouldn’t be you who got into trouble though, would it? And I wasn’t thinking of my situation regarding the police.

  ‘I won’t know how to contact you,’ I said, disingenuously. Of course I would be able to find her if I really wanted to.

  ‘You could email me. Have you got a pen?’

  ‘I don’t really do email,’ I admitted. ‘I leave all that to Maggs.’

  ‘Oh.’ She thought I was brushing her off. Perhaps I was. I definitely knew that I ought to, that there was no good reason to maintain contact with her. I could and should just forget her, and the small part she had played in the murder of Gavin Maynard.

  ‘Give me your phone number,’ I said.

  Not a lot more happened that day. Maggs kept saying I should phone the police in Gloucestershire and demand to know where I stood. ‘Take the initiative,’ she urged. ‘Don’t just sit and stew about what they might do next. It isn’t fair.’

  ‘Maybe they’ll just forget all about me,’ I said, with crazy optimism. ‘If they find who did it, they’ll just file me away as a red herring.’

  ‘Under “R”, I suppose,’ she quipped. ‘And they’ll keep your DNA and fingerprints on their computer for a million years. Doesn’t that worry you?’

  ‘A bit,’ I admitted. ‘For the principle of the thing. Isn’t there some ruling that says they have to destroy it?’

  ‘I think they’re still contesting it,’ she said vaguely. ‘I’ll ask Den.’

  ‘Meanwhile,’ I persisted, ‘I think I’ll just take it a day at a time, and assume they’ll adopt a reasonable view. If they want to question me again, they’ll have to come here to do it. I can’t be forever driving up there and back, now, can I?’

  She rolled her eyes and lapsed into silence for half an hour, while I marked Mr Everscott’s grave on our detailed plans of the burial ground, and checked his meagre paperwork. One good thing about a burial was that there was no need for the cremation papers signed by two doctors. Another good thing was that we could be relaxed about the timing, instead of obsessively watching the clock. Ten or twelve other good things regularly occurred to me as well, even after years of operating my environmentally benign business. A shame, then, that the great majority of the population still unthinkingly signed up for cremations in all their stark and sterile glory.

  I thought, too, about Thea, wondering whether she had reached home yet, whether I ever would actually phone her, whether we would meet again. I thought a bit about other women – my wife, Mrs Maynard, Judith Talbot – the things
they had said and their feelings towards me.

  It was a day for phone calls. Just as I was sitting down with Karen to enjoy the scrambled eggs she had prepared, it rang again. I answered, expecting something unpleasant, which is what I got.

  ‘Mr Slocombe? It’s Daphne from the school. I’m afraid Stephanie has had a bit of an accident.’

  A bit of an accident meant deep coma, shattered spinal column, acid across the eyes, in common English parlance. ‘Where is she?’ I choked, all the breath gone out of me.

  ‘She’s right here beside me. She banged her head, half an hour ago, and we’ve been watching her for any worrying signs. She seems fine, but is rather upset. Could you speak to her for me?’

  ‘Daddy? Hello,’ came the voice of my daughter, far more faintly than it should have done.

  ‘Steph? What happened to you, sweetheart?’

  ‘Harvey Johnson pushed me,’ she said. ‘My head’s got a big lump on it and it hurts.’

  ‘You poor thing. Has Mrs Foster put something on it for you?’

  ‘Cream. It hurts. It’s like a little man thumping me inside my head.’

  ‘I’ll come and get you, right away. We can go to the hospital and they can see if everything’s all right.’ I had caught Karen’s eye and held it, from the first words, and she seemed to have ceased breathing completely. She did none of the stupid silent mouthings that people always did in films. She simply waited trustingly, knowing I would do as much or more than was necessary. Where Stephanie was concerned, nobody doubted that I could pick up Everest and shift it half a mile to the east.

  ‘Thank you,’ said my little girl.

  I reported the facts to Karen, while pulling on my jacket and taking a final mouthful of egg. ‘I’ll let you know what they say,’ I promised needlessly. ‘But it might be a while.’

  ‘What about Timmy?’ she reminded me quietly.

  I froze. It was just past one o’clock. I was unlikely to be able to get back from the hospital in time to collect him at three-fifteen. ‘Um…’ I said.

  Karen exhaled. ‘I’ll ask Irene to take him to hers for a bit.’ The reproach was gentle, scarcely there at all, but I felt it just the same. I had forgotten my other child completely, ready to drive off with our only car, leaving him stranded at school.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Anyway, we might not be long. I might be back.’

  ‘Yes, you might,’ she agreed. ‘They put children to the front of the queue. And it should be quiet in the middle of a Tuesday. It doesn’t sound too serious. Did she black out at all?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘If she had, the school would have called an ambulance. She’ll be fine, Drew. You know she will.’ Tears stood in her eyes, belying her words. More than anything, she was distressed at this reminder of the fragility of life. It could all veer off to the edge of the cliff at any moment, and there was nothing you could do about it. She was being immensely brave, in her own quiet way, reassuring me, calming me down, acknowledging that Stephanie was the most precious person in my life at that time.

  Stephanie and I had spent a great deal of time together in her early years. Karen had gone back to teaching, and I took on the childcare in a fashion so cavalier that, when I looked back on it, I couldn’t understand how it had worked so well. My little girl had played contentedly in a corner of my office, ridden in the back of my car, watched calmly as the newly bereaved choked out their wishes for a funeral. She had been parked on strangers at times, hustled into her clothes, rushed through skimpy meals, to suit the needs of my fledgling business – and remained serene throughout. Now seven, she remembered nothing of that period, but I retained my admiration and gratitude for the way she had made it so easy for me.

  At the hospital, nobody showed any particular concern. The young female doctor shone a torch into Stephanie’s eyes, and palpated her neck, and asked her a few questions. Steph conscientiously cooperated, and was deemed unharmed and in no danger. Nobody said, Children bang their heads all the time, you know, but it hung in the air anyway. I prattled excessively, assuring everyone that we did not make a habit of panicking, that I had never rushed a child to casualty before, that it was the level of pain that had alarmed me.

  ‘No harm done,’ said the pretty doctor with a smile. ‘It’s what we’re here for.’

  It was a line often used by undertakers – one that always worked well. I smiled back, and ushered my daughter out to the car.

  ‘That wasn’t too bad, was it?’ I said, as we left the overpriced car park.

  ‘I knew I was all right,’ she said. ‘What about Timmy?’

  Like me, she had only belatedly thought of her brother.

  ‘Irene’s fetching him, I think.’

  ‘Irene won’t be there today, because Jacey’s got a cough. She’s away.’

  ‘Oh. Well, one of the other mums, then. Colette or Jenny or someone.’

  ‘Mm.’

  I refrained from worrying. Whilst not really part of the school mums’ social circle, Karen knew their names and phone numbers. If all else failed, she would get the school to sort it out. One of the teachers could drive Tim the two miles home. In the olden days, the kid would have walked it without a second thought. Recently, there had been a more focused attempt to prevent everybody from using their cars, with a thing called a ‘walking bus’ taking the nearer ones on foot. They all wore fluorescent jackets and marched two-by-two in a painfully regimented fashion. It made me cringe to see it, but I was forced to admit that it was an improvement on using motor vehicles for trips of a few hundred yards.

  By four-fifteen we were all reunited, Stephanie’s head sporting an angry lump that was already purple with smudges of blue at the edges. Timmy was playing up, angry without quite understanding why. I tried to be patient with him, letting him talk about his short stay at Colette’s house, where the twin girls had forced him to eat cake with marzipan on it, even though it was horrible. ‘Never mind, Tim,’ I consoled him. ‘You’re home now.’

  ‘It was an emergency,’ said Stephanie, nodding earnestly at her little brother. ‘That’s why you had to go to that other house.’

  ‘Mrs Harris said it was annoying, not knowing who was taking me.’

  I glanced at Karen, imagining the scene. Home time at the primary school was a laborious drawn-out process, whereby every child in every class was carefully liberated in turn, the teacher clutching the shoulders of each child until its parent was identified standing on the pavement outside. If someone was missing, the child had to wait. It meant teachers having to recognise two or three faces for each pupil. Mrs Harris clearly found the whole procedure as stupid as I did, her patience worn thin after a day in the company of twenty-two five-year-olds. The surprising part was that she stuck to it so religiously, week after week, term after term. It caused delays and traffic jams and quite a lot of bad temper, but still nobody dared to permit a child to leave the building without clear evidence of a responsible adult five yards away to receive it. Even I, in my late thirties, had almost forgotten there had ever been a time when things were different – when schoolchildren strolled along streets or across fields, or down quiet pathways unsupervised, and arrived home without ever having encountered the word ‘safety’. Now, the parting shot after many lessons or excursions was ‘Be safe!’ – an injunction that encapsulated society’s attitude all too comprehensively.

  Karen smiled back at me a bit vaguely, content that everything was back to normal – that she had done what was necessary to come through the small crisis without mishap. She knew, I presumed, that it had actually been me who did everything – all that had been required of her was to make one or two phone calls. But this was to miss the point. She had not fallen apart, or lost the plot, or withdrawn into some safe, quiet corner. She had functioned, and still, after three years, we both knew this could never be fully taken for granted.

  I had almost forgotten the unfinished business in Broad Campden, the continuing threat hanging over me of being charged
with murdering Gavin Maynard, of being remanded in some distant police cell, unable to fulfil my duties to family or work. As Tuesday drifted uneventfully to a close, I found myself hoping that it was all being settled without me, that DI Basildon had solved his case and deleted me from his database, seeing no need to let me know. Did the police go to the bother of telling suspects that they were off the hook, as part of their routine? I doubted it. We were probably meant to keep an eye on the local press, and draw our own conclusions. I found myself feeling glad I had not burdened Karen with the full story. She knew nothing of the council official’s death, and only a few scraps of the complexities of Mrs Simmonds’ family and property. Even Maggs had been given an edited account.

  There was only one woman who shared the full story with me, who understood my position and sympathised with it. And it was beginning to look as if I would never see or speak to that woman again.

  Chapter Eleven

  Mr Everscott’s funeral was the big event of that Wednesday. Even with only two mourners, and with everything well in hand, Maggs and I were fully absorbed in the preparations. We seldom had more than one burial a week, which meant that every one was important. This is not to say that every funeral isn’t important to much larger and busier undertakers, but there can be a certain conveyor-belt mentality if there are five or six cremations in a single day, as is not unusual. We were at the other end of the spectrum. We fiddled with the cardboard coffin, sealing down the lid and checking the weight. Lowering it into the grave was a challenge when there were only the two of us to do it. Maggs was almost as strong as me, and we had a good system worked out, but even so, it could easily become undignified if we weren’t careful.

  There was to be no service, as such. I would read some words, agreed with Mr Everscott in advance, and the granddaughter had expressed a wish to say something, even though there would be so few of us to hear her. ‘I’ll be doing it for myself,’ she said. ‘If you can understand that.’

  I did, of course.