by Rebecca Tope
Throughout her life, Thea had had difficulty with roles. Never properly engaged in an identifiable long-term career; more friend than wife to Carl, more mate than mother to Jessica; seldom acting her age or doing what was expected – she mostly thought of herself as an observer, watching people from outside. Perhaps as a defence against any anxiety that they might be watching her, this had become her habit.
But she wasn’t very confident of her own powers of observation. She certainly didn’t believe she possessed any of the deductive qualities of a Miss Marple. She was simply caught in the middle of something violent and hate-fuelled and she thought it ought to be stopped. More than stopped – since there were no more Jennison sons to be murdered, it might well have stopped already. She actually wanted the killer located and punished. Killing Joel Jennison by pulling a blade across his throat was an act worthy of retribution, in anybody’s eyes.
The ringing phone startled her, at the same time as giving rise to a surge of anticipation. It didn’t matter who it was – it would be good to have somebody to talk to.
‘Hello? This is June Jennison,’ came the surprising announcement. ‘Would it be all right if I popped in to see you?’
‘Of course. When?’
‘Now. I’m just down the road. I thought I should phone first, in case you were scared by somebody knocking at the door.’
‘That’s very thoughtful. I’ll see you in a minute, then.’
Despite her gracious words, Thea was irritated by the assumption that she would be scared by a knock on the door at nine thirty pm. These repeated signs of apprehension across the nation, as well as large parts of the wider world, always disturbed her, putting her in a gloomy mood. She wanted to believe it was all hysteria and over-reaction, media-induced and groundless – but hard facts would persist in intruding. A man had been killed close to the house; burglaries happened everywhere; violence and hatred ran riot. The aberration, she sometimes suspected, was in her, not in the security-conscious mass.
June, when she arrived, was as neat as ever in a tailored jacket and well-pressed blue trousers. Thea was reminded of Muriel Isbister, mother of June’s murdered husband, and concluded that Paul had followed the stereotype and married a woman like his mother – at least as far as her attitude towards clothes was concerned.
Or maybe it was a feature of the Cotswolds, and all the women dressed like this.
‘Come in,’ she invited, trying to prepare herself for whatever might follow. This could hardly be dismissed as a casual passing visit.
‘You’ll think I’m off my head,’ June began, ‘coming at this time of night. I’m sure it’s a crackpot notion – but the idea wouldn’t go away. I just had to be here at the same time as Joel was killed last week.’
‘Like a police re-enactment?’ Thea said, wondering how such a thing could possibly work.
June shook her head. ‘I know it doesn’t make sense. We don’t know what happened out there, and anyway the weather’s different tonight, and the moon’s in a different phase. But I’ve got to do something. It’s all just drifting away, otherwise. The police have said we can bury Joel any time from the middle of next week, nobody ever even mentions Paul any more, the papers are full of the usual rubbish about children with leukaemia and corruption on the Council. Whoever killed them will get away with it if we don’t find some sort of new evidence.’
It was a heartfelt speech, and Thea found herself in sympathy with most of it. ‘But I don’t see what you can achieve by coming here.’
‘Will you come outside with me? I suppose “re-enactment” isn’t quite the word, but I want to try and work out what Joel was doing. I bet the police haven’t been back for a look at it in the dark.’
‘I don’t think they have. Come to that, we still haven’t checked the security lights – I mean, I know they work, but not exactly where you have to be to trigger them. Come on, we can do it now there’s two of us.’
June expressed a silent question.
‘They didn’t come on that night, you see. Or I’m fairly sure they didn’t. Let’s do it now. You go out and set them off, and I’ll go upstairs and see what I can see from the window.’
Without further query, June did as instructed. Thea went to her room, switching off the lights on the stairs and landing as she went. For extra verisimilitude, she lay down on the bed. A yellow glow was evident. Probably not enough to wake her up, but unmistakable once awake. The lights lit most of the garden at the front and side of the house. She hurried down to June, who had come back into the house.
‘The lights didn’t go on. When I heard the scream, it was dark – cloudy, I suppose. There wasn’t any moonlight. Which means the person knew how to avoid triggering them, or it was happening further away than we think.’
‘So what does that tell us?’ June asked.
‘Probably not much more than we know already. Joel was attacked within earshot of my room, then dumped in the field pool some time later. And somewhere there’s a lot of blood – although it might have gone by now.’
‘Blood?’
Too late, Thea realised that it couldn’t be assumed that the family knew just how Joel had died. Nobody had warned her not to tell them, though. Once again, the issue of roles cropped up. Was she meant to be a police informer, or a friendly sympathiser? Didn’t everybody want the same thing, anyway – apart from the killer? Who could, in theory, be June.
‘They haven’t told you.’
‘What?’
‘His throat was cut. He’d bled to death before they left him in the water.’
‘Oh yes, they did tell us that. They had to, really, didn’t they? We’ve a right to go and see the body, after all.’
‘Have you? A right, I mean.’
June gave her an impatient look. ‘Yes, of course. Gramps, me and Lindy. And Muriel, I suppose. Close family. We could just phone the undertaker and ask to see him. I went to see Paul, anyway.’
‘But not Joel?’
June shook her head. ‘I decided I could give it a miss. Nobody else wants to, either. The point is, we knew how he died. The Coroner’s Officer told us, actually.’
‘That’s all right then. I don’t want to have to keep secrets.’
‘Didn’t it occur to you that they’d hardly tell you, without telling us as well?’
Thea wriggled, aware of further confidences. ‘I suppose that’s right,’ she mumbled.
June was becoming more confrontational. ‘You heard him scream.’ It was an accusation, and Thea took it on the nose.
‘I think I did, yes.’
‘And you didn’t do anything. You didn’t even call the police.’
‘No. I listened for a few minutes, to see if it would come again, and then I went back to sleep.’
‘You didn’t even go outside for a proper search the next morning.’
‘No. I went for a walk with my dog. It was nearly midday when I found him.’
‘Don’t you feel terrible? Knowing you might have saved his life?’
Thea wove her fingers together, squeezing the knuckles, watching the fingertips turn red. ‘I try not to think about might have beens, and what ifs. I think most people would have done the same as I did. I was lazy, that’s all. I am trying, in my own small way, to assist with the investigations. Some people would have packed up and gone home, after a thing like that. I’m not very good at it, but I really do want to see if I can discover who did it and why.’
Her hands throbbed when she let them fall apart. It was a favourite trick, acquired accidentally during Carl’s funeral.
‘You’re not scared, are you?’ June was watching her closely. ‘Unhappy, perhaps, but not scared. I can see it would take a long time to understand you.’
‘Don’t bother. I’m only here another fortnight.’
‘And then what?’
‘And then I go somewhere else.’ Belatedly she remembered again the Minchinhampton woman. What was it that prevented her from phoning when she had the chance?
June seemed to give up. ‘So let’s go outside, shall we?’
‘You’re assuming I’ll participate in this plan, are you?’
‘That’s right.’
June led the way through the house and out of the back door. The garden sloped slightly downhill towards the road, with a shrubbery of rhododendrons and other evergreens between the lawn and the front hedge. A winding path led to the ornamental pond in the north-eastern corner. The field gate was some distance to their right. Most of the paths were of old stone, kept ruthlessly clear of weeds and moss. June seemed quite familiar with the layout. ‘Which window is your bedroom?’ she asked.
Thea considered a moment, before pointing out an upstairs window overlooking them. ‘There, I think.’
‘Which suggests he was on this side when he screamed. If he’d been in the yard, you probably wouldn’t have heard him.’
‘I expect I would. It was night, when sound carries. And I don’t think it was as close as just here.’ The idea appalled her – that the murder could have taken place right outside her bedroom window.
‘Did you have your window open?’
‘Just a bit, yes. I always sleep with a window open, if at all possible. That means I’d have been more likely to hear him from a distance.’
‘Or perhaps it means you’d be more likely to be woken up if there was a noise just here. Are you a deep sleeper?’
‘Fairly. But it was my first night in a strange bed. I don’t think I was very deep asleep.’
She thought about the police experiment with the tapes, and wondered whether she should tell June about it. From the way she was talking, it almost seemed that she knew already.
As if to confirm this idea, June began to speak, in a fluent monotone, only half addressing Thea. It was more like someone rehearsing the story so far, checking it through for inconsistencies or overlooked clues.
‘Raymond Barnfield – he’s one of the cops who’ve been talking to you – was a friend of Paul’s. He’s been keeping me updated. He’s a nice chap.’
‘Which one is he?’
‘Probably the one who didn’t say much.’
‘Right. So what’s he been telling you?’
‘They’re stumped. They’re coming to the pretty obvious conclusion it was the same person who killed Paul and Joel. That means they think it had some kind of family motive. Money, jealousy, hurt feelings, so they see me as a key witness. Me and the old man. They’re not too worried that anybody else is at risk, and that means they’re going about it all at a snail’s pace. Endless forensic work, going through the bank statements; checking everybody’s alibi. They won’t listen to me when I keep saying they’ve got it all wrong.’
They had moved down to the gate behind the house, and stood leaning on it, looking out into the dark field. Thea had a sudden sense of wilderness – deep countryside, where anything might happen. Like the outback in Australia, it sat there pretending innocence, when the reality was of an unyielding hostility towards humanity. The field sloped down to the brook, and from there more fields spread out, with no lights to indicate human habitation for some distance.
‘How far is the next house in that direction?’ she asked June, pointing an indistinct finger.
‘Probably nearly a mile. Of course there’s the Winstanleys just up there,’ indicating to the left, ‘and the Normans down the hill, plus the Staceys over the road – and us, of course. It’s not exactly isolated – it just feels that way sometimes.’
Thea had noted the us. Hardly surprising that June still regarded Barrow Hill as her home, of course. But did it also imply that she intended to move back there now?
They stood for a silent three minutes, listening to the faint sounds of distant traffic, a dog barking, a night bird singing. ‘I still don’t know how you could just ignore a scream,’ June said, dropping the remark like a big stone, right onto Thea’s foot.
The tone wasn’t aggressive, but nonetheless, Thea felt the full impact. She could have saved the man’s life. Perhaps. She was never going to know. The wound made her speak rashly.
‘But his throat was cut. It must have been over in a few seconds. There’d have been no hope of saving him, even if I’d rushed outside, and managed to find the right place.’
June was grudgingly agreeable to this defence. ‘That’s true, I suppose. Could a woman have done it, do you think?’
Thea paused. There was a significance to the question that seemed to be taking them into new waters. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Possibly if he was taken by surprise, pulled backwards. I really don’t know.’
‘Tell me,’ Thea switched to a fresh topic, ‘would you have come over here like this if the Reynoldses had been at home?’
‘What?’ Thea couldn’t see June’s face at all, but her tone was bemused. ‘Well, yes, of course. At least…’
‘Would this have happened if they’d been here?’
June made another sound reminiscent of being strangled. ‘That’s what we’d all like to know, isn’t it,’ she blurted. ‘Why now? Why here? Why him?’
Thea made no attempt to provide answers, but took the initiative of pushing away from the gate and starting back towards the house. ‘Come on,’ she invited. ‘We’re not doing any good here. If Joel’s ghost is going to show, it won’t be for a few more hours yet.’
It was flippantly said, but seriously received. ‘You believe in ghosts?’ The hope in the voice was unmissable.
‘Oh, well, not really. I mean – I’ve never seen one, and never met anybody who has. Surely you don’t think…?’
‘Don’t mock.’ June’s voice was low and hard.
‘I’m not. I know it’s a basic human need. Believe me, I do know all about that.’
‘Never mind need.’
Thea kept on walking, her feet drifting off the path at one point, stepping into the bare soil of a rosebed. Thorns snatched at her trousers. ‘Who does the gardening here, anyway?’ she asked, aware of the inconsequentiality, but still curious to know.
‘Jennifer. Jennifer gardens obsessively. Always did. Even at school she had things growing in the classroom.’
‘School? You were at school with her?’ The casual twist almost made Thea laugh. ‘But surely she’s years older than you?’
‘She’s forty-seven and I’m nearly forty-five. We were at Cheltenham Ladies’ together.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Thea, meaning something slightly different. Jennifer Reynolds had seemed at least ten years older than forty-seven. ‘She must be older than that.’
‘She married a man twelve years older than herself, and I married one eight years younger. Funny what a big difference that can make. We were day girls.’
‘Best friends?’
‘Not at all, no. I never really liked her. She was prissy and thin and obsessed with botany. I was plump and jolly and sporty. But it made us very aware of each other, living here as neighbours. I suppose in a small way we kept each other’s secrets.’
Thea’s frustration expressed itself in a small groan. ‘What? What’s the matter with you?’ June demanded.
‘It’s hopeless. I’m never going to grasp the links between all these people. However do the police manage to make sense of something like this? It’s impossible.’
‘They work backwards.’
‘Backwards?’
‘First they get the forensic stuff – hairs, footprints, mud, DNA – you know. Then they match it with everybody they can think of who could be the killer. Quite often that’s all they need. The motive jumps out at them as soon as they make the arrest.’
Thea laughed. ‘It ought to be me telling you all this, by rights. I’m the one with a policeman in the family.’
‘Don’t forget Raymond. He fills me in on the procedure now and then.’
Thea remembered again that June was a recent widow. Remembered, but scarcely credited it. There was nothing about her that chimed with Thea’s own experience. If anything, June was still p
lump and jolly, if not visibly sporty. The murder of her husband had left little discernible scar tissue. ‘Did you love Paul?’ she asked, on the very threshold of the back door. In the harsh light of the house it would not have been possible to frame such a question.
‘Ah!’ June inhaled as if preparing for a struggle. ‘The answer to that could take all night.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
They sat in the living room, with Jennifer Reynolds’ biggest fern watching over them, and Hepzibah ignoring them from the comfort of the hearth rug. Bonzo and Georgie remained voluntarily in the kitchen, as human males might do. Not for them the sighs and tears and sudden clashes of two emotional women waiting for ghosts in the night.
‘It isn’t only Joel’s anniversary,’ said June, as Thea opened a bottle of not-very-cold Hock. ‘It’s ten weeks today that Paul died, too.’
Thea struggled to remember what ten weeks felt like, only managing to come up with a memory of her daughter at that age, suddenly showing animated responses to words and songs. She’d made a point of noting down the landmark that had been ten weeks – but in no way did it translate to a similar period of widowhood. Unless perhaps it did mark a kind of emergence, a better sense of proportion, a setting in a wider context. ‘Ten weeks,’ she repeated. ‘Dear me.’
‘I didn’t go to pieces or anything, when they came to tell me. I had to be brave for Lindy’s sake, but that wasn’t it. I think women in this country are brilliant at coping with death, for some reason. I suppose we’ve had to be – with babies dying like flies, and the First World War taking all the men, and all the rest of it. There’s no patience with any nonsense. You can’t go loopy, and pretend it hasn’t happened. You can’t howl and scream and pull your hair out. You’ve got to choose a coffin and write thank you letters and fill in all those bloody forms for the bank.’
