by Rebecca Tope
He’s just a smarmy … she couldn’t think of anything that quite served the purpose. Smarmy, ingratiating, far too good-looking to be genuine … she feverishly listed all the reasons why she could not possibly be stupid enough to actually respond to his efforts.
‘Are you married, Mr Biddulph?’ she asked in desperation.
He jerked back as if she’d slapped him. ‘What? Oh – no, actually. Never quite got to that point. What does that have to do with anything?’
Drew loyally picked up the baton. ‘Well, your wife might have had a view about things,’ he said feebly, with a puzzled glance at Thea.
‘Why have you come here?’ Thea demanded, throwing every last shred of protocol out of the window. ‘What are you trying to do? It’s the weekend. We’ve got to go out in a minute. Drew’s given you everything he can. There’s no sense in it.’
‘All right, then.’ The man got up from his chair without any further argument. ‘Thank you for listening. That’s all I really wanted, you see. Just someone to hear it from the other side. We – my mother and brother and me - have nothing to apologise for. We’ve got the moral high ground, when all’s said and done. We were abandoned, left to fend for ourselves, badly damaged by the sudden loss of husband, father and provider. It’s a bit rich, now, to try and keep us away from the funeral.’
He looked intently from one to the other. ‘It isn’t nice to be treated as a dirty shameful secret. You’ve met Linda – which is more than we have. I hope you saw her for what she is. A cowardly social climber, afraid of what people would think if they knew the full story. I ask you – can you honestly live with yourselves if you let her have her way?’
He blinked his long lashes and rubbed his shapely nose. Thea felt a mirroring lump in her throat. ‘That’s what I said. Isn’t it, Drew? I said it was cowardly and unfair.’
‘Unfair to Lawrence, if I remember rightly,’ said Drew, who appeared to have had more than enough.
‘Unfair to everybody,’ she insisted. ‘And rather ridiculous, in this day and age. How could she think she’d ever keep the secret?’
‘Well …’ said Drew, before Clovis interrupted.
‘She kept it for thirty years,’ he said. ‘It’s only because my father’s dead that she’s got to spill the beans now.’
‘And she will,’ pleaded Drew. ‘As soon as the funeral’s over. Just give her a few days, and it’ll all look very different.’
‘Sorry, but we’re all going to be there – whenever it is. We all need it in our different ways – Luc most of all. I’m going now to locate the burial ground, which I don’t imagine will be very difficult. And I’ll be watching for a new grave being prepared. As a detective job, it’s all going to be pretty elementary. Just as finding you two has been. Things have changed a lot in the past thirty years, you know. Nobody gets to keep a secret any more.’
Drew heaved a heartfelt sigh. ‘Well, I can’t stop you. But I should perhaps warn you that just at the moment the burial ground is crawling with police. There’s been a murder just a field away.’
Chapter Nine
They walked to the Bakers Arms in an awkward silence. The spaniel followed them, off the lead, knowing to keep out of the path of any vehicles. On a mild Saturday in May, there was only sporadic passing traffic. Thea had watched Clovis Biddulph leave, still struggling to focus on anything there might be to dislike about him. There was nothing. He was intelligent; handsome; direct; honest; handsome; sensitive; dignified; hopelessly, disgracefully handsome … But hadn’t he been dreadfully angry and rude on the phone? He’d made threats, snarled and sneered and been altogether horrible. Yes, but he’d had good reason to be. He’d come to explain himself – although he had made no attempt to apologise.
It wasn’t important, she assured herself. After Tuesday, the whole Biddulph business would be filed away and forgotten. Except there was actually Tuesday to get through. He, his mother and the disabled Luc would show up and confront Linda and Lawrence, and there would be tears and shouting and a wholesale loss of dignity. And the man at the core of it, the man who was obviously to blame for the whole mess, would be lying quietly in one of Drew’s simple beech-veneered boxes, smugly oblivious to it all.
‘He doesn’t really deserve a dignified funeral, when you think about it,’ she said aloud.
‘What? Who?’
‘Stephen Biddulph. He must have forced Linda to keep quiet about his former family. And look where it’s got her. Everybody angry and scared. The wretched Lawrence with no idea what’s coming.’
‘Scared? Nobody’s scared, as far as I can see.’
‘Linda must be,’ she said quickly. ‘She doesn’t know how Lawrence will react, does she?’
‘At least I don’t have to tell any more lies,’ said Drew, clearly thinking about something else. ‘We’d better try and get a table outside, so the kids can run around – don’t you think?’
‘It’s not very suitable for Meredith. It might be better indoors, if there’s any space left.’
It was good, she told herself, that Drew was barely showing an interest in the Biddulphs. Good that he hadn’t properly noticed her peculiar reaction to Clovis. It would make it so much easier to forget the whole silly business if he never said a word about it.
Her confidence increased over lunch. Maggs and Den were fifteen minutes late, but there was no difficulty in holding onto the biggest table in the bar. For some reason, business was slow, and the landlord was more than happy to accommodate them. The children tumbled in, Stephanie and Timmy each holding one of Meredith’s hands, almost dragging her down the passageway from the entrance at the back of the building. Hepzie rushed to greet them, as if deprived of their company for a month.
‘We saw a tapir,’ said Timmy. ‘It’s got a little trunk like an elephant.’
‘Effylant,’ said Meredith, looking round as if hoping to see one in the other bar.
Stephanie was the first to subside. ‘Are zoos cruel, do you think?’ she asked worriedly.
‘That’s a big question,’ said Drew. ‘I think some of them are, yes. But a lot of animals don’t mind the shortage of space, and hardly notice they’re inside a cage.’
‘Hey, don’t start that now,’ ordered Maggs. ‘I’m starving. Can we get something that can be brought quickly, do you think?’
Drew laughed at her. ‘Are you sure you’re not pregnant?’ he said.
Den rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t start that again,’ he warned. ‘It’s turning into a touchy subject.’
‘She’ll be three at this rate,’ Maggs grumbled. ‘And I wanted another one by the time she was two.’
‘Can’t order these things,’ said Drew comfortably.
All three of the other adults looked at him disgustedly. ‘He’s too good for this world,’ said Thea, thinking the same thing could definitely not be said of her.
‘Makes you sick,’ said Maggs. ‘So – how was your morning down amongst the corpses?’
Timmy straightened and stared at her in disbelief. ‘She said it as well!’ he gasped, as if unable to credit the evidence of his ears. ‘Dad – Maggs said it as well.’
‘I heard her,’ said Drew. ‘The thing is, people say things like that when they’re with friends, and that’s okay. But you have to be more careful when there are families around. Didn’t I already explain that?’ he concluded tiredly.
‘You can be as politically incorrect as you like between friends,’ said Maggs.
‘Don’t be too sure,’ Thea corrected her. ‘Before you know it, Merry will have reported you at her nursery, and the thought police’ll be at your door. That’s what happened in East Germany, you know.’
Thea’s tendency to see sinister implications in every CCTV camera, and to view Twitter and the rest as far too intrusive for anybody’s good, might have gone into abeyance recently, but it was far from abandoned.
‘So, Tim – don’t tell anybody at school that I said “corpse” – right?’ said Maggs. ‘Not that anyone’s li
kely to think there’s much wrong with it. It’s only a silly convention, after all.’
‘It’s not, though,’ said Drew. ‘It’s disrespectful. You know it is.’
‘So how was your morning?’ asked Den loudly. ‘If it’s not an indiscreet question.’
‘Mmm, it is a bit,’ said Drew with a small frown.‘Not suitable subject matter for the dinner table, as my mother might have said.’
‘Tell us about the zoo,’ Thea suggested. ‘That’s much more interesting.’
It was well past two when they left the pub, Meredith drooping sleepily and Hepzie getting restless. The tall former police officer carried his chunky little girl over his shoulder, and Stephanie raced the spaniel down the short length of village road to the church. Timmy watched them critically. ‘If a big lorry came now …’ he said.
‘We’d hear it in plenty of time,’ Thea reassured him. ‘But I do sometimes wish there were pavements, even so.’ Broad Campden was a typical stop-start Cotswolds settlement. The pub was a distance from the church, which in turn was removed from the cluster of houses that formed the apparent centre of the village. There were fields and hedges in between; a quiet looping lane and a modest little stream added to the picture. The Slocombes lived down another meandering lane, which petered out into a field. ‘The very definition of leading nowhere,’ Thea said.
A small group of people stood on the wide grassy knoll opposite the church, reading a plaque attached to the huge cherry tree that grew there. They resolved themselves into a man, woman and young girl, and as Stephanie approached them she slowed, eyeing the child with interest. The strangers turned to face them, apparently eager to speak. Hepzie performed immediate introductions, jumping up and wagging her feathery tail.
‘Can you get her down, please?’ came the woman’s strained voice. ‘Modestine is allergic to dogs.’
‘Come here, Heps,’ Thea ordered, with a sigh. Her tolerance of allergies was notoriously thin.
‘Modestine?’ repeated Drew. ‘Then you must be … Mr and Mrs Biddulph. Are you looking for me? I’m Drew Slocombe.’
‘Ah – that’s lucky. We were sort of hoping to find you,’ said the man. ‘We’ve been to your house, but got no response. We really came to have a look at the burial ground, but we haven’t found it yet.’
‘That’s right,’ interrupted the woman. ‘We thought we should show Modestine where Granpaps was going to be laid to rest. It helps to talk them through these things in advance, don’t you find? We were all so terribly fond of him, you know. He was such a devoted family man. We want the funeral to go perfectly. He deserves that.’
This stark contrast with the characterisation that Clovis had given the man made Thea’s head buzz. Two such different experiences seemed somehow dreadful. The buzzing got worse when she realised the half-brothers could have met in the field.
‘Oh – absolutely,’ gushed Drew. ‘The burial ground is down that way. Just a few minutes’ walk. And you already know our house is down here,’ he indicated the opposite direction. ‘If you need me for anything, just come and knock. I’m not going out again today.’ Thea gave him a reproachful look, hoping to remind him that he had virtually promised Maggs a walk to Chipping Campden. He ignored her, keeping his attention on his clients.
‘Can we drive to the field?’ The woman pointed to a black car tucked beside the church.
‘Yes. That is – you can usually. But there’s been a bit of an incident there today, so you might not find a space. I’m not sure how things stand just at the moment. It’s really no distance. Down that road, and it’s the first thing you come to on the right, once you’re past all the houses.’
‘Incident?’ repeated the man, who Thea had readily identified as Lawrence, even without any help from Drew. He was taller than his older half-brother, darker, with thick black eyebrows and not the least bit handsome. There were grooves on his face that suggested acute emotional distress. His voice contained a kind of whine, and his wife was obviously a bit of a nag.
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Drew. ‘But there’s no need for you to worry. Everything’s going to be fine for Tuesday. It really doesn’t concern us, other than being so close by. Just that there could be a bit of trouble parking.’
‘Hmm,’ said the wife suspiciously.
Thea was also having doubts. As she understood it, Lawrence’s mother still had not finally agreed to hold the funeral on the coming Tuesday. Yet Drew gave no hint of this uncertainty. The children had been conducting their own introductions. Modestine looked to be about four, which was young enough for Stephanie to feel maternal towards her. Meredith struggled for release from Den, having decided things were far too interesting for her to proceed with the planned nap. Timmy was kicking stones from the edge of the patch of grass and throwing glances at the newcomer.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked her, having missed the introductions.
‘Modestine,’ she announced defiantly. Thea, hearing this, concluded the child was still too young for the inevitable teasing the name would incur. Although, maybe it wouldn’t. Outlandish names were ubiquitous these days, after all. But wasn’t it a name from a book, she kept wondering. Where had she heard it before?
Stephanie, miraculously, had the answer. ‘That’s a donkey’s name,’ she said with a little laugh. ‘A bad-tempered donkey in a story about a long walk.’
‘How do you know that?’ Thea interrupted. ‘Can you remember who wrote the book?’
‘Robert Louis Stevenson,’ came the prompt reply.
‘I don’t believe you. He wrote Treasure Island and Kidnapped. Adventure stories. Nothing about going for walks with a donkey.’
Stephanie drew herself up. ‘It is,’ she insisted. ‘It’s in the library at school.’
‘She’s right,’ said Lawrence. ‘What a clever girl!’
So why name your kid after a donkey? Thea wanted to demand. Why not? would probably be the swift reply.
Unexpectedly, a reply to the silent question was soon forthcoming. ‘My grandmother was French. She suggested the name, and we liked it well enough to go along with it.’
And she must have suggested Clovis as well, Thea realised. Stephen Biddulph’s mother, married to an Englishman, and not long dead, it seemed, if she had influence over this little girl’s name. ‘I see,’ she said with a smile.
‘I don’t imagine you do,’ Lawrence argued. ‘But it doesn’t matter.’ He sighed and looked round for his wife, like a child for its mother.
‘Well …’ said Drew, supported by Maggs, who was looking impatient. ‘As I say – any trouble, just come and find me down this way.’
‘I’m sure that won’t be necessary,’ said Mrs Lawrence Biddulph. ‘Let’s get on with it, shall we? It’s taken me all day to get you this far.’ She looked at her husband with a mixture of impatience and solicitude. ‘You shouldn’t have taken those sedatives last night. It’s thrown your sleeping patterns into chaos.’
‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.
The woman looked to Thea for support. ‘Honestly! He didn’t wake up until nearly eleven. I put him in the spare room, so we didn’t disturb each other, and he slept like a dead thing.’
‘It does that to people,’ said Thea. ‘Grief, I mean.’
‘Well, let’s hope he pulls out of it after the funeral, then. He’s meant to be going back to work on Monday week.’
Thea watched the little family straggle down to the burial field, thinking Well, at least I’m not as much of a cow as that.
Back in the house, the remains of the afternoon felt ominously unplanned to Thea. It was doubtless down to her, as hostess, to produce tea, biscuits, entertainment and a generally comfortable atmosphere. ‘We could play a game,’ she suggested, thinking of her own family weekends of thirty years ago, where one or other of them would insist on Monopoly or Pictionary. Thirty years? she caught herself asking. Could it really be that long since she was fifteen and Jocelyn twelve and the older ones in and out of the house at random times? Her f
ather had kept his weekends sacrosanct for the family and was permanently eager for a game of cards or something with a board. He had always done his best to win, as well. Not like Drew, who deliberately lost to Timmy as often as was humanly possible in the misguided assumption that this would make the child feel good about himself.
But a game would exclude young Meredith and make conversation difficult. ‘What do you want to do?’ she asked helplessly.
Den Cooper took over. ‘Merry needs a nap, for a start,’ he said. ‘And Maggs and Drew have things to talk about. It’s lovely out there – and I notice there’s a footpath that goes right into Chipping Campden. Why don’t we take Stephanie, Timmy and Hepzibah for a good long walk? You can show me the local sights. I’ve never been here before, remember.’
He made it sound blessedly simple. Stephanie and Tim were delighted at the prospect of a second outing in one day, and Thea was just glad not to have to make decisions. The evening meal would have to take care of itself – she could manage an acceptable spaghetti bolognese at fairly short notice, and nobody was likely to be hungry after the filling pub lunch.
Den’s role as rescuer continued as they set out down the unpaved lane and into the first field. The footpath kinked around an uninhabited house, which Thea had become increasingly intrigued by. It had a large grapevine growing against the front wall, and tall dark conifers close by that still loomed like giants, despite having been lopped some months earlier. The path followed a narrow alleyway at the back of the house, before returning to the same big field they had started in. There were then choices to be made. A favourite with Thea and her dog for short strolls, was to turn left past a small fenced-off field often containing odd-looking sheep, opposite an ancient house that had been renovated and embellished until it had to be worth an astronomical sum. There was then the handsome old Quaker Meeting House, just a few steps further, before coming back to the church, and pub. The whole area was an indecisive mixture of natural countryside and human interventions: alternating extravagantly expensive houses with patches of neglect, interspersed with evidence of genuine agriculture. Thea had embarked on some research into it all over the winter but, apart from identifying some very engaging characters from the Arts and Crafts Movement, she had not got very far.
