by Rebecca Tope
‘Why don’t you like dogs?’ Thea had said at one point.
‘They demand too much,’ I replied briefly.
‘That’s true. Sometimes I can do without them myself.’ I was learning that Phil’s new lady had a knack of disarming criticism or disagreement, even though she could rubbish my pagan opinions so categorically. I had to admit, as well, that I liked her far more than I’d expected to at first sight. She wore her widowhood and consequent suffering lightly but conspicuously, conveying an impression of courage and self-sufficiency that made her very likeable. She was direct and brisk, in the way small women often are.
‘But I’m afraid I’m hopelessly sentimental about Hepzie. She’s such a good friend. I shudder to think what would have become of me without her over the past year and a half.’
‘Well, we can’t all be the same,’ I said, rather stiffly. ‘I’ve got a cat.’
I heard the next question coming. ‘No boyfriend, then?’ It was light, uttered in a breath, floating off even as she spoke it.
‘No boyfriend,’ I confirmed. ‘Not for quite a while now.’ To tell her about Lawrence, so many years after the event, would have been pointless. Even at the time he hadn’t been particularly important. His significance had all been in the things he had taught me about human folly. But I was grateful to Thea for the question. It cleared a blockage out of the way, if nothing else.
‘It’s a rotten business, this murder, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘For you and Phil, I mean. Is he going to have to go off every day and do his detective work? Will you want to stay at Greenhaven without him? I mean – there’s still no power. It’s sure to be chilly and bleak there.’
She sighed. ‘I don’t know, yet. I expect he’ll try to keep the work to a minimum. But he can’t dodge it altogether. He knows you, for a start.’
I hadn’t seen it like that – the way I formed a link in a chain between Phil and Gaynor, and potentially, at least, provided him with an insight into the people involved.
‘He thinks I might know the killer, does he?’
She chewed her lower lip worriedly. ‘Well, you must understand,’ she said haltingly. ‘There’s bound to be a question mark over your head, in their minds. I mean – you were on the spot. She was at your house yesterday. The Barrow’s a special place for you.’
I had no idea what she was trying to say. ‘And I found the body,’ I said. ‘So?’
‘Well, you seem to be the only person who was in any sort of relationship with her. You might even have been the last person to see her alive. These are all pointers. That is—’
‘I keep getting the feeling you’re trying to warn me,’ I said, ‘against police suspicion that I killed her. Is that what you’re trying to say?’
‘Not quite. But I imagine you’re quite near the top of their list, so to speak. At least until they learn more about her and the people in her life.’
I gazed around, at the spreading grasslands, the oppressive sky, the straggling smothering blankets of old man’s beard on the hedges. Somewhere there must be comfort, reassurance. ‘But…’ I burbled. ‘But I didn’t.’
She put a small hand on my arm. ‘You don’t have to convince me. I’m not accusing you.’
That wasn’t enough. That was like the defence lawyer who demands that his client withhold any incriminating truths. I wanted wholesale trust and unqualified friendship. But, I reminded myself, I had friends. I had Stella, and – at a push – Pamela and Daphne.
‘And there’s this Freemasonry stuff,’ Thea added, as if prompted by a careless afterthought. ‘What’s that all about?’
‘It’s not about anything,’ I snapped. ‘But it has been a powerful factor in this area for centuries. We’re all aware of it in the background, even if we don’t actively think about it. I thought you said Phil had explained it all to you.’
‘He tried. He told me the story of how he resigned from the Lodge and how furious everybody was with him. And you said something about it when I asked about Caroline. But I still can’t get a proper idea of why it was all so important.’ There was something touching in the way she spoke, a hesitant child wary of venturing into adult realms.
I nodded. ‘It was all rather ghastly, actually. They don’t like people to resign, you see. They did their best to punish him for it. And I told you Caroline was livid.’
‘It must have been at the same time as all the scandal and publicity around Masons and the police,’ she said. ‘Exposing their corruption and back-scratching.’
‘That certainly didn’t help. Poor old Phil, he was trapped between a whole lot of hard places.’ I recalled a long summer night, when I was twenty-one or thereabouts, and Phil had driven me home after an evening’s babysitting. He’d had a few drinks – nobody bothered much about drinking and driving in those days, at least in quiet areas like ours – and Caroline had seemed shirty about something when they’d come home. We’d sat in the warm dark car in the farmyard outside my parents’ house and talked for half an hour or more. All I had to do was listen. He scarcely knew who it was there beside him, anyway. He’d discovered some sordid bit of business going on amongst the Masons, which had confirmed his decision to give it up. But their hooks were well and truly in him, and detaching wasn’t easy. ‘You leave a lot of skin behind where you tear yourself away,’ he said. ‘They’re expert at tying you in – as bad as any cult. It’s like walking over your own children’s faces or cutting your father’s throat to get away from them. Worse than that – it’s like giving up your own soul. That’s what happens when you make those oaths – just like Faust selling his soul. Everything’s fine while you play the game. You can have the world. But if you break away, you’re done for. You spend the rest of your life in outer darkness, lost forever.’
His language was full of images of torment and fear, which I assume he got from the rituals and ceremonies at the Lodge. Most of it frightened me, but I didn’t understand a quarter of what he said.
At the end, when I opened the car door, he looked at me as if waking up from a nightmare. ‘It’s like choosing to live without a whole dimension,’ he said. ‘Can you imagine that?’
In my clear-sighted innocence, I met his eyes. ‘If it’s a dimension of evil, then you should be glad,’ I said.
He laughed at that, bitterness mixed with a sliver of relief, I thought. ‘Thank you, Mary,’ he said, with the deliberate enunciation of the drunk. ‘That’s exactly what I needed to hear.’
I didn’t even try to describe all this to Thea. Instead, I evaded any real discussion of the subject, aided by Arabella, who came thundering through the bushes at the sound of our voices.
A full-grown Tamworth sow is a large and very heavy object, and there was nothing between her and us except for Thea’s spaniel. The dog was slow to realise what was bearing down on it, even when Thea tried to raise the alarm by calling its name. With only a yard or two to go, it noticed and started to dodge the oncoming leviathan. At the same time Arabella, perfectly well aware of the obstacle in her path and planning to politely circumvent it, also dodged in the same direction on an inevitable collision course. The dog howled, the pig squealed and Thea screeched as if she was ten times more hurt and shocked than the animals had been.
It was quickly over, Arabella snorting reproachfully at me for introducing such a brainless bundle of hair into her domain. The spaniel crept quiveringly on three legs to its mistress, who gathered it up and crooned idiotically as she examined the bones of one foreleg.
The other dogs gathered, eyeing the pig with surprised wariness. Arabella was orange, with a good coat of wiry hair, huge flapping ears and very small screwed-up eyes. In fact she seldom opened her eyes enough for anyone to see the pupils. She moved on delicate cloven trotters, which preferred soft mud to hard-baked summer ground. She spoke in a wide vocabulary of grunts, which turned into a purring croon when I scratched her cheeks.
I tipped the apples and carrots and cabbage leaves onto the ground, and Arabella forgot everything in
her joy.
‘Isn’t she wonderful?’ I said, competing fondly for Best Pet Award. ‘She had eleven babies last year. That’s a lot for a Tamworth. She’s due again soon.’
‘Oh?’ Thea made little effort to show an interest. ‘What happened to last year’s?’
‘Sold, bartered, eaten,’ I summarised. ‘There’s half a one in my freezer still.’
‘Right,’ she muttered palely, still preoccupied by the limping spaniel.
‘Pigs and dogs don’t mix very well,’ I tried to explain. ‘They have very different world views, I’ve discovered. A pig doesn’t care what its people think of it. They’re marvellously self-sufficient. The babies are hilarious in the first month or two.’
I forced myself to stop eulogising on Arabella’s gentleness, her curiosity and willingness to accord human beings the benefit of any doubt.
‘She’s very handsome,’ said Thea at last. ‘Pleased to meet you, Arabella,’ she added. The pig squinted closely at her, wondering whether she might have another apple somewhere about her person.
The spaniel soon recovered and we turned for home in the fading light. Thea was very quiet, which I supposed was all about the dog, but when she finally spoke I realised my mistake.
‘Why was Caroline so cross when Phil left the Masons?’ The question burst onto my thoughts which had been entirely on Arabella and where I might move her when the woodland owner banished her. I had to switch rapidly back to the Hollises.
‘Because of her father. He was the Grand Master, you see. It was all supposed to be kept in the family. Even poor old Steve was being groomed, from the age of about ten, regardless of their claims that they never actively recruit people. That’s one of the big jokes about them – the difference between what they say and what they do.’
‘Their son,’ Thea remembered, ignoring my calumnies. ‘And what happened? Did he join up?’
‘Not as far as I know. He’s only nineteen now, which is still a bit young. The whole business became taboo in the Hollis family, as far as I could tell. You’ll have noticed that Phil still hates talking about the Craft.’
Thea thought about this, before saying something startling. ‘Craft,’ she repeated. ‘Isn’t that what pagans – or wiccans – call their activities as well?’
I choked. ‘Well, yes. But it’s completely different. With us, it really is a craft – something we do. In Freemasonry, nobody ever does anything. It’s pure abstraction. It’s different,’ I insisted.
‘Is it?’ was all she said to that.
When we got back to the village Phil was standing by Helen’s gate, talking to a woman I knew. It would have been surprising if I hadn’t known her, actually, since I knew just about everybody in the neighbourhood. But this was Ursula Ferguson, who I knew rather well.
Greetings were exchanged, and questioning glances thrown in all directions. ‘Ari!’ Ursula exclaimed, hurrying to lay a hand on my upper arm, squeezing firmly, almost painfully. ‘What an appalling thing to happen!’
I nodded and pulled away from her grip. She surged on, all the usual platitudes about it being unbelievable and terrifying and incomprehensible. Phil watched her closely, virtually ignoring Thea and the dogs.
Ursula lived in Turkdean, only a couple of miles away, with a teenage daughter who cared for nothing but horses. The bulk of Ursula’s income apparently went towards feed and equipment for a rangy hunter that the girl had insisted on acquiring. She was a familiar sight in all the villages, a solitary rider oblivious to everything but the equine muscles moving between her legs. Ursula was a schoolteacher, poor wretch, vainly trying to inspire her daughter’s peers with the delights of geography at one of the big urban comprehensives. Sometimes she looked transparent with stress and exhaustion. But there was always some deeper reserve of energy, as was evident now, on a late Sunday afternoon in Cold Aston, with the light fading and a murder adding massively to the ghosts and shadows of Samhain.
‘But Gaynor,’ she wailed at the end of her threnody. ‘That poor girl.’
I didn’t think it was especially perverse of me to itch to correct her. Gaynor was not a girl, she was thirty-six. She was no more or less pitiable than anybody else unfortunate enough to be murdered. Her death, in fact, had appeared to be comparatively painless. I uttered none of these thoughts, but they made me wriggle and step further away from the group. I felt impatient and antisocial.
Phil rescued me. ‘It’s getting cold,’ he said, overtly to Thea, but I felt myself included. ‘We should get inside.’ He looked at Ursula, and added, ‘Thank you for talking to me, Mrs Ferguson. You’ve been very helpful.’
Belatedly I wondered what in the world she could have said to him. She knew Gaynor only as everybody else knew her – a peripheral figure, loosely attached to me, but not participant in any activity that concerned the pagans. Had the irksome matter of Oliver Grover been mentioned again?
Thea led Phil and the three dogs into Greenhaven and I crossed the street to my cottage. Ursula made a sound which I took to be valedictory. I looked at her. ‘Are you walking?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘It’s not completely dark yet. There’s a moon, anyway.’
The thought was inescapable. There was a murderer out there, and the way to Turkdean led down a bridlepath known as Bangup Lane. It was not a prospect she could possibly relish. On the other hand, she must have known what she was in for when she set out on foot, unless an expected lift had failed to materialise.
‘I’d better drive you,’ I said. Then I wondered about Phil, so casually letting a lone woman make her own way home after nightfall, without asking if she’d be all right.
Ursula protested half-heartedly. I ignored her and went to fetch my car keys.
There was no garage attached to my cottage so I kept the car on the street outside. There was never any competition for parking space, with almost all the other properties boasting accommodation for vehicles as well as people. Ursula waited beside the car until I let her in.
I was tired. Weariness washed over me as I clumsily did a three-point turn in the street, running onto the pavement outside Greenhaven’s gate. ‘Careful,’ said Ursula, as we jolted over the kerb.
I almost turned off the engine right there and let the ungrateful cow walk, after all.
But instead I drove too fast down the quiet twilight lane to Turkdean. Ursula clutched the door beside her, but wisely remained silent. It took barely five minutes to get to her village by car. A tiny place, much smaller and more compact than Cold Aston, it boasted nothing more than a church and a telephone box besides a handful of very beautiful houses. Ursula had a classic example, with front garden full of shrubs and perennials. It had taken me years to discover how she came by it. It turned out it was the usual pattern, albeit with one interesting variation. She had had an older brother, who made a handsome sum in the City. He bought the Turkdean house with his profits, in the mid-80s. Then he’d got himself run over by a speeding metropolitan police car, and Ursula had inherited the house, since the brother was unmarried and the parents comfortably settled in a hilltop hideaway near Montpellier.
Only as I drew up outside her gate did she speak again. ‘They seem very interested in Oliver Grover,’ she said. ‘Mr Hollis asked ever so many questions about him.’
There was something about the way she said his name. ‘Do you know him?’ I asked. ‘Phil, I mean.’
‘Vaguely. I taught both his children in Year Nine. I remember him from the parents’ evenings. And his wife, of course. And I was at Emily’s funeral. Terrible business.’
‘Ex-wife,’ I said, automatically. ‘But…’ I was trying to keep a grip on the thread. ‘That doesn’t explain why you were at Cold Aston just now.’
‘I walked over to see him,’ she said, as if this was too obvious and simple to warrant explanation.
‘How did you know he was there?’
‘I saw him last night. When we left you, we stood around outside for a bit, the way we always do. He came to the door
of the house opposite, and I recognised him.’
She spoke impatiently, as if answering a particularly obtuse pupil. I hadn’t the energy to ask anything more, but I still didn’t feel I had the whole story. Luckily, Ursula seemed to feel I needed her to continue.
‘When I got there this afternoon, he invited me in and gave me a cup of tea,’ she said.
My surprise was completely genuine. ‘Brewed on the gaz?’ I spluttered.
She laughed. ‘That’s right. Very atmospheric, it was, with the candles and everything.’ She looked up at her own house, with little sign of impatience to get indoors. ‘Of course, I already knew he’d become a Detective Superintendent, so I managed not to make any blunders.’
‘How?’ I mumbled, thinking she might have seen it in the local paper, but wondering at her noticing or remembering when he must be just one of thousands of parents she’d dealt with over the years.
‘Funnily enough, it was Sally Grover who told me. You know – we both go to Bernadette in Naunton for our hair. She does us both on Saturday mornings, and we often get chatting. She’s doing ever so well, isn’t she, for her age? Wonderful woman.’
Shut up, I wanted to scream. The air felt full of watching eyes, following all my movements, spreading gossip, telling tales. And it was all my own fault. I’d gossiped to Sally about Phil quite a lot over the years, in connection with his Auntie Helen and Greenhaven. I’d even told her about the new lady friend and we’d speculated about what she might be like.
‘Oh,’ was all I said.
‘Poor you,’ she suddenly sympathised. ‘It must have been ghastly. Finding her like that. They’re all talking about it.’
I wilted even further. Whoever ‘they’ might be, they’d apparently got the story more or less right. ‘Mmm,’ I mumbled.
