by Rebecca Tope
‘I’d better tell Phil,’ said Thea, in what sounded like another change of subject.
‘Tell him what?’
‘About your friend Kenneth and his money troubles. It’s the sort of thing he should know about. Or do you want to tell him?’
My head was in a muddle with everything that had happened during the day. ‘I think it’s more important to tell him that Caroline knew Gaynor,’ I said.
Thea hesitated, ready to get out of the car. ‘Um – I’m not sure I’m the person for that. You’d better come in with me now and bring him up to date.’
I tried to see her face in the dark. ‘He might have gone to bed,’ I objected. ‘Besides, it would be treacherous to pass on what Pamela just told me in confidence. Plus, it’s surely irrelevant.’
She opened the car door enough to make the light go on inside. Her face was serious. ‘Ariadne, you have a lot to learn about murder investigations. I’m way ahead of you on this. Not just because of Phil, but because I have a brother-in-law who’s also a Detective Superintendent, as it happens. I’ve always taken an interest. My daughter’s just joined the force, as well. I’m surrounded by them, whether I like it or not. And one thing I’ve discovered is that there is no such thing as irrelevance when it comes to a murder. At least, not this sort of murder, where all the pointers are to a pagan significance. You and the others in the group are going to be under scrutiny, whether you like it or not. If one of you has money worries, debts, whatever, then that’s important. Take my word for it.’
It was nothing short of a lecture, and I felt suitably admonished. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘But you do realise that Pamela might never speak to me again if she works out who informed on her.’
‘Oh, I think she will,’ Thea said. ‘If you ask me, young Pamela is really rather fond of you.’
I merely grunted at that, and got out of the car, leaving the wool and spinning gear for the morning.
Thea dragged me across the street and into Greenhaven, where Phil was all entangled with dogs on Helen’s big leather sofa.
‘Don’t get up,’ I told him. ‘I won’t be here for long. Thea thinks I should tell you some stuff.’
He looked at me, open-faced. Not wary or irritated, just encouraging and receptive. I remembered how easy he’d always been to talk to.
I summarised to the point where it sounded more like a text message. ‘Kenneth Webster has got money troubles, and your ex-wife knew Gaynor,’ I said. Then I looked at Thea and asked, ‘Satisfied?’
Phil still didn’t get up. He hugged the smaller dog to his chest, and absently rubbed his chin across the hair on its back. It was probably not deliberate, but it made him irresistibly human and safe. The dog sighed blissfully. Thea’s spaniel had welcomed her with excessive ecstasy, jumping up at her and wagging its silly tail. These people used dogs as intimately as they did each other, it seemed.
‘You’ve seen Caroline?’ Phil said.
I told him about her visit, and my doubts as to its purpose. I added the extra information about Oliver and Gaynor being a lot friendlier than I’d realised. I started to explain about Pamela and Kenneth being in my pagan group, but he waved a hand at me, saying he knew just who they were.
‘Have you seen anyone else from the group since yesterday morning?’ he wanted to know.
‘Verona Farebrother came round this morning,’ I remembered.
Phil nodded. ‘Thea mentioned her,’ he said.
With a sense of superfluity, I proceeded with my report. ‘There’s a meeting tomorrow evening, but she can’t be there for some reason. I expect Daphne and Ursula will both turn up, as well as Kenneth and Pamela.’
‘What’s it for?’
Good question, I thought. ‘I think mainly it’s to decide whether we carry on with the Samhain ceremony at the Long Barrow. We’re not sure you’ll allow us to, of course.’
Phil gave a half shrug, careful not to dislodge the corgi. ‘We’ve done all we need to there – but I imagine it might seem a trifle insensitive to some people if you carry on as planned.’
For the first time it struck me that the Barrow would never be the same again to anybody living in the area. The scene of a violent death generally acquired an aura that could last for centuries – especially if it was already a place of some mystery, with ghostly associations. Perhaps the killer even intended that to be so.
‘Well, thanks for the information,’ Phil said, having waited in silence for me to speak. ‘We’d better not keep you any longer. You’ve had a busy day from the sound if it.’ Then he added, ‘Oh, yes. Thea thought you might still have a mug with Verona Farebrother’s fingerprints on it. Is that right?’
I was too tired to bridle at the suggestion that I hardly ever washed anything up. I nodded. ‘And one with your ex-wife’s on as well, come to that,’ I said. ‘I’d better try not to muddle them up.’ I didn’t want to go out there into the dark, leaving the two of them so cosy and contented. By rights it ought to have been the other way around, with the unheated house and lack of ordinary facilities.
‘I’ll come and collect them tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Maybe you could label them and put them in a plastic bag for me?’
I was dismissed and took my leave with a smile from Thea. ‘Thanks for keeping me amused,’ she said, at the door.
As I crossed the street I looked around, at Greenhaven and the rest of the village, with the fields behind it. Everything seemed to have been sprayed with mildew. I could smell it, musty and moribund. I couldn’t remember why I was bothering to stay alive, what I could ever possibly want to do with myself from that point on. People talk about broken spirits, and that was exactly how it felt. Some normally upright thread inside me, which pulsed and gleamed and kept me essentially sound, had drooped like an unwatered plant. I remembered the questions that Baldwin and Latimer had asked me, and their subtle lack of comprehension. They hadn’t mocked my lifestyle or rubbished my friends. They’d simply trampled heedlessly over everything I valued, blindly failing to grasp what mattered to me. They’d held a mirror up to my life, which showed it as pointless, a foolish failure in a world where everybody ought to have a proper job and a bland simplistic belief system.
I trudged into the living room without looking back, and noted that the Rayburn had gone out. The cat was nowhere to be seen. The piles of knitwear in the back room looked abandoned, little more than a lot of unwanted jumble.
I remembered the bottle of gooseberry and elderflower in the fridge, that I had not got around to drinking on Saturday. It was a rich sweet wine, good with fruit and cake and ice cream. It was at its best on a hot June evening, not a gloomy October one – but I drank it anyway, pouring out a large glassful as soon as I’d dealt with the fingerprinted mugs. Without them I wouldn’t be able to do much entertaining. Almost all the others had chips or cracks in them.
Halfway down the bottle, the magic began to work. The world gained colour again, my head filled with dreams and insights that convinced me I was clever and creative and valuable. Nothing actually mattered, not even the death of Gaynor. People died. It happened all the time. We attached far too much importance to the individual, making such a fuss when a single person expired. I put a CD on at random, letting Macy Gray belt out her stuff, not caring if the whole village heard. It was like having someone in the house with me for a few minutes. Then I turned her off again. None of the songs had enough tune and most of the words were indistinguishable. I’m funny about music, anyway. Helen bought me the CD player, not long before she died, and I hardly ever used it. Then I found a stack of disks for sale cheap in Cirencester market, and decided to give it a better try.
The taste of the wine got more and more cloying as I finished the bottle. I could feel it turning thick and sludgy in my stomach. When I held up the glass to the light and tilted it, the liquid was oily, slow-moving. Behind it, the light bulb was diffuse, spooky. It seemed to have a face. I shut my eyes, and the whole world heaved.
But still I felt carefree and pl
eased with myself. I went to bed, moving carefully, making sure the doors were locked and everything switched off. I fetched myself another blanket – one I’d made from thick and creamy wool, very loosely spun. Nothing in the world could be more comforting.
I woke next morning around nine, with an excruciatingly dry mouth. My head didn’t exactly hurt, but it was muffled and dysfunctional. I knew already that the day would have to be abandoned. I was never going to accomplish anything. I might not even get out of bed, except to fetch a large glass of water and drain it in seconds.
Then I went back to sleep.
It was midday when I woke again. I lay there thinking Cat, pig, Sally, listing the animals and people who might need me enough to make me get out of bed. No, I decided, they could all manage for a while longer without me. Sally’s curtains could certainly wait. The pig would have to find more acorns and worms for herself. And there was no sign of the cat. I sank into self-pity. Nobody cared whether I lived or died. Stella had her job and her family. My parents hardly ever saw me anyway. And Gaynor was dead. The sense that nothing mattered, which had been liberating the previous evening now thrust me into depression. It was all futile, pointless. Nobody would miss me if I died, the same as Gaynor had done. Nobody but me was missing Gaynor. We were superfluous to the world. Not needed, barely even noticed. Best to just expire, and do some good by fertilising a nice natural burial ground somewhere.
I finally got myself together at about half past two. I went downstairs and unlocked the doors, back and front. There was no post for me. The Rayburn was not just out but stone cold. In the street outside everything was silent and still, although it wouldn’t be long before school finished and children would start passing on their way home. In Cold Aston, some courageous mothers still allowed their nine-year-olds to walk half a mile from school to home without supervision. One or two of the kids even waved to me if they saw me through the window.
With a shock, I realised I couldn’t possibly be ready for the stall at the Gypsy Horse Fair. I’d rather lost track of days, but when I worked it out, it seemed that this was Tuesday, with the Fair the day after next. A surge of rage against Gaynor’s killer, the police in general, and Phil Hollis in particular gripped me. By throwing me into such a useless state, the whole messy business had lost me a major part of my income for the month. From what I’d expected to earn at the Fair, I was planning to cover all the Christmas expenditure as well as running costs on the cottage into the New Year.
I had no desire to eat anything, or to get on with spinning or knitting. The loss of Gaynor was a gaping hole in the whole enterprise. Without her brilliant work, there seemed little point in carrying on. I couldn’t do it all on my own, and expert knitters were hard to find. The older women who had done it all their lives were now falling prey to arthritis and rheumatism. If their hands still worked, they had fixed ideas about shapes and patterns that dated back to the Seventies or earlier, and had little appeal for modern customers.
The pagan group had not quite abandoned me, but I did not much relish the planned meeting for the evening. The death of Gaynor was too big an event for our rituals and ceremonies to deal with. All we were, at the final analysis, was a small bunch of people who wanted to retain some faint understanding of how human beings connected to the soil. How the seasons affected us, the sun and moon providing succour for body and spirit. It all crumbled to ash when faced with the violence that people can wreak, the deviousness and greed that we all possess, simply by virtue of being human.
When Thea came to the door at half past four, I almost didn’t let her in. What role did she think she was carrying out, running back and forth between me and Phil, barely understanding either of us?
‘Are you all right?’ she asked, peering intently at me. I had only lit one small lamp in a corner of the room, and the shadows were deep. ‘I haven’t seen anything of you all day. I’ve been keeping busy, but Phil’s just phoned to say he can’t hope to be back before eight.’
‘I’m alive,’ I said, in answer to her original question, not caring that this statement carried more meaning than it would normally.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Hangover,’ I admitted. ‘I didn’t get up until after midday.’
‘What a waste of time. Has it thrown all your plans?’ She was in the house by this time, roaming around the room as if searching for something.
‘Completely,’ I said.
‘You must be furious with yourself.’
Nobody likes to be told how they’re feeling, and my argumentative soul resisted her assumptions, despite their accuracy. Besides, there was an implied criticism in there somewhere. ‘Not really,’ I said.
She cocked her head at me, her clear eyes catching the light, her wide cheeks making her look like a pretty child. She made me feel like a carthorse, towering over her.
‘Well, none of this is very nice,’ she summarised, with irresistibly British understatement.
Then she surprised me. ‘Let’s go to the pub,’ she said. ‘You could probably do with a drink.’
I physically cringed, hanging back, holding onto a chair. Until that moment I hadn’t realised how ashamed I was feeling, how urgently I did not want to be observed by my neighbours. ‘God, no,’ I gasped. ‘You must be joking.’ Then I saw my clock. ‘It won’t be open anyway.’
But she was ahead of me. ‘You can’t hide away from everybody,’ she said. ‘I know that’s what you want to do, but you’ll have to live with these people after the business with Gaynor has all been sorted out. Believe me, in the long run it’ll be much easier if you get right back into it now. I’ll come back at six, and expect you to be ready. I can leave a note to tell Phil where I am. He doesn’t think he’ll be back until around eight, anyway.’
‘But I hardly ever go to the pub,’ I said weakly. She hadn’t understood on that particular point. It wasn’t the public exposure I dreaded so much as another bout of heavy drinking. ‘Plus I’m meant to be going to that meeting at Kenneth’s.’
‘What time?’
‘Eight, I suppose.’
‘So you can do both,’ she said. ‘And I’ll be home in time for Phil. Perfect for everybody.’
In the event, I didn’t go to the pub or the pagan meeting.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sally Grover phoned me at half past five; something she almost never did.
‘Ariadne?’ she shouted, a relic of the days when telephones were newfangled and not to be trusted. Normally I might have found it endearing. As it was I was poleaxed by guilt at my neglect of her.
‘Sally,’ I said. ‘How are you?’
‘What?’ She wasn’t at all deaf, but somehow her approach to the technology of communications blocked her hearing.
‘Are you all right?’ I refused to shout. ‘Do you want me to come?’
‘Yes, I bloody do,’ she said, more quietly. ‘These sheets are a disgrace and you know I can’t tuck them in properly by myself. And Ollie said you were going to change my curtains. The draught’s whistling through the summer ones today, and it’s given me lumbago again.’
‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes,’ I promised. ‘Leave the door unlocked, and I’ll come right in.’
Sally squawked. ‘I’ll do no such thing, what with all these murderers about. You knock like you always do.’
Sally lived in Naunton, which for my money is by far the loveliest of all the Cotswold villages. Phil might prefer Guiting Power, only a mile or two away, but Naunton is the one that does it for me. Bigger than most, it spreads over undulating ground, with the main road comfortably bypassing it. The old village street snakes along parallel to the Windrush, with the jumble of houses mostly on the northern slope. Tourists seldom venture there in any numbers, but it’s less deserted than many of the smaller settlements.
Sally lived in a small ancient cottage adjoining the main street and was always in and out of other people’s houses, gossiping merrily. There seemed to be fewer second homes in Na
unton, too. On sunny days there were generally people in gardens, and once I saw a woman doing her ironing on her small patio outside her side door, in full view of passers-by. There was something about that which endeared me to the place.
I had even said to Helen, more than once, that she had made a big mistake in choosing Cold Aston. ‘Naunton would have been much better,’ I said.
But Helen liked the wind and the wide open vistas and the chatter from the school playground. And she did not much like old Sally Grover – or anybody who thought it was all right to drop in on people without due notice.
I ran across to Greenhaven and explained quickly to Thea that the pub evening would have to be postponed. I didn’t give her time to ask any questions, but persuaded myself that she wouldn’t have long on her own. Whatever Phil might have said, he was unlikely to stay away from her if he could avoid it. It seemed a bit off of him to spend so long on his police work, as it was. Hadn’t the man ever heard of delegation?
As I got out of my car in Naunton, another vehicle came towards me, rather too fast for the winding street. In the unnatural glow of the street lighting I was unsure at first of the colour. But I recognised the man at the wheel, as well as the shape of the car. Eddie Yeo was heading straight at me, and for a moment I thought he might hit me. I stood my ground, chest out, and he slowed down, giving me a careless wave as he passed. It was too dark to see his expression, but I thought I could detect the white glint of a toothy smile.
I had never much liked Eddie, but with Daphne as a friend I’d managed to be civil to him while they were married. He was a difficult man to offend, in any case, accustomed as he was to the savagery of the Council Planning Office. Whatever anyone might say to him, he’d heard it before. Little wonder, then, that it had taken Daphne so long to convince him that she really couldn’t stomach the marriage any longer. According to her he had gone quite willingly at the end, although nobody had suggested he had another woman to go to.
