Death in the Cotswolds

by Rebecca Tope

  She made no reply, just stood her ground and let his words echo around the room. I could manage no such composure. ‘How could she?’ I demanded. ‘She doesn’t know where she stands, what her position is with your family. Have a bit of sense.’

  He stood up very straight. ‘Listen,’ he snapped. ‘I’ve been landed with a double murder investigation over the past few days. I get bombarded with calls, reports, demands, crackpots every five minutes. Nothing’s as I planned. Even the dogs have hardly seen me. Quite frankly, the sooner I get shot of all this garbage, the better I’ll be pleased.’

  This silenced me. I hardly dared look at Thea, for fear she would reveal a sudden distaste – or worse – for him, if this is how he behaved. Did he always get so stressy when he had to find a murderer? Or was there something particularly bothersome about this one?

  Thea smiled at him, a smile full of understanding and forgiveness and unmistakable affection. ‘I know, Phil,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to get so aggressive about it. It’s not your fault the week’s been ruined.’

  It was dreadfully sad for a minute or two. The word ruined hung in the air. So whose fault is it? I wanted to shout, knowing we couldn’t find an answer to that. I felt a sharp stab of rage against the unknown murderer. Even if they – he or she – thought it mattered less because Gaynor and Verona were virtually alone in the world, the ripples still spread far and wide.

  ‘So make sure you catch the bastard,’ I said.

  ‘Right,’ Phil nodded. ‘I intend to.’

  I wasn’t prepared to leave it there. It was impertinent and inappropriate of me, but I was sufficiently involved to risk it. Phil was being unnecessarily grumpy with me and I wanted to understand why.

  Thea was standing close to him, a hand on his back, an intimate touch that spoke volumes about her abiding fondness. I imagined her fingers, slowly stroking him through the jumper, sensual and proprietorial. He was a lucky bloke. I could see him leaning back into her touch, a distant look in his eyes.

  ‘Are you saying you think you’re close to making an arrest?’ I asked, using words from countless television dramas.

  He wanted me to go. We were standing in the hall, all three of us, and I was inching my way towards the door.

  ‘We’re running some forensic tests,’ he said. ‘When I get the results I might know enough to take action.’

  I remembered the mugs carrying two sets of fingerprints. ‘You’ll already have found Caroline’s prints on things in Gaynor’s flat,’ I guessed.

  He nodded. ‘Doesn’t mean anything. We know they knew each other.’

  I remembered something else. ‘The stuff in the attic. What about that?’

  He put up a hand. ‘I can’t reveal what we’ve found. Surely you understand that. A careless word now could mean the whole case collapses.’ He was almost pleading with me. ‘You have no idea how careful we have to be these days.’

  Thea moved, just a slight forward tilt, but it felt as if she was urging me to leave. Phil was between us, looking at me but in physical contact with her. Suddenly I understood something: he had not moved on from twenty years ago. He couldn’t grasp that I was no longer the same obsessive teenager I’d been then, despite what I’d tried to tell him in the car the day before. Knowing this made me volatile and foolish, but also somehow dear to him. It was pleasing to be loved, after all, and perhaps he had known more than I realised about my feelings then. I had to put him straight, if only for Thea’s sake.

  ‘Phil, I’m not sure how to put this, but I should point out that we’re not youngsters any more. I’m thirty-six. You don’t have to treat me so carefully.’ I floundered, aware of putting myself in a very embarrassing situation if I didn’t watch out.

  Thea, sweet Thea, came to the rescue.

  ‘Ariadne’s trying to tell you that she’s grown out of the crush she once had on you,’ she said, her tone suggesting that he was the one risking embarrassment, not me. ‘Although I’m not sure why she feels she has to say it now.’ She raised an eyebrow at me.

  I groaned. ‘There’s never going to be a perfect moment, is there?’

  Thea gave a look of commiseration, and Phil shook his head. ‘I’m tired,’ he said. ‘I’m going to sit down.’

  Thea came outside with me, which I hadn’t expected. ‘We’re not leaving until after lunch tomorrow,’ she said. ‘So I’ll come over and say goodbye in the morning.’ She leaned closer, glancing along the dark deserted street. ‘I think he’s right about Oliver Grover, you know,’ she whispered. ‘It makes good sense.’

  ‘Not to me it doesn’t,’ I argued. ‘And he’ll have to come up with some very good proof to convince me.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Unlike the previous night, I slept badly and was up before seven next morning, fuelling up the Rayburn for the extra heat I awarded myself at weekends. The gloomy prospect of Thea and Phil departing demonstrated how lonely a life I led. The news of Verona’s death seemed to have stunned everybody into silence. No one had phoned or visited me to talk about it. Either they were too shocked, or they suspected that I’d done the wicked deed – or they’d simply forgotten all about me. I fiddled with the airlock on one of my wine demijohns and knew I’d have to seek human company or drive myself mad worrying about murder and wrongful arrests.

  For no better reason than that she was the closest geographically, I walked to Turkdean at nine, in search of Ursula. I went slowly, but it still took barely half an hour to get there. It was an unsocial time to call on somebody, but the situation seemed to justify unsocial behaviour. However, after several loud knocks on the front door, I started to think my journey had been in vain.

  ‘Urgghh?’ came a voice from above my head. Stepping back, I looked up to see Annie leaning out of an upstairs window. ‘Is your mum in?’ I asked.

  ‘Dunno,’ said the girl, plainly only just surfacing for the first time that morning.

  ‘Oh.’ I hesitated. ‘Well…’

  Then the front door opened and a very sick-looking Ursula appeared. I called up, ‘It’s okay, Annie. She’s here.’ The girl disappeared without another word. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’ I demanded of Ursula. ‘You look terrible.’

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ She looked at me as if I was insane and possibly dangerous. ‘About Verona?’

  ‘Yes, of course I have. But—’ I wondered briefly whether it was monstrous of me not to be as obviously distraught as Ursula was.

  ‘She was murdered,’ the woman wailed. ‘The same as Gaynor. What in the world is going on here?’

  I pushed my way in, leaving my boots inside the front door, and most of my spirits with them. This was going to be a grim and gruelling conversation.

  Ursula led me into her front room, where the curtains were still closed and no discernible heating in operation. She slumped onto a sofa where she had obviously been for some time, and left me to choose between two matching armchairs. ‘I’m so scared,’ she shivered. ‘Absolutely terrified.’

  ‘But why? Has somebody said something? Have you been attacked?’

  ‘Not for myself, but for Annie. Somebody’s slaughtering young girls, out there. I can’t let her out of my sight until he’s caught.’

  There were several things wrong with this. ‘But Gaynor and Verona weren’t young girls. They were both over thirty,’ was the obvious first point. ‘And they lived on their own. It’s silly to be scared for Annie. She’s only fifteen and she lives with you. There are no similarities at all as far as I can see.’

  People never like to be told their fears are foolish. I’ve seen it before, the way they bridle, and accuse you of being feckless or wilfully blind. They talk about risk and say but what if…a lot. How would you feel if it was you? is another favourite. It’s all impossible to argue with, and I didn’t even try, at least to start with.

  ‘It’s a living nightmare,’ she moaned, more than once. ‘Here in these quiet little villages. It’s obscene.’

  For the first time I re
alised that nobody had spoken about the possibility of rape. It had not even occurred to me that the killer might first have assaulted his victims. Gaynor’s body had been so nicely arranged, her expression so relaxed, I didn’t think it was a factor at all. But Ursula was probably making the predictable assumption that sex must have been at least an element in the crimes.

  ‘Obscene?’ I repeated.

  She flipped her hand impatiently. ‘Depraved. Barbaric. I can’t think of words strong enough.’

  ‘You’re doing quite well,’ I assured her. ‘Now calm down a bit, and let’s see if we can come up with something useful.’

  She stared at me through her odd glasses. They had a very prominent horizontal line across the lenses, which distorted her eyes. I always found them unsettling. ‘Useful?’

  I did my best to explain. We were local to the site of the murders. We knew the victims. We probably knew their killer – she flinched at that and rammed a hand over her mouth as if to stifle a scream. ‘So we might be able to think of some motive, or suspicious connection that the police haven’t managed to find,’ I concluded.

  ‘What connection?’ She sounded so stupid I could have slapped her.

  ‘I don’t know. They were both single and living alone, for a start.’

  ‘One rolling in money, and the other living from hand to mouth.’

  I wanted to tell her about Caroline and the Masonic connection and Phil’s suspicions of Oliver, but he had asked me not to. I didn’t think it would reassure her much, in any case.

  ‘Have you discussed it with the others?’ I asked.

  ‘Not since I heard about Verona. Before that, it was only Daphne and Pamela, really. Kenneth did phone, but I hadn’t got time to talk to him. He sounded rather upset.’

  ‘What day was that?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Probably Wednesday.’

  ‘I saw Daphne and Pamela at the Horse Fair on Thursday,’ I contributed. ‘And Eddie Yeo.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she agreed carelessly. ‘I’ve seen him. I heard he’s been going around with some woman.’

  I swallowed. ‘I think that was Caroline Johnson, and I don’t believe there’s anything in it.’

  Too late I remembered that Ursula also knew Caroline from when she taught the Hollis kids. She seemed to find my news unremarkable, however, just nodding. ‘It’ll have been business, then. Eddie probably wanted to speak to Xavier about something. People do gossip, don’t they? After all, she’s way too good for him.’

  ‘Is she? He’s quite a big noise, surely.’

  Ursula sniffed scornfully and said no more. She was a lot calmer than when I arrived. We sat quietly for a minute, and then Annie came in, still wearing a short nightshirt. ‘You’re here then,’ she said to her mother. ‘I thought you were out.’

  ‘I’m here,’ Ursula said.

  ‘But you were out,’ persisted the girl. ‘I called you an hour ago and you didn’t answer.’

  ‘I haven’t been out,’ said Ursula. If she hadn’t thrown a nervous glance at me, I would never have taken the slightest notice. As it was, it became suddenly obvious that she was lying and didn’t want me to know. She was such a fool. She could have said she’d gone into the garden, or even to the loo.

  Annie, like most children, was quick to detect parental deception. ‘Liar,’ she said, easily. ‘You’re always such a liar.’

  Ursula blustered. ‘What a thing to say,’ she protested. ‘To your own mother.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Annie shrugged. ‘Off to see your boyfriend, I suppose.’

  ‘Early on a Sunday morning?’ Ursula tried to sound mocking. ‘I don’t think so. Anyway, I wasn’t out. Leave it, will you. Go and have some breakfast.’

  I had not known that Ursula had a boyfriend. And she hadn’t wanted me to know. She turned her back to me, hiding her face. I couldn’t imagine that it was important, so I left. She hadn’t even given me a cup of tea.

  With a feeling that I ought to steer clear of Thea and Phil for a while longer, even if it meant they went off without seeing me again, I drifted back to Cold Aston along the tree-lined road, which always felt like the approach to some gorgeous mansion. In fact, there was a manor house in Turkdean, as well as a Manor Farm, which must have created the wonderful avenue of trees originally. If I’d been a local historian, I’d have known for sure just who and when and how. As it was, I simply enjoyed the sensation of being alone on a country road with the wind rising, giving the trees an energy and character that I found exhilarating. I scuffed my feet through the dead leaves on the verge, and let my thoughts wander. Starting with Ursula’s mystery lover, I was soon into my own plans and timetables. Having sold so much at the Horse Fair, I now had a serious shortage of items for the Christmas rush. At least two of the local shops were going to be clamouring for originals in the next few weeks. Without Gaynor, I wasn’t at all sure I could satisfy the demand. But at least I had the buttonless coat, rescued from Gaynor’s flat. And – the unworthy thought came unbidden – I would not now have to pay the knitter for doing it. If it sold, as I expected it to, it would be pure profit.

  Before going back to the cottage, I called in at The Plough, which had just opened. I wasn’t a very frequent drinker there, but they knew who I was. I couldn’t claim close friendship with anyone in the village. Several of Helen’s chums acknowledged me, but it didn’t go further than that. I was strange in their eyes, with my paganism and the pig and the stripy hair. They never seemed to know what to say to me. I could easily imagine that some of them might think me capable of murder.

  A couple in their early sixties were having a pre-lunch drink in the bar, sipping carefully and not talking. I knew them vaguely. He had just retired, and was making a nuisance of himself everywhere he went. He’d got heavily into Neighbourhood Watch, for one thing, going round to everybody, haranguing them about being careful about locking doors and windows. She was an amateur painter, producing some very unoriginal watercolours and trying to sell them at fetes and table-top sales. Since her husband’s retirement she had looked haunted, forever chewing her lower lip and sighing a lot.

  They looked up when I went in, seeming relieved to have company. ‘Hello,’ the wife said. ‘We haven’t seen you for a while.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed.

  ‘Terrible business, that murder,’ she went on, dropping her voice. ‘You must have been so shocked.’

  ‘Murders, you mean,’ said her husband. ‘There’ve been two, remember.’

  The woman looked astonished. ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Two. They found another body at the Barrow on Friday. It was on the evening news.’

  ‘You never told me!’ she shrilled. ‘I had no idea. Who was it?’

  The man looked at me as if for rescue. ‘Some girl,’ he muttered.

  ‘She was called Verona Farebrother, and ran a business in Gloucester,’ I said. ‘I knew her, the same as I knew Gaynor.’ I tried to laugh. ‘I’m beginning to take it all rather personally.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ the woman continued to complain. ‘I feel such a fool. Henry, how could you not tell me?’ She gave him a look of pure hatred. ‘You do it on purpose, keeping things from me.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said, with insolent calm. ‘I just assumed you would have heard.’

  ‘Who are the people in Greenhaven?’ the woman asked me, abruptly. ‘Do you know them? Is it a relative of Helen’s?’

  ‘Her nephew,’ I told her. ‘And his girlfriend. He’s actually a police detective. Rather senior, in fact.’ I stopped, thinking I might already have revealed more than Phil would have liked. ‘I think they’re leaving today.’

  ‘How convenient! Is he investigating the murder? Murders, I mean.’ She threw another poisonous look at Henry.

  ‘He is, yes.’

  They hadn’t really known Helen very well. They did not attend the funeral, and had made no particular attempt to offer me condolences. Perhaps that was why I found their interest now so irritating. Why,
I asked myself, was I speaking to them at all?

  Henry stuffed a pickled onion from a dish on the bar into his mouth and spoke before it was properly disposed of. ‘You’ve got in with them, by the sound of it,’ he commented, with a knowing nod. ‘Clever girl.’

  It was like a punch in the belly. The insinuation was unbearable. I leaned over him, my broad shoulders casting a shadow across his upper body. ‘I’ve known Phil Hollis since I was twelve,’ I shouted. ‘I knew his wife and his children – and his Aunt Helen. I’m his friend.’

  ‘Hush, dear,’ pleaded the woman. ‘Henry didn’t mean anything. Did you?’ she demanded of him.

  He was wiping his mouth with a napkin, as if I’d spat at him. ‘Hollis?’ he said, looking at me. ‘His wife wouldn’t be Caroline, would she?’

  His manner was exactly as if we’d just exchanged pleasantries at a Buckingham Palace garden party. Being shouted at by a large, slightly mud-stained female was clearly well within his comfort zone. And it was entirely effective.

  ‘Yes, as it happens,’ I muttered.

  ‘I knew Caroline, when she was Mrs Hollis,’ he said. ‘Now she’s Mrs Johnson. I saw her at the Horse Fair on Thursday.’

  ‘So did I,’ I nodded.

  ‘With that Yeo fella from the Council.’ He beamed at me in triumph. ‘And I’ve just seen him again, this morning, with that Mrs Ferguson who teaches at the big school, from Turkdean. They were sitting in a car having a real old ding dong.’

  It was too much. None of it made sense and I just wished the whole of Gloucestershire would go to hell.

  ‘I expect she was trying to persuade him to let her have planning permission for something,’ said Mrs Henry brightly.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, rather loudly. ‘I expect she was.’

  Thea was standing beside Phil’s car when I got back. He was in the driving seat and the dogs were not in the vehicle with him. I made a tentative judgement that the argument had been resolved in Thea’s favour. I stood at a little distance, waiting to catch her eye. ‘Staying, then?’ I said, when she did finally look at me.