by Rebecca Tope
‘So …?’ she invited. ‘What brings you here?’
‘Don’t worry, I won’t disturb you. The thing is, Uncle Olly’s been keeping some of my stuff for me, in the back room, and I came to collect one or two things. I’ll be in and out before you know it. What a dear little dog,’ she added, with such insincerity, Thea wondered that Hepzie didn’t snarl again.
She felt decidedly wrong-footed. Should she ask for proof of identity? Was she meant to defend the entire house contents against such an obvious scam? After all, anybody could show up like this, with just such a cover story, and make off with all the best silver. The impression that the opening lines had been prepared in advance gave rise to a wariness that bordered on the fringes of suspicion. The reference to the older sister, which had probably been intended to sound convincing, had instead alerted her to something not quite right. Suddenly the name Mo re-echoed.
‘Mo?’ she said. ‘Short for Maureen?’
‘I guess so. We don’t call her that, though. It’s terribly old-fashioned.’
‘My mother’s called Maureen.’
‘Yes. Apparently it’s no coincidence. Uncle Ollie thinks it’s rather sweet.’
‘Fraser named his daughter after a girl he’d gone out with for a couple of months? Blimey!’ This new light on her mother was surprisingly unsettling. ‘What did Mo’s mother think about it?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. If he had any sense, he wouldn’t have told her his reason for liking the name. He probably said it was some old film star or something.’ The young woman was speaking easily, while looking past Thea at something in the shadowy passageway inside the front door.
‘Well, I’d better come with you while you collect your things.’ At some point, Thea found, she had decided to trust the newcomer enough to let her into the house.
‘No need,’ breezed Melissa, heading for the door. ‘I know my way.’
‘Yes, but …’ Thea got up from the garden seat. ‘I think I should. I mean, I only have your word for it.’
The awkwardness was in no way alleviated by the unsmiling stare the young woman gave her. ‘Only have my word for what? Don’t you believe me? That’s appallingly rude of you.’
Thea felt weak and cross. ‘I dare say it does, but try to see it from my standpoint. I’m being paid to stand guard over this house and its contents. That’s the whole point of a house-sitter. You can understand that, surely?’ She seemed to be repeating that word stand ridiculously often, which only made her more cross.
The newcomer shrugged. ‘It never crossed my mind there might be any difficulty. I just need a few clothes and a memory stick. Come with me, if you must. I’ve got nothing to hide. I just don’t like being suspected of something underhand, as if I was a criminal.’
Melissa marched ahead into the house, and through to a small dark room at the back corner. It had one narrow window, half obscured by a bush. Stacked tidily in one corner were three large cardboard boxes, with MELISSA written in marker pen and parcel tape sealing them closed. Thea had to admit that if this was a heist, it was singularly well planned. The young woman went straight to the middle box, pulling it open carefully and rummaging inside it. She drew out two long-sleeved tops and a pair of jeans. Then she taped it up again, making use of any residual stickiness in the tape. ‘The memory stick’s in the bottom one,’ she said. ‘Can you help me?’ Together they lifted the top two boxes out of the way, and Melissa repeated the process. A plastic box that had once held ice cream contained a neat arrangement of electronic gadgets, including a digital camera and something Thea could not identify. The memory stick was plucked from its nest in the corner, and everything replaced as before.
‘You seem to know where everything is,’ Thea said, in a grudging attempt at an apology.
‘I’ve been living out of these boxes for three years now. It gets to be pretty routine. I’ll have to come back again next month for some warmer clothes.’
‘Are you homeless, then?’ Thea looked at her: aged about thirty, expensive haircut, clean clothes, apparent good health. ‘Surely not?’
‘In a way, I am. Actually, it’s my job. I travel a lot, and stay mainly in hotels. I just carry whatever I can get in the car – laptop, clothes, phone. I imagine you must be quite good at packing up and moving on yourself, doing this house-sitting stuff?’
‘Yes, but I’ve got my own house as well.’
‘I’ve got a little place in Oxford that costs me a small fortune. I sublet it when I’m away, unofficially. Anyway, Uncle Olly’s more than happy to keep this stuff for me. It’s not much to ask, after all.’
‘It’s not my business,’ said Thea stiffly. ‘Can I get you a cup of tea or something?’
‘No, thanks. I’ve got someone waiting for me at the pub. We’ll have a meal there and then head off up the motorway. I’m supposed to be in Stoke tonight. I just had to fetch this …’ she held up the little torpedo-shaped data storage device ‘… it’s got some files on it I’ll need tomorrow.’
‘They’re clever little things, aren’t they?’ said Thea vaguely. Despite being in possession of a BlackBerry and a laptop, she felt herself lagging considerably in the frantic developments in digital technology.
As she had half expected, Melissa gave a scoffing laugh, a single high bray that sounded more like a donkey than a person. ‘They’re pretty antiquated now, actually. It’s going to be much easier to just upload everything to Cloud and access it from absolutely anywhere. Nothing can get lost that way, and no need for all these physical gadgets.’
‘Right,’ said Thea, even more vaguely than before.
‘Bye, then,’ breezed the visitor, with scarcely a backward look. Thea watched the jaunty walk, the carefree bounce of someone who trod lightly across the world. By rights, she should approve of such a lifestyle: carrying no baggage, confident that possessions were unnecessary for a fully productive existence. Instead, she felt defensive about her own choices. Somehow she had come second in an unspoken competition; had been in the wrong from the first moments. She had not much liked young Melissa, who had ‘someone waiting for her at the pub’ and was therefore also ahead in the unavoidable race to find and keep a man, which every woman was expected to enter. Thea had no illusions about her own position where this subject was concerned. She wanted to be half of a couple. She had liked being married to Carl, and would never forgive the cruel fate that had disrupted her assumptions so completely. She wished quite painfully that there was someone waiting for her at the pub as well.
It really was close to twilight now. She was confined to the house for the coming night, whether she liked it or not. The usual strategies for passing an evening would be brought into play, after she had cooked the sausages from the Winchcombe butcher and the small quantity of potatoes she had found in Oliver’s vegetable rack. She had located the television, which would pass the hours if all else failed. She could play games on her laptop or listen to the radio. She could read a book or search for websites of local attractions. It was the same set of options that probably millions of single women across the land were considering, as the daylight faded. Or if not millions, then a lot. Those who had not managed to get together with another person for a trip to the pub or the cinema or a nightclub on a busy street. Those whose husbands had died or departed or disappeared into a garden shed or back bedroom. And those who had never possessed a husband in the first place. A silent community of solitary women, all wishing passionately that there was something more engaging on the TV than the nine hundredth episode of Casualty.
She got through it readily enough. At ten, she took the dog out of the back door for a final pee, noting that the moon was very nearly full. Something about September moons stirred in her memory – this one was orange-tinted, and not especially friendly. It rose above Oliver’s trees like a reminder that the world was full of small and irrelevant concerns. Hepzie threw a bizarre long-legged shadow over the patio as she sniffed idly at something on the flagstones. Everything was unn
aturally quiet: no traffic or music or human voices could be heard. She might be fifty miles from the next habitation, instead of fifty yards. There was a house to the north-west, no further away than that, and a whole double row of them not far beyond. Winchcombe itself was within shouting distance. But in this polite little place, nobody shouted very much, even on a Saturday night.
At ten-thirty she went upstairs, with the dog at her heels, and arranged a comfortable night for the two of them. She closed the curtains and turned off all the lights. Outside an owl was hooting, somewhere in Oliver’s wooded acres. She consciously counted her blessings, noting that no part of her body was hurting; she had enough money for her needs; and none of her relatives was suffering unduly. (Except Emily, she reminded herself, and even Emily was very much over the worst, a year on from the Incident.)
Sunday morning dawned fair but breezy. The bedroom looked broadly eastwards, over the wooded acres where Oliver fed the birds, and past that to a hill behind Sudeley Castle. She could hear the treetops swishing, like waves on the seashore, but less rhythmic. There was nothing soothing about wind, no hypnotic predictability, as there was with waves. Wind could blow the roof off, or send the chimney crashing down on top of you. All her life, Thea had very much disliked strong winds.
Her mother was coming. And a man who was brother to the owner of this house. There was some peculiar illogical element to this that continued to evade her. It was hard to see exactly what her own role was in the picture – perhaps that was it. She had to feed the birds. She had to provide seeds and fat for creatures who, in September, could perfectly easily obtain their own food. There were berries everywhere, as well as nuts and seed heads. All she was doing was to lure them into staying close by, so that Oliver could photograph them.
Which reminded her of the video camera. She was supposed to set it going early each morning, when the birds were at their most active and interesting. It would run for ten hours or so before closing itself down. She had to replace the little card and keep the early one safe, with the date on it. A simple task, but one that nobody else was going to do.
‘Come on, Heps. Rise and shine,’ she said.
It was early – just after seven-thirty. The sun was up, but not yet warm. The slight bite in the morning air was a stark reminder that winter was not far off. September was inescapably evocative to any country-dwelling Northern European, with the atavistic urgency that came with it. Firewood had to be collected, fruit preserved, hay stocks carefully protected. The very gentleness of winter’s approach could seduce an unwary population into postponing these essential preparations. There would be warm, sunny days for weeks yet, fostering the illusion that winter might be short and mild this year. And then you could get six inches of snow at the end of October and find yourself in all kinds of trouble.
Except that this was the twenty-first century, when mankind had dominated the elements, and simply pumped in more oil for heat and light, to repel the natural forces of darkness.
There was a pleasing paganism to these thoughts, which recalled Thea to the week or so that she and Phil had spent in Cold Aston, making the acquaintance of Ariadne Fletcher, a real and proper pagan. Almost two years earlier, she realised, with a start. Two years in which the passing of the seasons had pressed in upon her in a number of ways. She had been imprisoned by snow, deceived by rain, and disappointed by a reluctant sun. In a country habitually obsessed by weather, the subject had been greatly augmented by large arguments about climate. At least it was never boring, she thought now, with a smile.
Once outside, the wind seemed much less intrusive. Beneath the trees, it was almost calm, all the activity focused on the top few inches of the branches. The leaves on the birches had just begun to turn yellow, but they were not yet dead enough to fall off in the breeze. The overall hue remained a determined green, on all sides, the leaves hanging on for several more weeks, all being well.
She trod the narrow path as softly as she could, hoping to see the woodpecker again, and aware of his extreme nervousness. The dog danced lightly along, a few paces in front, doing nothing that might scare birds away, other than merely existing. They came into the clearing with the many contraptions for holding food, and the well-camouflaged hide, and Hepzie gave a yap.
‘Shut up,’ Thea hissed at her. ‘You’ll scare them all away.’
But then she saw the cause of the dog’s alarm, and felt like yapping, or shouting or calling upon divine assistance herself.
Because there was a dead person lying face up on the rough grass between the hide and the feeding stations, as if in a green chamber created by the protecting trees overhead.
Chapter Five
There was an appalling tidiness to the corpse that Thea found almost unbearable. The hands were folded across the chest, the hair immaculately neat, the expression peaceful. The only jarring note was the three items of clothing that had been collected from the box in Oliver’s house. They were lying carelessly tossed aside, a few feet away. ‘It’s that girl!’ Thea said aloud. ‘What on earth has happened to her?’ She nudged an unmoving arm delicately with her foot, in needless confirmation that life really was extinct.
Nobody replied. All the birds had disappeared, apart from one crow, sitting in clear view on the stump of a tree that must have been cut down to make way for the hide. It eyed Thea and the body with calculating interest, its thick black beak slowly tilting from side to side as it moved its head for a better view.
‘Go away,’ said Thea loudly.
The bird showed signs of asking itself just what it might have to fear from this human being and her dog. At her feet was some very tempting carrion, enough for every friend and relation for miles around. Perhaps, if it waited a while, the upright being would leave the way clear for the early pickings in the form of juicy eyeballs and soft fleshy tongue.
Robotically, Thea grabbed her dog’s collar and began to hurry back to the house, hoping the crow would hesitate before beginning its predations. The body had looked cold and stiff, the lips blue-grey and the visible skin drained of blood.
She called the police, and agreed to wait by the roadside to lead the way to the clearing. They knew where Vineyard Street was, and promised to be there quickly. Shutting the dog inside, Thea ran back down the woodland path with a rug she had grabbed from Oliver Meadows’ sofa, and threw it over the vulnerable corpse.
Only as she stood impatiently at the end of the little drive did she remember her expected visitors. What was her mother going to say? And – belatedly – it dawned on her that the victim was the daughter of Fraser Meadows, who was also shortly to arrive on the spot. The man would see his dead child, would perhaps wail and sob on her mother’s insubstantial shoulder. From past experience, she knew it was perfectly possible for the dead Melissa to lie undisturbed for the best part of the day while the police examined the scene in every imaginable detail. A tent would be erected over her, and TV reporters would probably turn up and film it. The magnitude of the disaster expanded as she gradually overcame the initial shock and considered the implications.
The birds! There would be forensics people and photographers and a police doctor all crowded into the little space and probably wrecking Oliver’s careful arrangements. They would go into the hide and examine its contents.
The camera! Excitedly, she realised that there was a chance that the truth of what had happened to Melissa might be recorded on the little digital card. But it could wait until the police arrived. She would calmly show it to them, and invite them to take the card as a prize piece of evidence.
Despite some acquaintance with the local police, she had never met either of the individuals who first responded to her call. They were uniformed officers, a sergeant and a constable, and she felt uncomfortably old in comparison with them both. ‘I assure you she’s dead,’ she said. ‘Is there a doctor on his way?’
The sergeant smiled tightly, and made an excessively polite reply to the effect that all due procedures were in train, thank you,
madam. If she could just indicate the exact location of the person concerned, they would quickly have everything in hand. She contemplated her choices: she could tell him in plain English that she had done this before, and knew exactly what the procedure was, or she could flutter her eyelashes gratefully and let him get on with it. There were temptations to both options.
‘I know who she is,’ she said, neutrally. ‘And I can tell you that her father is expected here later today.’
‘Thank you, madam. That’s very helpful. Now, this way, am I right?’
‘Not quite, no. She’s down that little path, about a hundred yards or so. You won’t miss her. I covered her up with a rug. There was a crow …’
He made a peculiar sucking noise through his teeth. ‘Shouldn’t touch anything, you know.’
‘I didn’t. I just dropped it over her.’ Too late, she realised there would now be contaminating fibres, hairs, skin cells on the body that ought not to be there. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘I suppose it was rather silly of me.’
The constable spoke for the first time, giving her a supportive little smile. ‘You weren’t to know,’ he said.
Oh, but I was, she wanted to argue, but instead gave him the grateful flutter she had been debating. There was always the faint possibility that they would never find out who she – Thea Osborne – was. There was always the chance that Melissa had died of natural causes, or that someone was at that moment in Cheltenham police station confessing to having killed her. There might not be any sort of investigation at all.
It might have been her lack of hysteria that gave her away; that suggested even to these tunnel-visioned policemen that something was not as usual. A single woman in a strange house – that much they had somehow ascertained – finding a dead body in the early morning woods, should not be so calmly collected. She caught an exchanged look, a raised eyebrow that was beginning to border on suspicion. Here was something unnatural, some story well beyond the obvious, which they felt themselves unequal to. ‘This one’s for the detectives, right enough,’ she heard the sergeant mutter, before he became welded to his telephone, his expression strained.
