by Rebecca Tope
‘Right,’ Thea nodded vaguely. ‘I might go that way later on, if it stops raining.’ She glanced at her watch and wondered what they might profitably do for the rest of the day – the rest of the week, probably. Sightseeing was the obvious answer, admiring the endless glories of Cotswolds towns and villages, but that depended on the weather being at least dry. Sunshine would be a nice bonus. There was a little museum in the middle of Winchcombe, and another one beyond the church. She approved of such local enterprises, usually run by dedicated eccentrics who could spend most of their time knitting or reading, lucky to receive more than two or three visits a day. ‘Or we might go to the museum.’
Priscilla snorted. ‘That won’t take long. It’s one and a half rooms of jumble. Most of it’s devoted to a display of old police stuff.’
‘Fascinating!’ crowed Thea. ‘Just my line. Several of my friends and relations are in the police, you know.’
‘Oh,’ said Priscilla sourly. ‘I might have guessed. Now, I’m on my way. Goodbye.’ She gave a formal little nod and strode away.
‘We don’t have to go to that museum, do we?’ muttered Maureen. ‘I’ve never really liked museums.’
‘What else do you suggest?’
‘I want to go home, Thea. I want to see Fraser and find out how he’s coping with this horrible trial. I want to know where Jason’s gone, and if he’s under police suspicion. Mo will have something to say about him going missing, and she’ll probably take it out on her father. He lives with her, in case you’ve forgotten.’
Thea had a sense of events taking place beyond her capacity to keep track. On the face of it, Jason had behaved very suspiciously by disappearing shortly after the discovery of Reuben Hardy’s body. The complications of who had used which car still eluded her, but she supposed Jason had heartlessly driven off without his girlfriend and her father. Fraser had taken Mo home in his vehicle, and her mother was now stranded without transport. The notion of Jason as murderer was both feasible and ridiculous. He was a strong man, engaged in shady property dealings, superficially bluff and amiable, but probably capable of all sorts of dodgy doings. But the timing didn’t work. When Reuben died, the man had either been in the car with Mo, or at home in his caravan park. It could only be that Gladwin had worked this out already and dismissed him from her list of suspects. Any attempt to unearth a motive looked doomed to fail, not to mention a convoluted theory whereby he was in Winchcombe in the early hours of the morning, then fled home again, collected Mo and made the return trip to Thistledown, looking perfectly relaxed. Unless, of course, Mo was actively involved, and had conspired to lay a false trail. It was, after all, possible that they had both arrived in Winchcombe before dawn, or even the previous evening, and somehow killed Reuben with pharmaceuticals and hidden his body. Then Jason could have laid it in the alley at half past ten, not long before it was found by the little party, subtly led there by Mo.
She ran it through again, slowly. Had Mo actually arranged for them to go that way? It seemed possible. There had been very little deliberate steering on Thea’s part, although she had regarded herself as the party leader. The most difficult part to square was the actual killing. Could Reuben have been forced to take the overdose – or could it be injected into a vein? Would the pathologist find the place on his skin, if so?
And why? Only the original suggestion that Reuben had seen something he shouldn’t offered itself as an answer to this central question.
‘You’ve gone very quiet,’ her mother remarked.
‘Sorry. I’m thinking.’
‘About murder, I assume?’
‘Right.’ She gave a quick outline of the direction her thoughts had been going. ‘It would mean Mo being part of it,’ she concluded. ‘For some reason.’
‘And that would take us back to the question of who, if anyone, is going to continue the Meadows funeral business?’
‘Yes,’ Thea nodded, ‘I hadn’t got that far. I keep forgetting about them. All I can get my head around is what happened here in Winchcombe. I’m being very parochial about it.’
‘You won’t get to the bottom of it like that. It seems obvious to me that it’s all about the people in London, with Oliver as the link. It’ll be that Henry. I’ve been thinking as well, and it keeps coming back to him. He killed Melissa at the first opportunity after Oliver was out of the way, and somehow Reuben got himself involved, so he killed him as well.’
‘Hmm. Maybe. But that leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Like – was Reuben actually murdered at all, and if so, why was he dumped in the alley?’
‘That’s the bit we don’t know,’ Maureen agreed. ‘Can we go in now? It must be time for some coffee.’
They were a few yards from the turning into the Thistledown track. Hepzie was plainly of the same opinion as her mistress’s mother, and veered to the right on the assumption that they could get out of the rain. ‘All right, then,’ said Thea.
‘That dog is awfully wet. We can’t let it onto any of the furniture like that.’
‘It’s only water. She’s not muddy.’
A woman stepped in front of them, from behind a wall. ‘Thea Osborne? I’ve been waiting for you,’ she said.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Thea stepped back, recognising the woman as somebody she had previously exchanged heated words with. ‘How did you know where to find me?’ she blustered.
‘It’s a small town, and Oliver Meadows is in the phone book. You’re fairly conspicuous, too, with that dog.’
‘So what do you want this time?’
‘To apologise,’ said Maggs. ‘To throw in the towel and try to make amends.’
‘Gosh!’ said Thea faintly.
‘Who is this person?’ asked Maureen.
‘It’s Maggs,’ Thea introduced inadequately. ‘She works with Drew, in Somerset. But I thought you were dreadfully busy,’ she added. ‘Lots of new funerals all at once.’
‘We are. I left him organising four new graves and lining two coffins. It’s raining there, as well, and there wasn’t enough space for me in the workshop. It’s very small, you know. I’ll have to be back by one. He can cope without me until then.’
Thea was familiar with the journey from the North Staverton burial ground to the Cotswolds. It could not be done in less than two hours. ‘What time did you leave?’ she asked.
‘Eight. I was up before six. It’s not as bad as it sounds – I went to bed really early last night. I’m using the motorbike. I’ve had it for years, and it comes in useful sometimes.’
‘Not much fun in this weather,’ remarked Maureen.
‘What do you want?’ Thea burst out. ‘Surely not just to bury the hatchet? You could do that by phone.’
‘I had an epiphany,’ said Maggs seriously. ‘After talking to you, Drew’s a different man. I’ve been a fool about the whole thing. He told me off for trying to run his life for him.’ The dark-skinned young woman looked bewildered and far more subdued than the last time Thea met her.
Thea opened and shut her mouth, lost for words. In the presence of her mother, the conversation had no chance of getting anywhere. ‘Mum,’ she said, ‘would you mind very much taking Hepzie back to the house, and leaving us to have a quick chat? I know it’s rude, but we won’t be very long.’ A glance at her watch showed barely fifteen minutes before Maggs had to leave again.
Maureen acceded to the request with reasonably good grace. ‘Come on then, dog,’ she said. ‘I’m going to rub you thoroughly with a towel before letting you into the living room.’ The spaniel hung its head and trailed reluctantly behind the determined woman.
‘We can go to the pub,’ Thea suggested. ‘It’ll probably be open.’
‘No time. Is this your car? Can we sit in it for a bit?’
It seemed rather foolish, when they could have gone to the house, but Thea understood the instinct behind it. A car was a perfect place for intimate revelations, especially as the windows were sure to steam up within moments, making them invi
sible as well as inaudible to anyone outside. ‘All right, then,’ she said.
‘You’re involved in another murder, I gather,’ Maggs began, almost before the car doors had closed. ‘Drew’s told me some of it. He asked me about Henry Meadows. I saw something about the trial of his father. He’s desperate to help somehow, but he can’t get away.’
‘I see,’ said Thea, not entirely truthfully.
‘No, you don’t. You haven’t seen him since Karen died. He’s been in bits, a real wreck. He wouldn’t have her buried at Peaceful Repose – did you know that? It was terrible. I was furious with him. I probably made it all a lot worse.’ Her black eyes grew shiny, and she clasped her hands together. Thea thought she had lost some weight since they last saw each other, six months previously.
‘Hard for you,’ she ventured. ‘Being so fond of him.’
‘Yeah. It was as if I’d never really known him at all. I mean, I just assumed that’s where she’d go. He said I didn’t understand what it was like. I was so angry about it. It was so bad for the business. He betrayed the whole basis of it. For weeks I couldn’t think of anything else. And that meant I was much less use to him than I ought to have been. And it all got tangled up with you, so I blamed you for it. I thought it showed he felt guilty towards Karen and didn’t want her constantly there to remind him.’
‘I didn’t know,’ said Thea. ‘I thought the grave was right there, just outside the house.’
‘It’s in another alternative burial ground, twenty miles away.’
‘But you’ve kept it all going – the business, I mean. And helped him with the children. He’d never have survived at all without you.’
‘He would, but the business might not have done. And there’s this Broad Campden angle, as well. That’s never going to happen, is it? How can it? We’d need to employ somebody – two people – full-time. We’ll never afford that. It’s hopeless.’
‘And you associate that with me as well,’ Thea said.
‘Right. And I blamed you for it. I’ve been seeing you as an evil interloper, making everything worse. But that wasn’t right. I guess I knew, deep down, how it was really. And I suppose I got carried away, seeing you as a threat to the kids and the whole set-up. But Drew really loves playing detectives. He always has. He wants to get to the bottom of things and make sure it’s all fair. When he met you in March, that was seriously bad news at first – even you must admit that. He nearly got prosecuted over it. That daughter of yours – is that who she was? He only told me afterwards, in a garbled sort of way, just how scared he’d been.’
‘You’re being a bit garbled yourself,’ Thea said, feeling very much older than this tormented young woman at her side. ‘Does this visit have anything to do with the murder that happened here, or is it all about me and Drew?’
Maggs rummaged in a roomy shoulder bag, and extracted a buff folder. ‘I found this,’ she said. ‘On the Internet early this morning. I printed it out for you.’
‘What is it?’ Thea leafed through four or five sheets of apparent newspaper reports, some with photographs.
‘All I could find about the Meadows family. See – there’s a family group from 1960, with the three brothers and the old man and his wife. Plus one of Oliver, much more recent – when his bird book was published. And I tracked down Fraser as well, because he seems rather a dark horse. Lucky it’s an unusual name. He had his own website when he was in Australia – did you know? It’s still floating around, the way they do. He put his graduation picture on there – and look! There’s another one from way back when – with a girlfriend. Drew said something about your mother, and I thought this looked a bit like you, so I added it in. Have a look.’
Thea peered through the steamed-up murk at the small smudgy picture, dated ‘March 1962’ and clearly recognised her own youthful mother, standing next to a tall and perfectly identifiable Fraser.
‘Well,’ she said, with heartfelt relief. ‘That solves one mystery, anyway.’ She looked at the clock on the dashboard. ‘You should be going.’
‘Yes.’
‘Thanks, Maggs. You don’t know what this means.’ As she leant over to embrace the younger woman in an awkward hug, she had no doubt that Maggs knew precisely what she was talking about.
Her mother was in the kitchen, washing up a single mug in a bowlful of hot, soapy water. ‘What a waste!’ said Thea.
‘Habit. If you don’t wash everything as you go, it quickly gets sordid.’
Housework had never been an interesting topic of conversation for Thea, less than ever now. ‘I have news for you,’ she said.
‘Oh?’ Her mother turned round warily, drying her hands on a tea towel. ‘What?’
‘Fraser is who he says. Look at this.’ She proffered the picture. ‘This is on his website.’
Maureen took it slowly and gave it a long examination. ‘That is me, isn’t it? I look like you.’
‘Do you remember it being taken?’
‘No. Who can have taken it, anyway? We didn’t know any other people. I don’t remember a camera. I don’t remember this place.’ She looked almost panicky. ‘It hasn’t triggered anything at all.’
Thea’s confidence wavered. Could the picture have been faked? Photoshopped somehow? ‘But you recognise yourself. Have you ever seen that picture of you before? Without Fraser?’
Her mother shook her head. ‘I would remember that. We always take great notice of ourselves in photos, don’t we?’
It was true, Thea realised. A picture from another person’s collection featuring you was deeply fascinating, providing another angle on your self-image. She remembered being shocked to discover that one’s image in a mirror was not what others saw – not what the camera saw. She was still trying to work out why that was.
‘There’s a date, look. You can check your diary and see if you went anywhere with him. It doesn’t look like London to me. That’s a sort of lay-by you only get in small towns.’
‘And isn’t that a seagull?’ Maureen indicated a faint smudge in the background. ‘Oh! It was Worthing!’ she cried suddenly. ‘Yes – we got a train to Worthing for the day. It was windy and freezing cold. And that scarf – I lost it. It must have blown off while we were walking on the seafront. Fraser went to look for it, but never found it. But we didn’t have a camera. I’m sure we didn’t.’ She puckered her brow in the effort of recall. ‘The train was empty and we joked about it being specially provided for us – and I said perhaps it was a ghost train taking us to the other world. I got myself quite frightened, and he explained very seriously that there were no such things as ghosts. There was a man just outside the station with a camera, and Fraser gave him five shillings to take a photo and send it to us when it was developed. We argued about whether he would ever do it. This must be it.’
‘Blimey,’ said Thea, rocking back on her heels. ‘That’s got you going, hasn’t it?’
Maureen’s eyes were bright with excitement. ‘This is amazing – everything was in here all the time.’ She tapped her head and laughed. ‘You can’t imagine how wonderful it feels.’
‘I can see.’ She could feel the delighted relief herself. There was something richly reassuring about the whole episode. Not only was her mother probably not developing Alzheimer’s, but she was savouring the recollection of that day at the sea with such evident relish that it was catching. ‘Can you remember more about him now?’
Maureen’s eyes closed as she inspected her memory. ‘Hardly anything,’ she admitted. ‘But this is enough for the time being. He’ll be so glad when I tell him.’
‘And it’s all down to Maggs,’ said Thea, wonderingly. ‘I thought she was my lifelong enemy, and instead here she is bringing all sorts of good news.’
‘I still don’t understand who she is.’
‘Come into the sitting room and I’ll explain,’ said Thea.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
In London, all three of the Meadows brothers were in Court Room Four, together for the first tim
e in thirty years or more. Oliver’s heart had lurched alarmingly at the sight of Fraser, sitting tall in the heart of the public gallery. His voice had faltered in the middle of answering the first real question of the day, keeping his eyes on the prosecuting barrister and fumbling for words to describe what had happened between him and Cedric a lifetime ago. He had lifted his gaze for a moment, searching for release from this excruciating ordeal, and found himself looking into the eyes of his brother. Fraser, who had failed him repeatedly in those early years. The gangly, dreamy, self-absorbed brother who managed to ignore events around him. Fraser had been in love, successively, from the age of sixteen, a Romeo who only had to see a girl to fall for her. Immersed in his terrible memories from that time, Oliver saw a young Fraser sitting there and struggled to make sense of his presence. Why turn up now, when it was all far too late?
‘Mr Meadows?’ the barrister prompted gently. ‘You were saying?’
‘Ah, yes …’ He had lost the thread completely. ‘I’m sorry. What was I saying?’
The barrister could not suppress a sigh. ‘I know this is very difficult for you, sir. It would be hard for anybody. But if you could just finish your testimony. Perhaps we could read the last few words back …?’ He cocked his head at the judge for permission. The judge nodded, and the stenographer read back ‘I was forced repeatedly to have sexual relations against my will’ in a flat voice.
‘Did I say that?’ Oliver had no recollection of uttering those words. ‘Well, yes, it’s true. He forced me. He was six years older than me, in many ways a stranger, after Fraser and I were evacuated. Fraser and I went, but Cedric didn’t, you see.’
‘Thank you, Mr Meadows. Now, just a few more questions …’ The drama continued, with Oliver choking out the horrible details, appalled that Fraser was there to hear them. Until then, Fraser had been a kind of refuge, a haven of decency and distance that had nothing to do with Cedric and his ghastly abuse. He steadfastly avoided looking at his brother again. Nor did he look at the accused, his other brother, the man who shared half his parentage only. Fraser and he were the real brothers; he had always felt that.
