Trouble in the Cotswolds (The Cotswold Mysteries)

by Tope, Rebecca

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ she wailed. ‘How could I have done such a stupid thing? Will it need a new engine, do you think?’

  Kevin snorted and gave an exaggerated look at his watch. Higgins made reassuring noises, but was obviously losing patience, as well as his colleague. Thea opened the door and started to climb out of the car. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said, more to herself than to the men. It was extraordinary how heavy her arms and legs had become. ‘I don’t have to do anything or go anywhere. The dogs can make do with the garden for today. I’ll be much better tomorrow. Thanks, Jeremy. I don’t know what I would have done without you.’

  ‘Given your germs to the AA man,’ Kevin muttered with ill-concealed resentment.

  Higgins continued to look concerned, as he had done since he’d first found her. ‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘I’ll just pop next door and tell them the situation, get them to keep an eye on you. They’re neighbourly people round here, especially at this season of good cheer. You’ve got to have some sort of safety net. Unless you’ve got somebody who’ll come and stay with you?’

  ‘My daughter’s scared of rats,’ said Thea. ‘And Drew’s got children. And my sister …’

  ‘Yes, I know about your sister,’ he said gently.

  ‘No – not Emily. The other sister, Jocelyn,’ she corrected earnestly.

  Higgins waved the subject aside as irrelevant. ‘I’ll just be a minute.’ He was addressing Kevin, who sighed theatrically.

  ‘Not that side,’ Thea told him, pointing to the house where the funeral party had gathered the previous day. ‘That’s where the dead man’s girlfriend lives.’ See, she wanted to boast I’m still keeping up with everything.

  ‘Okay.’ He gave the house a long slow examination that surprised Thea. Then he trotted to the door of the one the far side and rang the bell. Thea stood unsteadily beside the car, aware that her dog was scrabbling at Gloria’s net curtains in the living room.

  A man came to the door, listened gravely to Higgins’ explanation and threw a somewhat unengaged glance at Thea. ‘I’m afraid I’m going away myself tomorrow,’ he said, quite loudly. ‘But of course, if there’s a problem in the meantime, do give me a shout.’

  Higgins thanked him and went back to the car. ‘Come on, then,’ he said. ‘Let’s get you inside. Where’s the key?’

  ‘In my bag.’ The bag was still in the car, and Higgins retrieved it, handing it to her with a patient smile. She fished for the door key, which was on a ring with several others.

  ‘No burglar alarm?’ he asked.

  She shook her head, noticing for the first time that the painkillers had finally worked. Instead of the sharp stab that any movement had caused, there was now a sort of muffling fog. ‘It’s all quite simple,’ she said. ‘They’ve got the dog. She looks as if she’s snarling. A burglar would be scared stiff.’

  He unlocked the door for her and ushered her in. Hepzie flew down the hallway at them, hurling herself at Thea’s legs, in a flurry of long coat and plumy tail. There was no sign of the Alsatian.

  ‘I have to go,’ the detective said, apologetically. ‘Get in the warm and have something to eat. I’ll get back to you if they tell me what’s happened to your car, but they’ll send you a text about it, as well. You might have to contact the insurance people. I don’t think the AA are going to cover the cost of draining the engine.’

  ‘It’ll work all right, will it? I won’t have to have a whole new engine or anything?’

  Higgins smiled. ‘Should be okay,’ he said, with a slightly uncertain nod.

  Thea heard herself and frowned. ‘I asked that before, didn’t I? I’m scared it’s going to land me with a massive bill.’

  ‘Worry about that after Christmas,’ he advised. Then he was back in the car, much to Kevin’s relief. She heard him drive off with a low-geared flourish, heading northwards to Broadway. Or, more accurately, Willersey, which Thea thought was a little way north again, just beyond Broadway. On a fine summer’s day, it would be an easy walk along the well-trodden footpaths and country lanes, to Willersey and back again. Always, on her house-sitting commissions, she promised herself she would use her feet more and get to know the pathways. Somehow, it rarely happened as planned.

  She was thirsty, but not hungry. Blondie was curled up in the kitchen looking miserable. Hepzie was stir-crazy, wagging furiously and jumping up at Thea’s legs. Her own feathery limbs were in need of a good brushing, as usual. Thea did a concentrated inventory of the situation. It was nearly two o’clock. Her car had died. She had been lucky with the way Jeremy Higgins had got her out of trouble. It could all be a lot worse, she concluded.

  Outside the village was oddly silent. The heavy cloud had not lifted all day, and there was no breath of wind. She opened the back door and chivvied Blondie outside. The big white animal slouched reluctantly to her special corner, cocked her ears briefly at a blackbird on a low branch and then came back again. She sighed deeply. ‘Oh dear,’ said Thea. ‘You’re not happy, are you? I’m not doing a very good job, am I?’ She remembered what the Great Dane woman had said – that Blondie had been to correctional classes, or something of the sort. Had they somehow taken all the spirit out of her, in the process? She should be out in the open stretches of central Europe, herding cattle or whatever her breed had been intended for. Presumably she was a variation on the German Shepherd, which suggested work with sheep in Bavaria. Or Alsace, she supposed, wherever that was.

  Rambling again, she told herself. The lurking fever that was making her alternate between sweating and shivering was also doing weird things to her thought processes. She boiled the kettle and made a mug of Lemsip with added honey. It was soothing, at least. Later on, she’d make more soup.

  Higgins had been very kind. He’d always been nice to her. He knew Phil Hollis very well, of course, and she had no illusions about the degree to which the men had discussed her, when she and Hollis had been an item. Thea knew a number of police detectives in the Gloucestershire constabulary – her favourite being DS Sonia Gladwin. But Higgins had probably been unwise to tell the man next door about her flu. She would become a pariah, especially if nobody in Stanton had yet succumbed to the epidemic. Nobody wanted to be ill at Christmas. If it hadn’t been for that, she might well have enjoyed a visit from some local proselytiser who would invite her to carol services or sherry parties. Now they’d all shun her and leave her to wallow in her own viruses.

  She felt lonely and abandoned and not fully in control of herself. She might dissolve into tears without warning, or fall downstairs, or forget to switch something off. She tried to focus on something outside herself, and landed on the woman next door – paramour of the dead Douglas-the-businessman. Thea had to revise everything she had first assumed about the owner of the house. How old was she? Did she have children? What was she doing for Christmas? Had she and the wife forged an unholy friendship and were at this very moment celebrating the demise of the man they had shared? Had they, she wondered irresistibly, indeed colluded in his murder, as had been suggested by one of the men in the police car? Which one, she had already forgotten. The conversation in the car had faded into a sort of dream, where she could not have accurately reported who said what, or indeed whether much of it had taken place silently inside her own head. Higgins had said something upsetting about her association with violent crimes during her various house-sitting jobs. It was possible, she told herself sternly, to achieve an entire house-sit without getting involved in anything criminal or violent. She had actually managed it a few times. This time, she could simply ignore everything to do with Callendar and his complicated life and death.

  She was in the front room, stretched out on the sofa, which stood with its back to the window. Hepzie had used it to perch on while she scrabbled at the curtains. There was a small tear in one of them, Thea noticed, caused almost certainly by her dog. As she fingered it, thinking it would probably show more if she tried to mend it than if she left it alone, a confusing figure came into view on th
e pavement outside. Blinking it into focus, Thea recognised the Sherry woman and her huge dog, standing barely a yard away and staring in at her. ‘Can I come in?’ she mouthed exaggeratedly.

  Thea hauled herself up and went to open the door. She made no attempt to restrain either of the dogs in her charge, but the woman snatched at her animal’s chain when she saw Blondie in the hallway. ‘Can you shut her in the kitchen or something?’ she asked.

  Thea sighed exhaustedly. ‘I’m sure she won’t be a problem,’ she said. ‘She’s too depressed to pick a fight.’

  ‘Well – if you’re sure.’ She came tentatively into the hall, and Thea shut the door behind her. ‘You don’t look very well,’ the woman commented. Her spine straightened in a businesslike fashion and she removed the blue coat she was wearing, indicating an intention to stay. She hung it on an empty hook which was one of a row, near the front door, and turned back to Thea. ‘I can see you need somebody to help.’

  ‘No, I’m not very well. I seem to have got flu. You might want to keep your distance.’

  To her credit, Cheryl – Thea had finally remembered her name – did not recoil. ‘You poor thing,’ she sympathised, with apparent sincerity. ‘That must make things awkward. Anyway – listen. I saw you just now, in that police car. Did something happen?’

  The change in demeanour made Thea wonder whether her own fuzzy condition was somehow deceiving her. Hadn’t this been a stand-offish person, exuding disapproval, only the day before? Now she was all attention and concern. ‘I put the wrong fuel in my car and it died. Stupid. I’ve never done that before.’

  ‘I imagine it’s something a person only does once.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what are you going to do? Won’t you need somebody here with you?’

  ‘I’ll be all right. It’s not very demanding. Blondie can survive without a walk for a day or two.’

  ‘What about neighbours?’

  ‘There’s a man on that side, who’s going away tomorrow. And on this side there’s just been a funeral. You knew that, I imagine. Did you go to it?’

  Cheryl was scrutinising the room, including the strings of Christmas cards and the well-tended house plants. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I had to be somewhere else.’

  ‘Did you know the man who died, though? Douglas Callendar. He must have lived right next door, because that’s where everyone came afterwards.’ Then she remembered the gossip in the car and knew she’d got it wrong. There was a complication that would normally present no difficulties. But now her understanding seemed to be clouded with something urgent and physical.

  ‘Yes, I knew him – not that I ever saw much of him. He never had a lot of time for socialising.’ She sounded slightly bitter to Thea’s ears. ‘But his house isn’t the one next door,’ Cheryl corrected. ‘He’s got a great big property up towards Snowshill, in the middle of nowhere.’ She was speaking slowly, appearing to Thea to recede in an oddly dreamlike fashion.

  ‘Yes,’ said Thea weakly. She could feel her knees buckling, as she tried to stand up straight and conduct a normal conversation. ‘Um … I think …’ She felt herself swaying, a rushing sound in her head, and the world went a curious pinky-grey colour.

  Chapter Five

  It wasn’t a proper faint, she insisted to herself. She felt the floor hit her quite hard on her bottom and shoulders. She felt Cheryl’s hands on either side of her head, pressing and shaking in a decidedly unpleasant and unhelpful fashion. She opened her eyes and saw a nightmare vision of a massive dark-grey head, with loose lower lips showing flashes of pink. A long tongue was coming towards her. ‘Caspar – get back,’ said the woman. ‘That’s not going to help, is it?’

  But Thea was more grateful to the worried dog than she was to its mistress. She looked into the liquid eyes and wanted to stroke the huge head. ‘Pity he’s not a St Bernard,’ she said, idiotically.

  ‘You fainted,’ said Cheryl accusingly.

  ‘I didn’t. I just … I didn’t pass out. I’ll be all right.’ A wave of energising anger swept through her at the situation. She could not permit herself such weakness. It was embarrassing, humiliating. She sat up. ‘I didn’t have any lunch,’ she said, by way of excuse.

  ‘You’re shaking. Your skin’s all clammy. You’re incredibly pale.’ Cheryl listed the symptoms dispassionately. She pulled her up and half dragged her onto the sofa where the strings of Christmas cards seemed to cut out the light and loom threateningly over her. ‘Lie down,’ Cheryl ordered. ‘Now, you really must have somebody here with you. What if you fall downstairs or something?’

  Thea’s rage grew hotter. ‘There isn’t anybody,’ she said furiously. ‘The world is full of women managing on their own. It’s what we do. Have you got somebody to look after you if you catch my flu?’

  ‘Actually, no,’ Cheryl admitted. ‘A son, with a wife and a child, in Norwich. An ex-husband, with a wife and a child, in Manchester. A sister in Devon.’

  ‘There you are, then,’ said Thea. ‘We manage on our own. Like I said.’

  ‘No we don’t. We help each other. Especially at Christmas. It’s a religious festival, after all.’

  Thea imagined the woman and her dog moving in for Christmas, she and Thea feverishly cooking a turkey together and pulling crackers. There was a look in her eye that reminded Thea of her brother Damien, who had embraced the Christian life wholeheartedly, some years before. ‘Do we?’ she said, appalled to find herself close to tears.

  ‘Of course. Aren’t I helping you now?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Thea, too poorly to prevaricate.

  ‘Listen – I’ll make some tea. I’ll take that dog out into the garden for you. I’ll make one or two phone calls, if you want me to. I’m sure there must be someone you can find. Otherwise, the people will have to come back. Gloria and what’s-his-name. Where’ve they gone, anyway?’

  ‘Bermuda,’ said Thea, with a flicker of satisfaction. ‘They can’t come back. That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘So … ?’

  Thea avoided Cheryl’s eye and said nothing. In an odd way it no longer felt like her problem. She was prepared to struggle on by herself – it was other people who kept saying she couldn’t. After a pause, the woman went into the kitchen and started clattering much more officiously than necessary. Thea let her go, and let her head flop back on the cushions. Cheryl was mid fifties or so, and bossy. Further than that, Thea had not observed, unusually for her. Questions began to form dimly, many of them childishly dreamlike and irrelevant. Why did she possess a Great Dane? Why had she not been at work in the middle of a Friday, instead of walking the dog, when Thea first met her? How well did she know the people of Stanton? Somewhere, behind everything that had happened, there simmered an awareness of the usurper next door who had to be interesting and worth getting to know. Even through her embarrassment at what she’d done to her car, and the headache and the impatient Kevin, the snippets about the girlfriend of the dead man had taken root in her mind. They waited for her attention. And when she had accorded it, she would want to tell somebody the story.

  Not just any old somebody, of course. There was only one person who would properly appreciate the intriguing implications of a mistress taking over the funeral of a man who already had a perfectly viable wife.

  When Cheryl came back with two mugs of tea and some fruitcake, Thea stared at her for a moment, wondering whether she would dare ask her to phone him on her behalf. What would she say? What would he say? What possible good could come of it? ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘So you don’t know the girlfriend, then?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Next door. Where they had the funeral party.’ She wasn’t sure how much of this she had already said – or had she just silently thought it? Memory of recent events felt blurred and unreliable.

  ‘Oh. You were saying something about that when you fainted.’

  ‘I didn’t faint.’ It seemed important to win that point.

  ‘I know who she is, but we’ve never had
any real contact. I think I should maybe go and talk to her – tell her you’re here and not too good. What did you say about Douglas Callendar? Something I didn’t understand.’

  ‘After his funeral,’ Thea said, with an effort. ‘They came back here for the wake. Except, it’s not technically the wake, you know. There isn’t a proper word for what people do these days. The wake is meant to be before the burial. It’s a sort of vigil over the body. It’s nothing to do with all that noisy stuff that happens afterwards.’

  Cheryl made a sound that hinted at disapproval. Thea suspected she was rambling again, and lapsed into silence. They both drank their tea thirstily. Must keep up the fluids, Thea thought, with a sense of obeying an ancient edict. Cheryl finished first and slapped down the mug with an air of firm decision. ‘Right, then. I’ll leave Caspar here for a minute, and pop next door for a word. Won’t be long. You just lie there and rest.’

  Thea shook her head half-heartedly. ‘I don’t think we should bother her, though. She’ll be busy with … you know … all that stuff that you have to do when a person dies.’ Then she thought about it. ‘But she won’t, though, will she? She’s not the wife.’

  ‘You’ve got that right, anyway. But she’ll be a backup for you, if you need someone. It’s down to me to alert her.’ Cheryl spoke with a nurse-like certainty, bringing her hands together in a decisive grip that seemed designed to strengthen her own resolve. ‘You don’t want to have to go the other side if you can help it.’

  Thea was puzzled. ‘He seems all right,’ she murmured, but Cheryl wasn’t listening.

  ‘I’ll go now, all right? I’ll leave the door on the latch. You stay there. Caspar won’t be any bother.’

  The three dogs, left to their own devices, had evidently come to an amicable understanding, out in the hall. Hepzie could be an effective peacemaker at times, squirming submissively on her back, exposing the pink underbelly and causing other dogs to mellow by means of her silliness. Mostly, they just sniffed disdainfully and proceeded to ignore her. Blondie and Caspar might have history, but Thea suspected that Cheryl had exaggerated it. People might be frightened of Alsatians, but in her experience they were generally pretty soft. Blondie’s deceptive snarl must have done her reputation no good at all.