by Rebecca Tope
‘So that’s all you can tell me, is it? You glimpsed a male person with a limp walking around that corner. No other people? No sight of his face?’
Thea felt uneasy. She didn’t want to be the sole bearer of important testimony. She danced a little jig on the spot. ‘That’s it. And on the strength of that, you’ve got all this work going on here? That makes me feel rather odd.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, I’m a newcomer, only here for a couple of weeks, and I’m instantly thrown into this horrible business. Why aren’t there loads of other witnesses, not just me?’
‘For a start, I’m sure there are. But on the other hand, you’ll have noticed how empty and silent the whole place is. Hardly anybody strolls around the footpaths, even at the weekends. They stay indoors, even in July, or they drive off in their cars. You’re an important witness because you actually came out here on your own two feet.’
She shrugged. ‘That makes sense, I suppose. But please – I’ll have to get back, if that’s all you need from me,’ she said. ‘They’ll be missing me.’
‘They?’
‘Jocelyn and Hepzie,’ she said, in all seriousness.
His laugh was full of genuine delight in her silliness, a joyful peal of understanding and goodwill. ‘Best get back to them, then,’ he said. ‘It’s all road walking from here.’
They spent the rest of the walk side by side, touching lightly once when a car forced them to huddle into the hedge. Thea’s spirits lifted with every step. She took deep lungfuls of the morning air, and walked with a bounce. Okay, so there had been a murder in these peaceful fields, and somebody somewhere had lost their beloved boy. But absence of personal guilt was a wonderful thing. None of it could remotely be construed as her fault, which made the whole business more of an intellectual puzzle than an emotional tragedy. Besides, the sun was shining and a handsome man was walking by her side.
With Juniper Court once more in sight, Hollis cleared his throat. ‘I need to be serious for a minute,’ he said. ‘This house-sitting malarky. It’s bothering me. In general, I mean – not this place specifically – where you ought to be scared stiff and packing your bags. I mean as a general principle.’
‘Why does it bother you?’
‘It puts you at a disadvantage, staying where you don’t know anybody.’ He met her eyes, revealing a concerned little frown. ‘Why do you do it?’
She performed a slow shrug. ‘Why not? It’s interesting. And it’s supposed to be peaceful. Lots of time just to slop about in someone else’s house, eating their food and using their bed. I think I might have overlooked a few angles, though.’ She smiled. ‘There must be something about an empty house that triggers a train of events.’
‘But it’s not empty. You’re in it.’
‘That’s true. But I suppose I’m sort of invisible. For all I know, all kinds of people call in regularly, or take a short cut through the yard, or have a standing invitation to use the paddock. So I’m not going to be suspicious, am I?’
‘You’ve been thinking about it, haven’t you?’
‘Of course I have. How could I not?’
He tilted his head understandingly. ‘But you’re still not scared? I find that amazing.’
‘I might have been, without Joss, when it got dark. But it isn’t very likely that anybody’s going to hurt me, is it? If they were going to, surely they’d have done it by now.’
They took their slightly muddy footwear off at the back door, and Thea led the way to the kitchen. There was no sign of Jocelyn, but Hepzie had rushed to greet them, the merest hint of reproach in her eyes. ‘Sorry, babes,’ cooed Thea. ‘I’ll take you out later on for a good romp in the paddock.’
They had coffee, not saying very much. Thea wasn’t even sure she’d been stringing words together coherently, with his autumn-tinted eyes steadfastly on hers the whole time. He seemed to be seeing right into her, drinking her up while at the same time keeping her safe. It was a very pleasing sensation and she was sorry when it stopped.
‘Your leg mended, then,’ she said, before he left. He’d been in plaster the last time she’d met him.
‘Yes, thanks. Good as new now. I won’t be in any hurry to do that again.’
‘That man—’ she murmured. ‘The one in the sporty car.’
‘If you see him again, give me a call.’ He handed her a card with a mobile number on it. ‘Any time.’
‘And should I stay here until further notice? What about the Phillipses? What happens next?’
‘We get a name for the body. That’s taking longer than it should, without any wallet or papers, but any time now we’ll have him ticketed. Your guess is pretty much as good as mine when it comes to the Phillips family. It depends what they say when we finally reach them. But be careful, okay? Lock the doors and windows, and keep your phone in your pocket. I can’t very well tell you to get off home, when you’re in the middle of a job, and you’ve got your sister here to protect you. But I’d like to, I really would.’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said. ‘I’m tougher than I look.’
But just at that moment she felt far from tough.
Chapter Seven – Tuesday
Jocelyn was in the living room, the door firmly closed. When Thea found her, she was speaking on her mobile, huddled on the sofa, still in the long T-shirt. She took the phone from her ear and mouthed, ‘Won’t be long,’ before listening again.
Thea waited, stroking the spaniel’s long ears in apology for her lengthy desertion. The animal was perched on the back of the sofa, and Thea was leaning against it, watching the yard from the window. Hollis had gone, as had the forensic men. Geese and hens drifted about, the only signs of life in the picture.
‘You’ve been gone for ages,’ said Jocelyn, pocketing her phone. ‘I didn’t know whether I should be doing something. How’s the pony?’
‘Alive. I threw him some hay and came to see how you were doing.’
‘Where do those bloody peacocks go during the day? Can we shoot them, do you think? Isn’t there a shotgun hidden away somewhere?’
‘I doubt it. They sit on the roof of the barn, or in one of the trees at the side of the garden.’
‘Actually…’
Thea leaned back against the windowsill, braced for whatever might be coming. ‘What?’
‘I might go home tomorrow. That was Alex.’
‘Why tomorrow? Why not today, if all’s forgiven?’ The prospect of being left alone again was unexpectedly disagreeable. Already she’d started to think in terms of ‘we’ for the rest of her stay at Juniper Court. Abrupt changes of plan had always unsettled her.
‘No need to be like that,’ Jocelyn pouted. ‘You should be pleased.’
Thea remembered all the reasons why she found her younger sister so irritating, reasons that stretched back to when Joss had been about two. The whining, the self-pity, the total absence of sensitivity – all came rushing back. Although a substantial woman well past her first youth sat before her, all Thea could see was the red-faced toddler, caught in the act of scribbling in Thea’s beloved copy of Alice Through the Looking-Glass and utterly unrepentant.
‘I’m not pleased,’ she said. ‘You’re mucking me about. I’ll have the police on my back if I’m here on my own.’
‘That shouldn’t be such a terrible thing. I’ll be leaving you a free run with that dishy Superintendent, for a start.’
Thea clamped her lips tightly together. ‘So what changed?’ she asked. ‘What magic words did Alex utter to lure you back home again?’
‘It’s not fair on the kids, that’s all. They’ve got all the end of term stuff to do – Abby’s lost a library book and they’re hysterical about it. Toni’s got a school trip, starting tomorrow, and can’t find any clothes to take. It sounds like bedlam, even after one day. Less than one day. And Roly wouldn’t go to bed without knowing exactly where I was.’
‘But you knew all that when you left. I tried to tell you last night. You said A
lex would have to do it all.’
‘I know I did.’
Thea’s irritation deepened. The fact that Jocelyn was belatedly coming to see the situation as Thea herself saw it was part of her annoyance. The timing was the main problem. Since the previous evening, she had come to take her sister’s side against her husband, to accept that it was the only reasonable course of action for an abused wife to leave the family home. Now she wanted to go back, in the vain hope that a few hours’ absence would put everything right.
‘Are you thinking you’ve taught him a lesson, and he’ll behave himself from now on?’
‘He says he will. He says he had no idea how much they all needed me.’
‘Well, I’ve got no more to say on the matter. Do whatever you want. And I still don’t see why you’re leaving it till tomorrow, if Toni’s bag has to be packed today.’
‘I’ve told him where all her stuff is. That was just an excuse, anyway. She knows exactly what she needs and where it all is.’
Thea blinked, thinking that if a cartoon were to be made of the scene at that moment, her head would be haloed with exclamation and question marks in equal numbers. Her sister was engaged in some grim domestic game that she had no desire to understand.
And then she found herself thinking about Hepzibah’s mother. The poor dog had been thin and careworn when Thea had gone to choose her puppy, which had been one of a litter of five. She had watched as the bitch hovered indecisively outside the whelping box, obviously torn between a desire to run free in the garden outside, and the powerful instinct to protect and feed the babies. ‘She’s not a very good mother,’ the owner had said. ‘She’d much rather come for a walk with me than stay here with the pups.’ A glance at the sore scratched pendulous underbelly of the wretched animal had drawn Thea’s sympathy in a big way. ‘I don’t blame her,’ she’d said. ‘Poor thing.’
‘Will you be breeding from yours?’ the woman had asked.
Thea had made the decision once and for all. ‘Oh no. I’ll just keep her as a companion,’ she’d said. This, she felt now, somehow summarised the difference between herself and Jocelyn. For Joss, there was no greater joy, nothing more meaningful, than the production of new lives.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ she told her sister. ‘All this seems so completely out of character for both of you. You and Alex have always been the perfect parents, with everything coming so naturally to you. I still can’t believe it’s gone so horribly wrong.’
‘You’ve probably just explained it, without realising it,’ Jocelyn mused, staring at the floor. ‘Perfect parents don’t make very good partners to each other. And anyway, we’re not the perfect anything. I’m even beginning to wonder whether we had all those kids just to distract ourselves from having to look at the cracks that have always been in the marriage. That isn’t very subtle, I know – but I think it’s probably true.’
Jocelyn heaved herself off the sofa, making Thea aware for the first time how much weight she’d gained since their last encounter. Something in the lumbering movement raised a suspicion. ‘Good God – you’re not pregnant again, are you?’
Her sister stared at her, and then down at her own body. ‘Of course I’m not,’ she snarled. ‘I’d have told you.’
‘Thank heavens for that. So why are you so stiff and slow?’
Jocelyn met her gaze with a long level look. ‘Isn’t that obvious?’ she said quietly. ‘Alex hits me. He really hits me.’ Unselfconsciously, she raised the T-shirt, in spite of the absence of any pants. ‘See?’
Thea noted the brown pubic hair, the puckered stretch marks from all those pregnancies, the excess flesh in a fold across the lower abdomen. And the multi-coloured contusion on the hip bone, spreading inwards and downwards over the buttock and thigh. She moved around her sister, slowly examining the bruise.
‘He didn’t do that with his fist, did he?’ she said at last.
‘Cricket bat,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Three or four blows.’
Thea experienced an involuntary image of a white-clad Alex, complete with shinpads and pullover, whacking his wife with a bat. ‘But he doesn’t play cricket, does he?’ she said, stupidly.
‘It belongs to Noel. Luckily for me, it isn’t a full-sized one.’ She uttered a harsh humourless laugh.
‘Have you been to a doctor?’
‘What do you think? It isn’t broken or anything. It just stiffens up if I don’t keep moving. It’s much better than it was.’
Thea pressed a hand over her own nauseous stomach. All the feelings of five minutes ago were gone, washed away by a new rage, and a solid steel determination to protect her little sister. Because Jocelyn had not only been a maddening interfering nuisance: she had been cherished and spoilt by the older siblings. Emily, Thea and Damien had all rejoiced when she was born, finding her fascinating and delightful, a necessary completion to the family.
‘You’re not going home tomorrow,’ she said flatly. ‘No way. You’re staying here, if I have to lock you in Naomi’s room for a fortnight.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Jocelyn’s tone was nowhere near as firm as the words she used. ‘I told him I’d go back.’
‘Does he know where you are?’
‘Not exactly. I don’t know where I am.’
‘Joss,’ Thea pleaded. ‘You’ve made the break now. You must have been desperate – you certainly sounded desperate. Who’s to say he won’t be even more angry with you, after all this? A few days of relief that he doesn’t have to manage the kids, and then it’ll be back to square one.’
‘You can’t possibly know that.’
‘And you can’t know different. Nobody really knows another person, and what they might be capable of.’
This remark took their thoughts straight to the murder on their temporary doorstep, and what somebody very close by had indeed been capable of.
‘You’re not thinking he’ll murder me, are you?’ Jocelyn gave a shaky laugh.
‘It wouldn’t be the first time a husband murdered his wife, would it,’ said Thea.
* * *
They still hadn’t resolved anything by mid-afternoon, but the weather had continued to improve beyond all expectations, which did a lot to lift their spirits. Pallo had passed inspection twice, the geese had grudgingly called a truce, and Jocelyn had insisted on letting the rabbits and guinea pigs out of their cages, deftly constructing a run for them out of a wire cage she found lurking uselessly in long grass between the barn and the paddock. ‘I bet this was used for this very purpose before it got abandoned,’ she said.
‘Well, it’s down to you to catch them, if they escape,’ Thea warned. ‘There’s probably a good reason why it was thrown away.’
‘At least there isn’t a cat stalking them,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Did you say it was a Siamese that got run over?’
‘Seal point, I think. Very beautiful.’
‘And lethal with guinea pigs, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘Probably. I think they’ll be fairly safe with Hepzie. I’ve never known her kill anything.’ Thea paused, savouring the scene of the picturebook yard bathed in bright sunshine.
‘Are you still cross with me?’ Jocelyn asked in a baby-sister voice.
Thea sighed. ‘No, Jocelyn, I am not cross with you. I’m just drained by everything that’s happening. Nothing’s turning out as it should.’
‘Oh well. Why don’t we just make the best of it? As you said, it’s a very nice place. I do feel better just for being here.’
‘I just hope they settle this murder business,’ Thea worried. ‘It looks as if he wasn’t killed here – but brought from half a mile away, already dead, and hanged in the stable for some unfathomable reason.’
‘Yuk! That’s disgusting.’ Jocelyn closed her eyes against the images Thea had conjured. ‘You mean, they lugged him up to the loft, tied rope round his neck and sort of rehanged him?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Presumably wanting to give some sort of message to your
people – or to implicate them somehow.’
‘But they weren’t here, were they? So it’s me that got implicated, and that’s the bit I don’t like.’
Jocelyn shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think they had you in mind at all. You’re an incidental detail. Maybe they just wanted to ruin the family’s holiday. Or divert attention from the place where he was really killed.’
Thea pondered this. ‘That might be it,’ she concluded. ‘Especially as there was nothing to connect the victim with the barn, apart from an accidental sighting on Saturday.’
‘Oh?’ Jocelyn’s attention was drifting. ‘Who by?’
‘Me,’ said Thea miserably.
Her sister laughed, a loud oof of amusement. ‘You’re jinxed,’ she announced. ‘Let’s face it.’
Before Thea could react, there was a commotion from the geese in the yard and Hepzie gave a warning yap.
‘Uh oh,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Looks as if we’ve got a visitor.’
A boy of about nineteen or twenty was facing the trio of geese which had detected him before the sisters had, and had rushed to meet him at the gate. The visitor had one hand raised as if conducting the birds. Slowly he waved it from side to side, and all three heads followed in unison, beady eyes fixed on his finger. He then advanced on them, forcing them to step backwards, again in perfect synchronicity. Finally, he clapped his hands, with one sharp crack, and the birds turned and fled, casting dignity to the wind.
‘How did you do that?’ Thea asked in admiration.
‘You haven’t to take any nonsense from them,’ he said carelessly. ‘That’s all. Same with any animals.’
‘Can you do tigers as well?’ asked Jocelyn.
‘Probably,’ he shrugged. ‘I’m Jeremy Innes, by the way. I think my mum spoke to you yesterday.’
Thea had no difficulty in recalling the woman she had taken such a strong dislike to. She had to fight to avoid transferring her antipathy to the son.
‘Yes, hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Thea and this is my sister, Jocelyn.’ She inspected the newcomer narrowly. Long dark eyelashes, thick curly hair and a charming smile. Not remotely like his mother. ‘What can we do for you?’
