A Cotswold Ordeal

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Not much water in it. Has it leaked away?’

  ‘Here and there, possibly. But the puddling they did in those days was fantastically effective. Leaks are rare – though trees have grown in the middle of the waterway in some places. That breaks up the clay skin.’

  ‘How on earth can anybody think it’s possible to reconstruct it all? It’ll take decades.’

  ‘They’ve done quite a few already. The entire stretch of the Kennet and Avon is open now. Where there’s a will, and all that. Some people are fanatical about it.’

  ‘They must be.’ Jocelyn cast another critical eye over the reedy canal bed, and the barricaded tunnel. ‘Can’t see the attraction myself.’

  ‘You’re a philistine,’ said Thea. ‘I think it’s marvellous.’

  ‘So you said. Pity the tunnel’s blocked.’ In spite of herself, Jocelyn was intrigued. ‘It certainly does have atmosphere, I’ll give you that.’

  ‘Well, it is blocked, further along. But this first bit seems all right. It echoes a long way. You can tell by the drips.’

  ‘And have you seen enough now? Even Hepzie’s getting bored, look.’

  ‘Okay,’ Thea agreed. ‘But we’ll be early.’

  They walked back to the car without speaking. Hepzibah ran cheerily ahead of them, zigzagging in her usual way. Sunlight threaded between tall trees on both sides of the waterway, promising another fine day.

  * * *

  It was twenty to twelve when they settled at one of the tables in the pub garden, with Hepzie comfortably curled at their feet. Pub gardens were familiar ground to her, and she knew how to behave. ‘If we start drinking now, we’ll be blotto by the time we get any food,’ said Jocelyn.

  ‘We’ll just have to take it slowly, then,’ said Thea. ‘I’ll go and get us some local ale, shall I?’

  Jocelyn pulled a face. ‘Mine’s a white wine,’ she instructed. ‘Nice and sweet.’

  ‘Philistine,’ said Thea, again.

  ‘Here she is,’ Thea said, at two minutes to twelve. ‘Nice and prompt.’ A silver-coloured car had drawn up in the parking area, and the sisters watched as Cecilia got out. She was wearing a smart lightweight jacket in pale blue and darker blue slacks. Her head was up and her step confident. When Thea waved, she gave a nod of acknowledgement and quickly joined them.

  ‘You’ve started without me,’ she noted. ‘Are you ready for more drinks?’

  The sisters shook their heads emphatically and Cecilia climbed the slope to the bar at a trot.

  There did not seem to be anything to say as they waited for her to return. Then, after Thea had made the introductions, Jocelyn confessed that she had been one of Cecilia’s students. ‘You haven’t changed a bit,’ she said.

  Cecilia scrutinised her. ‘Well, I’m afraid I can’t say the same for you. I don’t remember you at all.’

  ‘I wasn’t very conspicuous,’ Jocelyn smiled. ‘And it was nearly twenty years ago.’

  ‘So many students, so much wasted breath,’ sighed Cecilia, as if she’d said the same thing many times before. ‘But it was a living, I suppose.’

  ‘Come off it,’ said Thea. ‘After last Tuesday, I don’t believe a word of that. You’re still devoted to your subject.’

  ‘I’m devoted to this little part of the world, and its history,’ Cecilia admitted. ‘It’s not at all the same thing as being an avid lecturer on the stuff.’

  ‘You seemed quite avid on Sunday,’ Thea argued mildly. ‘Full of local history and gossip, you were.’

  ‘It’s completely different,’ the older woman insisted. ‘I really can’t pretend that I ever had much of a liking for the students. Most of them had no idea why they were there and cared nothing for the subject.’ She threw a mildly accusing glance at Jocelyn. ‘What did you do afterwards, for example?’

  ‘I got a job on a glossy magazine for a bit. It was wonderful while it lasted. Then I got married and had five kids.’ Her tone was defiant, but there was self-mockery in her expression. ‘Since then I’ve had a series of part-time jobs, and sold one or two articles about antique ceramics and that sort of thing. But you’re right – most of us had very little feeling for the subject.’

  Cecilia sipped her pint of cider and said nothing. Thea began to worry that the next hour would be rather hard going. Under the table, Hepzie was licking a paw, a sign of restlessness. ‘I’ve seen the locks, in the woods down there,’ she offered, waving a hand towards the road and the bridge across the river. ‘I can’t imagine how they’ll ever restore them. It’ll be an enormous job.’

  ‘So everybody says,’ Cecilia nodded. ‘I don’t expect to see it done in my lifetime.’

  ‘Oh, but aren’t they saying five years?’ Too late, Thea wondered whether the remark had been an oblique revelation of a terminal illness, rendering five years well beyond Cecilia’s expected survival. But this did not appear to be what she’d meant.

  ‘Don’t you find it’s one of the plagues of our times – setting targets of this sort?’ Cecilia’s tone was conversational and calm, but Jocelyn caught Thea’s eye with an alarmed look. ‘It’s as if these people believe that all they have to do is state an intention to achieve something by a certain time, and it’ll happen, by magic. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so irritatingly childish. And most of the time the target is something stupid that nobody wanted in the first place.’

  Thea held up her hands. ‘Let’s not get into that argument,’ she pleaded. In desperation she sought for a change of subject. ‘Do you know Valerie Innes?’ she asked Cecilia, who responded with a few seconds’ blankness.

  ‘What does she have to do with anything?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing really. She seems to be rather a prominent personality around here, that’s all.’

  ‘She’s that, yes. I can’t say I have a great deal to do with her.’

  ‘Her Jeremy was fond of the cat,’ Jocelyn contributed. ‘I gather you were the first one to discover the body.’

  ‘What?’ Cecilia seemed startled. ‘Oh, Julia’s cat. Yes – poor thing.’

  Thea began to sense minefields on all sides. Not knowing how much Cecilia knew about the death of Nick Franklyn presented her with a number of brick walls when it came to conversation. Safer, then, to stick to local history. And that meant canals. ‘But you would like the canal to be restored, wouldn’t you?’ she asked. ‘So far I can’t seem to find anybody who’s actually in favour of it, which I find extraordinary.’

  But even this was apparently an unsafe topic. Cecilia sighed heavily, suggesting exasperation and even something like anger. She shifted her feet and accidentally kicked the dog, who squeaked. ‘It’s all rather hard to explain,’ she said. ‘Life has moved on. New people have come here, who don’t know or care about how things were in the past. And the canal never was all good, you know.’ She leaned forward, her eyes glittering. ‘People died because of that canal.’

  Thea took this easily. ‘Well, of course. Making that tunnel must have been an awful job. But surely—’

  ‘And afterwards. Much more recently than the construction of the tunnel. Locks can be extremely dangerous, you see.’

  Thea was unmoved. ‘Just about anything’s dangerous, if you get into that way of thinking,’ she said. ‘I’m sure the benefits would outweigh any minor hazards.’

  ‘Well, many people would think you were wrong about that,’ Cecilia said tightly.

  ‘Let’s order some food,’ Jocelyn suggested. ‘I’m hungry.’ They duly consulted a menu and made their selections, the atmosphere heavy and slow between them.

  Thea observed Cecilia as she ate – not something she would normally do. The food was absorbed impatiently, roughly chopped and certainly not savoured. The woman seemed angry and preoccupied, perhaps with the proposed canal restoration, or perhaps with the fecklessness of students. Or, more probably, as it turned out, with Valerie Innes.

  ‘The woman’s a disaster,’ she said, her mouth still occupied with a large chip.

  �
�Which woman?’ Jocelyn asked with a frown and another glance at Thea.

  ‘Valerie. She’s a type, of course. Never listens, thinks the world will collapse if she doesn’t take control. Gets an idea into her head and tries to force everybody to conform to it. It amazes me the way those boys have stuck around as long as they have.’

  ‘I can’t say I liked her much,’ Thea agreed carefully. ‘And I thought the same about the boys. Dominic must be well over twenty.’ Again the sisters’ eyes met, Thea trying to convey that she knew she was taking a gamble.

  ‘Coming up to twenty-three, I think. There’s a case in point, if we need one. Dropped out of Bristol after less than a year and hasn’t got himself together since.’

  ‘Too busy with his Rural Warriors, I suppose,’ purred Thea. ‘And girls. Isn’t he involved with Flora Phillips? Which must be rather a scandal in itself, with such a big age gap.’

  Cecilia had taken a second chip, which now obstructed her windpipe as she thoughtlessly inhaled. Coughing desperately, she turned red and leaned over the grass in an undignified attempt to expel the object that was preventing her from breathing. Jocelyn reached over and thumped her heartily between the shoulderblades – which clearly did not help. Hepzibah sensed an interesting diversion and began jumping at Cecilia. Jocelyn pushed her away with an irritated comment.

  All Thea could do was watch, and wonder which of her remarks had been so startling. She was not afraid that Cecilia would choke to death – if she could cough, then air must be getting through. But Jocelyn was in full panic mode. ‘God, Thea, do something!’ she shouted.

  ‘She’ll be all right. Just leave her to sort herself out. You’re making it worse.’ At the same moment, the sisters both recognised that Thea was doing it again – refusing to react to the sort of alarming event that had most people in a frenzy.

  ‘Ohh – you,’ said Jocelyn, retreating from the suffering woman. ‘One of these days, somebody’s going to die right in front of you, and you’ll be sorry you didn’t try to help.’

  ‘Let’s hope not,’ gasped Cecilia, eyes streaming and voice constricted. ‘But I’m all right.’ She drew a long shaky breath. ‘That was all my own fault.’ She rubbed her bronchial area. ‘What an exhibition!’

  ‘Have a drink,’ Thea suggested. ‘Isn’t that what people do?’

  Cecilia picked up her tankard, containing barely an inch of cider. ‘I’m not sure why, are you? The last thing you’d want is fluid going into your lungs as well. But let’s see if it works.’ She drained the glass, and set it back on the table. ‘Right as rain,’ she reported. ‘I’m so sorry to cause such a scene.’

  Jocelyn surprised them both. ‘It was something to do with Flora, wasn’t it?’ she said. ‘You weren’t expecting Thea to know about her and Dominic.’

  ‘But it isn’t true,’ Cecilia croaked. ‘Absolute rubbish. Flora Phillips was going out with Nick Franklyn.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Jocelyn flashed.

  Cecilia pursed her lips at this, and gave the question little attention. ‘I just know,’ was all she would say.

  The lunch seemed to fizzle out after that. Thea lost any further inclination to draw gossip out of Cecilia, and Jocelyn seemed to withdraw into her own gloomy thoughts. One final unfortunate exchange centred upon the defunct Milo and Jeremy Innes’s retrieval of the body.

  ‘That was Valerie’s fault, of course,’ said Cecilia. ‘Decided the animal would be happiest at Juniper Court, when really Frannie Craven should have had him, if anybody should.’

  ‘Jeremy seemed to think somebody killed him deliberately,’ Jocelyn said. ‘He was furiously upset.’

  ‘Jeremy’s very confrontational,’ Cecilia mused. ‘He should do well in the Army.’

  Thea laughed a little at this, but not enough to salvage the atmosphere.

  Back at Juniper Court, a few minutes after one thirty, Thea idly lifted the phone and got the broken signal to indicate a 1571 message. When she listened, it was Phil Hollis, asking her to call back. He’d left it only ten minutes previously.

  She got through to him quickly. ‘Now brace yourself,’ he said. ‘This might sound a bit beyond the call of duty.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Franklyn would like to meet you. It’s not unusual, actually. You found the body, you see. It gives you a special sort of place in the story for them.’

  Thea gulped. ‘Well, it won’t be the first time, I suppose,’ she said bravely.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘In Duntisbourne. I met the entire family of the victim.’

  ‘So you did. Well, that’s okay, is it?’

  ‘Yes, it’s okay.’

  ‘I’ll be there just after two, then. Have you had lunch?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘Well I haven’t. You’ll have to put up with me eating sandwiches in the car.’

  ‘No problem,’ she said, wanting to add, Yes, but what about Mr and Mrs Franklyn’s lunch? People suffering from a sudden intolerable loss forgot to eat, or they ate a jar of Marmite at three in the morning, or a whole loaf of bread, picked off with their fingers, a chunk at a time.

  ‘And before you ask,’ he added, ‘no, you can’t bring the dog.’

  * * *

  He gave her a thoroughly professional briefing as they drove to Cirencester, making her feel important and excited and involved, for the first time since Monday.

  ‘We’ve questioned him, of course,’ Hollis said. ‘And he says he was asleep in bed with his wife until eight on Monday morning. Then he had to go and see a client in Bisley at nine thirty.’

  ‘Bisley? Where’s that?’

  ‘You may well ask. It’s north of Chalford. To get to it from Cirencester, you might reasonably opt to go through Daneway – but not Frampton Mansell, which is where you saw him, as I understand it.’

  ‘Yes. But not before nine thirty. He must have been coming back from his client. What client, anyway? Has he or she backed up what Mr F. says?’

  ‘It’s a foreign family in a big house, down an impossibly steep and narrow little lane. I sent two DCs to check it out, and it sounds more or less kosher. Franklyn’s a financial consultant – he was helping them choose a pension plan, or some such stuff. They think he arrived when he said he would, and stayed about an hour. They admired his car. He charged them over a hundred quid for his services, which came as something of a shock, I gather.’

  Thea thought this over while Hollis ate most of a cheese and pickle roll, driving with one hand.

  ‘Does he know it’s me?’ she wondered. ‘I mean, surely he does. So he’ll know I saw him near Juniper Court at about eleven, just about the time when somebody was stringing up his son’s body in the stable. He’s had loads of time to prepare his alibi.’

  ‘He doesn’t know the exact times, and I want you to be careful not to give anything away about that. It strikes me that it’s the wife who wants to see you, and the chap’s been forced to go along with it.’

  ‘But that wouldn’t make him the murderer, would it? Didn’t you say Nick died much earlier, probably at the barn?’

  ‘Right. Something like four or five in the morning, they think. He was just stiffening up by the time they cut him down from your stable beam. But it’s a bit convoluted to think one person killed him and another took him to Juniper Court.’ He threw her a quick look. ‘Don’t you think?’

  ‘I have no idea. Considering that everybody knows everybody, and they all seem to be part of the Rural Warriors outfit, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was like the Orient Express and the whole community pitched in.’

  He sighed. ‘I know this is going to annoy you, but what’s the Orient Express reference about?’

  ‘Oh, honestly!’ she tutted. ‘It’s an Agatha Christie story. It turns out that everybody did it.’

  ‘And now you’ve spoilt it for me.’

  ‘Serves you right.’

  ‘We’re almost there. Just down here and it’s a cul de sac on the left, if I’ve read t
he map right.’

  ‘Hello, again,’ Thea said to Mr Franklyn, when Hollis made the introductions, wondering in the sudden stillness of the detective beside her whether that was entirely the wrong thing to say. It seemed to come as a shock to Mrs Franklyn, too.

  ‘Again?’ she queried, with a puzzled frown. Thea had the impression that most things puzzled this poor woman at the moment.

  The man turned to her. ‘You remember, dearest – I met this lady on Sunday. When I was out looking for Nick.’

  ‘Oh, did you?’ Interest lapsed into lethargy. Thea remembered the sense of fragility that she could see on the woman’s face – the conviction that if you moved or spoke too violently, your arms and legs and head would all come off.

  The Franklyns were hollow-eyed but controlled. The man held his wife’s hand, stroking her fingers, one by one, feeling the joints, bending them slightly. Thea understood his need to believe in warm living flesh, to convince the bereaved mother, at the same time, of the same reality. Mrs Franklyn kept her free hand pressed against her sternum, as if monitoring her own breathing.

  ‘I saw your appeal on the telly,’ Thea pressed on. ‘You did it very well. It must have been nerve-wracking.’

  ‘We badly want to find who did this, you see,’ said the father.

  ‘Not that that will bring him back,’ his wife put in, as if this needed to be said repeatedly, before she could properly believe it.

  ‘Did you find Daneway?’ Thea asked, feeling unkind and irrelevant. It was now blatantly obvious to her that the man had not slaughtered his son.

  He stared at her blankly. ‘Where?’ he said.

  ‘Daneway. You asked me the way, remember? On Sunday afternoon. I hope I directed you the right way.’

  ‘I was looking for Nick,’ he repeated. ‘We were worried about him. He’d phoned us that morning and said something about the canal. He said there was trouble over the plans for the canal and he had to confront some people. It didn’t make very much sense.’ He turned to Hollis in appeal. ‘I’ve already told you all this.’