A Cotswold Christmas Mystery

by Rebecca Tope

  Andrew spread his hands in a display of ignorance. ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘Although I would guess not, the way he was talking.’

  ‘He probably will, though,’ Thea said. ‘Those sort of people won’t let anything go. They’re very likely thinking it was Ant or one of his parents who nicked the thing. They’ll use any excuse to persecute them.’

  ‘Nasty,’ said Andrew.

  ‘They are nasty,’ said Stephanie fervently. ‘Nasty rich people.’

  Everyone laughed at that, which made her feel silly and ridiculously young.

  Then it was nine o’clock, and the Emersons were going home, and Thea was clearing up glasses and the dog was gleaning crumbs from the carpet. Jessica stretched and said what a lovely lazy day it had been, and still two more to go before Christmas. Timmy groaned and said it felt as if Christmas would never come. Drew sat in one of the armchairs, watching them all with a weirdly distant expression.

  ‘Bed, you two,’ ordered Thea. ‘Dad can read to you tonight. It must be his turn.’

  And he did, briefly, and with very poor expression. Because the children were in the same room while Jessica was staying, one story did for them both. It was Martin’s Mice by Dick King-Smith, which was childish and funny and familiar. Drew had owned the book since he was eight, and the cover was badly torn. When he picked it up before starting to read, he went very quiet, until Timmy said, ‘Dad? We’re waiting.’

  Then they got the hurried chapter, and a perfunctory kiss, before being left to their own devices. ‘Weird,’ said Timmy.

  ‘He’s worried about something,’ said Stephanie. ‘I think somebody he knows must have died.’

  ‘So why doesn’t he tell us? Has he told Thea?’

  ‘No,’ said Stephanie with certainty. ‘He hasn’t. He’s probably going to do it now.’

  ‘She might not listen,’ said Timmy, to Stephanie’s surprise. ‘She often doesn’t.’

  Stephanie found herself pulled in two directions. She wanted to defend her stepmother, who was being really good about Christmas, and staying cheerful and keeping it all going. But her deeper sympathies were with her father. He just wasn’t very good at getting to the point, when he wanted something. He had a very poor grasp of timing; it made Stephanie wince when he would broach an important topic when it was obvious that Thea was juggling five other things already. And he would regularly start in the wrong place, jumping into the middle of a story that needed much more careful introduction. Thea would stop him, often irritably, saying, ‘I can’t read your mind, Drew. You need to explain what you’re talking about.’

  ‘She will if he says it properly,’ she told Timmy.

  ‘If,’ said her brother sombrely.

  Next morning, it soon became apparent that no meaningful conversation had taken place between the adults. Thea was still in domestic mode, making lists and teasing Timmy about his minute-counting. ‘Just under forty-eight hours to go,’ she calculated. ‘We’re getting there.’

  Jessica had got up early and was on her mobile. Nobody asked who she was texting or why, but she volunteered the information anyway. ‘I have to be back bright and early on Wednesday,’ she announced. ‘I was hoping I could have the morning off. I’m on duty all over New Year as well.’

  ‘Do you get paid double time for that?’ Thea asked.

  Jessica shrugged. She was well known for being careless with money, haphazard with direct debits and credit cards. ‘You’ll never be able to buy your own house if you don’t pay more attention,’ Thea repeatedly warned her.

  ‘That doesn’t worry me at all,’ came the blithe reply.

  ‘So who’s keeping you informed about the work rota?’

  ‘Sandy. My flatmate. She’s working right up to the end of tomorrow. She’s CID and they’ve got a new case. Not sure what it is, but it’s having an effect on the shifts, apparently.’

  Drew wandered into the kitchen. ‘I’ve got to make a phone call, but first I need to tell you something,’ he said to the room in general. ‘I’m going to have to be out all day today and part of tomorrow. Lucky Jessica’s here – you can use her car if you need to.’

  ‘Why? What are you talking about?’ Thea seemed breathless with surprise.

  ‘I had a phone call yesterday afternoon from my mother. My father died on Thursday night. She wants me to go up and see her.’

  Chapter Four

  Antares was slow to wake on Saturday, after drinking quite a lot of wine with Alice the previous evening. It was half past eight and he was supposed to be selling Christmas trees in Chipping Campden. The final day of a punishing three weeks, which had left him exhausted. It was several minutes before he remembered his absent mother. Her car had not been there when he returned home, which had bothered him at the time, but not enough to prevent him from slipping into a deep sleep the moment he lay down.

  But now he was pierced by a feeling of acute concern. Where was his mother? While she was undeniably a woman of fierce independence, and even fiercer obstinacy, she would never leave for such a long time without explanation. He tried to think of reasons why she might so abruptly disappear. Something to do with Christmas seemed the most persuasive idea. An enforced two days of sitting around the house eating too much and bickering might have struck her as unbearable. Or perhaps the lurking presence of Carla Blackwood’s two daughters, just over the fence, had felt insupportable. There was, after all, no absolute requirement for Beverley to remain at home and understandable reasons why she might choose not to.

  But where would she go and why wouldn’t she tell her husband and son?

  For several years now, she had gone her own way, treating the bonds of marriage as of diminishing significance. Digby had been forced to accommodate himself to it until he discovered that he was himself liberated by this loose arrangement. Beverley had been an entirely adequate mother to her two children, until they finished school. Then she had swiped her hands together, given them beaming smiles and told them she intended to devote the rest of her life to pleasing herself. ‘In the nicest possible way,’ she had added with a laugh.

  But she had been civilised about it. She mounted a large cork board on the wall and embellished it with dozens of drawing pins, several of them holding clean white sheets of paper. ‘Just write your movements up here,’ she instructed. ‘Dates and places.’

  ‘Wouldn’t a simple calendar suffice?’ asked her husband. ‘Or one of those boards you can wipe clean?’

  ‘Or stick notes onto the fridge with magnets?’ suggested Ant.

  ‘This way’s best,’ his mother insisted. ‘Work from left to right, see. There’s space for all kinds of information, and we can refer back if necessary.’

  Two years after that, Aldebaran had grabbed a felt tip, and written ‘I’m off to America. See y’all. Deb.’

  And she had gone, a month later, never to be seen again. Her note was still on the board, after ten years’ absence. Ant peered at it now. Cluttered, dusty scraps of paper curling at the edges, they still used it once in a while. Nothing recent, though. Nothing from Beverley to explain where she’d gone so suddenly.

  The approach of Christmas had seen all three of them scrambling to take advantage of the increased commerce that came with the festival. Digby had been running his stalls at a dozen different village hall sales, offering poinsettias, hyacinths, wreaths, mistletoe, holly, as well as keeping his regular market stall going, selling bric-a-brac and general junk. The van was permanently crammed with plants, packaging and fancy pots. Beverley went with him now and then, but her own activities centred more around textiles. She made rugs and wall hangings, blankets and bags, which she sold to pretentious emporiums all around the Cotswolds. She spun and dyed the wool herself, as well as running classes in a whole range of handicrafts. The Frowses were always busy.

  ‘Didn’t she have a row with old Blackwood a couple of days ago?’ Ant said slowly. ‘Was that Wednesday? She was upset about it that evening.’

  ‘Bloody swine,’ said Dig
by, automatically. He was a heavy man, whose past life had been full of incident, if his stories could be believed. Now in his late sixties, he had once been the manager of the whole estate, when it had been a fruit farm. Four hundred acres of apples, pears, plums, apricots and cherries had been grown there. The gates had been open to the public, who came to pick their own, or buy in bulk. But then it had failed, largely thanks to EU regulations and various social changes, and Digby had been out of work. Not, however, out of a home. The cottage was ‘tied’ and the family had a perfect right to stay in it for the rest of their lives. The entire estate had been sold, eighteen years earlier, to a millionaire who fancied a rural Cotswold lifestyle, but was appalled at the presence of a ramshackle cottage only yards from his own handsome Georgian home.

  The landlord’s name was Rufus Blackwood, and he was the owner of the whole Crossfield Estate, now amounting to six hundred acres on the edge of Broad Campden. It had ceased to function as a fruit farm years before, and all the apple and plum trees had been rooted out. Now it was grazing land, maintained more as a decorative park than a working farm. Alpacas and Highland cattle strolled over the close-cropped acres, a few fields were given over to growing lavender, a few more to fast-growing willows intended for biofuel. Blackwood was exceedingly rich, but he still enjoyed exploiting whatever government subsidies might be there for the taking. The Old Stables were a perpetual thorn in his side, the very sight of which enraged him. He and his Russian-born wife had decided to try to persuade the Frowses to leave by a campaign of harassment that had Beverley especially in a constant state of vigilance. She wrote down every detail of every underhand act, preparing herself for a legal defence that might never be needed.

  The electrified fence around the whole property, with the gates and the keypads that had to be operated to open them, were several steps too far, as anybody would agree. Even though Digby had so cleverly circumvented the need for a code, the outrage persisted. The moment anyone lifted the phone, they were automatically connected, and the gate would swing open as if by magic. It was immensely satisfying, and a very good joke against the Blackwoods – but there was no denying the original intention to harass and intimidate. The landlord still believed he was making life difficult for his unwanted tenants. If he ever discovered the subterfuge, he would make a point of installing something even more draconian to make the Frowses’ lives difficult.

  The landlord’s own visitors mostly arrived by helicopter, or fancy cars with special electronic devices that opened the big wrought-iron gate with ease. His wife had three daughters who showed up from time to time. Their father had been a Russian oil magnate. Carla had quickly found a rich Brit to marry when the rich Russian died in a freak accident. And Carla had been horrified at the eyesore that was the Old Stables when she first moved into Crossfield. Digby’s van, his heaps of junk and the awful old caravan, and Beverley’s untidy heaps of dyed wool drying in the sunshine – it all produced an impression starkly at odds with the mansion Carla had so enthusiastically come to live in.

  Crossfield House was indeed a mansion. Covered in ivy, dating to around 1760, modernised and beautiful, it suffered terribly from its scruffy little neighbour, in Carla’s eyes. ‘My father would simply have had it demolished without a second thought,’ she had said. ‘Surely you can do that?’

  ‘Sadly not,’ sighed her new husband. ‘I’d most likely end up with a prison sentence.’ But he shared her contempt for the slobbish Frowses and their stubborn refusal to take increasingly heavy hints. The house was deliberately allowed to fall into disrepair, with Rufus ducking out of his obligations to keep roof and windows watertight. The tenants paid such a minimal rent that he felt entirely justified in neglecting them. He had much more important things to do, such as entertaining CEOs of large corporations and discussing investments with fund managers. He also had to keep Carla happy with lengthy trips in his yacht. The lodge they owned in Aspen had to be visited two or three times a year, as well.

  Beverley, her husband and son suspected, made everything worse by her attitude. Every time the rent was reviewed, she wrote a long letter to the authorities listing the reasons why the house was uninhabitable as it was, and any rent was extortion. Even more self-defeating, she refused to allow Digby to make any sort of improvements himself. ‘It’s not our property – we’re not responsible for the maintenance,’ she repeated over and over. And so the plaster flaked off, the plumbing was full of airlocks and the kitchen was an absolute mess.

  And yet Beverley loved Christmas. She would hang up great sprigs of Digby’s holly and mistletoe, send handmade cards to everybody she had ever known, and kept a secret cupboard well stocked with surprise presents. On the day itself she would prepare a lavish meal with turkey and every imaginable accompaniment. More than once she had invited random strays to join them.

  ‘What was the row about?’ Digby wondered now. ‘Did she say?’

  ‘Something to do with a package that’s gone missing. I didn’t take very much notice, but apparently Rufus sent up for some priceless piece of jewellery for Carla, and it never arrived.’

  ‘What? He had it sent through the post? That doesn’t sound very likely.’

  ‘I might have got it wrong. He accused Mum of having it, anyway. That was on Wednesday afternoon, when she was down by the gate. She was absolutely livid about it. You can’t have missed the whole thing. You were right here when she came to tell us about it.’

  His father grimaced. ‘I remember bits of it. She wasn’t really talking to me, was she? I was on the computer, as I recall.’

  One of Digby’s many methods of distracting himself from what he had feared would be long days of retirement was discussing the American Civil War with a large group of like-minded aficionados on his laptop – which he generally brought downstairs during the day, sitting at a small table in a corner of the living room and ignoring everything going on around him. He had been to the battlefields once, long ago, and never lost the interest. When he was on one of his forums, a bomb could go off next to him and he wouldn’t notice.

  Ant tried to remember more detail. ‘I admit it didn’t make a lot of sense. You know how she talks in shorthand. But now I’m wondering—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It might not have been the usual sort of thing. He was accusing her of something. Stealing, even. But just as I was starting to think it might be important, Jason phoned and I had to set him straight about the trees and we never got back to it. Mum went upstairs and the rest of the day seemed fairly normal. She made that lamb stew, remember, and went to bed early? And I don’t think I’ve seen her since then.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Digby with a sigh. ‘Well, I haven’t either. D’you think we ought to do something about it?’

  Mr and Mrs Frowse did not share a bedroom. When their daughter died, they agreed that her room should not be kept as any kind of shrine to her, except for a framed photograph of her. And on a corner shelf there stood a lidded urn made of porcelain in which Aldebaran’s ashes were stored. ‘I want her to be buried with me when I go,’ said Beverley.

  She had moved into the empty room and had been there ever since, with Digby making very little objection. ‘Can I be in the grave with you as well?’ was all he said. As far as Ant could tell, there were no conjugal encounters between his parents. Not one of the family could claim any activity of that kind. Only the dog enjoyed any sort of sex life, and that had been two years ago when Percy had fathered a litter of crossbreed puppies and suffered the extreme punishment of losing his gonads as a result.

  ‘I’ll try her phone again,’ said Ant with no sense of optimism. His mother did in theory carry a mobile with her, but generally it languished in the glove compartment of her car, the battery dead. ‘Why would I want to be pursued by a telephone, when I’ve hated them all my life?’ she would demand, with scant originality. When family or friends insisted, ‘But they’re so useful,’ Beverley just laughed.

  It was not that she was a deliberate rebel, goi
ng against the flow in any way. She was simply unaware most of the time that there was a flow. She barely noticed the news, had absolutely no grasp of current affairs, and only concerned herself with events inside her own small circle. She had not always been like this, however. The brutal and unsolved murder of her daughter Aldebaran had been the cause of her withdrawal from the world. ‘If I can’t do anything to change it, then I have no choice but to ignore it,’ summed up her existence. ‘I would rather not engage with this stinking world,’ was what she said at the time. Digby’s grief had also smothered most of his emotional life in a dense grey blanket. Both parents seemed to Ant to have drifted away from normal social intercourse, even with him, their only surviving child.

  But he made his second phone call anyway and left a voicemail to the effect that he and his father were wondering what had become of her. ‘I have to go,’ he realised, five minutes later. ‘One final push. I can hardly wait for tomorrow. Did you find the Christmas carols?’

  ‘I did. It’ll be playing all day, just as always.’

  There was one special CD they always put on for Christmas Eve, and which always concealed itself in one or other pile of junk throughout the rest of the year. ‘Where was it this time?’ asked Ant.

  ‘Top shelf, above the telly. Quite logical, really. Probably put it there myself.’

  ‘Don’t forget to take the dog for a quickie before you go out. If Mum’s not back soon, he’s going to have a boring day, poor old lad.’

  The dog was Ant’s, officially, and he was diligent in exercising and entertaining him as a rule. But Christmas chaos ensured that very few of the usual rules pertained.

  ‘I’ll have to wait for you to get home, won’t I? I’ll need the van.’

  ‘So you will.’ Ant sighed. ‘You’ll have to take him up to the footpath or somewhere. He ought to get a run.’