A Cotswold Christmas Mystery

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Let’s have a drink,’ said Digby at last. ‘We’ve got the port they gave you at the hotel. I could fancy a glass of port. And are there any mince pies? We’ve hardly had any food all day.’

  Ant didn’t move or reply. He had no appetite for food, and was wary of drinking in case he had to suddenly drive somewhere. ‘I can’t eat,’ he groaned. ‘I’m too agitated. Do you think Carla might have done it? Isn’t it usually the spouse when there’s a murder? Or he might have got entangled with that bloody fence and it electrocuted him. That would be a joke. Serve him right. Then it wouldn’t be murder at all. Just a stupid accident.’

  ‘We don’t know the facts of it. Nobody does. It might yet turn out to be a perfectly ordinary heart attack. I tell you, son, we just have to hang on a day or so, and wait for a chance to do something for ourselves. The police are taking two days off, more than likely. We can put the jump on them. Don’t panic, that’s the main thing.’

  ‘“Put the jump on them”? What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘Forget it. Go and get the port, there’s a good lad. I don’t want to disturb the dog. He’s missing your mum, poor old boy.’

  ‘Maybe he could find her for us.’ Ant was only half joking. Percy was an intelligent dog, who deserved a much less restricted life than he was allowed by the Blackwoods. Carla would go berserk if he ventured into their terrain and scared her precious Peke, so the Frowses had to take him along the road and onto the Monarch’s Way every time he needed a run. There wasn’t always time for more than a short excursion, which left the dog restless and bored.

  Digby only snorted at this idea. He waited for his drink with obvious impatience. Ant finally got up and went to look for the bottle. It seemed wrong to open it without Beverley. The hotel manager had carelessly handed it over, as just one more gratuity for a long list of townspeople who gave sporadic paid help at busy times. The kitchen, gardens, bedrooms, car park and bar might all find themselves short of essential staff at unpredictable moments. Ant had only ever done gardening, apart from selling them their Christmas trees. He had been replacing one that had got damaged when Beverley had made the mysterious phone call. ‘And say thanks to your mother,’ the manager had added. ‘She’s been quite a help this year.’ The implication had been that the port was meant for them both.

  Ant told his father about this remark now. ‘Don’t drink all of it,’ he said.

  ‘What’s she done for the hotel, then? I don’t remember anything.’

  ‘She made all those table decorations for the Rotary Club’s Christmas bash, three weeks ago or more. The florist let them down, so Mum had to do it in a rush. She did a lovely job. You can’t have forgotten.’ The house had been fragrant with the holly and cloves and glue that had gone into the centrepieces. Beverley had added glittery little origami birds as a special touch, and the feedback had been glowing.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Digby absently. ‘That seems a long time ago now.’

  ‘Dad – do you really think you know where she is? Somewhere beginning with “Win”? That’s got to be Winchcombe, hasn’t it? Why would she be there?’

  Digby shrank into his chair, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know for sure. Could be Winchcombe – most likely is. I wish you’d just stop going over it. Must be a hundred times by now. She was wrong to call you like she did, and say that about someone being dead. Can’t imagine what she was thinking, saying that.’

  ‘Why do I get the feeling you and she had some sort of plan, that hasn’t gone the way you expected?’

  ‘Stop moithering me, will you! You’re twisting my words and making me say things I don’t mean. Leave it, for God’s sake. I’m telling you, I’ll get to the bottom of it on Tuesday, when it’s had a bit of time to settle. How many times do I have to tell you?’

  Digby only said words like moithering when high emotion sent him back to his Lancashire roots. His first fifteen years had been spent in Manchester, where they said snicket and used a short a for daft. Ant understood that something had been going on behind his back; something that his parents had hatched and which involved the ultimate horror of sudden death. And yet, the idea was surely ludicrous, when he regarded it more closely. There had to be some simpler explanation − something to do with Christmas, perhaps – even a surprise present for himself. Straining his imagination, he arrived at a scenario whereby his mother had gone off to acquire an animal of some kind – Ant had always said he fancied keeping geese or pot-bellied pigs – and it had died. Perhaps she was in trouble because it was a valuable creature and her own carelessness had caused its death. Perhaps she’d let it onto the road and caused an accident. A fatal accident. It was starting to sound plausible inside his own head. Except for about twenty inexplicable details. Why keep up the secrecy? Why would she make that phone call? Why not get hold of another phone or find a charger for her own? How would she transport livestock in the family’s small, unreliable car? And hadn’t there been a strong implication that the words He’s dead and I can’t come home referred to a human being? And all that before factoring in the bizarre conversation between his father and Bronya. He went through the chronology of events one more time, hoping to prove that there really couldn’t be any connection between his mother and the death of Blackwood. It was impossible to believe that Beverley had loitered in the woods one evening in the dark, used fatal violence on their landlord and then dashed off to a hiding place without communicating with her husband and son.

  ‘She’s done something illegal, hasn’t she?’ he challenged his father. ‘That’s the only explanation that makes any sense at all.’

  ‘I honestly don’t know, son. And that’s the last I’m going to say on the subject.’ Digby drained his glass of port and defiantly poured another one.

  Drew and Timmy made it home by eight-fifteen, when Stephanie was upstairs at the front window watching out for their headlights. They brought gusts of the outside world, disturbing the quiet and introducing topics that fitted awkwardly with the Christmas atmosphere. And yet none of the females in the family could resist asking endless questions, to which the males were more than happy to respond. An hour flew by, with them all flopped around the sitting room with the fire blazing up. Thea had made a rich, creamy soup from parsnips and onions and pieces of ham. ‘Unorthodox but delicious,’ said Drew approvingly.

  ‘We’ll be short of parsnips tomorrow,’ Thea warned. ‘But they do make wonderful soup.’

  They then progressed to mulled wine and mince pies, as promised.

  Jessica said little, watching the faces and trying to assess the implications of his father’s death for Drew’s marriage. Thea’s own father had died a few years ago, leading to a slow but steady fracturing of the remaining family group. The siblings saw much less of each other than they had when the patriarch had organised get-togethers. His widow seemed much less interested in maintaining the Johnstones as a unit.

  When invited to give a summary of the visit, Drew grimaced. ‘She was completely different from how I remember her,’ he began. ‘She belongs to a choir which occupies half her time, volunteers all over the place, drives an electric car that cost a fortune and has a huge dog.’

  ‘The dog’s a monster,’ said Timmy with a shudder. ‘It chased me.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have run away,’ said his father, with scant sympathy. ‘It only wanted to play.’

  ‘You told me that Tim thought it was wonderful, when you phoned,’ Thea reminded him.

  ‘He did at first. But it has an unreliable temper. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have hurt him, all the same.’

  ‘So your mother’s all right?’ said Thea. ‘I mean, she doesn’t sound prostrated with grief.’

  Drew paused. ‘No, she’s not at all prostrated. I got the impression they’d been living very separate lives for quite some time. It turns out he got a hefty windfall from the PPI thing – got some agency to dig it all out, and ended up with nearly forty thousand. Claimed he was “financially naive” and had believed all
the stories he was told about needing to be insured. Spent most of it on the car. My mother’s gone astonishingly green, which is why she wants him to have a natural burial.’

  Which got them onto the logistics of what was going to happen next. Drew, it turned out, had wasted no time in contacting a local green burial ground and fixing up a funeral for the coming Friday. ‘He’s having a cardboard coffin, and the choir are coming to sing at the graveside,’ he added.

  ‘In a snowstorm, most likely,’ said Thea. ‘Doesn’t it snow all winter up there?’

  ‘Not quite. We checked the long-term forecast and it looks reasonably mild all week.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘She wants to come and meet you and see Stephanie and mend bridges. She’s pencilled in 4th January. And she’s going to bring the dog.’

  Timmy shuddered again, but Stephanie found herself curious to meet the animal. It couldn’t be entirely terrible if it had an old lady as an owner, she decided.

  ‘How long is she proposing to stay?’

  ‘Four days. Apparently there’s a concert on the 9th she has to be there for, with a rehearsal the previous day.’

  ‘Long way to come in an electric car,’ said Jessica. ‘Won’t it run out of power before it gets halfway?’

  ‘She’s coming by train. We’ve got to meet her in Oxford, probably. She can get a direct line to there.’

  Thea made a soft puffing sound of indignation, but said nothing. Stephanie was half asleep, her mind forming pictures of a strange grandmother setting stones on top of each other in an effort to mend a bridge, with a massive dog at her side.

  ‘She sounds very organised,’ said Jessica neutrally.

  ‘She made Dad cut up logs,’ said Timmy unexpectedly. ‘She’s got a big, fancy woodburner, twice the size of this one.’

  ‘Are they green?’ wondered Thea. ‘I thought we weren’t meant to burn things any more.’

  ‘Apparently they’re fine if they’ve got all the latest attachments to control the emissions. And I wasn’t cutting the logs up, I was splitting them. It’s actually very satisfying,’ said Drew. ‘She’s got an acre of land, with lots of trees. She uses dead bits for firewood mostly, but sometimes there’s a big branch to lop off …’ he tailed away, suddenly aware that nobody really wanted to hear about his mother’s fuel arrangements.

  ‘An acre of land?’ Thea echoed, picking up the only interesting detail. ‘Maybe she should start her own burial ground, then?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Somebody’s got two horses on it at the moment. There’s quite a nice shelter in one corner.’

  ‘You obviously got the guided tour. What about the house?’

  ‘I think that’s enough for this evening, don’t you?’ said Drew, noticing his somnolent children. ‘It’s probably going to be an early start tomorrow.’

  ‘The later they go now, the longer they’ll sleep in the morning,’ said Thea optimistically. ‘You do hear of kids bouncing on their parents’ bed at 4 a.m.’

  ‘Not these two. I’ve got them better trained than that.’

  ‘And not me, either,’ said Jessica. ‘I always had to wait until seven. It was torture.’

  ‘Well, the turkey should go in by nine. Otherwise I don’t think I’ve got any deadlines,’ said Thea. ‘We can start on the presents after breakfast.’

  Stephanie’s eyes flew open. ‘Presents! We haven’t brought them down. And a mince pie for Santa.’

  There ensued a flurry of activity, everyone producing parcels from hidden cupboards and corners, until the tree was swamped by them. Timmy had to be carried upstairs and undressed while more than half asleep. Everyone else soon followed, with the briefest of visits to the bathroom for teeth-brushing. ‘It’s good to have you home again,’ mumbled Thea to Drew, as they both sank into oblivion.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Towards dawn, Stephanie had a succession of dramatic dreams. In the first, Ant’s mother came to the door festooned with brambles and nettles and thistles, her face scratched and her hands bleeding. ‘Help me!’ she gasped, before collapsing in the sitting room and knocking over the Christmas tree. That was followed by one featuring a witch-like figure riding on a massive dog, which was chasing Timmy around a fallen tree in a field. Lastly, there was a lengthy episode in which she had to find a box containing Thea’s Christmas present from Drew, which he had hidden and then forgotten where he put it. Only Stephanie could help, until Ant’s beloved Percy appeared and started to dig under a hedge. A glint of bright silver wrapping paper had just become visible when she woke up.

  Blearily she blinked at her father standing in the doorway, his arms full of peculiar shapes. ‘Happy Christmas, kids!’ he carolled. ‘Don’t tell me you’re still asleep. It’s nearly half past seven. Look – Santa Claus has been, as hoped. I found all this stuff by the fire downstairs.’

  He carefully disentangled the two pairs of well-filled tights and gave one to each child. ‘I hope I’ve got them right,’ he said. ‘Not that Santa seems to discriminate between the sexes so much these days.’

  It felt wrong to Stephanie that he had had to wake them up. This had never happened before, and it made her think she must be getting old. The magic of the pre-dawn anticipation had been a crucial part of previous Christmas mornings. But Timmy had missed it too. He was as bemused as she was. ‘Morning already?’ he spluttered. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I think I am. Thea’s not up yet, but Jessica’s in the bathroom already. The sun’s going to rise any moment now.’

  ‘It’s not till after eight, actually,’ Timmy corrected. He knew about such things. But he was not trying to pick an argument. Instead his attention was diverted to the mysterious lumps and rattles of his Christmas stocking. ‘It’s heavy,’ he said, his eyes widening.

  ‘Well, just see what you’ve got, while I go and let the dog out,’ said Drew. ‘Don’t eat all the chocolate at once.’

  ‘How do you know there’s chocolate?’ demanded Timmy, alert for any hint that Santa might actually be a resident of their own home.

  ‘I think I spotted it, about halfway down one leg.’

  Stephanie was already pulling objects out of the tights. The stretchy nylon resisted as corners caught, and she tried not to make holes. First out was a wooden yo-yo, followed by something mounted on a cardboard rectangle. It was a strange puzzle set into a plastic frame, comprising moveable squares to create a picture. Delving further, she soon had a goodly pile of treasure on her duvet. Timmy, across the room, was yelping with delight every minute or two. It was unusual for them to be sharing a room, but Jessica’s arrival made it necessary. Only three upstairs rooms contained beds, while the fourth, which was very small, was used as an emergency overflow only, with a folded bed kept in a cupboard. Timmy had begun to use it for his own overflowing collection of Pokémon figures and other things. He had instructed Jessica to be very careful when moving around his bedroom, because he had several delicate possessions sitting on almost every surface. ‘Don’t knock the orrery over, will you?’ he begged her.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘It’s a model of the solar system. I made it myself.’

  ‘Wow! I promise I won’t make any sudden movements,’ she assured him.

  Drew came back to inspect their stocking things, and then left them to get dressed and come downstairs. ‘Nice smart clothes, remember,’ he added. One of the aspects of childcare that he had always paid particular attention to was the way they were dressed. For this Thea had expressed considerable gratitude and relief, when first taking on her role as stepmother.

  Jessica came into the kitchen, her phone in her hand. ‘Snow forecast for Wednesday,’ she informed them. ‘Just as I’m supposed to be driving back to Manchester.’

  ‘Hooray!’ crowed Timmy. ‘I like snow.’

  ‘It should have been today, then we could have had a white Christmas,’ said Stephanie. ‘That never seems to happen.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Jessica agreed. ‘I don’t thi
nk I can remember a single one.’ The children had brought their stocking toys downstairs in cardboard boxes, and Jessica devoted herself to a thorough inspection of them, remarking that she thought a pair of tights was cheating, and she had only ever been allowed to hang up a handmade felt stocking that had been her father’s. ‘It only held about four things,’ she said. ‘And it had a hole in the toe.’

  ‘Gosh – that old thing!’ Thea exclaimed, overhearing this remark. ‘Carl’s mother made it in about nineteen sixty. I threw it away when you were fourteen.’

  Stephanie digested this conversation with interest. Carl’s mother must be Jessica’s grandmother – the one that wasn’t the person who she had met twice, when Dad and Thea had got married. ‘Is she still alive?’ she asked.

  ‘Who? Carl’s mother? Oh, yes. We’ve got the full set of grandmothers, in fact, even if we hardly see any of them.’

  ‘Where does she live?’ she asked Jessica. ‘Your father’s mother, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, she’s in a nursing home in Shrewsbury. I went to see her last month, actually. It’s not terribly far from Manchester. Carl’s father died ages ago, and she married a man called Stanley when she was seventy-five, and they went to live on the Welsh border. Then she got Alzheimer’s. She usually knows who I am when I visit, but last time she thought I was one of her old schoolfriends. Somebody called Abigail.’ She turned her attention to Thea. ‘You’ve never been to see her, have you, Mum? She used to ask about you all the time.’

  ‘I send her birthday and Christmas cards, and always put a letter in. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘I would say not, actually. She lost one of her sons in a shocking accident. I remember her being in a dreadful state at his funeral.’

  ‘So were we all. She hogged all the limelight, as if she was the only one entitled to any grief.’