by Rebecca Tope
‘Come in,’ Thea instructed, brooking no argument.
‘I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try and fill you in a bit,’ the woman conceded. ‘All I ever do at the moment is answer questions, anyway. Serves me right for trying to keep everything to myself, I guess.’
Thea made tea and sat the visitor down. ‘Where’s Digby?’ she began.
‘At the police station. It’ll take them a while to get the story straight. I’m not sure I understand it myself, despite Ant’s best efforts. Poor old Ant – he’s never going to feel the same about either of us again. He keeps insisting that Bronya’s really the victim in the whole thing.’
‘The way it sounded to us, Digby had been planning to kill Rufus for ages, and somehow Bronya brought it all to a head last week, and then killed him herself. In a nutshell, as it were. Have I got that right?’
‘Remember I haven’t seen Digby. They let me go at the same time as they took him in. I’ve just got Ant’s account to go on. He’s putting quite a lot of the blame on me, for some reason.’ She gave a windy sigh. ‘And he keeps saying there won’t be any real evidence against anybody, and they’ll have to let Digby go. He’s not so sure about Bronya.’
‘But you – where did you go? And why? And when?’
‘I went early, before the others were up, because I was sick of the way Digby was fixating on Bronya. I caught him sneaking around the back of our house, with some gadget that can magnify voices. He was listening to her in her parents’ living room, even though he tried to deny it at first.’
‘A listening device?’ said Thea, feeling very clever at even knowing the phrase.
‘Right. You plant a little box somewhere and you can hear everything it hears, through your phone. Incredibly simple and very sneaky. I was furious with him. He thought I’d never find him out there – we hardly ever go round the back,’ she added.
‘Okay. So you stormed out because of that?’
‘It was his manner. He told me it was none of my business, nothing that would affect me, and I would do best to just forget the whole thing. Well, how would you feel? Nobody likes to be told something like that, do they? I stewed all night, and decided I should drive off to my friend to cool off.’
‘You went to a friend?’
‘Winnie,’ she nodded. ‘She’d been inviting me for ages, and it seemed the perfect solution. But she’s awfully hard work. Never stops talking. So I gave it a day and then headed home again.’
‘That was Thursday evening?’
‘Right – I think. The days are all a bit of a blur now. There was no sign of Digby or the dog, and Ant fast asleep in his bed. I thought Digby must have taken Percy out for a late stroll – it was a nice moonlit night – so I went looking down by those woods. The dog heard me and came lolloping up, but no Digby. I didn’t dare shout, for fear of annoying the landlord. The woods are nice, you see, because they’re shielded from the bloody security lights that are on all the time round the houses.’
‘Okay,’ said Thea, visualising the scene. ‘Then what?’
‘Then I heard sounds. Heavy breathing, rustling undergrowth. Percy was all alert but not especially disturbed. We tiptoed towards the noises and I saw two people lying on the ground in what looked like sexual congress – as the police kept saying. I took them to be Digby and Bronya, although I realise now that I hardly saw anything that could identify anybody. I was furious, and went charging back to my car, determined to leave him once and for all. Then I bashed into a wheelbarrow that was under a tree, and tipped it over. Percy was under my feet at the same time, and he got hurt somehow. He yelped, and I was scared of being caught, so grabbed his collar and got us both back to the house without being seen. I’d left my car down by the road, which I often do, to save having to wait for the gate to creep open. It’s quicker on foot – and I hate having everything I do caught on the rotten cameras. We figured out that a person on foot can stay out of its sight, you see. Anyway, I shoved Percy into the house and ran back to the car. Winnie wasn’t best pleased to see me back at midnight, I can tell you.’
‘And you stayed away all over Christmas,’ said Thea, trying not to sound reproachful.
‘For my sins. I took Winnie out to a hotel for lunch, and we played about fifteen games of Scrabble, and watched an awful lot of mindless television, and I tried to psych myself up to leaving Digby and getting a nice little flat in a town somewhere. I figured if he was having it away with Blackwood’s stepdaughter, I couldn’t trust him even to be on my side any more. It made nonsense of the whole ghastly business.’
‘Your feud with the landlord, you mean?’
‘Right. I’d just had enough. So I phoned Ant and said as much. Something about Digby being dead to me – which he misheard, apparently. It was a bit melodramatic, I know, but that’s how I was feeling at the time.’
‘I’m not sure I follow the timing. Was it all pre-planned by Bronya and Digby together?’
‘I really don’t think so. It all came to a head when Rufus accused me of stealing that necklace, at the same time as Digby heard things getting more and more nasty for Bronya. It’s not really such a coincidence that the three of them ended up in the woods at the same time on Thursday night. Digby knew what Rufus was up to, and seized the moment.’
‘When did you first know that Blackwood was dead?’
‘Must have been Boxing Day, I suppose. When I phoned Ant again. I couldn’t work out where that fitted in the scheme of things, and by then I knew I’d have to go back and explain myself. And I was a bit worried about Percy, as well. And I think you know the rest. It wasn’t Digby rolling on the ground with Bronya – but Blackwood. And she was resisting him, not enthusiastically co-operating. It is quite hard to tell in the dark, you know,’ she added defensively. ‘And I still don’t know where Digby was. Behind a tree, I assume.’
‘Apparently Digby heard you knock the wheelbarrow over. He set it right again and ran back home without it. Maybe Bronya saw him and somehow got Rufus subdued enough to use the equipment to electrocute him.’ She hesitated. ‘Does that sound even remotely feasible to you?’
‘Not really. She’d have to have been miraculously quick-thinking. Ant thinks she probably saw Digby arriving with the wheelbarrow before Rufus came out in his pyjamas to have his wicked way with her. It’s even possible that they talked about a combined effort to bump him off. They both wanted him dead, after all. And Digby seems to be sympathetic towards her. And he can’t have taken all his equipment home if Bronya used it on Rufus after Digby had left the scene.’
‘It was back in the garden on Boxing Day – because Stephanie saw it and worked out the implications.’
‘He must have gone back for it before they found Rufus’s body, to try and cover up the truth of what happened.’
‘More than likely,’ said Thea, feeling sad.
‘If that’s so, he’s an accessory at best. He’ll get ten years in gaol.’
‘And what’ll you and Ant do?’
‘Get on with our lives.’ Beverley lifted her chin and stared at a corner of the room. ‘Which won’t be before time. All we’ve done for years is live like people under siege. If it’s not too late, I want to do something constructive. I was thinking I might offer myself to the Citizen’s Advice people.’
‘Good idea,’ Thea approved.
‘And Ant can finally grow up.’
Stephanie was even more taken with little Kim than expected. Within an hour she was besotted. The child was chunky, with rather thin, colourless hair like her mother. But she had greeny-grey eyes that glowed with an intelligent interest and a very advanced vocabulary. Drew and Thea watched in helpless wonder as the two settled down on the hearth rug with a collection of plastic toys and lost themselves in a game of fantasy involving a cow, a camel, a small house and five dinosaurs. Timmy had presented the last as his contribution to the game.
But Timmy had chosen Damien as his preferred member of the visiting family. It transpired that they shared an intere
st in exotic freshwater fish.
Jessica had gone, after a brief conversation with her mother out in the lane. ‘Another murder solved, then?’ she said. ‘I assume Beverley tied up all the loose ends for you?’
‘More or less,’ Thea said.
‘No thanks to Detective Constable Graham, apparently.’
‘He wasn’t even on duty. What did you expect?’
Jessica smiled. ‘I’m glad, really. I managed to stay out of it rather well, don’t you think?’
‘Was it deliberate?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘And are you staying in touch with him?’
‘I might. It’s a long way from Manchester. I wouldn’t get too excited. As far as I can see, relationships are pretty difficult even when you’re in the same house. If it’s three hours’ drive away, it might be impossible.’
‘Or it might be a darn sight easier,’ laughed Thea. ‘But don’t go away with the idea that there’s anything wrong between me and Drew.’
‘Even if you insist on going off to that woman in Northleach?’
‘Even then. We’ll be fine, honestly. You can trust Stephanie to make sure everything stays on track.’
‘Stephanie’s a marvel. You don’t know how lucky you are to have her.’
‘Oh, yes, I do,’ said Thea.
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About the Author
Rebecca Tope is the author of three bestselling crime series, set in the stunning Cotswolds, Lake District and West Country. She lives on a smallholding in rural Herefordshire, where she enjoys the silence and plants a lot of trees, but also manages to travel the world and enjoy civilisation from time to time. Most of her varied experiences and activities find their way into her books, sooner or later.
rebeccatope.com @RebeccaTope
By Rebecca Tope
The Cotswold Mysteries
A Cotswold Killing • A Cotswold Ordeal
Death in the Cotswolds • A Cotswold Mystery
Blood in the Cotswolds • Slaughter in the Cotswolds
Fear in the Cotswolds • A Grave in the Cotswolds
Deception in the Cotswolds • Malice in the Cotswolds
Shadows in the Cotswolds • Trouble in the Cotswolds
Revenge in the Cotswolds • Guilt in the Cotswolds
Peril in the Cotswolds • Crisis in the Cotswolds
Secrets in the Cotswolds • A Cotswold Christmas Mystery
♦
A Cotswold Casebook
The Lake District Mysteries
The Windermere Witness • The Ambleside Alibi
The Coniston Case • The Troutbeck Testimony
The Hawkshead Hostage • The Bowness Bequest
The Staveley Suspect • The Grasmere Grudge
The Patterdale Plot
The West Country Mysteries
A Dirty Death • Dark Undertakings
Death of a Friend • Grave Concerns
A Death to Record • The Sting of Death
A Market for Murder
Copyright
Allison & Busby Limited
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London W1F 8AN
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This ebook edition published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2020.
Copyright © 2020 by Rebecca Tope
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–2637–0
