Death Comes to Call: An absolutely unputdownable English cozy mystery novel (A Tara Thorpe Mystery Book 3)

by Clare Chase

  Matthew Cope must have followed her gaze. ‘This is my inheritance,’ he said, ‘left in trust until I’m forty – just the same arrangement as for Luke.’

  Tara was curious about that. She ought to be able to get away with probing if she presented her questions as polite interest. She was quite sure Matthew Cope still didn’t see her as the detective she actually was. Annoying, but it helped. ‘Did your parents spend time in both houses? Coming here almost feels like being in the countryside.’

  Cope nodded. ‘It’s good to get right away from the city each night. It’s not all nice out here, but I’ll take the smooth with the rough. There’s nothing like going outside in the evening and watching the bats swoop over the grounds.’

  Tara took the smooth with the rough where she lived too. The beauty and peace of the meadows more than made up for the lonely location, and the occasional antisocial behaviour out on the common around her house.

  ‘When my father married my mother it was his second union,’ Matthew Cope went on. ‘He was already living in the house in town. After he divorced his first wife, she moved away from Cambridge with their daughter, Vicky, to Suffolk. He bought her out, which gave her a nice bit of money to play with, and my mother moved in.’

  He made it sound like a simple financial transaction with no emotions involved. Tara wondered how he got on with his half-sister, and if she had grown up feeling resentful. As a half-sister herself, with no fewer than four half-siblings, she could well understand it if she had.

  ‘This house was my mother’s family home,’ Matthew Cope went on. ‘She was sentimentally attached to it so when my grandparents died my parents decided to keep it as investment rather than letting it go.’

  ‘It’s certainly quite a place.’ Tumbledown, yes, but with some faded grandeur and more than enough room to swing a hundred cats. If Matthew worked long hours, getting the place renovated might not be a priority. It was the same for her; she spent so little time at home that she hadn’t yet got round to much DIY, despite her cottage’s shortcomings.

  ‘Do you have to get back to work soon?’ Tara asked, her mind having turned to his career.

  He shook his head. ‘I requested a day’s leave when I heard there’d been a development. I couldn’t get it out of my head that the body must be Luke’s.’ He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Now I know that it’s not, I can’t help but feel relieved. But the thought that it’s Freya makes me sick to the stomach.’

  ‘All those reactions are very understandable. As I said, there’s been no formal identification yet.’

  He nodded and took a short, tight breath. ‘But I presume it will all come out very soon now?’

  Tara tried to see where that question had come from. Was he worried that everyone would assume his brother was guilty, the moment the murder of Freya Cross went public? That might be true if most people knew they’d been lovers. But surely they’d have kept it quiet, given that Freya was married?

  She nodded. ‘I think so. A little later today, I imagine.’

  ‘I can’t bear all this waiting. Can I get you a coffee?’ He was standing by a sink and taps that had a 1970s feel about them.

  ‘Thank you.’ The house was even colder than hers. Of course, there was a lot more of it to heat. She wondered if it was connected to the grid, or if he relied on an oil tank – and maybe a septic one for waste too.

  ‘Please take a seat.’

  She pulled a wood veneer chair, with a wipe-clean cushion, out from under a matching table and acted on the invitation. ‘So your brother and Freya Cross met through Trent’s art gallery?’

  Matthew filled the kettle. ‘That’s right. My brother’s art doesn’t sell well, but he’s had some very positive reviews. Jonny Trent – the gallery owner – was happy to stock his work; he’s got plenty of space, but the paintings seldom shift. Luke probably makes a couple of hundred quid every five or six months. Trent’s isn’t the right platform to further his career. His work’s too edgy.’ He turned to put the kettle on its stand and flicked the switch.

  Presumably Luke didn’t have much cause to visit the gallery often then – it wasn’t as though he’d be in and out, keeping track of sales and providing new artwork. Yet it seemed he’d got into a relationship with a married woman who worked there… ‘Did they have any other contact with each other?’

  ‘Not initially. But the gallery holds occasional private views – drinks parties for prospective art buyers – and Luke usually attends those.’ She saw him roll his eyes as he put mugs on the table. ‘He enjoys that side of things. And he always says there’s a chance that he’ll get talking to someone who can turn his fortunes around.’

  She imagined the right contacts could make or break a career, but it was clear that Matthew didn’t agree. Time to ingratiate myself… ‘That sounds like a bit of a long shot.’

  He nodded. ‘I concur. It’s true that lots of reputations in the arts world appear to be built on luck, but in reality you have to make your own. And there are better ways of doing it than standing about eating vol-au-vents at parties.’

  Tara wondered if Luke ever got irritated by Matthew Cope thinking he had all the answers. She would, in his place.

  Matthew was pouring milk into a small brown jug. ‘My brother’s work is every bit as good as the stuff that makes it into the top London galleries.’

  Tara thought back to the strange paintings she’d seen at Luke Cope’s house. They’d certainly been striking. Not what she’d want on her own walls, though. And then there was his personality, as indicated by the portrait of a woman being strangled. If he was a violent misogynist that wouldn’t help him make friends and influence people…

  The kettle had boiled and she watched as Matthew spooned coffee grounds into a cafetière he’d taken from a shelf and then add the water. He brought the press over to the kitchen table.

  ‘So you were aware of Mrs Cross and your brother socialising outside work, I presume, given you suspected they were more than just friends?’ With the drink-fuelled gallery parties she could start to see how an affair might have been kindled.

  ‘Not especially. My brother and I don’t live in each other’s pockets. But Luke invited her and Jonny Trent to his house-warming do, and what I saw there made me think he and Freya might be having an affair.’

  ‘House-warming?’ She was confused for a moment. Surely the mansion where he lived had been in the family for years?

  ‘Ah, yes. I should explain. Until four months ago, Luke was living in a flat on Histon Road.’

  The street was one of Cambridge’s main arteries, on the same side of the city as the house they were now in, but further into town. Nowhere in Cambridge was cheap, but Histon Road was more reasonable than some locations.

  ‘He was letting the house off Trumpington Road to tenants. There are always plenty of people prepared to pay a small fortune to rent a place like that for a few months – visiting venture capitalists spending some time in Silicon Fen.’

  University spin-out companies ensured there was a lot of money sloshing around the area.

  ‘By doing that and then renting a much cheaper place himself,’ Matthew went on, ‘he was able to make ends meet whilst trying to further his artistic career.’

  ‘So what changed then, to allow him to move back into the family house himself?’ Tara leant forward. She wanted him to feel they were having a heart to heart, not a one-sided interrogation.

  ‘That’s what I asked myself. I double-checked the value of his paintings online to see if he’d had a breakthrough, but that wasn’t it. In the end I cracked and asked him. It turned out he’d discovered one of the bits of jewellery our mother had left him was worth much more than any of us knew.’

  His glance met Tara’s. ‘She and my father left me some nice pieces too. And we each own those things outright, so we can sell them whenever we want.’ He smiled suddenly and put his shoulders back. ‘I just don’t need to. My work means I can afford to live in this place without extra hel
p.’

  If he’d been a bird, he’d have preened his feathers at that point. It wasn’t attractive, but she managed to smile anyway. ‘That’s a nice position to be in, I imagine – and not that common these days.’

  ‘Too true.’

  ‘So Freya Cross and Jonny Trent attended your brother’s party?’

  He nodded. ‘Freya’s husband came too, in fact. He was keeping a close eye on his wife and my brother.’ The man leant over his coffee and put his head in his hands for a moment. ‘I could see that much. And they exchanged what are commonly known as “pleasantries”, but I’m sure Zach Cross suspected things weren’t as they should be.’ At last he looked up at Tara. ‘I suppose maybe Freya found she and her husband had less in common than she’d thought. She was a fair bit younger than him. Perhaps their priorities didn’t quite match up.’

  Tara kept quiet on that. She thought of Kemp. In her experience age difference was no barrier to a spark between two people. But of course, things were different when it came to a long-term relationship. Not that she’d had many of those.

  ‘What did you think of Freya?’ she asked.

  Matthew shrugged. ‘I never got to know her well. She seemed very passionate about her work. I got the impression she adored art and the people who create it.’

  ‘What about the painting your brother did of Mrs Cross?’ she asked quietly. ‘How did you feel when you saw it?’

  It was a moment before he spoke. ‘I was shocked. But even though I was worried – especially when Luke just disappeared – my God, I never truly thought he’d act on his feelings. Not in my heart of hearts. The news that a body has been found brought that home to me. I thought his art was his safety valve; that doing that painting would have got his anger out of his system. It was his own welfare I was worried about when I called the police.’

  There was a long silence. Through the kitchen window Tara could see crows swooping across the untidy grounds of the house.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t show your colleagues the painting when I first spoke to them.’ His eyes met hers, more challenging than apologetic.

  Tara shook her head. ‘Even if you had told us, it’s unlikely it would have made a difference. And we have no proof that your brother is responsible for the body that’s been found.’ Though things weren’t looking rosy for him. She sighed. ‘So what do you think’s happened to your brother?’

  ‘I’m worried he’s harmed himself.’

  It was possible that he had, rather than going into hiding to try and escape the consequences of what he’d done. Assuming he was guilty. ‘If that were true, Mr Cope, can you think where he might have gone? Somewhere that would have given him the time and space he’d have needed?’

  ‘Call me, Matthew, please.’

  Bingo.

  He shook his head slowly, his dark hair falling forward over one eye. ‘I’ve tried, but I can’t think of anywhere.’

  ‘No place that was special to him, for instance – a childhood haunt or somewhere he liked to visit when things got tough?’

  The man shook his head again. ‘We used to run around the streets of Cambridge when we were little but there was nowhere quiet where he wouldn’t have risked being disturbed.’

  Cambridge had its secluded spots, though, and it had been days before Freya Cross had been discovered, if their assumption about the timing was right.

  ‘Just for the record, Matthew, I need to ask where you were on the night of Friday twenty-third of February, and over that weekend too. We’ll request the information from everyone we interview who knew Freya.’ Tara wanted to keep the window quite wide until they’d heard more from Agneta about the time of death. She couldn’t think of any reason for Matthew to want Freya dead, but it was too early to make assumptions. Even though they were conversing more easily now, she hadn’t warmed to him.

  He frowned, fished his mobile from his pocket and leant forward over the table as he looked at it. ‘Work during the day of course, and then I just came home. My colleagues and I do sometimes get together for a drink on Fridays but looking back, that wasn’t one of them. Then, the following day I went to Tesco to get some shopping in the morning, did some jobs in the afternoon, I think – and then went into town to meet Luke for our pub trip, only he didn’t show. The landlord at the Snug might remember me. I suppose I was hanging round there for half an hour or so, looking at my watch and the door, and calling my brother. After that I went round to his house, knocked, got no reply, left him a note and went home again.’

  ‘You travelled in by car?’

  He nodded. ‘I managed to park on Panton Street.’

  It was a residential side road, just round the corner from the bar.

  For a second his eyes were far away. ‘It’s a bit of a distance to cycle from here.’

  It wouldn’t make a pleasant ride home, either. Not if the speeding Mercedes she’d seen outside was a sample of the sort of driving you got down the narrow lane.

  ‘I spent Sunday morning here – apart from nipping into Chesterton to get a newspaper – but later in the day I went back to Luke’s place and let myself in to look round when I got no answer.’

  ‘Thank you.’ No useful alibis at all, then. ‘I’ll need to get all this written up, so you can check it and then sign it as an official statement. And under the circumstances, we’ll need to get a team of investigators over to your brother’s house.’ Tara watched his eyes widen. ‘I’m sorry. At this stage it’s just a precaution, but we’ll have a warrant by this afternoon. We’ll need to keep everyone else out of there too.’ She paused. ‘Yourself included, I’m afraid. It’s just so nothing’s disturbed. If you like you can give me your brother’s house key now. Or you’re welcome to wait for the warrant.’

  After a moment, Matthew shook his head. ‘You can have it now. I want my brother found.’ He went to a drawer and pulled out the keys to both a Yale and a mortise lock.

  ‘Thank you.’ Tara was glad – and a bit surprised – that he wasn’t throwing up barriers, now that it looked as though Luke could be guilty of murder.

  She stood up and Matthew did too. ‘Here’s my card, if anything else occurs to you. And can I please have your contact details at work, in case I need to reach you there?’ If they discovered anything concrete about Luke, it might well be the sort of message she’d want to deliver to his brother in person.

  Matthew Cope took out his own business card from the top pocket of his jacket and handed it over.

  ‘I’ll wait to hear,’ he said, his jaw tense.

  As Tara got back into her car she could hear the sound of dogs barking from somewhere nearby. And then came a man’s voice: angry, swearing. The feel of the area made her glad she was leaving in a vehicle, rather than by bike or on foot. Perhaps it was another reason Matthew Cope had decided to take his car when he’d gone to meet his brother a week ago Saturday.

  Thoughts of the apparent love triangle involving Freya, her husband and Luke Cope spun in Tara’s head as she turned the car round in the driveway. That wasn’t the only issue on her mind though. She wasn’t quite convinced by the explanation for Luke Cope’s move back to the grand family home in the centre of town. It must have been some jewel he’d sold, if the proceeds were enough to fund his day-to-day needs in an ongoing way, given he had almost no other income. On the one hand, Luke Cope might have just decided to live for the moment. Maybe he was the sort who got a few grand in their pocket and went wild. His brother had already implied he wasn’t the most grounded of people.

  But on the other hand, maybe he’d lied to Matthew about where he’d got his extra cash. What secrets had he been hiding?

  Her car’s wheels lost traction for a moment in the mud and slush. She’d have to put it through the carwash after her excursion or someone at the station would complain.

  She was just about to join the road again, heading back towards town, when she heard a text come in.

  Blake.

  Off to talk to Jonny Trent at the gallery. Frey
a’s friend Sophie Havers had no idea she was intending to visit.

  Six

  Jonny Trent’s art gallery was out along Babraham Road, close to the Gog Magog Hills and the Iron Age ring at Wandlebury. The setting felt quite rural, but it was a fairly major route down to the A11, and tourists visiting the ring would create plenty of passing traffic too, Blake guessed.

  As he drove, he mentally replayed the call he’d had with Sophie Havers. She’d been shocked to hear that Freya Cross was missing, and he’d heard her swallow back a sob when he’d told her that a body had been found. Saying official news was pending formal identification had been the final straw, somehow conveying that there was no real hope, only administration to be completed. It had taken a while before Sophie had been able to answer his questions. He frowned. Although Freya hadn’t arranged to stay with her friend, Sophie did say she’d been out of sorts when they’d spoken last, and that she’d said she wished she could ‘escape’ for a while. Apparently she hadn’t wanted to elaborate. Sophie said Freya had sounded as though she was battening down her feelings, but she’d got the impression Freya had been seriously worried about something. And if she’d talked of wanting to escape, Blake could only assume it was a problem she couldn’t work out how to tackle. Could it have been an affair with Luke Cope? Maybe he’d been pressing her to run away with him? Or threatening to tell her husband, in order to force her hand? But in that case, you’d expect Freya to have lashed out at Luke, yet it was she who was dead. Maybe she’d told Luke that it was over between them…

  But perhaps it hadn’t been relationship problems that Freya had wanted to escape. Sophie Havers had reckoned there’d been some tensions between husband and wife, but she’d thought Freya’s current anxieties might have been work related. It made Blake all the more keen to talk to her employer, the gallery owner, Jonny Trent. Especially after the calendar entry Tara had spotted in Freya’s kitchen, indicating her intention to speak to the man the Monday after she’d walked out of her house for the last time.