by Rebecca Tope
Phil raised his shoulders helplessly. ‘Who can say? She’s a handsome girl, with a good heart. Maybe he really has fallen for her.’
‘And you think he killed his brother?’
‘I’d love to think so – it would make my life very smooth. But unfortunately he seems to have a very convincing alibi.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes, on Saturday evening, he was dining with the rector of St John the Baptist Church in Cirencester. He arrived at nine, perfectly calm and clean, ready for a rather formal encounter with some Diocesan bigwigs.’
‘Oh,’ said Thea.
Phil stayed just over an hour, sharing a pot of tea and some quickly prepared sandwiches which served as a combination of lunch and afternoon tea for both of them. They did not discuss the murder investigation any further, despite Thea’s continuing concern over her sister’s role in the matter. Instead, Phil asked after her mother, and how she was dealing with her new situation.
‘She’ll be all right,’ Thea assured him. ‘She’s of a generation that doesn’t like to make a fuss. Mind you, she lost it a bit over the weekend. I had to speak sternly to her.’
He laughed at that. ‘What – told her to pull herself together, did you?’
‘Yes, more or less. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. She understands me pretty well. I was just giving her some friendly advice. After all, there’s nothing worse than self-pity.’
‘I can think of plenty of worse things, but I know what you mean. It’s very unattractive.’
They both remembered that Phil himself had indulged in this regrettable emotion quite a lot when his back was first damaged. Thea had told him to pull himself together, as well.
‘So you think the dogs will be all right, do you?’ Her worry about them was never far from her mind. ‘I wouldn’t trust that Galton man not to sneak over here when I’m out and shoot them.’
‘My guess is he’d have done it by now if he was going to. The first white-hot rage will have died down after the first few hours. But he won’t hesitate if he sees them loose again. I’ve been remembering more about him from college. He always had a quick temper, but being so big, he had to learn to keep it in check. It was a hard lesson—’ he stopped, plainly censoring himself.
‘Oh? That sounds as if there’s a story.’
‘Nothing much.’ He eyed her thoughtfully. ‘He hit another boy, a lot harder than he intended, and broke his nose. There was quite a bit of trouble over it, but it calmed down in the end. I doubt very much if he’s ever done it again. He’s very decent at heart.’
‘I feel sorry for big men. They’re like big dogs, aren’t they? Always having to stop and think before they do anything, in case they cause some damage. It must be awful.’
‘I guess it’s a matter of training in both cases.’
The reference to dogs returned them to their contemplation of Freddy and Basil. Thea sighed. ‘It’s not much of a life for the poor things, is it? I mean – why keep them if they have to be chained up the whole time? It’s cruel.’
‘It’s also very common. I’d guess half the dogs in the country never get to have a proper run in their lives. They certainly don’t have a chance to chase anything out in the countryside. They’ve come a long way since their wolf ancestors roamed the land.’
‘Cats have done better, on the whole, haven’t they. They take what they want from people, while making very few compromises.’
He made an effort to engage fully in the conversation, pointing out that a lot of cats were confined within four walls much as dogs were – especially in towns and cities. ‘But I guess their survival instincts are in better shape than dogs’, all the same,’ he concluded.
After a pause, he began on a new topic. ‘So there’s no prospect of anybody coming to join you, then? You’ve got to get along on your own for a change.’
She snorted. ‘You make it sound as if I’ll find that difficult. I’ll be perfectly all right.’
‘I hope so. If I remember rightly, this is the first time for over a year that you’ll have gone without somebody to share at least part of the stay with you.’
‘You’re here,’ she said lightly. ‘I’m assuming you’ll drop in like this, from time to time.’
‘Are you?’
His voice was low, and he was looking at the floor, one hand holding the mug of tea. How could there be so much to scare her in those two small syllables? Something flexed and swelled inside her, and she stared hard at him. Her heart thundered and the air turned cold.
‘Phil? What are you trying to say?’
He looked cold, too. ‘Only that I don’t feel sure of a welcome. You didn’t kiss me when I arrived. You’ve hardly smiled at me. You weren’t going to tell me about Ariadne and the vicar. What’s going on, Thea? I’m not stupid, you know. I can read the signs of indifference as well as anybody.’
She desperately did not want to have this conversation. It was one thing to fantasise about another man, and to feel guilty about it, quite another to be confronted with the apparent end of a relationship which meant a lot to her. The chill wind of abandonment blew round her, and she reached out like a child whose hand has been dropped by its mother.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t say that. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean – I’m not indifferent. Not at all.’ She stopped herself from employing the excuse of her dead father, because not only would that be playing dirty, it would carry little weight, since they both knew the problem went back much further than that.
‘You haven’t felt the same about me since Temple Guiting,’ he said flatly. ‘I don’t blame you. I know it was annoying having me laid up with my back. But I couldn’t help it, Thea. Accidents happen to people – you can’t blame them for getting hurt.’
She had always regarded herself as unusually mature and understanding. She, Thea Osborne, had interceded with people in a calm collected way, seeing through to the core of things, pointing out the bullshit that people employed to hide their real feelings. Now she felt like a child, a selfish blinkered child, letting her own frustrations wound a perfectly good man.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘I’ve behaved very badly.’
‘No,’ he sighed heavily. ‘No, you haven’t. I’ve asked too much of you. You gave up those weeks to stay with me in Cirencester and nurse me. You’ve never said a word about the sex – not having any, I mean. But you have been pushing me away more and more, whether you realise it or not. Every time I try to get near you, you go all chilly and withdrawn. So how much more of it can we take? Either of us, I mean. It’s not exactly a barrel of laughs these days, is it?’
‘If we were being grown up about it, we’d accept that there are bound to be down times.’
‘That’s true. But I’m wondering how solid a foundation there is to cope with down times. I mean – won’t we both be asking ourselves what the point is, if we’re not having fun any more?’
She looked him full in the face. ‘It is all my fault,’ she insisted. ‘You wouldn’t be saying any of this if I hadn’t gone chilly on you.’
‘I don’t think blame comes into it. We never made any rules or promises.’ He scratched his head uncomfortably. ‘I want to say some things that will sound accusing and unkind. I don’t mean them that way.’
‘Go on,’ she invited, feeling intense resistance to whatever he might be planning to say, but knowing she had to let him say it.
‘Well – I think that for you the sex was the main thing. Neither of us realised it until my back put a stop to it. And I know we weren’t at it five times a week—’
‘Far from it,’ she interrupted.
‘Yes, I know. But it was something to look forward to, something we got a lot of pleasure from. And I’m not saying I wouldn’t miss it terribly if it stopped altogether. But without it I’m not sure what else we’ve got.’
‘We’ve had a whole string of murders to preoccupy us. You’ve been very generous in letting me share in the investigations—’
&nbs
p; ‘I’m not sure I could have stopped you,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘Besides, you were darn useful most of the time.’
‘Yes, and a bloody nuisance at other times. I know. Which is why I don’t know where I stand with this one. It’s more personal to me than any of the others, and yet I feel very much detached from it.’
‘My problem is,’ he scratched his head again, ‘you always seem so vulnerable. My instincts are to protect you. And then I find out you can take perfectly good care of yourself, and it’s just as likely to be me that ends up getting hurt.’
‘Which we both know is no good basis for a serious relationship,’ she summarised sadly. ‘But I hate to think of it finishing. I’d be bereft.’
‘We don’t have to do anything drastic – I hope we’re adult enough to disengage in a civilised manner. It’s just – well, you don’t have to feel I have exclusive rights.’ He smiled into her eyes, suddenly fatherly and understanding. ‘I wouldn’t throw too violent a fit if you slept with someone else, for example.’
It should have been what she wanted to hear, and yet it felt like rejection. He no longer felt she was his special partner. The pill was all the more bitter because she couldn’t pretend to herself that he had some other sexual partner waiting in the wings. With his malfunctioning back, he could hardly be plotting to introduce another woman into his bed the moment he’d squared it with Thea. It was all much worse than that: he was being unbearably generous, releasing her to find what satisfaction she might with somebody other than him.
A tear escaped from the corner of her eye. ‘Stop being so nice about it,’ she sniffed.
‘Oh, Thea,’ he groaned, and took her to himself for a tight hug. ‘What are we going to do with you?’
He could not have said anything more effective in giving her strength. She nuzzled briefly into his chest, and then pulled away. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘You’re absolutely right about everything. I’ve got to sort myself out and decide what I really want. In spite of how it might seem, I do like this house-sitting work. I like the different animals and the villages and the sense of adventure. The money’s not brilliant, but it keeps me afloat. And surprising as it might seem, I’m in quite big demand.’
This time they both laughed. The growing number of crises during Thea’s various commissions might be expected to ruin her for future work. Instead, she seemed to have a reputation for holding the fort, keeping her nerve and bringing order out of chaos. Nobody blamed her for the awful things that had happened, and each time she seemed to have emerged with an enhanced image.
‘It’s no laughing matter,’ came a stern voice from the next room. Thea and Phil both froze for a moment, until she remembered Ignatius.
‘It’s the parrot,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever get used to him. He says the most amazing things.’
‘It all works by association,’ said Phil knowledgeably. ‘If he hears laughing, he’ll remember what somebody once said about it not being a laughing matter. It’s not as clever as it seems.’
‘Hmm,’ said Thea.
Phil left at about five, and Thea did the rounds of the animals, talking quietly to them, watching the ferrets for a few minutes. She was trying hard to persuade herself that this was all she needed right at this moment. If she had lost Phil, and been shown that she could not have Peter Clarke, then so be it. She had a big family, several friends, plenty of interests. She had her health and her looks and enough money. Where was the problem?
The immediate problem mainly lay, not with Det Supt Phil Hollis, but with Ariadne Fletcher and the Reverend Peter Clarke. It had been painful and shocking to be ordered out of the house by Ariadne because of a perceived challenge to her relationship with the vicar. Not since the fourth year at school had she contested with another girl for a man. It was undignified and embarrassing. It demeaned the man, too, by implying he could be taken by the triumphant female, regardless of his own actual preference. Besides, she knew perfectly well that she was one of those women who would choose to maintain a loyal friendship with someone of her own sex rather than make an enemy in order to get a man.
But her friendships had also proved less robust than she might have expected, since Carl died. Those closely bonded sisterhoods of the late teens and early twenties had worn thin under the weight of marriages and children and work and relocations. There was nobody she could readily phone for a heart-to-heart at that precise moment, and this struck her as a serious piece of carelessness on her part. ‘I’ve got lots of friends,’ she had often said and believed. The truth was, she knew a number of people, but very few of them would set other claims aside in order to be available to Thea Osborne, that pretty girl from school who’d lost her husband so young.
Which left sisters. Jocelyn and Emily. Both of them very much taken up with their own demanding lives, but the careless intimacy of siblings ensured that they could be leant on in times of need. And vice versa, of course. Just now, Emily was the needy one, and Thea ought to brace up to this reality. She felt a renewed surge of determination to help find Sam Webster’s killer. She would have liked to summon her sister back and make her explain the holes in her story that Phil had pointed out. But Lower Slaughter was going to have gruesome associations for Emily for the rest of her life, and she was highly unlikely to voluntarily show her face again in the village. There was, if Phil could be believed, even an element of risk attached to doing so. If the killer had learnt who the sole witness to the murder was, then he might be tempted to silence her. A man capable of such a vicious and sustained attack was a man to be feared, despite Thea’s tendency to dismiss warnings of danger.
An hour or two passed with mundane chores, eating a scrappy supper and assembling a healthy section of the jigsaw, which included the off-white sheep in the snow, and a broken old gate. Then two car doors slammed outside, and two pairs of feet walked to the front door.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was Ariadne and Peter, she the taller by a good two inches, but he the more vivid presence by some margin. He spoke first. ‘I understand you two know each other,’ he began. ‘And there’s been a bit of a falling out. It seems to me that we can’t let that situation persist, so we’ve come to bury the hatchet.’
All the damning things that Phil had told her came urgently to mind. He was ‘smarmy’ and deceitful. He had been dismissed from at least two posts in the Church and was here on sufferance because there was nobody else. She met the blue eyes, the frank smile, and could do little else but believe the evidence of her own senses. He was a lovely man.
‘Come in,’ she invited quickly. ‘It’s great to see you both.’ She looked then at Ariadne, who seemed young and vulnerable, her emotions so naked and needy. She was also rather sheepish, after the way she’d spoken to Thea that morning. Thea herself felt relieved to the point of weakness that things seemed to have come right again between them so quickly.
She found them some olives and white wine that had been in the box of provisions she’d bought in Stow. The grubby living room with its poor lighting served as a surprisingly cosy venue for the intimate exchanges that followed. It was as if some layers of reticence had been shed at the door, leaving no necessity for caution. After all, she and Ariadne had shared some visceral moments less than a year before, and if Peter had such a convincing alibi for Saturday, there was no need to regard him with any suspicion over his brother’s murder.
‘Hey – a parrot!’ cried Ariadne, spotting Ignatius. ‘Does it talk?’
‘Oh yes,’ Thea assured her. ‘He talks all right. But he doesn’t seem to be in the mood just now.’ Ignatius was hunched morosely on his perch, eyes almost closed, ignoring the activity in the room.
They wasted no more time in small talk. ‘We want to tell you about Sam,’ said Peter. ‘Given that it was your sister who witnessed his final moments, it seems as if we owe you a bit of an explanation.’
‘I’m sure you don’t, but I’m happy to listen,’ Thea said. ‘You’ll know about my invol
vement with Detective Superintendent Phil Hollis, of course?’
‘Oh yeah – everybody knows everybody,’ said Ariadne with a sigh. ‘That’s the trouble.’
‘Well, we don’t know who the monster was who smashed Sam’s head in,’ said Peter. ‘I’m not at all confident that he’ll ever be caught.’
‘Oh, he will,’ said Thea, surprising herself at the confident tone. ‘If he’s as crazy and out of control as it sounds, then he’ll give himself away. Probably sooner rather than later.’
‘You mean because he’ll do it again?’ Ariadne sounded scared.
‘No, no,’ Thea said quickly. ‘He can’t be that crazy.’
Peter took over from her, his voice was thick, and his hand went to his mouth. ‘His body was such a mess. I’ve never seen anything like that before. They cleaned him up as well as they could, but with his skull so shattered – well, I honestly couldn’t say for sure that it was him. Not from his face. It was his hands that clinched it. He had very long fingers and a slightly odd joint at the base of his thumb. He broke the scaphoid bone when he was ten and it was missed, so it mended crooked.’ Thea recognised the outpouring of irrelevant detail as a reaction to trauma.
‘Phil said his hands weren’t hurt at all,’ she said, without stopping to think.
‘That’s right. I assume that means it was all over before he had a chance to defend himself.’ He was restless, fiddling with a spoon and kicking one foot against a table leg. ‘Poor old Sam.’
Ariadne reached out a hand to him, while looking at Thea. ‘Do we have to talk about it?’ she asked. ‘It’s not very easy to take, you know.’
Did she mean for herself or Peter, Thea wondered? The reproach was no less real for being so gentle.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘No, no, it’s all right. We have to talk about it,’ said Peter, giving Ariadne’s hand a warm squeeze. ‘I think our stomachs can take it.’
There were questions breeding more questions in the air between them. What was Peter Clarke really like? How did he really feel about Ariadne? How much did he care about his brother’s death? And why had Thea assumed that it was jealousy that had motivated Ariadne’s angry ejection of her earlier in the day? Was it not arrogant of her, Thea, to make such an assumption, with virtually nothing to support it? It had been the reference to Emily that had done the damage, she remembered – and how could that connect to Peter?