by Rebecca Tope
‘She should join the club, then,’ said Ariadne, and this time it was Thea who giggled.
‘No, no, it isn’t funny,’ she asserted, sobering quickly. ‘She’s my big sister, never had a day’s illness. It throws everybody if Emily falls apart. Now if it was Jocelyn, nobody would be surprised. She’s the baby of the family – we’re used to having to mop her up. This is altogether different.’
Ariadne had no answer for that. Thea remembered that there were only brothers in her family, which would be a whole other dynamic.
By a silent agreement to revert to something closer to normality, Thea made a pot of tea, and carried it through to the living room, where Ariadne went to the window, first to inspect the parrot on his perch, and then to observe the view beyond.
‘Hawkhill used to be much bigger than this, didn’t it?’ Ariadne looked out of the window, as if scanning the invisible acres. ‘My dad had some kind of business dealings with them here at one time. They kept pigs, years ago, and he used their boar now and then. Looks as if most of the buildings have gone now.’
‘They sold off the bulk of the land, Cedric said. There’s some trouble over whether or not it can be built on.’
‘As usual,’ Ariadne nodded easily. ‘Every new brick is cause for a massive battle around here.’
‘Except it wouldn’t be bricks, would it? Perfectly matched Cotswold stone has to be the only material under consideration.’
‘Right. I keep waiting to be old enough to care about that sort of stuff. The campaigners are always over fifty – had you noticed? And most of them live in London from Monday to Friday. It makes you wonder what it’s all about.’
‘Money, obviously. Property values. If Lower Slaughter agrees to a new estate, however tasteful and tucked away, it becomes a less desirable place, and the house prices slide. Even the most whispered suggestion of new houses will start a panic. It’s quite funny, really.’
‘I do hate the look of new houses, just because they seem so raw and bare and cold. But they soon start to blend in, I suppose. Everything was new once.’
‘It won’t happen,’ said Thea confidently. ‘Whatever Cedric might say.’
‘You’re probably right.’
The diversion had been deliberate, a breathing space in the maelstrom of police arrests and crazy sisters.
‘I have to feed the animals,’ Thea remembered. ‘At least the ones that are left.’
Ariadne gave no sign of hearing this leading remark. Thea sighed, and added, ‘Do you want to help? You can do the parrot.’
‘Wow – thanks. I love the parrot. Will he say something to me?’
‘Who knows? He has a mind of his own – full of some very strange material, I might add.’
‘Then can we go to the pub, and decide what to do about Peter? He must be in such a state, poor bloke.’
‘He has his God, hasn’t he?’ said Thea, knowing it was unworthy. ‘It worked for Terry Waite.’
‘Not enough,’ said Ariadne stoutly. ‘He needs us as well.’
They drove in Thea’s car down to the main road, and turned left to where Ariadne knew a pub on the edge of Bourton. The bar of the Coach and Horses contained some obvious holidaymakers, with young teenage children eating chips and lasagne. The two women ordered fish pie and wine from the Specials board, Thea pointing out that this was her second pub meal of the day. ‘And there was me thinking I wouldn’t find anybody to go out with while I was here.’
‘Can you ask Phil to keep you in the loop with what’s happening to Peter?’ Ariadne asked. ‘He usually tells you, doesn’t he?’
‘Things are a trifle cool between me and Phil,’ Thea reminded her. ‘It all came to a bit of a head yesterday. I’m still trying to adjust.’
‘Oh gosh! What happened?’
‘Nothing – that’s the problem. His back – I told you about his back, didn’t I?’
‘Oh, I get it. No rolling in the hay, as I guess they’d call it around here about a century ago, in case it goes again.’
‘It was rolling in the feathers that slipped his disc,’ said Thea, with a shy grin. ‘Don’t you ever tell him I told you.’
‘Poor man.’
‘Yes, well, it put things to the test and it looks as if we’ve failed.’
‘And are you upset about it?’
‘A bit. I still can’t quite believe it.’
‘So does that mean you’re on your own? I mean you can’t call him if you feel lonely or scared or bored?’
‘I don’t know. I was just wondering the same thing when you turned up. I’ve got rather a crisis with the dogs. They’ve gone missing.’
‘Oh? Is that usual?’
‘Certainly not. Somebody’s taken them. They might even have shot them by now. I should not be here talking to you – I should be out there searching for them.’
‘But why? I mean – what’s going on?’
‘Never mind. First things first. We need to concentrate on your Peter.’
A look of fondness settled on Ariadne’s face, a daft smile on her lips. ‘My Peter,’ she murmured. ‘That does sound nice.’
But when they tried to focus on Peter’s plight, and how they might best help him, they found little to say. ‘If we could just firm up the alibi, that would settle it once and for all,’ said Thea.
‘And that’s entirely down to your sister. She has his life in her hands.’ Ariadne’s tone was melodramatic. ‘It all rests with her.’
‘The police will realise that. They’ll probably send somebody to check the times again with her. They’ll have the log of her 999 call, of course. They’ll have worked it out from that, probably. And when they did, they’ll have come to the conclusion that there could just possibly have been time for Peter to be in both places. I’m not sure they will need Emily to add anything more.’
‘We could find the person who really did it,’ Ariadne suggested, with a glance around the bar. ‘What do we know about Sam? Can we think of a reason why somebody would want to kill him?’
‘He seemed inoffensive enough when I met him,’ said Thea carelessly.
‘What?’ Ariadne’s screech raised heads on all sides. ‘What do you mean? You never said you’d met him.’ Her eyes bulged and a chip was suspended halfway to her mouth.
‘Only once – at Emily’s. It’s nothing to get excited about. You know that Emily and her husband, Bruce – more Bruce than Em – knew him. He and Bruce went to college together. He went to their house a few times, and I was there for one of those times. It was a dinner party.’
‘I hadn’t realised they were really friends,’ Ariadne said loudly, ignoring the people listening at the neighbouring tables. ‘Don’t you think that’s weird?’
‘Not at all. I’m sure it was just a horrible coincidence. Emily had no idea it was him. It was dark and wet and his head was crushed when she reached him. He was here to see Peter, and she was here to see me, and it just all came together in that terrible way.’
‘Rubbish. Utter rubbish. If she knew him, then she must have known he was here. She probably knows who his killer was. What if she was having an affair with him, and wanted to get out of it, and when he kicked up a fuss, got somebody to put him out of the way.’
‘That’s even bigger rubbish,’ said Thea, suddenly angry.
‘No, it isn’t. It could have happened like that. She might have lured him into that layby, away from the hotel and watched while the deed was done.’
‘But then she’d just have driven away. Why would she call the police?’
Ariadne paused. ‘OK – what if it went further than she intended? And the sight of his mangled body snagged her conscience. After all, she might still have loved him, but felt guilty at betraying her husband.’
‘Stop it,’ Thea ordered. ‘And stop shouting. You’re saying appalling things about my sister, in a public place, and you’ve got to stop.’
A brief silence followed, during which they avoided each other’s eye and toyed with the food.
‘It’s obvious that she had no idea who he was,’ Thea repeated quietly. ‘She would have told me when she came back here afterwards. She would have told the police, as well. They didn’t get an identity for him until Sunday morning. It isn’t such a wild coincidence, anyway. She and Bruce know loads of people. They’re in a huge social network, with parties and clubs and all the rest of it. She probably knew three or four people staying at that hotel, if it comes to that.’ It was a daft exaggeration, of course, which she knew even as she spoke.
‘Where does she live?’
‘Aylesbury.’
‘Hardly local. And Sam lived in Oxford. And this is a very small village in the Cotswolds.’
‘I could give you four or five true instances of much bigger coincidences than that. They sound incredible, but they’re not.’ She opened her mouth to tell the story of the time she knocked on a door of a B&B in Cerne Abbas and discovered a woman who’d been in the same antenatal class as herself, twelve years earlier, but closed it again. Ariadne was in no mood to be convinced.
‘The clinching thing,’ she went on, ‘is that Emily wouldn’t have called the police if she’d been in any way involved in Sam’s death. Isn’t that axiomatic?’
‘Double bluff,’ muttered Ariadne darkly. ‘Oldest trick in the book.’
‘You’re being much too complicated about it,’ Thea complained. ‘Far simpler to stick with what we all thought at the start – a psycho with a baseball bat or cosh of some sort sees Sam, thinks he looks good for a few quid and works himself up into a huge frenzy before attacking him. Maybe he got some kind of blood lust, a red mist thing, and didn’t know when to stop. He only came to his senses when Emily heard the noise and interrupted him. She saw him run off.’
‘But she didn’t describe him, did she?’
‘According to Phil, she said he seemed quite small and slim and not black. She was fairly sure he wasn’t black.’
‘As if that matters.’
‘It narrows things down a bit,’ Thea said.
‘It doesn’t, because she can’t possibly give a positive identification, even if they catch him. So it’ll be down to forensics, and he’s had time to get rid of every last molecule by now, hasn’t he?’
‘Well, this isn’t helping Peter,’ Ariadne sighed, after another short silence. ‘And if you’re not going to call Phil, then I suppose it’ll have to be me. Do you want me to give him a message?’
‘Tell him the dogs have been stolen, if you get the chance.’
Ariadne frowned. ‘What? How could they have been stolen?’
Thea shook her head. ‘Never mind. I’ll call him myself. It’s not your problem.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
She dreamt about dogs eating the brains out of a smashed human head, and woke with a sick feeling of horror swirling in her stomach. It was Thursday, almost a week since her father’s funeral, and not much over a week before she had to face the owners of Hawkhill, with whatever ghastly news there might be about their dogs – assuming her conscience didn’t force her to contact them before they returned. How could she have slept at all, knowing they were out there somewhere, shut in a dark prison, or even dead already? There had to be something she could and should do, instead of passively waiting for the next thing to happen.
Phil had not responded to the message she’d left on his phone, which made her think he was sticking to his decision to keep her at a distance. It also implied that he thought it beneath him to get involved in a search for two dogs. After all, he’d decide, they came back of their own accord last time. It was probably safe to assume they’d do it again. She could think of nothing else but to return to Galton and try out her theory about the Lister man. But that did not much appeal as a strategy. The theory would be far better tested directly, she decided. If she could discover where Lister lived, she might also find Freddy and Basil.
The phone book and Google between them revealed enough of an address for her to locate the man’s house. She had expected a farm, with his talk of a large compound for his ridgebacks, but it was in fact a house in a row, between Hawkhill and the centre of Lower Slaughter. She remembered the spot well, with its tetchy notices about keeping dogs off the verges.
It was an easy walk from Hawkhill. The main dilemma was whether or not to take Hepzie. It felt risky to leave her behind, where she too might be stolen away. On the other hand, if there was any trouble, she’d be a liability. Better, then, to lock her firmly in the house and hope that she and Ignatius could establish a better relationship than hitherto.
The weather was dry but overcast. There was a faint smell of woodsmoke outside and a jaded sense that summer was rapidly departing. She had always liked September, with the new school terms, new courses to attend, and the bounty of blackberries and nuts and mushrooms to collect on woodland walks. Carl had been a great enthusiast for autumn fruitfulness, organising old-fashioned family outings with capacious baskets and hooked sticks. But this was not yet September; this was August with its face still turned backwards to the summer almost over, with a feeling of time wasted. The English summer was inevitably disappointing. It never lasted for long enough, never provided the right levels of sunshine for what you wanted to do. June had been fabulous, July capricious and August a total disaster. It didn’t seem much of a deal, looking back.
She tried to plot her course of action once she reached the Lister establishment. Would she creep round to the back in the hope of finding Freddy and Basil in a shed? Or would she boldly knock on the door and insist on being allowed to make a search? Neither felt very promising, as she strode down the lane towards the village. The man was sly, and he possessed two very large dogs which might be trained to attack intruders – or at the very least make a lot of noise. She needed to be sly as well. She needed to invent a story that would deceive him into giving himself away, and instantly one fell into place. She slowed her pace, rehearsing the details as they came to mind.
A woman answered her knock. ‘Mrs Lister?’ Thea asked, trying to seem breathless and a trifle sheepish.
‘No, but I live here with Mr Lister.’
‘Right. Well, I saw him yesterday afternoon, and we had a little talk. Is he in?’
‘He’s outside with the dogs.’
‘Oh.’ She feigned uncertainty. ‘Then would it be all right if I waited for him to finish what he’s doing? I saw the dogs yesterday, and they made me a bit nervous.’
The woman smiled. ‘To tell you the truth they have that effect on me sometimes. They’re not exactly lapdogs, if you know what I mean.’
‘Still, they’re not pit bulls, either. I don’t suppose they’re really aggressive.’
The woman waggled her head ambivalently. ‘Not really, no. You have to keep them under firm control, animals that size, of course.’
‘Right.’
‘Well, come in. My name’s Sharon.’
‘Thea. Thea Osborne. I’m house-sitting for Mr and Mrs Angell at Hawkhill.’
‘Oh?’ This information had a noticeable effect on her. Her brows came together in a thoughtful frown. ‘Are you indeed? So it was you who let the dogs kill Henry’s sheep?’
‘Er—’ This was an unexpectedly full-frontal challenge. ‘I don’t think—’
‘Come on, love, face facts. There’s no doubt about it, now is there?’
‘You know Mr Galton then, do you?’ As questions went, this was a particularly stupid one, but she found herself floundering badly.
The withering look was all the answer she needed. Then Sharon seemed to lose interest. ‘Well, I’ve got to be somewhere. I’ll shout to Mike that you’re here, and then I’m off. Though God knows why you’ve come. I’d have kept out of his way if it’d been me.’
Thea shrugged helplessly and said nothing more. She watched the woman go to the back door, and then tried to distract herself with a brief inspection of the house, which gave an impression of starkness. Varnished wooden floors with no rugs, no pictures on the walls, no clutter on the surfaces.
She was half inclined to make an escape, but it was too late for that. She had to try and keep to her plan, and see where it got her.
Lister came in a minute or two after his partner had called him, swiping his hands together and smelling faintly of old meat. Thea had a sudden nasty image of him feeding road kill to his dogs, which seemed all too plausible when she gave him a closer look. Sharon gathered a jacket and a bag and slammed quickly out of the front door leaving Thea and Lister together in the living room.
‘Oh, Mr Lister,’ she burst out, hoping she sounded genuine, ‘I came to tell you the dogs have come back, after all. I thought you must be worrying about them.’
He ignored this, rather to her consternation. Instead of responding, he demanded, ‘How did you know where to find me?’
‘Um – the phone book.’
‘Why not just phone me, then?’ His face was the epitome of suspicion. He stared at her as if she might suddenly pull a gun on him.
‘I felt like a walk.’
‘What’s your game?’ he said, his voice suddenly loud and angry. ‘What are these lies you’re telling me?’
She raised her eyebrows and repeated, ‘Lies, Mr Lister? What do you mean?’
It was like the moment when you realise you’ve got a word in Scrabble that not only uses all seven letters, but takes in two of the triple word scores as well. Lister was cornered. He couldn’t support his accusation that she was lying without admitting that he had Freddy and Basil, or at least knew where they were. She swelled with pride at her own cleverness. She hadn’t told him they were missing – so why hadn’t he picked her up on that, instead of her claim that they’d come home again? It was a clear indication of his own involvement, which he proceeded to embellish, albeit with a desperate turn in the conversation.
‘I mean that I’ve seen those bloody dogs and they’re dead. Dead in a ditch a mile from here.’
Thea deflated rapidly. ‘They’re not,’ she whispered. ‘They can’t be.’