by Rebecca Tope
‘It might. Don’t you know who owns this barn we’re going to?’
‘I have no idea. It looks completely abandoned. We had to push through a whole lot of nettles and brambles to get into it. Here, Clovis – this is it, on the right.’ They were entering Barnsley from the west, and had just passed the big hotel and spa that was the village’s chief claim to fame. Clovis pulled off the road and they all got out.
‘Romantic,’ murmured Clovis, gazing at the ivy-covered building.
‘How do we get in?’ asked Ben.
‘With difficulty,’ Thea repeated. ‘And we’d be trespassing, I suppose.’ She looked all round. There wasn’t a soul in sight. ‘But nobody seems to be watching.’
‘Can’t see any cameras, either,’ Clovis reported.
‘Let’s get on with it, then.’ Ben walked up the short lane to the barn. Thea followed him, impressed all over again by the fairy-tale quality of the place. The growth of creeper all over the facing wall was rampant, suggesting years of neglect. Its presence in a tidy little Cotswold settlement made it all the more remarkable.
‘Round here,’ she said. ‘There’s a farmyard on the other side, which might have people.’
‘Is it a working farm, then?’
‘I don’t know. The house seems to be uninhabited.’ It was obviously becoming something of a theme, she realised.
‘There’ll be somebody managing the land,’ said Clovis confidently. ‘The buildings might be scheduled for some sort of conversion. All sorts of stuff is probably going on behind the scenes. It doesn’t have to mean it’s been abandoned. But I don’t think we’re being watched, so this is as good a moment as any to have a look.’
Thea regarded at him wonderingly. A grown man, more or less respectable, showing no hesitation in taking part in a madcap adventure involving nettles and spiders and unambiguous trespass. Perhaps he was much less respectable than he liked to appear. She remembered again his unconventional mother.
Ben was charging ahead, examining the same barely passable way in that Thea and Jocelyn had found two days ago.
Two minutes later they were all standing inside the barn, getting used to the gloom, peering into the shadows. ‘It was just here,’ said Thea, staring at the homemade shrine, which was now devoid of any adornment. ‘And it’s gone,’ she announced.
It was five minutes or more before the others believed her. They walked the whole length of all four walls, peering into shadowy corners, before admitting that she must be right. Apart from the locked trunk at the back, there was nothing else inside the building. There was no upper storey, no musty hay bales providing opportunities for hiding anything. ‘It’s gone,’ Thea repeated, three times. ‘Somebody’s taken it.’
They gave up then and pushed through the prickles back to the car. ‘It must be that Williams man,’ Thea decided. ‘He was here when Joss and I emerged from the barn. I didn’t think he’d seen us, but he must’ve done.’
‘Who?’ asked Ben and Clovis together.
Thea explained. ‘I think he must be local,’ she concluded. ‘He walks his dog around here.’
‘It is very bizarre indeed,’ said Clovis. Thea sighed at this statement of the obvious. Was it possible she was going off the man? Was he revealing hidden shallows, as Barkley would certainly believe, if she knew what was going on?
‘Ashes,’ mused Ben, his gaze on the ground. ‘What do we know about ashes?’
‘They’re heavier than they look. Sterile. Hopeless as fertiliser. Usually in very fine pellets rather than dust, but it does vary. Eighty per cent of people dying these days are turned into them.’ Thea rattled off these facts with complete confidence.
Ben stared at her. ‘Um …?’ he said.
‘Oh – didn’t we tell you? I’m married to an undertaker,’ she said blithely. ‘I just assumed you’d know that.’
‘Wow! You are an interesting person, aren’t you! Wow!’ He was pink with admiration. Then he gave himself a shake. ‘So – you must know whether it’s possible to extract DNA from them. Ashes, I mean.’
‘It obviously isn’t,’ she said, feeling slightly less confident than before. ‘They’re cremated. Burnt at very high temperatures. Totally dead. That’s why they’re no good as fertiliser, even though people will insist on burying them under roses, poor things.’
‘The people or the roses?’ asked Clovis, with a fatuous grin.
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Ben, ignoring him. ‘And is it true they really do give you back your actual person? Or is it all just chucked in together and everybody gets a shovelful?’
‘According to Drew, they’re scrupulous about that. They wait until the furnace has cooled down after every cremation, and scrape out the ashes, one person at a time. All carefully labelled and any instructions followed to the letter.’
‘That’s reassuring,’ said Clovis. ‘But I’m still glad my dad was buried in your field, without the fiery furnace being involved.’
‘So what do we do now?’ asked Thea, having waited in vain for Ben to say it.
They had gone back to the car, but made no move to get into it. ‘No idea,’ said Ben. ‘Except I should probably try and get hold of Uncle Dick, to tell him I’m here.’ He pulled a face. ‘Something’s not right, is it? Something to do with my family, I mean.’
‘It’s a red herring,’ said Clovis. ‘Nothing to do with Thea’s murder.’
‘Obviously. But we can’t just ignore it, can we? I mean – why were Gwen’s ashes in that barn in the first place?’ He stared hard at Thea, as if trying to read the answers in her face.
‘Well, if she’s the cause of all this family disagreement, then perhaps it made sense to keep her remains in a neutral place,’ she suggested slowly. ‘Perhaps some members of the family remember her fondly, and set up the little altar to her. It’s rather a nice idea, in a way.’
‘So why move them now?’ asked Clovis.
‘Why now?’ Ben repeated. ‘That’s always a useful question. Maybe something has shifted in the legal wrangling. And maybe …’ his face brightened, ‘maybe somebody does think you can get DNA from ashes, and they’re trying to prove a relationship. I bet that’s it,’ he concluded cheerfully.
‘Have you any relatives called Williams?’ Thea wondered, still convinced the accountant was the culprit.
‘Not to my knowledge. I’ll need to have a proper look at the whole family tree to be sure.’
‘Hang on,’ Clovis objected. ‘This definitely doesn’t connect to the murder at all, does it? We’ve got completely sidetracked. Shouldn’t all this wait until we’ve finished discussing the Grace woman?’
‘Well, yes,’ said Ben dubiously. ‘Except I thought we had finished. What else did you want to talk about?’
Clovis wriggled his shoulders. ‘Just … what about those initials on the ring, for example?’
‘Yeah,’ said Ben, with no sign of enthusiasm. ‘We could have a think about that – but this feels more urgent, to be honest. If I can just sit down with my phone and notebook for a minute, I’ll be able to get my thoughts straight. We could use the house on the corner, for preference.’
‘Yes!’ said Thea. ‘Come on, then.’
‘I’ll have to move the car,’ said Clovis. ‘I’ll catch you up.’
For the third time, Thea paused to scrutinise him. Something wasn’t right. It was akin to the feeling she had about Drew. Both men were withholding something from her. Both were behaving oddly. Or was it her, imagining things? Was she suspecting secrets where they did not exist? In contrast, the boy Ben was wonderfully refreshing. He said what he was thinking, he had no inhibitions about casting accusations right and left, and his mind had all the sharpness of a healthy young genius.
‘It can’t possibly connect, though, can it?’ she said, as they walked briskly through the village, past the Village Pub, the church and a handful of old stone houses. ‘The murder, and your family feud, and Barnsley Park and the ashes. How could they possibly all be part of the
same thing?’
‘We should accept that it’s not impossible,’ he said sententiously. ‘We’ll know more when I’ve checked out a few things.’ He looked up at the building in front of him, as Thea steered him through the lopsided gate. ‘Nice old house. What’s being done to it?’
‘Just updating the kitchen and bathroom, basically. Nothing’s been touched for seventy years, or something. Forty years, more likely, in the kitchen, I suppose. They’re not doing anything structural, apart from a new piece of wall at the back. That part isn’t so old, anyway.’
‘How do you get on with the builders?’
‘Fine. They’re really nice chaps.’
‘My mother’s an architect. I get to hear a lot about builders. Mostly good, funnily enough – but there’s a few she’d quite like to slaughter.’
‘Sid and Dave work fast as well.’ She was speaking quietly, unsure whether the men could hear her. ‘They’ll be knocking off soon. Early start, early finish seems to be the pattern.’
She unlocked the front door, and ushered the young man into the hallway. ‘We can leave it open for Clovis,’ she said.
‘I’m not sure he’ll be coming,’ came the startling response.
‘What? What do you mean? Of course he’s coming.’
‘How well do you know him?’
‘Well enough.’ She felt defensive and utterly confused. ‘Why?’
‘Have you got a phone number for him? Address? Employment record?’
‘His number is in my phone. He called me a time or two. And my husband will have an address for him. We did his father’s funeral … oh!’ She flushed with embarrassment. ‘Maybe he hasn’t got it, after all. It was all very complicated. But I could easily find him if I wanted to.’
‘I might be wrong, but I don’t think so. He hasn’t seemed genuine to me from the first moment I met him.’
‘Gosh!’ she said weakly. ‘So what are you thinking? That he murdered Grace?’
‘No, no. I’m not saying that. But he does obviously have an unhealthy interest in the whole business. Luckily, I don’t think he’s very clever. Are you sure he actually likes you, by the way? Because I caught one or two looks that suggested otherwise.’
‘I don’t know. At the moment, I don’t really know anything at all. The ground’s just given way under my feet. But I was starting to wonder about him, believe it or not. You’re right – there was something secretive and a bit … withdrawn about him today. And maybe he thinks he has reason to be angry with me. He can get very angry.’ She blinked away a sudden rush of self-pity. ‘The first time I spoke to him, he was shouting and making threats.’
‘Well, he’s not here, is he? I think he was beginning to feel out of his depth around the point where we started eating our lunch, and it just kept on getting worse. So he’s baled out, the first chance he got.’
‘So that just leaves you and me,’ she said, with a brave smile.
Chapter Twenty-Two
They sat at Tabitha Ibbotson’s dining table, using Thea’s sketch pad for the flow chart that Ben insisted on constructing. ‘It’s the way I do things,’ he told her firmly. ‘Can we start with everyone we know in the village?’
She blew out her cheeks. ‘That must be a lot of people. Don’t tell me you know them all?’
‘Actually, no. Just the relatives, basically. Right – let’s do it. Start with the Jacksons, Richard and Edward.’ He put the two names at the top of the page. ‘Then Auntie Laura. She’s married to Richard, but she’s got awful arthritis and hardly ever goes out. Edward’s wife is dead. Then Norma – her mother was Gwen’s sister, I think. Or possibly aunt. Who else?’ Again he tapped his front teeth with the pen.
‘What about the other people I met in the churchyard? A woman with a very straight fringe, and another man I haven’t seen again. Your Uncle Richard and Auntie Norma were there as well. Norma had a camera. I recognised Richard from his limp, when I saw him again. He says it’s his knee.’
‘Right. He hurt it somehow at the weekend. Some sort of tendon damage. Not very serious, or so he says.’ Ben was speaking carelessly, most of his attention on the names he’d recorded.
‘So who’s the woman with the fringe?’
‘What sort of age?’
‘Probably fifties. Seemed very businesslike. I haven’t seen her again.’
‘Sounds like Julia. She’s Auntie Laura’s sister. Their father had a farm at Poulton, I think. She’s on the parish council.’
‘So not a Wheelwright or a Williams or a Jackson?’
‘Nope. If they’re related at all, it’ll be via a second marriage with step-siblings. Something like that. Listen’ – he gave her a severe look – ‘don’t ask me to construct a complete family tree. I told you – even my mother gets confused, and she’s a lot more clued up about it than I am.’
‘Okay. Point taken. So what’s Julia’s interest in the headstones in Barnsley?’
‘Keeping an eye on things, probably. I don’t really know her, but they always say how socially committed she is, whatever that means. I’m surprised she hasn’t marched in here and demanded to know all the details about the dead woman, as representative of the parish.’
‘Well she hasn’t. And the other man?’
‘Describe him.’
She found this difficult. ‘Very ordinary. Grey hair. Didn’t say much. Looked a bit like a vicar.’
He laughed. ‘That’s not ringing any bells. I’ve never met the vicar here – probably covers about six churches in the area, anyway.’
‘Oh, I came across that when I was googling. I think it might be seven, if I remember rightly.’
‘He – or she – is probably a bit too busy to be deciphering headstones on a Monday morning, then.’ He nibbled his pencil in deep thought, then made a few more notes. ‘Those initials on the wedding ring,’ he said. ‘Remind me.’
‘G. B. and K. A. W.’
He wrote them down. ‘In that order, were they?’
‘I suppose so. I didn’t see them myself. Barkley told me.’
‘Because, wouldn’t you expect the person wearing the ring to put themselves second, not first? I mean, if both parties had the same thing, they’d reverse the initials and wear the one with the beloved first. Get me?’
‘I think so. And you’re right. It’s obvious, when you think about it. Can you possibly be saying my woman was K. A. W.? That would change everything.’ She stared at him, trying to process the implications.
‘Just a suggestion. If it’s right, it could mean that she invented the name Grace and the G initial is George or Graham.’
‘Or something Chinese.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t think there’s much of a Chinese element here. I suspect that’s nothing more than a red herring. I hate red herrings!’ he snapped. ‘And there always seem to be some. It comes of not knowing any of the background. We just grab at the most obvious things.’
Thea was still distracted by the outrageous disappearance of Clovis, her thoughts wandering repeatedly in his direction. Ben’s explanation was entirely unsatisfactory. People didn’t just go off like that, without a word of apology. What had happened to change his mind so drastically? He’d been keen enough at the beginning, seeking her out and listening intently to her story. ‘I can’t stop thinking about Clovis,’ she admitted, when Ben gave her an enquiring look.
‘Well try, because he’s a separate issue.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘I just can.’ He put his pen down and leant back. ‘Don’t ask me to show my workings, okay? Not for side issues. It’ll take all night.’
She looked at her watch. ‘Gosh, it’s past four. Shouldn’t you call Richard?’
‘In a minute. We can’t stop now. Help me to think, will you?’
She stared at his jottings. ‘You’ve left out Gwendoline Phoebe Wheelwright and her inheritance. And don’t we need some sort of family tree?’ Suddenly implications began to dawn. ‘Oh – Ben. These are your
relations, or most of them. What if …? I mean, aren’t we …?’
‘We have to follow the evidence, wherever it leads,’ he said like a much older man. Or like somebody reading from a book. ‘And I’m not too worried at the moment, because I can’t see anything that leads anywhere. We’re missing about twenty connecting links. We need more facts.’
‘All I can see are the holes. How did anybody know Grace was here in this house, for a start? I keep coming back to that. Were they – whoever they are – still searching for her when I brought her here? And what on earth had she done to deserve being killed?’
‘We need help,’ he decided suddenly, reaching for his phone. ‘It shouldn’t take long to find out about K. A. W.’ He was already thumbing and swiping. ‘What if the W is Wheelwright? It’s worth looking at the Electoral Register.’ There followed three minutes of silence before he reported, ‘Karen Alison Wheelwright, with an address in Banbury. That’s the only one.’
‘And you think that’s her? The dead woman?’
‘It could be.’
‘How can we find out for sure? Would there be a picture of her somewhere?’
‘Hang on. Let’s check marriages. See if she married a G. B.’ He went quiet again, giving Thea time to ponder the implications. She was afraid she would never catch up, but it proved easier than she’d thought, as she peered at the small screen over Ben’s shoulder. The story was, bit by bit, starting to take shape. ‘It all hinges on the motive,’ she murmured. ‘Doesn’t it?’
‘Mm,’ said Ben.
Then Thea’s own phone emitted a musical ping to announce a text. ‘Good Lord – listen to this. “Sorry to disappear like that. The truth is I was getting in too deep, and feeling like a fool. I was only trying to impress Jennifer, anyway, proving it was all down to the Chinese. That would have been a perfect solution – blame everything on them. After all, they’re responsible for most that’s wrong with the world. Might not be seeing you. Sorry again. Clovis.”’
‘The man’s a racist,’ said Ben in disgust. ‘You’re well out of that.’