Secrets in the Cotswolds

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Yes, but—’ She sighed. But he’s so terribly handsome, she thought with regret, before firmly banishing the man from her mind. ‘Getting anywhere?’ she asked.

  ‘Maybe so. There’s something here, look. A newspaper report about Karen Alison. She entered into a civil partnership, three years ago, with a woman called Grace Berensen. G. B. In Banbury. Apparently, she’s a successful entrepreneur, with her own consultancy business. That could mean anything, of course. Grace Berensen is a respected social worker, who specialises in elder care.’ He looked up with a grin. ‘I always think that sounds like somebody who looks after trees and picks elderberries. Anyway, the people of Banbury evidently value them as pillars of the community.’

  ‘I don’t believe you could possibly have found all that so quickly. It’s a miracle.’

  ‘Not really. I checked the Oxfordshire newspapers first and there it is. A photo as well. Is this your woman?’

  Thea peered excitedly at the tiny image. ‘I can’t see it properly.’ Ben expanded it for her, and she squealed with amazement. ‘That’s her! The one on the left. So she wasn’t called Grace, after all.’

  ‘She took the name of her partner – wife, I suppose. Probably the first thing that popped into her head.’

  ‘The real Grace looks nice,’ Thea said wistfully. ‘Poor woman. Presumably she’s got no idea what’s happened.’ She sat there, open-mouthed, trying to process this disconcerting discovery. She reviewed the brief time she’d spent with the dead woman – who she had to start calling Karen instead of Grace. She had lived only twenty miles away. She had no discernible links with any sort of trafficking. And yet – she had been deliberately killed, here in this very house. Her fear had been real and entirely justified. The dramatic story that Thea had constructed from the snippets Grace/Karen had given her suddenly felt more ordinary, but at the same time more terrible. ‘But she must have told me some lies,’ she concluded. ‘What about all that stuff about Manchester and people in a car. I believed that part of the story.’

  ‘We don’t know that she was lying,’ said Ben. ‘This doesn’t disprove the basic story. But it does establish an identity for her and that’s the main thing. Plus, of course, this murder victim, Ms Karen Alison Wheelwright, is almost certainly some relation to me, and my mum, even if she does look Chinese. Did you say she told you she had an English father? Then he’s got to be a Wheelwright. I wonder if I can find his first name somewhere?’

  ‘Oh, Ben. Stop being so calm about it. This is linking the whole business to your family, for heaven’s sake. What if … what if one of them killed her?’

  He shivered, as if throwing off a dowsing of cold water. ‘It’s all speculation at the moment. We haven’t got a shred of evidence against anybody.’

  ‘Yet,’ she muttered darkly. The picture was still coalescing inside her head. The main obstruction was the inclusion of the city of Manchester – nothing she could imagine explained how that could fit.

  ‘We need to locate this Grace Berensen,’ Ben said. ‘In fact, we ought to let the police know what we’ve found, before we do anything else. If we don’t, they’ll have us for obstructing the course of justice. You know who to call, I assume?’

  ‘Normally, I’d go straight to Gladwin. She’s a detective superintendent. But she’s up to her eyes in this pangolin business, and I haven’t seen her all week. I suppose it’ll have to be Cirencester, and I don’t know them there. Not very well, anyhow.’

  ‘Call them,’ he said. ‘If I’ve learnt anything in the past year or two, it’s when to stop acting unilaterally and let the professionals take over.’

  ‘I’m not sure I ever quite got the hang of that,’ she admitted with a laugh.

  ‘And this time it’s all a bit too close to home for comfort. It never even crossed my mind,’ he burst out. ‘What’s my mother going to say if I turn out to be the one who landed one of my uncles with a murder rap?’

  ‘Still jumping ahead,’ she cautioned him. ‘We’re not there yet, by a long way.’

  They spent the next ten minutes on their respective mobiles. Thea called Cirencester and left a message with a person who sounded about fifteen, for whoever was in charge of the Barnsley murder enquiry. ‘The identity of the victim is Karen Alison Wheelwright,’ she said unambiguously. ‘She has a partner called Grace Berensen, living in Banbury.’ There followed a string of bemused questions, which she did her best to answer, until she heard herself saying, ‘It’s all there on the computer! Find it for yourself,’ and cutting the call. ‘There! I called them,’ she told Ben. ‘Satisfied?’

  ‘Send a text to your Gladwin person as well,’ he advised. ‘Belt and braces.’

  ‘And Barkley. Don’t forget Barkley.’

  ‘I don’t know who that is.’

  ‘She’s a very bright detective sergeant. You’d like her.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, without looking up.

  Thea went into the shiny new kitchen and made two mugs of tea. Her brain was whirling with theories, names, images, while her emotions were equally tangled. Guilt towards Drew combined with embarrassed bewilderment about Clovis, and minor nagging worries about Jessica and Hepzie. There was still no clear path through any of it.

  But Ben was miraculous in his capabilities. He was making it all look so easy, and yet the police clearly had been dragging far behind him. Something as simple as transposing the two sets of initials on the wedding ring had unlocked the mystery within moments. Thea was tempted to simply sit back and enjoy watching him at work.

  As he sipped his tea, he shared his latest findings. ‘I went onto the Wheelwright family website – the one that’s only open to family members. I’ve found Karen’s dad – he was called Simon and he died six months ago. That could be the answer to the “Why now?” question, actually. I’m very much afraid it does all hinge on this inheritance business. If I’ve followed it properly, then Karen’s grandfather must have been Gwen’s brother. The whole gang of them are descended from Great-Granddad, including this Karen, my mother, even Auntie Norma, through her mother somehow.’ Again he chewed the pencil. ‘She’s always been around, in and out of the Jacksons’ houses. But if I remember rightly, they’ve been neighbours for ever, very tight-knit. There was some sort of disgrace somewhere in her background. Something that was hushed up.’

  ‘And that’s not on the website?’

  ‘Definitely not. She’d never have allowed that.’

  Again, Thea’s mind began to whirr. Did Karen know about the ‘disgrace’? Had she been threatening to make it public? Or what? She wanted to ask Ben, but he looked as if he could do with a break. ‘Should we pack it in for now?’ she asked him. ‘Let the police take it from here.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He looked anguished. ‘What if the solution to the whole thing is just a few more taps away? I’ll feel really stupid if I miss it now, having got this far.’

  ‘Well, it’s driving me crazy,’ she grumbled. ‘I just wish we could speak to Gladwin. We should put the radio on and see whether there’s any more news about the pangolins. If that’s been sorted, she’ll have some time for this.’

  ‘I can check the news on here,’ he said, in a mildly scornful tone. Again he tapped and swiped, before announcing, ‘News blackout. That means it’s all kicking off as we speak. You won’t get any sense out of her if she’s on that case.’

  ‘Well, I’ll try Caz, then.’

  ‘Isn’t she part of it as well?’

  Thea explained the free-floating role of the detective sergeant, as well as she could, and Ben absorbed every piece of information as if he were a sponge. ‘You know what?’ he said at the end. ‘You’ve been completely on your own through all this, haven’t you? Where I come from, there’s a proper little gang of us. Three, usually. My girlfriend and her boss are always right there, so we bounce everything off each other. It makes things a lot easier.’

  ‘Sounds great. I’ve usually got my dog with me,’ Thea said idiotically.

  ‘What
about your undertaker husband?’

  ‘Sometimes he gets involved,’ she said vaguely. ‘The first time I met him, he’d just found a body. But he’s not a natural detective, really.’

  ‘Not many people are. I’m not sure that you are, when it comes to it.’

  ‘I’m very nosy, and I’m good at getting people talking. I’m not always very sympathetic, though.’ She sighed. ‘And I think my brain’s past its peak.’

  He drained his tea, but did not return to his computer searches. ‘We need more than I can get, sitting here. Who can we go and talk to, I wonder?’

  ‘I’m sure your relatives are wondering where you are by now.’ The prospect of him disappearing back to his aunts and uncles or cousins or whatever they were was not a happy one. Clovis had deserted her, leaving her feeling foolish and puzzled. Ahead lay several hours of evening, with nothing to do but phone her husband and try to pretend she’d had a nice ordinary day.

  ‘I could ask who the other man was – in the churchyard on Monday. I don’t expect he’s important, though. And I could pick some brains about the Wheelwrights. Stuff they haven’t put on the website.’

  ‘You don’t think, then—’ She stopped, unsure as to how much she dared say. ‘I mean, hasn’t the whole thing got alarmingly close to home? Will you tell them what you’ve just found out?’

  ‘Whoa,’ he protested. ‘Slow down. It’s not that urgent. I think we ought to sleep on it, and see if it looks clearer in the morning. I’m not going home till Sunday. And no – I won’t tell my people anything yet. It’s all too murky still.’

  ‘Tomorrow might be my last day here. I need to get home – something’s going on there that I don’t understand. I should never have come. The whole thing was a stupid idea from the start.’

  ‘Was it yours? The idea, I mean.’

  ‘Actually no – that was all thanks to Gladwin. She meant well – and she couldn’t have known how preoccupied she was going to be. We thought she’d be able to drop in once or twice, and we could go exploring or something.’

  ‘And now she’s under so much pressure, she’s forgotten all about you.’

  ‘I don’t expect she has. She’s really nice, you know. I liked her from the start. That was ages ago now – I was doing a house-sit in Temple Guiting. I think. They tend to blur after a while.’

  ‘That’s a very smart piano,’ he remarked, peering into the living room on the way out. ‘Must be worth a bit.’

  ‘She’s a professional pianist. I suppose she has to have a good one. It’s part of my job this week to keep guard over it. Not that much was likely to happen to it.’

  ‘Other than fire or flood – and I don’t expect you can prevent anything like that.’

  ‘No.’

  They hovered on the doorstep, acutely aware that nothing had actually been solved, despite their best efforts. ‘I’ll give you my number, in case something happens,’ he said. ‘And what’s yours?’

  She handed him her phone. ‘Put yours in.’ Then she recited her own number, which had taken her about three years to memorise.

  ‘Good,’ said Ben.

  ‘Where do they live?’ she asked, as he began to walk away.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dick Jackson and his wife. The ones you’re staying with.’

  ‘Oh – right here in the village. Just the other side of the big hotel. Five minutes away, at most.’

  She let him go then. Perhaps she was projecting her own feelings onto him, but he did seem to droop as he walked away. There was so much she didn’t know about him, things she wanted to discover. A sharp pang of anxiety shot through her: what if she never saw him again? What if he suffered the same fate as Grace/Karen? What if somebody murdered this remarkable youth, afraid that he was getting too close to the truth? His own relatives were not above suspicion. He was there, under their roof, impossibly vulnerable to attack during the night. Then common sense took charge. Ben Harkness was clearly no fool. He would ensure his own safety in all sorts of clever ways. It was probably more sensible to worry about her own well-being. Not only was she alone in a large house, but she was in a very unstable mood. Frustrated, guilty, anxious – all the same feelings that had been lurking for days were coming to a painful climax.

  When in doubt make something happen, she told herself again. It had been her motto for several of her dramatic house-sitting experiences. Force things along, call someone’s bluff, ask the searching questions. There were several options open to her. Firstly, she could drive to Cirencester and make sure her report on all the discoveries of the day had reached somebody in authority. Or she could go out and knock on doors, just for the sake of it. Or she could have a go at continuing Ben’s researches on her laptop, while she considered the coming evening. The last was the easiest and the most appealing. But Ben had swept through so many references and websites and archives on his phone that she had not managed to catch a proper sight of anything. She might know a bit of the theory, but in practice she didn’t think she could even manage to successfully log in to anything useful. So she gave it up, and went back into the kitchen for another mug of tea. What she really wanted was wine, and a nice steak or freshly caught trout. And a congenial companion to chat to. And a dog who worshipped her.

  Outside it was warm, but overcast, which had been the default condition for most of the month. Since Jessica had grown up, the month of August had lost much of that bitter-sweet urgency, where it was regarded as the entire summer, the only time a family could get away for a holiday. She and Carl had enjoyed only one self-indulgent fortnight at the end of June, when Jessica was seventeen. They’d gone to Brittany, feeling like fugitives from every responsibility. After that, Carl had died and Thea found herself swamped with house-sitting work all summer. Jessica left home, Hepzibah was acquired, and holidays seemed like something other people did. And now she was back several steps, frantically trying to give two children a good summer while preserving her own sanity.

  Feeling sorry for herself on every level, she drifted around the house. She should be concentrating on the murder – the resolution felt so close, along with a vague sense of danger. The police were nowhere in sight; nobody really cared what became of her in this strange old village. Awful things were going on behind the bland exteriors – nothing was as it seemed. Nobody was telling the truth.

  It was after six. Outside it was still light, the day far from finished, but everyone had deserted her. It was all very well for Ben to preach about knowing when to stop playing amateur detective, but just walking off and leaving her in limbo began to feel unfair. After all, he was amongst individuals who could turn out to be active players in the investigation. While he probably wasn’t actually in any danger, he was at least quite likely to be in line for some excitement.

  Make something happen! her inner voice shouted at her again. But what? Still she drifted and dithered and hesitated. Anything she did now could make matters worse. She might blunderingly ruin a delicate plan that clever Caz Barkley was unfolding without Thea’s knowledge. All around her were people she did not know or understand. Even Ben Harkness could well have an agenda that he’d kept to himself.

  When the doorbell rang, she went limp with relief. Even if it was a gang of murderous men with guns, it would be better than this paralysis.

  It wasn’t a gang of men. It was a single woman, with nothing in her hands at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Norma Whatever-her-name-was stood there, faintly smiling. ‘All on your own?’ she asked, with a lift of the eyebrows.

  ‘As usual.’ The bitterness surprised even Thea herself.

  ‘Well, that’s not good. Come round to mine for the evening. We can play cards or something. Have some wine. Have you eaten yet?’

  ‘I had a big lunch, so I’m not very hungry.’

  ‘I find hunger isn’t very relevant, though. Don’t you?’

  Thea laughed. ‘I suppose that’s true. Well, it’s a very kind thought, but …’ She could
find no excuse that would sound remotely convincing. She couldn’t even convince herself. Why was she hesitating? What did this immediate instinct to refuse the offer really mean? The woman was perfectly ordinary and friendly. She was only following up on her earlier attempt to make a connection. Perhaps that was it. Why was she so persistent? ‘I need to phone my husband,’ Thea finished lamely. ‘He’ll expect a call from me any time now.’

  ‘Bring your phone. Call him from my place. I’m literally one minute away from here.’

  The house was indeed virtually next door to Tabitha’s. It stood ‘kitty corner’ as the Americans would say, diagonally opposite and then about fifty yards along towards the centre of the village. Thea had passed it several times without taking any particular notice. A nice-enough stone building, detached, with a low hedge in front, it was just one of hundreds of similar Cotswolds homes. It had no close neighbours. Norma opened the front door without the use of a key, which prompted Thea to ask, ‘Is your husband at home?’

  ‘He’s not, actually. The fact is, he’s in Bulgaria at the moment – or is it Romania? One of those places. He’s a bit younger than me – still working up the career ladder, as they say. He’s doing well in the property business, and whatever’s going on politically, the Brits never get tired of buying somewhere cheap in the sun, even if the infrastructure’s impossible. He does try to warn them,’ she added defensively. ‘They always think it’ll be fine in their particular case. Sometimes it is, of course.’

  ‘Does he go to Poland?’ Thea asked, suddenly put in mind of Clovis and his innovative musicians. Clovis was still prodding and poking somewhere deep inside her skin.

  ‘A bit. It’s a much better country to live in than most of the others, but not so cheap any more.’

  ‘It’s nice that you leave the door unlocked,’ Thea said.

  ‘Oh, yes. Most people have got so paranoid about security, haven’t they? I’ve got nothing worth stealing, and you don’t get many burglaries these days anyway, do you?’