by Rebecca Tope
‘I don’t think so. And if she does, she won’t spot us. People don’t look up this high. I sit here and watch them come and go, and they never once notice me.’
‘Good place for a sniper,’ said Thea.
‘Perfect. I wish I’d got a telescope. I could see what it is she’s picking, then.’
Thea squinted into the late-afternoon sun. ‘Can’t see a thing,’ she complained. ‘She’s against the light.’
‘Watch for a minute.’
They kept up the scrutiny, tracking the woman’s erratic progress across a small triangular patch of ground that lay between two fields. It had overgrown hedges and no visible gateway into it. Thea was reminded of the burial ground that Drew had inherited in Broad Campden. An anomaly of history, somehow dropped off some old deeds and ignored by the Land Registry. The countryside abounded with such slivers of land, despite the high value attached to any little patch of grass these days. They became invisible, except to the plants and small animals who enthusiastically colonised them.
‘Doesn’t it look suspicious to you?’ Toni murmured. ‘I think we should see where she goes, and find out what she’s doing.’
‘There are so many innocent explanations,’ Thea demurred. ‘But it does seem a bit odd, I agree.’
The woman had moved out of the sunlight to a shadowy stretch of hedge, where they could see her plucking small quantities of some kind of plant. ‘Deadly nightshade, I bet you,’ said Toni.
‘Bit early for blackberries,’ said Thea. ‘But there could be rosehips.’
‘Hemlock.’
‘Wood sorrel.’
‘Hey – you really know your plants, don’t you! Did Uncle Carl teach you?’
‘He did. You remember him, of course.’
‘I do, absolutely. He took us all on nature rambles, like something out of the Famous Five. Showed us what was edible and what wasn’t. I thought I’d forgotten it all, but it’s coming back to me now.’
‘Did you ever try to dig down for the nut at the end of the wood sorrel root?’
‘Once or twice. I don’t really believe it’s possible.’
‘Neither do I. The root’s as thin as a hair. You’d have to be a fairy or a leprechaun to manage it.’
Toni laughed. ‘Or a witch, maybe. Don’t you think she’s like a witch?’
‘She is a bit. Oh!’
The woman had been stretching up for something in the hedge above her head, and stumbled backwards, almost falling. Her basket flew off her arm, and landed upside down.
‘Shh!’ adjured Toni.
But the woman had heard Thea’s gasp of alarm, and was looking their way.
‘Keep still,’ whispered the girl. ‘She won’t see us.’
She was right. The questioning face never raised higher than the ground floor of the hotel, with the blank side wall revealing nothing more interesting than a staff parking area. A car engine told them there was a vehicle coming or going, which would most likely divert the woman’s attention. After a few seconds, she returned to the calamity of her spilt gleanings, and knelt to recover them.
‘They’re obviously very important to her,’ said Thea.
She had realised that her own habitual curiosity was reflected in her niece – some genetic quirk had bestowed it on the girl. The resulting sense of fellowship was sweet, and made her smile. ‘You’re just like me,’ she said. ‘Nosy about people.’
‘I am. I’m burning to know what she’s up to. None of the theories can be right. She’s being so selective in what she picks. It’s not enough for jam or wine or soup.’
‘It might be if she just wants extra flavour.’
‘I know it’s poison. She’s planning to poison somebody.’
‘We’ll probably never know,’ sighed Thea.
‘If she comes again, I’m definitely going to follow her.’
‘You can’t. You’ll get the sack.’
Toni wriggled her shoulders in frustrated agreement. ‘Oh – I forgot to tell you. From this weekend, there’ll be a room here for me, if I want it. I told them I did. Is that okay? It feels a bit ungrateful of me, but it would obviously be much easier if I could live in. I need to move before Saturday. There’s a massive wedding that day, and we’ve all got to work overtime.’
Thea was surprisingly sorry to hear this news. ‘Oh, of course it would be better. But we’ve got used to you now. We’ll all miss you.’
‘I can come and see you on my days off. And it has been great to really learn how to cycle on the roads. It’s a brilliant sense of freedom. You can see why people rave about it.’
‘That’s good.’
When they turned back to check on the woman, it was to see her in the further angle of the little field, hitching up her skirt before clambering over a lower section of hedge.
‘She’ll break it down, and let animals through,’ said Thea. ‘That’s no way to behave.’
‘Can’t see any animals,’ Toni reported, standing up and trying to peer into the adjacent field.
‘She’s through it now. Must have used it before. I can never get over or through hedges, however hard I try.’ Then she thought of a hedge in Duntisbourne Abbots that she had got through, and added, ‘Hardly ever, anyway.’
‘Now we’ll never know what she was doing. It’ll haunt me for the rest of my life.’
‘No it won’t. I’m going to go down there and follow her. She’s got to have a car close by, if she doesn’t live in the village.’
‘I assumed she did live here. Why do you think she doesn’t?’
‘Because if people know her, they’re more likely to question what she’s doing …’ Thea paused. ‘Except, that’s not really true, is it? They’d notice a stranger more quickly, and be more suspicious. Silly me.’
‘We’re both silly. We’re playing a childish game, spying on her and making idiotic guesses about her.’
‘You started it,’ said Thea with a laugh.
‘I know I did. Let her get on with her winemaking or whatever innocent thing it is.’
‘I really would like to follow her,’ said Thea. ‘I’ve hardly ever done it, and I’m sure it would be fun.’
‘You’d have to keep me informed of where you were, on the phone. And I have to be back in the kitchen in about ten more minutes, so that won’t work. And she’ll be well away before you can get anywhere near her. Once across a couple of fields, she’ll be impossible to trace.’
‘I suppose so.’
So they left it, and spent the final minutes talking over Toni’s transfer to the hotel and whether she should leave her bike in Broad Campden or take it with her.
Thea went home to break the news that the very popular lodger was leaving them. It was hard to know who was most upset amongst Drew and the children. ‘She’s very good company,’ he said. ‘Makes me realise what I’ve missed by not knowing you at that age.’
Thea tried to overlook the very slightly creepy implications this sentiment carried. Husbands did lose their heads over nubile young girls, and it would be folly to assume that hers was an exception. Although he was, insisted an inner voice. They’d only just got married, for goodness’ sake. So she smiled, and said there did seem to be some similarities between her and Toni. ‘She’s more like me than Jessica is,’ she said.
‘We saw the witchy woman,’ she added. ‘I must admit she was behaving very suspiciously.’ And she supplied details.
‘Must be pretty athletic to get over a hedge,’ said Drew.
‘We thought she’d probably made a place, with footholds that didn’t show from where we were. And that means she must be local, I suppose. We wondered about that.’
‘You are two nosy women,’ he teased. ‘I think you’ve corrupted poor young Toni with your insatiable curiosity.’
‘I think she was already that way before she even came here. And hotels are a perfect breeding ground for that sort of interest. All those stories that you never hear the end of. People having illicit liaisons, or hiding fro
m their in-laws, or spending money they never ought to have. It must be thrilling.’
‘I’m sure it is. Especially for someone planning to study psychology. She can construct all kinds of theories about what makes people do what they do.’
‘Including picking berries or seedheads in a neglected field, wearing a long skirt.’
‘I’m really sad that she can’t run to a hat as well. Even a floppy straw article would complete the picture.’
‘No hat.’
‘Pity. It would have proved conclusively that she’s a ghost. She might still be a ghost, of course. Who wears long skirts these days?’
‘Some old ladies do. Tall ones, with long grey hair. It’s a look.’
‘What did Toni decide to do with the bike?’
‘She’ll keep it with her at the hotel. Then she can go on exploratory rides when she has some time off. She seems quite smitten by the Cotswolds. I told her to go to Naunton, and Northleach and Winchcombe.’
‘And you can meet her at some of them, with Stephanie and Timmy. You’ll be wanting to have some outings with them. You’ll all go mad if you just stay in the house for six weeks.’
‘I thought we could set Stephanie to doing some grave-digging, and Timmy can man the phones.’
‘A hundred years ago, that’s exactly what we’d do. If they had phones then. Did they?’
‘In the big houses, yes. Just about. I’m sure we’ll all have a wonderful summer,’ she added bravely.
Toni was even more consumed by a need to know the end of every story than Thea had guessed. Despite the many distractions of the job, with the backroom gossip and the never-ending demands and the important upcoming wedding, the Case of the Woman in the Field maintained its place at the top of her priorities. She was perhaps gathering food for pet rabbits – or goats. That was Toni’s latest theory. New ideas occurred every day, only adding to the frustration of not knowing which, if any, was true. She couldn’t really be poisoning anyone, surely. Poisoning was very out of fashion as a method of murder, with the tox analysis so advanced at the pathology labs.
The morning of the wedding dawned slowly, with low cloud and the threat of rain. Hotel staff scuttled feverishly in all directions, carrying tables, flowers, dishes, luggage. Toni’s tiny room was barely accessible past a large pile of chairs that had been moved out of the banqueting hall, to create space for dancing. ‘Isn’t that a fire hazard?’ she asked, having been reading some health and safety literature. Nobody bothered to reply.
It all passed in a whirl. The bride herself was from Burford, but her parents lived in Upper Slaughter and the groom was from Cheltenham. They each had large families and many friends. Toni was promoted to one of the waiting staff, carrying plates endlessly to and from the kitchen, struggling to remember all the rapidly learnt etiquette for handing food to people. There was no time whatever in which to think. The menu was relatively simple: choice between cream of vegetable soup and grilled sardines, then roast duck, and sherry trifle. But there were flamboyant accoutrements, and a few special diets to watch out for, which raised it well out of the ordinary. Seventy-five people sat down to eat.
The wedding service itself had been held in the local church, with an old-fashioned procession to the hotel. The wedding breakfast was at half past two. By half past four, ten guests had been prostrated by the most severe gastro-enteric trouble. Some vomited where they sat, including a boy of ten who had eaten far too much.
Ambulances were called, and one old man looked so close to death that the bride burst into screams at the sight of him. She herself appeared unaffected, but her new husband had disappeared into the Gents many minutes earlier, and failed to return.
Toni could not shake off a sense that she had blundered into the set of a disaster movie. People were panicking, throwing accusations and clutching their stomachs as if they’d been knifed. Paramedics materialised, kneeling beside white-faced victims and asking earnest questions. The moribund old man was carted away on a stretcher, with the bride calling ‘Grandad!’ forlornly after him.
And where was the groom? Suddenly that was the main question. ‘Rupert – where’s Rupert?’ everyone was wanting to know. A group of male friends went off in search of him, followed by the hotel manager who was almost rigid with anxiety and horror.
Nobody was in control, Toni realised. She concluded that she could do very little good where she was, so went outside to check the situation there. There were two ambulances already and a third was turning into the driveway. More guests were collapsing with every passing minute, some of them evidently unable to control their own bowels. ‘Good God, it’s like an outbreak of cholera,’ said an elderly woman. ‘I saw something of the sort in India, back in the fifties.’
The smells and sights were deeply disgusting, and getting worse. In those moments, Toni learnt that whatever vocation she might develop, it was not going to be as a nurse. Nor a doctor. Nor a paramedic. She was repelled by the whole business. She had to get away, and the only place she could think of to go to was her terrace in the sky, far above all this vile commotion.
Once there, she raised her head to the leaden sky and breathed in deeply. The rain had held off, by a whisker, but the air was moist and the light poor.
Then she saw the woman in the field. She was not carrying a basket, or wearing the same long skirt, but it was unmistakably her. She had her hands together under her chin, still posing as if for a Victorian painter, watching the scene outside the hotel, smiling broadly.
The door opened and Toni was joined by one of the junior chefs. He was twenty-four and there was a growing mutual interest between them. ‘Hi, Matt,’ she said. ‘Do you have any idea who that woman is, over there?’
He peered down. ‘Oh, that looks like Mrs Tompkins. She’s a brilliant cook – makes all sorts of chutneys and pickles and so forth. We buy them from her. She did the soup for the wedding today, actually. I thought you’d have noticed her delivering it this morning. She must have taken days over it.’
‘No,’ said Toni. ‘I didn’t see her.’
Matt went on, seeming eager to talk, ‘And I know her son. She had him late and he’s terribly spoilt. He wanted to marry Samantha, I think.’
‘Samantha?’
‘The bride. They must be quite miffed that this Rupert bloke got her instead.’
A piercing cry from below interrupted them and they both leant over the parapet to see what the trouble was. They could just see a stretcher being loaded into the newly arrived ambulance. The bride, in her frothy white dress, trotted alongside and then climbed in after it. ‘Rupert!’ she wailed, over and over again.
‘Uh-oh,’ said Matt, while Toni turned to look again at the woman in the field.
‘Probably not the wisest choice of soup-maker,’ she said. ‘Not with all that hemlock or toadstools or deadly nightshade that grows over there.’
‘Probably not,’ said Matt, with an uncontrollable giggle.
Making Arrangements
She knew it wasn’t fair to blame Drew. She should have thought of it, at least as much as he should. It was, after all, her problem and not his. They were her painful memories and sudden associations, from a time years before she even met him.
But she felt it, all the same. His careless, hurried words – ‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll be fine. It’s high time you gave it a go. I’m not sure of the details, but there’s a woman coming about her husband. He sounds a bit young, but that shouldn’t be a problem. Now, I’m really late for Mrs Frangipani at the hospice.’
‘She’s not called that, you idiot. I thought you were always mega-careful with their names.’
‘It’s Frantileni. I know perfectly well, but I always think frangipani’s such a nice word. Now, it’s your last chance to ask me anything. You’ve got the diary, coffin catalogue, stuff about the paperwork and legal requirements.’
‘How young was he?’
‘Um … don’t know. Too young.’ He shook his head. ‘You’ll be fine,’ he repeat
ed. ‘Just be yourself. Don’t overdo the sympathy. Give her time to think of any special details. It was a sudden death, so she won’t have been prepared for it.’
The first quivers of apprehension assailed her then. ‘Um, Drew—’ she began, but he was already almost out of the door.
The woman was due at ten, which was imminent. She was called Linda Padwick. Her husband’s body was in the mortuary at Gloucester. ‘Some ghastly accident with a horse,’ said Drew, who had contacted the Coroner’s Officer already.
Horses were a daily feature of Cotswold life, with racing stables, riding schools, stud farms and livery all preoccupying a fair portion of the population. Accidents involving them were common enough to go unremarked, or at least fail to make front-page news. But people seldom actually died at the hooves of a horse. She remembered a bizarre story told by Den Cooper, husband of Drew’s partner Maggs, where a young woman was killed when a horse headbutted her. It had led to Den’s biggest murder enquiry, eventually, shaking him for a number of reasons. Thea tried to concentrate on this aspect of Mr Padwick’s death, rather than lingering on the consequences for his wife.
But it was impossible. As she waited for Linda Padwick to arrive, Thea was thrown back nearly five years to the moment when she herself had been forced to visit an undertaker and arrange the funeral of her own young husband.
The person who dealt with her had been a woman. A woman who was almost shockingly friendly. Thea’s clouded, horrified mind had nonetheless retained almost every detail of that hour, ever since. She recalled a foolish final notion that the whole thing was a prolonged dream, where the most terrible events were happening. And then here was this woman coming onstage from a land of good cheer and normality. ‘Good morning. My name is Christine Woolley. Please sit down.’
Thea, and her sister Emily (who had won the muted contest as to which sibling should go with her) sat side by side across a desk, in the bland room.