A Cotswold Casebook

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Not really,’ said Thea. ‘They’ll soon be here. It might be somebody I know,’ she finished hopefully. ‘Like Gladwin.’

  ‘You know DS Gladwin?’ asked the female constable.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Thea told her. ‘And DI Higgins.’ She could have added more names, but refrained. As soon as anyone from CID arrived, her intimate connections with the local police force would become apparent. Winchcombe itself had been the scene of two brutal murders not so long ago. Thea had found both the bodies. The sudden appearance of a third made her both angry and weary.

  Maggs noticed Olivia throwing strange looks at Thea. Confusion was plain on her face, as well as a sort of apprehension. There had not been time for proper introductions, she remembered, so Olivia knew almost nothing of Thea’s background. The house-sitter who moved from one Cotswold village to another, encountering bad behaviour on an epic scale almost everywhere she went. The new wife of alternative undertaker, Drew Slocombe, who was attracting considerable attention since setting up a new burial ground near Broad Campden. Olivia knew only that Thea and Maggs had been friends for some time, having somehow been connected through their husbands. Maggs had been deliberately vague, hoping to elaborate properly over the picnic.

  ‘I think we should go,’ said Olivia again. Her small son was grizzling and showing clear signs of needing to escape from the straps that imprisoned him. Not for the first time, Maggs grieved over the way little children spent such a lot of their time tied into some contraption or other, ostensibly for their own safety.

  But then two more cars drove right up to where they were standing, oblivious of any normal parking rules. Five people emerged and were quickly standing along the pavement, asking questions and pulling on protective clothing, in one or two cases. Maggs, Olivia and Thea were ushered to one side and asked to wait. Activity and bustle ensued, with police tape barring entry to the church, a horrified vicar suddenly appearing for good measure. Maggs looked to Thea for some sort of explanation based on her experience, but she just shrugged. ‘Not Gladwin or Higgins,’ she sighed. ‘Nobody I know at all. Pity.’

  A young man in plain clothes came up to them. ‘Mrs Cooper?’ he asked. Maggs raised a hand. ‘Good. Would you be kind enough to come with me, please?’

  ‘Why me?’ she muttered, but went willingly enough. She felt a small lurch of pride at being the one singled out. They must think her the most competent and responsible of the three, she concluded.

  Annie’s body still lay exposed to the sky. A man in a suit knelt beside her. More men were stringing tape in a wide arc from church wall to shrubs at the edge of the grassed area. ‘Do you recognise this?’ the original policewoman asked her, holding a handbag aloft.

  ‘Actually, I do,’ said Maggs slowly. ‘That’s Annie’s bag. I remember it from the classes. We all admired it.’

  It was a very distinctive item, made of soft purple leather and very expensive. A present from Mike, on first learning she was pregnant. She had made a great display of it, more than once. Seeing it now, surviving its proud owner, gave her a piercing pain. What would happen to it? What significance could it ever have, along with all Annie’s other possessions? Bethany might inherit it eventually, perhaps. But would she want it? If she was told that it had lain beside her dead mother, containing her personal things, would she not be repelled by it? Perhaps Mike would sell it or thrust it at Annie’s mother for disposal. For the first time – which given her occupation had to be rather shameful – Maggs considered the fate of a dead person’s belongings. Just so much clutter, in most cases, their meaning gone along with the person who had valued and loved them.

  And then a distinctive sound was heard from inside the bag. Automatically, the policewoman reached in and removed the phone, which had indicated the receipt of a text. She looked at its screen and then showed it to Maggs, whose mind began to work as fast as a microprocessor.

  JOHN, it said.

  ‘Do you know who that is?’ the officer asked her.

  ‘Um … I don’t think so. Might be anybody. Listen – are we done here? I need to get back to my little girl.’

  ‘Well …’ The woman looked around for someone to consult. ‘Can Mrs Cooper go now?’ she asked.

  ‘Go where?’ replied a man in jeans, who was probably a fairly senior detective.

  ‘Just back to the street, with the others,’ said Maggs.

  ‘No problem,’ he nodded.

  ‘So, actually, could we go and have some lunch as well?’ she pressed on. ‘We were heading for the park. Would that be okay?’

  ‘Leave your contact details, then. We’ll want to interview you this afternoon. All of you.’

  She smiled co-operatively, and went back to the others. ‘They want our mobile numbers,’ she told them. ‘Then we can get down to the park, and try to eat something.’ She looked directly at Olivia. ‘I feel too sick, quite honestly. Sick as a … whatever it is.’

  ‘Dog,’ said Thea. ‘Dogs are often sick. What happened back there? You’ve gone a bit green. Surely not at the sight of a body?’

  ‘Let’s get going. I need to think,’ was all Maggs would say.

  The male constable was hovering, and they gave him their numbers, reminding him of their surnames. Then Maggs led the way back towards the main square of Winchcombe, before turning right down a characterful little street that ended up at the gates of Sudeley Park. Thea paused for a wistful glance down over some allotments. ‘I stayed there, a year or two ago,’ she said. ‘You remember, Maggs.’

  ‘Yes. I came here to confront you about Drew.’

  ‘No, you didn’t confront me. You gave me a very sweet apology for being nasty to me.’

  They exchanged fond smiles. They did, after all, have a substantial history behind them. From some obscure emotional connection, Maggs leant down and kissed the top of Meredith’s head. ‘It was a while ago now,’ she said.

  They found a spot under a huge tree, spreading a cloth on the sparse grass and laying out a modest array of picnic food. Then Maggs looked at Olivia, with a mixture of pity and disgust.

  ‘There’s a message from John on Annie’s phone,’ she said. ‘They’ll have read it by now. I give them about half an hour to work out what that means. Perhaps you should call somebody to come and take charge of Simon. You won’t want to take him with you where you’re going, will you?’

  Olivia went rigid. ‘I didn’t kill her,’ she said, forcing the words through a tight jaw. ‘I admit I was there. We were both early, because I wanted to have it out with her, before you arrived – to tell her she was ruining the lives of two little children, as well as mine and Mike’s. But she just laughed and said everyone had a right to happiness, and the kids were too young to notice anything. Besides, she said, their fathers were hardly ever at home anyway.’

  Maggs closed her eyes against the rage that swept through her. ‘You hit her so hard it killed her. How could that have been unintentional?’

  ‘I didn’t hit her. It was that stone man.’

  ‘What the hell do you mean?’

  ‘A piece of stone fell off the roof and landed on her head. She was on the ground, because I’d pushed her over. I was trying to make her go away, before you got here. No way could I sit through a picnic with her, the little bitch. But I didn’t kill her. If you told the police we arrived together and never saw Annie, that’d be an alibi for me.’

  Maggs could hardly speak, but she choked out, ‘I think you’re lying. I’m certain you hit her and killed her.’

  ‘But nobody can prove it, if I did.’

  Thea made an instinctive move to cuddle Bethany, as she struggled to understand what had been said. ‘Oh, they’ll prove it all right,’ she said. ‘And what’ll happen to this little thing now? Not to mention your own little boy.’

  Olivia looked at the child, then at the other two, her Simon and Maggs’s Meredith. Finally she stared hard at Maggs. ‘That’s up to you, isn’t it?’ she said.

  For two seconds, Maggs considere
d these words. If she did supply a false alibi, she would have to live with the consequences for ever. She could never tell Den about it. The police would question her inconsistent testimony.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  The Blockley Discovery

  Blockley retained a special place in Thea’s affections. Larger than most of the settlements she had found herself in, it had a more obvious sense of community and a more substantial population of permanent residents. When she and Hepzibah went back there on a misty November day, she felt surrounded by ghostly memories. Tragic things had happened there, as well as some amusing ones. The woods into which one end of the main street simply disappeared were dripping with moisture as well as shedding their colourful leaves. Underfoot it was slippery with them. Beyond the woods were innocent-looking fields that concealed a lost village, abandoned centuries ago and very nearly forgotten altogether. ‘“Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie,”’ she muttered to herself. Over the past few weeks she had set herself the task of learning a new poem every few days and the current one was ‘Spring and Fall’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins. The effort was considerable, making her fear for her long-term mental capacity, but she hoped the discipline would prove useful in delaying the decline. Drew had laughed at her. ‘Poor old lady,’ he said. ‘Forty-six next birthday and already half demented.’

  Drew himself was not quite forty, and this rankled more than it should.

  ‘Let’s go and have a look up there,’ she said to the dog, who was running loose as usual. The easiest track through the woods began close to the end of the street, and they had automatically followed it, but then veered up a smaller pathway, leading steeply towards open fields. Other alternatives required a muddy scramble up through the trees and over a low stone wall. It all came back to her as she walked. Had Hepzie remembered it as well? She supposed not. The spaniel had been to very many places over the past three years or so.

  They were getting tired, having walked all the way from Broad Campden – a distance of at least three miles. It had been a sudden impulse, born of feelings of restlessness and anxiety. Drew had been snappy over breakfast, culminating in a flash of sarcasm that had wounded her, even as she knew she deserved it. She’d been whining about having nothing to do and no money to go anywhere, when he said, ‘No problem. Just go and dig two new graves for me, then. That should keep you occupied.’ Being small and not especially good with a spade, she had rightly interpreted this as ill-tempered. Drew had more than enough to do that week, with two funerals, a talk and a trip down to Somerset to see Maggs all in his diary. His wife was left with a minuscule amount of paperwork and a couple of phone calls. She was obviously going to be bored, and it seemed quite acceptable for her to say so.

  ‘Go for a walk, then,’ he suggested, when she scorned the grave-digging remark.

  ‘All right. I will. Come on, Heps.’ And without another word, she had grabbed coat and boots and set out southwards with no clear destination in mind.

  It was going to be a long slog home again, she realised now. First there would have to be a good rest in a pub, both for herself and the dog. Hepzie wasn’t accustomed to route marches across fields and through woods, especially since they’d moved to the Cotswolds permanently. And certainly anything more than a mile or two was asking rather a lot. On the other hand, it was all good fun, with the cool breeze bringing so many interesting smells.

  There was a decidedly interesting smell wafting Hepzie’s way, as they climbed through the Blockley trees towards the sweeping fields that lay between them and the main road. She lifted her muzzle and had a good long sniff.

  ‘If that’s fox poo you’re smelling, don’t even think about it,’ said Thea. ‘I warn you – you won’t be allowed back in the house if you’ve rolled in it.’

  They were soon in the field, where there was no hint of fox, sheep or cow. A few rabbits slipped out of sight, and birds swirled overhead, enjoying the wind, which was suddenly much stronger.

  ‘Let’s not go far,’ said Thea, with a look at her watch. ‘We might find somewhere to have coffee before long. Though they probably won’t let you in,’ she sighed.

  The dog took no notice, but kept up her quest for the source of the scent she could still detect. She zigzagged ahead, nose to the ground, veering off towards a line of trees, which had perhaps once been a hedge. They had been left to attain some height, forming a windbreak, and offering a degree of shelter for any creature hoping to avoid heavy rain or snow. Thea followed, still hoping there were no fox droppings to be found. The stink that a single small dog could carry around for days after rolling in it was appalling. The European version of a skunk, Thea supposed. The only recourse was to give the dog a thorough bath, and nobody enjoyed that in the least.

  She could see a small mound a few feet away from the line of trees. There were sticks on top of it, and lusher grass than elsewhere in the field grew around it. Hepzie was pawing at one edge of it. Thea went for a look, her mind still on baths and the long walk home.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want to stay here for long. It’s too windy.’

  The spaniel pushed her muzzle into a hole she had made and began to tug something. As Thea bent down to pull the dog away, she caught sight of an incongruous piece of material. Thicker than a garment would be, unless it was a heavy winter coat, it had a straight edge and appeared to be a singularly unpleasant shade of green. ‘What on earth is that?’ she said again.

  Hepzie continued to pull at an object from underneath the fabric, until she suddenly shot backwards with something dark and dirty in her mouth. She dropped it and sat down, panting. A very nasty smell was coming from somewhere close by.

  ‘Somebody’s buried a dead sheep here,’ said Thea. ‘Covered it with old carpet and a few sticks, and it’s just sunk into the ground. They’re not supposed to do that.’

  The object was probably a decomposed ovine head or hip bone or something, and she was in no hurry to inspect it. But the dog was showing a renewed interest, and that could not be permitted. Thea kicked the find gently. ‘It’s a shoe,’ she realised. ‘A mouldy old shoe.’

  Sheep did not wear shoes. It dawned on her that if you could successfully hide a dead sheep in this way, you could hide any sort of dead body. Unwelcome thoughts pushed their way to the surface. It was becoming increasingly clear that this was no sheep. It was a clever concealment of a dead human person. There hadn’t been any detectable smell, until Hepzie disturbed it and let the stink of rotting flesh escape. ‘Trust you,’ she accused the dog. ‘This is exactly what we don’t need.’

  She felt tired just thinking about the next hours and days. Questions, emotions, explanations. She had her phone in her pocket and she supposed she could call authorities and direct them to the spot. Except, when she put her hands into first one pocket and then another, she realised she had brought a different coat, and not transferred anything from the previous day’s jacket. Nor had she brought her bag. All she’d done was grab her purse from the hall table, attach a lead to Hepzie and set out, desperate to get away and give herself something to do.

  Now there was too much to do, and not in a good way. When the thought intruded itself, she did not immediately push it away. You could just turn round and forget the whole thing. She could drag her dog back into the middle of Blockley, find coffee somewhere and walk home, steadfastly ignoring what the damn dog had unearthed.

  Except of course she could not possibly do such a thing. As a house-sitter she just might have managed it – running away from a week or two’s stay in someone else’s house, burying the knowledge even more deeply than the dead person had been buried. But as the wife of a respectable funeral director, she absolutely could not. Drew, so decent and stalwart, would be appalled if he ever found out. He would never feel the same about her again. There would be a loss of trust, a loss of respect, that would eat away at their marriage until it fell apart. Even the fact of her hesitation would give Drew a few bad nights – if she ever admitted it t
o him.

  She would not admit it, because it was only a moment’s madness. She would have to find a phone, which might not be easy. She would be regarded as eccentric, at best, by anyone realising she was walking in woodlands without the ability to communicate with the wider world. Except there were still parts of the Cotswolds poorly provided with signals, so it was not sensible to depend on a phone, anyway. Batteries died, as well.

  She walked briskly back down to the woods, stumbling over the small stones on the track that took her into the street lined by handsome houses. As she went, she rehearsed what she would say about her find. Except, there was almost nothing to say. A dead person, under a piece of old carpet, with grass growing over it, and some randomly placed sticks to make it look natural. A shoe that had somehow worked its way out, to be found by a passing spaniel. How many people went walking up there, at every season of the year? How many dogs? Why, then, did it have to be her dog and her accursed curiosity that uncovered the body?

  She had to walk all the way to the big hotel before she found any chance of a phone. She went into the bar with Hepzie on the lead, and abruptly demanded to use their phone. ‘I need to speak to the police,’ she said.

  It was far from being the first time she had done this – there had been Hampnett and Snowshill, Lower Slaughter and Duntisbourne Abbots, and others, where she had been called upon to dial 999. Each time was different. Levels of efficiency and good sense at the other end varied greatly. Directions, explanations, the spelling of names and the strength of emotion were different every time. Here in Blockley – again – she felt more jaded and uncaring than she ever had before. The body was without a gender or a face or any human aspects. It was stinking and abandoned and not so very important to her. Perhaps a homeless man had somehow crawled under the old carpet beneath the trees and simply died there of natural causes.

  ‘We don’t allow dogs in the bar,’ said a tall young woman.