by Rebecca Tope
Thea looked at her. ‘Weren’t you here two years ago?’ Was it two – or three – since she’d spent time in a house just a short way along the street? ‘Don’t I remember you?’
‘Only been here a few months, actually. You’ll have to take the dog out.’
‘No, I won’t. I have to call the police. That’s unless you want to do it instead. Tell them there’s a dead body in the field above the woods. Been there quite a while from the smell of it.’
‘What? You’re joking, aren’t you?’
‘I wish I was. But not many people would find it funny, would they?’
‘Why haven’t you got a phone of your own?’
‘I left it at home, which is three miles away. I went for a walk, with my dog. She found it, really.’ She threw Hepzie a venomous look. ‘It’s all her fault.’
The woman gave up. ‘Come on, then. Get it over with. But don’t let them come here. It’s got nothing to do with us.’
The phone call went averagely well. She was shown into a small office and left alone with her dog, for which she was grateful. She supposed the woman was spreading the news of her discovery to the rest of the staff, leading to a lot of questions and hypotheses and annoyances. Although she remembered that on her previous Blockley experience the locals showed a remarkable lack of concern, as if murder were simply too far off their radar to be taken seriously.
She was informed that it would be half an hour at least before anyone could be with her. It would be appreciated if she could stand somewhere visible, and lead the officers to the spot. Was she certain the person was actually dead?
‘Definitely,’ she said, trying to recall whether she had been asked this on previous occasions. In any case there had to be a police doctor to certify that life was extinct. The first responder on the phone mostly sent an ambulance for good measure. Sometimes it was used to convey the body to the mortuary, although more usually that was a task for a local undertaker, once authorised by the coroner. Thea did not believe that Drew would appreciate the work this time, even if he were to be asked. As an ‘alternative’ practitioner, he was not fully integrated into the system. Other funeral directors competed for the work, because the one who did the transporting nearly always ended up handling the funeral as well.
She had twenty minutes to kill, then. ‘Can I have coffee here?’ she asked the wary-looking barwoman.
‘Only if you take the dog outside.’
This was a straw too far. Admittedly the spaniel had muddy feet, but the damage was already done. She was in all other respects a perfectly inoffensive animal, small and well behaved. ‘That’s so ridiculous,’ she protested. ‘What possible harm can she do? And don’t you think this is a special situation? There’s a dead person, a quarter of a mile away. Don’t you care?’
‘Some people are allergic.’
The sound Thea made was very like Pshaw! Allergies were self-indulgent and attention-seeking as far as she was concerned. Drew had attempted to persuade her otherwise, using his experience as a nurse for evidence, but she remained unconvinced. ‘I know they think it’s real,’ she had agreed, reluctantly.
‘And that makes it really real,’ he told her. ‘It’s very unfair to dismiss something that has its roots in the mind. In fact, it’s pretty stupid, as well.’
This recent conversation had startled her. She had forgotten that living with somebody could be frightening at times. They crossed lines, understood more than was comfortable, and told you about yourself. You were always under scrutiny, and even a loving scrutiny like Drew’s could be disconcerting. And yet he never let it turn bitter. She had been about to flash back with some criticism of his character, when he’d grinned and put his arm round her. ‘Not to say that you’re stupid, of course.’
‘You did say that,’ she muttered. ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t.’
‘Okay. Maybe I did. But only because I hoped it would make you think a bit. Sorry.’
The trouble was, he was always right. Drew Slocombe never seemed to suffer from the temptations to be bad that others did. She had never caught him in a lie, never seen him cut corners or overcharge a bereaved family. He never seemed in any moral doubt, and that made him a hard person to live up to.
‘My little girl’s allergic to animals, actually,’ said the woman at the bar, very stiff and reproachful.
‘Oh, God. Never mind, then. Come on, Heps.’ It was obviously a day for walking off with her faithful friend on her lead, head held high and heart seething with complicated rage.
Outside it had turned grey, with a penetrating wind suddenly blowing down from the higher levels. Blockley was deserted, with nowhere to sit and take refreshment with the dog at her side. There had been a tea shop on a corner, but at some point it had disappeared. There was another pub some distance away, which might well admit Hepzie, but might equally well be closed, or resistant to animals. There wasn’t time to investigate, anyway.
The lack of a phone was suddenly a much bigger problem. She wanted to call Drew and tell him what had happened. She wanted to reassure herself that he was still interested, still available. She wanted to be told that he still loved her. Don’t be such a child, she censured herself. They were married, for heaven’s sake. There were always going to be rocky times, when life got in their way and everything felt sour. Yes – but not everybody went out and found a dead body in the middle of just such a time.
She crossed the road, for no good reason, finding herself face-to-face with one of the wooden doors covered with notices that she had observed on her first visit to Blockley. Clubs, meetings, items for sale – it had been an indication that here, unlike in much of the Cotswolds, people lived and congregated and pursued their interests. As a way of passing the time, she read them all carefully. Perhaps there’d be one about a missing person, leading effortlessly to the identification of the body in the field. There wasn’t, of course. They were mostly Christmas bazaars, carol concerts and an art show. They put her in mind of Stanton, where she had been for the days before Christmas, a year or two ago.
And they made her think about the poor dead person she had found, in a makeshift grave, unmarked and abandoned. There were reasons why every burial had to be carefully recorded in perpetuity. Every life had a significance; a fact that had been evident from the earliest moments of human society. The point, as Drew had observed more than once, was that we would all be dead one day, and didn’t we want our descendants to know where our final resting place was? We wanted to be taken seriously and recorded in the annals. In spite of her unusually close involvement with death, Thea had never looked at it quite like this before. Now she could see that there was something terrible about just leaving a dead person to rot anonymously, not even properly buried.
She wondered about the lack of reaction amongst the people at the hotel. Surely they must know by this time that something was happening. She tried to imagine herself in their place, and grasped, in a vague way, how it might be for them. A form of paralysis might well take over, in which any utterance or action could turn out to be wrong. In the unlikely but possible event that one of the staff had actually killed and concealed the person in the field, there would be the added effect of disabling fear and guilt. Once the body was given a name and back story, then the gossip and supposition would begin. And that might well be a long way in the future.
She drifted back towards the woods, the spaniel pulling gently, as if to question the snail’s pace. ‘You should be worn out by this time,’ Thea said. ‘We’ve been walking for ages.’
Apparently this was not the case. The dog showed every sign of eager energy, the closer they went to her fabulous find. Was it still there? Could she have another go at digging it out? Could she please savour that enchanting smell again? Such thoughts – if a dog could be said to have thoughts – were plainly being expressed. ‘You’re disgusting,’ Thea told her. ‘All dogs are disgusting. I don’t know why we bother with you.’ On the whole, Hepzie had been reasonably inoffensive thr
oughout her life, but the occasional deposit on the living room floor of a stinking dead thing, plainly in the final stages of decomposition, showed that she had the same horrible instincts as all her fellow canines.
A police car found her with little difficulty. Two men followed her up the track and into the field. The wind had increased, bringing with it a few squally sheets of rain, just as they walked out into the open from under the trees. For the first time all month, it finally felt well and truly like November. Leaves were flying off the birches and willows that edged the field, and Thea wished she’d brought a coat with a hood.
‘It’s over there,’ she pointed. ‘The dog found it.’ Hepzie was pulling harder on the lead, but Thea couldn’t see the mound, or smell the rotting flesh.
‘Lead the way,’ invited one of the young policemen. He had ruddy cheeks and bright eyes. His colleague was taller and darker, hinting at North African heritage perhaps. Thea liked the look of him, wishing she could engage him in conversation.
She led the way, with heavy feet. The manifestation of another body was dispiriting. She felt haunted and somehow culpable. Almost cursed, with her repeated encounters with crime and violence. For the most part she had explained it to herself by the very fact of house-sitting. When people went away, the pattern changed, neighbours took advantage, grievances emerged. And a bored house-sitter was a dangerous thing. She had probed and questioned outrageously at times, discovering secrets and connections that had been unexamined for years.
This time, she had been an innocent walker, nothing further from her mind than the dead. At least, not the abandoned dead, to be found by her harmless dog. ‘I was just out for a walk,’ she said aloud to the policemen. They could not, of course, understand the sense of victimisation she was increasingly experiencing. It wasn’t fair. She had not been inquisitive or intrusive.
‘Mmhmm,’ said the man. ‘Is it much further?’
‘No, not at all. Just here somewhere.’ For a crazy moment she thought the whole thing might have been a dream, a hallucination, a figment of a fevered imagination. They ought to be able to see the shoe by now, at least. Then she saw a figure standing under the trees, only thirty yards away, watching their approach. ‘Who’s that?’ she said.
‘You might well ask,’ said the taller policeman. ‘Good morning, sir,’ he added, raising his voice a little.
‘What’s all this?’ demanded the man. ‘What’re you after, then?’
His accent was one that was rarely heard any more, specific to North Gloucestershire, more Bristol than Birmingham, but not very similar to either. He was wearing colourless clothing, grubby but not torn. Thea guessed that he was an employee of a much smarter and richer landowner.
‘We had a report of … something suspicious up here,’ said the ruddy-faced constable. Thea sympathised. What was he supposed to say? To what extent did they trust the word of a woman walking her dog, even if she was the notorious Thea Osborne (now Slocombe) who routinely found dead people? There had been no suggestion that these officers knew who she was, in any case.
‘Suspicious?’ repeated the man. ‘What does that mean?’
‘We have to search this area. This is it, right?’ he turned enquiringly to Thea.
‘More or less.’ She scanned the ground. The sticks seemed to have gone and there was definitely no sign of a shoe. She stared accusingly at the nameless man. If he had been interfering with her find, why was he still there? Wouldn’t the sensible thing have been to make tracks as fast as he could, and trust that Thea’s dog would lose its sense of smell? ‘You’ve moved it around,’ she charged him. ‘Haven’t you?’
‘Moved what? Dunno what you mean.’
Hepzie came to the rescue, nosing at and then lifting a clump of grass that proved to have been uprooted and placed over the edge of the old green carpet. She squeaked excitedly as the glorious scent of decomposition wafted free. ‘There!’ said Thea. ‘That’s it.’
‘Oy! You can’t go digging around like that,’ said the countryman, half-heartedly.
‘Too late,’ said Thea. ‘There it is, look. Under there.’
There was very little to see. The bright-eyed officer bent down, and gingerly gripped the carpet, lifting it an inch or two. ‘What is this?’ he wondered.
‘No need to do that,’ said the local man, with a grimace, half resignation, half irritation. ‘I can tell you what’s in there.’
The policeman paused, nose wrinkled at the smell. His colleague cleared his throat. ‘Can’t just take your word for it,’ he said. ‘Not now it’s gone this far.’ He flapped a hand at the other, urging him to carry on with what he was doing.
Obediently, the officer lifted the carpet another inch. Thea leant forward, seized by a strong sense of responsibility. This was all her doing, and the indications were already telling her that she might have done better to walk away, saying nothing. ‘Oh, my God,’ groaned the officer. ‘That’s a bone.’
‘Don’t disturb it any more, Bobby,’ said his mate. ‘It’s a crime scene.’
‘Don’t be so bloody stupid,’ snapped the watching man. ‘Them’s sheep bones, you fools.’
‘Sheep?’ The policemen blinked as if the man had said dragons. ‘Did you say sheep?’
‘But there was a shoe,’ Thea protested. ‘That’s what made me call the police. There was a man’s shoe.’ She stared all around, hoping to find the vital piece of evidence.
‘That were mine,’ explained the man, with a rueful grin. ‘Had a hole in the sole, plus it got muck all over it. Thought I may as well chuck it in with the ewes.’
‘How many sheep?’ asked the tall policeman.
‘Two, that’s all.’
‘You are required by law to have them incinerated,’ the other officer told him. ‘As I suppose you know quite well.’
‘Just doing as I’d been told,’ mumbled the man. ‘Don’t you go trying to get me into trouble. It’s the boss you want to talk to, lazy sod. Can’t be arsed to get the tractor and link box down here to gather ’em up. Said they’d never get found up here, if they was covered well enough.’ He gave Hepzie a poisonous glance. ‘He’s right, as well. Not a sniff from foxes or any other thing, till this’n came along. Saw it from two fields away and knew the game was up.’
‘What’re we going to do, then?’ asked Constable Bobby. ‘They’ll be waiting for a report.’ He tapped his belt, where a phone was dangling. ‘Lady reported a dead body. It’ll be flashing high alert all over the patch by now.’
‘We have to check,’ said the darker man. ‘Can’t just take his word for it.’
‘Oughta call the boss, then. Should be a warrant thingy, seems to me,’ insisted the civilian.
‘Where is he, then? Who is he, your boss?’
‘Big landowner. Graham Whitebush, his name is. Gone off to the Riviera for the winter. Does it every year. Leaves us with the work.’
‘Are you his estate manager then?’ asked Thea dubiously.
The man laughed scornfully. ‘Me? Just the dogsbody, that’s me. Manager’s a bloke called Williams.’
‘Can we call Mr Whitebush, then? And what’s your name?’ The question came several minutes later than it should have done, which they all realised at the same moment.
‘Thought you’d never ask. It’s Dave Carter. I can give you my address, if you like.’
Bobby walked around the gentle mound, bending to pick at it here and there. ‘Done a good job,’ he observed. ‘Can’t see the edges.’ He looked at his partner. ‘Stav? What should we do?’
The countryman was still talking. ‘Took no time at all. Worst bit was carting the old mat up here. Daft, really. Might as well ’ave done it properly, seemed to me. It’s not such a big job, calling the knacker.’
‘What did they die of?’ Thea asked suddenly. ‘The sheep, I mean.’
‘Told you – they just lay down and died. The winter was too much for them. Deficiency of some sort, most likely. They were big old girls, I can tell you that.’
Dave Carter blanched, and almost crossed himself. ‘Don’t even think it,’ he hissed. ‘Besides, that doesn’t kill ’em as a rule.’
Hepzie was plainly bored and frustrated. Kept away from the succulent corpses, she sat sulkily at her mistress’s feet. ‘Can we get on with it?’ Thea asked rudely. ‘I’m getting very wet.’ The slight drizzle had begun to penetrate more than one layer of clothes.
‘Whitebush?’ Bobby’s shoulders and spine suddenly straightened. ‘Isn’t that the name of the woman who went missing, earlier in the year?’
‘What?’ said Stav and Thea together.
Dave Carter took longer to react, and then slowly stepped backwards, until stopped by a tree. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘No, no, no. I put them here myself. Two old ewes, like I told you. Like the boss instructed. Mrs Whitebush went to the Philippines to save the orphans. She’d never liked it here. Complained the whole time. She’s not missing. She just ran off.’
‘Not according to her sister and daughter,’ said Bobby. ‘I spoke to the daughter. She was certain her mother was dead. Told quite a tale about the terrible time she was having with the husband.’
‘Hysteria,’ muttered Dave stubbornly.
But all four pairs of eyes were on the mound.
Bobby reached for his phone.
Ladies Who Lunch
Moreton-in-Marsh suffered perpetually from a ghostly the, missing from its name. Few people felt comfortable leaving it out, even while knowing it was right to do so. Some regarded it as a point of historical pride, an ancient usage that they might not manage to explain, but which was self-evidently significant.
Thea Slocombe sat at a small table in the pedestrianised area of the town and thought about it, in an idle sort of way. It was late September, sunny and mild. She was lunching in solitary splendour, having spent much of the morning running errands for Drew. She was officially a partner in his business, fully participating in the work of Peaceful Repose in various roles. One of these was to visit the dying and discuss with them the sort of funeral they desired. Most were in a hospice, but some were in their own homes and others in residential institutions. To date, she had interviewed seven such brave souls, her respect for them increasing exponentially. It took courage and a rather British sort of realism to confront the paradoxes that any funeral contained. The same questions repeatedly arose: who is a funeral really for? What is its central function? How can a life be most effectively concluded? The closer she came to such topics, the greater her understanding was of her husband the undertaker. He had spent much of his adult life at the heart of these enormous issues. It had made him a far more serious person than any she had ever met. The most prominent question this gave rise to was – did she really want to be quite so serious herself?