Cotswold Mystery, A

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘You sound awfully sure.’

  Thea smiled complacently. ‘I am.’

  ‘So when’s the happy day?’ Jessica tried to speak lightly, but it came out wrong. She turned away to hide the sudden hardness on her face.

  ‘No happy day, Jess. I’ve told you that before. I don’t want to be married again. I like being on my own. And Phil’s got too much baggage, as the saying goes. Not to mention his job.’

  ‘Right,’ muttered Jessica. ‘So what are we doing for lunch? It looks like rain out there.’

  Thea ducked her head to peer at the sky through the front window. ‘Rain? Surely not!’

  ‘And wind. Look at those bushes.’

  ‘Bummer. Well, let’s go to the shop and buy some lunch and then I should probably pop next door. After all the excitement, I really need to make sure she’s alive. What if the shock’s finished her off?’

  ‘That would be all we need. Did the people leave the number of a local undertaker?’

  Thea slapped her daughter’s arm. ‘Of course not. I was joking. She’s going to be fine. I won’t allow anything else to happen. And since the police haven’t been back, we might even assume they’ve caught Julian’s killer hiding in a ditch over at Aston Magna or somewhere.’

  Jessica shook her head ‘Sorry, but no such luck, according to Uncle James. There isn’t really a place called Aston Magna, is there?’

  ‘There really is. I’ll take you to see it tomorrow, if you like. It’s near Upper Ditchford – that’s one of the lost villages. Won’t that be interesting?’

  ‘Fascinating,’ groaned Jessica.

  CHAPTER NINE

  They went together to the village store, as it began to rain gently, and bought assorted convenience food that would need little cooking. Fray Bentos pies, frozen Ready Meals and a large victoria sponge made by a local woman. ‘Lovely!’ enthused Jessica. ‘All my favourite things.’

  Thea had almost got to the point where she no longer quizzed her daughter on her diet, and whether she was eating properly, with plenty of fruit and not too much alcohol. Jessica looked as if she managed at least as well as Thea did, her skin clear and her figure neither too fat nor too thin. The most zealous mother would be hard pushed to find any cause for concern, at least on the physical side.

  ‘Hello,’ came a voice behind them. The tall lugubrious figure of Giles Stevenson stood there in a bulky jacket, the hood over his head, making him seem oddly ageless and indefinable.

  Thea found herself wanting to hug him, as an unlikely rescuer, a familiar sharer in the crisis that had overwhelmed them. ‘Hello,’ she said, standing her ground. ‘Are you all right?’

  He stooped to bring his face closer to hers. ‘Are you?’ he rejoined.

  ‘Just about. Aren’t we?’ she enlisted Jessica’s support. ‘It’s all very nasty, though.’

  ‘How’s Gladys today?’

  ‘She was all right this morning. The police came to try to interview her, but I’m afraid it didn’t go very well.’

  Giles smiled painfully. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose it did.’ He gave the impression he could say more, but was reining himself in.

  ‘There doesn’t appear to be very much reaction in the village,’ Thea commented. ‘I mean – everything looks as if it’s carrying on as normal. In the shop just now – nobody asked us about it. Surely they know who we are by now, and what happened last night?’

  ‘Bad form to talk about it,’ he said with a cynical kink on his lips. ‘What would you expect them to say?’

  Thea nodded. ‘I see what you mean.’

  Jessica seemed restless, beside her, but Thea was not inclined to abandon the conversation quite yet. She was asking herself at what precise moment she had concluded that Giles Stevenson was on their side, a good and useful person, and realising it had been close to this very spot, the previous morning, when she had been frantically searching for Granny, only to find her on the man’s sheltering arm.

  ‘Your list was a good idea,’ she said next. ‘Did you write it last night?’

  He nodded. ‘It usually works quite well.’

  Jessica hefted the bag of shopping, before asking him, ‘Is she really as senile as she seems? I mean – the police were wondering if it’s for real, this morning. There just isn’t any logic to it,’ she complained.

  ‘Au contraire, my dear,’ said Giles softly. ‘The logic might not be apparent to you or me, but I assure you it exists. Gladys is the same person she’s always been. Her instincts are unchanged, her mannerisms and even, I think, her values. She might forget her name, sometimes, but she still knows who she is.’

  The obscurity of this silenced the women for a moment. ‘It is very mysterious, though,’ said Thea at last. ‘It makes everything so unpredictable.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Giles smiled sadly. ‘It does that all right. Which is why I admire Yvette for being brave enough to go off and leave her, the way she did. We all warned her it might have drastic consequences. Gladys doesn’t like changes in the routine – not unless they come from her, of course.’

  ‘But you can’t possibly have expected something like this – can you?’ Thea stared at him, suddenly aware of the depths of her ignorance about the people, the place, the connections between them. ‘You don’t mean that, do you?’

  He closed his eyes for a moment, turning his face to the mild drizzle that was falling. ‘Unpredictable, remember,’ he said. ‘I had no idea what to expect.’

  Something cold settled on Thea’s heart, a suggestion of horrible proportions, which she actually tried to brush away with the flat of her hand.

  ‘It’s raining, Mum,’ said Jessica. ‘I’m getting wet.’

  But Thea still wasn’t quite ready to separate from the man who she believed knew more answers than she had questions. ‘How long has she been like this?’ she asked. ‘With her memory the way it is?’

  He almost seemed relieved, and his reply came readily. ‘Just about five years now. It isn’t Alzheimer’s, you know. It was the result of an accident.’

  ‘Accident? How?’

  ‘The idiot GP prescribed the wrong drug for her. All she wanted was an anti-inflammatory for a sore shoulder. He gave her some new stuff, didn’t check the dosage, and it knocked her for six. You should have seen her! She was like a different woman within days of taking it.’ The indignation was stark.

  ‘My God!’ Jessica was suddenly animated. ‘Didn’t they strike him off for negligence?’

  Giles shrugged. ‘Not so far. You know how slowly these things grind on. He’s blaming the manufacturers and the pharmacist, equally. The makers say they listed the possible side effects quite clearly, with all the contra-indications. Gladys drank several shots of scotch while she was taking them, which didn’t help.’

  ‘So he says it was her own fault?’ Jessica suggested.

  ‘Not in so many words, no. And of course nobody can prove for sure that she wasn’t already getting senile, and had managed to mask it. It’s left a lot of ill feeling.’

  ‘And a woman who doesn’t know what time of day it is,’ said Jessica.

  Giles huffed a gentle laugh. ‘Oh, she knows that, all right. That’s just one of her games.’

  Thea wondered about this remark. Granny had definitely been confused about the time of day last Saturday, when Thea had first arrived.

  Giles was in full spate. ‘Gladys lives in a perpetual present, you see,’ he expounded. ‘She knows precisely what time it is now. Just don’t expect to get anywhere if you want to know about yesterday.’

  ‘Although,’ Thea said, even more doubtfully, ‘she talks about her own past. She told me she came here when she was sixty, that she worked with Julian, and was keen on painting.’

  Giles raised his eyebrows tolerantly. ‘I’m sure she did,’ he said. ‘And tomorrow she’ll tell you she was born here and spent a lifetime as a potter.’

  ‘It isn’t true?’

  He shook his head. ‘How much of anything that one person t
ells another is true?’

  Jessica had had enough. ‘I’m going back,’ she said. ‘The shopping’s getting wet as well as me.’ She took a few steps, clearly expecting her mother to follow.

  But Thea was gripped by the question, eager to enter into the philosophy of it. ‘Facts,’ she protested. ‘Surely you can trust the facts a person tells you?’

  Giles put up one hand. ‘No more,’ he told her. ‘Your daughter’s right. This is not the time or the place. Besides, I have to return to the grindstone. This won’t butter the parsnips, will it?’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘Oh, I’m just a hack. Weekly columns here and there, you know. Had a piece in the Telegraph last week, for a change. Not usually quite so upmarket as that.’

  Thea remembered his reference to a keyboard, and understood her mistake in thinking it had to do with music.

  ‘Celebrity interviews?’ Thea asked with a mischievous smile. ‘Have you done Icarus Binns?’

  ‘That nincompoop? I might slide a little way down market now and again, but I never get so low that I’d find him a suitable subject, believe me. For a start, I can’t understand anything he says. And for another thing, these celebrity types are no-go when they’re over here. It’s an unspoken agreement that we pretend they’re just like the rest of us.’

  Thea smiled. If this man earned enough from his so-called hack writing to afford to live in Blockley, he was probably something of a celebrity himself. ‘Very civilised,’ she said. It was a parting shot, and with nothing more said, they went their separate ways.

  Having caught up with Jessica, Thea began to apologise for being annoying. But Jessica cut her short. ‘There’s something very odd about that man, don’t you think? All that old-fashioned charm feels like an act. Nobody behaves like that any more.’

  Thea gave this some thought. ‘They do, you know. In places like this, the men still wear ties even if they’re not going anywhere, and they open doors for women. I like him. He seems trustworthy.’

  Jessica laughed scornfully. ‘This place is in a time warp. In Manchester they just leer at you and call you names.’

  ‘If I had to choose, I suppose I’d go for the time warp, then.’

  Thea had been thinking a lot about the increasing gulf between country areas such as the Cotswolds, and the urban frenzy that was now her daughter’s habitat. There seemed to be nothing in between, no bridge from one to the other, and very little mutual comprehension. Her house-sitting episodes, in small affluent villages, where a good proportion of the properties were owned by town-dwellers who escaped for some fresh air and silence, had only highlighted the great divide. She had found herself in farmyards and tiny local pubs worlds away from the centre of Manchester or Birmingham. People in the villages of Gloucestershire still understood the rhythms of the seasons and the malodorous realities of meat production, even if they were not directly involved. But, she had discovered, they basically behaved the same as their urban cousins. They became addicted to harmful chemicals, they felt rage and fear and jealousy. They closed and locked their doors and huddled over their computers. The languidly patronising Giles seemed a perfect case in point.

  ‘You like these places, then?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘I love the look of them,’ said Thea carefully. ‘And the history, and the way they seem so permanent and incorruptible. These houses have been here for two centuries or more, and they’re going to last at least that long again.’

  ‘But they’re going to be more and more like film sets – just hollow sham, with nothing really going on behind the facades. Tourism is sure to ruin everything that’s genuine about them.’

  ‘That’s already happened to a few. But tourism is by nature blinkered, one-track sort of stuff. There are dozens and dozens of little places tucked down country lanes, where the tourists would never dream of venturing. No, it won’t be tourists – it’ll be the rich second-home people. But there’s some good things about them. They preserve the appearance of the houses, for a start.’

  ‘And you think the main virtue of them is the appearance,’ observed Jessica. ‘Isn’t that a bit sad?’ They were passing one of the doors on which had been pinned several notices concerning village activities. ‘Look at this,’ Thea invited. ‘They have them in a lot of places. Somebody offers their street door as a community noticeboard like this. And see what they’ve got going on. Bridge, film club, yoga, first aid course, even a discussion group. They do actually meet each other, from the look of it.’

  ‘And they indulge in some good old-fashioned murder, too,’ said Jessica. ‘Just like where I live.’

  ‘I was hoping we wouldn’t talk about that,’ sighed Thea.

  ‘Tough luck. Look what’s parked outside our house.’

  It was a police car containing Tom and Ginger Eddie. ‘Them again,’ said Thea. ‘Don’t we even warrant the CID?’

  ‘Don’t!’ Jessica shuddered. ‘What I’m dreading is your Phil and my Uncle James arriving together and giving us more lectures about safety. Don’t they realise how much more scared it makes us?’

  ‘I think that’s the intention,’ said Thea. ‘They don’t like women to be fearless. It unsettles them.’

  ‘You could be right. It must make them feel redundant.’

  ‘It’s another example of what we were saying about men and the way they treat women. If you ask me, they’re all pretty much the same, deep down. They think we need protecting and rescuing every five minutes.’

  ‘Oh well,’ Jessica sighed. ‘Maybe there are times, just now and then, when we do.’

  Thea thought back to her alarming house-sitting commission in Frampton Mansell, where she definitely had needed rescue. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘But those are just the times when they’re off doing something else.’

  They were close enough to the house to hear Hepzie barking inside, a high reproachful sound, accusing the world of abandoning her to the annoyance of police officers at the door.

  ‘Still no sign of Granny,’ said Thea. ‘Do you think they’ve tried to speak to her?’

  ‘Let’s ask them,’ said Jessica, going to the driver’s side of the car and bending down to catch the man’s eye. ‘Hi, Tom,’ she said. ‘Fancy seeing you again.’

  With a single movement, the two men left the car and Jessica stood back to accommodate them. ‘Could we come in and talk to you for a minute?’ asked the sergeant, without much of a smile.

  ‘Of course,’ said Jessica with the faintest hint of irony. ‘We’re completely at your disposal.’

  Thea unlocked the door, and deactivated the burglar alarm that Jessica had made her set before they went out. ‘Stupid thing,’ she muttered.

  The policemen seemed slightly bored by their assignment. Just an old man bumped off, nobody too upset about it, village life carrying on more or less as usual. ‘I gather they didn’t get far with the old lady this morning,’ said Tom. ‘And I should ask how the post-mortem went – if that isn’t insensitive of me.’

  Jessica looked at the ginger-haired Eddie who had scarcely said a word in her hearing thus far. He gave her a flickering grin, ready for the sympathy.

  ‘It was fine, thanks,’ she said. ‘Really interesting. And I wanted to ask you something – did I get the offer of attending the pm because of my uncle?’

  Tom blew out his cheeks in a parody of innocence. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said, and then winked. ‘Don’t knock it, love – that’s my advice. If you’re any good, it can’t hurt, and if you’re rubbish, it isn’t going to save you.’

  Jessica giggled her relief. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Now, are you coming in?’

  ‘So where did we get to with the old lady?’ Tom asked again, once inside the door. ‘We could really do with some answers from her.’

  Thea and Jessica both gave him repressive looks. ‘Even if she answered your questions, you couldn’t rely on what she said,’ Thea emphasised. ‘She makes a lot of it up. Or dreams it, maybe. She’s ninety-two, for heavens sa
ke.’

  ‘Age isn’t regarded as an impediment in itself,’ Tom said, as if reading an invisible book of rules. ‘And her memory can’t be too bad if she’s still living independently.’

  ‘Well, see for yourself,’ Thea said. ‘It’s not for me to decide, is it? For all I know you’ve got a whole set of procedures for interviewing senile witnesses.’

  ‘No, they haven’t,’ said Jessica, with a suppressed chuckle. ‘Even I know that much.’

  Thea lost patience. ‘Well, it’s not up to me, is it? You go and question her. Maybe she’s having a lucid day today. Maybe she saw the whole thing and it’s come back to her, clear as crystal.’

  Tom remained unmoved by the sarcasm. He held his ground, planted solidly on two large feet. ‘So how do we get hold of her? We knocked on the street door, and nothing happened.’

  ‘She usually answers the door,’ Thea said. ‘Even though it can take a long time. I suppose we could try the connecting door, but she doesn’t like it, according to her daughter. It’s only really for emergencies.’

  ‘How do you define an emergency?’ asked Eddie, as if waiting for his moment in the limelight.

  ‘I have no idea,’ snapped Thea. She led them to the door halfway along the hall, and took the key from the hook.

  ‘This is a weird arrangement, don’t you think?’ said the sergeant. ‘Keeping your poor old Granny locked away all lonely and neglected?’

  ‘I suppose they’ve got their reasons. They seemed like very nice people. They said something about firm boundaries. She’s quite fit physically, after all.’

  ‘Hasn’t she got her own key to this door?’

  ‘It seems not. That would defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it? Although—’ she remembered ‘she did have one originally, and apparently lost it. Maybe it turned up again.’

  ‘Maybe she never lost it at all,’ Tom suggested.

  Thea gave him a startled look. ‘That’s a bit cynical, isn’t it?’ she said.

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe. So let’s assume she really has lost it. How does she contact them if she needs to? What if she falls out of bed in the night, or forgets where she is, or runs out of milk? What’s she supposed to do?’