Cotswold Mystery, A

by Rebecca Tope

  Thomas heaved a deep sigh, and dashed a hand beneath his nose. ‘I hope that’s true,’ he murmured. He raised his eyes slowly to Thea’s. ‘Have you ever thought how desperately important it is to die well?’ he asked her. ‘How it can undermine the whole of the life that went before, if death is ignominious? And how much more true that is when it’s an old person?’

  Something in the words made Thea think of Granny Gardner in her cottage. ‘I haven’t thought about it until now,’ she said. ‘But I can see how important it is.’

  ‘It ought to go without saying,’ the old man said, his voice stronger, as if Jessica’s frankness had revived him. ‘Nobody wants to be remembered as a leaking bag of bones, without wits or dignity. Because that is how you’re remembered. All the past achievements and wisdom are wiped away as if they never happened.’

  ‘I’m sure that isn’t true,’ said Thea. ‘Think of Churchill, or Clark Gable, or – or—’

  ‘Exceptions,’ he waved an impatient hand. ‘Think of your own grandparents – anybody you’ve known who reached eighty or more. What’s the first picture of them that comes to mind?’

  Thea met his watery gaze. ‘I see what you mean,’ she whispered. ‘It never occurred to me before.’

  ‘But what can you do about it?’ Jessica demanded robustly. ‘Give everyone a lethal injection before they start to crumble?’

  Thomas Sewell smiled sadly at her. ‘The answer to that is too big for one old man to provide,’ he said. ‘All I wanted to know was that Julian died as he lived – worthy of respect and dignity.’

  ‘I saw nothing that would indicate otherwise,’ said Jessica stiffly, and Thea thought again of Granny Gardner.

  ‘Mrs Gardner was very fond of him,’ she ventured. ‘And I suppose she thinks of him in his prime, not as an old man.’

  Thomas jerked his head forward impatiently. ‘Julian was in his prime! He might have been in his seventies, but he was fit and well. We’ll all remember him like that. There isn’t anything else to remember.’

  He put both hands on the arms of the chair, preparatory to standing up. His great belly seemed to surge ahead of him, rising into the air as his weight shifted. ‘Thank you for the sherry,’ he said, once he was upright. ‘And the information.’

  Jessica went to him, reaching a hand gently towards his arm. ‘I hope it helped,’ she said. ‘And I’m sorry for your loss.’

  He looked her full in the face. ‘You can have no idea how great a loss it is,’ he murmured. ‘I have loved that man for fifty years.’

  Once more Jessica was admirably careful. ‘You and he – were you, um – partners?’

  Thomas made a sound of irritation. ‘Partners my foot! What a foolish word to use. We were never lovers, if that’s what you mean. Julian loved his wife, and when she took to her bed and then finally died, he gave most of his attention to Gladys Gardner. No, we were never partners, as you mean it. We were mates, colleagues, brothers – there is no word that describes it properly. But I’m damned if I know how I’m going to manage without him.’

  And before the threat of female sympathy could reach him, he was out of the room and fumbling with the front door.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Thea made a large omelette with salad and bread for their supper, and afterwards they slumped together on the sofa, debating whether to search for something congenial on one of the plethora of TV channels. ‘We’ve earned some mindless entertainment after today,’ said Thea. ‘It seems to have gone on for ever.’

  ‘It has been an amazingly long day,’ Jessica agreed. ‘I can’t believe it was only this morning that I was at that post-mortem.’

  ‘It’s taken me most of that time to really believe there was a murder next door,’ Thea mused. ‘I think I just wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, to start with. To let other people sort it out and leave me out of it.’

  ‘Well, you could do that. You’re not really involved. We could try to carry on as normal, whatever that is.’

  Thea shook her head. ‘They won’t let us,’ she said.

  ‘Who won’t?’

  ‘All these people who keep coming to the door and phoning us. We’ve got to stay and watch out for Granny – or I have – and while I’m in this house, I’m involved. No escape possible. Besides, I was talking about how I felt at first. Since then I’ve been hooked. Now I really want to know the whole story.’

  Jessica grinned. ‘That’s a relief,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d have to do it all on my own.’

  Thea narrowed her eyes. ‘Do what?’ she asked, with a wholly false innocence.

  ‘What do you think?’ replied the girl.

  But their banter was a variant on whistling in the dark, and they both knew it. Together they went around the house, firmly closing every window, and employing every bolt and lock on doors back and front. Jessica switched the buzzer on, and checked that the connecting door to the cottage was definitely locked.

  ‘Nobody can get in now,’ said Thea. ‘Not without smashing a window and waking the entire street.’

  ‘I still feel a bit wobbly,’ Jessica confessed, as she climbed into bed. ‘I keep hearing funny noises out there.’

  Thea listened to the night sounds of Blockley. ‘I can hear a car quite far away,’ she reported. ‘And some sort of animal, even fainter. And water pipes gurgling in the roof. Nothing to worry about. Go to sleep. There’s nothing to worry about.’

  And within minutes, Jessica had done as instructed. Thea lay awake for a little while longer, relishing the warm weight of the spaniel against her feet, and steadfastly refusing to face the knowledge that there were only two more nights to go before she and the dog were on their own again.

  Tuesday morning dawned cloudy and cool. Thea woke first, her mind instantly informing her that she was in a strange house, sharing a room with her daughter and her dog, responsible – sort of – for an old woman next door and trying to navigate the shoals of a relationship. The last to occur was the one she gave her attention to for the next five minutes, before Jessica was stirred by the spaniel. Hepzie knew Thea was awake and was suddenly all too energetic, shaking out her tangled ears and giving her hindquarters a seeing-to, which made far more noise than might be expected.

  Phil Hollis was increasingly the default subject of Thea’s thoughts in any quiet moment. She understood that the dilemmas and inconsistencies were the standard package for anyone in her situation, and the pitfalls no less inevitable for being able to foresee them.

  He could turn her legs to marshmallow at one moment and crack her teeth with grinding frustration the next. There was a lot between them that worked, that was worth preserving. But she had found herself looking forward to the Phil-free times, too. Times when she could sit up until three in the morning with a book, or make herself a thick warm soup at three in the afternoon, without having to explain herself. Couplehood demanded routines and expectations that she found irksome. And for Phil it was the same, as she had forced him to admit a few weeks before. His erratic working patterns, profound preoccupations and sudden dives into depression were – much to his surprise – less bearable for having to give an account of them to another person.

  ‘Don’t make me give you a running commentary of how I’m feeling,’ he’d begged her. ‘Moods come and go, generally they’re of no significance. If I have to describe them, and bring them to the front of my mind, that distorts everything. Do you see?’

  ‘OK,’ she’d agreed slowly. ‘That makes a kind of sense – although I don’t know what a couple counsellor would say.’

  The word couple lay at the heart of their difficulties, she realised. After two years as a single person, she still took it for granted that the ideal situation in the eyes of the world was to be half of a couple. It was the default position, surely? Only when she stopped to examine what this meant did she discover that it might no longer be true. There were single people everywhere she looked, and they seemed perfectly happy with their condition. The couple word had gath
ered associations which were not altogether appealing. Phil, single for a few years longer, seemed no further forward in working out precisely what he wanted. In the end he had summed it all up. ‘We’re thinking too much about it,’ he concluded. ‘Why don’t we just live and stop trying to give everything a label?’

  And Thea had striven to do just that, only to discover that she resented the endless struggle to remain in the present, when a large part of her wanted to know where they would be in ten or twenty years’ time. She could not entirely quell the fantasies where they were both in their seventies, retired and relaxed, taking grandchildren on adventurous holidays and agreeing completely about all the big topics of life. Every time she caught herself at it, she replaced the dream with alternatives, where she still lived alone with a dog or two and a flourishing garden and stacks of fascinating books to read.

  But her musings this grey morning concerned Phil as police detective. She had met him during one murder investigation, and fallen for him during another. She knew him for a patient committed professional, albeit prone to sudden flaring frustrations and serious mistakes. His mind worked methodically, he was an organised leader with a streak of kindness that did not go unnoticed. But he was no Sherlock Holmes, she had quickly realised. Small details passed him by, connections and implications had to be worked at, and frequently led him in the wrong direction. Perhaps it was just as well that he appeared to have no involvement in the investigation into the killing of Julian Jolly. As far as she could tell, no senior officer had dropped all other work to solve this crime. It felt as if it was being fitted in around the edges of more important cases, assigned to sergeants and the occasional inspector, with plenty of input from the uniformed sector. Little pressure was being exerted from the public, or the family, or the newspapers to find the deranged knifeman who had stabbed the harmless old historian in his own kitchen.

  And this felt wrong to Thea, as she let her thoughts slide from Phil to Julian. Somebody other than his devoted friend Thomas ought to care that the man had been killed. Jessica thought so too. Well, Thea decided – from now on, I am going to care. Before Jessica had properly opened her eyes, her mother was speaking.

  ‘Hey, it’s half past eight,’ she said. ‘Time to shift yourself. We’ve got a murder to solve.’

  Jessica raised her head and grinned, with all the energy and tolerance of youth. ‘Just what I was thinking,’ she agreed.

  * * *

  Over breakfast they tried to compile a sensible action plan. Jessica quizzed her mother on every person she had met in Blockley since Saturday morning, and what her impressions of them had been.

  ‘It’s a short list,’ said Thea. ‘Granny. Giles. Thomas and Ick. That’s it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Oh, and Gussie from Todenham, with a son in Paxford.’

  ‘And did they all know Julian?’

  ‘Gussie didn’t mention him, but it’s bound to be safe to assume she did.’ Thea spread her hands helplessly. ‘We can’t possibly take it for granted that one of these people is the murderer.’

  ‘No,’ Jessica nodded, ‘but we have to start somewhere. Granny and Thomas both claim to have been his friend more or less for ever. Giles as well, probably. And we forgot Nick. He has to be on the list.’

  ‘And the police have surely interviewed all of them.’

  Jessica shook her head. ‘Not Gussie, for a start. Except maybe for a basic house-to-house, which might still be ongoing.’

  ‘I don’t see any point in counting Gussie. She’s a red herring, I’m sure. It was entirely random that I happened to pick her up when I did.’

  Jessica narrowed her eyes. ‘Not necessarily,’ she said. ‘That was Sunday – right? Julian had been dead for only a few hours by then. She might have been in on it, knowing full well that you were the house-sitter. You could have been followed when you went to Todenham, and waylaid by her for some reason.’

  Thea laughed. ‘That’s crazy,’ she protested. ‘You could work anybody in if that’s your method.’

  ‘Anybody who’s met you, yes.’ Jessica was serious, bouncing her pen on the table as she analysed her notes. ‘Whoever did it will know you’re here. Isn’t it almost certain that the departure of the Montgomerys was the trigger for the attack on Julian?’

  ‘And what if your idea about Granny is right?’ Since Jessica’s alarming assertion on their return from Upton the previous afternoon, no more reference had been made to the theory of senile old woman as murderer. Thea flung herself back in her chair. ‘It’s no good. It’s like trying to do a jigsaw with more than half the pieces missing. We don’t know enough to even guess what happened.’

  ‘Not true at all. We have to start with some hypotheses, and test them out, based on what we do know. Some won’t work, but others might.’

  Thea frowned sceptically. ‘Is that the approved method for solving a murder, then?’

  ‘Very likely not, if you’ve got access to the police records and all the rest of it. If you’re investigating privately, I don’t see what’s wrong with it.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Thea gave her daughter a penetrating look. ‘You’ve decided to abandon your training as a police officer, and become a private investigator instead. Jessica Osborne, PI. No case too trivial, no crime too terrible. That sort of thing?’

  ‘Not at all. Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Thea backed off, knowing she’d gone too far, cursing herself for failing to take a murder sufficiently seriously for her daughter’s liking. Somewhere there lurked the abiding idea that she was on holiday, despite being paid to take care of the house and the old woman in the cottage.

  ‘What we need to do is to make things happen,’ Jessica asserted. ‘Put people together and see what they do. It’s no good talking to them one at a time. They can tell all kinds of lies if you do that. You get a much better idea of what they’re capable of if you let them spark off each other.’

  ‘I can see that,’ Thea said. ‘But how do we manage it? Throw a party? I’m not sure Ron and Yvette would approve.’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Jessica. ‘I’m still at the hypothesis stage.’

  ‘Doing it your way will end up with us just playing a game for the next three days. Hardly different from Cluedo – Granny stabbed him with one of his own knives because he knew her daughter was really her grand-daughter. Grandson Nick did it with an archaeological pick, because Julian had evidence that Nick’s research was rubbish. Icarus Binns did it because Julian had seen him having sex with Thomas Sewell and threatened to tell the tabloids. The landlord of the Crown did it because he thought Julian had written that terrible review of the food. Gussie did it because Julian refused to give her son a job reference.’ She paused for breath. ‘And those are just off the top of my head,’ she added after a few moments. ‘I could probably think of four or five more at least.’

  Jessica’s eyes were sparkling. ‘They’re all brilliant!’ she applauded. ‘What an imagination you’ve got!’

  ‘And that’s all it is. Even if one of them was true, we’d never prove it. Leave it to the police, love, and forget the whole thing.’

  ‘But I thought you wanted to do it. You said – only an hour ago—’

  ‘Yes, I know I did. But now it seems silly. It’s bound to have been a burglar he interrupted in the early hours of Sunday.’

  ‘Burglars hardly ever kill people,’ said Jessica. ‘That much I have learnt. Maybe I ought to ask Uncle James if there’ve been any developments. Do you think he would tell me?’ Jessica played with her pen for another minute, and then answered her own question. ‘No, he wouldn’t,’ she admitted. ‘Would he?’

  ‘I can’t imagine why he would,’ Thea confirmed. ‘And asking him would bring him over here with a long lecture about minding our own businesses.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  They washed and dried the breakfast things, gave Hepzie a bowl of milk, and listened for sounds from the cottage. ‘She is a quiet old thing,’ Jessica remarked.
‘No telly or radio that I can hear.’

  She was standing with her ear against the connecting door. ‘Maybe she isn’t up yet. I wonder what she does all day.’

  ‘I wonder that about a lot of people,’ said Thea from the kitchen. ‘I think they can make a magazine last all morning, for a start.’

  By a rapid association of ideas, Jessica asked, ‘Do you think Icarus has gone back to London? It’d be great to see him again. After all, he is on our list of murder suspects. We ought to try to catch another glimpse of him.’

  Thea sighed. ‘And then what? Ask him for his autograph and embarrass the poor chap?’

  ‘He expects it. I bet he thought you were really weird when you didn’t, on Saturday.’

  Thea recalled the bemused expression on the rap artist’s face, and could only agree. ‘I think he did. He gave me a very funny look. I had no idea at all who he was.’

  ‘You’re a dinosaur,’ her daughter told her, ‘and you ought to be ashamed.’ She was idly opening and closing a drawer in a rather fine antique side table, on which sat the telephone and a notepad. Her ear was still cocked for sounds of Granny Gardner. The drawer slid smoothly in and out, causing Thea some irritation, as she stood in the kitchen doorway.

  ‘Do you have to?’ she asked at last.

  ‘What? Oh!’ Jessica looked down at what she was doing. ‘I was just playing with it.’ Then she peered closer at the actual contents of the drawer. ‘My God!’ she said.

  Thea went closer, and tried to see what was there. The hall was shadowy, and the drawer only half open. She put her hand out to pull it further.

  ‘Don’t touch it!’ cried Jessica.

  ‘What is it?’

  Jessica took a tissue from a pocket and covered her fingers delicately with it. Then she lifted out the article by the very edges of its handle. ‘Strangely enough, it looks like a knife,’ said Jessica.

  ‘But not covered in blood,’ Thea observed. ‘Why wouldn’t there be a knife in a hallway drawer? Useful for cutting parcel string and sellotape.’