Malice in the Cotswolds

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Oh, God! What’ll you do then?’

  ‘Something’ll turn up. I can get some experience in a school somewhere and sign up for teacher training. Except I’ve missed the boat, according to Maggs. Too many out-of-work bankers deciding they want to teach, all of a sudden. We’ll get by,’ he finished easily. ‘It’s the same for everybody, and with Maggs alongside, we’re never going to starve.’

  ‘What did you mean about her losing it?’

  ‘That house-sitter woman was there when we arrived. With her spaniel. I know Maggs should have minded her own business, but you probably know how she feels about her.’

  Drew stared at him. ‘No. I’ve no idea. Why does she feel anything? What’s Thea to do with her?’

  Den trod carefully. The emotional links between all those involved were complex and delicate. ‘She thinks you’re vulnerable to people like that. She feels she has to defend you from them.’

  ‘Oh!’ The undertaker forced a laugh. ‘Silly girl.’

  ‘I know. It was pretty much out of order. I felt sorry for what’s-her-name. She was pretty shaken.’

  ‘Thea. She’s called Thea. I haven’t seen her for ages now.’

  ‘She said you asked her to go and check the grave.’

  ‘I sent her a text. She’s staying somewhere close by. Snowshill, or something like that.’

  ‘Snowshill? Where that kid was killed at the weekend?’

  Drew stared harder. ‘Kid?’

  ‘A boy was strangled. It was on the news just now. Sounds to me as if the mother did it. Very nasty.’

  ‘Is Thea involved, do you think?’ Drew’s eagerness would have done nothing to allay Maggs’s worries, if she’d been there to witness it.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea. Why would she be?’

  ‘She tends to turn up when that sort of thing happens. Like at Broad Campden. She got me off the hook there, Den. I don’t know where I’d have been without her.’

  ‘And you went to see her, with the kids, in Cranham. That seems to be the bit that Maggs can’t stomach.’

  ‘Maggs is overstepping the mark.’ Drew’s energy was reviving by the moment. ‘Thea’s a good friend, a clever woman who … well, who can be very good company,’ he finished lamely.

  ‘And she’s pretty,’ Den observed mildly. ‘I can see there’s definitely something about her.’

  ‘Am I banned from seeing her, then?’

  ‘If Maggs has her way, yes you are,’ said Den candidly. ‘And Maggs generally does get her way.’

  ‘She needn’t worry. I’m not going anywhere, am I? How can I, when the hospital could call at any moment? I’m nailed to this room, like Christ on the cross. I’m even starting to think I know how he must have felt.’

  ‘I can see it’s crucifying you, anyway,’ summarised Den. ‘You’ve lost half a stone at least since June, and you look as if you haven’t slept for a month, either.’

  Drew shrugged. ‘Anyone would be the same. It’s the not knowing that’s such a killer. It’s a cliché, I realise that, but when the future’s just a massive grey void, you don’t feel like putting much effort into the present.’

  ‘Your kids have a future. You need to focus on that.’

  ‘Without a mother? What sort of future is that?’

  ‘Come on – listen to yourself. You’ve been the most hands-on dad I’ve ever seen, especially with Stephanie. They’re not babies any more. You’d cope. You’ve got me and Maggs to help.’

  Both men were fully aware that the prospect of Karen’s absence was assumed as hard fact in this exchange. In the past few days a shift had taken place, leaving only Maggs resisting the irreversible process by which Karen was being lost to them.

  Drew focused his gaze on a mat on the floor. ‘She was such an amazing girl when I met her. All that hair, and bright beautiful eyes. She was so quick and funny and good. She was my mate, for life. When it looked as if we might never manage to have kids, I thought – well, that’s okay. Nobody in their right mind could ask for more than Karen anyway. She always knew the right line to take, always had such a zest. That stuff with the farmers’ market, just before she was injured – she was fabulous with all that. Everybody loved her.’

  ‘I know. I remember.’

  ‘I was never worthy of her, never really understood what she saw in me. She knew there were times when Maggs had to steer me back on track, when I went astray. But now Maggs has got it wrong. Even she can’t put everything right this time. And she doesn’t have to be fierce with poor Thea. Things are different now. We’ve all got other things to learn, other ways of surviving. Maggs is living in the past.’ He shook his head in defeat. ‘Which is a great shame.’

  ‘Sorry, mate, but I think it’s you that’s wrong, not Maggs. She’s making sure we all remember what we’ve got to hang on to. If we’re ever going to face the future, we need to keep the past in mind, to show us what matters. She’s the consistent figure through all this. Even if it doesn’t work with you, it’ll be a lifeline for the kids. Somebody has to keep the old Karen alive for them, give them that foundation and security.’

  Drew rallied again. ‘I can do that. And Karen’s mother, up to a point. We both can and will do it. But it won’t help them if I crucify myself, will it? I have to be normal and functional, and try to remain my usual self.’

  ‘I think that’s what Maggs and I are both trying to say,’ said Den with a smile. ‘And we’ll get there, if we all pull together.’

  Drew did his best to answer the smile, before asking, ‘But what did Maggs say to her, exactly?’

  ‘I don’t remember exactly, but it was pretty strong. It seems she’s been working herself up for quite a while and it all came spilling out. She hadn’t expected your lady to be quite so attractive, I suppose. She really is a looker, isn’t she?’

  ‘She’s seven years older than me. Her daughter’s twenty-two. Nearly as old as Maggs, in fact. She’s a widow and she’s daft about dogs.’

  Den was unmoved. ‘So?’

  ‘So there’s nothing for Maggs to get angry about, and no reason in the world to abuse poor Thea. What am I going to say to her now?’

  Den tilted his head. ‘You have to say something?’

  ‘Of course I do. If there’s been a murder near where she’s staying, and if she went to look at the grave like I asked, and if she wants somebody to talk to—’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Den. ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Drew.

  When Maggs got back from the hospice, Drew forced himself to confront her without delay. ‘Den was here a little while ago. He said you’d been rude to my friend Thea. What was all that about?’

  Maggs lifted her chin and met his eye in a very direct gaze. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think you need to back off a bit, and let me live my own life. You’re not my mother. It was out of order.’

  ‘Den said the same thing, but I just flipped when I saw her. I know you, Drew, don’t pretend I don’t. What about that time with Genevieve Slater? You’d have done something terrible then if I hadn’t stopped you.’

  ‘That was seven years ago and anyway I wouldn’t have. You exaggerate your influence. You’re worrying about nothing. Can’t you see how damaging it is, you thinking that sort of thing about me? You’re crossing a line.’

  ‘I was thinking of Karen,’ she said, no longer meeting his eye.

  ‘I know, and I absolutely understand that you want the best for all of us. But you can’t control everything, however much you want to. We’ve all got to take it a day at a time, and keep things as normal as possible for the children.’

  ‘Yes!’ she said loudly. ‘That’s exactly it. If you go off with that woman, it won’t be normal, will it?’

  He sighed. ‘Maggs, you’re all wrong. I can see how scary that idea must be – but it isn’t going to happen. It never was going to happen. There’s no question of it.’

  ‘Good. Because you’re married, and Karen’s going to get
better, and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Right,’ he said, with another great sigh. Maggs was still so young, he reminded himself, although their long acquaintance often made him forget her youth. She had been seventeen when he first met her, not quite nineteen when they set up Peaceful Repose together. Her entire adult life had been spent in his company, and he had watched as she and Den Cooper found each other and quickly recognised how well they fitted together. Cooper had been a police sergeant at the time, but within a few months had resigned from the force, and taken a succession of low-paid jobs – some of them effectively voluntary – in the caring services. Impossibly tall, he carried an air of calm reliability that made him useful in a wide range of situations. He grew up in mid Devon, slowly identifying where his own strengths and weaknesses lay as he found himself dealing with cases of murder that entangled him emotionally as well as professionally. He could not extricate himself from the sadness of people’s lives, the unnecessary suffering they inflicted on themselves and each other, the cunning and malice they nursed within themselves, often for years. When he met Drew, he was introduced to a new way of seeing death that calmed and reassured him and made him see that he was no longer fit for police work.

  Drew felt responsible for the austere life that Maggs and Den were forced to live. Their income was risibly small, thanks to him. Maggs owned almost half of the business, which meant nothing in terms of bread on her table. Den had spent years trying to decide where he ought best to direct his efforts, and even now, the idea of teaching felt lukewarm and tentative. He might enjoy much of the studying, but would struggle with the written work. Nobody felt confident that he would finally land a permanent full-time post, with pensions and holidays and sick pay and promotion. And like Drew, he was not so very far from his fortieth birthday – a time when all good men should feel themselves finally grown up.

  Maggs had always insisted that she never wanted children, a position nobody argued with while she was still only in her mid twenties. Time enough, they all thought, for her to change her mind. But Den was a different matter. It was easy to visualise him with a baby over his shoulder, or calmly talking a toddler down from a terrifying tantrum. For Den not to have his own children struck his friends as a waste.

  When Maggs had gone, Drew accessed the BBC news website and tracked down the story about the Snowshill murder. A boy, nine years old, had been found dead outside a house in the village. Neighbours had suggested he was a child out of control, capable of malicious acts of destruction, and if ASBOs hadn’t been abolished, he would undoubtedly have received one by the age of eight. He lived with his mother in a cottage close by and was her only child.

  ‘Poor woman!’ moaned Drew. ‘I wonder if Thea has met her yet.’ There was no doubt in his mind that Thea Osborne, house-sitter and compulsive amateur detective, would have got herself involved in some way. And he, Drew Slocombe, found himself wishing he were free to go there immediately and find out more. Because he was another compulsive solver of mysteries, and here was one he already found deeply intriguing. But he was not free, and that evening, he would again take his place at his wife’s silent bedside, while their grandmother sat in his house with his children.

  Chapter Twelve

  Monday evening found Thea with a suddenly friendly cat on her lap in the bizarre living room, as the daylight disappeared. Hepzie rumbled jealously beside her, but the cat – Jennings, she thought – smugly kept its place, purring defiantly. She had spent some minutes working out the various features of the television, and now had it tuned, perhaps oddly, to Radio Three, which played Così Fan Tutte softly to her. Yvonne’s only radio was in her bedroom, she had discovered when she searched.

  Her thoughts returned compulsively to the hour on the previous afternoon before she found Stevie’s body. Why had she not heard anything? If she had only had the good timing to look out of the front window at the right moment, she might have seen the killer depositing the body beyond the wall. A car must have drawn up, bundled the little boy out and then driven off again. Didn’t everybody subconsciously note the sounds of such a happening? If Thea didn’t, then her dog surely should have done.

  It had to have happened while she was speaking to Jocelyn, as she and Gladwin had already concluded. What an irony, that the impulse to phone her sister should have come at precisely the wrong moment. She might otherwise have been in the garden, in a spot ideal for witnessing events out in the road.

  Except, she realised, the boy would still have been dead – killed at some other spot, and brought to Hyacinth House for some grim reason that was still obscure. And if the killer had had the least suspicion that someone was watching from the house, the body would surely have been dumped somewhere else. She could have done nothing to prevent it, however irrationally an inner voice insisted she might have.

  Outside, Snowshill continued to be beautiful and serene. If there were ghosts of ancient travellers and mad collectors hovering there, they manifested no horror or outrage at the crime just perpetrated. No doubt they had seen such things before – the monks who sheltered the voyagers would have heard terrible tales from the wider world. Charles Paget Wade must have witnessed violence and misery in the slave plantations of the West Indies. But had anybody ever before been murdered in this tiny jewel of a village? As far as her computer could inform her, they had not.

  Hepzie heard the garden gate before she did, which was unusual. Thea was slow to get up, not wanting to dislodge the cat. But then she heard the footsteps and knew she must move. Looking out of the front window, she could see a woman standing on the doorstep, waiting, unmoving. It wasn’t difficult to recognise Gudrun Horsfall.

  For twenty seconds she dithered indecisively. Did she want to admit the woman and vicariously endure the anguish of her loss? Was she feeling strong enough to offer a shoulder for Gudrun to cry on? She had no choice, of course. Her car was there in full view, the dog had yapped revealingly when the knock sounded. Silently, she went and opened the door.

  ‘They let me out, you see.’ The defiance in the words was pathetically outweighed by the ravaged face. ‘Couldn’t make me say I’d killed my own boy.’ Tears glittered in the light from the hall, and thickened the woman’s voice.

  ‘Oh, gosh, come in and sit down.’ It was obvious, of course, that Gudrun would want to sit with the woman who had found her child and witnessed her collapse. Thea Osborne, if anyone, must be certain of her guiltlessness. Which only made Thea feel a sharp pang of shame at the way she had allowed Gladwin to shake her confidence. ‘You poor thing,’ she added.

  ‘I can’t go home, not with it so empty. They said I could have that policewoman with me as long as I liked, but she’s no company. She treats me as if I’m a wild animal. Hardly says anything. One night of having her around was more than enough.’

  ‘You were at home last night?’

  Gudrun nodded. ‘Been answering questions all morning, mind. They don’t mean to be cruel. I understand that.’

  ‘They want to get to the truth.’

  ‘Funny how I can’t feel that it matters. You see those people on telly, baying for the blood of their kids’ killers, as if that’ll make things all right. I don’t get it myself. It’s not going to bring him back, is it?’ She slumped into silence for a few moments, before going on, ‘It was washing line – did you know? A length off somebody’s washing line.’

  ‘Was it? I thought it was just some odd sort of string.’

  ‘No, it was washing line. Doesn’t rot in the rain, see. Plastic. Strong. You can’t break it. The sort those whirligig things have. They told me that, and I said I’d never had one. I’ve got a string across the back, with a long stick to hold it up in the middle.’

  The old-fashioned arrangement almost made Thea smile. She had only seen such a line in photographs, as far as she could recall.

  ‘I suppose most people round here have the whirligig sort. “Rotary”, that’s the word for them.’

  ‘Yeah. Rotary.’
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br />   ‘Gudrun – who is Stevie’s father? Does he know what’s happened? Is he going to be upset?’ Were these cruel and intrusive questions, she wondered uneasily? Or was it the most natural and obvious thing to ask?

  ‘No father,’ was the short reply. ‘Stevie’s mine, all mine. I stole him,’ she added, with a quick flash of pride. ‘I wanted him and I got him. Easy.’

  ‘You mean …’ Of course she didn’t mean it as it sounded. But what exactly did she mean?

  ‘I won’t say. Too late for all that now. Didn’t turn out as I wanted, anyhow, not really. Serves me right, according to some. Taking what wasn’t rightly mine, going against nature. There’ll be plenty saying that today, when they hear what’s happened. Someone taking him away from me again, just to teach me a lesson.’

  ‘No!’ Thea cried out involuntarily against the notion of such a ghastly way to get at someone. ‘Who could hate you as much as that?’

  ‘Stevie annoyed a lot of folk around here. He was a bad boy, I won’t deny it. You saw for yourself. But I’d have brought him round. The teachers were just saying, at the end of term, how he was turning a corner, growing up a bit, listening to them a bit more.’

  ‘And nobody would deliberately kill him, just for being a bad boy. That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Somebody did,’ said Gudrun, unarguably.

  ‘Do you want to stay here for the night? I’m sure Yvonne wouldn’t mind, if she knew. We needn’t even tell her, come to that. She’s not home until the end of next week.’

  Gudrun tried to form a brave face, tried to get out of the soft chair, but sank back. ‘Maybe just the one night,’ she accepted weakly. ‘Now it’s getting dark. I’ll be better in the morning.’

  ‘Are there any animals that need you at home?’ The cottage seemed a natural environment for chickens, goats, dogs, cats, but she couldn’t recall seeing anything by way of livestock.