Malice in the Cotswolds

by Rebecca Tope

  Thea was standing in the hall, her dog in her arms. To the left, through a doorway, Drew could see a young man swinging a chair with complete abandon, scything ornaments, plates, glasses from shelves and surfaces with an appalling look of dedication on his face. A woman stood in the midst of the destruction, blood and tears on her face, making no attempt to interfere.

  ‘W-what …?’ Drew stammered. ‘Can’t we stop him?’

  ‘We did try, but he’s beyond reason.’ Thea’s voice was strained and tight. ‘I should call Gladwin.’

  ‘There’s a man outside who says he’s already done it. They should be here soon.’

  ‘We should go outside. We’ve no place here.’ Stumblingly, she went out of the open door and into the garden, still clutching Hepzie.

  ‘Here they are!’ called Blake. ‘At last.’

  Two uniformed police officers got out of a car and walked steadily, shoulder to shoulder, across the garden. Instinctively they looked to Drew for an explanation, which even in the midst of chaos surprised him. ‘There’s a man in there, completely out of control. He’s smashing the whole place to bits.’

  ‘Is he alone?’

  ‘No,’ said Thea. ‘His mother’s there. You’d better hurry. She’s getting quite badly cut from the flying glass.’

  The officers exchanged looks. ‘Does he have a firearm?’ asked one.

  ‘Of course not. He’s not armed at all, except with a chair. He might stop when he sees you.’

  ‘But watch out for her,’ warned Blake. ‘She might have a knife.’

  The cautious policeman activated his phone. ‘Backup needed at Snowshill,’ he barked importantly. ‘Violent domestic incident, one male, one female. Possibly armed with a knife.’

  Thea gave a cry of frustration. ‘You wimps,’ she accused them. ‘Just get yourselves in there and use some common sense for a change.’

  The officers stood straighter and squared their shoulders. ‘Madam,’ said the one with the phone, ‘we have orders not to approach dangerous individuals until we can assess the level of risk.’

  ‘Mariella!’ called Blake suddenly. The Filipina had crept away from the group and was disappearing into Hyacinth House. The four others automatically followed her, as if her action had somehow changed the whole situation.

  Mariella crunched fearlessly through the shattered porcelain and smashed glass, and put a hand on Mark’s arm. ‘Stop,’ she ordered him. ‘This can do no good.’ She turned to Yvonne. ‘You are Mrs Parker, then,’ she stated. ‘You are the murderer.’ She seemed to feel more curiosity than anything else. ‘You have sent this boy crazy by what you’ve done.’

  In the doorway, Thea and Drew exchanged blinks of amazement. ‘Murderer?’ repeated a policeman softly.

  ‘Where’s the knife?’ said the other one.

  In reply, Yvonne bent to gather a shard of glass from the fireplace and flew at Mariella with it, swiping wildly, ignoring the blood springing from her hand, where she grasped the lethal edge.

  ‘No!’ shouted Drew, plunging forward. He was not quite close enough to get his own face slashed before the two policemen grabbed him and pushed him out of Yvonne’s reach. Then they finally tackled her, one on each side, valiantly risking personal damage. She dropped the glass without resistance, holding her streaming hand up close to her face, eyeing the flowing blood with interest.

  Mark had dropped his chair at some point, his frenzy over as suddenly as it had begun. ‘Mariella’s hurt,’ he said quietly.

  Everybody looked, to see a deep gash in the young woman’s bare upper arm, where she had raised it to defend herself. Blood was pumping out steadily and her face was white. Drew began to think that two hesitant police officers were nowhere near adequate to the crisis. They still held Yvonne tightly between them, as if their work were done. ‘Call for paramedics,’ said one to the other. ‘That’s an artery, that is.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Thea, thrusting the spaniel into Drew’s arms. ‘Come out here,’ she ordered Mariella, ‘and sit down.’ She led the shaking woman into the kitchen and started to wrap tea towels tightly around the bleeding arm. Blake joined her, holding the bindings in the right place without being told. Both murmured calming reassurances to their patient, knowing instinctively the value of slowing her heart rate and conserving all available energy. ‘Pressure,’ muttered Thea. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Exactly. It’s not as bad as it looks.’ The slippery blood was gathering on the floor beneath the chair, giving off a hot metallic smell that made Drew want to panic, as he watched the first-aiders go into action. He had all the training necessary for stemming rapid blood loss. He had done it before. But he had been given permission to sit this one out. He had a spaniel to hold. The awkward dog in his arms wriggled, and almost escaped. He badly wanted to put it down, but could not see a good place to do so.

  Mark Parker was the only person left to his own devices. He drifted into the kitchen and stood with his back to one of the worktops, watching intently. Slowly he began to speak, addressing nobody in particular. ‘Dad was Stevie’s father, then,’ he said. ‘Belinda was right all along. I never believed her. I didn’t see how Dad could ever have disowned him, after the way he was so protective of us. His own kid. We were just adopted, after all. This was his real biological boy. Mum never had the slightest idea, of course. It would never occur to her. She’s so naive.’

  For want of anyone else to pay attention, Drew cocked an encouraging ear. ‘You think she strangled the kid?’ he prompted.

  ‘I know she did. She took my car on Sunday, came here, then parked it back where she’d found it, in Evesham.’

  ‘We saw hers in Crouch End,’ said Drew in confusion.

  ‘Must have left it there for days, and got the train to Evesham and back. She’ll be on some CCTV somewhere, I imagine.’

  ‘But why? I mean, why now?’ In truth, he wasn’t sure what he meant, but he definitely needed a lot more elucidation.

  ‘Dad was fool enough to keep the evidence – he must have had a paternity test some time ago, and it confirmed his suspicions. But he kept the secret from Mum. Didn’t he, Mother?’ he called to Yvonne, who was hanging limply between the policemen, her lacerations causing them some concern. ‘You never had any idea. Why do you think he left you? Wasn’t it because he couldn’t bear to see Stevie every day, with you so maddeningly trusting and innocent? So he invented some horrible Internet sex thing to give you some sort of explanation for him going.’

  Yvonne smiled crookedly. ‘No – I invented that,’ she said. ‘I wanted people to think badly of him.’

  Thea thought of Janice, mother of another of Victor Parker’s offspring. Would Yvonne have murdered Ruby as well, if she’d known?

  ‘Why didn’t he just tell her the truth?’ wondered Drew, quietly.

  ‘It’s not easy to tell Yvonne things,’ said Thea, still focused on Mariella’s arm. ‘I can vouch for that.’

  ‘Here they are at last!’ said one of the policemen in relief, as further footsteps crunched up the front path. ‘Took their time, didn’t they?’

  * * *

  Despite – or perhaps because of – rigorous procedures for debriefing, it took Gladwin until well after dark to ascertain the whole story. Injuries had to be dealt with first, and the dangerous condition of the living room assessed and made safe. Everyone appeared to be generously smeared with blood from head to toe, apart from Drew and Hepzibah. Blake Grossman flashed some kind of secret identity card at the police officers, earning himself exoneration from all questions and a nod of respect from Gladwin. Only Thea seemed to notice this exchange. Was he Mossad, she wondered wildly? Or merely MI5?

  Mark Parker adopted a sweetly reasonable manner, even when confronted with the destruction he had wreaked in the living room. ‘I was very angry with her,’ he said simply. ‘She killed that poor little boy, who I could have known as my little brother, who could have been a part of our family – which was bad enough. But I couldn’
t let her get away with killing my father. She had to take what was coming to her for that.’ Gladwin eyed him doubtfully, and made a mental note to check his medical records for any history of psychological disturbance.

  Yvonne said nothing when she was finally formally arrested and charged. She said nothing for the following week, during which scarcely any evidence was gathered to demonstrate that she had indeed killed both Stevie Horsfall and Victor Parker. And yet nobody doubted that she was guilty, or refrained from speculating as to her motives. ‘Jealous revenge, I guess you can call it,’ said Gladwin to Thea.

  ‘But it was all so perfectly planned,’ protested Thea. ‘With alibis at every stage.’ She had had plenty of time to think it all through since the climax on Wednesday evening. Gladwin had asked her to meet her in Cirencester, to check whether she had any further testimony to give.

  ‘No, I don’t think it was. She just acted instinctively.’

  ‘But the car thing.’

  ‘Yes, that was rather brilliant, I admit. Simple, but effective. Even now, if we can’t see her on the Evesham CCTV there’ll be hardly anything concrete to use against her. Nobody saw her, as far as we know, she left no physical evidence and she hasn’t said a word to incriminate herself. We know she did it, but we’re having a hard time proving it.’

  It was Drew who suggested the solution, five days later. ‘They just need to tell her they’re arresting Belinda for the murders, on the basis of new information, and Yvonne will soon admit it,’ he said, when Thea phoned and reported Gladwin’s frustration to him, before giving him much of a chance to speak. ‘After all, she did it all for her children.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Of course.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Actually, it was Maggs who explained it. She’s adopted, you see.’

  ‘Er …’

  ‘I told her the whole story. She insisted I should, and I couldn’t see any reason not to. Anyway, she says Yvonne would have been incandescent when she realised there was a natural child as well as the other two. Not just because it threatened their inheritance of his money, but because of the biology of it. There was a little piece of Victor in the world, but not of her. It might not have mattered to her so much while they were still married, but once divorced, she couldn’t cope with it at all. So she had to kill Stevie – it must have seemed inescapable.’

  ‘But she was nasty and cunning enough to get poor Gudrun blamed for it.’

  ‘Possibly not deliberately. That shoe might just have fallen off unnoticed, when she grabbed the boy. But it worked very well as a double revenge on Victor and Gudrun.’

  ‘And why dump him behind my car?’

  ‘Maggs thinks that’s as far as she could carry him, and it made a good hiding place. Or else, Mark’s car was sitting close by, and it just worked out that way.’

  ‘I’m wildly impressed by all this,’ she told him. ‘You and Maggs must have talked about it for ages. Have you worked out why she killed Victor as well?’

  ‘Probably because of Mariella.’

  ‘Ok-a-a-y,’ said Thea slowly. ‘That makes sense, I suppose.’

  He elaborated patiently. ‘Not just the sordidness of it, and the natural fury of the older discarded wife when faced with a prettier, younger model. But the idea that he might yet father another child, if she didn’t stop him. It looks as if she had no idea Mariella existed until she must have seen her coming out of his flat on that Monday and followed her around the streets. Well, that’s all a big guess, assuming she never went to France, of course.’

  ‘She can’t have done – and I was so convinced,’ moaned Thea. ‘It never occurred to me she could just pretend all that.’ Another puzzle presented itself. ‘And how did she know about Mariella in the first place?’

  ‘Most likely she saw evidence of a woman in the flat, when she was there on Sunday morning. Or maybe Victor simply told her – showed her a photo, even. Anyway, we think she must have hung around Crouch End on Sunday evening, or somewhere close by that does B&B. When she saw Mariella go back in with the shopping, and heard Victor greet her, her suspicions would have been confirmed. Then when she went in and saw he wasn’t wearing any clothes, she lost it completely and let fly. Funny, really, after what that nanny said to us. Remember?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘She said Mariella would scratch the eyes out of any woman moving in on Victor. She got that wrong, didn’t she?’

  Thea was deeply impressed at his ability to keep up and remember every detail she’d passed to him over recent days, during their phone calls and taxi rides in London. She accepted his reasoning, with one or two reservations. ‘You think she killed Victor on an impulse? But she had a knife.’

  Drew paused for thought, the phone line making a hollow silence while Thea waited. ‘Maybe she used one that was in the flat. Maybe she took it when she went after Stevie, and it was still in her pocket.’

  ‘They obviously haven’t found anything as nice and easy as a murder weapon covered in fingerprints.’

  ‘What about the B&B or wherever it was she spent those three nights? Saturday, Sunday and Monday, presumably.’

  ‘Last I heard, they haven’t traced it. She didn’t use a card to pay, so it must have been a very small low-tech place.’

  ‘Which is why Maggs says they have to outwit her, and threaten to prosecute Belinda instead.’

  ‘I’ll tell them, but I very much doubt they’ll take the advice. It’ll all come down to boring donkey work in the end. She’s sure to have left some sort of trail, if they can only find it.’

  He said nothing. Only then did Thea ask, ‘And how’s Karen?’

  He made a small sound that sent a chill right through her. ‘She died,’ he said thickly. ‘Yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Thea. ‘Oh, Drew.’

  About the Author

  REBECCA TOPE lives on a smallholding in Herefordshire, with a full complement of livestock, but manages to travel the world and enjoy civilisation from time to time as well. Most of her varied experiences and activities find their way into her books, sooner or later. Her own cocker spaniel, Beulah, is the model for Hepzibah, but is unfortunately ageing much more rapidly.

  www.rebeccatope.com

  By Rebecca Tope

  A Cotswold Killing

  A Cotswold Ordeal

  Death in the Cotswolds

  A Cotswold Mystery

  Blood in the Cotswolds

  Slaughter in the Cotswolds

  Fear in the Cotswolds

  A Grave in the Cotswolds

  Deception in the Cotswolds

  Malice in the Cotswolds

  A Dirty Death

  Dark Undertakings

  Death of a Friend

  Grave Concerns

  A Death to Record

  The Sting of Death

  A Market for Murder

  Copyright

  Allison & Busby Limited

  13 Charlotte Mews

  London W1T 4EJ

  www.allisonandbusby.com

  First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2012.

  This ebook edition published by Allison & Busby in 2012.

  Copyright © 2012 by REBECCA TOPE

  The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978–0–7490–1107–9

  br />
 

  Rebecca Tope, Malice in the Cotswolds