by Rebecca Tope
‘Call me Thea,’ she said, still thinking hard.
‘OK – Thea. What does that suggest to you?’
‘I might as well tell you, I suppose. Edwina was here this afternoon, and she told us she’d agreed to help Donny when the time came. But she didn’t do it. I’m sure she didn’t.’ She explained how upset Edwina had been, and puzzled by Donny’s precipitate action. She kept quiet about the words she had overheard the night before, her conscience paining her, but outweighed by the knowledge that words once said could not be unsaid. She could reveal everything later, if it seemed necessary.
‘Who else was here?’
‘Drew Slocombe, the undertaker. Donny wanted to talk to him about his funeral.’
Higgins was sometimes a bit slow, she remembered. He rubbed his brow with a short forefinger. ‘Mr Davis wanted to discuss his funeral today, but killed himself before meeting Mr Slocombe?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Was anybody else here?’
‘Toby something. Husband of Donny’s dead daughter, Cecilia. They all seem very fond of him.’ She wanted to add he’s got ginger hair, as well, but it was obviously completely irrelevant.
He puffed out his cheeks in an expression of admiration. ‘Phil was right, then. You have met all the main players already. Have we left anybody out?’
‘Well, there’s Thyrza. She’s Edwina’s sister. And she has a son, Philippe, who has a big grey poodle called Jasper. I’ve met all of them.’
He had extracted a notebook from a back pocket and was making hurried notes. ‘Should I add Jasper to the list, do you think?’ he asked, with a smile.
She thought of the dog in the woods, and shook her head. ‘He’s only useful if you need to identify his master,’ she judged. ‘And that probably won’t be too difficult. He wears pink clothes and a sort of Breton cap.’
‘And they all live locally, do they?’
‘Most of them. I think Toby’s from further away, but I don’t know where. And I’m not really sure about that. He might be staying here until Donny’s funeral, anyway.’ Again she tried to think back to exactly what Donny had said. ‘I think it was just a vague impression to do with Cecilia being in and out of hospital. I gathered there was a lot of driving back and forth. Actually, Donny never mentioned that she had a husband.’ She spread her hands self-deprecatingly at the muddle of relevant and irrelevant information. ‘I don’t imagine the source really matters,’ she added, while at the same time wishing she could convey the fragile threads connecting the various individuals. The sad story of the failed heart transplant could not be pertinent to Donny’s death, and yet she could not shake it from her mind. ‘Poor Toby,’ she sighed. ‘I think he was very fond of Donny. They went through a lot together.’
‘So – you think this phone call got it wrong, then?’
‘Absolutely, I do. Possibly whoever it was heard something about the plan, and just assumed that’s what happened. But it all points to a straightforward suicide without anybody there to help.’ As she spoke, she felt doubt clouding her words. Could Edwina have stayed with Donny while he died, and then quietly slipped away when it was all over? She might have been putting on an act when she came to the Manor to see Thea and Drew. But then – why feign an interest in Donny’s funeral when it was too late to be sure of getting what he wanted? Why not delay doing the irreversible deed until after talking it over with Drew?
Jeremy’s head moved slowly from side to side. ‘It’s not, though, is it? Straightforward, I mean. We’ll have the post-mortem tomorrow, which may or may not throw more light on the matter. But meanwhile, we have to assume there’s reason for further investigation. You haven’t said anything to change that.’
‘Haven’t I? That’s a shame. I hate to think somebody’s hiding what really happened. Donny deserves better than that. There ought not to be any deception going on.’
‘Makes sense, though, if somebody did slip that bag over his head, without taking proper precautions first. They’d be scared of a murder rap.’
‘Precautions? Like what?’
‘Like getting everything written down and signed by the deceased. Like not benefiting from his will, or having the slightest accusation of undue influence laid on them. And even then, it’s a risk. The law in this country does not recognise assisted suicide.’
‘So even with the precautions, it could still be seen as murder? Sounds like a no-win situation all round.’
He smiled tolerantly. ‘Don’t you think that just about sums up death itself? In the end, none of us can win, can we?’
She gave him a severe look. ‘That’s not the right attitude, is it? That’s coming close to not caring how or why a sick old man finally dies, because it was sure to happen soon anyway.’
His expression changed completely, and an angry finger waved in front of her nose. ‘Don’t come that with me,’ he snapped. ‘Don’t ever say anything like that to a police officer. I’d have thought you’d know better.’
‘Sorry.’ She held up her hands and backed away from him. ‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that. We’re on the same side, of course we are.’ The red hair was perhaps not so incongruous after all. For the first time, she had witnessed another side of DI Higgins, and learnt that he had deeper, stronger principles than she could ever have guessed.
‘If this is a suspicious death, then the proper procedures will be gone through,’ he insisted. ‘His age and state of health make no difference to an investigation, if it comes to that.’
They do, though, thought Thea mulishly. Of course they do. It wouldn’t be possible to raise the same head of steam as if a little girl had been raped and strangled, or a pregnant woman slowly tortured to death. Not all deaths were the same, and everybody knew it.
She decided to stand her ground. ‘All I meant was, if Donny seriously wanted to die, because his outlook was so hopelessly grim, then somebody helping him could hardly be given the same treatment as a much more dreadful murderer.’
‘That’s not what you said just now.’
‘No. We got off the subject, somehow. So – you’ll be speaking to Edwina, then.’
He tipped his chin affirmatively, a gesture his body was not designed to make easily. His big head was set squarely on broad shoulders, with very little neck between. Thea examined him as the conversation ran dry. His ancestry appeared to combine sandy-haired Northerners with large-boned eastern Europeans, something Polish about his round cheeks and heavy hips and thighs. Few people would tag him as a plain clothes police detective, on first sighting.
‘I don’t think you should take what I say as important. I don’t know the history, or how the people connect. I don’t even know whether Jemima gets on with the sisters – or whether the sisters get on with each other, come to that. I’m beginning to think I might have got quite a lot wrong, making assumptions without much foundation.’
‘It’s plenty to be going on with,’ he assured her. ‘And you’ve got form when it comes to fingering the heart of the matter.’
The awkward metaphor recalled the tragic Cecilia and her transplant, yet again. An image of a probing finger delving behind the broken ribs to cut out the defective heart came to mind, and soured her stomach.
‘Don’t bank on it,’ she muttered. ‘I really have no idea what’s what this time.’
It had been a very long day. She went to bed at ten-thirty, wondering whether she dared to hope for better things next morning. A sunny sky, a trouble-free visit to the mother dog in her burrow and no more visits from the police. But Donny would still be dead, and that in itself was cause for profound regret.
Chapter Eight
Wednesday was unarguably the middle of the week. It meant that her stay in Cranham had not much more than another week to run, and for that she felt rather thankful. The geckoes all appeared to be thriving when she visited them that morning, the eggs looking just as usual, and the gauges giving normal readings. The realisation that there was nothing more she had to attend to
, no other duties, made her feel lazy and aimless. The lack of Donny did not diminish as teatime approached and there was little prospect of a visitor. She had no news about the post-mortem or the interview with Edwina, which came as something of a relief. A surreptitious trip to the woods with another bag of meat and milk for the runaway dog was achieved without incident. As recompense, she took Hepzie for a long walk in the other direction, wondering whether they might even get as far as the outskirts of Painswick before turning back again.
On the map, the walk looked feasible, but the reality was rather different. The rise and fall of the land, the uncertainty of the way at one or two junctures, and the absence of any other human beings combined to make the walk both tiring and dull. Every time she embarked on one of the house-sitting jobs, she dutifully examined the large-scale map and traced the surrounding footpaths with every intention of exploring them with the dog. Once or twice she had met her own targets, with mainly gratifying results, but she had to admit to herself that walking was not as much of a pleasure as she wished it to be. Unless there was an obvious goal, or a companion, it felt rather hollow, a pointless exercise. And now, the plan of reaching Painswick looked insanely ambitious. There and back was a walk of some miles, involving several hours, and however unreasonably, she felt unjustified in deserting Hollywell for the best part of the day.
‘Enough,’ she announced to the spaniel, after almost an hour of trudging along the inside of hedgerows and worrying about getting lost. ‘Let’s go back.’
She turned and walked up a slope and was suddenly confronted by a vista that left her gasping. She was somewhere between Sheepscombe and Bulls Cross, looking westwards towards Painswick. The fact that she must have been heading east before she turned was disconcerting, when she had believed otherwise, but there was no room for concern in the face of the fabulous view before her. The whole town of Painswick lay before her, the church spire dominating the spread of houses interspersed with grand old trees. The colours were greens and greys under the thin white cloud, with frequent creamy-white facades catching the light. It was perhaps half a mile distant, with a long green slope stretching from her feet to the first houses of the town.
‘Wow!’ she breathed. ‘Look at that!’
It did not alter her decision to return to Cranham, but it amply justified her excursion. The walk had acquired a point, after all. The joyful uplift caused by the perfect landscape presented so unexpectedly to her sight was worth a lot of weary tedium. The buildings, made of local materials, flowed up and down the natural slopes, sharing the space with vegetation and waterways, as aesthetically right as any trees or hills could be. Only the church struck a false note, she found, somewhat to her surprise. It was too obviously man-made, too tall, the shape all wrong for the setting. The eye had no need for such a thrusting focal point – she felt it a detraction from the scene’s undulating form. She held up a thumb to blot out the spire, confirming to her own satisfaction that the town would look better without it. The small heresy amused her – without the church, the vision before her was much more inspiring and awesome. It felt like a discovery she should share, and the thought that there was nobody to confide in was momentarily lowering.
But her step was buoyant as she worked out the shortest way back to Cranham. She had glimpsed something magical, something that was always going to be there for the contemplating. It made her happy, in and of itself. It was both ordinary and mystical, common and unique. It was full of paradox and illusion, and it was nothing more than a little town settled into an English valley like dozens of others. She toyed with a swirl of poetical thoughts as her spaniel escorted her unreliably back to their temporary home. ‘Have you read Cider with Rosie?’ several people had asked her, since she began her regular visits to the Cotswolds. She had not, believing on the basis of almost no information that it was an old-fashioned, sentimental picture of the countryside that couldn’t hope to have any relevance fifty years after it was written. She knew that Slad was the setting of the book – a place she had never seen. Now she realised that she was very close by, and probably ought to give it a look. It was possible, she conceded, that it was as beautiful and memorable as people said. If Painswick could present such an enchanting prospect, then perhaps Slad could, too.
‘Maybe we’ll go that way tomorrow,’ she said to the dog.
* * *
Something of her elevated mood remained throughout the afternoon and evening. She chirruped at the geckoes, and then patrolled the unambitious garden, tweaking out a few weeds and training some clematis tendrils through the spars of a wooden fence as she went. Gardening had never been very high on her list of interests, but she could see various ways in which this one could be readily improved. The roses were its best feature, but there were other things that would flourish with a bit of encouragement. An old plum tree was reaching the end of its productive life, at the back of the house, surrounded by straggly grass and hogweed. It could be transformed into a colourful island bed, if the tree were removed, she mused. All it would take was a saw and some imagination.
The sky had cleared again, and the sinking sun filtered pleasingly through the branches of a silver birch that grew tall on the far side of Harriet’s boundary fence. The next property was a detached house in two or three acres of well-tended grounds. Thus far Thea had seen nothing of its occupants. Now a man was cutting the grass on the enormous lawn, on a ride-on mower. He wore a floppy hat, obscuring his face, and cut-off jeans, exposing brown legs. Somehow she thought he was an employee, and not the householder. But he could easily be a wealthy young stockbroker or – more likely these days – a media consultant with one of those jobs that created something out of nothing on the Internet. Where a year before she had wondered whether harsh economic times would affect the nature of these Cotswold villages, now she concluded that most of them were occupied by rock-solid plutocrats, whose wealth was beyond the vagaries of the market.
He showed no sign of having seen her, and she turned away, letting him carry on with his perfectly straight lines. Harriet’s poor lawn was dotted with daisies and dandelions, the grass much too long, and Thea greatly preferred it to next door for its character. She had not been asked to cut the grass, and she had no intention of doing so.
There were, of course, insistent thoughts about Donny Davis. It was less than two days ago that he had died, and she was more and more sorry to have known him so briefly before losing him. She went over their conversations for clues as to just why he had chosen that particular night to kill himself. She had been barely two hundred yards away as he gasped his last inside that awful plastic bag. She had not properly looked at the bag itself, but carried an impression of it being unusually sturdy. Certainly not one of those flimsy things they gave you for fruit in the supermarket. They would be too easy to puncture in that frenzy to survive that surely overcame everybody, however miserably determined they might be to end it all.
She thought, too, about Jemima, and how Thea had liked her despite her short temper and unreasonable objections to Drew and his funerals. A bond had formed between them over Donny’s dead body, the experience shared for ever, like it or not. She should see her again as soon as she possibly could, for a bit of mutual debriefing. She knew how important it was to tell the story repeatedly, and how hard it could be to find people willing to listen. There was something hidden about Jemima, too. Some undercurrent in her relationship with her father that had removed any real surprise at his death, and thereby aroused Thea’s curiosity.
But whether and when she saw Jemima was not within her control. She might find Hobson in the phone book, she supposed, and track down the precise location of her fruit farm, but that felt intrusive. Sooner or later she was confident that the woman would come to her. Whether or not Edwina Satterthwaite and Thyrza Hastings would turn up again as well was less certain. She had little reason to assume that they would, but it would be surprising if they didn’t. They had said too much to her to just drop the connection now.
The more she thought about it, the more probable it seemed that Edwina had in fact helped Donny in his suicide. The deed done, she must have lost her nerve, unable to face the police questioning and the prolonged deliberations about whether or not to prosecute her for a crime. She had bolted the back door and pulled the front door behind her with the catch down, so nobody could intrude on the body. Then she had walked home, gone to bed and acted normally the following day.
This scenario was seductively simple, although she stumbled over the fact that she still did not know where Edwina lived. It was somewhere close by, she supposed, from Thyrza’s vague words on Monday night, within easy walking distance, even for somebody with a bad hip. The hypothesis also required a belief in impressive acting talent on Edwina’s part, but Thea had seen people tell large lies with perfect aplomb before. It came more easily than anybody liked to think. Edwina only had to concentrate on her quite genuine grief, and pack away her secret knowledge of exactly how Donny had died. It wasn’t that aspect that bothered Thea. It was the argument she had overheard on Monday evening that stuck scratchily in her mind. Would anybody be able to conduct the final act, with the love and respect and dignity it demanded, after such words had been exchanged? She did her best to imagine it – the reconciliation, the smiles of self-reproach on either side, the hugs and farewells. After all, Toby had confirmed that Edwina and Donny regularly shouted at each other, without meaning anything by it.
So had Edwina forced him in some way? Had she lost patience, or broken under the strain and decided it was time to end it, whether he was ready or not? That felt like a more natural consequence of the raised tempers and exasperation Thea had heard. That would explain Edwina’s attempts to conceal her involvement: her fear that the police would not accept that all she was doing was helping Donny to achieve what he wanted.