by Rebecca Tope
‘Fine,’ she said, wondering how true that was. What chance would they have of a decent discussion about Donny, with his family tagging along? But what did she want, she asked herself. She had phoned him with an idea of forming a team, of updating him about events in Cranham, and he had responded more readily than she could ever have expected. ‘I’ll look forward to it. Shall I phone you, or you me?’
‘I’d better call you. I think I’ve still got your number.’
‘You must have – you phoned me about Harriet’s book, remember?’
She had not thought it strange that he should have retained her mobile number for three months, since their first encounter. Now it made her wonder slightly. ‘Of course,’ he said.
‘Will you need to go to Broad Campden as well? To see your burial field or something?’
‘I might show it to Karen if there’s time. She hasn’t seen it yet. Who invited you to lunch?’
‘Philippe, son of Thyrza Hastings. He wants me to meet his wife, apparently.’
‘Really?’
‘Maybe he’s just being kind, although I hadn’t thought of him like that. I think it’s more that he regards me as some sort of rarity, and he wants to find out more about me. He knew about me before I even got here, and took great pleasure in telling me how famous I am.’
‘And you didn’t like that?’
‘Not much, no. But his child is sweet, and it’ll be a distraction. It never occurred to me to refuse.’
‘Why would it?’
‘Right,’ she laughed. ‘So I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Which left a long Saturday evening to be got through, with no duties other than checking and feeding the geckoes – a task that took barely ten minutes, even including lingering to search out the invisible creatures. The food disappeared regularly, so she supposed everything must be in order. If she left her visit to nine o’clock or thereabouts, the animals were more active and she might find one clinging to the side of its tank, the large eyes apparently watching the room beyond, although probably not dreaming of freedom or adventure.
Restlessly she prowled around the Manor with a duster in her hand, slowly inspecting objects as she whisked the cloth over them; objects that she had overlooked before. The paintings in the gallery received a long examination, the signature in the corner suggesting all of a sudden that they could be the work of Evelyn De Morgan, a female painter whose name had been unfairly dropped from the canon of Pre-Raphaelites. This was obviously exciting, if true, and Thea reproached herself for failing to realise the importance of them sooner. Her sister Jocelyn would have been a lot quicker to identify them and explain their history. With very few interests in common, the sisters did at least share a relish for the whole Pre-Raphaelite experiment, an enthusiasm which had begun when they were barely into their teens. Athena posters of paintings by Burne-Jones and Millais adorned their bedroom walls for years. Almost by osmosis they acquired knowledge of the Brotherhood and its wider circle. But the De Morgans had never featured prominently – William and Evelyn, husband and wife, were always on the periphery.
Thea’s initial assumption that these pictures had come with the house seemed increasingly likely on reflection. If Harriet had purchased them, she would know them for what they were and be aware of their value. There would be issues of security and insurance. The fact that Harriet had not mentioned them seemed to suggest she regarded them as of little importance. Was it possible that she had no idea of their history? They were poorly displayed, on the shadowy side of the gallery, in urgent need of cleaning. Perhaps Thea was the first person to spot them in a hundred years or more. The idea thrilled her, despite its improbability.
For an hour or so she managed to forget about Donny and his circle, but inexorably it all broke through her defences again as soon as she went downstairs. In the kitchen, his ghost seemed to linger, sitting in his customary chair, clutching the coffee mug in shaking hands. More vividly than ever she remembered his words, his moving complaints about the unpleasantness of growing old, his emphatic rejection of the entire medical machine.
As if a voice spoke it clearly into her ear she understood that Donny Davis did not die by his own hand. He had done no more than utter the universal wishes of every sentient being nearing the end of life: to avoid pain and degradation, to remain fully human to the final moment, to cause minimal trouble to his loved ones, to be remembered for the energetic creative person he had been in his prime. In the wider world, such sentiments were being expressed on all sides, in speeches and articles and blogs and TV documentaries, until it felt as if there was some easy means by which to achieve this ideal. But Donny had known there was not. She saw it in his eyes. Donny had known that his actual fate was far more difficult and undignified than he wanted it to be – than anybody wanted it to be. From that knowledge to suicide might seem a small step, but Thea knew that it was far from being so easy.
She felt a sudden urgent need to talk to Jemima, the only blood relative Donny had left in the country, apart from her children, his grandchildren. The distant Silas and his needy wife had apparently severed all meaningful links long ago. Despite her denials and distractions, Thea suspected that Jemima understood most acutely the position her father was in. And because she knew that there was no solution, no possible truthful reassurance she could offer, she sensibly strove to divert him from it. And that was why she said This is what I was afraid of when she found his dead body. She believed that her efforts had failed, that he had sunk into a slough of despair that she ought to have been able to steer him from. And some of that was surely Thea’s fault, in Jemima’s eyes.
It was one thing to want to see the woman, and quite another to organise a meeting. Jemima was busy. She had a husband, a farm and a number of offspring. No doubt she did a lot of cooking, cleaning, shopping, washing. She might make pies and jams and chutneys as well, for the store cupboard, even if such activities had virtually died out in the popular imagination. It was the strawberry season, very nearly – an extra busy time for the Hobsons. In fact, hadn’t Donny said something about people turning up to pick their own? If the berries were ripe already, that suggested polytunnels, which must entail a whole lot more work. What would Donny’s daughter be doing on a Saturday evening?
On several occasions Thea had gone uninvited to the homes of people she wanted to speak to. She had done it right from the start, in Duntisbourne Abbots, where she had found herself unable to sit quietly alone in a big house close to the scene of a murder. On the whole the outcome had been positive, but there had been enough hostile receptions to make her more hesitant since then. Her spaniel had been attacked as well, once or twice, which had also taught her not to be too cavalier. She had developed a habit of circumspection, rehearsing cover stories, or trying to make her approach look casual or accidental. And since the unsettling revelations from Philippe Ferrier, earlier in the day, she felt even more diffident about showing her face. If people regarded her as a celebrated amateur detective, they were unlikely to feel very pleased when she knocked on their front door and requested an interview.
But she and Jemima had a bond. They had found Donny’s body together. Of the three women she had come to know in Cranham, Jemima was the one she most nearly regarded as a friend, despite her prickly manner and occasional rudeness. Jemima was the one she thought she understood. It was perfectly acceptable, therefore, to track down her number and make a phone call.
Except there was no sign of a telephone book in Hollywell Manor. People hardly ever used them any more, Thea had gradually realised. With the advent of universal mobile conversations, landline numbers were falling into disuse, except for businesses – and even they probably received more emails than phone calls. She rose cheerfully to the challenge. There was a free local paper in the neat stack of mail on the hall table. Turning its pages and scanning their contents, she soon found a display advertisement for Hobsons Farm Shop and Pick Your Own, with a phone number at the bottom. Easy, she congratulated herself.
Without much preparation, she dialled the number on Harriet’s phone. A boy answered.
‘Is that the Hobson family?’ asked Thea.
‘Yeah. Who’s that?’
‘My name’s Thea Osborne. Is your mother anywhere about? I’d like a word with her.’
‘Yeah. Hang on.’ She heard him shouting ‘Mum!’ at some distance from the phone. ‘A woman for you. Don’t remember her name.’
It was half a minute or so before Jemima’s voice came through the receiver. ‘Hello? Who is it?’
‘It’s Thea—’
‘What do you want?’ The words came sharp and unfriendly. Thea entertained a groundless image of floury hands and hot dank hair needing to be brushed aside.
‘Just a chat. I’m all on my own here, and thought it would be nice to talk to somebody.’
‘Shouldn’t you have thought of that?’
‘Pardon?’
‘When you took on the job. You must have known what it would be like.’
‘Well, yes. But with what happened … I feel all unsettled.’
Jemima gave an unsympathetic tut, as if an importunate child had interrupted her for no good reason. ‘I’ve got Toby here,’ she said, ‘feeling all sorry for himself. I can’t cope with any more whining Winnies, just at the moment.’
Whining Winnies? Was that how she came across? ‘Oh,’ she said.
Jemima sighed noisily. ‘Oh bugger it. I didn’t mean that. It’s just … I don’t know. Saturdayitis, or something. They’re all milling about, trying to decide whether to go out or not, driving me mad. Matt’s furious because some stupid punter drove into our sign and knocked it over. You’d better come round. Maybe you can help to calm things down. I dare say you’re good at that.’
Thea was on the very brink of refusing, her pride damaged quite painfully. But she remembered why she had phoned in the first place, and accepted the grudging invitation. ‘How do I find you?’
The directions were far from straightforward, particularly as she still had only a very hazy idea of how Cranham connected to its neighbouring settlements. ‘I expect I can manage it,’ she said, with only moderate confidence.
Jemima repeated the directions with impressive patience. ‘It’ll take you ten minutes at most,’ she said.
Hobsons Farm was impossible to miss, once you got to the right road. For good measure, the sign announcing its presence, beside a wide gateway, was tilting alarmingly. Quite how anybody had managed to drive into it was hard to understand – but then accidents after the event seldom did make very much sense.
The sun had almost set by the time she arrived, but there was still a sense of a summer evening, designed for carefree gatherings on the lawn, with nibbles and Pimm’s and some highbrow music playing softly somewhere. Or the gentle thwack of tennis racquets indicating the young things disporting themselves in the court behind the house. A scene Thea had to admit was no more recent than Edwardian times, a century ago, before Britain lost much of its self-confidence.
But as she drove up the long approach, there were definitely vestiges of just such an affluent lifestyle still lingering. The house was large and lovely, with a creeper over the facade for good measure. The expected polytunnels were an unavoidable blight, but she discovered that they could not be seen from the patio at the side of the house, where rustic tables and chairs were placed to catch the westering sun. Toby whatever-his-name-was sat at one of them, with a bottle of beer at his elbow. He watched Thea sullenly as she got out of her car and waved a greeting, giving no answering gesture. Three teenagers, aged roughly from fifteen to eighteen, sat at a separate table, two of them with mobile phones in their hands.
Nobody was playing tennis or drinking Pimm’s, but there was a big old garden with big old shrubs and well-maintained stone walls. Matthew Hobson, it seemed, was doing all right, selling his summer fruits and whatever other agricultural pursuits he might be engaged in. There was a substantial flock of sheep in a big field behind the house, Thea noticed. She nodded and smiled at the youngsters, who nodded and smiled fleetingly back. There was a man standing in a doorway, broad-shouldered and complacent. He also watched her as she approached. When she reached the edge of the patio he called, ‘Mimm! Your visitor’s here.’
‘Come on in,’ Jemima’s voice floated from the house. ‘I’m a bit tied up …’
The man stepped aside and waved her into the big square room that opened onto the patio. As with Hollywell Manor, the proportions were perfect. It was an ordinary family room with a battered sofa and big rugs, television, and an oak table covered in papers, mugs, schoolbooks and a laptop computer, but the ceiling was high, the windows generous, lending an air of relaxed comfort and very little to worry about. ‘Through here,’ called Jemima. Thea followed the voice into a large kitchen, to find the lady of the house making sandwiches on a massive pine table.
‘They had a perfectly good meal an hour ago, but now they want more,’ she said with mock annoyance. ‘Helen’s friends are coming, apparently. She’s gone to fetch them.’
Wordlessly, Thea stationed herself at Jemima’s elbow and started spreading pâté onto the sliced brown bread that was waiting. She added slivers of tomato and cucumber and pressed down the lid. She had the impression that none of the food was home-produced.
‘They’re all yours, out there, then?’ she asked, after a few moments.
‘Two of them are, last I noticed. The third one’s a friend who never seems to go home. We’ve got a few casual workers in a caravan, as well. They join us now and then. It’s all very informal. It means I never get a moment to myself, of course. They’re always wanting something to eat.’
‘Nice, all the same,’ said Thea sincerely, finding a romance in the easy-going rural idyll she had stumbled into. ‘That was your husband, I assume?’
‘Matt, yes. The master of all he surveys. He loves it. In his element he is, this time of year.’
‘A happy farmer! What a rarity!’ said Thea, thinking of some of the hostile curmudgeons she had met over the past two years. Then she remembered a man called Henry in Lower Slaughter, who had been another exception.
‘He was a swine when we had the cows. We never realised that his destiny was in fruit and veg and the sheep. He mostly keeps them for old times’ sake, although the lamb prices have improved lately, and that’s no bad thing. His father would be furious about selling up the herd, but we’ve got past that now. He’s been dead for seven years.’
The reference to dead fathers was inopportune. They both fell silent as the spirit of Donny filled the room. Jemima was first to recover. ‘My dad liked it here. He would have liked to move in, I think, but we never suggested it, and he never asked outright. There really isn’t the space.’
‘He seemed OK in the Lodge,’ said Thea, trying to offer reassurance, assuming Jemima was feeling guilty about it.
‘Much better,’ Jemima nodded. ‘Or so I thought. Maybe I was wrong.’ Her eyes clouded, and Thea expected tears, but instead Jemima shook herself and handed Thea a large plate of sandwiches. ‘Here. Can you take these out for me? Go and talk to Toby. He’s driving me crazy.’
‘What’s the matter with him?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Says he’ll never work again, because the state won’t finance any retraining, or something. It’s all his own fault, pig-headed so-and-so.’
It was not the moment for eliciting the full story, but Thea was intrigued. ‘OK, I’ll try and cheer him up, then,’ she offered.
‘Good luck!’ Jemima called after her, with a little laugh.
Toby gave her a weak smile when she sat down opposite him and proffered the plate of sandwiches. He took one with an air of weariness and nibbled half-heartedly at it. ‘Isn’t it nice here?’ she began. ‘Great views. What’s that over there?’
‘Painswick Beacon,’ he said. ‘You can see for about a hundred miles in every direction from up there when it’s clear.’
‘Really? I should go up for a look, then.’
He nodded inattentively.
‘Are you staying here?’
‘For the night, you mean? No way. There’s no space here.’ She eyed him carefully. Here was another man well into early middle age, who acted more like somebody twenty years younger. It was high time he gave up saying things like No way.
‘Looks like a big house,’ she said.
‘Four bedrooms, two bathrooms,’ he recited. ‘They’ve got three teenagers, with a room each. Even when Helen goes off to college, she won’t let anybody use her room.’
‘Can’t blame her, I s’pose.’
‘No.’ He frowned. ‘Donny wanted to come and live here. Would have made things a lot easier if they’d have let him.’
She began to suspect that this had been a recent topic of conversation, with both Jemima and Toby telling her about it in the space of five minutes. Jemima had said something about Donny never directly asking her to house him, implying somehow that the old man’s real feelings had never been fully expressed to her. Perhaps he had confided in this son-in-law, who still maintained such a close connection. ‘Did he ever ask them if they’d have him?’
Toby shrugged. ‘Don’t know. But they could see it was the obvious thing to do. Anybody could.’
‘Instead of various relatives having to go and nurse him at the Lodge you mean?’
He grimaced unpleasantly. ‘Right.’
‘I see she put you to work, then,’ came a voice behind her. She turned to see Matthew Hobson eyeing the plate of sandwiches. ‘Feeding the five thousand.’
‘I volunteered.’
‘Good for you.’ He turned to look at the youngsters at the other table. ‘Gets more like a pub garden here by the day.’
Thea laughed, thinking she had been trying to work out what the set-up reminded her of. ‘Could be worse, I suppose.’
‘Certainly it could. I’m not complaining. You could say we’ve been having a bit of a wake for poor old Donny, in advance of the funeral. Should be an open coffin and all the grandchildren kissing the body, by rights I suppose. I quite like the idea of all that old-fashioned sentimentality.’