by Rebecca Tope
‘She’s not just looking for him,’ Drew said.
‘Does she know the names of every person involved? What does she expect to find?’
‘I jotted them down. Thyrza Hastings. Edwina Satterthwaite. Philippe Hastings. Toby Brent. Jemima Hobson.’
‘Stop it. You’re showing off. How do you know Toby’s surname?’
‘Edwina introduced him on Tuesday. Don’t you remember?’
‘No,’ she sighed. ‘But you’re not quite perfect: it isn’t Philippe Hastings. His father was called Ferrier. Thyrza was married twice.’
‘Drat!’
‘Don’t let it worry you. I already told you I can’t imagine it was him.’
‘Only because you don’t think he’s kind, and you’ve got the idea it was meant as an act of kindness. What if Donny was killed by somebody unkind?’
‘That would be horrible. Poor Donny.’ She tried to think it through again. ‘It might well have been, of course. If it wasn’t assisted suicide, then it was outright murder, for selfish motives.’ She frowned. ‘Nobody’s really behaving as if that was it. If one of the people I’ve met did it, they’re showing no signs of guilt – or even of satisfaction that they’ve got whatever it is they wanted.’
‘Most people can put on a pretty convincing act if their freedom depends on it. Or their good name.’
‘Maybe,’ she agreed doubtfully. ‘I can’t see how any of this is getting us anywhere.’
‘It isn’t until some evidence turns up.’
‘And you think it will?’
‘I think it might.’
‘Look, Drew, I’ve seen them all over the past few days. I’ve been to their houses and met their kids. It’s an ordinary family, who’ve had two deaths in a year. Nobody’s behaving strangely or eyeing each other suspiciously. What if there was a conspiracy and they’re all in it? Jemima, Edwina, Toby, Thyrza and Philippe all banded together and murdered Donny because they thought it was for the best. That would confuse the police dreadfully, wouldn’t it?’
‘You forget the most important detail.’
She closed her eyes, scanning her memory. ‘The phone call! Somebody broke ranks and accused Edwina, and was lucky enough to catch a moment when the police recording machine was out of action and the number of the call wasn’t logged.’
‘Is that what the detective bloke told you?’
‘Yes. He’s embarrassed about it.’
‘Without that call, would it just have been written up as a suicide, do you think?’
‘Highly likely. There was nothing else to arouse suspicion.’
The children were squatting on a patch of grass, peering intently at the ground, showing no signs of impatience despite Timmy’s thirst. Hepzie was sniffing at a hole in the roots of a tree some distance away. ‘Aren’t they good!’ Thea approved.
‘For the moment. They’re obviously in no hurry to get home.’ His expression was rueful, and she wondered about the atmosphere in the house, with Karen’s ill-defined malaise casting a pall over everything. ‘OK, kids?’ he called from the point some yards away where he and Thea stood talking.
‘Higgins told Edwina there was evidence that it was murder, but he didn’t say anything about a phone call. She seemed to expect people to think she’d helped him to kill himself.’
‘And she doesn’t deny that she promised to help him to kill himself when the time came?’
‘Right.’
‘And this was not the time.’
‘Right again.’
‘So somebody killed him.’
‘I suppose they must have done.’
Chapter Nineteen
It was well past five o’clock as they drifted back to Drew’s car, still talking, the children diverting from the path to examine items of interest. ‘I really should get them home,’ he said, more than once. ‘They’ll be hungry.’
‘I hope you had a big lunch?’
‘Not very. There was a café at the wildlife park, but we only had a snack. They weren’t in the mood for eating.’
‘Will Karen have a meal waiting?’
‘I doubt it. We might have to stop somewhere on the way.’ He was beginning to look harassed, running a hand through his floppy hair. ‘I’m always getting the timing wrong when it comes to food.’
‘Why don’t you phone her, say you’ll be late and come back to the Manor with me? I’ve got some sausages and eggs and bread. I can do a fry-up or something.’
‘That’s a great offer, but it’ll make us so late.’ He almost wailed. ‘It takes an hour and a half at least to get home from here, especially with all this weekend traffic.’
‘They can sleep in the car. And if you get away by six-thirty or so, you won’t be so terribly late anyway. Just sling them into bed as soon as you’re home.’
‘They’ll be grubby for school. There’s never time for a bath in the morning.’
‘Drew!’ Exasperation overwhelmed her. ‘Don’t fuss. It’s a gorgeous summer evening in a beautiful part of the country. The kids are happy. Wipe their faces and wash their hands and they’ll be perfectly presentable.’
His laugh was so loud it shocked her. It seemed to explode out of him, making his children and three passers-by all stare. ‘You’re right!’ he shouted. ‘You’re so right. Thank you, Thea Osborne. Thank you very much.’ He moved towards her, arms outspread and she waited for a hug that never happened. Instead he stopped six inches away and dropped his arms.
‘Get your car and I’ll follow you,’ he said. ‘It’s not far, is it?’
‘About two miles. Maybe less. Give me three minutes. Come on, Heps.’ She jogged along the line of parked cars, which had several gaps in it as people went home for their tea. Hers was further than she remembered – so much further that she began to think it had been stolen. When she finally found it, she had to turn it round on a narrow sandy track. What’s the rush? she asked herself, aware of an obligation to hurry. She’d convinced Drew that he could calm down and stop worrying, and now she was doing the same thing.
They drove back to the Manor, with Drew sticking closely to her bumper. The confusing layout of Cranham gave her pause for a moment, approaching it from the south-west for the first time. The landmarks that normally came up on the left were now on the right, and she had to struggle to visualise where the common and Manor must be. After more than a week this seemed pathetic and she rebuked herself for it. The little road alongside the village hall beckoned welcomingly, as did the church tower further along, and the small village school. Donny’s Lodge was where she expected it to be, and she sped up the driveway to the Manor with a sense of returning home.
The house seemed to glow proudly as she ushered Drew and his offspring into the hall. The lowering sun was dazzlingly lighting up the big main room, through the high windows. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she boasted. ‘A perfect piece of architecture.’
‘We’d better stay in the kitchen,’ said Drew cautiously. ‘They might break something.’
‘I’ll get cracking on the meal right away. Except I should feed the dog first.’
Her visitors sat around the table, with drinks, happy to chat inconsequentially while Thea cooked.
‘I’ll phone Karen,’ Drew announced, fishing for his mobile. ‘Is there a signal here?’
‘Should be,’ Thea nodded. ‘I haven’t had any problems.’
He stood up and went to the window, his back to the room, waiting for the rhythmic sound that told him the phone was ringing at home. He shifted from foot to foot as he waited, knowing Karen could be slow to react. Thea turned sausages and the children kicked their feet against the central pedestal of the table, and a silence descended.
‘No reply,’ he said, finally.
‘Are you on call for the funeral business?’ Thea asked, wondering why that had not occurred to her sooner.
‘No, it’s Maggs this weekend. We try to alternate. Maybe Karen’s gone round to talk to one of the neighbours. Or she could be asleep.’ The worry in
his tone was muted but real. He glanced from Stephanie to Thea to the sausages, his lips tight.
‘Or out in the garden,’ offered the little girl. ‘In the sun.’
‘That’s possible,’ said Drew with a frown. ‘Although—’
‘She’ll be fine,’ said Thea, a shade too heartily. ‘You can be on your way in twenty minutes. This will be ready in a flash.’
‘It’s OK. I know I’m being paranoid. But not answering the phone … well, that never happens. We live by the phone, in a way. That’s how we get our business. For all she knows, it’s Maggs needing her to do something.’
‘Try again in ten minutes. She might have been in the loo.’
‘Yes. I’ll do that.’
Thea could tell that he was entertaining awful visions of his wife unconscious at the foot of the stairs, a cerebral haemorrhage draining her life away. He chafed as the food was placed before him and his children eagerly began to eat. He looked at the clock on the wall every few seconds. ‘It’s possible that Maggs had a call and Karen went to help her. She hardly ever does that, but if it was something quick and easy, she might.’
‘Could Maggs collect a body all on her own?’
‘Not really, no. She’s done it once or twice, but it means getting somebody to lend a hand, and that’s not very professional. Den – her husband – would go with her, but we try not to need him. He’s not very comfortable with it, to be honest.’
‘She’d tell you if there was anything, wouldn’t she?’
‘She might. You can never be sure with Maggs. She’s not very predictable.’
‘How close to your house does she live?’
‘Six miles.’
‘So, if there’s no answer when you try again, you could ask her to go and see if everything’s all right. She could be there in ten minutes.’
He sighed. ‘Stop encouraging me. You’re supposed to assure me that there’s nothing at all the matter.’
‘Sorry. Obviously, you’ve got nothing whatsoever to worry about. Eat.’
He eyed the clock again, before starting his own food. Stephanie and Timmy were halfway through theirs. ‘Nice to see children with healthy appetites,’ she observed.
‘Mm. Yes. We’ve never let them be silly about food.’
Drew ate quickly, and again retreated to the window with his phone. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered first.
Before he could begin the gadget warbled in his hand. ‘That’ll be her,’ said Stephanie knowingly.
‘No. It’s Maggs,’ Drew corrected her, reading the screen. ‘Hello?’ he answered. ‘What? Where are you?’
His side of the conversation was largely monosyllabic questions, with the occasional ‘Slow down’ and ‘Say that again’. It took several minutes, during which Thea dished up ice cream and made a pot of tea.
When he finished, he sat down heavily at the table. ‘She’s been investigating,’ he said. ‘And she says she’s found a connection between Donny and Harriet that proves our theory.’
The presence of two very attentive children made it impossible to speak openly about murder and suicide. ‘What about Mummy?’ demanded Tim. ‘Is she all right?’
‘I’m sure she is. Let me talk to Thea for a minute and then I’ll phone again.’ He appealed to Thea. ‘Can they go outside or something for ten minutes?’
‘There’s not much to do out there. Maybe a bit of telly would be an idea. I think there’s a wildlife programme on about now. I saw it last week.’
She led the children into the main room, and returned quickly. ‘What on earth did she say to distract you from panicking about Karen?’
‘She found a long review of the book posted on a website by Toby Brent. She read me some of it. All about Harriet being irresponsible when it comes to people’s feelings. And some stuff about his wife dying young of heart problems.’
‘So how does that prove Donny was murdered?’
‘According to Maggs, Toby quoted his father-in-law as being a classic case in point. He might talk about wanting to die, but it was perfectly obvious to anybody who knew him that he wanted nothing of the sort. He just thought he might want to in the future.’
Thea’s eyebrows went up. ‘That isn’t proof, is it? Not by a million miles. It’s not even new, really. We’ve said most of that already.’
Drew danced restlessly on the spot, tension visibly mounting. ‘We should speak to him. Ask him about it.’
Thea put up her hands. ‘Oh, no. I already tried that yesterday and got my head bitten off. I’m hopeless at that sort of thing, I’ve finally realised. I’m not going anywhere near any of them if I can help it. Let’s just drop the whole thing. You go home and see if your wife’s all right and get those kids to bed. I’ll play with geckoes for a week and then fix up another job, if anybody will employ me.’ She thought of the unsettling comments made by Philippe in the pub. ‘Apparently I’m a minor celebrity around here now, and everybody wants me. I can’t believe it’s true. More the opposite, if anything.’
He wasn’t listening to her. ‘If I’m going to start a burial ground up here I need to have everything straight from the outset. I can’t just forget what happened here – after all, I was hoping to get my first Broad Campden prepaid funeral, thanks to you.’
She stared at him. ‘But you didn’t get it. You never even met him. It can’t possibly matter to you now.’
‘But it does. I’ve been here three times now, talking to you about it. I’ve told Maggs and she’s grabbed onto it, the way she does. Even if you don’t want any more to do with it, she’s not going to give up. She hates it when we lose a funeral.’
‘Losing a funeral,’ Thea repeated slowly. ‘Is that what this is, really? Frustration? A sense of being cheated?’
‘Well, yes, in a way. The business is important, you know. I came into it from nursing, which I never really took to. I made mistakes and lost a lot of confidence. What I do now perfectly suits my nature. Maggs is the same. She says she wanted to be an undertaker from the age of seven. She’s amazingly focused. We both want to provide a service that matters enormously to people. So it’s important to us – all of it. After all, the man is dead.’
She sat down at the table, trying to think. Being dead meant something extra to Drew and Maggs – more than it meant to ordinary people. They concentrated on the body lying in a mortuary somewhere, awaiting disposal. They imagined the various forms the funeral might take, the priorities of the family in the matter of the coffin and final resting place. To them, the matter was unfinished until after the funeral.
‘But I don’t understand why you should care about how he died,’ she said out loud. ‘What difference can that make to your side of things?’
He blinked, as if rousing himself from some complicated thinking of his own. ‘Because it goes against the grain to arrange a funeral under the instructions of somebody who might have murdered the deceased. It leaves you feeling soiled and implicated. So I need to be sure of the full story.’
‘OK, I can understand that. But you’re not going to be doing this funeral, are you?’
‘Aren’t I?’ he said with a twinkle. ‘What makes you think that?’
Everything changed from that moment on. There was a purpose and a feeling of certainty. But still the logistics presented difficulties. Thea reminded Drew about the council meeting the following day. ‘Surely you’re planning to be there?’ she said. ‘Does that mean you’ll drive home now and back tomorrow morning? Isn’t that rather silly?’
‘It was the idea, yes. Lots of people drive a hundred miles a day. The more you do it, the shorter it seems.’
‘Won’t Maggs disapprove? I thought she was all for reducing carbon emissions and avoiding global warming.’
‘She’s having rather a crisis of conscience over all that. She thinks it might be slightly hysterical, given the fact that most parts of the world have cooled in the past ten years.’
This came as news to Thea. ‘Have they? Surely not.’ She realised she had
not given climate change a single thought for months. It had slipped out of the headlines some time ago.
‘So she believes. But she would probably disapprove anyway of me driving back and forth. She likes me where she can see me.’
Thea giggled.
But Drew made no move to gather his offspring and leave. They were contentedly settled in front of the television, showing no desire to head for home. ‘I suppose …’ he began tentatively, ‘we could try and find a B&B. There must be dozens within a few miles of here.’
‘Don’t be stupid. If you’re staying, then I can find space for you here. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time.’
‘It would with the kids. There can’t be enough beds for all of us.’
‘Oh, there are plenty of beds. And it’s a warm night. You won’t need much in the way of blankets.’
‘But they’ll miss school. They’ll be blacklisted for unauthorised absence. It stays in their files for life.’
‘So?’
‘So it’s probably just what they’ll need on their CVs. Shows a spirit of adventure or something. I can’t help hoping that that will be viewed positively in the future, unlike nowadays.’
‘Indeed,’ she agreed heartily. ‘But it might be tricky tomorrow, having them in tow. I’m telling you now I’m not going to mind them for you while you have all the fun.’
‘Maybe we could infiltrate them into the local school for a morning and hope nobody notices.’
‘Right. Brilliant idea. We can’t leave them in the car because it’ll get too hot, although I think we’d get into worse trouble if we left Hepzie to die of heatstroke.’
‘We’ll just lock them in the attic here with some colouring books and a cup of water.’
‘Let’s sleep on it. Something might turn up.’
They arranged the beds with a sense of mischief at making free with the Hollywell rooms. Drawing the line at using Harriet’s own bed, that left a spare room with twin beds for the children, and a massive four-poster in another spare room for Drew. ‘Why does she have so many rooms all ready for visitors?’ Drew wondered. ‘Clean sheets, no dust or fluff, everything a guest could wish for. Does she run the place as a B&B, do you think?’