by Rebecca Tope
‘We find out who really did kill Mr Maynard.’
‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ I frowned into my pint glass. ‘And how do you suggest we do it?’
‘I have no idea,’ she said.
We were still giggling when the sound of raised voices from inside the pub alerted us to something going on. Two men were arguing vociferously, it seemed, the noise they made jarring on the quiet respectable village pub. I doubted they had much trouble, even on Friday nights, with drunken yobs and their graceless girlfriends. On a Thursday lunchtime it had to be dramatically unusual.
‘What’s going on?’ wondered Thea superfluously.
One of the voices had an accent I had heard in the last few days, exaggerated by the evident anger behind it. ‘That’s Oliver Talbot!’ I said. ‘I’d better go and see.’ In my mind, Mr Talbot was a client, somebody I had provided a service for. Whatever might have happened subsequently to put me and him on an antagonistic footing, I still felt an instinctive loyalty to him.
I hurried to the back door and peered in. Two men were standing in classic aggressive postures, jaws thrust forward, eyes bulging. Oliver Talbot was almost unrecognisable from the quiet detached husband I had hitherto known. He held a glass beer tankard in one hand, the contents slopping as he brandished it at the other man. He, too, I had met before, but it took me a few moments to fix a name to him. Ingram! This was the male half of the Ingram couple, who had been at Mrs Simmonds’ funeral, briefly introduced to me, but paying little part in any of the proceedings. I forgot his first name, but recalled his wife was Miriam Ingram, a name I had repeated to myself as worthy of attention for its pleasing rhyme. I had intended to share it with Maggs at some point.
‘What the bloody hell d’ye mean by it?’ Talbot was snarling. ‘Just ye tell me that, and make it quick.’
The barmaid was a slender colourless creature, cringing nervously under the shelf of wine glasses. Where was Barbara Windsor when you needed her, I wondered? She would never have stood for such a breach of the rules.
Ingram was not to be intimidated. Both hands clenched, he stood his ground. ‘I mean what I say,’ he shouted. ‘Don’t you bully me. I’ll say it again, for the world to hear.’ He raised his head, as if addressing a large crowd. ‘Your family never did right by Greta. Nor by your own children. Always Charles, and never the other two. We all saw it, time and time again. Greta knew she was sick, we all knew it around here, but you never came near. Thinking you’d get the house for that son of yours, after he’d driven his poor wife half crazy. It’s true, every word of it, and it’s time somebody told it to you straight.’
I sensed Thea at my shoulder, but did not turn around. From my very limited experience, I fancied there was no real danger of violence. Two middle-aged men, with perhaps a pint or two of beer inside them, might bluster and shout, but they were very unlikely to actually hit solid living flesh. Except, I remembered, somebody had done just that, only a few days earlier, when Gavin Maynard was killed. I watched more closely, hoping to detect the crazed expression of a violent murderer in one or other of these men.
‘Just mind yer own bloody business,’ Oliver Talbot growled, already subsiding. ‘You mind what you say about things you dinna understand. I could have ye for slander.’ He looked round at the other people in the bar. They totalled five, including me, Thea and the barmaid. The other two were a young couple with rucksacks who were plainly every bit as terrified as the barmaid was. Oliver recognised me with obvious shock. I spread my hands to indicate that I was there by sheer unlucky accident, and had no comment to make on what I’d heard.
Ingram was left with his dignity likewise in tatters. ‘Well, you look to your family for a change,’ he grumbled. ‘There’s plenty that’s wrong at home, without you interfering in matters you’d be better leaving alone. Helena Maynard is none of your business, and she wants nothing to do with you. You made a big mistake creeping back here, trying to bully her the way you did. She’s in no fit state to talk to you, and you should know that.’
‘And what’s it to you?’
‘She’s a friend, always has been. She’s been looking to me for protection – and I’ve no intention of letting her down.’ His voice was rising again, and the fists danced in front of his chest.
‘All right, all right.’ The Scotsman was backing away, the tankard slammed down on the bar. ‘I get it.’ He attempted a sly grin, the innuendo so grotesque that in Ingram’s place I might have wanted to hit him myself. ‘I’m to stay clear of Helena, because she’s your property. Now I have it.’
I braced, waiting for the punch to land, but instead, Ingram merely sneered and turned away. ‘You don’t deserve that family, you bastard,’ he said loudly. ‘Every one of them’s too good for you, and that includes your bloody Charles.’
Carefully, I steered Thea back out to our garden table. ‘Phew!’ she said melodramatically, when we were sitting down again. ‘That was exciting.’
‘Did you see Talbot’s face when he saw me?’ I mused. ‘He was horrified.’
‘Didn’t want you to see him behaving so badly. Loss of self-respect,’ she nodded. ‘That was what defused the whole thing. Lucky you were there.’
‘And you. He wouldn’t want you thinking badly of him, either.’
‘Phooey. I’m just a house-sitter. He doesn’t care what I think.’
‘But what was it all about? Ingram must have said something awful about the Talbot family. And Mrs Maynard – where does she fit in?’
‘It sounded as if Mr Talbot came back here, wanting to pick her brains about the mystery of the deeds or mortgage or whatever it is she knows about Mrs Simmonds’ house. You can see why it would matter to him, if he thought she could straighten it out. And Mr Ingram’s her self-appointed defender, for whatever reason, and took umbrage at her being questioned in her fragile condition.’
The summary was clear, complete and rather amusing. I smiled cheerfully. ‘You’d make a brilliant barrister,’ I said. ‘Cutting right to the heart of things.’
‘I thought barristers specialised in obfuscation, actually,’ she demurred.
I smiled again. ‘Maybe they do. Anyway, it did look as if they’d both touched raw nerves. Talbot’s a lousy father, and Ingram’s got inappropriate designs on Mrs Maynard.’
Thea’s eyes widened. ‘And if he’s been carrying on with her, he might well not be too upset if her husband got himself bumped off.’
Carrying on? Bumped off? If not Enid Blyton, then something not much more sophisticated was directing her vocabulary. I suddenly wanted her to be a lot more serious. The whole thing mattered very much more than her attitude acknowledged. This was a woman who had just been passionately denouncing the surveillance society, after all. Surely the deliberate killing of one human being by another warranted at least as much mature consideration as that?
She saw my expression, and quickly sobered. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘That sounded flippant, didn’t it? But it wasn’t meant to. I mean…it’s not a light thing to accuse a man of murder, even if he isn’t here to hear me. That must be why I lapsed into Biggles-speak.’
I was thoroughly disarmed. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘So what do we do now?’
‘We’ll have to think about that,’ she said. ‘But first we need another drink.’
Chapter Fifteen
It was a very weird feeling, being under police suspicion and yet free to roam the country lanes of Gloucestershire as much as I liked. Even more strange was being allowed to remain in the company of Thea Osborne. Somehow I would expect us to be kept separate, with injunctions slapped onto us to stay at least a mile apart. Did the police not realise what dynamite she was? Not only her passionate adherence to the cause of civil rights, but her past record for interfering in murder investigations might have alerted them. Over the course of that Thursday afternoon, she treated me to detailed descriptions of the experiences she had had as a house-sitter and girlfriend of a senior police detective, and I began to learn what sor
t of person she was.
‘I think it’s mainly nosiness,’ she admitted. ‘Curiosity about the things people do, and why.’
‘Sounds more like a sort of commitment,’ I corrected her slowly. ‘You can’t just walk by on the other side and leave it to somebody else.’
‘That’s true, I suppose. But there’s no virtue in it. I can be pretty nasty at times, actually.’
‘So can anybody. It’s not human to be sweetness and light the whole time.’
She shook her head. ‘I won’t forgive myself for the way I was with Phil, when he hurt his back in Temple Guiting. Poor man – it wasn’t his fault at all, and I gave him hell for it. And I can be horribly abrupt with my mother, as well.’
I resisted the natural urge to reassure her. Perhaps she had been unkind to the boyfriend. So what? Looking at her, and remembering what I’d experienced of her in the past few days, I knew she was essentially decent and straight. This confession of her faults made me uneasy, venturing onto territory that was just a bit too personal. Besides – I had a confession of my own as yet unmade. I had said nothing to her about my inheritance of Mrs Simmonds’ house, persuading myself that there had been no opportunity. First her rant about the state of the nation, then the fight between the men in the bar. Now was the moment, but I couldn’t bring myself to voice it. It was too starkly suggestive of my guilt; it raised suspicions even in my own mind, which was crazy, but true. Gavin Maynard had threatened to scupper a promising potential business, and wouldn’t anyone be tempted to silence him for ever, in those circumstances? I had often seen the awkward embarrassment that new legacies could produce in people – the sense of undeserved largesse that changed a whole range of delicate interpersonal balances. Now I was feeling it for myself. At some irrational level I was ashamed of the inheritance, worried that I had inadvertently given Greta Simmonds grounds to regard me as a rightful heir in more senses than one.
So instead I invited Thea to carry on describing some of her earlier house-sitting adventures. She readily complied, treating me to anecdotes that were exciting, funny, and sometimes almost incredible. Cold Aston, Duntisbourne Abbots, Blockley – she reeled off the names of villages, most of which I had never heard before. The stories were all very different, and she had worked out plausible reasons why each killing had taken place where and when it had, but the fact remained that she had found herself in the centre of some dangerous and unpleasant events.
Finally, light dawned. ‘I get it,’ I announced. ‘The police have deliberately let us loose in the hope that we will solve this case for them. They know what you’re capable of and they think you’ll do it again.’
‘That would mean they don’t really believe you’re guilty,’ she demurred.
‘Maybe they don’t. Maybe it’s all part of a devilishly clever plot.’
‘Too clever,’ she said. ‘And it isn’t the way they work. They’re probably just waiting for you to make a wrong move.’
‘Well, I won’t,’ I said. ‘And don’t think I’ve forgotten that I owe you for driving me about, and being so nice about everything.’
She shrugged disarmingly. ‘Think nothing of it,’ she said.
This pleasantly prolonged conversation took place as once again we walked the village environs with the dog. We turned sharply left, past the locked Quaker meeting house and onto a footpath that led to Chipping Campden. The sun had come out and the wind had finally dropped, but it was not at all warm. I could feel my nose turning red with cold and wished I had thought to bring a scarf with me. When my mobile tinkled in my pocket, it brought a startling reminder of the wider world when it turned out to be a very upsetting phone call from Maggs. She had tried several times already, only to find my phone unreachable. ‘Does the name Kaplinsky ring any bells?’ she began in a deceptively sweet voice.
It took me a moment, and then – ‘Oh, my God! It’s Thursday, isn’t it? I said I’d meet her at the hospice. I forgot all about it. Ohh!’ I grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled it hard.
‘You didn’t write it down,’ she accused. ‘I could easily have gone.’
It was the stuff of nightmares, guilt the most crippling of emotions. ‘Can’t you go now?’ I begged.
‘She doesn’t want me. She doesn’t want either of us. She’s been completely let down.’
It was the ultimate sin to be unreliable if you were an undertaker. There are no second chances. At least with a wedding that goes horribly wrong, you can do it again. Mr Kaplinsky could die at any moment, without having his last wishes recorded. ‘Ohh,’ I wailed again. ‘I’ll phone her.’
‘Leave it until tomorrow,’ Maggs ordered me. ‘She’s too angry now to want to listen to you. So am I, actually.’
The loss of Maggs’s respect was not to be contemplated. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am. It’s this bloody business here, sent everything else out of my head.’
‘I realise that, Drew. But you can’t afford to just forget your obligations. Too many livelihoods depend on it.’
She often addressed me as if she were a schoolmistress and I a disappointing pupil, but there was generally a jokey edge to it. Not this time. Miserably, I apologised again, and ended the call.
Thea had heard it all. ‘Problems?’ she asked gently.
I told her the whole story. ‘It’s unforgivable,’ I concluded. ‘That poor woman.’
‘Well, it’s not beyond salvation,’ she judged. ‘He can still have the funeral he wants. You missed an appointment, that’s all. Phone tomorrow and tell them you’ll reduce the costs and give them the sunniest spot in your burial ground. That should mollify them.’
I stared at her, my heart lifting. How was it possible to assuage my self-disgust so quickly? ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I feel better already.’
She smiled girlishly. ‘It’s what I’m good at,’ she admitted. ‘Putting things into perspective.’
‘Well, it’s a great gift,’ I said, somehow feeling she’d helped me to get away with something – that I had escaped punishment that was due to me. She spent a few minutes reminding me about her past encounters with murder, as if to show me how serious life could get. Not that she said anything that really outweighed my transgression, but at least it was a distraction.
Then I began to worry about where I would spend the night. ‘Technically, I suppose I could claim the right to stay in Mrs Simmonds’ house,’ I said, without thinking.
She looked at me, eyes wide. ‘Say that again.’
‘The police told me this morning. She left it to me in her will,’ I muttered. ‘But I don’t expect I’ll get it, and I can hardly pretend it’s actually mine for ages yet. What about you? Are you going back to Witney?’
‘Wait!’ she held up a hand. ‘Don’t let’s change the subject. This is a serious development. Why on earth didn’t you tell me right away?’
I tried not to wriggle or look sheepish, with not much success. ‘I didn’t know what you’d think.’
‘I think,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘that it would be a great motive for the Talbots to murder you, but I can’t see how it links to Mr Maynard. Except there’s something we still haven’t grasped about Mrs M and ownership of the house. Something she knows about, that wouldn’t be good news for the Talbot family.’ She lifted her chin triumphantly. ‘I know! Greta must have told her she was leaving the house to you. That’ll be it. And she’ll have told Gavin, and he’ll have thought it was the worst idea he’d ever heard and gone out of his way to prevent it.’
‘And so I had to kill him to protect my inheritance,’ I supplied. ‘Right. That’s what everybody’s going to think.’
‘So we have to prove them wrong,’ she asserted stoutly.
Speaking to Maggs had activated my conscience to a painful extent. I had deserted my post as undertaker, husband and father. I was having a pleasant time in the thoroughly gorgeous Cotswolds, with a very nice woman. I might be in trouble with the police, but for the moment, it felt as if I was playing hookey while other p
eople shouldered my rightful responsibilities.
‘I don’t see how we can,’ I said. ‘And for the moment I need to settle the question of where to sleep.’
‘I should go home, I suppose,’ she said, without enthusiasm. The dog, forever at her side, gave her a slow wag, as if expressing an opinion on the matter – though I couldn’t tell where its preference lay. ‘But then you’d be stranded. I brought you here – by rights I should take you back again.’
‘Not at all,’ I assured her. ‘I can get a bus or train or something. Besides, we don’t know when I’ll be allowed to go. I have to check in with the police again tomorrow. Actually, they probably want to know where I’m staying tonight. I’m out on bail, remember. I’m surprised they didn’t put one of those electronic tag things on me.’
We had turned round after my phone call, and were walking down the uneventful street of Broad Campden, and it was approaching half past three in the afternoon. The gardens were full of cheerful daffodils and little blue things. Almost no traffic passed by.
Thea didn’t respond to my comment about tagging. Instead, she directed my attention to our surroundings, pointing out footpaths that ran in various directions, to Chipping Campden one way and Blockley another. I asked a bit more about the Arts and Crafts business and she rattled off some stories about artists and others who had lived in the village a century ago. Only slowly did I begin to wonder whether she was merely keeping me company out of pity for my situation, thinking I’d be hopelessly bored on my own. If so, she was right – I would. But I could hardly expect her to give up days of her own life simply to entertain me.
Nonetheless, she appeared perfectly happy to remain at my side. ‘Mrs Maynard would be a useful person to speak to,’ she mused. ‘But we can hardly just walk up to her front door and demand an interview.’
‘We don’t even know where she lives.’
‘We could find out.’
I stared at her. ‘No,’ I said at last. ‘It wouldn’t be right. Besides, she hates me. She more or less said so when she phoned me on Monday.’