A Grave in the Cotswolds

by Rebecca Tope

  I have also learnt that Greta did indeed leave her house to you, which I knew she was considering, and which I think is a sign that she must have lost her mind. I am sure that if she had lived a little longer, she would have seen sense and altered her will again.

  But it is my poor innocent husband that is obviously uppermost in my mind. I feel sure he was killed because of his attitude towards Greta’s grave. There can be no other reason. He lived a quiet and blameless life. People liked him. He was very much at the centre of the church, and he took great care to abide by its teachings. If it was you who killed him, I hope your conscience will never be easy again. I hope you will never have peace as long as you live. I have never cursed anybody before, but I believe this is what is needed now. Perhaps you will be clever enough to evade the punishment due to you – you certainly deceived poor Greta into trusting you – but in your own heart you know the truth, and I truly hope that it will always haunt you.

  Helena Maynard

  I was rocked by the force of it. The folly of spending the night in the cottage with Thea hit me powerfully. That had been a huge mistake, and I had known it, even at the time. The Watchetts must have spread the word up and down the high street on Friday morning, perhaps even contacting Mrs Maynard directly to give her the news. The police might well have shared the fact of my arrest with the local newspaper, making it common knowledge in the whole area. The furious widow must have written the letter sometime on Friday, catching the Saturday post. I tried to imagine the gossip, the anger at my apparent freedom to get on with my business and the insensitivity of my taking up with the pretty house-sitter in such a public fashion. Was Thea the object of similar opprobrium, I wondered?

  I had to talk to someone – but not the someone who was at that very moment walking up to my office door. Maggs was definitely not the right person this time, which in itself was cause for acute regret. She had always been my sidekick, my reassurance and support through the dark times three years ago. Now, because of the fact of Thea Osborne, I could not share anything with my faithful colleague. My technical innocence would not be enough for Maggs: she could see through to my core and knew what was in my heart. She would fight for Karen and the children, as any woman would. It was the right and natural line to take. I took it myself. But I knew I would be unable to tell the whole story about Mr Maynard and Mrs Simmonds and the Talbots and Ingrams and Watchetts and the way the police regarded me, without putting Thea at the centre of it all. After all, Maggs already knew the basics – that the police needed my help because I could have been the last person to see the murder victim alive. She knew I was under suspicion, but not that I’d been charged for the crime myself. If I revealed the letter from the vindictive widow, I would have to explain a great deal more than that.

  I shoved the letter into my pocket and adopted a harassed expression as she opened the door. Before she could speak, I waved at the paper on the board. ‘Two reasons to go to the hospice,’ I said. ‘I thought you might do them later today.’

  She blinked and I noticed she looked somewhat subdued. Her nose seemed swollen and her eyes narrower than usual. ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked belatedly.

  ‘Just a cold,’ she said thickly. ‘Came on late on Friday and I’ve been getting worse ever since. My whole head feels stuffed with compost. A lot of it keeps coming out of my nose. It’s disgusting.’

  ‘You poor thing,’ I said, thinking she would be deeply unwelcome at the hospice in that condition. ‘Where did you catch it?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ she said crossly. ‘What does that matter?’

  ‘Has Den got it?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not yet. He didn’t think I should come to work, but it’s boring just staying at home.’

  ‘At least the weather’s quite nice,’ I said fatuously.

  She gurgled an inarticulate sound full of phlegm and self-pity. I tried to think of an easy task I could give her, but none came to mind. We were both accustomed to long days in which there was little to do but extract weeds from the paths between the graves, or prune some of the rose bushes that had been planted by grieving relatives. We would hypothesise about parallel businesses we could run in all the spare time we had, but nothing ever came to fruition.

  I got up and walked around the room, aware of feeling trapped by this new development. I had somehow believed I could return to the Cotswolds whenever I wanted, because Maggs could handle everything for me. Now, if she was ill, I would have to do it all myself. ‘I suppose I’d better go, then,’ I said. ‘To the hospice, I mean.’

  ‘Mrs Kaplinsky forgave you?’ she said, reading the paper on the corkboard. ‘Wow.’

  ‘I know. I expect it was all thanks to you.’

  ‘And who’s this other person? Sarah Williams?’

  ‘Someone who’s fading fast, apparently. Maybe she’s been talking to the Kaplinskys. Anyway, they both want to see me, preferably today.’

  ‘One in the eye for the opposition,’ she smiled. We both enjoyed stealing business from the mainstream undertakers in town. They were inclined to become altogether too complacent, if given half a chance.

  ‘You’d better go home,’ I worried. ‘You’re really not well.’

  ‘I’m all right. It’s only a cold. I’ll stay out in the sunshine and do the nature cure.’

  ‘You’re a marvel,’ I said, for probably the eight hundredth time. Maggs was a marvel. Everybody knew that. But she had left me with no choice but to visit the hospice myself, removing any possibility of heading back to Broad Campden to remonstrate with Mrs Maynard.

  Because, I realised, this was definitely what I wanted to do. I wanted to meet her face-to-face and persuade her that I had nothing to do with the killing of her husband. I wanted to stand up to this angry woman and put myself on the same side in the effort to find who did kill him. I also wanted to quash the rumours about me and Thea, if possible. Neither task would be easy, and if I was caught up with arranging funerals and handling the business single-handed, I’d have no chance of even making a start.

  Breathing deeply, trying to remain calm, I began to organise the day in my mind. Working for a large busy undertaker had taught me the necessity of a firm schedule. Despite the absence of many acute pressures, such as having to arrive at a crematorium at the precise right moment, it was still incumbent upon me to do what I’d agreed to do, and be where I’d agreed to be. The lapse on Thursday, forgetting all about the Kaplinskys, was unforgivable and must never ever be repeated.

  ‘Karen’s got the car this morning, but I’ll go straight after lunch,’ I said. ‘Whatever happens.’

  ‘What’s going to happen?’ wondered Maggs innocently. Something in her look made me feel very lonely.

  The drive to the hospice gave me time to think without fear of disturbance. The mobile was turned off, so even if the police wanted me, they’d have to wait an hour or two. A good portion of my thinking revolved around what I knew and guessed about their investigations. Now that they had charged me, in the belief that there was enough evidence to make a case against me, they would be working hard to establish that case. They would have questioned Mr Maynard’s neighbours and work colleagues, and most of the local population, to discover his connection with my activities. They would have appealed for witnesses in the crucial period on Saturday. They would interview anyone who knew him and trawl through all his recent encounters with members of the public. They would read his private papers and examine his computer. His life would be peeled bare, his hobbies and habits all examined. And they would do all they could forensically, too. In theory there was no escape any longer for a killer. Everybody shed DNA and fibres everywhere they went. However, on a windy day in a damp little clearing, finding such evidence was never going to be easy. Besides, all those tests cost a great deal of money, and were therefore employed with some caution. Defence lawyers would cast doubt on apparently solid findings, speaking of contamination and misguided conclusions. I knew, from direct personal experience, ho
w facts did not always support what they appeared to support. Even police investigators sometimes saw what they expected to see, and not what truly lay behind the evidence.

  Like me and Mr Maynard. If traces from my person were discovered on his person, this would be because I had indeed met him that day. I had Officer Jessica to endorse the time and the place where this had happened. Beyond that, it was nothing more than circumstantial. I had gone for a walk and made phone calls from a spot quite near where he had been killed, soon after having a heated argument with him. It was enough to persuade the Crown Prosecution Service to send me to trial for the deliberate killing of the man from the council – unless new evidence materialised to exonerate me, or incriminate somebody else.

  I tried to convince myself that our visit to the co-housing place had thrown up enough new information to warrant a closer analysis. I needed to sit down with Thea and talk it through. She and I should be drawing up flow charts, listing connections and questions and making logical deductions. If the police could do it, so could we. Nothing was worse than simply pretending to myself that it would all come right in the end, that I could not possibly find myself in court on a charge of murder. As I understood it, I was already well along the road to that very situation. But I also had a job to do, and while I was free, I had no choice but to get on and do it.

  I conducted my interviews at the hospice with all due sensitivity, threaded with the businesslike approach that the dying patients expected. Other people were there to provide sympathy and pain relief and counselling. My role was to take down their wishes and assure them that it would happen just as they envisaged. I was in the same category as a solicitor would have been, and to waste time with expressions of regret at their plight would not be welcomed. Indeed, I liked to think that most people found it refreshing to be treated as a client with ordinary needs, instead of in some uniquely special situation simply because their time on earth was coming to an end. Mr Kaplinsky was initially scratchy because of my failings the previous week, and I readily agreed with him that I had let him down and did not entirely deserve the second chance. But he had heard about Peaceful Repose, and despite some misgivings about the name, which he characterised as ‘slushy’, he had chosen to have himself buried there. ‘If I can’t be taken home to the fields of Poland, then this will do almost as well,’ he said. On questioning, it turned out that he had in fact been born in Wiltshire, so to refer to Poland as home was more wistful sentiment than anything real. He had visited his parents’ one-time native village in his youth, and dreamt of it ever since.

  But he signed his contract with me, and selected a mountain ash tree as his grave marker, and I left him relatively contented, or so I hoped.

  Sarah Williams was fifty-nine, and dying rapidly of pancreatic cancer. She had an irritable manner, born of the pain that could not be completely kept at bay, as well as the necessity of ‘putting her affairs in order’ as she phrased it with some irony. ‘I get so dreadfully restless,’ she complained. ‘I don’t want to be in here at all, to be honest, but there isn’t anyone at home willing to put up with me, so there it is.’ She gave me a look that I had seen before – bewilderment overlaid with a kind of bravado. By definition, those dying individuals I encountered had come as close as possible to an acceptance of their fate. But at some level, they passionately wished they had not been forced to do so. The self-awareness of human beings was a recognised curse – why couldn’t we be like animals, and have the whole business left obscure?

  But, as always, I liked and respected the two new future inmates of the burial ground behind my house, and went home well satisfied with the service I had provided for them.

  There was a message on my mobile when I turned it on again – which I did before driving home. It was breathless and excited. ‘Drew? Sorry to bother you, but I think you’ll be contacted again by the police today. Maybe you have been already? It’s Mrs Maynard – she’s causing a lot of trouble, and not just for you. Half the village has got involved, apparently. I can’t tell you all of it in a message. Call me back when you get this.’ She hadn’t bothered to say who she was – there was no need for that.

  I wanted to phone her right away, but restrained myself. First I should get back and see if there was anything else waiting for my attention. Karen, the children and Maggs all had every right to assume that I would be there when required. Thea Osborne had no such right, and despite my earlier desire to confront Helena Maynard, yet another trek to Broad Campden was both impractical and frightening.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Everything at home was deceptively calm when I drove in through our gate and parked the car. The westering sun was throwing shadows across the burial field, the different little trees at various stages of growth marking the graves that had been created so far. Officially, it was possible to accommodate almost a thousand burials to an acre, but I had opted for a more spacious allocation, aiming at less than half that density. With ten acres at my disposal, I expected the space to last until I retired, even if that wasn’t until I was eighty. I paused, as I often did, to admire and relish the haven of natural restfulness that I had brought into existence.

  Karen met me at the door. ‘Maggs has gone home,’ she said. ‘The poor thing could hardly breathe. She probably won’t come in tomorrow.’

  Flickering apprehensions assailed me. I was going to need Maggs by Wednesday – perhaps sooner, if Thea’s message was as urgent as it sounded. ‘She’ll soon shake it off,’ I said optimistically. ‘Did she get any calls while I was out?’

  Karen looked uncertain. ‘I didn’t hear anything,’ she said. Knowing how vague my wife could be, Maggs would have been sure to flag up anything that required my attention. So far, so good, I thought.

  ‘Well, I’m desperate for some tea,’ I said brightly. ‘Have the kids been good?’

  ‘Steph won’t take her new shoes off, and Timmy brought four books home from the library. I tried to tell him he was only allowed two, but the stupid woman there told him he could have six. I said six was too many so we split the difference.’

  ‘We should be glad he likes reading,’ I said.

  ‘I suppose so. I don’t expect it’ll last. It’s a novelty, that’s all.’

  For a teacher, Karen had often seemed surprisingly uncommitted to the virtues of literature. I still clung to the idea that books were desirable for their own sake, though could not have formed a particularly effective argument to support my position.

  ‘Let me just put these notes away, then,’ I said, flapping the folder containing the new customer details, ‘and I’ll be with you in ten minutes.’

  I had not quite reached the office door when the police car arrived. I turned to meet it, feeling resigned and not at all surprised. It was not unlike those split seconds before a car crash, when all resistance is gone, and you simply await your fate with no emotion at all.

  It was a uniformed officer I hadn’t seen before. ‘Mr Slocombe?’ he asked, with a serious expression.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘We’ve had a call from Gloucestershire, wanting us to escort you there as soon as possible.’

  ‘Escort?’ Yet again, the logistics took prime place in my thoughts.

  ‘We’ll take you,’ he clarified.

  ‘Right.’ That was an improvement on the previous occasion, I supposed, despite the implication that I was an unreliable criminal who needed to be kept under supervision. Already the nervousness implicit in the situation was abating. I had been arrested and questioned before – I knew what it felt like. And Thea’s phone message had already alerted me to the probability of a return to Broad Campden. The working day was almost ended anyway, and although I was permanently on call, the needs of my business were slipping rapidly down the list of priorities.

  Karen and the children were a different matter altogether. ‘I’ll have to go and speak to my wife,’ I said.

  ‘Five minutes, sir.’ The urgency was unsettling, but I assured myself that nothing t
oo dreadful could happen if I delayed by a few extra minutes.

  ‘I have to go in here first,’ I said, indicating the office. ‘Then I’ll tell my wife, and get a bag of things, if that’s allowed.’

  ‘Quick as you can, then,’ he encouraged.

  As we sped up the M5, me in the back seat behind two police officers, I tried to stay abreast of probable developments. Mrs Talbot, friend, no doubt, of Mrs Maynard, had perhaps made some sort of complaint or demand that had, in Thea’s words, caused a lot of trouble. My immediate assumption was that Jeremy had reported seeing us at the community farm, and that had led to some sort of unfortunate interpretation on his mother’s part. The Talbots had no cause to like me, once they realised that I had snatched their inheritance from beneath their noses. The police already believed that the legacy proved me guilty in some way – although it was still far from clear how that linked with the killing of Mr Maynard. Thea and I had incriminated ourselves in the village, and produced the dreadful letter from Helena Maynard – which I still had in my pocket, I suddenly realised.

  So far, so predictable. Things continued to make a kind of sense that I found reassuring. The worst thing was sudden surprises, new facts or accusations that came out of the blue and rendered logical thought impossible. The news of my inheritance had been just such a bombshell. Seeing Jeremy at the farm was another, though a lesser one.

  We arrived in Broad Campden at about six, with the sun almost set, and the temperature quite chilly. I took close note of our route, and understood that we were going to the small field where Mrs Simmonds was buried. The associations that came with this realisation were more alarming than my conscious mind could explain. I found myself reliving my earlier journey to meet Mr Maynard at this very spot, and my shock at hearing that the field had not been Mrs Simmonds’ legitimate property.