A Cotswold Killing

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Just me and the dog,’ she nodded. It had felt like a perfectly benign question.

  All the time, she was examining his face, waiting for some explanation as to why he was there. He looked to be in his middle thirties, hair growing thickly on top, cut short at the sides. Clean-shaven, blue eyes, reasonably tall. His hand, playing with the dog, was narrow with long fingers. ‘Are you their gardener or something?’ she asked, when she could bear the uncertainty no longer.

  ‘Gardener?’ He stared at her. ‘No, of course I’m not the gardener. I’m Joel Jennison. I’m from the farm across the lane.’ He waved an arm in the general direction of the roadway behind him. ‘Barrow Hill, it’s called. I’m a neighbour. Gardener!’ he repeated the word with scorn.

  Thea did not apologise. It seemed a perfectly reasonable mistake to have made. But it was nonetheless embarrassing, if only because she no longer knew where to place him. English society persisted in pigeonholing people according to accent, income, education and connections. And clothes. If Joel Jennison had wanted her to place him accurately, he should have put on a clean sports jacket and cord trousers before coming to the door.

  She managed a half-shrug, a kink at the side of her mouth, to indicate confusion, but said nothing more. Bonzo, the older labrador, lost interest and trudged heavily back into the house, head and tail slung low.

  ‘I thought I should come and say we’re just over there if you need anything,’ the farmer blurted. ‘I expect you’ll be all right – those daft sheep have all lambed by now, and been wormed. But one thing I need to tell you is that the shearer’s coming on the 10th, and it’s usual for the Reynoldses to send theirs over to be done at the same time. Did they mention that?’

  The 10th of May seemed a long way off, and Thea filed it in a deep mental recess. She was still struggling with the man’s accent.

  ‘Not that I recall,’ she answered to his question. ‘It might be in the notes.’

  ‘Well, you won’t have to do anything much. We’ll come and fetch them, and bring them back again for you. Clive must have taken us for granted, as usual.’

  Thea said nothing. Hepzibah had pottered off across the sweeping lawn, and Thea rather fancied going with her on a detailed exploration.

  ‘Well, milking time,’ said Farmer Jennison. ‘Just thought I’d show my face. You’re welcome to come over for a cup of tea any time. My old dad lives with me, and he always likes a visitor. Best time is just after dinner. Two-ish.’

  Thea’s confusion deepened. He was shy, she realised. And single. And motherless. And busy. And against the docking of spaniels’ tails. ‘That’s really nice of you,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much. Let me get sorted out here for a few days, and maybe I’ll take you up on the offer sometime in the middle of the week. Should I have your phone number? Then I can call and make sure it isn’t a nuisance for you.’

  He laughed. ‘Don’t do that. Just take pot luck. Bye, then.’

  She watched him go, his walk unself-conscious in the cracked old boots. She wondered whether she would recognise him if she ever met him in Cheltenham, dressed in a suit and tie.

  She didn’t go back into the house, but followed Hepzie’s paw-steps over the lawn. Her instinctive eye for the history of a place revealed that the garden was not in fact of any great antiquity. Despite the beech trees, which were perhaps fifty years old, there was ample evidence that this garden had not long ago been part of a field. A lot of stonework and fencing had transformed it into classic rural grounds, closely resembling something from a television gardening programme. All the basic rules had been observed: frame the distant view; bring everything together with careful design; aim for variations in height to maintain interest. There were seats, pathways, pleasing curves and a riot of different botanical textures. The pond had a trickling water feature over artistically arranged rocks, which provided a constant background noise that Thea expected she would quickly grow accustomed to. We leave it on night and day, Clive had told her. Jennifer’s very insistent about that. He hadn’t even shown her where the switch was to turn it off.

  The only surprise was in the generous size of the lawn. Lawns were not fashionable these days, and there was no suggestion that the Reynoldeses had a number of ball-game-playing teenage sons.

  A wide five-barred wooden gate opened into the field containing the sheep, but this was not the favoured access. ‘We hardly ever use this one,’ Clive had said. Another similar gate led from the gravelled yard on the other side of the house. It was through this portal that Thea was to approach the sheep. A small barn stood close by, in which their winter fodder was stored.

  Clive had given extra verbal orders regarding gates and dogs. ‘We prefer the dogs not to go into the field together. There’s always a risk that they’ll run off and get into trouble with neighbouring farmers.

  ‘This time of year everybody’s very sensitive about lambs, and you can never completely trust two dogs out on their own.’ The written notes just said Exercise B. and G. in garden. Walks at your discretion, on leads.

  There had not, however, been any outright ban on using the garden gate, and Thea did so now, though minus the labradors. She and her own dog took a short stroll that way, admiring the bluebells growing in the copse on the other side of the brook, and listening to the piping song of a solitary starling perched in an alder. There was a buzzard mewing a field or two away. Everything seemed peaceful, the air mild and sweet-scented.

  ‘We’re going to like it here,’ Thea told the spaniel.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A page of instructions dealt with procedures for the end of the day. Check all electrical items unplugged was typical. Surely, Thea thought, nobody did that these days? There were circuit-breakers and fail-safe systems, which meant the house was protected against lightning strikes, or whatever it was Clive Reynolds was afraid of. Sitting at the kitchen table, the list in her hand, she came to a decision. She would not unplug everything unless there was reason to expect a thunderstorm.

  Make sure the road gate is closed and fastened. Test security lights when it gets dark. Bring flower tubs into conservatory if frost is forecast. Clearly she was going to have to pay close attention to the weather forecast every evening.

  The list was unflagging. Check that the sheds are both locked. Watch the dogs when you put them out, and be sure they’ve passed water. Close and fasten all downstairs windows. Only downstairs? How very sloppy. And there was much, much more.

  It all made her feel weak and irritated. Until then, she hadn’t thought of herself as idle or careless, but compared to Clive Reynolds she was a total slob. She had done almost none of these things before leaving her own house for three whole weeks. Well, she resolved, she was in charge now, and as long as everything was intact when their owners returned, they would never know how she’d achieved it. For a start, she had no intention of checking the stupid security lights.

  Even in a pruned form, the tasks took forty minutes. She missed the weather after the news on television, but a glance at the sky reassured her that there would be neither frost nor lightning. The dogs slumped uncomplainingly into their big plastic beds, lined with very clean blankets (Wash the dogs’ bedding every third day) and showed no sign of missing their people. Hepzibah watched Thea closely for clues as to her night-time fate. Sleeping on the bed was her most favoured option, but she would, if necessary, settle for a nest on the floor close by. Thea had carefully sidestepped the issue when granted permission to bring her own dog, and the Reynoldses had mercifully neglected to mention it. ‘As you’ve been such a good dog, I think we’ll smuggle you onto the bed,’ she said. ‘So long as you stay on your blanket.’

  The bed was comfortably soft, the room situated at the back of the house, on a corner, was neutrally furnished and decorated, with two casement windows overlooking the back garden and field. Before settling down, Thea threw one of the windows wide open, wondering whether the rising sun would waken her. As far as she could work out, it faced roughly north-
eastwards. At least there should be a fine dawn chorus, with so many places close by for birds to perch and sing. As she leant for a moment on the sill, she was very conscious of the water feature in the corner of the garden. The trickling waterfall, powered by electric pump, sounded loud in the still of the night. Thea worried that it might keep her awake, but her fears were unfounded. She dropped off within five minutes of switching out the light.

  Three distinct things woke her in the night. Firstly there was the recurrent throb of her finger. Before going to bed, she had probed it again, with a needle she’d brought with her in a small emergency sewing kit. Afterwards it was quite a lot more painful. In the night, with no distractions, it hurt more than ever. She indulged in a few habitual thoughts of Carl, who was dead. Forgetting Carl was not an option; neither was letting the anguish of losing him fade. Carl, who had been her mate, her comfort, her unquestioned permanent partner. Big and gentle and good and wise. The universe had never quite recovered from his loss. Secondly, Hepzie stirred two or three times, changing position, and pressing more closely against Thea, through the duvet. Giving the dog her own blanket, on top of the duvet, had been a mistake. It made Thea too hot. So she sat up and extracted it, throwing it on the floor. ‘We can wash the duvet cover,’ she said. ‘Which we’d have to do anyway, I suppose.’

  Thirdly, there was the scream from outside. A sudden rising human-sounding scream, so startling and incongruous that Thea could not quite believe she’d heard it, through the layers of sleep. She’d been dreaming about sheep, and a sudden surge of water and a gate that wouldn’t open. Downstairs, the labradors did not bark. Thea switched on the lamp beside the bed. Outside, after that single wrenching sound, there was silence, except for the constant splashy trickle of the garden waterfall. Hepzibah jumped off the bed and went to the window, standing on her hind legs, but still not tall enough to see out. She squeaked anxiously, but showed no sign of being able to hear or smell anything significant. Thea did not leap out of bed. She didn’t get up at all. She gazed at the open window, seeing nothing outside but dark grey sky, and re-ran the sound in her head, trying to persuade herself that it had been made by a rabbit or a bird. Her own semi-rural cottage was not immune to night-time slaughter, or the mating calls of foxes.

  They could often be quite alarming.

  But this had been different. This had penetrated more deeply, freezing her with fear. It had been something awful, unearthly. She should get up and do something about it. Even if she’d lived in the middle of cacophonous night-time Manhattan, she’d have surely felt compelled to investigate a sound like that.

  So why didn’t she at least lean out of the window and see if there was any suspicious movement? Or phone the police. Or send the dogs out to sniff around. Somebody out there was in severe distress. Probably in the field left under her charge. She was being paid to act responsibly and ensure that all was well.

  But there had been no further sound, apart from odd rustles and the burble of the water feature at the end of the garden. She had been asleep and might easily have mistaken some innocent wild animal for a human being. Perhaps, even, there was a local person of reduced capabilities, given to wandering at night and screaming. To make an outcry would be embarrassing, if this was so. There must be other houses and farms within earshot, anyway. Let somebody local take control.

  The time was three forty-five. The dead of night. Outdoors at such a time was an alien place. Whatever might be going on out there was part of a different sphere of existence. Besides, she’d obediently locked and barred the doors, set the burglar alarm, bedded the dogs – to try to unpick all that would probably trigger the alarm and lead to further humiliation. And besides again, the security lights hadn’t gone on. That clinched it. No burglar. Nothing untoward creeping up to the house – even foxes generally triggered the damned things.

  Finally, and selfishly, she concluded that she was safe and snug where she was. Whatever might have happened out there had happened, and by now there would probably be little help for it. Nobody was shouting for help, or screaming with pain. It had surely been an animal. Rabbits could shriek their heads off as the fox grabbed them. There might be badgers fighting amongst themselves, or one of the buzzards catching a shrew or some other protesting prey. It could, she concluded, be almost anything.

  So she invited the spaniel to jump back onto the bed, pulled up the duvet and quite quickly went back to sleep.

  It wasn’t so much that she forgot the events of the small hours when she woke at seven thirty – it was more that she had so many tasks to perform that there wasn’t time to think about it.

  Open front gate for postman. Make sure dogs go out, and reward them afterwards with small biscuit (top shelf, left hand cupboard – tin labelled markies). If dry, open windows. Thursdays, leave £10 in tin box to the right of the front door for the Veggie Box people. Outside, check sheep for problems. If sunny, open greenhouse vents. And so forth.

  However, by nine thirty, she had counted the sheep from the yard gate, since they were obligingly scattered over the upper part of the field; persuaded the unenthusiastic labradors to make a tour of the garden, and ticked off six further items on the list. For the moment, there seemed to be nothing more to do. She had the rest of the morning to herself.

  The day being dry, the obvious choice was to walk down the hill to the village. There was a public footpath covering the half-mile or so between Brook View and the centre of Duntisbourne Abbots, which Thea found to be maintained to near National Trust standards, as soon as she climbed the stile on the other side of the road from Brook View’s front gate. The walk took a leisurely fifteen minutes, Hepzibah running cheerfully along before her.

  The village buildings on the whole were modest in size, giving the sense of an old settlement surrounded by fertile hillsides. Every roadway leading to the village centre was steep and twisting, with no clear vistas. Most of the houses escaped being overlooked by any of the others, producing a sense of solitude and secrecy that felt strange in the middle of a village. The morning was cool and cloudy and the only sign of life was the aural evidence of a Sunday service going on inside the church. The organ played and snatches of thin human voices drifted through the air. Four or five cars were parked near the lychgate, suggesting an influx of churchgoers from the surrounding countryside.

  The church itself – a broader building than the usual simple design – boasted an inviting graveyard, surrounded by stone cottages; a bigger house looked down from a slight elevation, and the roadsides were already getting shaggy with spring growth.

  Fastening a lead to Hepzie’s collar, Thea walked past the church and along a road that could possibly claim to be the main village street, wondering whether she was going to encounter any inhabitants. A door banged shut somewhere, and a baby cried briefly. A dog barked and a car approached. Still there was no sign of a human being, no pub or shop or post office. The village hall was a small old stone structure, which could well have been a tiny local school originally. The whole place was beautiful, timeless and secretive. A well known name on the tourist circuit, featured on toffee tins and jigsaws, epitomising rural England, it seemed to be turning its back firmly on Thea’s intrusion. With a sense of desolation, she turned round and started back the way she’d come. At least Joel Jennison had welcomed her, she consoled herself.

  On the path, about halfway along, she encountered a young couple, and found herself staring eagerly at their faces. They seemed to be about twenty, a boy and a girl, walking side by side, but not touching. Both were taller than average, and thin, but not alike in any other ways. The girl had light brown hair, round shoulders and blemished skin. The boy’s eyes were sunken, his cheeks hollow. Neither appeared to enjoy a healthy diet or much fresh air.

  ‘Morning,’ said Thea, and Hepzie ran up to them, performing her usual ecstatic wagging dance around them. The boy bent down to pat her, but the girl shrank away.

  ‘Hi,’ muttered the boy. The girl said nothing. Thea was past
them before she had a chance to say more, besides which they had not appeared to be in a talkative frame of mind.

  A shadow seemed to attach itself to her, as a result of the encounter. Her own daughter was of a similar age to this couple, which perhaps made her all the more interested in them. But none of her daughter’s friends had this look of sickness about them; this air of debility. Perhaps there was some sort of convalescent home close by, or even a hospice. She wondered, uneasily, whether the pair had AIDS.

  By a predictable chain of reasoning, her mind returned to the scream in the night. It was disgracefully remiss of her not to have gone out and investigated it, at first light if not when she heard it. She ought to do a careful circuit of the Reynoldses’ acres, just in case something lay dying on a fence or in a gin trap, or…or what? She could imagine nothing that would continue to cause genuine concern by daylight. Whatever it was would have long ago disappeared from sight. All the same, if she made her patrol, and found nothing, she would know not to worry if the same thing happened again. Just another night-time noise, she’d be able to tell herself comfortably.

  Thea was not a nervous person. On a practical level she had found several positive aspects to living alone. The logic was simple: If I can survive Carl’s dying, then I must be able to survive anything was the gist of it. She worried about the inevitable day when Hepzibah would die – but in the nature of things that was ten or more years off, and easily deferred as a cause of concern. She trembled for the safety of her daughter, now and then, but Jessica was robust and never seemed to get into serious difficulties. A final year student at Durham, she already had a job to go to in September – fast tracking up the ladder of the Police Force, earnestly encouraged by her delighted uncle. Then, Thea suspected, the worries would really begin.

  She did not fear for her own safety. Forty-two might not be any age these days but she believed the best was already behind her. Nothing could ever be as carefree and contented as the years with Carl had been, even if she hadn’t quite understood that at the time. Now there wasn’t much left to lose, and if she could finish each day with a small mental sigh of satisfaction, that was the best she could ask of life.