A Cotswold Killing

by Rebecca Tope

  The Reynoldses’ field was about nine acres in area, the garden almost another acre. There was dense hedge around three sides of the property, and somewhat scrubby woodland adjacent to the fourth, which marked the eastern boundary. This woodland lay the other side of the brook, which in places cut a ravine at least ten feet deep. A sturdy fence barred the way to any man or beast bold enough to scramble down into the brook and up the other side. ‘The locals call this a dingle,’ Clive Reynolds had said. ‘But I think that’s over-stating the case, myself.’

  Dingle or not, it was pretty, with trees growing down to the water’s edge. In a corner of the field the ground flattened out, offering Clive the opportunity to create the small pool he’d shown Thea the day before. Wild violets and bluebells grew vigorously in the hedgerows, along with white blossoms on blackthorn bushes.

  Thea walked slowly down the wooded side, peering into the brook from time to time. Hepzibah zig-zagged across the field, following multifarious scents, enjoying the freedom. They had left the unambitious labradors in the garden, as Clive Reynolds had ordained. ‘They’re not too keen on long walks,’ he’d said. ‘Just leave them to potter about round the house and garden.’

  The clouds had lifted and thinned, giving way to a gauzy covering that allowed warmer air through. Birds sang.

  She reached the corner, where the watering hole was. The sheep clearly didn’t use it much, as there were few footprints in the soft ground. Only the imprint of two human feet were visible, aligned neatly side by side and parallel. ‘Must be where Clive stood yesterday, when he showed me around,’ she muttered, somehow not quite believing it. She didn’t think they had gone so close to the water – and if those were Clive’s footprints, then where were her own?

  It seemed almost an answer to her question when something bobbed in the water a few feet away that, when she looked, turned out to be the sole of a Wellington boot. How uncharacteristically untidy, she thought, before taking a closer look.

  The boot was not upended, but lying nearly horizontal in the water. A lateral-growing bramble obscured her view, and she moved sideways to see better. There was something else sticking out of the water, a couple of feet away from the boot. Something brown and sodden.

  The whole picture hit her in a rush. Once recognised, it burnt itself into her mind, like a brand. It was a human body, half submerged in the pool, wearing boots, and with the cloth-covered buttocks partly out of the water. The torso was wedged under another lateral bush, impeding the flow of the brook as it came down the side of the field. The head was invisible, the water opaque. Everything was in shadow, with a large ivy-covered tree cutting out the light. Thea stepped into the pool, intending to drag the thing out, but, feeling her boots sink into soft mud and finding the body far too heavy, she panicked. Water came over the tops of her boots, she slithered helplessly, and ended up sitting beside the body in twelve inches of very cold water.

  Frantically she pushed herself backwards onto the comparative security of the not quite so muddy field. Where was the dog?

  Useless thing – shouldn’t it have known there was a dead body here, just by its sense of smell?

  She sat there for a moment, wiping her hands on the scanty grass, trying to think. It was a man, drowned in the little pool. He hadn’t been there yesterday, and it was unthinkable that he had got there by accident. It had, she decided with some reluctance, almost certainly been his dying scream she had heard in the night, and failed utterly to respond to.

  Her clothes stuck to her disgustingly when she stood up and tried to run back to the house. Her feet squelched in the water-logged boots. The dog ran round her, thinking it was a game. The back door was still locked, so she had to circle the house and go in through the front, left irresponsibly on the latch. For a moment, she had no idea where the telephone was. The hall was quite narrow and L-shaped. Kitchen, living room, dining room and study all opened from it. After a few seconds’ thought, Thea moved heavily to the study, leaving wet footprints and muddy drips on the beige carpet. In the study, on a very nice antique desk, sat a telephone, which also served as a fax machine. She remembered, belatedly, that there was also a normal instrument attached to the wall in the kitchen.

  No time to change her mind, she decided, simultaneously aware that time no longer mattered to the body in the pool.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The police – two male uniformed officers – asked her to show them the body, and whether she had any idea what had happened, or who the man was, as they stood on the edge of the pool assessing the situation. Nobody moved to lift the body clear, once it was established that there was no prospect of saving his life. ‘Didn’t you try to lift his head free?’ one of them asked Thea.

  ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘He was obviously dead already, and I couldn’t get a proper foothold. He seems very tightly wedged under there.’

  ‘Do you know who it is?’

  ‘No, of course not. His face is under water. I’m a stranger here. I don’t know anybody.’ Her voice was rising, and she was still in her wet clothes.

  ‘Hmm,’ they said.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve messed up a piece of evidence,’ she confessed, looking at the ground. ‘There were footprints here, but I think I sat on them.’

  ‘Probably belonging to the deceased,’ one man said.

  ‘Mmmm.’ Thea tried to offload the niggles she felt about the matter. If the police weren’t bothered, then why should she be? But she couldn’t resist a close examination of the pool’s edge, which only confirmed that she had indeed obliterated the marks she had seen in the mud.

  ‘Well, leave it to us, Madam,’ she was dismissed. ‘We’ll come and talk to you later. You go and get yourself into some dry clothes. But keep the ones you’re wearing to one side, if you don’t mind. We might want to examine them.’

  Thea shivered. Did they think she’d drowned the wretched man?

  They let her walk unaccompanied back to the house, speaking urgently into their phones, waving their arms about, and gingerly stepping into the pool. The sheep watched from the top end of the field, and Hepzibah ran sniffing to and fro until Thea called her in.

  Vehicles began to arrive, and Thea was required to direct them before getting a chance to change her clothes. They drove through the gate from the yard into the field, having got out to test the feasibility of this. ‘You might not be able to get all the way,’ Thea warned them. ‘It’s rather soft at the bottom. And can you keep the gate closed? The sheep’ll escape otherwise.’ She wondered whether she ought to try to pen the animals into a shed or barn, out of the way, but when no objections were made to her orders concerning the gate, she abandoned the idea.

  From the house, she could not see much. She assumed they were examining the whole surrounding area before removing the body from the pool. They seemed to take hours over it, and Thea was dismayed at the mess they were making of Clive Reynolds’ field.

  And not just the field. After a time, men in white coveralls started crawling over the garden, too. Thea felt invaded and powerless. It was like a scene from a film, the uniforms sinister and inhuman. People who dressed like that became robotic, following orders and trampling sensibilities. They might seize her dog, wreck Jennifer’s borders, or accuse her of cold-blooded murder.

  She didn’t quite know why she did it, but something prompted her to seek out the switch for the water pump, in the utility room at the back of the house. The noise of the constant running water had irritated her earlier in the day when she exercised the dogs, and somehow she assumed it would interrupt and distract the search for clues. She found a likely-looking switch, in the on position, and reversed it. Then she went to the front door to listen. All was blessedly quiet. It occurred to her that she might enjoy better quality sleep if she left it off for the duration of her stay.

  Neighbours materialised – if neighbours was the right word. Only three other dwellings were closer in proximity than half a mile, and yet there were soon nine or ten people gathered
in the road outside Brook View’s wide-open gate. Most of them seemed to have come on foot. Thea, finally changed into clean trousers and a fleecy sweatshirt, stood uncomfortably on the gravel near the front door and foolishly scanned the crowd for a familiar face, feeling at bay.

  The stares directed at her did not look friendly. Nobody tried to speak to her. They seemed content to wait out there until the facts of the matter became apparent. Nobody ventured through the gate, or showed any signs of impatience.

  It gradually dawned on Thea that their behaviour was strange. Why were they not more curious? More surprised? It was as if they’d slipped into a routine that had taken place before. They knew already how to behave. She could almost believe she heard the word again muttered amongst them. It wasn’t absolutely obvious what was going on in the Brook View field, but Thea supposed that anybody could have made a pretty good stab at guessing. Four vehicles had grouped together towards the end of the field, invisible from the road. Another arrived as the people stood there – a Renault Espace, containing two men in suits. Thea waited for them to turn in through the gate, and bent down to speak to the driver.

  ‘They’re down there,’ she pointed. ‘I’ll open the gate for you.’

  That done, she walked down to the front gate. ‘Hello,’ she said, addressing a middle-aged woman wearing a Barbour jacket. ‘I’m Thea Osborne. I’m house-sitting for the Reynoldses. I hadn’t bargained for anything like this.’ And she forced a silly laugh.

  ‘Like what?’ said the woman.

  ‘Well – somebody’s died down there.’

  Another woman snorted. ‘Course they did. That’s the undertaker’s van, come to remove the corpse.’

  ‘Looks as if he drowned,’ said Thea, wondering if it mattered what she said, but too anxious to make human contact to care.

  Nobody responded to that, apart from a gentle collective sigh that seemed to pass through the group like a melancholy breeze.

  ‘We know who you are, anyway,’ said the first woman. ‘Clive told us you’d be here.’ She didn’t meet Thea’s eye, but fixed her gaze on the yard and the field beyond. Thea felt sidelined.

  ‘I suppose we’ll have to contact them. They’ll be on their ship by now, probably. I’ve got all the numbers and everything.’

  ‘You leave them,’ said a younger man with dark curly hair and a London accent. ‘They’ve deserved this holiday. No use bringing them back.’

  ‘It won’t be up to us, Martin,’ the Barbour woman said. ‘It’ll be completely out of our hands. Clive and Jennifer were here until yesterday, so the police probably will want to speak to them.’

  Thea didn’t like the sound of this. ‘Oh, I can settle that,’ she blurted. ‘I mean – I know there was nothing in the pool yesterday, just before the Reynoldses left. Anyway,’ she announced without thinking, ‘I heard it happen. In the night.’ Too late, she realised her folly. The briefly gratifying flare of attention from everybody within earshot was followed by acute self-reproach. The scream in the night was bound to be vital information, best confined to the ears of the police. Had one of these people been responsible for the death? Was she endangering herself by her careless honesty? Anything seemed possible at this juncture. She forced a giggle. ‘At least, I thought I did,’ she added.

  Another silence met this shift of position, and she scanned the group, registering each face in turn, still hoping for some sign of friendship or concern. She found a pleasant-looking older man, sporting a grey beard; a woman standing close to the man previously addressed as Martin, who seemed impatient, clapping her hands together; a tall younger woman with a woolly hat pulled down low over hair that was apparently bright red; two further middle-aged women with old-fashioned perms and handbags; a teenaged boy leaning on a bicycle; and a pale-faced girl of about twenty, who frowned her bewilderment at being involved in such strange events.

  The bearded man approached the girl, and put a gentle hand on her arm. ‘Monique – you shouldn’t be here. Martin, take her back.’

  ‘Hang on a bit, Harry,’ said the Londoner. ‘I want to hear what’s been going on. Susanna can do it, if she’s going in a minute. Monique’s all right, anyhow.’

  The young woman with the woolly hat turned her head slowly to give Martin a thoughtful look. ‘Fine by me,’ she nodded. ‘I’ve seen enough here.’ She held out a hand to usher the girl away, pausing to nod at the Barbour-jacketed woman.

  ‘Thanks,’ Martin said. Then he added, ‘Paolo’s probably up by now – he’ll watch out for her.’

  The woman beside him drew closer, as if needing some comfort. Without looking at her, he threw an arm around her shoulder. Thea noted this public display of couplehood, in her efforts to fix the whole group in her memory. There were some moments of silence, during which the boy on the bike gave up the vigil and set off down the lane with a few preliminary wobbles. ‘Careful, Johnny!’ called one of the handbag ladies.

  The bearded man swung his arms a few times, and then said to the group in general, ‘I think I’ll be off, if that’s all right?’

  Nobody answered, and he walked away, presumably to a car parked out of sight.

  Mumbling some excuse about the dogs, Thea retreated to the house, and paced the hall, biting at her damaged finger. She had no idea what would happen next: would she be sent home almost before the job had begun? Would she have to make a statement at the police station? Could she have saved the man if she’d gone rushing out in the night, when she heard that dreadful scream?

  It seemed an age before the procession of vehicles began to leave the field, presumably conveying the body to the mortuary, and the scraps of evidence, photographs, observations all packed up for forensic analysis. She went outside again, to watch them go, noting that all but three of the onlookers had dispersed. Two uniformed officers were walking across the gravel towards her. Time at last for her interview, she guessed.

  Before escorting the policemen into the house, Thea saw the man called Martin step forward to obstruct the passage of one of the police cars. He bent down to speak to the driver through the window. ‘Can you tell us who it was?’ he asked, speaking loudly as if his was the voice of the whole assembled throng.

  ‘Looks like Joel,’ came the reply. ‘Have to get identification, of course. But it’s no secret – Joel Jennison’s gone and got himself killed.’

  Thea felt ridiculously upset. The only person to have spoken to her since she arrived, and he had to go and die on her. She took it personally; all the more so because she had lain there in bed, ignoring his scream while he was dying. She was criminally at fault, and everybody in the village would know it, thanks to her thoughtless remark. With a sensation of confessing to a piece of culpable negligence, she told the story to the policemen.

  ‘And what time would this have been?’ asked one.

  ‘Three forty-five,’ she said. ‘Or a few minutes before that.’

  ‘You were afraid to go and see what had made the noise, is that right?’

  She hesitated. How simple it would be just to agree with this explanation. Women were cowards, everybody knew that. Nobody would blame her for cowering nervously under the bedclothes, in a strange house, all alone.

  ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘It was more that I didn’t think I’d find anything. And, quite frankly, I doubt if I would have gone right to the corner of the field in the pitch dark. I don’t know the layout properly, and would really not have known where to look. But now, of course, I wish I had.’ She smiled wanly at them. ‘Poor man.’

  ‘You didn’t know him, I take it?’

  ‘Well, funnily enough, he came to see me yesterday. He’s the only person locally who I had met. He seemed very pleasant.’

  ‘He came to see you?’

  ‘Yes. Five minutes after the Reynoldses left. He was just being friendly, introducing himself.’ She sighed. ‘I feel as if I’ve walked into something very unpleasant.’

  ‘More than you know,’ agreed the policeman who’d done most of the talking,
earning himself a tap on the wrist from his colleague and a frowned instruction to hold his tongue.

  ‘He didn’t drown himself, did he?’ Thea ventured. ‘Not if that scream was really him. Somebody pushed him in and held him down in the water. Horrible.’ She shuddered.

  ‘We can’t say,’ said the quieter policeman. ‘Now, would you give us the contact numbers for Mr and Mrs Reynolds, please.’

  ‘Are you going to bring them home?’ She didn’t know whether she wanted a yes or a no to that. It would be frustrating to be sent packing now, leaving everything in such turmoil, forever wondering exactly what had happened and why. On the other hand, she couldn’t pretend to like Brook View and its environs very much, on first impressions. It seemed cold and strange. And a sudden death during her first night was hardly an auspicious beginning.

  ‘That won’t be up to us,’ he said.

  Thea watched them leave, and then went into the house. One vehicle remained, and white-coated officers still moved like ghosts around the garden and field, scanning the ground at their feet. The sky had grown cloudy and she was alarmed to discover that it was already half past two. She must have missed any number of instructions since the morning. If nothing else, she was supposed to take the labradors for a stroll to the end of the garden and back. If interested, you might throw them a ball or a stick. Whose interest, she wondered, was hypothecated? Hers or the dogs’?

  She was also hungry. Plans to make herself a good lunch of ham and salad, ready provided in the Reynoldses’ fridge, went by the board. Instead she cut two slices of bread and made a ham sandwich, eating it standing up, restlessly moving around the kitchen.

  Could the local people really be as unwelcoming as they seemed? Were they perhaps merely stunned and concerned by what had happened? Could be if she made the first approach, things would be different. What had Clive said? Do go and call on Helen, he’d suggested with a wave towards the top of the hill. Right, then. That’s exactly what she would do.