by Rebecca Tope
Helen, it turned out, lived on a very tidy little farm with four large horses in the roadside field. They looked like Arabs to Thea’s uncertain eye. She walked up the drive with Hepzie on the lead and admired the property before her.
The house was at the yellower end of the Cotswold spectrum, with a pale grey tiled roof and three proud dormer windows, leading Thea to visualise the attic rooms inside, no doubt of interesting shapes, the ceiling sloping down to the low window. Such rooms were the stuff of children’s stories, the windowsills often at the exact height for a child to curl up comfortably and look out on the world. There was something old fashioned and safe and magical about Helen’s house. There had been no name on the gate, nor any she could see attached to the house. No need, she assumed. Everybody would know it without a label.
A sturdy porch shielded the front door, and a low stone wall separated the small front garden from the farmyard. Aubretia was just coming into flower along the top of the wall, and an ancient stone trough was filled with tulips and hyacinths almost at the end of their blooming.
A casual inspection would conclude that this was a house at least two hundred years old, on a working farm, unchanged for generations. A closer look would reveal the absence of muck and mud; the manicured garden; the large new Subaru parked in the open end of a barn where a tractor ought to be. This place had been gentrified, with a vengeance. No milking cows or pigs or noisy roosters here. Just very expensive horses, perhaps some undemanding sheep and a few distant fields rented out for pasture. The man of the house probably worked as a software consultant, the woman, if she worked at all, would be a designer of some sort.
Thea blinked rapidly, thinking herself into the appropriate frame of mind to deal with the people she expected to encounter. Then she activated the clanger of the large bell suspended from the porch. It made a pleasingly loud noise.
A woman opened the door, instantly identified as the one with the Barbour jacket in the road outside Brook View’s gate earlier in the day. ‘Oh!’ said Thea. ‘It’s you!’
The woman smiled, a genuine friendly smile, and held out her hand. ‘Helen Winstanley,’ she said. ‘Do come in. And bring that dear little dog.’
CHAPTER FOUR
The lounge appeared to be newly decorated in a calming dove grey with pink woodwork. The Chinese carpet was blue and grey and white. The furniture was shiny and did not look very comfortable. ‘Try this one,’ said Helen Winstanley, patting an armchair. ‘It’s better than it looks.’ She didn’t even glance at Hepzibah, as the spaniel crossed the expensive carpet and flopped down on a pristine sheepskin rug in front of the empty grate.
‘Tea?’ she asked in the next breath. Thea thanked her, wondering whether a maid would bring it. It was the sort of lounge that would be nicely set off by a maid.
Instead, the woman disappeared, saying she wouldn’t be long. Thea remained in the chair, feeling no compulsion to explore or even to read the spines of a shelf of books beside the fireplace. She was much too weary and emotional for that.
It was the smile that did it, she decided. Until then, she’d been braced for a cool reception, rehearsing how she would explain herself. The amicable manner of her temporary neighbour had disarmed her, and suddenly the events of the day caught up with her.
‘So, you must be feeling you got more than you bargained for,’ Helen said, having returned with a tea tray and poured out two cups. ‘It must be utterly bewildering.’
‘Unreal,’ Thea admitted.
‘Somebody’s been very clever with the timing, that’s for sure.’ When Thea didn’t immediately answer, Helen gave her a straight look. ‘Don’t you think?’ she prompted.
‘That poor man. He seemed really nice.’
‘You met him?’ The question came fast and sharp, as if a different person had spoken.
‘Yesterday. He knocked on the door only a few minutes after the Reynoldses left. Came to introduce himself, he said.’
‘Did he indeed?’ Helen proffered a cup of tea, and as Thea went to take it with her left hand, she accidentally stubbed her sore finger on the saucer. ‘Ooh!’ she moaned, snatching it back. Her hostess almost dropped the whole thing.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘My finger.’
‘Let’s see.’ The woman took Thea’s hand without further permission. A pair of spectacles dangled round her neck on a gold chain, and she fitted them onto her nose before examining the finger. ‘It’s right in the nailbed,’ she said. ‘I can see something black. Look – there’s something in it.’
Thea pulled away, but didn’t break the connection entirely. ‘I don’t think there is,’ she said. ‘That’s where I stuck a needle down it. It’s left that mark.’
The air seemed to grow colder around them. Helen tightened her hold on Thea’s hand. ‘That’s a new one,’ she said. ‘Inventive.’
Thea smiled. ‘What is it with you, then?’
‘Feet, mainly. Stones in shoes.’
Thea gave a sympathetic moan. ‘What happened?’
Helen shrugged. ‘Daughter. Drugs. In and out of our lives, never knowing what to expect next.’ Thea could feel the tears gathering, the throat thickening.
‘My God.’
‘And you?’
‘Husband. Died a year ago. It’s getting a bit better. I suppose.’
Mutually, they agreed to leave it there. After all, the whole point of hurting yourself was to distract from the deeper pain. If you talked about it, that negated the exercise. The surprise was in finding a fellow sufferer so easily. Thea had not expected that.
‘Clive Reynolds suggested I come to see you,’ she said. ‘I’d never have known anybody lived up here otherwise.’
‘He wanted me to do what you’re doing. I nearly said I would, until I began to realise just what was involved. I hope he’s paying you well – it can’t be easy.’
‘It’s all right. Or would have been without a body in the brook. You came down to see,’ she almost accused.
‘That’s right, I did. Virginia in the village phoned me, and said something was going on. I think she phoned most of the people who were there.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s the sort of thing she’d do. Makes her feel important, I guess.’
Thea reminded herself that this was a small village, where the fate of one of its inhabitants impacted significantly on everybody else.
‘Can you tell me who all the people were?’ she asked. ‘I’ve got their faces etched on my mind.’
‘Why bother? You won’t see many of them again.’
‘I might. And I’m curious. The nice-looking man with the beard, for instance.’
‘Harry. He’s a widower.’ Helen seemed to have a sudden thought. ‘I should phone him. He’d gone before they said it was Joel, hadn’t he?’
‘Yes, I think so. Why do you need to phone him?’
‘He’s Joel’s uncle. I ought to be sure he knows.’
‘He didn’t suspect, then?’
‘Probably he did, yes. Nobody said anything, but I guess we all knew who it was likely to be.’
Thea felt giddy with the threads of local history that she couldn’t hope to grasp. ‘Well, just tell me who the others were. The two women with the perms?’
‘Virginia and Penny. They’re neighbours. Stalwarts of the village; WI, Parish Council, that sort of thing. They run the gossip network.’
Thea moved to the front window. ‘Hence the phonecall, I presume. Can you see Brook View from here?’
‘Not quite. But I can see a stretch of road, look, just beyond the house.’
‘The girl with the woolly hat?’
‘Susanna. She probably came with Martin and Isabel. She works at their place on a Sunday, quite often.’
‘Monique?’
Helen’s face closed, as if swept by a thick curtain. ‘Just a foreign student. Staying with the Staceys.’
‘The Staceys being Martin and Isabel? The chap with the London accent?’
‘Right. They’re your next neighbours down the road. Fairweather Farm.’
‘That’s everybody then, I think. Except the boy on the bike.’
‘Johnny Baker. I doubt if you’ll see him again, either. He’s Virginia’s boy, actually. Her youngest.’
‘Goodness. She looked too old.’
‘She’s younger than she looks. About fifty-five, I suppose. Johnny’s fourteen.’
Thea shrugged, accepting that the family histories of the villagers would never really matter to her. ‘Well, thanks for explaining,’ she said.
‘It must be strange, walking into something like this. Aren’t you scared?’ Helen examined her with blatant curiosity.
‘Not really. Put it down to lack of imagination.’
Turning the conversation to Helen, Thea discovered that James Winstanley was away, appearing as Guest Speaker at a Conference in Beijing. ‘Something to do with the internet,’ she added, confirming Thea’s original guess as to his line of work.
‘When did he leave?’ Thea asked, aiming for casual interest, rather than a clumsy attempt at establishing the man’s alibi. After all, the police were presumably going to be asking the same thing.
Helen was not deceived. ‘He actually left quite late yesterday. His flight was supposed to go at eight this morning, so he spent the night in a hotel near the airport. And yes, I spoke to him last night and everything was going according to plan.’
‘You don’t know if the flight took off on time then?’
Helen cocked her head slightly to one side. ‘I don’t keep close tabs on him. He travels all the time. I lose track of where he’s meant to be.’
Helen’s own work, when she described it, sounded equally irregular and unpredictable. ‘Oh, I do all sorts of things,’ she said, with an airy flip of the hand. ‘Never did decide what I wanted to be when I grew up.’
She freely disclosed that she and James had lived in this house for eight years. Their daughter had been eleven, and due to start secondary school. Thea was tempted to ask more about the unnamed daughter, but was somehow diverted to her own Jessica, of whom she indulged in some boasting.
‘And you like it here, do you?’ she asked, after a short lull.
‘Love it. Honestly – it suits me perfectly. I always felt embarrassed at having money while still being a bit unambitious in my tastes.’
Thea gave a snort, half sceptical, half sympathetic. ‘That’s not how most people would regard living here.’
Helen grimaced. ‘That’s probably true. I blame the City fatcats and their seven-figure bonuses. They’re wrecking it for everybody else, buying five-bedroom country cottages and only coming down one weekend a month, to make sure the security systems are working. I’m here full-time, I haven’t got a security system worth the name, and I don’t shop in supermarkets.’
‘You’re a freak,’ Thea laughed, sensing they were creeping closer to the real reason for Helen living where she did. Not the friendly people or the Cotswold stone, but the essential Englishness of the area, was what appealed. There were few places left that could claim the same amalgam of unself-conscious qualities which went back to Roman times and had not changed much since. Thea herself could recognise it when she saw it, but would have been hard pressed to articulate it. Something stoical and judgmental of perceived weakness in others; values which placed a premium on ancient skills such as stonework and preparing good food. An automatic respect for the law, which was provoked to rage when these laws were manifestly unjust. People who felt most comfortable with a strong leader, and who became insecure when expected to work out their own destinies.
‘Are you very friendly with the Reynoldses?’
‘Not terribly. They don’t socialise particularly. You could say we share a basic outlook on life, I suppose. But I can tell you that they won’t be too keen to come home early. Jennifer’s been looking forward to this trip for more than a year. She takes it as her hard-earned compensation for a very gruelling time.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well, it can’t hurt to tell you, I suppose. You’re not likely to gossip, are you? You see, Clive had been having an affair with some woman he worked with, apparently for ages and ages. Jennifer never suspected anything – didn’t want to see what was under her nose, probably. Then it all blew up, around Easter last year, and she had a breakdown. It was quite dramatic: she went wandering round the lanes at night, sobbing and swearing. She came all the way up here, more than once. Totally out of her mind, for a bit, poor thing.’
‘Another one for the club, then,’ Thea murmured, hardly aware that she’d spoken out loud.
‘You might say that,’ Helen nodded quickly. ‘Anyway, Clive got her into some smart psychiatric place, dropped the other woman, and became Jennifer’s abject slave.’
‘Did that work?’ Thea was sceptical. ‘Did the other woman move away?’
‘It all seemed to settle down well enough. I never knew who the other woman was, to be honest. They managed to keep everything quite discreet, as far as I’m aware.’
‘So that’s the lowdown on the Reynoldses. Poor things. It sounds like a rocky time for them.’
‘These things happen. Jennifer came to me for a couple of heart-to-hearts, and each time she was feeling much better than the last. I think they’ve been more or less back to normal for the past three or four months. Since Christmas, I suppose.’
‘Have they got any children?’ Thea mentally scanned the walls and shelves in Brook View, and failed to recall any family photographs or evidence of grandchildren.
‘Two boys. One’s in the airforce, and one emigrated to Canada. Neither’s married, but the Canadian one has a long-term girlfriend. They don’t come visiting much.’ Helen’s gaze became unfocused for a moment. ‘You might say they were the lucky ones,’ she mumbled.
Thea remembered the errant daughter, and said nothing, until she also remembered the sick-looking youngsters on the footpath that morning.
‘Is there some sort of hospital around here? Clinic, or something?’ she asked.
‘What? No, of course not. What makes you ask that?’
Thea explained about her encounter.
‘Oh, they’ll be from Fairweather. Martin’s got a big herb-growing operation there, and employs loads of casual workers. Mostly students. They all look half dead, don’t you find?’
Thea thought of her robust daughter, and mentally disagreed. But there didn’t seem any grounds for arguing, so she kept silent. It was, in any case, definitely time to go. Hepzibah, who had been peacefully enjoying the sheepskin, stood up, almost before Thea had thought the thought. It was wonderful to have such a telepathic dog. It made a person feel cherished and attended to, twenty-four hours a day.
‘Are you going to be all right?’ Helen asked her, with seeming sincerity. ‘All alone in that house, knowing somebody’s just died outside?’
‘The house is like Fort Knox,’ Thea said. ‘And I can’t imagine there’ll be a repeat of last night. I always think the safest place to be is where some big disaster has just happened.’
That was when Helen dropped the bombshell. ‘Then you don’t know?’ she said. ‘Nobody’s told you that there was another death in that field, two months ago?’
Thea let Hepzie run free on the way home, risking the occasional car passing them on the road. The dog was obedient enough for it to be a very minimal risk, and the grass verge was wide enough most of the way for her to run safely off the tarmac. It was much easier to think if you didn’t have an eager spaniel pulling you along.
The story Helen had told was a simple one. On February 22nd, in the early morning, the Reynoldses had been awoken by the sound of a gunshot outside. Clive, it seemed, had dashed fearlessly outside in pyjamas and bare feet, managing to catch a glimpse of a figure running across the field and pushing though the hedge between the Brook View field and the one to the west of it. The odd burrowing action necessary to penetrate a hedge which was demonstrably sheep-proof had been the most vi
vid part of the tale.
‘But who was it that was killed?’ Thea demanded.
‘Paul Jennison. Joel’s older brother,’ Helen replied with a sombre face, before continuing with her account.
Fibres had been retrieved, footprints preserved. The gun had been Paul’s own, and only his fingerprints were on it. Many people queried Clive’s testimony and asserted it must have been suicide. But forensic work demonstrated that the angle and distances were entirely incompatible with self-annihilation. This left a broad spectrum of hypotheses, ranging from his having put the gun down for some reason, during which careless moment his attacker stole up and snatched it, to his willingly handing it over to someone he knew and trusted.
‘My God! Then it must be some sort of family feud? Surely that much is obvious now that Joel’s been killed. And there must be some pretty strong suspicions as to who’s doing it? Surely there must be…’
Helen shook her head firmly. ‘I don’t think so. The Jennisons have been perfectly ordinary farmers here for forty years or more. They’ve never upset anybody, never had any scandal attaching to them. It’s an absolute mystery.’
Thea had smiled her scepticism. ‘Well, that can’t be true,’ she said. ‘I mean, the bit about them never upsetting anybody. It sounds to me as if somebody is very upset indeed.’
Now, walking past the entrance to Barrow Hill, her thoughts turned to the poor old man, bereft of both his sons. It was too much to contemplate, the double grief, the sense of victimisation he must be feeling. Almost, she turned into the farm track, wanting to go and offer some solace, some word of human sympathy. But she didn’t. She’d never met the man. He might be crazed, or sedated. Joel’s doorstep promise of ready hospitality from a man who ‘liked visitors’ was quite irrelevant now. How might he react if a strange woman showed up, claiming to have heard his dead son’s final despairing scream?