A Cotswold Killing

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘I didn’t cope brilliantly,’ said Thea. ‘I fell apart. That’s what it was like – a string puppet with all the cords severed. Arms, legs, head all lying on the floor in a jumble. I was, to be honest, wrecked by it. The sheer bloody pain of it.’

  ‘Pain?’

  ‘You didn’t get the pain?’

  June shook her head, screwing up her mouth in a mock wince. ‘Not that I remember. It was definitely a huge surprise. I’d never dreamt he’d get himself murdered. And I missed him, as a presence. As somebody to talk to. I kept starting to ask him something, and he wasn’t there. Still do it, now and then. But not pain, no. Sorry.’

  Thea changed tack. ‘So what about ghosts? Do you think they do happen?’

  June shook her head again and rubbed a knuckle into a corner of an eye, like a child. ‘I can’t explain,’ she said. ‘It isn’t a yes/no sort of thing. I just felt that if there was something to learn, this would be the best night for it.’

  ‘Maybe the killer will return to the scene of the crime,’ suggested Thea, again feeling inappropriately flippant.

  ‘Maybe he will.’

  The Hock was girlishly sweet, making Thea feel unsophisticated and therefore almost embarrassed. You weren’t supposed to enjoy such stuff. June showed no such qualms, holding out her glass for more, and asking worriedly whether there was another bottle.

  ‘Were you at school with Helen Winstanley as well?’ Thea asked.

  ‘Helen is a good ten years older than me,’ said June, with a severe look. ‘Don’t be silly. Anyway, she’s an incomer. I hardly know her at all.’

  ‘The Staceys?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Anything about them.’

  ‘They grow herbs, mostly. Very labour intensive. Always youngsters there, working for a few weeks then off again. Isabel does the paperwork, I think. Martin’s away a lot – meeting buyers and stuff, presumably. He goes to London, off down the M4, like most other people round here.’

  With a sense of irresponsibility, born no doubt of the wine, Thea asked, ‘Is there anything between Helen and Martin?’

  June’s face seemed to lengthen with stunned surprise. ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘Oh, well – she just seems to spend quite a bit of time there.’

  ‘That’s because they’re in partnership, you idiot.’

  ‘Partnership? What sort of partnership?’

  June looked at her suspiciously, for signs of teasing. ‘The herb farm, of course. It went through a bad patch a few years ago, and Helen baled them out. She needed an interest, and she’s stuck with it. It’s doing all right again now. There’s some gossip about them expanding.’

  ‘What sort of herbs?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. You name it, they grow it.’

  ‘Have they got glasshouses or polytunnels and all that? A packing shed? I haven’t noticed anything like that.’

  ‘Not glasshouses, but just about everything else. It’s on the far side of the house from here, with an entrance on the other road. They had a monumental job getting permission for it all. The villagers went bonkers about it. Now, of course, nobody turns a hair. It doesn’t affect them much at all. Lindy was telling me the locals are all quite happy about it now. Martin’s in favour with everybody again, for some reason.’

  ‘Don’t they even object to the lorries? Surely there’s a lot of traffic connected with something like that?’

  ‘Actually, there aren’t many, as far as I can see. A lot of it gets sent in boxes in the post. Dried stuff – seeds, I suppose. One of the supermarkets was taking plants in pots for a while. Tarragon and sage and basil. Hundreds at a time. But you can get a lot of little herb pots onto one lorry. The truth is, it doesn’t impinge on the village at all.’

  ‘What about James?’ Thea suddenly thought to ask. ‘Helen’s husband.’

  June laughed. ‘What about him?’ It was beginning to feel like a party game.

  ‘Is he involved? Was it really his money that went into the herbs? What does he think about it all?’

  ‘James Winstanley is not a man to express his feelings carelessly,’ said June, her tone betraying a degree of inebriation. ‘James Winstanley is a stuffed shirt, a blithering bore, a bloodless buffoon. He should have been smothered at birth. He’s a waste of space. We do not like James Winstanley, Mrs Osborne. Please remember that.’

  ‘Right. I think I’ve got that. Does Helen feel that way about him, as well?’

  ‘Obviously. Doesn’t it show? Poor cow loathes his guts.’

  ‘It’s beginning to seem as if happy marriages are somewhat thin on the ground round here.’

  ‘You can say that again. Can’t think of a single one.’

  ‘Not even you and Paul?’

  ‘Not even me and Paul,’ said June Jennison.

  Somehow it was astonishingly midnight and June was still there.

  Two empty wine bottles stood on the stone hearth, where the spaniel lay, enjoying the long evening of company and generous heating. A somewhat old-fashioned electric fire stood in the grate, augmenting the central heating. Thea had developed the habit of putting it on once darkness fell, wantonly heedless of the running costs for a change. What the hell, she decided – the dog likes it.

  The conversation had drifted into various backwaters: jobs, their daughters’ talents and character, thoughts about the future. Thea had asked about Harry Richmond and his sister, and been told they were a funny pair, not particularly forthcoming, although Lindy clearly found something appealing about Harry. Thea could detect no undercurrents there, just a gap where feelings should have been.

  ‘And Joel,’ she said, at last. ‘What about Joel?’

  June’s head flopped forward, melodramatically. ‘Don’t make me talk about Joel,’ she pleaded.

  But then she started doing just that. ‘Joel was a lamb. A little lost lamb. You’ve seen his mother, the woman who walked out on her boys. And his father, the selfish old bastard…’ She caught herself then, listening to a mental rerun of her own words. ‘No, that’s not really fair. Lionel’s not bad, when it comes down to it. He’s clever, and straight with people, although it’s usually to tell them where they’re going wrong. But he was a lousy father, and isn’t a brilliant farmer, to be honest. I’ve got the measure of him, after all these years, and he’s fond of me and Lindy, though he’d never show it. But the only one who watched out for Joel was Paul. We thought Susanna would be good for him, at first, but she blew it. Two-timing him, she was. But he’d probably have stuck by her, even then. He went to pieces when she finally dumped him, following her about, pleading with her. Didn’t care who saw him or knew about it. All Joel ever knew, really, was abandonment and neglect. All things considered, he turned out all right. Maybe a bit judgmental, like his dad. Intolerant of people’s weaknesses. But basically he was the sweetest boy. Soft and smiling, nice to everybody. Looking for love, and never quite finding it.’

  Thea said nothing, remembering the friendly open face, the amused indignation at being mistaken for a gardener. Remembering, too, the air of composure and self-possession. He hadn’t struck her as a lost lamb, but a young man rooted in his little world, conscious of the tasks ahead, steady in their performance.

  ‘If it wasn’t for the way it happened, I’d have easily believed that Joel killed himself,’ June added. ‘He didn’t really have very much to live for – not after Paul died.’

  ‘It’s midnight,’ said Thea.

  ‘And the ghosts have come,’ said June. ‘Can’t you feel them?’

  Sadness was the background to Thea’s existence, so much so that she simply assumed its proximity without thinking. But that Sunday morning, when she woke late with a head like a much-kicked leather ball, sadness consumed her. The murdered brothers had become increasingly present in the house, as June talked about them and Thea sank into a familiar contemplation of loss and abandonment. But they came no closer to solving the mystery of who had killed them. Indeed, the question receded int
o the shadows, pushed there by grief. ‘I liked Paul,’ June insisted. ‘It’s just that we didn’t make a very good fist of being married. We never really understood how it was meant to go.’

  Thea had pointed out the inconsistency of June’s liking him, but feeling no pain at his death. ‘Maybe I’m still numb,’ said June. ‘Maybe it hurts so much I can’t even feel it yet.’

  They opened a third bottle of wine, with some trepidation. ‘How’m I going to get home?’ June wondered.

  ‘You’re not,’ said Thea.

  Now, as far as she knew, the woman was still stretched out on Clive and Jennifer’s bed. Please God, don’t let her have been sick on the duvet, she prayed.

  Slowly she went down to the kitchen and put the kettle on. Strong tea, toast and Marmite were her favoured morning-after breakfast. The dogs had been unnaturally quiet, given the long wait they’d had to be let out. ‘Good boys,’ she murmured. ‘Very good boys.’ Then she opened the back door and let them out, to go wherever they liked. In the process she realised she hadn’t set the burglar alarm the previous night. She didn’t think she’d put the dogs out, either, for a bedtime widdle – but it seemed to her now that she must have done. The last hour or so before bed was a disconcerting blur.

  ‘Errghh,’ came a voice from the top of the stairs. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Twenty past nine.’

  ‘God! What’s Lindy going to say? That’s if she’s there, of course.’

  ‘At home, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah. She stays at Barrow Hill sometimes, or goes to see my mother. She’s pally with the Staceys as well. I can’t keep track of her.’

  June came down the stairs looking much fitter and fresher than her sluggish tone implied. The only hint of the previous night’s excesses was her unbrushed hair. Thea half-remembered finding her a large T-shirt to wear in bed – but there was no sign of that now. She was wearing the previous day’s clothes, showing no sign of creases or crumples.

  ‘You look great,’ Thea said. ‘How d’you do it?’

  ‘Clean living,’ June laughed. ‘Good genes.’

  Thea heard this as jeans, and glanced at the dark blue trousers in puzzlement before realising. Wits are slow today, she told herself.

  ‘Is there any coffee?’ June asked, making for the kitchen. ‘Just a quick cup and then I’ll go.’

  Thea experienced a surge of relief at this announcement. She was uneasy in June’s presence, almost guilty at the way they’d made free with the house. She’d spend the day vacuuming and dusting, she promised herself. And making sure the master bedroom was just as Clive and Jennifer had left it.

  The coffee evidently completed June’s restoration, and with no sign of a headache or remorse or grief or embarrassment, she took her leave. Only then did Thea wonder how she’d got there the night before. She saw no sign of a car.

  ‘You’re not walking, are you,’ she asked. ‘Or is there a bus?’ Didn’t June live in Cirencester, seven or eight miles away?

  June laughed. ‘No, I don’t think there’s a bus. I left my car down at Barrow Hill. It’s in the yard.’

  ‘But won’t the old man be wondering where you are?’

  ‘I don’t care if he is. But no, he won’t worry. He’s got more than enough on his own plate to wonder what I’m up to. He probably hasn’t even noticed it.’

  Left alone, Thea began to feel busy. Not just cleaning, but contacting her daughter, and perhaps James. Giving the dogs some quality time, too, after days of skimping on that particular duty; watering the plants; sorting the mail that was scattered untidily on the hall table. And making a close inspection of the sheep, which had been even more neglected than the dogs. She was not earning her pay, she concluded. The Reynoldses would not be very happy if they knew how little attention she’d given to their domain throughout the past week.

  On the other hand, everything was still alive, which felt like a minor triumph. And there were still two weeks to go, during which everything could be handsomely polished, cherished and supervised.

  The phone had not murmured for several days, and she had not made any outgoing calls. There were, perhaps, messages on the facility. One of her clearly stated duties was to note all communications, and then delete them, to leave space for more. She remembered, dimly, the sense of being admitted into the Reynoldses’ lives, trusted with their phonecalls. It had felt pleasingly intimate, and potentially interesting. That had been when things had appeared simple and innocent; when she’d assumed invitations to garden parties, rotas for the church flowers, changes to the bridge club calendar – not the drama of murder and the mysteries of marital infidelity.

  Again, she felt an urgent need to sit down and think. She had been drawn into something disturbing, to say the least. People on all sides were assuming that she was not merely involved but concerned enough to actively participate. They wanted something from her. Even James. Especially James. The suspicion, successfully buried over the past days, resurfaced. The suspicion that she had been deliberately placed here by a conspiracy between James Osborne and Clive Reynolds. That there was a bigger, blacker reason for this than merely a benign wish to find her some paid occupation.

  But surely neither James nor Clive had known there’d be a murder the first night of her occupancy? At least, James could not have known. Clive might have done. Clive might have paid somebody to kill Joel, while he himself had a cast iron alibi. The network of links between just about all the people she had met so far, as well as a few she hadn’t, was hurting her poisoned head. She tried to remember everything June had told her: the factual stuff, if not the stated or implied emotions. Jennifer Reynolds was younger than she looked, and had been at Cheltenham Ladies’ with June. Lindy, although only fifteen, was allowed to wander the countryside without supervision, staying the night with one or other of her relatives. And Lindy certainly had a lot of relatives to choose from. Not just her paternal grandfather, but a maternal grandmother and a great-uncle. And a paternal grandmother, too, although she seemed almost entirely detached. Did June have a father somewhere? Or siblings?

  Helen Winstanley was in business with Martin Stacey. At least that settled a clutch of questions. Except…a number of June’s revelations had sat uneasily with Thea’s own observations. Joel as a lost little lamb; Jennifer as only forty-seven; Lionel as misunderstood. She had skated over the Staceys and their herb farm as if completely uninvolved in it herself, and she had claimed that the Winstanleys were miserable together. Thea found a lot of this quite difficult to absorb.

  She sighed, but not unhappily. She sighed with a sort of contentment. Another week was stretching before her, in which she would learn more about the Jennisons and the Staceys and the Winstanleys. Spring would be in full flood, and the dogs would be made happy. She would go back to Duntisbourne Abbots and admire its extraordinary beauty. She would visit the other Duntisbournes, in their straggling string down the valley, and perhaps take some photographs. She would seek out the goodness in the creamy, honeyed, syrupy stone, savouring the solid history behind the buildings.

  Absently, she squeezed the fingernail that had been a source of suffering all week, and found that it no longer hurt.

  The morning passed with a vaguely satisfying sense of having things to catch up with. Radio 2, a channel she chose when feeling self-indulgent, kept her company. It soothed her head and contributed a feeling of the world being essentially benign. How this could be possible at the scene of two unpleasant killings was not a question she chose to explore.

  When the doorbell rang at mid-day, she went to answer it expecting the pleasant atmosphere to continue.

  She was not disappointed. Harry Richmond stood there, dressed in a mauve jumper and pale grey slacks. There was a jauntiness to him that made her smile. Easily, she invited him in.

  ‘No, no. I’ve come to take you out to lunch. We’re going to my favourite pub.’

  She’d forgotten, totally and utterly, how that could feel. To have a man come calling, w
ith a ready smile, and whisk you off to a place of his choosing was intoxicating, and all the more so for the scratchy and suspicious experience of the day before with James and Rosie. The contrast told her quite a lot about her feelings towards Harry Richmond.

  But above all, it required a complete absence of analytical thought, which was the biggest relief of all. ‘Give me three minutes,’ she said. And then, ‘Can Hepzibah come? She likes a good pub.’

  ‘Welcome,’ he said.

  They drove sedately in his middle-aged blue Renault, winding through villages she’d never heard of with rarely more than a mile between them. Signposts pointed the way to a string of others – names that came and went before she could fix them in her memory.

  The denseness of the English countryside struck her – the ancient rich textures, with settlements around every turn, layered in patterns almost too complex to interpret. She had never been one for excessive conservation; if an old bridge had outlived its usefulness, she was happy to go along with its replacement. But these stone buildings seemed to have become part of the natural scenery in a way she suspected was unique in Britain. Perhaps the adobe houses and churches in New Mexico might compare, but she could think of few instances where the materials for the buildings were so evidently taken from the ground close by. Mostly, it seemed, mankind strove to do the very opposite. She recalled the grim corrugated iron roofs of Australia, the incongruous Italian marble of west coast America, the man-made amalgams of most of the former Soviet countries and rejoiced to be where she was.

  ‘It’s lovely, isn’t it,’ she said.

  ‘Not bad,’ he agreed. ‘The trees are good around here, too. And the tilting ground. There are no right angles anywhere – had you noticed? Everything curves and leans, even the houses. The corners of the stone look soft, the tops of the walls are odd shapes. And there are countless colours in every single stone.’