by Rebecca Tope
Thea watched his face, taking a moment to realise that she was seeing something familiar. A lost little boy, seven years old, striving to understand why a parent had so abruptly disappeared. To her horror she felt tears gathering at the top of her nose. Here was Timmy Slocombe, over thirty years on, still dealing with the huge internal wound that life had dealt him. And another layer of connection pushed to the front of her mind: Luc bore a very strong resemblance to his younger brother Lawrence. Three small boys, then, with hopelessly damaged childhoods. And that wasn’t counting Clovis, who seemed to have oddly detached himself from the proceedings.
‘Because of you?’ she repeated.
‘It was me who wanted to be at my father’s funeral. I had to see him finally put away. I had to see for myself that he had been somewhere, alive and happy all this time, when, for me, he had stopped existing when I was seven. The funeral would prove it – it would show me his whole life in a few minutes.’ He snorted. ‘I can’t explain it properly, but it’s very important. I worked it out last week, when I was at the centre. There was somebody there who helped me to understand.’
‘Juliet,’ said Thea, with a renewed stab of horror. ‘Juliet Wilson.’
‘That’s right,’ said Luc Biddulph.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It was still only nine-fifteen when Thea got back home. The rain had lessened, but not stopped, and she was wet to the skin everywhere but her head and shoulders. The first thing she did was to peel off her jeans and pants, rubbing the chilly flesh of her legs with a towel.
‘You were a long time,’ said Drew, who was still in the kitchen with a mug of coffee.
‘It feels like hours. A lot’s happened. I need to talk to Gladwin.’
‘They’re still there, then?’
‘I’m afraid so. And Linda’s shown up to confront them. That backfired spectacularly.’ She shuddered at the images of high emotion and recriminations. ‘There were tears,’ she added.
‘I’m not surprised. But how does it concern Gladwin?’
‘I don’t know for sure, but I’ve had a ghastly idea.’
‘So have I.’
She looked at him more closely, reproaching herself for not having done so sooner. He was very pale, with grooves under his eyes. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I keep practising what I want to say to Maggs – and you. It comes out different each time. I think I’m going mad. I feel horribly out of control. It’s as if some outside force is in charge of me. And that’s idiotic. I know it’s down to me, that I can make my own decisions. But somehow it all slides away when I try to force it.’
‘Oh, God, Drew,’ she moaned. ‘Do we have to do this now? I’ve just had the most awful time with the Biddulphs, and here’s you sounding just the same as they did. What’s the matter with everybody?’
His face hardened. ‘Perhaps it’s not them, but you,’ he said. ‘You flitting from one crisis to the next, never getting properly involved, never hanging around to face the consequences. Well, life is real and earnest, and sometimes you just have to stand still and take what it throws at you.’
She flinched, the words like icy water in her face. ‘I am taking it,’ she protested. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘Barely.’
The icy sensation spread further. ‘I think you’d soon notice if I wasn’t. There’d be no food, for a start. Nobody to hold everything together, in fifty different ways. You don’t seem to understand about all that.’
‘I did it before.’
And could do it again went unsaid, but hovered terrifyingly in the air between them. What was happening, Thea asked herself desperately. How had it come to this in such a short time? Had Maggs flicked a switch and cast a dazzling light on the weaknesses in the Slocombe marriage?
‘But you don’t want to do that,’ she said as lightly as she could, as if the awful words had actually been spoken.
‘Do what?’
‘Manage without me. Do you?’
‘Of course not. Isn’t that what I just said?’
‘Not really, no. But it doesn’t matter. You’re absolutely right. My concerns for murder and the police and people acting crazily out there should definitely come second to your problems. I’m not being sarcastic or anything – I know that’s the way it is. So tell me the whole thing, and we’ll see if we can sort it out together. Okay?’
‘I have told you the whole thing. There isn’t anything new to say. Except I can’t endure the thought of selling Peaceful Repose. I had a horrible dream …’
She put up a hand. ‘No dreams,’ she begged. ‘Can we please skip the dream?’
He smiled then. It had been an early rediscovery that having someone to listen to your dreams being reported next morning was one of the major perks of couplehood. ‘But they’re always so desperately boring,’ Thea had sighed.
‘Doesn’t matter. It’s your duty to listen,’ he had said at that time, with mock severity. In more recent times he had relented and kept his nocturnal visions to himself.
‘Linda Biddulph is at the field,’ Thea told him, unable to restrain herself. ‘She might come here, I suppose.’
‘She’s going to have to tell me what to do with her husband’s body, and I’m going to tell her she’s liable for the whole cost of the funeral, whatever happens next.’
‘Good for you. Quite right too. Plus some for the added hassle.’
‘Maybe not. Meanwhile, I’ve got Andrew standing by for the interment at eleven. And I’ve had a call from Hambling Grange. They’ve got someone for us. The family could show up at any moment – although it’ll probably be tomorrow.’
‘It’s good to be busy,’ said Thea, as she always did. ‘Which one is Hambling Grange?’
‘The expensive one near Cirencester. It’s a man who died last night. I met his son ages ago in Somerset, apparently, and he decided then to use my services.’
‘I hope he told his old dad?’
‘I suspect not. I only got a few hints on the phone, but it sounds as if they never actually discussed it.’
Thea shrugged. It was a familiar scenario, though less so in the case of alternative woodland burials. It was only a minority of people who could be induced to meaningfully discuss their final resting places, with no real sign that this was ever going to change. While it was quite common for people to carelessly announce ‘I want to be buried under an old oak tree’, or something of the sort, they rarely thought it through in any detail. They left their relatives to make the practical decisions – which generally omitted oak trees altogether.
There was a frozen atmosphere in the house, as if neither of them could move or speak freely. Thea was aggrieved that her experiences of the morning were not getting a hearing, and she was fairly sure that Drew felt rather the same. Their efforts to overcome these feelings were making little headway, while the world outside was clamouring for attention. Except, just at that moment, it was doing no such thing. Linda Biddulph had yet to materialise with her final decision, and nobody else seemed to want the Slocombes for anything. Even the spaniel was in her basket quietly licking her feet.
‘Well, we can’t just stand here,’ said Thea. ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere.’
‘The trouble is, we don’t seem to know where we want to get.’
‘It’s all Linda Biddulph’s fault.’ The line was intended to raise a smile, but failed. In Drew’s mind the Biddulph funeral had receded into a hopeless cause in which he was powerless. It could therefore be set aside in favour of more urgent and personal matters. ‘Well, all right then. Most of it’s nothing to do with her,’ Thea amended. ‘Although—’
‘Don’t say it,’ he snapped, more angrily than she had ever seen him. ‘It’s obvious you just want to get right into the middle of it all and sort everybody out. Solving a murder one minute and reconciling warring families the next. Well, go on, then. I’m not stopping you. You don’t have to hang around here offering misplaced sympathy for my worries when that’s obviousl
y the last thing you want to be doing.’
Fear silenced her. Drew’s anger was so unexpected, so unfamiliar, that she found herself entirely defenceless before it. Always, he had confronted disagreements with calm reason, refusing to be provoked into saying anything hurtful. She had assumed that everything he said was sincerely meant, without sarcasm, or irony, or ulterior motives. The assumption still held good, so she carefully reran his words just as he’d uttered them. ‘You think I’m more concerned with all that stuff than I am with the future of this business,’ she summarised.
‘Well, aren’t you?’
‘No. But it’s not a fair comparison. I can’t make your decision for you, but I can help the police catch a murderer. I think I can, anyway. And if I can sit down with you and really look at all the options, sensibly, then I might be useful. But it’s not at all certain. If I say I want to stay here now we’re settled, and I think it’s time you let all the Somerset stuff go, that might come across as undue influence. It might just make everything more difficult for you.’
‘Do you? Want to stay here and abandon everything else?’
‘I don’t want it badly enough to affect what you decide. I’ll go along with whatever that is.’
‘Will you really? Even if I say I want to sell this house here and go back to the one in North Staverton?’
She went cold. ‘Is that what you do want, then?’
‘Answer the question.’
‘All right then. Yes, I think so. It would be a horrible upheaval, and I don’t much relish living in your old house, and I have no idea what I would do with myself. But yes, if it comes to that, I’d go. Of course I would.’
He did not look any happier. ‘But you wouldn’t want to, which means you’d martyr yourself for my sake. And that would make me feel guilty.’
‘It’ll work itself out,’ she said bravely. ‘We’re big, grown-up people. We can do this – whatever it is.’
‘I hope so. Now go away, there’s a good wife. Go and do what you’re best at, and leave me to wallow. I’ll be better by lunchtime.’
Then his head lifted. ‘Footsteps,’ he identified. ‘Right on cue.’
‘I can’t hear anything.’ But half a second later the doorbell rang.
Two female police detectives stood shoulder-to-shoulder, one significantly taller and thinner than the other. ‘Oh! Both of you,’ said Thea. ‘Do you want to come in?’ Looking past them, she observed with relief that the rain had finally stopped.
Gladwin’s smile was fleeting. ‘Probably best not. We could do one of our walks instead.’
Caz Barkley gave an audible sigh, and both older women looked at her.
‘We have to go down to your field, and either you or Drew should be with us.’
‘Oh?’ A sense of something ominous was growing.
‘The thing is, we’ve had a complaint. Inappropriate use of a cemetery, disturbing the peace and jeopardising the graves. Words to that effect.’
‘Good grief. I’ll have to tell Drew, then. Who complained?’
‘I’d better not say. Is Drew available?’ Gladwin peered through the open door into the hallway. ‘Has he got a funeral today?’
‘He did have, but it’s on hold. Complications.’ Thea still felt a resistance to bringing the Biddulph family to Gladwin’s attention. Even after the revelations and connections of the early morning, she wanted Juliet’s death and Clovis’s jumbled relations to remain separate. But now somebody else had done the deed instead. The police would find the camper van, and ask questions and get things confused. ‘I can call him,’ she offered reluctantly.
The sound of a ringing phone prevented her from doing any such thing. ‘He is quite distracted just now,’ she said. ‘Do you think we could go without him?’
‘No problem. But we should get a move on. You don’t seem too worried. What if somebody’s desecrating your graves, as we speak?’
‘They won’t be, but I’m happy to go with you and see.’ She started walking up the lane. Gladwin hurried after her, and began to increase the pace. ‘You sound very sure,’ she said.
Thea pulled a rueful face that Gladwin didn’t see. ‘It’s all a fuss about nothing. I don’t know who complained, but I can guess. And I don’t think we need to fear for the graves. It’s a family feud, basically. Not a police matter at all. I was there an hour or two ago. Nobody’s going to do anything criminal.’
‘Has this got anything to do with Juliet Wilson?’ Caz asked breathlessly. ‘I mean – it’s right beside the place where she was killed, isn’t it?’ She was trotting behind them, finding the pace uncomfortable.
‘It’s a regularly used burial ground. People come and go all the time. They visit their dead relatives, leave flowers, plant trees – all the usual things. Not to mention new funerals happening every couple of days.’
‘So Juliet Wilson might have been doing something like that as well – right? Your husband was the last known person to see her alive, right there in your field. She might have been there for two days or more before she died. What was she doing there?’ The young detective looked from Gladwin to Thea and back, eyes wide and questioning. ‘Where did she sleep? Who knew she was there?’
‘She didn’t sleep rough. We’d have found the place,’ said Gladwin heavily. ‘And she didn’t have a car. She didn’t go home. Nobody we’ve spoken to has the slightest idea. Not even her mother.’
‘Are you sure you’d find the place in the woods?’ queried Thea. ‘Was she wearing a coat? Couldn’t she just have curled up under a tree for the night? I got the impression she’d do something like that quite happily.’
‘At least seven hours of darkness, temperatures about four or five centigrade? What about food and drink? What would she do?’ Gladwin repeated the emphasis that Caz had used. ‘I can’t see it. I think she went to a house somewhere, at least for Wednesday and Thursday nights. Maybe in Chipping Campden, which is barely fifteen minutes’ walk away.’
‘A house? Whose house?’ Thea frowned at this suggestion. ‘Must be somebody we don’t know about. Is it the person who killed her, then?’ The idea that there was a whole unknown aspect to the case that rendered all her own speculations irrelevant was irksome.
‘Could have been an empty house. Or a shed in a garden. Somewhere a bit warmer than the open air, anyway.’
They were within sight of the field in another minute. The camper van was concealed behind the hedge, and Thea entertained a wild hope that it would be gone. ‘That makes more sense,’ she said. ‘And it fits with what Juliet was like. She didn’t have much respect for private property.’ She recalled the first time she had seen the woman in Stanton. Juliet had walked right into the house that Thea was in temporary charge of, without knocking or waiting for permission. Her apologetic mother had arrived soon after, trying to explain Juliet’s diminished capacity.
‘The crucial thing is that she came back here sometime in the early hours of Saturday, and somebody else was here at the same time, who killed her. Whether they came together, or met by accident, or what, is still obscure. The truth is, we’re hardly any further forward than we were three days ago.’
‘Who’s that then?’ asked Caz Barkley, seeing the camper van. ‘Must be what the complaint was about.’ She looked at Thea. ‘You knew that was here?’
Thea sighed and nodded. ‘I was hoping they might have gone by now. Are you going to force them to move?’ she asked Gladwin.
‘Only if you want me to. It’s your land. You can allow anybody you like to be on it.’
‘So – the person who complained hadn’t got any real grounds. Is that right? Why are you here, then?’ Thea was still addressing Gladwin, who was already heading for the van.
‘Curiosity,’ came the brief reply, thrown over her shoulder.
‘No. Wait. Come back.’ Thea’s brain was suddenly working overtime. ‘I need to tell you some things first. You don’t know the full story. You’ll get it all wrong if I don’t explain.’
Th
e wiry, dark-haired detective paused, then turned to give Thea a very stern look. ‘Then why leave it till now?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve had a lot of other stuff to think about. You turned up at an awkward moment. I’ve been dashing round since eight o’clock this morning, one thing after another and I got soaking wet. But don’t just barge in there – especially if you’re not going to get them to move.’ She was staring at the van, searching it for signs of life. ‘Actually, it doesn’t even look as if anybody’s in there anyway.’ But she observed that the van door was open, and the wheelchair ramp in place.
‘Explain, then. Quickly.’
‘It’s a family called Biddulph. I did tell you a bit about them yesterday, remember? Drew was supposed to bury their father today. This is his first wife and two sons. There’s a second wife and one son – Lawrence. He doesn’t know his father was married before, and Linda, his mother, wanted to keep it that way until after the funeral. But Luc – one of the other sons – and his brother and mother, wanted to be here for the burial. It’s all been terribly difficult for Drew. Now Linda’s cancelled the whole thing because Clovis found out, and they’ve come to make sure they don’t miss it.’
Gladwin digested this slowly. ‘I think I get it,’ she said. She looked at Caz. ‘Can you take some notes? Family name Biddulph. Two wives, three sons, family secrets.’
‘Where did they go?’ Thea wondered aloud. ‘I assume it was Linda who made the complaint? She must have hoped you’d move them. Pity, in a way, that you can’t. We might still have the funeral, then. Gosh!’ she suddenly realised. ‘I wonder if people will start showing up for it. She can’t possibly have told them all that it’s been cancelled.’
Caz was writing in her notebook. ‘Linda – second wife?’ she queried.
Before Thea could reply, Gladwin said, ‘No, it wasn’t her. It was the Spiller man. The one who found Juliet on Saturday. He said there was obviously going to be trouble, and he was worried about his uncle’s grave.’
‘Oh. How very peculiar of him. He drove me here this morning, when it was raining. He didn’t seem especially worried then.’