No doubt he felt he couldn’t leave Timmy alone in the house. Or perhaps Hepzie had distracted him by trying to get at Blondie again. Or a rat had escaped. Or the telephone rang. Maggs could have called him about Stephanie, wanting to know when he’d be home. The list of possible explanations flashed through her mind as she stood her ground and confronted Cheryl Bagshawe.
Not one of the four people out in the chilly grey village street could be regarded as a friend. Ralph had been kind; both brothers were polite and gentlemanly. Richard was not directly angry with her. And Cheryl was incomprehensible. It added up to a complex situation that she was very far from understanding, but which did not feel especially threatening. ‘I thought you were going away,’ she said to Cheryl. ‘You said you were.’
‘I said a lot of things. Most of them were just to shut you up. You ask way too many questions.’
Since the only things she could think of to say were more questions Thea kept silent. There was a surreal, slightly ludicrous tinge to the whole business. The horse in the box was stamping its feet restlessly, making the vehicle rock. Richard was doing a similar little dance of his own, as if in sympathy. All it needed now, Thea thought, was for Juliet and Rosa Wilson to show up and add their own unique contributions. Or Marian and Sebastian Callendar, to complete the family circle.
‘We’ll have to go,’ said Edwin. ‘It’s nearly an hour each way. I’m supposed to be home by six, and that’s not going to happen now, is it? You were late,’ he accused Cheryl.
‘But where?’ wailed Richard. ‘You’ve got to tell me.’
‘It’s over for you, mate – haven’t you got that yet? You can just bugger off back to Scotland and give it all up. It was a mad idea from the start, if you ask me. I might as well tell you that Mother has already destroyed that spare embryo she nabbed from Tash’s house yesterday, as well. So it really is all over and done with.’ It was Ralph speaking, in a sympathetic tone that barely softened the force of his words.
Richard reacted badly. ‘How can you say that? Have you any idea how much time, money, work, risk, I’ve put into it, this past year? Marian would never harm the embryo – you can’t make me believe that. She’ll have it safe somewhere. That’s all I need to carry on. That’s the only thing that matters.’
‘She has destroyed it, you idiot,’ sneered Cheryl. ‘She’ll have chucked it in a ditch five minutes after nabbing it.’
Richard’s bad reaction escalated as the possibility that they were telling the truth took hold of him. ‘What?’ he howled. ‘Why would she do that? What do you mean?’
‘Listen, you fool,’ ordered Cheryl. ‘I never wanted to get drawn into this. I’m not coming with you, after all. You can have this –’ she handed Edwin a SatNav ‘– it’ll take you to the vet I told you about. I’m going home. I’ve had enough. It was never going to work.’ She was addressing Richard, but threw looks at everyone else in the group, to indicate they were all included, even Thea.
‘How did you know Marian nabbed anything from the house?’ Thea asked. ‘I never told you.’
‘It’s not all down to you,’ sneered Cheryl. ‘Other people have tongues in their heads.’
It was true, of course. Thea opened her mouth to ask another question, but she was drowned out by Richard’s anguish. Even she began to worry that the good people of Stanton actually might start showing an interest if the noise kept up. And where’s Drew? a little voice kept repeating.
‘Listen, Rick,’ Ralph laid a hand on the distraught man’s shoulder, effectively silencing him. ‘It’s for the best. We never should have agreed to it. You got the old man at a weak moment when you persuaded him to sign up. He was always up for a risk, anyway. He liked your nerve. We all did – of course we did. But we never should have let it go so far. We’ve flouted too many rules. Sally’s foal isn’t going to see the light of day either, old chap. It’s sad, but there it is. We’ve carried the cost, and we’re losing what might have been a prizewinner, and we’re not going to claim any comeback from you. But this is where it ends, okay? No more to be said.’
Thea’s mind was darting in all directions, struggling to make sense of this speech. Had Richard somehow genetically manipulated the unborn foal? That’s what it sounded like – and yet how could he possibly have managed something so technical? Did the Callendars have their own laboratory somewhere? ‘What?’ she almost shouted. ‘What did he do with the foal?’
‘Don’t ask,’ said Cheryl, with a little rictus of disgust.
Richard had slumped against the horsebox, looking close to tears. Edwin was watching him carefully, like a bodyguard waiting for a suspicious move. He was a sort of bodyguard, Thea realised, with the horse the subject of his protection. ‘I am asking,’ she said. ‘So will the police, because I assume it explains why Natasha was murdered.’
The two Callendar brothers stared at her in blank amazement. ‘You’re joking,’ said Ralph, after a moment. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘It seems obvious,’ she said, more defiantly than she felt.
‘Well, it’s not. If you think Richard’s crazy experiments were important enough to warrant killing somebody, you’re even crazier than him.’
‘He seems to be pretty serious about them,’ she argued. ‘Look at him.’
‘Let me tell you exactly what he was trying to do, then.’ Ralph was as patient and polite as ever, despite his brother’s obvious wish to get moving. ‘His thesis is all about storage and preservation of body parts and blood, essentially. Which is what our business is concerned with, as you probably know. Sally’s foal isn’t biologically hers. It was implanted in her – embryo transfer, they call it. That’s not unusual in itself. But Dicky had been experimenting on the semen beforehand, using various gels and suspensions and I don’t know what, to see how long each batch would survive. He got Natasha to look after another foal embryo that he thought was the key to success. The idea behind it all is to avoid having to freeze the semen, or use any system that requires electricity. He’s been doing work with sheep and cows and things as well. It’s all very worthy stuff, designed to help developing countries improve their livestock out in remote areas where they can’t reliably freeze anything. With me so far?’
Thea nodded doubtfully.
‘Anyway, he came up with this magic mixture that seemed to keep the sperm alive for over a month in perfect condition. Great, we all thought. Clever old him. But then he pulled a fast one on us, and used this experimental sample on poor old Sally, without permission. She’s been used as a surrogate a couple of times now, with another mare’s embryo implanted. It’s established practice, nothing sinister about it. But young Richard here has been playing a Doctor Frankenstein game with the gametes, testing out his new invention. We didn’t find out until months later, long past the point where we could do anything about it. It’s incredibly stupid of him, as my mother tried to tell him. It’ll invalidate his findings, apart from anything else.’
‘It will not,’ said Richard hotly. ‘Everything’s been recorded and monitored. There’s no room for any doubt as to what’s been done.’
‘You deceived us. You knew we’d never have given you permission to switch embryos the way you did.’
‘I had to,’ Richard whined. ‘The whole thing has to be tested for real.’
‘So what’s the problem?’ Thea wanted to know.
‘We don’t think the foal’s normal. It was scanned six weeks ago, and its head looks misshapen.’
Thea shuddered. ‘Poor little foal. But why take the horse away like this?’
‘We’re taking her to a top vet near Oxford who’ll keep a close eye on her. Costing us, of course. Plus we need to keep the whole thing quiet. There are breeders out there who’d use this to blacken the Callendar name and put us out of business.’
Thea looked at Richard as if she’d caught him in an unspeakable act of depravity. ‘It sounds utterly foul,’ she spat at him.
Edwin put up a hand. ‘Enough,’ he said. ‘This
is wasting too much time. We’re going. Now. Cheryl – you can follow us.’
Thea couldn’t let it drop there. ‘What does she have to do with it?’ Ralph’s explanation had done nothing but raise a host of further questions.
‘Another time,’ Edwin called over his shoulder. ‘We’ll explain it another time.’
‘No, you won’t. You’ll explain it now,’ came a new voice from across the street.
Chapter Seventeen
It was Drew, who looked as if he’d been standing in the doorway of the Shepherds’ house for some time. In the shadowy street he was barely visible. ‘You’re not the only one who wants to have this settled, and get on with Christmas,’ he said, walking towards the group. ‘A woman’s been murdered, and you all’ – he looked from one person to another – ‘all of you have explaining to do. Best get it over with quickly.’
‘And just who do you think you are, to give us orders?’ demanded Cheryl.
Another voice came from a point just beyond the Range Rover. ‘He’s a very clever chap who called us twenty minutes ago,’ it said. ‘And we’ve been here quite a while, listening to what you had to say.’ DI Jeremy Higgins materialised from the shadows, accompanied by another man who Thea took a moment to identify.
‘So?’ Edwin challenged, in a voice gone oddly husky. ‘So what?’
‘It explained quite a lot – filled in quite a few blanks,’ Higgins said.
Thea felt surrounded. On all sides were men who understood considerably more than she did.
‘Drew?’ she turned to him, reaching out an automatic hand to touch him. ‘Do you know what’s going on?’
‘Sshh,’ he said, which simply bewildered her all the more.
‘Mrs Osborne,’ Higgins addressed her directly. ‘We think you must be the key to much of this. Specifically, to what happened here on Saturday. You were on the spot. We think you saw and heard enough to constitute evidence, without fully realising it.’
‘Mrs Callendar?’ she said uncertainly. ‘Do you mean when she went next door? I did see her with something. I told Gladwin. But that was the day after the murder. I suppose it was her, all the same. She’s arrogant enough.’
She forced her mind to examine the idea. Marian Callendar did seem a likely killer. Hadn’t one of her sons implied that she was against Richard’s experiments, which would put her against Natasha as well? And she could so easily have made her husband’s death seem an accident. ‘But she wouldn’t kill Eva, would she?’ she said aloud. Nobody seemed to understand what she meant.
She wrapped her arms around herself, aware for the first time of how cold it was out there without a coat. She visualised her warm jacket, hanging in the Shepherds’ hallway, and how comforting it would be to have it around her now. She almost asked Drew to fetch it for her. Then her mental image expanded slightly, to include the coat hanging next to hers. It was blue, with big buttons. She had seen it that morning, without any conscious registering of significance. But something strange about it had stuck in her subconscious. It ought not to have been there, because it hadn’t been there on Friday, when Gloria and Philip departed. There had, instead, been a brown gabardine mac that looked as if it was used for gardening.
‘The coat,’ she said out loud. ‘Go and see the blue coat.’
‘What?’ Higgins blinked, half excited, half bemused.
‘In the hall. Next to mine. Ask Drew.’ She wasn’t sure why she couldn’t just go and get it herself, except that her legs had gone heavy and she felt weirdly breathless. Higgins didn’t move, but kept his eyes on her face as if waiting for more.
‘Saturday,’ Thea murmured. ‘Before Natasha was killed. I fainted. Then I was dizzy. I couldn’t think properly. It was you.’
Everyone followed her wavering finger. The person indicated stood firm, chin held high, saying nothing. ‘I remember,’ said Thea, greatly surprising herself. ‘The coat. It was blue, then brown. The blue one is wrong. There must be blood on the brown one. The coat—’ and for the second time in her life, she fainted.
But this time a man caught her and lowered her gently to the ground, mumbling reassurances. He felt big and warm and strong. It had to be Drew. Of course it was Drew. She even came close to saying his name as she emerged from the same pinkish cloud as before. But it didn’t smell like Drew. So it had to be Higgins, then. Higgins was a policeman – it would be instinctive for him to jump forward and catch a fainting woman.
Then she opened her eyes.
It was the other man, the one with the waistcoat and the old-fashioned pomposity. It was Dennis Ireland, holding her close and warm and smiling down at her. She felt small against his broad chest, and quite deliciously safe.
Around her things were happening that she couldn’t make sense of. It was dark. A man was shouting. A dog was barking. A horse was clattering its hooves on a metal surface. ‘Mrs Osborne? Thea?’ Another voice was overlying that of Dennis Ireland. ‘Can you hear me?’
‘Jeremy,’ she nodded. ‘I’m all right. I must stop doing this. It’s embarrassing.’
‘Thea?’ A third man was there somewhere. The man she’d wanted to be the one to catch her.
‘Drew. What’s happening? Do you understand any of this?’
‘It’s all right. We’re going into the house. They’re making an arrest.’
It wasn’t the explanation she’d sought, and she wasn’t sure she could get to the house with any vestige of dignity. ‘Oh,’ she said weakly.
Against all her wishes, she was carried back into the Shepherds’ living room and placed carefully on the sofa. More time passed, and people came and went. When she finally surfaced, she could locate only Drew and Timmy in the room with her ‘What time is it?’ she asked. For some reason, that seemed a very important question.
‘Half past five,’ said Drew. ‘It’s half past five.’
‘Oh dear,’ she moaned. ‘It can’t be that late. You’ll have to go. And Edwin’s going to get into awful trouble with his wife.’ Scraps of conversation returned to her, the crucial and the trivial impossible to differentiate. ‘What about Marian? And Juliet? What about the other deaths? Please will somebody explain.’
Nobody did. She struggled upright, but didn’t leave the safety of the sofa. She was aware of a small boy and two dogs all watching her with round eyes. ‘It’s okay, Tim,’ she laughed. ‘I’ll be fine in a minute. It’s just because I’ve got flu.’
She was angry with herself at having missed a whole lot of important developments. Frustration gripped her and she sat up straight. ‘Who are they arresting?’ she asked Drew.
‘Richard,’ he said.
‘What?’ It was so totally unexpected that she almost fainted again. ‘Why? It can’t possibly have been him.’
‘Listen,’ he said, with poorly concealed urgency. ‘The Callendar woman phoned here while you were outside. She wanted to know if we’d seen Richard, so I told her some of what was happening outside. She said he was a dangerous lunatic, in effect, with a Frankenstein complex. He’s been breaking any number of laws in his research and she’s been trying to stop him. Natasha and Douglas had been taken in by him, but she’s now got a vital piece of evidence, and has contacted the police about it.’
Slowly, Thea compared this splurge of revelations with what she already knew. It fitted with reasonable credibility. ‘So?’ she encouraged.
‘So I told her she should call the police and tell them he was here – which she did.’
‘Did you mention her sons as well?’
‘No. I thought it best to keep things simple.’
Thea smiled weakly and nodded.
Drew continued, ‘And then you raved about coats and pointed at Richard, and that seemed to be all they needed.’
‘I didn’t,’ she almost wept. ‘I didn’t point at Richard. It wasn’t him, Drew. It has nothing to do with him.’
He gave her a severe look which perversely made her want to laugh. ‘You did, Thea. You pointed right at him and said you remember
ed his coat. Or some such thing. Then you fainted and Richard tried to run away and the two brothers caught him and the horse got all excited. You missed rather a lot, actually.’
‘You got it all wrong,’ she moaned. ‘You got completely the wrong person.’
Then Timmy began to cry, for no apparent reason. Drew went to him in concern. ‘I want to go home,’ the child sniffed. ‘We need to go home, Daddy.’
‘He’s right,’ Drew announced. ‘Okay, Tim. We’ll go in just ten more minutes, I promise. We’ll fetch Stephanie and you can hang up your stockings, and have a lovely sleep, and tomorrow will be Christmas.’
‘But Thea should come as well. We can’t go without Thea. She’s poorly, like Stephanie.’ And his tears flowed afresh.
‘Ah,’ sighed Drew, as if an important secret had finally been revealed.
‘I can’t come, sweetie,’ she said. ‘I can’t leave the dogs and rats and everything. I’ll be all right.’ She remembered a warm chest and a strong arm. ‘There’s that nice man next door. He’ll watch out for me if I get poorly again.’
She stood up, hardly knowing what she meant to do, and went to the door. The loo – she needed the loo, that was it. There was a small one near the front door and she headed for it.
Before her was the blue coat, hanging from its hook as she’d remembered. It seemed to glow with significance. She could visualise its owner inside it. Another coat, brown and probably bloodstained, must be missing. A coat that belonged to Gloria Shepherd, and which had been there on that first afternoon. She almost forgot where she was going, but then decided that whatever happened next would happen better on an empty bladder. She used the thirty seconds productively, rerunning the events of Saturday and the next two days, and the probable motives behind them. When she came out, most of the story was clear in her mind.
Trouble in the Cotswolds (The Cotswold Mysteries) Page 23