A Cotswold Christmas Mystery

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘No, it’s not compulsory,’ she repeated, catching her father’s eye and grinning.

  ‘Oh, you two,’ sighed Jessica, significantly increasing Stephanie’s delight.

  Thea was wandering in and out, showing no signs of being gainfully employed. She had paused to watch the game for a moment, and heard this exchange. ‘They read each other’s minds,’ she said. ‘You get used to it.’

  Timmy was shaking his dice and plotting his next move, but he did not miss what was going on around him. He looked from sister to father and back, and gave a little shake of his head. ‘You don’t really,’ he told his stepmother.

  By an obvious lucky fluke, Timmy won the game, and the grown-ups suddenly got all hyperactive. Timmy was contentedly sifting through his box of new things on the big chair by the fireplace. Stephanie was cuddled with Hepzie on the sofa, also assessing her acquisitions. Then Thea spoke. ‘Did I mention that I had a card from Lucy Sinclair? The woman I house-sat for in Hampnett two years ago?’

  Drew and Jessica both looked at her in confusion. ‘So?’ said Jessica.

  ‘She’s moved to Northleach, which is hardly any distance from where she was before. It was a converted barn and she had some land as well. Now she’s in a small house in a street.’

  ‘This card – it must have had a letter in it as well,’ Drew noted. ‘And isn’t she the woman who phoned for you last summer, when you were in that Barnsley house?’

  ‘Right,’ said Thea, waiting for the next question.

  ‘And now she wants you to house-sit for her again,’ said Drew with certainty. ‘I can hear it in your voice. And you’ve waited until now to mention it.’

  Everybody held their breath. Stephanie silently repeated to herself, It’s all right, it doesn’t matter, it’s not a big disaster. Because why did it feel as if it was very bad news?

  ‘It’s not definite,’ said Thea. ‘But she’s got to go and have an operation at some point. Her back’s got something wrong with it. And she took some of her animals with her, so they’ll need looking after.’

  ‘Is she the one with the rabbits?’ Timmy asked. ‘When Mrs Gladwin helped you feed the baby ones?’

  It was a familiar story, one of the less grisly ones in Thea’s repertoire. Even so a rabbit had died by violence. ‘That’s the one,’ she said. ‘Fancy you remembering.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of Northleach,’ said Jessica.

  ‘It’s an old wool town. Made a fortune out of sheep. Enclosures, peasants’ revolts – all that stuff. Absolutely steeped in history, in fact.’ Thea spoke with relish.

  Drew sighed, and then smiled ruefully. ‘So now you’ve broached the subject, I suppose I’m meant to get used to the idea for a bit, and then when it happens, not raise any objections?’

  ‘Something like that,’ said Thea.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Everything was happening at once at the Old Stables. Thea phoned to announce that she was walking over; the police showed up in force with a new SOCO team; and Beverley came home.

  Ant had found himself yearning increasingly for the return of his mother. Without her Digby seemed like a different man, unpredictable and unsettling. Random new suspicions kept occurring to him. Was there another person involved somewhere? That didn’t strike him as at all probable. Living in a group of three nearly always meant that one person was at a distance from the other two, whose relationship was the dominant one. But in the case of the Frowses, it was not apparent who this third person was. If forced to say, he would suggest that he and his mother formed the central bond, with Digby further away from either of them. His father had taken outside work when the fruit farm was dismantled, often being out for ten hours or more in the summer. His expertise with trees came in useful, as well as a skill at building drystone walls and erecting fences. But the work had dwindled over the years, and now much of the equipment required for these tasks lay unused around the front garden of their house, along with his car-boot sale stock and other junk. When Aldebaran died, Digby had stayed upstairs for two days demanding to be left alone. When Beverley ranted about the Blackwoods, he would nod and say something sarcastic or mocking about them, but never suggested any action. His modest computer skills enabled them to circumvent the keypad on the gate, which Ant found deliciously enjoyable, while Beverley was even more ecstatic. Digby had refused to explain exactly how it was done, and from that point on, began to experiment with other technologies on the reconditioned laptop that Ant had got for him. ‘I’m a silver surfer now,’ he would say.

  He would announce numerous arcane discoveries he had made thanks to Google – but he never ventured into the shark-infested waters of Facebook or Twitter.

  ‘I just wish she’d come home,’ Ant said, almost involuntarily. ‘This has gone on long enough.’

  And then she did, five minutes before Thea and Stephanie Slocombe came through the gate, and yet another police car followed them up the driveway.

  In the event, all five of the Slocombes had set out for the walk along Monarch’s Way. ‘Surely we can’t all descend on the Frowses?’ Jessica objected. ‘You didn’t say that when you phoned them.’

  ‘I thought maybe just me and Stephanie would go the whole way. The rest of you could circle back through Chipping Campden, if you’ve got the energy,’ said Thea.

  ‘How far is it?’

  ‘Probably three miles. No more than that, unless you get lost.’

  ‘That’s a lot for Timmy.’

  ‘He’s nine, not three. He could walk twice that and barely notice.’

  Stephanie was proud to have been selected for the main purpose of the walk, even though it was fairly obvious all along that it would be her. She knew Ant and Percy better than anyone, after meeting up with them on several strolls along the footpaths. The young man and his dog would be out in all weathers, at most times of day, simply walking for the sake of it, as far as she could tell. ‘The dog likes a good run,’ was the answer she got when she made a comment to this effect. ‘And he likes to meet other dogs, like your Hepzie.’

  ‘I’m desperate to see if Beverley’s back,’ said Thea, trying to hurry things along. ‘And find out what the police have been saying.’

  Jessica made a sort of throat-clearing noise, before saying, ‘It is a murder investigation, remember. It might get a bit nasty.’

  Stephanie knew that this was a coded way of saying that Jessica didn’t think a child should be exposed to such situations. She smiled up at her stepsister. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen lots of dead people, you know. That sort of thing doesn’t bother me.’

  Thea took her hand and gave it a funny little shake. ‘That’s my girl,’ she said. ‘Though this time’s rather different from anything you’ve come across before.’

  Jessica pulled a funny face. ‘I thought I was your girl,’ she said, in a silly voice.

  ‘You don’t really want to come. You’re having a holiday from police stuff,’ said Thea. ‘And besides, it’s completely outside your patch.’

  Jessica gave a little laugh. ‘Nobody says “patch” any more. You’re hopelessly out of date.’

  ‘They do on the telly,’ Thea argued. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘It comes to us all,’ said Drew from behind them. ‘Don’t try to get between Thea and Stephanie, if you know what’s good for you. They’re going to make a formidable team in another few years.’

  Stephanie’s feeling of pride burgeoned even more. They were treating her almost like a grown-up, taking her seriously and obviously pleased with her. She gripped Thea’s hand, pretending it was because they were walking on slippery stones where the footpath climbed upwards, and looked around for the spaniel. ‘Hey, Hepzie!’ she called. ‘Run!’

  The dog needed no encouragement. She began to fly across the adjacent field, long black ears flapping. ‘Lucky there aren’t any sheep,’ said Jessica, who was the only one apparently feeling less than joyous.

  ‘Did you know that this footpath is more
than six hundred miles long?’ Timmy offered, after a short silence. ‘It zigzags a lot, you see, because it’s much less than that from Worcester to Brighton, which are the two ends.’

  ‘That’s amazing,’ said Jessica, sounding as if she really meant it.

  ‘It’s because the King was escaping, in the Civil War, and he had to keep going off course to hide,’ said Stephanie. She looked around her. At first glance, there were very few obvious hiding places, but then small banks as well as walls and hedges came into focus as ideal shelters. The land tipped and buckled, forming dips and creases where a person could lie down and become invisible. She connected it with the missing Beverley, as well as the possible presence of buried Roman treasure and suddenly saw the entire landscape with new eyes. ‘I expect there were more trees here then,’ she said.

  ‘Probably not,’ Thea corrected her. ‘They’d been felling most of the English oaks for a long time by then. And don’t forget this was an area with huge numbers of sheep. You don’t get trees in sheep country. They eat all the baby saplings as fast as they pop up.’

  ‘And they made coffins out of the elm trees,’ said Drew, reminding them of what he did for a living. ‘Lovely straight trunks, you see. I heard that they’re coming back at last. Won’t that be nice?’

  Stephanie had an agreeable sense that everything connected. Charles I and Beverley Frowse, English oaks, sheep, old estates, dogs and death – they all danced around in her mind, joining up in a strangely coherent picture. Thea had often commented on how there was not a single inch of Britain that had not been walked on by people over thousands of years. ‘And a lot of it will have the bones of the dead lying down there as well,’ she usually added. Battles, old burial sites, family members interred close to the homestead – layers of dead people forming part of the very ground they walked on. But probably not up here on this particular wold, she decided. Just dead sheep and birds would be decomposing out here.

  It was an idle conversation, with little emotional heft. The wind was slight but very cold. She remembered that Dad had said something about snow. It felt quite cold enough for it. ‘Are those snow clouds?’ she asked, pointing ahead, where the sky was very grey.

  ‘Could be,’ said Drew. ‘I forget what the forecast said now.’

  ‘Something about a light covering tomorrow. Maybe I should move my car,’ said Jessica. ‘At least as far as the church.’

  ‘If it really snows, Damien won’t be able to come,’ said Thea hopefully. ‘Please God, let it snow.’

  ‘Don’t be so nasty!’ Stephanie protested. ‘I want to see Kim.’

  ‘Kim and Tim!’ said Drew. ‘I only just realised. Like people from a storybook.’

  ‘It should be Tim and Kim because I’m older,’ said his son.

  ‘Timmy and Kimmy sounds even better,’ said Stephanie.

  They had almost reached the road, where they would divide into two groups, according to Thea’s plan. The ground sloped downhill, providing better shelter from the cold wind. They had not seen a single person. ‘Why is it so deserted?’ asked Jessica.

  ‘It’s usually like this in winter. The tourists mostly go for better weather, even the walkers, and the second-homers are enjoying their log fires and mulled wine,’ said Drew. ‘You know what – I forgot to take you to see the burial field. It’s very different from when you were last here.’

  ‘Have we got time now?’

  He looked dubious. ‘Not really. Not unless we go back the way we came, and down the other road.’

  ‘It’s just a field, Dad,’ said Timmy, who did not at all share his father’s and sister’s relish for graves. ‘And it’s windy on the footpath. It might be better if we go the way Thea said.’

  ‘I have to say you’re right,’ Drew agreed. ‘Sorry, Jess. Next time, eh?’

  The parting of the ways was upon them. ‘You’ll be back before us,’ said Thea. ‘Put the kettle on. If we’re later than five, you can start making something with the cold turkey.’

  Drew looked alarmed. ‘What sort of something?’

  ‘Cut it into little bits and fry it up with onion and tinned tomatoes. Jessica can help, if that’s too difficult for you.’ Drew’s cooking abilities were famously minimal, and yet he had managed to keep himself and two children alive for years when Karen was too ill to do it, and after she died. ‘We’ll have rice with it, but don’t start it until we’re back.’

  ‘You’ll take the dog presumably?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  As Thea and Stephanie rounded the bend before the entrance to Crossfield, they could see three or four vehicles parked along the edge of the driveway, between the road and the gate up to the big house. ‘Looks as if the police are still here,’ said Thea in some surprise.

  ‘I wonder why.’

  ‘They’ll be pressured into finding every scrap of evidence, now they know for sure it was murder. Gladwin’s probably here. Better put Hepzie on the lead. They won’t like it if she gets in their way.’

  Stephanie caught the dog and attached her to the lead. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘Better start with Ant and Digby, I suppose. They can bring us up to date, and it was them we came to see, after all.’

  ‘And we shouldn’t intrude on police work,’ said Stephanie, feeling very grown up.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Thea with evident regret.

  The electric gate was partly open, and when Thea pushed it, it shifted quite easily. ‘They’ve disconnected the electrics,’ she realised. ‘Mrs Blackwood won’t like that. Though I suppose she’s got other things to worry about.’

  Stephanie had never seen Mrs Blackwood, but had heard plenty about her from Ant. She privately thought it very likely that she had killed her husband in a fit of rage. But the whole business of the murder was still very confusing. ‘How exactly did Mr Blackwood die?’ she asked Thea now, as they walked the hundred yards or so up to the cottage.

  ‘I probably shouldn’t tell you. I’m not really meant to know. It’ll all be made public soon enough, I expect.’

  ‘We haven’t been very good detectives, have we? Not like you usually are. We haven’t actually done anything. And we don’t know very much, either.’

  ‘We know he was wearing pyjamas when he died.’

  ‘Oh.’ Stephanie wasn’t sure that this was a pertinent detail. ‘And a dressing gown?’

  ‘Probably, at this time of year.’

  A car came up behind them and hooted. It turned out to be Gladwin, obviously heading for the cottage as well. She put her head out of the window, her expression stern. ‘Not a good time to be visiting,’ she said.

  ‘Oh? Why not?’ asked Thea.

  ‘We’re here to arrest Mrs Frowse,’ came the stunning reply. ‘I’m told she arrived home five minutes ago.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ant had the presence of mind to ask his two questions almost before his mother was out of her car. He paused only to check that she was not damaged in any way, mentally as well as physically. She appeared drawn, apprehensive even, but perfectly steady. ‘What did you mean when you said “He’s dead and I can’t come home”?’ he burst out. ‘That’s what you said to me on the phone.’

  She shook her head in puzzlement. ‘What? What are you talking about? Where’s your father? What are all those cars doing in the driveway?’

  ‘You said those words. You must remember. What did you mean? Who was dead? It’s important.’ He wanted to shake the answer out of her.

  ‘Oh. Is that what you thought I said? I was talking about Digby. “He’s dead to me” is what I said, or something like it. It was quite a bad line. You must have heard it wrong.’

  Ant fell silent, running the phone call through his head yet again. ‘No,’ he decided. ‘I didn’t hear it wrong.’

  ‘You’ve been thinking I killed someone?’ She looked back at the police activity in the woods. ‘That I killed Rufus Blackwood, in fact?’ The smile that went with these words made Ant even m
ore terrified than he was already.

  ‘I’ve got another question,’ he went on hurriedly. Digby was standing in the doorway, waiting for them to join him. And there was a strong sense of events closing in, leaving no time to spare. ‘Why did you take Aldebaran’s ashes with you?’

  ‘Ah!’ Beverley stepped back to her car. ‘They’re quite safe – I strapped them into the passenger seat.’

  ‘But why … ?’

  ‘I didn’t want your father to have them,’ she said simply.

  Which only left two more minutes for Digby and Beverley to confront each other, with a minimal exchange of words. Those they did utter were gibberish to Ant.

  ‘I saw you,’ said his mother. ‘I came back on Thursday and saw you.’

  Digby did not flinch. ‘Whatever you think you saw, you got it wrong,’ he said.

  ‘Nobody’s ever going to convince me of that.’

  ‘So what do you think happens now? There’s trouble, whichever way you look at it.’

  ‘Visitors,’ said Ant, pointing down at the gate.

  Although they kept well out of the way, Thea and Stephanie did not go home despite the knowledge that they were intruding on matters that were none of their business. They saw Gladwin supervising the arrest of Beverley Frowse, and taking her away in the back of the police car. ‘We’re taking you in for questioning,’ the senior detective intoned. ‘With regard to the unlawful killing of Mr Rufus Blackwood.’

  Ant and Digby stood at the gate watching the departing vehicle with blank faces. Percy came out to rub noses with Hepzie, both dogs subdued and watchful.

  Ant belatedly took notice of them and beckoned. ‘You’d better come in,’ he said. ‘We might need some distraction.’

  ‘I hope you’re going to tell us everything,’ said Thea. ‘This has got to be a mistake, surely?’

  ‘There’s hardly anything to tell. We only spoke to her for a minute before you got here. And you saw what happened then.’