A Cotswold Christmas Mystery

by Rebecca Tope

‘So where has she been? What was she doing?’

  ‘She was at her friend Winnie’s,’ said Ant. ‘Which will be very easy to prove. The police really are wasting their time, you know. If they’re looking for a murderer, they’d be better off concentrating on me and my dad. At least we were right here. My mother was miles away.’

  ‘Steady on, lad,’ said Digby. ‘Don’t go confessing to something you haven’t done.’

  Ant blinked, and then laughed awkwardly. ‘Th-that isn’t what I meant,’ he stammered.

  ‘No. Well,’ said his father repressively. He turned to Thea. ‘They’d be better off interrogating Carla and those daughters of hers. They’d soon find out that things are a lot more complicated than they think.’

  ‘Really?’ said Thea. ‘I suppose they’ll be doing that anyway.’

  Digby was suddenly much more active than he had been for days, pacing around the kitchen, watched worriedly by Percy. He was muttering, more to himself than the other people in the room. ‘Makes no sense. Why do they think she came back, if she’d killed bloody Blackwood? Arresting her is ludicrous.’

  ‘The way they see it, they want to know why she went off like she did if she didn’t kill him,’ said Ant.

  ‘And how do they think she did it, then? With a crowbar or what?’

  Thea spoke before fully engaging her brain. ‘Oh, no. He was electrocuted. It mucked up his pacemaker, apparently.’

  Digby stopped his pacing and dropped his jaw. ‘You can’t be serious,’ he gasped. ‘So the careless bugger must have got himself tangled up in his own fence, then.’

  Ant spoke at much the same moment. ‘That’s right − it must have been the fence. The old fool was so sure the medics had fixed his heart trouble once and for all – when all the time it just took a few volts … so why are they so sure it was murder?’

  ‘Something the pathologist found in this morning’s post-mortem,’ said Thea, belatedly trying not to say too much.

  ‘Have you spoken to the police, then?’ Ant was now the sharper of the two men, Digby still open-mouthed and speechless. ‘Are they telling you what they’re thinking?’

  Thea was plainly embarrassed. ‘We’re friends, you see, me and Gladwin. And she knows I’m matey with you as well, so it seemed to make sense for her to come to me …’

  ‘You’re a spy,’ interrupted Digby angrily. ‘What the hell have you told her? Is it down to you that they’ve arrested Beverley?’

  ‘Um … well, in a way, I suppose. But they’d have found out anyway, of course.’

  ‘Found out what?’

  ‘That she’d been missing since before Christmas.’

  ‘How?’ Digby shouted. ‘How would they? Nobody else knew about that. Not a single soul. We don’t talk about our private business to anybody.’ He turned on his son. ‘You’ve been blabbing to this woman, haven’t you?’

  ‘You were right here as well,’ Thea pointed out. ‘You heard everything he said.’

  ‘And I knew at the time he was an idiot.’ The man’s rage, which did not come naturally to him, was rapidly subsiding. ‘Well, it’s done now,’ he groaned. He looked across the room to where Stephanie was loitering by the door. ‘And what are you doing bringing this little one into all this mess?’ he finished, with another flare of aggression.

  Stephanie was unsettled by Digby’s angry words, but not especially alarmed. She trusted him to calm down quickly and return to his usual affable self. Anybody would be cross in his situation. The police thought Beverley had killed the Blackwood man and had taken her off to prison. She and Thea were wrong to be there at all – a point which Digby had been trying to make, she suspected. And he was probably right that Thea had interfered when she shouldn’t have done.

  And now there was this new information about electrocution. That was the bit Thea had refrained from telling her, only a little while ago. She had an image of jagged forked lightning stabbing into the man, his hair on end and eyes staring. How could anybody deliberately arrange for that to happen?

  ‘We should probably go, then,’ said Thea. ‘I’m sure everything’s going to work out all right. Gladwin’s a good detective. She won’t charge Beverley without rock-solid evidence.’

  ‘We hope,’ said Ant. ‘If that’s right about electrocution, I still can’t see that they can be sure it wasn’t an accident.’

  Thea averted her gaze, with a little shake of her head. ‘I never was much good at physics,’ she said.

  ‘What happened about that jewellery thing?’ Stephanie asked, out of the blue. ‘Did you tell Thea that somebody found it? Where was it?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Ant quickly. ‘That’s got nothing to do with all this other stuff. One of Mrs B’s daughters had it all the time.’

  ‘Really?’ Thea was obviously intrigued. ‘They had the decency to come and tell you that, did they?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Ant uncomfortably. ‘But it’s not relevant – take my word for it.’

  ‘Yes, you do that,’ echoed Digby. He gave Stephanie a rueful look. ‘Best not to ask too many questions, pet. You never know where they might lead.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Stephanie, feeling a quiver of alarm.

  ‘Come on, then,’ said Thea, gathering child and dog, and opening the front door. ‘We’ll get out of your way. But I hope we can get together again soon, and patch up any differences.’

  ‘Differences!’ snorted Digby, waving them away.

  ‘What a mess this place is,’ Thea muttered, as they crossed the junk-filled garden. ‘Look at it!’ There was a rusty wheelbarrow not far from her, containing a car battery and a roll of wire. Next to it was a buckled sheet of galvanised iron and a garden fork with a broken handle. ‘It all needs to go to the tip, if you ask me.’ She kicked at a dented metal bucket that stood close to her foot. It fell over, despite being full of water, with a dirty sponge at the bottom.

  Stephanie scrutinised every item, including the bucket and its spilled contents. ‘I expect some of it’s useful,’ she said vaguely.

  ‘I doubt it. Looks like complete rubbish to me. Engines, old lawnmowers, chunks of oily metal – you’d have to have a proper workshop to make anything of this lot.’

  ‘Mm,’ said Stephanie, still examining the various objects with close attention.

  They trailed back along the footpath, each feeling far from cheerful. Stephanie went over the accusation that Thea was a spy, and could see how it might seem that way. In fact, it could even be true that the police would never have arrested Beverley if Thea hadn’t told the young Finch Graham about the woman being missing. She had worked out without being told that he had passed the information on to his senior officer. Very little of the whole business had been conducted out of her hearing, anyhow. Much of the time, Thea and Jessica seemed to forget that she was there, paying close attention.

  ‘It can’t have been Mrs Frowse who killed him, can it?’ she asked, after a few minutes.

  Thea replied quite readily, apparently uttering thoughts she’d just been mulling over. ‘It’s hard to see anybody deliberately rigging up some sort of lethal device, and then connecting him to it and killing him. He wouldn’t just keep still, would he? I mean – he was outside, in his pyjamas. It might work if some maniac doctor decided to do it in his surgery somehow, but this just seems ludicrous.’

  Stephanie concentrated on the idea of the electric fence being the real murderer. Her first term at the big school had introduced her to the wonders of physics, with some basic experiments with electricity the high point so far. She had drawn diagrams and learnt new terms such as ‘resistance’ and ‘voltage’ and ‘conductor’. She knew that water helped the current to flow, and that human skin was providentially resistant to electricity. Gold, silver, copper and aluminium were all good conductors, especially when cold. She knew that ‘earthing’ was important, and along the way had been shown how to change an electric plug. She had found the whole subject fascinating, as had most of the rest of the class.

  The
a was thinking along different lines, evidently. ‘It could have been one of the staff, of course. They’d have the opportunity and probably the means. And there’s likely to be plenty of motive as well. Blackwood doesn’t seem to have been the greatest employer, if his treatment of the Frowses is anything to go by.’

  ‘Mm,’ said Stephanie. ‘I wonder if he had bare feet?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think it makes the current stronger if you’re not wearing shoes. And if you’re wet, of course.’

  ‘I expect he had some warm, fleecy slippers on.’

  They walked another hundred yards, the power of their thoughts slowing them to a crawl. Then Stephanie stopped dead. ‘We’ve got to go back,’ she said. ‘Or phone Mrs Gladwin. Or something.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The car battery,’ she said urgently. ‘They did it with the car battery.’

  Chapter Twenty

  Thea insisted that they should carry on home, and talk it over calmly before taking any action. But now they proceeded at a trot, arriving in Broad Campden barely ten minutes later. Stephanie kept trying to describe the process. ‘There are terminals, you see. And if you lie a piece of metal across them, and then hold that against someone’s heart, they’re likely to die.’

  ‘Okay, but—’ Thea floundered, ignorant of more than the absolute basics. ‘Are you really sure that’s right?’

  ‘We can check it on the Internet.’

  ‘But Steph – if you’re right, that looks terribly bad for Digby. Or Ant.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Stephanie. ‘But if it’s the truth …’

  ‘The truth can be terrible,’ said Thea softly. ‘I just wish you didn’t have to learn that so young.’

  Stephanie’s impatience was almost painful. She wanted to confirm her theory and assure herself that she wasn’t being stupid. She remembered Timmy talking about the film The Green Mile which he had been outrageously allowed to watch at his friend Oliver’s house. He had talked about it obsessively for days afterwards, mostly to his sister, giving her a graphic description of the electrocution scene. Something about a wet sponge having to go on the top of the victim’s head, and the sadistic prison officer not providing it, so the whole thing would hurt more and take longer. Timmy had found it both terrifying and fascinating. ‘Hurry up,’ she urged her stepmother. ‘We’re almost home now.’

  ‘What’s the rush?’ puffed Thea. ‘I can’t go any faster.’

  Stephanie couldn’t properly explain. It felt as if the ideas that were filling her mind would either evaporate or somehow overflow. She had to capture them calmly, organise them just as she’d been taught to write up her science experiments. There were so many potential obstacles – her father, the police and Digby himself. All or any of them might just laugh at her and dismiss everything she had to say.

  But then they were in the house at last. Everything was calm and normal, and it seemed almost violent to burst in as they did, and start gabbling about Beverley and police and electrocution. Thea was of little help. Random comments emerged from her with no logical thread until Jessica physically gripped her shoulders and made her stop.

  Drew was irritable. ‘We’ve only just got back ourselves,’ he said. ‘We’re all tired out. Can’t we just have a bit of peace for a while?’

  It was much as Stephanie had feared. Thea had made it worse, behaving more like a child than a grown-up. She went over to Timmy, and sat with him in the window seat, leaving the adults to settle down, watching each face anxiously.

  When salvation finally came, it was from another source entirely. The doorbell rang and there was Detective Sergeant Finch Graham, looking boyishly apprehensive. ‘DS Gladwin sent me,’ he said. ‘I’m to ask you a few questions.’

  ‘Who? Me?’ Thea asked foolishly.

  ‘Who else?’ sighed Drew. ‘Take him into the office, why don’t you?’

  They were gone for only a few minutes when Thea reappeared and told Stephanie she should join them. ‘He wants to hear it from you,’ said Thea. ‘The stuff about electrodes or whatever it is.’

  Stephanie sat down on a chair reserved for people arranging a funeral, while the detective took Drew’s place. Thea was next to her. Carefully she presented her theory, waiting for Finch to make notes as she went. At last he looked up at her. ‘That’s incredibly clever,’ he said. ‘I’m enormously impressed.’ Then he deflated her again. ‘But I don’t think it’ll do, you know. The problem is, you could turn almost anything into a lethal weapon if you really want to. Knitting needles, belts, lavatory cleaner, you name it. And as well as that, you can push a person under a train or off a roof or into a river. And you can make all those things look like an accident, with good planning.’

  ‘But—’ Stephanie had no idea what to say. She had been so certain.

  Thea was indignant. ‘I thought you were going to take her seriously,’ she protested. ‘Now you’ve just made her feel silly.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘And I promise you it isn’t silly at all. We will have a look at those things you’re telling me about, of course. But without any actual evidence, they’re just bits of junk in a front yard.’

  ‘If they’re still there,’ said Thea darkly.

  ‘You’ll tell Mrs Gladwin, though, won’t you?’ begged Stephanie, with a hazy notion that a female listener might give the theory more credence. After all, her stepmother showed signs of believing her. Another thought struck her. ‘And if they’ve been moved and hidden away, that’s a sort of evidence as well – isn’t it?’

  ‘It would be suspicious, I agree,’ said the detective.

  ‘Did you ask Thea the questions?’ Stephanie enquired, wondering at the brevity of the interview. ‘The ones you came with?’

  ‘It was really just the one.’

  ‘And I didn’t know the answer,’ Thea admitted. ‘I’ve been pretty useless, in fact.’

  Finch Graham tapped his teeth for a moment. ‘There are a whole lot of connections we haven’t worked out, you see. Along with some findings at the scene.’

  ‘Which he won’t tell us about,’ Thea said to Stephanie.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t Mrs Frowse,’ said Stephanie firmly. ‘You should let her go back to her family. Percy’s missing her.’

  The return to ordinary family life felt terribly wrong to Stephanie, but she did her best to go along with it. After all, it was still Christmas, and she had failed hopelessly as a detective, so she ought to try and forget the whole murder business.

  Timmy was sifting through his new toys in the sitting room, taking them out of the big cardboard box they’d gone into as he unwrapped them, and putting them in piles. ‘Wow, Tim! Look at all those new things!’ said Thea.

  ‘Lots of them were in my stocking.’ He fingered a puzzle in which you had to move small squares in a frame to make a picture. ‘I like this one. Stephanie’s got one the same – except it’s a different picture.’

  ‘I had those when I was small. I didn’t know you could still get them.’ Thea was careful to preserve the myth of Santa for another year or two, where Timmy was concerned. One of her ploys was to find unusual items that harked back to an earlier kind of childhood.

  Stephanie was inclined to be impatient with all this after the events of the afternoon. She felt superior to Timmy in his artificially preserved innocence, including his determination to believe in Santa Claus. She knew that deep down he was perfectly aware that adult human beings supplied the contents of his stocking, but he still enjoyed the pretence, and wouldn’t hear any suggestion that it was false. It produced a tension in her that was uncomfortable. She snatched at the puzzle toy, and examined it, holding it away from her brother. ‘Mine’s better,’ she said nastily.

  ‘Hey!’ protested Timmy. ‘Give it back.’

  ‘Let me have a go on it first.’ She started shifting the little squares, sliding them around each other, but always finding the bottom of the picture stubbornly returning to one side, and the corners refus
ing to co-operate. Within two minutes she had thrown it back at Timmy in frustration. He took it and deftly arranged it into the finished picture in forty seconds flat.

  ‘Easy,’ he said. ‘You have to push them the opposite way to what you want, sometimes. You need to think about the gaps,’ he tried to explain.

  ‘I have a feeling it’s true that boys are better at this sort of thing,’ said Thea. ‘Although my brother was always hopeless at jigsaws.’

  ‘I am as well,’ said Stephanie crossly. ‘And I bet Mrs Gladwin is, too.’

  ‘She probably is,’ Thea agreed. ‘Although she seems to work by some sort of lucky intuition, much of the time. She can’t possibly really think Beverley killed that man, can she?’

  Timmy looked up questioningly. ‘Does she?’ he said.

  ‘They arrested her,’ Stephanie informed him.

  ‘I don’t get it at all,’ Thea went on, not really talking to the children so much as speaking her thoughts aloud. ‘If the man was electrocuted, why do they think it was done deliberately? Isn’t it always an accident?’

  ‘Not if it’s the electric chair,’ said Timmy.

  ‘What do you know about that? It’s much too gruesome for you.’ Thea looked mildly concerned.

  When the small boy explained about The Green Mile, Drew also took notice. There followed a pointless bit of bickering about the dependability of Oliver’s parents.

  ‘It’s a very odd investigation,’ mused Jessica, interrupting. ‘I mean – surely the two Frowse men must be the main candidates for killing the landlord bloke? They hated him. He made their lives a misery. With him dead, the place will probably be sold, and a new person would be sure to be an improvement.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Thea. ‘That’s wrong in about ten different ways. For a start, it’s Carla who they really hate. Rufus was an idiot, too rich for his own sanity, but not really malicious like her. Plus those terrible daughters, who float around causing trouble and taking up space. Plus, if the estate gets sold again, there could well be ructions for the tenants. It would make Carla even more determined to eradicate them. Beverley talks big, arming herself with all the relevant legal protections, but they’re really very vulnerable. Nobody would speak up for them if it came to the crunch. They’d have to pay for a barrister or something – which they couldn’t hope to do.’