A Grave in the Cotswolds (17 page)

‘We would have to, sir, but there would be no requirement for us to take you home again. And the inconvenience would be considerable.’

Just as Maggs and I had worked out for ourselves. I heaved a noisy sigh. ‘I’ll try to contact Mrs Osborne, then.’ It seemed a further bizarre twist that he should try to throw us together in this way. Didn’t the police generally endeavour to keep their witnesses apart?

‘Who’s Thea?’ asked Karen, as any wife would, having overheard the conversation. ‘And what did you mean about her being a suspect? A suspect for what?’

‘She’s the dead woman’s house-sitter,’ I said casually. ‘She was at the funeral. The police are raising a whole lot of difficulties about the grave, and now they think there’s been some sort of deliberate misdemeanour on my part. They suspect me of ignoring the rules. But I can’t understand why the police would want to question Thea. She lives in Oxford.’ My insides were spasming with the guilty risks I was taking by telling such lies to my wife. It was all the worse because she so readily believed me.

‘So she’s hardly likely to come all the way down here, is she? Is that what they were suggesting? It would take
hours
.’

‘Right. Though I suppose I could at least get a train to Bath or somewhere and meet her there.’ I looked at her, reading her face, trying to convey my sense of floundering in something that normal people would find a mere trivial detail. ‘Why is this so difficult?’

‘Maybe because you’re making it so,’ she suggested shrewdly.

I frowned. ‘Am I? What do you mean?’

But she had turned away from me, so I could only see the side of her face. She was pale, and listless, already dealing with my imminent absence and the responsibilities she would have to shoulder. ‘I don’t want you to go,’ she muttered. ‘I don’t feel well, if you must know.’

She would never lie about it. If she said she felt ill, then she genuinely did. The iron fist clutching my guts took a tighter hold. ‘Kaz,’ I begged her. ‘I would stay here if I could – you know I would. But too much depends on it. If we get embroiled in a serious legal battle, we could lose everything. I have to convince them I acted in good faith, and I can only do that face-to-face. I thought about just letting it go along without me, but I daren’t risk it. Honestly, love, there really isn’t any choice.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll cope. Just get back as soon as you can.’

Chapter Twelve

The plan worked almost too well. I phoned Thea on the number she’d given me, and she confirmed that she too had to return to the Cotswolds, for reasons she did not entirely understand. She would normally just buzz along the A40, but she could easily come down through Cirencester to Bath, and be there by ten. She gave the impression of having a map of the whole area in her head, rattling off road numbers, while I struggled to visualise her route. ‘It sounds terribly out of your way,’ I protested feebly.

‘It is a bit, but I really don’t mind. I’ll come and meet you at the station, then, shall I?’

‘If you’re sure. The traffic in Bath can be horrendous. I never go there if I can avoid it.’

‘Well, if I’m late, just hang about where I can see you.’

‘OK. I’ll have to go now. Karen’s taking me to Castle Cary. It’s all rather a rush.’

‘The whole thing is completely ridiculous,’ said Thea, with absolute conviction. ‘I don’t know why we’re humouring them. If they want us, they damn well ought to come and fetch us.’

‘Yes,’ I said briefly, wanting to articulate some more of my thoughts, but aware of Karen rushing the children into their coats, ten minutes earlier than usual. Luckily, the school was open for a breakfast club, and we could drop them at any time after eight.

I caught the train, along with hundreds of commuters, letting myself be jostled aside by more experienced travellers. I found myself without a seat, standing with two other men in the area by a door. Nobody spoke and the time passed slowly. Less than an hour, and it seemed like a whole day.

I was twenty minutes early for Thea, but waited obediently at the front of the station, watching every car as it swung off the road to drop or collect a traveller. The city of Bath was not a favourite of mine, despite the history and beauty. I could see some of the fine old buildings from where I stood, with a hill rising behind the busy streets. Traffic hummed on every side, and I was left with an impression of a tired old town no longer fit for purpose. At least the Cotswold villages offered peace and quiet, whereas here the demands of the motor car seemed to have created a sort of perpetual low-lying bad temper that was almost tangible.

As I stood there, my thoughts slowly calmed, the demands of family and business behind me. There was nothing more I could do to make life easier for Karen or Maggs. They had the car, and each other. I was stepping into a different world, with new things to think about, such as exactly why the police wanted to speak to me again, and whether one of the people I had met at the weekend was the actual killer of Gavin Maynard.

I had not previously noticed Thea’s car, so had no idea what to watch out for. Something small and environmentally responsible, I assumed. She had not struck me as a person interested in conspicuous consumption.

The first thing I saw was her spaniel, sitting on the seat in a red Fiesta that I expected to occupy myself. Its black and white head with the long flapping ears bobbed excitedly as the car turned into the station forecourt. As I stepped towards them, the dog reared up, scrabbling at the window in a frenzy of welcome, as if I was a long-lost master, pined over for years, and suddenly miraculously restored. I smiled, in spite of the silliness of the thing.

Thea leant over to restrain the animal, beckoning me to get in. I could hardly see her for the impossible ears and flailing paws. With an impressively powerful heave, she tossed the dog over her shoulder onto the back seat, and beckoned at me again. I opened the door cautiously, half expecting Hepzibah to escape into the traffic of Bath the moment I gave her the chance. Behind us a car horn tooted.

‘Hurry up,’ Thea encouraged me. ‘Sling your bag in the back with Hepzie.’

In seconds we were away. She threaded the car back into the stream of traffic and headed in a direction I supposed must be north.

‘This is very kind of you,’ I said. ‘It sounds pathetic, but we were really stuck.’

‘Anyone would have been,’ she sympathised. ‘The police are behaving very oddly. I have no idea what they think they’re doing.’

I remembered that she was already acquainted with members of the local police force, and therefore presumed some sort of special treatment. ‘I can’t imagine what they want with you, anyway,’ I said.

‘No. I’m very insignificant. I never even met the wretched Mr Maynard.’

‘But you were almost the first to see his body.’ I thought it through again, from the beginning, greatly facilitated by the atmosphere inside the car. The spaniel had settled down, and Thea drove reliably, with no sudden jerks or alarming manoeuvres. ‘Those other people – the birdwatching couple and the two women in the car – are they relevant, do you think?’

‘Unlikely. Although you never know. It isn’t always sheer bad luck when somebody finds a body. Especially one that’s only been dead a few minutes. I imagine they’ve all been thoroughly questioned by now. But the most important thing has to be that the police have persuaded themselves that there’s a connection between Mrs Simmonds and Mr Maynard.’

‘Which is where I come in,’ I said glumly. ‘I’m the missing link.’

‘But I can’t understand it. I mean…I get that the council don’t like the grave being where it is. But Mr Maynard was only doing his job. He wasn’t
personally
involved. So it seems a bit mean to murder him just because of his position in the council.’

‘But he
was
personally involved,’ I said slowly. ‘Very much so. He called it a travesty. His wife said he had strong religious beliefs, which implies he thinks my whole operation is blasphemous. That’s certainly the way he came over.’

‘So he was killed by an atheist. Is that you, then?’

I laughed. And then I remembered where we were going. ‘That’s probably what the police are thinking. It must look beautifully neat to them – a nice simple fight over the theological implications of burying somebody in an unconsecrated field. They want you to give a character analysis of the woman in the grave, plus adding your impressions of me, and maybe the Talbots.’

‘Could be. But they need evidence. And they won’t get it, will they?’

‘I got the impression they’d found something, when they phoned yesterday.’ My skin began to prickle with a fresh wave of anxiety. ‘After all, I had recently met him. One of my hairs could just possibly have got onto his jacket.’

‘Did they take samples from you, for comparison?’

‘I’m afraid so.’ I had suppressed the memory of the faintly disgusting procedure by which they scraped the inside of my cheek. It reminded me unpleasantly of Saddam Hussein undergoing the same humiliation.

‘They’ll keep it on record for twenty years,’ she told me. ‘Doesn’t that make you furious?’

‘It might, when I stop to think about it. Maybe it’ll just be a very effective deterrent against my committing any crime during that time.’

She turned her head quickly, to check my expression. We had scarcely looked at each other at all since I had got into the car. Real drivers, as opposed to those in films, only remove their gaze from the road ahead for the briefest half-second at a time.

‘You’re not serious,’ she accused. ‘You sound like my daughter, saying that.’

‘Well, I can see both sides. And I don’t think it is twenty years, is it? I thought it was less than that.’

She snorted. ‘It shouldn’t be twenty
minutes
. It’s an outrage.’

Her energetic indignation was a delight. ‘And you sound like my partner, Maggs,’ I said. ‘Although she’s got a lot more mellow lately, she’s still very
certain
about everything. And she had a lot to say about the song and dance she and her husband had when they tried to get back into the country from Syria last week.’

‘Syria?’

‘They were there on holiday. I’ve hardly had a chance to ask her about it, yet, but I gather they had a fantastic time.’

‘I’d like to meet her,’ said Thea simply. I tried to envisage such an encounter, and concluded that they would probably like each other enormously.

‘She’s a one-off,’ I said fondly. ‘There’s nobody in the world like Maggs.’

For a moment I interpreted Thea’s silence as some sort of offence – praising one woman to another was not always a good idea, after all. But a glance at her face revealed no sign of displeasure. Behind us, the dog was curled contentedly, as if riding in the car was her natural condition.

‘Is your mother still alive?’ she asked suddenly. ‘And your father?’

‘Mother, yes, father, no. He died ten years ago. My mother’s only sixty-eight. She’s always very busy.’

‘Sisters?’

‘One. Married, no kids. Is this some sort of rehearsal?’

‘Pardon?’

‘For my police interrogation.’

She huffed out a little laugh. ‘Oh, sorry. I just wanted to put you in context. You strike me as a man surrounded by women, so I was just checking. Did I sound rude?’

‘No, not at all. But it was rather a sudden change of subject.’

‘Was it? It seemed quite logical to me.’

‘So tell me about your parents and siblings. Incidentally, you’re more or less right about being surrounded by women. But I do have a son.’ I thought about Timmy for a moment, with the usual niggle of self-reproach. ‘I’m afraid I favour his sister, though. Isn’t that a wicked thing to admit?’

‘Honest,’ she said. ‘I have a mother, but no father, as of a few months ago. Two sisters and a brother. I’m third in the family. We’re all quite close. Eight nephews and nieces – and the daughter you’ve already met.’

‘Eight! That’s a clan. A tribe. Your mother must feel a proper matriarch.’

‘She doesn’t, really. I don’t think she feels very connected to any of them. My big sister has three boys and my little sister has five.’

‘Five boys?’

‘No, no. Two boys and three girls. She just kept popping them out, but it looks as if she’s stopped now.’

‘So you’re still in mourning for your father.’ It was a statement, based on firm personal expertise. ‘Right after your husband. That must be hard.’

‘Not right after. There were nearly three years between them. But yes, it did bring it back, and I took it very personally, both times. They were too young, especially Carl.’

‘But it’s made you stronger,’ I observed.

‘Has it? I’m certainly different. If “stronger” means not being easily scared, then yes. I don’t feel I have very much left to lose, which is quite a powerful way to be. Except, in my last house-sit, I lost my nerve big time. I spent a week feeling sheer terror. It was all very cosmic – I was scared of being abandoned, losing my grip. It took all my energy just to want to stay alive. Gladwin saved me. And the rabbits.’

‘Rabbits?’

‘It’s a long story. And sad.’

We were already in the Cotswolds, I noticed. The distinctive stone houses and tip-tilted land had begun to appear on all sides. ‘Do you always do your house-sitting in this area?’ I asked her.

‘Actually, yes. It began more or less by accident, but then I decided it would be fun to really get to know the place. The history is fantastic, once you start delving into it. Like Broad Campden, in fact.’

‘Really?’ All I had noticed was a big flamboyant hedge and a funny little church.

‘It was the absolute heart of the Arts and Crafts Movement a century ago.’ She said it with a flourish, as if revealing something amazing.

‘What’s the Arts and Crafts Movement?’ I asked humbly. ‘Sorry to show my ignorance.’ I ransacked my memory for some link, some piece of information buried deep, but found nothing.

‘William Morris? You’ve heard of him.’

‘Wallpaper,’ I managed. ‘My mother raves about it. Big flowers all over it.’

‘Yes, well, there was a lot more than that. It was a whole philosophy. Everything should be handmade and beautiful. I’d have thought you’d be in sympathy with all that. It’s like your coffins.’