Death in the Cotswolds (2 page)

But they changed it to Cold Aston, not so long ago – or so they think. The signs all keep Aston Blank as an alternative, and I don’t believe either name will ever really disappear.

It was as good a place as any to live, and all the better for not being on the tourist trail. There was at least the normality of a school, and a pub and a fair number of small houses for not-so-rich people to live in. The farms were mostly approached by plain rutted tracks, left open and unannounced to
the road. There were avenues of trees on all sides, remnants of driveways to country mansions, in many cases. If there was frost overnight, I thought, the leaves would have lost their green within a couple of days.

Just as it was getting properly dark and Thomas, my big tabby, had come in from the cold, seeking out the fire I’d already lit for us both in the back room, there was a knock on the door. Phil was there, eyebrows raised in a sort of mock drama, holding a broken oil lamp chimney.

‘We’ve made a bad start,’ he grinned. ‘Baxter knocked this over with his tail.’ I didn’t need to ask who Baxter was. ‘It’s useless now. I don’t suppose you’ve got one anywhere, have you?’

‘An oil lamp,’ I said slowly. ‘You’re asking me if you can borrow an oil lamp.’

‘I know – it sounds a bit like a fairytale, doesn’t it. It’s just that they cast such a lovely romantic light.’ He cocked his head sideways, coaxingly, infuriatingly. ‘Besides, there are only four candles. We forgot to buy a new boxful.’

‘Well, sorry, but I haven’t. There might be one in your attic, though. Helen kept all sorts of junk up there. You should keep those dogs under better control.’

‘You don’t have to tell me that – but I’ve never found a way to stop them wagging their tails. Even
Hepzie – that’s Thea’s spaniel – can do some damage with hers.’

‘Cut them off,’ I said. ‘Now…’ He was letting the cold in, and I was cross with him for being so soppy. The Phil Hollis I remembered had never been soppy. He was a senior policeman, for heaven’s sake!

He blew out his cheeks, still playing the same game, helpless little boy, appealing to an earlier version of me, fishing for some old shared childhood that had never really existed. ‘It’ll be awfully dark in the attic,’ he whined.

‘So use the candles for the rest of tonight and have a look up there tomorrow. It’s got a skylight – you’ll be able to see quite well by day.’

‘Oh, well, thanks, um, Ariadne.’ He worked his lips and repeated quietly, ‘Ariadne. I must remember to say Ariadne.’

‘Oh, go away,’ I said, and pushed the door shut in his face.

It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. If we were playing a ‘reversion to childhood’ game, then this was entirely in keeping with the rules. He would tease me, I stuck my tongue out or punched him, he retreated and forgot all about me. It had been a regular pattern for decades and I’d have been lost if anything had changed. The presence of a love interest on his side made no difference. Whatever it was between Phil Hollis and me, it definitely wasn’t
love. For love, you had to have equality, respect, attention, seriousness, understanding – and about fifty other qualities which were utterly absent from our relationship, such as it was. Instead, on his side there was a decency, a good heart – and a kind of unimaginativeness which prevented him from working out that I might be bad news. For me there was a curiosity about his life, along with our shared history and an uncomfortable knowledge of secrets. Secrets that Detective Superintendent Hollis certainly would rather I hadn’t known.

Before ten the next morning he was back, wearing a quilted bodywarmer over an inadequate nylon jumper, and looking pinched with cold. His lady friend hadn’t managed to create much heat, then, I thought, while wondering whether she’d had the sense to pack more substantial clothes than he had.

Without giving him time to speak, I ushered him into my house and sat him down beside the Rayburn. ‘Stay there,’ I ordered, and went through to the back room. It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for.

‘Here,’ I told him, proffering a thick jumper in handspun Cotswold wool. ‘That’ll keep the cold out. I’ve got a pot of tea made, too, if you’d like some.’

He didn’t demur, just grinned and shivered. ‘I didn’t think it could be this cold in October,’ he said. ‘How do you cope in January?’

I didn’t bother to reply. He might never have
lived in Cold Aston, but he knew the area well enough, so acting like a soft townie didn’t cut much ice with me.

‘Does your friend want a jumper as well?’ I asked, once I’d put boiling water in the teapot.

‘We’ll buy them off you, of course,’ he said, standing up to put the jumper on. It fitted perfectly. ‘Must be worth quite a bit.’

‘You don’t have to. I wear them myself before I sell them. Just don’t spill red wine down it, or blood, and you can give it back when you go if you like.’

‘But I want to keep it,’ he insisted. ‘I love it already.’

I shrugged. Everybody loved my jumpers – which was why I’d been forced to employ a team of spinners and knitters to keep up with the demand. It took a lot of the satisfaction out of the business, but also most of the pressure. There’d been a time when I’d knitted for twelve hours a day, turning out three full-sized jumpers a week, and that’d been no fun at all.

‘D’you want to ask her over for some tea, as well?’ I invited. ‘Or is she frying sausages on the camping stove?’

‘I’ll go and get her,’ he said. That was always a thing I’d liked about Phil – he didn’t waste time on polite nonsenses, like
well, if you’re sure it’s no
trouble
. He took people at their word. Sometimes I
wondered whether this was a good trait for a policeman. Might he not be missing some of the undercurrents, if he believed whatever his witnesses and criminals told him? When I said this to Caroline once, she laughed at me and said I’d got him completely wrong. ‘He never stops trying to spot the hidden agenda,’ she told me. ‘That wide-eyed look works a treat, putting people off guard.’ She seemed to be saying it had worked rather too successfully with her at times.

Before they came back, I fetched another jumper for the woman. This was a smaller version of Phil’s in the golden brown you get from dyeing fleece with dead dahlia heads. It wasn’t one of my favourites.

She came in looking as if she’d only just got out of bed. Her hair was messy and her cheeks very pink. Phil followed her into the kitchen, standing behind her and putting his hands on her shoulders. She pressed back against him, angling her head up and sideways to see his face. I thrust the jumper at her without saying anything.

She accepted it with a big smile and immediately put it on. I poured tea for them, without offering coffee. I dislike coffee myself and seldom keep it in the house. All I had was some very stale ground beans that had to go into a proper coffee machine and there was no way I could be bothered with all that.

The woman was curious, looking round the
house with no shame. ‘It’s more recent than Auntie Helen’s house, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘By a century or so,’ I confirmed. ‘This one barely dates further back than the 1880s. It was built for a farm worker and his family, I think.’

She nodded seriously. ‘Very likely,’ she said. ‘Have you always lived here?’

I shook my head. ‘I grew up on a farm, near Charlbury, not really in the Cotswolds at all.’

She nodded again, as if this information fitted her expectations of me.
Just a country bumpkin
, she was thinking.
Probably left school at fifteen.

‘So what do you do now?’ she asked. ‘Besides making gorgeous jumpers?’

I shrugged. ‘All sorts of things. Gardening, watching out for old ladies, lending a hand at lambing time. Keeping pigs. Making wine.’

She blinked, trying to make something of me, to fit me into a pigeonhole. Phil rescued her. ‘Oh, M— Ariadne’s a woman out of her time,’ he laughed. ‘Always has been. Babysitter, shepherd, home help, and now expert craftswoman.’

I hadn’t missed the near-blunder over my name, but gave him credit for correcting himself in time. I didn’t mind that he was patronising me. What he said was accurate enough.

‘He’s left out the most important bit,’ I said lightly.

They both looked at me expectantly, and I felt
strangely foolish. ‘I’m a pagan,’ I mumbled. ‘We’ve got a group here. I more or less started it.’

‘I didn’t know there was a group,’ said Phil. ‘Is it flourishing?’

‘Depends on what you mean. It’s healthy enough.’

‘I’ve always liked the sound of paganism,’ said Thea, not very convincingly. ‘Although I don’t know much about it.’

‘There’s no mystery,’ I said, with a look at Phil.

Thea was still being gushingly polite. ‘It must have been wonderful to grow up on a farm,’ she said next.

I smiled. ‘It was, actually. We mainly had sheep, and I didn’t get very involved except at lambing time, when I was in big demand. From when I was twelve or thirteen I was the best at it. More of mine survived than anyone else’s. It just seemed to come naturally to me. Plus I’ve always had strong hands.’ I was boasting shamelessly, trying to get a reaction from her, wanting her attention for some reason.

She smiled at me, a fresh sincere smile. It was as if she kept a neatly laundered stock of them somewhere, ready to produce a new one every minute or so. ‘That must have been quite something. And you still do it now, do you?’

‘Yup,’ I agreed. ‘Still the best, ask anybody.’

‘Actually,’ said Phil, with typical male clumsiness, ‘I came over to ask you a favour.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘You know the attic in Helen’s house? Where you said there might be a lamp? Well, we can’t find how to get into it.’ He laughed. ‘Is there a secret door somewhere?’

I’d forgotten that he had hardly even been to his aunt’s final home, even though she lived there for eighteen years. When he did visit, it was just for an afternoon, Helen treating him to tea and scones and gratitude for his trouble. His life had been on its own track, with wife, kids, parents, job.

‘Fine detective you are,’ I teased.

‘It’s really quite a big house,’ the woman defended. ‘I was surprised. I mean, just for one old lady. She must have rattled about in there.’

‘She loved it,’ I said, feeling a pain behind my left breast. ‘I’ve never known anybody love a house like that before. She was always polishing and dusting, and just – well,
loving
it.’ I sighed.

‘But Phil says she was quite old when she came here to live.’

‘She was sixty-eight. Her husband had just died. She wanted to make a new start in a new place.’

Phil’s friend looked out of my kitchen window, where there was a view of open fields, stretching down the slope to the south. ‘It’s much more open than most Cotswold villages,’ she murmured. ‘The others I know all seem to be situated in hollows or valleys. There’s a lot more sky here.’

I didn’t say anything. Phil drained his mug, and wriggled his shoulders inside the jumper. She read his mind instantly, and downed her own drink in one gulp.

‘Work,’ she said. ‘We’ve got work to do. Ariadne—’ she said it easily, with no sign of any effort or reluctance, which earned her a small hike in my estimation ‘—the attic. We really
can’t
find the way into it.’ She went to my front door and stared across at the house. It obviously had three storeys, although lacking the dormer windows that were such a common feature of Cotswold houses. A Velux skylight had been set into the steep roof, though, betraying the presence of a useable roof space. Thea shook her head.

‘It’s crazy – putting in a window like that and then hiding the access.’

‘It isn’t really hidden,’ I said and led them back to their side of the street.

I showed them where it was with a ridiculous feeling of pride. There was in fact a narrow stairway to the upper floor, not some newfangled loft ladder, or removable rectangle of plywood covering a hole in one of the ceilings. To get to Helen’s attic, you pushed aside a tallboy beside the chimney breast in the third bedroom, and climbed a flight of steep brick steps which followed the tapering line of the chimney itself. Then you turned tightly, to step onto the boarded floor of a large
space which ran the entire length and breadth of the house.

Phil and his Thea pressed right behind me, making daft jokes about the secret stairway and wondering what they’d find under the roof.

But they had to wait. As I turned, ready to climb the last few inches into the attic itself, I stopped. The light was quite good, streaming in through the roof window. It showed a transformation that made no sense at all to me.

‘Why’ve you stopped?’ demanded Phil. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Somebody’s been here,’ I said, my heart pounding at the strangeness of what I was seeing.

‘What?’ He couldn’t hear me, stuck halfway up the narrow stairway.

I tried to bend towards him, but it was difficult. I couldn’t bring myself to take the final step. ‘It’s all different,’ I said, a bit louder.

‘Well, move then,’ he snapped at me. ‘Let me see.’

I crawled clumsily onto the boards and sat close to the top of the stairs. I felt cold and scared.

Phil’s head appeared, and he swivelled, trying to find me. ‘Look!’ I told him. ‘Look at it.’

He came up higher, turned and hopped up to my side. Only then did he inspect the attic, spread before us like – well, like a film set, perhaps. Or the scene of a very peculiar crime.

It wasn’t so much a crime scene, I corrected
myself, as a clinically organised hideout. As Phil and I slowly shuffled over, to make space for Thea, the three of us obviously had very diverse reactions to what we were seeing. For myself, I was quite simply stunned. What lay before me was impossible. It was a joke, a cleverly constructed display designed to confuse. For Phil the policeman, it was deeply suspicious. He moved first, walking with head bowed to avoid the low beams of the roof, hands clasped behind his back, giving everything a forensic inspection, careful not to touch. Thea inhaled loudly, excitedly. ‘It’s so
clean
,’ she said. ‘Surely…? I mean…?’

She was right. Everything sparkled in the morning light. None of the dust and cobwebs that even Helen had permitted up there, and which would inevitably have accumulated in the year since her death without a human hand to remove them. The clutter that I had expected to see had all disappeared. ‘Where are her
things
?’ I demanded. ‘They’ve all been stolen.’ I thought about the stamp collection, the photo albums and boxes of letters.

Phil was halfway towards the far wall. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘There’s a whole lot of stuff behind this curtain.’ He tweaked at a huge dark blue swathe of chenille. Then he started to enumerate the objects that were carefully arranged on the clean floor in full view. ‘Cushions, lots of them. Silver candlesticks. Tins of food. Paper and
pens. Books. China plates. Folding table. My God, look here!’ His hands had become unclasped, and he was using a ballpoint pen, with its cap still on, to flip things open or nudge something aside for a better view. I stared into a neat cardboard box containing objects that I immediately realised had a particular significance. Phil, too, had understood what they were and our eyes met in a startle of memory and apprehension.

I rubbed my toe on the two-by-eight boards on the floor, which I remembered as having been covered with fine dust the last time I saw them. Now they were insanely clean. I peered down for a closer look. ‘They’ve been
sealed
,’ I realised. ‘Or varnished. Why would anybody do that?’

‘And when?’ Phil added. We both stared at the floor, until I spotted faint lines in the varnish. When I looked at Phil, it was plain that he’d seen them already.

‘What are they?’ I asked.

‘Something’s been marked out,’ was all he would say.

Thea was standing under the Velux, scanning the whole space. She moved to a Tesco carrier bag, lying on its own in the angle made by the roof. Bending down she retrieved it and looked inside. ‘What’s this?’ she said, pulling something out.

Phil beckoned her to where he was standing, not wanting to have to crouch in the lower part.
‘Masking tape,’ he said. ‘All scrumpled up.’ He tilted his head at me. ‘This is what made those lines,’ he explained.

‘Why would they unpick it? Why not just leave it?’

He shrugged. ‘They probably change. Maybe it’s just some sort of rehearsal.’

Thea looked from him to me and back again. ‘What are you talking about?’ she demanded. ‘Is this making more sense to you two than it is to me?’

She bent over the cardboard box, reaching out a hand. ‘Don’t touch anything!’ Phil warned her.

She blinked at him in surprise and then turned her attention back to the objects. ‘Jewellery,’ she said. ‘Is it the stash of a burglar or something? This must be his booty. Phil – there are probably fingerprints on it all. You’ll have to call the police.’ Then she giggled, hearing herself. ‘Except, you
are
the police, aren’t you?’

‘Not really,’ he muttered, inattentively. ‘I haven’t got a fingerprint kit with me, for a start.’ He and I must have been acting strangely because Thea quickly picked up our reaction. ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘What’s the matter with both of you?’ She gave the box a sharp kick, shifting the contents. ‘A gold ring with a sort of sunburst pattern on it. And a watch with a bird design in the middle. Something made of blue silk with stars on it.’ She shook her head. ‘Nice things.’

‘It’s a blazing star, not a sunburst,’ I said. ‘It stands for the Great Being.’

Phil gave an intake of breath. Even after all those years it upset him for the secrets of the Lodge to be spoken out loud. He glanced around as if expecting the All-Seeing Eye to materialise between the roof beams.