Deception in the Cotswolds (13 page)

Drew knew better. ‘Oh I have. There’s a growing trend for that sort of thing. Like a sort of midwife, if you like. But they do have to be careful, obviously.’

‘So now we have a dodgy suicide right here on Harriet’s doorstep, which seems rather a coincidence, don’t you think?’ said Thea.

‘Definitely. I said it was. But maybe there is a logical connection, a reason why it’s all come together the way it has.’

She reminded Drew that somebody had called the
police and said Edwina helped Donny to kill himself, which could lead to her being charged with murder.

‘Who would do that?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine. A man, is all I know. It could be anybody. I haven’t met everyone who knew Donny and his family, obviously.’

‘Just the main players,’ he said shrewdly.

‘Don’t you start. That’s what Higgins said. He’s the police detective who’s investigating.’

‘Have you met him before?’

‘Once or twice, yes. He’s a nice man. Kind. A bit bovine.’

‘What does the coroner say?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘He has to sign it off before the funeral can go ahead. And that means being entirely satisfied that there was no foul play. The phone call could scupper the whole thing. Probably has, from the sound of it.’ She thought she could hear strain in his voice, an effort to concentrate on the remote events in Cranham when he had more pressing matters to attend to at home.

‘Cheer up! You might yet get the funeral,’ she said flippantly.

He made a sound like somebody in pain. ‘No, Thea, that was never going to work. They’re not going to want him buried all the way down here. Stop trying to rustle up business for me. It’s never a good idea.’

‘It is if the alternative is that you go bust,’ she argued.

‘I’ll go bust all the quicker if people think I use shady practices to get customers. It all has to be totally transparent, don’t you see? The subject is very delicate. People’s suspicions are easily aroused.’

‘I know. I wasn’t being serious,’ she apologised. ‘So why did you call me, if you’re not interested in Donny any more?’

‘I didn’t say I wasn’t interested. I’m sorry I never met him. He sounded like a good man.’

‘I don’t know if he was good, but he was pleasant company. I’m lonely without him, to be honest.’

He made a clicking noise, part sympathy, part frustration. ‘You can phone me any time,’ he offered. ‘For a chat.’

‘Thanks. I expect I will.’

‘Any news of your maverick dog in the woods?’

‘Actually, yes.’ She told him about meeting the rosy-cheeked man with the gun, who had to be the dog’s owner.

‘Was he going to shoot the dog?’ Drew asked.

‘No, of course not. He’s not that angry with her.’

‘But he wasn’t calling for her?’

‘He probably gave up days ago. Or maybe he was embarrassed.’

‘What?’

‘It’s embarrassing shouting for your dog. It suggests poor discipline.’ She paused and thought about it. ‘And he might be a bit ashamed as well.’

‘Mmm?’ he prompted.

‘Well, he drove her away, didn’t he? He hasn’t played fair by her. I told him he was cruel and he just took it, as if he knew I was right.’

‘So you think it would be safe to tell him where she is?’

Her stomach jolted in protest at this. ‘No, no. That would be a real betrayal. He said he’d only let her keep one or two pups. That’s no good.’

‘But she’s going to need help … isn’t she?’

‘When I’ve gone, yes. But there’s another week before I have to decide what to do.’

‘Right. Meanwhile, you can research Harriet and her book sales. Have a look at her Amazon ranking.’

‘Her what?’

Drew laughed. ‘I’d never heard of it, either. Maggs told me. It’s on the Internet. I’ll leave you to figure it out. It’ll give you something to do.’

‘Thanks,’ she said dryly.

‘You’re welcome. So – you don’t sound as if you think my amazing discovery means anything much to the investigation.’

‘I’m not sure. I think the biggest factor is the anonymous call to the police saying Edwina helped Donny to kill himself. Without that, there’d be no cause for suspicion.’

‘And you haven’t heard who’s doing the funeral?’

‘I doubt whether they’ve chosen anybody yet. They were looking through his papers this morning.’

‘But we know he hadn’t made any arrangements in advance, don’t we?’

‘I guess so, since he asked me if I knew anybody. That was a bit odd, actually. I mean – why me? You’d think Harriet would have sorted that out with him long since, if she’s such an expert on the subject.’

‘Do you think she knew about me?’ he said slowly. ‘That I’m trying to open a new burial ground in the Cotswolds?’

Thea found this idea decidedly unsettling. ‘Possibly,’ she said. ‘Since it’s obviously a special interest with her.’

‘And could she have heard that you and I were both involved in the murder in Broad Campden?’

‘I wasn’t involved,’ she protested.

‘Yes you were.’

‘Not publicly. I wasn’t in the papers, like you were.’

‘OK. But I think you underestimate your fame across the area. Your reputation as a house-sitter who always has some sort of crisis to deal with must be quite widespread.’

‘Have you heard anything?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘Here and there,’ he said vaguely.

‘Hmm. I’m not sure what I think about that.’ This was not quite true. She definitely did not like the feeling of being under surveillance by the people of the Cotswolds, engaged for house-sitting by somebody who knew much more about her than had been
acknowledged. She felt manipulated and insecure. ‘I’d rather maintain my privacy.’

‘So I gathered back in March,’ he said, with a short laugh. ‘And I can see why you wouldn’t like it. People don’t really understand. They hear half a story and jump to conclusions. All the same, I think you should be pleased they don’t regard you as a jinx. The way I heard it, you’ve got superhuman talents, and can solve mysterious crimes when the police are stuck. A kind of good fairy, restoring order out of chaos.’

‘Rubbish,’ she spluttered, feeling rather better. ‘I don’t believe a word of it.’

‘Up to you. I’ll have to go now. Maggs is flapping at me outside. She thinks I’m slacking in here.’

‘I’d like to meet her sometime. She sounds nice.’

‘She’s a marvel.’ He said it like a mantra, repeated too often for the meaning to remain. Thea suspected he had created a myth where his partner was concerned, and could just be in the process of doing the same thing with her.

‘Thanks for the information, anyway,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep you posted.’

‘Bye then,’ he said quickly and he was gone.

Drew had given her something fresh to think about, for which she was grateful. Donny’s character and state of mind had been clarifying over the days since she had first met him. The picture was quite consistent, given the history of the family and the personalities involved. He had endured years in which his wife and daughter had been long-term patients, never entirely healthy. His wife had officially become a ‘survivor’, his daughter a more acutely ill patient, before she died. It had left him asking himself what value it all had, what the cost-benefit balance really was.

The discovery that Harriet was unusually knowledgeable about funerals had at first seemed like something Donny would find useful. But further thought cast doubt on this. Not everybody cared about their own funeral, thinking it quite irrelevant. Once
you were dead, nothing else mattered. Even Donny, unafraid of the realities of dying, might have jibbed at exhaustive discussions about the disposal of his remains, especially if his daughter consistently refused to talk to him about it.

And yet he had quite readily agreed to a meeting with Drew Slocombe, to discuss his own grave. A terrible thought hit her at this point: had Donny killed himself in order to avoid the meeting? Had he been too polite to tell her he really didn’t want to engage in it? Had Jemima or Edwina said something to strengthen this resistance? Had she, Thea, inadvertently driven him to kill himself weeks or months sooner than he would otherwise have done? It seemed all too dreadfully likely, as she recalled Jemima’s horrified anger at her admission that she had contacted Drew on Donny’s behalf. It was, after all, a dubious favour to do somebody – to arrange a meeting with an undertaker in anticipation of their death. Perhaps Harriet’s interest had not been helpful at all, but frightening. If she believed in assisted suicide, would that not be rather alarming to a man in Donny’s situation? Too close to being possible, too easy to get sucked into before you felt properly ready. Had she recruited Edwina against Donny’s actual wishes, persuading him to make the living will, without ever properly listening to him?

So why had he died two days after Harriet went away?

Interference was always hazardous – she knew that. Especially coming into a new place, where everybody had their relationships established, and things were seldom what they seemed. Had she disrupted a delicate balance in some way, and precipitated Donny’s suicide? If so, wouldn’t Harriet have foreseen the consequences and made an effort to warn her? Instead, it felt as if the exact opposite had happened. Donny had broached the subject of dying and Thea had unhesitatingly jumped in with ill-considered assistance.

Harriet really ought to have warned her. How could she, Thea, have possibly understood the undercurrents? There was no need to feel guilty or reproach herself, nothing she might have done to affect something so massively momentous as choosing the moment to kill yourself. Or so she tried to persuade herself.

These musings made her restless. However vigorously she countered the arguments pushing into her mind, the logic seemed all too dreadfully clear. ‘Come on, Heps,’ she announced. ‘We’re going out.’

On the doorstep, she changed her plan from a walk to a drive. The car had hardly been used since she arrived, and there was still much to explore. They would meander through the little lanes, taking a route around three sides of a square, with the idea of familiarising herself more closely with the locality. The sun was still high, the shops would still be open, and there was no need to hurry back for anything. There was even the option of carrying on to Stroud, a town
she barely knew at all apart from the supermarket she had found on Monday.

They did not get beyond Painswick. On a whim, seeing a clear space for parking in the main street, she got out and took the dog on a lead around the little streets. They didn’t meet any familiar figures – not Phil’s sister Linda or any of the few dozen people she had met during her various house-sits. The flash of disappointment this gave rise to made her realise how much she had hoped for a chance encounter with an old acquaintance. The church still struck her as incongruous, as it had when viewed from a distant hill. But the small jumbled streets were even more beautiful close up. Some were barely more than alleys, some sloped steeply. All the buildings were of the same perfectly cut stone, with low walls and barely protruding window sills effortlessly functional as well as utterly pleasing. Doors and windows were decorated with pediments and arches, shop signs were hand-painted and oddly shaped. She drifted slowly where the whim took her, savouring the visual glory of yet another confidently lovely small Cotswolds town.

They returned to the hot car and drove away with the windows open, somehow enriched by the diversionary interlude, where nothing mattered but the images of an architecture that felt as if something greater than humankind had created it.

And then, standing in a gateway on the road back to Cranham, was a tall man with a grey dog and a small child. The child’s face was exactly level with the dog’s, which somehow emphasised the human qualities that poodles possess. Automatically, Thea slowed and stopped, pushing the excited spaniel off her lap. Hepzie always went into a frenzy at the sight of another dog when she was in the car. Outside, she was far more restrained.

Thea leant her head out of the window and gave the little group a broad smile. ‘Hello again,’ she said.

‘The house-sitter!’ Philippe gave her a friendly nod, wagging his head in a diagonal movement that suggested carefree bonhomie. ‘Nice to see you again. This is Tamsin – my daughter.’

Oh. The only gay in the village had a
daughter
? Had it been a sperm donation for a pair of lesbians? Or what?

‘Hello, Tamsin. Hello, Jasper,’ said Thea politely. ‘I’ve been exploring. Aren’t these long evenings lovely? You forget that it gets dark at four in December. How is that possible?’ She looked up at the sky, where the sun was still in full evidence at seven o’clock. ‘We only got as far as Painswick and then drifted slowly back. I stopped once or twice on the way. The time just seemed to go.’

‘I know just what you mean. Tam’s mum must be wondering where we’ve got to by now. Jasper’s such a keen walker, we just keep going.’

Tamsin had black hair and deep brown eyes, totally different from her father in colouring, but she had the same-shaped face, the long chin, low brow and familiar full lips. ‘She looks like you,’ said Thea.

‘Nonsense!’ he protested. ‘She’s the image of her mother.’

‘Mummy has light-brown skin, Granny’s pink, an’ I’m coffee,’ recited the child.

Thea had put the skin colour down to a few weeks spent in the sunshine. ‘Milky coffee,’ she suggested. ‘Cappuccino, maybe.’

‘Are you OK up at the Manor?’ asked Philippe, breaking into the chat about skin colour. ‘With everything that’s been happening?’

Thea remembered his uncharitable comments during their first meeting. Something to the effect that Donny was a nuisance and should get on with his suicide plans sooner rather than later. She had been left with an impression of a selfish, insensitive man, who took no account of Donny’s feelings. This time he seemed a lot nicer.

‘It was a big shock,’ she said. ‘A real surprise – to everyone, apparently.’

‘Not to me. Inevitable, as I see it.’

‘Yes, so you said before. I suppose you knew him better than I did. Even so …’

He glanced down at his little girl, who was probably no more than five, and Thea understood that she was not to pursue the subject in any detail. She would normally have few qualms about discussing death in front of a small child, but in this case it was not her decision. She ought to tread carefully until fully confident that she had the permission of the child’s father.

What’s more, this child was showing an unusual curiosity about the conversation. ‘Did you have a surprise?’ she asked Thea. ‘Was it a nice one?’

‘Not really.’

‘We’re talking about Donny,’ said her father. ‘He died. Remember we told you?’

‘Oh yes.’ The child was entirely matter-of-fact. ‘Aunt Edwina was sad.’

‘She still is, baby. She’ll be sad for a long time.’

‘I met your mother,’ said Thea with a little frown, alerted by the reference to Aunt Edwina to the close links these people had with Jemima and Donny. ‘And Toby.’

‘I know you did,’ he said as if this was obvious. ‘You seem to have come across the full cast of characters in this little drama.’

‘Except for your wife,’ she pointed out. ‘And Donny’s, come to that.’ The mysteriously banished Mrs Davis was beginning to niggle at her. She who ought to be the ‘chief mourner’, arranging the funeral and sitting in the front pew. By association, Drew Slocombe also came to mind.

‘The wives are notable for their absence,’ smiled Philippe. ‘Especially poor old Janet. I don’t think you need worry about her, though.’

‘But …’ The wholesale abandonment of the woman struck Thea for the first time as seriously unkind. ‘Doesn’t
anybody
other than Toby visit her?’

‘Nope. It’s much less awkward than it sounds. I mean – she has effectively been replaced by Aunt Edwina, for quite a while now. She’s done Donny a lot more good than Janet ever did.’

‘Yes, but …’ she tried again. ‘What does
Jemima
think about it? Doesn’t she feel any loyalty to her mother?’

‘Jemima doesn’t analyse things. That’s to say, she never goes more than a millimetre below the surface. So she doesn’t actually know what she feels about anything beyond the very simple basics. She sees no reason to resent Edwina. She reacts like an animal would – anger, pleasure, impatience, joy – she’s perfectly honest about it.’

‘Yes,’ said Thea slowly. ‘I noticed some of that. I was with her when we found Donny, you know.’

‘I know you were. And how was she about it?’

‘Efficient,’ said Thea after a moment’s reflection.

Philippe laughed. ‘Good word,’ he approved. ‘Now, we have to get home. Come on, kidlet. Definitely past your bedtime.’

The little girl grasped his outstretched hand and gave Thea a proprietorial grin, as if to proclaim her good fortune in having such a father. After all, a lot of children didn’t have one at all. Thea grinned back. ‘See you again, I hope,’ she said.

It had been a good day, on the whole, she judged. No further disasters, some social exchanges, and a deeper grasp of the interactions amongst the people around her – all slightly better than she might have hoped for when she awoke. The sunshine had been an omen, it seemed, bringing the beauty and goodwill that was part of the English June stereotype.

She went to bed in a calm mood, having visited the geckoes last thing. The eggs in their snug nests held
a promise that she found exciting. She spent a few minutes conscientiously examining them. When they hatched, they would have to find food and shelter and companionship for themselves. It seemed a lot to expect. Harriet had written a brief list of instructions against the event of one hatching unexpectedly.
Make sure it can’t escape. Give it a little bit of mashed fruit and a drop of water in a jam jar lid.

It would be thrilling to witness a little hatchling emerge, of course, but the responsibility would probably outweigh the excitement.

Friday was sunny again and Thea felt a fresh responsibility to get outside and make the most of it. She could finally go and investigate Slad, rectifying an omission that seemed to have gone on for a long time. Or she could go to Gloucester and have a look at the cathedral or canal basin. She wasn’t sure she’d ever actually been there at any time in her life. But that would make complications concerning the dog, and really she did not very much like cathedrals unless there was somebody with her to point out the main features. And a sunny day was more suited to open countryside, not city centres.

It was now three days since Donny had died, and there was a sense of limbo around the whole unhappy business. DI Higgins probably wouldn’t contact her again. Nobody had mentioned a funeral to her. The people involved seemed to have melted away,
forgetting all about the temporary house-sitter who had just happened to be present when the body was discovered. Suppressing a flicker of resentment, she gave a mental shrug and told herself she ought to be pleased.

But she was not pleased. She wanted to get to know Jemima better, for one thing, her curiosity piqued by something Philippe had said the previous evening. He had confirmed Thea’s impression that Donny’s daughter lived in fear of the deeper realities; that she evaded the dark side of life with all her strength. Such an attitude was perfectly common, of course. Nobody wanted to dwell excessively on death and disease and betrayal and loss, unless they were abnormally morbid. And perhaps Donny himself had been rather the same as his daughter. He refused medical help, in case it led to painful and undignified treatment, as it had in the case of Cecilia – and his wife, come to that. Jemima had said nothing to suggest that she disagreed with this approach. Nobody had mentioned that she put pressure on her father to see a doctor. If anything, it appeared that she colluded with him in his avoidance of any such action. Was that not wrong of her, Thea wondered. It was certainly unusual. All the stereotypes had the family urging their sick relative to get to the GP as fast as they could. There was actually something quite brave in giving their support in doing the opposite. Jemima might be frightened, but she wasn’t a coward, it seemed. She had been prepared to stand
by Donny’s decision, even if it resulted in acrimony and accusations. Because it would. It was regarded as virtually criminal to fail to see a doctor if you knew there was good medical reason to do so. Thea felt a moment’s rage at this idea. Doctors meant well, more or less, but they certainly had a very inflated idea of their own importance, thanks to society’s wholesale reliance on them.

And Donny himself had been frightened, or revolted, or horrified by the prospect of a post-mortem on his dead body, according to Jemima. That was another factor in the balance against his having killed himself.

She tried to recall exactly how Jemima had reacted to the discovery of her father’s dead body.
Efficient
, she had said to Philippe, but that wasn’t quite accurate. Relief had been there, unmistakably. A dilemma resolved, a long and miserable end escaped. After the first shock – and Thea could swear there had been shock – the implications had all looked positive. It was sad, even painful, but not unbearably so. An old sick man had killed himself, seemingly without much suffering, seemingly in accord with what he had been wanting for some time.

So what was wrong? Somewhere, something was quite definitely wrong. The anonymous phone call accusing Edwina of manslaughter, if not murder, was at the heart of it. But Thea’s own observations left her with profound misgivings. Donny had not wanted to die on that particular day. He had made an
appointment with Drew. He was enjoying getting to know Thea. He was twinkly and spirited and witty. You didn’t kill yourself while those words could still be applied to you. You just
didn’t
. Drew himself had tried to suggest that, based on what he’d heard from her.

She should try to find Edwina again, and invite her to respond to the accusation that had been made against her. The police would surely have told her of it by this time; they had no choice but to confront her with it, albeit gently and non-judgementally. Quite how to arrange a meeting was tricky, however. She was not averse to simply walking up to the front door of a person’s house and inviting herself in for a cup of tea when the situation seemed to demand it, but this did not quite feel like one of those situations. Edwina Satterthwaite was elderly and under police suspicion. Although she had been entirely civil to Thea, there had been no real relationship established between them. She could hardly be expected to readily open up and tell the house-sitter everything – especially if she really had helped Donny to kill himself and then panicked when the implications hit her.

Besides, Thea didn’t know where Edwina lived, beyond the fact that it was somewhere in Cranham.

She opted for a stroll in the direction of the village centre and the pub, with Hepzie on a lead. She deliberately deferred another visit to the dog in the woods, in the hope of avoiding undue dependency on
the part of the animal. If it could not rely on regular deliveries of food, then it might try a bit of hunting for itself – or even risk sneaking back to its own farmyard in the hope of finding something to eat.

Cranham had very few level stretches. The road took a dive downhill from the Manor, levelled briefly, and then surged uphill again. All the other roads similarly sloped upwards out of the hollow in which the core of the settlement had been positioned. The pub was up one of these smaller side roads, to the south of the main village street, and was as yet an unknown quantity. Perhaps she would be brave enough to call in and see if they provided coffee. It was not quite eleven o’clock, a time when village pubs would never have dreamt of opening in the past. Now some of them had embraced the relaxed regulations on opening times and invited people in from mid morning to late evening. In June especially, they were likely to want to attract any summer visitors who might fancy a drink.

It was a nice-looking little pub, unpretentious and tucked away. Across the street were a few classically lovely old buildings that she would have liked to examine more closely, if it hadn’t been for an old man watching her with unashamed curiosity from the doorway of one of them. She smiled and waved at him, and walked on. The pub was evidently not yet open, but even if it had been, she wasn’t sure she had the courage to go in alone. It probably didn’t allow dogs anyway, she thought sourly, remembering the
inhospitable establishment in Broad Campden, which hid cravenly behind spurious hygiene regulations when banning perfectly clean spaniels from their premises.

‘Morning,’ came a breathless voice behind her. ‘Out for a walk?’

She turned to see Thyrza, mother of Philippe, grandmother of Tamsin, sister of Edwina. Like her sister, Thyrza had a faintly regal appearance, but was two or three inches taller than Edwina, with less covering on her hips. If you had to choose a queen with which to compare her, it would probably be the late Queen Mother, for the confident air and impression that her wish was most people’s command. There was a directness to her gaze that Thea found engaging. She reminded herself that a great deal had happened since they had last met, and it was incumbent upon her to do her best to be diplomatic in the face of so much sensitive emotion amongst Donny’s friends and relations.

‘It’s a lovely day for it,’ she said with a smile.