Deception in the Cotswolds (15 page)

‘It’s your boyish charm.’

‘That must be it. It works every time.’

‘Even Jessica changed her mind about you in the end.’

He groaned. ‘I should hope so. I thought I’d be dogged by your daughter for the rest of my life, trying to catch me out in some minor transgression. She’s a scary woman.’

‘Don’t give me that. Your Maggs sounds every bit as bad.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Maggs is a pussycat. What do you mean?’

They laughed easily, without saying more about the people closest to them. Their first meeting in Broad Campden had not ended happily for everyone, and it was an unspoken pact to stay off the subject. For a long time, Drew had not been at all sure he wanted to open a second natural burial ground there, given the associations.

‘So show me your secret protégée,’ he encouraged. ‘Does Hepzie come as well?’

‘Better not, although I hate to go without her.’

‘Put her on the lead, then, and I can hold her,’ he offered.

‘Good idea. Hang on while I get something for the collie to eat.’

They set off five minutes later, in warm sunshine. ‘What a splendid day,’ Drew enthused. ‘Sunshine makes such a difference to everything, don’t you find?’

‘It’s only superficial, though,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘We had a lovely June last year, if you remember, and it didn’t help much when I got embroiled in some trouble in Temple Guiting.’

‘Oh? And in January you were caught in all that snow – right?’

She sighed. ‘That was awful. OK – sunshine is better, regardless of the horrible things people might be doing to each other. You win.’

‘I wasn’t arguing,’ he said mildly.

‘No, but I was. I do it quite a lot.’

‘Feel free,’ he invited.

She laughed and led him down the path into the beech woods, Hepzie enjoying a free run for the first part of the walk. ‘This woodland is quite famous, apparently,’ she said. ‘It extends for a long way.’

‘It’s fabulous,’ he said, looking around admiringly. ‘There’s something so
English
about beech trees.’

‘Really? I thought that was oaks.’

‘And chestnuts, of course. The village smithy and all that.’

‘Cold Aston,’ she nodded. ‘They’ve still got theirs, right in the middle of the village.’

‘The smithy?’

‘No, you fool. The tree.’

‘Coffins always used to be made of elm, you know. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an elm tree, and yet the whole country was dense with them at one time.’

‘It just goes to show, you can’t take anything for
granted. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one, either. Will they come back, I wonder?’

‘Probably. How far is this secret hideaway?’

‘Ten minutes or less. I’ll catch Hepzie before we get near. She’s bound to cause trouble otherwise. But at least she’s not suspicious by her absence.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Did I tell you I met the dog’s owner last time I came here? He thought it was very strange that I was out here without my spaniel. I’m famous for my spaniel,’ she added.

‘But the man didn’t find his missing dog?’

‘I hope not. He’ll drown the puppies if he gets a chance.’

‘How old are they now?’

‘About a week, I think. They’re terribly sweet. I’ve always adored puppies. They smell so wonderful.’

‘I’ve never been particularly close to a dog. I told you I’ve never got over being bitten as a child. We used to say we’d get one, because Karen likes them, but somehow never did. It’s such a huge responsibility.’

‘So you were joking when you said you’d take a puppy?’ She tried to quell the flicker of disappointment.

‘Not entirely. There’s really no reason not to, apart from the mess and the expense and the responsibility.’

She stopped and faced him, her expression serious. ‘Don’t just have it on a whim. You have to be sure
you’ll stick with it for its whole life. That might be fifteen years.’

He nodded with mock solemnity. ‘No, ma’am.’

‘Listen to me!’ she exploded. ‘When did I get to be so pompous?’

‘No, but you’re right. A lot of dogs get thrown out. Maggs was talking about it the other day. She gets in a real state about it, even though she’s not especially fond of dogs. She’s very idealistic in some ways. Bad behaviour upsets her.’

‘Do you know you talk about Maggs more than you do about your wife?’

He grunted. ‘Do I? There isn’t a lot to say about Karen these days, that’s the trouble. She’s gone so
limp
. She used to be a real firebrand, campaigning for local food, and the farmers’ market and all that. It seems a hundred years ago now.’

‘So she was as idealistic as Maggs?’

‘More, if anything. It’s all very sad, although she seems happy enough. I’m not sure she understands how changed she is.’

‘Difficult,’ murmured Thea, carefully. ‘And maybe not an ideal situation to introduce a puppy into.’

‘The children would love it. Poor little things, they could do with something new to occupy them. Do you know – I think I might be able to talk myself into it.’

‘No rush. There’s six weeks or more until they can leave their mum.’

‘By which time you’ll have been long gone, and
their fate will be in other hands. I think we have to admit it’s all just a dream. The truth is, I can’t really imagine myself with a dog.’

‘Pity. Now, Hepzie, come here, girl. Time to put your lead on.’

The spaniel reluctantly presented herself, staring down at the ground with lowered head while Thea attached the lead. When she found herself being led by Drew, she shook her shoulders in a canine shrug and did her best to drag him through a clump of brambles.

‘Hey! Steady on!’ he pleaded. ‘Whoa there!’

‘Just give her a firm tug,’ said Thea. ‘She’s trying it on.’

‘It’s just occurred to me that I won’t be able to see the pups if I’ve got to stay clear with this creature,’ he said. ‘Bad planning.’

‘I can go and feed her, then come back to take Hepzie, and then you can go and have a look,’ she suggested. ‘Except, I’m not sure how the mother dog will feel about a strange man showing up.’

‘And I’m not entirely heartbroken to miss it,’ he admitted. ‘I mean – I don’t expect there’s very much to see, is there?’

‘Up to you,’ she said shortly. Something about the area surrounding the burrow had changed, and she quickened her pace, sliding down the steepest part of the approach on her backside. ‘Hello, girl?’ she called softly. ‘Are you there?’

No answering whine came from the hidden nest. ‘Oh!’ Thea exclaimed, seeing the disturbed ground and shifted tree trunk. ‘Somebody’s found her. She’s gone!’

Desperately she searched for signs of violence – half expecting to see dead puppies lying on the forest floor. She dropped the bag of meat and milk, and stood helplessly staring at the wrecked hideaway. ‘Oh,’ she said again.

‘Gone?’ repeated Drew, stupidly, from ten yards away. ‘How?’

She ignored him, kneeling down and pushing her head and shoulders into the hole where the dogs had been. Its shape was all different, with the removal of the fallen tree that had comprised the roof. A few branches still remained and a lot of dead leaves. There was a smooth hollow where the family had been, and an unmistakable smell of dog.

Feeling like a distraught mother herself, she rummaged in the leaves, feeling for small cold bodies that she was sure must be there. ‘They’re not here,’ she moaned. ‘They’ve all gone.’

Slowly she got to her feet, swinging a leg to clear away bracken and other plants in a search for her lost protégés. ‘What happened?’ She faced Drew. ‘Come and look.’

Assuming it no longer mattered what he did with the spaniel, he joined Thea, squinting bemusedly at the ground.

Surprising herself as much as him, Thea suddenly dissolved into tears and buried her face in the undertaker’s chest. For half a minute she wept like a child, while he rubbed her back and made soothing noises. Then she pulled away, wiping a hand across her nose and sniffing forcefully. ‘Sorry,’ she said thickly. ‘I didn’t mean to do that.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘People cry on me all the time.’

She giggled moistly. ‘I bet they do,’ she said. ‘Comes with the territory. But not over lost puppies. It was what I’d been afraid of all along. It shouldn’t have come as such a shock.’

‘So you think the farmer found her and dragged her home?’

‘Must have done. It was probably me that gave her away.’ Her face crumpled again, but she fought back the tears. Enough was enough, she told herself. ‘Poor little things.’

‘Well, I guess that means I don’t have to adopt a puppy after all,’ he sighed. ‘And there’s not much we can do here, is there? Do you know where he lives? I mean – which farm is it?’

‘I’ve no idea. Presumably he’s got sheep, if he keeps a working dog. I might be able to find out. But I can’t just march in and accuse him of cruelty to dogs, can I?’

‘Can’t you? I imagine it wouldn’t be the first time.’

She giggled again. ‘That’s true. But it is his dog, and I don’t expect he’d listen to me.’

‘I doubt if it’s legal to kill puppies, though, is it?’

She wiped her face again, with both hands. ‘I’m not reporting him to the RSPCA, if that’s what you mean. Nobody deserves that.’

His eyebrows lifted. ‘Why not?’

‘They overreact terribly. Every farmer dreads coming to their attention. Horrible things happen to animals as a matter of course, with the best will in the world. The whole attitude of the authorities is hopelessly unfair and judgemental.’

‘I’m amazed. I thought they were Britain’s favourite charity. You sound as if you’ve had close encounters with them.’

‘No, actually. It’s just being around farming people on and off for much of my life. And reading local papers. They’re like a branch of the social services – all that moral outrage because somebody left a dead sheep in a ditch. You don’t have to be especially well informed to know that sheep die routinely, whatever you try and do for them. And they remove dogs and cats from their owners on little more than a whim. Most pet owners dread coming to their attention, let alone farmers.’

‘I’m not sure I believe you,’ he said, with a look of puzzlement. ‘It sounds like gross exaggeration to me. Plus you’re contradicting yourself. You were trying to save the dog from her master, but now he’s found her, you’re defending him.’

She chewed her lip, unhappy at being accused of
exaggeration. ‘Honestly, I could find people to back up what I said. But you might be right that I’m being inconsistent. I just think the farmer was basically fond of his dog, and had no intention of hurting her. It’s a bit like Jemima and her father, come to think of it. She was trying to steer him away from thoughts of death and dying, but when he did die, she was almost glad. Things so often turn out to be much more complicated than we expect.’

He smiled, but she could see he was still confused. The fruitless expedition left her feeling thwarted and slightly foolish. ‘We’d better go back, then,’ she said, gathering up the unwanted mince and milk. ‘At least I suppose he’ll feed her properly. And he did say he might let her keep one or two pups. I’m going to miss her,’ she admitted. ‘I liked coming here to visit her.’

‘That’s obvious,’ he said. ‘She was lucky to have you.’

‘I wonder. All I did was delay the inevitable.’

‘What would she have done otherwise?’

‘Stayed with the pups until hunger drove her to take bigger and bigger risks, I presume. She might have managed with rabbits and squirrels, if she could catch them. But there’s no water for a long way. They do say that dogs can’t survive without people any more. They’ve got too dependent on us.’

Drew led the way back to the main track through the woods. Hepzie zigzagged amongst the trees, impervious to her mistress’s sadness. Thea said very
little, her thoughts all on the bitch, trying to cling to a hope that all was well with her. Perhaps the farmer’s heart was softer than it looked, and he would permit the whole litter to grow up.

The driveway up to Hollywell Manor looked steeper than before, the house slightly forbidding as it looked down on them. ‘Funny little place, isn’t it?’ Thea said, pointing to the Lodge.

‘I wonder what’ll happen to it now,’ he replied.

‘Harriet will have to find a new tenant, I suppose.’

‘Is Jemima his only child now?’

‘No, there’s a brother. Silas. He’s in Africa. He’ll come for the funeral.’

‘I can see the appeal of your work,’ he said slowly. ‘All these new people to get to know. A whole new community to try and understand. It’s a bit like what I do, but more so. I get very close to a family for a few days, and then they disappear.’

‘Don’t they come back to visit the graves?’

‘Oh, yes, but there’s seldom the same intimacy again as on that first visit, and the funeral itself.’

‘I never considered myself as having anything in common with an undertaker.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he advised. ‘I’m just being fanciful.’

‘You’re right, though,’ she said. ‘Although I’m not sure other house-sitters would agree with you.’

‘They don’t have your curiosity – or your knack with people.’

She shrugged away the compliment, and waited for him to get back into his car and drive away. He did so unhurriedly, winding down the window to talk to her before starting the engine. ‘It was nice to see you again,’ he said.

‘And you.’ She smiled weakly, thinking of the long evening ahead with practically nothing to do.

‘Let me know what happens,’ he called, having turned the car and begun to move away. ‘And good luck!’ 

She certainly had plenty to think about for the rest of the day, and the late afternoon was still warm enough for a lazy hour in the garden with a mug of tea. Hepzie crawled under the reclining chair, in pure contentment.

Drew had been sweet to bring Harriet’s book in person and take such an interest in the Cranham happenings. He had lost a funeral, which must have been annoying, but he had not once mentioned it. His home life sounded rather joyless, despite the two children; a telltale air of making the best of it gave him away when he spoke about Karen. A sense of the best times being behind them, both in terms of family and business, cast a melancholy light on him as Thea replayed their encounters. She wished she hadn’t cried on him – not so much for the lack of dignity as the
relatively trivial reason for her tears. When he was accustomed to people weeping for their dead partner or parent, grief over the misplacing of a dog must have struck him as a piece of weak sentimentality. All the same, he had been exactly right in his response: neither stiff nor unduly sympathetic. He must be a perfect undertaker, she concluded. Safe, reassuring and efficient, without being distant or unctuous.

The disappearance of the dog and her pups was a nagging worry that refused to go away. There could be other explanations that she hadn’t thought of: men illegally digging for badgers, for example. They might have mistaken the dog’s lair for a sett quite easily. Or another dog walker, like Thea herself, alerted to the hideaway by their own animal, and dismantling it from overzealous curiosity. But what then? The bitch surely wouldn’t run away and leave her brood. She would fight to defend them. Or would she? A trained sheepdog was viscerally subservient to human beings, whoever they might be. She might stand by, whining pitifully, as her offspring were removed and disposed of. Then she would probably slink home, the adventure over, and do her best to forget the whole miserable thing.

Hepzie had never had puppies. Thea had her spayed at a year old, almost without thought. She had never been especially interested in breeding. There was enough life in the world already – more than enough, in her view. She felt no great urge to add to it. She had 
produced one child, because Carl had wanted it and she had no real objections. It was what you did, a year or two after getting married. And it got her out of having to go to work, which was a very considerable perk. She deeply pitied her contemporaries who struggled to juggle two full-time sets of responsibilities, with little sign of fulfilment. Carl had willingly taken on the role of provider, on condition that they lived frugally in their small cottage. She had been more than happy to cooperate, although never really immersing herself in self-sufficiency the way Drew’s Karen seemed to have done before she was injured. Now all that early family life seemed a century ago. Jessica was grown up with a boyfriend and a career, and Thea hoped she wouldn’t even think of maternity for at least another ten years. If ever. She had no desire for grandchildren, much as she enjoyed the company of little people. Her sister Jocelyn had produced five, who were great fun to visit once in a while. There were nine in Jessica’s generation – the family seemed set to proliferate whatever Thea’s little branch of the tree chose to do.

Hunger pangs sent her into the kitchen at seven o’clock to rustle up some kind of meal. There wasn’t very much available, she discovered, so contented herself with a large sandwich stuffed with lettuce, cucumber, sliced cheese and mayonnaise. It was delicious.

Then she checked the geckoes, having learnt over the past days that they became more active as the
daylight faded. One by one she peered into their tanks, where they would hide all day under leaves or inside the various tubes Harriet had provided for them. She found one large individual sitting in full view, its grey skin decorated with delicate patterns that were almost too subtle to see. The bulbous fingers and intelligent eyes gave it a genuine appeal, and Thea watched for some time, trying to imagine existence from a gecko’s point of view.

The eggs looked exactly as usual. Twelve of them were ranged neatly in their incubator, much the same as birds’ eggs in appearance. Harriet had given her a brief exposition of the life cycle of the creatures – the females laying two eggs a month, and the eggs taking a very unpredictable length of time to hatch. The survival rate was abysmal in the wild, apparently, with adults eating the hatchlings with appalling frequency. But somehow they grew up in sufficient numbers to ensure a healthy species, as everything did, most of the time – even those wretched little turtles being gobbled by voracious gulls in their first hour of life.

Breeding again, Thea realised, with a little shock. Was she being unusually influenced by hormones – being at the age where the final chance of pregnancy was upon her? Did her body crave a late baby, while her mind considered any such thing completely out of the question? She had never for a moment contemplated having a baby with Phil Hollis. After the first inescapable exchange of information regarding
each other’s fertility, the topic had never again been mentioned.

Giving herself a shake, she left the cellar and wandered into the well-proportioned living room. It really was a beautiful space, which Harriet had successfully rendered comfortable as well as pleasing to the eye. She – or perhaps a designer she had employed – had really got to grips with the whole ethos of the Arts and Crafts movement. Earthy natural colours, warm welcoming surfaces, big botanical patterns on the rugs and cushions. It was a world away from stiff Georgian elegance, or cluttered Victorian busyness. There were no nasty little china knick-knacks or groups of elaborately framed photographs – just a large earthenware bowl overflowing with fragrant potpourri, which Thea always stirred when passing; a pair of pewter candlesticks holding chunky
cream-coloured
candles; a bronze of a young woman with flowing hair. Everything was perfectly in proportion, from the room itself to the long-piled rug in front of the fireplace.

But there was nothing to do in the room other than watch the television that stood defiantly in one corner, as if to proclaim that William Morris would have had no problem with it, had it existed in his day. And Thea wasn’t in the mood for random murder dramas or wholesome documentaries about dolphins. She almost unconsciously opened the door to the stairway and climbed up to the gallery through which she had led
Drew earlier in the day. Again, the proportions were impeccable, the furniture and decorations a delight. It would be a perfect spot for playing card games whilst listening to music, or sitting with some wine debating the politics of the day. As perfect in the twenty-first century as it must have been in the nineteenth, in fact. The thing about Hollywell Manor, Thea decided, was that it remained as fit for the daily pleasures and purposes of life now as it had been from the outset.

Although the computer and filing cabinet and boxes of books in the maid’s room overhead would have seemed extremely strange to the first occupants of the house. As would the strange reptiles in the cellar, in all probability, despite the Victorian tendency to odd hobbies and amateur scientific pursuits. Harriet Young was a modern businesswoman, with an eye to the quirks and fears of contemporary society, quietly exploiting them in the less visible parts of her mansion.

Slowly, Thea mounted the second flight of stairs, and collected a copy of Harriet’s book, Drew having taken his away with him. Glancing around the room, again noting its efficiency, she went back to the living room, where the light was rapidly fading. She chose an armchair with a reading lamp provided at the shoulder, and opened the book with a slight sense of transgression.

Not only had she borrowed a pristine copy intended for sale, but the subject matter itself carried hints of taboo. Of course, sooner or later almost everybody
had to arrange a funeral. They had to make quick decisions about burial or cremation; whether to have hymns, and if so which; the quantity and ultimate destination of flowers – but already she understood that Harriet was not concerned with these universal choices, routinely presented by the undertaker who ticked a preprinted box according to the response. Harriet went much deeper, and was considerably more transparent about the implications than any undertaker Thea had ever met.

There were tables of costs, showing the percentage mark-up made by the funeral director. There were statistics about nursing homes and their loyalty to one particular local business, which could sometimes overrule the wishes of the family. There were quotes from suppliers of willow or cardboard coffins in which they refused to deal directly with members of the public. And, a few chapters into the book, there was a long diversion examining the Victorian origins of modern funeral practices. Harriet seemed to be saying that when people lost many of their children, and life expectancy was barely fifty, the attitude towards death and the disposal of bodies was a lot more wholesome. She made reference to rituals in which young children were taken to kiss the dead body of their relative, and how that rapidly swung to the opposite extreme, in which a child was not even informed that its mother or father had died. She quoted from novels and newspaper reports and diary entries, creating a dense forest of
opinion and figures from which Thea found it hard to extract a central message. Skipping on, she arrived at the section on the present day, in which alternative undertakers were bravely swimming against the tide, making very little headway in twenty or thirty years.

None of it shed any light at all onto the death of Donny Davis. Increasingly, Thea suspected that he knew nothing about the book. Surely he would have mentioned it during one of their teatime chats, if he had read it. Instead, he had seized upon Thea as a lifeline, somebody it was at last safe to ask about funerals. He had wanted to meet with Drew. If Harriet had been involved, who better to talk him through the options and help him to make the arrangements? It seemed logical, then, to assume that Harriet had been on Jemima’s side – had even perhaps been ordered to stay off the subject at all costs. The only person who had managed to talk about it with him was Edwina, and she had promised to assist him to die when he finally felt the time had come.

But then she found herself on the final chapter, having flipped through much of the book barely skimming the contents. ‘The Future for Funerals’ it was headed, and began with the sentence, ‘And so this whole huge issue stands at a crossroads. Burial space in churchyards is almost full, cremations are increasingly seen as sterile and unsatisfying, while the cost of a grave in a municipal cemetery is spiralling higher by the week. To choose an alternative to these
conventional means of disposal is to be catapulted into a hasty frustrating process, which is far from sure to succeed. Only with considerable advance planning can there be much realistic hope of having precisely what you want. And to plan your own funeral requires the courage to confront your own mortality. A major change in attitude is called for, in which it becomes standard practice to select the corner of your appointed field, the container in which you’re to lie there, and the words to be said as the final farewell from those who love you. And, ultimately, we are all going to demand even greater control – we are going to want to choose the very moment at which we die.’

The rest of the chapter gave names and descriptions of organisations intent on achieving this glorious state of affairs. The tone was a clever mix of good sense and powerful polemic. There was no space for objections or arguments in favour of letting nature take its course, or having the courage to endure the final months of helplessness, as another part of the wheel of fortune, bringing you full circle from the dependent days of infancy. Nothing about the skills of doctors and nurses in palliative care, or the small insights to be gleaned from the final stages of life. Thea herself only recalled these factors when she put the book down and let its message sink in. It was past ten o’clock, the sky outside finally dark, the evening birds gone quiet. She let her thoughts wander unchecked, the unanswered questions rising insistently as she went over her brief
acquaintance with Donny, the facts of her own father’s death, the probable reactions to the book of all the people she knew.

She had few, if any, firm conclusions to draw, other than that she knew Harriet had omitted a major dimension from the pages of her book – and that a vulnerable reader might well be persuaded to act impulsively and contrary to their own interests. What, she asked herself insistently, would Donny have made of it, if he had read it?

Saturday came with a sense of relief, as the halfway stage of her commission. While still in bed, she asked herself whether this meant she was not enjoying Hollywell and Cranham. Was she impatient to return to her Witney cottage, and the dusty neglected possessions she kept there?

In a vague attempt to summarise the previous week to herself, she reran the scratchy conversation she had had with Thyrza Hastings, and the warning to mind her own business. Such warnings traditionally betrayed guilt, but in this instance, it had not felt like that. If anything, the woman had been protecting her sister, rather to her own credit. Thea went back further, to the visit from Edwina and Toby, curtailed as it had been by the burning pie. They had come with a view to arranging Donny’s funeral with Drew, only to go cold on the idea when they realised where his burial ground was. But what made them think they
had any control over the funeral anyway? That was surely Jemima’s role.

Her summary amounted to a lot less than she had anticipated. She had spent very little time with any of the people of Cranham. An hour and a half with Donny, the sum of two encounters, with the sort of high-quality conversation she was good at, and which ordinary people seldom engaged in. A similar period with Jemima, perhaps, all added together. Much less with Edwina, Thyrza, Philippe and Toby. She could not possibly expect to understand them on the basis of such brief acquaintance. Better by far to let everything take its course without any more intervention from her.