Deception in the Cotswolds (22 page)

‘See you then,’ he said quickly, and rang off.

The Ferrier household was predictably unpredictable. Before she got there, Thea was prepared for pink walls, plastic chairs, Persian rugs, prayer mats or pouffes. Anything was possible. And the wife – what was she going to be like? And the poodle – was it allowed on the furniture, or kept in its own separate outhouse? Or what? The curiosity behind the hypothesising was pleasurably distracting from gloomy
self-recriminations
, as she walked the half-mile in an easterly direction, without her spaniel. She would be very nice, she vowed – very careful about what she said.

Initially she had assumed the village to be divided into two sections, but slowly she had worked out that there was a third cluster of houses, in a deep hollow sheltered by the woods to the north. Sheltered, protected, and perhaps rather threatened on dark winter days. Philippe lived in this third area, in a square stone house at a remove from the others, further up the easterly slope. She found it easily, pausing to admire
the jumbled garden boasting a swing and a trampoline as well as a big old fig tree which looked to be bearing fruit in some quantity.

The door was festooned with a yellow Mermaid rose, which immediately reminded Thea of her own cottage, where Carl had planted just the same thing, which continued to drape itself all around the porch at the front. The reminder came with a pang, a flashback more complicated than usual. This was not the moment to remember her dead husband, with all the sensations of abandonment and helplessness that came with the memories. She took a deep breath and reached out to pull the strange oriental-looking contraption that was the doorbell. Before she could connect, the door opened, and two faces beamed out at her.

‘Welcome!’ said Philippe expansively. ‘What good timing! We’ve just finished the fruit punch.’

‘I cut up the peaches,’ chirped Tamsin, displaying fingers covered in juice and sticky pieces of peach skin.

‘Messy job,’ said Thea. ‘I’m afraid I come
empty-handed
, which is very rude of me. I should have cut some of Harriet’s roses for you, but that seemed a bit—’

‘Perish the thought!’ exclaimed Philippe. ‘That would be grand larceny.’

The child beside him giggled, and repeated, ‘Grand larceny,’ with obvious relish, turning the syllables into mere sounds without meaning.

The wife was still invisible, but as they went into the house, Thea could hear glass clinking in a room at the end of the hall. ‘She’ll appear in a minute,’ said Philippe. ‘I do let her out of the kitchen on special occasions.’

It wasn’t a joke that any self-respecting independent woman could possibly laugh at, which he must surely realise. Thea said nothing, instead making a point of inspecting the hallway, which was windowless and stone-floored. The flags were polished, highlighting beautiful swirling marbled patterns contained in the stones themselves. It definitely wasn’t anything local.

‘Chinese marble,’ said the man of the house, seeing the direction of her gaze. ‘Aren’t the colours amazing?’

‘Fabulous,’ she agreed. ‘But I guess you have to work hard to keep them as shiny as this.’

A large wall hanging was the next cause for admiration. Apparently Indian, it was an explosion of textures and colours, with small mirrors sewn in at random intervals, gold thread stitched into swirling shapes, and raised quilted sections crying out to be fingered.

‘Come through,’ he urged her. ‘There’s much more to see.’

He led her into a living room almost as big as the one at Hollywell. There was no wood panelling, but instead three walls were papered in a design that Thea recognised as William Morris’s ‘Acanthus’ in shades
of blue. The sheer perverse unfashionableness of it endeared it to her. Always a fan of William Morris and his many different products, she had made a study of his Cotswold connections. A big open fireplace was decorated with ceramic tiles, also carrying Morris designs. On the floor a pair of tufted wool rugs boasted further evidence of the same theme – flowers and leaves on a winding trellis with smaller leaves sprinkled all over the background.

‘Deborah made them,’ said Philippe. ‘She’s made a lot of the furnishings, actually.’

There was a portentousness to his tone that alerted her. ‘I’m impressed,’ she said. ‘It’s all lovely. I’m very keen on William Morris myself, as it happens. That’s the Acanthus design, isn’t it?’

He nodded. ‘And the rugs are Windrush. Very appropriate, don’t you think?’

‘Definitely. The blues and golds are gorgeous.’

Tamsin had flopped down in the middle of one of the rugs, and was stroking the pile. ‘Mummy’s rugs are famous,’ she said. ‘Did you know that?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Thea hesitated, then took the risk. ‘She’s not Debbie Fawcett, is she?’

Father and daughter grinned delightedly. ‘Got it in one!’ cried Philippe. ‘Most people need a few more clues than that.’

‘Wow! Now I’m
really
impressed,’ she breathed. Debbie Fawcett was close to becoming a household name with her Victorian revivals. Cushions, hangings,
rugs, curtains, wallpapers and tiles – everything that Morris had designed, she built on, making her own variants, altering some of the colours, but using nothing but natural materials. People mocked, and insisted there was no market for such retro furnishings, but somehow they bought them anyway, seduced by the feel of real wool and cotton, heedless of the astronomical prices.
They must be minted
, she thought.
With him being a private heart surgeon as well.

‘Don’t be,’ came a voice. ‘It’s pure plagiarism, when it comes down to it.’

A grey-haired woman with Mediterranean skin was standing in the doorway, smiling calmly. She looked to be at least fifty, tall and straight-backed, but with telltale grooves on her face, and inelastic skin at the base of her neck. She wore a beige embroidered dress that almost reached the ground, sleeveless and shapeless. The embroidery depicted similar leaves and flowers to those on the Windrush rugs. The beige colour was almost exactly the same as her skin, giving the impression that she was naked apart from the patterns.

Thea made no move to greet her, paralysed by her charismatic presence. She had registered that the child had some darker blood than her father, leading her to expect an Asian mother, if not African. The serendipity of racial mixtures always interested her. In this case, the result was a beautiful child with classic colouring that might have come directly from Helen of Troy.

‘It’s good to be appreciated,’ Deborah said in creamy English tones. ‘Now, can I get you a drink? We’ve made a rather extravagant fruit punch. We’ll be eating in the conservatory, if that’s all right?’

‘The punch sounds wonderful,’ said Thea, thinking of Tamsin’s sticky fingers on the fabulous handmade rug. ‘Your daughter has been telling me about it.’

‘Tam! Did you wash your hands?’ The normality of the question was somehow reassuring. ‘You were covered in peach juice last time I looked.’

The child sighed, and spread her fingers. ‘It’s dry now,’ she said optimistically.

‘Fibber. Go and wash.’

Obediently, Tamsin left the room, looking at her hands with exaggerated scepticism, throwing her mother a glance full of weary frustration laced with affection and a sort of wise understanding that some children possessed, to the discomfort of many adults. She returned within two minutes.

‘Now can we – you know?’ said the little girl, with a sideways look at Thea. ‘Can we
show
her?’

‘You’ll have to ask Jasper,’ said Philippe, who had been quietly watching the women as they met for the first time. There was something orchestrated in the whole encounter, Thea suspected.

Tamsin laughed, a joyous musical peal that made all the adults smile. ‘Come on, then,’ she trilled.

She led a little procession out of the room, and
down the hall to the back of the house. Thea had time to register a big oak chest covered in scars and dents, with carved panels. On it stood a telephone and a scatter of papers. It filled an alcove next to a door, through which they all trooped.

They were in a large light kitchen, boasting a huge old pine table, almost the twin of Jemima’s. The walls were bright yellow, the floor covered in black and white tiles. Unhesitatingly, Tamsin took them through another door, into an area that must once have been a dairy. The wide slate slab where butter was once made, cheese and eggs stored, cold meat carved, remained as evidence of more self-sufficient times.

‘Here she is!’ crowed the child, kneeling in a corner where something alive stirred. ‘Hello, Lady. How are you today?’

Debbie and Philippe stood back to give Thea a clear view. She focused on a sharp nose, pricked black ears and a tangle of little bodies against a furry side. ‘Oh!’ she cried. ‘It’s my dog from the woods.’ She knelt down beside Tamsin, and let the dog sniff her proffered hand. ‘How did she get here?’

Nobody spoke, and for a moment Thea had no sense of tension or surprise. She rubbed the dog’s soft head, between the ears, letting the relief and gladness flow through her, to the exclusion of all else. Only at that moment did she understand how miserable she had been about the sudden disappearance. All five pups had survived, and grown to nearly double
the size they were when she last saw them. Gently she picked up the biggest one, a shaggy-coated grey animal, whose eyes were just coming unglued. He squinted at her as she held him close to her face. She inhaled the drenchingly sweet scent of him, aware of the incomparable instinctive protective love people felt for baby things, and perhaps puppies above all else.

‘You’ve seen them before?’ came Philippe’s voice, oddly tight.

‘Yes, yes. My spaniel found the burrow in the woods. I took food for her. I suppose your poodle did the same thing.’ She fondled the bitch again. ‘Silly girl – you weren’t as well hidden as you thought, were you?’

‘We hid her there, as it happens,’ said Philippe. ‘And you ruined it.’

Finally she detected the anger in his voice. Awkwardly she turned to look up at him. ‘What?’

‘We knew old Sam would never let her keep the pups, so we hid her. It wasn’t easy, but she settled down after a day or so.’

‘So
you
were feeding her as well? But she seemed so hungry. And thirsty.’

‘No, we couldn’t do that. She would have followed us home. It’s only a field away from here. She’d have brought the pups one by one.’

‘I don’t get it. Why not keep her here from the start?’

‘Because this is the first place Sam looked when she went missing.’

‘Why?’

A big, warm, grey body appeared from nowhere, and pushed between Thea and the mother dog. The shade of grey on the poodle was exactly the same as on the pup she held. ‘Oh! Now I see. They’re his. And Sam would have realised.’

‘Right. And no way does he want a mongrel litter of poodles. He despises the entire breed, for some reason.’

‘So what happens next?’

‘We’ll have to tell him eventually. We keep the pups and he gets his bitch back.’

‘But – why are you so cross with me? Didn’t I save her? She would have starved if I hadn’t taken food for her. And why did I ruin anything? What happened?’

‘You left a trail as obvious as the M4 to a dog. Jasper came across it, and followed it to the burrow. He wouldn’t leave her alone, so we had no choice but to move the whole lot here.’

‘But nothing’s ruined. This is better for all concerned.’

He shook his head. ‘It makes us into criminals. We’ve stolen Lady, in the eyes of the law.’

Thea blew out her cheeks in a puff of amused disbelief. ‘Rubbish. Anybody would have done the same.’

Deborah spoke for the first time. ‘The law doesn’t
see that as a very good excuse, though, does it? Even when you act out of kindness, or ordinary human sensitivity, you can still be breaking the law.’

It sounded as if she was speaking about more than the dog. Thea looked at her consideringly. ‘I suppose that’s true,’ she agreed slowly.

The lunch with the Ferrier family was ample, original and not entirely comfortable. Although Philippe appeared to be trying his best to recapture the easy friendliness that had characterised roughly half of Thea’s dealings with him, she had seen too much of his other side to be seduced any further. She concentrated on Deborah and the child, with the Arts and Crafts movement the chief topic of conversation. Thea’s background in historical studies proved useful. She expanded on her somewhat rusty knowledge of canals and railways, topic of a dissertation written twenty years earlier, with a brief account of her time in Frampton Mansell, where she was embroiled in local hostilities arising from the renovation of the Cotswold Canal.

Tamsin listened avidly to Thea’s description of
a holiday spent on a narrowboat, one gloriously sunny July, with her daughter Jessica who was five at the time. It had been idyllic by any standards, and for the second time that day, Thea was transported back to her life as a wife and mother, when the world had been warm and easy. ‘Can we do that one day, Mummy?’ the child pleaded. ‘We could take Jasper.’

‘Dogs usually like it,’ Thea confirmed. ‘We had two when we went, and they were fine – except for the locks. One of them went crazy when the water started flooding in and the boat rocked. She knocked a whole lot of things into the sink and broke a plate.’

Tamsin uttered her contagious squeal of laughter, clearly knowing how endearing the adults found her.

Deborah had prepared a substantial game pie for the meal, containing rabbit, pheasant and venison. ‘All wild,’ she asserted. ‘And local.’

‘Wow!’ Thea wasn’t quite sure she approved of the implications. ‘Who killed them?’

‘Not me,’ said Philippe, with a camp shudder, reminding Thea of her first impression of him. ‘It’s all perfectly kosher. I hope,’ he added with a smile. ‘There is a slight question mark over the venison, to be honest.’

‘No there isn’t, Phil. Don’t be silly,’ his wife admonished. She looked at Thea. ‘There’s a lot of poaching of deer going on, because the meat’s selling so well at the moment. Awful townies coming into
the countryside and making a real mess of it. Barbaric stuff we wish we didn’t know about.’

‘But aren’t you encouraging it, by buying the meat?’ Thea couldn’t resist asking. ‘I mean – it’s a bit like buying ivory, isn’t it?’

‘Probably. But it’s nice, isn’t it?’ The glimpse of Philippe’s character that these words revealed again reminded Thea of her reservations about him. He was lacking in integrity, she decided. Irresponsible, not a serious person. A fair-weather friend. Deborah evidently chose the furnishings for their house and exerted discipline over their daughter. What was left for him to do around the house, other than behave as a handsome drone in his flamboyant shirts?

Donny Davis was not mentioned once, although he had not disappeared from Thea’s thoughts. She bit back outrageous questions about Cecilia’s heart condition and Philippe’s reported failure to offer his services for nothing. She censored any references to Jemima or Toby or Harriet Young.
Be nice
, she repeated to herself at regular intervals.
Don’t upset anybody
.

At three o’clock, after a large serving of home-made ice cream full of pieces of honeycomb, followed by a rich nutty coffee, Thea made a move to leave. ‘I’m meeting someone in a little while,’ she said. ‘It has been a magnificent meal. Really wonderful.’ She looked at Philippe, sitting with his big woolly dog between his knees. ‘I’m sorry about the dog and her pups. I know I shouldn’t have interfered. But I think anybody would
have done the same. I hope you find good homes for the puppies.’

‘Think no more about it. It’s done now, and I expect it’ll come right in the end. Things usually do.’

Thea thought of Donny. Had it come right in the end for him?

She thought not.

Only by prolonged use of their mobile phones did she and Drew find each other in the parking area near Painswick Beacon. Vehicles straggled along a rough wide track, angled into the edge of the woods wherever they could find a space. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, it was packed. Thea had to drive along the track for a considerable way and walk back, the spaniel pulling ahead on the lead.

She was looking for a family comprising two parents and two children, but when she finally saw Drew waving vigorously at her from the top of a slope, there was only him and the children. She unclipped the dog and climbed up to them, pausing for breath and to admire the view before saying, ‘Where’s your wife?’

‘She didn’t come,’ he said. ‘This is Stephanie, and this is Timmy.’ He patted each child lightly on the shoulder, and they both stared at her, unsmiling.

‘Hello there,’ she said heartily. ‘This is Hepzibah. Are you having a nice day out?’

They glanced indifferently at the dog. ‘Timmy
dropped his ice cream,’ said Stephanie. ‘And Daddy wouldn’t buy him another one.’

‘The queue was a mile long,’ Drew protested. ‘And he’d had about half of it.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘The wildlife park. It was bedlam.’

‘Like here,’ remarked Thea. ‘I suppose it’s the sunshine, bringing them all out.’

There were knots of people on all sides, scrambling down into an old quarry or walking around its edge. ‘Have you been here long?’

‘Ten minutes. We were lucky and got a parking space just as somebody was leaving.’

‘So let’s walk to the top, shall we? It’s an old hill fort, according to my map. Two hundred and
eighty-three
metres above sea level.’

‘Is that a lot?’ Drew asked the question in all sincerity, it seemed, not simply wanting the information for his children, who had begun to take more interest in their surroundings.

‘It must be something like nine hundred feet, I suppose. I always think a thousand feet is quite high, so yes, it’s respectably elevated.’

‘Which way?’

She looked around, and consulted the Explorer Map she’d brought with her. ‘Due north of here,’ she said with authority. ‘And the sun’s in the west, more or less, so it must be that way.’ She pointed to the far side of the quarry. ‘Where everybody’s coming back from.’

The children waited passively for instructions, and Thea wondered whether they had the energy for a climb. ‘I don’t think it’s very far,’ she said encouragingly. ‘Follow me.’

It was further than it looked on the map, with a long straight path leading towards the earthworks that were all that remained of the fort. Just as she was bracing herself for complaints and resistance, she heard Stephanie say, ‘Daddy, this is like Maiden Castle, isn’t it?’

‘It is a bit, yes. Well done, Steph. That’s very clever of you.’

‘Maiden Castle?’ Thea echoed.

‘You know – the big hill near Dorchester. We’ve been there three times. Steph loves it. She says she saw a ghost there.’

‘Gosh! And how is it like this?’

‘These banked-up ridges are much the same. They had wooden fences on top. It was all fiercely fortified.’

‘And stakes,’ said Timmy. ‘They put sharp stakes to stop the army coming in.’

‘Well, it looks as if this was a good choice, then,’ said Thea with relief. ‘You know more about it than I do.’

They progressed up the long sloping walkway to the very top, where a circular plate indicated the places that could be seen on a clear day – which this was. The children were less interested in the view than
the imagined warfare that raged a thousand years ago. ‘Roughly speaking,’ said Drew apologetically. ‘I’m not at all sure of the dates, are you?’

‘A lot more than a thousand years, I think. If I remember rightly, it’s BC, which means it’s more than
two
thousand years old. They call it Kimsbury Camp in some of the books.’

With impressive energy, Stephanie and Timmy began to re-enact their idea of Dark Ages politics, with horses and swords. Hepzie was encouraged to join in, with modest success. Thea found Drew’s children disconcerting on the whole, mainly due to a worry about her role in the little group and what they might tell their mother. Seizing the opportunity, she told Drew that the mystery of the missing dog in the woods had been solved.

‘I was so happy to see her again. The puppies have grown amazingly.’

‘You were so upset when she went missing.’

The memory of weeping on Drew’s chest ought to have been embarrassing, but somehow it wasn’t. ‘I know. I was terrified for their welfare.’

‘So what about Donny?’ Drew changed the subject. ‘What’s been happening about him?’

‘Loads of theories and suspicions, but nothing concrete.’ She met his eyes and made another switch of topic. ‘Why isn’t Karen with you?’ she asked him outright.

‘She’s not well enough. She hasn’t been right for a
week or more. I wasn’t sure I should leave her, really, but there are neighbours she can call on if necessary.’

‘What’s the problem?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. More of the same. They’re talking about doing a brain scan, to see what’s going on. She’s just so
flat
all the time.’

‘It sounds like ME – though nobody seems to get that any more, do they?’

‘It’s similar, I suppose. But we’re sure it’s all a result of being shot in the head. There must have been more damage than we first assumed.’

‘I can’t imagine what it must have been like, for all of you, not just her.’

‘Neither can I, now. We seemed to come through it really well at the time. The kids weren’t especially upset, and once Karen got home from hospital they were fine. We all were, for months. But it slowly dawned on us that she was never going to be the same as before. Even if she’d made a complete physical recovery, the trauma would never entirely disappear.’

‘Does she know you’re meeting me?’ The question had been on her mind since she’d realised Karen wasn’t there. It had taken an effort to voice it.

He took a few seconds to reply. ‘No, actually. It was all a bit chaotic this morning. She was going to come, right up to the last minute. Then I said I’d cancel it and stay with her, but Timmy made such a fuss it seemed easier just to stick to the plan.’

‘So when they tell her you came up to the Beacon
with a strange lady, what’s Karen going to think?’

‘Your guess is probably better than mine,’ he said. He sounded so despondent and helpless that she almost put her arms round him in an effort to comfort him. ‘She’s very unpredictable,’ he explained. ‘The most likely reaction is complete indifference.’

‘Oh dear. She really doesn’t sound right.’

‘No. And not telling her is definitely the best thing. For her, I mean. If I force her to listen, it’ll seem as if I’m making a big issue of it – an important announcement of some sort.’

It was a problem that Thea had not encountered before, despite its ordinariness. When a married man spent time with an attractive single woman, there were implications and reverberations that took over, however innocent the intentions. Men never did tell their wives, she supposed, just in case things went out of control and there was reason to deceive after all. But in this case, the children would inevitably complicate matters. She knew Drew well enough to be sure that he would never ask them to keep a secret from their mother. So why had he taken such a risk?

They were still at the top of the Beacon, gazing at the compelling panorama stretching for many miles in each direction. Conscientiously, they called the children and pointed out the landmarks as indicated on the metal plate. The roofs of Painswick were a fairy-tale jumble, the smaller villages comfortably rooted in their cosy valleys, roads barely discernible until a big lorry
crawling along showed where they were. Gradually, as they obediently looked, the spreading patchwork below them caught their imagination.

‘It’s a kingdom!’ said Timmy. ‘And I’m the king.’

‘The ruler of all you survey,’ said Drew. ‘What a marvellous spot for a fort. Clever people they had in those days.’

‘They killed everybody,’ Stephanie objected solemnly. ‘Fighting and killing.’

‘Not all the time,’ Thea said. ‘They had plenty of peace as well.’

‘Did they?’ said Drew. ‘Are you sure?’

‘It isn’t possible to fight all the time. There would have been long recovery periods, where the women put it all back together, growing vegetables and making new clothes for everybody, and seeing that the wounds healed. Besides, they call it a “camp”, which suggests it was peaceful most of the time.’

‘Sounds rather nice,’ he agreed. ‘But I’m not sure I believe you about recovery periods.’

‘I’m right, all the same. It’s obvious. It’s the same now. War is exhausting in all sorts of ways. It has to stop eventually.’

‘But people are still dead,’ said the little girl. ‘
Thousands
of them.’

‘True,’ admitted Thea, wondering at the child’s insistence.

‘Daddy buries dead people,’ said Timmy – something Thea had temporarily forgotten.

‘So he does,’ she smiled. ‘So you know all about it.’

‘Not
all
,’ frowned the undertaker’s son. ‘But I will when I get bigger.’

‘Time to get back,’ Drew announced, with a palpable heaviness. ‘Bedtime is already going to be late, and there’s school tomorrow.’

Thea waited for the customary remark about an impatient Mummy chastising them for staying out too long, but nothing came.

‘I’m thirsty,’ said Timmy. ‘And hot.’

‘I expect we all are,’ said Drew with an air of helplessness. ‘There’s some water in the car.’

The children went ahead, scampering down the long incline to the foot of the hill fort. Thea was aware that Drew wanted to talk to her, that he was frustrated at not having time or space for a prolonged conversation. Whilst happy in his company, she was unsure about his evident need for something more. It was unclear where his priorities lay – what was the most urgent topic for him amongst the things they had spoken of so far?

It was soon revealed. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘This man who died. I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ve discussed it with Maggs as well. We’re both convinced he didn’t kill himself. It just shouts out that it couldn’t possibly have been suicide. I think you have to contact the police and explain about his appointment with me. People don’t make appointments the day before they take their own life.’