Deception in the Cotswolds (6 page)

‘And if I am, I fear you have the advantage of me.’ It was like talking to somebody out of a P.G. Wodehouse story.

‘I’m Thea Osborne, Harriet Young’s house-sitter. Donny told me about you.’

‘Well, you’ve jumped to quite the wrong conclusion, young woman. I am in fact not Edwina, but her sister. I dare say Donald neglected to mention me. He generally hopes to eradicate me from existence by the sheer force of his will. We enjoy what you might call a mutual antipathy.’

‘Oh,’ said Thea.

‘My name is Thyrza Hastings. I live close by, in a house that has been in my family for three hundred years.’

Is that all?
Thea thought impertinently, well aware that there were still families in England who could add several more centuries than that to their tenure. And who would take it over after Thyrza, she wondered inconsequentially. The details of inheritance was a pet interest, leading as it often did to people behaving badly.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said, offering her hand, whilst trying to hide the carrier bag containing the plastic bowl behind her back.

Thyrza Hastings took her hand fleetingly, as if impatient at the irrelevant gesture. Thea took a closer look at the woman’s face, settling on the Cupid’s bow mouth. ‘Are you related to a man called Philippe?’ she asked boldly. ‘You look rather like him.’

‘He’s my son. How very observant of you. Very few people can detect a likeness. But then they only look at things like hair and height.’ Her hair was thick and frizzy, forming a dark-grey halo around her head. Philippe’s had been brown and floppy.

‘Does he inherit the ancestral home, then?’ she asked with a smile, hoping she didn’t sound too rude. ‘I suppose he lives with you?’ The stereotype of the spoilt only son of a dominant mother seemed to fit the man with the poodle rather well.

Thyrza bridled, her neck stretching as she pulled
her head back. ‘I do not consider that any of your business,’ she snapped. ‘I can’t imagine why it would matter to you.’

‘You’re quite right,’ Thea conceded. ‘I’m incorrigibly nosy, that’s all. I like to get a sense of where everybody fits, in a small place like this.’

‘Perhaps you ought to bear in mind that curiosity killed the cat,’ the woman warned. ‘Now I think we should both be getting home. It’s nearly dark.’

‘It’s not half past nine yet, is it? I thought it would stay light a bit longer than this.’

‘It’s the trees,’ said Thyrza. ‘And it’s cloudy tonight.’

‘Of course.’

They walked along side by side, without speaking for a few minutes. Thea was glad of the company, and grateful for the absence of searching questions as to exactly why she was in the woods all alone on a darkening evening. Her companion appeared preoccupied with her own thoughts as she marched sturdily along the track. No hint of any sisterly echo of the bad hip that Donny had said afflicted Edwina. ‘Do you and your sister live together?’ she asked, as they finally left the woods and emerged onto the road down to the village. Then she added meekly, ‘Sorry. I’m still not minding my own business, am I? I don’t think I can help it – I find new people so interesting, you see.’

The woman had evidently thawed somewhat during the walk. She snorted, half laugh, half impatient
protest. ‘Heaven forbid!’ she replied. ‘She lives on the other side of the common from me. She and I are very different.’ Thea thought she could detect a note of wistfulness in these words.

‘And she’s visiting her daughter,’ Thea recalled. ‘Donny said something about that.’

‘Due back any time now. They’ll be glad to be shot of her – might even persuade her to set off this evening. Her duties expire when half-term finishes, but she insists on staying one more day, to help get the house straight or some such nonsense.’

They were approaching the edge of the wood, where the road ran through the centre of Cranham. ‘I go that way,’ said Thyrza Hastings, tilting her chin to the right.

‘And I’m straight over the road,’ said Thea, sounding more certain than she really was. The light was fading fast and she had emerged onto a different point from the one she knew.

‘You can see the Manor from the corner there,’ said the woman, with a glimmer of humour. ‘It’s easy to lose your bearings around here.’

‘Thank you. Maybe I’ll see you again.’

‘Maybe you will. Goodnight, then, Thea Osborne.’

‘Goodnight,’ said Thea, impressed that her name had been so accurately noted.

She passed Donny’s Lodge as she turned into the driveway of Hollywell Manor. There was a light on
downstairs, and the front window was open. She glimpsed, without taking any proper notice, the back of a car parked around the side of the house. In the twilight, she gained no clear impression of its colour or make. Voices floated from the open window, which she took to be the television at first. The absence of close neighbours made it unobjectionable to anybody, she supposed, although it was rather loud.

‘No, I will not!’ came a man’s raised voice. ‘I’ve told you a thousand times, damn it.’

‘For heaven’s sake,’ a woman replied. ‘Calm down, will you?’

‘Don’t patronise me!’ he almost screamed. ‘Don’t be so bloody condescending all the time.’

Thea realised that it was Donny’s shrill old-man tones she was hearing. Presumably Jemima had come to see him, and an argument had developed. Well, she thought – it’s none of my business, and she hurried up to the Manor, where her eager dog welcomed her as if she’d been away for a month. 

She ended the day with a glass of wine that she felt had been well earned. The geckoes were stirring when she paid them a bedtime visit. ‘I suppose this is the start of your day, not the end,’ she murmured to them. A greeny-grey tail flicked at her from behind a large leaf. She activated the water spray over the somnolent eggs, imagining the tiny reptiles curled inside them. It was sweet to think of the new lives quietly incubating, unaware of their future existence in captivity, at the whim of feckless humans. ‘Sleep tight,’ she crooned softly to them.

Tuesday morning was another uncertain day,
weather-wise
. High white cloud almost covered the sky, but there were encouraging patches of blue here and there. Thea and her dog had woken early, slowly surfacing
to greet the morning and learn more about the people of Cranham. Outside, all was quiet and still.

Drew, she remembered, was coming that afternoon. The fresh-faced undertaker, who looked younger than his thirty-eight years. Drew was witty and bright, the best possible fun to talk to. It would be a treat to see him again.

She pottered through breakfast before taking a circuit of the garden with Hepzie, her mind more or less empty as she savoured the new day. In a while, she would mash up some banana for the geckoes and do a bit of dusting in the big living room. She had bought everything she needed for the next day or two – bread, biscuits, milk, eggs and more meat for herself and the dog in the woods.

The dog! That was her most urgent consideration for the coming morning. She should take more food for it – a much more difficult task in broad daylight, with the risk of being seen by passing walkers or cyclists. And the necessity of leaving Hepzie behind meant that she should go for another walk with her own dog, in a different direction. Suddenly she felt much busier, having forgotten for the moment her new responsibility.

Most dogs only fed once a day, in her experience. Perhaps, then, the new mother could wait at least until the afternoon. That would leave Thea with a pleasingly lazy morning, reading, emailing one or two people and not much else.

By nine-thirty she was activating her laptop and preparing to send short updates of her whereabouts to her daughter and mother. None of her family understood or approved of her career as a house-sitter. Jessica had joined her a few times, becoming involved in the adventures that so persistently befell Thea when she intruded into the complications that seemed to characterise small English communities. As a newly trained police officer, Jessica was often torn between roles and alarmed at her mother’s cavalier approach. But the girl was currently distracted by a demanding relationship, with little attention to spare her mother. ‘Besides,’ Thea had assured her, ‘I’ve demonstrated by now that I can look after myself, haven’t I?’

The front door stood open, weak sunshine brightening the hallway, which Thea could see from the living room. She liked open doors and fresh air – something she was generally able to ensure in the Cotswold houses she looked after. Double glazing and complicated locks made her impatient, the way they created airtight boxes in which she felt suffocated. Whilst doing her best to follow specific instructions, she was quite relaxed about the matter of security in general. This infuriated Jessica, who reminded her mother that there had surely been enough incidents of violence and criminality around her for her to have learnt to keep herself safe. Thea just shrugged and said if somebody was intent on attacking her, a locked door probably wasn’t going to stop them. She
pointed out that hardly anybody had offered her direct aggression, and that she was simply in the way most of the time. The vacuum created when somebody left their house often gave rise to opportunistic felonies, it was true, but Thea’s role to date had mainly been to bear witness and make sensible suggestions to the police.

Or so she chose to characterise her career thus far. She conveniently overlooked the times when she had been seriously frightened, when the animals in her care had come to harm and her suggestions proved to be much less sensible than she cared to recall.

Frowning at her computer screen, she composed a buoyant message for her daughter that would allay any lingering worries the girl might have.
Weather tantalising, work not a bit arduous, great walks and much to explore
. A bit telegrammatic, she decided, and added a few embellishments before sending it off.

‘Are you there?’ came a female voice from the hallway. ‘Hey – I need somebody, quickly.’

‘In here,’ Thea called back. ‘What’s the matter?’

Jemima Hobson was standing in the doorway, breathing heavily. She must have run up the drive from the Lodge – a short but rather steep avenue. ‘It’s Dad. I can’t rouse him.’

Thea did not react very quickly. She glanced at the large antique clock on the mantelpiece, thinking perhaps the old man had merely slept in. It was a few
minutes after ten. ‘What do you mean? Have you been into the house?’

Jemima shook her head. ‘The door’s locked. I banged and shouted, but there’s no sign of him.’

‘Haven’t you got a key?’

‘It’s at home. I never normally need to use it – he leaves the back door on the latch.’

‘Gosh! Isn’t he worried about burglars?’ She heard her own hypocrisy, in this question. Why should she assume that Donny was any more paranoid than she was herself?

Jemima shrugged impatiently. ‘Not very, no. He hasn’t got anything of value in the house. I imagine any marauders would make directly for the Manor, don’t you?’

Which wasn’t much more secure, Thea acknowledged silently. ‘Could he have gone out?’ she asked.

‘He only really comes up here, these days, unless Edwina takes him somewhere.’

‘Has he got a car?’

‘Yes, but he doesn’t drive any more.’ Jemima danced agitatedly. ‘Please come with me. We’ll have to break in.’

‘I don’t know how useful I can be,’ Thea demurred. ‘I’m not especially good at bashing doors in.’

‘At least you can be a witness,’ said the woman.

‘We could phone him,’ Thea suggested. ‘That should wake him up, if he’s overslept.’

‘I tried that already. Honestly, I am very worried. This has never happened before. He seemed perfectly all right yesterday.’

‘Well, I’d better shut the dog in, I suppose.’ She followed Jemima outside, and closed the front door firmly. Only then did she remember the argument she had heard the previous evening. ‘Were you here last night?’ she asked.

‘No. Why?’

‘I heard him shouting, and a woman answering him.’

Jemima barely seemed to hear her. ‘Oh, come on. We have to get back. Tell me as we go.’ She began trotting down the drive towards the Lodge.

Thea persisted. ‘It was about half past nine, I suppose. I was walking past and heard raised voices. He sounded quite cross. I thought it was you. I saw a car—’

‘I was not here last night,’ said Jemima, loudly. She slowed her pace and turned to meet Thea’s eye. ‘I was at home.’

‘OK, I believe you,’ said Thea. ‘I don’t suppose it matters, anyway.’

‘Let’s hope not. Now – I’m going to bang as loud as I can. If that doesn’t work, we can go round the back and break the glass in the door.’

‘Did you say he doesn’t usually lock the door?’

‘Right. Not the back, anyway. The front’s got a Yale lock, which he mostly clicks down before bed. But the back just has a bolt, and he never puts it
across. I couldn’t believe it when I couldn’t get in.’

A lot of Thea’s energy was going into resisting all the insistent thoughts that were crowding into her mind. She had been here before – an old man lying on the floor, killed by an unknown attacker. She did not want to find the same thing again. She liked Donny and had looked forward to talking to him every day of her stay. ‘I hope he’s all right,’ she said.

‘So do I. He’s been threatening to take things into his own hands, but I never thought he’d really do it.’

‘What – you think he’s killed himself?’ The idea had not occurred to Thea. ‘Surely not! He was in such a good mood yesterday.’

‘The doors are locked,’ Jemima repeated. ‘That’s what worries me most.’

She banged, as promised, and called ‘Dad!’ at a deafening volume. Then she fell quiet, and they both listened intently. Not a sound could be heard.

‘That’s it, then. Come on.’ Jemima led the way around the back. Thea noticed fleetingly that the car she had seen the previous evening was still there.

The back door had a glass pane in its upper half, and without ceremony, Jemima took a brick to it. Then she reached in carefully and pulled back the bolt that secured the door. The women moved silently through the kitchen, and out into a narrow hallway that led to a living room and then a bedroom at the back of the single-storey house.

‘Dad!’ Jemima yelled again.

There was no option but to proceed along to the bedroom, after a cursory glance into the front room. Thea followed Jemima’s lead, her mind almost blank as she awaited the outcome of their search.

‘This is his room,’ Jemima announced, unnecessarily. She pushed the door, which was half closed, and peered in. ‘Oh God!’ she cried. ‘This is just what I was afraid of.’

It sounded odd to Thea – a stilted remark which did not match the situation at all. She pushed Jemima aside and looked for herself. Donny lay tidily on the bed, dressed in striped pyjamas, uncovered by sheet or blanket, arms by his sides, and a plastic bag over his head, fastened tightly around his neck with wide, brown, sticky parcel tape. A purple-hued face was inside the all-too-transparent bag, looking nothing like a human being. The bag was tightly welded to the skin around the nose and mouth, and Thea could see smooth cheeks and chin.
At least somebody shaved him
, she thought.

A lot of clashing thoughts occurred to her at once. Donny had killed himself, as he had reportedly threatened to do over the past months or years. The person he had argued with the previous evening had somehow driven him to do it. He must have drugged himself before putting the bag over his head, because nobody could take suffocation so quietly as he appeared to have done. And his daughter Mimm was acting strangely. And she heard a voice in her head
saying:
Why doesn’t he just put an end to his misery, and do us all a favour?
Philippe, son of Thyrza, would be satisfied, at least. As would Thyrza herself, if her own report of ‘animosity’ could be taken seriously.

‘We shouldn’t move him,’ said Thea.

‘No. He really is dead, you think?’

Thea silently pointed to a dark patch at Donny’s crotch. The relaxation of all bodily muscles meant that bladder and bowel had released their contents just after death. Beyond that, the unnerving stillness in the room gave Mimm her answer.

‘Yes, he’s dead,’ she said. ‘Poor old Dad. I honestly didn’t think he would ever do it. Not alone, anyway.’

More flickering thoughts crossed Thea’s mind along with a range of feelings. Helpless sadness was the primary one, and a violent regret that she had somehow permitted this to happen. You were supposed to stop people from killing themselves, striving to convince them that there was still hope, still pleasure to be had from life. All the media controversy about assisted suicide, which came and went through the years, altering emphasis and demanding a variety of major changes to the law, came back to her. In her teens, there had been a lot of discussion about the best methods of killing yourself – a topic that adolescents found deeply fascinating – with pills and plastic bags a favourite. People who helped their terminally ill relatives to die were advised to take this route. More recently, and quite bizarrely, the more affluent
would-be suicides went to an expensive killing clinic in Switzerland to drink a toxic mix they could surely have acquired in the UK if they made the effort. But the main point always seemed to be that there ought to be another person involved, even when the central figure was entirely capable of mixing a drink and swallowing it, or pulling a bag over their own heads – as poor Donny had evidently done at some point during the night. It was a taboo subject surrounded by myths and emotions that carried very little rationality. It was assumed that nobody wanted to die alone, and yet the majority of people in hospitals and nursing homes hung on until the last visitor had left, before allowing themselves to sink into oblivion. Conversely, it was assumed that there were a lot of fates worse than death, and it should be made easier for people to curtail the process and cut to the final stage more quickly than nature intended. In Thea’s experience, this was a false assumption. As far as she could see, people clung to life ferociously when it came to the crunch.

The arguments flashed through her mind, fragmented and contradictory, and all accomplished in a few seconds, like a dream that feels as if it lasted all night.

‘I don’t believe he wanted to die,’ she said softly.

So why had Donny not clawed at the bag, ripping it from his face? Had he wound the tape so tightly because he knew he might change his mind? She tried
to imagine the sequence of events, only to find several difficulties. If he had possessed the strength and clarity of mind to pull the bag down over his face, and fasten it so securely, this strength must have quickly deserted him when, after four of five breaths, there was no more air in the bag for him to breathe.

‘
Was
he alone, I wonder?’ she muttered aloud.

Jemima made a kind of croak. ‘What do you mean? Of
course
he was.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Thea quickly. ‘We’ll have to call the police. They’ll bring their own doctor.’

‘There won’t be a post-mortem, will there? He had a horror of post-mortems. It was all part of his general loathing of medical procedures.’

Thea remembered Donny’s anguished description of his daughter’s body after the heart transplant. Something about being cut about like a piece of meat. ‘I’m afraid there will,’ she said. ‘If ever there was a case for one, then this is it.’ And wouldn’t Donny have known that, she wondered. Wouldn’t that have been one of the main reasons for avoiding this sort of death for himself?