Deception in the Cotswolds (7 page)

Jemima was making no move to call the authorities. She was rooted to a spot about a foot from her father’s body, her hands clenching spasmodically. ‘Can we take that bag off his face?’ she asked.

‘Better not.’

‘Why? It isn’t the scene of a crime, is it? There won’t be detectives and SOCOs and all that stuff.’

‘There’ll be an inquest,’ said Thea. ‘They’ll want an exact description of how he was found.’

‘It’s so awful,’ said Jemima flatly. ‘Just utterly awful. I can’t take it in.’

‘You said it was what you were afraid of,’ Thea reminded her. ‘As if you weren’t surprised.’

‘He
talked
so much about killing himself. He was morbid about it, discussing all the different ways of doing it. He gave me nightmares.’

‘Suicides hardly ever think about what it’s like for the people finding them.’

‘No. He didn’t think about that at all.’

‘But it looks as if he went ahead and did it. All on his own.’

‘Yes.’

The women exchanged uncomfortable glances, nodding at each other’s words, glancing back at the dead Donny, breathing quick shallow breaths. Jemima’s hands were shaking, and Thea felt surging waves of anxiety in her guts. The death of a nice old man such as Donny was quite enough to account for such distress – of course it was.

Somehow hours passed, and although it was not the first time Thea had been closely involved in a sudden death, she could not remember ever being in such a state of paralysis since her husband Carl had been killed in a car crash. She could not decide what to think; her emotions were so tangled they seemed to cancel each
other out. Donny had said he wanted to die, and yet he had seemed so completely alive that nobody had quite believed him. What he had really wanted, surely, had been the same as everyone wanted – an easy, painless death, while still functioning mentally. A chance to say last words to those one loves, and set at least a few affairs in order. Not to dwindle by inches in a nursing home lounge, staring at the television and the same blank faces for months on end.

The police had taken everything at face value: an old man with a debilitating illness, who had frequently spoken of his wish to die, had taken a well-worn route to oblivion. ‘Did he leave a note?’ asked the uniformed sergeant who attended the scene.

‘I haven’t found one,’ said Jemima with a frown. ‘That’s a good point, actually. I would have expected us all to have a letter from him. It’s the sort of thing he would do.’

The police doctor made his tests before declaring life extinct and calling for the undertaker’s men to remove the body to the mortuary in Gloucester. Jemima used the Lodge phone to call Edwina, who was difficult to persuade to stay away. ‘No, you shouldn’t come,’ she said three times. ‘I don’t want you to.’ Then she called her husband on the farm to explain her prolonged absence.

‘And Toby,’ she sighed to herself. ‘I suppose I’ll have to tell Toby.’

Thea’s raised eyebrows were enough to elicit
clarification. ‘My sister’s husband. He was quite fond of Dad, even though they argued all the time. He’s kept in touch, of course, since Cecilia died.’

Thea had hung around, thinking Jemima would appreciate the company. The atmosphere in the Lodge was cold with the fact of death in general and the sadness of Donny’s departure in particular. She missed him already, despite their brief acquaintance.

Jemima performed a hurried search for a possible suicide note, finding nothing. Thea wrestled with the dilemma as to whether or not to report to the police the argument she had heard the previous evening. It was surely relevant, even crucially important, but the more she rewound it in her mind, the less sure she was of what she had actually heard. It could even have been the television, she told herself, while knowing it had not been anything of the sort. Jemima had reacted as if being accused of something when Thea had told her about it again. The car she had assumed belonged to the shouting woman was actually Donny’s. Nothing was clear, and she badly wanted to avoid making things worse. The police had gone, as had Donny, with the undertaker’s men. Thea’s rumbling stomach alerted her to the passage of time.

‘Gosh – it’s nearly two o’clock!’ she noticed with a shock. ‘That’s incredible.’

‘Don’t hang about on my account,’ said Jemima. ‘I’ll have to be going, anyway. But the house isn’t secure, now I’ve broken that window.’

‘I thought you said Donny never locked it, anyway. It isn’t likely to be burgled now.’

‘It might, when the news gets out that he’s gone. They watch out for that sort of thing, the bastards.’

‘They watch for the day and time of the funeral, but I think they’d expect too much coming and going over the next few days for it to be a good prospect.’ She entertained an image of lurking shadowy criminals, watching for a chance to steal the mahogany davenport and antique clock that seemed to be the only things Donny possessed of any value. ‘And to be honest, I doubt whether they’d think it worth the trouble, seeing how little there is to nick.’

‘That davenport was valued at fifteen hundred quid, twelve years ago,’ said Jemima, eyeing the thing speculatively. ‘Not that it’s ever been very useful.’

‘I have a feeling they’re out of fashion at the moment. There hasn’t been one on
Antiques Roadshow
for ages.’

Jemima laughed, before clamping her mouth shut and widening her eyes. She moaned an inarticulate self-reproach, which Thea recognised. It would not be until after the funeral that Donny’s relatives felt they could smile or laugh normally again. Even in a culture almost devoid of ritual, there were powerful protocols surrounding the whole business of death.

‘I’ll have to eat something,’ Thea announced. ‘I’m starving. Do you want to come up to the Manor and have a sandwich? And a cup of tea.’

‘That’d be nice. I’m not hungry, but my throat’s parched.’

‘Should we try to find a number for Harriet and tell her what’s happened, do you think?’ This was far from the first time that Thea had been obliged to ask such a question. ‘She did say, loud and clear, that she was not to be contacted.’

‘No, I don’t think so. There’s nothing she can do, and she might well be back before the funeral, anyway. I imagine it’ll take a couple of weeks to get everything sorted.’

‘She’s sure to want to be at the funeral.’

Jemima shifted irritably. ‘I can’t worry about Harriet now,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve got my own family to see to.’

‘Right,’ Thea nodded understandingly. ‘And my dog’s going to be wanting a walk. Half the day’s gone already.’

It was only then that she remembered the dog in the woods, by association with her own spaniel. The stab of guilt at her desertion, however irrational, was the strongest emotion she had felt all day. Quickly she persuaded herself that the animal would be perfectly all right after its meal the day before, but the guilt would not go away. ‘I’ll have to do it soon,’ she said to Jemima, worriedly.

‘What on earth for? She can relieve herself in the garden here, can’t she? How can it be that important?’

Thea could not disclose the secret of the collie in the woods, especially to Jemima, who might know the owner and betray the trusting animal. Neither could she quell her own sense of responsibility. It had something to do with the new lives, even more significant now that somebody had died. In a jumbled kind of way, she felt there was a balance in operation – that it might make Donny’s death less dreadful if the puppies survived. At the same time, she knew this was an outrageous attitude – she did not question that a human being outweighed a dog by a million to one. More – it was not a comparison that could be made with any numbers. And yet, somewhere deep inside her, it was a real compulsion. If it lay within her power, she was going to ensure that those dogs survived.

Fortunately, Jemima was increasingly aware of pressure on her own time. She drained a large mug of tea, and accepted another, before trotting off to the car she had been forced to move to halfway up the drive, to make way for the official vehicles that had arrived through the morning.

‘I am really sorry about your father,’ said Thea, on the doorstep. ‘He was a lovely man.’

‘Don’t!’ pleaded Jemima. ‘Don’t start me off now, for God’s sake.’

And she was gone.

Thea treacherously shut Hepzie in the house again, having collected more mince and milk and biscuits. Feeling furtive, she hurried across the road and into the woods, meeting nobody on the way. Children back at school, fathers and mothers off up the motorway to an office in a large town or city somewhere, the whole place abandoned for the day – the chances of seeing anyone were reassuringly small.

The dog must have heard her coming, and was whining with the familiar mixture of worry and welcome. The black nose came forward and the eyes gleamed like those of a wild animal. But this was a sheepdog, bred for millennia to obey human beings, and defer to them in every way. The deception practised on her master was extreme, and the source of considerable guilt. The conflicting duties of
motherhood and work were afflicting her severely.

‘Poor old girl,’ Thea sympathised, understanding much of this. ‘What’s to become of you? I don’t expect I’m doing you any favours, in the long run.’

As if to reward her for the compassion, the dog backed into her hole, twisting her head behind her, and reappeared with a wriggling pup in her gentle mouth.

‘Oh!’ Thea accepted the offering with due reverence. The puppy was blind, with a vivid pink nose and large splayed paws. The coat was black and slightly ridged, as if promising to grow long and fluffy in the future. ‘Who’s your daddy, then, I wonder?’

She handed the baby back, and extracted from her bag the provisions she had brought. The mother dog took it delicately, plainly less ravenous than the day before, although thirsty enough to make short work of the milk.

Thea lingered a while, reluctant to abandon the little family to their fate, whatever that might be. The death of Donny Davis had shaken her badly, and made her wonder about her own situation. It was possible that Harriet might decide to return prematurely, if the funeral was scheduled for a date before she was due home. She had persuaded herself that it was not her place to try to get in touch with Harriet, however.

Funeral! The word hovered in her mind, and only then did she remember the appointment with Drew.
She looked at her watch, to find it was three-fifteen. ‘Bloody hell!’ she muttered, and scrambled heedlessly away, hoping that Drew would not have given up and gone away before she reached him. Somehow she must have missed the barely visible track she had made for herself on her trips to and fro, through the undergrowth to the established path. It should take no more than five minutes, but instead she found herself still negotiating bumpy terrain strewn with sharp brambles and debris from the trees after ten. The walking wasn’t difficult, but it certainly wasn’t the way that everybody else used to navigate through the woods.

Ridiculous, she told herself, to get lost in an English wood in the middle of summer and feel that determined swirl of panic in your guts as a result. The urgency of having to find Drew made it much worse. She ought to give herself time to think, to locate the sun, which would indicate a westerly direction and use all her senses to identify a familiar landmark. But all the big beech trees looked the same, and the sun was nowhere to be found. Even if she’d had Hepzie with her, she doubted things would be easier. The spaniel had no concept of being lost, assuming her mistress to be omniscient, so strange behaviour like walking in circles ten yards from the usual path must have a human logic that she was not expected to question.

Then a dog trotted up to her, like the materialisation
of a dream, and sniffed her legs in a polite and friendly manner. It was the grey poodle she had met two days before. It turned and walked sedately along in front of her, clearly intending her to follow.

‘Heavens! You’re an intelligent creature, aren’t you?’ Thea congratulated it, as she emerged onto a track that she guessed led directly to the village. ‘Where’s your master, then?’

‘Hiya!’ called a voice from some distance behind her. ‘Has Jasper been doing his rescuing act again? He always thinks people must be lost if he finds them in these woods.’

‘He was right,’ she shouted back. ‘I had no idea where I was going.’

‘That’ll make his day.’ Philippe was hurrying towards her, smiling broadly. ‘Make sure you show him how grateful you are.’

Thea bent and fondled the topknot on the dog’s head, wondering fleetingly what poodles looked like without the attentions of a beauty parlour. Was it a law that you had to keep them trimmed and primped if you owned one? ‘Clever boy,’ she praised him. ‘I might have been there for ages. It never occurred to me to come this way.’

‘It’s easy to lose your bearings,’ said Philippe tolerantly.

‘Now I have to rush, I’m afraid,’ Thea apologised. ‘I should have been back half an hour ago, or more. I completely forgot I had somebody coming.’

‘Sad about poor old Donny,’ he said, almost casually, stopping her in her tracks. ‘Didn’t think he’d do it so soon, not with Harriet away.’

‘Perhaps he thought it would save her the distress.’

He gave her a probing look from beneath the brim of his silly hat. ‘Perhaps he did,’ he said, obviously not believing it for a moment.

‘I met your mother. It must have been yesterday.’

‘So I gather. Apparently you think I look like her, perish the thought. Now go. Your guest won’t wait for ever.’

Drew was sitting in his car, reading a magazine and showing no sign of annoyance or impatience.

‘Did something happen?’ he asked mildly, as she panted up the drive to him. ‘Or did I get the time wrong?’

She looked at him, unconsciously comparing the face she last saw two and a half months ago with the reality before her. Not a lot had changed. ‘I am terribly sorry,’ she puffed. ‘I forgot about you.’

‘I see. And where’s my potential new customer?’

She let her breathing settle down before replying. Drew got out of his car and waited. ‘He died in the night, I’m afraid,’ she said.

He didn’t laugh, or curse his bad luck, or gasp in amazement. He merely raised one eyebrow, and held her gaze for a full fifteen seconds. ‘Oh?’ he said.

‘It looks like suicide. It
was
suicide. A plastic bag
over his head. He must have decided he couldn’t leave it any longer.’

‘Poor man. And poor you. You don’t have much luck with this house-sitting stuff, do you?’

‘I’m not really involved in this,’ she said with a jerky motion of one hand, not wanting to hear such a sentiment uttered out loud. ‘He just came up here for coffee once or twice.’

‘Hm,’ said Drew sceptically. ‘So what now? Shall I just go away again?’

‘Of course not. Stay as long as you can. I’ve hardly eaten anything today, so I’m planning to cook a big supper and have it early. When do you have to go?’

‘I should be home by dark, if I can. That would mean leaving here by eight or so, I suppose.’

‘You found it all right, then?’ she asked belatedly. ‘It’s nice, isn’t it?’

‘I took one or two wrong turns, but it wasn’t too bad. And yes, it’s lovely. A proper traditional manor house. What’s it like inside?’

‘Come and see. It’s actually a bit of a fake. A Victorian copy of a manor house. Some local magnate built it, probably with the advice and even help of William Morris, in a much older style. The windows are wrong, look – too big for a genuine medieval house.’

She led him into the house, pushing away the effusive spaniel, who was even more excited than usual thanks to the scent of puppy on Thea’s hands. Drew gave
his full attention to the features of the house, while admitting he knew all too little about architecture. ‘Wood panelling,’ he observed. ‘Is it handmade?’

‘Hand-carved, yes,’ said Thea, pointing to the intricate designs. ‘There’s no machine that could manage that.’

‘It feels expensive. Who’s the owner?’

‘She’s called Harriet Young. American. I don’t know where her money came from. She’s really nice.’

The tour of the downstairs rooms was a diversion from the distressing details of Donny’s death. Thea could sense a simmering sympathy in Drew, wanting her to share with him the trauma of the morning. She resisted because she did not want to be left holding all the miserable feelings she only could intensify by talking about them, once he’d gone back to his family. Also because she did not really know him, and had no right to drag him into a story that was nothing to do with him.

He read her thoughts. ‘He was almost my client,’ he said. ‘I get the feeling I’d have liked him. And I’m upset because he probably won’t get the funeral he wanted now.’

She frowned. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ she admitted. ‘I could be a witness to the fact that he definitely would have been interested in using you for his burial. But his family will probably fight it,’ she added defeatedly. ‘They don’t like the idea. They want him to be buried in the churchyard here. Jemima was very cross with
me for contacting you without asking her first. And that was
before
he died. Goodness knows what she would say now.’

‘I don’t think she’ll have changed her mind,’ he said easily.

‘We didn’t tell her about you coming today. It was a secret assignation.’

Drew tutted under his breath. ‘Bad idea,’ he reproached her. ‘It’s important to have everybody on the same side.’

‘Maybe Donny realised that. Maybe that’s why he gave up.’

Too late she realised her defences had collapsed, and there was no stopping the wave of sadness and shock that had been building since the discovery of Donny’s body. ‘Oh, Drew! That poor old man!’ she burst out. ‘He still had such a zest for life – everyone could see it. He had a twinkle in his eye, and it was easy to make him laugh. What must have happened to send him over the edge like that? Could it have been
my
fault in some way?’

Drew’s eyebrows went up. ‘Doesn’t sound like any suicide I’ve come across,’ he said. ‘Is it absolutely certain that it was self-inflicted?’

‘I don’t know. It looks like it, yes. And I suppose it always comes as a huge surprise when anybody actually does it.’

‘It doesn’t, oddly enough,’ he contradicted gently. ‘Usually there’s been a long slow build-up that’s quite
obvious to all concerned. They deny it to themselves beforehand, but afterwards, they admit they could see it coming.’

‘Well, it’s not like that with Donny. Although Mimm did say it was what she was afraid of, when she first found him.’

Thea’s frown deepened. The story had layers of confusion, contradiction and puzzlement to it. ‘I really did not get the impression that he was at all ready to die, despite what he said.’

He held her gaze. ‘So what are you saying?’

‘Nothing. Honestly, nothing. Except …’

‘What?’

‘I passed his house quite late last night, and heard him shouting at somebody. A woman. Mimm says it wasn’t her. I saw a car and thought he had a visitor, but the car’s his, I think. It’s still there today. He was protesting at being bullied – bossed about – something like that. I remember now – it was “patronising”. He said, “Don’t be so bloody patronising.” Not a very dreadful thing to say, I suppose.’

‘Did you tell the police? They always ask who was last to see the person alive.’

She shook her head. ‘They weren’t interested in me. His daughter dealt with all that.’

‘But it’s surely important.’

‘I don’t know. He’s got a lady friend, Edwina, and she’s got a sister, Thyrza, and
she
’s got a son, Philippe. I could go on, but they’re the main players. They all
appear to know him well and at least Edwina cares about him and visits him a lot. The other two don’t seem to have been so enamoured of him. I haven’t met Edwina. She’s a force of nature, according to Donny.’

He listened and nodded, but asked no more questions. It felt to Thea as if he was being careful with her, and perhaps with himself as well. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked suddenly. ‘What’s been happening in Broad Campden?’

He sighed. ‘Oh, it’s just a typical British legal mess. Everybody can see what has to be done, but some perverse spirit always gets in the way. I’m not sure it’ll ever get operational. I’m not even sure I want it to.’

Drew’s alternative burial service was based in Somerset, where he lived with his wife, children and business partner, Maggs. He had recently been given the opportunity to expand into a new branch in the Cotswolds, which he could hardly refuse, despite the complicated implications for the whole family.

‘Why not?’

‘Karen isn’t well. The children are quite happy at their local school. Maggs says there’s no way she’s going to move to a village even more remote and quiet than where she lives now, even though she’s excited about the business prospects at Broad Campden.’

‘Did you ask her to? Move, I mean.’

He snorted. ‘Not at all. She could run North Staverton, and I could set up the new place. She
doesn’t see it that way, for some reason.’

‘You could double your income, if it worked out.’

‘In theory, after a few years, maybe. But there are still things I haven’t thought about properly. It takes ages to establish a reputation and earn the trust of all the people who matter. Nursing homes, for a start. They’re very slow to absorb a new idea or transfer their loyalties to a new business. To be honest, I’m almost at the point of deciding to let it all go.’

Thea’s sigh was even deeper than his had been. ‘What a shame,’ she sympathised. ‘What’s wrong with Karen?’

‘Same as usual. They did another scan on her head three weeks ago, and couldn’t find anything to worry about. But she gets awful headaches, and something’s not right. I hardly know her sometimes.’

‘What does she say about moving?’

‘She won’t even think about it.’ His brow creased. ‘If I try to remember how she was before the injury, I’m forced to accept that she’s really not the same person at all. She functions well enough if everything’s kept simple and superficial, but if a big change is threatened, or a big decision has to be made, she just retreats into herself like a child.’

‘Sounds more like somebody who feels really frightened,’ said Thea.

‘Right! That’s it. I haven’t even told her I’m coming up here today. It’ll worry her far too much.’