Guilt in the Cotswolds (23 page)

‘Does Brendan know what you’ve done?’

‘Don’t beat about the bush, dear. Call a spade a spade, why don’t you?’

She was beginning to feel that this man was having no difficulty in disarming her. She was doubting some of her own perceptions and conclusions. But she wasn’t done yet. ‘That classwork book he found in the attic. It was yours, wasn’t it?’

‘Richard’s, actually. Full of doodles and scrappy ideas. Funny the way he left it up there. I think it was deliberate, don’t you?’

‘Did he really leave an email predicting that he would be killed? Your aunt won’t tell me.’ It was a niggling detail that kept distracting her.

‘Up to a point, yes. Brendan saw a printed-out email at Auntie Rita’s. Richard was eaten up with all kinds of
worries. Not just family stuff, but all those farmers who hated his guts. But he didn’t expect to be murdered. He just hinted that there was something important in the attic that might explain a few things. Brendan always did overdramatise everything.’

‘He’s not the only one,’ said Thea, thinking of Millie, and even old Mrs Wilshire herself.

‘Well, they all got the family gene, I guess. It comes from my old grandma. Rita and Dawn’s mother. But let’s not get into that now.’

‘I think I understand quite a bit of it already.’

‘You do, do you?’

‘I know that your father is also Richard’s father. I imagine that had implications for inheritance of his estate. He’s from a rich family, with titles and stately homes and all that.’ She heard herself faltering. There was a glitch in her logic that she hadn’t noticed. But she pressed on. ‘And this house,’ she said, waving at Rita’s handsome Cotswold property. They were standing on the front path, neither showing any sign of wanting to go indoors. Thea had a feeling that Martin was deliberately remaining in the open as a gesture of reassurance. And for that, she found herself quite liking him.

‘The house goes to Millie. There’s no argument about that.’

‘But there was an argument?’

‘On a quite different level – yes, I’m afraid there was.’

She waited, aware that she had absolutely no claim to any knowledge of private family business, but equally
aware that Martin had asked her to come and meet him. There must be
something
he wanted to say to her. He’d talked about gratitude for her kindness, on the phone. But he wasn’t carrying a bunch of flowers and he had called her a dangerous little thing. All of which led to a loss of balance.

‘We argued about our mothers, essentially. Neither of us knew Dawn; we both regarded Rita as central to our lives. Richard knew perfectly well that I would never have agreed to putting her in a home. He went ahead and did it without any consultation. But when I saw her there, I realised it was for the best. I made no objection. The same thing when I heard that he’d employed you to go through my mother’s possessions. I was forced to concede that it was well past the time when they should be opened up and disposed of. I was annoyed when I finally got hold of the fact that he had approached our father some time ago, and wheedled his way into his affections, in these final years of his life. Bit by bit, I found Richard a thorn in my side on just about every level. He did his best to obstruct my visits to Auntie, as well. He turned his girl against me. He read all the emails I sent to Auntie, and apparently came to the conclusion that I was stealing his mother from him. She always loved me more, you know. It was just a fact of our lives. I can’t see how it really changed anything for him. I was out of his way, first at school, then I left the country altogether. He was a dutiful son. Auntie was a perfectly good mother to him. And yet
it seems he never felt he got his due. He could never please her to his own satisfaction.’

‘But they seemed so close,’ Thea interrupted. ‘My fiancé said that was obvious from seeing them together, last month.’

Martin nodded sadly. ‘He was always determined to be seen as the perfect son. It was almost an obsession. When he finally discovered who his father was, it was the same there, too. He had to win affection and approval from a deaf old man, who had never much cared about his offspring. He more or less abandoned me as a small child, and I’ve barely seen him twenty times in fifty years. But the fact remains that I’m his legitimate son, and nothing can change that.’

‘Is there a lot to inherit now?’

Martin puffed out his cheeks in amusement. ‘Barely a cent. He was the fourth son of a grand family. As a youngster, he had a reasonable income from all the various enterprises. His father was a remarkably clever businessman, unusually for the aristocracy. When he died, there was a pretty handsome share-out. But that was a long time ago. They’ve been a prolific family. There’s a dozen cousins at least all claiming their share. Besides, don’t you think there’s something very unsavoury about a man of seventy waiting for an inheritance from his father? If you can’t make your way in life by that time, then it’s a bit late to get started at my age. I don’t need any more money. I’ve done quite nicely for myself.’

‘So what happened with Richard, then?’ she blurted. ‘At the barn.’

‘You really think I know the answer to that?’

‘I really do.’ She fixed him with an uncompromising stare. ‘Who else?’ It sounded much bolder than she felt. There was still every chance that an angry farmer had killed Richard, she supposed. Perhaps all the things she had gleaned from members of the family had expanded into a conviction that was quite wrong. But no, she couldn’t believe that. It had gone too far for that.

‘I will tell you,’ he said, glancing up and down the little road. ‘Will you walk to the church with me? I think better when I’m walking, and your little dog seems eager for some exercise.’ Hepzie was mooching aimlessly close by.

‘Okay, then.’ The church was two minutes’ walk away, but the suggestion made a sort of sense. They were somewhat conspicuous, standing in an empty road. It was somehow the wrong setting for a confession to murder.

Because she felt certain that this was coming. Why in the world the man should freely make such an admission remained obscure. He had said on the phone that he owed her something, but she failed to understand what or why. Nevertheless, she was more than happy to let him speak.

‘Let me summarise,’ said Martin Teasdale. ‘Richard was always jealous of me, from the very start. Auntie talked about me all the time, rushed to open my letters as soon as they arrived, paid handsomely for my wedding
and gave me lavish presents. It was foolish of her.’

‘Indeed,’ said Thea.

‘But not my fault. However, as I just said, in Richard’s mind there were countless reasons for hating me. And he acted on his hatred. He thwarted me in every way he could. He tried to poison Auntie’s mind against me. He labelled poor Brendan a criminal.’

‘Which made you hate him in return.’

‘Well, no, actually. I always felt sorry for him. I spent a large part of last Friday trying to put him straight. Trying to make him see that we were both too old for such foolishness. He came to my place in Gloucester, demanding that I stop emailing Auntie and showing her so much attention.’

‘All day Friday? So that’s where he was. He let people down. He didn’t answer his phone. He abandoned his dogs.’

‘He got very drunk on Thursday evening. He’d come to meet me to talk about the house here. We met in a pub near my home. He just lost it, I’m afraid.’

Thea thought back to the man she had seen on her arrival at Chedworth. How he had claimed to be consumed with guilt. It would make sense for him to try to drink the guilt away, she supposed.

‘So he stayed the night,’ Martin went on. ‘And in the morning he felt too ill for work. I took his phone away from him, because he would only make things worse for himself by trying to explain what was going on. And then we got into the most dreadful all-day conversation,
going right back to the start, with Richard airing every grievance he’d ever had against me. He recounted his whole life. Then he drank more, and fell asleep at about seven in the evening. I didn’t know what to do with him, quite honestly. He woke up at six the next morning, insisting we settle it once and for all.’

‘Settle what, exactly?’

‘I wasn’t sure myself by that time. I was utterly sandbagged by the whole thing. But I knew we owed it to Auntie to try to clear the air. All that talk on Friday hadn’t resolved anything. It just made everything worse. Richard kept talking about a day we’d both gone to the barn.’

‘The barn where he died?’

Martin nodded. ‘It has a lot of history for us, that barn. When Richard was six and I was about seventeen, we went there together. We had a little terrier and wondered if we could get him to catch a rat. Rather nasty boy stuff, to be honest. We’d been before, and regarded it as our own personal playground. Anyway, it was August and the place was full of corn waiting for the thresher. Mountains of the stuff, fantastic for climbing on. We stayed all day, with the dog. Never caught a rat, and I remember getting bored with such a young kid in tow. I’d got my eye on a girl in Yanworth and wanted to get over there. But for Richard it was a magical day. He said it was the only day he could remember that we were real friends. We’d got some pop in a bottle and bits of food, so we had a little picnic, right up on top of all those sheaves. I told him some stories about school. All slow and sweet.’ His
eyes grew moist at the memory. ‘So I stupidly reminded him of it, and said maybe we could try to recapture that friendship, by going back to the barn. It was mad, I know. But I couldn’t think of anything else to do, and it would at least get him out of my place. I was sick of the whole thing by then. I wanted to get on with my own business. Richard was maudlin, but not really drunk by that time. We took his car and decided to walk through the woods, just as the sun was rising.’

It fitted the facts thus far, thought Thea. Everything sounded genuine. Almost for the first time since Thursday, she felt she was being given unvarnished truth. ‘Then what?’ she prompted.

‘We climbed up to the platform, pretending we were boys again. But we’d got a lot bigger and heavier. Richard banged his head really hard on a beam. That made him bad-tempered, and he started all over again accusing me of wrecking his life. Then he tried to push me over the edge. I was terrified. It seems a hugely long way up, you know. And I’ve never liked heights. I clung to him, and scrabbled for a foothold. Then I realised we were close to an upright strut, and reached out for it with one arm. The sideways movement changed the centre of gravity and Richard just went over the edge, head first. I didn’t see him fall, but I heard him land. Just like a sack of potatoes. It never occurred to me it could kill him. But it did.’

‘But … the police have come to the conclusion it was murder.’

‘Must be because of the knock on his head. And that might have done more damage than it seemed at first. It was quite a clout.’

‘You didn’t finish him off? Did you rearrange the body or anything?’

‘I checked for a pulse, when I finally got down again. That took me several minutes. The ladder was wobbly and I was in a real panic. He was dead. I just left him. Nothing I could do would increase the impression that it was suicide.’

‘But there were no signs of a struggle on the platform.’

‘No. We didn’t struggle much.’ His voice grew softer. They were at the church door, the light rapidly fading. Ninety-six hours, almost exactly, since Thea had last seen Richard Wilshire. ‘You knew I was there,’ he went on with a little frown. ‘How did you?’

‘I don’t quite know,’ she faltered. ‘It just came together, somehow. But I thought perhaps it was Brendan and not you. I just got there by accident,’ she said with a quick laugh. ‘That’s often how it seems to happen.’

‘Well, you needn’t worry any more. I’m going to slip in here for a little while, and then I’ll phone the police. Nothing more for you to do, Mrs Osborne. Not a single thing.’

She gave him a searching look. ‘They won’t believe it was an accident,’ she said.

‘They won’t be able to prove otherwise. I’ll get a good defence barrister. And character witnesses. It won’t be
so bad,’ he said with his customary smile. Then his face hardened. ‘You said Auntie Rita had lost everything. That isn’t true – yet. Only if I get sent to prison for the rest of my life will she lose both her boys. And that would hasten her death. If they do take Brendan in for questioning, there’s nothing he can tell them. Those ridiculous stamps might divert them.’

‘That might be what they want to talk to him about,’ said Thea.

‘Let’s hope so.’

‘What about Millie? And Judith? How did you get home again on Saturday? Did anybody see you?’

‘I walked back through the woods, thinking I’d drive Richard’s car back to Gloucester. Then I had second thoughts. It had to stay where it was. I put the key in its little magnetic box, because Millie knew that was his habit, and I figured she’d find it eventually. I kept on walking, all the way down to Fossebridge. Then I phoned Brendan and he drove me home. I told him some bullshit story about a business acquaintance who’d been called away, leaving me stranded.’

‘Did you take Richard’s car key out of his pocket?’

‘Of course not. I drove from Gloucester, so I had it already.’

‘You wanted everyone to think Richard killed himself,’ said Thea slowly. ‘Wasn’t that cruel?’

He shook his head impatiently. ‘Enough,’ he begged. ‘These questions could go on till Doomsday. You don’t need to know every little detail.’

Oh
, but I do
, thought Thea. Irritating, but true. ‘Sorry,’ she said, and then felt foolish.

She and the spaniel went slowly back to the car, wondering what came next. Was the case so easily solved, then? Richard’s death had been an accident, it seemed. All his own fault. What would his mother feel about that? Would she continue to blame herself? Was Martin an adequate replacement for her son?
She’s lost everything
, she thought unhappily.
Unless I leave it all alone and just go away
.

She looked around as she walked the few yards to her vehicle, at the house, and the thin scattering of cars parked along the road. One was Martin’s. And on the back seat, if she was not much mistaken, was the painting of the two young sisters. He had got it from Brendan, then. Was he planning to sell it, or what? Like everything else, it must belong to Rita Wilshire, who could leave it to anyone she liked. It wasn’t Martin’s to sell – or even to hang in his house in Gloucester. But it seemed a small detail now.