Malice in the Cotswolds (20 page)

Drew had learned to keep a supply of tissues to
hand at all times, and quickly fetched a box from the kitchen. ‘Here,’ he said.

‘I’m crying for Karen,’ she said, a few minutes later. ‘Not you or the kids or myself.’

‘Go home,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

During the night, Thea was awoken by a crash from downstairs, followed by a squeal. ‘What was that?’ she asked her dog, which lay sleeping at the end of the bed. Fumblingly Thea switched on the bedside lamp, and Hepzie raised her head with no sign of concern.

‘We’ll have to go and see. That’s what I’m being paid for. Come on. You can be my defender.’

Together they went onto the landing, and Thea put on every light she could find as they went downstairs. There were sounds coming from the kitchen. ‘It’s those cats,’ Thea said. ‘They must have broken something, and from that squeal, one of them sounds to be hurt.’

She opened the door, and before she could switch another light on, a rushing twofold flurry of fur shot past her legs. Perfectly game for a chase, Hepzie followed. All three animals bounded up the stairs while Thea dithered. In the kitchen she found nothing worse than a saucepan on the floor – presumably the source of the initial crash.

Still muzzy from her deep sleep, she trailed after her charges and tracked them down to the bathroom, where Julius was growling under the basin and both the others stood with swishing tails staring hard at
him. Jennings was plainly furiously angry and Hepzie was enthusiastically prepared to assist in any way she could.

‘What have you got?’ Thea asked Julius. ‘Let me see.’ Without ceremony, she dragged the cat from its lair. As she did so, a smaller creature dropped from its mouth and scuttled behind the lavatory. ‘A mouse! All this fuss for a mouse. Now it’s let loose up here and we’ll never catch it. Well, it’s too late to worry about it now. Back to the kitchen, you two.’ She scooped up the disgruntled Jennings and took them both back to quarters. Hepzie remained, sniffing importantly after the rodent.

It took some time to settle down again, but eventually she drifted back to sleep, having quashed her feelings of irritation with the cats, and concluded that the whole adventure had been rather funny in its way.
Light relief,
were the last words she consciously thought before sinking into sleep.

Wednesday dawned grey again, and Thea retrieved the clothes she had worn the day before from the bathroom where she had carelessly abandoned them. Never especially tidy, she had half intended to put them through the wash that day, and therefore saw no need to fold them or hang them up anywhere. The trousers were the ones she had packed at the last minute, just in case it was too cool for shorts. Which it had been for most of the week. The long-sleeved shirt, however, would not do for another day, so she left it where it lay, to be joined by a few other things that could be washed when the pile was large enough.

The cats drank their morning milk and slunk outside as soon as she opened the back door for them. They ignored her reproaches about the disturbed night. Hepzie too seemed to have forgotten the whole
episode, and for a moment Thea wondered whether it had all been a dream. Where had the mouse got to? Had it been injured as the two Burmese fought over it? Was it an outdoor mouse – perhaps a vole or shrew – or one that habitually lived in the house? She had no especial antipathy towards mice; spiders were a great deal worse, in her opinion. She was expected, in her role as house-sitter, to deal with the normal run of rural wildlife and so far she had encountered no serious difficulties. Probably the most intrusively trying creature so far had been a parrot called Ignatius in Lower Slaughter.

After the turbulent events of the previous day, and the wretched news from Gladwin in the evening, she felt a definite stasis that morning. There was nothing she felt constrained to do, nobody she should speak to, not even any great mystery yet to be solved. She would have to remain at Hyacinth House for another nine days, taking the dog out for walks and drives, reading up on local history, hoping for improved weather and some lazy time in the garden. The great wound in the fabric of the village caused by the murder of one of its sons might yet create further trouble, and would certainly remain a talking point for years to come, but if Gladwin’s team of investigators had it right, there were very few loose ends still to be teased at. Gudrun would be treated with a mixture of kindness and horrified disdain, interviewed by a dozen different
people, all of them urging her to confess and thus save herself the ordeal of a long trial.

It was ten o’clock when a man’s voice from the open front door said, ‘Still here, then?’

She had virtually forgotten him.
Thursday
, she remembered now.
He said he’d be back on Thursday.
But this was only Wednesday. He’d come back a day early. ‘Yes, I’m still here,’ she said, standing in the hall beside Yvonne’s bureau. ‘Weren’t you meant to be away until tomorrow?’

‘Change of plan,’ Blake shrugged. ‘I heard about poor little Stevie. What an appalling thing! Eloise is going to be horrified. She always said he was nowhere near as bad as everyone claimed. She was quite the champion when anybody complained about him.’

‘How was your trip?’

‘Oh – boring, mainly. The whole exercise got changed at the last minute, actually. Very annoying.’

‘You didn’t go?’

‘I didn’t go to where I’d originally intended. It was Ankara, as it turned out, when I’d been expecting Damascus. It’s a crazy world out there. You’ve never seen madness until you’ve been involved in a trade delegation.’ He smiled ingenuously, as if describing a minor amendment to a bus timetable.

‘So not entirely boring, then?’

‘Compared to what’s been going on here, definitely boring. Speeches, meetings, trying to stay diplomatic all the time. And the
paperwork
!’

‘When did you get in?’

‘Landed at Birmingham at seven-thirty. Knackered now, of course, after about three hours’ sleep.’

He looked perfectly fresh to her. Shaved, showered, uncrumpled – nobody could ever guess he had just got off an early flight from Turkey.

‘Yvonne’s in France now, apparently,’ she said, for the sake of saying something.

‘Right. All square with Victor, then?’

‘I have no idea.’
Be wary,
she reminded herself.

‘I expect she’ll fill me in with everything when she gets back. She usually keeps me informed. I hope she’s got better weather than this, anyway. It’s freezing!’

‘Disappointing,’ agreed Thea. ‘You’d think we’d learn not to get our hopes up, wouldn’t you?’

‘Ever optimistic,’ he said lightly. ‘Still a couple of months to go before the nights start closing in. Of course, I’m off to Dubai in a week or so, all being well. Should be good and hot there.’

‘Another trade delegation?’

‘More of the same,’ he sighed. ‘No peace for the wicked.’

‘What are you trading? I mean, do you represent one particular company? Or is it more complicated than that?’

A superior little smile reminded her that she was not at all sure she liked this Blake Grossman, since he had been so rude to her the last time she met him. ‘“Complicated” is hardly the word,’ he said. ‘Trust
me, you really don’t want to know.’

He was right, she admitted. He was welcome to his self-important little deals with inscrutable Arabs and Turks. ‘I expect I’ll see you around, then,’ she said, looking over the odd configuration of the two gardens and sighing silently to herself. However much an occupant of Hyacinth House might wish to avoid Blake, it would be virtually impossible, the way things were arranged. Whose idea had it really been, to start with? Which of them did it benefit more? What did the invisible Eloise make of it?

She took a firm hold of the front door, wishing she could break the bad habit of leaving it open so often. She did it in her little house at home, letting the dog come and go as she liked, and she continued to do it in her various house-sits, when the weather and traffic would permit. Blake had not come further than the threshold, but if the door had been closed, she might have given herself more time to think before answering his knock. ‘Well, I’d better get on,’ she said. ‘And you must have things to do.’

He cocked his head and stood his ground. ‘You don’t want to talk about finding Stevie, then? About fetching his mother before calling the police?’

She repressed a desire to ask him how on earth he knew so much. The papers and TV had given the story some prominence over the past two days, and although she had avoided it all, she could well believe that her own part had been thoroughly aired, despite
her refusal to be interviewed. ‘No, I don’t, thanks,’ she said coldly. ‘I have friends and family for that sort of thing, if I need it.’

‘How’s the hornet sting?’ he went on to enquire. ‘No ill effects?’

She had forgotten all about it. ‘Nothing at all, thanks. It itched for a day or two, but it’s gone now. And I haven’t seen any more of them. I’m not sure there is an active nest in the roof, after all.’

‘Oh, it’s there,’ he assured her. ‘They just don’t like this weather. Half a day of sun and you’ll see I’m right.’

‘The first sign of sun and I’ll take my dog and go off for a picnic, then,’ she said. ‘Bye for now, Blake. Thanks for dropping in.’

Except she had not let him in. She had deliberately kept him on the doorstep, for reasons she could not have fully explained. He had made no attempt to push past her or invite himself for coffee, but she was in no doubt at all that he had noted her lack of hospitality.

Barely five minutes after he had finally gone back to his own house, Thea was in the living room, straightening cushions, when through the front window she saw a car draw to a stop next to her own. For the fiftieth time she wished she had been standing in the same spot on Sunday when the little boy’s body had been dumped.

A small woman pushed open the driver’s door and came to the gateway. Thea went to meet her, and was through the door and halfway down the front path
before the visitor had properly entered the garden.

‘Hello?’ she said, only then wondering if this was another press reporter, following up the story of the murder. ‘Can I help you?’

‘You’re the house-sitter.’ It was a statement, not a question. The woman was of Oriental appearance, no taller than Thea herself, with a direct look and lovely skin. On this cool August day – it was 1st August, Thea had vaguely noted at some point during the morning – she wore a sleeveless dusky pink top that emphasised her golden colour. ‘I’m Belinda. Can I come in?’

Standing back to give free access to the front door, Thea’s thoughts squirmed like a nest of snakes, entangling and hissing. She realised that she had expected something quite different – if not a journalist, then Victor’s mysterious girlfriend, or merely a passing tourist being outrageously nosy. ‘Belinda,’ she said. ‘Yvonne’s daughter.’ Adopted, she remembered. Of course.

‘That’s right. Mark told me about you, and I decided to come and see for myself. Plus, I’m worried about my mum. Something rather odd has been happening, apparently.’

The accent was pure middle-class English. Belinda was about thirty, and perfectly self-possessed. She was as different as anyone could imagine from what might be expected of Yvonne’s daughter. ‘Oh? As far as I know, she’s in France with her sister. Isn’t that right?’ They had moved through the hall and into the living
room. Belinda sat on the sofa, with its partly plumped cushions, and ignored the spaniel sniffing her legs.

‘I don’t know. Auntie Sim – Sylvia, as she is officially – lives on a hilltop near Avignon, with no modern facilities. She certainly doesn’t have a phone, and I don’t suppose Mum’s old thing would work overseas.’ She became aware of Thea’s frowning confusion and gave an impatient sigh. ‘Am I going too fast for you?’

‘Not really. I mean – everything’s such a muddle, you’re just one more factor. And I suppose I assumed that you and Mark—’

‘That we came from the same ethnic background?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘I was born here in England. They didn’t trek out to a Chinese orphanage in the mountains and choose me from a thousand abandoned baby girls, if that’s what you’re thinking. Although I admit I’m sometimes tempted to spin some sort of story like that. As far as I can discover, I’m actually only half Chinese. The paternal half.’

‘I was thinking more that Yvonne must have been unusually young to adopt.’ She did the sums laboriously. ‘Only in her early twenties.’

‘So?’

‘Well – it just seems unusual.’

‘She had undeveloped ovaries. She already knew, by the time she was twenty, that she’d never be able to have children. Physiologically, she’s still prepubescent, even now. They gave her hormone treatment to help
her appearance, but the organs were never going to function.’

‘Gosh! Poor her.’
Too much information
, she inwardly protested. There had been something almost like relish in the rapid explication. She had not noticed anything particularly undeveloped or childlike about Yvonne. ‘Well, it must have worked. She seemed quite normal to me.’

Belinda shrugged. ‘What’s normal?’ she asked rhetorically.

‘Can I get you some coffee?’

‘Okay. Thanks. God – isn’t this room
awful
! How can you bear to be in here?’

‘I don’t come into it much,’ Thea admitted with a laugh. ‘I’m scared of knocking something over.’

‘It’s not very
normal
, though, is it?’

A thought – a sudden insight – struck Thea. ‘It’s the sort of thing teenage girls do, I suppose. Collecting china animals, or candles, or little boxes. Your mum just never stopped.’

‘Right! That’s exactly right. She’s stuck at about fourteen. Makes her a good teacher, of course,’ she added ruefully. ‘The kids love her. They think she’s fun.’

‘Let me get the coffee. Is instant all right?’

‘Fine,’ said Belinda, with an irrepressible little grimace.
Too bad
, thought Thea.
I’m not wasting time doing the real thing. This is far too interesting.

She was back in four minutes, carrying two mugs
and a plate of biscuits on a small tray she had found. ‘I gave her that tray,’ said Belinda. ‘About twenty years ago. I don’t think she ever uses it.’

Why would she,
thought Thea?
She probably only ever eats in the kitchen.

‘It was dreadful seeing this house on the TV news. Like a nightmare. Were they all camped out like vultures, making you live under siege?’

‘Actually, no. Not at all. The police kept it quiet until the middle of Monday, so it was bad then for the rest of that day. But I think they quite soon realised it was too terrible to make a big splash about. Or something.’

Belinda raised her delicate eyebrows in a sceptical question. ‘Surely not? The more gruesome the better, as far as they’re concerned. I didn’t see
you
in the news, though.’

‘No. And I still think they were uncomfortable with the story. Plus there was absolutely nothing to see here, apart from some tape and the SOCOs crawling about. They filmed that from all angles and then drifted away. After all, there was no chance that anything else was going to happen here, was there?’

‘I guess not.’

‘You don’t sound sure.’

‘I’ve got a nasty feeling, that’s all. You’ve seen Gudrun, I suppose.’

Thea nodded. ‘You know her?’

‘I
did.
Very well, actually. She taught me to swim
when I was twelve. I was quite good, and she was an inspiration to me.’

‘You knew Stevie?’

‘Barely even saw him, except at a distance. I’d left home before he was born. I don’t think I even knew she had a child for a year or two. She was never around when I came here for Christmas or anything. Not that I come back very often. And even less since my parents split up. I’ve been rather firmly on my dad’s side, to be honest. I can’t imagine what Mum thought she was doing, making such a fuss about such a little thing.’

‘Why? What did he do?’

‘They never told us the full story, but Mark and I worked out that it must have been something to do with telephone sex. Or maybe the Internet. Something got her incandescent and she made it impossible for him to stay. She was such a fool. He was a good husband, a wonderful father. I’m sure she’s regretted it ever since. And it’s been a financial disaster for both of them.’