Trouble in the Cotswolds (The Cotswold Mysteries) (4 page)

There ensued a muted anguished argument in the rats’ living room that set Blondie whining in the doorway and Hepzie slinking cravenly behind
the sofa. Thea forced herself to go and see what was happening. Juliet, with a rat held tenderly on her forearm, fingers entwined with its tail, became incoherent, quoting lines of poetry and casting her gaze to the sky like a rather exasperated medieval saint, with her mother chivvying her, for all the world like a harassed helpless mother in a supermarket, afraid to shout at, least of all smack, her recalcitrant offspring. There was an unreality to it that set Thea’s teeth on edge and her stomach churning. Juliet presented a tragic figure, with the light of reason now increasingly unsteady behind her eyes. Thea feared for the Royal Worcester if Juliet made any wild movements, as seemed all too possible. The presence of her mother had dramatically knocked her off balance, making Thea wonder whether the whole genesis of the trouble lay in the relationship between the two.
It’s always the mother’s fault
came a rueful little voice in her head. Cruel and unfair as it might be, there was an irresistible truth to it. Who else had the power to drive their child into madness? God, she supposed. Or genetics. The same thing in essence, she suspected. Either way, it absolved the parent, which was doubtless a good thing.

She caught herself up, aware that she was echoing some of Juliet’s own disjointed lines of thought. Did her mother refuse to engage with any of her musings? Did she mock and dismiss and belittle, as mothers tended to do? Whatever the facts of it, she had had enough.

‘Listen to me,’ she said loudly, standing in the open doorway, not caring if rats escaped or got eaten by dogs. ‘I’m in charge of this house, and I don’t think either of you should be here. Please go now. Both of you.’

It worked like a miracle. Juliet fell silent, and carefully replaced the rat she was holding into its cage. ‘Good girl, Petulia,’ she breathed.

‘Right,’ said Thea. ‘That’s right. Thank you.’

The older woman was red-faced and breathing hard. She headed grimly for the front door, not looking to see if her daughter was following.

‘Eva died,’ Juliet remembered. ‘Poor Eva.’ She tilted her head. ‘But she’s better dead, isn’t she, Mummy? That’s what you said. Sometimes it’s better to be dead.’ There was rage and reproach and challenge in her voice.

Her mother ignored her. ‘Thank you for being so understanding,’ she said to Thea. ‘My name is Rosa Wilson. We live in Laverton. It’s been a difficult day.’

‘Was that not your relative’s funeral, next door?’ Thea could not help but ask. ‘I saw there was a big service on at the church, and then everybody came back here. It looked like a good turnout.’

‘Oh, no.’ Rosa confirmed Juliet’s information. ‘That was something quite different.’ Her lips grew thin and pinched. ‘That was a man called Callendar. Nobody bothered themselves about our little tragedy.’

‘Juliet said it was in Willersey. I’m afraid I’ve never heard of Willersey.’

‘It’s only a small place.’

‘Well, I’m sorry for your loss,’ Thea said tritely.

Juliet followed her mother out of the house, giving occasional twitches of her head, as if conducting an internal argument. ‘I am so very sorry,’ said Rosa again, on the threshold. ‘As you can see – Juliet goes her own way whenever she can.’ She gave her daughter a vindictive look.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Thea wearily. She did not add any softening remarks about seeing them again or being pleased to meet them. When they’d gone, she went straight to the back door and very decisively locked it.

She felt obliged to check that the rats had not suffered any ill effects from Juliet’s attentions, and such was her relief to find them alert and apparently in good spirits that she gave them a handful more of their corn before bidding them goodnight. Three whiskery faces lined up behind the bars of the cage and tried to persuade her that they really needed exercise, and should be released for their evening run without delay. ‘Sorry,’ said Thea. ‘I can’t face it just now. I don’t feel strong enough.’ Her headache had got worse in the past ten minutes, and she had a nasty feeling she might be running a temperature.

She had eaten scarcely anything all day, but the prospect of food was not appealing. ‘Maybe some soup,’ she muttered to herself. Amongst her extravagant supermarket purchases there had been no fewer
than four packets of soup mix. Onion, minestrone, mushroom and leek offered themselves. Mushroom, she decided and poured the powder into a pan with a pint of water. Easy cooking, which had become more and more of a habit since Carl had died. The idea of making a cake or pie from scratch had never even crossed her mind in the past few years. Not so long ago, she had managed to burn a shop-bought pie to a cinder when attempting to provide Drew with a meal. Definitely not the way to impress a chap – although he hadn’t seemed to think much the worse of her as a result.

A cold was always worse in the evenings, she told herself. By next morning, she’d feel much better and be ready to go out and discover what Christmas jollity was on offer in the village. With the two funerals out of the way, people would be focusing on their family get-togethers and the last-minute shopping. And if she was still suffering a bit, she could simply turn up the heating and snuggle with the dogs, earning money for doing hardly anything.

The soup was soon ready and she poured it into a big cup she found, designed specifically for the purpose. It was warming and easy to swallow, but it did nothing to diminish the headache. Never needing to take pills, she had no paracetamol or codeine in her luggage. What was the protocol, she wondered, of raiding people’s medicine cabinet in search of analgesia? Not really the done thing, she concluded. The best treatment would be an early night, anyway.
Hepzibah could keep her feet warm, as always, and all would be well next day.

It turned out to be a restless night. When she did sleep there were dreams involving escaping rats, hundreds of them, swarming down Stanton’s main street and over the thatched roofs. In the dreams, she was oddly wet, as she tried to catch rats in a big fishing net. When she woke it was to realise she was drenched in sweat, and her knees were aching.
How funny,
she thought,
why my knees?,
before drifting off again into another nightmare world of clanging church bells and great swooping birds that pecked at the top of her head.

When she finally surfaced, the sky outside was still dark and her head still ached. It was half past seven. ‘Damn it, Heps,’ she mumbled. ‘I think I must have got flu.’

Her initial reaction was anger. Those germ-ridden people in the supermarket must be responsible. She, Thea Osborne, who never got ill, had been wantonly contaminated by thoughtless Christmas shoppers. And now what was she meant to do? The anger morphed into mild panic, which she fought off determinedly. Getting out of bed, she tried to assess her condition. Not so very bad, really. She could walk and dress herself. She’d be able to let the dogs out into the garden at the back, if no further afield. She’d get them their food and see that the rats got theirs. She’d be better in a couple of days, in any case. It wasn’t such a big deal. Except that everything seemed to
ache.
Head, knees,
back, shoulders – they all felt heavy and sensitive and sore.

Outside there were people who would surely lend her a hand if she asked them. All she would have to do was stand at the front door and shout, if things got seriously bad. Which they wouldn’t, of course. Women everywhere were valiantly making mince pies and wrapping presents, even if they did have a temperature of a hundred and a crashing headache. Once she could find herself some painkillers she’d be all right, and maybe a bottle of whisky, lemons, honey … she wilted at the list. None of those things would be obtainable in Stanton. She would have to drive somewhere – Broadway probably – and get them all. Well, so be it. Driving was easy. And at least she wasn’t sweating any more. If anything, she felt rather cold.

She gave no more thought to the electrocuted Callendar or the Eva woman with her cystic fibrosis. An accident and a fatal condition – the normal causes of death that brought sadness and reproaches but not the desperate depth of feeling that came when there was a murder. She had had entirely too much close experience of murder in the past few years. People persistently took advantage of the changed circumstances that involved a house-sitter being in residence – or else her own deplorable curiosity led her into trouble, where another person might cheerfully have let it all pass her by without any sort of involvement.

Breakfast was minimal. Even the coffee tasted
horrible and left an acid residue in her mouth. The sore throat had abated slightly, to be replaced by sporadic pains in her armpits. For a crazy moment she wondered if she had the plague, with buboes developing. Anything seemed possible in her reduced state. Delirium could set in at any time.

Outside it was still not properly light. Thick cloud hung just above the hilltops that surrounded the village. She could see no people at all out in the street. Not too surprising when she realised it was only eight-thirty on a Saturday morning. There were at least five work-free days ahead for most people, which ought to give even the most dedicated celebrator of Christmas more than enough time to get everything done, without leaping out of bed before the sun was up. Even so, it made Thea feel lonely, there in a strange village where she knew nobody and nobody cared about her.

The headache made it difficult to think clearly. It hurt all over, like one big bruise. Perhaps the so-called flu epidemic was actually something much more serious, and all the people of Stanton were lying dead and dying in their beds, in a cataclysmic outbreak of a deadly contagion. All sorts of extreme trouble seemed possible in the absence of any evidence of normality.

Moving around proved to be slightly therapeutic. She let Blondie and Hepzie out into the garden and noted that they both relieved themselves. Neither seemed especially eager for a long hilltop walk, which was fortunate. The Alsatian disappeared behind a screen of
bamboo at the end of the garden, which Thea hoped meant further lavatory arrangements had been attended to. The animals might have a boring day ahead of them, but at least the floors should remain unsullied.

Time moved jerkily. It took hours to reach nine o’clock, and then suddenly it was twenty to eleven. If she was going out, she ought to get on with it. Traffic would be heavy, parking difficult, shops crowded. Well-stocked little local groceries were very thin on the ground these days, put out of business by the supermarkets. No way was Thea going to tackle another supermarket. She could all too vividly imagine herself passing out in the aisles and being rushed off to hospital.

Muzzily, she remembered a substantial garage shop on the outskirts of Blockley, about six miles away, and decided she should aim for that. If whisky proved unavailable, she would raid the Shepherds’ stocks and confess when they came home. There was a modest shelf of bottles in a cabinet in the rats’ room, which Gloria had shown her on the initial explanatory visit.

After a brief deliberation, she decided to leave both dogs in the house. If she had an accident due to her headache, it would be better for them not to be aboard. In the event, driving turned out to be much as usual, all the necessary instincts taking over, and a painful head no impediment. The lanes were quiet, contrary to expectation. She drove south, through Stanway, to the 4077 and turned left, thinking that took her eastwards. She should then take another left turn towards
Snowshill, and locate the road into Blockley that she could clearly remember.

But something went wrong. The 4077 was not very familiar to her, and she found herself gazing about, driving at a crawl, wondering what Cutsdean was like, and then spotting a sign pointing to the right, saying Temple Guiting. She knew Temple Guiting, but had not realised how close it was to Stanway. Perhaps, she thought, she should go there instead, and patronise the community-run shop that would at least have honey and lemons for sale. Before she could decide, she had somehow overshot the turning, and was carrying on eastwards. The road ran straight for two or three miles and her speed increased. The throbbing in her head was affecting her sight, with spots of silvery light flickering crazily like sparklers going off inside her eyes. It had been difficult to turn her neck when she looked both ways at the only road junction she had so far negotiated, because something at the base of her skull was painful.

‘I’m really quite poorly,’ she muttered aloud. It was frightening, but also slightly exciting. She was in the grip of a drama of a new kind, with a wholly unpredictable outcome. She would have to dig deep for her own inner resources. She would have to be sensible and stoical, because there was nobody around to help her.

She had to turn left, though. She should already have turned left. There was a map on the back seat, but she couldn’t reach it. She didn’t think she’d be able to focus on it anyway. The yellows and browns of the roads, the
dotted greens of the footpaths and the thin black lines that outlined every blessed field would all swirl around in a mocking travesty that would leave her stranded in Burford or Stratford without a moment’s warning.

And then there was a little crossroads, with a sign pointing to a trout farm to the left, and for no good reason, she took it. It had to lead northwards, and Blockley was definitely to the north – even though she could hardly remember now why she’d wanted Blockley to start with. Doggedly she followed the road, which was neither too narrow nor too twisting for comfort, so was a perfectly good road, as roads went, at least for the first mile. Then it indulged in a little wobble, with bends that required concentration, and then, with criminally inadequate warning, it deposited her at a T-junction with a big road full of speeding traffic. A sign informed her that it was the A424, and offered her the choice of Broadway to the left or Stow-on-the-Wold to the right.

This could be what she’d wanted, she supposed. Wasn’t this the road that took you to Blockley? Or had she got Blockley and Broadway confused? She shook her head. No, of course she hadn’t. They might look similar when written down, but they were
completely
different as places. She didn’t like Broadway. But was she safe on a busy main road? A car behind her tooted questioningly, forcing her to take a deep breath and turn left.

Once again instinct took over and she covered a mile
or two without incident, despite a growing difficulty with her sight. Shards of silvery light were flashing chaotically before her eyes, apparently all part of the persistent headache that plagued her. When she turned her head at the junction, her neck hurt even more than before. She repeated her shopping list to herself:
lemons, honey, whisky, painkillers.
It seemed insuperably difficult to remember, and even more so to actually obtain the goods.

Suddenly there was a petrol station approaching on her left. Perhaps this was the one she’d been aiming for all along. In any case, didn’t they all have some kind of shop attached, these days? Probably, if she’d had any sense, she could have found one a lot closer to Stanton in the first place. But now she was here, she could top up with fuel as well, even though the tank was still showing nearly half full. Never waste an opportunity, as Carl would have advised her.

Jerkily she indicated and pulled off the road, drawing up beside the pumps. Her body felt heavy and uncooperative as she crawled out of the car and grabbed the nearest nozzle.
Lemon, honey, whisky, pills,
she muttered. If there weren’t any fresh lemons, she might find some juice, or Lemsip or something. The motor whirred as fuel gushed into her hungry tank, and before she knew it the sum owing had reached forty pounds.

‘Oops!’ she said. ‘That’s plenty.’ It was more than she would usually spend on filling up, she thought
crossly. They must have put the prices up for Christmas. Normally, half a tank would come to much less than that.

There was a small shop, as hoped, with local honey on offer and a selection of analgesia. No whisky, though. ‘Have you got any lemons?’ she asked the girl behind the desk.

‘Sorry.’

‘Lemsip?’

A languid finger pointed at a distant shelf. Thea couldn’t understand why the stuff wasn’t kept with the aspirin and paracetamol, until she realised it was actually the same shelf from which she had taken a pack of pills a minute earlier. Clutching her purchases to her chest, she fished in the bag she had luckily remembered to bring with her and extracted her purse.

Remembering her bank card number was another exhausting challenge, but it all went through, and she returned to her car with a sense of triumph. All she had to do now was retrace her steps and get back to the sanctuary of the house in Stanton.

The road was still busy and her neck still hurt, but she pulled out into a brief lull and set off southwards, wondering how in the world she would recognise the little right turn into the road that took her back to the 4077. No matter, she told herself. She would find it from Stow if necessary. She remembered the complicated junction where you had to do a sort of zigzag, right, then quickly left. It would take her through one of the
Swells, Upper or Lower, she wasn’t sure which. In a welcome moment of clarity, she could visualise the route in surprising detail.

But she found the little turning, after all. She turned into it, recognising a bare oak tree beside a gateway a hundred yards along. She would have no difficulty from here on. She would take two painkillers and raid Philip’s drinks cabinet and sweat it out. It was sure to be better next day. By Christmas Eve, two whole days away, she’d be thoroughly back to normal.