Guilt in the Cotswolds (14 page)

He extracted a single album from the box, and began to carefully open its pages. ‘I can get them valued.’

‘Is there just the one album?’ Thea asked.

He nodded.

‘Not worth killing somebody for, then,’ said Drew, trying to keep them to the point. ‘Unless she’s got a penny black, I suppose.’

‘Your grandmother was called Dawn – is that right?’ Thea asked, checking the family tree she was holding firmly in her head.

‘Yes. Apparently that’s when she was born, and her father was a poetical sort of chap, the First World War was going on at the time.’

‘Was he a soldier?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Did he survive?’

‘Just about. Lost a leg and a thumb, at Passchendaele. He and his wife lived to very ripe old age, both of them.’

‘You’re very well informed, for a young man,’ Drew observed. ‘I haven’t the slightest idea what my great-grandparents were like. Couldn’t even tell you their names.’

‘We’re all obsessed,’ said Brendan. ‘My elder sister, Carol, the one in Kent, has it all written out in fancy copperplate script and hung on the wall, with pictures of everybody. Lucky nobody had twelve kids, is all I can say. It fits on quite a small sheet of paper.’

Thea gave a confident summary: ‘So when Dawn died, possibly under suspicious circumstances, her sister – your Great-Aunt Rita – inherited the house, and had her nephew, your father, living here with her. She later had a son of her own, who was Richard, recently deceased. Your father’s cousin. But there’s – what? Twelve or fifteen years age difference? So they’d never have been boyhood chums. And where were the husbands? Mr Teasdale Senior, and ditto Mr Wilshire?’

‘You amaze me,’ said Drew. ‘I’d got the generations in a complete muddle.’

‘I can give the whole story,’ said Brendan Teasdale, with a hint of competitiveness. ‘Dawn was born during the First War, Rita in the early twenties. When Dawn died, her sister was only eighteen, so the house was kept in trust for her until she reached twenty-one.’

‘Where was Martin’s father?’ Thea persisted. ‘The widower.’

‘He went to pieces and drifted out of the picture, never to be seen again, as far as I know. He came from a very well-to-do family. Titled. He was a youngest son out of several sons. But he was always all right for money, so he never laid a claim to the house. I still need to do more research on him. He probably joined the armed services during the war. He’d have had no reason to be exempted.’

‘But didn’t he want to see his little boy? Where did he go?’

‘Precisely what I’d like to find out. My father says he doesn’t remember ever meeting him.’

Thea found herself more and more sympathetic with the young Martin and his miserable childhood. Even his Aunt Rita had replaced him with a child of her own, once he’d gone off to boarding school.

They were flipping idly through the contents of the tea chests, Thea cautiously watching out for angry spiders. Old magazines, books, childhood games, school exercise books were all muddled in together.
‘There are a lot of gaps to the story,’ Thea mused. ‘How did Dawn come to own such a big house at such a young age? And how come she made a will so early? And why wasn’t your father the beneficiary?’

‘I can’t explain all that now. It’s fairly logical, given the times they lived in. Men were in short supply and there were a lot of complications. My father says he can remember regular visits from the family solicitor, to change a will or revalue something or other. But it did add to the rumours about her being murdered, of course. Carol has a few things to say about it.’ The man was holding a green schoolbook, with a ragged front cover scribbled all over with typical childhood doodles. ‘My dad’s classwork book,’ he murmured. ‘That’s what they called it. The one you made notes in, that you never had to show anybody.’ He flipped through it, and then clapped it shut. ‘No time for that now.’

‘Come on, then,’ urged Drew. ‘We can’t stay up here all night. I have to be somewhere. We’re not going to find anything.’

‘Okay,’ said Brendan, surprisingly docile. ‘Let me just take a few bits and bobs.’ He tucked the exercise book under his arm, and clasped the stamp album to his chest. ‘And it would be good to take one of the pictures, if one of you could help me.’

He one-handedly selected a large framed painting. Drew lifted it for him, and held it up to the window for a look. Thea edged closer. It showed two girls sitting shoulder to shoulder. One was about six or eight, the
other a nubile teenager with wavy brown hair. It flowed unrestrictedly down to her breasts, drawing attention to them under a thin gauzy garment. The younger girl was fingering a lock of hair, with a sly smile. ‘Blimey!’ said Thea. ‘Isn’t it a bit … suggestive?’

‘Downright erotic,’ said Drew.

‘Are these the sisters? Rita and Dawn? It’s got a sort of thirties feel to it, so that would fit.’

‘It must be them,’ said Brendan. ‘I’ve heard about this picture – always wanted to see it for myself. There was a worry that Rita was going to have it destroyed, but Richard must have hidden it up here until she forgot about it.’

‘How did you know about it?’ Thea asked. She was putting all her efforts into maintaining a grasp of the many facts Brendan had disclosed. If he could be believed, the Wilshires and the Teasdales had had virtually no contact for decades.

‘My father always loved it. It was in his bedroom when he was a little boy here. It is his mother, after all. He talked about it a lot.’

‘Why would Rita destroy it?’

‘Look at it,’ said Brendan simply. ‘Would you want such a picture of yourself to be stared at by all and sundry?’

‘Still not enough to kill somebody for, if that’s what you’ve been thinking,’ said Drew. ‘Though it might be worth a bit. Who’s the artist?’ He tried to decipher a tiny signature at the bottom.

‘Some young chap, apparently. He died in 1940. An airman or something. Never had time to make a name for himself.’

The careless words did not deceive Thea. ‘Did he know your grandfather, do you think?’ she asked. ‘There sounds to be some sort of connection to me.’

‘This isn’t what I was looking for,’ Brendan told her. ‘How could it be? How could a picture prove anything about a murder?’

‘But you appear to have got what you wanted,’ said Drew mildly. ‘I wonder what that is.’ He eyed the stamp album thoughtfully, and Brendan gripped it more closely to his chest.

‘I’ve got the only things I can find that could possibly throw some light on it all,’ said Brendan. ‘I’ll take them to Auntie and see what she makes of them.’

By common consent, they descended the flimsy stairs to the lower regions of the house. Brendan took custody of the picture, with Thea feeling a nagging guilt at allowing him to disappear with items that belonged to his great-aunt, and which might be valuable. There was no certainty that he really would take them to her. She tried to convey her worry to Drew, nudging him with her elbow.

‘What?’ he asked.

She braced herself. ‘It’s okay, do you think, for him to just go off with things like this?’

Brendan heard her, loud and clear. ‘You’ve got no authority to stop me.’

‘I know. It’s just—’

‘Leave it,’ said Drew. ‘We’ve seen what he’s taken. We can testify about it, if it ever comes to that.’

‘Fine,’ she shrugged. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she said to Brendan, with a blatant lack of sincerity.

‘Thanks,’ he said distractedly and was gone.

‘Drew, I really think you need to go and relieve Pandora. The kids’ll be wanting to see you.’

‘I had to stay and protect you from that man.’

‘What do you mean? He wasn’t going to hurt me.’

‘You don’t know that. Everything he said was a complete pack of lies.’

She just stared at him, waiting for an explanation.

‘All that nonsense about an email,’ Drew said. ‘It couldn’t possibly be true. He concocted it as a ruse to get into the attic. I suppose he wanted the stamps, but it might have been the picture.’

She closed her eyes against the new layer of complication. ‘I’m not so sure. Don’t you find it’s the far-fetched stories that often turn out to be the true ones? I thought it rang true, on the whole.’

‘Well it didn’t to me,’ he said irritably.

‘All right. So, why would he raise the idea that Richard was murdered at all? Wasn’t that taking an awful risk? It could so easily blow up in his face.’

‘My guess is that he knows your reputation for getting involved in murder investigations, and thought it would be a good way to convince you to let him do what he wanted.’

‘Oh Lord, that’s an awful idea,’ she objected. ‘When did you think of that?’

‘Just now, to be honest. And I still can’t believe Rita would be able to summon her thoughts enough to send an email that could persuade her great-nephew to drop everything and rush up here like that.’

‘He lives in Cheltenham, doesn’t he? Isn’t that what Mr Teasdale said this morning?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’ Drew was still preoccupied with the effort to make sense of it all. ‘Maybe I’m wrong, after all,’ he said. ‘Mrs Wilshire really is a strong-minded woman. If they told her that Richard killed himself, and she was certain he would never do such a thing, she might go straight for any proof she can find that he didn’t.’ He sighed. ‘I can’t think straight, with so much going on.’

‘I’m just as bad,’ she said. ‘But I think you’ve got the old lady wrong. I’ve heard you say that people can be amazingly capable and coherent, right after hearing the most shocking news. They adapt like lightning, sometimes. They need explanations – a narrative, to use the jargon – that make it easier to cope with. Isn’t Mrs Wilshire likely to be that sort of person?’

‘Quite likely, yes.’

‘Okay, then. And you don’t doubt that Brendan really is her great-nephew, do you? He knew so much about the family, he must have been.’

Drew nodded. ‘It was what he said on the doorstep that set me against him. You don’t start shouting about murder like that, if you’re genuine.’

‘It was odd,’ she agreed. ‘But he’ll have had a shock as well. He expected to get to know Richard better, and
catch up with Millie, and now it’s all changed. Then he gets an email from his aunt that he probably doesn’t really understand. I think I believe him, you know.’

‘Well …’

‘It is very confusing for everybody,’ she sighed. ‘
Was
Richard murdered, do you think? Is that what we’ve decided?’

‘Oh yes – I’ve thought so all along,’ said Drew. ‘The story doesn’t hold water, otherwise. The loft isn’t high enough for suicide. And if he died close by and was quickly moved into the barn, there wouldn’t be much evidence to show what happened.’

Thea was deeply impressed that he had worked so much out with no external signs to suggest his thought processes. She struggled to keep up. ‘You think he was bashed in some way that made it look as if he fell?’

‘I don’t know. We have no idea what the post-mortem might show tomorrow. They’re bound to be doing it then, even if they don’t believe he was murdered.’

She grimaced. ‘What if he fell off some other high place that killed him, and was then moved – would that be obvious from the post mortem? There’d be the wrong amount of blood in the barn. Broken bones would be displaced. Have you been working all this out since yesterday?’

‘I did go through it in my head quite a few times,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve been thinking quite hard for more than twenty-four hours.’

She paused. ‘I wondered what the matter was. I
thought it was something to do with me.’ A tension she had been almost unaware of was falling away. ‘I thought I’d upset you somehow.’

‘Sorry, love.’ He pulled her to him. ‘You mustn’t be so unsure of me. You’re my number one priority, you know. Nothing’s going to change that.’

She still wasn’t entirely able to accept this. ‘What about the children? And the new business? And Maggs? I don’t want to come before them. That’s too much responsibility.’

‘I meant, at the moment. I can’t go and leave you with all this mess. Pandora understands. Oh, and she says Maggs wants to speak to me, but didn’t like to phone in case she disturbed us.’

Thea flapped a hand at his phone. ‘Call her, then.’

He did so, his face expressionless. ‘Maggs – hi. How’s Meredith? … Good. Lovely. I gather you wanted me …’

The one-sided conversation enhanced a wholly uncalled-for exasperation in Thea. She wanted to go outside and run somewhere, to stop her brain crashing about in helpless circles. There was guilt looming ever more adamantly, at all her stupid, inappropriate responses to everything Drew said or did. He was doing his best to rescue her from a complicated situation, which he had landed her in to begin with. He was sad and worried about old Mrs Wilshire. He wanted the truth to be found concerning how the woman’s son had died. And he probably also wanted the house to be left
neat and tidy, with everything listed and labelled and sorted and stacked.

Meredith. She repeated the name to herself. Wasn’t it Welsh? Or was that only when the accent was on the second syllable, which was not how Drew had said it. Meredith Cooper. It had a certain ring to it, she thought. Better than the name Kim, which her brother Damien and his wife had given to their new daughter. The family had expected Hope or Theodora or Christiana – but Kim had no associations that anybody could discover. That baby had been born a month early, its startled and biologically elderly parents hopelessly intimidated by the whole experience. Thea’s (and Damien’s) mother had marched to the rescue, as grandmothers routinely did, and as a result was intensely in love with the infant, who showed every sign of reciprocating.

Not a bit like the family she had been learning about that afternoon, then. The Johnstones had their shameful secrets, it was true, but nobody had died before their time, or bequeathed each other houses that were full of ancient possessions. Or not quite, anyway, she amended, thinking of Drew’s inheritance in Broad Campden.

He was listening intently to whatever Maggs was saying. ‘Yes,’ he muttered a few times, and other monosyllables that told Thea nothing. ‘If you’re really sure,’ he then said. ‘All right, Maggs. That’s very sporting of you.’

His vocabulary could be that of a schoolboy at
times. He fell into it when dealing with elderly bereaved customers, from a vague instinct that it would reassure and console them. He was probably right about that. He and Maggs would say ‘smashing’ and ‘lawks’ now and then, as if they’d just been reading an old Beano comic.

So Maggs was being sporting. Thea experienced the pang of being on the furthest angle of the triangle, the two others united in a small conspiracy, however benign it might be. She wanted to snatch the phone and demand to know what they were planning. Ten seconds later, she was being conscientiously updated.

‘She says I should stay here another night. She’ll go into the office tomorrow, with the baby, and help Pandora, who’s happy to babysit my kids between now and then. She can get them off to school in the morning. They can cope so long as I’m back in plenty of time for the funeral on Tuesday.’

‘She knows about clothes, breakfast, and all that?’ Another pang assaulted her; this time laced with jealousy. Drew’s domestic arrangements were surely
her
business more than they were Pandora’s.

‘Stephanie will talk her through it. She’s very capable. Nine, going on sixteen, as Maggs would say.’

‘They’ve worked it all out, behind your back.’

‘They want me to be with you. They think you’re the answer to bigger problems than getting the kids off to school. I’m marrying a rich widow, who will set the business straight and settle me down into contented
middle age. They all think that’s an outcome profoundly to be desired.’

‘Hmm. Rich widow, eh?’

‘Rich enough to keep things afloat. Although I have been thinking it might be an idea to rent your Witney house out, rather than selling it. You’d get seven hundred pounds a month for it, at least. That would cover pretty much all the bills. Food, fuel, electric, anyway.’ He sighed as if such a situation would be nothing short of heaven. ‘And quicker than going through all the hassle of selling it.’

‘Drew – this isn’t the moment to start talking about all that. We’re in the middle of a serious mess here. Don’t you think we should try to phone Millie, at the very least? We should ask her if she really has got a cousin called Brendan. I seem to remember Norah Cookham mentioned him on Friday, so I suppose that clinches it.’

‘Why does it matter?’

‘I suppose it doesn’t. Even if he is a relative, we could still report a theft of items from the attic.’ She stopped. ‘Ignore me. I’m just trying to make everything even more complicated, aren’t I?’

‘Oh well.’ He drifted into the living room, rubbing his head. ‘So, what are we doing now? It occurs to me that I’m extremely hungry. We’ve hardly eaten all day.’

‘Oh, Lord. There’s still no food in the house. We can go to the pub, I suppose. It’s about three minutes’ walk away, after all.’

‘Right. So be it.’

She hesitated. ‘It’s lovely that you’re staying. But I’m not really sure
why
you are. What are you protecting me from? I’d be happy just to lock up here and get the hell out.’

‘Leaving Dodge to stew in its own juices.’ His attempt at an American accent was ludicrous and she laughed.

‘Seriously,’ she reproached him.

‘Call it a hunch. A lot’s happened today, and we ought to sit down and sift through it. It was only yesterday that we found Richard, after all. We need to give ourselves space to get over that.’

‘But you see dead bodies all the time, and I’ve seen my share of them, these past few years.’

‘It’s never easy when it’s sudden and violent. We owe it to Richard to stop and reflect. It’s all been far too much of a scramble with all these people accosting us.’

‘And the rest,’ said Thea, thinking of decisions about the future, and the demands of their lives, here and now. ‘But I’d be very happy to stop and reflect, if that’s what you suggest. Can it be done in a pub, do you think?’

‘Doubtful. Especially if people guess who we are. There’ll be more accosting, if we’re not careful.’

‘The only real escape would be to leave.’ She was still unclear as to exactly why he was finding that such a bad idea. ‘We can give Richard all due attention, wherever we are.’

‘We can’t find out who killed him, though. We have to be on the spot for that. And I quite fancy the pub.’

She gave him a long look, aware that his thought processes had far outrun her own. ‘Did you tell Maggs there was a probable murder here? If so, when?’

‘I texted her this morning, just with a few basics. You know how she likes to be kept informed.’

‘I’d have thought she had enough to occupy her for the time being.’

‘Apparently not. She said just now that the baby sleeps half the time, and it’s all a bit boring. She refuses to become one of those mothers who can’t think of anything else but the baby. I’m her route into the wider world, she says.’

‘Babies
are
rather boring,’ Thea remembered. ‘I always thought so.’

They saw no reason to delay going to the pub, except that poor Hepzie had enjoyed no exercise whatsoever all day, and Thea insisted on a fifteen-minute session in the field at the end of the road. Drew went too, on the grounds that he also needed to give his legs something to do. It still seemed to Thea that he had made a much greater sacrifice than was actually called for, in neglecting his children for another night. The sense of a small conspiracy between Pandora and Maggs – and possibly Stephanie, too – was unsettling. Thea Osborne was a woman who had always disliked behind-the-back secrets, thanks to growing up in a large family where information was often used as currency. She wanted everything open and honest and forthright. So she said, ‘What’s really going on back home? Why is everybody
so concerned for you to stay here with me? Do they think I can’t look after myself?’

He kicked at a tuft of brown grass and nibbled his lower lip for a moment. ‘I think they might think you’ll resent it if I go back to them and leave you on your own. They don’t want you to be annoyed with me.’

‘They’re scared I’ll dump you? Suddenly I’m a Good Thing after all? I can remember a time when Maggs regarded me as little short of a witch, stealing you away from your natural obligations.’

‘That was when Karen was still alive. She’s changed completely since then. As well you know.’

They watched the spaniel roaming across the field, nose down, following trails left by numerous other dogs. ‘I suppose Hepzie might miss the house-sitting,’ said Thea doubtfully. ‘She’s always been very adaptable in all those strange houses. And the various animals mostly tolerated her pretty well.’ She thought back over the many cats, dogs, poultry, sheep and other beasts that she and Hepzie had been entrusted with. ‘I’m not sure I could have done it without her. It’s a lonely business, and often terribly dull.’

‘She can be entertainment for my kids, from now on,’ he said. ‘Because you’re never going to be lonely again.’

It would be mawkish coming from anyone else, but he meant it as a statement of fact. It was also a warning that Hepzie could expect to be relegated to second place in Thea’s affections from here on. For Thea, this
came with a twinge of guilt at the betrayal. The faithful little dog should not suffer because her mistress had a boyfriend – or husband, as he insisted he would soon become.

Drew did his best, but he would never be entirely comfortable with the idea of a dog in bed with its people. It was all down to a person’s upbringing, Thea supposed. Whilst the Johnstones had not been an especially doggy family, there had been a scruffy mongrel throughout much of Thea’s childhood, which she had insisted was mostly hers. She had invited it to share her bed on weekend mornings when she lazed under the blankets with a book, and the habit had returned after Carl’s death. She made no secret of the consolation she derived from the soft presence in the night.