Guilt in the Cotswolds (15 page)

‘Love me, love my dog,’ she said lightly. It was rapidly becoming a mantra.

‘I’ll do my best,’ he promised.

Walking back, to the point where the field ended and the cul de sac began, Drew’s head went up. ‘There’s a car,’ he said. ‘Outside the house.’

‘It might not be for us.’

‘What’s the betting?’

He was right. A few more yards and they could both see Millie Wilshire standing close to the car with a man. ‘Who’s that?’ asked Drew.

‘Never seen him before.’

They approached at a brisk walk, with Hepzie still
running free. She ignored the people and went to the front door of the house as if she’d always lived there.

‘Millie,’ said Thea. ‘Are you waiting for us?’

The girl looked drained and miserable – far worse than when they’d seen her that morning. ‘This is Andrew Emerson, the farmer I told you about. The one who was waiting for Dad on Friday, for the TB test on his cows.’

Andrew Emerson also looked exhausted, his face deeply lined. He barely smiled as he nodded a greeting. At first glance, he appeared to be something over sixty, but Thea had a suspicion he was rather younger than he looked. His hair was a lightish brown, similar to Drew’s, and his small eyes a murky greeny-hazel. There was a groove between his eyes, and more around his mouth. He conjured an impression of a struggling settler in the American Dust Bowl, the weather and fate implacably against him.

‘The police have had me in for questioning,’ he said in a deep voice. ‘Trying to trace Richard’s last movements.’

‘Oh!’ Thea was about to ask
Do they think he was murdered, after all?
when a nudge from Drew silenced her. ‘So what can we do for you?’ she said instead.

‘You should probably talk to each other,’ said Millie reluctantly. ‘You both saw Dad more recently than I did, and everybody seems to assume I’m the most unobservant person in the world – so perhaps you can find an explanation between you for what happened to him.’

Thea frowned at this idea. ‘Do you have a cousin called Brendan?’ she asked.

‘What? What’s he got to do with anything?’

‘He came here today. He really is your cousin, then?’

‘Sort of. His father is my father’s cousin.’

‘Right. That’s what we thought,’ said Drew. Thea realised he was interrupting her on purpose, worried that she would say something upsetting. ‘I know about cousins. It means you have the same great-grandmother,’ Drew went on. ‘Making you and Brendan second cousins, strictly speaking.’

‘Right,’ said Millie, with a glance at the farmer. ‘So – can you talk to Andrew or not?’

‘We were just off to the pub. Why don’t you come as well?’ Drew invited. ‘We’ve hardly eaten anything all day.’

Andrew Emerson and Millie both seemed doubtful about this suggestion. ‘People might recognise us,’ said Millie.

‘Does that matter?’ asked Thea. ‘I can understand why your friend Judith might find that a nuisance, but it’s different for you, surely?’

‘They’ll know about my dad dying by now. They’ll be embarrassed. And they might think it’s wrong for me to be out drinking at a time like this.’

‘I don’t drink,’ said the gravel-voiced farmer. ‘I don’t go into pubs, if I can help it.’ He sighed. ‘And I am definitely in no mood for it tonight.’

‘What happened with your cows?’ Thea asked him. ‘Did someone else test them?’

He nodded. ‘Came yesterday afternoon. Four
reactors. That’s the end of us now. We can’t keep on like this.’ He rubbed a hand across his face, fingers splayed, as if using an invisible wash cloth. ‘You have no idea what it’s like,’ he muttered. ‘Like being kicked in the face every time you dare to hope it might be getting better.’

‘So …’ Thea’s hunger was, to her shame, the dominant consideration.

‘He talked a lot about you,’ the farmer told Drew. ‘When he came for the first part of the test. Said you’d got life pretty well sorted. Facing facts, talking straight about dying. He liked that. You helped him decide about his old mum.’

Thea tried to visualise the conversation conducted over the wretched cows and their incipient TB. She knew enough about the subject to be aware that perfectly healthy-seeming animals could show up positive on the test that was rigorously enforced by the authorities. And a positive result meant certain death. A farmer and a vet might well discuss dying and associated matters in such circumstances. ‘Do you think he killed himself, then?’ she asked.

‘Of course he didn’t. It wouldn’t even enter his mind. What possible reason could he have for doing such a thing?’

‘Did you say that to the police?’

He nodded. ‘They said it just might have been an accident, but that came to much the same thing, as far as they’re concerned.’

‘They weren’t seeing you as a murder suspect, then?’ Thea said, tactlessly. She was more or less thinking aloud, without considering the effect of the words. At her elbow, Drew uttered an exasperated sigh.

‘What?’ the farmer almost shouted.

She held her ground. ‘Well, if it wasn’t suicide, and an accident seems unlikely, then what else is there?’

He subsided quickly. ‘All right.’ He looked at Millie. ‘You were right,’ he said. ‘She is scary.’

‘Who? Me?’ Thea was astonished. ‘Scary?’

‘Accusing a man you’ve never met before of murder. Richard was my
friend
. He told me all kinds of things. He said so much about you –’ addressing Drew ‘– that I had to come and see you for myself. Plus, I was hoping maybe you could fill me in on how he looked. You found him, in that barn. Nobody else can put my mind easy on how it must have been.’

Drew pulled a face and glanced at Thea. She understood his difficulty: only by professional straight talking could he give a satisfactory answer, and sometimes that could be straighter than people might like. He was regularly reproaching her for saying too much, getting too graphic, forcing people to face truths they preferred to avoid – but his own instincts were not so different from hers.

‘It’s impossible to say,’ he began. ‘A dead body relaxes completely. The face always looks bland and unemotional afterwards. Nobody dies with their last expression still permanently on their face, like you read
in stories. As far as we could tell, he hadn’t moved at all. The ground underneath him wasn’t churned up or anything.’

‘But – what exactly
killed
him?’

‘I think his skull cracked. And possibly his neck was broken. We didn’t move him, obviously – although the dogs did nudge him a bit before we pulled them away.’ A sound from Millie reminded him that there was a listener even less likely to want gruesome details. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘But as the next of kin, you’ll be able to ask the Coroner’s officer for the cause of death – tomorrow, probably. It’ll be on the death certificate, anyway.’

‘Okay,’ she said thickly. She raised her face to look at him. ‘A week ago, I would never have dreamt any of this. I couldn’t even bring myself to come here, knowing Gran was never coming back.’

‘Did something happen?’ Thea suddenly asked. ‘I mean, before your father died? Why did you come here on Friday, when you were so against the whole thing?’ She tried to remember what had been said. ‘You were angry with your father for clearing the house. You asked me if I was his girlfriend, when surely you knew—’ She stopped, wondering, as so often before, just who knew what.

‘What? What should I have known?’

‘Well – your friend Judith says she was very close to him.’

‘Close? She liked him, if that’s what you mean. He treated her like an ordinary person. That’s all it was.’

In a murder investigation, the police would have
explored in detail every movement made by Millie, Judith, Andrew Emerson and others on the day Richard Wilshire died, as well as any unusual circumstances in the days before that. They would have asked about arguments, sudden changes, impressions. Some of their findings might have filtered through to Thea in her meetings with Higgins and perhaps one or two other officers. As it was, virtually none of these enquiries had been made, because nobody openly asserted that there had been a murder at all. Andrew Emerson had been asked a few questions, apparently, to get an idea of the timings, but nothing more than that.

‘
Did
something happen?’ Drew also asked her.

‘Sort of.’ Millie swung one foot to and fro like a small girl. ‘Martin showed up, out of the blue, for one thing.’

‘Martin?’

‘My dad’s cousin. Martin Teasdale. I thought you saw him at the home. When I phoned this afternoon, that’s what Mrs Goodison said.’

‘Oh – yes, we met him.’

Millie shrugged. ‘Well, he and two of his children are living back here in the UK now, and they’ve started taking an interest in what Gran can tell them about family history. Brendan’s obsessed with it.’

‘So we noticed,’ said Thea. ‘Although he said it was his sister Carol as much as him. He took some things away,’ she added conscientiously.

‘What do you mean?’

‘From the attic.’ Thea pointed at the house with her thumb. ‘Listen – I don’t want to be rude, but I’m starving hungry. It’s six o’clock, and we need something to eat. If there’s nowhere else, we’ll have to go to the pub. There’s no food in the house.’

‘Brendan took things from the attic?’ Millie spoke slowly, stressing every syllable, as if checking a statement that was too terrible to be true. ‘What things?’

‘A stamp album and a picture, and an old schoolbook.’

‘Hmm. That doesn’t sound too bad. He can have the stamps for all I care.’

‘Thank goodness for that.’

‘We shouldn’t hold you up,’ said Andrew, who had been fondling Hepzie for the past few minutes. ‘I should get back.’ He turned to Millie. ‘Richard’s dogs,’ he said. ‘Are you sure they’ll be all right?’

Millie nodded. ‘I’m taking them over to Judith’s place now. She’s thrilled to have them.’

‘I know, but – they need to
work
. At least be amongst cattle or sheep, free to run about. I ought to take them, but …’ An agonised expression crossed his face. ‘I can’t guarantee them a future, the way things are.’

‘They’ll be all right,’ said Millie, putting a hand on the farmer’s arm. ‘You’ve got other things to worry about.’ She turned to Drew and Thea. ‘Andrew’s got a sick wife, as well,’ she told them. ‘And his daughter’s gone off to America.’

‘Celia’s on the mend,’ said the man bravely. ‘She was up most of yesterday.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’ asked Thea.

‘A really nasty bout of shingles. We had no idea it could be so debilitating. I’ve had to hire in some help to cover for her.’

‘Sounds grim,’ said Drew with just the right note of sympathy. ‘But you won’t really give up farming, will you? Isn’t that awfully drastic?’

Andrew’s mouth twisted in a show of pained inevitability. ‘After what’s happened to Richard, it doesn’t seem worth carrying on. Life’s too short for constant worry, working all hours for nothing. We still have a bit of equity if we sell up now – enough for a little house and garden. I can do odd jobs.’ He looked straight at Drew. ‘Actually, that’s another reason I wanted to see you.’ He hesitated and his colour heightened like an embarrassed teenager. ‘This burial business of yours. As I said, I like the sound of it. I was wondering if you might be needing another pair of hands. Digging graves, carrying coffins, driving – all that side of things?’

Drew put a hand up, half-warning, half-making a grab for something that felt like a very good offer. ‘Hold on – I haven’t got it running over here yet. Not by a long way. Although – there is a deadline not too far off now. Ask me again in six months’ time and I might well have a place for you. Assuming we can agree details, and get along together.’

‘How do I find you?’

Drew felt in an inside pocket and located a business
card. He handed it to the man, who read aloud: ‘“Drew Slocombe, Peaceful Repose Green Burial Ground.” Sounds great.’

‘Thanks. I warn you, there’s not a lot of money in it.’

‘More than there is in farming,’ said Andrew.

‘Drew …’ said Thea, putting a hand to her middle. ‘Food?’

‘Yes, yes, you get on,’ Andrew said quickly. Then he had a thought. ‘Just one more thing. If we’re thinking somebody might have deliberately killed Richard, I’d look no further than Bloody Norah.’ He said the name in a whisper, with a meaningful glance at the house just behind them. ‘Everybody knows they had a big fight over the dogs and her cat.’

Millie uttered a brief giggle. ‘Bloody Norah,’ she repeated.

Thea also laughed. ‘My father used to say that,’ she remembered. Then her face grew serious. ‘But it couldn’t really have been her – could it?’

It was well past six when Drew and Thea finally got to the Seven Tuns and ordered a meal. ‘Whatever’s quickest,’ said Thea shamelessly to the woman at the bar.

They sat in the largest room, set out as an informal dining area at the back of the building. Windows looked out onto a deserted garden and patio. They could see two other bars, revealing what a large hostelry it was, and had always been. ‘Must be costly to maintain,’ muttered Drew. ‘No wonder it was out of business for so long.’

‘Was it? How do you know that?’

‘Heard it somewhere,’ he said. ‘I’ve been doing lots of research into Cotswold society, you know. I need to understand my market, for the new business.’

‘Right.’ The meal wasn’t coming nearly as quickly as she would have liked, but the beer she gulped down did a lot to assuage the hunger pangs. ‘What a day!’ she sighed.

‘It’s not over yet.’

‘It’s almost dark,’ she pointed out. ‘I call that the end of the day.’

There were very few other customers in the pub. An October Sunday evening was hardly the most popular time for drinking, they supposed. ‘There are seven mirrors in here,’ Thea noted idly. ‘Is that meant to be lucky, do you think?’

He smiled. ‘I doubt it. They’ve just gathered up as many characterful old artefacts as they could, and hung them on the walls. Must have been fun to do.’

‘I like Chedworth,’ said Thea. ‘I didn’t think I would at first. It’s so much bigger than I expected, I wish I’d given myself more time to explore it.’

‘You can stay a bit longer,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to be anywhere, after all.’

She shivered. ‘That’s not a very nice feeling. I shouldn’t be so uncommitted. It’s like being in limbo, waiting for a decision. Why didn’t we just go back to your place this afternoon?’

‘We’d have missed Andrew Emerson, and I am very pleased to have met him. He could be the answer to a prayer.’

‘You mean God told us to stay, so you could meet him?’

‘If you like.’ He smiled. ‘More likely an old pagan deity who wants my burial practices to catch on. Getting back to pre-Christian times and all that.’

‘I miss Higgins,’ she realised. ‘Or Gladwin. Some
police person to talk to. Poor Richard, swept away and ignored because it’s convenient to assume he killed himself. If he was murdered, the person who did it must be very pleased with himself.’

‘That’s part of why we’re still here,’ Drew said. ‘The poor man deserves better.’

‘He wasn’t particularly nice, though. A bit of a coward, actually, getting me to do the house sorting instead of facing it himself.’

Drew nibbled his lip. ‘That Judith seemed to like him.’

‘Did you believe her? I thought it might have been a bit of self-dramatising, the grieving girlfriend role, sort of thing.’

‘She never said that, exactly. Just that he was a welcome change from the people she usually mixes with.’

Thea sighed. ‘I’ve got very sceptical in my old age,’ she admitted. ‘I wasn’t entirely sure I could trust that Mrs Goodison, either.’

Drew nodded. ‘I know about women like her, remember. They value their reputation above everything. Nothing’s allowed to sully their precious home. If she had any inkling that Richard was murdered, she’d do all she could to distance herself from that.’

‘Especially if it looked as if his mother was involved.’

He snorted in amusement. ‘Like – she killed him?’

‘No, of course not. I meant, if it had something to do with her house, or money, or something. After all, the
usual motive for murder is to acquire something that the dead person has.’

‘Is it?’

‘Or to stop them from revealing something. Or because they’ve done something awful to you. Or because you lose all self-control and just keep bashing them. Or—’

‘Stop it,’ he begged. ‘That’s enough.’

‘What’s the matter? You usually don’t mind murder talk.’

‘I feel guilty,’ he admitted. ‘All this is my fault.’

‘How is it your fault that Richard Wilshire’s dead?’ She was genuinely puzzled.

‘Not that. I expect he’d be dead regardless of anything I’ve done. But I dragged you here, and I keep on dithering about Broad Campden and what happens next. I’m pathetic.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Look – this is what we’ll do. We’ll go back to the house, tidy up the worst of the mess in the bedrooms, leave the key under a stone at the back and be out of here first thing tomorrow. We’re never going to be of any use hanging around like this. If Higgins and his boss persist in thinking it was suicide, then they won’t have any time for us. We’d never be able to change their minds. Millie seems reconciled to that explanation, even if his mother isn’t.’

‘We don’t know for sure what his mother thinks. I’m not sure I can just leave without another attempt to see her. I have an obligation to her.’ He scratched his head.
‘That’s another thing that’s making me feel guilty.’ Then his phone warbled in his pocket. He scrabbled for it and peered at the screen. ‘Must be Pandora,’ he said.

It wasn’t Pandora, but young Stephanie. Drew’s voice became warm and gentle, listening to a long story, his responses giving Thea no clue as to its import. ‘I was going to phone you,’ he said, pulling a face at Thea that suggested he had actually forgotten any promise to do so. ‘It’s been very busy here. You’ll have to find Timmy some clean pants and socks for school, okay? … Yes, I know. But it’s just for a day or so, sweetheart. You can manage perfectly well. It’s character-forming.’ Listening to this, Thea deduced that he had used a catchphrase that would reassure his little girl. He laughed lightly. ‘Don’t worry about me, darling. I’m perfectly all right. Thea sends her love. We’ll be back soon. I’m not promising, Stephanie. You know I never make promises. Can I talk to Timmy?’

A pause, in which nobody spoke. Then, ‘Hi, Tim. How’s it going? … Good! Great! Pandora might read to you if you ask her nicely. You can tell me what happens in the next chapter, when I get back. I know, son. But everything’s okay. Be good at school and I’ll see you soon. No fighting with Stephanie, right?’

The difference in his tone when addressing his two children was almost painful. It was an aspect of him that Thea was still getting to grips with. She had gathered some scraps of information about the early years, with Tim’s conception a surprise and his arrival not quite
the cause for delight that Stephanie’s had been. Then Karen’s injury and eventual death had been made much worse by the existence of a small dependent boy. Timmy had a look that made a person wince. A brave, vulnerable, quiet child. Drew could try harder, Thea concluded, but she lacked the nerve to say anything.

The call ended, Drew continued to play with the phone. ‘I took photos of that barn,’ he said. ‘Just before you and the dogs found Richard. I wanted to capture its size, and the odd constructions in front of it.’ He skimmed through a few pictures. ‘They’re not very good.’

‘Let’s see.’ She took it from him. ‘They’re not bad. You should have done black and white. Then they’d be like something by Ansel Adams. The sky’s lovely. And these blocks of stone or whatever they are look good in the foreground.’

‘You’re an art critic,’ he smiled.

‘Not at all. But I understand a bit about composition. What
are
these stones? They look like paving slabs, stacked in a pile.’

He peered over the table, seeing the little picture upside down. ‘No idea,’ he admitted.

‘They’re quite close to the barn door. Something like a foot square. Maybe somebody was planning to make a hardstanding for tractors, or a path.’

‘Seems unlikely. They’d just spread a layer of concrete, surely?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ She went on looking at the picture.
‘Um … Drew. Have we finished here? Can we go back to the house and do a bit of brainstorming?’

‘Brainstorming?’

‘Yes.’ She was emphatic, and just a bit excited. Little ideas were springing up like seedlings. Then she looked through the pub window at the sky outside. Her brain had done quite a lot of storming in the past two seconds, rendering superfluous any need for more. ‘It’s not quite dark yet. I think we should go to the barn, not the house.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes. Now. We might already be too late.’

‘Thea, it’s ten past seven. The sun set half an hour ago, at least. It’s much too dark to do anything useful. Besides, the police have probably taped it all off.’ He resisted the urge to point out that he had no idea what she was thinking.

‘No, they won’t have. Not for a suicide. Why would they? I’ve got a good torch in the car. It’s only a few minutes from here.’

‘I can’t stop you,’ he said, with a hint of irritation. ‘And I suppose you’ll explain at some point.’

‘It’s a wild theory, that’s all. It’ll probably turn out to be complete nonsense, but we should go and have a look, just in case.’

He stood up without another word. The meal had served its purpose, paid for jointly. Two more people had come in while they were eating, but the pub was still very quiet. Mindful that it had been closed for some
time in recent years, it struck him that survival was far from guaranteed, even now it had reopened.

‘I need you to explain,’ he pleaded. ‘Somewhere I seem to have missed a major step in the logic.’

She had begun the walk back to the house, at a brisk pace. ‘In the car,’ she threw back at him.

Six minutes later they were negotiating the sharp steep bend in the road to Yanworth, and Thea was taking Drew through her thoughts. ‘What if he was murdered by somebody who had planned it all in advance? The person knew about the barn and its high platform, and decided it would be a good place for a suicide. But just pushing him off might not kill him – so they hit him in such a way as to make it look like an injury inflicted by a fall. It would have to be a flat thing, because the floor’s flat. Now do you see?’

‘Sort of. But those slabs must be too heavy to hold with one hand. How would the killer keep Richard still while they hit him in just the right place? Especially as the injury was mainly at the front of his head. How would you manage that?’

She pondered for a moment. ‘Perhaps he was already unconscious. Or stooping down for some reason, looking at the floor. That would work rather well, don’t you think? There are any number of possible explanations.’ She waved an airy hand.

‘We don’t know that he died from the damage to his head, of course. That might have been inflicted simply to make it look like a fall. If I’m right that his neck was
broken, that’ll be the cause of death. And that is much more likely to be the result of a fall. And what about other bones? He would need to be covered in bruises and impact injuries to make it look convincing.’

She made a little sound of resistance. ‘I guess it would be possible to whack him in a few places – hips, back, shoulders – the places he’d be likely to land on.’

‘Horrible thought. I wonder sometimes about your imagination,’ he admitted. Then he said, ‘But if he was already dead, there wouldn’t be bruises, as such. Just the usual pooling of blood – and that would give the police grounds for suspecting foul play.’

They had arrived at the straight stretch of road just before the barn. ‘Here we are,’ Thea announced. ‘And it’s still not really dark.’

‘Too dark to find the sort of evidence you’ve got in mind.’

She stopped the car beside the gate directly in front of the barn. ‘We can’t go through there,’ said Drew. ‘It’s chained shut, look.’

‘So it is. We’ll have to go through that field gate, like we did before.’

‘Thea – I know this is what you always do, and so far you’ve come through more or less intact, but really I must just say it’s not the way civilised people behave. You ought to go to the police with your idea, and leave it to them.’

‘They’d fob me off and not do anything. Regulations would require a full SOCO team, forensics, reports – all
the stuff they’ve decided to leave out, for some reason.’

‘Finances, presumably.’

‘Or another case they think is more important. Illegal immigrants or somebody looking at websites that tell you how to make a bomb.’

Thea led the way through the uneven terrain, across a ditch onto the concrete forecourt of the barn. The sky was growing darker by the minute.

‘They’re still there, look,’ she said, her voice suddenly loud. The torch in her hand was directed at the small pile of square stone slabs, scanning the surface of the top one. ‘Hmm – it looks fairly clean.’

Drew bent over it, without touching. ‘You think he would just put it back where he found it? Isn’t it more likely to be chucked into a thicket of nettles?’

‘If it was all as carefully planned as I think, he’d definitely put it back.’ She peered closely, pressed against Drew’s shoulder. ‘But you’re right – there’s no blood or anything on it.’

She straightened, and idly swept the torch beam left and right. ‘I was thinking, you see, that a person falling from a height has different injuries from any other cause. No sharp edges, or punctures.’

‘Yes, I understand.’ He sounded somewhat tetchy. ‘But the idea that he was hit a fatal blow with a slab of stone is very far-fetched, don’t you think?’

‘Probably. It made sense when I first thought of it. But now I don’t know. Would you land face down, if you deliberately jumped? You would if you were pushed
from behind. And then you wouldn’t crack your skull open, would you?’

‘Thea …’ he begged. ‘This is all very graphic. I know I wouldn’t like you to be all girly and squeamish, but this is rather the other extreme.’

‘Sorry,’ she said crossly. ‘But if the police aren’t going to ask these questions, then
somebody
should. And we found him – we owe him some sort of attention.’

‘I know.’ He made a visible effort. ‘Well, he was lying partly on his side when we found him, wasn’t he? That fits with a fall. And his head was at a very unnatural angle. That fits as well. But the severity of the impact seemed excessive, given the height. Your theories are sensible, from that point of view. It’s been going round and round my head ever since yesterday, that it’s a highly unlikely suicide.’

‘It is,’ she agreed. ‘Very unlikely.’

‘And I can see that the only thing we can hope to do is find some hard evidence to take to the police and get them to open a proper murder enquiry. But I have to get home tomorrow. Stephanie sounded very bereft. And there’ll be work mounting up. There could be a new funeral at any moment. And I’ll really have to be there in time for the funeral on Tuesday.’ Anxiety was thick in his voice.