Guilt in the Cotswolds (21 page)

Rita Wilshire possessed a mobile phone and an email address. Drew had noted them both down on the top sheet in the folder. It was all rather more businesslike than Thea would have expected. Eighteen hundred pounds had been paid already, to cover all expenses for the funeral, whether it took place in North Staverton or Broad Campden. That was also a slight surprise. She had assumed a natural burial to be significantly cheaper than that. Then she noticed the inclusion of a maple tree and the hire of a piper to play over the grave. Drew must have had to make a guess as to how much that might cost.

Email wouldn’t do, so she telephoned Mrs Wilshire, with no real expectation of getting a response. But she was wrong. It was answered on the third trill. ‘Hello?’ came an exhausted-sounding voice.

‘Mrs Wilshire? This is Thea Osborne, Drew Slocombe’s fiancée. Would you mind if I asked you one or two questions?’

‘You sound uncannily like a police officer. Are you doing this on their behalf?’

‘No, not at all. But we have been to the police station this afternoon. I’m sure somebody’s told you they are now treating your son’s death as murder. Something in the post mortem changed their minds.’

‘No. Nobody has told me. I expect they think it can wait.’

Recollections of other violent deaths surfaced in Thea’s mind. Wasn’t there always a family liaison officer holding the hand of the bereaved relatives? Didn’t that person virtually move in and offer an almost smothering level of support? Just one more unforeseen consequence of living in a care home, she supposed. The FLO would be considered superfluous, in the circumstances. Mrs Goodison would be deemed a perfectly adequate substitute.

‘That’s very bad,’ she said. ‘Is anybody with you?’

‘Not just now. I think they find me embarrassing. I’m afraid I gave in to emotion a little while ago, and they’ve tucked me into bed to get over it.’

But you kept your mobile on, and within reach
, thought Thea. There was still plenty of life left in this old lady, then. And a lively interest in the world outside.

‘This is going to sound strange,’ she warned. ‘And I can’t altogether explain it myself, but Drew and I have been doing our own little bits of detective work. We’ve been involved all along, of course. It wouldn’t be right to just drop it now and go home. So, can I
ask you one or two things?’ The inclusion of Drew was deliberate, but she felt bad about it. If she was dishonest with Rita, it would serve her right if the old lady repaid her in kind.

‘Go on.’

‘Right. Well, it’s going to sound very intrusive, I’m afraid. Do you know where Richard was when he disappeared that time? Millie told me about it on Friday, and it’s been nagging at me ever since.’

There was a pause that seemed to last an unnaturally long time. ‘He told me he was having a fling with a young woman. Said they went to Portugal for a summer of love. But it burnt itself out and he crawled back home again. Never told his wife or daughter where he’d been. But they guessed, close enough, and it was the end of the marriage.’

‘It seems odd that he wouldn’t tell his wife, though, after the event. Husbands usually do – don’t they?’

‘I know.’ Something in the voice alerted Thea. ‘But Richard has always been a very poor liar. He’d never have convinced her the story was true.’

‘Because it wasn’t.’

‘Exactly. He never went to Portugal – just snatched it at random, for my benefit.’

‘He kept in touch with you during those three months?’

‘By email, yes. Made me promise not to tell Daphne. To my shame, I was rather proud of the fact that he put me above his wife. That he cared more for my distress and
worry than hers. Of course, she had Millie for comfort.’

‘So you believed the story at the time?’

‘Most of it, yes. And then last week, he told me the truth of the matter. He had to, you see, because I was so close to discovering it for myself.’

With some impatience, Thea pressed on. The slow convoluted disclosures were quite unnecessary, as far as she could see. ‘So where was he?’ she asked loudly.

‘I’m not sure I should tell you. On the grounds that I might incriminate myself.’ She gave a throaty little laugh, sounding as if the last of her energy was about to expire. ‘It’s not funny, of course. I am so irredeemably guilty, I fear it might kill me. Everything has been my fault, from the very start.’

‘I’m sure that can’t be true. You didn’t kill Dawn, did you?’

‘No.’ A worryingly rasping breath filled the next two seconds. ‘No, I didn’t kill her. But I did things that were almost as bad.’

Thea found nothing to say, but the image of the painting from the attic, with the two seductive girls displaying themselves so shamelessly, came to mind. The younger one, smiling so knowingly, fingering her lip – that was Rita Wilshire.

‘Well,’ she began, with no idea of what she was going to say. ‘I can’t imagine that has anything to do with what happened to Richard.’ Stupid, she chastised herself. Because it quite evidently did have everything to do with it.

‘Thank you, dear. But you don’t really think that, do you?’

‘I’m sorry. I really didn’t want to upset you. I’ll leave you in peace now, and I hope …’ What? That blissful oblivion came quickly, to soothe the guilt and distress that were evidently approaching rapidly? That some beloved relative – and it could only be Millie – turn up and offer consoling companionship?

‘But I haven’t answered your question, have I?’ A querulous note now entered her voice, as if she had forgotten much of the conversation. ‘You asked where Richard went, five years ago.’

‘And you said it might incriminate you.’

‘So it might. Well, it’s only what I deserve. He went to see his father. Goodbye, dear.’ And the phone went dead.

Which explained very little, at least at first sight. Okay, Rita was feeling guilty because her husband, Mr Wilshire Senior, had not been Richard’s father, and had therefore probably been deceived. That wasn’t good. It carried a lot of implications down the generations. Millie had a genetic inheritance other than the one she assumed.

Had Richard spent the lost three months living with the old man, getting to know him, hearing the full story from him? Or had much of the time been spent in tracking him down, following clues and hunches until the man himself was revealed? And why not tell people
afterwards? Why keep it from his wife and wreck his marriage as a result?

Was there also an implication somewhere that Rita knew who had killed her son? And if so, was it somebody she wanted to protect? Brendan Teasdale came instantly to mind. Even if he had stolen her stamps, invading her attic and being generally obnoxious, he was her great-nephew and might therefore have earned some affection from her.

She sat in her car with the extremely disgruntled spaniel and tried to think. Drew had been right to accuse her of dwelling far too much on past history. More profitable, surely, to focus on exactly
how
the murder had been committed. The logistics of when and where would leave some sort of trail for the police to find. Weapon; tyre marks; hairs; phone calls; witnesses and alibis – it would all be keeping a dozen officers and more occupied all week. They would very likely assemble a picture of what must have happened to Richard Wilshire sometime early on Saturday morning. And from there they would construct a small pool of suspects to interview in the hope of catching them out and reaching a conclusion.

Yes, but …
Why?

The answer to that question seemed to lie in the family’s past. Without a scrap of clear evidence, Thea had arrived at this certainty. Not only Rita, but Millie and Brendan too – they had all reverted to old stories concerning Dawn and Martin and Richard’s
missing months. Somewhere in all this kaleidoscope of information, the answer must lie. She could almost taste it, just sitting there, an inch or two away. Now Rita’s guilt seemed to contribute to the idea, as well.

But what to do about it? The two addresses in her notebook still felt significant. Richard had been in the habit of visiting his cousin Martin, it seemed. Or at least, he had done so once, and probably much more than that. An address saved in a satnav’s memory must imply repeated visits. And that raised the question of just who lived in Wychwood Road, Chipping Norton.

‘It’s not far,’ she said aloud to the dog. ‘And we’ve got nothing else to do. Let’s just give it a try.’

Hepzie expressed no opinion on the matter, other than a deep canine sigh.

Thea consulted her road atlas, muttering ‘Up to Stow-on-the-Wold and turn right.’ She was to find number 18 Wychwood Road, it seemed. And without a navigation system, it was liable to be a matter of trial and error. So be it. Chipping Norton was a small place. Ten minutes of driving around it should be more than enough. After all, she said to herself, it wouldn’t be the first time.

It took a little under ten minutes, in the event. Wychwood Road was slightly outside the town, well supplied with trees and more contemporary than most of the other parts. Number 18, however, turned out to be not a private house, but a converted row of houses, so that it was in effect numbers 16 to 22. Obviously
Richard’s satnav hadn’t been able to handle such a deviation from the norm. The resulting building was, to Thea’s surprise, a residential home for the elderly.

This presented multiple difficulties. Who had Richard been visiting here? No other elderly relatives had been mentioned – except for the man’s father, of course, and that had been five years ago. She parked inconspicuously opposite the main entrance with a sign outside and tried to think of a course of action. It was twenty to four. The inmates might be having tea and biscuits, or an afternoon nap. The weather was chilly, so nobody was likely to be sitting in the gardens at the back. She saw no pretext upon which she might go in and ask questions. What would she ask?
Is there anybody here who knows a Mr Richard Wilshire?
That was the only one that made sense, but carried considerable risk. If there was somebody, who knew Richard was dead, there would be a lot of questions in the other direction.

At least she could get out and give the dog a breath of air. ‘Come on, then,’ she said, fastening lead to collar. ‘Something might come to mind, I suppose.’

She walked herself and Hepzie to the furthest end of the road, admiring the glimpses of the old town, and trying not to think how close they were to her own home in Witney. Poor little cottage, so badly neglected in recent years. Initially she had been very glad to escape the associations with Carl and their violently truncated marriage. Before the first house-sitting commission she had been in a bad way, physically
hurting herself to distract from the shocked and broken heart. The spaniel had been of some limited comfort, vastly better than nothing, but often rather overlooked, too. Just as she had been for the past two days, poor thing. In a paroxysm of guilt, Thea bent down and stroked the soft head. It was such a sweet creature, the long ears and large liquid eyes guaranteed to attract warm feelings. Her coat, untrimmed for many months, was luxuriously silky to the touch. In old age, Thea had been warned, this same coat would turn matted, especially around the leg joints and belly. But for now it was perfect. ‘You’re a good, lovely dog,’ Thea said, with all sincerity. ‘Whatever would I do without you?’

They turned back, just in time to see a small group of people leaving the care home. Two of them looked familiar, and with no conscious thought, Thea ducked behind a convenient plane tree. The people had their backs to her, and were something like seventy yards away. She watched them cautiously, wishing she could hear what they were saying. There was an impression of drama in the way they huddled together, their expressions serious. But the very fact of their presence was really all the clue she required for her next move.

Because Martin and Brendan Teasdale could surely only be visiting a relative. The woman with them was dressed in a trim blue suit, and carried a briefcase. She had
solicitor
written all over her. Drew would have called it sheer guesswork, but Thea was convinced it was better than that. Deduction, she called it. The story
was still full of gaps and contradictions, but essentially she could see the main picture. Essentially, she knew now who had killed Richard Wilshire and why. Answers that had been slowly coming into focus all day now formed in her mind, slotting into place with the facts she had accumulated in such quantity since Thursday evening. She remained tucked behind the tree, her dog pulled close to her legs until the three people had got into two separate cars and driven away.

‘Lucky Derek-the-eyebrows isn’t here,’ she muttered. ‘He’d have spotted my car right away.’

With profuse apologies she put the dog back in the car and marched through the front door of the care home. ‘Is there a Mr Teasdale here?’ she asked a woman in a blue nylon garment who happened to be in the entrance hall.

‘What?’ The accent was Spanish or Italian.

‘Teasdale.’

‘Oh, poor man. The ambulance is just gone. He has a heart attack. Poor man.’ She shook her head. ‘But he is so old.’

‘Can I speak to someone about him?’

‘Someone? Who?’ The woman was not just having trouble with the language, thought Thea. She was also exasperatingly dim. Probably a cleaner or cook, she concluded.

‘Someone in charge,’ she suggested.

‘Okay.’ She was led up a flight of stairs to a room that looked over the street at the front. It had a bow
window, and would have made a pleasant home for an old person to end their days in. ‘Mrs Saunders – there is a lady,’ the menial announced, and then withdrew.

Mrs Saunders had been standing at the window, and turned to see who the lady might be. ‘I saw you in the street,’ she said. She was about Thea’s own age or slightly younger, stout, fair and flustered. ‘Who are you?’

‘I came to see Mr Teasdale,’ she said boldly. ‘But I gather he’s been taken ill.’

‘He probably won’t survive the trip to hospital. I
knew
all this business would be too much for him. He’s ninety-eight, after all, and very frail. It seems wrong. Who
are
you?’ she said again.