Trouble in the Cotswolds (The Cotswold Mysteries) (3 page)

Thea retreated to the kitchen at the back of the house and made herself a mug of tea. Hepzie pottered after her, as she always did, especially in a new place. ‘Here we are again, then,’ Thea said to her with a sigh. The spaniel gave a slow wag of agreement.

The first sip of tea was the precise moment when
it began. From one second to the next, she knew it was coming. Not just the taste, but the consistency, the momentary scratch that came from swallowing, the unavoidable awareness of her own throat. She was getting a cold! This had not happened for at least three years, but nobody could forget those insistent warning signs. Firmly, she resolved that it would be gone as quickly as it had come. She would turn up the heating and go to bed early, and in the morning it would have retreated under the unyielding resistance of its victim. Thea Osborne did not get ill. She had no patience with it. Besides – who would look after her if she did? As a house-sitter, she was obviously not allowed to be poorly.

She carried on with the allotted tasks as darkness fell, focusing on feeding generous quantities of top-quality tinned tripe to Blondie, and trying to get to know the rats. They came to the bars of their cage, whiskers quivering as they sniffed the new person who was meant to release them for their evening frolics. ‘Sorry,’ said Thea. ‘I don’t think I’m quite ready for it tonight.’ The prospect of the creatures hiding from her, teasing their new custodian, like children with a supply teacher, was too nerve-wracking on the first day. ‘Tomorrow, maybe we’ll give it a go,’ she promised. ‘When you’ve got to know me better.’ Having made sure the door to the room was closed, she unhooked the cage door and delivered a handful of the mixed corn they were to be fed. The darkest
of the three animals put a small naked paw on her finger, in a gesture that seemed friendly. Cautiously, Thea stroked the dense coat, catching the intelligent eye and letting thoughts of vermin and Hamlyn and sewers sift through her mind. Rats were a good bet for long-term survival, after nuclear devastation or pandemics or another ice age had eradicated the humans from the world. They were organised, adaptable and cunning. They would eat anything and produced dozens of babies every year.

Her daughter’s terror of them had come as a surprise. The incident when she was seven had involved little more than a wounded creature, mauled by a neighbour’s dog, dragging itself pathetically over the grass in the Osbornes’ garden, in Jessica’s direction. The child’s screams had brought people running from all directions. ‘Take it away!’ she had howled. ‘It’s after me.’

Carl had donned thick gardening gloves and scooped up the wretched animal. ‘But Jess, it’s poorly, look. It’s been hurt. You should feel sorry for it.’

But the hysterical child shrieked and turned her back. ‘Take it away!’ she repeated. ‘It’s horrible.’

Carl, sensitive to the genuine fear, had disposed of the rat somehow, returning to his wife and daughter with a matter-of-fact air. ‘Nothing to be scared of, sweetheart. You shouldn’t let yourself get into such a state.’ He and Thea had assumed his words would overcome the irrational reaction, only to find Jessica
increasingly petrified as she grew up. She would never go into a shed or a cellar until someone had checked it first for rodents. She left the room if rats appeared on a TV programme. She went white at sounds of rustling or scuffling behind a skirting board.

‘I rather like them,’ Thea would always say, as if this would change anything. ‘They’re so intelligent, and clean and they’ve got lovely little faces.’

Despite her claims, even she found it a trifle unsettling that people could keep them as pets. Especially middle-class affluent Cotswolds people, who might be expected to regard rats as enemies in the struggle to maintain civilisation at all costs. Unsettling and mildly endearing. She liked the quirks and eccentricities of people when it came to relationships with animals. She had encountered geckoes, rabbits, a donkey, a snake and all the usual dogs and cats, in her house-sitting career. They all said something about their owners, and a quiet defiance of convention that pleased her. It was something she suspected Drew did not fully understand. Drew didn’t really engage with animals, she had discovered. But then he had more than enough with his children and his house and his dead people.

The notion of going next door to volunteer her friendship in a time of sadness took another knock at the suspicion that a cold was starting. She knew from experience that sudden shocks were liable to lower a person’s immunity. When Carl had died, she had developed a variety of minor ailments, including
an outbreak of very unappealing acne. She had been tired and headachy for months. If the woman next door was anything like the same, a cold was all too likely to take advantage of her, given half a chance.

She reviewed her plans to seek out and join in with Christmas festivities in the village. By no means a churchgoer, she nonetheless relished a carol service, especially all the old favourites belted out with fervour. Whether she could face a Christmas lunch at The Mount Inn, at a table by herself, was a different matter. She was well provisioned for spending it in the house, if necessary. With the weather predicted to be nondescript – somewhat damp, perhaps, but no snow or ice or downpours or gales – she could take the dogs out for a good run, and savour her release from the routine rituals that had lost almost all their meaning for her when she was about sixteen.

But that was still four days away. First she had to dispel the cold germs, get to know the dog and the rats better, and perhaps read up on some local history.

It was six o’clock and dark when she heard someone at the back door. A muted thump, followed by a gentle voice calling, ‘Hello? Can I come in?’ Before Thea could push Hepzie off her lap and step over Blondie, the voice had come closer. ‘Gloria – you there?’

‘Who’s that?’ She wasn’t scared, but she did feel a surging irritation. It was extraordinarily rude of this person to just march in without an invitation. If she was
such an intimate friend that this was acceptable, then surely she knew that Gloria and Philip had gone away. And why hadn’t somebody thought to lock the door?

‘It’s me, Juliet.’ A soft laugh concluded this introduction, and a tall slender figure came into the room. ‘Oh!’ She stared in evident terror at Thea, but made no move to flee. Afterwards, Thea could not have precisely identified what it was that alerted her to this woman’s condition, but she knew within seconds that there was something askew. The grey eyes that met hers contained panic, but over that lay a sort of resignation, as if fear and unpredictability were the natural order, only to be expected.

‘Hello, my name’s Thea Osborne,’ she said calmly. ‘I only got here today. Did Gloria not tell you about me?’

‘Th-Thea,’ stammered the woman. ‘Oh.’ She stared around the room. ‘Is there a man with you?’

‘No.’

‘Good.’

‘Where do you live, Juliet?’ Aiming for a natural relaxed tone, Thea found herself speaking stiltedly, and wondering frantically what she was supposed to do.

‘I live in Laverton.’ She smiled at the assonance, moving her tongue as if tasting it again. ‘With my mother. We went to the funeral this afternoon, you see. A fiendish funeral, with tears and tantrums. Poor Eva has died. Do you know Eva?’

Thea shook her head in confusion, thrown by the mixture of ordinary conversation and rogue lapses of
logic. ‘I thought it was a man who died. Mr Callendar.’

Juliet frowned. ‘No, it was Eva. She was my cousin and she had cystic fibrosis, the poor girl. Makes you question it all, don’t you think?’

‘Did she live in the house next to this one?’

‘Oh, no, she didn’t.’ Another frown and then a careful laugh, as if there might be a joke somewhere that she’d missed.

‘Was her funeral in the house next door?’

‘Of course not.’ Again a flash of suspicion. ‘What do you mean? It was in the church. How can you have a funeral in a house?’

Thea understood that she had worded her question badly, and that her curiosity was undoubtedly misplaced anyway. ‘You’re quite right, of course. I meant the gathering afterwards. A lot of people came to the house next to this one, this afternoon, in funeral clothes.’

‘Did they? Two funerals, then. Eva was buried in Willersey which is five miles from here. They’re Methodists, you know. Very devout people. They actually believe in God. Don’t you think that’s strange, when science shows us so plainly that such a thing is impossible?’

‘Well …’ Thea was struggling to remain relaxed, to overcome the atavistic fear of insanity that she had not thought existed in herself. Juliet was in her thirties, at least. She was very unlikely to present any danger. She was clearly intelligent. She was also beautiful, with a long Pre-Raphaelite face and very pale skin. She looked
delicate and insubstantial, both mentally and physically.

‘No, but
don’t you
?’ she repeated urgently.

Thea floundered, quite unprepared for a theological discussion. ‘I think science leaves quite a lot yet to be explained,’ she ventured.

Juliet’s face brightened. ‘You’re right!’ she applauded. ‘I was thinking about the flowers. Everybody sent flowers. Red ones, from Africa. Tulips. Roses. Lilies. They all mean something to people. But they’re false as well – do you see? Because they’re grown indoors and flown here on planes, and kept alive artificially. And I thought – they’re the same as religion.’ She lifted her chin triumphantly, as if waiting for an accolade. ‘They’ll just lie there on the grave until they rot. And that’ll be the end of it.’

Thea felt weak. The woman’s words contained plenty of sense, but the delivery was too forceful for the occasion, the facial expression not in balance with the words. ‘Does your mother know you’re here?’ She tried a new topic in cowardly desperation.

Juliet shrugged. ‘I’m later today, because of the funeral,’ she explained. Her accent was pure cut-glass Queen’s English, reminiscent of female newsreaders from the 1950s. Thea felt irritation towards the Shepherds, who had not mentioned the probability of this visitor, who was implying that she showed up every afternoon.

‘It’s dark now,’ she noted. ‘Perhaps you’d better go home.’

‘No, not yet. I can’t go yet, can I? I haven’t played with the girls.’

‘Um …?’

‘Sally and Maisie and Petulia.
You
know.’ She waved an arm at the door into the room at the back of the house. ‘I always come and play with them.’

‘Oh!’ Light dawned. ‘You mean the rats. But Gloria never said anything. She never told me they had a friend.’ Juliet ignored this. ‘What exactly do you usually do with them?’

‘As I said – I play with them. But now it’s so late, it must be their supper time. Will you allow me to feed them?’

‘Actually, I’ve already done them,’ said Thea. ‘But you can go and talk to them, I suppose. Just don’t let my dog in with them. I’m not sure what she might do.’

Only then did the visitor give the spaniel any attention. ‘A spaniel,’ she nodded. ‘Cocker spaniel. Blue roan. Long tail. Mum wouldn’t like that. They really shouldn’t have a long tail. It ruins the look of them.’

‘They don’t dock them so much these days. There are boxers and rottweilers and all sorts with long tails now.’

‘All wrong,’ dismissed Juliet. ‘They look ridiculous.’

This normal-sounding exchange came as a slight reassurance to Thea. Her initial unease began to abate. ‘Shall I make some tea?’ she offered.

The frown returned. ‘Would it be too much to ask you to make some hot chocolate? It’s rather a habit with
me and Gloria. I think you’ll find some in the kitchen.’

‘Okay,’ said Thea slowly. ‘Made with milk or water?’

‘Milk,’ said Juliet firmly. ‘Now I’ll see the girls.’ She went through to the rats’ room, closing the door behind her.

Thea stared after her, aware of a growing resentment at not having been told of this woman’s existence. It was a gross oversight on the part of the Shepherds, by any standards. Was this going to become a daily occurrence? And was Juliet to be trusted with the rats? Blondie had effectively ignored her, which suggested a bored familiarity. And how was she going to get rid of her?

Before even more unsettling questions could arise, there was a brief tentative rap on the front-door knocker, as if a finger had delicately lifted and dropped it. Blondie heard it loud and clear, however, and sat up sharply, giving a staccato bark and kinking her ears forward.

‘Stay here,’ Thea ordered both the dogs, and shut them in the living room. The sense of a series of closed doors, protecting animals from each other and people from them all, made her sigh. She opened the front door slowly, bracing herself for whatever might happen next.

A woman of perhaps seventy stood there, face creased with emotion. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she breathed. ‘But I wonder if you’ve seen my daughter? She comes here sometimes. We were at a funeral, and—’

‘Juliet,’ said Thea. ‘Yes, she’s in with the rats. She asked me to make her some hot chocolate.’

‘Oh, my goodness. I’m
so
sorry. What must you think? She hasn’t done this for
ages.
It’s the funeral, you see, upsetting everything.’

‘Don’t worry. There’s no problem. It’s just …’ she tailed off at the woman’s expression. ‘What? What’s the matter?’

‘We try to keep her away from the rats. They set her off, sometimes. You can understand it, can’t you?’ The woman had a pleading expression. ‘One minute they’re just cute furry pets and then they suddenly seem so sinister. And Juliet’s very sensitive to that sort of thing. Especially today, with the funeral …’ She heaved a profound sigh, as if it was all too much for her.

‘Well, come in and sort it out, will you?’ Thea felt tired and helpless, a mere onlooker in some complex drama that made scarcely any sense.

The woman slowly entered the house and went directly to the back room, evidently quite familiar with the layout of the house. ‘Juliet?’ she called in a voice that suggested more authority than had first been apparent. ‘Come on out of there. You’re not supposed to be here, are you?’ When there was no response, she went into the room. Thea stayed back, hoping she would not have to do anything.