Trouble in the Cotswolds (The Cotswold Mysteries) (6 page)

Higgins thanked him and went back to the car. ‘Come on, then,’ he said. ‘Let’s get you inside. Where’s the key?’

‘In my bag.’ The bag was still in the car, and Higgins
retrieved it, handing it to her with a patient smile. She fished for the door key, which was on a ring with several others.

‘No burglar alarm?’ he asked.

She shook her head, noticing for the first time that the painkillers had finally worked. Instead of the sharp stab that any movement had caused, there was now a sort of muffling fog. ‘It’s all quite simple,’ she said. ‘They’ve got the dog. She looks as if she’s snarling. A burglar would be scared stiff.’

He unlocked the door for her and ushered her in. Hepzie flew down the hallway at them, hurling herself at Thea’s legs, in a flurry of long coat and plumy tail. There was no sign of the Alsatian.

‘I have to go,’ the detective said, apologetically. ‘Get in the warm and have something to eat. I’ll get back to you if they tell me what’s happened to your car, but they’ll send you a text about it, as well. You might have to contact the insurance people. I don’t think the AA are going to cover the cost of draining the engine.’

‘It’ll work all right, will it? I won’t have to have a whole new engine or anything?’

Higgins smiled. ‘Should be okay,’ he said, with a slightly uncertain nod.

Thea heard herself and frowned. ‘I asked that before, didn’t I? I’m scared it’s going to land me with a massive bill.’

‘Worry about that after Christmas,’ he advised. Then he was back in the car, much to Kevin’s relief.
She heard him drive off with a low-geared flourish, heading northwards to Broadway. Or, more accurately, Willersey, which Thea thought was a little way north again, just beyond Broadway. On a fine summer’s day, it would be an easy walk along the well-trodden footpaths and country lanes, to Willersey and back again. Always, on her house-sitting commissions, she promised herself she would use her feet more and get to know the pathways. Somehow, it rarely happened as planned.

She was thirsty, but not hungry. Blondie was curled up in the kitchen looking miserable. Hepzie was stir-crazy, wagging furiously and jumping up at Thea’s legs. Her own feathery limbs were in need of a good brushing, as usual. Thea did a concentrated inventory of the situation. It was nearly two o’clock. Her car had died. She had been lucky with the way Jeremy Higgins had got her out of trouble. It could all be a lot worse, she concluded.

Outside the village was oddly silent. The heavy cloud had not lifted all day, and there was no breath of wind. She opened the back door and chivvied Blondie outside. The big white animal slouched reluctantly to her special corner, cocked her ears briefly at a blackbird on a low branch and then came back again. She sighed deeply. ‘Oh dear,’ said Thea. ‘You’re not happy, are you? I’m not doing a very good job, am I?’ She remembered what the Great Dane woman had said – that Blondie had been to correctional classes, or something of the
sort. Had they somehow taken all the spirit out of her, in the process? She should be out in the open stretches of central Europe, herding cattle or whatever her breed had been intended for. Presumably she was a variation on the German Shepherd, which suggested work with sheep in Bavaria. Or Alsace, she supposed, wherever that was.

Rambling again,
she told herself. The lurking fever that was making her alternate between sweating and shivering was also doing weird things to her thought processes. She boiled the kettle and made a mug of Lemsip with added honey. It was soothing, at least. Later on, she’d make more soup.

Higgins had been very kind. He’d always been nice to her. He knew Phil Hollis very well, of course, and she had no illusions about the degree to which the men had discussed her, when she and Hollis had been an item. Thea knew a number of police detectives in the Gloucestershire constabulary – her favourite being DS Sonia Gladwin. But Higgins had probably been unwise to tell the man next door about her flu. She would become a pariah, especially if nobody in Stanton had yet succumbed to the epidemic. Nobody wanted to be ill at Christmas. If it hadn’t been for that, she might well have enjoyed a visit from some local proselytiser who would invite her to carol services or sherry parties. Now they’d all shun her and leave her to wallow in her own viruses.

She felt lonely and abandoned and not fully in control
of herself. She might dissolve into tears without warning, or fall downstairs, or forget to switch something off. She tried to focus on something outside herself, and landed on the woman next door – paramour of the dead Douglas-the-businessman. Thea had to revise everything she had first assumed about the owner of the house. How old was she? Did she have children? What was she doing for Christmas? Had she and the wife forged an unholy friendship and were at this very moment celebrating the demise of the man they had shared? Had they, she wondered irresistibly, indeed colluded in his murder, as had been suggested by one of the men in the police car? Which one, she had already forgotten. The conversation in the car had faded into a sort of dream, where she could not have accurately reported who said what, or indeed whether much of it had taken place silently inside her own head. Higgins had said something upsetting about her association with violent crimes during her various house-sitting jobs. It was possible, she told herself sternly, to achieve an entire house-sit without getting involved in anything criminal or violent. She had actually managed it a few times. This time, she could simply ignore everything to do with Callendar and his complicated life and death.

She was in the front room, stretched out on the sofa, which stood with its back to the window. Hepzie had used it to perch on while she scrabbled at the curtains. There was a small tear in one of them, Thea noticed, caused almost certainly by her dog. As she fingered it,
thinking it would probably show more if she tried to mend it than if she left it alone, a confusing figure came into view on the pavement outside. Blinking it into focus, Thea recognised the Sherry woman and her huge dog, standing barely a yard away and staring in at her. ‘Can I come in?’ she mouthed exaggeratedly.

Thea hauled herself up and went to open the door. She made no attempt to restrain either of the dogs in her charge, but the woman snatched at her animal’s chain when she saw Blondie in the hallway. ‘Can you shut her in the kitchen or something?’ she asked.

Thea sighed exhaustedly. ‘I’m sure she won’t be a problem,’ she said. ‘She’s too depressed to pick a fight.’

‘Well – if you’re sure.’ She came tentatively into the hall, and Thea shut the door behind her. ‘You don’t look very well,’ the woman commented. Her spine straightened in a businesslike fashion and she removed the blue coat she was wearing, indicating an intention to stay. She hung it on an empty hook which was one of a row, near the front door, and turned back to Thea. ‘I can see you need somebody to help.’

‘No, I’m not very well. I seem to have got flu. You might want to keep your distance.’

To her credit, Cheryl – Thea had finally remembered her name – did not recoil. ‘You poor thing,’ she sympathised, with apparent sincerity. ‘That must make things awkward. Anyway – listen. I saw you just now, in that police car. Did something happen?’

The change in demeanour made Thea wonder
whether her own fuzzy condition was somehow deceiving her. Hadn’t this been a stand-offish person, exuding disapproval, only the day before? Now she was all attention and concern. ‘I put the wrong fuel in my car and it died. Stupid. I’ve never done that before.’

‘I imagine it’s something a person only does once.’

‘Yes.’

‘So what are you going to do? Won’t you need somebody here with you?’

‘I’ll be all right. It’s not very demanding. Blondie can survive without a walk for a day or two.’

‘What about neighbours?’

‘There’s a man on that side, who’s going away tomorrow. And on this side there’s just been a funeral. You knew that, I imagine. Did you go to it?’

Cheryl was scrutinising the room, including the strings of Christmas cards and the well-tended house plants. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I had to be somewhere else.’

‘Did you know the man who died, though? Douglas Callendar. He must have lived right next door, because that’s where everyone came afterwards.’ Then she remembered the gossip in the car and knew she’d got it wrong. There was a complication that would normally present no difficulties. But now her understanding seemed to be clouded with something urgent and physical.

‘Yes, I knew him – not that I ever saw much of him. He never had a lot of time for socialising.’ She sounded slightly bitter to Thea’s ears. ‘But his house isn’t the
one next door,’ Cheryl corrected. ‘He’s got a great big property up towards Snowshill, in the middle of nowhere.’ She was speaking slowly, appearing to Thea to recede in an oddly dreamlike fashion.

‘Yes,’ said Thea weakly. She could feel her knees buckling, as she tried to stand up straight and conduct a normal conversation. ‘Um … I think …’ She felt herself swaying, a rushing sound in her head, and the world went a curious pinky-grey colour.

It wasn’t a proper faint, she insisted to herself. She felt the floor hit her quite hard on her bottom and shoulders. She felt Cheryl’s hands on either side of her head, pressing and shaking in a decidedly unpleasant and unhelpful fashion. She opened her eyes and saw a nightmare vision of a massive dark-grey head, with loose lower lips showing flashes of pink. A long tongue was coming towards her. ‘Caspar – get back,’ said the woman. ‘That’s not going to help, is it?’

But Thea was more grateful to the worried dog than she was to its mistress. She looked into the liquid eyes and wanted to stroke the huge head. ‘Pity he’s not a St Bernard,’ she said, idiotically.

‘You fainted,’ said Cheryl accusingly.

‘I didn’t. I just … I didn’t pass out. I’ll be all right.’ A wave of energising anger swept through her at the
situation. She could not permit herself such weakness. It was embarrassing, humiliating. She sat up. ‘I didn’t have any lunch,’ she said, by way of excuse.

‘You’re shaking. Your skin’s all clammy. You’re incredibly pale.’ Cheryl listed the symptoms dispassionately. She pulled her up and half dragged her onto the sofa where the strings of Christmas cards seemed to cut out the light and loom threateningly over her. ‘Lie down,’ Cheryl ordered. ‘Now, you really must have somebody here with you. What if you fall downstairs or something?’

Thea’s rage grew hotter. ‘There isn’t anybody,’ she said furiously. ‘The world is full of women managing on their own. It’s what we do. Have
you
got somebody to look after you if you catch my flu?’

‘Actually, no,’ Cheryl admitted. ‘A son, with a wife and a child, in Norwich. An ex-husband, with a wife and a child, in Manchester. A sister in Devon.’

‘There you are, then,’ said Thea. ‘We manage on our own. Like I said.’

‘No we don’t. We help each other. Especially at Christmas. It’s a religious festival, after all.’

Thea imagined the woman and her dog moving in for Christmas, she and Thea feverishly cooking a turkey together and pulling crackers. There was a look in her eye that reminded Thea of her brother Damien, who had embraced the Christian life wholeheartedly, some years before. ‘Do we?’ she said, appalled to find herself close to tears.

‘Of course. Aren’t I helping you now?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Thea, too poorly to prevaricate.

‘Listen – I’ll make some tea. I’ll take that dog out into the garden for you. I’ll make one or two phone calls, if you want me to. I’m sure there must be
someone
you can find. Otherwise, the people will have to come back. Gloria and what’s-his-name. Where’ve they gone, anyway?’

‘Bermuda,’ said Thea, with a flicker of satisfaction. ‘They can’t come back. That’s ridiculous.’

‘So … ?’

Thea avoided Cheryl’s eye and said nothing. In an odd way it no longer felt like her problem. She was prepared to struggle on by herself – it was other people who kept saying she couldn’t. After a pause, the woman went into the kitchen and started clattering much more officiously than necessary. Thea let her go, and let her head flop back on the cushions. Cheryl was mid fifties or so, and bossy. Further than that, Thea had not observed, unusually for her. Questions began to form dimly, many of them childishly dreamlike and irrelevant. Why did she possess a Great Dane? Why had she not been at work in the middle of a Friday, instead of walking the dog, when Thea first met her? How well did she know the people of Stanton? Somewhere, behind everything that had happened, there simmered an awareness of the usurper next door who had to be interesting and worth getting to know. Even through her embarrassment at what she’d done to her car, and the headache and the
impatient Kevin, the snippets about the girlfriend of the dead man had taken root in her mind. They waited for her attention. And when she had accorded it, she would want to tell somebody the story.

Not just any old somebody, of course. There was only one person who would properly appreciate the intriguing implications of a mistress taking over the funeral of a man who already had a perfectly viable wife.

When Cheryl came back with two mugs of tea and some fruitcake, Thea stared at her for a moment, wondering whether she would dare ask her to phone him on her behalf. What would she say? What would
he
say? What possible good could come of it? ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘So you don’t know the girlfriend, then?’

‘Who?’

‘Next door. Where they had the funeral party.’ She wasn’t sure how much of this she had already said – or had she just silently thought it? Memory of recent events felt blurred and unreliable.

‘Oh. You were saying something about that when you fainted.’

‘I didn’t faint.’ It seemed important to win that point.

‘I know who she is, but we’ve never had any real contact. I think I should maybe go and talk to her – tell her you’re here and not too good. What did you say about Douglas Callendar? Something I didn’t understand.’

‘After his funeral,’ Thea said, with an effort. ‘They
came back here for the wake. Except, it’s not technically the wake, you know. There isn’t a proper word for what people do these days. The wake is meant to be
before
the burial. It’s a sort of vigil over the body. It’s nothing to do with all that noisy stuff that happens afterwards.’

Cheryl made a sound that hinted at disapproval. Thea suspected she was rambling again, and lapsed into silence. They both drank their tea thirstily.
Must keep up the fluids,
Thea thought, with a sense of obeying an ancient edict. Cheryl finished first and slapped down the mug with an air of firm decision. ‘Right, then. I’ll leave Caspar here for a minute, and pop next door for a word. Won’t be long. You just lie there and rest.’

Thea shook her head half-heartedly. ‘I don’t think we should bother her, though. She’ll be busy with … you know … all that stuff that you have to do when a person dies.’ Then she thought about it. ‘But she won’t, though, will she? She’s not the wife.’

‘You’ve got that right, anyway. But she’ll be a backup for you, if you need someone. It’s down to me to alert her.’ Cheryl spoke with a nurse-like certainty, bringing her hands together in a decisive grip that seemed designed to strengthen her own resolve. ‘You don’t want to have to go the other side if you can help it.’

Thea was puzzled. ‘He seems all right,’ she murmured, but Cheryl wasn’t listening.

‘I’ll go now, all right? I’ll leave the door on the latch. You stay there. Caspar won’t be any bother.’

The three dogs, left to their own devices, had
evidently come to an amicable understanding, out in the hall. Hepzie could be an effective peacemaker at times, squirming submissively on her back, exposing the pink underbelly and causing other dogs to mellow by means of her silliness. Mostly, they just sniffed disdainfully and proceeded to ignore her. Blondie and Caspar might have history, but Thea suspected that Cheryl had exaggerated it. People might be frightened of Alsatians, but in her experience they were generally pretty soft. Blondie’s deceptive snarl must have done her reputation no good at all.

And Great Danes were scarcely dogs at all, by any normal standards. Embarrassed by their own size, only lightly endowed with brains, they strolled along beside their owners thinking their own thoughts and being very little trouble. Thea had known one as a child, and remembered the huge head towering over her, gazing into the middle distance and declining to play.

She couldn’t stop Cheryl, even if she wanted to. Just as she couldn’t stop Higgins going on the same errand to the house on the other side. Passing the buck, essentially, in both cases, she thought irritably. Calling on strangers to watch over her and make sure she lived through the next twenty-four hours or so, when she’d insisted she’d be all right. The whole thing was humiliating. The strangers wouldn’t take kindly to the request – why should they? For a start, they would understandably shy away from the risk of contagion.

She glimpsed a figure passing the front window,
vaguely brown in colour, and assumed it was Cheryl on her mercy mission. Then she closed her eyes for a moment, noticing how giddy that made her feel, and how strange swirling shapes were lurking on the back of her eyelids. She watched them as if hypnotised.

Cheryl was back in what seemed like barely a minute. Thea heard the door slam, and a slight rustling sound which she supposed must be the removal of her coat. Seconds later, she was in the sitting room, breathless and with a puzzled frown on her face. ‘She’s not answering the door,’ she reported. ‘But I can hear voices inside the house.’

‘Maybe the bell doesn’t work.’

‘It does – I heard it. And I knocked as well. Don’t you think that’s odd?’

‘She’s probably too upset. Or drunk. Got the telly turned up loud and wants the world to go away.’ Thea remembered something similar in her own case, when her husband had died.

‘Even so. Don’t people
always
answer the door?’

‘Of course they don’t. There’s no law says you have to. A person’s home is his castle, or whatever it is. You can pull up the drawbridge any time you like.’

‘Well,
I
’ve never done that.’

‘Never mind. You tried. The man on the other side knows about me. It’ll be fine. You must be wanting to get on.’ She sagged after this burst of self-reliance and dignity, but stuck to the point. ‘Honestly. You’ve been very kind.’ She levered herself upright, and prepared to
give up the comfort of the sofa. The role of invalid was already wearing horribly thin.

‘Nosy, more like,’ Cheryl countered. ‘Seeing you in that police car – well, I did wonder …’

Thea’s heart gave a startled thump of suspicion. This woman knew who she was! She knew that Thea Osborne, house-sitter, had a reputation for getting involved in nasty crimes. She had been intrigued and curious, not just about what might be going on in Stanton, but about all Thea’s earlier adventures. The flu had diverted her from what she had really come to discover. She must be feeling very disappointed now. ‘It wasn’t anything interesting,’ she said. ‘Just my poor old car, which has never given me a moment’s trouble.’ She sighed. ‘I expect I’ll be hearing any time now what’s going to happen next about that.’ She stood up, with a faint intention of locating her handbag and telephone, in preparation for returning to normal efficiency.

As if in a kind of cosmic synchronicity, there was a knock at the front door, alerting both Blondie and Caspar, who barked in loud unison. ‘I’ll go,’ said Cheryl, but Thea heaved herself up and followed her. She didn’t like the way the woman was taking over, and she wanted to be sure her spaniel didn’t get embroiled in any skirmishes. If the newcomer also had a dog, things might become complicated. She took a step towards the door, pleased at the return of steadiness.

‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘Let me put the dogs in the kitchen.’ She herded Blondie and Hepzie clumsily into
the room and shut the door. ‘Okay,’ she said.

It was the man from the neighbouring house; the one Higgins had spoken to an hour or so earlier. Thea could see half of him, past Cheryl and her Great Caspar, and heard everything that was said. ‘Oh!’ he began. ‘I was told … I didn’t know you were here. What about the house-sitter? The one with flu?’ Cheryl was holding her dog tightly and Thea saw the man take a step back. ‘I thought I saw her with a spaniel …’

‘That’s right. I’m only here for a few more minutes. I don’t know Mrs … the house-sitter very well at all.’

You’ve even forgotten my name,
thought Thea.

‘I see,’ he said, plainly not seeing at all. ‘So everything’s all right then, is it?’

Thea moved forward. ‘Do you know the woman on the other side?’

A rictus of disdain crossed his big face. He was a portly man, with a double chin and beefy hands. He wore a pale-grey waistcoat and tan-coloured jacket that looked expensive. ‘Only as much as one knows a neighbour,’ he replied pompously. ‘We don’t socialise.’

‘Weren’t you at the funeral do, then, yesterday?’

‘I was at the church, and then I went to support Mrs Callendar, as all right-thinking people should have done. The fiasco next door was a social gaffe, to say the least.’ He threw a look at Cheryl, as if expecting her to agree, before adding more quietly, ‘In any case, what does the funeral have to do with anything?’

Cheryl gave her dog a wholly needless jerk, apparently
wanting to regain centre stage. ‘She’s not answering the door,’ she said.

‘Who? Natasha? I’m not surprised.’ The man had plainly come out of duty because a police detective had asked him to. Further than that, he saw no reason to go. ‘Well,’ he concluded, looking at Thea, ‘My name is Dennis Ireland, and I will be here at least until about ten tomorrow morning. In case of emergency, that is. I wouldn’t want Philip and Gloria to accuse me of neglecting my obligations. I would have taken care of the animals and so forth, if it hadn’t been for my promise to my family. I think they understood that.’ He sounded almost forlorn to Thea, who thought he had a nice face. ‘Do have a good Christmas,’ he finished, with a quaint flick of a finger at an invisible hat.

‘That’s very good of you,’ Thea rewarded him, from behind Cheryl. ‘I am poorly, but not so bad I can’t manage the dog and answer the phone. I’m bound to be better tomorrow. Cheryl was worried about me and called in, that’s all. She’s not staying.’

He had been on the brink of leaving, but he paused, still somewhat confused. ‘You know each other?’

‘No, no, not at all. The
dogs
do.’ Thea laughed at herself. ‘I mean, we bumped into each other yesterday morning, that’s all. She’s been very kind.’ She sighed gently. Kindness was draining when you were on the receiving end of it. Thea sometimes suspected she handled it badly, and should make more effort to receive it gratefully, instead of resisting as she did. She
knew there were claims that it was the chief of all the virtues, but she could never quite see it. The much less arguable case that its opposite was the greatest vice was not enough to convince her.

He departed and they heard the faint sound of his own door closing in the next house. Cheryl released her dog, which mooched aimlessly into the living room and flopped down on the floor. ‘Don’t get settled, my lad,’ its mistress said. ‘We’re going soon.’ She looked at Thea. ‘If you need help, I advise you to opt for Natasha. That
man
is not what he seems.’