A Grave in the Cotswolds (8 page)

‘Her, vaguely, by sight,’ said the cross woman. ‘We live in Chipping Campden, and I think she works in a shop there. It is her, isn’t it?’ she said to her companion.

‘What – in the chemist, you mean?’

‘Right. Don’t remember seeing him, though.’

I looked again at the older couple. He had binoculars slung around his neck, a bizarre detail given the circumstances. Perhaps he had glimpsed the murderer speeding off across the fields, while scanning the area for his woodpecker. His wife was well turned out, her hair neat and her shoes clean. They appeared to be content to stand patiently by, awaiting their moment in the police spotlight. I moved towards them, trying to focus on their plight, thinking I might ask them one or two questions, just for politeness’ sake, but before I could speak, a newly arrived policeman approached me and politely told me to remain where I was, until a more senior officer arrived and questioned me. My head throbbed with the strangeness of what was unfolding around me.

Thea attached herself to my side, the spaniel sitting quietly at her feet, licking a paw as if nothing interesting were going on. Thea’s spaniel was already a permanent part of my image of her, a kind of daemon, automatically going everywhere with her. Except she had not been at the funeral the day before – left in the car or Mrs Simmonds’ house, I supposed.

‘Murder,’ I managed to mutter. ‘Murder most foul.’

‘I wasn’t going to look,’ she said. ‘I forgot, when Jessica said about the stone. It’s pretty awful, isn’t it?’

I nodded. ‘Poor chap.’

‘I suppose you’re used to it – seeing broken and bloody bodies, I mean.’

‘Not really. I mean…you could never exactly get used to it, and I’ve never encountered one so…well,
fresh
.’

‘Mm.’ She turned away, her lips pulled back, her nostrils flexing, creating a vivid expression of disgust and distress.

‘I didn’t do it, I promise you.’ It seemed important to say it, to make every effort to keep her on my side. ‘The thing is, he probably had quite a few enemies if he was the same with everyone else as he was with me. I suppose I shouldn’t say it, but he did seem a bit of a pest.’

‘But it happened
today
,’ she almost moaned. ‘That’s the trouble.’

‘Yes. And your daughter’s convinced she’s solved it before he’s even cold.’

‘I’m so sorry. Jessica isn’t really as – well,
rigid
as she seems. She’s actually perfectly nice.’

‘I believe you,’ I said with a tight smile at this endearing attempt at fairness. ‘I’m sure it’s all my own fault.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ she smiled back.

But I meant it. It did feel as if I’d brought it all down on myself somehow or other. I
should
have made sure the car was legal, for a start. As I traced events back, this seemed an important element. With new tyres and current tax disc, Jessica would never have spoken to me. I would have bade farewell to Thea with no further conversation, and therefore not have been invited to join them for lunch. And I definitely should have checked that Mrs Simmonds was the rightful owner of that field. That, more than anything, now appeared crucial. I’d been sloppy and negligent, and see where it had got me.

I shrugged. ‘Logically, I think I’m right,’ I told my new friend. ‘But thanks for sticking up for me.’

We walked up and down the road, with an idea of keeping the dog occupied, but could not avoid repeated glances at the crime scene. One of the first procedures was to erect a sort of tent over the body, which was made difficult by the strong wind, corners of it flapping wildly. I found myself hoping that any particles that might have come from me during my earlier encounter with Mr M had already blown away. At least, I thought glumly, there could be none of Mr Maynard’s blood anywhere on my person.

A man arrived and, after a few false starts, was accosted by Jessica and apprised of the situation. She indicated me, where I remained on the verge, beginning to feel rather shivery. He walked up to me, his eyes narrow. ‘Detective Inspector Basildon,’ he introduced himself. ‘I understand you are Mr Drew Slocombe.’

‘Right,’ I agreed, resisting the impulse to put out a hand for him to shake.

‘And you can identify the deceased?’

I shrugged self-effacingly. ‘Mr Maynard from the council – that’s all I know.’

‘And that’s very helpful, sir.’

‘And I might as well tell you I walked through this gate, over more or less the exact spot where he is now, at about twelve-fifteen today.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ he said, with an impressively straight face.

‘I’m an undertaker, and I live in Somerset,’ I carried on, intent on getting the basics out of the way. ‘I conducted a funeral here yesterday, in a field a short distance from this spot. There was a problem over ownership of the land and I was called back today – a round trip of a hundred and twenty miles – to be told off by Mr Maynard. Officer Osborne witnessed Mr Maynard walking away after our conversation, and I told her afterwards that I wished people like him didn’t exist.’ It felt wonderful, like drinking whisky on an empty stomach. The detective scribbled busily on a notepad. ‘You can check the last part, because he used the police to get me back here. I mean…a police officer came to my house this morning and told me I needed to come and speak to Mr Maynard face-to-face.’

‘That must have been annoying,’ he said, with a straight look.

‘Very,’ I said. ‘But not to the point of committing murder. I expect I should add that I absolutely did not kill him.’

‘You’ll appreciate that I can’t comment on that, sir.’ I wondered, with a belated pang of anxiety, just how much of police work these days was performed by computers. Would there be a box to tick that said
Suspect seems genuinely innocent
, even if there were glaringly incriminating means, motive and opportunity? They’d have the evidence of my footprints beside the body, my stupid absence to make needless phone calls, my rage against the deceased. A computer might think that was ample proof of my guilt. I expected to be arrested there and then.

But the detective inspector remained calm. ‘Could I take your address and other details, sir? I’m sure you’ll understand that we will need to speak to you again, given the circumstances.’

It was a relief not to be driven away in handcuffs, so I rattled off my address and phone numbers with alacrity. ‘I can go home, then, can I?’ I asked.

He frowned at the page in his notebook. ‘Might be best if you stick around here for a day or so, just to be on the safe side. We’ll need a full interview with you, later today. Please do not change your shoes or any other clothes.’

‘I couldn’t if I wanted to,’ I said. ‘I haven’t brought anything with me.’

‘Well, we’ll make it as soon as possible. We’ll be setting up an incident room somewhere close by, to make it easier for the local people. Do you know where Mr Maynard lived?’

‘No idea, but I suppose it’s around here somewhere. He didn’t appear to have a car when we met at the grave, so it’s probably within walking distance.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ he said, with one eyebrow lifting at the way I was practically doing his job for him. I was being a trifle
too
cooperative, I feared. Falling over myself to assist the enquiries might lead to an interpretation of guilt as much as strenuous obstruction would have done. I quailed inwardly at the impossibility of my situation. Whatever I did would be open to suspicious interpretations, if there was already a presumption that I was guilty.

‘Those people don’t know him, then?’ I asked, indicating Mr and Mrs David and the women in the car. They’d been kept hanging about for well over an hour by that time.

DI Basildon merely shook his head and pursed his lips, to indicate that I had no business asking such questions.

I reviewed what he had said to me.
A day or so
was alarmingly vague. Where was I going to stay? ‘Until when do I have to stay here, exactly?’ I pressed him. ‘If you interview me today, can I go home after that?’

‘Impossible to say,’ he smiled. ‘Depends what we find here, for a start. Early days,’ he added inscrutably and very annoyingly. ‘“Assume the worst,” is my advice.’

I looked to Thea, as the most reassuring face I could find. She didn’t fail me. ‘You could stay in Mrs Simmonds’ house with me, I suppose,’ she said. ‘There are three bedrooms, all ready to use.’

‘Now, there’s an offer,’ said the policeman, every bit as crassly as Detective Paul would have done if he’d heard Thea’s words. Already the damage was done.

I shook my head regretfully. ‘I can’t do that,’ I said, thinking of how Karen would react if she heard I’d been alone in a house with a woman as lovely as Thea Osborne, for a whole night. People assumed the worst, just as this DI bloke advised them to. And their thoughts changed the reality; they jumped into my own head, whether I liked it or not. ‘There must be plenty of B&B places around here.’ My mind was buzzing with worries, self-reproaches and obligations. ‘I told Karen I’d be back before dark,’ I said, to nobody in particular. I hated to break a promise – an undertaker above all had to be reliable.

The DI moved away to speak to Jessica, and then the women in the car, who were finally given permission to go on their way. Mr and Mrs David were also permitted to drive off, with promises of a call by a police liaison officer very soon, to make sure they were all right. It was an improvement, I supposed, on the olden days when witnesses were left to their own devices, regardless of the trauma they might have suffered. The police force was awash with a range of civilian and semi-civilian personnel who participated in almost every aspect of the work, with the idea of keeping everybody happy. My friend – and Maggs’s husband – Den Cooper had found himself just such a post after leaving his job as a full-time police constable. A bit like a dysfunctional marriage, where the couple can’t live together, but neither can they live apart, with Den incapable of abandoning law enforcement altogether.

‘Come on,’ Thea urged me. ‘At least come back to the house for a cup of tea – assuming the power’s still on. I’ve had enough of this. I don’t want to be here when they remove the body.’

Remove the body
was the phrase used by undertakers. Had she uttered it by chance, or did she know the routines and practices of the funeral business from personal experience? I remembered that she was a widow, with several close connections to the police force. Even so, it seemed surprising to me that she should use those words. It was tempting to think she had done it in order to offer me a kind of solidarity, an antidote to the isolation I was feeling.

As always, I found myself wondering about my alien status in society. I could go along for weeks, thinking I was just a normal bloke, chatting with ordinary people, taking the kids to school, going to the shops, and then something would happen to remind me that I was actually a pariah. I handled dead bodies; I kept them in a room that was part of my own house. I performed mysterious and dreadful acts on their lifeless corpses, seeing them naked and undignified. Even the vibrantly alive young mums at the school gate were aware of this, and kept me subtly at arm’s length. I think every one of them had visualised herself in one of my coffins, helplessly at the mercy of my sinister tools. ‘Thanks,’ I said to Thea. ‘That sounds nice.’

It wasn’t until we were in the house that I had another good look at Thea as she bent down to unclip the dog lead from her spaniel’s collar. Her face was at an odd angle, foreshortened, giving her an elfin appearance. But it was the fact that her lips were quivering that really struck me. When she stood up again, she dashed a finger under one eye, and sniffed.

I had seen enough women close to tears to grasp instantly what was going on. ‘Are you OK?’ I asked.

‘Oh, God, I’m sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘Take no notice. Don’t, for heaven’s sake, be nice to me or I’ll be a complete mess.’

‘Easier said than done,’ I warned her. ‘Besides, crying doesn’t bother me. Don’t bottle it up on my account.’

She laughed then, a little explosive laugh that seemed to disperse the oncoming tears. ‘I’m fine, really. I just felt so sorry for that man, bleeding to death in a gateway. Somebody must have hated him intensely to do that to him.’

‘I can’t pretend to have liked him,’ I confessed. ‘I thought he was a hidebound little time-server, with a complete absence of common sense.’

She laughed again. ‘None of which would make you want to kill him,’ she said with total confidence.

‘No more than I wanted to kill your wretched Jessica,’ I ventured, aware of stepping over a line.

‘I told you – she’s not usually so bad. Trying to impress the boyfriend, I suppose.’

‘Wasting her time there,’ taking another step into forbidden territory.

‘In more ways than one,’ she agreed. ‘I liked him at first – you know how it is. The mere idea of her having a handsome black boyfriend went to my head. It’s only now I’ve started to see him for what he really is, to my shame. And I don’t think he’s actually very nice. There’s a coarseness to him, somehow.’

‘I noticed,’ I said.

‘It makes me feel lonely,’ she said softly and completely ingenuously. It was as if she had only that moment identified the feeling.

I thought about it. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know how that goes.’ My own little moment of insight had struck me between the eyes. That was what
I
had been feeling, ever since Karen’s injury, without ever putting a word to it. The shock of this shared revelation made me weak.

‘I suppose it’s the same for everybody,’ said Thea bravely. ‘When it comes right down to it. Like Mrs Simmonds. She was definitely lonely. You could see it in her eyes.’

It was a clever move, and I followed it with a mixture of relief and disappointment. At least, I hoped I did. ‘Are you really staying another night here?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you want to go home?’

She brought her elbows tightly into her sides, clutching herself in an agony of indecision. ‘Oh, I don’t know. It is rather bleak here. Charles is sure to get everything turned off at any moment. But now this has happened, I don’t think I can leave. I know it’s none of my business, and I’ll only get in the way, but I think I will have to hang on, just for another day or so.’