Shadows in the Cotswolds (24 page)

‘Come on, then.’

They walked up to the main street and turned left, instinctively seeking the near-familiarity of the Plaisterers Arms. ‘It’s such a
waste
,’ Thea burst out. ‘A waste of a beautiful dog, I mean.’

‘Yes, it is. But animals die every day, lovely animals. It’s always there, in the background, even for me. I’ve never lived on a farm or even had many pets, but I feel it, just the same. All those cows and pigs, killed for us to eat. And badgers and rabbits on the roads. You know – I think that’s the single most dreadful thing about life on this planet, the way we torture animals. It’s the one we can’t bear to face up to.’

‘Gosh, Mum,’ Thea laughed shakily. ‘Where did that come from, all of a sudden?’

‘I’ve always thought it, from a girl. Hunters shooting bears and tigers; men on boats harpooning whales; Italians shooting little birds out of the sky; it just goes on and on, an endless list of cruelty and killing. It makes me hate the whole human race.’

‘Horses in the First World War is the one that gets to me – and I don’t even
like
horses very much.’

‘You don’t have to like them. What about rats in laboratories, and being poisoned because they eat the cattle feed? And those poor cane toads in Australia. I don’t expect they’re very nice, but people think it’s fine to be unspeakably cruel to them.’

‘Stop it. It’s too depressing to think about.’

‘My point exactly. We can’t bear to face our own wickedness.’

The drift into philosophy had managed to divert Thea from the specific anguish over Blodwen and her surely distraught owner. ‘I don’t feel up to seeing Jenny,’ she admitted, after walking a short way in silence, Hepzibah trotting discreetly at her heel, dimly aware that she was not in her mistress’s best books, for some reason.

‘I wouldn’t think she’d want to see us, either. It perhaps wasn’t such a good idea, anyhow.’

It was a little after midday when they entered the pub, and the place was deserted. Thea looked down at herself again and flinched at the sight of her messy clothes. ‘I’m not sure …’ she began, but her mother had already started talking to the man at the bar.

‘I’ve ordered you a brandy,’ she announced. ‘And we’ll sit here in this cosy corner. Nobody’s going to care about your clothes.’

Thea was forced to concede that this was undoubtedly true – since there was nobody else in the place
to
care. Only when sitting down did she become fully aware of how shaken she had been. Her spaniel put both front paws on her knee, gazing into her face with large liquid eyes. ‘Down, Heps,’ said Thea feebly. ‘There’s a good dog.’

She briefly stroked the soft head, and flipped a long black ear through her fingers, in the old automatic
gesture. Hepzie seemed satisfied, and slumped onto the floor with a sigh.

‘Brandy seems terribly decadent,’ she protested. ‘In the middle of the day.’

‘It’s what you need. That horsebox might easily have crashed down on you. My heart was in my mouth.’

‘So
you
need a brandy as well.’

‘I certainly do,’ agreed her mother. ‘Possibly two.’

‘It couldn’t have tipped over, though. Not while it was attached to the truck. I wasn’t in any danger.’

‘Fraser would call it a “ute”,’ said Maureen, with a fond smile. ‘That’s what they have in Australia. Huge great things, apparently, that cost a fortune to run. People take them into the outback, with very luxurious camping stuff. It’d be nice to see it. He says it’s incredibly beautiful down there. He showed me some slides he took when he first went out. It does look wonderful.’

‘Phil Hollis has been to Australia,’ said Thea. ‘Queensland. He didn’t like it much.’

‘Fraser says it’s much better in the west. Less conformist, apparently.’

The idle chat was soothing, and combined with the brandy was serving to settle Thea’s nerves. The sadness over the dog was already more bearable than it had been fifteen minutes earlier. But she found that any thought of food was repugnant. ‘We’re not having lunch here, are we?’ she said. ‘I don’t think I could face it.’

‘Leave it a little while, then. There’s no rush. We don’t have to be anywhere.’

It was true, and yet Thea felt uneasy at the idea of spending hours in a pub, when outside there was murder and misery swirling all around. She patted her pocket, reassured to feel her phone still in place. If anything drastic happened, somebody might phone her, she thought, pulling it out and switching it on. ‘What’s that for?’ asked her mother.

‘I just thought … Gladwin might want me.’
Or Drew
, she added silently.

‘I’ve got mine as well.’ Her mother prodded the shoulder bag she’d brought with her. ‘Lucky I put my purse in, or we wouldn’t be able to pay for the drinks.’

There seemed to be nothing to say. It was like being at the eye of a hurricane, waiting for the next onslaught. Except that it was an erratic sort of storm, coming and going unpredictably. Only an hour ago, she and her mother had been so happy, never guessing that a dog was about to die and plunge them into sadness.

Maggs wouldn’t be back yet. Would she tell Drew about her meeting with Thea? What would his reaction be? Did he resent his partner’s influence over his life, needing her permission before he did anything? Or was it not like that at all? Would he collapse completely without Maggs at his side?

And Gladwin? What was she doing at that precise moment? Thea felt a sense of obligation towards the
detective, a need to be available at a moment’s notice, just like any paid employee.

There was a small television behind the bar, which had been switched off when they arrived. Now the barman, apparently in an effort to add some cheery distraction to the place, turned it on. A news reporter was speaking, from in front of the Old Bailey. The name ‘Meadows’ crashed into the quiet bar like a small bomb.

‘Oh, my goodness,’ said Maureen, her hand to her mouth. ‘What’s happened now?’

It took them a few moments to decipher the story. An old man was speaking to camera, with a quiet dignity that had plainly magnetised everyone around him. ‘Whoever might have killed her, it had nothing to do with my family,’ he said.

‘He means Melissa, of course,’ said Thea. ‘But how does he
know
?’

Maureen slowly caught up. ‘That must be Cedric,’ she realised. ‘He doesn’t look much like the others, does he?’

‘Oliver’s collapsed – is that what they said? The trial’s been suspended. So what happens now? He’ll come home, I suppose, if he’s well enough.’

‘I must go to Fraser,’ her mother announced urgently. ‘I really must go to him right away.’ She stood up, her face pinched with worry. ‘I
told
him to stay away from all that nastiness. It’s got nothing whatever to do with him.’

‘That’s what Cedric just said,’ Thea remarked. ‘And yet surely it can’t be true.’

Her mother was unstoppable. Thea followed her out of the bar, into a town square that was suddenly bright with sunshine. ‘But how will you get there?’ she protested. ‘What’s the hurry? Do you want me to take you to a station? The only one I know is at Moreton. It isn’t far away.’

‘Yes, yes. A station.’

‘To London? Are you going to London?’

‘Yes. No. I suppose so. Wherever Fraser is.’

‘We don’t know where he is. He might have gone home to Mo’s by now. Calm down, Mum. Stop and think for a minute.’

But at that moment the storm came back, and there was no time for thinking.

It began fairly quietly, with a minor kerfuffle in the pub doorway, in which a man tried to step around Hepzie and got entangled in her lead. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ Thea apologised, trying to unwind them.

‘For God’s sake,’ snapped the man. ‘Get out of the way, will you.’

‘Just stand still a minute,’ Thea ordered, as if to the dog. But since the spaniel was meekly waiting for release and the man was hopping and twisting, he rightly assumed the instruction could only apply to him.

‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ he shouted.

‘We’re in a hurry,’ put in Thea’s mother.

The man jerked roughly and Thea dropped the lead. Aware of her freedom, Hepzie darted forward into the square, where cars were parked. Cravenly she scuttled
underneath a silver Peugeot and crouched quiveringly out of reach.

‘Satisfied?’ snarled Thea at the man, and ran to retrieve the dog.

It was accomplished without much difficulty, Thea’s mother eventually snatching at the trailing lead and hauling the dog out from just below the number plate. ‘Come here, you silly thing,’ she said. ‘There’s no time for this.’

Thea found herself staring at the car’s registration. ‘
RE08BEN
’ she read aloud. ‘And look what somebody’s done to the zero – added a screw or something, to make it more like a U. Look, Mum! Is it just me, or is it trying to look like
REUBEN
? With two Bs, though. That rather spoils it.’

Maureen stood back for a look. ‘I would never have guessed,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you being rather fanciful?’

‘Don’t you think it could be what Melissa had written on her hand, though? I wonder whose car it is?’

‘It must be Reuben’s – but why is it parked here, when he only lives around the corner?’

‘Hmm. It’s got something stuck on it – see. A parking ticket, presumably. Which means it must have been here …’ Thea peered more closely at the
plastic-encased
missive. ‘There’s a date – the sixteenth. That was yesterday.’

‘Wouldn’t it have been towed away by now? I thought the police were checking all the cars, anyway.’

‘Yes, that’s right. They were. And this must surely have attracted their notice.’

‘Especially if it does belong to Reuben.’

‘But you don’t have to pay to park here on a Sunday, so it might just have come up as belonging to a local resident, when they ran the check, so it escaped their notice. Once Reuben’s body was found, they went on to something else and stopped worrying about cars.’ Thea was hypothesising wildly, her detective instincts suddenly activated. ‘It’s possible,’ she finished, rather lamely.

‘Well, never mind now. I want to get moving.’

‘No, Mum. I have to call Gladwin, and tell her about it. I can’t believe it’s not important.’

‘Afternoon, ladies,’ came a voice from the pavement behind them. ‘Can I be of service?’

‘Jason!’ gasped Maureen. ‘What are you doing here?’

The man grinned cheerily at her. ‘Mo sent me. She thought you might be in need of some wheels. And the old man’s pining for you, so she says.’

‘Where did you go on Sunday?’ Thea challenged him. ‘You just disappeared. The police—’

He spread his hands ingenuously. ‘Tell me about it. The phone’s been red-hot. How was I to know you’d fall over a dead body the minute I let you out of my sight?’

‘Come on, Jason. I’m not that stupid. You made yourself scarce for a reason. Nobody had an idea where you’d gone.’

‘Listen.’ He put his face close to hers. ‘There were a few things in the back of my car that I didn’t want people to see, okay? I got back to the high street here after looking at the trains, and saw the rozzers gathering, so had a quick look to see what was going on – just walked down to the end of that Silk Whatsit Street. I saw you two and the uniforms and thought I should keep my head down. When Mo didn’t show, I reckoned she’d get a ride with her dad, no trouble, so I went off on my own. No great mystery to it. Don’t know why you set the law on me like you did.’

‘They found you, then?’

‘As I said, only on the phone. Seems I wasn’t near as suspicious a character as you made them think.’ He turned to Maureen. ‘Now, milady, can I drive you to a reunion with your beloved? That’s what I came for. I was just about to turn down your road when I spotted you here. Couldn’t miss that pretty doggie, could I?’

Thea struggled to find further flaws in his story. Whilst having no real fear that he had committed murder, or even behaved violently, she could still not believe him. ‘Did something happen?’ she asked. ‘After you left us to go to the museum?’

‘Not a thing,’ he said forcefully. ‘I told you.’

‘I will go with you, if it’s all right with Thea,’ said her mother. ‘It’s rather a godsend, actually. We were going to have to find me a train, otherwise. Where is Fraser now?’

‘Back at Mo’s. Silly old lad went off to London first
thing, and upset his brother so much they had to stop the trial. It was all over by ten, as far as I can see. He got home somehow – from Paddington, I s’pose – and phoned from the station. Mo says he’s in quite a state.’

‘But it’s only half past twelve now. How did you get here so quickly?’ Thea could not help but question.

‘There you go again. I was on the road, Burford way, when Mo called me. There’s such a thing as mobiles now, you know. Sent me over here asap.’

‘But she told us you never use a mobile.’ It was Maureen’s turn to doubt him. ‘Said you thought it would make you into a caricature.’

Jason rolled his eyes. ‘Blimey! Spanish Inquisition’s got nothing on you two, has it! I keep one in the car, all right? Hands-free, ten years old. Only works when it’s in the right mood. Only two people even know the number, and one of them’s Mo.’

Thea refrained, with difficulty, from asking who the other was. He told her anyway. ‘And the other is Janice, my assistant. She handles the caravan park, bookings and so forth. About three times a year she needs to check something with me, so she calls me. Otherwise she can manage it all herself when I’m not there. Just like in the olden days.’

Thea laughed. There really was something very endearing about the man. ‘All right, you win,’ she said. ‘Take my mother off with you, if you must.’

‘You trust me with her, then, do you?’

‘She’s old enough to look after herself. We’ll walk
down to the house and meet you there, shall we?’

‘Um … yeah, okay.’ It was the rapid glance to his rear, and then across the street that alerted Thea. All her reluctant faith in him evaporated in an instant. He was afraid of being seen; afraid of spending another minute in Winchcombe. But she said nothing, feverishly calculating what her next move should be.

‘She’ll have to pack up her things. Give us fifteen minutes or so. Have you had any lunch?’

He shook his head. ‘I thought we could stop somewhere on the road.’

‘Okay. Well, we’ll be as quick as we can. You can wait outside for us. It’ll only slow us down if you come in and we get talking.’ It sounded feeble in her own ears, but he seemed to accept it.

‘I’ll get the motor and find somewhere to park, then,’ he nodded. ‘Might be further down, by those big gates.’

‘We’ll find you,’ said Thea.

The moment they were around the corner, Thea called Gladwin, hoping desperately that she would respond quickly. The countless possibilities as to where she might be and what she might be doing were dizzying.

But the detective answered on the second ring. ‘Thea? What’s the matter?’

‘Jason’s here. He says he came to fetch Mum and take her to Fraser, but he’s acting oddly. I don’t think I should let her go with him.’

‘Hey!’ protested Maureen. ‘What are you saying about me?’

‘Where, exactly?’ asked Gladwin.

‘We’re in Vineyard Street, going back to Oliver’s house. We said we’d meet him in fifteen minutes. I don’t know what he’ll do if we don’t show up.’

‘Are you scared?’

Thea hesitated. ‘Not exactly. I just don’t think we should let him get away again. He says the police haven’t seen him, just spoken on the phone.’

‘That’s true, but it’s not the whole story. We haven’t had
time
, do you see? It’s all happening so quickly.’

‘So …?’

‘Stall him as long as you can. I can’t come for a bit yet, but I’ll send Jeremy. He can keep him talking until I get there. I’m working on something at the moment …’ A faint voice apparently spoke to her in her other ear. ‘Yes … I’m coming,’ she said before returning to Thea. ‘Do you know what his car looks like?’

Thea removed the phone from her ear and asked her mother. ‘What sort of car does Jason drive?’

Maureen’s eyes widened helplessly. ‘Goodness, I don’t know. We should have asked him, shouldn’t we? I think it’s black, and fairly old.’

Thea reported these scrappy details, and added that he was planning to wait by the gates into Sudeley Park.

‘Jeremy will find him,’ said Gladwin. ‘See you in a bit.’

She was never to know just what DI Jeremy Higgins said to Jason, what he threatened him with, or how he appealed to his better nature. But the two of them appeared at Thistledown within half an hour of the phone call to Gladwin, and asked if they could come in.

‘Mr Padgett and I will wait here, if that’s all right,’ said Higgins, with a quick smile. ‘The DS is going to want to talk to him.’

Jason was a shadow of his former self. His head hung heavy and he could barely raise his gaze from the floor. ‘Oh,’ said Thea. ‘Oh, dear. What has he done?’

‘One thing at a time, Mrs O,’ said Higgins, deftly reminding her that the two of them had a bit of history; enough for a certain degree of informality, but not enough to warrant any breach of protocol. ‘Least said the better, for the moment.’

Thea’s mother was less forbearing. ‘But I want to
go
,’ she insisted. ‘Jason said he’d take me. I’ve been ready for ages.’

‘Why don’t you phone Fraser and tell him you’ll come as soon as you can?’ Thea suggested. ‘I don’t expect this will take long.’

Her confidence was far less stalwart than she made it sound, but the prospect of her mother nagging and chafing for the rest of the afternoon was too grim to ignore. There was a chance that Fraser would reassure her that he was in good hands and could easily wait another day if necessary before they were reunited.

The phone call took place upstairs and took a long time. Before it was finished, Gladwin had arrived. In stark contrast to her previous visit, she was composed and collected. ‘Ah, Mr Padgett,’ she greeted Jason. ‘Just the man I’ve been wanting to meet.’

Jason shuffled his feet like a teenager and mumbled, ‘Don’t know why.’

‘Yes you do, sir. Don’t let’s be silly about it. Now, I think the best thing would be for you to come with us to see Mrs Hardy, don’t you? You can tell her what happened on Sunday morning, and we can get it all straight, in one fell swoop, so to speak.’

Thea’s ears pricked up at this, and she took a step forward. ‘Um …’ she said. ‘Does this involve me at all?’

Gladwin gave her a look. ‘Not really, love. That is … you
were
at the scene, of course. I’m guessing you’d like to be in on it, if that’s possible.’ She glanced at Higgins. ‘What d’you think, Jeremy?’

‘Mrs Osborne might well have a contribution to make,’ he said. ‘And I dare say she’ll know when to keep quiet.’

‘Mum – can you stay here with Hepzie? Is that okay?’

‘Doesn’t seem as if I’ve got any choice,’ said Maureen ungraciously. ‘Does it?’

‘Won’t take long, with any luck,’ Gladwin breezed. ‘Come on, then. We may as well walk.’

They followed the identical route to that taken earlier by Thea and her mother – the walk that had been aborted by the horrible death of Jenny’s puppy. Thea wondered whether she should try to tell Gladwin about that, before turning up at the Silk Mill Lane house. It seemed unkind to all concerned to remain silent, but she had been obliquely warned not to talk, and the story was too raw to simply spill out in a few words.

Jeremy remained in the street outside, while they walked up to the Hardy residence. Jenny opened the door warily, her eyes swollen and red. ‘What do you want?’ she asked. ‘Can’t I have
any
peace?’

Thea had not seen the woman since Sunday evening, when she had turned up with Reuben. She wasn’t sure that she would have recognised her, except for the hair, and even that seemed to have faded and flattened during the intervening days.

‘Mrs Hardy, we have here a witness to your husband’s final moments, and we thought he should come and tell you about it himself,’ said Gladwin.

‘What’s
she
doing here?’ Jenny glared from Thea to Jason. ‘If this bloke’s your witness. Who is he, anyway? I don’t know him.’

‘His name is Mr Jason Padgett, and he was in your street yesterday morning. If we can come in, he’ll tell you all about it himself.’

Jason was somehow urged forward, and the four of them collected in the small living room. Thea edged
herself towards the large window and found herself looking straight down into the woodland surrounding Oliver Meadows’ hide. It only required that she angle her head slightly to get a perfect view.

‘Go on, Mr Padgett,’ Gladwin encouraged. ‘I’m sure Mrs Hardy is anxious to hear what you have to say.’

‘Right. Well …’ Jason coughed. ‘Well, I was planning to go and see the railway museum, on the Greet Road, and I
did
go, just so people there could say they’d seen me, if it came to asking questions, and I only stayed ten minutes or so.’

‘You wanted an alibi,’ Gladwin said flatly.

‘No, no. Not really. I mean …’

‘Mr Padgett, you’ll need to start from the beginning. Where did you go when you left Thistledown House?’

‘To get my car. I’d parked it down a narrow little street. It turns out it was this one – Silk Thingy – up the far end.’

Everybody nodded, even Jenny, who was on the edge of her settee, eyes fixed on Jason’s face. He sat forward in an unconscious imitation of her, but avoided her gaze.

‘So, it was at the far end, as I say, and before I reached it, I’d come across this geezer, staggering round like a drunkard. “Steady on, mate,” I says. “You’ll fall down if you carry on like that.” He was in that little alleyway by then, wheeling about and holding his guts.