Trouble in the Cotswolds (The Cotswold Mysteries) (23 page)

‘So why kill Natasha?’ Thea demanded, hooked by his revelations, in spite of herself. ‘It would make more sense to kill Marian.’

‘She tried to make it look as if Marian was the killer. That way, she’d get her revenge on them both. But she wasn’t clever enough …’ He gasped again. ‘…Were you, old dear?’ He leant towards the prostrated woman with a sneer. ‘If it had been the other way around, Natasha would have made a brilliant fist of it. You never did have much of a brain, compared to some.’

Cheryl hissed and struggled to sit up. ‘Keep still, for God’s sake,’ Thea told her, feeling sullied by both the injured people, and their blatant mutual hatred. A key factor remained at the forefront of her mind. ‘Why didn’t you report him for the rape, if he’d admitted it to you?’ she asked. ‘Didn’t you owe that to Juliet? To society in general?’

‘She knows it would never have stuck,’ he panted. ‘She invented the whole stupid story because I resisted her advances. The oldest cliché in the book – the woman scorned.’

It rang true to Thea, but she was still suspicious. ‘And how the hell did
you
know so much about everything that’s been going on?’ she demanded.

‘I know most things that happen around here. I’m on all the relevant committees. Finger in every pie. And I can work a computer.’

‘So?’

He groaned in pain and failed to respond.

And then the ambulance arrived, without siren or fanfare, and everything was flooded with light and efficiency, and Caspar was unceremoniously bundled into the house by two hefty paramedics.

Three hours later, Thea crawled into bed, having given the dogs and rats the minimum attention required to sustain life until next morning. At least twenty-seven questions threatened to keep her awake until Christmas Day dawned. Did Cheryl kill one, two or three people? Who would take care of Caspar? Could she believe Dennis’s assurances that he definitely had not raped Juliet? What was happening to Richard? Where had they taken the mare and her new foal? Where was the brown coat? Had Marian really destroyed the embryo in the flask? And if so, how did Cheryl know about it? How well did all these people know each other? What had happened at the pub to demand Gladwin’s presence that afternoon? And a whole lot more. Some answers had been peripherally supplied in the course of arguments and accusations that had flown to and fro since Richard had appeared on the doorstep. The phial had contained a horse embryo, which had to be the most bizarre element in the whole picture. The brown coat, rightfully belonging to Gloria Shepherd and whiffing of cigarette smoke, was probably in a washing machine somewhere.

She had tried in vain to get more information from DI Higgins when he arrived in Wood Stanway twenty minutes after the ambulance and ten minutes after two uniformed officers. He insisted, with some justification, that his own questions took priority. He made her go with him to the police station in Gloucester and tell the whole story of how she came to be in the tiny hamlet with two injured people. He made no allowances for flu or Christmas or events earlier in the week.

But somehow, during the whole process, assisted by the young police officer Kevin, who sat with her for half an hour before her interview, the central question did get answered. Kevin was a born detective, she realised. He knew all the local gossip and how people connected. With no suggestion that Thea was under suspicion of anything other than recklessness, he saw no reason not to chat freely to her. He assured her that Cheryl, who had not broken her neck, but was suffering from a serious concussion, had certainly killed Natasha Ainsworth and for the very simple reason – as Dennis Ireland had begun to explain – that she hated her. She hated her for being everything that Cheryl herself was not. Cheryl had seen the mourners gathering at the house after the funeral, in defiance of any decent moral behaviour, thus providing the final straw. She had heard Natasha rubbish her perfectly reasonable request for a minor diversion of the footpath. Everybody loved her, including Sebastian, object of Cheryl’s thwarted devotion. Sebastian had to be fifteen years younger than
Cheryl, if not rather more – a relationship that could at best have been precarious. Natasha was even older, and loved, not as a potential partner but as a lifelong family friend, trusted with their secrets and tolerated as their father’s mistress. Cheryl disapproved. She came from Methodist stock and maintained a set of old-fashioned values that alienated her from almost everyone.

‘Methodist?’ Thea interrupted. ‘Like Rosa and Juliet Wilson?’

‘They go to the same chapel.’

‘Cheryl said Dennis Ireland raped Juliet,’ Thea disclosed diffidently. ‘That can’t be true, can it?’

‘Oh, that old chestnut,’ scoffed Kevin. ‘My dad could set you right on that one, as well as a dozen other people. The fact is, Juliet was never exactly normal. When she was sixteen, she took herself off to Cheltenham one weekend, without telling her mum where she was going. Big hoo-ha, everyone out searching for her. She comes home wild-eyed, mud all over her skirt and a serious problem with men ever since. But when she was examined, there was no suggestion of rape. Not a bruise on her. I don’t say she wasn’t frightened, maybe even threatened, but nobody’s ever believed the wild accusations that flew round.’

‘Cheryl said Dennis confessed to her.’

‘She’s dreaming. He had a drink problem for a while, used to sit in the pub all evening getting maudlin and telling tall stories.’

‘And Cheryl sat with him?’

‘Something like that. Touch of the Sally Annies about her back then. Didn’t last long, when she found that saving souls didn’t come easy.’

‘Sally Annies?’

‘You know. Salvation Army. Methodists can be nearly as bad, given half a chance. Good intentions, obviously. But Cheryl was well out of her depth. Didn’t like the things she was hearing. In fact, Cheryl Bagshawe was always hearing things she didn’t like, including all that business with the horses.’

‘So he
did
tell her he’d assaulted Juliet?’

Kevin spread his hands. ‘Who knows? My guess would be he tried to take the girl home one day after the Cheltenham incident – which was kept very quiet, I should add. Maybe he laid a careless hand on her, set her shrieking and imagined he’d done something terrible.’

‘I see,’ said Thea. ‘Thanks, Kevin.’

The long list of other questions would have to wait, she concluded. Some of them would cease to niggle, some would become clear over time, and some would be answered by Gladwin, the next time she saw her.

Meanwhile, there was Christmas Day to deal with. Perhaps, she thought bleakly, she could just spend the entire day in bed.

Woodside House had no door bell. Instead there was a large knocker in the shape of a fox’s head, which connected to a solid lump of metal. It made a sharp disruptive sound that nobody could possibly sleep through. Thea was woken by it shortly before eight on Christmas morning, after barely four hours’ sleep.

The Wilson women stood shoulder to shoulder

on the threshold, smiling broadly. ‘Happy Christmas!’ they almost shouted. Thea half expected them to start singing carols.

‘We’ve come for Blondie and the rats,’ Juliet announced. ‘We’ve got a cage in the car for them. It’s a bit small, but it’ll only be for a couple of days.’

‘Urghh? Pardon?’ mumbled Thea, scratching distractedly at the back of her neck, where the collar of her pyjamas seemed to be causing an irritation. She
had not even paused to find a dressing gown.

‘Go and get dressed, and then make tracks down to that boyfriend of yours,’ Rosa ordered. ‘Poor chap – whatever were you thinking of, coming here instead of going to him for Christmas?’

‘Boyfriend?’ She recalled that Cheryl Bagshawe had used the same word. Had everyone in Stanton been discussing her and Drew, then? How could they possibly know anything at all about him?

‘The policewoman told us,’ Rosa explained. ‘She thinks you need a break, after everything that’s been happening here. She knew we were the obvious people to ask,’ she added proudly.

‘Well, Blondie knows you,’ Thea nodded, still befuddled. ‘She’s got stitches in her ear, though.’

Juliet gave a squawk of distress. ‘Why?’ she demanded.

‘My spaniel did it. Blondie’s in season. And she’s miserable.’

‘I’ll soon cheer her up,’ promised Juliet.

‘It would do us all some good,’ said Rosa, with a meaningful look. ‘Gloria ought to have asked us in the first place. I don’t know why she didn’t.’

‘But – I can’t just show up at Drew’s without any warning. He might not want me.’ She remembered his coolness in the hours before his departure the day before.

‘He wants you. I saw him with you in the pub. That man wants you more than he wants anything.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Thea corrected her. ‘His wife’s only been dead a few months.’

‘Then he needs you as much as he wants you,’ said the woman. ‘Can’t you see that?’

Thea sidestepped the implications of this, with something like terror. ‘He’ll be wanting to know what happened about the murder,’ she said. ‘He came because he wanted to do a bit of detective work. He loves all that sort of thing.’

‘Oh yes?’ The scepticism was like a spotlight shining on the truth. ‘Well, however you explain it to yourself, you’d better get going. You might be in time to help him peel some potatoes.’

Still she protested, feeling her face flushing and her heart pounding ridiculously. ‘I’m not sure I can find his house. Should I phone him first? How long will I stay? What will the Shepherds think?’ She threw questions and objections at random, the whole idea too outrageous to be taken seriously.

Juliet and Rosa worked as a highly efficient team. They ushered her back into the house and upstairs to get dressed. They carried the rats out to their car, and Juliet cradled Blondie’s wounded head with infinite sympathy. ‘We’ll bring them all back on Thursday afternoon,’ Rosa said.

Nobody had mentioned the murder. Something in Rosa’s eyes indicated a full awareness of the implications and connections. Finally, she voiced some of them. ‘We feel bad about Cheryl, you see,’ she said calmly. ‘She’s a
member of our church. You’re not to think too harshly of her, you know. She’s not had an easy life. She helped us when Juliet had her trouble.’

‘Oh – you mean when she ran off—’ Thea began rashly before Rosa stopped her with a violent gesture and a worried glance towards Juliet, still murmuring over the Alsatian as she attached a lead to her collar.

‘You’re not to have any silly ideas about our Eva, either,’ said Rosa. ‘She died as everyone knew she would one day. Poor girl – we won’t have much of a Christmas this year, with her so recently gone.’

Thea didn’t dare say anything more. She was still too stunned to form proper thoughts, anyway. She was aware that she had misjudged Rosa, as she quite often did misjudge people. ‘Thank you for this,’ she managed. ‘I don’t know why you’re being so kind.’

‘It’s as much for Juliet as for you,’ said Rosa softly. ‘Don’t you see that?’

She did not phone Drew. She had a lurking worry that she might reach Staverton, even glimpsing his house, and then turn away again, spending the day driving around with her dog, lonely and frightened. It was a mad thing to do, and dreadfully dangerous. He had given her no indication that he would welcome an invasion on Christmas Day. She doubted that she knew him well enough to have any hope of predicting his reaction.

But she got there. Once in Staverton, which was
a one-street village, with the Peaceful Repose Burial Ground unmissable on its outskirts, there was no difficulty in remembering how to find the house, having been there once before. She parked fifty yards away on a wide grass verge and got out, letting Hepzie follow her without a lead.

There were carols coming loudly from the house, through an open window. The day was mild and grey. Her dog ran up the front path and waited by the door, as if trained to play a part in a film. She sat down and cocked her head, which always made Thea smile. Before she could knock, Drew himself had opened the door, half turned away as something in the house distracted him. When he focused on Thea’s face, he was already smiling broadly. The positive current between the two smiling people formed a feedback loop that lifted two hearts and swept aside all impediments.

He stood back, pulling the door wider. Hepzie accepted the invitation and ran waggingly into the house.

They talked for the rest of the day. Timmy and Stephanie sometimes participated, but were mainly content with the many novelties that this particular Christmas was throwing at them. Timmy had hurled himself at Thea with an ecstasy that thickened her throat. She hugged him to her, remembering what Juliet had said about him, and wondering whether she might be allowed to help remedy his troubles. ‘Is your flu better?’ he asked her, when they detached from the embrace.

‘Very nearly,’ she said. ‘In fact, it’s only there when I think about it. So much has been happening that I forgot to be poorly.’

‘Huh!’ laughed the child with wholesome scepticism.

She slid into an orgy of talk with Drew – about Karen, Carl, funerals, murders, accidents. Grim topics that they discussed easily, uninhibitedly, even in the hearing of Drew’s children. Drew wept at one point, reproaching himself for his failings in the way he handled his wife’s death. Then he shook himself and asked a dozen questions about Cheryl and Natasha and the fate of the house in Stanton.

Together they puzzled out answers, some of them guesses, most of them very likely to be more or less accurate. The extent of Cheryl’s premeditation had them stumped, although Thea suspected there had been a plan from the first day of her time in Stanton. Marian Callendar’s exact motivation eluded them, too. They argued gently about Dennis, who was still a minor hero in Thea’s eyes, and a figure of suspicion to Drew.

‘Cheryl’s lucky he isn’t suing her for slander,’ he remarked, having heard a carefully worded account of the rape story.

‘Maybe he will. Can you sue someone who’s being prosecuted for murder?’

‘I doubt it. And it’s probably better just to let it all lie, anyway. Nobody would ever believe it, given how freely Juliet wandered about close to his house. She obviously wasn’t scared of him at all.’

Thea’s thoughts went back to the previous evening. ‘Cheryl really did seem to believe it. It was the main reason why she stabbed him.’

‘Main reason? What other one was there?’

‘I’m not sure. If she’d been really clever, she might have persuaded the police that he killed Natasha, rather than Marian Callendar,’ she mused. ‘She might even have persuaded
me
, if she’d told the story convincingly enough, and if Dennis was dead and unable to defend himself. She might have thought that would be the best way of wreaking revenge on him.’

‘And so on and so forth,’ said Drew with a fond look around the room. Stephanie was in a deep chair with a new toy and Thea’s dog. Her flu was receding, but she was low on energy and rather warm. Timmy was sending a remote-controlled car zigzagging around the room. ‘Let’s change the subject. Let’s watch a silly old movie on the telly.’

‘Are you glad I came?’ she asked.

‘What do you think?’ he said, and gave her a quick hot kiss on the lips.