Trouble in the Cotswolds (The Cotswold Mysteries) (10 page)

She did feel marginally better after eating the eggs. She addressed the two dogs – who had watched every mouthful – in a more cheerful tone. ‘Let’s go outside, then, shall we?’ She opened the back door and led them into the garden. Hepzie was unenthusiastic, sniffing under the dry red stalks of a dogwood bush. Blondie
went down to her far corner and raised her head for a long careful listen to whatever might be happening in the village beyond. All Thea could hear was car engines, faint voices and a plane overhead. This was not proper exercise by any standards. The garden wasn’t large and neither dog showed any inclination to romp. But it was December, midwinter, and no animal could expect long sessions of enjoyment in the open air. Sheep would be glumly gathered behind hedges, rabbits would be hunkering in their burrows. Hedgehogs went to sleep for months on end. ‘It’s the best you can hope for, just now,’ she told her charges. ‘Sorry. But at least you can stay out here for a bit.’

Then Blondie’s sharp ears angled forward and she barked one short note. Thea had heard nothing, but with due attention she caught the sound of raised voices in the street the other side of the house. One was female and sounded urgent. ‘What’s going on?’ she wondered aloud.

She left the dogs and went back through the house to look out of the living room window. An altercation was taking place barely three feet away, between a middle-aged woman and a younger man. Thea recognised the woman by her dark glasses and long chin – it was Marian Callendar, last seen in the funeral limousine on Friday afternoon. The man was most likely one of her sons who had been in the same car, Thea guessed, although she couldn’t identify him from the glimpse she’d had of him. ‘Don’t try to stop me,’
the woman said shrilly. ‘It’s none of your business.’

‘It most certainly is,’ he argued, and grabbed at her arm.

If the mullioned window had been double-glazed, it would have been harder to hear what they said. As it was, there was no difficulty. Furthermore, the woman caught sight of the eavesdropper and paused in her struggles. ‘Seen enough?’ she shouted, right into Thea’s face. It was the sort of thing people said in
Eastenders,
but this was a smartly dressed woman, widow of a wealthy businessman, with a pure BBC accent. Thea grimaced her embarrassment and withdrew into the room.

‘No! Come out here,’ the woman ordered. ‘Let’s have a proper look at you.’

Mrs Callendar was also a magistrate, Thea remembered, accustomed to giving orders to delinquent youths and befuddled drunkards. On shaking legs she obeyed the order, slowly pulling the front door open and stepping into the street. In Stanton there were few proper pavements, and this house had the scantiest of boundaries between itself and the thoroughfare. No kerbs or yellow lines, simply a semicircular flower bed in winter dormancy, under the window. Passing traffic had to be trusted not to drive over it.

‘Where’s Gloria Shepherd?’ demanded the woman. ‘Who are you?’

‘She’s away. I’m house-sitting for her.’

‘Name?’

‘Thea Osborne.’

Behind her, both dogs had come to the door. Blondie now emerged and went directly to Marian Callendar, giving her pseudo-snarl that was really a smile. The woman squawked exaggeratedly and backed away. ‘Hold that dog! It’s going to bite me.’

Any respect or sympathy Thea might have had for her instantly evaporated. People who behaved stupidly with dogs had always been on her list of candidates for the firing squad. She told herself it was fine to be intolerant of intolerance and clung to her position unless an individual could give rock-solid justification for theirs. ‘She’s not going to bite you, you fool,’ she snapped. ‘Blondie, darling, come here.’ The Alsatian did her bidding with a canine shrug, that said
I was only being friendly.
Thea smiled understandingly and patted the big white head. The poor dog must have spent its whole life being misunderstood. The behaviour classes that Cheryl Bagshawe had mentioned had almost certainly not been at all necessary.

‘Mother, can we go now?’ said the man, who had hovered uncertainly to one side. Thea diagnosed him as another dog-unfriendly nuisance.

‘We’re not going until somebody lets me into this house.’ She pointed at Natasha Ainsworth’s erstwhile home. ‘There are things of mine in there that I want to reclaim.’

Thea knew she had a chance to retreat. She could gather up the dogs and firmly shut herself back into
the house she was meant to be looking after. But the scene she had been dragged into was far too interesting for that. And the chilly air seemed to be clearing her head slightly. She looked to the man for the next move. He obliged with a valiant effort. ‘You can’t. You, of all people, must know that. It’s a sealed crime scene. See the tape? You know what that means. What the hell’s the matter with you?’ he finished in exasperation.

Thea wondered why nobody else had emerged from nearby houses to see what the noise was about. Probably they were all watching from their windows, remaining in the shadows rather more successfully than Thea had done. She focused on what the woman had said. Who did she think would let her into the house? There was no sign of any police people, who were the only ones likely to have such authority. ‘There’s nobody here to let you in,’ she said aloud.

‘Haven’t
you
got a key? Being next door, I’d think you would.’

‘Not as far as I know. And this man’s right. It’s a crime scene. Nobody can go past that tape.’

‘“This man” is my son, Edwin. He’s been treating me like a lunatic ever since … well, you don’t want to know all our business. It’s nothing to do with you.’

Rudeness from another person always gave Thea a little thrill, which she had recently worked out was because she was occasionally inclined that way herself. Discovering that other people could commit the same sort of indiscretion came as a kind of reassurance.
‘You’re quite right,’ she nodded. ‘Although, you
did
bring me out here.’

‘Only because you were snooping at us through the net curtains.’

‘I heard shouting. It was only natural to come and see what was going on. Especially as there was a violent murder here only yesterday.’

Marian Callendar subsided so completely it was like watching a balloon burst. One minute it was all round and colourful and buoyant, the next it was a limp rag, and you never quite caught the moment of transition. ‘Murder,’ she repeated with a shudder. ‘Such an awful word.’

She
was
a lunatic, Thea decided, with a glance at the son. He met her eye impassively, as if afraid to give anything away. But his mother was also a pillar of the community, a school governor and suffering from leukaemia. She did also have some excuse for erratic behaviour, given the events of the past week or two. Thea could find nothing to say that would be safe, so she clamped her lips shut, and wrapped her arms around herself. She was out in the cold without a coat. Medical advice had been to stay in the warm; she had every reason to leave the Callendars to their own messy lives. But she did want to see what happened next.

‘Mother, we have to go,’ bleated Edwin. ‘Half the village are going to be out here soon, wondering what the noise is about. There’s nothing of yours at Natasha’s, anyway. I can’t think why you ever had such an idea.’

‘Yes there is,’ hissed the woman. ‘What would you know about it? For a start, she had half my CDs. He kept “borrowing” them without asking, and then listening to them with her. Stupid man.’

‘For God’s sake – he’s
dead.
Have a bit of respect.’

‘I know he is. And I want my music back. I put up with a lot from your father, but I don’t see why I should let some house clearance people take what’s mine. What’s so crazy about that? Just tell me—’ She whirled round to look at Thea. ‘Tell me what’s wrong with that, will you?’

‘Nothing,’ stammered Thea. ‘Sounds reasonable to me. Except you still won’t be allowed in there, even with a good reason.’

The dark glasses had been an impediment from the start. Unable to see the woman’s eyes made it impossible to fully assess her mental state. Except, of course, the very fact of shades in December suggested something awry. Presumably they were intended to hide signs of weeping from the public gaze, but even if she had been crying at some point during the day, she certainly wasn’t doing so now. Or could it be something medical, like oversensitivity to light, Thea wondered. Something associated with the leukaemia? There had been a time when she might have asked outright, but her new resolve to be less confrontational and inquisitive was still holding good.

Edwin was giving her a grateful look, which she found slightly pathetic. This was brother to Ralph,
son of the man who died in his bath. Neither of them betrayed much in the way of grief for their father – but Thea knew from her own experience that feelings could be concealed all too easily. Beneath the competence and composure a morass of acute suffering could be lurking. The British way was to keep calm and carry on, even when your lifelong partner died suddenly and left you floundering. Drew often talked of his admiration for the way bereaved people behaved in this society, the quiet, dignified stoicism making his job a lot easier than in some places around the world.

‘I’m sorry about your father,’ she said to Edwin, out of the blue. She could not pretend to herself that this was a simple statement of condolence. She knew it was intended to prompt some sort of disclosure, some further information that she had no right to. ‘It must have been a terrible shock.’

He nodded briefly and returned his attention to his mother.
Okay,
Thea told herself.
Just leave it alone,
will you?
She took a step towards the open door of the house. It would be dark in another hour or two. She would try to find something watchable on TV and think about something trivial. She might phone Jessica and see whether she was at Jocelyn’s yet. She would tell the story of her car and conceal the fact of her flu.

But social interaction had not yet finished, rather to her annoyance. Before she could get inside and close the door, another person appeared. Dennis Ireland had all too obviously been listening to the exchanges in the
street and now came out of his own house, with a half smile. ‘Hello again,’ he said, nodding vaguely at her. ‘Everything all right, is it?’

‘I thought you were going away,’ Thea frowned. ‘Isn’t that what you said?’

‘Change of plan.’ He made a little face of self-reproach. ‘Hadn’t taken my good sister’s priorities fully into account, and jumped the gun. Families, eh!’ He twinkled at the two Callendars, who were standing close together a few inches from the police tape across Natasha Ainsworth’s house.

‘Did you hear what we were saying?’ Marian challenged him. ‘Who are you, anyway?’

‘I heard raised voices, that’s all. It’s a quiet street, as you can see. Incidents such as we’ve had this weekend are severely upsetting. Everyone’s nervous. To be honest, I’m rather glad to be delaying my departure, under the circumstances. One never knows what predations might take place in one’s absence, you see.’ He glanced at Thea as if expecting endorsement of his words. ‘Besides, the local constabulary have asked me to keep an eye on this young lady, who never bargained for such goings-on, I’m sure.’

Thea winced inwardly. Here was at least one Cotswolds resident who had no idea of her reputation, then. Neither, come to that, did the Callendars appear to know anything about her. Perhaps she was much less famous than she’d come to suspect.

‘Does your sister live with you?’ she asked, needing as
always to understand as much as she could of people’s domestic arrangements.

‘Heaven forbid!’ he cried, with much more drama than necessary. ‘No, she’s in Lower Swell – which is still too close for comfort. There’s more than a touch of the Gargery woman about our Elspeth, let me tell you. Just as Sebastian Callendar is a dead ringer for Steerforth. Different book, of course.’

Something had happened to the man, Thea was beginning to realise, through the haze of her flu. Either he’d been sampling the Christmas sherry, or had received some good news. He was much more buoyant than the last time she’d seen him. Most likely it was the reprieve his sister had given him. ‘So are you here for Christmas, then?’

‘Ah – no. Sadly not. It seems I stand little chance of escape, although I continue to hope for a miracle. We have another sister, you see, in Edgware, who insists on the ritual gathering of the clan every year. Nine of us, at least. It’s torture.’ He laughed grimly. ‘There are twin grandchildren who will be three by now. A desperate age, I’m sure you’ll agree.’

Nobody took him up on this. His prattle was rapidly being perceived as crass and inappropriate. Marian Callendar evidently came to this conclusion at the same moment as Thea did. ‘A woman has been killed here,’ she said starchily. ‘Show some respect.’

Her son gasped audibly at this turnaround. Thea almost laughed. ‘Come on, Mother,’ said Edwin, taking
hold of her arm. ‘This is ludicrous. We can ask the police to arrange for you to collect your things in a day or two. Nothing’s going to happen to a few CDs, is it? We’ll go back and sort out some more of Dad’s paperwork. Ralph might come over to lend a hand. There’s plenty to do.’

Marian looked at Dennis. ‘The Gargery woman,’ she said slowly. ‘You mean the one in
Great Expectations
?’

The man nodded. ‘Same sinewy forearms.’

‘I always thought Natasha was like the Dartle woman. Same martyred air of injury.’

‘You can’t beat Dickens for capturing a character, can you? They stay in your mind for life.’

‘They do,’ she agreed. There was a shared sigh, as the two people retreated from reality for a few moments, into a world of Victorian fiction where everything turned out right in the end.

The sense of being stuck in a Dickens novel persisted as Thea finally shut herself back inside the Shepherds’ house. Out in the village there were flickering lights in some of the windows, and winter birds were collecting on the trees behind the houses, forming sinister black clusters. She pulled the curtains across, knowing it wouldn’t be long before the daylight fully faded. The dogs were restless, pottering up and down the hall, their nails clicking on the tiles.

Her flu was becoming a familiar companion; the headache a background constant that made thinking difficult. She felt heavy and tired and shivery. The people outside had diverted her for twenty minutes or so, their oddness increasing as she listened to them. Perhaps her own condition had exaggerated this. Perhaps she had only imagined some of the things they said, some of
the faces they made. She didn’t know who ‘the Dartle woman’ was, and only very faintly remembered the one from
Great Expectations.
It was rude of people to exchange literary references like that. People in Stanton were proving to be quite rude, she concluded. Even Cheryl and her impossible dog had been pretty direct on first acquaintance.

She should phone Jessica. It would take some energy and concentration to find the phone, press the right keys, make rational conversation. First she had to locate her bag, which occupied a few minutes. It was upstairs in the bedroom, and coming back down the stairs proved painful for her knees. They refused to bend properly, and hurt when forced. But it was eventually accomplished and her daughter responded quickly. ‘Hi, Mum!’ she chirped. ‘How’s things?’

‘Not bad,’ came the careful reply. ‘One or two glitches.’

‘Oh?’

‘My car, mainly. I put the wrong fuel in it and it died on me. I don’t know when I’ll get it back.’ Uttering these words engendered a sharp pang of anxiety, which she found shockingly disabling. What if it was another three or four days before she was mobile? She would run out of milk and bread before then.

‘You idiot. How will you manage? Is there a shop in wherever-it-is? It’s
Christmas,
for heaven’s sake.’

‘I’ll survive. I brought lots of stuff with me. There’s dog food here, and tins and things.’

‘Mum? You sound very weird. You’re not drunk, are you?’

‘Of course not. What a thing to suggest!’ But she did feel giddy and confused, unsure of exactly which words would emerge from her mouth next. ‘Are you at Jocelyn’s now?’ she managed to ask.

‘Not yet. We decided I should go down tomorrow morning. I suppose I could call in on you, actually. It must be pretty much on the way. Why didn’t we think of that before?’

The temptation added to her feebleness. Jess could bring supplies, sympathy, suggestions. She might even sort out the car people for her. But she would also make a great fuss about the flu and the murder and the rats. ‘You forget the rats,’ she said.

‘I could cope for an hour or so, if I didn’t have to go into the same room. I could buy some provisions for you. Or has somebody else offered to help?’

‘Not really. It’s all a bit chaotic here at the moment.’

‘Oh?’ Jessica repeated ominously. ‘In what way?’

‘A woman was killed yesterday. Next door. It’s rather a complicated story.’

‘It usually is. How involved are you?’

‘Not at all. I never even saw her. I’ve seen Jeremy Higgins …’

‘Who?’

‘He’s the detective inspector who was so kind over the thing in Lower Slaughter. He’s investigating this one, with Gladwin.’

Jessica had uttered a little mew of distress at the mention of Lower Slaughter. It had become an intensely personal catastrophe for the whole family, following very closely on the death of Thea’s father, and was seldom mentioned as a result. ‘No wonder you sound so strange,’ said the girl.

‘I know. But it’s a nice house, in a very pretty little village, and I’ve got all I need, really. You don’t want to waste time doing a detour tomorrow. The traffic’s going to be horrible.’

‘Okay, then,’ agreed Jessica, far too readily. ‘I expect they’ll fix the car for you by tomorrow, anyway. They’ll want to get things clear before Christmas, won’t they? And it doesn’t take long to drain the engine and get it back to normal. When did it happen?’

Thea had to concentrate hard to answer that. ‘Yesterday morning. Higgins brought me home.’

‘Home,’ repeated Jessica softly. ‘You think of it as home, after two days, do you?’

‘Of course not. I just …’ She couldn’t think what to say. Home was a cold, empty little cottage in Witney, where she and Carl had been an ordinary happy couple for twenty years before calamity befell them. ‘Home is where my dog is,’ she finished, with a quick little laugh. The truth of it stabbed her viciously. The dog was already almost halfway through its life. What sort of a dependency had she let herself get into when her only anchor was a slightly scruffy spaniel?

‘Right,’ said Jessica, with a hint of impatience.
‘As Granny would say,’ she added with a little laugh. Self-pity was taboo throughout the family, largely thanks to Thea’s mother having had a tendency that way while her children were growing up. Whatever they said, she would make little effort to take a more tolerant view. But since her own widowhood, she had improved considerably, much to everyone’s surprise. ‘So I’ll stick to Plan A, then, unless you call me tomorrow with a change of heart. I’m leaving at eight, so you’ll have to make it early.’

‘That’s fine, Jess. Have a lovely time at Jocelyn’s. At least the weather’s not too bad.’

‘Rain, they say, for the rest of the week.’

‘Really?’ The prospect was far more lowering than it ought to have been. ‘That’s a pity.’

‘Well, I expect you’ll keep yourself occupied, as always. I suppose you have to walk the dog?’

‘Dogs, plural. Yes.’ Two days now and the wretched animals had barely stepped outside. But she wasn’t going to admit that. ‘I don’t suppose it’ll rain the whole time.’

‘No. Okay, then. See you sometime in the New Year.’ And she rang off.

Thea was left with a swirling mass of unpleasant emotions. She had concealed her state of health for no very noble reasons, probably hoping subconsciously that Jessica would somehow divine the truth without being told. She had had a glimpse of herself as a stubbornly isolated martyr, when she could quite easily
have been part of a lively, noisy family celebration. Although not with flu, she reminded herself. Jocelyn would not have welcomed her presence if there was a risk she’d infect five children and their parents. She had casually mentioned a murder, with no hint of the tragedy and wrongness that went along with a violent death. Yet again she assessed herself harshly, unable to deny the less attractive elements of her character. She couldn’t even give the long-suffering dogs a decent time. Well, as a penance, she would definitely release the rats that evening, for their customary run. That was the very least she could do.

Blondie was whining at the front door, she noticed, and probably had been for a few minutes. ‘What do you want?’ Thea asked the dog.

The reply was unmistakable.
I want to go out for a walk,
said the pricked ears and steady gaze at the invisible street outside.

‘But I’m
poorly,’
Thea told her. ‘And it’s cold out there.’ But it wasn’t, really. And hadn’t she just spent several minutes outside without a coat? What a waste that had been, when she might have been giving the dogs some fresh air. Her own animal was watching her closely, head cocked sideways. It was beyond anyone’s power to resist. ‘Oh, all right, then. Just a little way. And don’t
pull.’
She wasn’t sure she had the strength to restrain them if they both decided to take control.

When she reached for the leads hanging on a hook next to the coats in the hallway, both dogs went crazy
with excitement. She had not seen Blondie anywhere near as animated since she arrived. She turned in small circles and wagged her heavy tail. ‘Wait,’ Thea ordered. ‘I’ve got to get my coat on this time. I need to keep warm.’ She looked at the hooks for a moment, unable to locate her garment. A blue woollen coat with big buttons was next to it, which confused her.
When did I rearrange them?
she asked herself, remembering that her own jacket had been sharing a hook with a brown coat. The skirmishing continued as the Alsatian was attached to her lead and let out through the front door. Hepzie was permitted to stay free, given the paucity of traffic and her disinclination to run off, as a general rule. ‘Steady!’ Thea shouted.

What happened next was utterly, horrifyingly unexpected. Hepzie was jumping at Thea’s legs, while Blondie started to head along the street, towards the higher ground at the end. The larger dog gave a snarl as Hepzie landed awkwardly, bumping against her. Just what the snarl expressed in dog language would be forever a mystery, but the spaniel took great exception to it, and totally gratuitously began to snarl in response. Furthermore, she opened her jaws and clamped them shut on Blondie’s pointed left ear. Then she shook and pulled as if she had a rat in her mouth.

Thea was slow to grasp what had happened. Blondie screamed a long blood-curdling protest, full of pain and shock. Hepzie just shook and pulled some more, creating a gash from which bright blood spurted onto
the thick white coat. ‘Stop it!’ Thea screamed and kicked hard at her own dog. ‘Let go, you bloody fool.’

When nothing changed, she called ‘Help!’ as loudly as she could. Blondie’s screams were considerably louder, and surely more likely to bring rescue. Inside all those houses, just feet away, there were strong men who did not have flu, and who could prise open a spaniel’s soft jaws with ease. Nobody came. Not even Dennis Ireland emerged from his front door, yet again summoned by noises in the street. A car came into view around the gentle bend, and Thea waved frantically at its occupant, while still kicking at Hepzie, and watching blood splatter everywhere.

‘Good God, Thea – is that you?’ came a familiar voice. Before she could answer, strong hands had grabbed the spaniel by the throat, squeezing her until she let go of the ear. ‘Let go, you little beast,’ she ordered. ‘What the hell are you thinking of?’

‘Gladwin,’ breathed Thea, before tottering backwards and slumping against the wall of the house. ‘Thank heaven!’

The detective superintendent lifted Hepzie bodily into the air and thrust her at her mistress. ‘Here. Hold her,’ she ordered. Thea obeyed clumsily, clasping the wriggling dog to her chest in arms that felt quite unequal to the task. The shock of what Hepzie had done was numbing her brain. With no previous hint of anything resembling aggression, Thea would have trusted her spaniel with a newborn baby, without a second thought. Or a litter of blind kittens. Though perhaps not with a
rat. The idea that she would attack a dog five times her own size, for no reason at all, would have been dismissed as ludicrous less than ten minutes previously.

Blondie was whimpering miserably, shaking her bleeding head, sinking down onto her stomach like a collapsed sheep. Gladwin peered closely at the torn ear. ‘It’s not so very bad,’ she judged. ‘The blood looks worse on the white coat. She’s lovely, isn’t she.’

‘She’s a wimp,’ said Thea.

‘Alsatians often are. I expect she was taken by surprise. What’s her name?’

‘Blondie. She’s been pining for her people ever since I got here. She seems to have a reputation locally for biting, but I don’t think she deserves it. She does a sort of smile that looks like a snarl.’

Gladwin crooned over the wounded dog, soothing bits of nonsense that seemed to have some effect. Thea remained propped against the wall, clutching her wicked pet. ‘I can’t imagine why she did it. They were terribly excited about going for a walk, and then something just flipped.’

‘It’s very common. I’ve seen it lots of times. We had Irish setters when I was young, and they did it. Best of friends one minute and snapping and biting the next. And I was called to an incident just like this, some years ago, in a park. A Jack Russell tore an Alsatian’s ear right off, and all he did was cry.’

‘Oh, well, a Jack Russell,’ said Thea. ‘What do you expect? But Hepzie’s a
spaniel.
’

‘True. But they’re both bitches, and that’ll do it. Has Blondie been spayed?’

‘I have no idea. How could I tell?’

Gladwin moved to the white dog’s rear end, and unceremoniously lifted her tail. ‘Ah! That’ll explain it. She’s coming onto heat, look. Hepzie won’t have liked the hormonal vibes, for some reason.’

Thea leant closer for a look at the Alsatian’s genitalia. ‘It looks a bit swollen,’ she admitted.

‘Right. I imagine she’s not just pining, but feeling a bit queasy. I swear dogs get period pains, the same as people do.’

‘So does she need a vet? For the ear?’

‘I’m afraid so. It’ll have to have a few stitches. First we’ll stop the bleeding. Can we go in?’

Stumblingly, Thea led the way. This, she told herself, was what she was being paid for – to summon help if her charges got into trouble. But it was definitely not part of her remit for her own dog to inflict that trouble. The shame and embarrassment made her hotter than the flu had done.

Gladwin efficiently mopped the gashed ear, having located Dettol and a sponge under the kitchen sink. The hair all around the wound was wet and dirty with blood. The good ear drooped in sympathy, the dark eyes wide with reproach and self-pity. ‘Poor Blondie,’ sighed Thea. ‘She’s going to be scarred for life.’

‘It won’t show for long, if they sew it up properly.’
She gently fingered a flap of flesh that had almost separated from the rest of the ear. ‘But we ought to be quick.’

‘I haven’t got a car,’ Thea remembered. ‘I can’t take her. And where’s the nearest vet, anyway?’

‘Stow, I suppose. Isn’t there a number somewhere? Haven’t the people left a list?’

‘Oh, yes. Everything’s written down.’ Thea rooted in the drawer beneath the phone where she had put Philip’s instructions for safe keeping. ‘Here it is. Will they come out, do you think?’

‘Not a chance. I’ll take you.’

‘Oh.’ Outside it was close to dusk, and very uninviting. ‘Actually, I’m not very well. I’ve got flu.’