Trouble in the Cotswolds (The Cotswold Mysteries) (22 page)

But it wasn’t. It was Dennis Ireland, whose broad chest had given Thea her soft landing after her latest faint. ‘Can I come in?’ he asked. ‘How are you now?’ He gave her a careful scrutiny, his big face full of gentle concern.

‘I’m all right. Drew’s just going. You should get back to your sister.’

‘All in good time. Let’s have a little talk first.’ He twinkled at her, a smile that reminded her yet again that this was Christmas Eve and special things were liable to happen.

‘The foal’s been born, then,’ she said.

‘Indeed. A fine little filly. Nothing wrong with it, as far as anyone can see. All that Frankenstein stuff got a bit overstated, if you ask me.’

‘Did they really arrest Richard?’ Somehow that
distressing fact had slipped her mind. ‘He didn’t kill anybody, you know.’

‘Didn’t he? Does that seriously matter to you?’

‘Of course! Because I know who killed Natasha. It’s obvious.’ She looked at him intently. ‘You were there as well, weren’t you? You might have seen it the same as I did.’

‘Thea …’ came Drew’s voice, full of warning and worry.

‘Oh, Drew. You don’t still think it could have been Dennis, do you?’ She almost laughed at him.

He stiffened and said nothing. Timmy began to whimper, for no discernible reason. Dennis took charge. ‘Come on, chaps. You’ve had a very long day of it, I can see. Gather yourselves together and leave it all to me. I’ll watch out for the young lady here and see she gets a good night’s rest. I’ll be right next door if she needs anything.’

His joviality was impossible to credit. Thea went to Timmy and bent down to whisper, ‘Do you think he might be Santa in disguise?’

The child gazed at the portly man. ‘No beard,’ he whispered back.

‘Ah – that’s right. But he’s nice, all the same.’ She stood up and spoke in a normal voice. ‘Now you and Daddy can get off home. I expect I’ll see you again soon.’

‘Thea …’ Drew tried again. He looked exhausted, almost to the point of passing out as Thea had done. ‘How can we?’

‘Easily. As you said yourself, how can you not? You’re not needed here any more. Honestly, it can all wait a few days now.’ She caught Dennis’s eye for a second, confirming what she had begun to suspect.

Drew held out his hand for Timmy. ‘All right, then,’ he capitulated. ‘Go for a wee, Tim, and then we’ll turn the car round and head for home. I suppose they’ll let us out, now the horse is okay.’

‘Can I take the DS?’ the boy asked optimistically.

‘No,’ said Thea. ‘Of course you can’t.’

He handed it over without complaint. ‘Good boy,’ she approved. ‘You’ve been an extremely good boy all day.’

Drew didn’t touch her before he left. Not a peck on the cheek or even a handshake. He smiled wanly, wished her a happy Christmas, and ushered his son out into the street where the horsebox had just departed and people had all but dispersed. He turned back at the last minute, the car door open, and said, ‘But—’

‘Go, Drew,’ she interrupted. ‘Go
now
.’

The tail lights were still etched onto her retinas when she looked up at Dennis and said, ‘We’re going to Wood Stanway.’

‘That we are,’ he agreed.

‘Your car or mine?’

‘Oh, yours, I think. I keep mine in a garage the other end of the village.’

‘First I have to feed these wretched dogs. They’ve had a terrible day.’

He waited in the hallway as she quickly supplied bowls of food for the dogs, giving Hepzie hers in the living room, where she was subsequently confined, to ensure she left Blondie alone. The Alsatian picked daintily at a few morsels, but plainly had little appetite. ‘Oh, you poor thing. I’m so sorry,’ Thea told her. ‘But I’ll make it up to you, I promise. It’ll be much better from now on.’

‘Bring some biscuits or something,’ Dennis suggested. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve eaten anything lately.’

‘I had a mince pie,’ she remembered, and grabbed the box that still contained two or three remaining cakes.

Activity was proving to be quite restorative and she felt almost normal as she got into her car. ‘How much do you know?’ she asked him.

‘More than you about the background, less about the events of the past two days. I know where we’re going, but I have no idea how you worked it out.’

‘Footpaths,’ she said.

‘Indeed. You put your finger unerringly on it.’

She laughed. ‘I’ve met men like you before,’ she said. ‘Or one in particular. He’s called Harry Richmond, and he does exactly this sort of thing, as well. I assumed he was a one-off.’

‘I think I should make it plain that I’m strictly a sidekick. Not clever or brave, in any way at all. Just coming along for the ride.’

‘Rubbish. You’re desperate for a piece of adventure. I bet your favourite books are James Bond or Flashman.’

‘Much sadder than that. My father had a complete set of G. A. Henty and I read them all until I was shamefully old. They were written when my grandfather was a boy, so I’m abysmally obsolete when it comes to the practicalities.’

‘Well, let’s make a plan, shall we?’

They talked intently for the seven or eight minutes it took to reach their destination. Dennis pointed out the relevant house, which was shrouded in darkness. ‘We’ll have to beware of the dog,’ Thea joked.

‘Is that supposed to be funny? It’s as big as a horse. I imagine it can outrun either of us without any trouble.’

‘Maybe she’s not here, after all,’ said Thea in sudden doubt.

‘Oh, she’s here all right. Where else would she be?’ As if in confirmation the deep hollow bark of the Great Dane could suddenly be heard behind the hedge. ‘She’s heard us,’ Dennis hissed. ‘And let the dog out.’

‘Forget the dog,’ Thea instructed. ‘And remember what we planned.’

The plan was essentially simple. Thea and Dennis were to confront Cheryl Bagshawe with their knowledge of what she had done. They would tell her they knew the reasons for it, and the means she had employed. In the car, Thea had said, ‘You saw where I was pointing, didn’t you? You heard what I was mumbling about the coat. But you never stopped them from arresting poor Richard.’

‘I didn’t think it was my place,’ he defended. ‘Besides,
I had my hands full of a fainting lady. And I wanted time to think about it,’ he added.

‘And you didn’t like Natasha, did you? You weren’t so sure you wanted her killer to be caught.’ The accusation was reckless, but there were still aspects of Dennis Ireland’s behaviour that puzzled her.

‘Something like that,’ he admitted, with a low chuckle. ‘How well you see through people, Mrs Osborne.’

‘So now you want her to explain it, before it’s too late?’

‘As do you,’ he countered.

‘And you’re on the highways and byways committee. I saw you listed, when I checked the Internet.’

‘Guilty as charged.’ He chuckled again.

Cheryl Bagshawe had a dog and probably a lethal knife that she had used once already. Yet Thea felt no qualms as she fumbled her way through the front gate of Old Mill House. She had seen the woman’s face just before her most recent faint, had seen the understanding and the flash of admiration at her quick deductions. Cheryl wouldn’t try to run and hide, nor would she resist arrest when the time came. At some point over the past few days, the two women had come to a silent understanding that neither could have explained. Cheryl would know, now, that all Thea wanted was a full explanation, and perhaps an apology for the way she had been used.

But if she’d got it wrong, then she had Dennis for protection. Dennis was big and apparently healthy. And
he would be a useful witness to whatever might be said.

‘Come on,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s do it.’

‘Why are we whispering?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘Why don’t we just march right up to the door?’

‘Good question.’

The dog barked again, only a few feet away. ‘Hello, Caspar,’ said Thea as naturally as she could. ‘Is Mummy in?’

The response did not come from the Great Dane. It came with a loud aggressive shriek and a flurry of movement that was without warning in the darkness. Air whistled, dog moaned and man shouted. Thea wished desperately that she had thought to bring a torch with her. ‘Hey!’ she shouted with more force than she thought herself capable of. ‘What’s going on?’

‘For God’s sake, woman – what have you done?’ The voice was that of Dennis, but enfeebled with terror. Thea had never heard such naked fear before. She could almost taste it like fog or smoke on her tongue.

‘How could you be such a fool as to come here?’ Cheryl demanded. ‘What did you expect would happen?’

The torch might have been forgotten, but the Blackberry was not. It came alive with its own little light, and Thea called the emergency services without the slightest fumble. Then she went to her car and turned on the headlights. They shone mainly on the hedge in front of Cheryl’s house, but cast sufficient light to reveal what had happened.

‘I would have talked to you on your own,’ Cheryl said. ‘Why did you have to bring
him
?’

‘I thought he might be useful,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Thea was kneeling beside Dennis, trying to find where he was hurt. His breathing sounded encouragingly robust, and there was no visible pool of blood anywhere.

‘He’s a rapist, for a start,’ came the bizarre reply.

‘
What?
’

‘He attacked Juliet Wilson when she was sixteen. She nearly died.’

‘So why isn’t he in prison?’

‘Because there was never any proof it was him. She couldn’t identify him, there was no forensic evidence, and he’s always been a pillar of the community. She still won’t say for sure that it was him.’

‘So how do you know it wasn’t?’ Thea demanded. ‘Juliet wanders around the village where he lives. She goes in and out of the house next door. Wouldn’t she want to stay away from him, or accuse him, or something? Isn’t she frightened of him?’

‘It’s not that simple.’ Cheryl frowned in frustration. ‘Juliet has buried the whole thing, as if it never happened.’

‘So how do you know about it?’

‘He told me, fifteen years ago.’ She waved towards Dennis.

‘I did not,’ the man gasped. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘You never realised it was me,’ she said scornfully.
‘You won’t even remember, you were so drunk. You’d have liked to have raped me as well, but you weren’t capable. You told me enough of the story for me to work out what you were confessing to. I’ve been looking for a chance to take revenge on you ever since. On behalf of all the women who’ve ever been raped,’ she concluded savagely.

‘Rubbish,’ he said, followed by a sharp cry of pain. ‘You’re just a madwoman. You stabbed Natasha Ainsworth, and now you’ve stabbed me. And I never laid a finger on Juliet Wilson, you stupid bitch.’

‘Shut up. You did, and that’s an end to it.’

‘But you did something even worse,’ Thea accused. ‘You killed Natasha. You swopped the coats because you didn’t want yours to get bloody, and went to her house while I was still semi-conscious after my faint. She must have let you in, and you stabbed her without any warning. You thought she was dead, but she crawled through the house and broke the window. You must have been terrified when that happened.’

Cheryl’s display of alarm and confusion outside Natasha’s house returned vividly to Thea. ‘You really didn’t know who had smashed the window, did you? You were scared someone else might have been in the house and seen what you did.’

Cheryl said nothing. Dennis groaned repeatedly, but Thea was cautiously confident that his life wasn’t in immediate danger. The knife had pierced his right shoulder, through about three layers of clothes. At worse
his lung might be punctured, but from the robustness of his breathing, that seemed unlikely.

‘But
why
?’ Thea persisted urgently. ‘It obviously had nothing to do with the Callendars and that horse.’

‘Obviously?’ Cheryl sneered. ‘How is that obvious, Miss Clever House-sitter? How did you work that out, with your flu and your boyfriend and your idiot dog?’ She came closer, still brandishing the knife, bending over the prostrate man as well as Thea as she knelt beside him.

Without warning, Dennis reared up and gave her a powerful punch with his left fist. He must have been tensed in readiness, his legs curled beneath him acting as a lever. The blow caught Cheryl full in the face and she flew backwards, connecting with Caspar and somersaulting over him, to land with a crack on the stone pathway, head first.

‘Hey!’ protested Thea. Her immediate reaction was frustration at the interruption in what she had hoped would be a full explanation. Then when Cheryl remained ominously silent, she began to panic. ‘Bloody hell, Dennis – you’ve killed her.’

‘I doubt it,’ he said, struggling to his feet. ‘She’s as tough as old boots – as they say. Or as tough as Miss Havisham, if not Abel Magwitch.’

‘Be quiet,’ Thea snapped. The man was demented. Her protector had turned into a rapist and pugilist and she suddenly felt uncomfortably vulnerable. Ambulance and police couldn’t hope to arrive for many more minutes yet.

‘I can answer your questions, if you like,’ he said helpfully. ‘I can see you’re dying of curiosity.’

‘For God’s sake – we need to see to Cheryl first. She could have broken her neck for all you know.’

‘Serves her right if she has. Please let me explain it to you.’

Thea stumbled to Cheryl’s side, trying to grasp the extent of the damage. She was impeded by the Great Dane who was standing over his mistress and whining. The light from her car was filtered through the bare hedge, and not much better than nothing. ‘Cheryl?’ Thea called. ‘Can you hear me?’

A faint hum came in reply, a single note of fear and bewilderment.

‘Don’t try to move,’ Thea ordered. ‘There’ll be an ambulance in a minute.’ She gently pushed the dog aside, but he instantly returned to his position as guard, making it clear that if it came to a contest, Thea was unlikely to win.

Dennis was still talking. He was on his knees, both arms held awkwardly. His words were interspersed with intakes of breath that suggested a severe degree of pain. ‘Cheryl never had very much to do with the Callendar business, you know …’ He gasped. ‘She works in Winchcombe, with the National Trust. She doesn’t care about horses or footpaths or any of that – although she seems to have been disgusted by that young man’s experiments. But that wasn’t enough to kill anybody for. All she cares about is Sebastian Callendar. They
were lovers, years ago, and she never got over it. His mother did everything she could to break them up, with Natasha’s help. Cheryl hated them both …’