Shadows in the Cotswolds Page 11

‘Really?’ The police detective’s expression changed to maximum alertness. ‘Can’t he prove it to her somehow?’

  ‘She scarcely remembers anything. A clever man could persuade her, I imagine.’

  ‘And why would he? What’s he after?’

  ‘Her house, probably. She’s got rather a nice house and he’s homeless.’

  ‘It must be possible to check.’

  ‘DNA,’ Thea suggested, with a wry grin. ‘Isn’t that the answer to everything these days?’

  ‘It’s very overrated. Useless unless you have something to compare it with.’

  ‘You took a sample from him, though. Are you planning to compare it with the dead woman?’

  ‘Eventually we might have to. He went very tense when I asked for it. But a lot of people do. They instinctively dislike it.’

  ‘Obviously,’ said Thea, knowing there was no need for her usual rant about personal privacy. Gladwin had heard it already.

  ‘It’s horrible when you don’t know who the victim is,’ Gladwin complained. ‘Not just because it thwarts any effective investigation, but you can’t tell the family, who just think everything’s fine, when it isn’t.’

  ‘Unless they did it.’

  ‘Cynic. They’d call her Jane Doe, in America. Any unidentified female is a Jane Doe. It hasn’t caught on here, for some reason.’

  ‘Too glib?’ Thea suggested.

  ‘No, not really. It’s rather nice, in a way.’

  ‘I didn’t much like her,’ Thea said softly.

  ‘I know. You said. But you didn’t kill her. We’ve been over that already. It doesn’t matter, does it? You only saw her for ten minutes.’

  ‘But you didn’t see her at all, and you care more about what happened to her than I do. What does that make me?’

  ‘Normal,’ Gladwin shrugged. ‘You probably do care more than you think, anyway. You look pretty miserable to me.’

  ‘Do I?’ Thea sighed. ‘I wasn’t too happy before all this, actually. It hasn’t been a very pleasant summer, on the whole. In fact, it’s been bloody horrible since Easter.’

  ‘You’ve had some grim experiences, I know,’ Gladwin sympathised. ‘You should probably have stuck with Phil Hollis. Everybody thinks so.’

  Everybody was the team of Gloucestershire police detectives, Thea presumed. Hollis was another detective superintendent, who had been her lover or boyfriend or significant other for a year or so. It had ended quite badly, and he now had a new partner. And Thea had almost forgotten about him.

  ‘Everybody’s wrong,’ she said. ‘He didn’t bring out the best in me.’ And Drew Slocombe does, she silently added. She knew with absolute certainty that she would never treat Drew as badly as she’d treated Phil Hollis.

  They were standing in Silk Mill Lane, speaking in low voices, the dog patiently waiting for further progress. Gladwin waved aside the tribulations of human relationships and pointed the way over the river and back to the Thistledown acres, through a rickety-looking gate that led to the eastern edge of the allotments. ‘Or, as I say, you could follow the Windrush Way for a bit and then cross the river. It’s passable when the water’s low.’

  ‘Do we have to wade across it?’ Thea was concerned for her shoes. ‘Is that part of this odd little walk?’

  ‘No, no. What’s odd about it? I just wanted to have a look round and chat with you at the same time. We can go back through the woods.’

  ‘Hang on a minute.’ Thea looked up Castle Street, where a tall house stood close to the road. Behind and above it loomed a substantial chapel. ‘Isn’t that lovely! So much character! I wonder what its story is.’

  ‘Go to the museum and ask, why don’t you?’

  ‘I just might do that.’

  ‘The woman we met yesterday lives here, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Priscilla Heap,’ Thea remembered. ‘I suppose she does. I wonder which house it is.’

  ‘She gave me the name. Something Cottage. That isn’t a cottage, is it?’

  ‘A “House”,’ judged Thea. ‘Definitely a “House”.’

  They walked down the hill, passing a tiny dwelling entitled the Coach House, which Thea privately thought added substantially to her abiding impression of Winchcombe as a place created by magic and existing in some kind of alternative fairy-tale reality. Even the rickety gate that led into the allotments carried a suggestion of ageless mystery to her overactive imagination.

  They found the route into Oliver’s woodlands, where Gladwin pointed out signs of recent use. ‘It’s like a Western,’ Thea laughed. ‘Looking for bent grasses and snapped twigs. We need an Indian tracker.’

  ‘It’s very much like that,’ Gladwin agreed. ‘But it doesn’t actually get us very far. I expect you could have done some of this yourself.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Didn’t Oliver bring you out here on Saturday?’

  Thea looked behind her, seeing the view from a different angle. ‘Not quite this far, but he did show me this clearing, from over there.’ She pointed to where she thought the bird hide must be. ‘I think,’ she added feebly. ‘Are we on his land now?’

  ‘Apparently so. It goes right to this fence.’

  ‘Yes, that must be right. He keeps this part clear for birds that like grasses and meadow flowers. I imagine he comes out here with his camera sometimes, even though there’s no hide.’

  ‘There’s a sort of flattened area, with marks that suggest a tripod, so I imagine that’s exactly what he does.’

  ‘Can I feed his birds again yet?’ She had abandoned her responsibilities all too readily, she felt. If she was to stay there all week, and perhaps beyond, she ought to try to get things back to how they had been. ‘Is the hide still taped off?’

  ‘Yes it is, but you’re free to put stuff out for them, on that feeding station thing. That’s the trouble with feeding wild birds – they get to rely on you, and you really shouldn’t stop.’

  ‘Even at this time of year, when there must be loads of stuff out there for them?’

  ‘As I understand it, yes. Besides, a lot of the seeds and berries are almost finished now. It’s July and August when the real bounty happens. I’m no expert, but I think they’ll be feeling the lack of your fat balls and stuff.’

  ‘So I can’t go into the hide, but I can go to the feeding station?’ Thea clarified.

  ‘Right.’ Gladwin patted Thea lightly on the shoulder. ‘Now, what are we going to do about your mother?’

  Thea was silenced by this abrupt change of subject. She opened her mouth and closed it again. Did the police believe her mother was a suspect? How was that possible. ‘Er …’ she managed.

  ‘I mean, with this mystery man from the past. She’s got to establish beyond doubt that he is who he says he is. There must be some way to do that.’

  ‘Are you offering to help?’

  ‘I might be. When all this is over.’

  ‘But you don’t think there’s a connection?’

  ‘There’s the same connection that we’ve encountered before,’ sighed the police detective.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You, Thea Osborne. Once again, the connection is you.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mo and Jason were only slightly early, arriving at ten, which meant that Thea had nearly an hour with her mother and Fraser, in which they talked awkwardly about trivial matters. Thea asked Fraser to describe more of his years in London before going to Australia, in a vague attempt to establish his credentials. He answered cordially, explaining that he had become a land surveyor, scoping out likely routes for new roads and railways, operating such equipment as theodolites and mastering advanced geometry. He had married Domenica, who came from Toledo, after knowing her for only three months. She was fiery and adventurous and wanted to see the world. Going to Australia had been her idea. Mo had been three when they set sail in classic migrant fashion, and another baby was on the way. ‘It miscarried on the ship,’ he said briefly. ‘It was really dreadful for poor Nica. Sh
e took years to get over it.’

  ‘And you never had any more?’

  ‘We never did,’ he smiled sadly.

  On the face of it, he was being open and frank, answering the questions in a relaxed easy manner. Only when she thought about it did Thea spot the gaps. Where exactly had he worked? Where had he grown up? She tried to flesh out the picture. ‘Do you remember the war?’ she asked. ‘You must have been about five when it started.’

  ‘I was exactly five years and one month,’ he responded. ‘And I was just shy of eleven when it ended. I remember it very vividly, of course. I’m sure your mother does as well.’

  ‘Were you in London all the way through?’

  His expression hardened slightly. ‘Oliver and I were evacuated for a few months, but we both behaved so abominably that they sent us back. My mother was even more traumatised by it than we were, I think, looking back now. Even those few months disrupted our family so violently that we were permanently changed by it. Oliver more than me, I believe. He felt she had deliberately betrayed us, and I think he held it against her for the rest of her life.’

  ‘That’s tragic!’ Thea exclaimed with genuine distress. ‘People do such terrible things to each other, don’t they? In the name of the greater good, and all that.’

  ‘It was certainly well intentioned,’ he nodded. ‘And life in the Blitz had its own ghastly consequences. We saw things that small boys ought not to have seen. The worst thing, actually, was the dog.’ He gave Thea’s spaniel a look, as if being deliberately reminded of something dreadful.

  ‘Dog?’ Thea encouraged reluctantly.

  ‘It was the domestic pet variation on evacuation, in a way. They had them put down, in case there was an invasion and the Germans tortured them. That was what my mother said, anyway. We had a golden spaniel called Spike. My brother adored that dog – you know how boys can be about their pets.’

  ‘So she really did betray you,’ Thea summarised furiously. ‘How could a mother do such a thing?’

  ‘As you said – she thought it was all for the good. She thought that was what she had to do. People will do the most appalling things for the most flimsy of reasons. They’re very suggestible.’

  ‘Stupid, I call it,’ said Thea flatly. ‘Just plain stupid.’

  Fraser Meadows showed signs of exasperation. ‘You can’t judge if you weren’t there,’ he said. ‘That isn’t fair.’ Then he brightened. ‘But it was different for your mother. She was living in leafy Oxfordshire and never heard a bomb.’

  ‘Not entirely true,’ corrected Maureen. ‘We saw a lot of bomber planes, and one or two let their bombs drop not far from us. Nobody seemed very worried about it, though.’ Her eyes glazed as she relived those distant days. Seventy years ago, Thea calculated, near enough. To her it was like a completely different world. With different ideas of right and wrong, she suspected, as Fraser had implied when telling her about poor Spike.

  The conversation had strengthened her appreciation of her mother’s dilemma. Fraser Meadows was almost entirely credible. But then conmen always were credible. That was the whole point. They had a knack of making you like and trust them. Fraser was sometimes obviously trying hard to be nice, but at other times he seemed to be genuinely relaxed and spontaneous. There was no hint of calculation in his eyes. He seemed concerned for her mother’s well-being, and mildly embarrassed by his lifelong fondness for her. But as acting parts went, it had to be a relatively easy one to play. A few basic background details, which Maureen had almost certainly given away on Facebook or Friends Reunited, careful listening as she chatted about family, and one or two inspired guesses, and he could easily be convincing. Bodies changed dramatically over a lifetime, after all. Accents, even mannerisms, modified. And if he was fooling Maureen Johnstone, he must surely be fooling Oliver Meadows, and his own daughter, as well. Or was Mo another impostor, sharing the deception?

  ‘Reuben Hardy said you had a dog,’ she said suddenly. ‘Last time you were here, visiting Oliver. Reuben said you had a dog. Where is it now?’

  ‘It wasn’t mine.’

  ‘So whose was it? Mo’s?’

  ‘No, no. Mo never liked dogs much. Takes after her mother in that.’

  ‘So …?’

  ‘It’s a long, irrelevant story.’

  Thea felt a great desire to push it and demand every detail, but her mother repressed her with a look. It probably was, after all, irrelevant.

  Mo turned out to be a faded beauty. She had silver streaks on her temples, a startling dead tooth at the front, and thick black eyebrows. The tooth was the most disconcerting feature. It was dark brown and looked alarmingly loose. It made Thea think of Albanian peasants or Moroccan crones. The woman looked as if she was about to emit a loud cackle or curse. Jason was almost equally surprising, with a pot belly and dense grey beard. As relatives – or near relatives, in Jason’s case – of the very civilised Fraser, they were entirely unexpected in every respect.

  But they both spoke with standard English accents, seemed impressively concerned for the welfare of all three people at Thistledown, and duly acknowledged Hepzie. The spaniel took to them immediately, and curled up at Mo’s feet when she sat down on the living room couch. As far as Thea could see, the woman nursed little or no animosity towards this particular dog.

  ‘So, who’s this woman that got herself killed?’ Jason demanded, within the first five minutes. ‘Have they worked it out yet?’

  ‘Not as far as we know,’ Thea said cautiously. ‘She told me she was Fraser’s daughter.’

  ‘Well, that’s me, and I’m not dead,’ said Mo, emphatically. ‘No other daughters out there, eh, Dad?’

  ‘I think I can safely say not,’ he asserted. ‘I thought to begin with they were telling me you’d been murdered. I didn’t know what to think. I mean – I’d only seen you a day or two before.’

  Mo snorted, and began a close inspection of Thea. ‘So this is my stepsister-to-be,’ she said cheerfully, greatly to Thea’s alarm. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Um …’ Thea floundered, throwing her mother a pleading look, and recollecting for the first time that Melissa had made her think something very similar. ‘I …’

  Maureen forced a laugh, from the doorway. ‘Not quite,’ she demurred. ‘That is, nobody’s said anything …’ She took a step backwards, towards the kitchen, as if trying to escape.

  Fraser coughed self-consciously. ‘Steady on, Mo,’ he advised. ‘You’re not getting rid of me that quickly.’

  ‘Aw – shame!’ grimaced the woman, with self-mocking exaggeration. ‘Still, worth a try, I suppose.’

  Mo, Thea reminded herself, had grown up in Australia, despite the absence of an accent. That might explain the brashness, the complete lack of shyness or hesitation. She had a loud laugh and used it often.

  ‘I gather you’ve got three daughters,’ she said, when the conversation flagged.

  ‘Too right,’ agreed Mo. ‘For my sins.’ Then she laughed. ‘No, they’re good girls, all of them. Never caused me any grief. Give them a few years and I’ll be a granny two or three times over, I shouldn’t wonder. That’ll be a thing – Granny Mo.’ She laughed again.

  ‘And great-granddad Fraser,’ Thea pointed out, hoping to draw him back into the centre of things. Somehow the whole exercise felt as if it centred on him; as if it was designed to explain something. The stepsister remark could have been it, perhaps. If so, it was very much not what Thea had wanted to hear.

  ‘Yeah,’ Mo muttered, as if that was hardly relevant.

  Thea’s mother had appointed herself maker of coffee, and she came in with a laden tray, dispensing mugs of perfectly brewed real coffee. When it was finished, which took all of a minute and a half, Jason slammed his mug back onto the tray and gave himself a little shake. ‘Well, if you good people will excuse me, I’m off for a look at the railway museum they’ve got here.’

  ‘Is it open on a Monday?’ Thea wondered. ‘They often aren’t.’

  ‘I do
n’t mean the actual museum,’ he corrected. ‘I mean the station and trains they’ve got preserved, out on the Gretton road. I’ll drive up there and have a look round, see what they’ve got. Always like to see the big old steam engines, every chance I get. Lovely things!’ he sighed nostalgically. ‘Wish I’d been around when they were operating.’

  ‘I gather you’re in favour of the new high-speed abomination,’ Thea accused, before she could stop herself.

  He visibly resisted the challenge to make it a serious argument. ‘I sure am,’ he said in a joke American accent. ‘Have to move with the times. And the engineering’s going to be a miracle. Imagine it – it’ll be like flying through the countryside.’ He spread his arms, and made a whooshing sound. ‘It’s great that trains are still going to be around, right through this century. Pity the Yanks haven’t got the same idea.’

  Thea was torn. Obviously trains were easier on fossil fuel consumption, and altogether less of a hassle to use than planes. But she completely failed to see much, if any, environmental benefits to a slashing new line carving up the hills and vales and woodlands of Middle England. ‘I think it’s horrible,’ she asserted, with her usual emphasis. ‘Absolutely horrible.’

  ‘That’s what they always say about new things,’ he dismissed. ‘After a couple of years, everyone’ll wonder what the fuss was about.’

  ‘Well, I for one still think it’s never going to happen. Too many powerful people are against it.’

  ‘We’ll have to see, then, won’t we?’ said Jason calmly.

  ‘I’ll be dead by then, anyway,’ said Fraser, as if the idea held quite an appeal for him.

  The stark word brought them back to the present reality, and Thea’s mother sighed. She looked at Thea. ‘Presumably they still don’t know who she was – you’d have told us if they did.’

  Nobody pretended not to understand what she meant. Mo raised her eyebrows for a moment, but lowered them again, as if the details were unimportant.

  ‘Thea saw the police detective in charge of the case, earlier today,’ Maureen explained. ‘They went off somewhere, just the two of them.’ There was a thread of reproach in her tone.