Shadows in the Cotswolds Read online

  She had not, however, ordered a meal for herself, Thea noted. She seemed content to wait with them, and aware of the need to hold her tongue for the moment. There was something very contained about her, Thea observed. This was not a woman who would burst out in incontinent revelations or embarrassing comments. She was tense, though; her hands clasped together and her weight constantly shifting from one foot to the other. ‘Where exactly do you live?’ she asked.

  ‘Castle Street.’

  ‘Nice. I saw some really lovely houses down there, only this morning. One in particular. And that chapel overlooking it all gave it extra character.’

  ‘I’m just a little way down the hill from there. And my house is not regarded with much favour, I’m sorry to say. It’s too new to be lovely.’

  Thea laughed. ‘That’s ridiculous when you think about it. But I know what you mean. The stone has to weather for at least two centuries before it looks right.’

  ‘And yet by definition it’s already millions of years old. It’s a pity it comes out of the ground looking so new. It’s like a deep-sea creature that’s never seen any light. The stone needs to gain its own version of melanin, like a suntan.’

  ‘Is it very new? Your house, I mean.’

  ‘Fifteen years or thereabouts. I’ve heard it called a monstrosity and an abomination, when in fact it’s very well built. It conformed to all the regulations; it’s perfectly in keeping.’

  ‘Not like that blank-faced building where the silk mill used to be, then?’

  ‘Hush!’ Priscilla looked quite alarmed. ‘You mustn’t criticise that. It was the town’s pride and joy when it was built. You should have seen what was there before.’

  ‘But in Blockley they simply converted the mill. That’s got loads more character.’

  If there was coded information in what Priscilla was saying, Thea was missing it. She had assumed that Reuben and Jenny lived in the building in question, which appeared to be divided into maisonettes or flats – hadn’t Jenny said as much on Sunday? It seemed now that she might have misremembered the exact remark. There were several other possibilities as to where Jenny might live – large houses raised high above the street on the north side, and smaller ones further down Silk Mill Lane. Close neighbours to Priscilla Heap, in any event. She had not forgotten that the woman had appeared swiftly on the scene when they found Reuben’s body, and had capably ushered back the onlookers. And now she was nervous and agitated, and in need of company.

  They carried their food back to Thistledown. ‘I’ve no intention of eating in the street,’ said Thea’s mother firmly. ‘However hungry I might be.’

  ‘Oh, Mother – you’re so old-fashioned,’ Thea fondly mocked.

  ‘It’s good to have standards,’ Priscilla defended. ‘That’s what the older generation is for – to maintain standards.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Maureen with dignity. ‘Shall I take the dog, if you carry this bag?’

  The food was still hot when they got back into the house, and there was no awkwardness about Priscilla not sharing the meal. She offered to make coffee while the others ate and a comfortable peace descended, which Thea could not help feeling was merely temporary and perhaps undeserved. In fact, she broke it herself, after a few minutes.

  ‘So – did you know Reuben Hardy, then? Wasn’t he a close neighbour of yours?’

  ‘I knew him well enough, yes. Typical brash young whizz kid, off up the motorway every morning to some incomprehensible job.’

  ‘And his wife? I met her on Saturday, briefly. With that gorgeous dog.’

  ‘Poor creature. It only sees the people at weekends. They pay someone to take it out for a few minutes during the day, while they’re both off at work. Criminal, if you ask me.’

  ‘She seemed very fond of it.’

  ‘How could anybody not be? It’s the most beautiful animal you could wish to meet. Much as I mistrust dogs, I can recognise sheer beauty when I see it.’

  ‘More beautiful than your horse?’

  ‘My horse is twenty-five years old, with a crooked flash down her face and a tail that collects sticky burrs of its own accord. Sally-Girl is far from beautiful.’

  ‘But you love her,’ supplied Thea’s mother.

  ‘I suppose I do. She and I go back a very long way.’

  ‘Do you ride her?’

  ‘Of course. Her life would lack all purpose otherwise. We have our little circuit, avoiding the roads. This area has more bridle paths than anywhere I know. People have ridden to and fro for centuries, across this land. And Sally-Girl knows all the kinks and bumps for miles around. Do you ride, either of you?’ She looked from face to face.

  Both shook their heads. ‘You should try it,’ urged Priscilla. ‘It’s magnificent, up there, being carried along by a living animal. There is absolutely nothing like it.’

  ‘I think you have to come to it young,’ said Thea carefully. ‘And we were never a horsey family. I’ve got two sisters, and none of us ever went through the pony stage.’

  ‘Poor you,’ said Priscilla Heap with feeling.

  ‘It was a different sort of place to this,’ defended Thea, tiring of the subject. ‘So – tell us about Reuben,’ she demanded. ‘Isn’t that why you came to see us in the first place? After all, it was only this morning we were standing over his dead body.’

  ‘I’ve told you most of it. Young. Ambitious. Too affluent for his own good. That dog must have cost close to a thousand pounds, for a start.’

  Thea’s mother gave a shocked squawk. ‘Really?’ she spluttered.

  ‘From what I hear at the shows, absolutely.’

  ‘But he wasn’t killed for his money, was he?’ said Thea briskly. ‘I don’t expect he’s got very much in hard cash.’

  ‘Unless it was his wife, of course,’ said Maureen. ‘She’ll get it all now, won’t she?’

  Priscilla gave a dismissive snort. ‘How could she have carried the body up that alley? She’s not very big. Besides, they’re a devoted couple. Everybody says so. She’ll be absolutely lost without him.’

  ‘She screamed for ten minutes,’ said Thea absently, ‘when they told her he was dead.’

  Priscilla blew out her cheeks. ‘Gosh!’ she said.

  But Thea was thinking about something else. ‘How do you know the body was carried into the alley?’ she asked.

  ‘Because it was cold – been dead for hours – and even though it’s not exactly a busy thoroughfare, people do go up and down it regularly. If he’d died there, someone would have found him a long time before you did.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Thea accepted. ‘I know it is, because I went down it myself shortly before nine this morning. And he wasn’t there then. But how do you know it was cold? I didn’t see you touch him.’

  Priscilla lost poise for a moment, her lips working but no words emerging. ‘Oh, well, I had a quick feel, remember – just the tips of my fingers on his cheek. I don’t know why – just a sort of instinct, I think. Animals do it. Just a little nudge, to see if you can bring them back to life. And poor Reuben was stone cold, I assure you.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Thea said quickly. ‘And somebody killed him.’

  ‘Don’t you think …’ ventured Maureen, ‘that he might possibly have died naturally, or perhaps killed himself, and then been put in the alley for some reason?’

  Both the others stared at her. ‘Why in the world would anybody want to do that?’ Thea demanded. ‘That would be insane.’

  Her mother held her ground. ‘Well – he might have been in the wrong place, somewhere embarrassing. Perhaps he was having a fierce argument with someone and the stress of it gave him heart failure. After all, there were no marks on him. He didn’t look as if he’d been strangled, did he? Doesn’t that leave obvious bruises? And the way he was laid out … it all looked so careful.’

  Thea suppressed an unworthy thought that the streets of Winchcombe obviously demanded a neat and tidy murder, and focused on what her mother had said. She had
to admit that there was some sense in the theory. There were clear differences between the two bodies, after the initial impression that they were identical. ‘But whoever laid him out like that must have seen Melissa’s body as well.’

  ‘Or work as an undertaker,’ suggested Priscilla, as if the idea was a new one, a light remark with no substance behind it. Now it was her turn to receive a hard scrutiny.

  ‘You know about the Meadows case, then?’ Thea asked.

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  Thea remembered that Gladwin hadn’t paid much attention to the story; that she herself, despite having the news mumbling away on the radio for much of the day, had missed it. Perhaps Drew, in the business himself, had given it undue importance, assuming that everybody else in the country shared his fascination for funerals and their operatives. The reality might easily be that it had been given much less coverage than he implied, and that most people failed to be interested.

  ‘Oliver’s brother is on trial for child abuse, in London. The family are prominent East End undertakers. Oliver’s nephew runs the business now. Oliver’s father was—’ She stopped herself. The fact of Melissa’s parentage was not for public consumption. It was even possible that the girl herself had actually thought herself to be the offspring of Fraser, and not his sister. It had been a tightly kept secret, and to reveal it now felt unfair, even before the obligations to keep details of police enquiries to herself.

  ‘What? Was what?’ prompted Priscilla.

  ‘Famous during the war, apparently,’ Thea improvised. ‘He was a hero, according to Drew.’

  ‘Fraser never said a thing about that, back in the sixties,’ Maureen said quietly. ‘I would have remembered that sort of story. I’m sure I would.’

  Priscilla turned to her enquiringly. ‘Pardon?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, he and I knew each other, a thousand years ago. We’ve just been reunited.’

  ‘Gosh! How romantic!’ The thread of sarcasm was barely discernible, but Thea winced on her mother’s behalf. ‘Who’s Drew?’

  Good question, Thea thought. ‘He’s a friend of mine. He does natural burials in Somerset.’ She glanced at her mother, aware that until that moment she had never heard Drew mentioned.

  ‘You don’t mean the Peaceful Repose chap? The one who’s been trying to get a burial place going in Broad Campden?’

  I might have known, thought Thea. Maybe people did take more notice of the funeral business than she’d just been assuming. ‘That’s him,’ she said resignedly.

  ‘How do you know him? Have you buried somebody in his cemetery?’

  ‘No. We just … bumped into each other, earlier this year. His wife died a few weeks ago.’

  ‘Thea, you’ve gone pink,’ her mother accused. ‘Is this a new boyfriend you haven’t told me about?’

  How was it that mothers could always regress you to fifteen, with absolutely no effort, Thea wondered. She repressed a desire to snap and snarl and retreat to her bedroom. ‘Nothing like that, Mum,’ she said brightly. ‘I just said – his wife died. He’s got two little children. He hasn’t got time for anything else.’ And besides, he’s six years younger than me, she felt like adding. But that would be too great a giveaway. You didn’t make those sort of calculations about somebody who was just a casual friend. Her heart skipped alarmingly. No, it crowed, you don’t, do you?

  ‘So he’ll know about the Meadows family,’ summarised Priscilla. ‘And could be helpful to the police, maybe? If they ask him.’ She smiled meaningfully, and Thea understood that the well-publicised events of Broad Campden, six months earlier, had remained in the memory of at least one resident of Winchcombe.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  While Thea was gathering information and making connections, Drew was managing something similar, once the children were finally in bed, and some urgent bill payments attended to. The hours since the conversation with Thea had passed somewhat blurrily, as he tried to stay abreast of work, children, supper, Maggs and his own chaotic emotions.

  This would be the fourth time since he met her that Thea had become embroiled in a violent death. The first time, admittedly, it had been less her than Drew himself, who had borne the brunt of it. Since then, they had discovered a knack of bouncing ideas and theories around, working as an informal team, or – more accurately – a mutually supportive twosome. Karen had been a serious distraction every time, and Maggs a sternly disapproving figure. But here was a clear instance where he could provide helpful inside information. Nobody could object to that. And as if to exonerate himself of any subterfuge, he had asked Maggs, shortly before she went home, whether she knew anything about the Meadows family and their undertaking business in London.

  ‘Henry Meadows!’ she exclaimed immediately. ‘Yes, I met him on that conference thing you sent me to. Remember? About eighteen months ago. You thought we should make our presence felt. It cost a fortune, and I never thought it was worth it.’

  ‘Henry Meadows was there?’

  ‘The man himself. They treated him like royalty. Everybody wanted to be like him. There was a session on relations with the community – I had plenty to say about that, as you can imagine.’

  ‘I remember,’ he said patiently.

  ‘Well, the Meadows chap seemed to think he’d invented the whole idea. Went on about Chambers of Commerce and Rotary and that sort of tedious stuff. I kept interrupting and talking about the WI and the local Green Party. He was furious with me,’ she chuckled. ‘It was great fun.’

  ‘So he’s a pompous stuffed shirt?’

  ‘Well, no, not really. He’s youngish and good-looking and quite a charmer. Not oily at all. Smiles a lot.’

  ‘I’m impressed at your total recall.’

  ‘I haven’t given him a thought for over a year,’ she defended. ‘But you asked and I told you.’

  ‘Yes, and I’m impressed,’ he repeated.

  ‘So why the question in the first place?’

  He took a deep breath. ‘I saw a news item on the telly. A murder in Winchcombe. Apparently it involves that Meadows brother who says he was abused as a boy, by another of the sons. His half-brother. There’s a trial happening in London as we speak.’

  He could see her mind whirring. ‘Winchcombe? Where’s that, as if I didn’t know?’

  ‘Gloucestershire, I think.’

  ‘Come off it, Drew. It’s in the Cotswolds, isn’t it? That woman’s involved, I suppose. And you’ve been speaking to her.’ When I told you not to, hung in the air, but even Maggs wouldn’t go quite as far as that.

  ‘I can be helpful to her,’ he insisted. ‘So can you, if you stop being so pig-headed about it.’

  She blinked and eyed him carefully. ‘You do look better,’ she acknowledged. ‘I suppose that’s a good thing.’

  ‘It’s all these new funerals,’ he said warmly. ‘Being busy is the best medicine. I still can’t quite believe it.’

  Maggs yawned. ‘Well, I can. I had about four hours sleep last night. I can’t wait to get to bed.’

  ‘Get along, then,’ he encouraged. ‘Thanks for the info about Henry Meadows.’

  ‘Luckily you’re going to be far too taken up with the funerals to have time to slope off to the Cotswolds. I suppose a few phone calls won’t hurt.’

  She spoke with the air of giving gracious permission, and he knew he couldn’t let it go at that. Drew Slocombe had always tried to address snide hints and innuendo wherever he found them. ‘Maggs, dear friend and partner, let’s get this straight. You’re not my mother, sister or wife. You actually can’t take responsibility for me and my life. I know your motives are perfectly pure and good, but you have to back off and let me make my own decisions. I owe you an enormous debt of gratitude for years of support and sacrifice and fantastic company. I rely on you far too much. The children even more so. It’s not good for either of us to keep on like this.’

  She sagged, taking the full impact of this startlingly direct speech. But Maggs Cooper was
made of solid steel. Drew often imagined a Jamaican grandmother somewhere, whose genes had passed wholesale into this young cuckoo who had been raised by a quietly decent couple in Plymouth. They had valiantly risen to the challenge of a mixed-race child, who from her middle teens had wanted nothing else but to become an undertaker. She had married Drew’s friend, Den Cooper, a very tall ex-policeman, who knew himself to be unworthy of her. Nobody, really, was worthy of Maggs.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Fair enough. I’m not going to argue with you about it. But I’m not going to change my mind, either. There’ll come a time when you’ll see I’m right, and be thankful to me.’

  ‘I’m thankful now. I just said so.’

  ‘Well, that’s all right then. Now let me go home to bed, will you?’

  ‘Right. I’ll see you in the morning, then. Busy day ahead.’

  ‘Night, night, then, Drew.’

  All of which left him mildly confused. Whatever he might have said to Maggs, he still found himself feeling answerable to her, in need of her permission before he approached Thea again. But hadn’t she given that permission? And wasn’t he lapsing back into the old pattern of bowing to her superior wisdom, thinking along these lines in the first place? Almost from the start, Maggs had taken it upon herself to behave as his moral arbiter. She had defended Karen’s interests, working on the assumption that all men would stray and misbehave if you gave them enough rope. An assumption that Drew had almost confirmed, once or twice. Women liked him. They liked his boyishly open face and natural good listening. He met their eye and admitted to his feelings. They liked his way with children, and his easy professionalism when it came to burying the dead. And, to his own occasional surprise, they seemed to see in him a solid integrity that made him a man to rely on. That was the part that Maggs seemed to overlook. Drew was safe and much stronger than he looked. His back was straight and his shoulders square. He looked good in a suit. And he had small sensitive hands. Everybody looked at his hands, wondering with a variety of emotions just what he was capable of doing with them.