Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: Cotswold Mysteries
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
A classic British cozy crime mystery set in the idyllic Cotswold countryside ... Thea Osborne reconnects with her friend Emmy while on a visit to the church in Baunton, near Cirencester with her stepdaughter Stephanie. Emmy, now married to local farmer Nick Weaver, asks Thea to, help them find their missing niece, Ginny. But before Thea can get started, she stumbles upon the recently killed body of Alice, a woman they had briefly seen in Cirencester the day before. Stephanie concentrates on searching for Ginny via social media while Thea is diverted into helping the police with the murder investigation. It soon becomes clear that Ginny and Alice are linked in a sinister way.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 390
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
3
A Discovery in the Cotswolds
REBECCA TOPE
5
This one is dedicated to my dear friend Paula Brackston, who has been a staunch confidante for a long time now.
Contents
Author’s Note
As with other titles in this series, the story is set in a real Cotswold village. Baunton is almost exactly as described, including the tumbledown sheds. But the Weavers’ farm is an invention.
Chapter One
‘I’ve discovered something,’ Timmy announced over Sunday lunch.
‘What?’ asked Stephanie, with minimal interest.
‘Tomato soup tastes nothing like tomatoes. It’s not even the right colour.’
The whole family paused and looked at him. Thea had made two cans of soup stretch between four people as a first course before the roast chicken. First courses were unusual, but the chicken wasn’t very big. Besides, it was half-term, which they all thought called for something a bit special.
‘I tried making it with real tomatoes once,’ she said. ‘And it was revolting.’
‘They add a lot of sugar,’ said Stephanie in a helpful big-sisterly tone. ‘And other stuff, I suppose.’
Drew was sipping soup thoughtfully. ‘Makes you think of Andy Warhol,’ he said. ‘And Coca Cola. Icons. Secret ingredients. You could do a PhD on it.’
‘It’s like the emperor’s new clothes,’ Timmy went on. ‘Everybody pretending it’s actually something it’s not.’
‘But it really is made of tomatoes,’ Stephanie pointed out. ‘Like ninety-five per cent of it is, or something like that. It must be to do with the processing.’
‘Hurry up and finish,’ said Thea. ‘The next course is ready.’
‘What’s a PhD?’ asked Timmy.
‘The phone’s quiet,’ noticed Thea, an hour or two later.
‘It’s Sunday,’ Drew reminded her.
‘I know, but it’s been quiet for a week now.’
Stephanie gave her a look. ‘More than that,’ she said. ‘There’s only one funeral this week – and only one last week, too.’
‘Oh.’ Thea cast her mind back, wondering how long it had been since she took a proper interest in her husband’s schedule. ‘It’s one of those phases, is it? You can do some catching up, then.’ You could even go and see your mother, she added silently. Drew’s mother had turned out to be a very mixed blessing since she had reentered their lives the previous year. Encounters with her were dutiful and strained, the lengthy estrangement too deep and damaging to overcome in any meaningful way. Drew had driven up to her distant northern home once, and never again. Talk of her moving to the Cotswolds to be near them had withered away as unfeasible.
‘It’s a bit more than that,’ said Drew with a sigh. ‘Those new people in Cirencester are turning into real competition. They make me feel very stale by comparison.’
‘Um …?’ said Thea, slightly alarmed. She had evidently missed something.
‘That new undertaker business, all run by women. Bespoke funerals, low prices, flexible in every way. Fresh, young, ground-breaking. Overturning all the old practices. You know what I mean.’
‘Oh. I thought you were all those things.’
‘I might have been ten years ago. The world appears to have changed quite a lot without me properly noticing.’
‘Maggs would have made sure that didn’t happen,’ Thea acknowledged in all humility. Drew’s original assistant had handled a substantial portion of the work, subtly educating Drew in countless ways and nudging him in the right direction when it came to public tastes and expectations. Nobody – certainly not Thea – had filled her shoes, and the initial novelty value he had enjoyed in the Cotswolds was rapidly fading away. Alternative burials were almost mainstream now, and providers were proliferating.
‘I know,’ sighed Drew.
Implications were legion. And familiar. Thea had put up a very poor showing as the undertaker’s wife, distancing herself from the details of the work with little or no apology. Not – as many people probably supposed – because she had any difficulties with death, but more because she lacked the subtle sensitivities that her husband seemed to have been born with. The complicated realities of bereavement baffled her at times. She wholeheartedly endorsed the simple burials that were Drew’s stock-in-trade: the absence of any religious ritual; the close involvement of the families in decorating the coffin and speaking over it before it was interred – it was all completely right, in her view. But there were more layers to it than that. The enormity of death had to be handled in small bites, seasoned with humour and tears, and sometimes openly defied. Whilst deploring the often-used passage written by Henry Scott Holland and subsequently turned into a poem, Thea accepted that it reflected what people wanted to believe at the moment of losing a loved one. ‘Death is nothing at all. It does not count,’ it said. ‘I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened.’ ‘Nonsense!’ Thea had wanted to shout, the first time she heard it at the age of thirty-two. Her feelings had only grown stronger since then.
When her first husband had died, a friend had rashly suggested the reading, causing a painful meltdown on Thea’s part, which evolved into a dark period of anguish and confusion. Grief had been subsumed under the heading of rage for a while, morphing into a grim phase of self-harming, as the jargon characterised it. She had pulled herself out of it with the help of her spaniel and a whole new way of life working as a house-sitter. There had been a new relationship which she had come to see as ‘transitional’, before meeting dear Drew Slocombe. Even then, it had been a long time before she’d found the courage to disclose all the details of her recent past to Drew. Her main worry was that he would overreact and offer an excessive level of retrospective sympathy. In the event, he had pitched it perfectly and firmly packed it away as long dealt with and finished. ‘A normal part of the grieving process,’ he said.
She knew she would never be able to match his expertise when it came to managing the minefield of bereavement, and she was going to have to tread carefully when considering Drew’s current predicament. ‘So what are we going to do about it?’ she said.
‘Good question. I’m wondering whether I should get Maggs down here and see if she has any ideas.’
‘She might not want to, you know. She’s got plenty of other things to think about these days.’ Maggs was married, with two small children, not much money and some worrying health issues.
‘I could go there, maybe?’
Thea grimaced. Going there entailed revisiting the area where Drew had lived with his first wife and run a thriving alternative burial service. His children had been born there and his wife was buried close by. Maggs and Den Cooper lived in a neighbouring village, but had moved out of the funeral business. Den worked as a security officer at Bristol airport, and Maggs had become a full-time mother. Her second daughter, Imogen, was only five months old. Two months earlier, Maggs had suddenly become breathless and light-headed. An embolism was discovered on a lung, and everything had plunged into panic and uncertainty. The echoes of Karen Slocombe’s experience were impossible to ignore.
‘You know her best,’ said Thea, ‘but I’m not sure the timing is terribly good.’
‘I’ll phone her and see how things are, then.’
‘The obvious answer is for me to earn some proper money,’ said Thea, returning to a perennial topic that was never entirely resolved. Thea had sold a house in Witney when she married Drew, which gave them a large amount of savings which easily tided them over the quiet spells. Bearing this in mind, she felt she might be excused the annoyance of having to find a job, and Drew had agreed with her. However, there was a new tone to this latest analysis of their finances, which threatened to give rise to a new line of thought. If Drew’s business failed, everything would be thrown up in the air. ‘I should sit down and write a CV.’
‘We’re not very employable, either of us,’ he pointed out. ‘I can’t just let everything fall apart – not with Andrew and Fiona relying on me, and after we’ve made all the alterations to the house and got the hearse …’ He ground to a halt, looking miserable. ‘I just have to pull myself together and keep up with the times. I thought I knew what people wanted, but I can see I’ve been lazy. Maybe I need to invest in another burial field if I can find one, with a different sort of ambience that might appeal to a whole new group of people.’
The conversation rambled on for a few more minutes, with Thea finding less and less to offer by way of helpful suggestions. The spectre of Maggs Cooper hovered at the back of her mind; Maggs who knew how to handle the bereaved and understood what was wanted from a genuine funeral. She had been Drew’s assistant for years, seeing him through the loss of his wife and effectively carrying the business for a while. It would look as if Thea had failed him if Maggs were to be shipped in now.
‘I’ll just check a few things on Facebook and whatnot – see if anybody wants a house-sitter around here, then,’she concluded. ‘After all, it’s what I do.’
‘There’s a rather peculiar thing about Baunton,’ Thea reported, later in the day. ‘You know – that little place right beside Cirencester.’
‘Never been there,’ said Drew. ‘Peculiar in what way?’
‘I was just noodling around and got onto something about church paintings. You know – like the one in Oddington, where I was back in the summer. I’d got it in my favourites or something and it popped up, along with stuff about another one in Baunton. And that led me to a post somebody put up saying there was goings-on in a corner of the churchyard and there should be a rota of people to watch it in the night, to see what it was.’
‘Goings-on, eh? Amongst the graves? Sounds pretty normal to me.’
‘You’re thinking of that woman who was killed and buried in Peaceful Repose before you’d even opened up,’ she accused. He had told her the story several times, boasting of his own brief prowess as an amateur detective. ‘Not that there was anything normal about that, of course.’
‘I wasn’t thinking about her,’ he said, with a little frown that struck Thea as mildly irritated. ‘It’s more that most teenagers go through a phase of mucking about in churchyards. I think it has to do with confronting death for the first time. Trying to belittle it, or put it in its place. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Sort of. Maybe that’s what’s happened in Baunton. Unless it’s lovers looking for a quiet spot. Except it’s serious enough to make the news, even if it’s only local Facebook stuff.’
‘Black magic, then?’
‘Might be. I can’t find anything else about it, but there’s something up. A man’s been complaining that his granny’s grave has had a fire started on top of it. More than once, apparently.’
‘I’m confused as to why you find this interesting. I thought you were looking for a house-sitting job.’
‘I got side-tracked. One thing leads to another,’ she defended vaguely.
‘I have to say if you’re looking for regular work, I’m not sure house-sitting is the best option. Not that I’m objecting or anything, but it does take you away from the bosom of your family, and that can be awkward. Stephanie doesn’t like it, for one thing. And the dog’s always a complication.’
He had neatly summarised the tensions that arose when Thea did accept a commission to watch over someone’s Cotswold house for a week or so. She had done it for a few years before she met Drew, finding herself in surprising demand, in spite of the succession of calamities that followed her around. She had acquired a level of notoriety that actually appealed to some people. Her very presence sometimes overturned the daily routines of a small village and led to violence. The fact that house-sitting was essentially boring ensured that Thea took it upon herself to tackle the mysteries of local behaviour, generally with the encouragement – or at least concurrence – of the police.
‘You think I should stack supermarket shelves?’ she challenged.
‘It’s steady money and we’d get a handy discount on groceries.’
‘While you just sit at home waiting for the phone to ring.’
‘It’s a hard job, but someone has to do it,’ he twinkled. ‘But as we said already, it looks as if I’m going to have to be more proactive than that. Winter is coming, people will be dying and I want to bury them.’
‘You could make a banner saying just that,’ she teased.
They both laughed, happy in the banter that might have sounded sharper to an outsider than it was meant. Stephanie and Timmy had long ago learnt to take it calmly, and only started to worry if Thea wept or Drew stormed out of the room. That hardly ever happened.
‘Winters aren’t so cold these days,’ Thea reminded him. ‘And nursing homes are suffocatingly hot.’
‘Even so,’ he muttered.
‘I think I might go and have a look at Baunton tomorrow. Stephanie can come with me. Tim’s got that Pokemon thing to go to.’
‘Okay,’ said Drew.
Which had not actually solved anything, of course. Drew pointed this out later in the day. ‘We’re just avoiding the issue,’ he said.
‘Ah,’ said Thea, reaching for her metaphorical counsellor’s hat. ‘Well, let’s be methodical about it. First of all – how much do you seriously want to carry on as you are? I mean, doing the same sort of burials at the same sort of prices. Are you actively committed to that or would a change appeal to you?’
‘I’m not at all resistant to change, if a viable one offered itself. Have you anything particular in mind?’
‘Not really. We should probably go over what it is people most want from a funeral. Has that changed? If there’s a sudden preference for quick cremations with nobody there, then we might be in trouble.’
Drew winced. ‘Surely that can’t really be what they want? It’s so cold and callous. Such a waste of a life.’
‘That’s a bit strong.’
‘No, but the funeral’s where everyone gets a chance to recognise that a life has stopped, that there’s a lifeless body that ought to be respected for who that person was. I must have watched thousands of people put that body into the ground, throw soil onto it and walk away knowing they’ve done everything properly. Somebody once said nobody should leave a funeral more miserable than they were before it. Something like that. And that’s what I want to give them. The release of emotion and permission for life to go on. There’s nothing more they can actually do. That’s a good feeling.’
Thea laughed. ‘Good Lord, you’ve still got it, haven’t you! Just show up at all the WIs in Gloucestershire and say that and you’ll have queues around the block.’
‘Like I did ten years ago,’ he agreed. ‘But I get the impression that it’s all going the other way now. Death is seen as morbid, ugly, frightening. Watching a flimsy coffin get covered in earth is too much for them. With a cremation it all goes on out of sight, and is a lot easier – or so they like to think. They’ve still got the satisfaction of getting it accomplished, without too much of the reality. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s me that’s got it wrong.’
‘It’s not,’ she assured him. ‘You need to save people from themselves. They’re only doing these horrible cremations because they think it’s the cheapest way. People never believe that a burial can be cheaper.’
‘Not just “can be”. It always is, even in a churchyard or a municipal cemetery. Unless they have one of those really simple cremations with nobody there,’ he finished with a sigh.
‘Right. So tell them that. You have to get out there and spread the word.’
‘Yes, dear.’ He stared at a spot on the wall, processing his feelings. ‘I just wish I didn’t have to, that’s all. People use such peculiar language these days. Everything’s “cherished” or “precious”. I like to use plainer words.’
‘Says the man who ran “Peaceful Repose Burial Ground”,’ she taunted. ‘I almost went off you on the spot when I heard that’s what you’d called your place.’
He bridled. ‘It was peaceful,’ he protested. ‘And besides, I was more idealistic then.’
She patted his hand. ‘You’re still idealistic. And quaint. And traditional. I mean – you don’t even like it when people request brightly coloured clothes at the funeral, because that’s what the dead person said they wanted.’
‘That’s true,’ he admitted with a bowed head. ‘It always feels like a sort of false modesty on the part of the deceased. As if they don’t want their friends and family to really care that they’ve gone. Because it’s usually at their request that people don’t wear black.’
‘I know. You explained it before. But that’s how people are these days.’
‘I always let them do what they want,’ he defended.
‘You do. And it’ll be all right, honestly. Meanwhile Stephanie and I are still going to Baunton tomorrow. We’ll do some shopping in Cirencester as well, to make it worth it. That’s what half-term’s for – replacing school stuff. She needs new trainers.’
Chapter Two
Thea parked close to the very large church that was one of Cirencester’s main features. ‘Do you want to go in?’ she asked Stephanie, who had been taking considerable interest in religion for some time now.
‘Not really,’ shrugged the girl. ‘We’re looking at the one in Baunton, aren’t we? Two in one day might be a bit much.’
Thea laughed. ‘It’s a handsome building, all the same. Look at it! It’s like Northleach only more so.’
‘Yeah, but it’s not symmetrical, look. That extra bit is all wrong. And it’s really much too big.’
Thea gave an obedient glance but found herself resisting any proper scrutiny. She had mixed feelings about churches in general, very aware of their declining relevance and the cost of preserving them. ‘I agree with you about the size. It’s just showing off.’
Stephanie opened her mouth to correct this calumny when her attention was caught by a figure leaning against one of the buttresses at the foot of the tower barely fifteen yards away. ‘Look at that woman!’ she whispered. ‘Is she drunk or something?’
Thea tried not to stare, even though the person in question was in no state to notice or even care. ‘I think she must be,’ she said. ‘But you can’t always be sure. She might have brain damage or something.’
As they watched, the woman slid down the stonework until she was squatting on the pavement. Her head was shaking from side to side, and she patted the ground by her feet with both hands. ‘Gosh!’ breathed Stephanie. ‘Shouldn’t somebody help her?’
‘Probably. But she’s not causing any harm, is she? She might well not want any help.’
‘Everyone’s just ignoring her. They’re embarrassed, aren’t they?’
‘Look, here’s somebody. She seems to know her.’
Another woman was approaching with obvious purpose. ‘Oh, Alice,’ she said loudly. ‘I’ve been looking for you. Get up, you fool.’
Alice did not move or speak. The newcomer stood over her, arms folded. Thea and Stephanie shamelessly watched the proceedings, each consumed with curiosity.
‘They look just like each other,’ said Stephanie. ‘Don’t they?’
It was true. Both aged about sixty, with fair hair gone grey and long chins, they might have been twins. ‘The new one’s quite a lot fatter, and a bit taller,’ Thea murmured. ‘But I bet they’re sisters.’
‘They look – unusual,’ judged the girl. ‘Not like most people round here.’
It was obvious what she meant. Cotswolds women had good clothes, expensive shoes, tidy hairstyles and always seemed to be in a hurry. They drove big cars and often had a big dog to match. The few remaining farm women were no exception, although their hair might sometimes be disorderly. Alice and her putative sister were both wearing grubby trainers, and Alice actually had a dry leaf and a small twig sticking to her jumper.
‘Get up,’ came the repeated instruction. Alice slowly complied, pushing herself upright with the help of the stonework behind her. ‘Why are you here, anyway?’ barked the vocal one. Alice merely shrugged.
‘We should go,’ muttered Thea. ‘They won’t want us watching like this.’ As she spoke, the second woman met her gaze and held it. She’ll know me again, thought Thea, turning away with a faint smile.
Stephanie was quick to agree, and they walked past the church into the main shopping street. ‘Was she drunk, do you think?’ Stephanie wondered, unable to drop the subject.
‘Probably. We’ll never know now, so let’s just forget about it. She’s got somebody looking after her, which is the main thing.’
By force of habit, Thea was heading for the Oxfam bookshop until her stepdaughter queried this. ‘We don’t need any more books,’ she said. ‘I thought we’d come to get me some trainers.’
‘Sorry. You’re right – although it’s always fun to have a browse through a lot of books, and they’re cheaper here.’
‘We haven’t got time,’ said the sensible girl. ‘You know you always take ages when you go in there.’
‘You exaggerate,’ Thea argued mildly. ‘We’ve only been here once before, to my certain knowledge. Together, I mean.’
Even so, Stephanie prevailed and the trainers were purchased after careful comparisons between several pairs. ‘Tim needs more socks,’ Thea was reminded. ‘And you did say Hepzie could do with a new collar.’
‘Drew thinks he ought to get another tie or two, as well,’ said Thea with an effort. ‘He got a greasy mark on the best one he uses for funerals.’ She was not enjoying this part of the expedition, with the mundane necessities that had no direct connection with her own priorities.
It was well past eleven when they finished. ‘Let’s get to Baunton now,’ Stephanie urged.
‘Right,’ said Thea, resisting the urge to point out that none of the shopping had been for her benefit.
The village was approached via Baunton Lane, which led through a part of Stratton. ‘Look at these houses!’ Thea exclaimed as they passed a number of very big, very handsome Cotswold residences. ‘Every one of them must be worth nearly a million,’ she sighed.
‘Really?’ Stephanie sounded sceptical. ‘That’s a lot.’
‘Maybe only the really huge ones. Oh, here we are, look.’ They had crossed the A435 and were immediately in Baunton where the houses were still handsome but not quite as large. ‘Now where’s the church?’
They followed the little road around a bend, past houses that often had no barrier between themselves and the street, and which gave an instant impression of approachability and friendliness. ‘How very different from Oddington!’ said Thea. ‘Everything’s got big gates and electronic keypads there.’
‘I remember,’ said Stephanie. ‘Horrible!’
They spotted a sign saying ‘To the Church’ and found a place to park. A woman in a garden opposite gave them a little wave as she cut the dead heads off a clump of dahlias. ‘Wow – a real live person!’ said Thea. ‘That’s a rare sight in most of these villages.’
Standing beside the car they both became aware of a constant noise, loud enough to force itself onto their attention. ‘Cars?’ said Thea.
‘Must be.’
‘They sound so close. And such a big road.’ She was bewildered by the geography, remembering the quiet little lane they had used to get there. ‘We’ll have to go and look after we’ve seen the church.’
Stephanie just nodded and opened the little gate into the churchyard.
They could see nothing immediately worthy of note. Yew trees, gravestones, a wall and the church itself. They stood back and regarded it for a moment. ‘Not like the one in Cirencester,’ said Stephanie. ‘This one’s more like a house.’
She was right, Thea realised. No spire or tower, just a basic plain building with a large porch in the middle. ‘It’s really old,’ she said. ‘We should have done some homework on it before we came.’
‘I did,’ said Stephanie. ‘It dates back to 1150, with some extras added in the fifteenth century.’
‘Oh,’ said Thea.
‘Let’s go in.’
The wall painting confronted them the moment they were inside. Most of it was visible, with St Christopher’s red cloak the most vivid part. ‘But where’s the Christ Child?’ wondered Stephanie. Little by little they detected the outline of a small figure perched on the saint’s shoulder, marred by a modern beam-end that had presumably been inserted at a time when the painted had been obscured by Victorian whitewash. Stephanie recounted the legend of St Christopher for her stepmother’s benefit, since her knowledge of such subjects was much greater than Thea’s. ‘Hmm,’ said Thea, looking round at the rest of the interior. ‘I bet that’s not in the Bible.’
‘Hardly any of the saints are,’ said Stephanie. ‘But that doesn’t mean they’re not good stories.’
Thea had found a curtain, which she opened to reveal a very old embroidery. She inspected it closely. ‘This is lovely,’ she called to the girl who had moved up towards the altar.
‘So is this.’ Stephanie was looking at the cloth hanging over the front of the altar. ‘All done by hand.’
‘That must be the replacement for this one, when it got too fragile. Now it’s kept over here with a curtain to stop it fading.’
‘Everything’s so old. It makes my head hurt. Do you think people then were the same as us now?’
‘Who knows? Lots of people say they were, that nothing has really changed since Neolithic times. The basic intelligence level of human beings is still the same as then, apparently.’
‘They were good at embroidery, anyway,’ smiled Stephanie. ‘But I don’t think they can have been anything like us. What about religion? They put all these pictures on the walls because people couldn’t read. And they can’t have been very clever, can they? They didn’t invent stuff like we do now.’
‘It’s a big question. I think the main difference is in what people were most frightened of.’
‘Dying,’ said Stephanie readily. ‘And that hasn’t changed, has it?’
Which reminded them of Drew and funerals and murder. ‘We haven’t had a proper look round the graveyard,’ Thea said. ‘What about the strange goings-on we came to investigate?’
With a long backward glance, Stephanie followed her outside and they again examined the churchyard. ‘It’s very small,’ Thea remarked.
‘There’s another bit round the corner, look.’ The girl started towards the wall at the bottom of the short path and veered around the end of the building. ‘They’ve got a lovely new shed,’ she pointed out. ‘Do you think the vicar hides out here if he doesn’t want to talk to someone?’
‘Bound to,’ Thea agreed. The shed was an anomaly in itself, and she felt very tempted to see if she could look inside it. The door was not obviously locked. But she restrained herself and went to look at the additional collection of graves. On her left, the ground dropped away into a wide field several feet below the level of the church. A wall and a fence barred the way down.
‘Look at this!’ Stephanie was standing by an old headstone. ‘What’s happened here?’
A large earthy mound was lying at right angles to the stone, giving the whole thing a disjointed appearance. At first glance it appeared that there had been a recent burial, but looking again, Thea saw that it was not the work of any human hand. ‘Ants?’ she said. ‘It looks like one of those big anthills you get on land that nobody’s touched for a while.’ She kicked it gently.
‘Don’t!’ Stephanie stepped back. ‘It’s scary. There’s a body down there.’
The mound was indeed roughly coffin-shaped, but somewhat smaller. ‘No, there’s isn’t. I mean – not right here. The stone’s facing the other way – see? But it’s very odd, all the same. Why have they allowed it?’
‘Conservation,’ said Stephanie, as if that was obvious.
‘Really? Do ants need conserving? I thought there were trillions and zillions of them.’ She kicked again and a small number of insects made an appearance. ‘I was right!’ she said. ‘They’ve made a proper ant city right beside this grave. I hope the person wasn’t scared of them!’
‘This isn’t what you read about, though. That said something about a fire.’
‘Right,’ Thea remembered. ‘They must have cleared it all up. I can’t see anything. It was probably months ago now.’
They went back to the older section, Thea’s attention constantly drawn to the field below them. ‘It probably floods sometimes,’ she muttered. ‘The River Churn is over there somewhere.’
‘I bet it’s where they have the summer show and all that sort of thing,’ said Stephanie, who had helped run a stall at the Chipping Campden Show and thought every village should have one.
‘Baunton isn’t big enough for its own show. But I do see what you mean.’ She let her imagination run free. ‘Maybe they had jousting and pig roasts and competitions for who owned the best sheep, back in the fifteenth century. The church was here then, so there must have been a settlement.’
‘Hog roasts, not pig,’ Stephanie corrected her. ‘But otherwise, yes. Those woods look interesting over on the other side as well.’
‘They do. And I can see people by them – look.’
She pointed to a group of three or four figures at the edge of the line of trees. They seemed to be consulting each other, before spreading out and pushing into the woodland in one or two places. Thea and Stephanie watched for a full minute, before Thea said, ‘They must be walkers who’ve got lost, looking for a footpath.’
Stephanie shook her head. ‘I think they’re looking for a dog or somebody who’s gone missing. You can’t really go wrong if you’re walking a footpath. There are signs everywhere. We’re on the Monarch’s Way here, you know.’
‘Are we?’
‘It goes right past this church. You can walk it from here all the way to our house.’
‘And the rest,’ said Thea, who had heard a great deal about the Monarch’s Way from Timmy, and how it was 625 miles long, stretching in a crazy zigzag from Worcester to Shoreham in Sussex. Timmy had made his own comprehensive map of it, marking spots he had seen for himself, along with points of interest adjoining it. He had acquired a book about it, too, and never missed a chance to go and look at a new stretch. ‘He’ll be cross that we’ve seen this bit without him.’
‘We’ll have to come again. I like this village.’
‘We’ve hardly seen any of it yet.’
The never-ending rush of traffic somewhere close by formed a backing to everything they said and saw. In every lull in the conversation it obtruded itself. ‘I guess you’d get used to it,’ said Thea. ‘The traffic, I mean. It must be like having tinnitus.’
Stephanie requested an explanation. ‘Oh,’ she said, when it had been briefly delivered. ‘So let’s go and see how close we are to the noisy road, shall we?’
‘Aren’t you hungry? It must be lunchtime. I should be at home making something to eat.’
‘Dad won’t mind. He’s got one of those pies he likes. He’ll have it all to himself. Oliver’s mum is making something for the Pokemon club.’
‘Just twenty minutes max, then. Come on.’
They turned left at the church gate and followed the track past the last house in the lane, and onto a path that took them into a whole different world. On one side the ground dropped down to the small river, which was not always visible through rushes and low vegetation. On the other side there was a thin line of trees on a rising bank. Ahead, the noise grew louder until suddenly they found the road itself soaring above them. The footpath ran right underneath it. ‘Wow!’ breathed Stephanie.
The noise seemed to lessen as they stood directly below the road, with its supports perfectly aligned so there was a sense of being in a kind of cathedral. The underside of the roadway was clean and new-looking. There was no vibration and nothing visibly moving. ‘It doesn’t even smell of exhaust,’ said Thea, trying to reconcile the monstrous intrusion with the ancient little village.
‘It’s awful. But weirdly wonderful as well.’
‘That’s exactly right,’ said Thea. ‘Now, come on. We’ve been here long enough.’
They hurried back towards the car, both aware that they would not be home before half past one at this rate, and hunger was an increasingly urgent issue. But Thea could not help slowing as they passed a short row of denser trees on the rising ground beside the path. She peered through them and noticed a wooden building perched at the top of the slope, half covered with ivy and other vegetation. ‘Somebody’s got a nice big garden shed,’ she said. ‘But they’ve let it go to pieces by the look of it.’
Stephanie barely glanced at the object of Thea’s interest. She was still looking back at the road so high above them. ‘Hmm,’ she said.
Thea was still trying to get a better view of the shed. ‘It might be a summer house,’ she mused. ‘I’ve always wanted a summer house. But I can’t see any windows.’
‘We should probably go,’ Stephanie reminded her. ‘You said twenty minutes max, remember?’
There were often times like this, when Thea felt she was actually the child in this relationship, and she reacted accordingly. ‘But it doesn’t really matter, does it? Apart from being hungry, we don’t actually have to dash home for anything.’
‘I’ve got homework. Hepzie needs a walk. Dad might have to go out. Did you bring your phone?’ The last question was fired at Thea with a fierce look.
‘No, because I knew you’d have yours.’
‘It’s out of battery,’ the girl admitted crossly. ‘I left it on all night and didn’t have time to charge it this morning.’
As a family, the Slocombes had an ambivalent attitude towards telephones. They formed a crucial part of Drew’s work, summoning him to collect bodies or meet with families, at short notice. Timmy and Stephanie used tablets for games and information, but Stephanie now had her own mobile, with the numbers of innumerable other teenagers stored in it, and membership of social groups that Thea struggled to keep track of. Stephanie used it very much less than others of her generation, but it was still a constant presence.
‘Drew wouldn’t phone us, anyway,’ said Thea. ‘Timmy’s not due back until about four.’
‘I just want to get back,’ said Stephanie.
The car was just as they’d left it, except for a very obvious sheet of white paper clipped behind one of the windscreen wipers. Thea’s first reaction was that it was a complaint at the spot she’d parked in. ‘Did I block someone’s driveway?’ she asked herself, looking around.
‘Read it,’ said Stephanie superfluously.
‘Listen to this. “Am I right that this is Thea Slocombe’s car? I remember it from the time you were in Chedworth, three years ago or so. Maybe it belongs to someone else now. But just in case, this is Emmy Wilshire – remember? Or was I still calling myself Millie, then? The thing is, I need somebody like you, here in Baunton. I live here now. Here’s my phone number. Can you call me?
“P.S. If the car isn’t Thea’s, then please destroy this note.”’
Thea stared helplessly at her stepdaughter. ‘Millie Wilshire,’ she said. ‘Of all people.’
‘Who is she? What’s she like?’ Stephanie was torn between curiosity and her wish to get home.
‘Young. A bit ditzy. I don’t really remember her very well, to be honest. I wonder why she changed her name. Millie to Emmy seems rather odd.’
‘Not if she’s officially Emily,’ said Stephanie.
Thea smiled. ‘You are so clever sometimes,’ she said. ‘I never would have thought of that.’
Stephanie smirked and shrugged, and said, ‘Chedworth’s really near here.’
‘Is it?’ Thea frowned. ‘I’ll never get the hang of the way all these little places connect up. Although I know you’re going to tell me it’s on the Monarch’s Way as well.’
‘I’m not sure, but I think it might be.’
‘Get in the car and let’s go home. I’ll phone Millie-stroke-Emmy from there.’
Chapter Three
Drew remembered Millie Wilshire with a wince. ‘That was an awful business,’ he said. ‘What can she possibly want from you now?’
‘I’m going to find out this very minute.’ And Thea made the call. Five minutes later, she had plenty to convey to her husband and stepdaughter. ‘She’s married to a man called Nick Weaver, living on a farm just outside Baunton, not far from that big road, and her husband’s got a niece who’s gone missing.’
‘None of which surprises me,’ sighed Drew.
‘No. Well, she wants me to go and stay in a sort of annex they use for visitors and see if I can ferret out what’s happened. There’s been funny goings-on in the village, as we already knew. It’s also a sort of house-sit, because they’ve got nobody to help on the farm and so there’s a domestic crisis as well.’
‘Did the niece live with them?’
‘Temporarily, apparently. She’s supposed to be at university, but never went back at the start of the second year, for some reason. Emmy hasn’t got a father, as you know, and her mother’s not in the picture for some reason. Now this niece has foisted herself on Emmy and Nick. And after a few weeks with them she just vanished.’
Drew nodded to indicate that he well recalled the demise of the girl’s father. Not only had the poor man been murdered in a barn, but Thea and Drew had found the body. ‘Have they reported it to the police?’
‘Oh yes – they say they can’t see any real cause for concern because there are no suspicious circumstances. They’re not very good at missing persons, as we’ve discovered before.’
‘You make it sound as if we’re experts on every sort of crime in the Cotswolds.’
Thea smiled. ‘Well, we are, pretty much.’
‘And we can always consult Gladwin or Caz if we get stuck,’ said Stephanie, who had been listening quietly. ‘It sounds like our sort of thing, all right. Can we go back there and see what we can find?’
‘We?’ echoed Thea. ‘What makes you think you can go?’
‘It’s half-term,’ Stephanie reminded her. ‘I’ve got nothing else to do. I can stay in the annex thing with you, and do the washing-up for Emmy, or whatever. They might have calves to feed, or pigs, or—’
‘Lord help us!’ cried Drew. ‘All my women are deserting me!’
‘I haven’t got anywhere near deciding to do it,’ Thea soothed him. ‘But can I just say that Baunton is a lovely little place, and we only saw a bit of it today, and it would be interesting to have a proper look round, maybe with the dog. Emmy remembers her and says she can come as well. She’d love sniffing round those little lanes.’
‘What about Stephanie?’ He glared at his daughter. ‘Who has been altogether too closely involved in the more unsavoury aspects of life over the past months, if you ask me.’
‘Says the undertaker with bodies in the back room,’ Thea mocked him, in a style she had recently adopted, and which nobody else found very amusing. ‘What is it exactly that you want to shield her from?’
‘And what about Timmy?’ said Stephanie abruptly changing tack. Her brother was missing this conversation, being in his bedroom at the time.
Everyone took a breath and Thea even managed a laugh. ‘Let’s not decide anything yet. I’ll go over and see Emmy tomorrow, and try to get a proper story out of her. She might have got it all wrong about the niece. You know what families are like,’ she finished vaguely.
‘You’ve got a few nieces yourself,’ said Drew. ‘Jocelyn’s Toni, for one.’
‘Indeed. And it’s probably a small miracle that she’s never gone missing.’
‘Oh, I love Toni,’ cried Stephanie. ‘Why haven’t we seen her again? It’s absolutely ages since she stayed here with us.’
‘She’s at university. Maybe we’ll try and see her and the others at Christmas. Don’t change the subject. You’re both doing it.’
‘Sorry,’ said Drew, giving his daughter a more friendly look. ‘I like Toni as well.’
Thea drove back to Baunton next morning, leaving Drew sitting beside his silent telephone, making scrappy little lists of ways in which he might enhance his business. Stephanie was reading something on her tablet and Timmy was waiting to be collected and delivered to his friend’s house for another day of Pokemon. ‘I won’t take the dog,’ Thea decided. ‘It won’t be very interesting for her if all I’m doing is talking.’
Drew merely grunted and Stephanie made no promises to Hepzie about walks.
It was easily twenty miles from door to door, effectively from one end of the Cotswolds to the other, north to south on fast straight roads that were very familiar. But at Calmsden she dived off to the right and approached Baunton down small lanes that passed through North Cerney, following the River Churn. Close by were Bagendon and Daglingworth and several other villages she had got to know through her house-sitting. Her mental map was full of these small settlements, each one entirely individual and only very loosely connected to each other. In Baunton she had no sense of the nearby Daglingworth, and even less of Sapperton where she had been with her sister Jocelyn several years earlier. However many times she ventured off the main roads into the various deserted little places, she never lost the sense of mystery and other-worldliness. Except in Oddington, where something important had been lost; something you might be tempted to call a soul.
Emmy had given her directions to a farm that was situated roughly north-east of the village, and she found it with little trouble. The house was of the usual solid stone construction, crouching heavily on a flat area of ground, with a barn, sheds, a yard, and scattered clumps of trees on all sides. Thea saw little sign of any of the usual farm animals, except for some hens scratching about. The yard was clean and the open-fronted barn was empty of hay or straw, or even fodder beet or sacks of cattle cake.
The fact was, Thea had seldom visited an actual working farm anywhere in the Cotswolds. She was ignorant of the daily practices of animal husbandry or field-based agriculture. Tractors or other large machines ploughed the land, sowed seeds on it, gathered in the crops. People like TV farmer Adam Henson had huge barns full of rare beasts, but more than that she scarcely knew. She knew about dogs, pet rabbits, garden birds and house plants. None of them very rural, she admitted to herself. As with other aspects of the area, there was a lot that was illusory. Almost all the properties she had taken care of could have been in the middle of a large town for all they taught her about the muck and mayhem of farming.
Emmy’s farm had an aura of putting on an act of some sort, deviating from expectation in subtle ways. There was land and hedges, a pick-up truck and the picturesque brown hens. But the more Thea gazed around, as she stood beside her car for a moment, the stronger the impression of neglect and abandonment became. There were thistles in the nearest field, dried up on long stalks. The hedges had a fuzzy untrimmed look, entirely out of character in the tidy Cotswolds. And yet there were areas like this – pockets of untended land where rushes and brambles flourished, along with hogweed and docks. There had been a short stretch like that alongside the Monarch’s Way, which she had walked the previous day with Stephanie. Perhaps things had been changing without her noticing.
Giving herself a shake, she went to the door of the farmhouse, which had a small porch around it, and knocked. There was no front garden, just an old table standing beside the door, which had empty plant pots stacked up on it.
‘Oh, damn it!’ she heard a voice from behind the door. ‘Can you go round the side? We don’t use this door much and it sticks.’
Thea obeyed and found another door which was standing open. Emmy was waiting for her. ‘Sorry,’ said Thea. ‘I should have realised.’
‘The path’s the clue. Most people figure it out.’
‘Sorry,’ said Thea again. ‘I can be very thick sometimes.’ She looked at the young woman, trying to reconcile the person in front of her with the one she remembered from Chedworth. There were several very obvious differences, not least the name. Thea was still mentally using Millie.
But the main one was that Emmy-formerly-Wilshire was heavily pregnant.
‘Come and meet Nick,’ she said. ‘This was really his idea.’
Nick Weaver was in his mid-thirties, with rosy cheeks and thick dark brown hair. He was standing in the kitchen holding a full mug of coffee in one hand and fondling the head of an extremely large and shaggy black dog with the other. It was definitely not the sort of dog you normally encountered on a farm. ‘Newfoundland,’ he said, ‘before you ask. His name’s Joshua.’
Thea was thankful she had left Hepzie at home. This creature might crush her with a single careless movement. ‘Gosh!’ she said faintly. ‘Hello, Joshua.’
The dog wagged its heavy tail and gave her a slight nudge.
