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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: Cotswold Mysteries
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
'As Rebecca Tope tells it, every rural idyll is blighted by underlying menace. Such is her writing skill, I'm inclined to believe her 'Daily Mail A handsome, if slightly shabby, stone house in Upper Oddington is home to Umberto Kingley as well as his three dogs and will be Thea Slocombe's latest house-sitting assignment. Without even a local shop, Thea expects the location to be one of her quietest, until the serene atmosphere is shattered with a fatal hit-and-run. The ensuing high-profile police investigation plunges Thea deep into the victim's complicated family dynamics and the rift that had already torn it apart. And she cannot help wondering if the reverberations of scandal have led to a deliberate and murderous assault.
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3
Betrayal in the Cotswolds
REBECCA TOPE
5
For Roger and Nikki
Contents
8
Author’s Note
Upper and Lower Oddington are real villages, very much as described here. Positano is entirely invented, however, as is the layout of fields and gardens. The village street has also got somewhat wider in this incarnation.
Prologue
It was late April. The children had gone back to school and life was relatively quiet. Thea Slocombe had been approached for a new house-sitting commission in six weeks’ time and she was presenting herself in Lower Oddington for inspection and instruction.
The village was readily located, a short way east of Stow-on-the-Wold and parking was easy. The same only different, Thea said to herself as she parked her car outside Umberto Kingly’s handsome stone house with its perfect symmetry and colourful garden. He let her in and introductions were made. She waited in vain for him to say ‘Call me Bert’. On closer inspection, it was perfectly obvious that this was never going to happen. Which was in no way a problem, since ‘Umberto’ was a splendid name by any standards. She liked the ‘Kingly’ too, because he was, rather. Very straight back and an authoritative look in his eye. But quite a lot less rich than a king, to judge by the state of his clothes and property. He might be a man of substance in the physical sense, but there was a shabbiness about him that could not be mere eccentricity. The house oddly suited him – surrounded by second homes belonging to stockbrokers and barristers, only an initial careless glance could make it fit the Cotswold stereotype. A gutter was hanging at a precarious angle, paint was peeling from the window frames and the incongruous locked gate that opened onto the pavement was rusting in places.
Umberto was affable, with a large oval head and a matching paunch. His thick wavy hair was dark grey, having obviously mutated from black. He had an air of impatience with the world. Thea earned his approval by returning his gaze without flinching and replying to his remarks with very few words. He succinctly explained the nature of her commission and she replied with equal briskness. She was to remain in place for five days, taking care of three dogs, and a roomful of old cameras and binoculars.
Thea’s first impressions of Upper and Lower Oddington were nowhere near as favourable as others had been in other places. This was nothing more than a street lined with old houses, the occasional new ones standing out vividly – custard-yellow amidst the mustard and caramel of their neighbours. She spotted an Old Post Office and Old Malthouse, evidence of lost businesses. There was no sign of a shop and The Fox Inn looked as if it was very slowly being renovated or refurbished or something. If she wanted a pub, she would have to go to the Horse and Groom in the other Oddington.
Umberto’s house boasted the name of ‘Positano’, which struck Thea as highly unsuitable, even if it confirmed an Italian dimension to the man. It had an iron gate and a keypad, as did about half the properties she had passed. The gravelled area outside the gate was adorned with a prominent ‘No Parking’ sign, and a smaller one asking people to prevent their dogs from fouling it or its strip of grass. The sign was particularly sinister, with a pair of eyes watching closely for canine misdemeanours.
‘So welcoming,’ Thea muttered to her dog. Hepzibah had been given permission to share in the house-sitting and had come on this preliminary reconnaissance to be approved by Umberto.
As he showed her round the house, he explained the business – which she had already understood was more of a passion that generated no more than a very modest income. An upstairs room had become home to numerous examples of his stock-in-trade. Cameras of every shape and size lined the walls. ‘I buy them at auctions mostly,’ he explained. ‘And get them cleaned up and working. Then I take them back to where they were made – which is Germany for the most part. I’m especially passionate about Voigtlände rs.’ He clearly wanted to say more about this, but thought better of it. ‘I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear all that now. I keep this room locked, as you’ll understand. And I’d be glad if you wouldn’t mention it to anybody. They might be rather specialist, but a burglary would be most unwelcome, all the same.’
‘Of course,’ murmured Thea, thinking about her grandfather who had shown her how to work his precious Leica when she was about eight.
‘So I’m going off for a week in June on a selling trip. It’s the first one since I got the dogs. Since …’ he hesitated. ‘Since we had some family trouble last year,’ he finished. Thea’s curiosity was instantly aroused, but she bit back the questions. Umberto reverted to his plans for the trip. ‘You meet such wonderful people,’ he sighed. ‘Absolute experts, most of them. It’s a privilege to know them.’
‘Must be sad to see the old equipment gradually disappearing,’ she said. ‘Can you even get film for them any more?’
He laughed and told her that there were specialist companies still valiantly producing thirty-five-millimetre film, as well as older formats. ‘Not for much longer, I suppose,’ he sighed. ‘I hate progress, don’t you?’
Thea had no answer to that, and realised that he didn’t really expect one. He was happy in his bygone world, which apparently was even now quite lavishly populated with fellow Luddites.
‘So come and meet the girls,’ said Umberto, as if everything else had been a rather insignificant preamble. ‘I’m sure they’ll like you.’
Thea had already realised that the dogs were even more dauntingly precious than the cameras – pedigree salukis, with infeasibly long legs and shining brown coats. ‘They just need company,’ their owner told Thea. ‘And somebody to stand guard over them. Don’t ever take them out. They’ve got all the space they need here.’ And he showed her his field, strongly fenced and scattered with doggy toys and a kind of miniature set of jumps and hurdles worthy of a gymkhana. Patches of untended long grass added variety, and Thea was excused from having to clean up their excrement. ‘They mostly go at the far end, so just watch where you tread down there,’ said Umberto.
He recited their names, which she jotted down on the notepad she carried. ‘They’re beautiful,’ she sighed, in all sincerity.
‘They are,’ he agreed. ‘The loves of my life.’ And he offered her more than twice her usual fee for keeping his darlings happy. ‘But do remember that they’re vulnerable to being stolen,’ he added with a very poor attempt at carelessness.
‘I’ll remember,’ she assured him, and then changed the subject. ‘How long have you lived here?’
‘Oh – that’s a complicated thing to explain. My mother has lived here most of her adult life and had us all here as children. When my father died, she insisted she couldn’t be here on her own, so the four of us organised a sort of rota to stay with her. None of us has properly managed to leave home, you see,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I moved in permanently at the beginning of last year, just to save money. I never dreamt that Mama would go and die on me. It came as quite a shock.’
‘It must have done. Was your mother fond of the dogs?’
‘I didn’t have the dogs then. They’re not even a year old. I only got them six or seven months ago. It’s all very recent, you know.’ Thea remembered the remark about family trouble. ‘We’re still settling down, actually. I wake up some mornings thinking my mother’s still in the next bedroom to mine.’
‘She died unexpectedly, did she?’
‘Yes, she did. It was horrible.’ He was suddenly unreasonably snappish, his face turning pink. ‘It was last summer. Must be nine or ten months ago, now.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Thea feebly.
He took a breath and forced a weak smile. ‘Sorry. It’s still quite raw. She just dropped dead, halfway through a sentence. Never a day’s illness in her life, everything to live for, no will or anything. Threw everything into a spin for a while. We’re a very close family, you see.’
Thea wasn’t sure she did see, but she smiled understandingly. Umberto went on, ‘The house came to me more or less by default. But it’s still the focal point for the others as well. The grandchildren all love it. Not that any of them are mine.’ He grimaced, and changed the subject. ‘So you think you can manage my lovely girls, then?’
‘They’ll be fine with me,’ she assured him. ‘And it’s not for very long, is it?’
Chapter One
Now it was mid-June and she was back in Lower Oddington with Hepzie and a bag of clothes and books, for the whole week, while Umberto Kingly went to Germany to sell old cameras.
She got out of the car and pushed a button on the keypad; then waited twenty seconds for a voice to crackle out at her, and then click the mechanism to let her in. While she waited, she examined her immediate surroundings, the same phrase as before echoing in her head. The same only different.
It applied very aptly to Lower Oddington; it was indeed ‘the same only different’. Every Cotswold village was different from every other, and a single glance could effortlessly distinguish Chedworth from Snowshill or Daglingworth from Cranham. Then there was lovely Naunton, and overrated Broadway, and tiny Hampnett and tourist-ridden Bibury. The list grew longer with every passing month, as the Slocombes made new discoveries. None of them had even registered the existence of the Oddingtons until a few months ago, which was not unusual. When twelve-year-old Stephanie had mentioned Hillesley the whole family had stared at her blankly. When nine-year-old Timmy checked it on a map, they all decided it was too far south to properly count as Cotswolds. ‘But don’t tell anybody we said that,’ cautioned Drew, their father. ‘It might hurt someone’s feelings.’
People’s feelings were sacrosanct, as nobody could deny, and Drew found himself the main enforcer of sensitive behaviour. His work as an undertaker gave him special powers in that respect.
Umberto was looking much smarter than before and the house was tidier. He quickly took her out to see the dogs, and repeated his earlier instructions. ‘I’ve written it all down for you,’ he said. ‘The main thing is exercise, really. You need to throw things for them, and run around with them, two or three times a day. If it’s fine, you might want to sit out here with them.’ He indicated a swinging hammock, big enough for a person and three – even four – somnolent dogs. ‘They should be fine with your spaniel, once they get to know her,’ the man added for good measure.
The dogs looked bigger than Thea remembered, which she observed aloud. ‘They’ve filled out a bit,’ Umberto agreed. ‘And they’re even more playful than ever. I love them as if they were my children.’ His eyes were moist with Latin sentiment. Thea could only suppose he had not heard about her past record with other people’s dogs – which was a shameful one. There had been deaths and damage, desertion and disasters. But for some reason he had wanted her specifically, and the set-up here in Oddington looked to be almost completely foolproof. The spaniel would, as Umberto predicted, cause no difficulties. Hepzie was skilled at winning over affection, whether human or canine – even salukis, which were essentially hunters, and might be tempted to view her as prey. ‘You will have to keep a very close eye on them, and keep the front gate locked,’ he emphasised. ‘Don’t forget about the cameras upstairs. There aren’t so many now, but there’s still about ten grand’s worth.’
‘They’ll be fine,’ said Thea.
‘I’m waiting for one of the girls to come on heat,’ he went on. ‘I won’t breed from any of them this year, of course – but early next year it’ll be time for the first one.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘I’ll need my sister’s help with that. But if it goes to plan, I should be able to boost the coffers quite nicely, even with one litter a year.’
Thea swallowed back the cautionary tales she could tell him about the perils of relying on animals to boost the coffers, as he charmingly said. ‘Let’s hope it works,’ she said.
‘Even if they paid for my council tax, that would be a huge help,’ he said with a smile that suggested such modest aspiration was absurd. With a decent amount of good fortune, he obviously expected the pups to cover quite a number of essential bills.
Thea forced a confident smile, and willingly redefined her role as dog warden, rather than house-sitter. Umberto apparently cared rather less for his inanimate property. The interior of his home did not suggest much in the way of domestic pride in any case. A good proportion of the ground floor was available to the dogs, with a large comfortable area at the back of the house furnished with saggy chairs and warm sheepskin rugs. It opened directly out onto the back garden and field, and had a small scullery with a sink and doggy feeding bowls. Throughout the house, the furniture was nothing special, apart from the old-fashioned mahogany desk in the study. ‘I work from here, obviously. I used to have to go to auctions all over the country, but now I can do most of it online. I still like to go to the viewings, though.’
‘Who minds the dogs?’
‘Usually my sister Imogen. Sometimes my nephew lends a hand, and there’s a local chap who’ll give them a game outside. We muddle through. Once in a while I take them with me, if it’s somewhere nice. We went to a funny little place in Herefordshire last month.’
‘I thought they never left these premises?’
‘Hardly ever,’ he nodded, apparently unconcerned at his own inconsistency.
They both knew that now he was leaving there could be no turning back from the arrangement. Any hint of anxiety or second thoughts must be quashed. The plan was for Umberto to transport an impressive number of antique cameras in a slightly battered Bedford van, across France and into Germany. His dark eyes were focused on schedules and paperwork, the dogs a box already ticked.
Thea made no attempt to hide her surprise when she realised how he would be travelling. Umberto laughed. ‘You think I’m dodging the export tax?’ he said. ‘Well, I’m certainly going to try. There’s a risk I’ll be searched and required to explain myself, but it’s a risk worth taking. You would never believe the bureaucracy involved if I try to send it all by plane. It’s not so much the tax I want to avoid as the paperwork. Not that there’s any real escape. Just getting myself and the van across is bad enough. The truth is, I really love driving and this is a perfect excuse.’
‘I see,’ she said, wondering at his frankness. How many people knew what he was doing – and wasn’t there a fear that one of them would report him?
He caught her expression and laughed. ‘Please don’t worry about it. Now – be sure not to get bored, won’t you? Go and have a look at the old church. It’s well worth it. The weather looks reasonable. Help yourself to any books – and the TV’s all set up for streaming and so forth. There’s a list of instructions taped to it. You won’t be bothered by any neighbours. They’re all off on cruises at this time of year – those that do actually live here, that is. There’s some building work on the way up to the church, but they haven’t been too noisy up to now. There’s a chance my sister will call in. You never really know with her. She’s called Imogen Peake. Oh – and she’s got a daughter by the name of Kirsty who comes and goes. They take it for granted they can just drop in whenever they like. They only live in Lower Swell, just the other side of Stow. The dogs are very fond of them. By rights they should be doing your job, but Immy said she couldn’t make the commitment. I explained all that before, didn’t I? She took our mother’s death very hard and still isn’t over it. It makes her somewhat unreliable, I’m afraid.’ He sighed, as much from impatience as compassion.
Thea frowned as she tried to remember what he had said six weeks earlier. ‘Does that mean they could turn up without any warning?’ The prospect of sudden unannounced invasions by relatives was somewhat concerning.
‘I’m afraid so, although from what Immy said last week, she’s very much tied up with her business troubles just now, so it’s not very likely. I’m just letting you know it’s possible. We’re a big family, all very close. It’s the Italian influence, still lingering on after two generations.’
‘Yes, you said,’ Thea told him impatiently. ‘And they all live around here, do they?’ That struck Thea as improbable. Despite his old clothes and badly kept house, Umberto was clearly middle class – and middle-class families, in her experience, tended to disperse around the world. Or at least around the country.
‘More or less. If you want the full story, there’s a booklet you can have a look at. My oldest sister’s husband, as well as her mother-in-law, does genealogy in a big way. Between them they tracked everybody down and wrote it all up. Victor fancies himself as a bit of a writer, apparently, and he did do a pretty good job, to be fair.’ He snatched a slim paperback from the top shelf of a little bookcase standing in a corner. ‘This is it.’
Thea took it automatically, trying to process this new twist, while mentally drawing up a family tree that included a sister’s mother-in-law. ‘Thanks,’ she mumbled. She read the title and author aloud. ‘One Family Among Many by Victor Rider. Nice title.’
Umberto shrugged and then gave himself a shake. ‘All this is making me late. It’s a long drive to Folkestone. Just don’t worry about anything. You’ll like Immy, if you see her, and Kirsty’s mostly harmless. They’ve got keys but they won’t just march in. You’ll get a warning at the gate, anyway. You have to buzz people in. That won’t be a problem, will it?’ He eyed her suspiciously, and she could tell he was wondering whether she intended to pursue activities that unexpected visitors might upset. He might even be suspecting her of inviting unsuitable friends into his house.
‘No, no. It’s your house,’ she said inanely.
‘It is, and I’m paying you handsomely to keep it safe, because of the dogs. That’s not complicated, is it?’
‘Not at all,’ she relied firmly. ‘Have a good trip.’
And with a departing purr from his van’s engine, he was gone.
Boredom was always a hazard for a house-sitter. Thea had dodged it on past occasions by embarking on unofficial and often intrusive amateur investigations into local crimes. The departure of the owners of the various properties she had been in charge of had sparked bad behaviour of extreme proportions at times. She was well known to the police, and had a prominent reputation across the region. She regularly bumped into people she had encountered on previous commissions.
But somehow she doubted this would happen in Oddington. Perhaps if she ventured into Stow-on-the-Wold, only a few miles away, she would see familiar faces. But here, as Umberto Kingly had pointed out, there did not seem to be any people to bump into, apart from some builders. Nobody would complain if the dogs barked or if she played loud music. She could take Hepzie out for short walks and probably not see a soul.
The salukis themselves would have to provide both Thea and her spaniel with entertainment. She had learnt their names and how to tell them apart. Dolly had darker ears than the others; Gina was the smallest and that left Rocket, the affectionate one. The names, Thea realised, had been carefully chosen to sound as different as possible from each other. Umberto had joked that Rocket was in fact rather slow, by saluki standards, but was the one he was planning to use first for breeding. ‘She’ll be a rather young mother, but I think she’ll be up for it,’ he said fondly.
The field used by the dogs looked to be two or three acres in size – more than enough to provide space for a good run, but surely very limited as far as variety and interest went. There was something unkind, and definitely unnatural, about keeping these lovely creatures imprisoned here, presumably for fear that they would be stolen if their existence were to be revealed in the wider world. The sturdy wooden fence on two sides was impossible to look through or over, while the other two sides bordered farmland and were therefore less likely to be used by potential thieves – or so Umberto apparently believed. There were thick and well-kept hedges forming the boundary on those sides. Thea imagined drones flying overhead and filming the dogs. Or cunningly disguised felons tramping across a neighbouring field pretending to be farmers or hikers gone astray. She had instructions to take the dogs indoors at night, or if she went out. If it rained, they had a sort of open-fronted summerhouse to shelter in. But her main task was to make sure they exercised, in particular by being organised into races, like greyhounds. This, she had been shown, was associated with feeding time and involved two or three processes in which they had to run for snippets of food.
The presence of Hepzibah was sure to complicate the procedure and Thea had been surprised at Umberto’s ready acceptance of her. ‘She’ll add variety,’ he had said, with a grin. Later, Thea had wondered whether he expected the salukis to catch her and tear her apart like a rabbit or a hare. A flicker of chilly humour made the idea credible. Hepzie was going to be kept away from the field unless under supervision, Thea resolved. They would go for sedate little walks around the village instead.
It was only just past ten on a Monday morning. Outside it was June, not far off the longest day. Thea could hear her father’s voice telling her not to waste it. Richard Johnstone had always been acutely aware of the seasons and their rapid passing. He had died too soon, his urgent attitude to life amply justified with hindsight. All his offspring missed him with a perpetual dull ache.
It was not of course necessary to remain indoors. The field behind the house was in fact her primary area of responsibility and she could sit there all day, guarding the precious dogs, reading a book, dozing in any sunshine there might be, ignoring the rest of the world. Her family were reconciled to her absence and need cause her no concern. She had nothing to feel guilty or anxious about. With a bit of effort she could imagine herself on a Caribbean beach, provided it didn’t rain.
But there was no way that Thea Slocombe could remain idle for more than about ninety minutes. Even that would probably be a record. There would have to be a project of some kind if she was to remain sane for five whole days. And the only thing she could think of was to organise the dogs into something that would entertain them all.
She went out through the sliding doors, which opened from the living room onto a patio. This was the closest there was to a proper back garden – six stone tubs containing begonias and lobelia and a shameful number of weeds. There was no sort of barrier between the edge of the patio and the field, and the dogs freely gambolled across it and into the house when they noticed the open doors.
‘Hey!’ shouted Thea. ‘You’re not supposed to go in there.’ Umberto had clearly laid out the rules – dogs in their own room next to the kitchen, and nowhere else in the house, unless one had special dispensation of an evening. ‘It goes against the grain,’ he admitted. ‘But I was forced to the conclusion that three large dogs are too much for any room that wants to stay halfway civilised. I probably wouldn’t stick to it if it wasn’t for Imogen. She keeps me on the straight and narrow.’
It seemed to Thea that such rules spoilt much of the pleasure in having dogs at all; a thought that must have shown on her face. ‘I do sometimes let them onto the couch one at a time,’ the man confessed. ‘Especially in the winter.’
Hepzie detected the chance of some excitement and began to yap in the mindless way that Thea found particularly irritating. ‘Shut up!’ she said. ‘You’ll just cause more chaos.’ Hepzie sat down and drooped in a shameless display of pained reproach.
‘Gina!’ Thea ordered at random. ‘Come out of there.’ The smallest of the three salukis turned her head, ears up, eyes bright. Thea could see her thinking This is going to be fun. ‘You heard me. Out – all of you!’
The tone was evidently well chosen and all three good-naturedly trooped through the patio doors, which Thea quickly pulled shut behind them. ‘Good dogs!’ she applauded. ‘Very good dogs. Now let’s go and play outside.’ She tried to remember everything Umberto had told her about the doggy games. Then she realised she had left the spaniel in the house, and opened the doors again. ‘Come out, you fool,’ she said fondly. ‘You’ll be all right while I’m here.’ Hepzie trotted out, avoiding her owner’s gaze, and stood watching the salukis. ‘You’ll soon get used to them,’ Thea told her. ‘They’re really going to be excellent company for us, you see.’
She spent the next hour throwing toys, exploring the various contraptions designed to occupy the dogs, and giving Rocket so many cuddles that Hepzie almost exploded with jealousy. The objects scattered around the field suggested both the gorilla section of a modern zoo and a carelessly arranged circuit at a gymkhana. There were tunnels, jumps, seesaws, a hammock and even a paddling pool, although it was devoid of water. To Thea’s eye, it all looked rather ramshackle. She imagined Umberto acquiring most of the equipment second-hand at his auctions, or through an outfit such as Freecycle. She had an idea that he had embarked on some kind of agility training and then quickly abandoned it as too time-consuming or effortful. As far as she could recall, she had never seen salukis in that kind of activity anyway. They probably lacked the right skills or motives. But she saw Dolly wriggling through one of the tunnels, as if the animal simply enjoyed the experience for its own sake.
Thirsty for a mid-morning coffee, she left the dogs to rest and went back into the house with Hepzie. There were clouds gathering and the temperature had dropped to a level that made sitting outside unappealing. She settled down on the couch in the living room and took up Umberto’s family history with a lukewarm curiosity. Such volumes tended to be poorly written and sadly dull.
Neither proved to be the case in this instance. The first chapter launched into a vivid account of a sea voyage to India in 1859, rapidly followed by a detailed description of the birth of a baby who turned out to be Umberto’s great-grandfather. Lengthy quotes from letters and diaries gave credence to the narrative, and Thea was hooked. The writing was good and the structure blessedly clear. There was never any doubt as to which generation was being described, despite the hectic pace that rushed from 1850 to 1920, back to 1900 and on to 1960. Themes were followed – seafaring, childbearing and dogs were predominant. The final chapter came all of a sudden, with a summary of how the family stood at the time of writing. Umberto was one of four siblings, with a generous helping of cousins – one of them still in India and several in Italy.
The last lines held her attention most of all.
Ours is a family of violent feuds and sentimental reconciliations, up to and including the present day. I end this volume with the hope that current animosities will quickly be resolved.
Chapter Two
Dogs and antiques were both Cotswolds clichés, to Thea’s mind. Especially expensive pedigree dogs. She had already decided that Hepzie’s successor, when that time came, would be something of mixed parentage that never crossed the radar of the Kennel Club. The world of antiques was entirely mysterious to her, and not at all interesting. The things only got broken, or caused fights, and ended up at country auctions and car boot sales. Either that or they were bought by rich Chinese and African individuals, who wanted them back, after they’d been wickedly purloined by European colonists. It all made Thea sigh. Even an innocent Ming vase carried overtones of exploitation and dirty dealings. But Umberto’s cameras were an exception, to her mind. Although they might technically qualify as antiques, there was something refreshingly practical about them – at least compared to a Ming vase.
What else did the man do with his time? she wondered. He evidently kept in close contact with a good number of relatives – but equally evidently he had no spouse or offspring of his own. A bachelor uncle, then – perhaps with somebody tucked away for occasional intimacies. A married woman, she guessed, since he had seemed to her to have heterosexual instincts. There had been an at-another-time-under-different-circumstances twinkle in his eye when she met him, despite his being older. Thea was pretty – some might even say lovely. Her face had a lucky symmetry that never changed with age; she was small and shapely, with the waist and the bust of a woman a lot younger. Men reacted to her even now, just as they had for the past twenty-five years. She automatically knew what they were thinking and what their bodies were telling them. Umberto Kingly had been no exception.
She scanned the books on the shelves in the living room for clues about him. On the bottom shelf there was a row of leather-bound Victorian novels – Wilkie Collins, Trollope and J M Barrie, but no Dickens. Above them came some more recent hardbacks with their dust-wrappers intact. On the basis of very little knowledge, Thea marked them as first editions likely to gain in value over time. And at the top, on a narrower shelf, came a mixed bunch of paperbacks, in far from pristine condition. D H Lawrence, Iris Murdoch, Ngaio Marsh, Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Lessing, Graham Swift and A N Wilson all caught her eye. No trashy crime or saga for our Umberto, then, thought Thea. Unless he was simply showing off, his taste generally ran to the good stuff. The only author she herself had enjoyed of this lot was Doris Lessing, but she was in no doubt that they were all admired by those in the know. Then it struck her that the books had probably belonged to his mother, given their vintage, and were of no interest to Umberto. Looking around the room, she concluded that almost everything dated back several decades. Umberto was too young and too male for many of these writers to suit him. Hadn’t he told her he had simply moved in with Mama after being part of a shared rota with his sisters? Somehow he had been landed with the caring on a more permanent basis and then naturally stayed on in the house after she died, making very few changes – if any.
The day was passing easily enough. She explored the kitchen and the contents of the small freezer, which she had been told to make full use of. There was fish, three or four ready meals, bread, burgers and frozen peas. In the drawers at the bottom of the fridge were quantities of carrots and green beans, tomatoes and a cucumber. Higher up was cold meat, with cheese and eggs. More than enough to keep her fed for the whole week, in fact. Umberto had deliberately ensured that she would have no excuse for venturing beyond the environs of Oddington – which made her feel more like a prisoner than she had expected.
But it was a big house and Umberto had made no limitations on how she might amuse herself. ‘Make yourself at home,’ he had said.
‘Is it all right if my dog sleeps on the bed?’ Normally she would not ask, but simply wash everything on the last day and hide all traces. In this instance, she felt confident there would be no need for subterfuge.
‘Don’t see why not,’ he shrugged. ‘I’d have all mine on top of me if I thought I’d get any sleep. As it is, I can’t favour one over the others, can I?’
There were four bedrooms upstairs, including the camera room, none of them unduly large. They were simply furnished, with beds, cupboards, rugs and curtains all having seen better days. One had a wardrobe but no chest of drawers, another the opposite. Thea had been given one at the front, which had a duvet on the bed, where the other spare bed had sheets and blankets. She did not venture into Umberto’s room. Hers looked down onto the village street – though part of the view was blocked by a copper beech tree that grew inside Umberto’s gate. His front garden was considerably better tended than the back. It had a cluster of colourful azaleas in full flower, and a bed of tall gladioli just opening into flower, which spoke of a certain defiance, since they were sure to be deemed common by Cotswolds folk. It also suggested that Umberto – or perhaps one of his sisters – took the trouble to plant corms somewhere around Easter. Thea herself had a great liking for the flower, but seldom managed to find the right moment for planting them. The copper beech was a fortunate element, distracting the eye with its pleasing shape and colour. Further away, on the other side of the street, was one of the oldest village buildings, with fairy-tale gables and a lavishly filled front garden. Umberto had probably felt he would earn opprobrium if he failed to create some kind of floral display to match.
Before she embarked on feeding herself and the dogs, she gave them another twenty minutes of exercise, calling them from one corner of the field to the other, checking to see which commands they would obey. ‘Stay!’ certainly worked and came in very useful. She left them sitting expectantly in one spot, walked as far away as she could, and then summoned them with a whistle. They flew across the ground as if weightless. Hepzie tried to participate, but got left far behind.
It was fun – more so as she got to know her charges as individuals. Dolly was the quickest, both physically and mentally, always slightly ahead of her sisters. Rocket had been given the wrong name. There was something goofy about her, as she pushed forward for extra attention, gazing at Thea with an adoration that could well be illusory. Gina was the only one who showed any interest in Thea’s spaniel, sniffing at her, and then lying down to display her smooth pink undercarriage. All three of them had the untidy flyaway ears that defined the breed. A saluki was never going to be altogether elegant, as a whippet or greyhound was. From what she had seen of Umberto, the choice was perfect. He might be charming and nice-looking, but he was always going to have a subtly raffish dimension, just as these dogs did. ‘You’re all lovely,’ Thea told them. ‘Now let’s go and get you some supper.’
It was six o’clock before she knew it, the sky still on daytime shift, but evening for all that. Thea listened for returning commuters, half-hoping that Oddington might come to life at the end of the working day. With an idea of catching a glimpse of some neighbours, she went up to her room and stood by the half-open window. When there was no sign of life, she felt a little drop in her spirits. Not so much disappointment as resignation. Perhaps it was better in the sister village – Upper Oddington – where there were some smaller houses, which might belong to more ordinary families.
Then she saw someone. A car had pulled up alongside the pavement, only a few yards from Umberto’s gate. A young woman emerged from it, and stood for a moment in the road, first looking up at the house and then along the street, the way she had come. She had her car door open and was standing passively as if waiting for something. Thea wondered whether she was visible, and what the person would think if she found herself being watched. But the sun was shining on the windowpanes, making it impossible to see what was inside the room.
There was no time to continue the thought. Out of nowhere another car came speeding down the street from the same westerly direction as the first car had come. The young woman reacted to the sound of it, but did not try to move out of its way. There was ample space for it to pass her. She left her car door wide open, and appeared to focus on the oncoming vehicle with a look of welcome … although Thea had no word for it in that moment. Certainly nothing to arouse alarm; no hint of what was to come.
The impact was horrifying. The oncoming car simply drove parallel to the one that was parked, scraping the wing mirror along it, making a noise that must have been fully audible all down the street. The standing woman and the door of her car flew up into the air like so much balsa wood. Then they landed on the hard tarmac, the metal door clanging and the attacking car accelerating away. It was over in five seconds. Thea blinked, dazed and disbelieving. The body in the street made no movement. Nobody appeared in any doorways. Thea mindlessly tried to close the window, for no reason she could explain, only to leave it swinging open again as she let it go without knowing what she did.
Then she ran downstairs and out of the front door, her spaniel at her heels, thinking this was a sudden walk. Opening Umberto’s gates took a stupidly long time, during which she confined her gaze to the small red car a few yards away, now minus its door. It was a Skoda, one little part of her brain informed her, because it was the same as her daughter’s motor. The registration plate also implanted itself on her brain, which she later supposed had been a sort of distraction mechanism. A nice innocent harmless five-year-old Skoda, driven by a nice innocent harmless young woman, who was lying shapelessly a short distance away, streaked with blood and half-covered with the crumpled door of her own car.
The body was inescapably dead, its head at a grotesque angle, arms and legs mere lifeless appendages. The car door lay like a very inadequate protective cover, concealing all too little. Having opened the gate at last, Thea went no closer than the middle of the pavement. A man was shouting not far away, and an approaching car had stopped at the sight of something impossible in its way. There was no sign at all of the killer vehicle that had wrought such unspeakable damage.
Thea went on standing rigidly outside the gate. There was nothing she could do or say or even think. Somebody else would take charge any moment now.
It seemed to take a long time before the shouting man came closer, a phone already at his ear. Two more cars drew up, from the other direction. The world was composed of unnatural shapes and alien voices. Nobody seemed to see her. She was not sure of her own reality; the world seemed to have altered beyond recognition.
Her dog brought her back to at least one or two of her senses, when it gave a single bewildered bark. ‘Let’s go in, then,’ she said. Indoors there was a more normal world, where at least you were unlikely to be run down by a speeding car.
Chapter Three
After about ten minutes she recovered just well enough to find her mobile and call the private number she had for Detective Superintendent Sonia Gladwin. Then when her friend responded, all she could do was gibber at her. Her voice was as shaky as her hands and something had gone wrong with her hearing. The impact of metal on flesh kept repeating in her ears, drowning out Gladwin’s words. But she forced herself to think, and to utter something coherent. Outside there were people and somebody would have called 999. Thea had burnt through any number of links in the chain by going directly to a senior police detective. ‘I saw it!’ she repeated. ‘I saw the whole thing.’
Gladwin took the time to calm her down and then explained that she was unable to drop what she was doing and come to Oddington for at least another hour. ‘Speak to whichever officer shows up first,’ she instructed. ‘It doesn’t have to be me. You’ll have to have somebody with you, though. You sound completely traumatised.’
‘It was murder,’ Thea wailed. ‘Cold-blooded deliberate murder. I saw it.’ She was never going to dispel the image of the ravaged body in the street, however hard she tried. ‘Slow down,’ Gladwin repeated. ‘She might not even be dead, for all you know.’
‘She is,’ said Thea with certainty. ‘She was crushed between two chunks of metal and then tossed into the road – and probably run over as well. Oh, and an ambulance has just arrived. I can see the blue light.’
‘Don’t go out,’ Gladwin ordered her.
‘Why not?’
‘For half a dozen reasons that I won’t explain now. Just don’t. I’ll have somebody come in and sit with you. Give me two minutes. And try not to think about it too much. From the sound of it, you might be the only witness, and we need your immediate observations. Not things you think you saw.’
Only then did Thea understand that she had not seen anything like as much as she first thought. The attacking car, the body and the mangled door of the smaller vehicle had all disappeared behind the copper beech tree. Only when she went downstairs did she see the results of the impact. By then the murderous car had long gone, with any one of four or five directions to choose from.
‘I didn’t see what happened next,’ she mumbled.
‘Okay. Well just sit tight and wait. It’ll all get sorted. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ Thea could hear frustration and impatience down the phone waves, even through her own hysterics. ‘I really didn’t need this,’ added the detective bitterly, and ended the call.
Neither did I, thought Thea resentfully.
It was humiliating to admit how little she had seen, when the first uniformed police officer came to speak to her. It was a nice-looking woman she had never met before, working conscientiously through the checklist of questions, having first spent ten minutes being kind and concerned and making a mug of sweet tea. It was astonishingly delicious.
‘Colour of the vehicle?’ ‘Size?’ ‘Was the driver a man or a woman?’ ‘How would you say it was being driven?’ Careful open questions with no suggestion of guidance or pressure. All Thea could say for certain was that it had been considerably larger than the dead woman’s little Skoda and some kind of silvery colour. And that it was being driven fast and seemingly with a clear purpose. There had been no sounds of sudden braking that she could recall. ‘I would have heard,’ she realised. ‘The window was open.’ She was feeling better for the change of tone. Practical, matter-of-fact, a sense of being useful. ‘All I heard was the crash of metal on metal.’ Then she remembered the detail of the wing mirror scraping the side of the smaller car, and felt pathetically pleased with herself at having something concrete to report.
The police officer asked nothing about the impact and its effect on the victim, but still Thea found her head full of images of the impossibly delicate body being crushed as effectively as any wasp between a windowpane and a book. The final flinging into the street was barely relevant after such violence. ‘It was going terribly fast,’ she choked, turning her face away. ‘I’ve never seen anything so horrible.’
‘You’ll probably need to talk to someone,’ said the woman briskly. ‘You’ll have symptoms of trauma for a while.’
‘Am I the only witness?’ Thea asked, already knowing the answer.
‘Seems so.’
‘I haven’t told you anything you couldn’t have worked out for yourselves, have I? I may as well just be another victim, for all the help I’ve been.’
The woman gave her a steady look, with greeny-brown eyes full of calm intelligence. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘You are a victim. It might help to regard it in that light.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Thea, aware of an inner stirring that felt like resistance. ‘That’s not the way I like to think of myself.’
‘Up to you.’ The officer closed her notebook, in which very little had been written. ‘Thank you for your time. Have you anybody who can stay with you tonight? You might not want to be alone.’
‘It’s not my house. I told you that. I can’t just invite random people into it.’ Hearing her own words, she remembered that she had done just that on another house-sit, not so long ago, and learnt never to do it again. She also remembered that Gladwin had agreed to come – and would be there very soon now. It seemed indiscreet to mention this to PC Green-Eyes.
Outside the street was closed, a white tent erected over the dead body and a growing assemblage of professionals milling about. There would be no skid marks or fingerprints or DNA to identify the aggressor – but there could be fragments of wing mirror, perhaps. Thea couldn’t say whether or not it had been broken in the impact, but the vehicle’s height and colour could perhaps be detected from its contact with the Skoda.
It was past eight o’clock when Gladwin buzzed the keypad by the gate and Thea fumblingly let her in. The full significance of being barricaded against intruders in such a way only then occurred to her. It was, she had been told, the result of an impulsive purchase by Umberto’s mother, eight or ten years ago. It made Thea feel as if she’d carelessly stepped into another world that she was not equipped to deal with. She and Drew often forgot to lock their front door before going to bed.
‘Coffee?’ she asked, keeping her voice steady with an effort. ‘Are you hungry?’
Gladwin accepted coffee and a biscuit, standing close to Thea as she made the drinks. ‘You’re shaking,’ she observed. ‘You’re probably not safe around boiling water.’
In a sudden unanticipated burst, Thea began to cry. It was as if some quite alien force had invaded her and flicked a tap – it was entirely beyond her control. Gladwin had no need of an explanation. ‘It’s all right,’ she soothed. ‘All quite normal. Come and sit down.’
They sat together on Umberto’s sofa and Thea took deep breaths. ‘That was very weird,’ she gulped.
‘Shock,’ said Gladwin. ‘Reality breaking in. Horror. Disbelief. I expect you know the theories.’
‘More or less,’ Thea agreed, thinking she probably didn’t. Probably nobody did. Even when you had every reason to expect something terrible to happen – like in the trenches, with your soldier friends being torn apart in front of you – you couldn’t anticipate the effect on yourself. And this was not a war – it was closer to a terrorist bomb going off just as you were in mid-sentence, or thinking about a birthday party. ‘Isn’t there a poem about it?’ she said, idiotically. ‘The one about Icarus falling out of the sky.’
Gladwin ignored this. ‘Where’s the owner of this house?’ she asked.
‘Somewhere in France, I guess. Driving towards Germany in a van.’
