The woman known to her friends as Judith, and to the nation as Jayjay, came towards them. ‘At last!’ she said furiously. ‘I’ve been sitting here for hours.’
‘I thought you were working all weekend,’ said Thea. ‘That’s what Millie said.’
‘They changed the schedule. The weather’s not right. Besides, I’m too upset to work.’
‘So, what can we do for you?’ Drew asked.
‘Who’s this?’ asked the actress rudely.
‘Drew Slocombe,’ said Drew, holding out his hand. ‘I’ve come up for the weekend. It was all thanks to me that Thea got this job in the first place.’
‘He’s dead,’ Judith burst out, ignoring his proffered hand. ‘And you found him.’ She stared intently from face to face. ‘Why do you look so normal?’
‘Come in,’ said Thea. ‘Let’s talk properly.’
She led the way up to the front door, feeling a fraud at behaving like a hostess in a house that was in no way hers. Hepzie ran ahead, showing no such qualms.
They went into the living room and stood awkwardly for a minute. ‘Shall I make coffee?’ Thea asked tiredly.
‘I never drink coffee,’ said Judith scathingly, as if this was the most obvious fact imaginable.
‘Tea, then.’
‘Why are you here?’ Drew interrupted. ‘What’s it all about? We’re packing up and going in a little while. We saw Millie this morning. She’s got the dogs back, but she thinks they can go to your house.’
‘Your mansion,’ Thea corrected. ‘With permanent staff who won’t object to taking care of two sheepdogs.’
‘I’d love to have them. I’m very fond of them. And they’re all that’s left of Richard.’ Without warning, the floodgates opened and with tears coursing down her face, she also poured out a torrent of words. ‘Listen, will you. Richard was the sweetest man. So natural and normal, not at all fazed by the media and all that stuff that follows me everywhere I go. I can’t believe I’ll never see him again.’
Drew and Thea met each other’s eyes, full of helpless questions. Neither said anything. Judith clasped her hands together and walked the length of the room and back. It occurred to Thea that this was the sort of thing an actor learnt to do as a matter of routine. Ordinary people almost never behaved in such a way.
‘Listen,’ Judith said again. ‘You saw him – lying there in that barn. How did he look? How exactly did he die? I know it sounds ghoulish, but I have to know.’
‘It’s not ghoulish,’ said Drew. ‘It’s quite natural to want to know the whole story. But we probably can’t give you all the answers. There were no signs of suffering. He hadn’t moved at all after he landed. So it must have been quick.’ He reached out a hand to her, which she flinched sideways to avoid. Her face was a picture of misery, the corners of her mouth drooping and bags appearing under her eyes. All suggestion of acting abruptly vanished.
‘Poor Ricky!’ she choked. ‘The poor man. He must have fallen off the edge by accident. He would never have done it on purpose. That’s what they think, isn’t it? I bet he saw a cat or something up there and went to rescue it. He was quite an awkward person, you know. His balance wasn’t very good.’
‘An accident,’ echoed Thea slowly. That possibility had apparently not occurred to anybody. ‘You think that’s likely?’
‘I don’t know. I just can’t believe he did it deliberately. He had such a lot to live for. He was making plans for retirement, travelling and so forth. He talked to me about it, because Millie was never interested. I really loved the way he talked. Millie says he was quite unfriendly with most people, always looking for a reason to take offence, but he was fine with me. He said I was a breath of fresh air.’ Thea made a mental comparison between this agonised performance and the monosyllabic sidekick who had come to the house with Millie on Friday morning. It was disorientating.
‘I’m sure you did each other a lot of good,’ said Thea stiltedly.
‘We did,’ said Judith, her eyes shining. ‘It was a beautiful friendship. And Millie was pleased that we got along so well. She laughed at us, but she liked it really.’
‘It all sounds very … rewarding. An escape from all the celebrity stuff.’
Judith gave a little shiver. ‘I hate it, you know. There’s never any end to it. People think it’s the best thing that can happen, landing a part like this, but it’s murder, honestly. My life isn’t my own. It’s like being wrapped in silver foil all the time – all people see is the shiny celebrity and nothing of the person inside.’ The demeanour had changed again. Now the young woman was being bravely confiding, setting right the general assumptions surrounding her way of life. The tears had dried completely, Thea noted.
‘The money must be good, though,’ she said. Then she caught a look from Drew, which made her cringe inwardly. Thick-skinned, she remembered. That’s what he’d called her. He appeared to be thinking it again. And yet it was a perfectly reasonable comment, as far as she could see.
‘The money is amazing,’ said Judith with a sigh. ‘I should probably have said gold foil. I’m a walking lump of gold. And you know what? It doesn’t help. You still have to live. You have to get up, and eat and talk and do things. And you can’t trust people when they say they like you. They mostly want to sell you things, or get you to invest in their stupid projects. It’s ridiculous, when you think about it.’ She leant against the back of a chair, her head drooping. ‘I can’t see how I can go on without Rick. He kept me grounded. He never demanded anything from me, never wanted anything to do with my working life. He would never come to the clubs with me, never met all the other actors and that. We had our own special little world, away from all that rubbish. I’d be hooked on drugs by now without him. That’s what’ll happen now. I know it will.’ The first words of this speech had felt quite genuine to Thea, but the rapid decline into self-pitying melodrama made her doubt her own impressions.
‘Sit down and I’ll make tea,’ said Drew, cutting through the little scene. ‘Then we’ll have to start getting ready to go. I have to be home by six.’
‘Home?’
‘I live in Somerset.’
‘You’re both going?’ Judith looked around the room. ‘Just walking away, leaving everything in a mess here?’
The living room wasn’t the least bit messy, thought Thea resentfully. But upstairs was. Upstairs there were heaps of clothes, open drawers, boxes of papers and piles of books. ‘I haven’t been asked to stay,’ she defended. ‘I think Millie’s going to have to deal with it from here on.’
‘Or the cousin,’ said Drew, from the doorway.
‘Who?’ Judith looked blank.
‘You tell her,’ said Drew to Thea, and disappeared into the kitchen.
‘He was at the home this morning. He’s called Teasdale. He was visiting Mrs Wilshire.’
‘Whose cousin is he? I’ve never heard of him.’
‘He’s Richard’s first cousin – the son of Rita’s sister. He’s quite old. Lived in Saudi Arabia or somewhere until recently. He’s very jolly. The woman in charge at the home thinks he’s wonderful. They were going to tell the old lady about her son, together. They’ll have done it by now.’
‘She didn’t know? Where was Millie? What’s she playing at?’
‘She’d gone by then. They didn’t let her see her gran because she was playing bridge.’ Thea felt uneasy about conveying any further information. She had a strong sense of walking on thin ice, beneath which lay murky relationships. Judith and Richard; Richard and Millie; Millie and her celebrity friend – the triangle was all too obviously fraught with dark emotions. Questions began to pop up like mushrooms. Was Millie secretly jealous of her friend’s relationship with her father? Was Richard embarrassed about it, or just star-struck by the girl’s fame and fortune? Did Judith fully understand the implications? Had she really never heard of the cousin? What did any of them stand to gain from the others? When she finally caught up with her own thoughts, Thea realised she had become inescapably drawn in. She was hooked by the revelations of the day – not just Judith’s unlikely affection for a man with little charm or appeal, but the appearance of a long-lost cousin, and the delay in telling Mrs Wilshire the tragic news. Drat! she said loudly to herself. It no longer felt possible to just bundle her dog into the car and drive away. And one reason for this was that she found herself rather admiring Judith/Jayjay, the celebrity. There was also the thrill of enjoying a one-to-one conversation with a person almost everyone in the country knew by sight. It would be something she could boast about, once the Chedworth business was concluded. Even if the entire encounter had been phony, a counterfeit performance laid on by a skilled actor, it had felt exciting and revelatory. There was a lurking implication of a self-deluded girl stalking an older man who had no feelings for her at all. The damaged celebrity in search of normality and protection. It would make a very neat reversal of the usual pattern, where the sad lonely man persuaded himself that the lovely actress fancied him.
But Judith wasn’t finished. ‘I only met her once – Richard’s mum, that is. I came here with Millie, ages ago now. Mill thought her gran might let me look at some of the old clothes she’s got, in case they’d be good as costumes, but she didn’t want us touching them. Said she’d kept them in perfect condition for seventy years, and she didn’t want people messing about with them.’
‘I’ve messed about with them,’ said Thea, feeling guilty. ‘I could never get them back as they were. I hope she doesn’t find out. Or perhaps Millie could gently tell her what’s been happening, and ask her what she wants done with all the things here.’
Drew came in then with a tray, holding a teapot, three cups and a plate of biscuits. ‘Where did you find those?’ Thea asked. ‘Have they been in a tin for months?’
He laughed. ‘No. I had them in the car. I bought a few things yesterday, on the assumption there’d be no food in the house. I only just remembered.’
Judith gave a loud dramatic sigh. ‘She is still alive, you know. Everything still belongs to Richard’s mum. Don’t you feel it’s all rather yukky, going through her stuff like this?’
‘I assumed that was why Richard asked me to do it – keeping his own hands clean, as it were.’
Drew spluttered over his tea at this, but Judith merely nodded. ‘That’s exactly right. I said the same thing to him. But actually, it’s mainly Millie’s fault. She’s the obvious person to do it. She’s been all over the place ever since her gran went into the home. Screaming at poor Rick one minute, and then asking if she could borrow money against this house the next. She’s been a good friend to me, so I shouldn’t speak against her, but to be honest, she is a bit of a taker. Expects it all to be handed to her on a plate. She won’t put the graft in, like I did.’
There was not a lot to say to this. At barely twenty-five, it was difficult to believe that the girl had spent long hard years stacking supermarket shelves while attending hundreds of auditions, as the general pattern seemed to go. It had to be at least two years since she joined the cast of the soap opera. Many might think she had enjoyed a solid-gold career with plenty of extremely good years ahead of her. She was, as far as Thea was aware, a reasonably talented actor, and her looks were distinctive enough to carry her well into her thirties. Long faces like hers were highly regarded in the fickle eyes of the general public, rather to Thea’s chagrin. She blamed the woman in Sex in the City – Sarah Jessica Parker – and a gaggle of younger lookalikes.
‘Your chauffeur not working today, then?’ Thea said, after a pause.
Judith snorted. ‘You make me sound like royalty. It’s just a driver – different men every time, pretty much. It’s a not-very-subtle way of making sure we actually turn up when we’re supposed to. They treat us like naughty schoolchildren. One of these days, they’ll fix tracker devices on us, or implant microchips, so they can always find us. It’s a massive cast, you know. They talk as if they’re organising an army, half the time.’
‘A different world,’ murmured Drew. Then he worked his shoulders manfully. ‘I’ve got half an hour, max,’ he announced, addressing Thea. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Good question,’ she said. ‘An hour ago, I’d have followed you back to North Staverton, but now – well, it doesn’t feel right to just abandon things here.’
He tilted his head at her, saying nothing. Then he looked at Judith, who looked right back at him.
Thea agonised, thinking aloud. ‘I expect I could leave it all to Millie. The house is her responsibility, not mine. I don’t imagine I’ll even get paid for the days I’ve done. But there are so many loose ends. You see that, don’t you? You’d stay as well, if you could.’
Judith gave a snorting little laugh. ‘You two!’ she said. ‘What are you like?’ It was funny, even if it came from a line of TV dialogue. She went on, ‘The big “loose end”, as you put it, is that Richard did not kill himself. The idea is insane. There’s nothing about him that could make that a sensible idea.’
‘Have you ever been in that barn?’ Drew asked her. ‘Do you know how high the upper part is?’
‘I have, actually,’ she admitted. ‘Richard took me there a couple of times. He had a thing about it. Did I tell you he took the dogs there quite often?’
‘Millie mentioned it. Did he know who owns it?’
Judith shrugged. ‘He must have done. But he said he’d been going there all his life, so nobody’s bothered about it, obviously. We used to climb in from the field next to it. The road gate’s kept locked with a chain and a padlock.’
‘Why hasn’t anybody converted it into a house?’ Drew asked. ‘You never see an old barn like that, left as it was originally.’
‘I can think of lots of reasons,’ said Judith vaguely. ‘It’s too high for a house, for one thing. It’d be like living in a cathedral.’
‘But it’s a place he might go if he was feeling … low or worried, or something,’ Drew pursued. ‘To go and think, maybe. Like a cathedral,’ he finished thoughtfully. ‘There is a sort of holy feeling to it, somehow.’
The two women gave him sceptical looks. ‘Holy?’ said Thea. Judith gave one of her snorts, which served to remind Thea that this really was the same person she’d met on Friday. Up to then, there had been few points of similarity.
Drew stuck to his point. ‘You know what I mean. A big empty space, with sunbeams filtering in, and nothing to distract you.’
‘Richard didn’t see it like that,’ said Judith. ‘He just liked the way it has survived, in an area that doesn’t care very much about agriculture or industrial history or anything like that. He loved the way it’d been built, with that fantastic roof. I think he’d have bought it if he’d had the money, just to keep it safe.’
‘It’d cost a fortune,’ said Drew.
‘But you could have afforded it,’ said Thea slowly. ‘Did he ask you to buy it for him?’ That might be at least part of an explanation for the man entering into a relationship with her, she supposed. Again, it suggested a reversal of the expected scenario – although rich young women had certainly been pursued by older men in need of some cash, from time to time.
Judith’s eyes filled again. ‘I would have done, in a heartbeat, if he’d let me. But he was far too proud for that. No – we did joke about going to live in my Chipping Norton house, so I could look after him when he’s old. He never really liked Chedworth, you see. Said it had painful associations.’
‘But he grew up here, didn’t he?’ said Thea.
‘So? His childhood wasn’t very happy, by all accounts.’
‘There are things from his boyhood still in one of the rooms upstairs.’ Thea was trying to reconcile the idea of an unhappy childhood with the man’s manner on Thursday evening. It did fit reasonably well, she concluded.
‘Are there?’ Judith sniffed back the tears. ‘Can I see them?’
Thea shrugged. ‘I can’t stop you, can I? I’ve got no authority over the house and what happens in it.’ She frowned. ‘I don’t seem to be answerable to anybody, really.’
‘It’s a shambles,’ said Judith. ‘Richard was the lynchpin. Everything went through him. Now he’s left a great black hole and nobody knows what to do.’
The words reflected Thea’s feelings quite accurately. Every time she tried to find an answer or a decision, her instinct to consult Richard Wilshire was thwarted. He had juggled his mother, daughter and girlfriend – and perhaps even the newly arrived cousin. Not to mention the irascible woman across the road. His dogs depended on him, too. Without him there was a sort of implosion. Everyone was scrambling to understand what had happened, assembling scattered bits of information to no particular effect.
‘I see what you mean,’ she said weakly. ‘So, nobody knows what comes next?’
‘I’ll get on to Millie and insist she makes some proper decisions,’ said Judith. ‘I can’t stop now. I’ll come back one day and have a look at the stuff he’s left. Millie might want to come as well.’
‘Good,’ said Drew approvingly. ‘Sounds the best course.’
They all lost patience at the same moment. Judith zipped up her smart jacket and headed for the door. Drew swept up the teacups and took them to the kitchen. Thea did nothing, but her thoughts were all on the stacks of clothes and other things upstairs.
Four o’clock was upon them, and Drew was going to leave, whatever happened. Thea was almost glad. The indecisive standing about had got thoroughly on her nerves, the whole day had been a frustrating waste of time. If Richard Wilshire had fallen off the barn loft by accident, then there was no more to be said. If he had done it on purpose, that raised questions, but they hardly concerned her.
That only left one other possibility, and nobody appeared to be seriously considering that.
Except one person, it seemed. When Judith pulled the front door open, rooting in her pocket for car keys, and staring at the ground, she almost collided with a man. ‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘I know you.’
Judith’s loud sigh could be heard at the far end of the hallway. Drew came out of the kitchen at a trot, alarmed at the aggressive tone.
‘Who’s that?’ he asked.
Nobody replied at first. The man had one foot over the threshold, his eyes fixed on Judith’s face. ‘Who are you?’ Drew said again.
‘Brendan Teasdale,’ came the reply, as if this should mean something.
‘Teasdale?’ Thea joined Drew, blocking the way into the house. ‘A relation of the cousin we met this morning, then?’
‘My father is Mrs Wilshire’s nephew. We used to come here now and then, when we were small.’
‘Ah!’ Cogs clicked into place and pennies dropped. ‘Millie said something about that. You’re older than her, though.’
The man was perhaps in his early thirties, his dark hair close-cropped, and he had a fleshy mouth looking as if it smiled much of the time. He showed signs of finding himself both outnumbered and outmanoeuvred. He threw repeated glances at Judith, as if she was the one who really mattered to him.
‘How can we help you?’ asked Drew, in his usual polite fashion.
‘I’ve come to find proof that Richard was murdered,’ he said with a scowl.