‘All that nonsense about an email,’ Drew said. ‘It couldn’t possibly be true. He concocted it as a ruse to get into the attic. I suppose he wanted the stamps, but it might have been the picture.’
She closed her eyes against the new layer of complication. ‘I’m not so sure. Don’t you find it’s the far-fetched stories that often turn out to be the true ones? I thought it rang true, on the whole.’
‘Well it didn’t to me,’ he said irritably.
‘All right. So, why would he raise the idea that Richard was murdered at all? Wasn’t that taking an awful risk? It could so easily blow up in his face.’
‘My guess is that he knows your reputation for getting involved in murder investigations, and thought it would be a good way to convince you to let him do what he wanted.’
‘Oh Lord, that’s an awful idea,’ she objected. ‘When did you think of that?’
‘Just now, to be honest. And I still can’t believe Rita would be able to summon her thoughts enough to send an email that could persuade her great-nephew to drop everything and rush up here like that.’
‘He lives in Cheltenham, doesn’t he? Isn’t that what Mr Teasdale said this morning?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’ Drew was still preoccupied with the effort to make sense of it all. ‘Maybe I’m wrong, after all,’ he said. ‘Mrs Wilshire really is a strong-minded woman. If they told her that Richard killed himself, and she was certain he would never do such a thing, she might go straight for any proof she can find that he didn’t.’ He sighed. ‘I can’t think straight, with so much going on.’
‘I’m just as bad,’ she said. ‘But I think you’ve got the old lady wrong. I’ve heard you say that people can be amazingly capable and coherent, right after hearing the most shocking news. They adapt like lightning, sometimes. They need explanations – a narrative, to use the jargon – that make it easier to cope with. Isn’t Mrs Wilshire likely to be that sort of person?’
‘Quite likely, yes.’
‘Okay, then. And you don’t doubt that Brendan really is her great-nephew, do you? He knew so much about the family, he must have been.’
Drew nodded. ‘It was what he said on the doorstep that set me against him. You don’t start shouting about murder like that, if you’re genuine.’
‘It was odd,’ she agreed. ‘But he’ll have had a shock as well. He expected to get to know Richard better, and catch up with Millie, and now it’s all changed. Then he gets an email from his aunt that he probably doesn’t really understand. I think I believe him, you know.’
‘Well …’
‘It is very confusing for everybody,’ she sighed. ‘Was Richard murdered, do you think? Is that what we’ve decided?’
‘Oh yes – I’ve thought so all along,’ said Drew. ‘The story doesn’t hold water, otherwise. The loft isn’t high enough for suicide. And if he died close by and was quickly moved into the barn, there wouldn’t be much evidence to show what happened.’
Thea was deeply impressed that he had worked so much out with no external signs to suggest his thought processes. She struggled to keep up. ‘You think he was bashed in some way that made it look as if he fell?’
‘I don’t know. We have no idea what the post-mortem might show tomorrow. They’re bound to be doing it then, even if they don’t believe he was murdered.’
She grimaced. ‘What if he fell off some other high place that killed him, and was then moved – would that be obvious from the post mortem? There’d be the wrong amount of blood in the barn. Broken bones would be displaced. Have you been working all this out since yesterday?’
‘I did go through it in my head quite a few times,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve been thinking quite hard for more than twenty-four hours.’
She paused. ‘I wondered what the matter was. I thought it was something to do with me.’ A tension she had been almost unaware of was falling away. ‘I thought I’d upset you somehow.’
‘Sorry, love.’ He pulled her to him. ‘You mustn’t be so unsure of me. You’re my number one priority, you know. Nothing’s going to change that.’
She still wasn’t entirely able to accept this. ‘What about the children? And the new business? And Maggs? I don’t want to come before them. That’s too much responsibility.’
‘I meant, at the moment. I can’t go and leave you with all this mess. Pandora understands. Oh, and she says Maggs wants to speak to me, but didn’t like to phone in case she disturbed us.’
Thea flapped a hand at his phone. ‘Call her, then.’
He did so, his face expressionless. ‘Maggs – hi. How’s Meredith? … Good. Lovely. I gather you wanted me …’
The one-sided conversation enhanced a wholly uncalled-for exasperation in Thea. She wanted to go outside and run somewhere, to stop her brain crashing about in helpless circles. There was guilt looming ever more adamantly, at all her stupid, inappropriate responses to everything Drew said or did. He was doing his best to rescue her from a complicated situation, which he had landed her in to begin with. He was sad and worried about old Mrs Wilshire. He wanted the truth to be found concerning how the woman’s son had died. And he probably also wanted the house to be left neat and tidy, with everything listed and labelled and sorted and stacked.
Meredith. She repeated the name to herself. Wasn’t it Welsh? Or was that only when the accent was on the second syllable, which was not how Drew had said it. Meredith Cooper. It had a certain ring to it, she thought. Better than the name Kim, which her brother Damien and his wife had given to their new daughter. The family had expected Hope or Theodora or Christiana – but Kim had no associations that anybody could discover. That baby had been born a month early, its startled and biologically elderly parents hopelessly intimidated by the whole experience. Thea’s (and Damien’s) mother had marched to the rescue, as grandmothers routinely did, and as a result was intensely in love with the infant, who showed every sign of reciprocating.
Not a bit like the family she had been learning about that afternoon, then. The Johnstones had their shameful secrets, it was true, but nobody had died before their time, or bequeathed each other houses that were full of ancient possessions. Or not quite, anyway, she amended, thinking of Drew’s inheritance in Broad Campden.
He was listening intently to whatever Maggs was saying. ‘Yes,’ he muttered a few times, and other monosyllables that told Thea nothing. ‘If you’re really sure,’ he then said. ‘All right, Maggs. That’s very sporting of you.’
His vocabulary could be that of a schoolboy at times. He fell into it when dealing with elderly bereaved customers, from a vague instinct that it would reassure and console them. He was probably right about that. He and Maggs would say ‘smashing’ and ‘lawks’ now and then, as if they’d just been reading an old Beano comic.
So Maggs was being sporting. Thea experienced the pang of being on the furthest angle of the triangle, the two others united in a small conspiracy, however benign it might be. She wanted to snatch the phone and demand to know what they were planning. Ten seconds later, she was being conscientiously updated.
‘She says I should stay here another night. She’ll go into the office tomorrow, with the baby, and help Pandora, who’s happy to babysit my kids between now and then. She can get them off to school in the morning. They can cope so long as I’m back in plenty of time for the funeral on Tuesday.’
‘She knows about clothes, breakfast, and all that?’ Another pang assaulted her; this time laced with jealousy. Drew’s domestic arrangements were surely her business more than they were Pandora’s.
‘Stephanie will talk her through it. She’s very capable. Nine, going on sixteen, as Maggs would say.’
‘They’ve worked it all out, behind your back.’
‘They want me to be with you. They think you’re the answer to bigger problems than getting the kids off to school. I’m marrying a rich widow, who will set the business straight and settle me down into contented middle age. They all think that’s an outcome profoundly to be desired.’
‘Hmm. Rich widow, eh?’
‘Rich enough to keep things afloat. Although I have been thinking it might be an idea to rent your Witney house out, rather than selling it. You’d get seven hundred pounds a month for it, at least. That would cover pretty much all the bills. Food, fuel, electric, anyway.’ He sighed as if such a situation would be nothing short of heaven. ‘And quicker than going through all the hassle of selling it.’
‘Drew – this isn’t the moment to start talking about all that. We’re in the middle of a serious mess here. Don’t you think we should try to phone Millie, at the very least? We should ask her if she really has got a cousin called Brendan. I seem to remember Norah Cookham mentioned him on Friday, so I suppose that clinches it.’
‘Why does it matter?’
‘I suppose it doesn’t. Even if he is a relative, we could still report a theft of items from the attic.’ She stopped. ‘Ignore me. I’m just trying to make everything even more complicated, aren’t I?’
‘Oh well.’ He drifted into the living room, rubbing his head. ‘So, what are we doing now? It occurs to me that I’m extremely hungry. We’ve hardly eaten all day.’
‘Oh, Lord. There’s still no food in the house. We can go to the pub, I suppose. It’s about three minutes’ walk away, after all.’
She hesitated. ‘It’s lovely that you’re staying. But I’m not really sure why you are. What are you protecting me from? I’d be happy just to lock up here and get the hell out.’
‘Leaving Dodge to stew in its own juices.’ His attempt at an American accent was ludicrous and she laughed.
‘Seriously,’ she reproached him.
‘Call it a hunch. A lot’s happened today, and we ought to sit down and sift through it. It was only yesterday that we found Richard, after all. We need to give ourselves space to get over that.’
‘But you see dead bodies all the time, and I’ve seen my share of them, these past few years.’
‘It’s never easy when it’s sudden and violent. We owe it to Richard to stop and reflect. It’s all been far too much of a scramble with all these people accosting us.’
‘And the rest,’ said Thea, thinking of decisions about the future, and the demands of their lives, here and now. ‘But I’d be very happy to stop and reflect, if that’s what you suggest. Can it be done in a pub, do you think?’
‘Doubtful. Especially if people guess who we are. There’ll be more accosting, if we’re not careful.’
‘The only real escape would be to leave.’ She was still unclear as to exactly why he was finding that such a bad idea. ‘We can give Richard all due attention, wherever we are.’
‘We can’t find out who killed him, though. We have to be on the spot for that. And I quite fancy the pub.’
She gave him a long look, aware that his thought processes had far outrun her own. ‘Did you tell Maggs there was a probable murder here? If so, when?’
‘I texted her this morning, just with a few basics. You know how she likes to be kept informed.’
‘I’d have thought she had enough to occupy her for the time being.’
‘Apparently not. She said just now that the baby sleeps half the time, and it’s all a bit boring. She refuses to become one of those mothers who can’t think of anything else but the baby. I’m her route into the wider world, she says.’
‘Babies are rather boring,’ Thea remembered. ‘I always thought so.’
They saw no reason to delay going to the pub, except that poor Hepzie had enjoyed no exercise whatsoever all day, and Thea insisted on a fifteen-minute session in the field at the end of the road. Drew went too, on the grounds that he also needed to give his legs something to do. It still seemed to Thea that he had made a much greater sacrifice than was actually called for, in neglecting his children for another night. The sense of a small conspiracy between Pandora and Maggs – and possibly Stephanie, too – was unsettling. Thea Osborne was a woman who had always disliked behind-the-back secrets, thanks to growing up in a large family where information was often used as currency. She wanted everything open and honest and forthright. So she said, ‘What’s really going on back home? Why is everybody so concerned for you to stay here with me? Do they think I can’t look after myself?’
He kicked at a tuft of brown grass and nibbled his lower lip for a moment. ‘I think they might think you’ll resent it if I go back to them and leave you on your own. They don’t want you to be annoyed with me.’
‘They’re scared I’ll dump you? Suddenly I’m a Good Thing after all? I can remember a time when Maggs regarded me as little short of a witch, stealing you away from your natural obligations.’
‘That was when Karen was still alive. She’s changed completely since then. As well you know.’
They watched the spaniel roaming across the field, nose down, following trails left by numerous other dogs. ‘I suppose Hepzie might miss the house-sitting,’ said Thea doubtfully. ‘She’s always been very adaptable in all those strange houses. And the various animals mostly tolerated her pretty well.’ She thought back over the many cats, dogs, poultry, sheep and other beasts that she and Hepzie had been entrusted with. ‘I’m not sure I could have done it without her. It’s a lonely business, and often terribly dull.’
‘She can be entertainment for my kids, from now on,’ he said. ‘Because you’re never going to be lonely again.’
It would be mawkish coming from anyone else, but he meant it as a statement of fact. It was also a warning that Hepzie could expect to be relegated to second place in Thea’s affections from here on. For Thea, this came with a twinge of guilt at the betrayal. The faithful little dog should not suffer because her mistress had a boyfriend – or husband, as he insisted he would soon become.
Drew did his best, but he would never be entirely comfortable with the idea of a dog in bed with its people. It was all down to a person’s upbringing, Thea supposed. Whilst the Johnstones had not been an especially doggy family, there had been a scruffy mongrel throughout much of Thea’s childhood, which she had insisted was mostly hers. She had invited it to share her bed on weekend mornings when she lazed under the blankets with a book, and the habit had returned after Carl’s death. She made no secret of the consolation she derived from the soft presence in the night.
‘Love me, love my dog,’ she said lightly. It was rapidly becoming a mantra.
‘I’ll do my best,’ he promised.
Walking back, to the point where the field ended and the cul de sac began, Drew’s head went up. ‘There’s a car,’ he said. ‘Outside the house.’
‘It might not be for us.’
‘What’s the betting?’
He was right. A few more yards and they could both see Millie Wilshire standing close to the car with a man. ‘Who’s that?’ asked Drew.
‘Never seen him before.’
They approached at a brisk walk, with Hepzie still running free. She ignored the people and went to the front door of the house as if she’d always lived there.
‘Millie,’ said Thea. ‘Are you waiting for us?’
The girl looked drained and miserable – far worse than when they’d seen her that morning. ‘This is Andrew Emerson, the farmer I told you about. The one who was waiting for Dad on Friday, for the TB test on his cows.’
Andrew Emerson also looked exhausted, his face deeply lined. He barely smiled as he nodded a greeting. At first glance, he appeared to be something over sixty, but Thea had a suspicion he was rather younger than he looked. His hair was a lightish brown, similar to Drew’s, and his small eyes a murky greeny-hazel. There was a groove between his eyes, and more around his mouth. He conjured an impression of a struggling settler in the American Dust Bowl, the weather and fate implacably against him.
‘The police have had me in for questioning,’ he said in a deep voice. ‘Trying to trace Richard’s last movements.’
‘Oh!’ Thea was about to ask Do they think he was murdered, after all? when a nudge from Drew silenced her. ‘So what can we do for you?’ she said instead.
‘You should probably talk to each other,’ said Millie reluctantly. ‘You both saw Dad more recently than I did, and everybody seems to assume I’m the most unobservant person in the world – so perhaps you can find an explanation between you for what happened to him.’
Thea frowned at this idea. ‘Do you have a cousin called Brendan?’ she asked.
‘What? What’s he got to do with anything?’
‘He came here today. He really is your cousin, then?’
‘Sort of. His father is my father’s cousin.’
‘Right. That’s what we thought,’ said Drew. Thea realised he was interrupting her on purpose, worried that she would say something upsetting. ‘I know about cousins. It means you have the same great-grandmother,’ Drew went on. ‘Making you and Brendan second cousins, strictly speaking.’
‘Right,’ said Millie, with a glance at the farmer. ‘So – can you talk to Andrew or not?’
‘We were just off to the pub. Why don’t you come as well?’ Drew invited. ‘We’ve hardly eaten anything all day.’
Andrew Emerson and Millie both seemed doubtful about this suggestion. ‘People might recognise us,’ said Millie.
‘Does that matter?’ asked Thea. ‘I can understand why your friend Judith might find that a nuisance, but it’s different for you, surely?’
‘They’ll know about my dad dying by now. They’ll be embarrassed. And they might think it’s wrong for me to be out drinking at a time like this.’
‘I don’t drink,’ said the gravel-voiced farmer. ‘I don’t go into pubs, if I can help it.’ He sighed. ‘And I am definitely in no mood for it tonight.’
‘What happened with your cows?’ Thea asked him. ‘Did someone else test them?’
He nodded. ‘Came yesterday afternoon. Four reactors. That’s the end of us now. We can’t keep on like this.’ He rubbed a hand across his face, fingers splayed, as if using an invisible wash cloth. ‘You have no idea what it’s like,’ he muttered. ‘Like being kicked in the face every time you dare to hope it might be getting better.’
‘So …’ Thea’s hunger was, to her shame, the dominant consideration.
‘He talked a lot about you,’ the farmer told Drew. ‘When he came for the first part of the test. Said you’d got life pretty well sorted. Facing facts, talking straight about dying. He liked that. You helped him decide about his old mum.’
Thea tried to visualise the conversation conducted over the wretched cows and their incipient TB. She knew enough about the subject to be aware that perfectly healthy-seeming animals could show up positive on the test that was rigorously enforced by the authorities. And a positive result meant certain death. A farmer and a vet might well discuss dying and associated matters in such circumstances. ‘Do you think he killed himself, then?’ she asked.
‘Of course he didn’t. It wouldn’t even enter his mind. What possible reason could he have for doing such a thing?’
‘Did you say that to the police?’
He nodded. ‘They said it just might have been an accident, but that came to much the same thing, as far as they’re concerned.’
‘They weren’t seeing you as a murder suspect, then?’ Thea said, tactlessly. She was more or less thinking aloud, without considering the effect of the words. At her elbow, Drew uttered an exasperated sigh.
‘What?’ the farmer almost shouted.
She held her ground. ‘Well, if it wasn’t suicide, and an accident seems unlikely, then what else is there?’
He subsided quickly. ‘All right.’ He looked at Millie. ‘You were right,’ he said. ‘She is scary.’
‘Who? Me?’ Thea was astonished. ‘Scary?’
‘Accusing a man you’ve never met before of murder. Richard was my friend. He told me all kinds of things. He said so much about you –’ addressing Drew ‘– that I had to come and see you for myself. Plus, I was hoping maybe you could fill me in on how he looked. You found him, in that barn. Nobody else can put my mind easy on how it must have been.’
Drew pulled a face and glanced at Thea. She understood his difficulty: only by professional straight talking could he give a satisfactory answer, and sometimes that could be straighter than people might like. He was regularly reproaching her for saying too much, getting too graphic, forcing people to face truths they preferred to avoid – but his own instincts were not so different from hers.
‘It’s impossible to say,’ he began. ‘A dead body relaxes completely. The face always looks bland and unemotional afterwards. Nobody dies with their last expression still permanently on their face, like you read in stories. As far as we could tell, he hadn’t moved at all. The ground underneath him wasn’t churned up or anything.’
‘But – what exactly killed him?’
‘I think his skull cracked. And possibly his neck was broken. We didn’t move him, obviously – although the dogs did nudge him a bit before we pulled them away.’ A sound from Millie reminded him that there was a listener even less likely to want gruesome details. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘But as the next of kin, you’ll be able to ask the Coroner’s officer for the cause of death – tomorrow, probably. It’ll be on the death certificate, anyway.’
‘Okay,’ she said thickly. She raised her face to look at him. ‘A week ago, I would never have dreamt any of this. I couldn’t even bring myself to come here, knowing Gran was never coming back.’
‘Did something happen?’ Thea suddenly asked. ‘I mean, before your father died? Why did you come here on Friday, when you were so against the whole thing?’ She tried to remember what had been said. ‘You were angry with your father for clearing the house. You asked me if I was his girlfriend, when surely you knew—’ She stopped, wondering, as so often before, just who knew what.
‘What? What should I have known?’
‘Well – your friend Judith says she was very close to him.’
‘Close? She liked him, if that’s what you mean. He treated her like an ordinary person. That’s all it was.’
In a murder investigation, the police would have explored in detail every movement made by Millie, Judith, Andrew Emerson and others on the day Richard Wilshire died, as well as any unusual circumstances in the days before that. They would have asked about arguments, sudden changes, impressions. Some of their findings might have filtered through to Thea in her meetings with Higgins and perhaps one or two other officers. As it was, virtually none of these enquiries had been made, because nobody openly asserted that there had been a murder at all. Andrew Emerson had been asked a few questions, apparently, to get an idea of the timings, but nothing more than that.
‘Did something happen?’ Drew also asked her.
‘Sort of.’ Millie swung one foot to and fro like a small girl. ‘Martin showed up, out of the blue, for one thing.’
‘Martin?’
‘My dad’s cousin. Martin Teasdale. I thought you saw him at the home. When I phoned this afternoon, that’s what Mrs Goodison said.’
‘Oh – yes, we met him.’
Millie shrugged. ‘Well, he and two of his children are living back here in the UK now, and they’ve started taking an interest in what Gran can tell them about family history. Brendan’s obsessed with it.’
‘So we noticed,’ said Thea. ‘Although he said it was his sister Carol as much as him. He took some things away,’ she added conscientiously.
‘What do you mean?’
‘From the attic.’ Thea pointed at the house with her thumb. ‘Listen – I don’t want to be rude, but I’m starving hungry. It’s six o’clock, and we need something to eat. If there’s nowhere else, we’ll have to go to the pub. There’s no food in the house.’
‘Brendan took things from the attic?’ Millie spoke slowly, stressing every syllable, as if checking a statement that was too terrible to be true. ‘What things?’
‘A stamp album and a picture, and an old schoolbook.’
‘Hmm. That doesn’t sound too bad. He can have the stamps for all I care.’
‘Thank goodness for that.’
‘We shouldn’t hold you up,’ said Andrew, who had been fondling Hepzie for the past few minutes. ‘I should get back.’ He turned to Millie. ‘Richard’s dogs,’ he said. ‘Are you sure they’ll be all right?’
Millie nodded. ‘I’m taking them over to Judith’s place now. She’s thrilled to have them.’
‘I know, but – they need to work. At least be amongst cattle or sheep, free to run about. I ought to take them, but …’ An agonised expression crossed his face. ‘I can’t guarantee them a future, the way things are.’
‘They’ll be all right,’ said Millie, putting a hand on the farmer’s arm. ‘You’ve got other things to worry about.’ She turned to Drew and Thea. ‘Andrew’s got a sick wife, as well,’ she told them. ‘And his daughter’s gone off to America.’
‘Celia’s on the mend,’ said the man bravely. ‘She was up most of yesterday.’
‘What’s wrong with her?’ asked Thea.
‘A really nasty bout of shingles. We had no idea it could be so debilitating. I’ve had to hire in some help to cover for her.’
‘Sounds grim,’ said Drew with just the right note of sympathy. ‘But you won’t really give up farming, will you? Isn’t that awfully drastic?’
Andrew’s mouth twisted in a show of pained inevitability. ‘After what’s happened to Richard, it doesn’t seem worth carrying on. Life’s too short for constant worry, working all hours for nothing. We still have a bit of equity if we sell up now – enough for a little house and garden. I can do odd jobs.’ He looked straight at Drew. ‘Actually, that’s another reason I wanted to see you.’ He hesitated and his colour heightened like an embarrassed teenager. ‘This burial business of yours. As I said, I like the sound of it. I was wondering if you might be needing another pair of hands. Digging graves, carrying coffins, driving – all that side of things?’
Drew put a hand up, half-warning, half-making a grab for something that felt like a very good offer. ‘Hold on – I haven’t got it running over here yet. Not by a long way. Although – there is a deadline not too far off now. Ask me again in six months’ time and I might well have a place for you. Assuming we can agree details, and get along together.’
‘How do I find you?’
Drew felt in an inside pocket and located a business card. He handed it to the man, who read aloud: ‘“Drew Slocombe, Peaceful Repose Green Burial Ground.” Sounds great.’
‘Thanks. I warn you, there’s not a lot of money in it.’
‘More than there is in farming,’ said Andrew.
‘Drew …’ said Thea, putting a hand to her middle. ‘Food?’
‘Yes, yes, you get on,’ Andrew said quickly. Then he had a thought. ‘Just one more thing. If we’re thinking somebody might have deliberately killed Richard, I’d look no further than Bloody Norah.’ He said the name in a whisper, with a meaningful glance at the house just behind them. ‘Everybody knows they had a big fight over the dogs and her cat.’
Millie uttered a brief giggle. ‘Bloody Norah,’ she repeated.
Thea also laughed. ‘My father used to say that,’ she remembered. Then her face grew serious. ‘But it couldn’t really have been her – could it?’