Thursday exceeded even the optimistic predictions of the weatherman. Sunlight streamed through the open curtains onto Thea’s bed. The room was on a corner of the house, with windows in two walls. One faced north and the other east. Between them, they gave her a good view of much of Daglingworth, despite the presence of a lot of trees. She could see the church, and a handsome barn conversion, as well as the little road into the heart of the village, with its raised walkway for pedestrians. The buds on the bushes and trees all seemed to have grown fatter and greener overnight.
Throwing on some clothes, she skipped downstairs to awaken Gwennie and take her outside. Her spirits were suddenly much higher than they had been for weeks. The sight of the burnt patch in the hall did nothing to lower them, nor did the events of the past few days.
The corgi seemed glad to participate in whatever rite of spring her temporary mistress had in mind. She snatched her breakfast biscuit and raised her pointed snout in a plea for more. ‘You are a pretty dog,’ Thea told her. ‘Such a lovely coat.’
Hepzibah wagged competitively, and pushed past the older dog to be first into the garden at the back of the house. It was a routine Thea had performed several times in numerous house-sits, and she watched the animals with half an eye as she debated what to have for breakfast.
She should, she knew, keep a closer watch on her own dog, who had something of a record for volatile behaviour in recent times. Sudden excitement could spark a moment of madness that had at least once led to expensive and embarrassing damage to another animal. But calmly mooching about under old apple trees was unlikely to set her off. The two dogs were ignoring each other, anyway, sniffing around in different parts of the garden.
It would be pleasant to walk once more down the pathways and over the fields to the house in Bagendon, for a final visit. The people were due back late the next day, which would mark the halfway point in Thea’s occupation of Galanthus House. She thought of the Fosters in Australia, surrounded by relatives and enjoying the exotic wildlife and vegetation. She never did hear exactly how they responded to being told by the police that their house had been fire-bombed – but assumed they were suitably mollified by assurances that no real harm had been done.
It was a shame that Gwennie couldn’t manage such a long walk. She was obviously happy to be out in the sunshine, and had doubtless benefited from the gentle circular stroll around Daglingworth the day before. It was plainly Thea’s duty to take her for a similar outing again today.
A slice of toast and a mug of coffee were quickly consumed, and then she clapped her hands decisively. ‘Okay – a short walk to start with, then Gwennie comes home and we go off for the rest of the morning.’ She addressed her spaniel. ‘And this time, we won’t accept any lifts back. It’s not far – we can easily do both ways.’
For a change she kept along the road leading to a different church, standing beside the junction with the road through Stratton – the place where she and Jessica had missed the turning, thanks to the drama of Jack Handy’s troubles. It was probably a mile each way, if she went the whole length, which was far too much for the elderly corgi. ‘We’ll turn back in ten minutes,’ Thea promised.
The road was quiet, but there was no proper pavement and when cars did pass by, they moved quickly. The dogs had to be kept close on their leads, which Hepzie found thoroughly frustrating. ‘I should have left you behind and just taken Gwennie,’ Thea muttered crossly.
The next car to appear was coming towards them. The driver ducked his head to get a better view of Thea’s face, and she met his eyes. It was the same bearded young man, and the same car, that she and Jessica had met two days before, in the gateway to a field where a man lay bleeding. Without thinking, she flapped a hand at him, but he was already pulling to a stop.
Twisting to get a view from the rear window, he reversed the ten yards or so to where she stood. One of his big ears was visible, and Thea wondered foolishly why he kept his hair so short. It only emphasised the less-than-attractive feature.
‘Steve,’ she said, through the open passenger window. ‘We meet again.’
‘Yeah. I knew you were staying along here somewhere.’
‘Were you looking for me?’
‘No way! Why’d I want to do that?’
Good question, she thought. ‘So …?’ she invited.
‘Just wondered how you were doing. And that girl – your daughter, was she? Must have been a bit of a shock for her.’
Thea put her head through the window and gave him a straight look. ‘You drove off without waiting for the ambulance. The man’s your uncle, or so you said. You didn’t know if he’d live or die, and you just drove off. What was that all about?’
He returned the look, completely unabashed. ‘I got a phone call. So I had to go. I knew he’d be okay. I saw the ambulance on its way. I called in later and gave them my name and address and all that.’
‘Who called you?’
His face darkened. ‘None of your business. Anyway, he’s getting better now. Panic over.’
‘You could have taken the dog. I had to keep it all night, and then find out where she lived and take her back the next day. Why should I get all that hassle?’
He left a beat before replying, his eyes on hers. She could read his thoughts as clearly as if he’d shouted them. Hadn’t she asked for it, pushing in where she wasn’t wanted, concerning herself in other people’s business? Any hassle she got landed with was entirely of her own making. ‘Looked to me as if you fancied a bit of hassle,’ he said. ‘Must be boring, watching out for someone’s house day after day. Nothing like a bit of violence to brighten the day – ain’t that right?’ He laughed nastily. ‘You think you know such a lot about us, after five minutes, don’t you? And you haven’t a bloody clue, really.’
If it had not been such a lovely day, she might have responded in kind. As it was, she found it almost easy to deflect the abuse. ‘You’re probably right. So why did you stop to talk to me?’
He laughed again, with more genuine amusement than before. ‘Good question. They told me you were different. I can see what they meant now.’
‘Who’s “they”?’
‘The girls,’ he said vaguely. ‘Listen, if you’re not doing anything, we could go and have a bit of a chat. Set you straight.’
It dawned on Thea that he had heard a report of the visitation on Tuesday evening, with accompanying doubts as to how effective the warning to stay clear had been. Perhaps this Steve was trying again, along a new tack. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Where do you want to go?’
‘Back to yours? It’s closest.’
‘It’s not mine,’ she corrected. ‘And I thought you said you didn’t know which house it was, anyway.’
‘I don’t. But it’s along here somewhere. You can’t have walked far with that dog. Looks as if it’d drop dead if you made it go more than a quarter of a mile.’
He couldn’t see Gwennie, where she was sitting patiently almost under his car. Hepzie was more restless, even jumping up at the window to get a glimpse of the man inside. Thea supposed that Steve had got a good look at both dogs as he drove towards them.
‘That’s true,’ she agreed, maintaining an affable manner despite small flickers of anxiety somewhere inside her. Would it be utter madness to let him into the house, when there had been so much unexplained violence going on?
‘So?’
‘Can we have a lift? Or do you want to crawl along behind us?’ There had been no passing traffic at all during their conversation, but now a fair-sized lorry came up behind Steve’s car and hooted. ‘You’ll have to move.’
‘Jump in, then. Put the dogs in the back.’
The lorry waited with poor grace while she bundled Gwennie onto the seat and suffered Hepzie to sit on her lap, contrary to Steve’s instructions. ‘She won’t stay in the back,’ she said, knowing that this was a lie. She felt faintly protected by the spaniel, which was ludicrous. Hepzie had no concept of protection. She was soft and brainless and not entirely predictable.
It took less than two minutes to reach Galanthus House. Steve left the car at the bottom of the drive, effectively preventing any other vehicle coming in or going out. ‘Nice day,’ he said fatuously, as they walked up to the door. ‘We could sit out here if you’d rather.’
It was a tempting idea. ‘I suppose that would be nice,’ she said. ‘The dogs can come in and out as they like.’ She assumed that Gwennie knew better than to escape into the road. There was no gate across the entrance, which for the first time struck Thea as unusual. Most Cotswolds properties made it very clear where their boundaries lay, and just how they regarded potential intruders. The openness of the Fosters’ house was an appealing detail, and another way in which it was very different from the one in Bagendon.
‘I can’t stay long,’ said Steve. ‘As you’re probably pleased to hear.’ He plonked himself down on a wrought-iron seat positioned to one side of the small lawn. Thea saw no alternative but to sit beside him, but she hesitated.
‘Shall I get some coffee?’ she asked him.
‘Don’t bother. I’ve just had some. Let’s get on with it.’
‘You’re going to set me straight,’ she nodded.
‘Sit down and listen, then.’ He waited a moment while she obeyed. ‘Okay – for a start, let me tell you about our group. All you’ve got so far is what Sophie’s said, by all accounts. And Sophie’s the extreme one. You can’t take her as typical.’
‘That’s a relief.’
‘We’re a big collection of like-minded people, mostly young, but not entirely. We’ve activists. That’s the word we use. We use direct action where everything else has failed. But we’re mostly trying to change minds with reason. Most of the time we’re blogging and tweeting and putting the case for better environmental awareness. We don’t hurt people.’
‘Jack Handy was hurt,’ she objected.
He paused and closed his eyes. ‘You think that was us?’
‘He told us it was. We’re fairly sure it was Ricky Whiteacre who hit him.’
‘Uncle Jack doesn’t know who’s who. He’s never bothered to learn anyone’s name or ask them what they want. He’s always been on the defensive, ever since his dad died. He thinks everyone’s talking about him and out to get him. Those hens of his – he knows it’s wrong. And selling that field was deliberate provocation. The whole village was against him doing it. But those aren’t things we get concerned about.’
‘He knows you, though.’
Steve nodded. ‘Only because I was at school with his boys and spent half my time on his farm. That was when he was milking. Ages ago now.’
‘So what are you saying? You think it wasn’t Ricky?’
‘Ricky Whiteacre is a law unto himself. He’s not properly with us, never comes to the meetings.’
‘His father knows it was him. We heard them talking. You’re just trying to keep me from knowing the truth. Well, it’s too late now, isn’t it? Jack’s going to tell the police it was Ricky. Even if he doesn’t know names, he can describe them. He said there was a gang of girls pushing and punching him.’
‘All I know is it wasn’t Tiffany or Nella or Sophie.’
‘So they tell me.’
‘It’s true. Nella and Sophie can both prove they were nowhere near that field. So can Tiffany, come to that. She was at home. If you must know, that was the phone call I got. Sophie was calling to ask if I was coming or not. I was late, see.’
She nodded slowly. ‘But you’d already stopped by that gateway. You’d seen Jack and were horrified. That’s why I stopped – the look on your face.’
‘Right. What’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing, I suppose. Except – why were you there, at that very spot, and just the right moment? And then it still strikes me as very odd the way you disappeared – as if you didn’t want to get involved with the police.’
‘Right,’ he repeated. ‘What’s surprising about that? We’re not on good terms with the cops. And, as I told you already, I didn’t see there was anything I could do. There were two of you, and that girl seemed pretty capable.’
‘My daughter. She’s a police officer.’
‘Yes, you said at the time. So why would you need me?’
‘Didn’t you care about him? He’s a relative, isn’t he?’
‘Distant cousin. What can I say? I didn’t think he was badly hurt.’
‘I’m still confused. Who were those people, then? Why would they attack him like that?’
‘As you just said, he can tell us himself, now he’s woken up. Someone’s going to get a knock on their door – if they haven’t already.’
‘The assumption is it’s most likely to be revenge for the death of Danny Compton,’ she said. ‘Everyone seems to think Jack Handy killed him.’
Steve said nothing for a minute, simply staring thoughtfully at the road beyond his car. Then he forced an artificial cough, as if the silence had to be filled somehow. ‘Everyone liked Danny,’ he said after another minute. ‘He was everyone’s friend. Willing, cheerful, capable. All the girls fell for him.’
‘And he chose Nella,’ Thea nodded, thinking the bony, sharp-spoken young woman was an unlikely selection.
‘He did. They were mad about each other. They were getting married.’
‘I don’t suppose I’ve seen her at her best.’ Then she remembered that when she first saw Nella and the others on Saturday, nobody knew Danny was dead. She tried in vain to recall her first impression of the dead man’s fiancée. ‘I heard Tiffany saying that Danny was dragging his heels about a date for the wedding and Nella was cross about it.’
‘What man doesn’t drag his feet in that situation?’ Steve laughed. ‘He was just being sensible. They didn’t have anywhere to live, for a start. And there was something weird about his parents. He left home very young and hardly ever saw them – something like that.’
‘Must have had some money, though – with that nice car.’
‘Yeah. We did wonder about that. He said he got it at a massive discount somewhere. Never did hear the full story. We used it for off-road operations. S’pose there’ll be no more of that now. Unless Nella gets to inherit it.’
‘So you believe your distant cousin Jack bashed him on the head and tipped him into the quarry, then?’ she persisted.
He shook his head heavily. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Better people than me say he did, so they’re probably right. After all, it wouldn’t have taken much to provoke him.’
‘Wouldn’t Danny have resisted, fought back, left scratches or bruises?’
‘Who says he didn’t? What do you know of the details?’
She smiled ruefully. ‘Not much. They know for sure it wasn’t an accident. I think Higgins said he was bashed on the head before being thrown into the quarry.’
He gave her a startled stare. ‘That wasn’t it,’ he said. ‘I thought it was common knowledge.’
‘What?’
‘He was stabbed.’
‘No! Who told you that?’ She was furious at her own ignorance, at Higgins having wilfully withheld the fact, even suggesting something quite different, whilst apparently telling all sorts of other people the real truth of the matter. ‘And don’t tell me your brother works at the local mortuary.’
He laughed. ‘Not quite. It was the chap who found the body on Sunday. He tweeted about it, damn fool. There was a lot of blood. Somebody in the group retweeted it, Sophie saw it and told some of us.’
‘Did she tell Nella?’
‘I doubt it, but she might have done. I’m trying to tell you – I’m not part of the inner circle. None of them’s my best mate.’
She frowned at him. ‘And yet you were right there, in Bagendon, monitoring the police radio, on Sunday. I saw you myself.’
‘And I saw you,’ he said loudly. ‘I thought at the time you were trouble, and I turned out to be right, didn’t I?’
‘How am I trouble?’ she asked, in all innocence. ‘Did I disrupt some horrible plan?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ He heaved a profound sigh. ‘Sorry. But just by being here, you’re causing trouble. Nobody knows where you’ll pop up next, or which of your copper friends you’ll have trailing after you. Even your bloody daughter is one of them.’
‘She is. Not that I ever encouraged her. It gets worse – my brother-in-law’s a detective superintendent. And I’m quite matey with another of them, in this region. Luckily for you, she’s on holiday.’ She gave a wry laugh. ‘I’m sort of on your side, you know. I mean, I agree with a lot of your aims.’
‘Big deal,’ he grumbled, which increased her sneaking liking for him. A solid young man, with large hands and hair the colour of oak furniture, he had a wit and integrity that had taken a while to recognise.
Again he gazed off down the drive, seeming to conjure a slow-moving, silver-coloured car approaching from the west. The driver was shamelessly peering up at the house, in an attitude that Thea was beginning to find annoying. The twisted neck and hunched shoulders that were necessary to see through the passenger window exemplified an excessive level of intrusion. Even Thea at her most nosy had never done it.
‘It’s Sheila Whiteacre,’ she noted. ‘Again. Hasn’t she got better things to do than keep snooping up here? She did it on Monday, as well.’
‘Sheila’s all right,’ he said softly. ‘So long as she’s on the same side. She’s got a lot of influence.’
‘Oh, damn it.’ The woman had pulled her car awkwardly behind Steve’s and was getting out. She waved cheerfully, which reminded Thea that their last encounter had led to a very uncomfortable piece of knowledge about her son. The two waited on their seat for the newcomer to come closer.
‘Just thought I’d ask how you got on with that dog,’ Sheila chirped, when she was a few yards away. ‘Did you find the farm all right?’
‘No problem. Mrs Handy showed me round.’ There were undercurrents in operation that could take them into all kinds of deep water. Tiffany’s hostility; Ricky’s misdeeds; Sheila’s own uninvited appearance – they were all potential areas of conflict.
‘Oh good. Hi, Steve,’ she greeted him fondly. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’
Another possible minefield opened up – had Sheila stopped because she’d spotted Steve, and wanted to check up on what was being said? Something guarded in his eyes suggested this might be the case. ‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Look – I have to go over to Bagendon,’ Thea said firmly. ‘I’m not being paid to sit about and chat like this.’
They both looked at her in astonishment. ‘Aren’t you?’ said Sheila. ‘I’d have thought this is exactly what they want from you. Better than getting yourself embroiled in local trouble that you understand nothing about.’
Here we go, thought Thea. ‘You mean, I should shut myself away in here and ignore everything going on outside?’ Anger was slowly building somewhere in her chest. ‘All I did was go for a walk on Saturday, you know. Tiffany and Sophie were in the little wood, and it seemed entirely natural to have a little chat with them.’
Sheila let her shoulders drop in an attitude of exasperation. She breathed out slowly. ‘And then you cadged a lift off Jack Handy. After that, you went back again and pushed into a group of people you didn’t know. You just keep turning up, time after time, don’t you? You’re like a witch. Or a bad fairy.’
‘A jinx,’ muttered Steve.
‘Or a spy,’ Sheila finished. ‘Deliberately informing the police about everything you hear us say.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Thea shouted. ‘That’s all absolute nonsense. I had no idea your protest group even existed until I came here. Sophie told me a whole lot about it, five minutes after I first met her. If you’re worried about spies, maybe you should tell her to keep her mouth shut.’
‘She thought you might make a likely recruit,’ Steve explained. ‘She’s always on the lookout for new people.’
Thea got up. ‘Well, tell her she’s useless as a recruiting officer. She comes across as borderline insane. Now, I do have to get on. The morning’s half gone already.’ Part of her regretted the curtailment of the conversation, but a larger part was eager to be done with it. ‘Thanks for putting me straight, Steve,’ she added with some irony. It would take a good deal of hard thinking before she could truthfully say she was any closer to understanding what had been going on.
‘He put you straight, did he?’ Sheila said sharply. ‘How, exactly?’
‘Never mind,’ said Steve. ‘If you move your car, I can go. We can’t stay if she doesn’t want us here.’ Again, Thea pegged him as essentially decent, although evidently not entirely law-abiding, given his eavesdropping on police radio exchanges. She would have liked longer to try to assess his character and motives. A murder had been committed, after all – and anybody with a strong arm and sufficient reason might have done it.