A Grave in the Cotswolds (22 page)

Thea effortlessly unlocked the front door and ushered me into the house. She reached for the light switch to illuminate the murky hallway, but nothing happened. ‘Drat!’ she exclaimed. ‘I forgot about the electric being turned off.’

No hot water, no light, no telly, no heating. The list grew longer as I contemplated the lack of power. ‘That’s that, then,’ I said, trying to hide the gladness in my voice.

‘Don’t be such a wuss,’ she said. ‘There’s bound to be some candles.’

‘It’ll be cold.’

‘Not especially. It’s an old house with thick walls. I’ve hardly used any heating since I’ve been here.’

She was too much for me and I gave in. At least I was indoors, not spending any money, and had a well-charged mobile phone in my pocket, even if I had to walk up a hill before it would work. Things could be worse.

‘I’m going to pop over to Chipping Campden before the shops close, and get some food, OK? No need for you to come. Look after Hepzie, will you?’

She had left her car outside the cottage while we had walked around the village for most of the afternoon. The spaniel and I looked at each other. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘So long as she doesn’t make a fuss.’

‘She won’t. She takes to everybody. She has a very independent spirit for a dog.’

And so it proved. In the thirty-five minutes that Thea was gone, the animal had jumped onto the old leather sofa next to me, and snuggled warmly against my leg. We were both tired, it seemed, and I leant back my head and let everything drift for a bit. A cup of tea would have been perfect, but I supposed we’d have to drink water and nothing more, unless there was some sort of paraffin stove tucked away somewhere.

Thea returned carrying armloads of shopping. She dumped it in the kitchen, and went out again, returning with our luggage. A tapestry bag, a bulging white plastic carrier bag, my own little holdall and a rucksack all dangled from her at odd angles. She let it all drop onto the floor in front of me. ‘Dog food with dish, dog blanket, overnight stuff for me and plenty of food from a nice little old-fashioned shop I found,’ she enumerated. ‘What have you got?’

I had forgotten all about my own packing. ‘Toothbrush, pyjamas and a clean shirt,’ I reported.

‘Come on – there’s more than that in here.’

‘A book. Socks. Phone charger. Camera.’

‘Camera?’

‘I thought it might come in useful. I meant to bring it on Friday, to get a picture of the grave for my records, and forgot.’

‘Doesn’t your phone take photos?’

‘If it does, I don’t know how to work it. I’ve never been very good with gadgets,’ I confessed. ‘Maggs does all that sort of thing.’

‘For somebody only thirty-seven and three-quarters, you’re quite old-fashioned,’ she commented. ‘You’ll be telling me next you don’t know how to create a website.’

‘A what?’ I said.

‘Very funny.’

She was right, of course. I was a genuine unapologetic technophobe. It went with my line of work, my entire take on life and society, in a muddled kind of way. I liked the outdoors, personal contact, long considered conversations. Texting and emailing and superficial connections, such as existed on Facebook and the like, struck me as almost dangerously inhuman. Before taking the job with the funeral director, I had been a nurse. I had touched a lot of suffering flesh, looked into many frightened and pleading eyes and understood, right down to my bones, the stark need everyone had for a real live connection. The wholesale plunge into remote, detached communications via small hand-held machines appalled me as much as closed-circuit cameras did Thea. I just didn’t rant about it the way she did.

‘Just like Carl,’ added Thea, after a pause. ‘He didn’t like machines, either.’

I made no response to that. If she was telling me that I was her kind of man, then I should quite definitely not be staying alone in a house with her for a long March night.

Chapter Sixteen

Our first task was to find candles and create some light. The sun would be setting in less than an hour, and the windows of the house were small. Already there were deep shadows spreading out from the corners of the room. Thea knew where to look, and before long we had set up three light sources, although she ordained that we ought not to use them until we had to.

For food, she laid out a quiche that looked handmade, coleslaw, Pringles crisps, two apples and a bottle of red wine. ‘That should keep us going,’ she said. ‘We won’t have it yet, though – just some water from the tap.’

It was sufficiently like a camping holiday from my youth to make me feel boyish and irresponsible. I readily forgot why I was there, what was likely to happen next and what Maggs was going to say to me when I eventually returned home. My immediate thoughts were on the evening and night ahead, and the dawning understanding that I was alone in a house with a very beautiful, witty, clever, kind woman. I resisted all thinking along such lines quite firmly, without even pausing to argue with myself. There was no argument to be had. Subject closed. Think about other things.

I was still very worried about the legality of what we were doing. ‘People will see the candlelight,’ I said. ‘And wonder what’s going on.’

‘No, they won’t. And if they do, they’ll just accept it. Honestly, Drew, you worry too much, for no reason. Now then, there’s a stack of board games in the back room. Would you like to play Scrabble? I warn you, I’m fantastically good at it.’ A surprising look of pain crossed her face. ‘I used it to distract me when Carl died. It passed an enormous lot of time.’

‘Who did you play with?’

‘People on the computer. There are clubs. You can play with anybody, all around the world.’

‘Blimey,’ I said. ‘Fancy that. Actually, I’m not very keen on Scrabble, if that’s OK. I don’t mind canasta or gin rummy. I used to play those with my granny.’

‘Thanks very much,’ she giggled, ruining my subconscious hope that I could somehow pretend to myself that it was in fact my grandmother here in the house with me. ‘But I don’t think there are any playing cards.’

‘We should talk more about Mr Maynard,’ I said, with some hesitation. ‘That’s the important thing.’

‘Haven’t we said it all already?’

‘We need a plan for tomorrow,’ I insisted. ‘Pity about your computer – we could have looked up that co-housing place.’

‘Oh, we still can,’ she chirped. ‘I’ve brought my splendid new gadget with me this time. Jessica gave it me for Christmas.’ She waved a shiny black thing at me that obviously had a thousand useful functions.

‘But there’s no signal here.’ I knew only too well the truth of this, since all my troubles had arisen because of it.

‘There is if you’re with Vodafone, which this thing is. I’ve been practising with it. It really is amazing. I’ve completely fallen in love with it.’

‘Jessica will be impressed.’

‘Won’t she!’ she said smugly. She got Google running in moments, and searched for the place where Mrs Simmonds had lived. ‘This must be it,’ she said, reading out the details. I recognised the name of the village.

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘That’ll be it.’

‘They’ve got an open day, this weekend, for prospective members. “All welcome. Come and see for yourselves how we live. Organic lunches served. Talks and discussions.” Sounds as if they’re expanding.’

‘It must be weird, in a commune,’ I mused. ‘Endless meetings about what kind of light bulbs to use. No wonder poor old Greta couldn’t stand it.’

‘Did she say that? Maybe
they
couldn’t stand
her
. Maybe they threw her out.’

‘It’s odd that she kept this house. You’d think she’d have needed the money to buy into the co-housing group. I would assume they have to contribute quite a bit for their living quarters. She didn’t have a job, did she?’

‘No, but she had the rent from this, and maybe some money from her parents. She could have borrowed against the value of this place, as well. Banks were lending to anyone with property at the time she went there.’

I peered at the computer screen over her shoulder. There were pictures – a big house and a collection of converted farm buildings, with happy smiling people interspersed here and there. ‘Looks too good to be true,’ I remarked.

‘We could go,’ she cried. ‘We could go to the open day on Saturday.’

Objections crowded into my head. The police wouldn’t allow it. It was much too far to drive. We’d be spotted as impostors. ‘Could we?’ I said weakly.

‘We could leave early, spend the day there, and be back in time for supper.’

Were we planning to take up permanent residence here in Broad Campden, then? Was she envisaging three, four, five nights here together? It was like a dream, or a fairytale. Or stark-raving lunacy.

‘Um…’ I said. ‘I don’t think… I mean, I have to get home. I can’t just abandon everything for days on end. If the police don’t come up with something definite by tomorrow afternoon, they’ll either have to let me go home, or charge me with something.’

‘Aren’t you already charged with something? They wouldn’t bail you otherwise, would they?’

I shook my head, to try to clear my thoughts. ‘They did charge me, yes. But I don’t think they can actually insist I stay close by. It’s only for their convenience. I really will have to go home tomorrow.’

‘OK. But we can still go to the commune on Saturday. I can meet you there. It can’t be far from where you live.’

‘No,’ I agreed, feeling strangely unhappy. ‘It’s about twenty-five miles.’

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘Lots of things. This is not an ideal situation to be in. I keep wondering where I went wrong.’

‘Waste of time,’ she said airily. ‘What you should be doing is working out what to do next. Take control. Make things happen.’ She reached for the wine bottle, which we’d opened but not yet started, and poured out two large glasses full. ‘Here,’ she invited. ‘This’ll make you feel better.’

I sipped it warily. ‘Doing what you say, I’ll only get myself into worse trouble.’ I sounded useless, even to myself.

‘How much worse can it get?’ She gave me a teasing smile, her head tilted sideways, making me think of Stephanie.

‘According to you, the police can make their forensic findings fit their theory that I’m the murderer, and I can end up serving thirty years in prison. Isn’t that bad enough?’

‘I didn’t quite say that.’

‘You implied it. And it’s probably true. If I hadn’t been such an idiot as to get lost after I’d made those phone calls, I’d be perfectly all right. As it is, it looks exactly as if I saw Mr Maynard, followed him into that bit of woodland and bashed him with a stone. It would only take five minutes, and then I went back to you and had lunch as if nothing had happened.’

‘They have to find evidence that you did that.’ She looked doubtful, as if the full force of this hypothesis had only just struck her.

‘If they look hard enough, they’ll find it. I
did
walk that way. I
had
argued with the bloody man. Your daughter can testify to that.’ I was too polite to remind Thea that it was her Jessica who had originally marked me out as the likely killer.

‘Well, I can testify that you looked perfectly normal when you got back here. Only slightly out of breath and not a bit bloodstained. I already told them that, actually.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Anyway, it’s time for our supper now, and we can light one or two candles. It’s nearly seven o’clock. I can’t see a thing.’

Night had fallen gradually, and although our eyes had adjusted to the fading light, there was no way we could see to find anything, or cross the room without collisions with furniture. Thea lit two candles and we ate our little meal, finishing the wine rather quickly, still discussing the murder and the people of Broad Campden.

It was probably about half past seven when we fell silent, and I found myself watching her face in the flickering, flattering light. My irrepressible body was misbehaving worse than ever and I felt a growing panic about how we were going to get through a whole night without something outrageous happening. I summoned the faces of my wife and children, my inevitable shame and fear at what I had done, the horror of being found out, as I surely would be. Besides, I assured myself, Thea herself would have far more sense than to let such a thing happen. She knew the situation, she would feel sisterly solidarity with Karen. There wasn’t really any danger at all.

But somehow our eyes had become locked together, and I found myself sinking into the brown depths of her gaze. The normal controls were weakening, my mind no more than a quiet little voice nagging somewhere in the distance. But Thea’s controls were evidently stouter than mine. She pulled back and blinked, severing the eye contact. I was still giving instinct too much rein, when I was saved.

Like a sudden bucket of cold water, or the outraged voice of God, someone started loudly knocking on the front door.

Chapter Seventeen

I got up and started across the room to answer it, before Thea hissed at me. ‘No! Let me. You’re not supposed to be here, remember. Go in the kitchen, quick.’

Stumblingly, I obeyed her, hiding in the dark, but listening intently for whatever was to follow. Why was I not supposed to be there, all of a sudden? Who did she think she was protecting me from?

‘Oh…hello!’ Thea’s voice was as warm and friendly as always. ‘You scared me, banging like that.’

‘What are you
doing
here?’ came a woman’s voice. ‘You ought to be gone by now. Shouldn’t she, Frank?’

A confirmatory rumble indicated Frank’s proximity. I began to guess who they must be, but was no nearer knowing whether it would be safe to reveal my presence. I opted to listen for a while longer.

‘Oh, it’s all right,’ said Thea easily. ‘I’m not doing any harm.’

‘That is not the point,’ said the woman sternly. ‘You’re trespassing. Why have you got candles burning? I’ll tell you why – because the power’s been turned off. And
that
means the house is supposed to be empty. Doesn’t it, Frank?’

‘We just thought—’ Frank began, with a hint of apology for his aggressive wife.