Slaughter in the Cotswolds (16 page)

Thea followed this tale with some difficulty. ‘So why the feud?’

‘Cedric contested the will. He was the next of kin and was expecting to get the place. He said some very damaging things, and the old lady—’

‘Lister’s mother?’

‘Right – well, she went off her rocker with the strain of it all. She wasn’t all that old, I s’pose, maybe just past sixty, but she seemed like a crone to us boys at the time. Mike Lister was a bit older, always a jack the lad, swaggering about with his gun, boasting about girls. He was a spoilt brat, youngest of three boys, came along when his mum was well past forty. Anyway, he swore he’d get revenge on Cedric and he’s been doing all he could to get to him ever since. He never lets up.’

‘And now he’s shot the dogs simply because he doesn’t like their owner? The man must be a monster.’

‘He’s not nice, that’s for sure. And sly. But Thea – those dogs really did kill my tups. You have to face up to that. It was totally wrong of Lister to get involved, but even so, they had to go, don’t you see?’

‘No, I don’t see,’ she shouted. ‘They were two fine animals, in the prime of life. They could have been sent to a new home where they’d be properly looked after. Besides, there was no blood on them.’

He heaved another sigh, even deeper than before. ‘They would have licked it all off each other. They like the taste of it – it’s a treat for them. It was them, I promise you. There isn’t the least doubt. You’ve created a web of
fantasy around Lister and his ridgebacks that just obscures the truth. The
simple
truth. It’s possible that he was worried that suspicion would fall on his own dogs, and that was why he took it on himself to shoot them – as well as being glad to get at Cedric.’

‘So you’re saying I should have let you do it on that first day, when you came to Hawkhill.’

He grinned ruefully. ‘No, I’m not saying that. You’d never have let me. And I couldn’t have done it with you watching. It isn’t pleasant.’

‘Have you ever shot a dog?’

He shook his head. ‘But my father did, when I was twelve. I was there. It screamed. It scarred me for life, that scream.’

She looked at him, wondering at his tone. Slowly she understood that he meant what he’d said. The experience had done a damage that he permitted her to glimpse for a moment.

After a painful silence, she spoke. ‘What’s Cedric going to say when he gets back?’

‘He won’t say much, never does. Look – don’t feel too badly about it. It’s a strange business, sheep-worrying. Any dog’s capable of it, if it gets its blood up. They just see red and act crazy for a few minutes. The minute they get a taste for it, there’s no stopping them. You can’t really blame them – it’s in their nature. And tups are easy prey – soft things. It doesn’t take much to kill them.’

She was silenced, both by his confidence that Cedric’s dogs were guilty, and his surprising forgiveness.

‘You’re being very kind,’ she said, humbly. ‘After I’ve caused you so much trouble.’ The guilt and grief remained lumpily in her midriff, tangled up with a mixture of other unpleasant emotions. Wasn’t she getting her priorities upside down, agonising about a pair of dogs when a human being had been savagely killed? Somehow the three deaths merged in her mind, a confusion of violence and rage that was frightening.

He merely nodded in calm acknowledgement.

‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘And leave you to get on with your lunch.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Won’t you stay and have it with me?’

She looked round, seeing no sign of any food. Did he do all his own cooking, as well as housework and running the farm?

He laughed. ‘It’s just cold meat and bread, and a few bits. Most days, Dave comes in and has it with me, but he’s off on Thursdays. Dave’s the farmhand you guessed was about somewhere, when you came yesterday. There’s Eddie as well, when we’re busy.’ He fetched a joint of cold pork, on a large oval dish that looked like a valuable antique. Pickle, some tomatoes, crusty brown bread and a stoneware flagon of cider completed the repast. It could all
have found favour with the occupants of the house a century earlier. Even the kettle was an ancient enamel object, sitting on top of the Aga.

‘You like nice things, don’t you?’ she observed, making an effort at normality. ‘I can’t see anything made of plastic in this entire room.’

‘Just like things that have some life in them,’ he nodded. ‘If you look after them, they’ll last for ever. Mind you, I can’t take the credit. Most of this stuff was here when my mum was a girl. It’s like living in a museum sometimes.’

‘But you keep it all so
nice
.’

He leant forward and winked comically. ‘You know – I discovered a secret weapon. It’s called a feather duster.’

She laughed more at his face than his words. He had somehow managed to transform himself into a Mrs Mop figure simply by doing something with his mouth, then angling his head and flicking an imaginary duster over the china on the dresser. ‘You’ll have to teach me,’ she said. ‘I’ve never quite got the hang of dusting.’

‘It’ll be that dog’s fault,’ he said, nodding at Hepzie who sat self-effacingly beside Thea’s chair. ‘They shake dry mud over everything if you let them in the house. You should have seen this kitchen when my mum had her two setters in here. There was a veneer of dust and dog hair over every blessed thing.’

What a man, she marvelled. And yet she felt no stirrings of physical attraction. He was being kind and funny and self-deprecating, but he wasn’t flirting, and so neither was she. There was a comfortable atmosphere, where she found herself trusting and believing him completely. ‘You know, I was really scared of you a few days ago.’

‘I was a bear,’ he admitted. ‘I get like that. I blame the world, mainly. Things will keep going wrong.’

‘So which is the real you – the bear or the pussycat?’

‘Both, obviously. As the whim takes me.’

‘What do the local people think of you?’

‘They’re cautious round me. I’ll bet you Cedric Angell warned you about me – don’t get the wrong side of old Galton, he’ll shoot you if you do, kind of thing.’

‘Something like that,’ she agreed.

‘Yet I’ve never done him any harm. I like the dopey old bugger most of the time. He can’t see beneath the surface, that’s the trouble. Just because I’ve bawled him out a few times, he thinks I’m an ogre.’

And your wife?
Thea wanted to ask, simply to complete the picture. But she didn’t. It would have taken them into the wrong kind of territory.

‘I still need to find the dogs,’ she remembered. ‘Give them a decent burial, if they really are
dead.’ The heaviness came back, the sorrow for the animals whose lives had been so constrained and dull. ‘People do such awful things to animals, don’t they. It weighs me down sometimes, just thinking about it. So much suffering and exploitation. Do you think there’ll ever be a time when it stops?’

He shook his head. ‘It couldn’t work – not with farm animals at least. If people stopped eating cows and sheep and pigs, then there’d be none left in a few years. Just a handful kept sentimentally as pets, and the odd carefully controlled so-called wild colonies on scruffy mountainsides, for the sake of the tourist trade. Look at the nonsense with wild boar going on now. Idiot people letting them run wild in the woods, and then panicking and shooting them when they get into a school playground. Seems to me you have to take the rough with the smooth. Wild animals can be aggressive. They get hungry and invade human territory, and then the same old conflicts start up again, just as they have for thousands of years. Human beings have to be in control, and their safety and property come far and away above anything else.’

She listened to this speech attentively. The underlying cynicism matched her own attitude towards much that went on. Human folly seemed to expand with every passing year, and sometimes
she thought nobody could see it but her.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s just seriously bad luck to be an animal, I guess.’

This time he laughed, a booming guffaw that came from somewhere deep inside. Big men could be so
noisy
, she thought, briefly remembering Carl’s slight frame, and even Phil Hollis, though tall, could hardly be described as big.

‘Well, I really ought to go,’ she said, after picking at the food he gave her. The knots in her stomach prevented proper eating, she discovered. ‘You’ll have work to do, and I’m being paid to supervise the remaining livestock at Hawkhill. Except – I do need to find those dogs. Can you suggest where I should look for them?’

‘He won’t have taken them far. He’ll have had to use his car, probably did it late last night, and just bundled them out by the side of the road. There’s plenty of quiet lanes around here with a handy ditch running alongside.’

‘Do you think Sharon knew about it?’ There was something awful about that thought. And yet her face when Thea introduced herself suggested awareness. ‘She did, I suppose.’

Galton’s face softened. ‘Oh, Sharon,’ he said ambiguously. ‘You met her, then?’

Thea nodded.

‘Did either of you mention me?’

‘Yes – she did. I gather you know each other.’

‘Obviously. It’s a small village.’ He grimaced and shook his head. ‘I can’t hope to explain it all to you, but let’s just say that Sharon and I go back a long way.’

‘Just as you and Phil Hollis do,’ she remembered.

Galton laughed. ‘Not
that
long,’ he objected. ‘Although now I think of it, she was at school with my wife for a year or so. I’d forgotten that. They both grew up in Stow.’

‘I see,’ said Thea, vaguely, aware that she did not really see at all. ‘You’re telling me that everybody knows everybody and it wouldn’t be safe to make assumptions.’

‘More or less, yes. But you can assume all you like about Mike Lister. I’ll never work out what Sharon sees in him. He can’t be a lot of fun to live with.’

She thought again of the comfortless house, and the downtrodden dogs outside. ‘No,’ she said. Then she collected herself. ‘Well, come on, Heps, mustn’t outstay our welcome.’ She went ahead to the front door and turned to thank Galton for his hospitality. He wasn’t behind her. ‘Where did he go?’ she asked the dog, who merely looked blank.

Then he reappeared, carrying a pure white sheepskin. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Let me give you this. I have eight or ten done every year, just because it seems such a waste not to. It makes a nice bedside rug, maybe.’

She took it in wonderment, holding the soft wool to her face. ‘It’s gorgeous!’ she breathed. ‘Surely you could sell them, rather than giving them away?’

‘I don’t need money,’ he said, as if making a simple obvious remark. ‘It was good to meet you again, Thea Osborne. I hope it’s not the last time.’

Walking back to Hawkhill, she noted the way he’d used her name, as if he’d been storing it up for just the right moment. A flicker of her former fear recurred. Henry Galton was clever, mercurial and powerful. He had threatened her with his gun, fed her a classic country lunch and given her a sheepskin rug. What next, she asked herself.

She had neglected to take her mobile with her to Galton’s, and when she went into the kitchen, it caught her eye. Picking it up, the little symbol told her there was a message, and she listened guiltily to Phil’s voice.
Thea? Why aren’t you answering?
I only got your message late last night. You left
it on the wrong phone. What’s the matter? It’s all
about those dogs again, apparently. Call me on
this number –
and he slowly dictated the digits.

‘What does he mean, the wrong phone?’ Thea muttered. Then she remembered that he had recently made a more concerted effort to keep work and home separate, explaining rather tediously that it was disruptive to let the two
merge too closely. She had called the home number, a mobile he kept for personal matters – and which he only bothered to check every second or third day, it seemed.

‘Well, I don’t need you any more,’ she added in a louder mutter. ‘I can get along quite nicely as I am.’

But Phil Hollis must have felt otherwise, because within ten minutes his car was sweeping down into the Hawkhill yard. She stood in the doorway watching him getting out, still stiff and careful from the bad back. He was simultaneously dreadfully familiar and painfully distant. She found herself rehearsing how she should be with him, not frosty, but not too affectionate, either. It was horrible, and she felt slightly sick.

‘I didn’t come because of your phonecall,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s something else.’

The nausea was replaced by anxiety, something cold and even more unwelcome. ‘What is it?’ she demanded. It could only be to do with the murder of Sam Webster and the involvement of her sister. And Peter Clarke and Bruce and a shattered skull.

‘Come into the house,’ he ordered. ‘I haven’t got very much time.’

His urgency irritated her. ‘You’re lucky I’m here at all,’ she said. ‘I’ve been out for most of the day.’

‘Without your phone. Yes, I know,’ he said. He
was doing his headmaster act, pulling rank, very much the grown-up. She had to fight to quell the mulish adolescent response that rose from the depths.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘We’re got Peter Clarke, the vicar chap, under arrest. When we had a closer look at the timing, it made it just feasible that he could have been in that layby at eight fifteen or so.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she said, coolly repeating his own words. ‘I’ve seen Ariadne. It’s old news, anyway – if you don’t charge him soon you’ll have to let him go.’

‘We won’t be charging him. There’s nothing concrete to put him in the frame. Though I don’t believe half of what he’s saying. He’s going to hurt that girl, that’s for sure.’

‘So – what’s so urgent?’

‘Emily. I assume you know she’s had some kind of breakdown. Her husband wouldn’t let our officer see her this morning. We need her to firm up the timings – there’s a gap that doesn’t make much sense. And we need you to say precisely when she left here on Saturday evening.’

‘Yes, I know all that as well. Ariadne wanted me to say the same thing. And I can’t – not precisely. I’ve already told you, I thought at the time it must be nearly nine. It was fairly dark, but of course it was raining. She went off in a
rush, not wanting to get wet, and I shut the door behind her for the same reason. I didn’t watch her drive away. I didn’t look at a clock. But it can’t have been as late as I thought. I remember noticing when it was ten, and that was a lot more than an hour after she left.’

‘Did you put the telly or radio on?’

‘No. I tidied up a bit in the kitchen, and did some jigsaw and just sort of mooched about, thinking about Emily and Dad and the stuff she’d come to talk about. It didn’t really matter to me what time it was. I know it was half past eleven when she came back.’

‘And that’s odd, too. Why did she come back to you? Why not go home?’

‘She said she was too shaky to drive that far. And I suppose she wanted to tell me the whole story, face to face.’

‘She called for an ambulance at eight forty-three. If she left here at eight fifteen, say, and the accident was only a mile away, what was happening in that half hour?’

‘She got lost. And maybe she was too horrified at first to work her phone. And I didn’t
say
it was eight fifteen. I said I didn’t know what time it was.’

Her response was automatic, instinctive. It had little or nothing to do with any idea of protecting Emily, simply the provision of a neat
and credible explanation for something muddled and irrational. The police preferred the former, as Thea had discovered.

‘Well, don’t go for me, but I still think there’s a chance she knew the attacker. It strikes me she could have had time to actually talk to Webster and the mystery man, and be more of a witness than she’s letting on.’

‘Phil, that’s quite wrong. Emily doesn’t know any crazed psychopaths, capable of so much violence. Do you think she’d just stand there and let it all happen? And why would she tell lies about it?’

‘To save her own skin. If she was up to something, and didn’t want you or her husband to know, she’d have to lie to the police as well as you – she’d have to stick to the same story with everybody.’

Thea shook her head emphatically. ‘It’s just not her,’ she said. ‘Emily’s too fastidious, too much in control, to get caught up in anything so chaotic. And I don’t believe she’d have been able to fool me when she came back afterwards, if she’d known who the dead man was. She’d have been far more upset. It wasn’t until Monday evening, according to Bruce, that she really went into a spin, when you told her it was Sam. She did a normal day’s work, and then fell apart.’

‘Chaotic,’ he repeated sceptically. ‘Didn’t it all get damned chaotic anyway?’

‘Yes, but not because of anything
she
did. She dealt with it pretty well, from the sound of it. She didn’t panic or run away pretending nothing had happened.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘But I’m still puzzled by that time lapse. I don’t suppose there’s any chance she knows Peter Clarke, is there?’

‘I’m sure she doesn’t. He’s been in Africa for years, after all. Oh, by the way – there’s something I should confess to you about him.’

‘Oh?’

‘I let slip to Ariadne that I’d met Webster. I expect it would have been better to keep quiet about that, wouldn’t it?’

It obviously wasn’t the confession Phil had been expecting to hear. He gave it some consideration, absently rubbing the damaged disc in his back as he ruminated. ‘I can’t see what difference that would make,’ he said at last. ‘Clarke probably knew that already, anyway.’ He rubbed harder. ‘All three of them were there at that hotel, or close by, at the same time. We know that much. Webster knew Emily, but his brother didn’t. Where does that get us?’ he finished with a groan.

‘Have you found the murder weapon?’ The change of subject seemed politic to her, a safer topic to discuss.

‘That’s another thing.’ He willingly followed her lead. ‘It’s not easy to work out what it could have been. Heavy rubber-soled boots would fit much of the damage, according to Pathology. But Emily talked about a stick of some sort. It must have been something unusually broad – like a cricket bat. And yet there’s nothing on the man’s body to suggest blows from a weapon. The only injuries are to the head.’

‘Nasty.’

‘Yes, and a bit weird, only kicking his head. Most people aim for the ribs at some point, as well.’

‘Surely not always. If the intention was to kill him, from the start, the head’s the best thing to concentrate on.’

‘Well, he did that all right. Stamped down with all his weight, or so it seems.’

‘I’m assuming you haven’t found heavy bloodstained boots in Peter’s house?’

‘Right.’

Thea suddenly thought of Henry Galton – a big weighty man, with rubber boots part of his daily apparel, inclined to great rages. But she shook away the thought. The killer was somebody she had never met,
would
never meet. A psychopath who had escaped back to his lair, leaving no useful clues.

‘Peter’s not really
big
enough, is he? I mean,
you’d have to stamp down pretty hard to crack a skull.’

‘Once he was unconscious, and unresisting, it wouldn’t be so difficult. And if there was some sort of weapon, even quite a small person could have hit him hard enough to do the damage. It’s just—’ he sighed. ‘Just that it feels weird,’ he said again.

‘So, listen,’ she urged him, needing to change the subject even further. ‘Now you’re here I’ll have to tell you about the dogs. It is a police matter, if somebody shoots someone else’s animals, isn’t it? It must be.’

He nodded cautiously. ‘Normally that would be against the law, yes.’

‘Well, you remember I told you about a man called Mike Lister?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘The thing is, he lives just this side of Lower Slaughter and he’s got a breeding pair of Rhodesian ridgebacks—’

‘Nice,’ approved Phil. ‘Lovely creatures.’

‘Yes, well, I don’t think he’s very kind to them. They seem horribly cowed and miserable. Anyway, he was the one who saw me a few minutes after my dogs ran off. He told me Henry would shoot them if he caught them near his sheep.’

‘Henry?’ The jealous male that had always
been buried quite deep in Phil’s breast stirred and flicked an enquiring tongue at this casual use of the man’s first name.

‘Yes, Henry,’ she repeated impatiently. ‘I’ve seen him a couple of times yesterday and today. Anyway, I saw Lister as well, this morning. I went to his house, and pretended the dogs had come home—’

‘My God, Thea, what on earth have you been playing at?’

‘Never mind, just listen. I tricked him into admitting the dogs had disappeared, and he said he’d seen them dead in a ditch. But he wouldn’t say exactly where, so now I’ve got to try and find them,’ she finished sadly.

‘So what does
Henry
think about all this?’

She ignored the tone. ‘He says Freddy and Basil definitely did kill his rams, but he didn’t shoot them, and Lister’s been in a feud with Cedric for decades and never misses a chance to do something horrible. So he took his chance and murdered the poor dogs.’

‘Who would have had to be put down anyway if they were worrying sheep.’

‘Not if it couldn’t be proved. You know,’ she added with a wretched expression, ‘I think this is why the Angells decided to get a house-sitter in the first place. They wanted somebody to keep their dogs safe. So I’ve totally failed them.’

‘Seems as if you have,’ he said unsympathetically. ‘But you also walked into a messy situation without knowing the facts. And it wasn’t altogether your fault that the dogs slipped their leads and ran off. You were actually trying to keep them under control, if I understand it right.’

‘Thanks,’ she muttered. ‘I did have one of them on a lead, yes. Cedric said that would be all right.’

‘Well, then. You didn’t disobey orders, after all.’

‘Strictly speaking, that’s true. I suppose I could manage to take that as a very small consolation.’

Nothing was said for a few moments, giving them both time to realise that they’d reverted to a former mode, where they could talk easily, their minds following similar tracks, any arguments readily resolved. Except that Phil’s manifestation of jealousy where Henry Galton was concerned seemed worthy of notice. In the circumstances, it appeared inappropriate, even irrelevant, and Thea was inclined to ignore it as an aberration. But she found it gave her a little glow of satisfaction that was equally inappropriate. Presumably, she told herself, a relationship never really ended as smoothly and instantly as this one had seemed to. There would be ragged edges, nostalgic moments, changes of heart and panicky feelings of abandonment. If Phil thought she had gone
directly into the arms of another man, he could hardly fail to find this painful.

‘I’ll have to be off,’ he said. ‘Though I’d like to tell you about the Cirencester bloke, if I had time.’

‘The one who gave Peter his alibi?’

‘The very one. Plus eight or ten others to back it up. What a piece of work, though! You’d have thought I’d come to ask him to confess to the killing himself, he was so defensive.’

‘You went yourself? Wasn’t that a bit unusual?’

‘I do get out sometimes,’ he reproached her. ‘It’s called keeping in touch. Nobody’s above a bit of gentle interviewing.’

‘I bet the Chief Constable is,’ she argued.

‘OK, but that’s because he’s too busy with other things. I’m part of the team, and as such I lend a hand. Anyway, I’m only saying I didn’t take to that vicar.’

‘And what about Peter Clarke? Have you met him yet? Have you
interviewed
him?’

‘Not directly, but I’ve watched the tapes. He’s – complicated.’

‘You misjudged him,’ she accused. ‘Admit it. His daughter’s fine with his mother, and his relationship with his brother wasn’t the least bit sinister.’

‘We’ll see,’ was all Phil Hollis would reply to that.