Slaughter in the Cotswolds (5 page)

‘Definitely. But I don’t believe you.’

‘Believe me, Phil. I’m not even interested. One man bashes another to death and runs away – not a very fascinating story. Plus, I’ve had enough of death this past week or two. I want to smell the flowers and read PG Wodehouse and pretend everything’s all right.’

‘That’s my girl,’ he approved. ‘Be nice to yourself for a bit.’ For no reason at all, an image of the man with the vivid blue eyes floated across her vision. The nicest thing she could imagine, just then, was a chance to get to know him better. The stab of shameful horror at this blatant piece of infidelity made her gasp.

Phil mistook it for a huff of laughter, and gave an echoing chuckle. ‘I mean it,’ he said.

‘Right. Are you going to come and see me one day? Take me out to lunch?’ Since his back was hurt, there had been no proper sex between them, a deprivation that Thea was beginning to find oppressive. That, she told herself, was the root of her outrageous thoughts about the blue-eyed stranger. Not a very worthy explanation, but the best she could find.

‘I’ll try,’ Phil Hollis promised.

Thea did her best to put the whole thing out of her head, but it was a losing battle. Questions kept arising unbidden, as her unruly imagination
attempted to construct a full picture of what had occurred. She still had no precise idea as to where the killing had taken place, hoping it was further from Hawkhill than Emily believed. Then it occurred to her that Emily must have had a location to report to the police when she phoned them – how could they ever have found her otherwise? There were details she had not included in her account to Thea, and who could blame her? The police questioning must have been wearying at best. But the gaps in the story provoked an unwelcome curiosity in her mind, which she knew would be hard to quell.

Stop it
, she adjured herself. Hadn’t Emily already told her off for thinking like a detective? Too many murders over the past year had warped her brain and made her search for subtleties that did not exist. This was a sad and messy fight between two young men, a fight that had gone too far, fuelled by drink or drugs and maybe a girl in the story somewhere. The aggressor would be suffering agonies of remorse and fear this morning, unable to believe what he’d done, knowing his only avenue was to present himself to the authorities and submit to his rightful punishment.

Then Phil phoned again. Thea was outside with a mug of coffee, the spaniel at her feet. For once
she had kept the mobile close at hand, consciously training herself to make proper use of it.

‘Now, listen, love,’ he began cautiously. ‘This is turning out to be a bit more complicated than we thought.’

Before her mind could engage, her body had reacted. Her heart was suddenly filling her entire chest and something fuzzy had lodged in her throat. ‘Oh?’ she said.

‘The dead man. He’s a university lecturer – an Oxford don, apparently. His brother’s a vicar, standing in for a few months in the Slaughters. He – the victim – was staying at one of the big hotels in Lower Slaughter. It’s astronomically expensive and very select.’

‘So what’s complicated?’

‘Come on, Thea. You don’t get that sort of bloke brawling in a dark field, for a start. He wasn’t drunk or drugged.’

‘No, but he could easily have been mugged. I don’t see why you’re sounding so doomy about it.’

‘Muggers don’t hang about in Cotswold fields. They don’t lose their rag and kick people to death with massive blows to the head.’

‘So there wasn’t a weapon? No knife or anything?’

‘No knife. Your sister said something about a stick, but she couldn’t have seen it clearly.’

‘That’s right. I’m surprised she could even see as much as that.’

‘There’s more. Brace yourself.’

Thea made a wordless sound of invitation to reveal the worst.

‘We’re not happy with your sister’s story. It doesn’t hang together. Thea – there must be something important that she isn’t telling us.’

Phil refused to give away any details, merely repeating that as it stood, Emily’s story raised some puzzling questions. Thea would not allow herself to be thrown by something she felt sure was a failure on the part of the police to think clearly.

‘So?’ she challenged robustly. ‘It would hardly be surprising if she forgot something, or made a mistake. You’re always saying how witnesses only provide fragments of the whole picture. And they fill the gaps with their own imagination, without knowing they’re doing it.’

‘Yes, yes, all that’s true. This is different. There’s something you don’t know – or I assume you don’t. I oughtn’t to be telling you, of course.
Your loyalties are very likely to lie with your sister. But—’

‘Wait a minute.’ She had jumped ahead of him. ‘You’re right. If you’re going to present me with a choice between my sister and the forces of the law, I might well choose the former.’

He said nothing, silently letting the dilemma stand. Thea’s throat felt strange again.

‘Phil, she’s never been here before, she doesn’t know anybody in these villages. She can’t possibly have been involved in that killing in any significant way. You’re going to tell me she’s protecting the killer, or there’s the blood of a third party on her clothes, or – I don’t know.’

‘No, I’m not going to tell you either of those things. But I am going to tell you that the injuries on the body don’t match with what she told us. The body wasn’t curled defensively. No damage to the hands. This wasn’t a fight of any kind. The man was attacked suddenly from behind, blows rained on his head and neck. One vertebra is shattered.’

She clung to her initial position. ‘I can’t see how that contradicts what Emily said. She admits it was dark, and by the time she got to the scene, the killer – or killers – had run away. What’s the big deal?’

‘You might be right,’ he conceded. ‘But everyone’s coming up with all kinds of questions.
This all happened only yards away from a big hotel, and dozens of people. Why didn’t your sister go there immediately and call for help? Why stay out there in the dark with a dead body? Wouldn’t she be scared?’

‘She was probably too shocked to think straight – and she didn’t
know
it was a hotel. She might not even have realised it was there at all. She was totally lost.’

‘That’s another thing. How is it possible to get lost between Lower Slaughter and the main road? It’s barely a mile.’

‘She must have turned the wrong way out of my gate – I wasn’t watching and didn’t think to give her directions again. If she did that, she’d have gone towards Upper Slaughter, then around in a big loop somehow.
I
don’t know – I haven’t worked out the lanes myself yet.’

‘Well, it’s difficult to make sense of it – why she chose to turn round in that little gateway, for example.’

‘Oh, this is ridiculous!’ Thea flared. ‘You’ve no cause to be suspicious of her at all. I know what it’s like getting lost in these little lanes. I’ve done it myself. The signs don’t make any sense unless you know how the places relate to each other. She knew she’d come out on a road she recognised eventually.’

‘That still doesn’t explain why she turned round where she did.’

‘Phil, stop it. What are you implying, anyway? What do you want me to do?’

‘I don’t want you to
do
anything. I want you to be aware of what the evidence suggests.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘That your sister hasn’t told us the whole story. I won’t say any more than that.’

Another silence as Thea’s head filled with swooping dipping thoughts, like a room full of bats. ‘Well, that’s not saying much, is it?’ Then she remembered what Phil had said about the victim. ‘Um – hang on a minute,’ she added, thinking he was about to curtail the call. ‘You said the victim was an Oxford don. What was his name?’

She heard him tapping the keyboard briefly, before replying, ‘Dr Samuel Webster, MA, D. Phil.’

‘Oh my God,’ said Thea faintly.

Phil’s tone altered dramatically. ‘What do you mean?’ he snapped.

Sam Webster, as Thea reluctantly told Phil, had been a close friend of Bruce Peterson since college days. He was unmarried, geeky, clever, dedicated to his academic career, and Thea had met him only a month or so ago at Emily’s house. ‘I remember him quite clearly – they put me next to him at a dinner party, because we were the only singletons. He was nice – very old fashioned and
gentlemanly. I remember thinking how much his students must love him, if he treated them with the same respect and politeness. He was that sort of rumpled bachelor that girls especially take to.’

‘Did your sister like him?’

‘She did, I think. She talked about him a lot, and read his books. She was proud of having such a distinguished friend.’

‘Were they…? Was she…? I mean – did you detect any – um – undercurrents?’

Too late, Thea saw where this was leading. She laughed scornfully. ‘Between him and Em? No, no, of course not. Don’t be stupid. He was a geek. She said that lots of times. Fine for an evening’s conversation about German cinema or melting ice caps, but not for anything emotional. Besides, why would she, when she’s got Bruce? The two men are cut from the same length of cloth. If Emily ever has an affair it’ll be with some earthy Spaniard, or leather-clad biker.’

Phil persisted. ‘But Webster might have made advances to her?’

‘Not that I ever heard. No, it would be totally out of character. He was far too
polite
for anything like that.’

‘But you guessed it was him, didn’t you? When I said he was an Oxford don.’

‘Sort of,’ she admitted. ‘At least – I wanted to check that it
wasn’t
him.’

‘And here’s an even bigger question: Why didn’t she tell you who he was, right away? What in the world possessed her to keep it secret? She must have known you’d find out and connect him with her.’

‘Precisely. Obviously she couldn’t have realised it was him. That must be it – if his head was so badly damaged, she’d easily miss recognising him. I’m certain that if she’d known, she would have told me. Why bother to keep it from me? That makes no sense at all, when she’d know you’d identify him soon enough.’

‘You could be right,’ he said again. ‘It’s true his face was an awful mess. Not just covered in mud, but just about flattened. His nose was pushed right back into the cavity behind.’

Thea shuddered, holding her stomach as if afraid it would do something violent. ‘They’ve done the post-mortem, then?’ she asked, hoping for some sort of diversion.

He groaned. ‘After a fashion. There’s a locum at the mortuary, a doddering old fool who should have retired ten years ago. They wheel him in to cover for holidays. Bill Morgan’s gone off to Florida for three weeks. The locum went through the motions, and reported that death was caused by severe crushing of the skull, consistent with heavy blows. Small traces of rubber were in the wound, which could have come from the sole
of a boot. He did the necessary, I suppose. No surprises, except that the only damage was to his head. And neck.’

‘Poor chap.’

‘Indeed. But it was pretty quick, we think. We’re still trying to figure out just how it was done. And now you tell me that your sister actually
knew
him – well, that’s a pretty big coincidence, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Emily knows a lot of people,’ said Thea, thinking suddenly of the forty-eight condolence cards she’d received. Had one of them been from Sam Webster?

‘Could be she also knew the killer,’ he said lightly, as if half hoping she wouldn’t really hear the words. ‘Could be, even, that she had some sort of assignation at that hotel from the start, which she didn’t want you to know about.’

She wanted to feel rage and contempt for such outlandish ideas. She wanted to scream at him that he was living in a fantasy world and she would not hear anything so idiotic. But she remained calm. ‘No, I don’t think that can be right,’ she said. ‘I know my sister. She’s not a good liar, and she is probably the last person to get involved in anything as messy and chaotic as this is. I don’t blame you for exploring all the options, and letting suspicion fall on the only witness – but I hope that when I next see you,
you’ll have wiped it from your mind.’

She heard him swallow. Nobody spoke to Detective Superintendents like that. Even Thea had never been so icily uncompromising with him before. ‘I mean it,’ she added. ‘There are some things that ought not to be spoken, and what you just said is one of them.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ he countered. ‘There can’t be any no-go areas in a murder investigation. We have to go where evidence takes us. My mistake was to voice it to you. For that I apologise. I should have known better. I’ll try to come over later this afternoon, if you’d like me to. We don’t have to talk about this any more, if that’s how you want it.’

There seemed to be nothing she could say. She felt wrong-footed and confused. ‘All right,’ she mumbled. ‘That’ll be nice.’

Thinking the conversation through again, she was appalled. She felt breathless with the implications and the divided loyalties. Breathless, too, with anger – not just at Phil, but also at her sister for bringing another murder enquiry into her life.
Damn, damn, damn,
she repeated to herself,
damn, damn, damn and DAMN
.

She did her best not to think about it as she checked the animals in her care and made herself a modest lunch. But the need to justify her sister
and find a satisfactory account of what she had done and why, sent her to a large-scale Pathfinder map in her bag from which she tried to work out just where Emily had driven. As Phil had said, it made very little sense. She located Lower Slaughter Manor, which was indeed a hotel, just as Upper Slaughter Manor was, as well as The Lords of the Manor Hotel. Plenty of scope for confusion there, augmented by the existence of at least one Manor Farm and stretches of quiet country lane flying in every direction.

Her heart was less and less inclined to pursue the researches. The sun was high and bright outside, and the knowledge that September was only a week away made it a matter of urgency to exploit fine days while she could. The map had shown just how many footpaths connected the various villages; lovely walks away from traffic via disused quarries and something called the Wagborough Bush Tumulus. She found herself drifting into her favourite topic of local history – a subject that forced itself onto her attention every time she spent more than a few hours in this area. How many people immediately made the leap from the presence of the distinctive stone houses to the necessity of digging all that stone out from somewhere? The awareness that there were innumerable deep man-made holes carved into the landscape, many of them now full of
water and pretending to be natural lakes, had to be included in any appreciation of the way the land now looked.

Cedric’s dogs must be desperate for some freedom, too. It was cruel the way they were kept cooped in that shed on days like this. Almost as bad to tie them to long chains, giving them no chance to run. She longed to untie them and let them roam around in freedom. How big a risk could that be, for heaven’s sake?

Too big, came the reply. But if she kept one of them on a lead at a time, as Cedric himself had indicated would be acceptable, that would guarantee that there’d be no mischief. Feeling like a rescuer, she found a grimy leather lead on the back of the scullery door and went to tell the animals the good news.

A problem arose immediately – neither dog was wearing a collar. There was nothing to which a lead could be attached. The chains that held them all day had their own built-in arrangement which looped off over the heads. Thea considered borrowing the collar from her own dog, but it was too small, and to leave Hepzie untetherable would be too worrying. With her usual determination, she went back to the scullery and rummaged amongst the old macs and donkey jackets hanging on a row of hooks in a vain search for a collar. But there was plenty
of plastic bale string coiled untidily in the dogs’ shed. That could be looped and knotted and fashioned into a restraint for a dog, and she acted accordingly.

Selecting the black and tan one, as being marginally smaller, she pulled her home-made collar over his head. The big ears had to be squashed flat and it seemed rather tight around his neck. The dog looked into her eyes trustingly, and she spent a few moments fondling his handsome head and murmuring sweet nothings to him. ‘I wish I knew your name,’ she said. ‘Can I call you Basil, just for a little while? Would that be all right? Basil!’ she chirruped. The dog wagged its tail tolerantly.

‘And you can be Freddy,’ she told the other one. ‘And you have got to behave yourself, OK? If I let you run free, you have to stay where I can see you.’

Hoping that the plan would work, she set off with the three dogs. Hepzie ran loose, sniffing and zigzagging, pausing to grin at her mistress. Freddy tried to follow her, but his method of covering the ground was so much more direct and quick that he soon gave up any attempt at companionship. For the first quarter of a mile, Basil walked calmly at her side. They were on a footpath, heading well away from the farm that Cedric had warned Thea to avoid. Then, with a
flurry and a sudden loud yelping, Freddy must have raised a rabbit. Thea’s spaniel joined the chase, and Basil, appalled at the prospect of being left behind, gave a powerful lunge and easily dragged the end of the lead out of Thea’s hand. In seconds there was no sign of anything canine.

‘Oh shit,’ she said, before drawing a deep breath and shouting loudly for her own dog.

She knew it was futile. Hepzie gave the appearance of obedience only because her wishes generally coincided with what Thea wanted her to do. When these wishes diverged, the dog did exactly what it liked.

The hope – which she already knew was a faint one – was that the spaniel would eventually persuade the other dogs to give up the chase and return to quarters. There was no real worry that Hepzie would get lost, with her limited sense of adventure. Left to herself she would run round in a few circles, make noisy threats to the rabbit that its days were numbered, and then rejoin her mistress as if nothing had happened. Hepzie was not the worry.