A Cotswold Mystery Part 10

They were close enough to the house to hear Hepzie barking inside, a high reproachful sound, accusing the world of abandoning her to the annoyance of police officers at the door.

'Still no sign of Granny,' said Thea. 'Do you think they've tried to speak to her?'

'Let's ask them,' said Jessica, going to the driver's side of the car and bending down to catch the man's eye. 'Hi, Tom,' she said. 'Fancy seeing you again.'

With a single movement, the two men left the car and Jessica stood back to accommodate them. 'Could we come in and talk to you for a minute?' asked the sergeant, without much of a smile.

'Of course,' said Jessica with the faintest hint of irony. 'We're completely at your disposal.'

Thea unlocked the door, and deactivated the burglar alarm that Jessica had made her set before they went out. 'Stupid thing,' she muttered.

The policemen seemed slightly bored by their a.s.signment. Just an old man b.u.mped off, n.o.body too upset about it, village life carrying on more or less as usual. 'I gather they didn't get far with the old lady this morning,' said Tom. 'And I should ask how the post-mortem went if that isn't insensitive of me.'

Jessica looked at the ginger-haired Eddie who had scarcely said a word in her hearing thus far. He gave her a flickering grin, ready for the sympathy.

'It was fine, thanks,' she said. 'Really interesting. And I wanted to ask you something did I get the offer of attending the pm because of my uncle?'

Tom blew out his cheeks in a parody of innocence. 'I don't know what you mean,' he said, and then winked. 'Don't knock it, love that's my advice. If you're any good, it can't hurt, and if you're rubbish, it isn't going to save you.'

Jessica giggled her relief. 'Thanks,' she said. 'Now, are you coming in?'

'So where did we get to with the old lady?' Tom asked again, once inside the door. 'We could really do with some answers from her.'

Thea and Jessica both gave him repressive looks. 'Even if she answered your questions, you couldn't rely on what she said,' Thea emphasised. 'She makes a lot of it up. Or dreams it, maybe. She's ninety-two, for heavens sake.'

'Age isn't regarded as an impediment in itself,' Tom said, as if reading an invisible book of rules. 'And her memory can't be too bad if she's still living independently.'

'Well, see for yourself,' Thea said. 'It's not for me to decide, is it? For all I know you've got a whole set of procedures for interviewing senile witnesses.'

'No, they haven't,' said Jessica, with a suppressed chuckle. 'Even I know that much.'

Thea lost patience. 'Well, it's not up to me, is it? You go and question her. Maybe she's having a lucid day today. Maybe she saw the whole thing and it's come back to her, clear as crystal.'

Tom remained unmoved by the sarcasm. He held his ground, planted solidly on two large feet. 'So how do we get hold of her? We knocked on the street door, and nothing happened.'

'She usually answers the door,' Thea said. 'Even though it can take a long time. I suppose we could try the connecting door, but she doesn't like it, according to her daughter. It's only really for emergencies.'

'How do you define an emergency?' asked Eddie, as if waiting for his moment in the limelight.

'I have no idea,' snapped Thea. She led them to the door halfway along the hall, and took the key from the hook.

'This is a weird arrangement, don't you think?' said the sergeant. 'Keeping your poor old Granny locked away all lonely and neglected?'

'I suppose they've got their reasons. They seemed like very nice people. They said something about firm boundaries. She's quite fit physically, after all.'

'Hasn't she got her own key to this door?'

'It seems not. That would defeat the purpose, wouldn't it? Although-' she remembered 'she did have one originally, and apparently lost it. Maybe it turned up again.'

'Maybe she never lost it at all,' Tom suggested.

Thea gave him a startled look. 'That's a bit cynical, isn't it?' she said.

He shrugged. 'Maybe. So let's a.s.sume she really has lost it. How does she contact them if she needs to? What if she falls out of bed in the night, or forgets where she is, or runs out of milk? What's she supposed to do?'

Thea flapped a hand at the Sergeant, trying to make him stop while she explained, aware that she had asked precisely the same questions of Yvette, some weeks earlier.

'She'd have to shout. They'd hear her in the night. It's all one house originally, after all.'

'And don't forget the buzzer,' said Jessica.

'What buzzer?' asked Tom.

Thea showed him. 'It's very loud. Rather a good idea, in some ways.'

'Hmm,' said the policeman. 'So she isn't allowed to go out of her own front door.'

'I took her out for a walk on Sat.u.r.day afternoon,' Thea said, as if in self-justification. 'It wasn't altogether successful.' She laughed ruefully. 'She fell over, which was very scary at the time. That's when that Ick person showed up. He offered to help, which was nice of him.'

'Icarus Binns,' Jessica translated importantly. 'We saw him in The Crown. And Cleodie Mason was with him.'

The sergeant was perhaps thirty-four, the constable six or seven years younger. There was no doubt whatsoever that they would know the two celebrities.

Both men struggled to appear nonchalant. 'Yeah, I heard something about that. We like to keep an eye on these high-profile figures. They can be vulnerable.'

'You mean somebody might kidnap them?' laughed Thea. 'And hold them to ransom?'

'It isn't unknown,' said Tom stiffly.

Beside them came a sudden banging on the locked door. 'What's all that noise?' came a shrill voice. 'Who's doing all that talking?'

Thea called back, 'It's all right Granny. I'm going to open the door, and you can see for yourself.'

'Who do you think you're calling Granny?' came an angry reply. Thea remembered that she had been careful to stick to the more formal 'Mrs Gardner' until then.

'Sorry,' she said, pointing to the key hanging just too high for her to reach. Tom lifted it down, and put it in the lock. It turned easily, but when he tried to open the door, it wouldn't move. 'Hang on,' he said. 'It wasn't locked after all.'

'Yes it was,' said Thea. 'I checked it on Sat.u.r.day and I haven't touched it since then.'

'Well, you saw what I just did. I turned the key, and now it's locked.' He reversed the process, and the door opened. 'I turned it back, and it's open. I don't think you can argue with that.' He looked to Jessica and Eddie for support, which they both gave with unreserved nods of their heads.

When the door was pulled fully open, Granny Gardner was revealed, standing very upright, dressed in clean cord trousers and a bright pink jumper. She looked alert, fit and about seventy-three.

'Police!' she said, eyes wide. 'Has there been a robbery? Did Yvette lose the Minton plates? I told her not to leave them on full view.'

'No, no,' Thea said. 'Nothing's been stolen.'

'You've been driving too fast then,' she stated as clear fact. 'That must be it.' She gave Thea a penetrating scrutiny. 'You're the person with the long-tailed spaniel,' she said.

Thea almost clapped. 'That's right!' she said. 'We went for a walk together.'

'No, I went for a walk with Giles. Silly man,' she added. 'Told me Julian was away with that grandson of his. I knew that wasn't right.' Her face clouded. 'I remember his notes,' she quavered. 'They say Julian is dead. Can that be right?' She looked from face to face, stepping back to give admittance to the policemen.

Sergeant Tom gently ushered Mrs Gardner into her front room, and leant himself casually against the back of a chair. 'Yes, that's right,' he said. 'And we came to talk to you about him.'

She frowned at him, a wilful child with pouting lips.

'Julian was your good friend, is that right?'

She nodded. 'He helped me with my lists. He was like you bossy,' she quipped, with a little smile.

'And was he going to help you when your daughter went on holiday?'

'Is Frances on holiday? I haven't seen her for ever so long. But she sent me flowers, see.'

'No, it's Yvette Yvette who's on holiday,' Thea insisted. 'And I'm here to keep an eye on you. The policeman wants to know whether Julian would have done the same.' who's on holiday,' Thea insisted. 'And I'm here to keep an eye on you. The policeman wants to know whether Julian would have done the same.'

The blankness that met this question seemed to Thea tragically genuine. The old woman didn't even shake her head, but simply lost herself in thick clouds of bewilderment.

'Did he have a key to your house?' Tom repeated.

The old woman's eyes narrowed. 'Key? What key? Did who have a key?'

'Mr Julian Jolly.' Tom pushed a hand into a side pocket of his jacket. 'Because I think he did. I think this is it.' With a magician's flourish, he produced a s.h.i.+ny door key, which Thea recognised immediately. She took a breath to speak, but he quelled her with a look.

Mrs Gardner failed even to focus on the object. 'Never mind,' said Tom. 'We won't bother you any more. Thank you for letting us talk to you. And, if I may say so, you're looking extremely smart today.'

'I always put this jumper on for Julian,' she said, looking down at herself. 'This one's his favourite.'

Leading the way, the sergeant conducted his little party back through the connecting door into the main part of the house. Closing the door behind Jessica, he removed the key that Thea had used, and inserted the one from his pocket. But his expectations were dashed. The key refused to turn.

'What are you doing?' asked Thea.

Tom tapped the key against his teeth for a moment, and then looked towards the back of the house. 'There's a lock on the kitchen door, I a.s.sume?'

'Of course,' Thea nodded.

Without waiting to explain, he marched through and repeated his experiment with the key. This time it fitted perfectly, turning in the lock and doing everything a good key should.

Tom flashed a triumphant smile at his audience. 'This was in Mr Jolly's pocket,' he said.

CHAPTER TEN.

Before leaving, the police officers' attention was caught by the cage outside the back door of the cottage. For Tom, it seemed to be more evidence of strange behaviour on the part of the Montgomerys towards their aged mother. Thea made no attempt to defend them, still struggling to connect the fact of the key with the theories she and Jessica had developed earlier in the day concerning the escape route of the killer.

The two women talked about doors and keys for quite a long time after the policemen had gone, but with no constructive conclusion. Their theories tended to the circular, with so many distracting convolutions that there was plainly no sense in sharing them with the police who in any case could work it out just as easily for themselves. Or so Thea insisted, when Jessica worried that they should at least check that Julian's garden had been thoroughly explored.

'That would be telling them how to do their job,' Thea objected. 'Not a good idea, in my experience.'

After they'd made and eaten a hearty lunch, Hepzie was showing signs of cabin fever, so Thea suggested a walk through the woods to the higher ground, where they could look across to what had once been the village of Upton. 'It's stopped raining,' she pointed out. 'And there's a whole lot of day still to go. Hepzie can have a good run up there, as well.'

Jessica agreed with scant enthusiasm, and they set out towards the end of the High Street with a final glance at Granny's door. 'We'd better not be long,' said Thea.

It was obvious that the girl was preoccupied, as they pa.s.sed several attractive houses and gardens without her seeming to notice them at all. Thea deliberately pointed out interesting features, as if to a young child in a sulk. She began with the Russell Spring, from which clear water constantly trickled. 'I bet it's lovely to drink,' she said.

Jessica didn't reply, and was barely even turning to look at the landmarks. Thea persevered, on the a.s.sumption that the silence was due to the girl not wanting to go out at all. The weather was far from perfect, reminding them that it was still only March, with all the mood swings that implied.

'Oh, look at this,' she went on, coming to a sudden stop beside a wide entrance to a steeply climbing driveway. 'Joanna Southcott lived here. 'Joanna Southcott lived here. 18041814 18041814. Where have we heard that name just lately?'

Jessica blinked. 'Never heard of her,' she said.

'Yes, you have. I'm sure you were there. Something about a box. Yes I know! When Granny was talking about Julian this morning. She said he wrote a book about it, or something. With Thomas. Didn't she?'

'A box?' Jessica frowned. 'Joanna Southcott's Box. Yes, I remember. There was a file in Julian's house when it was searched. That was the t.i.tle on the front. What do you know about it?'

'Hardly anything,' Thea admitted. 'So when we get back, you can look it all up on the Internet. It sounds intriguing. I have heard of her, somewhere, but I have no idea who she was.' She scratched her cheek, groping for a mental link. 'I thought she was some sort of witch, or a wise woman. Something like that.'

'Nice house,' observed Jessica, standing back for a better look. The big rectangular property was some distance above them, backed by trees, with terrace gardens between it and the road. 'Some climb to get up to it.'

Inside the gateway, to the right, was an arrangement of low stone walls which had no obvious purpose. 'What's that for?' asked Jessica.

'It's like a little area for people to sit in,' said Thea. 'Maybe she held her consultations there for people too feeble to struggle up to the house.'

'Right. In 1814,' said Jessica. 'And her ghost keeps it tended even now.'

'Either that or Julian Jolly's been doing it,' said Thea lightly. 'It looks important, though don't you think. Something we could find out about.'

Jessica sighed. 'Mum that key. You do realise how bizarre it makes everything, don't you? Bizarre and scary. The dead man had a key to your back door in his pocket when he died.'

So that that was the cause of her preoccupation, Thea realised. Not a continuing annoyance about one of her mother's gaffes, nor a worry about what awaited her back in Manchester. The girl was frightened. was the cause of her preoccupation, Thea realised. Not a continuing annoyance about one of her mother's gaffes, nor a worry about what awaited her back in Manchester. The girl was frightened.

She aimed for a gentle rea.s.suring tone. 'You don't know that. The killer could have popped it in after he was dead.'

'Oh, yes and why in the world would anybody do that? That's a daft suggestion.'

'I don't know!' Thea almost shouted in her frustration. 'Now leave it for a bit and let's get on with the walk.'

Meekly, Jessica followed, as Thea led the way confidently to the right and up a wide pathway to the end of the woods and out into a wide open field. The dog ran cheerfully ahead of them, and the breeze tossed their hair more in play than chilly malice. They strode out, pa.s.sing a pretty farmhouse with a ma.s.sive barn facing onto the pathway and a picturesquely ruined outhouse the other side of a low stone wall. 'Isn't that gorgeous!' trilled Thea. 'If it's true that Granny was a painter, she must surely have painted this.'

'Did she really say she was a painter? When?'

'On Sat.u.r.day, when I took her out for a walk. She said a celebrity woman paid hundreds of pounds for some of her work.'