A Cotswold Mystery Part 17

'It's probably only temporary,' Jessica comforted her. 'You need a fix of history, or nature study or something. We could go for a bit of a ramble this afternoon if you like.'

Thea frowned. 'I can't leave Granny for long,' she worried.

'Oh, forget her for a bit. She's obviously managing perfectly well.'

'I'm not sure managing managing is quite the word. I'm beginning to think I'm being paid to make sure she doesn't kill anybody and I failed in that on the first day.' is quite the word. I'm beginning to think I'm being paid to make sure she doesn't kill anybody and I failed in that on the first day.'

'Don't joke about it,' Jessica turned serious on an instant. 'That woman was right, you know. If the police think it was Granny who killed Julian, they'll be in a right old panic, wondering what to do about it. Not just because she's old, but because her mind doesn't work properly. It'd be a nightmare trying to figure out what to do with her. Worse than if it was a child who'd done it, and that's bad enough.'

'She didn't do it. Of course she didn't.' Thea became serious in her turn. 'The idea is ridiculous. I'd be more inclined to suspect that grandson, if I had to finger somebody.'

'What, nice Nick? Surely not.'

'Was he nice? I thought you didn't like him.'

'He was annoying, I admit. But we were both nasty to him.'

'We were in a state.'

Jessica nodded. 'That's true.'

'But I'm not sure he's nice. He didn't seem very upset about his grandad being slaughtered. And where is he now? Why isn't he arranging the funeral and all that stuff?'

'He probably is. He doesn't have to be here on the spot to do all that. And it's a bit soon to start clearing the house.'

'You're right, of course. Well, here we are then. And I forgot to set the burglar alarm again. It always seems such a nuisance.'

'Can you still remember the number?'

'Barely. They wouldn't let me write it down. What would Granny do if it went off, do you think?'

'Oh!' Jessica exclaimed suddenly. 'I wanted to look round the church. That woman made me forget all about it. Should I go back now, do you think?'

Thea shrugged. 'Why bother? Since when were you interested in churches?' She could hear the sudden escalation of yaps from her dog, who had heard them on the doorstep. 'I don't expect dogs are allowed in there, either,' she added. 'You go if you like, but I'm not coming. If there's anything amazing, let me know and I'll pop over later on.'

Jessica seemed to be in two minds about whether or not to go. 'I don't know why I think I'm interested,' she said. 'Why do people persist in looking around churches when they have no interest in religion?'

'Lots of reasons,' said Thea, inattentively. She was feeling agitated, impatient with her daughter's vacillations.

'Like what?'

Thea drew breath, and burst out with a list she would have thought was obvious. 'For one, it's likely to be the oldest building in town. For another, there's some sort of appeal about the atmosphere of a church. Makes you go quiet and thoughtful. For another, they sometimes have very beautiful artwork carving, painting, gla.s.s, whatever. Aesthetically pleasing. Is that enough for you?'

'I'm not going,' Jessica decided.

'What a waste of breath, then,' Thea snapped.

The exchange had taken place through the opening of the front door, the delighted greeting from the dog, the automatic scanning of the hallway for anything unusual or disarrayed. All seemed undisturbed, and they went into the living room with little sense of purpose.

'Now what?' asked Jessica. 'I expect you to entertain me, you know.'

As a joke it misfired badly.

'Well, you're going to be disappointed, then. It's all I can do to entertain myself. I had hoped you'd provide me with some distraction.'

'What's the problem, Mum?' Jessica had plainly had enough. 'You're very bad tempered all of a sudden.'

Thea sighed, sinking into one of the big armchairs. 'Oh, I'm sorry. It must be that Gussie woman. Does everybody really think Granny killed Julian? Don't they see how bizarre that is? I'm convinced she wouldn't have had the strength, for one thing.'

'It does fit, though,' said Jessica gently.

'No better than the theory that he disturbed a burglar. Or that Fat Thomas did it in a final irresistible burst of jealousy. Or Nice Nick, wanting his inheritance. Granny was Julian's friend friend. n.o.body's said anything to suggest she wanted him dead.'

Jessica seemed to grow in maturity as Thea watched. 'Perhaps it was a pact of some sort between them. Perhaps he he wanted to die and she was the only person who'd do it for him.' wanted to die and she was the only person who'd do it for him.'

'You mean she just held the knife and he threw himself onto it, backwards?' Thea's brow wrinkled sceptically. 'I think even Granny would remember if that happened.'

'Who says she doesn't remember?' Jessica stared into the fireplace. 'We haven't done anything about psychology on the course, but I did it at A-level, remember. I've read all sorts of books about the way the mind works. People are incredibly good at burying nasty facts, denying them even to themselves. It's a defence mechanism.'

'Yes, yes.' Thea was impatient. 'I know all that. Even so it flies in the face of reason and logic and ordinary common sense to accuse such an old woman of murder.'

Jessica sighed. 'That's the trouble, isn't it. n.o.body's going to accuse her, unless there's overwhelming evidence. The police can be very sensitive to ridicule. You can see it now, can't you the news footage. Even if they used WPCs, gently ushering her into the back of a car, it would still look bad.'

'a.s.suming she'd go gently. I bet she'd kick and scream and have to be carried.'

'See what I mean,' said Jessica.

The afternoon grew increasingly cloudy, with drizzle setting in by teatime. The view from the house shrank to that of the neighbouring houses and no further. Thea switched on the main light in the living room. 'Dear Diary,' she intoned, 'This is Day Four in Blockley and already it feels like home. Thea and Jessica have made friends with several local people and have solved the vicious murder of a harmless old man. Hepzibah grows fat on the sofa. In India, Yvette and Ron have enjoyed their first elephant ride, and Ron's stomach is expressing its outrage at the food.'

'You don't know that,' giggled Jessica.

'Yes I do. You haven't seen him. Besides, all English men react badly to foreign food. It's a universal truth.'

'And we haven't solved the murder, either,' Jessica pointed out.

'So we haven't. It was nothing but wishful thinking. Let's go and look at the silk mills.'

'Do we have to? We're sure to b.u.mp into one of your new friends.'

'That was rather the idea.'

'No need, look.' Jessica pointed to the window, where a man was peering in at them. 'I think we've got a visitor.'

It was James...o...b..rne, Thea's brother-in-law and Jessica's uncle. He was dressed in a denim outfit that looked much too young for him. Thea still thought of him wearing police uniform, despite it being twelve years or more since he'd moved to CID and ceased to wear the crisp garments of his office.

James had a big heavy head, set squarely on wide shoulders. His colouring tended towards ginger, but he did not have the thin pale skin that often went with that. As he came in and enfolded Jessica in a hug, it was obvious that they were related. 'You two have got the same neck,' Thea said suddenly. 'I never noticed that before.'

Hepzie had once adored James, flinging herself unwelcomely at his legs whenever she saw him. But now she gave him a far more restrained greeting, which he barely even acknowledged. James was not a dog person.

Phil Hollis, however, was. Thea found herself almost resenting the arrival of the wrong detective. James was a poor subst.i.tute, as far as she was concerned. Hepzie's lukewarm response eerily echoed her own.

'And what can we do for you?' she asked primly.

'Cup of tea?' he said, with a smile she perceived as ingratiating. 'And some cake would be nice.'

'Sorry cake's off today. There might be a packet of biscuits, though.'

As she went into the kitchen, Thea was in no doubt that she was not the main object of the visit. James had come to the aid of his suffering niece, having heard all about her difficulties the previous week. The killing of Julian Jolly was secondary to the need to a.s.suage the girl's jangled confidence.

'I'll go and walk the dog for a bit,' she announced five minutes later. 'You two can have a good debriefing session without me. I'll stroll down to the shop and get some more provisions.'

'They sell cake at the place where we had lunch,' Jessica pointed out. 'You could bring some back with you.'

Thea nodded, thinking she had intended to stay out for an hour or so, in the hope that James would have gone by then.

She thought about this as she walked along the High Street with the spaniel pulling ahead. What was going on, that she felt so hostile towards the man who had been a pillar when her husband had died, a warm rock against which she had often beaten herself in her grief.

That, she suspected, might be part of the answer. James was forever a.s.sociated with the first black weeks of her loss, and now she was recovering and attempting to construct a new relations.h.i.+p, he took her back to that dark place that she never wanted to experience again. Plus, he was Carl's brother. However much he might wish her well and approve of Phil, there were bound to be reservations. In any case, Thea wasn't sure that he did did approve. She had never directly asked him, and he had been careful not to pa.s.s judgement, but she was not easy about it. approve. She had never directly asked him, and he had been careful not to pa.s.s judgement, but she was not easy about it.

So she left him to her daughter. They were good for each other, and always had been. James and Rosie never had any children of their own, thanks to a defect in Rosie's back which was currently getting worse. The once brave and serene woman had grown taut with the pain in recent months, the fear for her own future clear in her eyes. It was tragic, everybody agreed. The condition did not respond to treatment, and was never going to. The increasing levels of a.n.a.lgesia were affecting her mind, and she was visibly retreating into her own tiny world. James carried this burden valiantly, as people carried their brain-damaged children or their impossible runs of bad fortune, but it was changing him, too. Jessica alone seemed immune to the aura around him. She remembered the loving laughing uncle of her childhood and could still find him beneath the distraction of his martyrdom.

There was no sense of resentment that Jessica was pouring out her professional problems to her uncle. Rather it came as a relief to Thea that there was someone who would know what to say. All she could think of was plat.i.tudes about being new to the work and Jessica probably over-reacting. Speaking from a position of ignorance, she was quite likely to make the whole thing worse. All she had been able to do was offer some diversion, and since that took the form of another police investigation at least to a large extent she wasn't confident that it was going to work.

The killing of Julian Jolly was a very peculiar business, she concluded, as she walked down through a curving row of modern houses towards the large converted silk mill at the bottom of the hill. Although the police presence was muted, most of the neighbouring residents must surely have been questioned, and yet there was no sense of a community stirred up by a crisis in their midst. No gatherings on street corners or inquisitive peerings through Julian's front window. n.o.body had accosted Thea or Jessica to demand details of Julian's discovery. Perhaps the Gussie woman had got it right that everyone believed Granny Gardner to be the killer, and were all too shocked or embarra.s.sed or sensitive to make a major issue of it. Perhaps Julian had been universally disliked and the prevailing feeling was one of relief.

Or perhaps and this seemed by far the most likely explanation to Thea they were all too busy rus.h.i.+ng off to their city jobs to worry about a dead old man. Even those who were retired seemed to have very full lives, to judge from the quant.i.ty of notices pinned to wooden doors all around the town. Clubs, talks, quizzes, outings it would be a full-time job to keep up with it all. And then there were all the other obligations to keep the garden tidy, and to monitor the intriguing details of the lives of celebrities such as Icarus Whatsisname. Both more compelling than a quiet little murder.

The silk mill that confronted Thea was an enormous edifice, rising to three storeys at the front, and four at the back. At least, the ground floor was invisible from the front. Rows and rows of identical windows looked out onto neat gardens, with spiral fire escapes attached to the facade, and she found herself wondering what kind of person would move into a sub-division of such a building. How many rooms did each resident have, and was there a waiting list to live there? Feeling like an intruder, she let the dog tow her down the road to the back of the building, where it was easier to imagine it as a working factory. In deep shadow from another large block beyond it, there was a row of doors, and not a flicker of life. She found herself thinking about the silk that had come from the place, earning fortunes for the mill owners and clothing the upper cla.s.ses. And now, rather like the villages of Upton and Ditchford, it was all abandoned and forgotten.

The old ways were lost almost without trace. Only in the uncompromising hulk of the building's sh.e.l.l could the history be discerned, just as the lost villages were betrayed by the b.u.mps and troughs in the land.

The connection with Julian was obvious. His death might not be making many ripples on the surface, but somebody somewhere had murdered him, and Thea knew quite well that any sudden death brought rifts and ructions that lasted down the decades, however hard everyone tried to forget.

But still she found it hard to care. A man she had never met, in a small town she might never visit again after next week why should she bother about it when n.o.body else seemed to? Because Jessica was with her, came the answer. Jessica the police probationer who needed her principles reinforced, to judge by the things she had said during their walk to the Upton remains. Jessica had to know that every crime was important, that even a small matter of cheating undermined something vital about society. Carl's voice rang in Thea's ears, his rigorous ethics sometimes tedious or irritating, but always appreciated, deep down. Never particularly sociable herself, Thea nonetheless understood the fragility of human inst.i.tutions and the disastrous consequences of social breakdown.

She began to walk back up the curving hill towards the centre of town. Hepzie still pulled ahead, as she always did when on the lead. Thea often found herself wis.h.i.+ng she had a labrador, or some other obedient breed that hung back against your leg and would never dream of breaking the rhythm of your footsteps. But Hepzie was charming and endearing in most ways. What was one small defect set against all that, Thea thought fondly.

The sound of a throaty car engine caught her attention, as it came up the hill behind her in low gear. Cautiously, she pulled the dog closer, despite their being on a perfectly safe pavement. Where, she wondered, had it come from? Where, in fact, did the silk mill people keep their cars? Presumably a section of the building had been allocated to cars, but she had not noticed any garages.

The car drew level with her, and slowed to a standstill. 'Hiya, spaniel lady,' came a familiar voice. 'You doing OK? And the Granny? Still feisty and funny with her wits?'

He was almost shouting to compete with the rumble of the over-powerful engine. Thea just nodded and flapped her hand in a semi-wave. Then she noticed another familiar face in the pa.s.senger seat, as its owner leant towards Icarus Binns and said something to him.

Ick immediately turned off the ignition, and yanked up the handbrake, making the car rock slightly on the steep incline. 'Friend Nick wants to speak a word,' he said, leaning back to give a clear line of sight between the two.

Nick Jolly, however, seemed to prefer a more direct encounter. He unclasped his seatbelt and got out of the car, walking round the front of it to stand facing Thea on the pavement. He was about five feet ten, which made him eight or nine inches taller than her. Hepzie gave him a sociable greeting, jumping up at his legs and scrabbling at his jeans with sharp front claws. He set her down absently but firmly.

'You know each other?' Thea said foolishly, but unable to contain her surprise. She could think of no possible link between the celebrity from Ess.e.x and the gangling archaeologist from Dorset. Even the Blockley connection seemed very tenuous.

Nick smiled wanly. 'Not exactly. We met yesterday, as it happens. Ick was looking at a property in Paxford at the same time as me. It was a c.o.c.k-up on the part of the agent, basically.'

Thea let her thoughts run riot. It felt as if there was a whole raft of information in those few words. Icarus Binns and Nicholas Jolly were both planning to buy a house in the area. Ick and Nick Ick and Nick, her agile mind repeated, with some relish. Icarus and Icarus and Nicholas. Nicholas. How funny names could be, especially in conjunction with other names. How funny names could be, especially in conjunction with other names.

'And Cleo. Cleo is not to be forgot,' prompted Ick from the car.

'So you're thinking of moving here both of you?' Thea said, looking from one to the other and thinking the speed with which Nick Jolly had moved was extraordinary.

Nick patted himself on the chest consideringly. 'You're thinking it's rather soon to be house-hunting,' he observed. 'I can see it must look that way. But the thing is, I have to do something while I wait for the funeral and all that. And I always wanted to live here. Because of Upton, you see,' he added, as if that made everything clear.

'Upton? The lost village?'

'Right. Except we call them deserted deserted, not lost. You know it was excavated in the late sixties and early seventies, I suppose?'

Thea shook her head. 'Um no, I don't think I knew that, did I?' She stared at him in confusion. Should she have known?

'Well, it was, and they found some very intriguing earlier remains. Pre-medieval. But they never managed to get a proper look. They didn't have the necessary skills or equipment to get beneath the medieval stuff, you see. Plus, there were severe time constraints. Putting in a new drain, or something, which meant they only had a few days.'

'Right,' she said slowly. 'Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?'

He gave the same strained smile as before. 'Oh, no. Sorry. No, no. I wanted to see if you were OK, that's all. Are the police bothering you much?'

She couldn't resist it. 'There's a Detective Superintendent talking to Jessica at this very moment,' she said, watching for his reaction.

He did not go pale or start to shake. He didn't bite his lip or hurry back to the car. But he did frown in puzzlement. 'Is there? Why's that, then?'

Thea relented. 'It isn't actually anything to do with your grandfather. As it happens, I'm surrounded by police officers. Two Detective Superintendents, would you believe? My brother-in-law, and my um, boyfriend.' She looked away from his face, wary of saying too much after Jessica's warning the day before.

'I still can't really believe it,' Nick sighed. 'But you were right about my interview with the police. They obviously wanted to check my whereabouts before they would tell me anything about what happened. Can't blame them, I guess.' He repeated his familiar cheek-stroking mannerism. 'It feels so strange strange,' he burst out. 'Worrying about who might have killed him it gets in the way of...you know.'

'Grief,' Thea supplied succinctly. 'Yes, I know. It's another reason why murder is so horrifying.'

'Right. And now they won't let me into his house because they're still combing it for clues.'

'Clues!' came Icarus's rich tones from the car, where he was leaning out of the window following the whole conversation. 'Like a game, sounds to me. Follow the clues and get yo' killer is that the thing?'

Thea felt herself turn into the same stiff humourless matron that she always became with Icarus. 'I don't think it's a game at all,' she said. 'And I doubt if that's how Nick sees it losing his grandfather in such a terrible way.'

But Nick's eyes were s.h.i.+ning with suppressed mirth, and his full lips were quivering ominously. 'Sorry,' he said, 'but it's the way he speaks.' He turned to the celebrity rapper. 'I love love the way you speak,' he said with no hint of self-consciousness. 'You make everything sound like a poem.' He looked at Thea. 'He's taken me under his wing, so to speak, and I must say he's a tonic. Honestly, he's incredible with language, don't you think?' the way you speak,' he said with no hint of self-consciousness. 'You make everything sound like a poem.' He looked at Thea. 'He's taken me under his wing, so to speak, and I must say he's a tonic. Honestly, he's incredible with language, don't you think?'

Thea could find nothing to say to that which would not involve mendacity. 'Jessica says the same,' she managed, with a polite smile at Ick.

'Life's a poem,' said the celebrity easily, and then rapped his steering wheel with a knuckle. 'You coming now, or what is it?'

Nick took a few steps and then looked back at Thea. 'I meant to ask you about Gladys,' he remembered. 'How is she today?'