Blood in the Cotswolds (11 page)

Janey took one down, and proffered it at Thea. ‘
Lives of the Saints – January
’
she read. ‘By S. Baring-Gould.’ She shook her head slightly, to indicate lack of recognition.

‘It’s an amazing achievement,’ Janey explained. ‘Sixteen volumes. Nobody had made such a thorough job before. It took him years – though not as many as you might think, considering all the work that went into it. Grandma inherited them from her father. All first editions of course. And some of the entries are terribly funny. I read them to cheer myself up.’

Phil watched as Thea opened the book at random. It was as if the reference to Rupert had never happened, the whole incident skillfully
swept away. ‘
S. Pega, V. About
AD 718
,’ Thea read. ‘
After her brother’s death, she used all her
endeavours to wear out her life for the love of
Christ by still severer austerities. She therefore
undertook a pilgrimage to Rome
– da-da-da –
and she there triumphantly departed, on the
sixth of the ides of January
.’ She looked up. ‘What does the
V
. mean?’

‘Virgin,’ said Janey automatically. ‘It’s the
Ms
we try to stick to: Martyrs. Let me see that. I don’t remember her.’ She took the book from Thea and re-read the half-page. ‘I suppose she might count,’ she murmured. ‘British, and ended up dead.’

‘Don’t they all end up dead?’ said Phil, who was already wishing he’d stayed in the conservatory.

‘She killed herself deliberately for the love of Christ,’ said Thea. ‘Isn’t that a bit weird? Doesn’t the Church disapprove of suicide?’

Janey flapped an impatient hand. ‘Oh, we don’t ask questions like that. It’s the
story
, don’t you see? Can’t you
feel
the wit behind those few words? You’ve never heard of Baring-Gould?’ She seemed to find this a source of some regret. ‘He was a most interesting man. Incredibly energetic.’

‘If there’s a story like that on every page for sixteen volumes, I can see why you find it all so exciting,’ Thea smiled. ‘I can almost see St Pega trekking down to Rome in bare feet, not eating anything, and
triumphantly departing
once she got there. Silly creature.’

‘Yes!’ Janey enthused. ‘But I have to admit they’re not all that good. You opened it at a lucky page. There are quite a few dull old bishops who did nothing to warrant sainthood. Even so, there’s plenty to keep us going. At least Fiona thinks so. I’m beginning to think we’ve done all the best ones.’

‘You’re talking about your club?’

‘That’s right.’ Janey hugged the book to her massive chest, like a beloved pet.

Phil found himself quite unable to share their glee. ‘I think I’ll go back to Pritchett,’ he said. ‘Splendid collection, Janey,’ he added, glancing around the room. ‘Must be pretty valuable, too. Hope you’re fully insured?’

‘Phil!’ Thea protested. ‘Stop being such a policeman.’

He forced a smile. ‘Sorry. But as a policeman, I think I ought to go and talk to a man who’s lost his son. Don’t you?’

‘Don’t you dare!’ flashed Janey, shocking in her sudden anger. ‘Not in this house. I don’t allow any talk like that here. It all has to be kept nice, do you see?’ she continued on a softer note. ‘I like to maintain a feeling of a haven from all the horrors of the world outside. Is that too much to ask? Besides, Giles isn’t really lost. Everyone knows that. He certainly isn’t…
dead.
’
She forced the word out as if it physically hurt her to do so. ‘So please don’t talk about anything so horrid any more.’

Phil wanted to stop and cross-examine her, demand to know what she meant and what evidence she might have for saying what she had. Instead he fixed his gaze on the book in Janey’s hand, full of stories of violence and death. ‘OK,’ he said, and walked stiffly out of the room.

‘Sounds as if you got told off in there,’ said Pritchett when Phil went back to him. ‘Janey can be a bit funny sometimes. We do our best to humour her. Everybody loves Janey, you see.’

Phil took the hint, at least for the moment. ‘So,’ he said, lowering himself gently into his seat, ‘who owns this place then? Did Janey manage to get it as a divorce settlement?’

The question bordered on the impertinent, he
knew. But having been reminded of his status, he found himself firmly in policeman mode.

Pritchett showed no sign of offence, but shook his head vigorously. ‘Nothing to do with the Holmes chap. She’s got more to worry about from he-who-must-not-be-named. You saw the way she froze when your lady friend mentioned him. I won’t say any more now, but there’s a whole bucket of worms under the carpet where that bloke’s concerned.’

Phil glanced at the door. ‘Really? Surely he doesn’t own the house?’

Pritchett also looked at the door. ‘No, no. There’s a trust that was set up forty-odd years ago by Janey’s grandad. It’s got all kinds of conditions and so forth – I don’t know the whole of it, but for the time being, she lives here rent free, all the maintenance taken care of so long as nobody rocks the boat.’

‘Sounds too good to be true?’ Phil cocked his head. ‘Trusts usually have some sort of bad news attached to them as well, in my experience. Those conditions sound a bit ominous.’ He looked around at the flamboyantly anachronistic conservatory. ‘Does she have to keep everything just as it was in 1933 or something?’

‘Something like that,’ Pritchett nodded quickly, as if seizing the suggestion. ‘But then – we’re tucked away from the hurly-burly here anyway, aren’t we? Might as well be 1933 as far as we’re concerned. Your terrorists in the big city don’t worry us here.’

Phil looked at the man, ducking his chin as if to peer over non-existent spectacles. He had remembered, as if waking from being hypnotised, that he and Pritchett had spoken of matters that should by rights have been relayed to DS Gladwin in connection with the unidentified body.

‘But you know as well as I do that nowhere’s immune,’ he said softly, aware that Janey might object to what he was going to say, if she heard him. ‘And I’m sorry, but I can’t pretend I’ve forgotten the conversation we had only a few hours ago. I still don’t like to let it all drop.’

Pritchett wrestled visibly with conflicting emotions. His eyes skipped from side to side and a frown drove a vertical crease between his eyes. ‘I told you – leave it, man. No good can come of it now.’

Phil snorted impatiently. ‘I ought to have reported everything you told me about your son. Instead I let myself get distracted.’ He shook his
head as if to clear it. ‘I don’t really understand why.’

‘What’s a day more or less?’ said Pritchett easily, taking a sudden new tack. ‘Nobody’s going anywhere, after this long time. Leave it until your back’s better, why don’t you? Enjoy the extra holiday while you can.’

Phil’s head felt tight with frustration and self-reproach. But they
might
be going somewhere, he thought to himself. Once the news had got out that the bones had been found, the killer might have gone into hiding. This case, he thought, was like no other he’d come across. Far too little pressure from any direction on the police to solve it. The media had virtually ignored it, there were no relatives howling for closure, no chief constable threatening dire consequences if it was not cleared up immediately. And yet there was a sense that the village was only pretending to be unconcerned. A vibration in the air, a sense that everyone was studiously looking the other way or eagerly chattering about some other subject, instead of taking due notice of the bad smell right under their noses.

‘Don’t talk about it here,’ Pritchett said in a quiet but steely voice. ‘Janey will tear you into
shreds if she hears you. Pass it on to the chap in charge, if you must.’ He sighed. ‘But it won’t get you very far, I can tell you that for nothing.’

Chap? Did Pritchett not know that the Senior Investigating Officer was a woman? Had nobody interviewed him? He shook his head. Why would they? Without a name for the dead man, there were all too few questions that could meaningfully be asked. There would be no door-to-door enquiries in a straggling village like Temple Guiting. Only Janey and Fiona, who reported the fallen tree, and the owner of the field – and Phil had no idea who that might be – containing the beech tree could expect to be interviewed.

The visit had given them a mass of things to talk about, rather to Phil’s relief. The house; Janey’s resistance to anything ‘nasty’; Pritchett’s hints and evasions; the Saints and Martyrs; the whole unexplored family connections between most of the people they had met – it all kept them occupied for the rest of the day. Thea seemed to have recovered from her subdued mood and was eager to talk.

Phil was feeling more confident of his back
after a day of relative painlessness, which had the effect of activating his conscience. ‘I’ve been a real slob,’ he accused himself. ‘The world’s in flames and I’ve just been sitting here ignoring it all.’

‘They seem to be coping well enough without you,’ she observed. ‘Not a single call since you got here. Maybe they’ve caught the ricin-makers and neglected to tell you.’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said coolly. ‘I prefer to think I’ve got everyone so well-organised, they can get on with it without constantly needing me to nursemaid them.’

‘Do you worry you might be superfluous?’ she teased.

He smiled. ‘No, my love, I don’t worry about that. I have no doubt at all that my desk will be stacked a foot deep with paperwork when I get back. But the ricin-makers, as you call them, are the focus of a far bigger team than my little section. I’ve never been more than one tiny link in the chain. If I’m out of action, they’ll work around that without much difficulty.’ He sighed lightly. ‘But I doubt if I’ll ever get back into it now. I’ll find something completely different in the in tray when I get back.’

‘What a shame,’ she said insincerely. ‘Meanwhile, you could see how you get on here, working out why Pritchett wishes he’d never said anything about his missing son, and why Janey won’t have him mentioned. And why a dead man got stuffed under a tree, seemingly not missed by anybody.’

‘Except there’s already a perfectly capable DS working on that.’

‘She won’t mind,’ Thea said, with certainty. ‘She’s just waiting for you to come to her rescue.’

Phil laughed. ‘Thea, Thea, Thea,’ he murmured. ‘You don’t really get it, do you? The way the police force works, I mean. If I rescued Gladwin, she’d never live it down. She’d hate me for the rest of her career and do everything she could to sabotage me and my cases. A lot rides on how she performs over this business – her first in the new job. If I wanted to rescue her, I’d have to do it subtly, invisibly even.’

Thea seemed to like this idea. ‘You mean – drop clues in front of her and let her think she found them all by herself? Like helping a child win at chess?’

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘More like – let her do it all on her own, and stay out of the whole business.’

‘I think it’s time I met that snake,’ Phil said, as the evening started to feel a trifle long. It was nine o’clock, too early for bed, too late to start a game of Scrabble. ‘I feel it’s a hurdle I have to jump.’

She looked at him. ‘What? Are you scared? You kept that well hidden, I must say.’

‘Not scared, just – apprehensive. It sounds so dreadfully
big
. And Gladwin was right, you know. It’s an awful business, keeping these wild animals shut up in cages, thousands of miles from their rightful homes.’

‘Yes,’ she sighed. ‘But it’s here now, and probably doesn’t know what it’s missing. At least it’s got the right sort of weather. I expect
it’s as happy as a snake can be.’

‘And we have no idea how happy that is,’ he laughed. ‘Funny how seldom one hears that word these days,’ he added. ‘We all seem to have got so
miserable
over the past few years. Or is it just me?’

‘It’s your job,’ she assured him. ‘All that violence and greed. You get a distorted view of the world.’

‘Right,’ he nodded. ‘I see a violent and greedy world out there, no mistake about that. But it’s also terribly
sad
.’ He stroked an invisible beard reflectively, and searched his mind for some reason to be cheerful.

The snake looked peaceful enough, coiled untidily in a far corner of the generously sized cage. There were stones and hunks of wood to deceive it into thinking it was in its rightful habitat. The scales were large and symmetrical and very decorative. He couldn’t see its head.

‘Not much of a life,’ he said. ‘Not much of a pet, either, as far as I can see.’

‘Archie takes her out a lot and lets her ride on his shoulders. She weighs something incredible, though, so I doubt if it lasts for long.’ Thea put her face close to the fine wire mesh. ‘You can
see her breathing, look. Don’t you think she’s gorgeous?’

‘Handsome,’ Phil conceded. ‘Definitely handsome. And very boring. I can’t imagine anyone being scared of something so placid.’

‘Nor me.’

‘You exaggerated, though. There’s no way that creature could swallow Hepzie. I expected something much bigger.’

‘I wouldn’t like to put it to the test.’ Thea frowned consideringly. ‘You can see there’s a lot of slack skin, look. Just waiting to stretch around some tasty little mammal.’ She frowned more deeply. ‘I hope she’s warm enough. They like it really hot and humid. I’m supposed to spray her every now and then, as well.’ She indicated a plastic bottle with a trigger device at the top. ‘But she’s been drinking her water very nicely, so I thought she was probably OK.’ She sighed. ‘It’s a big responsibility, you know, making sure she’s just right. You don’t think she could get cold, do you?’

‘Thea, it’s been close to thirty degrees here today. It isn’t possible to be cold in this weather. It must have been sweltering in here with the door and windows shut.’

It was a new wooden shed, with two windows, and an airlessness that Phil was finding uncomfortable. ‘In fact, I think you ought to open a window for her. She’ll suffocate otherwise.’

‘Not in the night, though? Doesn’t it get chilly at night?’

‘Do it first thing in the morning,’ he instructed, wondering why he was allowing himself to get involved. He leant against the doorpost, fighting the growing pain in his back. Unassisted standing was still difficult, and he let the post take his weight, pressing his upper spine against it, in an attempt to relieve the lower muscles.

Thea noticed the odd stance and raised her eyebrows. ‘Too much standing,’ she diagnosed. ‘Bye bye, Shasti. Sorry to disturb you.’

But the snake showed no sign of caring whether they were there or not.

They finished the day with a sense of much achieved, Phil’s back having cooperated magnificently with everything he demanded of it. ‘We could go out again tomorrow,’ he said bravely. ‘And on Friday. The forecast says this weather is just going to go on and on.’

‘Last year it ended in a thunderstorm,’ Thea recalled. ‘But that was later in the summer. I can’t ever remember a June like this.’

‘It’s not natural,’ he said in a tone of mock doom.

‘Don’t start that again,’ she said. ‘I’m going to bed.’

Thursday morning dawned red and fiery, but by half past eight there were streaks of cloud approaching from the west and a sudden breathy wind that fluttered the willows in Miss Deacon’s garden. The horses seemed restless in their paddock and Phil reported a night much interrupted by the relentless gurgling of the fish tanks. ‘I want to sleep upstairs with you,’ he whined. ‘I’m sure I can manage it now.’

‘You might manage the stairs, but you won’t like the feather mattress,’ she reminded him.

‘Well, we could take the fold-up bed and put it beside yours. At least we’d be in the same room.’

‘Yes,’ she smiled. ‘That would be nice.’

His heart leapt with boyish optimism. ‘It would, wouldn’t it!’ he agreed.

His disturbed night had been filled with interwoven thoughts of Gladwin and Thea and the bones he’d found and the significance of ancient history to modern Temple Guiting. There was a powerful duty on the investigating team to identify the body and how it died, and a lesser duty to establish what had become of young Giles Pritchett. It was possible that there was no connection apart from the accident of location, but he was increasingly sure that there was, especially after the way Janey had behaved the day before.

‘Tell me about St Kenelm,’ he invited, having settled himself back into the garden chair under the willow trees for another sunny morning. ‘Isn’t that the Saint of the Month for July?’

‘Goodness, you have been paying attention,’ she congratulated him. ‘But I’m sorry to say I know nothing whatever about him.’

‘He’s got a well near here, for a start.’

‘Has he? How did you know that?’

‘It’s at the end of St Kenelm’s Way. It’s a long distance footpath. There was some trouble at the Worcester end a year or two ago.’

‘We could invite Janey over and get her to tell us.’

Phil put up his hands. ‘No, no – please no!’ he begged melodramatically.

‘But she’ll be full of useful local information.’

‘In which case Gladwin can have her. She’ll have spoken to her already, I shouldn’t wonder, what with it being her who called the fire brigade to move that tree.’

Thea was quiet. ‘What are you thinking?’ he prompted.

She wriggled her shoulders. ‘Oh, something about villages and what they can tell you about people through the ages. Just the way the houses are positioned, and the boundaries drawn can conjure up whole social systems if you know how to look at them. Even now, I suppose, we’re revealing things we don’t realise.’

‘Oh?’

‘That new wall, for example – did you notice it? A perfect, handmade dry stone wall in bright yellow. On the way here. On the face of it, it’s in perfect vernacular, maintaining traditions, keeping things looking the same. But dry stone wallers are highly paid experts now. The landowner isn’t doing it himself, or getting his sons to gather the stones. He’s paying a fortune for somebody else to do it. It’s artificial. There
won’t be any animals behind that wall, unless they’re highly bred and utterly useless horses. There’s a complete loss of
integrity
to the whole thing.’ Her eyes opened wider, as a new thought struck her. ‘That’s what bothers me so much about the Cotswolds. I’ve only just managed to put it into words. Nothing’s genuine any more. It’s all done for appearances.’ She sighed. ‘And yet it’s all so amazingly beautiful. Even the air is lovely.’

‘Right. And I’m not sure what the alternative might be. What should they do instead of that wall? Wire netting? A wall is still the most durable and effective barrier there is. Besides, there are still small working farms around here. There’s one just the other end of the village.’

‘Mmm,’ she said. ‘It probably isn’t as bad as I think. When the stock market bubble bursts, as they generally seem to do, I suppose all these second homes will be sold to people who need somewhere to live, and the place will come to life again. It’s all just being kept on hold at the moment.’

‘Preserved in aspic,’ he smiled. ‘Which has to be better than letting it all go to ruin.’

‘That’s all right then,’ she grinned back at
him. ‘Now what else can we put right in the world?’

He shifted gingerly, and was sufficiently free of pain to hold out his arms to her. ‘Come here,’ he invited. ‘It’s time for a hug.’

It was mildly embarrassing to realise they were being watched, five minutes later. ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t make you hear me,’ came a female voice from the edge of the lawn. ‘This is rather nice, isn’t it?’ She scanned the scene, bathed in bright morning light, and extended her arms as if to savour the warm air on her skin. ‘I hate to say it, but if I didn’t know better I’d think that bad back was just a fib to gain a bit of extra holiday.’

Thea extricated herself gracefully and laughed. ‘You’d better believe it,’ she said. ‘The back is bad enough to cast quite a shadow. I still haven’t forgiven him for going up to look at the tree on Tuesday. It made everything worse by about a million miles.’

Sonia Gladwin pulled a rueful face. ‘Some people just don’t know when to leave well alone,’ she agreed. ‘And now we’ve got the oddest murder investigation I’ve ever met. Do
you mind if I talk to him about it for a bit? To be perfectly honest—’ she threw a worried glance over her shoulder as if seeking for hidden listeners, ‘I’m already rather out of my depth.’

‘Help yourself,’ Thea said. ‘I’ll go and find some refreshment.’

Phil understood that things had to be badly getting to the new DS if she had been driven to swallow her pride and intrude on him like this. It was barely nine o’clock, and she looked as if she hadn’t slept since he’d first met her forty-eight hours before. He felt no irritation with her, and he had detected none in Thea. The woman was only trying to do her job. Besides, as everybody kept saying, Phil had brought the whole thing on himself to begin with.

His only unease stemmed from the knowledge that Pritchett had told him things that he had yet to pass on to the Senior Investigating Officer. This was quite out of order, and only felt worse for his lack of any good reason for the omission. He hoped it wasn’t because Pritchett and he had both been on the square, many years ago, and the old loyalties and concerns still held a grip on him. Freemasonry was a brotherhood
that bonded more strongly than was generally realised. Even Phil, a refugee from the seamier aspects, could not escape entirely.

‘We’re held up waiting for all the forensic reports,’ she said. ‘We made rather a mess of the scene, between us. It’s impossible to say now just where he was buried, and how deep.’

‘Not your fault,’ he said. ‘The tree threw everything up in the air, more or less literally. Plus the chainsaw gang must have trodden all over the show before any of us got there. Anyway, I’m not sure it matters, does it? There’s such a thing as getting too bogged down in the detail. Isn’t it enough to know he had his head bashed in and the body dumped? Having a date is the crucial factor, surely?’ He was being deliberately deferential, according her the seniority, granting her the case on a plate, with as little interference as he could manage. He found it wasn’t difficult.

‘How are you feeling, anyway?’ she asked, leaning forward slightly. ‘I should have asked that first. I know how crippling a bad back can be – my father had one for years.’

‘I’ll survive,’ he said lightly, doing his best not to compare this moment of real sympathy with
Thea’s cavalier treatment. ‘It’s a lot better than it was.’

‘Well, it’s good of you to let me pick your brains, just the same,’ she said.

‘You didn’t give me much choice,’ he pointed out. ‘Besides, I owe you a rather large apology. I’ve been withholding information from you.’

She cocked her head, unsure how to take this. ‘Oh?’

‘A man named Stephen Pritchett has been talking to me. He thought it might be his son – Giles he’s called – buried under that tree. It turns out from your description that it can’t be him after all – which is why I didn’t confuse things by telling you about it.’

‘When did he tell you this?’ She seemed unsurprised by the revelation, almost
expecting
it, if that made any sense.

‘Yesterday. Oh, and Janey Holmes let drop that she thinks Giles is alive and well. In other words, Giles Pritchett is probably a red herring, and nothing to do with the case at all.’

‘Is Stephen Pritchett a friend of yours?’

Hollis shook his head. ‘I met him once, years ago, that’s all. It’s a small world around here.’

‘Not as small as Cumbria, believe me,’ she
said. ‘I heard something about Pritchett last night, as it happens. There’s a family of them. The name of Giles has come up more than once already. That’s your man’s son, I take it? Early twenties and very tall? Last known address here in the village, but that was a few years ago now.’ She was consulting a strange-looking electronic notepad.

Hollis nodded. ‘That’s the one.’

‘So, you haven’t kept back anything we didn’t already know,’ she summarised, sitting back more comfortably in the canvas chair. ‘God, this weather’s nice, isn’t it? I can’t get used to it – it feels as if every day’s a holiday.’

He inspected her chestnut hair and freckled skin, which didn’t look unduly susceptible to sunburn. ‘You’ve got the colouring for it,’ he said, and was disconcerted when she blushed.

Deftly she returned to the subject under discussion. ‘We’re trawling through all the missing persons reports, of course. Three or four names have come up which might be worth looking into. But the pathologist – what’s his name? Peter?’ Phil nodded, and she carried on, ‘He’s raising some questions about the cause of death. He thinks the damage to the skull
could have happened post-mortem, after all. He’s sending slivers of bone from around the wound to the lab for microscopic analysis, but he thinks we might never be totally sure. There aren’t enough traces of blood and tissue to work on. You can understand the difficulty,’ she smiled, with a flash of typical police humour. ‘Every bit of the brain’s been gone for a while now. Must have been a feast for an army of creepy-crawlies.’