Guilt in the Cotswolds (11 page)

‘And you are?’ smiled the woman, perfectly unflustered. She was about the same age as Thea, with a halo of very curly hair. Frizzy, you might even say, thought Thea.

‘I’m Thea Osborne and this is Drew Slocombe. We found the body of Mrs Wilshire’s son yesterday. We came to offer her some sympathy on her loss – but it would appear that she hasn’t been told about it. Isn’t that very strange?’

‘Perhaps it seems strange to some people,’ Mrs Goodison nodded. ‘To me, it seems exactly the right thing.’

Drew took over, with a small glance of irritation at Thea. ‘When do you intend to tell her? She’s going to notice he’s not visiting her. Presumably he’d have come today, in fact?’

‘And that would have been our cue. You perhaps don’t appreciate the extreme delicacy of the situation.’

‘I’m an undertaker,’ said Drew with an obvious expectation that this would change the tenor of the conversation. ‘I’ve been here before, but you and I didn’t meet on that occasion.’ His formality was almost funny, and Thea had to clamp her mouth shut for fear of grinning.

‘So I understand,’ the woman said, cutting the ground from beneath his feet. ‘I know who you are, Mr Slocombe. I had the police here for some time yesterday evening. I am well acquainted with undertakers, as you might expect. It is not my experience that they ever get to be the ones to break bad news to bereaved relatives. I, on the other hand, do it roughly once a month.’

Drew floundered. The polite and friendly manner of the woman made it impossible to take an aggressive stand. As Thea watched, it was obvious that they had no grounds at all for criticism. Mrs Goodison knew her business. She was open, frank and not even slightly defensive.

‘I see,’ said Drew. ‘Of course.’

‘I’m sure you do.’ The smile remained sweet. ‘But you perhaps are not aware that Mrs Wilshire’s nephew is on his way, to be with her when we tell her the news.
He’s joining us for lunch, after which we will speak to her together. It will be extremely painful.’ A hint of reproach struck Thea forcefully. What, actually, did she and Drew think they were doing, she asked herself.

‘Nephew?’ Drew frowned. ‘I wasn’t aware of any other relatives than Millie. They never mentioned a nephew.’

‘He’s her sister’s son. He has lived most of his life in the Middle East, but has retired back to the UK now, and been in touch since then. He’s a lovely man,’ she finished girlishly. ‘She’ll be very glad of him now.’

‘You’ve met him?’

‘Once. He brought two of his three children to see Rita, a week after she came here. Well, they’re not
children
, of course. All in their thirties, I would think. Lovely people. All doing extremely well for themselves.’

Typical Cotswolds folk, then, thought Thea, before bringing to mind the scraps of information she and Drew had already gleaned concerning the family. The dead sister; an aristocratic husband and now a gaggle of great-nieces and nephews. ‘He’ll be Dawn’s son,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Is he called Martin?’

The others both looked at her gravely, as if a child had spoken out of turn.

‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Goodison.

‘How did you know?’ asked Drew.

‘The woman across the road said something about him. His son’s called Brendan. I don’t know about the others.’

‘I should probably meet him,’ said Drew firmly.
‘He’ll be the one to deal with when Mrs Wilshire dies, now Richard is dead.’

Mrs Goodison’s assurance appeared to waver. Her eyes bulged slightly, and her cheeks paled. ‘You … aren’t you running ahead somewhat? Rita is in excellent health. This blow will certainly come as a great shock, admittedly, but I wasn’t anticipating that it would be fatal. We don’t say “dead” or “die” here, Mr Slocombe,’ she finished in a low hissing voice. ‘We prefer to keep the atmosphere positive.’

‘That’s what your kitchen woman told us, just now,’ said Thea. ‘I suppose you know best, but it does seem somewhat … artificial, to us. Drew has instructions to handle the funeral when Mrs Wilshire … goes. And we thought she might want him to do Richard’s as well.’

‘There’s a term for people like you,’ said Mrs Goodison sharply. ‘I think it’s “ambulance chasers”.’

‘That’s a vile thing to say,’ Drew protested.

She closed her eyes for two seconds, her head lowered. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it was a bit strong. But I have seen some very undignified behaviour in my time here. I found it shocking, I have to say.’

‘I haven’t met any undertakers in this area, so I can’t comment. But I have never seen any poor behaviour from anyone in my line of work. Overcharging, maybe, but always totally sensitive and discreet with the families.’ He shook his head. ‘Anything else would be unthinkable.’

‘All right,’ said Mrs Goodison again. ‘I take it back.
But I can’t let you see Rita. Not until her nephew’s been. Come back tomorrow, if you must.’

Drew and Thea both started to say that was impossible, when a figure appeared in the doorway. A large and rather elderly man with an oval head stood smiling in at them. ‘Am I early?’ he asked. ‘Or late?’

‘Mr Teasdale.’ The greeting was imbued with relief, as Mrs Goodison got up and almost trotted towards him. ‘Your timing’s perfect. Lunch is in about ten minutes. Rita will be so pleased to see you.’

‘Poor old Auntie. How is she?’

‘She’s disconcertingly well. I hope we can keep the shock to a minimum – although it’s difficult to see how. She and her son were so very close.’ She sighed. ‘It’s a cruel thing to do to her.’

He came in and reached for her hand, ignoring Thea and Drew completely. ‘I know. It defies our understanding. But at least I can offer to do my poor best to fill the void for her. I’m here now, with acres of time on my hands. I can be a regular visitor – take her out for a drive now and then. And Brendan will do all he can. He’s very family-minded for a chap his age. And he only lives in Cheltenham. No distance away.’

‘You’re Richard Wilshire’s cousin?’ Thea interrupted. ‘My name is Thea Osborne, and this is Drew Slocombe. We found his body yesterday. At least, his dogs did, initially.’

The Teasdale man swallowed back his bonhomie and turned rather pale. ‘Indeed?’ he said faintly. ‘Why are you here?’

‘We assumed your aunt had been told of her son’s death and we came to offer condolences. And perhaps to answer any questions she might have.’

‘And to try to get her business,’ Mrs Goodison added. ‘He’s an undertaker.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said the cousin. ‘Of course.’ His lack of reaction was unsettling. ‘But your condolences are premature,’ he smiled.

‘They were just leaving.’ The administrator, or matron or whatever she called herself, spoke firmly.

There did not seem to be any alternative, so Thea and Drew removed themselves from the room and headed along the corridor. Nobody was going to escort them, evidently, and Thea had a wild idea of doubling back and finding Mrs Wilshire. Her head was full of muddled anger, mostly on Drew’s behalf.

Drew, however, was intent on making the best of things. ‘Next stop, Broad Campden,’ he said.

‘No, please. I must have some lunch first. Can we stop at the next pub we see?’

‘Certainly not. I don’t like Sunday lunches in pubs. They make you buy a full roast dinner with all the trimmings. I’m not spending that sort of money.’

She might normally have agreed with him, but just at that moment it felt highly unreasonable. ‘So what do you propose?’ she demanded.

‘We can stop at a garage shop or something and get sausage rolls and some juice. I’ll have to do a proper meal at home for the kids tonight, anyway.’

Drew’s wife had been a devoted follower of good-quality country food, at one time. She grew wholesome vegetables and bought local meat. Fast food, takeaways, microwaved pub lunches and supermarket ready meals would all have been anathema to her. Thea’s incompetent negligence where catering was concerned would have annoyed her. And Thea herself wished she could summon more interest in the subject. All she knew was that she was rumbling with hunger and dry with thirst. ‘All right, then,’ she sighed. ‘But make it soon.’

‘You’re driving,’ he pointed out. ‘You can choose where and when we stop.’

‘On condition it isn’t a pub, of course.’

‘Apart from anything else, we haven’t got
time
. The day’s half over and we haven’t done anything useful yet.’

‘How is going to Broad Campden useful?’ she wondered. ‘What can you actually
do
in an hour or so?’

‘Make sure the roof is still on, for a start. Prune a few roses, and dig up any obvious weeds at the front. It mustn’t look completely neglected, or there’ll be squatters moving in.’

His tone was firm and decisive. Any idea she might have had of talking him out of the detour to his house was quickly abandoned. She wasn’t even sure why she should want to dissuade him, except for a restless feeling that they ought to be concentrating on Chedworth and the Wilshire family. The attitude of the woman at the residential home had created a brick wall through which she and Drew were unable to pass, or even see.
She had joined forces with the nephew whose sudden appearance was both convenient and suspicious.

‘He’ll inherit the house, I suppose,’ she said. ‘The Teasdale man.’

‘Surely not? Much more likely to be Millie, I would think. But while the old lady is alive, it’s still hers, anyway. She can leave it to whoever she likes.’

‘Not you, I hope,’ said Thea with a laugh. ‘You can have too much of a good thing.’

‘Definitely not me,’ he said, still sounding uncharacteristically sharp.

‘So we don’t think the nephew killed the son to get his hands on the family home?’

‘Good God, Thea – you can be so thick-skinned sometimes. Aren’t you sorry for her – that poor old lady, kept in the dark, completely unaware of what’s happened? I can’t stop thinking about it. They’ll be eating their big roast lunch, trying to hide the truth, and then they’ll drop it on her afterwards. How’s she going to feel, knowing what a pretence they’ve been keeping up?’

‘I have no idea. I never met the woman. Of course I’m sorry for her. It’s awful for her. But I’m just as sorry for her son – however he died, it was wrong. I’m annoyed that we weren’t allowed to talk to her, as well. And if I am thick-skinned, it’s because I’ve been forced to be like that, over these past years since Carl died. And let me remind you that you don’t think Richard killed himself. If a killer goes free, that’s an injustice
that neither of us will be happy with. Stop being such a prig,’ she finished, in a low voice.

To her surprised relief, he laughed. ‘There we have it, in a nutshell,’ he said. ‘Our worst faults exposed within a couple of minutes. I
am
a prig, sometimes, I know.’

‘And I’m a tactless selfish cow.’

‘You are. I guess nobody’s perfect.’

She swallowed the lump in the throat that these words gave rise to. The fragility of her self-confidence seemed to be increasing, along with a tendency to tears. Hormones, she diagnosed fiercely to herself. There was a sense of exposed flesh – in fact, the very opposite of being thick-skinned. When Drew was nice to her, as he almost always was, it could make her feel unworthy. She so seldom gave him any assurances to match those he gave her.

‘Hey – where are you going?’ he demanded suddenly. ‘We want the A429, remember.’

‘So what’s this one?’ She had been driving on autopilot, simply following the road they had come into Stratford on. Drew had turned the TomTom off, with a remark to the effect that they at least knew how to find Broad Campden.

‘This one goes to Chipping Norton and Oxford. Too far east. We need the turning to Chipping Campden.’

‘Too many Chippings,’ she said. Then she tried to visualise the route. ‘This is off my usual patch. I can’t think how it links up.’

‘It’s easy. You’re only confused because we usually
approach it from the other direction. We can forget Chipping Sodbury, for a start. That’s miles away.’

‘I’m still hungry,’ she said humbly.

‘Okay. Stop at the next garage. There’s sure to be one along here somewhere.’

There was. Less than a minute later they were on the forecourt of a fully equipped petrol station, offering a shop, toilets and every sort of fuel. ‘I need the loo as well,’ said Thea.

‘And you’re low on petrol,’ he pointed out. ‘Let’s do it all in one go.’

They spent some minutes seeing to their various needs, including letting Hepzie out for a quick pee on a handy patch of grass. The spaniel plainly considered that she had been cruelly neglected so far that day. Her sheepdog companions had disappeared and the people hadn’t given her a single word or glance for hours. Sometimes she was less than thrilled at the very existence of Drew Slocombe.

It took very little time to reach Broad Campden. The house was on a small side road that ended as a footpath, just as the Chedworth one did. In fact, it was a regular feature of several Cotswold settlements that the roads simply stopped, with a hedge or gate or stile offering no further progress except on foot. It happened in Blockley as well and contributed to the sense of an earlier time, before motor-driven vehicles claimed dominance. Even bicycles were regularly thwarted.

Drew stood back and gave the building a thorough
scrutiny. ‘Doesn’t look too bad,’ he said. ‘Will you be okay, living here with me, do you think?’

She hesitated. The plan had been so slow to take shape, and was still so fraught with complication that she hardly believed it would really happen. But now it hit her with some force.
Did
she really want to spend the next phase of her life – perhaps all of it – here in the complacent Cotswolds? This village was as silent and deserted as most of the others she had experienced in her time as a house-sitter. Drew would have to erect a special building for storage of coffins and dead people. There would be awkwardness with neighbours: rich and famous individuals who kept their country mansion in mothballs except for a few weeks each year, when they chose to retreat to a secluded idyll where nothing nasty could happen. There would be a hearse standing in full view. There would be night-time call-outs to remove a body. There was a whole lot more to the funeral business that she still didn’t know about.