Guilt in the Cotswolds (16 page)

‘Okay,’ she pacified him. ‘If we can’t find anything now, we’ll have to give up.’

‘It’s too dark,’ he complained. ‘We’ll never find anything in this light, even with your torch.’

‘Think – we have to think,’ she urged. ‘What if there were
two
people, determined to kill Richard? Then one could hold him and the other crack his skull.’

‘There’d be signs of a struggle.’

‘No, but if there were two, they could have carried him into the barn and arranged the body to look like a suicide. There might be signs of a struggle out here somewhere, if we knew where to look.’

‘He was big,’ said Drew. ‘Heavy, but not especially strong.’ He sighed. ‘It’s no good. The more we guess, the less persuasive any of it seems.’

‘Lateral thinking,’ she said, mindful of a death she had been involved with where conclusions were drawn very prematurely. ‘We have to drop all our assumptions and start again.’

‘Is this when the brainstorming starts? I think we missed that part.’

‘The main thing we need is
evidence
. Until then, the police won’t listen to us. We can bang on about gut feelings and logical probabilities as much as we like, and they’ll take no notice at all. So we need a weapon, most of all.’

‘They must do some sort of post mortem,’ Drew said. ‘It was a sudden unexplained death. There always has to be a post mortem in that situation.’

‘Do they do them on Sundays?’ She already knew the answer, but had a feeling that Drew needed to feel as if he was the one in control, for the moment. Any more suggestions from her might well prove counterproductive.

‘Hardly ever,’ he told her. ‘It’ll be tomorrow at the soonest. And they’re not going to go into much detail. Cause of death; nature of his injuries; general condition.’ He laughed ruefully. ‘Actually, I don’t know exactly what they do.’

‘Neither do I, except for what I’ve seen on
Silent Witness
. But we should start by assuming he was murdered and see if we can construct a scenario that fits – with evidence.’

‘Oh, Thea. We’re playing at detectives here, aren’t we? Following our old game, because we both love it. I think it’s time we grew out of it.’

She could not see his expression in the vanishing light. ‘I can’t help it,’ she admitted. ‘Now we’re here, and we both knew Richard Wilshire, and we’ve met so many of his family, and he’s
dead
.’ She spluttered incoherently, with unexpected images of her own husband Carl intruding. ‘I know most people manage to let it all go and get on with ordinary lives. I know it’s peculiar, the way I go rushing in to confront anybody I think might have done something terrible. It’s something in my character, I suppose. A stupid need to get stories straight and stop people from getting it all wrong. I hate it when a myth gets established and perpetuated, based on wishful thinking and lies and secrets. I
hate
that.’

‘Okay,’ he said gently. ‘I get it. I suppose I’ve got the same thing in my character, more or less.’

‘You have. Yes. So if Millie Wilshire truly believes
her father killed himself, and he really didn’t, that’s the story that’ll go down the generations, and nobody will challenge it. And that’s so horribly
wrong
. Isn’t it?’

‘Of course. Nobody would disagree with that.’

‘Except perhaps the person who killed him.’

She swung the torch again, following the beam intently. ‘What’s that?’ she said suddenly.

‘Where?’

‘Leaning against the barn, look.’ She kept the light on a thick plank of wood that nobody would look at twice, in normal circumstances. About four feet in length, and ten or twelve inches wide, it had no obvious purpose. Thea went towards it.

‘That can’t be a murder weapon,’ Drew objected. ‘Not left in plain view like that. Nobody would be so … blatant.’

Thea was examining the plank without touching it. ‘It looks clean, the same as the stone,’ she said disappointedly.

‘Turn it over,’ said Drew, with a hint of agitation in his voice. ‘Use a hanky or something.’

‘I haven’t got a hanky.’

But Drew had. He took an old-fashioned square of cotton from his trouser pocket, and wrapped it around his hand. Gingerly, he gripped the top of the wood and pulled it towards himself. It leant away from the barn, so they could see the underside. At first it looked as bland and insignificant as the top side, but Thea shone the beam on a smudge near the bottom. In the artificial
light it looked dark brown. ‘It
could
be blood,’ said Drew doubtfully.

‘It’s exactly the right shape for the purpose, don’t you think? And there might not have been any blood left on it.’

‘Heads always bleed.’

‘Yes, but not instantly. If you whacked someone with this and then pulled it away, it wouldn’t have to get bloody.’

Drew inhaled slowly, steadying himself. ‘You’re describing a very brutal attack on a defenceless man. Defenceless and probably totally unsuspecting. A monstrous thing to do.’

‘All the more so for being planned, and made to look like suicide. Could that Andrew chap have done it, do you think?’

‘On first impressions – which are entirely unreliable – I’d say he might have lashed out in a rage, but not covered it up very well afterwards. And there’s still the small problem of how the killer managed to keep Richard still while he whacked him.’

‘He did look rather
ravaged
,’ mused Thea, not properly listening. ‘Maybe that was guilt, and not misery over his cows after all.’

‘I would venture to suggest it had to be someone quite tall and strong. This plank’s heavy, and you’d need some force to lift it and crack a skull with it.’

‘We don’t know it was this, for sure,’ she reminded him. ‘We’re jumping to conclusions.’

‘I think it’s likely enough for us to tell the police.’

She couldn’t hide her excitement. ‘Oh, good!’ she said.

Then Drew’s phone went again, and he carefully replaced the length of wood before answering it. ‘All right,’ he said, after listening for a few moments. He took it from his ear, and said to Thea, ‘Mrs Wilshire wants to speak to me. That was the woman at the nursing home … Yes, hello Mrs Wilshire. What can I do for you?’

Thea had never before heard his undertaker’s voice, but here it most unmistakably was: gentle, patient, professional and dependable. She wasn’t altogether sure she liked it.

He was quiet after the call ended. Thea had gleaned little from his side of the conversation except that he had promised to go back to Stratford to see old Mrs Wilshire, the next morning. ‘Is it about Richard’s funeral?’ she asked.

‘Not really. She said she has to talk to somebody and I’m the only one who she can trust.’

‘Can
we
trust
her
?’

‘I don’t think we have anything to fear.’ The very mildness of his tone felt like a reproach.

‘I didn’t think we had, personally. But we’ve already decided that people must be telling lies.’

‘Thea, she’s very old, and I’ve already got a relationship with her. She’s a bright, brave lady who faces the inevitable a lot better than most people do.’

‘Old people tell lies just as much as anybody else.’ She knew this from personal experience, she wanted to add. ‘And she’s clearly a bit peculiar, keeping all that
stuff in the house, preserved for no sensible reason.’

He merely nodded. ‘Let’s get back,’ he said after a pause. ‘We can’t do any more here.’

‘And I need to rescue my poor dog. She doesn’t like being alone in a strange house.’

They got into the car, turned it round and returned down the steep twisting lane into Chedworth. Thea’s mood was jangled. She was irritated with herself and by extension with Drew for witnessing yet again her less appealing side. They wanted the same things, she insisted to herself. Not just to resolve the mystery of Richard Wilshire’s death, but to be together, a contented couple with enough money to live on and a joint purpose in life. The goal was clear, but the getting there seemed to be increasingly fraught.

The house was in darkness. It was anything but welcoming, even with the enthusiastic greeting they were given by the spaniel. It was not long after eight o’clock, the evening still ahead of them. A sharp panic gripped Thea at the prospect of having to entertain Drew for at least two hours before they could decently go to bed. The panic increased as she acknowledged how wrong this worry was for somebody meant to be in a loving committed relationship. She had forgotten what couples did together. Watching television felt like a failure. There were no games anywhere – and she was fairly sure Drew disliked anything as banal as Scrabble or Canasta, anyway. She must have asked him at some point, she thought – and now could not recall his answer.

What had she done with Carl? It felt shameful to even ask herself the question, but equally it was impossible to avoid. She had been half of a couple with him – everything she knew on the subject inevitably included him.

‘I’ll make some coffee, shall I?’ she said.

‘If you like.’ He was standing with his back to the living room window. A memory stirred in which Thea had been in a room when a missile came crashing through a window, sending shards of glass everywhere. Memories like this were popping up repeatedly, she realised. Episodes from her many house-sitting commissions, where there had been violence and complexities of every sort. Temple Guiting, she remembered. Fifteen minutes earlier she had been reliving her time in Blockley. Cold Aston – where she’d been in a house with an attic – and Lower Slaughter had both woven themselves into her thoughts during the day. It was a troublesome kaleidoscope of recollections, making it difficult to concentrate on this amorphous Chedworth mystery. Perhaps it was only her experience of the past few years that made her think Richard had been murdered in the first place. Murder was what she had come to expect. In Frampton Mansell an apparent suicide had soon turned out to be a killing, after all. Likewise in at least two other places. But there had also been the opposite, where a presumed murder proved to have been accidental. The police had quickly acquired a habit of consulting the inquisitive house-sitter who
had few inhibitions about speaking to strangers and asking them questions that were close to rude at times. People had objected – in Cranham and Temple Guiting especially. But Thea Osborne had been undeniably helpful. An accidental sleuth in many ways, she had seldom solved the case all on her own; but now and then she had. Drew, too, had played his part, especially in Broad Campden and Snowshill.

She groaned softly, recalling all these many adventures and how gruelling some of them had been. She had forgotten the intention of making coffee, standing in the doorway, watching her fiancé.

‘What’s the matter?’ Drew asked.

‘Just thinking. Remembering. Feeling a bit tired and middle-aged about everything.’

He was instantly only an inch away from her, then pulling her close, resting his chin on the top of her head. Drew wasn’t tall, but Thea was definitely short. They fitted neatly together. He rubbed her back, and swayed her gently from side to side. ‘Poor old love,’ he crooned. ‘We can’t go on like this, can we? It has to change. Tomorrow.’ He said it with determination. ‘Tomorrow will be the first day of the rest of our lives, and we’re going to get it right. We’re going to leave this place with our heads high and our consciences clear.’

‘Huh?’ She barely heard his words, but there was something not entirely comforting in the tone.

‘We’ll go to Stratford first thing tomorrow, and after that we’ll tell your DI Higgins everything.’

‘Everything?’

‘Including our wildest guesses and groundless suspicions. We dump it all on him and go.’

‘Right,’ she said, thinking that Drew didn’t know Higgins, if he thought that was a workable plan. But just to have a plan that put her at its centre was reassuring. It told her that everything was probably all right, at least in the essentials.

Nothing else happened all evening. It wasn’t necessary to entertain Drew, she discovered. They could simply be together, cuddled on the sofa, talking sporadically about every sort of trivia. By unspoken consent they shelved the whole business of the Wilshires. The brainstorming, such as it was, could wait. They had worn themselves out, driving around the countryside meeting people and following hunches. Nobody could survive such a day without collapsing at its end.

Hepzie was on Thea’s other side, inconspicuously staking her own claim to a cuddle. It seemed to Thea that the presence of her pet was a given, just as Drew’s children were. It didn’t need to be spoken aloud. Banishing the spaniel from the bed when Drew was in it seemed to her concession enough.

Then it was Monday, and they were back to obligations and focus; Mrs Wilshire expected, and Drew was again conscientious and caring. ‘Will you say anything about Richard probably being murdered?’ Thea wondered.

‘I imagine she’ll say it herself. I’m assuming that’s what she wants to talk about.’

‘If that’s so, why us? Why not the police?’

He made his usual open-handed gesture that doubled as a shrug of ignorance. ‘Obvious reasons, I’d guess. They wouldn’t listen to her, would they? Even less than they listen to us.’

‘I woke up thinking about the family history,’ she said. ‘Those two sisters, and the cousins. Brendan’s dad, what’s his name, must be over seventy. Richard and he can’t have been much company for each other, with such a big age difference.’

‘So?’

‘Nothing, really, except I’ve been trying to imagine what it was like. And where are their fathers?’

‘Maybe the old lady will tell us. People often reminisce after a death. They have a compulsion to tell the whole story, sometimes.’ He gave a rueful sigh. ‘All part of my job to listen to it, of course. It can take hours.’

‘The home won’t be too happy to have us there right after breakfast, I bet. They’ll be trying to do cleaning and all that.’

This time Drew gave a real shrug. ‘I often think
home
is the wrong word for it. There’s no way the inmates can carry on as if it was really their home. It’s much more like being in prison, when you think about it.’

She shuddered. ‘Don’t spoil my illusions. I had to reassure Richard that there was a lot about it that was positive. Getting all your cooking and washing done,
for example. And always being nice and warm. And the setting is gorgeous.’

Drew was suddenly alert. ‘Did you discuss it, then?’

‘I told you – he was feeling horribly guilty. I wanted to make him see it was the best thing to have done. When we found his body, my first thought was that the guilt overwhelmed him so he couldn’t bear it any more. I did think he’d killed himself.’

‘We must go over it again in the car. Leaving in five minutes, okay? We’ll take mine.’

‘So long as Hepzie can come.’

‘She’ll have to go between the baby seats, then.’

‘You don’t still call them that, do you? The kids must love that.’

‘They don’t mind,’ he said irritably. ‘They think it’s funny.’

In the car, he was acutely focused, behaving almost like a police detective on a case. ‘It makes no sense for Richard to have felt so guilty. His mother was more than ready to make the move. Her legs were letting her down and the stairs were a real hazard. She’d dropped a pan of boiling water recently and knew she couldn’t trust herself with cooking any more. And she’s such a
philosophical
person. She faces up to things. That’s obvious, I suppose, from the way she planned her own funeral. So Richard didn’t have anything to reproach himself with.’

‘Well, he thought he did. He was miserable with it. All sort of crumpled inside, if you see what I mean. You
know how a person’s face goes when they feel guilty.’

He gave this some thought. ‘I’m not sure I do,’ he admitted.

‘I can’t describe it, but you’d recognise it if you saw it. As if there’s a lump of something you can’t bear to touch or think about, somewhere in your chest.’

‘This is getting whimsical. Especially from a woman who I have never thought of as having a troublesome conscience.’

At first she took this as an implied criticism. But before flying to her own defence, she paused. ‘I do feel a bit bad about keeping you from your responsibilities,’ she said lightly. ‘But on the whole I suppose I think guilt is rather self-indulgent. If you parade to the world how guilty you feel, that implies that you’re a good person, admitting your faults. Unselfish and all that. And it also carries a hint of control.’

‘Does it?’

‘I think so. If a person feels guilty at their mother growing old and needing more attention and help, that suggests the guilty one thinks they ought to have somehow prevented the inevitable. They believe, somewhere inside, that they can control nature.’

‘Or perhaps they’re just ashamed of how little they want to do about it. Or how poorly they manage things, getting into a situation where they haven’t got time or resources to give the old person what she needs.’

‘And you think that’s closer to how Richard was?’

‘I do. Except … I still don’t understand why he would 
think she was unhappy or uncomfortable, or blaming him in any way.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘In fact, in this particular instance, I have a hunch that your assessment might be closer to the truth than mine. My first impression was that they were a very devoted mother and son. Now I think that needs some modifying.’

‘Or we might both be wrong, and he had something else entirely to feel guilty about.’

He drove for another half-mile before replying. ‘Lateral thinking,’ he said then.

‘Brainstorming.’

‘You think he did something awful, and was killed for it?’

‘It’s a hypothesis,’ she said. ‘That fits the facts, as far as they go.’

‘Which isn’t very far,’ he said with a sigh.

It was ten past nine when they got to the care home. The front door was firmly closed, and the car park sparsely occupied. ‘Even the cleaners aren’t here yet,’ said Drew.

They rang the bell, and were mildly surprised when Mrs Goodison herself admitted them. Even more surprisingly, she was all smiles. ‘Oh, you’ve made good time,’ she approved. ‘Come in. It’s chilly today, isn’t it?’

She led them purposefully along a corridor and around a corner to a door on which she knocked. Without waiting for a response, she slowly opened it. ‘Rita?’ she said in a tone half-deferential and half-brisk. ‘Mr Slocombe’s here.’

Inside, the old lady was sitting in a big armchair beside the window. There was a bed and a table against one wall, with another chair, bookcase and chest of drawers distributed around the room. On the table was a laptop, with its lid up. Mrs Wilshire looked up without a smile, and said, ‘Yes, I saw them arrive.’ Her window looked across a lawn and through a fence to one side of the car parking area. She could only have glimpsed the pair before they disappeared from view. ‘It’s good of you to come,’ she added.

Drew took her hand, and then waved Thea forward. ‘I hope you don’t mind my bringing her with me? We did try to visit you yesterday, but your nephew took prior claim.’

‘So I understand. That must have been annoying for you. But I’m pleased to see you now,’ said the old lady, bowing her head. ‘It was good of you to go to the trouble. I hope you won’t feel I’m wasting your time. The thing is, you see, I suspect you might turn out to be useful.’

Thea had taken a step forward, but went no closer.

‘I’ll get another chair,’ said the matron, or whatever title she gave herself. Thea glimpsed a touch of reproach at her presence. Drew was supposed to come by himself. Perhaps her being there was a potential spanner in the works. And yet, the doorstep greeting had seemed genuine and Mrs Wilshire herself showed no sign of resenting the appearance of an extra person.

The chair was quickly supplied, and Mrs Goodison
made a dignified retreat. If she had any worries or anything to hide she covered it very well. Thea felt a thrill of anticipation at the conversation to come. There could hardly fail to be revelations of some description.

‘I am really so sorry about your son,’ said Drew. ‘It was a great shock.’

‘Thank you.’ There were signs of tears in her eyelashes. She did not wear spectacles, Thea noted. Her gaze was clear and her hearing evidently more than adequate. But her hands were shaking and her ankles looked swollen inside a pair of blue socks. She wore trousers and a sweatshirt, clearly comfortable with them both. ‘I have to make a great effort to believe it.’ She looked straight at Drew. ‘The temptation to fall back on fading memory and an exaggerated senility is surprisingly strong. It would be an acceptable way of avoiding the pain, after all.’