Malice in the Cotswolds (18 page)

‘Happy memories,’ said Thea easily.

‘Nothing stays the same. I should know that better than most. I actually
say
it to my customers sometimes. You can’t rely on any sort of continuity.’

‘Right. It’s the source of all our sadness. Loss, letting go, everything changing.’

‘Shifting sands. But it’s not entirely sad. I quite like letting go,’ he confessed. ‘Most of the time. I just didn’t bargain for letting go of the person I chose to spend my whole life with.’

Thea winced. ‘No,’ she murmured. ‘It’s a bugger.’

‘Where are we?’ He changed the subject with a determined little shake.

‘Tufnell Park,’ she read from an underground station portico, as they passed.

‘Never heard of it,’ he laughed. ‘I wonder who Tufnell was.’

‘Not much sign of a park, either.’

They were moving more quickly, along a straight street with scanty traffic. At a large junction they took a road that passed under a high bridge. ‘This is all very handsome, isn’t it?’ Drew remarked. ‘North London is another world. I ought to explore it sometime.’

‘Where in Crouch End do you want, lady?’ asked the Sikh driver.

‘The middle,’ she said vaguely. ‘Wait a minute.’ She opened her
A-Z
. ‘How about Coolhurst Road. That seems fairly central. At the northern end.’

The taxi turned right at the next traffic lights, the surroundings suddenly green and airy. Drew had time to register a sign saying ‘Shepherd’s Hill’ before the vehicle drew up at the kerbside and the driver pointed out Coolhurst Road on the right. Thea peered at her
map. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘This is perfect.’

As they stood together on the pavement, she showed him where they were. He quickly counted twelve streets that appeared to be the core of Crouch End, and groaned. ‘It’s going to take
ages
,’ he protested.

‘Not if we’re organised. It’s a green car, which is fairly unusual, for a start. Here’s the registration number. We can see it’s not along here, anyway. Now you go to the other side, and we’ll meet at the bottom.’

The plan worked approximately as Thea had anticipated, with Drew finding himself quickly scanning all the parked cars in sight, and muttering
red, white, grey, red, silver, green
… The green one had nothing like the number he had memorised, and he carried on. It took a surprisingly short time before the entire street had been examined. Together they turned right, into Avenue Road which they scanned as before, then retraced their steps, planning to investigate Crescent, Clifton and Coleridge, moving at a brisk trot. When he finally identified a green Peugeot with the right combination of letters and numbers, he stood stock-still, unable to believe his eyes. Thea was nowhere to be seen, having turned into a smaller side street a minute earlier. As if worried that the car would disappear if he let it out of his sight, he stood glued to the pavement until she reappeared.

‘Here it is!’ he called, self-conscious in the quiet and obviously affluent neighbourhood. Crouch End was clean and tidy, and fresh paint was much in evidence.
He looked around for signs of multiple occupancy and failed to find them.

Thea rushed to his side and stared at the car. ‘Gosh!’ she panted. ‘It really is the one. How weird!’

‘You didn’t think we’d find it?’

‘Not really. I mean … I didn’t know. What’s that on the windscreen? Has she been fined for leaving it here?’

‘It’s a resident’s permit,’ Drew ascertained. ‘They’ve all got them.’

Thea frowned thoughtfully. ‘Victor must have given it to her. So … where does he live?’

‘These places don’t look scruffy to me,’ he said superfluously. ‘Didn’t you say Yvonne thought it was rather sordid?’

‘She did – but you’re right.’ On both sides of the street were large expensive houses, set comfortably back from the traffic, with front porches and mullioned windows. ‘But some of them could be divided up, I suppose.’

‘Maybe. But we can’t go up to them and look for names,’ he objected. ‘We’ll be arrested. Some of them probably have their own cameras.’

‘It’s not as posh as
that
,’ she disagreed. ‘But it’s nothing like Yvonne described. Either she’s parked much further away than I thought, or she isn’t very good at describing places.’ She rubbed her forehead, trying to recall Yvonne’s exact words and failing.

Drew shook his head in bewilderment. ‘It’s not
terribly handy for St Pancras, either, is it?’

‘Presumably it seemed sensible to leave the car here, having got the permit.’ She lifted her shoulders. ‘I suppose it must make some kind of sense. Victor’s just staying for a bit, while he finds another house, according to Mark. Aren’t people
complicated
,’ she complained. ‘I don’t feel I understand the first thing about the Parker family.’

‘Does it matter?’ he asked mildly. ‘I mean,
why
does it? There’s no sign of anybody being attacked, no police tape or anything. What you heard can’t have been as bad as you thought.’

‘I guess that must be right. Oh well, we can at least tell Gladwin the car’s here. She’ll know what to do next – if anything.’

‘You mean, just go home now?’ It seemed very much a let-down, for the adventure to be over so quickly.

‘I suppose so. We can have some lunch maybe, first.’

He gazed along the street, trying to imagine the lives behind the closed doors. ‘It really is not the sort of area where you’d expect to hear a scream,’ he said. ‘If it was as loud as you say, wouldn’t people react?’

‘Probably not.’ She remembered another scream, heard during her very first house-sitting commission, which she had ignored.

‘But it’s all so
respectable
,’ he persisted, illogically. ‘Nice middle-class people with children and dogs.’

‘Don’t stereotype. There are probably rich drug
dealers and Arabs and Russians living all along this street, fighting amongst themselves the whole time. Maybe Victor dabbles in something nasty.’

‘Now who’s stereotyping?’ he said. ‘You’re worse than me.’

‘But my stereotype’s a lot more exciting than yours.’

‘I’m going to find out which one of us is right,’ he said, and before she could stop him, he had approached a girl of Hispanic appearance pushing a baby buggy, who had emerged from one of the houses. ‘Excuse me,’ he smiled. ‘But we’re looking for a Mr Victor Parker, who lives in this street. We seem to have got the house number wrong. Do you know him?’

‘Mr Victor?’ responded the girl readily, with a strong accent. ‘Oh, yes, he live over there.’ She pointed to a substantial house across the street.

‘You know him?’ The notion of London as a collection of hermetically sealed families, never engaging with their neighbours, quickly evaporated.

‘His … girlfriend. I know her. And also the cook where I live is sister to the cleaning woman at Mr Victor’s.’ She indicated the house immediately behind them. ‘We know many people here.’ She smiled sunnily, proud of her assimilation into the new world of London serving classes.

‘Have you seen him yesterday or today?’ Thea was quick to catch up and throw in her own question.

The girl shook her head. In the buggy a large
fair-headed toddler kicked its heels impatiently. ‘Not since … I think, Sunday.’

‘And he has a girlfriend?’ Thea pursued. ‘Does she live with him?’

‘Oh, yes. Since a month ago, perhaps. Mariella, from Manila. I am her friend,’ she boasted. ‘She is so happy to find Victor.’

I bet she is,
thought Thea sourly. ‘Has he had a visitor? An English lady?’

The girl smiled and shook her head. ‘I think not. Mariella not like that! She would—’ The girl mimed clawing with both hands, Yvonne’s vulnerable cheeks almost visible as the jealous concubine attacked.

‘Oh dear!’ said Drew, with a laugh. ‘Like that, is it?’ He looked at Thea. ‘What now?’

They both stood staring at the house in which Victor Parker apparently lived. ‘We should make sure he’s all right,’ said Thea. ‘Having got this far.’

Drew refrained from another glance at his watch only with extreme difficulty. ‘Ring his doorbell, you mean?’

‘Why not?’

‘Um … what will we say to him? Or his girlfriend? Won’t he think it very odd?’

‘We’ll think of something. Come on.’ Thea marched up the path, which seemed more like Snowshill than London, with its borders of flowering shrubs and tidy front hedge. ‘See – it says “Parker”,’ she triumphed. ‘Bingo!’

Nobody answered the door to them. They had not heard a distant ring or buzz – ‘But we wouldn’t if he’s got a flat on the second floor,’ Drew pointed out. ‘The walls are too solid.’

‘Why isn’t there an entry phone thingy?’ Thea grumbled. ‘I bet all the other houses in the street have one.’

‘We’ll have to go,’ Drew burst out worriedly. ‘It’s five past one. We might get stuck in traffic.’

‘There’s loads of time yet,’ she assured him. ‘But we do seem to have done what we came for. We could probably even get a bus, if we knew where they went from.’

‘No, please. Let’s find a taxi again.’

She nodded accommodatingly. ‘I’ll phone Gladwin on the way.’

She extracted her phone and keyed the detective’s number. It was obvious that she only got a recording, from the way she spoke. ‘It’s me, Thea. We’ve found Victor Parker’s address. He’s not answering the door.’ She recited the street name and the house number, and ended the call.

‘Okay. Now we dash down to Hornsey Lane and find another taxi,’ she decreed. ‘We’ll be home before the carriage turns back into a pumpkin, no problem. You might even catch the ten to two.’

He gave her a look designed to quell such inane optimism.

Mr Anderson’s funeral began promptly as scheduled, Drew in his respectable dark clothes, his hair brushed and his manner calm. Angela, niece of the deceased, watched with impressive equanimity as the coffin was lowered by Maggs, Drew and two middle-aged nephews. The eulogy that Drew delivered included his usual references to the inevitability of death and the sadness that accompanied it; the importance of remembering the person who had gone. He said nothing about heaven or God, but did mention the spirit of the dead man, surviving perhaps in the hearts of those who loved him, merging into the great sea of all who had lived in the past. He felt the wording of this final thought needed some further work, but he liked to include it. His aim was to acknowledge the real significance of every life that had ever been, without
descending into unconvincing platitudes about a life to come, or any unrealistic prospect that Mr Anderson would be meaningfully reunited with his family and friends at any stage in the future.

Throughout the ceremony, flickering images of the inert Karen and the mischievous Thea intruded themselves. He had permitted himself to think about them both in the train back from London, as honestly and directly as he could. It had been like opening a curtained window to let in light and cool air, as well as flying biting things. There would be no escape from the anguish of losing Karen. Childish adventures with Thea would do nothing to assuage the grief, at least in the first weeks and months.

All of which coloured the tone of his little speech at the graveside. He made no effort to soften or deny the sharpness of the loss, the gap in the fabric of things that the nice old man would leave. He found some of the more distant friends eyeing him doubtfully, as he confronted the realities without mercy.

Angela, however, seemed grateful. She shook his hand, and then pressed Maggs’s shoulder in a gesture of real warmth. ‘You’re both doing a brilliant service,’ she said. ‘This is exactly how all funerals should be.’

‘We think so,’ said Drew simply. Angela was easy, compared to the account he was going to have to give of himself to Maggs.

Because Maggs had discovered that he had not in fact been at his wife’s bedside all morning, thanks to
the station parking sticker he had left on the window of his car, and which she had spotted at twenty paces, the moment he drove in at five minutes past four.

Thea, too, had plenty of time to think on the train home. The mystery of Victor Parker was not even half solved, she realised. She and Drew had been childishly irresponsible in not sticking around until the police arrived and broke down the door of the flat. The timing had been ridiculous, with Drew so worried about his irritating funeral. They had behaved in a fashion that would embarrass the Famous Five, let alone two grown-up twenty-first-century people.

But the whole matter of Victor and Yvonne Parker had all along felt secondary to the far more awful and urgent murder of Stevie Horsfall. That was the mystery she really should be solving, and any unconscious hope that there would turn out to be a connection between the two had been thwarted by the need to rush back to Snowshill before any facts could be unearthed.

Gudrun’s confession to having ‘stolen’ her child was still niggling at her. Many women dreamt of such a theft, of course, knowing how easy it was to seduce a man into careless sex. But Thea had never actually met an example of it being followed through. Men were more wary than they were given credit for; single mothers liked to have some regular financial assistance from the father of their child; and some of them had the foresight to realise that the child itself was
eventually going to want to know at least something of the story. Mostly, anyone in that position these days – and perhaps even ten years ago – chose to go a more official route, and take themselves to a clinic where fatherhood was a bureaucratic and sanitised procedure, sanctioned by paperwork, and paid for with money. All that one had to deal with was a small phial of semen. The man himself never comprised part of the picture.

And was there not some sneaking suggestion of malice in what Gudrun had done? She had deliberately deceived the hapless man. He had imagined a no-strings liaison, grateful for his luck, doubtless treated to a suitably sensual experience, and been robbed of something profoundly visceral. And Gudrun had felt no remorse, no qualms about it, still almost boasting of her achievement ten years later, when the resulting child was dead, having brought her a great deal less fulfilment and satisfaction than she must surely have wished for in the first place.

Her mind whirled constantly with the burgeoning mysteries. As she drove hurriedly from the station in Moreton to rescue her imprisoned spaniel, she considered the other characters she had encountered: Blake Grossman and his absent Eloise, for a start. He could easily have fabricated his conveniently vague overseas trip, and come softly back on Sunday afternoon to slaughter the boy. Just as likely – which
was to say, not likely at all – Janice and Ruby had together killed him in their rage about the garden. Most probable, it seemed, was a scenario where a passing stranger, a man with mental problems perhaps, had seen red as a result of some outrageous misdemeanour from the boy. Grabbed him, garotted him and thrown his body on the nearest patch of grass behind a car, then driven off over the hills and far away. Just another summer tourist, unnoticed in the general pilgrimage to and from the famous Manor.

But then the oddness of Mark and Belinda Parker, who had grown up in Snowshill, and knew at least some of the present inhabitants, came to mind. And that brought her back to Victor, and the pressing need to establish where and how he was.

And what
about
Mark Parker? He seemed an increasingly large figure in the picture, a rogue element who had wantonly lied to her on Monday morning. She admitted to herself that she had entertained a sneaking hope that she might encounter him in Crouch End, thus proving somehow that he was the silent attacker of his father the previous day. Why or how would become apparent when she challenged him. Stupid idea, of course. It was enough of a triumph that they had found Yvonne’s car and established that Victor Parker did in fact live where Yvonne had said he did.

She approached Hyacinth House with churning emotions, wishing she could just collect her dog and
go back to her own little house. Hyacinth House was tainted with misery now, after housing Gudrun for the night. The guest had appeared in the kitchen at eight o’clock that morning, looking crumpled but
self-possessed
. ‘I never knew it was possible to sleep for so long,’ she said.

‘You must be awfully hungry and thirsty.’ Thea had produced toast and tea, which the woman consumed absently.

‘I’ll go in a minute. They might be looking for me,’ the woman said.

Thea did not enquire who
they
might be. She assumed it could only be the police. ‘No, they won’t,’ she said. ‘I told them you were here.’

Gudrun’s sunken eyes met hers with a flash of anger. ‘You reported me?’ she accused.

‘In a way, I did,’ Thea agreed. ‘Does it matter?’

‘Not really.’ Gudrun’s shoulders slumped. ‘I’ll have to get used to it, won’t I?’

Thea understood that
it
meant a whole great mass of stuff far beyond the attention of the police. ‘Will you be all right?’ she asked gently.

‘I’ll have to be, won’t I?’ said Gudrun with a stoicism that Drew Slocombe would have found admirable.

She had not heard anything from Gladwin since leaving the message from outside Victor’s house, but assumed that she would, before long. There was no sign of Janice, from across the road, who had agreed
to rescue the spaniel if Thea hadn’t got back by four o’clock. In the absence of any further excitement, she decided to reward her patient dog by taking it for a walk.

Snowshill was quiet. The pub appeared to be having a rest, the Manor behind its protective wall ignoring the village as usual. A few cars passed on the upper road, and a black dog pottered illegally across the churchyard. ‘How did that get in there?’ muttered Thea. For reply, the animal leapt effortlessly onto the boundary wall and then loped away without a backward glance. ‘Long legs,’ said Thea to Hepzie. ‘I bet you couldn’t jump that high.’ In fact, the spaniel was a competent jumper, given the incentive.

They circled the church, with Hepzie on the lead, before Thea decided to walk along the road out of the village and investigate the Manor grounds, as far as she was permitted with a dog. The road had no verge or pavement, but offered no real danger from the traffic. They passed a small car park, and at the last moment, Thea noticed a small gate leading from it, with a sign announcing that this was a footpath to the Manor.

‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘This looks like a better way.’

It was a ludicrously long walk in the wrong direction, considering that the manor house was behind them. The National Trust in its wisdom had opted to send visitors several hundred yards out of the centre of Snowshill, whether on foot or
driving, before admitting them to the grounds. They then had to walk all the way back, leaving their cars in a tastefully tree-dotted area – five hundred yards according to a note on a board she’d seen. By then, hardly anybody realised that they were in fact back where they started, literally next door to the Snowshill Arms where they might well have had their lunch. The walk of nearly half a mile was probably good for them, but the nannying implications were irritating.

No Dogs
it said, as she found the entrance, including shop, café and toilets.

‘Surprise, surprise,’ said Thea in resignation.

A vehicle slowed alongside her as she emerged from the same small gate into the same small car park, fifteen or twenty minutes after leaving it. ‘Hello again,’ came a female voice. She pulled into the entrance to the park, leaving the road clear.

It was Clara Beauchamp in a chunky red Subaru, looking down from the driver’s window. ‘I’m searching for my dog. He’s run off again, after some bitch somewhere, I suppose.’

Thea had been thinking about murdered children and dying wives, and barely focused on the woman speaking to her. ‘Oh dear,’ she said.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen him? Black. Long legs. Floppy ears. He’s part collie and part saluki. Runs like the wind.’

‘Oh! Actually, yes. He was in the churchyard about
half an hour ago. He seemed to know where he was going.’

‘So he might, but there are people around here who disapprove of loose dogs.’

Thea had very painful experience of the risks that such animals ran when they escaped their confines, and nodded sympathetically. ‘Maybe he’s home again by now.’

‘Let’s hope so. How are you getting on, anyway?’

‘Well enough, considering.’ She remembered that she and Clara had discussed young Stevie Horsfall only an hour or so before she found his body. Clara’s dislike of the boy had become one facet of the whole business, representative of the general attitude of the village towards him. ‘It’s so awful about poor Gudrun. She’s utterly heartbroken.’ The word seemed too weak for the torment the woman was enduring, but Thea had a resistance to the overused ‘devastated’ and could not bring herself to utter it.

‘I know. Everyone feels terrible about it. And of course, we’re all eyeing each other, wondering if it was somebody local who finally flipped. I think almost everyone has threatened to kill the bloody kid at some point – including his mother. But you never really mean it, do you?’ She shuddered, and added, ‘Just imagine actually
doing
it. It’s hard enough to put a dying lamb out of its misery, let alone a strapping great boy like Stevie. He’d kick and scratch. You really would have to mean business.’

Thea’s eyes widened at this straightforward talk. Even she had not allowed her imagination to go into quite such harrowing detail. ‘He didn’t really look as if he’d struggled,’ she said carelessly. ‘His clothes weren’t messed up, or anything.’

‘Really?’ Clara leaned avidly towards her, as far as the car window would allow. ‘You do surprise me.’ Quite which detail she meant was obscure.

‘You knew it was me who found the body, I assume?’

‘I did hear something,’ said Clara warily.

‘But you haven’t seen Gudrun?’

‘Me? God, no, of course not. It only happened two days ago. Besides, what would I say to her? I can’t pretend I didn’t loathe the little beast.’

‘You could say you’re sorry for her pain.’

A look close to exasperation crossed Clara’s face, and Thea felt a sudden pang of acute loneliness. People were so prone to reacting badly to comments like that, and yet she had taken this woman for an exception. Hadn’t she herself started it, with her talk of kicking and scratching? ‘She wouldn’t believe me,’ she said simply, thereby somewhat redeeming herself in Thea’s eyes.

‘Oh. Didn’t
anybody
like him?’

‘Not to my knowledge. There was a teacher, I believe, when he was seven or eight, who made a bit of progress with him. If you ask me, it’s karma.’

‘What?’ Clara Beauchamp was the archetypal Cotswolds character: rich, confident, impatient, doggy,
horsy, healthy and educated. Words like ‘karma’ did not fit the stereotype at all. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, as I told you on Sunday, the kid never should have been born. She was too old, too peculiar, to be entrusted with a child. It was never going to work out.’

‘She told me she stole him,’ Thea remembered. ‘Funny word to use.’

‘Right. That’s what she always says. Waylaid some drunk in Cirencester one night and had her wicked way with him, to get a kid, is one version of the story. Dishonest, I call that.’

‘Brave, though, if that’s really what happened. Plenty of women dream of doing it, but not many go through with it, do they?’

‘Don’t ask me. People like Gudrun Horsfall are closed books to me. It’s all a bit
sordid
, don’t you think?’

‘The way you tell it, yes. But that wasn’t quite the picture I got. And men – well, they don’t often turn it down, do they? They probably rather like to think they’ve got unknown offspring scattered around the countryside.’