Malice in the Cotswolds (24 page)

‘Were there any more, do you think?’ Thea asked recklessly. ‘Is the village full of little Victors? And I still don’t understand why it had to be such a secret.’

Janice squared her shoulders. ‘I’m not aware of any more,’ she said with dignity. ‘The secret was because of Belinda and Mark, primarily. They were both adopted, you see, because Yvonne was sterile. I couldn’t do anything to harm them. Besides, I had my pride,’ she added.

‘Then you think Yvonne found out about Stevie and threw Victor out.’

‘That’s what I imagined must have happened, yes. But you’ve made me wonder, now. It was all very sudden and shocking. One moment they were the ideal couple, the next he was driving off with two suitcases and never came back.’

‘Didn’t Yvonne ever tell anybody what had happened?’

‘Not to my knowledge. She dropped some hints about deviant behaviour. One or two people thought she’d found kiddie porn on his computer. She’s a teacher – she can’t afford to have anything to do with that stuff. But I thought that was just a cover story. It didn’t fit with Victor’s character. He wouldn’t find much joy in cyberbabes, or whatever they call them. He likes the real thing too much.’

‘Wouldn’t she have confronted Gudrun if she’d found out about Stevie? She doesn’t strike me as a very
subtle
person.’

Janice grinned cynically. ‘No, she’s not. And I must admit I have never heard a single soul even hint that Stevie was Victor’s, any more than they did about
Ruby. You know – you’re the first person I have ever told, in all these years. It’s like cracking open a dead shellfish, and letting the rotten stink come out. It’s because he’s dead, I suppose. The shock has loosened my tongue.’

‘Will you tell Ruby now?’

‘Oh no. God, no. Nothing’s changed, has it? Except I can sleep easier now, knowing he won’t ever show up and give away the secret. I’ve dreaded that ever since she was born.’

‘He must have been a very peculiar man.’

‘Do you think so?’ She pondered briefly. ‘No, he wasn’t. Just following his primitive urges – sex and money were what drove him. Yvonne had inherited a fair bit from her grandmother when they first married, and he used it to set up his business. He was always very sleek and self-satisfied.’

‘Belinda doesn’t know exactly why Yvonne threw him out, either,’ Thea remembered. ‘She guessed it was something sordid like telephone sex. Which fits with the hints you heard.’ The small consistency was somehow consoling.

‘Right.’

Thea couldn’t drop it. There was an important point to be established. ‘But you’ve always assumed they broke up because of the affair with Gudrun? When did you find out about that for sure?’

The tall woman stood up abruptly. ‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘I was never sure. It just slowly dawned on me
that it was the obvious explanation. It was the feet, I suppose. I hated that kid,’ she finished with a flash of ferocity.

‘Did you kill him?’ Thea looked at the big hands, the sturdy arms. ‘I could understand how you might.’

‘No, I didn’t. But I wouldn’t blame anybody for doing it. Not even his mother.’ She cocked her head. ‘The music’s stopped,’ she said. ‘I’d better go.’

Thea almost grabbed Janice’s arm. ‘Must you? It seems—’ After such intimate revelations, it felt almost violent for the woman to leave so suddenly.

‘I must. It’s nearly supper time. Ruby will be wondering where I am.’

Did neither of these women go out to work, Thea wondered belatedly? Or were they running some sort of creative industry in their handsome house? It seemed only too likely that she would never know now. There was a strong sense that Janice was never going to want to see her again.

Yet again, the TV offerings for the evening seemed nothing more than a criminal waste of time. Life was worth more than that, she had realised, when her husband had been killed in his thirties. She owed it to him, if not to herself, to make good use of every passing hour – and watching unfunny comedians or superficial historical reconstructions did not qualify. She could instead make notes about the two murders, at the very least. She could go and have another look
at the cows in the field behind the house. She could, came one final daring thought, have another look at those diaries of Yvonne’s.

But before she could open the bureau drawer, somebody was knocking tentatively on the firmly closed front door, so quietly that she would never have heard it if she hadn’t already been in the hall. She went and opened it, feeling more nervous than if there had been thunderous banging.

A young woman stood there, as exotically un-European as Belinda Parker had been earlier that day. But this one was darker skinned and rounder eyed. ‘Yes?’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’

‘You are Yvonne Parker?’

‘No, no. I’m her house-sitter. She’s in France.’

‘Ah. I suppose she knows that her husband is dead?’ Tears filled the brown eyes.

‘I’m not sure.’ Thea frowned warily. ‘Who are you?’

The answer came obliquely. ‘I was present when he was killed, with a knife. I ran away.’ Her accent was musical, with American overtones, the English words obviously coming easily to her. ‘I thought I would be killed too, so I ran away.’

Thea had to think for several heartbeats. This was a dramatic turn of events, a totally unexpected development. Distress, danger … yes, and a very disturbing set of implications. She stared hard at the beautiful little face. ‘But why come here? Why didn’t you go to the police when it happened? Who
are
you?’
But she already thought she knew who this must be. The Filipina girlfriend.

‘I came because I have to understand what it was about. Why is poor Victor dead, when he was such a kind sweet man?’

‘Was he?’ Thea glanced at her mental image of the Parker patriarch as a selfish, slightly intimidating man, with unwholesome proclivities when it came to choosing female company.

More tears filled the doe-like eyes. ‘How will I ever manage without him? I have no visa, no money, nobody to be with. Victor organised it all, he paid my fare. He said he would marry me, and I could stay here for ever.’

‘How did you know this address? How did you find this house?’

‘I went back later, and took this.’ She held up a bulging Filofax, which struck Thea as rather old-fashioned. ‘It was in his briefcase. It says “Yvonne. Hyacinth House, Snowshill, Gloucestershire”. I found it on the computer, quite easily. There is a train to Moreton-in-Marsh and then a bus.’

‘You amaze me.’ The girl had even pronounced ‘Gloucestershire’ almost correctly. Still Thea did not usher the grief-stricken creature into the house. This was, after all, an illegal immigrant, an e-bride of some description. And an ear witness at least to the killing of Victor Parker – as Thea herself was, she remembered. ‘I heard it,’ she said impulsively. ‘He
was talking to me on the phone.’

The eyes widened as this information was processed. ‘I came home with the food,’ she began slowly. ‘He was speaking on his mobile. I went into the kitchen with the bags, then I went to the bathroom and closed the door. He was still speaking. I heard nothing. I was there for … two, three minutes. Perhaps less. I came out and he was on the floor, blood like a fountain from his chest. He was wearing no clothes.’

‘No clothes?’

The girl flushed. ‘He liked air on his skin. It was a warm night.’

‘You must have heard something.
I
did.’ She cast her mind back to the truncated conversation. What had she really heard, before the screams began? Little more than doors opening and closing, and Victor saying, ‘Hi, Babe,’ before giving a choked cry that might well not have been very loud.

The Filipina simply shook her head.

‘How could the attacker get in? Wasn’t the door locked?’

‘I left the key in the lock. My hands were full of the bags. I intended to go back for it.’

‘I heard the buzzer,’ Thea remembered. ‘Why would the killer press the buzzer, and then just walk right in, anyway?’

The girl had no explanation, but simply shrugged.

Both women were aware that the details of the
doors mattered scarcely at all. Thea, however, could not abort her obsessive need to visualise the whole episode. ‘You must have been followed,’ she said. ‘The timing is too coincidental otherwise.’

‘I stayed out on Sunday, when Mrs Parker visited. Victor said it would be best.’

‘So you never saw her? And she didn’t know about you?’

‘I know Belinda and Mark,’ said the girl defensively. ‘Victor said Vonny should be kept in the dark, for her own good.’

‘Was it a man or a woman who stabbed him?’ she asked swiftly, hoping to catch the girl unawares.

‘How can I know? I think a man. A woman – how could a woman do such a thing?’ She wept unrestrainedly, her mouth a childlike arch of misery.

Thea was too caught up with the mystery of it all to feel much sympathy. There was still a chance that this was a murderer standing before her. ‘Where did you go on Sunday?’

‘To my friend in Tufnell Park. She is a nanny with her own flat.’

‘Were you a nanny? Before you met Victor?’

‘Oh no. A nanny has a visa, a permit to stay here. I am merely a visitor. Three months.’ She grimaced miserably. ‘Now I have been here eight months.’

‘You’re in trouble,’ said Thea flatly. ‘Particularly as you failed to call the police to a dying man. Did you run away leaving him to bleed to death? Don’t you
think you might have saved his life if you hadn’t been such a coward?’

‘No, no. Of course I didn’t do that. He was dead in seconds. I could not stay – what good would that do?’

‘It was two days before he was found. Belinda went there today. How do you think she felt, walking in on her dead father? Probably covered in flies by this time.’

‘I put a blanket over him. I am sorry, but it was not my fault at all. I was afraid.’

‘But you took the time to pack a bag and take his Filofax.’

The small chin lifted. ‘The bag was packed already. We were going away for a little holiday. I went outside, for a moment, and then turned back for the things.’

‘You could have killed him yourself,’ Thea said carefully. ‘Did you think the police would come to that conclusion?’

‘Perhaps, yes. I felt I should find his wife and tell her he did not suffer, that he was a good man, very kind. I felt we should be together in our mourning.’

Thea found this sentiment hard to swallow. ‘I’m not sure you’re right about that. Victor was probably very sensible in keeping you apart. I think it’s more likely that you thought you could somehow blackmail her into helping you.’

Emotion swamped the delicate features. Defiance, confusion, pride all jostled for dominance. Thea resisted a temptation to like her. ‘But he phoned me
and said she never came. He gave up waiting for her.’

‘Was that on Saturday or Sunday?’

‘Saturday.’

With resignation, Thea accepted that she could not prolong this doorstep conversation any further. Either she should send the girl away, or let her into the house. Neither seemed feasible. Once in, she might never leave again. But if she had no transport, where was she supposed to go? Irritation at being placed in such an impossible dilemma made her speak sharply. ‘I still don’t understand why you came here. What are you planning to do for the night? Where will you stay? What did you plan to say to Yvonne, for heaven’s sake?’

‘I see,’ said the girl hopelessly. ‘You will not understand. You are not a relative, you know nothing about the Parker family. I am sorry to have bothered you.’ The delivery was stilted, dignity keeping her chin high. Thea wondered why she had so little pity for the creature’s plight. What harm could it do to let her in and give her a bed for the night? Normally, she liked to think, she would have been very much kinder.

‘It isn’t my house,’ she said. ‘I can’t just invite you in. I don’t know for sure who you might be. And people have
died.
’

‘People?’

‘Yes. Your … boyfriend wasn’t the first. We’re all having to be careful – do you see?’ Was she simply being xenophobic, suspicious of this person purely
because she was foreign? Or was her caution entirely valid? She remembered that Belinda had said she didn’t like her, and wondered whether that was having an influence. On the face of it, here was a pathetic exploited waif, enticed to Britain with all sorts of promises and then expected to devote her life to the service of an ageing businessman with a suspiciously complicated family life. How could it ever be expected to work? How could the girl have been stupid enough to go along with it? Thea had no idea of the economic or social conditions in the Philippines, but she had met one or two exploited girls before and never found a proper answer to these questions.

‘You want me to go away, then?’ Again, the uplifted chin, with little hint of any reduced self-respect. The girl had a sort of class, Thea acknowledged. Perhaps in her own country she was an aristocrat, assuming she had rights wherever she was in the world. She seemed capable and educated. Why, then, not apply for a proper visa in the approved fashion?

‘I’m afraid so,’ she said firmly. After all, this was not really a ‘girl’ at all. She was at least thirty – with fabulous bones and skin that would preserve her youth for decades – and old enough to take care of herself. And it was, after all, just remotely possible that she was a double murderer. She might have her own excellent reasons for wanting both Stevie and Victor dead, for all Thea knew.

‘Is there another bus?’

‘I have no idea, but I doubt it. There are B&B places in the village, though. And perhaps the pub offers accommodation.’ Appalled at her own lack of charity, she silently thought,
And it’s a warm summer night. You can lie under a hedge with the cows.

‘B&B? That means a place to sleep?’

‘Bed and breakfast. They probably charge around thirty pounds or so. Of course, it is high season. They might be full.’

‘You don’t care about me, do you? You have no kindness.’

Thea’s mind filled with scenes from films and books – not to mention the countless nativity plays she had seen – where hard-faced women refused entry to obviously needy travellers, out of meanness of spirit or paranoid suspicion or sheer reluctance to put themselves to any trouble. Now she had become one of them, and it stabbed her own sense of who she was. But she held fast to a powerful instinct. ‘It’s not my house,’ she repeated. ‘I have no authority to let total strangers in for the night. And when you think about it, it isn’t very likely that Yvonne would want you under her roof, is it?’