Tope Revenge in the Cotswolds

The enthralling cozy crime series
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7490-1814-6
Verlag: Allison & Busby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 13, 320 Seiten

Reihe: Cotswold Mysteries

Thea Osborne, Cotswold house-sitter with an infamous reputation for getting mixed up in crime, is determined to avoid trouble this time. Her latest commission in the village of Daglingworth seems straightforward, with most of her time spent looking after an old corgi and a hibernating tortoise. Thea is ready for a relaxing if rather boring two weeks, with phone calls to new boyfriend Drew Slocombe the highlight of her days. Until, that is, a dead body is discovered in a nearby quarry . . .

Rebecca Tope is the author of three bestselling crime series, set in the Cotswolds, Lake District and West Country. She lives on a smallholding in rural Herefordshire, where she enjoys the silence and plants a lot of trees.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Tope, Rebecca

Leseproben

Daglingworth was as pretty as a hundred other little Cotswold settlements. Built around the intersection of two insignificant little roads, it enjoyed a peace and quiet that undoubtedly elevated the property values. The map clearly showed how the modern A417 had replaced older routes to Cirencester, with Daglingworth most likely a point of some importance at some long-gone time. But now the little lanes led nowhere but to other secluded villages or simply formed loops back to the big main road. The starting point of the footpath was somewhere close to the Fosters’ house, and she scanned the lane for a sign. Back towards the centre of the village was an elevated path running alongside the road, presumably constructed in order to keep pedestrians and their dogs clear of any traffic. The houses in view were mostly discreet stone cottages, the colours showing their age.

Peering at the map, she concluded that the path she wanted was adjacent to the old school a little way further down to the right. She set off that way, and found she’d guessed correctly. Pausing to inspect the converted school, she drifted back in time to when it would have rung out with childish voices and a summoning bell. Now it seemed to have become a single dwelling, boasting very generous living space. ‘All right for some,’ she muttered.

A grassy lane presented itself, running in roughly the expected direction, but with no official indication that it was a public path. ‘Must be right,’ said Thea and let the dog off the lead. Hepzie ran ahead a little way and they proceeded comfortably along, enjoying the sunshine and listening to birdsong. The gradient was just enough to make her aware of her breathing. ‘Not as fit as I should be,’ she sighed. Perhaps if she did this walk every other day, she would notice an improvement.

The lane itself was interesting, and she wondered whether it had once been a well-used thoroughfare. It was hard underfoot even after a muddy winter, and was just wide enough for tractors and cars to traverse if necessary. It crossed the little road on which she had driven into the village a few hours earlier and headed for Itlay, which turned out to be almost too small a place to justify a name of its own. The view became more open and traffic was audible. The uphill slope had levelled out, much to her relief.

Hepzie seemed safe enough running free, and the absence of an eager dog pulling at her arm made it easier to pursue her own thoughts. Thoughts which tended towards Drew, as if to a magnet. Drew’s cool, gentle hands; his attentive grey eyes; his easy charm and boyish humour – five years Thea’s junior, he did strike her as inescapably boyish. Falling in love had not embarrassed Drew as much as it had Thea. She had still not disclosed the full extent of her feelings to her daughter, nor to any other relatives. The truth was leaking out, bit by bit, but nothing had actually been said to them. Since the dramatic events around Christmas, less than three months earlier, had been a word she and Drew had used a lot, but only in private between themselves.

The future didn’t worry them. ‘No need to decide anything irrevocable,’ said Drew, if the subject arose. She assumed that they intended to set up home together at some point, whilst knowing it had to be delicately arranged. She was not in any rush to take the role of stepmother to Stephanie and Timmy. Motherhood had never entirely suited her, even with her own child.

Before she knew it, there was a large square tunnel before her, and Hepzie was yapping at something inside it, the sound echoing and reverberating alarmingly. The dog herself was bewildered by the noise she was making and quickly fell silent. The squirrel she had spotted made a rapid escape and Thea joined the spaniel under the westbound carriageway of the A417.

‘Come on, silly,’ she said, quelling the urge to yodel and enjoy making her own echoes.

A second tunnel was a few yards ahead, and then they emerged onto another lane, with a dramatic and unexpected sight to the right. Through the spindly bare trees, a huge stone quarry fell away below them. Massive chunks of yellow rock were lined up and giant diggers sat waiting to be activated. Such an industrial scene was entirely alien in this soft self-indulgent region – and yet Thea had been aware all along that the lovely stone houses had been built from material dug out of the ground on their very doorstep.

There were quarries galore throughout the Cotswolds. Her map showed them on all sides. And yet this one was simply marked with a few discreet squiggles that only then did she interpret as suggesting stones. She recalled a road sign saying ‘Daglingworth Quarry’ and concluded that this enormous hole in the ground was the site it referred to.

A minute or two more walking brought her to a specific viewing spot, with a fence and chippings of yellow stone to stand on. She stood and peered over, wondering how many feet above the quarry floor she must be. Too many for comfort, as a nearby sign warned. You certainly wouldn’t want to fall that far. She glanced around for Hepzibah, hoping the dog wouldn’t find a hole in the fence and go bouncing down the rock face. Her pet was close by and met her eye with a reassuring wag, as if to say, .

They wandered on and exactly as the map predicted, the lane soon emerged onto a proper road, which was apparently part of ‘The Welsh Way’. Somewhere there should be a stile into a field on the left, a dotted red line showing a direct path to Bagendon’s Upper End. ‘Not far now,’ said Thea. The quarry was on her right, shielded by trees, and she soon forgot all about it.

A footpath sign confirmed her map-reading skill, albeit standing in the middle of a thicket of brambles that was impassable even in early spring. ‘Huh!’ Thea complained. ‘How do we get through that?’

Hepzie sniffed the ground, and trotted a few yards along the road. She then veered to the left, and jumped onto a pile of stones. Following her, Thea realised that this was the way into the field – not a stile, but a gap in an old wall, which you could simply step through. ‘Okay,’ she murmured.

A very faint path showed in the grass of the field, which sloped gently down to a strip of woodland. No further signs could be seen, but there was no alternative to entering the wood and finding a way through. Hesitantly, with another close examination of the map, she stepped beneath the leafless trees. Just to her left, two large upright square stones showed where shepherds of a century and more – probably a lot more – ago had built a permanent barrier to exclude or contain their sheep. She wished Drew had been there to see them with her. Such small indications of long-ago human activity always delighted them both.

Hepzie’s yapping drew her attention to people sitting amongst the trees on the horizontal trunk of a fallen birch or ash. They were talking intently together, and took almost no notice of Thea and her dog, apart from a visible flicker of irritation. Two young women were perched there, eating bread and swigging from a wine bottle. The conversation was obviously too absorbing to allow anything to interrupt.

‘He’ll get around to it in his own good time,’ said one. To Thea’s interested gaze, she appeared to be somewhere in her mid twenties, with hair rolled up and tucked inside a woolly hat. Long flexible limbs, straight back and high ringing voice.

‘That’s not good enough, though, is it?’ replied her companion. ‘Nella’s going mad, waiting for him to get his act together. And you can’t blame her. It’s been now.’

‘Less than six months. Loads of couples stay engaged for years without fixing a wedding date. I don’t know why she’s in such a rush.’

‘She wants a proper old-fashioned wedding, that’s why. And it can take a year to arrange it all. She thinks she’ll be middle-aged before they get around to it, at this rate.’ The second speaker was shorter, plumper and younger than her friend. She had a peaches-and-cream complexion and fair hair.

Thea knew she was expected to simply keep walking past them, but two things stopped her. One was that she genuinely wasn’t certain as to where the path had gone. There were narrow ways going off in at least three directions, and she could not see where any of them led. The trees might be bare but they were close together, screening anything further than a few yards away.

The other reason was that she felt it rude of the twosome to ignore her so completely. She wanted them to acknowledge her, to be friendly and interested. So she simply stood there, looking at them, waiting for a pause in which she might ask the way.

The conversation continued in the same vein for another minute or two – the hesitant fiancé, the increasingly frustrated would-be bride, each with a defender. Thea found herself siding with the younger girl who favoured a quick wedding, despite an irritation with the idea that it would take a year in the planning. , she wanted to call out. One lesson she had learnt was that delay was seldom a good idea. You never knew what might happen to snatch away your security and well-being. If the engaged couple really loved each other, they should sweep aside all doubts and grab every available moment together.

And then she quietly tutted at her own maudlin thoughts. After all, she and Drew were at a standstill in their own relationship. Undue haste could be just as bad as a moderate delay. Perhaps there were good reasons for this man to...