Free Guilt in the Cotswolds by Rebecca Tope Page B

meal was definitely going to be required, especially if she made him go and ferret about in the attic as soon as he arrived.
    Those dogs would want exercise, too. Could they wait until Drew arrived, so they could all go out together? She wanted to get a better idea of how Chedworth was arranged. All she had managed to glean so far was a long straggling main street with numerous loops and cul-de-sacs leading off it, and a myriad of public footpaths going in all directions. To the north was woodland and a Roman villa. At least she had found the two significant landmarks for any village – the church and the pub. From there, everything else ought by rights to fall into place.
    It occurred to her that she had not given Drew any instructions on how to find the house. Then she recalled that he had recently started to use a satnav, with all the zeal of the convert. ‘The road signs will all fall into ruin before long,’ she’d said irritably. ‘They don’t think anybody needs them any more.’
    ‘That might be true, but honestly, it is fun. The thing knows exactly where you’re going. It’s like magic.’
    ‘You’re being deskilled,’ she said. ‘You’ll be sorry one of these days.’
    She must find distraction, she told herself. It was barelymidday. He would most likely not even have left home yet.
    So she thought about Richard Wilshire instead. Where, for heaven’s sake, had the man disappeared to? His daughter struck Thea as an unreliable witness on a number of levels. She had initially refused to ever come to Chedworth again, according to Drew’s original report on the commission. Then she had casually appeared on the doorstep with her famous friend, but declined to enter the house. She was vague and volatile by turns, swinging from anger to anxiety, then back to a relatively businesslike answer to the problem of the abandoned dogs. She had poured out a mass of information that would take a lot of sorting out, if Thea ever decided she wanted to understand even the basic structure of the Wilshire family.
    The absence of Millie’s father was clearly of deepening concern to the girl – and if she was honest, Thea herself was growing increasingly worried about him. And yet there was a sense of a family that did not share information very readily. Rita didn’t know her house was being ransacked. Millie wasn’t sure about anything in the past – even the identity of her own cousins. Judith was an additional complication, and the dogs were stark reminders that something irresponsible and perhaps alarming was going on.
    But Drew would shed some light, she was sure. He knew the Stratford addresses of Richard and his mother, for a start. He would take a clear view of the ethics of the situation, as regards how much more delving into Mrs Wilshire’s possessions they should do. Withouthim, Thea might have been tempted to feel a degree of resentment. She might conclude that she was being taken for granted, for example. And that might tempt her to think it would serve the Wilshires right if she bundled up some of these gorgeous old clothes and took them home with her. If nobody paid her, that could be rationalised as nothing more than her due. But Drew would never permit such an act. Knowing this made her smile ruefully, as she covetously fingered a velvet jacket.
    She would have to go down and see to the dogs. They’d be bored soon and that might lead to bad behaviour. She could at least take them to the nearby field and give them a bit of fresh air. Not that she dared let them run free – that way led to all kinds of terrible trouble, as she had learnt in Lower Slaughter.
    ‘Come on, then,’ she invited them, having found their leads in the box still sitting in the hall. ‘Heps, you can go loose, if you’re good.’ Keeping three dogs from tangling themselves around her legs was not an inviting prospect. She opened the front door and ushered them all out. Before she reached the gate, there was a loud voice