Free Revenge in the Cotswolds by Rebecca Tope Page B

‘You can’t let the idea catch on that these homes are really places to go to be finished off. They’re supposed toprovide warmth and comfort and distraction and company in your final years. It’s supposed to be happy and interesting for the inmates.’
    ‘Right.’ He didn’t sound convinced.
    ‘Did they have dementia – your customers?’
    ‘Not that I know of. Let me think – one did, maybe. It was a niece who made the funeral arrangements in advance, but the old lady signed the forms herself. Why?’
    ‘I just thought that might make them more annoying for the staff, and more likely to refuse to eat, maybe.’
    They talked around the subject for a few more minutes, before Drew asked how things were going in the Cotswolds.
    ‘A man died in a quarry,’ she said. ‘They found him this morning.’ For the first time, the thought hit her that perhaps the body had been there when she’d walked past the previous day. He might have been just below her feet, perhaps not quite dead. She had actually looked down and thought it a dangerous spot. Had he been inaudibly crying for help? Had she mysteriously heard him telepathically? Until that moment, she had felt entirely removed from the death, only interested in an intellectual, theoretical fashion. ‘I passed that way on my walk yesterday,’ she added, slightly breathlessly.
    ‘An accident, then?’ said Drew, sounding as if he needed that to be the case.
    ‘Probably. He had a fiancée. I met her briefly, andher friends. He was one of the people protesting about local environmental threats. Specifically, a proposal to build a big new house somewhere near here.’
    ‘I see,’ he said absently.
    ‘You should go. Where are the kids?’
    ‘Upstairs. I’m meant to be doing supper.’
    ‘I’ll phone again tomorrow. Eight o’clock.’
    ‘It’ll put the whole place out of business,’ he burst out. ‘The home, I mean. What have I done? Why the hell did I do it? I must have been mad.’
    ‘It’ll turn out right, you’ll see. Stop stressing about it. What does Maggs say?’
    ‘Nothing. She’s too busy being sick.’
    Only then did Thea remember that particular added layer of complication in Drew’s life. And if it was in his life, then it was in hers as well.
    ‘I’ll ring again tomorrow,’ she repeated and left him to his family.
     
    She fed the dogs and took them round the garden. Then she settled with the bland Sunday offerings provided by the television and did her best not to think very much. She wanted life to remain quiet and uneventful while she was in Daglingworth. It didn’t seem a lot to ask. But then, she had wanted it many times before and been denied her wish. Trouble followed her on so many of her house-sitting jobs. Trouble and malice and deception and fear had all dogged her footsteps from one village to another. People behaved badlymuch of the time. And Thea, with her sharp nose for connections and dissembling, was very often the linchpin in teasing out the truth of what had happened.
    Not this time, she resolved. If indeed it was a
this time
. If it did turn out that somebody had deliberately hurled the protester into the quarry, she wanted nothing to do with it. She had no reason at all to concern herself with it. She was still mentally insisting on this sort of approach when a police detective came to the door.

Chapter Seven
    It was Jeremy Higgins, a familiar face from only a few months before, as well as occasions prior to that. He smiled ruefully and said, ‘Me again, I’m afraid.’
    ‘What sort of time is this to pay me a visit?’ Her attempt at a lightly flirtatious tone was not a great success. Already she was asking herself how in the world he knew where to find her. And the effort required meant that this must be something serious; something professional to do with a crime. ‘Come in, anyway.’
    Hepzie seemed to remember him – but then she did the same scrabbling at legs and frantic wagging with every man she met.