Shadows in the Cotswolds by Rebecca Tope Page A

His glance flicked from Thea to Reuben Hardy and back again. ‘Perhaps we could finish our lunch in peace now?’ He returned doggedly to his cottage pie. Thea and her mother tried to do the same, but neither of them found eating to be possible. The question of Oliver’s location was apparently not so much of a mystery after all. If this man knew aboutit, Thea felt decidedly aggrieved at being kept in the dark.
    ‘Oh … sorry,’ said Reuben Hardy, obsequiously. ‘I understand. Say no more.’ He tapped the side of his nose in a parody of the Monty Python sketch.
    All three turned their backs on him then, and for five minutes they maintained their position. Then Thea glanced at him again. His facile grin had faded, and he was chewing a lip while keying something onto an iPhone. One foot was tapping a leg of the table. She thought over what he had said to them, trying to understand his motives in making contact as he had.
    ‘What did you want from us?’ she burst out, her instinctive curiosity getting the better of her. ‘Why did you speak to us at all?’
    ‘Want?’ he repeated, with wide-eyed innocence. ‘Nothing at all. I was just trying to be friendly. My wife said you seemed nice. I can see Oliver’s bird hide from the window of my flat, so I feel a sort of fellowship, if you like.’
    ‘In that case, you’ll know there’s been some trouble there today, won’t you?’ She was hoping to shock him into revealing how much he knew about the murder, if anything.
    ‘Pardon?’
    ‘There’s been a lot of coming and going all morning,’ she prompted.
    ‘You know – I don’t think I’ve looked out of thewindow all day. It’s been rather a rush, one way and another. Why – what happened?’
    She scrutinised his face for a long moment. His colour was definitely different and he was finding it impossible to meet her eye. But it seemed to her that he was betraying little more than a natural worry that his equilibrium might be disturbed by whatever she might tell him. ‘I can’t say, I’m afraid. It’ll all come out later today, but for the moment it’s better not to spread gossip. I’m sure you’ll understand.’
    His iPhone warbled at him, and he looked down at the screen.
    Thea didn’t wait for further conversation with him. ‘We’d better go,’ she said, noticing that Fraser had finally put down his fork. The old man hesitated fractionally, as if resistant to being given instructions by a woman. Thea stood up impatiently, yanking at her placid dog, and marching determinedly back through the pub. She had no reason to rush, nothing enticing was beckoning, but her patience had run thin. She felt irritated with her mother for taking up with these Meadows people in the first place. Seen from that angle, everything was her fault. She turned back, tempted to say something to this effect.
    She caught a complicated look passing between the elderly pair. Some kind of warning was being given by him, received with a pleading expression by her mother – an expression that made Thea angry. But there was also an intimacy, an indication thatthere was something shared, something understood, that softened the apparent aggression. As if he might be saying
Just be careful, you know how important this is
. And she was replying
Yes
,
I know, dear, but I really don’t like it.
Thea felt no need to defend her mother – rather her anger spread to them both. She was being excluded, even possibly
used
. They had engineered her into this house-sitting commission, without telling her why or forewarning her of the hazards. She felt isolated and exploited and childishly rebellious.

    Gladwin was in the road talking to a stout woman wearing leather riding boots and a corduroy jacket when they got back to Thistledown. There seemed to be some animosity in the air. ‘But I
always
go through here on a Sunday,’ the woman was saying, as if for the third or fourth time. ‘It’s a regular routine.’
    ‘I’m sorry, madam, but