A Cotswold Christmas Mystery

small space for the plate of mince pies, but otherwise left everyone to fend for themselves.
Ant and Percy were soon back, as promised. The young man – who was their real friend out of the Frowse family – hung a grey jacket on the back of the door leading to the rest of the house, where it joined several others. The dog flopped down on a muddy piece of material in a corner, which comprised his bed.
‘The daughters are here,’ said Ant. ‘Two of them, anyway.’
‘Already!’ Beverley groaned. ‘Christmas isn’t for another week.’
‘Carla’s going to be sick of them by then,’ said Digby.
‘And Rufus even more so,’ laughed Ant. ‘All they want to do is spend his money.’
‘They deserve each other,’ Beverley snarled. ‘Rotten, the whole lot of them.’
Stephanie was startled at the venom in the woman’s voice. Usually she kept things light when the landlord was under discussion. Everyone fell silent for a moment.
‘Don’t let them get to you, pet,’ said Digby wearily, as if he’d said the same thing a thousand times. ‘We’ll beat them in the end, you’ll see.’

Chapter One
Stephanie Slocombe, aged eleven and three-quarters, had completed the first term at her new school. The last day had just ended and she was going home to wait for Christmas. Her schoolbag was pulling on her shoulder and making her walk crookedly because it was packed with cards and presents from just about everyone in her class. Even nasty Millie Forster, who hated her, had dropped a card for her into the classroom postbox. Stephanie had opened it in horror, aware that she had not sent the girl one herself. There was no time left to post one now, either, unless she could persuade Thea to drive her to the post office to catch the last collection, which was vanishingly unlikely. It was all a great worry, but at least there were a few boys who hadn’t remembered her, which balanced things out a bit.
The special Last Day Lunch was still weighing almost as heavily in her stomach as the schoolbag on her shoulder, mainly because at least three of her friends hated Christmas pudding, so she had helped them to finish theirs.
But she did not feel at all overburdened. Instead she skipped lightly up the driveway to the waiting car, driven by her stepmother, Thea. Millie had probably sent the card with the clear intention of embarrassing her, she decided, and could therefore be safely forgotten. It would be stupid to let her spoil these thrilling days before Christmas Day itself.
Thea looked to be in a reasonably good mood. This was not always the case. By a frustrating twist of Local Authority rules, Stephanie was not allowed onto the school bus that went right through Broad Campden and on to more outlying villages. She lived just over a mile away from school, which everyone said was perfectly walkable for someone at a secondary school. Two miles, and the bus might have taken her. So Thea or Dad, who did not think it walkable at all, had to drive her to school in the morning and bring her back in the afternoon. There had been talk of sharing with other parents, but there was nobody in Broad Campden who seemed to fit the bill. Two Year Ten girls and a boy in the sixth form were the only ones who lived anywhere near the Slocombes.
Thea complained quite a lot about this extra driving. ‘Another nine years of this,’ she moaned, having worked out that Timmy would be at school for that long. ‘It’s a life sentence.’
‘Don’t be so melodramatic,’ her husband had reproached her. ‘It’s only for another year or two. They can walk it when there’s two of them, at least in the summer. And I already take her some mornings.’
‘I know you do—’ Stephanie was sure Thea had been going to start sounding off about having to answer the phone when Drew was out, which was nearly as bad as driving back and forth to school. Thea’s restless nature was all too familiar after a year and a bit of living with her. Things had not gone nearly as smoothly as everyone had thought they would when there’d been a funny little wedding with hardly any people and a sort-of party in a pub afterwards. Stephanie still remembered how her mum had always been around, even before she got so ill and could hardly get out of bed. Thea was a lot more restless, never altogether satisfied. But at least she loved Dad. The special smile she reserved just for him was enough to keep Stephanie on her side. Dad was lucky in that respect, although he didn’t always seem to remember it. Sometimes he forgot to smile back, and Thea would shake her head about it, and look cross. Stephanie always wanted to explain about the way his mind worked; how he could only do one thing at a time, and you just had to wait your turn for his attention. Thea wasn’t good at waiting. It was like having a semi-wild animal in the family – or maybe a selkie. A creature that was always yearning to be somewhere else, however much she might love the people she lived with. The story of the beautiful fisherman’s wife who was actually a transformed seal had gripped Stephanie in Year Six, not least because she could see how close to her own family life it was. One night she actually had a dream that Thea turned back into a seal and swam away for ever.
Stories about stepmothers were much less easy to relate to. Thea wasn’t wicked or jealous or cruel. She was clever and funny and pretty, and kind most of the time. She helped with homework and suggested projects. And she was really good at birthdays. She had interesting relations, as well, like Auntie Jocelyn and her five children, all older than Stephanie. That was because Thea was quite a lot older