A Cotswold Christmas Mystery

had come on, as always, so Ant went around the house closing the curtains. He was still thinking hard, now including his oddly unconcerned father. A short while after he’d first reported Bev’s phone call, stressing the words about someone being dead, Digby had jumped into an extended and not entirely serious brainstorm to try to explain what she might have meant. ‘If there really is a dead person – and not a dog or cat or aged uncle – we’ll find out soon enough,’ he had concluded.
‘An uncle’s a person too,’ said Ant crossly. ‘And I don’t recall us having any of those.’
‘Oh, there’s sure to be one or two lurking in the woodpile. Didn’t Bev’s dad have a younger brother who went to the bad? He’d be an aged uncle by now.’
‘Should we go through her letter drawer and see what we can find? Has it got to that point yet?’
Digby had coughed, expressing his discomfort with this idea. He also went slightly red. ‘Better not,’ he said quickly. ‘She would really hate us doing that.’
Ant had still been in panic mode. ‘Dad, we ought to be doing more to find her. Aren’t you scared for her?’
His father gave this some thought. ‘Not scared exactly. Worried, confused – that sort of thing. It’s all too complicated for my simple mind.’
Ant was not fooled by that. Digby’s mind was far from simple. The whole day had felt unreliable, his father acting one role after another, with none of it striking Ant as genuine. The suspicion that Digby knew a great deal more than he was admitting came back repeatedly. Something had happened that Ant had missed – or, more likely, several things.
Blackwood getting himself lost as well was another point that kept niggling at him. There surely had to be a connection with Beverley. Carla must have been pretty panicked to swallow her disgust and come knocking on their door. It made Ant wonder what sort of sinister outfits Blackwood might be involved with. What if his mother had blundered into something really nasty?
Then he snorted at his own fanciful notions. Was he thinking of Russian spies? That Carla had links with some underground political goings-on, and Rufus had got on the wrong side of them, dragging Ant’s wretched mother with him somehow?
‘It’s not impossible,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Unlikely, though. And if there was any whiff of that kind of thing, the police would be onto it, and be taking us a whole lot more seriously.’
The recollection of the police brought another person to mind. The person he had already concluded was his only hope in this whole messy business. When Percy came back in, looking reproachful at the lack of a walk, Ant said aloud, ‘We’ll just have to hope that Thea Slocombe can get things moving for us, won’t we?’

Chapter Seven
Jessica took charge of bedtime that evening. She read a story, not very well, and Thea stayed downstairs with the dog, banging pans a bit in the kitchen. ‘It’s so funny without Daddy here,’ said Stephanie. ‘Usually it’s Thea who goes away. I can’t remember a time when he’s been out all night.’
‘Must be his turn, then.’
‘I suppose. I don’t like it, though. Did Thea go away a lot when you were my age?’
Jessica gave this some thought. ‘Not really. We used to all go together, visiting my grandparents and uncles and aunts. And we had some nice holidays. My dad loved wide open spaces, like the Yorkshire Dales and Dartmoor. He really wanted us to sleep in a tent, but Mum was never very keen on that. We did it once or twice, but it rained and was quite miserable.’
‘Thea always knows what’s the best thing to do,’ said Stephanie, as if this was an obvious truth. ‘And she’s very brave.’
‘Is she?’
‘Oh, yes. She stays in houses where somebody’s just been murdered, and she goes round asking people questions, and gets stranded in the snow. All sorts of things like that, and it always turns out right for her.’
‘She’s been lucky. She should be more careful now she’s got you Slocombes to think about.’
‘Mm. It seems a bit unfair, though, having to think about us when she wants to be having adventures. And Dad doesn’t really get it sometimes. He thinks all he has to do is make enough money, so he sits in his office when he could be cooking or something. He leaves all the house stuff to her, and she doesn’t like it.’
‘Why doesn’t she tell him, then?’
‘Maybe because it sounds like moaning. And anyway, he’s been better lately. Ever since she came back and cried all over him, in the summer holidays.’
Jessica did not request further details, but got off the bed and leant down to kiss her little stepsister. ‘Christmas Eve tomorrow,’ she said, as if the idea was every bit as magical and amazing to her as it was to Stephanie. ‘Night night, kiddo.’
Just before she eventually fell asleep – which took much longer than usual − Stephanie remembered the man she had seen, with the gun that looked as if he had a third leg. Half asleep, she saw him again, much larger than life-size, pointing his gun through the bedroom window at her. The muffled cry she gave went unnoticed by Thea and Jessica downstairs, but she heard Hepzie give a sympathetic little yelp. That was enough to reassure her and she sank into a dreamless sleep.
‘They’re in Sheffield!’ Thea announced next morning, staring at her phone in disbelief. ‘At least, they were when Drew sent this. They got there at eight-thirty last night, in spite of dreadfully slow traffic. It’s a hundred and fifteen miles. They’ll be halfway to Durham by now.’ It was nearly nine o’clock; they had got up shamefully slowly. But now they bustled through breakfast.
‘Are you telling us you’ve only just picked up his text?’ Jessica asked accusingly. ‘If it’d been me, I’d have checked it at 7 a.m.’
‘I was