A Cotswold Christmas Mystery

any mystery attached to his death.
The body was stiff and apparently unmarked. The doctor was still there when Gladwin arrived, his hair tousled and his coat muddy. She knelt down beside him, to get a closer look at the body. ‘Please tell me it was a perfectly ordinary coronary,’ she begged.
He stirred his hair distractedly. ‘Doesn’t look like it to me. His colour isn’t right. And he’s in pyjamas. And I’m pretty sure he’s been moved – look.’ He pointed to a long, narrow groove in the fallen leaves. ‘That has every sign of something being dragged along it. It’s not a path.’
Gladwin looked around at the handful of officers awaiting her instructions. ‘Has anybody had a look to see where it goes?’ she asked.
A young constable raised his hand like a schoolboy. ‘It leads to the perimeter fence,’ he said.
‘What perimeter fence?’ Gladwin stared at him blankly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The Crossfield Estate is just over there.’ He pointed to a low ridge only a few yards distant, which might once have been a hedgerow. It had a few straggly trees growing along it, and a stretch of dead bracken. ‘He’s only five minutes from home. Less, probably.’
She got to her feet. ‘Show me,’ she said.
The lad took her alongside the scraped track, over the ridge and then stopped. A fence, six feet high, was barely five feet in front of them. It comprised five strands of stout wire strung between metal posts that had been planted every twenty feet or so. ‘It’s electrified,’ said the constable.
‘What’s the voltage?’ asked Gladwin, with a vague sense that this was important.
‘Not sure, but the legal maximum is ten thousand.’
‘Is that enough to kill someone?’
‘Not really. It depends on a whole lot of things. And I would imagine the voltage here is a lot less than the maximum.’
‘I’m impressed,’ she told him.
‘Don’t be. I got it off Wikipedia ten minutes ago,’ he confessed.
‘That’s impressive in itself. You were thinking this might be what killed him, were you?’
‘I thought it might be. I haven’t said it to anybody, though.’
‘So let’s ask the doctor what he thinks,’ she said, turning back into the woods.

Chapter Nine
The path running alongside the woods in which Rufus Blackwood had been found was a popular spot with Ant and Percy. They would amble along it two or three times a week, avoiding going into the woods themselves, but defiantly using the path, making a point of following the perimeter fence as visibly as they could in the hope of irritating the people on the other side. The Crossfield Estate was almost six hundred acres in size, and the Frowses had been expressly forbidden from entering any of it. But the woodside path was an exception. Digby had performed one of his dramatic little scenes, begging for permission to use it as a shortcut to Chipping Campden, if going there on foot. Blackwood had grudgingly acceded to the request.
The electric fence encircled the Frowse cottage, separating it unambiguously from the main house, but enclosing about an acre of ground, purely because the Blackwoods did not want it too close to their own gardens. Beverley had calculated its length and probable cost when it was first erected, using an arithmetical skill that her husband and son sorely lacked. ‘Many thousands of pounds,’ she concluded. ‘All to intimidate us. Who else do they think is going to invade them?’
‘It’s all down to Carla,’ said Digby. ‘Before she turned up, Rufus wasn’t really such a bad lad.’
That was true. Carla was fanatical about security. She had introduced the immoderately bright lights beaming down on the gates and yards all night. ‘All it does is draw attention to themselves,’ sighed Beverley. ‘It’s hard to credit that people can be so stupid.’
It was past midday before Ant and Digby were made aware of the demise of Rufus. The same police officers from the previous day came to the door with a serious expression. ‘Good God – she doesn’t still think we took that damned parcel, does she?’ Digby burst out, before they could speak.
‘This is concerning a different matter,’ said one of the men. ‘Could I ask you both about your movements over the past two days?’ he began.
Slowly the story emerged, albeit very vague and patchy. The policemen had clearly been trained in careful questioning, where the interviewee concerned was given no helpful clues as to why the questions were being asked. ‘Is this about my mother?’ wondered Ant in confusion.
‘Please just answer the question, sir.’ He looked first at Digby.
‘Well, I didn’t go anywhere on Friday. Last night I had a stall in the Christmas market at Blockley. Ant went out selling trees in Chipping Campden yesterday morning. You saw us here yesterday afternoon.’
‘Have you taken the dog for any walks?’
Ant snorted. ‘Yes, of course. I took him along the ridge today, early on. That was about three hours ago now.’
‘The ridge?’
‘That’s right. Monarch’s Way footpath, if you want to look it up on a map. It goes past the Bakers Arms pub in Broad Campden, but we didn’t get that far.’
‘What’s this about?’ demanded Digby.
Ant had a sudden insight. ‘It’s not to do with my mother, is it? You wouldn’t be acting so cagey if it was that. Something’s happened. Is it Blackwood? His wife came over yesterday to say she couldn’t find him.’ He watched the officer’s face closely. ‘That’s it! Hey! Has something happened to our esteemed landlord?’
The policeman was confused. Irony had not been mentioned in his training. ‘You were fond of him, were you?’
‘Well, we’d certainly notice if he wasn’t around any more. He’s a central part of our lives. And his wife, of course.’
‘So when did you last see him?’
Ant exhaled, a long, complicated sigh of relief and gratification and his tongue became strangely loose. ‘So it is him. I last saw him … let’s see … must have been nearly a week ago. We coincided at the road gate – might have been Tuesday