A Cotswold Christmas Mystery

will you? And shut the boot for me.’
Stephanie gave her usual competent assistance and started to walk round to the front of the house. ‘Oh!’ she yelped, as she stepped out into the lane. ‘Who’s that?’
A figure was moving quickly towards the field that opened out at the end of the drivable roadway. All she could see was a silhouette – which appeared to be a person with three legs. It proceeded purposefully without looking back, and was soon out of sight. ‘Did you see?’ she asked Jessica.
‘What? I can’t see anything over this box. I’m going to trip over something if I’m not careful.’
‘Somebody went down there. They didn’t want to be seen. They’ve gone now.’
‘Are you sure? Wait a minute. Let’s get inside and put everything down.’
Stephanie tried to quell the feeling of panic, telling herself that anybody was allowed to walk along the lane, even if it didn’t lead anywhere. There were two more houses between theirs and the field – but she was sure the person hadn’t belonged to either of them. It wasn’t Mr Shipley from opposite, either. And it was dark. Nobody went out for walks in fields when it was dark – even if it was only four o’clock.
Nobody wanted to listen to her thin little story, once they were back in the house. An hour or two passed in a kind of quiet aimlessness. Jessica forced Tim into a belated hug and another long discussion about Pokémon. As far as Stephanie was concerned, Pokémon was yesterday’s passion and anybody still obsessed with it was embarrassing. Thea was faffing about in the kitchen, rummaging in Jessica’s box of goodies and muttering to herself. Drew was – incredibly – on the phone to somebody in his room at the back. The dining room had been turned into his office, with a filing cabinet and shelves and phone and computer. Hepzibah was running back and forth, counting feet and making sure everybody knew she was there. Stephanie hovered in the hallway, trying to forget the figure she’d seen outside. After all, life was full of such moments, where there was an impenetrable adult logic to whatever was going on, and to reveal bewilderment was often to invite derision. Grown-ups didn’t mind the dark, especially in the countryside, she supposed. Except that they generally carried a torch – and wasn’t there a very strong suggestion that activities carried out in darkness were almost always unlawful, or at least suspicious? There was something horrible called lamping, for a start. And something even more ghastly called dogging that a boy at school had sniggered about only a few days ago.
But it was that third leg that bothered her most of all. Because it was very likely to have been a gun – one with a long muzzle that was undoubtedly intended to shoot something. Or someone. Because wasn’t that the whole point of guns?
In the Old Stables on the Crossfield Estate, at eight o’clock on Friday evening, the Frowse family found itself reduced to two. ‘Where’s your mother?’ asked Digby. ‘I haven’t seen her at all today. Or yesterday, come to think of it. Did she say she was going somewhere?’
‘She didn’t say anything to me,’ returned his son. ‘I guess she just took the car and went. She’s sure to have told you where and you’ve forgotten.’
‘What a weird lot we are,’ sighed Digby. ‘You’d think we’d have missed her before now. It did occur to me to wonder last night when there wasn’t any supper.’
‘She’s been out every evening this week, pretty much. I just assumed she was having a drink with some pals. There was all that stuff in the fridge, after all, for us to make supper with. Didn’t she come home to sleep?’
‘Didn’t hear her.’ The Frowses all had separate bedrooms, and unusually separate lives, although Ant couldn’t recall a time when it had taken a whole day, or longer, before noticing someone was unaccountably absent.
‘If she’s taken the car, that just leaves us with the van,’ said Digby crossly.
‘That’s okay, surely? Where do you want to go?’
‘I might fancy meeting a few mates for a Christmas tipple.’
‘If you were going to do that, you’d have gone by now. Look – the chances are Mum said where she was going, but neither of us listened when she mentioned it. I do remember something about a quick trip to London – but that was a week ago. Could be she was always meaning to go yesterday.’
‘Not very likely,’ said his father, with a small frown. ‘The roads are sure to be awful, and won’t London be absolute bedlam? Not her sort of thing at all, this time of year. It’d take all day to get there and back. I wish we knew exactly when she went.’
‘She might have gone on the train. The car’s probably at the station.’ Ant was finding his father’s attitude contradictory. He appeared vaguely worried, while at the same time taking an entirely selfish line. ‘Why does it matter what time she went, anyway?’
Digby sighed and pinched his nose. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I mean – I know she’s unpredictable, but doesn’t this seem a bit … unusual, even for her?’
Antares looked around the disorderly house. Their constantly critical landlord did have a point – they did live like Gypsies. Or rather, like the old-fashioned, politically dubious idea people once had of Gypsies. The people the Irish referred to as ‘tinkers’, who set up camp in lay-bys and strewed a wide area with bits of scrap metal and other detritus. They set up washing lines and tied up ponies and dogs. Ant had seen just such a habitation in County Wicklow, when he was about eight. They’d been visiting Digby’s brother, who had moved to Ireland in his twenties. When he glanced out of the kitchen window now to view the front garden, the similarities were inescapable. Digby was a magpie, visiting local auction rooms and car boot sales and