Slaughter in the Cotswolds Read Online Free Page B

postcode?’
    ‘I have no idea. Why do you want that?’
    ‘For the TomTom, of course.’
    The thing in the car, Thea realised. The device that was supposed to stop anybody ever getting lost again. What price adventure and fairytales now? The children of the future wouldn’t even understand the concept of not knowing precisely where you were at any given moment. ‘Well, I haven’t got the postcode. There are various ways to get here, but the easiest is probably to cometo the middle of Lower Slaughter, turn left, up a narrow lane, and left again at the junction, round a bend and you’ll see a stone farmhouse set back from the road.’ She gave a few helpful landmarks, but said no words of welcome. She found that she quite badly did not want her sister to descend on her for a deep discussion of grief and loss. She had been quite pleased to have dodged all that, with the convenient timing of her latest commission.
    ‘Why does it have such a nasty name?’ Emily wanted to know.
    ‘Slaughter, you mean? Oh, I know the answer to that. It has nothing to do with killing things. It’s from “slough” which is a stretch of boggy ground. Like the Slough of Despond.’
    ‘That’s quite nasty as well,’ said Emily, obviously determined to see the grey side of things.
     
    Before her guest arrived, and after all the creatures were dealt with, Thea took the spaniel for an exploration of the village. As Babs had said, the farmhouse was less than half a mile outside the settlement, with the sold-off fields even closer. There was a lot more overt tourist activity in Lower Slaughter than in the other villages she had stayed in. Two stately hotels set the tone – claiming stars and crowns galore between them, to prove the luxurious quality of their beds andcuisine. There would be none of the quiet deserted mornings before the tourist coaches came through that Duntisbourne Abbots or Temple Guiting enjoyed. Hotel guests would tumble forth to savour the early sun on the little river Eye, and self-catering holidaymakers would saunter out for some local colour before breakfast. The characteristic restraint of the dozens of tucked-away villages in the area had been lost in the Slaughters. Recalling what Emily had said, Thea wondered whether it was the intriguing, slightly repellent, name that had singled them out for such relentless attention.
    A well-behaved little river ran through the very centre of the village, with the road on one side, and a wide pavement on the other. This pavement could almost qualify as a promenade, inviting strollers along the waterside. At one end was a bridge just sturdy enough to take cars, and at the other, the path turned a sharp bend to the Mill, which had been converted into a shop clearly aimed at tourists. At right angles to it was a small museum, with old rural artifacts standing outside. A row of gorgeous old houses with colourful front gardens lined the footpath, conspicuous in their Cotswoldiness, and a narrow footbridge offered walkers a car-free way across the river. It all felt like being inside a picture postcard, or a fairytale. The air was still, the water merely flickering in its lazy progress.
    Keeping Hepzie on the lead, she traversed the village from end to end, and met ten or twelve people in the course of fifteen minutes. Even in the comparatively large Blockley, there had not been so many pedestrians. It felt intimate, as if all these people should become one’s friends, or at the least exchange something beyond a nod and a smile – an impression that Hepzie seemed to share. Three times she tried to jump up at a passing stranger, forcing Thea to rein her in tightly and make shame-faced apologies.
    The tension between having definite tasks to perform on the one hand, and the irresistible sense of being on holiday on the other, had gradually become a familiar part of house-sitting. The fact that events had never unfolded as expected only added to this tension. There were many different