A Grave in the Cotswolds Read Free

Skirts were whipping around female legs, which I suspected would normally be encased in trousers of some kind. ‘After all, not many people plan their own funeral when they’re only sixty – especially not a funeral like this .’
    ‘I had the impression of someone rather, well, forceful . I made some joke, if I remember rightly, about her living another thirty years or more.’
    ‘She seemed quite healthy to me,’ Thea agreed. ‘But perhaps she wasn’t. Perhaps she knew this was likely to happen.’
    ‘According to the certificate, she died of an occlusion.’
    Thea Osborne blinked. ‘I don’t know what that is.’
    ‘A blockage, basically. Generally impossible to predict. Very quick.’
    ‘Oh. So she approached you because she wanted a woodland burial, and fixed up all the details – is that right? That weird coffin, for a start. Don’t you have to make some special application to use something like that?’
    I smiled. ‘Actually no, hardly at all. You don’t really want to know the whole story, do you?’
    ‘Not if you can’t be bothered to tell me.’
    She meant it literally – not in a nasty way, but giving me permission to save my breath, if that’s what I preferred. I saw her looking around at the people in the field. She had the air of a person slowly coming to understand that her role was over, the last line delivered, and all that remained was to leave.
    The Talbots had begun to get into their somewhat elderly BMW, apart from the boy nephew who was hanging back as if wanting time alone. I wondered fleetingly about his bike and where he would go on it. The family lived miles away, somewhere the far side of Oxford. Was he intending to cycle the whole way? I watched the family for a moment. ‘Who’s Carrie – do you know?’ I asked Thea.
    ‘What?’
    ‘The boy said something about Carrie, in his little speech.’
    ‘Must be a girlfriend, I suppose.’
    ‘And why isn’t she here?’
    She looked at me with a parody of patient understanding. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
    ‘Sorry. I wasn’t really asking you. Just wondering. It’s funny the way families get to you, in this business. You want to figure all the relationships out, and understand the patterns. Loose ends niggle at me.’
    ‘I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘I’m the same, but in my case, it’s just idle curiosity. I really should get myself a life, one of these days.’
    I had no answer for that, other than a string of inappropriate questions that I would have liked to ask her. Like, was she married? Where did she live? Why was she doing house-sitting, of all things? Instead, I stuck firmly to the matter in hand. ‘Is there a get-together somewhere?’ I asked, thinking I would have heard if this was the case. Mourners were moving off slowly, apparently with nowhere definite to go. Nobody had said anything about adjournment to a local hostelry, or glanced at watches as if due somewhere.
    ‘Doesn’t look like it. How sad.’
    It was time for me to go. The melancholy little funeral had given me scant satisfaction – the woman had died too soon, with only the teenaged nephew showing any sense of loss. Every death should be important; the survivors should acknowledge that the pattern had changed. The permanent hole left by the deceased should be given its due recognition. In this case, I sensed surprised relief amongst the relatives, except for Jeremy, and an almost careless reaction from the middle-aged couples in attendance, who were purportedly local friends. Nowhere could I see evidence that Greta Simmonds’ death caused much more than a momentary pain to most of the people who knew her.
    ‘Oh, look!’ said Thea suddenly, as I started to walk away from her.
    I turned, following her pointing finger to a tree that stood at the edge of the field. Four big magpies were lined up along a bare branch, staring down at the grave.
    ‘Four means a parcel or something like that,’ said Thea.
    ‘Pardon?’
    ‘“One for