Death in the Cotswolds Read Free Page A

cope in January?’
    I didn’t bother to reply. He might never havelived in Cold Aston, but he knew the area well enough, so acting like a soft townie didn’t cut much ice with me.
    ‘Does your friend want a jumper as well?’ I asked, once I’d put boiling water in the teapot.
    ‘We’ll buy them off you, of course,’ he said, standing up to put the jumper on. It fitted perfectly. ‘Must be worth quite a bit.’
    ‘You don’t have to. I wear them myself before I sell them. Just don’t spill red wine down it, or blood, and you can give it back when you go if you like.’
    ‘But I want to keep it,’ he insisted. ‘I love it already.’
    I shrugged. Everybody loved my jumpers – which was why I’d been forced to employ a team of spinners and knitters to keep up with the demand. It took a lot of the satisfaction out of the business, but also most of the pressure. There’d been a time when I’d knitted for twelve hours a day, turning out three full-sized jumpers a week, and that’d been no fun at all.
    ‘D’you want to ask her over for some tea, as well?’ I invited. ‘Or is she frying sausages on the camping stove?’
    ‘I’ll go and get her,’ he said. That was always a thing I’d liked about Phil – he didn’t waste time on polite nonsenses, like well, if you’re sure it’s no trouble . He took people at their word. Sometimes Iwondered whether this was a good trait for a policeman. Might he not be missing some of the undercurrents, if he believed whatever his witnesses and criminals told him? When I said this to Caroline once, she laughed at me and said I’d got him completely wrong. ‘He never stops trying to spot the hidden agenda,’ she told me. ‘That wide-eyed look works a treat, putting people off guard.’ She seemed to be saying it had worked rather too successfully with her at times.
    Before they came back, I fetched another jumper for the woman. This was a smaller version of Phil’s in the golden brown you get from dyeing fleece with dead dahlia heads. It wasn’t one of my favourites.
    She came in looking as if she’d only just got out of bed. Her hair was messy and her cheeks very pink. Phil followed her into the kitchen, standing behind her and putting his hands on her shoulders. She pressed back against him, angling her head up and sideways to see his face. I thrust the jumper at her without saying anything.
    She accepted it with a big smile and immediately put it on. I poured tea for them, without offering coffee. I dislike coffee myself and seldom keep it in the house. All I had was some very stale ground beans that had to go into a proper coffee machine and there was no way I could be bothered with all that.
    The woman was curious, looking round thehouse with no shame. ‘It’s more recent than Auntie Helen’s house, isn’t it?’ she said.
    ‘By a century or so,’ I confirmed. ‘This one barely dates further back than the 1880s. It was built for a farm worker and his family, I think.’
    She nodded seriously. ‘Very likely,’ she said. ‘Have you always lived here?’
    I shook my head. ‘I grew up on a farm, near Charlbury, not really in the Cotswolds at all.’
    She nodded again, as if this information fitted her expectations of me. Just a country bumpkin , she was thinking. Probably left school at fifteen.
    ‘So what do you do now?’ she asked. ‘Besides making gorgeous jumpers?’
    I shrugged. ‘All sorts of things. Gardening, watching out for old ladies, lending a hand at lambing time. Keeping pigs. Making wine.’
    She blinked, trying to make something of me, to fit me into a pigeonhole. Phil rescued her. ‘Oh, M— Ariadne’s a woman out of her time,’ he laughed. ‘Always has been. Babysitter, shepherd, home help, and now expert craftswoman.’
    I hadn’t missed the near-blunder over my name, but gave him credit for correcting himself in time. I didn’t mind that he was patronising me. What he said was accurate enough.
    ‘He’s left out the most