The dog glanced over his shoulder, hearing his master’s voice. He knew there was something odd going on, with the mistress absent and the walk routine disrupted. His dinner had been outrageously late the previous evening, and as far as he could tell no food at all had been consumed on this day so far. There were strange smells inside and outside the house, and the terrifying wire fence might have something to do with it. Percy had touched it once, when it was first erected, and had never forgotten the appalling result. His nose still throbbed at the memory.
Ant was sorely tempted to keep walking until he came out on the Broad Campden road, opposite the pub. From there it was about three minutes to the Slocombe house, where the very clever Thea lived. Hadn’t she plainly said she wanted to help with the mystery of Beverley’s disappearance? Should he not tell her that there’d been a phone call and there was no obvious cause for concern? The sad fact was that there was nobody else in Ant’s life to whom he might confide any of these thoughts. No wise friends or elderly relatives, and, tragically, no sister. Aldebaran had been his best friend as he grew up, his protector and guide. She had explained the world to him, and accepted his limitations as of no importance. She knew he would never venture far from the Cotswolds, never train for a profession or create anything lasting. And she loved him anyway. Thea Slocombe was no substitute for Aldebaran but she was certainly the next best thing.
In addition to that, Ant had been quietly but instantly smitten by Jessica Osborne. Not that anybody had noticed, nor would they be very interested if they had. She lived somewhere miles away and probably had a partner already. She would never give him a second glance. Women seldom did, for some reason. But this added element in an already disastrously complicated Christmas was almost a final straw. Everything was happening at once, and poor Ant Frowse, who only wanted to be a gardener and handyman, found it all too much.
He did not go into Broad Campden, but turned round at the gate that had been lying off its hinges in the hedge for years now. He liked the sad, abandoned sight of it, a patch of untidiness in the all-too-neat Cotswolds. He would often give it a quick pat when he was walking that way. Leaving it behind him, he headed back under the watery sun and was home fifteen minutes later.
At much the same time, Detective Superintendent Gladwin was knocking on the Slocombes’ door, the post-mortem on Mr Blackwood having already been accomplished and a report having been transmitted to all interested parties. Thea told Stephanie and Tim to stay in the kitchen, while she led Gladwin into the living room, which smelt of woodsmoke and candles.
‘He died of electrocution,’ the detective said, after very few preliminaries. ‘And because he was at too great a distance from the electric fence for it to have been an accident, we have to assume it was a deliberate act of homicide. A relevant factor is his pacemaker, which was badly damaged by the electric current that passed through him.’
Jessica had resolved to detach herself from any conversation between Thea and Gladwin, but she quickly changed her mind when she realised the detective had not come alone. DS Finch Graham was at her side. And there was no denying the fascination of the case. ‘How?’ she demanded. ‘How do you electrocute someone, using their own fence?’
‘That’s what a team of officers is trying to establish as we speak. There’s a junction box thingy very close to where he was found, and it would not be impossible, apparently, to divert the current and send it through a human body.’ She sighed. ‘We did it in physics, a hundred years ago, and I can’t remember any of the details. All I can relate it to is the electric chair in America, and The Green Mile. It helps if the person’s wet, and if you connect to vital organs.’
‘One person surely couldn’t do it on their own,’ said Thea. ‘How would you keep your victim still?’
‘Bash him on the head, I suppose,’ said Jessica. ‘But there might well have been more than one attacker.’
Thea was thinking about Digby and his clever games with the keypad electronics at the gate across the track up to his house. Would that qualify him to operate a diversion of current from the fence as well? ‘It sounds awfully dangerous,’ she said.
‘It was a fairly high voltage, and it stopped his heart, thanks mainly to the pacemaker,’ said Gladwin. ‘The pathologist found minor burn marks on the skin, which confirmed it as electrocution.’
‘Are you saying that anyone could have died if they touched that fence?’ Thea was loudly indignant.
‘No, not at all. You’d have to be soaking wet, and holding it for at least a minute, preferably against a vital organ. Otherwise it’s just a nasty jolt.’
‘But was the Blackwood man wet?’ Jessica wondered.
‘He might have been. Hard to tell, given he was lying outside for two days or more before anyone found him.’
Thea was quick to jump on this.
