Shadows in the Cotswolds Read Online Free PDF Page A

lightly. It was true – Thea’s husband had been exacting in his gourmet standards. The meat had to be locally reared and killed, and the gravy made from its juices, with not a grain of Bisto. And he preferred it in chunks, not slices.
    ‘It’s not fussy,’ she objected. ‘It’s wanting them to serve something worth eating.’
    ‘We can have a salad in a garden somewhere,preferably by a river. I’m sure you can come up with the ideal spot.’
    ‘I’m sure I can,’ said Thea confidently. Then she had a thought. ‘But surely Fraser knows Winchcombe? He must visit his brother sometimes.’
    ‘He’s only been twice. Oliver is very reclusive, you see. He doesn’t encourage visitors.’
    ‘But he does know how to get here?’
    ‘Oh, yes. There’ll be no difficulty with that. He’s brilliant at that sort of thing.’

    She came to the conclusion that she was more pleased than otherwise that her mother would be joining her, as the afternoon slowly waned. It was only three o’clock, and there were two hours at least before she needed to go and check Oliver’s birds. She picked up the notes he had left, and saw the lines: ‘Cleeve Common is worth a visit, for the views. Drive to Postlip Hall (left turn off the Cheltenham Road that runs past the church and out of town), park just off the road and walk up the track.’
    The light outside was likely to be ideal for views, she judged. A thin layer of cloud would ensure there were no stark shadows, but a clear uniform visibility was almost guaranteed.
    ‘Come on, then,’ she told the spaniel. ‘Let’s start as we mean to go on. It might be raining for the rest of our time here.’
    She turned left at the top of Vineyard Street andpassed the church. The street was lined on both sides with an extraordinary collection of houses. No two were the same, as far as she could tell. She couldn’t recall another place, whether in the Cotswolds or anywhere else, that offered such a dazzling variety of styles, materials and sizes. It must be an architectural historian’s dream.
    There was a left turn within a mile or so, and she glimpsed a sign including the words ‘Postlip Mills’ and she turned down it, assuming it was where Oliver meant. But there was nowhere to park, and it looked incongruously industrial. Notices directed deliveries and other official business matters, and the road dived rapidly downhill. ‘This isn’t right,’ she told Hepzie. ‘It’s some kind of factory, I think.’
    Nervous of being stopped and interrogated, she hurriedly turned the car and went back to the main road. A second turning quickly came into view, with a sign announcing ‘Postlip Hall’.
    ‘Aha!’ she breathed, and turned left again.
    Immediately she found a fingerpost pointing up a track to ‘Cleeve Common’. It was, apparently, half a mile distant. She and the dog could be up and back within forty-five minutes, quite easily.
    They set off, the spaniel running free. The way was steep and stony, and Thea found herself considering the possibility that it had once been a significant road, bordered as it was with old stone walls. Somewhere there was a hall, invisible behind the trees on her right.Overhead, the branches met to form a green tunnel, and the path snaked enticingly upwards, renewing the sense of incipient magic that had begun with the gargoyle.
    The half mile took ten minutes and left her breathless. A gate marked the sudden emergence onto the common. Hepzie had wriggled through its bars before Thea managed to open it. Ahead was an expanse of scrubby grass, and an abrupt hill boasting a scattering of vegetation that might have been gorse. There was a sign, headed ‘Cleeve Hill Common’, so badly stained with mildew that she could barely read the depressing list of regulations it contained.
    She walked on, turning back every few yards in the hope of a good view of Winchcombe without having to go all the way to the top of the hill in front of her. There were trees in