Page 18 of Murder in the Winter Woods (Julia Bird Mysteries #8)

‘Two men who didn’t know each other in life, joined in death,’ said Julia. She felt this was quite a profound observation. The sort that Aunt Edna might make, on a good day.

‘Has someone else died?’ asked Hester, horrified.

‘Well, yes. Lewis.’ Julia felt confused. Hester herself had just referred to it.

‘Lewis and who else?’

Good lord, was the woman going insane from her grief? ‘Matthew,’ Julia said, in her gentlest, most therapeutic voice.

‘Yes, but who is the other one?’ Hester was getting quite het up.

‘The other who?’

‘The man who didn’t know them?’

‘Each other,’ said Julia, enunciating slowly. ‘They didn’t know each other.’

‘Well, of course they knew each other!’ said Hester. ‘They went to school together. Goodness, they even had a band together! How we used to laugh – Lewis Band, your friend from the band, I used to say.’

‘A band?’ Julia felt as if this conversation was rapidly hurtling away from her, and she needed to get it firmly back on track.

‘It would have been, what, the mid-eighties?’ said Hester, her eyes narrowed, as if she were squinting into the past. ‘They were in a band together when they were youngsters, but it had split up by the time Matthew and I met.’

‘Did they still see each other, the band members?’

‘Not as a group, no. There had been some bad blood between them at the end. They’d been doing quite well, apparently.

They’d got a big London manager, who had got them in with a record company.

They were going to make a record, but something happened, Matthew was never clear exactly what and it used to upset him talking about it.

Anyway, at the last minute they weren’t signed up.

Before my time, that was, but the breakup was quite fresh when Matthew and I got together.

A few months before, if I remember. I just know that there had been a lot of blame and bitterness, and a lot of fighting.

The band fell apart. Bands, you know. Matthew and Lewis were the only ones who stayed in the area; the others moved off. ’

‘Were Matthew and Lewis friends later on in life?’

‘They weren’t enemies, but they weren’t friends, particularly. I suppose they just didn’t have much in common, other than the band. But they’d say hello when they saw each other in the village. They were friendly enough, but they didn’t make plans, or get together.’

Hester got up to poke at the fire that she had lit just before Julia arrived.

‘What was the band called, Hester?’

‘Oh, now you’re asking. Gosh, I should know. I do know. It’s on the tip of my tongue…’ She tapped impatiently at her forehead, as if trying to dislodge that sticky piece of information.

Julia was all too familiar with the tip-of-your-tongue feeling, and the anxiety it engendered in the sixty-something mind. She also knew that the head tap didn’t work. ‘Not to worry, Hester, I was just curious.’

‘Well, it’s going to bother me all night if I don’t remember it. Wait a mo, I’ll get Matthew’s photo album. He’s got one specially for the band. It’s got lots of pictures from the gigs they played, and a little tour they did around the area. Gosh, I haven’t looked at that in years.’

Hester got up and walked over to a big wooden dresser. A matching set of stoneware was on the upper shelves. She opened the lower cupboards to reveal a stack of albums. Julia felt pleased that she seemed at least more energetic than she had been.

‘This is it,’ she said, pulling a big red-covered book from the bottom of the pile.

It was fat, and crumpled papers peeped from between the leaves.

She opened the book at a random page, and pulled out the flyer.

‘The Red Berries! Of course, how could I have forgotten? The Red Berries because they were from Berrywick. God, I hope I’m not going dilly. ’

‘You’re not going dilly. Stress affects memory recall, you know. Stress and grief, both.’

‘Well, there’s enough of that about,’ Hester said sadly, turning the pages of the book slowly, as if lost in thought. ‘It’s funny,’ she said, ‘their most popular song was a Christmas one.’

She started singing softly:

‘As white as the snow

The Christmas trees glow

And now I must go

Hoooooooommmeee.’

It was ghastly. But Julia smiled.

‘As red as the holly

The holly is jolly

And now I must go

Hoooooommmeeee.’

Julia wasn’t sure she could stand it if Hester moved on to the next colour, but she was saved by Hester finding the picture that she was looking for. She turned the book to face Julia, handed it to her and pointed: ‘Here he is, look at him. He was a fine-looking fellow, was Matthew.’

There he was, her elderly beekeeping neighbour, forty-odd years younger, in slim-fitting blue jeans and a neon shirt, his hair in a shaggy eighties mullet, a shy grin on his face, and a bass guitar slung around his neck.

Julia found herself smiling as she thought back to her own shaggy eighties hairdo, and accompanying neon clothes.

Matthew certainly had been a good-looking chap.

A blonde girl and two other young men stood, similarly attired, similarly smiling into their glorious futures.

Julia recognised one of them: the shortest and stockiest of the men, with the biggest grin, sitting behind a drum kit.

‘That’s Lewis Band!’ she said.

‘So it is. Lewis was the drummer. Look how young they both were. And now…Still, it makes me happy to see Matthew.’

‘He looks great there. Handsome and happy.’

‘I couldn’t believe it when he took a shine to me,’ said Hester with a laugh. ‘A chap like that? A girl like me? Heavens.’

‘Oh, I can see why he fancied you,’ said Julia. ‘You’re a natural beauty, with a kind heart.’

‘Ah, what a sweet thing to say. Funnily enough, that’s sort of what he said too.

It didn’t hurt that he’d just come out of a relationship.

He liked to joke that I was a rebound fling that lasted forty years.

’ Hester’s laugh turned into a sort of strangled sob.

She put on a ‘buck up’ voice and said, ‘You know what? I think it’s time for a slice of our homemade honey apple cake. ’

‘Gosh, that sounds delicious.’

‘It is delicious, made with our own apples and our own honey,’ Hester said, getting to her feet. ‘Back in a jiffy.’

While Hester went off to fetch the cake, Julia held the heavy album in her lap, turning the pages slowly.

Another photograph of the band caught her eye: in this one, they were squashed up on a long sofa with a few girls.

It seemed to be a celebration. They each had a champagne glass – the old-fashioned bubble glasses, not the flutes – and they were larking about.

The pretty blonde from the band sat on Matthew’s knee, her mouth open in what looked like laughter.

Lewis was turned towards them, toasting them.

Another girl with a halter top and spectacular afro stood behind, holding her glass towards the camera.

A waif in a mini skirt stood with a foot up on the arm of the sofa, and her arms up.

A few other men, who Julia took to be the other band members, or perhaps producers or some such, were caught in similarly celebratory poses.

Julia noticed the caption, the ink pale from all the years, but still legible.

Jupiter Records!!!! London, May 1986 , it said.

Below was a string of names – some of them, like Lewis, so familiar that they were identified just by their initials or a nickname, all in a tiny, illegible scrawl.

Julia leaned in and peered through her glasses at something like: M… Egg…L, Dom, M, K…

It was a lovely photograph, so happy and optimistic. Clearly, it had been taken before their record deal fell apart, with recriminations all round. Poor innocent young things.

Julia couldn’t imagine that a shared experience in an eighties rock band might connect two men killed in hit-and-run incidents in a Cotswolds village, but she reached into her bag for her phone, and took a photograph of the photograph. Because you never knew, did you?