Death in Disguise

Chapter 9

By eight-thirty next morning Barnaby was at his desk sifting, thinking, looking over his multiplicity of statements and sketches. Most of the latter showed some blanks but everyone seemed to know where they and their immediate neighbours had been, and from these incomplete drawings Barnaby had composed a large complete one of his own, now blown up on the wall.

He was studying this when the door opened and a pale-faced wraithish creature with eyes ringed like a panda’s appeared hanging on to a tray.

‘Is that my tea? About time.’

Barnaby had had five hours’ sleep. He never needed more than six and was in fine form. Troy got to bed at three a.m. The baby woke at four and cried, on and off, till seven-thirty when her dad got up and dressed, whereupon she had fallen into a deep sleep. She had been doing this sort of thing every night for a week. Such a degree of vindictiveness in one so young was giving Troy serious pause for thought. He gave Barnaby his tea, put three sugars in his own, stirred and drank. Barnaby drank too and pulled a face. ‘No sugar.’

‘You said you were cutting down.’

‘Down not out.’ Troy took over the bowl and the chief inspector helped himself liberally, grinning up at his sergeant. ‘Ah - the joys of fatherhood.’

‘She’s lovely. Beautiful. But ...’

‘But not in the middle of the night. I remember it well.’ He and Joyce had taken turn and turn about when Cully had six-week colic. He wondered what sort of helping hand Maureen got.

‘I expect eventually I’ll learn to sleep through it.’

‘I’m sure you will, Gavin.’

Encouraged by the voice of experience and enlivened by his sweet tea, Troy went over and studied the chief’s sketch.

‘That it then?’

‘Yes. Although just how important all those positions are I’m not sure. We’ll look again when we get the PR report. See the angle of the knife and so on.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that, Chief.’ Troy scraped out the last of the melting sugar with his spoon. ‘Quite long it was and bloody sharp. Even if you could conceal it about your person I shouldn’t think you’d feel all that safe or comfy. I wondered if it was stashed in the Solar ahead of time?’

‘Not much in the way of a hiding place. Plus you’d have to retrieve it.’

‘I was thinking of those cushions.’

‘Bit of a risk. Might have a bum on at the crucial moment.’

‘Then you sit on it yourself.’

‘But no one did.’

‘True, true.’ Troy was loath to let go his theory. He wandered over to the window, fingers twitching, longing for a ciggie to set off his cup of tea, and stared out hoping for distraction. ‘’Course that would mean Gamelin knew in advance where the regression would take place. We could find that out when we talk to him this morning.’

Barnaby, lost in the pile of statements, did not reply. About to return his cup to the tray, a movement in visitors’ parking caught Troy’s eye. ‘Hullo, some smart money’s spreading itself out there.’

Barnaby, glad to stretch his legs, joined his sergeant. A magnificent Bentley the colour of bitter chocolate had driven to an immaculate standstill. A man climbed out with some difficulty and walked towards the main building. Watching his slow and stately progress, Barnaby thought it took a tailor of genius to make a paunch like that look distinguished and not disgusting.

‘Who the hell do you think that is?’

‘I’ve got a very good idea.’

Shortly after this a constable from the main building came in with an excessively plain engraved card which Barnaby read aloud. ‘Sir Willoughby St John Greatorex. OK, Troy - better wheel him in.’

The CID was quite separate from the station proper, connected by a high glassed-in walkway. It was quite a distance although not nearly such a distance as Troy made it seem. He took Sir Willoughby through Traffic Control and up two unnecessary flights of stairs, proceeding always at a brisk pace until, by the time they arrived at Barnaby’s office, the great man was gasping for breath. Troy announced him po-faced but casting a derisive eye at the ceiling. Barnaby introduced himself and offered coffee. Sir Willoughby pressed a paisley silk square to his perspiring forehead and declined.

‘It’s very good.’

‘I’m sure it is, Chief Inspector. Unfortunately I’m limited to one cup a day which I’ve already had three times.’

Barnaby, a martyr to indigestion, nodded not entirely sympathetically. His own unruly gut was simply reacting against years of ropey home-cooking and greasy fry-ups in the works canteen. He suspected the Greatorex intestines were finally giving out after an equivalent period of superb business lunches and evenings toying with a morsel of pâte de foie gras and a glass of Margaux.

Sir Willoughby really was the most extraordinary shape. Like a huge tweedy pear. Everything about him was pendulous. His nose, his jowls, the thready pouches under his eyes. Even his ear lobes looked as if the slightest breeze might set them dancing. He was speaking again.

‘On the other hand it appears I may be involved quite soon in a lengthy and rather unpleasant disquisition, so perhaps a further bending of the rules might apply.’

No discipline these people, thought Troy, going off to get the desired brew. No self-control at all.

Soon, sipping delicately, Sir Willoughby said, ‘Perhaps you could explain exactly what the situation is regarding Mr Gamelin. The telephone call I received last night was a little incoherent.’

What exquisite tact! Barnaby imagined the torrent of oaths and vitriolic abuse that must have poured out of the Greatorex receiver. No doubt the size of the Greatorex bill would be commensurate. He explained exactly what the situation was.

Sir Willoughby heard out the man lately described to him as ‘a truculent bugger with a face like a side of beef’. Then he rested long, surprisingly slender fingers on the elegant camouflage of his trousers; winced and returned his nearly full cup to the chief inspector’s desk. Turning to Troy, Sir Willoughby said, ‘Do you think I might have a glass of water?’

Perversely the man’s courtesy irritated the sergeant far more than haughty condescension would have done. Even so there was no way the words ‘Sir Willoughby’ were going to cross his lips. Even a simple ‘sir’ used without a second thought to any half-way adult and reasonably sober male member of the public remained unuttered. Muttering, ‘... Right ...’ he left the office.

‘I understood,’ said Sir Willoughby, ‘when discussing this matter late last night that Mr Gamelin had been formally charged.’ (‘The fuckers have stitched me up, Will.’)

‘That is not the case although we will be questioning him again this morning. As Mr Gamelin’s solicitor -’

‘Please.’ Sir Willoughby’s hand made a weary gesture of disassociation. ‘I am the McFaddens’ solicitor and am here primarily to support and protect Mrs Gamelin.’

Barnaby felt a fleeting sympathy for Guy. The poor sod must have worn his trotters down to the ankles scrambling for a foothold in that tight little clan. The water arrived. Troy put it on the far corner of the desk and removed himself to the window.

Barnaby continued, ‘- You’re welcome to be present.’

The offer was not entirely disinterested. An attendant solicitor helped keep the story straight. Saved trip-ups if things got as far as court. Sir Willoughby smiled, stretched way out for his water, drank a little and gestured again, this time with such stylish ambiguity that it could have meant anything, everything, nothing or all three simultaneously.

They’re going to throw him to the wolves, Barnaby thought, and decided to question Sir Willoughby about the previous evening’s phone call. Normally asking a suspect’s solicitor if he could help the police with their inquiries would be about as daft as trying to milk a mouse and with much the same results. But Sir Willoughby considered the request seriously.

‘Well, it was fairly rambling. There was something about a glove and colourful descriptions of the food and company. The murder of course. And a long lament about his daughter.’

‘What did he say about the murder?’

‘Only that he’d had nothing to do with it.’

‘Did he mention the trust fund?’

Sir Willoughby sat up. Or as nearly up as his avoirdupois would allow. ‘No.’

‘I understand Miss Gamelin intends to give it all away.’

‘Ah ...’ He recovered so quickly the anguished little twist of sound might never have been uttered. ‘Well, of course it’s her money and she is of age.’ He then rose after a certain amount of rocking to and fro. ‘I have to be in court this afternoon ... so ...’

‘Will you be driving Mr Gamelin over here later, Sir Willoughby? Otherwise we’ll send a car.’

‘I really can’t quite say when we’ll be meeting. I shall be going straight from here to the Manor House to see how Sylvie and her mother are. So I shouldn’t rely on me.’

Yes, thought Barnaby. Definitely to the wolves.

Troy detailed Policewoman Brierley to show Sir Willoughby out and watched the Bentley depart with a curl of his lip, thinking, Sinjhan. If I’d got a name like a Paki newsagent I’d keep it to myself.

Nobody had slept much. Breakfast was proving hardly worthy of the name. Everyone was saying to everyone ‘You must eat something’ whilst going without themselves. Earlier in the hall (no one could bear to enter the Solar), they had gathered in a circle to recharge. But even ten minutes’ controlled breathing into Universal Mind had little effect. Grief had disunited them and they mourned individually, hutched in invisible cages of sorrow. Even Janet, whose respect and admiration for the Master stopped well this side of devotion, was dismayed by how disconsolate she felt.

Christopher poured fruit juice, Arno crumbled a barley cake, Heather had carved herself a slice of marmalade the colour of treacle toffee and laid it to rest on some burnt toast. Ken, on Hilarion’s instructions, was just about to retire to the garden with a straightened-out metal coat hanger to dowse for whatever etheric traces of the Master’s spirit might remain, a sortie he referred to as Operation Karmalight.

May sat at the head of the table, proud shoulders drooping, wonderful hair loose and unbrushed. She had been crying and her eyes were still bright and swimmy. Without make-up her face looked haggard. She looked ten years older; a faint facsimile of her former self. Arno’s heart almost broke at the sight and he had never loved her more.

She had been up most of the night with Tim. Arno had taken over at four o’clock. When he came downstairs he had left the boy still in bed lying in a rigid foetal loop, arms locked round knees, eyes screwed tight shut, refusing to acknowledge wakefulness.

Janet said, ‘Shall I make some more tea?’ No one replied. Heather asked where Suhami was.

‘She won’t come down,’ said Christopher. ‘She blames herself for bringing him here and can’t face anyone.’

‘Poor child.’ May got heavily to her feet. ‘Someone should go to her.’

‘You won’t get in. She talked to me through the locked door.’

‘Oh dear.’ Subsiding, May looked inquiringly at Janet and said, ‘Trixie’s not here either.’

‘No.’ Janet’s pulse ticked a little faster at this supposition that she would be the one to know why. ‘She’s still asleep. I looked in on my way down.’

‘It’s for ourselves we grieve of course.’ May’s face twitched as she returned to the subject on all their minds. ‘For him it’s over. He is in the ranks of the illuminati.’

‘And already born again,’ said Heather with a watery smile.

True though this might be, no one was much comforted. It was too soon. The total awfulness of not only the matter but also the manner of their Master’s demise lowered, a dark pall around their heads. Forced to believe, no one could quite believe. It was simply incredible. Like finding blood on the yellow brick road. Only May, still convinced that an immense supernatural force had spirited her teacher away, escaped this added dimension of despair. ‘We must undreary our minds,’ said Heather. ‘I’m going to make a supreme effort - it’s what he would have wanted.’

‘You’re right!’ Ken jumped up as springily as his gammy leg allowed. ‘There’s a lot of loving needed here today. And I vote we start things off with a heart-centred hug - check, Heather?’

‘Check.’ His wife got up and the couple stood facing, arms locked round each other’s waist.

‘Direct eye contact.’

‘Heads together.’

‘Full body contact.’

‘Breathe slowly and gently.’

‘... s.l.o.w.l.y ... g.e.n.t.l.y ...’

‘Flow of compassion ...’

‘My heart chakra to yours ...’

‘F.l.o.w. f.l.o.w ...’

‘Squeeze.’

‘Release.’

They broke apart, smiling. Ken’s trousers looked better already. No one else had gone in for the heart-centred hug. Arno drank a little juice and broke off a bit more barley cake. ‘I think what would help - what would also help I should say,’ he glanced apologetically at Heather, ‘is to keep busy. I mean after a ... After something like this aren’t there all sorts of things to organise?’ He was remembering his mother’s death and friends and relatives endlessly coming and going. The letters to be answered, the funeral tea.

‘Be a post mortem I expect,’ said Christopher. ‘There’s not much we can do till that’s over and the body’s released.’

This blunt remark caused May to gush fresh tears. Arno reached out to take her hand but at the last moment his courage failed and he let his own freckled paw lie in mute but companionable support a finger’s width away. The thought occurred to him that she might (absent-mindedly, of course) take hold of it and he came over quite wobbly.

‘For now I suppose we should carry on with our usual routine. It’s what the Master would have wanted. In the long run ...’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Ken. ‘The long run.’

‘I suppose what he means,’ said Janet, ‘looking at it from a practical viewpoint, is what will happen to the house?’

‘I don’t understand.’ May looked bewildered.

‘Well, May,’ Janet’s voice softened. ‘Assuming The Manor was his to leave, he might not have left it to the community.’

There was a long disturbed silence while this new idea spread its ripples amongst them. Then May spoke. ‘He must have. We were his family - his next of kin. He said that to me once.’

‘To me also,’ said Arno.

‘Don’t either of you know how the house is entailed?’ asked Christopher. ‘You’ve been here longer than anyone.’

Arno shook his head. He was feeling rather depressed at the rapidity with which this ‘nuts-and-bolts’ conversation had taken off. ‘We discussed everything else. Administrative matters, setting up courses, funding. But that just never seemed to come up.’

‘There was no need for it to come up,’ said May. ‘Until now.’

‘Did he have a solicitor?’

‘He’s never spoken of such things. His bank - The Lodge’s bank I should say - is the National Westminster in Causton.’

‘Ask them, May,’ said Ken, ‘next time you go in. You handle the accounts after all. They know you.’

‘Certainly my signature is accepted,’ admitted May. ‘But only on communal matters. I don’t see why they should tell me anything about the Master’s personal business.’

‘At least they could tell us if there was a mortgage.’

‘A mortgage!’ Ken was dismayed. ‘Gosh - I’d never thought of that.’

‘He was so other-worldly,’ sighed Heather. ‘It’s just like him never to have made a Will at all.’

‘I don’t agree,’ said Arno. ‘He’d have considered us and left his affairs in order.’

‘He would certainly,’ said May, ‘have considered Tim.’

‘Our continuation here though,’ argued Christopher, ‘doesn’t just rely on who owns the bricks and mortar, surely? All communities whether secular or religious need a guiding spirit to which they can conform. Ours resided in him. Who else here can lecture as he did, recharge people, give spiritual advice?’

‘I’m a qualified counsellor.’ Heather looked quite pouty. She had five framed certificates on the walls of her room including one for successfully completing a course in Venusian Temple Disciplines.

‘Christopher’s right,’ said Janet who was fully conversant with Heather’s idea of counselling. The procedure usually consisted of Heather sitting rather complacently while her ‘client’ explained the problem. Then, after pointing out that all dis-ease, whether mental or physical, was the external result of internal spiritual ignorance she would briskly offer an astrally oriented solution. After the recipient had paid their bill and left, Heather complained they’d drained her dry.

‘After all,’ continued Janet, ‘we are the laity here. Our tasks have been mostly practical. Making things and running things. I feel our numinous gifts may be a bit on the skimpy side.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ said Ken.

Arno interrupted an uncomfortable pause. ‘Has anyone looked in on Mrs Gamelin yet?’

‘I should let her rest,’ said May. ‘It’s still barely eight. She’ll probably sleep for some time. I gave her a betony tisane.’

‘God, that woman is in such need.’ Heather braced her shoulders and held the bridge of her nose between thumb and little finger in a manner that suggested some wonder-working power source coiled within the cartilage. ‘I really don’t know if I can cope.’

‘No one’s asked you to cope, have they?’ said Janet. She got up and poured some more tea.

In the end it was May who attended to Felicity. At nine o’clock she gently opened the door of the Oriel room, peered round and saw, beyond a foamy explosion of grey stuff in the middle of the floor, a narrow figure in a satin slip perched on the edge of the bed staring at the wall.

Felicity was in a turmoil and feeling very strange. She was trying to understand her state of mind. To separate at least one strand of emotion, draw it out, have a good look at it. But no sooner did she pinpoint one singular sensation than it bolted, swept away in the rush of half a dozen more. It seemed a long while since her arrival at the Manor House. She had not closed her eyes until the dawn and then only fitfully which no doubt contributed to the mental chaos.

At first the extraordinary and frightening events of the previous evening had touched her not at all. Things had seemed very bright, and clear and interesting, but also somehow unreal as if they had taken place on a stage some distance away. Or behind a thick glass wall. (She had taken a third line in the downstairs cloaks before going into the Solar.) Then, shortly after the police arrived, the effect wore off and fear, mess and muddle came roaring in, sweeping away this protective viewpoint. Self-knowledge loomed. She became aware that she was somehow involved in terrible things and that she looked ridiculous, having allowed Danton to turn her into a sideshow whilst she paid massively for the privilege. The click of the door made her jump and she stared at May whom she did not remember.

May was carrying a delicious cup of steaming tea. Visitors’ rations (Earl Grey bags, coffee beans and other decadent goodies) were always to hand in a special cupboard. She had slipped in a few drops of a gem remedy to aid Felicity’s recovery. May placed the cup on the bedside table, sat down and took Felicity’s hand.

Felicity looked dreadful. Her face was a splodged mess as if a child had gone to town on it with mixed crayons. Yesterday’s excessive mousseing, spraying and gelling had left her hair a lifeless mat. May stroked Felicity’s hand, smiling encouragingly and, after a while, persuaded her to drink.

Felicity tried but her mouth was trembling so violently that her teeth chattered against the rim of the cup and the liquid spilled. May went back to the hand-holding. There was not much else she could do at the moment, given Felicity’s emotional state and feeling far from robust herself. Gently, gently was the way. That a great deal of help was needed, May could see - for Felicity’s aura was quite splintered. One of the worst cases May had ever come across.

After a while May approached the open pigskin case. She was looking for some fresh underthings, intending to run Felicity a bath, and found a large pink and gold jar of cream. Using this, she cleaned Felicity’s face with slow rhythmical movements. After the third attempt the wastebasket was full of tissues and Felicity’s original ivory pallor was revealed.

May returned briefly to her own room, rummaged in the fluorescent bowels of her wardrobe and found a silk robe in deepest blue. (No colour refreshed the spirit more.) Then she picked up a tub of mallow shampoo and a fluffy towel, and returned to wash Felicity’s hair.

This proved much more complicated than cleaning her face even though Felicity bent meekly over the basin and kept quite still, holding a face flannel to her eyes. For a start there was so much of the stuff. The hand basin was full of it. May felt she was wrestling with a lion’s mane. This was partly explained when, at the second wringing, a large piece of the back section came away in her hands. Briefly horrified (had she discovered a mallow allergy?) May then realised the hair was false. She wrang it out, draped it over the back of a chair and carried on shampooing. So much awful gunge. How could anyone bear to have all this tickytacky on their head? Eventually the water ran clear. May wrapped Felicity’s hair in the soft towel and patted it gently. Then she combed it back and tied it with a piece of Kumihumo braid from her pocket.

‘Now,’ May bent down until her face was level with Felicity’s and smiled, ‘doesn’t that feel better?’

Felicity made a sad little sound, like a hungry kitten.

‘There, there,’ said May. ‘Now I suggest ...’ she took Felicity’s arm, ‘that you lie down until just before lunch time. Then you can have a bath and something very light to eat.’

Felicity sat down numbly on the bed and gazed at May with dark, pain-filled eyes.

‘It’s all right. Everything will be all right now. We’ll look after you.’ May leaned forwards and kissed Felicity on the cheek.

While these tender ablutions were going on, Janet was washing up, banging her hand-made cereal bowls around as usual in the stone sink. As she slopped water about she wondered about lunch. Suhami’s name was on the rota but she had still not emerged and it was now ten o’clock. It was going to be a disorganised day, the first, Janet suspected, of many. The utter finality of the Master’s death struck her with renewed force and she was sure that no matter how hard they all struggled to carry on as normal, things at the Manor House would never be the same again.

What would happen to them all? Where would they go if the house did prove to be no longer available? Would they try to live together somewhere else? Would she want that?

Janet knew she had no gift for the vigorous meddling in other people’s lives that seemed to be the commune’s definition of friendship. Philosophically, too, it was a struggle to conform. She was not at home with wild inexactitudes or fantastic suppositions and thought it sentimental to pretend all problems could be solved. Also she liked a bit of a grouse now and then, which was much frowned on. Only the other day, making some mildly derogatory comment on the weather, she had received a lecture from Heather on the lines of how she should be grateful she was not blind, or suffering from multiple sclerosis in a tower block.

Irritated by these recollections, Janet decided to break the house rules and make some real coffee. Stimulating uplift - that’s what she was in need of, and to hell with pancreatic cancer. Or was it liver fluke? She would take some up to Trixie as well. And perhaps some biscuits.

In the visitors’ cupboard she found a commercial and sinfully inorganic packet of Uncle Bob’s Treacle Delights. She ground some beans, inhaling with pleasure, and undid the biscuits. The wrapper, with a fine relish for the cultural cross-reference, showed a Chinese girl in a sombrero with corks dangling from the rim. Janet selected a blue flowered plate for the Delights, put it back, got out a little glazed mustard number with a spray of crimson blossom, put that back and finally settled for a pale pink trellised-edged look. She carefully arranged several syrup-coloured biscuits in overlapping circles then, while the coffee brewed, snipped an Albertine rose (a perfect match for the plate) from outside the kitchen window.

Entering the hall with her laden tray, stomach looping an apprehensive loop as she anticipated rousing Trixie from slumber, Janet came to a full stop. There, at the bottom of the staircase, were May and Arno talking to a huge man in a speckled suit. As Janet hesitated, May and the man turned and went upstairs.

‘Who was that, Arno?’

‘The Gamelins’ solicitor.’ His eyes were already slipping after May and he brought them back to Janet with an effort. ‘Something awful’s happened. At least I suppose normally one would say it was awful. I can’t help wondering if it’s a blessing in disguise. He was found dead this morning in his hotel room.’

‘What ... Guy?’

Arno nodded. ‘Apparently he’d asked to be called at nine. The maid took some tea up and he was just lying there. Hadn’t even gone to bed. They seem to think it was a heart attack.’

‘How dreadful.’ Even as she made the expected response Janet knew that she was glad. He had been a terrible man. Avaricious and unkind. The world was well shot of him. And what a piece of news to offer Trixie. What a sweet token of a gift! Better than the real coffee and Uncle Bob’s Delights. Better even than the rose. Arno was saying something else.

‘May thought Suhami might be better able to receive the news. Her mother is still not quite ...’ He trailed off tactfully but Janet was already climbing the stairs.

Trixie was not sleeping after all but curled up on the window seat and smoking again. ‘Has the post come?’

‘Yes.’ Janet put the tray down on the chest of drawers. She wondered if Trixie was looking for another letter in a blue envelope. ‘Were you expecting something?’

‘Not really.’ Trixie was wearing an apple-green silk dress. Her face was unmade-up, the skin thick and smooth like cream. Inside her arms, Janet could see yesterday’s scarlet pinch-marks transformed to little violets as the bruises came out.

‘I’ve made you some real coffee.’ She filled two mugs.

‘You’ll be for it. We’re in a caffeine-free zone here.’

‘And opened some biscuits.’ Janet put her own mug aside and took the tray over to the window. The rose now looked rather silly not to mention superfluous. She had forgotten Trixie already had a bowlful. ‘Drink it while it’s hot.’

Trixie told her not to go on and Janet accepted this routine castigation with the patience of one who knows it is within her power to spring a big surprise. She made some headway into her own mug. Heavens - she’d almost forgotten how utterly delicious the real thing tasted! Was a squeaky-clean colon worth the sacrifice? ‘Is it OK?’ she asked timidly.

‘Lovely. It’ll warm me up.’

Janet didn’t understand. The sun was streaming in and Trixie was bathed in it.

‘Is there any news? I mean from the police.’

‘They’re here now. With the Gamelin solicitor.’ Janet paused, her gaunt ardent face cloaked with anticipation. This was the moment. Still she hesitated, for the news could only be given once and then her purse would be empty. She could not tantalise, coyness not being her nature. In the end she just blurted it out.

‘Guy Gamelin’s dead. He had a heart attack.’

She remembered always what happened next. Trixie jerked violently upright as if she’d received an electric shock. The coffee spilled down her apple-green dress and bare legs and the mug clattered to the floor. She gave a wild shout, which was cut off as she clapped her hands over her mouth. Then she cried, ‘Oh God - what am I going to do?’ and started to scream.

About half an hour after this dramatic and sensational display, the police arrived to interview Tim. Arno led the way slowly and with the utmost reluctance along the gallery towards the boy’s room. As they approached the door, his steps became more and more sluggish until finally he stopped, turned to Barnaby and laid an urgent, detaining hand on the chief inspector’s sleeve.

‘He won’t be able to help, you know.’

‘Please, Mr Gibbs. We’ve been through all this downstairs.’

‘If you’re determined ... would you ...?’ Arno had moved some small distance away, beckoning. When the two men joined him he continued, lowering his voice. ‘I feel I should say something about his background. No one else here knows but it might help you to understand and be ... You see I met him - well found him might be a better way of putting it - about six months ago.’

He paused, cupping his hands round his eyes like blinkers for a second, then continuing. ‘I’d driven the Master into Uxbridge - he was a hospital visitor, Thursday was his regular day - and we’d arranged to meet back at the car. There’s a public toilet nearby which I needed to use. As I went down the steps, three men came up. Big men. One of them had tattooed arms, red and blue. They were laughing - great rough shouts. Not humorous laughter but ugly.

‘I used the urinal thinking the place was empty, then I heard whimpering coming from one of the cubicles. He was in there - Tim. His trousers were round his ankles and he was bleeding from the anus. They had ... used him.’ Arno’s voice had sunk almost to a whisper. Barnaby leaned forwards, barely able to hear. ‘Some money as well ... a five-pound note ... there. I mean, wedged ... It was vile.’

Arno broke off unable to continue. He produced a handkerchief and rubbed his eyes, turning his back while he did so. Picturing the scene, Barnaby felt the pity of it and even Troy was moved to sympathy - thinking, life’s a bugger and no mistake. After a few moments Arno apologised for the break in continuity and carried on.

‘He was in such pain and he didn’t understand. I’ll never forget how he looked ... his eyes ... It was like finding a child violated. Or a baited animal. As soon as he saw me, he started to scream. I tried to help him but he just hung on to the lavatory, his arms locked around it. I didn’t know what to do. I ran to the car park where the Master was waiting and told him what had happened. He came back with me. Tim had fastened the cubicle by then. The Master talked to him through the door for over an hour, even though he got some odd looks from the two or three men who came in during that time.

‘You never heard him speak, of course, Inspector - but he had the most remarkable voice. Not just mellifluous but with a great promise of kindness ... of happiness even. And so compelling. You felt whatever he told you must be true. Eventually Tim unbolted the door. The Master comforted him, stroked his hair. Then after a little while we helped him dress, took him to the car and drove him here. May put him to bed and we cared for him. And have been doing so ever since.

‘Everything had to be sorted out with the Social Services of course. We all got a thorough going-over which I thought a bit ironical considering how the boy had been neglected before. Turfed out of the hospital, shoved into a bedsitter and visited once a week, if he was lucky, by a care assistant. We got his benefit book and details of his medication and that more or less was it. I think the fact that we’re a sort of religious organisation swung it. They said we’d be checked up on from time to time but no one’s ever come. I expect they’re glad to have one less on their list.’

Arno paused then, with a look that plainly hoped this sorry tale would deflect Barnaby’s intention. As it became clear this was not the case he said: ‘Better come along then ...’

Tim’s room was nearly dark. Through a gap in the heavy velvet curtains, sunlight leaked to form buttery puddles on the sill. Arno pulled the velvet further apart. Only a little, but the humped form beneath the quilt twitched and shivered. The air was so smelly and stifling Barnaby longed to open the windows.

Arno approached the bed, uttering the boy’s name: a syllabic croon. He drew back the quilt, the floss of golden hair glittered on the pillow and Tim looked up, his eyes flying open like those of a mechanical toy. Barnaby heard a quick intake of breath behind him and was not unmoved himself - for the boy’s beauty, even disfigured by tears and grief, was remarkable.

‘Tim? Mr Barnaby would like to talk to you for a moment - it’s all right ...’ The boy had already started to cower. Tim shook his head. There was a throbbing vein like a thin turquoise worm in his alabaster forehead.

‘I shall stay here,’ continued Arno.

Barnaby took a chair so that he would not be looking down on the boy and sat near the opposite side of the bed to Arno. At a nod from his chief, Troy withdrew to a far corner of the room, producing a notebook but without much hope.

‘I know you must be very unhappy, Tim, but I’m sure you’ll want to help us if you can.’ A ring dove’s voice, purling. Troy thought the station’d never credit this. Even so, Tim reached out and seized Arno’s hands in what appeared to be an absolute frenzy of alarm.

Arno had said the previous evening that this was his usual condition. But it seemed to the chief inspector, cautious though he had been, the boy’s fear was intensifying by the second. His staring eyes were shadowed by it and the throbbing vein became more pronounced. Barnaby gave it five then continued.

‘You understand what’s happened, Tim? That someone has died here?’

Another long pause then, on the palely illumined pillow, the anguished face turned. Tim’s cheeks were slobbered with tears. Brilliant dark blue eyes touched Barnaby’s, slid away, returned. The procedure was repeated many times. Finally the connection held and he seemed to be getting ready to speak.

‘Ask ... ask ...’

‘Ask who, Tim?’

‘Ask ... her ... don ...’

The voice was but a tangled filament of sound, but Barnaby did not make the mistake of leaning closer. He just repeated his question, adding, now that he had a gender, ‘Do you mean May, perhaps? Ask May? Or Suhami?’

‘Neh, neh ...’ Tim shook his head fiercely and the nimbus glittered and shone. ‘Askadon ... askadon ...’

Barnaby said, ‘Are you saying “accident”?’

‘No, Chief Inspector. He just—’

Arno broke off as Tim made an urgent strangled copy of the chief inspector’s words.

‘... mean ackerdent ... ack ... si ... dent ...’ Having got it right, Tim repeated the words more and more quickly, rising higher and higher on the scale until the three syllables became transformed into a stream of meaningless babble. His body was a single bolt of flesh beneath the quilt and his eyes rolled wildly. Arno gave Barnaby as near to a glare as a man of such equable temperament could muster, then stroked Tim’s forehead with an air of resentful protectiveness that said quite clearly, now look what you’ve done.

Barnaby sat stubbornly on for a further thirty minutes, even though he suspected that Tim would not speak coherently again. Although the boy soon grew quiet, slipping into a self-protective doze, the measure of Arno’s indignation did not abate and Barnaby felt the warmth of it across the narrow space.

He refused to feel guilty. He knew he had been right to question Tim and that he had done it in a tactful and humane way. The fact that the boy was mentally disturbed did not mean he was incapable of noticing what was going on. Of course Barnaby had not realised quite how disturbed he was. Even so ...

At this point in his reflections he caught Troy’s eye. As was his wont, the sergeant immediately blanked out any expression that might give away his true feelings. His lids fell but not before his superior officer had caught an impatient and derisive gleam. Barnaby accurately translated: What a waste of frigging time.

But he was not at all sure that he agreed. It was hardly unimportant that Tim, closest of all to Craigie on the dais, saw his death as an accident. And surely there was, in Arno’s attitude, a much deeper anxiety than that caused by mere protectiveness?

No - Barnaby finally got up and moved towards the door, not a waste of time at all.

Hearing the news of Gamelin’s death, Christopher went searching for Suhami. Her room was empty and he finally discovered her on the terrace leading to the herb garden. May had tried to dissuade him from searching, saying, ‘She needs to be by herself. To take things in.’

Suhami did not turn as he approached but continued to stand motionless like a pillar of salt. He studied her profile. She looked very calm, wrapped in her own thoughts as tightly as the sari enwrapped her slender figure.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘I don’t know.’ She turned then and he saw that she was not as composed as he had thought, but rather dazed. ‘I feel I’ve lost something but I don’t know what. Certainly not him ... not him.’ The repetition was charged with a disconcerting mixture of bewilderment and satisfaction.

Christopher felt ill at ease. Her stillness seemed to him unnatural. He took her hand and said, ‘Let’s walk.’

They moved down the steps, avoiding outcrops of sempervivum and thrift, and into the garden proper. It was already very hot and the air was thick with the thrum of bees foraging among pink lavender and borage.

His future with Suhami was overwhelmingly on Christopher’s mind. Had the fact of her father’s death not arisen, he would have tried to discover how she now felt about leaving the commune. For it seemed to him that it was above all the presence of Ian Craigie that had held her there. Perhaps, even now, she would choose to stay. If that proved to be the case he would stay too for he was determined not to give her up. They sat down on a tiny circular lawn. A Catherine wheel of silver thyme and camomile.

‘How’s your mother taking it?’

‘She doesn’t know. Will told me first. He thought I’d be better able to handle things. I’ll break it to her when we go back. Or this afternoon. It’s not as if there’s any hurry ...’

‘Is it true they were unhappy?’

‘They always seemed so. I can’t imagine anyone being anything else living with him.’ She turned, her expression strained. ‘Perhaps we’ll get like that.’

‘Never, ever.’ Christopher smiled, greatly encouraged by the ‘we’. ‘Other people’s lives. This is you and me. This ...’ he placed his hand on the back of her neck, brought her close and kissed her. ‘Is you ...’ his lips still hovered on her own, ‘and me.’

He was upset by her lack of response. Just the day before she had danced in his arms, almost ecstatic. He reached in the pocket of his jeans and tugged out a flat box wrapped in magenta tissue.

‘I bought these for your birthday. Before I knew who you really were. Then I felt I couldn’t offer them.’

‘But you were wrong.’

‘Yes.’

‘Who I really am.’ The box lay in her lap, ribbon looped around her finger. ‘That’s what the Master said we should find out. That’s what matters isn’t it, Christopher? Everything else is shifting sand.’

‘You can do the philosophical bit when you’re ancient. There’s no answers to the big questions anyway. Open your present.’

Suhami put the earrings on, delicate sprays of filigree, trembling little pearls. She turned her head this way and that.

‘You’re like a lovely temple dancer. Ahh, you’re so pretty Suze.’

She hung her narrow head, surrendering gravely to disbelief. Not protesting as pretty girls usually do.

‘What can I say to you?’ he despaired. She lifted her slender shoulders and laughed with humorous resignation. ‘Yesterday in the byre -’ he tried again.

‘Yesterday you saw how I used to be. Frightened, desperate, grabbing at happiness, at people. Frantic in case I was left alone. I can’t live like that any more Christopher, I just can’t. And I won’t.’

‘But there’s no need to be frightened. I’d never leave you -’

‘You say that now, perhaps it’s true. But people are no different from all other forms of life in that they’re changing all the time.’

‘That’s a bit pessimistic.’

‘No, it’s realistic. Obvious. Change is the only constant and I don’t want to live in fear of it.’

‘What about faith and hope?’

‘I’m not sure they’re relevant.’

‘That sort of stoicism’s for old men on the battlefield. Or neurotics. Afraid to start any sort of relationship in case it goes wrong. Ending up lonely and half-alive like -’

There was a long silence. The bees thrummed louder than ever. One of the fish jumped in the pond and plopped back. A breeze sighed. Suhami said, ‘I shall never end up like my mother.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’re angry aren’t you?’

‘Of course I’m angry. I can see our future disappearing down the drain.’

‘You haven’t understood.’

‘I don’t think you know what you do want.’

‘I want ...’ She recalled that single moment of illumination in the Solar. The Master’s words when they had talked together only twenty-four hours ago. His powerful conviction that beneath the restless tangled surface of her life lay all she would ever need to comfort and sustain her. ‘I want something that doesn’t come to an end.’

‘Everything comes to an end. Lesson One, Stoic’s Handbook.’

‘No, there’s something. It can be discovered and called on. I know that’s true. The Master called it the pearl of great price.’

How very unoriginal of him, thought Christopher. He reached forward and took hold of her plait, teasing out the soft hair that smelt of frangipani into a silky fan. ‘Why can’t we discover it together then? I’m interested in these matters too, you know. Why do you think I’m here?’ He tugged her closer. ‘We could go on a retreat for our honeymoon if you like.’

‘Honeymoon.’ Behind the word a flash of longing. Encouraged, Christopher pressed on.

‘You don’t have to be in a religious community to live a religious life. There are plenty of lay people who make room for prayer and meditation. Exist quietly and harmlessly. Why can’t we be like them?’ Suhami frowned. She seemed uncertain, a little confused. ‘Don’t you think in any case esoteric knowledge is written on the wind? If you’re facing the right direction on the right day, fine. If not ...’

Suhami gave a half smile. She quite liked that way of putting it. It echoed the Master’s proposition: that the pursuit of the dream was not only useless but counterproductive.

Christopher returned the smile double, triple, manifold. His own was quick and bright; full of confidence. He had time on his side. And youth. And passionate determination. Surely in the end she would be his.

Returning to the house they found a confab going on in the kitchen. Everyone sat round the deal table making hay with Uncle Bob’s Treacle Delights whilst absorbing pungent distillations from the Arabica bean. After the proper expressions of surprise and pleasure at the sight of these secular delicacies, Suhami and Christopher helped themselves to coffee and shared the last biscuit. The conversation was about Trixie but directed at Janet who sat well back in her chair, looking more than a touch at bay.

‘Are you sure,’ Arno was asking, ‘that you got nothing intelligible out of her at all?’

‘She must,’ argued Heather, ‘have said something that made sense.’

‘People having hysterics don’t make any sense.’

The scene in question had been chewed on for nearly an hour and Janet was getting sick of it. The others had taken over the distressing and frightening episode in just the bustling and concerned way they seized on every opportunity for service. They didn’t seem to know the difference, Janet thought crossly, between benign interventions, bossiness and bullying. Mind you, it could be said she’d bullied Trixie pretty violently herself, though that had not been her intention.

When the shouting had started, Janet had rushed across the room calling out ‘Don’t, don’t!’ and stupid things like ‘It’s all right’. Then she had seized Trixie’s shoulders, or tried to. But Trixie had wriggled and wrenched herself free, flailing her arms wildly, striking Janet on the side of the neck and making non-stop fear-filled shrieks. Her mouth was opening and closing like a fish and her blank eyes stared. It was the eyes, Janet thought afterwards, that made it possible for her to do what she had done - for there was no trace of Trixie in them at all.

Janet hadn’t meant to hit so hard. The palm of her hand still stung. She must have pulled her arm right back for, when the blow connected with Trixie’s cheek, the girl staggered two steps sideways and fell against the wall. It worked though, just like it always does in the movies. Trixie immediately stopped screaming, understanding came back into her eyes and a huge red patch flared on her cheek. Then the others arrived and Janet was pushed into the background.

Outside on the landing, trembling, gripping the gallery rail, she repeatedly relived the moment of violence. Previously sure she had acted on desperate impulse (anything to stop those awful, soulless cries), now other more complicated motives threaded their way into her consciousness. If she was honest she had to admit that the connecting moment had not been entirely without a certain satisfaction. Even a vengeful satisfaction. How terrible! Janet felt sick with shame at this insight. She had been unaware that her dry and profitless love cloaked hostility. Trixie was right to reject her friendship. She became aware that Arno was regarding her anxiously and forced a smile.

Actually Arno’s anxiety, and there was a lot of it, was pretty widely distributed. The fact that his gaze happened to alight on Janet was almost by the way. The largest object of his concern was, of course, the murder. Like most of the others, he believed Gamelin responsible and couldn’t decide whether the man’s death was a good thing or a bad. Good if the police also agreed that he was guilty, as that would remove the need for a trial and all the attendant publicity. Bad if they were not sure, for that would mean the investigation dragging on, and doing even greater damage to the community than had already been done.

Then there was this extraordinary business with Trixie. Arno had been very disturbed by the wild intensity of her reaction to Guy’s death. He was not at ease with the inexplicable or with sudden explosions of emotion, especially those that seemed to have no logical launching pad. After all, she’d hardly known the man. Even the lightning realisation, on hearing the sound of Janet’s single hand connecting so forcefully with a curved cheek, that he had at long last solved his koän, did not console. It simply threw the loss of his dear teacher into more painful perspective as he recognised with what joy he would have hurried to break the marvellous news. Arno turned back into the conversation - where it seemed Heather was expressing aloud the first of his concerns.

‘If only we knew what happened between them yesterday.’

‘Confucius he say to know is to know that to know is not to know,’ said Ken. He spoke in his ageless-wisdom voice and lifted the skin at his temples to make almond eyes.

‘No wonder he was confused,’ replied Janet.

The previous evening’s tragedy was not touched upon. Perhaps the feeling was that any sort of speculation would be rather crass with Suhami, who was now swishing spinach round the sink, being present. Heather proffered a consolatory thought-brick.

‘I was meditating in the orchard this morning. Sitting oh so still and oh so quiet calling down the yellow flame of Cassiopea as it’s Saturday and you’ll never guess what happened?’ The table waited, all agosh. ‘A beautiful bee settled on some clover near my hand. A real Mr Bumble. He stayed and stayed, whirring his little wings just as if - and you can call this pneumatic synthesis if you like - but just as if he was trying to tell me something. Well, eventually I thought nothing ventured nothing gained, so I reached out and he actually let me stroke his furry back with my tiniest finger. Wasn’t that incredible?’

May said, ‘What do you think he was trying to transmit, Heather?’

‘I think - and I mean like this is pretty earth-centred, OK? - but my perception of the situation was that the Master’s transmutation having been so recent, etheric wisps of his astral body must still be about. Why couldn’t said Mr Bumble have traces on his wings? Because what I was getting from that dear small furry creature was the most overwhelming sensation of comfort.’

‘That could very well be,’ said May. ‘Certainly, if he was able, that is what the Master would wish to impart.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Suhami, now wringing out green leaves in a tea towel, ‘the bee was the Master. A reincarnation.’

Ken and Heather exchanged amused glances. Ken spoke. ‘I hardly think that a supreme arahat, after a life of devoted service to his fellow man, is going to reincarnate as an insect.’

‘So you can buzz off for a start,’ whispered Christopher, who was packing the spinach in an iron cauldron, and Suhami laughed.

‘Heather’s right,’ said May, ‘about left-over matter. I felt it myself this morning. There was a crowd of Elohim chattering away beneath my window. We must watch out for mischief. There’s nothing they like more than hitching a ride on the aura. Ah well ...’ she pushed back her chair, ‘it’s nearly twelve. I must go and run Felicity’s bath. Do you think you could take over the main course for lunch, Janet?’

‘Surely.’

‘And we’d better finish our chores,’ said Arno to Ken. ‘I think we’re both on the garden this morning.’

‘My leg’s playing up a bit actually, Arno.’

‘Well ... there’s always the hoe.’

‘Bending just seems to compound the problem.’

‘You haven’t got a back as well as a leg have you?’ Janet sounded quite pithy.

Ken gave her an all-forgiving smile. Poor old Jan, projecting again. If the group had had a pendulum reading when she first arrived, as he’d suggested, at least they’d have been forewarned. ‘Oh, I have plenty to occupy my time.’

‘Like what?’

‘Hilarion has warned me to expect a mass incarnation of god-beings from Pluto. I plan a lengthy star-seeding session under my Chela pyramid in preparation. And then I thought I’d give the giant bonsai a trim.’

Chapter 10

Ian Craigie’s effects had been released and Troy had gone to pick them up. The scene-of-crime report could not be far behind. Barnaby half hoped there would be something solid from Forensic to support the so far purely circumstantial evidence against Gamelin. If there wasn’t, or if he was found to be straightforwardly not guilty, then the chief inspector had a case that looked fair to being one of the most interesting and complicated for a long time.

Almost his first reaction when hearing of his major suspect’s demise was overwhelming relief. He had been quite near at one point the previous evening to taking the man in. Any custody death resulted, quite rightly, in a complete and careful investigation amidst the by now inevitable cries of ‘police brutality’. Imagine the descent from above on Guy Gamelin’s behalf: the tony lawyers, the Bill’s top brass, every press man who could stand upright, photographers, probably questions in the House ... Gratitude had welled up in Barnaby’s breast at the gods’ collusion in this near miss.

Troy entered, a grey plastic bag in the crook of his right arm. ‘Got our mystical dude’s stuff here, Chief.’ There was a nudge of anticipation in the words and his eyes shone. With slow dramatic movements he pulled out sandals, a bloodied robe and some cotton underpants. Then he paused looking alert and expectant.

‘If you’re waiting for a drum roll you’ll be standing there till the cows come home. Get on with it.’

Troy at once delved into the bag, this time producing a long fall of shining white hair. Barnaby reached out. The wig was beautifully made. Real hair on a base of fine gauze.

‘Very nice. Expensive.’

‘Makes you think don’t it, Chief?’

‘It does indeed.’

Barnaby’s pulse quickened. For the first time the dead man had revealed something of himself. Until now information had all been second-hand. What others remembered, thought, believed. But here was a direct revelation from beyond the grave. A primary source. Barnaby laid this basic staple of the actor’s artillery aside and said, ‘I wonder how many people knew he wore it?’

‘No one I bet,’ said Troy. ‘I reckon this bears out Gamelin’s theory. Part and parcel of the con man’s gear.’

A not unreasonable assumption. In fact quite tempting. What need, pondered Barnaby, would a genuine pietist have of such a tricky accoutrement? No sooner had this thought occurred than he recollected the splendid dressage of priests and prelates to the world’s more orthodox religions. A simple hairpiece appeared modest in comparison.

So Craigie used artificial aids to project an image that would reassure his followers. This did not necessarily argue that his teachings or persona were false or that some chicanery was afoot. And yet ...

Gamelin had been so definite. Was this simply, understandably, because of the trust fund? Or had it, as Troy supposed, been like genuinely sniffing out like? No harm in running a trace on Craigie, although nailing a con man was always bloody hard work. For a start they were forever on the move and had as many names as they had off-shore bank accounts. Second, the really fly ones, having never been nicked, would not be in the computer at all. Still, no harm in trying.

‘I got an idea about the glove as well, Chief,’ said Troy. ‘Something Maure said at breakfast.’ His voice took on a slightly sour tinge as he recalled the first meal of the day. The meal which was supposed to gird the family bread-winner’s loins till lunch time. This morning it had been cornflakes and tea and that not freshly made. One small baby and suddenly it was too much trouble to scramble some eggs, put a bit of bacon under the grill, fry a few mushrooms and sling some bread in the toaster. He’d had to shell out for a burger and chips in the canteen. Second time this week and it was still only Thursday. And now the desk was giving him dirty looks.

‘Problem, Chief?’

‘Glove.’

‘Oh - yeh. She was washing up, grumbling that the gloves never last five minutes. I wasn’t listening - well, you don’t do you? But I heard, “It’s always the left one goes first.” That clicked because ours was a left-hander. She said, “I used to have all these odd things piling up till I found you could buy them to fit either hand.” So I thought, what if ours was like that?’

‘Might be. Although there’s nothing to stop a left-handed murderer wearing a right-handed glove. Or vice versa just to confuse the issue.’

‘Makes holding the knife a bit more awkward, though. And that is a very slick mover we’re talking about.’

‘True.’ Barnaby got up. ‘Might as well get a check for Craigie started. They usually stick fairly closely to the original name. The initials might be the same for instance.’

‘What’d he be ... fifty-five? Sixty?’

‘I’d say. Maybe a bit older. I’m going over to the path lab. See how they’re doing.’ He took his lightweight jacket from the peg. ‘Then we’ll try Felicity Gamelin again. See if we can get some sort of sensible statement.’ He turned at the door. ‘Get your aura read while we’re at it.’ Troy made a winding movement directed at his forehead with his index finger. Barnaby grinned. ‘Your horoscope, then. What is it you’re supposed to have been born under? Sirius the dog star?’

‘If I was,’ said Troy, ‘I’ll bet the little bugger was cocking its leg.’

Arno, having done a modest bit of gardening and eaten a piece of fruit to clarify his mind, was now wrestling with a haiku. His thoughts were all of May (the poem was of course for her). The haiku - three lines of five, seven and five syllables in which to compress a single illuminating thought - is not an easy form. The floor around Arno’s chair was covered with screwed-up little balls of paper.

He sighed deeply, frustrated at the elusiveness of Thalia the poetic muse and at the general intractability of the English language.

Beloved blossom

Light-winged music-maker

Spirit of flame.

He couldn’t give her that. To start with it sounded incomplete, like the opening to a much longer work. Then there was that ‘beloved’. These endearments would creep in. All the abandoned pensées had at least one. And let’s face it, thought Arno moodily, if a person was addressed as ‘bosom’s ease’, ‘angel fluff’, or ‘honey cuddle-bun’, sooner or later, however unsophisticated that person might be, she was going to deduce something a tad warmer in the offing than mere friendship or respect.

Cross, and dry in the mind, Arno gave up pro tem and went over to the basin to wash his hands which had become rather stained. He had bought the finest parchment, a bottle of sepiacoloured ‘Indian’ ink and a calligrapher’s pen, feeling that only the very best materials would be worthy of his sacred task. But, being normally a Biro man, he couldn’t get the hang of the nib and the ink had spattered everywhere.

Scrubbing at his hands and knuckles, a depressed Arno stared at himself in the small flaky mirror. He would never be reconciled to his appearance, never in a million years. If only he were tall and handsome as the full moon! He would sweep her off her feet then; gallop away with her over his saddle on a wonderful barrel-chested white horse with jewelled harness and reins of gold.

Arno smiled at these imaginings. His mother would have called it ‘going all rhapsodical’. He studied his face and tugged his beard, parting it experimentally, curling the ends around his fingers.

He had tried a Blakeian beard, quiverful of life, tumbling all over his chest. But it hadn’t suited him. He’d looked like a dwarf with a doormat round his chin. The one he had was ... well ... neat. And at least it shone, for he treated it with henna regularly. Sometimes he thought he might look younger if he shaved it off.

Before turning away, Arno bathed his face in greenish water taken from a small bowl half full of saxifrage. Heather had assured him that it was superb for fading freckles but he’d been using the stuff for over a month now and he honestly couldn’t see much difference. He dried himself and put the towel back neatly. It was almost time for lunch.

With ten minutes to go, Janet had just got some sort of main course together. She had peered half-heartedly into the store cupboard, taking things out, putting them back before deciding on a packet of Sossomix. There was a drawing of granulated sausage shapes sizzling in a pan and Janet noted, not for the first time, the perverse labelling techniques adapted by firms catering to that ever-growing section of the population who loathed eating meat.

Nut Steaks, Veggie Burgers, Cashew Roast. Down at the Karmic Pulse, they offered Tofu, shaped like chicken legs and covered with soya grits. Quite indistinguishable, the cling wrap proudly assured customers, from the real thing.

Wool-gathering, Janet had poured too much water in the granules. Instead of being a nice firm malleable lump, it was all sloppy. Trying to drain off the excess, she’d allowed some of the mix to slip away. Fed up with the whole business, Janet dumped the bowl on the draining board and went back upstairs to try and talk out Trixie.

After practically pushing everyone who was trying to help from the room, Trixie had locked the door. Nothing odd in that but she would usually answer when someone knocked, if it was only to ask why people just couldn’t leave her in peace. But today - not a sound.

There was something so solid about the silence, thought Janet, rapping gently and calling. ‘Trixie - lunch ...’ It was so absolutely total. Not so much as a carpeted football. Hard to believe there was even a heart beating in there.

Looking round to check that she was unobserved, and still feeling vulgarly inquisitive, Janet knelt down and peered through the keyhole. All she could see was a section of Trixie’s unmade bed. Blushing, she scrambled up again.

When she got back to the kitchen she found that Christopher, who had slipped out to the village, had returned with a sinfully large chocolate cake ‘to jolly everyone up’.

‘But Heather’s done a tapioca roulade for pudding with a fig glaze,’ she pointed out.

‘Exactly!’

Janet laughed and was further cheered to discover that the Sossomix had absorbed the remaining water and was firm enough to shape and fry. She lit the gas under the spinach and suggested Christopher call the others.

He found Heather on the terrace in a royal-blue track suit. She was intoning, arms stretched high to connect with telluric energy lines.

‘I take movement into my very essence

I take runningness and jumpingness

I am run ... I am jump ...’

She started to bound about on the spot then, her huge bosom and bum quivering like giant jellies. About to call that lunch was ready, Christopher was halted by an explosion of lyricism.

‘Every little cell in my body is happee ...

Every little cell in my body is well ...’

Christopher was familiar with Heather’s paen to holistic positivism. She taught it to all her clients no matter how dreadworthy their disease. He placed himself in front of her and mouthed ‘food’.

She panted, ‘Kenny ... office ... go ...’ and pogoed off round the side of the house.

Ken was organising some posters for their next marriage workshop (On A Clear Day You Can See Each Other), resting his aleatory limb on the desk whilst the Gestetner chugged along.

‘Lunch is ready,’ panted his spouse, popping her head round the door.

‘About time,’ said Ken. ‘I’m starving.’

‘Sorry but things are sure to be a bit chaotic on a day like this.’ Heather wheezed in, picking up a poster. It was pale blue and showed two doves, one with long eyelashes wearing a pinny, the other stark-naked but for a fair smattering of white feathers. This one had its wing around the other one’s middle. Beneath it were Ken and Heather’s names and after Ken’s (in brackets) ‘Intuitive Diagnostician, Writer, Channeller’. Heather was down as ‘Healer, Writer, Priestess’. She said, ‘This should really bring them in. I hope it’ll still be on - I mean with all this upset.’

‘I resonate with that, Heth,’ said Ken, easing down his leg, ‘but hang loose. I’ve something to share.’

‘Oh - what is it?’ Heather sat with some difficulty, cross-legged on the carpet.

‘Well, you know my theory - never do one job when you could be doing three.’ Heather nodded. ‘So, while I was producing this lot, I also used my thought-energy web to tune into Hilarion about our future here.’

‘Brilliant. What did he say?’

‘Wouldn’t tell me, the old reprobate - oops!’ Ken put his head in his lap and covered it with his hands as if protecting himself from a rock fall. ‘Sorry, Hilarion ...’ he called through his fingers. ‘Only joking.’ He sat up then and continued. ‘But he did zero in with some info of his own. Nothing less than a complete world-overview of the cosmic and global situation. There was a special reference to the holes in the ozone layer and - talk about a paradigm shift - they are nothing whatsoever to worry about.’

‘What? I can’t believe ...’ Hope and incredulity fought it out in Heather’s shining face.

‘It’s true. Comes directly from the Original Silent Fourfold Column. You know how the waters break when a baby’s born? Well, this is precisely the same process. As we all know, there’s a great spiritual outpouring from the angelic realms at this particular moment in time. Now, how can this get through if apertures are not made in the heavens?’

His wife clapped her hands in wonder. ‘I never thought of that.’

‘Talk about profound. The old fox.’

‘So all this changing aerosols and fridges and things -’

‘Complete waste of time.’

Heather galumphed to her feet. ‘We must share this with the others.’

‘And then with the world.’

Crossing the hall towards the dining room, Ken checked the ‘Feeling Guilty’ bowl as he always did when passing. There was no money in it today, but he did find something else. A key with a tag on reading ‘25’. The key to Trixie’s room.

The afternoon was hot. Both the windows in Barnaby’s office were open but there was little breeze. It was Policewoman Brierley’s twenty-second and someone had had the wit to lob in ice and a huge bag of lemons as well as assorted cakes and pastries. The chief inspector had a frosted glass of tart, freshly made lemonade in one hand and was eating his doughnut in a very circumspect manner, trying to keep the filling off his shirt and off the mass of material on his desk, which included the recently delivered scenes-of-crime report.

A chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’ wafted through the half-open door and he could see his sergeant perched on Audrey’s desk. Troy was holding some computer sheets and singing away, his eyes on her black-stockinged knees.

She’d come on a lot in the last three years had little Audrey, thought Barnaby. Earlier on she’d been really shy, not knowing how to handle flirtatious come-ons or chauvinistic put-downs, which in any case often came joined at the hip, like unkind Siamese twins. The girls that stuck it toughened up. As Barnaby watched, catching scarlet confectioner’s jelly just in time, Troy leaned forward with a predatory leer, murmuring something, winking. Audrey winked and murmured back. There was an explosion of laughter and the sergeant walked away.

‘She used to be really sweet, that girl,’ he said angrily, flourishing the print-out. ‘Dead feminine - know what I mean?’

‘I think she’s quite sweet now, actually.’

‘Pay them a compliment - jump down your throat.’

The compliment had gone as follows. Troy: ‘I’ll take you for a drink to celebrate. Somewhere really smart. How about that snug little place on the river? You’ll have a good time. They don’t call me up-and-coming for nothing.’ Audrey: ‘Use it to stir your tea, Gavin.’

‘Women who are coarse just show themselves up - don’t you think, Chief?’

Barnaby, reading, said: ‘No Craigie on these.’

Troy made an effort to become unchagrined. ‘I checked on similar names as well. There’s a Brian Craig in there. Insurance fraud. Died in Broadmoor.’

‘Must have been some territory.’ Barnaby rarely made a joke. This one died on its feet.

‘There’s more to come. I’m waiting on a Cranleigh and Crawshaw.’ He sounded very bright and positive. ‘I’m convinced Gamelin was right. Feel it in my bones.’

Troy was always feeling things in his bones. They were about as reliable as a Saint Bernard that had been at the brandy.

‘Anything in scenes-of-crime, sir?’

‘Not a lot.’

Troy read the two closely typed sheets. Nothing on the glove - which was to be expected. And nothing on anything else much either. A magnified picture of the fibrous thread which had been caught up on the knife.

‘Bit of a pisser, that,’ he said when he’d finished. ‘Doesn’t look as if it came off anyone’s gear. Mind you - not everyone was wearing the sort of clothes that could conceal it. May Cuttle’s dress had long floaty sleeves but she’s out. Could have passed it to somebody though. Hey - maybe she slipped it to Wainwright. Because there’s no way he could have brought it in himself. Tight jeans, sneakers, short-sleeved shirt.’

‘He didn’t go near the dais either.’

‘So who’s left? The dykey woman wore trousers - she could’ve brought it in. The blonde might have found it difficult. Gibbs could have had it up his jumper. Gamelin and the Beavers could have hidden it and that lad with one oar out of the water. He wore a baggy sweater. Or Gamelin’s wife - she could have had a whole canteen of cutlery in that dress. Same goes for her daughter in the sari.’

Troy’s mouth pursed with a moue of distaste. If there was one thing that turned him up, it was white women dressing like blacks. ‘If that girl was mine,’ he muttered, ‘I’d drag her home, wash that red muck off under the tap and give her a good clout.’

‘But people are not “ours”, Sergeant. They’re not cars or washing machines. You’ve forgotten someone.’

‘No I haven’t.’ Barnaby pointed to the wall sketch. ‘Craigie?’ Troy laughed in disbelief. ‘Well, he’s not going to give the murderer a hand by smuggling a knife in, is he?’

‘He was there. We shouldn’t exclude him. What do we keep, Troy?’

‘An open mind, sir,’ sighed Troy, thinking some people’s minds had been kept so open their brains had fallen out.

‘Have a look and see if there’s any more of those doughnuts.’

Janet was searching Trixie’s room. She knew there was no point. She had searched it twice already, first in a whirling hawk-eyed frenzy of disbelief then more slowly, systematically turning out every drawer. She looked beneath the mattress and rugs and through pages of books and, once, in a moment of barmy desperation, pulled out the basket in the fire grate. But she found no clue as to where Trixie might have fled.

What Janet was really looking for, of course, was a letter. But there was no trace of any such thing. Not even thrown-way scraps from which an address might be pieced together. And there was nothing on file in the office either. Trixie’s first inquiry was by telephone, and this had been followed by a weekend visit which had extended itself indefinitely once bursary help was found to be available.

Janet was almost as distressed by the intensity of her misery as by the misery itself. How had she let herself get into such a state? The progress had been so insidious. At first she hadn’t even liked Trixie. The girl had struck her as shallow and silly, and they’d had nothing whatsoever in common. Then, gradually, she had started to admire and eventually envy the younger girl’s soubrettish character. Her assurance and smart backchat. Born into a tradition of polite reticence, Janet frequently found herself either tongue-tied or constrained by good manners from speaking her mind.

She had realised quite early on that Trixie was not a true seeker. Was not in fact very interested at all in the higher realm. She had attended meditation, had interviews with the Master and slipped a few genuflective remarks into various semi-religious discussions but Janet knew her heart wasn’t in it. It struck her once that Trixie only went this far to be sure of keeping her foot in the door. Janet had often longed to ask why she was at the Windhorse in the first place but had never dared. Trixie always said that if there was one thing she could not stand it was nosiness.

Now, sitting at the dressing table, the roses still blushing in their bowl and feeling quite ill with loss and longing, Janet opened the top drawer for the umpteenth time and regarded all that was left of Trixie. A half-full packet of Tampax, a pink lacy angora jumper smelling under the arms and some ‘airport’ novels, ill-written and virtually (Janet had dipped into a couple) pornographic, although any virtue seemed to have been vanquished by page seven.

Janet was sure that Trixie had disappeared because she was afraid. And that it was something to do with Guy Gamelin. Even in death that monstrous man exuded the power to harm. Janet pictured Trixie alone and frightened, running, running. Had she any money? Surely she wouldn’t try to hitch a lift. Not after all the terrible stories one heard. She must have left sometime between half eleven and twelve. Perhaps creeping through the hall with her blue-wheeled suitcase while Janet was just a few feet away in the kitchen. Oh God!

She sprang up, her arms wrapped straight-jacket-tight across her chest. Now more than any other was the time when Trixie would need her friendship. And Janet had so much to give. She could feel it lying, a great heavy lump, where her heart should be. She seemed to have been carrying it all her life and it grew heavier every day.

She caught sight of herself in the glass. Her hair was wild, skin stretched tight over beaky nose. She faced the thought that Trixie might never return and a terrible sensation of time passing snatched at her throat. A concentrated sense of loss. The bleakness of it almost brought her to her knees. She felt she was facing a long, unendurable twilight without ever having known the glory of the day.

She’d read once that the intensity of a really powerful emotion could kill recollection. Janet felt she could handle such oblivion. Loving Trixie in a poignant cauterised way, like a misplaced memory. There was something clean and austere about this conclusion. The absolute certainty of naught for your comfort was almost a comfort in itself. She would walk alone bearing in mind the harsh and deeply unsatisfactory epigram that the only sure way to get what you want in life is to want what you get.

‘Settle’ was the term her mother would have used. ‘I’ll settle for that’ Janet remembered her saying about a length of fabric or a piece of meat or a knitting pattern. Janet had always understood the phrase to mean ‘It’s not what I want but it’s better than nothing.’

But no sooner had Janet decided to settle for nothing than an agonised longing for human contact, for a flicker of warmth to light the way, devoured her, and she buried her face in the scented roses and wept.

Christopher and Suhami were in the study. She gazing out of the window, he sitting at the barley-twist one-legged table at which Barnaby had conducted the interviews. There was a small pigskin case by Christopher’s feet and on the table a large unsealed brown envelope. Three days’ neglect of the room had occasioned a layer of dust over everything.

The couple were talking about death. Suhami in the driven, irritable manner of one who is drawn to reinvestigate an unhealed wound. Christopher, who was also getting irritable, with great reluctance.

‘It’s impossible, isn’t it?’ she was saying, ‘to imagine what it’s like to be dead. You picture yourself looking down at your funeral. People weeping, all the flowers. But you have to be alive to do the imagining.’

‘I suppose. Can’t we talk about something else?’ When she did not reply he hefted the case on to a hard-backed chair. ‘We could get your father’s things sorted.’

‘What is there to sort? It’s only clothes. Next time someone goes into Causton they can take them to a charity shop.’

‘There’s this envelope as well.’

‘I know, I know. I signed for them didn’t I?’

‘Calm down.’ He shook out the contents. Guy’s wallet, his keys, handkerchief, cigar-cutter and lighter. An empty brown glass bottle. A small card, crumpled as if someone had clutched it tight, holding an engraved message from Ian and Fiona (Props). Christopher turned the card over. An elf in curly toed shoes pointed a little wand at a line of italicised prose: Our true intent is all for your delight. Wm Shakespeare. There was something else in the envelope. Right at the bottom.

Christopher slid in his hand and removed the watch. It lay on his palm, dazzlingly splendid; nothing but jewels and facets of light. He gasped (he couldn’t help it) and knew she had turned round. When he looked up, Suhami was watching him, the expression on her face unreadable. He lay the watch down and it blazed like a star against the dusty rose-brown wood. When he felt that he could speak without avarice shining through he said, ‘What do you think? Should we give these things to your mother?’

‘Hardly.’ Suhami came over. ‘The last thing she needs is that sort of reminder. It’s because of him she’s in the state she is.’

‘This bottle’s empty.’

‘Heart pills.’

‘He had time to take them, then.’

‘So it seems.’

‘There’s something stuffed in this wallet.’ Silvery cream and fawn alligator scales, it bulged slightly on one side. Christopher placed his finger into the aperture and a cloud of confetti-like stuff flittered out. He caught some pieces in his hand. ‘It’s money.’

‘How grotesque.’ Suhami stared down at the scattered fragments. She felt irrationally frightened. ‘He would never do that. Unless ...’ Briefly she entertained a vision of Guy in extremis finally apprehending the useless futility of his massive wealth and symbolically ripping apart a high-denomination bank note. Almost immediately she rejected this sentimental indulgence for the nonsense that it was.

‘Unless what?’

‘I don’t know. He was very ... strung out. Emotional. When we talked in the afternoon, I felt quite sorry for him. Not that I let him see.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘He despised any show of kindness. He just thought it meant you were weak.’

‘He sounds a bit sad.’

‘Don’t waste your finer feelings,’ said Suhami. ‘That’s when he took the knife don’t forget. Oh - put the bloody things back. No - wait ...’ She picked up the watch and with one quick movement thrust it towards him. ‘Here - have it.’

‘What?’

‘Take it.’ He stared, incredulous. ‘Go on.’

Christopher swallowed. His eyes turned slowly to the watch as if pulled by a silken thread. ‘You can’t mean it.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. It’s so incredibly ... so ...’ He knew the longing was vivid on his face but couldn’t help himself. ‘Who does it belong to?’

‘Me. He always said he’d leave me everything.’

‘But you can’t just ...’ The same thread now lifted his arm, uncurled his fingers, stretched out his hand.

‘Of course I can.’ She made a sort of dart towards him, dropped the watch in his palm and withdrew.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’ She had already moved quite away. ‘Sell it if you like. Buy yourself what the agents call a nice des res. But please don’t wear it if you’re anywhere near me.’

Christopher slipped the watch into his pocket. It weighed nothing. He was excited by the magnitude of the gift but also faintly aggravated by the casual manner in which it had been offered. Almost dangled under his nose. He then got the notion that the whole business was some sort of test which, by accepting the watch, he had failed. He was certainly aware of a tension emanating from her that he didn’t understand. Then it struck him that it might be some sort of consolation prize and that she had already decided to go her own way without him. This perception made him angry and not only because of the humiliating ‘pay off’ connotations. He would rather have Suhami than any timepiece, no matter how magnificent.

It was gone three by the time Barnaby and Troy drove up to the Manor House and May greeted them. She was looking wondrously flamboyant in a multicoloured striped djellaba with a beaten copper belt.

‘Ah - there you are.’ As if they had been personally summoned. ‘I’m so glad. I’ve something to tell you.’

‘Oh yes, Miss Cuttle?’ Barnaby followed her into the hall. The house seemed still and quiet but for the faint clatter of crockery. He noted and commented on the marvellous spillage of painterly light from the lantern.

‘We bathe in it, Chief Inspector. We saturate our psyches. At least once a day. Never underestimate the healing power of colour. Perhaps you would care ...?’

‘Another time, perhaps. What did you wish -?’

‘Not here.’ She walked speedily off, beckoning as she went. This was accomplished by holding her arm straight up above her head and swivelling her hand back and forth. Barnaby was reminded of a submarine’s conning tower.

Her hair was piled on top of her head today. A shapely coronet of loops, waves, sausage-like curls and a frilly fringe which, on a woman less formidably Rubenesque, might have been described as saucy. They followed her without difficulty. Indeed such was the magnetic pull of her flowing draperies that it seemed impossible to do otherwise. She ushered them into a room, glanced intently up and down the corridor, then closed the door.

After these urgent preliminaries, Barnaby expected an immediate flood of informative speech, but she waited - wrinkling her splendid Romanish nose and delicate nostrils. Eventually she said, ‘There are some extremely negative, not to say thorny vibrations here.’ Her gaze swivelled sternly between the two men. ‘I rather think it’s you.’ Troy raised his eyebrows, Joe Cool. ‘I must ask for a few moments’ grace to re-establish positive ions and restore my vitality index.’

She sat down at a small round table covered by an orange bobble-fringed chenille cloth, rested her elbows against the edge and closed her eyes. A minute ambled slowly by, followed, as is the way of things, by several more.

Is there anybody there? wondered Troy. He hoped it wasn’t his Aunty Doris. He’d owed her fifty quid when she’d got knocked down by a Ford Sierra and she’d an edge to her tongue like a buzz saw.

‘Oh! Buoyant rays!

Float in me restoring quantum peace

Effloresce and harmonise in Vesta’s all-seeing eye

Ida and Pingala - cross my nodes.’

At the first declarative boom, Troy nearly jumped from his skin. Barnaby studied his shoes, refusing to catch his sergeant’s eye. He noticed another larger table in the far corner holding many bottles of bright liquid. Nostra for the credulous no doubt. May inhaled and exhaled deeply a few more times, looked around and gave a calm and welcoming smile.

‘There. Isn’t that better? Are you quite comfortable?’ Barnaby nodded. Troy continued to state thornily out of the window.

‘I did not sleep last night as I’m sure you can appreciate but, resting briefly before luncheon, I fell into a slight doze during which I was visited by the green Master Rakowkzy. He gives advice on legal matters, as I expect you know, and he said I ought to talk to you.’

‘I see,’ lied the chief inspector, rather stymied by this ‘hey presto!’ introduction.

‘It isn’t anything to do with the Master’s elevation but another matter entirely. I’d been worried for some time and had just decided to talk to Christopher about it when the meteor fell and that put it right out of my head. We didn’t realise at the time it was a portent.’ Mistaking the controlled blankness of Barnaby’s expression for incomprehension, she added kindly, ‘That means omen, you know.’

‘Yes,’ said the chief inspector.

May glanced over to the window where Troy was pressing his head hard against the pane. ‘I say - is your sergeant all right?’

‘He’s fine.’

‘I’m afraid,’ said May, ‘I can no longer play the dromedary with my head in the sand. There is definitely something going on.’

Dear God, thought Barnaby, up to our oxters in murder and there’s something going on.

‘It all started after Jim Carter left us.’

‘I don’t recall the name, Miss Cuttle.’

‘No. He died before you met him.’

Barnaby didn’t even try on that one. ‘And who was he?’

‘Oh, a dear person. One of our longest-serving members. He had an accident - a fatal fall. I’m surprised you don’t know about it.’

‘Not our pigeon - accidental death.’

‘There was an inquest.’ May regarded Barnaby in a rather judgemental manner as if he’d been caught smoking in the bike shed. ‘It was a day or two after his death when I was on my way to the laundry that I overheard the argument. Or a bit of it. The door was ajar in the Master’s sanctum. Someone said: “What have you done? If they decide on a post mor -” Then they were shushed and the door was closed.’

‘Did you see who it was?’

‘There was a screen in the way.’

‘Was it Mr Craigie speaking, do you think?’ Barnaby leaned forwards as he spoke. Troy stopped massaging the window and turned into the room, his eyes wide and sharp. The air tightened.

‘I don’t know. The voice was so knotted up. But when the inquest came and there was a proper coroner’s report and everything seemed to be all right, I thought I was probably reading too much into it. Then, a couple of weeks later, I was woken by a noise in the middle of the night. Soft bumps as if furniture was being carefully moved about and slidy sounds like the opening and closing of drawers.’

‘Where was this?’ asked Troy.

‘Next door - Jim’s room. It was never locked so why do all this creeping about? Why not just go openly in the daytime?’

‘Perhaps a break-in,’ suggested Barnaby.

‘Not at all,’ said May and explained about the person running down the side of the house.

‘Didn’t you think of contacting the police?’

‘Well, you know, we don’t do that sort of thing here.’ May gave Troy a smile with a consoling pat in it. ‘I’m sure you’re very good but it might have caused real psychological damage.’

‘Do you think he - or she - when running away could have heard your window open? I assume they would know your room was adjacent.’

‘I suppose that’s possible.’ She glanced up at him with clear bright eyes. ‘Is it important?’

Troy took in the question with a mixture of awe and disbelief. Here was a woman who drove a car, handled the company finance, dealt with banking matters and looked after sometimes quite large numbers of visitors. All these accomplishments existing alongside a shining belief in archangels, extra-terrestrial domestic and legal help, plus an astrally spot-on blade artist who’d despatched the head gaffer, no messing. He watched her giving the chief, who was looking excessively pained, a gentle touch on the arm.

‘Are you feeling quite well, Inspector Barnaby?’

Barnaby cleared his throat, a dryish scrape. May appeared concerned. ‘A tense larynx can conceal grave kidney problems.’ This formidable diagnosis having being received calmly, she added: ‘I can get my passionflower inhaler in a twinkling.’ Barnaby went into a constrained but unequivocal retreat.

Doesn’t want that at his time of life, observed Troy. Randy old devil. Should be slowing down.

Barnaby sensed that May was disappointed. She shook her head a little sorrowfully but her opulent assurance remained undimmed. It was plain she was one of those people who must always be helping others. He had no doubt that she was genuinely kind, but suspected that the kindness would manifest itself in a rather narrow application of her own principles to the problem in hand, rather than a real attempt to seek out the supplicant’s needs.

‘Perhaps we could have a look at Mr Carter’s room?’

‘There’s nothing there. All his things have gone.’

‘Even so ...’

‘A tip, Inspector,’ she set off still talking, ‘which you should find very useful. Pull up an amaranth by the root - Friday of the full moon otherwise it doesn’t work - fold in a clean white cloth, which must be linen, and wear next to the skin. This will make you bullet-proof.’

‘The police supply garments for that purpose, Miss Cuttle.’

‘I say - turn left - do they really?’ She became intensely interested. ‘Are you wearing one now? Could I have a look?’

May’s eyes shone and her amber globe earrings shone too. She found herself thinking that being involved in an investigation was proving to be quite exciting. And wondered perhaps if the Windhorse, in refusing to give houseroom to a radio or television set or printed matter of a non-spiritual nature, was not only blotting out all negative vibrations but also a certain amount of lively colour. I should get out more, she thought, and felt immediately shamed by such disloyalty.

‘Would you say I was “helping with your inquiries”, Inspector?’ she stopped outside the room next to her own. ‘I’ve often wondered exactly what that phrase meant.’

But she had hardly formed the words when the door had been opened, herself courteously thanked, and the door closed again.

Barnaby and Troy looked about them. The place was as neat as a sailor’s. A minimum of furniture. Two pale oak chairs with high slatted backs which a smart dealer might have sold as Shaker, a single bed, a card table, a wardrobe containing an empty shoebox, the label showing smart Italian loafers and a chest of drawers. There were three hooks screwed into a plain piece of wood on the far wall. The coverlet on the bed was white roughish cotton, the sort found on iron bedsteads in men’s lodging houses. It was hospital-cornered, stretched with tight rigidity over the thin mattress. This straining air of self-effacement sat well with the rest of the room. It had such a feeling of puritanical restraint that any loose fold or wrinkle would have appeared pushily voluptuous. There was a text on the otherwise bare walls: God Is A Circle Whose Centre Is Everywhere And Circumference Nowhere.

Troy checked the chest of drawers. Empty. Barnaby stared around, wondering at this apparent confirmation of the necessary link between physical discomfort and spiritual attainment. He thought of mendicants in hair-shirts, self-flagellation, yogis sitting in caves for years - matty-haired, ash daubed and smelly; of martyrs rushing into flames or the jaws of great tawny cats. The chief inspector could see neither rhyme nor reason to it. He loved his comforts. A well-used armchair at the end of the day. Or a hammock on a summer evening, glass of wine to hand, music pouring through open French windows. He loved - how he still loved - going to bed with Joyce. Or sitting by a warm fire, sketching the still unblurred lines of her profile.

The chief inspector was not given to dwelling at length on philosophical matters, not only because he didn’t have the time but also because the pursuit seemed to him ultimately arid. He tried to live decently. Cared for his wife and daughter, did a worthwhile job as well as he was able and supported half a dozen charities when subscriptions were due. He had few friends, having been content to spend the little spare time that was his lot with his family, but the friends he did have had good cause to be grateful for his attention and concern if they were troubled. Overall he reckoned he hadn’t done too badly. Well enough, perhaps, to tip the scales positively should there prove to be such a metaphysically mischievous joke as Judgement Day.

‘Not much to show for a life, is it sir?’ Troy had wandered over to the book shelves. Three wooden planks separated by neat stacks of amethyst-coloured bricks. He crouched, pulling out a volume from the bottom layer. ‘There’s a book here on wolf messing.’ He passed it over. ‘My autobiography by R. R. Hood.’ And chortled.

Barnaby could never decide whether his sergeant’s happy appreciation of his own wit was truly ingenuous. It seemed unkind to think so. He looked at the spine. The tome was by Wolf Messing, described on the jacket as ‘Russia’s greatest psychic healer’. Barnaby pulled a book of his own out. Deathing: An Intelligent Alternative for the Final Moments of Life by Anya Foos-Graber. Much cheered by the news that there was going to be a choice, the chief inspector was only sorry that poor old Jim had failed to grasp the principles. Either that or he’d been given no time to bring his intelligence into play.

‘Better check them all - you never know.’

The two men pulled out each volume, shaking them, leafing through. Barnaby, expecting to find evidence only of cultural vassalage to the East, was pleasantly surprised. Sufism, Buddhism, Druidic Lore, Myths and Legends, Runecraft, the Rosicrucian, a Jung primer. There was also the I Ching, books on UFOs, The Tao of Physics, and the Arkana Dictionary of New Perspectives. They were mostly paperbacks and all second-hand. Top whack three pounds seventy-five, the cheapest twenty-five pence.

‘He must have had some personal stuff, Chief?’ Troy riffled through the last volume and put it back carefully. ‘Most people have got at least a birth certificate, a few photographs. You can’t exist with just the clothes on your back and a few books.’

‘Monks do.’

‘Oh well ... monks.’ Troy’s tone was so deeply uncomprehending he might have been referring to men from Mars. Barnaby picked up The Meaning of Happiness. What man would not?

‘One here by a yogi, sir. Yogi Bear actually. Ten exciting ways with porridge.’

‘If all you can find to do is make daft jokes you can clear off and interview Mrs Gamelin.’

‘Right. Any idea where she is?’

‘You’ve got a tongue in your head. Ask. You know what we want.’

I know what I want. A nice long tasty puff. Troy opened the door and nearly fell over May who immediately offered to take him to Felicity. On the way she gave him many an encouraging glance, stopping at one point to suggest that he should refrain from cutting his hair so short as it served as an antenna for cosmic forces.

‘The Temple of Victory on Venus is open to our consciousness on the seventeenth of this month. Would you care to join us for a little healing ceremony?’ Troy looked exceedingly nonplussed. ‘You do need healing, you know. Very, very badly.’ Thinking his silence meant indecision, she continued, ‘And we treat the whole person here. You see when you’re ill outside you just get some drug on prescription. Or if you’re hospitalised surgeons pay attention to the organ in question and not the person behind it at all.’

Troy who had spent his entire adult life searching for a female with just such a talent for disinterested application, checked a hankering sigh. ‘Yeh ... well ... bit busy at the moment. New baby and that ...’

Leaving Troy on the landing, May entered Felicity’s room then re-emerged saying, ‘She’s awake but her force-field is still very low so would you -’

‘We’ll be fine, Miss Cuttle.’

Troy hardly recognised Felicity. She was sitting in bed propped up by pillows, straight hair tied back with some sort of plaited stuff, wearing a blue silk robe. The nicest thing about the following interrogation, to the sergeant’s mind, was that he smoked all the way through without asking her permission. This minuscule bit of point scoring (sans-culotte 5, aristo nil) was rather undermined by the fact that she hardly seemed to notice, let alone be at all put out.

In fact she didn’t seem much more compos mentis than yesterday. And hardly remembered where she was sitting on the dais or who was next to her. Troy wondered if she’d just blotted the murder out. Let’s face it, being in the same room while one was being committed was enough to unbalance anybody, and if you were ten pence short of a quid to start with ...

Questioned on her feelings regarding the McFadden Fund and its disposal, she became quite agitated and said she’d known nothing about it. On being told her husband certainly had, she added, ‘Trust him.’ Then, ‘He’d fight it with everything he’d got.’

‘It’s the girl’s inheritance, Mrs Gamelin. Up to her surely?’

‘Whose money it was would make no difference.’ She became extremely distressed and started tossing her head about. Troy decided to open the door. Before he had reached it she launched upon a startling breakdown of her husband’s physical and mental distinguishing features. Troy, full of admiration at this talent for picturesque abuse (the mildest phrase being ‘frog-faced illegitimate avaricious prick’), quite missed the fact that it was couched in the imperfect present. When Felicity, panting, rested once more upon the pillows he said primly, ‘I don’t think that’s very nice, Mrs Gamelin. He has just passed away after all.’

At this Felicity gave a loud cry and fell out of bed, hanging upside down in a sort of swoon. May came running in.

‘You stupid bugger, Gavin,’ said Barnaby on their return to the station.

‘Well, how was I to know? She was lying there looking like death warmed up. I assumed someone must have told her the good news by then. Sir Sinjhan Farty was round there at ten this morning.’ He glared sullenly at the floor. ‘I get blamed for everything round here.

Whipping boy I am. Should have been a plumber. Or a linesman like my dad. But even as these grumbling alternatives formed, Troy recognised they were dishonest. He had always wanted to be a policeman, loved being a policeman, would never wish to be anything else. But there were times when the carping, the paper work, the brown nosing and double-declutch handshakes, the soft attitudes of outsiders who never had to scrape up the mess, the political in-fighting, the need to button your lip if you wanted to get on and a thousand other day to day irritations all coalesced and threatened to overwhelm him.

Noting the tightened mouth and strawberry patches on Troy’s cheekbones, Barnaby recognised that he had been unfair. The assumption that Felicity had been told of her husband’s death was not an unreasonable one, although no doubt his sergeant had handled matters unskilfully. Troy’s modest level of academic achievement was a very sore spot and calling him stupid was striking where it hurt. Normally the chief inspector would have thought ‘tough’ and let him get on with it. Today he was feeling benevolent.

‘Mistake anyone could have made, Sergeant.’

‘Sir.’

That was all it took. Troy’s ego was back from the mender’s in no time. Already he was wondering if this new indulgence was encouragement enough to broach the subject of Talisa Leanne tactfully. He murmured a few words. Just an oblique reference, nothing specific. Receiving an absent-minded nod, he immediately leapt into hyperbolic speech delineating the baby’s charm, beauty, growth rate (height, teeth, hair, nails), speech development, teddy bear (handling and interrogation of), musical accomplishments (creative timpani-playing with saucepan lid) and artistic creativity. The latest drawing, Blue-tacked to the fridge, was the dead spit of her nanna’s poodle.

Barnaby easily tuned out. He was back in the bare-boned room thinking about Jim Carter. A man serious in his devotions and friendly in his ways. And about the fragment of overheard conversation.

‘What have you done? If they do a post mor -’

A post mortem? What else, two days after an unexplained death. So Craigie (perhaps) and at least one other had been afraid of such a procedure. And now Craigie was also dead. Were the two linked?

Speculation was fruitless at this stage. A waste of energy and a great spoiler of concentration. And God knows, thought Barnaby, I’ve enough on my plate to be going on with. The new information would have to go on the back burner and bide its time.

It did not have to bide long, for the very next day some information became available which threw a new and deeply disturbing light upon Jim Carter’s death.

Chapter 11

Breakfast chez Barnaby. Cully and Joyce were sharing the Independent. Tom was sawing at something very soft, very pink, wet, white and streaky.

‘I wish you’d cook bacon properly. Why can’t we have it crisp?’

‘Last time I did it crisp you said it was burnt.’

‘It was burnt.’

‘Talking of food,’ Cully folded the paper and rested it on her knees, reached for another brioche, ‘how’s the chef-ing coming on, Dad?’

‘I shall have to miss this week.’

‘I mean for tomorrow night, silly.’ She slathered on nearly white butter followed by lashings of black cherry jam and, without waiting for a reply, started reading again.

‘I’ve done the first course but it might be wise to get something from Sainsbury’s to follow up.’

‘Sainsbury’s.’

Joyce said, ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full.’

‘This is my engagement dinner we’re discussing. Plus my birthday.’

‘I’ll take us all out when the case is finished. Somewhere really nice.’

‘Not the same.’

‘I see that awful tycoon’s made the front page.’ Joyce opened up her section. ‘With, I assume, an obit inside. I wonder what it says.’

‘Did not suffer human beings gladly,’ replied her husband.

‘Bad as that?’

‘I suppose it’d be a bit pushy to ask for a piece?’ Barnaby stretched out his hand to no avail. ‘Why do I never get what I want in this house?’

‘We all love you, Dad.’

‘I’d rather you let me have a look at the paper.’ Barnaby wondered how long it would take before the press discovered that the newly deceased millionaire had been present only hours before when a murder was committed. No time at all was his conclusion and he hoped the Golden Windhorse was prepared.

Cully was chuckling again and the paper, held by slender fingers tipped with hot pink nails like glossy almonds, trembled. She was wearing a man’s silk foulard dressing-gown, her long dark hair piled up and loosely pinned on top of her beautifully shaped head. A curl fell forward and she pushed it back with unmannered grace. Or was it mannered grace? It was never easy to tell where the daughter left off and the actress began. Barnaby had to remind himself - observing the sweet curve of her cheek, the soft unblemished apricot skin and baby fine golden down on her forearm - that this was a girl who’d been around. On the pill at sixteen, she’d also taken soft drugs during a punk-rock phase. Something she only told him about when it was over and done with. And now here she was, five years and God alone knew how many lovers later, looking as exquisite and untouched as a newly opened rose. Ah youth ... youth ...

‘What on earth’s the matter, Tom?’

‘Mm?’

‘Have you got indigestion?’

‘No thanks to that bacon if I haven’t. Well, if I can’t share the paper,’ he scowled at his daughter, ‘perhaps I can share the joke?’

‘A man who thought he’d been unfairly sentenced broke into the judge’s chambers during recess and boiled his wig in an electric kettle.’

‘I don’t believe that. I do not believe that.’

‘It’s true.’

‘Show me.’ It almost worked. The paper was nearly passed across. Then at the last minute snatched back.

Joyce laughed, started to read out bits from her section; the weather, a recipe, a detailed account of someone squatting up a tree to save the whales.

‘Won’t find many whales up there,’ said Barnaby.

‘There was another car bomb at the weekend,’ rustle, rustle. ‘The victim was someone in the UDR. It says he’s emigrating to Canada.’

‘Quite a blast then.’ Cully grinned at her father.

‘That’s not very funny, darling.’

‘Is this murder at Compton Dando’ - Joyce peered over the edge - ‘the one you’re working on?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t you say so?’

‘I did.’

‘You just said “out Iver way”.’

‘What does it -’

‘That’s absolutely typical.’ Joyce folded her paper and slapped it on the table, upsetting a salt cellar. Barnaby’s hand crept out.

‘Don’t you dare!’ snapped his wife.

‘Do you know what’s got into your mother this morning?’

Cully gazed out of the window at the flowering jasmine - refusing, as she always did, to collude or take sides.

‘Don’t discuss me as if I’m invisible, Tom. It’s infuriating.’

‘All right. So what’s supposed to be typical of me this time?’

‘You don’t talk to me.’

‘My God, Joycey - I’ve been talking to you about my job for twenty years. I’d’ve thought you’d be glad of a break.’

‘And - what is worse - you don’t listen.’ Barnaby sighed. ‘I bet you don’t remember Ann Cousins.’

‘Who?’

‘I thought so. My friend at Compton Dando.’

‘Ah.’

‘Last year after Alan died this Manor House lot did a workshop called New Horizons, which she thought might help. A great disappointment as it turned out. All style and no content. We both went.’

‘What? Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I did tell you.’ Joyce smiled with a certain grim satisfaction. ‘In great detail. Even when your body’s at home your mind’s at work. You have no interest in anything I do.’

‘That’s grossly unfair. I’m always down at the theatre painting scenery. I never miss one of your shows -’

‘You missed the last one.’

‘Two children had been abducted. Or perhaps you don’t remember -’

‘Poppy Levine’s getting married.’

Cully’s voice, loud and clear, sliced through the deepening acrimony. Her parents, choosing to believe their daughter was becoming upset, immediately ceased hostilities.

Cully, merely bored, continued: ‘In a skirt up to her cleavage and sequinned leggings.’

‘I’m late.’ Barnaby got up. ‘We’ll talk about this visit of yours when I get home.’

‘Suddenly I’m interesting,’ said Joyce sourly. She got up, too, and moved behind Cully’s chair where she lowered her greying curly head and scowled at the wedding picture. ‘Six husbands and she looks about twenty-one. How does she do it?’

‘Rumour is she sold her epidermis to the devil. Look at that.’ Cully flicked the paper hard with her nail. ‘It really gets me the way they always print how old a woman is. Poppy Levine, thirty-nine, marries cameraman Christopher Wainwright. No mention of his age - Dad!’ The Indy was snatched away. ‘Don’t be so bloody rude!’

Barnaby scanned, shook out the relevant page, folded it.

‘There’s an interview with Nick Hytner on the back of that ... Dad ...’

‘What is it?’ said Joyce. ‘Something to do with the case?’

‘Sorry.’ Barnaby shrugged on his jacket. ‘Take too long to explain.’

‘There you go again. That’s exactly what I mean.’ The door slammed. Joyce turned to Cully and repeated herself. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

Troy sped along the A40. Fast, easy, relaxed, enjoying his superior position as the one who knows. His passenger did little drum rolls on his blue-denimed knees. Before that he had played with a packet of Polos in the glove compartment, then fiddled with his seat belt until Troy had sharply instructed him to desist.

‘But what does he want to see me for?’

‘I couldn’t rightly say, sir.’

‘I’m sure you could rightly say if it suited you.’

Troy was not to be provoked. Nor was he unwise enough to show his pleasure at having a member of the great British public sweating away, supplicant and vulnerable, at his side. He was especially pleased that it was Wainwright whom he’d had down as a swaggering bastard - although in the sergeant’s book this meant no more than a simple refusal to be struck all of a heap at the sight of a CID warrant card.

‘I expect it’s about the murder?’

‘Probably, Mr Wainwright.’ Troy tightened his lips to check a smile. He’d really enjoyed saying ‘Mr Wainwright’. Playing the bloke along. He enjoyed it so much that, swinging into Uxbridge turn off, he said it again.

‘Won’t be long now, Mr Wainwright. Five minutes at the most.’

Barnaby was at his desk re-reading statements when a blue Orion zoomed past his window and redirected into a sensational curve before braking savagely a hairline from the station wall.

The chief inspector buzzed for three coffees and they arrived stimultaneously with Sergeant Troy and his companion, who sat down, looking even paler than usual, convinced he had just narrowly escaped multiple windscreen lacerations at the very least.

‘What do you want to see me about?’ Christopher accepted the coffee, drank it very quickly then said: ‘Mind if I have a cigarette? They’re rather frowned on at the Windhorse.’

To Troy’s chagrin (the No Smoking sign was plain enough), Barnaby told Wainwright to go ahead. Catch me going ahead, thought the sergeant. I’d be hearing about it to the end of time, plus replays. Christopher shook out a pack of Gitanes and offered them round. Both men declined, Troy with a marked slaver. The cigarette was lit, vigorously inhaled and the first question repeated.

‘I take it you haven’t seen today’s paper?’

‘Not allowed. Too much external stimuli impedes one’s journey to a higher plane.’

Barnaby was sure he deduced a whisper of sarcasm. ‘Poppy Levine was married yesterday.’

‘Again?’ said Christopher. ‘Well, it’s kind of you to let me know, but surely a simple phone call would have sufficed.’

‘Rather a coincidence really.’ Barnaby folded the Independent to a quarter square. ‘The groom was a television cameraman.’ He passed the paper over.

‘Why not? We’re hardly an endangered species.’ He glanced down. ‘What a ghastly -’ A catch of the breath. Barnaby grabbed the paper just before it knocked over a coffee cup. There was a lengthy pause then Christopher said, ‘Sod it.’

‘Quite.’ Barnaby began to read. ‘The groom, who was at Stowe with the bride’s brother, has recently returned from shooting a film in Afghanistan. After a whirlwind romance and a wedding at Chelsea Town Hall, the happy couple returned to the bride’s house in Onslow Gardens. Next month they take a delayed honeymoon in Santa Cruz. So ...’ he dropped the paper into his wastebasket, ‘that tells us all about Christopher Wainwright. What we’d like to know now of course is - who the hell are you?’

The man facing Barnaby screwed the stub of his cigarette out in his saucer, fished in the pocket of his cotton Madras jacket and shook out another. ‘Do you think I could have some more coffee?’

Delaying tactics. Won’t get him anywhere. Troy stepped into the outer office to find Audrey on the telephone and the only other policewoman present comforting a scrubber who was faking tears that wouldn’t have deceived a baby. Reluctantly he got the coffee himself, managing even during this brief and extremely simple procedure to project an air of put-upon truculence wildly disproportionate to the task in hand. When he returned, the interviewee was still staring over Barnaby’s head and punishing his cigarette. The chief had a notebook in front of him and a Biro in his hand. Wainwright accepted the coffee, sipped a bit, stirred a bit. Barnaby waited until the cup was empty then said, ‘Answer the question, please.’

‘That’s rotten luck.’ He nodded at the Independent. ‘He’d only just met her when we had lunch. Bowled over though, went on and on.’

‘This lunch, I presume was before you moved to the Manor House?’

‘Directly before. I ran into Chris in Jermyn Street. He’d been buying shirts at Herbie Frogg’s. I was going to the cheese shop for some sausages, which should give you some idea of the delicate gap between our respective incomes. It’s quite true that he was at school with Levine minor and so was I. A spiteful little prig he was too. Wriggling in and out of people’s conversations and assignations, and beds.’

‘Stick to the point.’ Barnaby could easily sound more angry than he was. A useful accomplishment. The false Christopher Wainwright hurried on.

‘We went for a drink in the Cavendish then he suggested lunch at Simpson’s over which he told me in interminable detail about his glorious rise in the BBC and this trip to what he kept calling “the roof of the world”, although I’d always thought myself that was Tibet. Then he started on Poppy. I couldn’t get a word in so I just switched off and concentrated on the glorious protein. We had some trifle and when the bill came he picked up his jacket - we were sitting on one of the banquettes by the wall - and couldn’t find his wallet. Said he must have left it at the shirt-makers. I got lumbered with the bill for forty-eight quid. I was furious, being nearly broke at the time. Specially as I was sure he hadn’t lost it. He was always tight as a tick at school. Locked everything up - even his face flannel.’

Barnaby was hunched forward, elbows on desk and hardly aware of the increased fumage. He made a forceful beckoning gesture of encouragement with his left hand and ‘Christopher’ began to speak again.

‘I needed to visit the Golden Windhorse. To look around the house, get to know the people. Search their rooms and belongings if necessary. I couldn’t do any of those things under my own name.’

‘Which is?’

‘Andrew Carter.’

Troy looked quickly across the room and watched his chief absorb the name and settle back, easing off the pressure. As if a point of no return had now been reached and the unravelling could safely be left to continue on its own.

‘Jim Carter was my uncle. I don’t know if the name means anything to you?’

‘I’m familiar with it, yes.’

‘I believe he was murdered. That’s why I’m at the Windhorse. To find out why. And by who.’

Barnaby said: ‘Wild words.’

‘Not when you hear my reasons.’ He pulled out an envelope and produced a photograph. ‘My bona fides by the way. Such as they are.’

He passed the picture over. It showed a laughing fair-haired boy of perhaps ten or eleven years old, on a donkey. A man in early middle age, also blond, held the reins. The boy looked straight ahead but the man, so alert as to appear anxious, was studying the child’s face as if to reassure himself as to his safety and enjoyment.

‘There’s certainly a likeness.’ Barnaby did not return the picture. ‘But very slight.’

‘That why you dyed your hair, sir?’ Troy was now behind the desk-picking up the snap.

‘Hell - is it so obvious?’ Nervously he smoothed the dark cap. ‘Yes. I thought it might lessen any resemblance. He brought me up - my uncle - after my parents were killed. He was tremendously kind. He couldn’t afford to keep me on at Stowe but apart from that I wanted for nothing. I didn’t notice of course how much he went without himself. Children never do.’ He held out his hand for the photograph. ‘I was very fond of him.’

‘I’d like to make a copy of this, Mr Carter.’

Andrew hesitated. ‘It’s the only one I have.’

‘It’ll be returned before you leave.’ Barnaby passed the picture to Troy who took himself off with it. ‘When did you last see him?’

‘Some time ago. Our relationship was close but we didn’t meet all that often after I left home. I was eighteen. We had a row. I got involved with someone who was married and a lot older. It was the only time there was any real conflict between us. He said it was morally wrong. He was old-fashioned like that. He got really angry. His disappointment made me feel guilty and I stormed off. The rift didn’t last five minutes nor, oddly enough, did the affair, but I never lived permanently at home again.

‘I was a bit of a drifter I’m afraid. I liked being on the move and picked up work wherever I happened to be, sometimes abroad. I did grape-picking in France and Italy, moved on to a ski lodge in the Alps. Worked in a circus in Spain - lion tamer of all things but they were poor toothless animals. Went to the States - couldn’t get a work permit. Dodged immigration for a bit then had to come back. I even did a stint on the Golden Mile at Blackpool, working the amusement arcades. All very picturesque. Or sordid, according to your age and tolerance quotient.’

‘But you always kept in touch with your uncle?’

‘Of course. I wrote regularly. And I always went to see him between sorties. He’d feed me up a bit. And he never lectured although he must have been sad at the way I turned out. Just accepted me for the grey sheep that I am.’

These last few words were spoken so quietly that Barnaby had to strain to understand. But there was no mistaking Carter’s expression. His eyes were burning with a heated mixture of anger and despair. The muscles in his jaw strained with the effort to stop his mouth from trembling. Troy came in with the photograph and some more coffee but Barnaby signalled sharply for him to wait.

‘So when did your uncle go to the Windhorse?’

Carter took a deep breath and long moments passed before he spoke again. He seemed to be bracing himself with great effort for the next step as if it would bring him to the very kernel of his unhappiness.

‘He wrote to me about joining when I was in the States. I must admit I wasn’t altogether surprised. He’d never married. As a child of course, I was glad. It meant I didn’t have to share him. And he’d always been a bit ... well ... reclusive. There were periods each day when he’d ask to be left alone to just sit quietly. In meditation, I suppose I’d call it now. Nearly all his books were religious or philosophical. Bhagavad-Gita, Tagore, Pascal. I remember them all throughout my childhood. They’re mostly still in his room at the Manor House. It really broke me up when I found them ...’

He paused again, this time pressing his knuckles against his mouth as if to dam some unseemly rush of emotion. When he removed his hand, his lips were white. Troy discreetly slid the photograph back on to the desk.

‘It was eighteen months before I got back to England. I moved into a bedsit in Earl’s Court, then I wrote giving my address and phone number and told him I’d come down for a long weekend as soon as I’d got a job sorted. He wrote back saying how much he was looking forward to it. He hadn’t been well - some sort of stomach upset. Then a few days after the letter this arrived.’ He picked up the envelope again and drew out a sheet of lined writing paper which he passed to Barnaby. It read: Andy, Something terrible has happened. Will call you at eight p.m. tomorrow (Thursday) from village. Can’t use house phone. Make sure you’re there. Love, Jim. The last sentence was heavily underlined.

‘I never heard. On the Friday I hung around till lunch time, then I rang the Manor House. I simply couldn’t believe it when they told me he had died. My whole family just ... gone. I sat for hours trying to take it in. Then I went out and got good and drunk. Believe it or not it was well into the next day before the two things - the letter and his death - sort of connected up.’

‘Are you suggesting he was deliberately killed to keep him quiet?’

‘Of course I am.’

‘Isn’t that a bit melodramatic, Mr Carter? The terrible news could have been all sorts of things. Of a medical nature perhaps?’

‘He was only in his late fifties. And his health, apart from this upset I just mentioned, was always good. They told me it had been an accident. “A tragic accident.” ’ He turned the phrase into a spit of disgust. ‘I found out when the inquest was and went along, sitting upstairs in the gallery. And that’s when I discovered for certain I was right.’

Barnaby’s coffee was by now stone-cold and even Troy had forgotten the half cup of scummy liquid hanging at a dangerous tilt from his finger and thumb.

‘Up until then although I was deeply worried and suspicious I had nothing definite to focus on. But when I heard the medical evidence I knew.’ He leaned forward gripping the edge of Barnaby’s desk. ‘The doctor said Jim had been drinking. That he smelled of whisky and some was spilt on his lapel. That was absolute nonsense. In his first letter he told me the doctor had given him some tablets for this intestinal infection and had warned him most specifically not to drink, as alcohol would have a very unpleasant perhaps even dangerous effect. An unnecessary warning as my uncle never drank anyway.’

Barnaby gave it a moment then said: ‘Is it your belief, then, that someone who knew this forced him to drink and it killed him?’

‘That would be a bit uncertain. I think it much more likely that they killed him then poured the stuff down his throat to make it look as if he’d had a drunken fall.’

‘Easier said than done, Mr Carter. Deglution - like most other bodily functions - ceases upon death. A corpse - forgive me for being blunt - cannot be made to swallow.’

‘It should have been brought out at the inquest, nevertheless. I was banking on that.’ Carter became angry, raising his voice. ‘I thought that’s what post mortems were for.’

‘Pathologists are busy men. He may have had other jobs waiting. A pm starts at the head ...’ Barnaby suddenly had a spectacularly vivid picture of just what this involved and felt momentarily queasy, ‘he got to the neck, saw that it was broken and stopped there.’

‘But ... don’t you analyse stomach contents? All that sort of thing?’

‘Only if there are suspicious circumstances. This obviously appeared to be straightforward. It’s a pity,’ he folded up the letter and placed it under a paperweight, ‘that you didn’t pass all these doubts on to the police straight away.’

‘What could I prove? The cremation had taken place before the inquest - they made sure of that. All the evidence literally gone up in smoke. Also, I thought that if you did take me seriously and started questioning people they’d be on their guard, clam right up and I’d get nowhere.’

‘Have you had any luck?’

‘No.’ His expression became dark and sombre. ‘Not a bloody whisper. I was very careful. I’d been there a month before I asked anyone anything. And then I was casual about it. Mentioned him only in passing. I thought this would be acceptable - even half expected. You know how curious people are after an unnatural death. I hoped it would be assumed my questions fell into that category. All I discovered was what he was like as a person, which I knew already.’

‘Did you find anyone reluctant to speak. Feel they were hiding something?’

‘No, damn it. I did wonder at one point if they were in it together.’ He caught the quizzical look of a rough grey brow. ‘It has been known.’

‘I’m aware of that.’ Barnaby, who had long since rested his pen, now put it and the pad aside. ‘Surely it’s a bit unlikely no one at the Manor House knew of your uncle’s medication and the possible side effects.’

‘I doubt it. The problem of alcohol wouldn’t come up. The place is dry, you see.’

‘Dry?’ The word, coloured red for horror, flew from the sergeant’s lips. Troy looked sternly round as if a fourth party were present, concealed perhaps in the filing cabinet, infelicitously interrupting.

‘You didn’t search his room by any chance?’

‘How did you know that?’ He looked briefly impressed.

‘You were heard.’

‘Oh dear. That’s bad.’

‘Were you looking for anything specific?’

Andrew flushed. He looked awkward and for the first time since the beginning of the interview, insincere. He blustered for a moment then shrugged, turning his hands palms-upward in a gesture of exculpation. ‘This is going to sound awfully mercenary so soon after he died but yes, I was looking for a Will. He’d sold his house when he moved to the Windhorse. Nothing grand. A three-bedroom terraced in what years ago was the non-posh bit of Islington. Now of course there’s no such thing. He got a hundred and eighty for it.’ Troy gave a low whistle. ‘I went to Barclays where he always banked, but they weren’t holding a Will and they’d tell me nothing about his affairs.’

‘Perhaps he put it into the commune?’ suggested Troy.

‘That’s not how it works. You don’t have to buy in. People just pay their way. And in any case it’s not something he would have done. He didn’t have to take me in and bring me up, but once he did our attachment to one another was total. I was his next of kin and I know he would have left the proceeds from the sale of the house to me. Certainly in preference to a bunch of strangers.’ His voice rose again on the final words then he paused. Breathing slowly in an obvious attempt to calm down, he reached for a third cigarette.

‘Perhaps you’d let me have your address at Earl’s Court, Mr Carter?’

Barnaby picked up his pen once more.

‘Twenty-eight Barkworth Gardens. Easy to remember because it’s my age.’

‘You say the morning of your uncle’s death you hung around waiting for a call till noon. Were you alone?’

‘Part of the time. Around half ten Noeleen - an Australian girl next door - asked if I’d like some coffee. We had it in her flat. The phone’s on the landing and she left the door open. Why do you ask?’

Barnaby capped this question by another. ‘What are you going to do now your cover’s blown?’

‘No reason why it should be.’ He fielded two disbelieving looks. ‘There’s no newspapers, radio or telly at the house you see.’

‘It’s all over the tabloids, Mr Carter,’ said Troy. ‘Maybe display boards, too. You don’t have to buy a paper. Just be in the blasting area.’

‘I don’t know about that. I was in the village this morning and I didn’t notice anything. Anyway - it’ll be a one-day splash won’t it? All over by tomorrow. I think I’ll keep my mouth shut and my fingers crossed.’

‘You’re going to have the fourth estate crawling out of your Tudor woodwork any minute now,’ said Barnaby, ‘what with the murder and Gamelin’s death. No point in telling them your name’s Christopher Wainwright.’

‘Hell. I suppose not. Then of course Trixie might have seen it. If she comes back -’

‘Comes back? What do you mean?’

‘She’s run off.’

‘What!’

‘We discovered it just before lunch.’

‘Why on earth didn’t you notify us?’

‘Oh there’s nothing sinister. She went of her own free will. Taken all her things.’

‘It’s not for you to decide what’s sinister and what isn’t!’ shouted Barnaby. ‘You were all instructed not to go anywhere without informing the police.’

‘It’s not as if she’s involved -’

‘She’s a witness in a murder inquiry, Mr Carter. And a possible suspect.’

‘A suspect ... but isn’t ... I thought ...’

‘The case is still open.’ He watched that sink in. Saw the implications take root and his visitor’s subsequent alarm.

‘I must get Suze away. I’ll tell her the truth. She’ll understand. Why I had to pretend, to lie. Won’t she?’ He sounded uncertain. ‘I’m not bothered what the others think.’

‘That’s a foolish and careless attitude, Mr Carter,’ said the chief inspector. ‘If your suspicions regarding the death of your uncle are correct - and I tell you frankly that I would not be at all surprised if they were - then someone at the Manor House has already killed two people. And they’ll not hang about, I assure you, if they feel a need to make it three.’

‘But why should anyone want to kill me? I haven’t discovered anything.’

‘Then it might be sensible to publicise the fact. And also,’ concluded Barnaby, ‘to watch your back.’

In the kitchen the Beavers were clearing up after lunch, Heather washing and wiping, Ken (hop, rest, ‘aah!’ hop) attempting to stack.

‘When I think of all that sprout timbale.’ She sounded quite peevish.

‘You haven’t thrown it away?’ Ken was naturally aghast. Throwing away was the irredeemable sin. Everything, even the contents of the vacuum bag, went on the compost heap - which at the Windhorse obtained to an almost iconic status. It was lovingly tended, dampened, activated by Garotta, forked sides to middle, gee’d up with a little lime and gently compressed by Arno’s wellies. Worms were thought specially beneficial and many was the lumbricus going modestly about its day-to-day affairs that would suddenly find itself tenderly whisked from terra firma and sent flying through the air to land, like as not, on a heap of rotting egg shells.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Heather now replied. ‘We can heat it up for supper.’ She tipped the Ecosudz down the sink. This, too, was not wasted. All water, (bar that from the loo), was diverted via an elaborate ganglia of tubes and hoses to the herb garden which remained ungratefully sodden-rooted and spotty-leaved. ‘Oh - do be careful. Here - let me ...’

Ken, balancing as best he could to put a stack of plates away, had almost toppled over. ‘Sorry ... a myriad thanks. A bit difficult getting earth-centred today.’

Pouring out the hyssop tea, Heather reintroduced a topic which had kept them awake and chatting the previous night well past sleepy-bye time. ‘Have you thought any more,’ she said, ‘about what we’re going to do if ...’

Ken shook his head. He drank a little tea, lifting and stretching his top lip in a rabbity fashion to keep his moustache dry. ‘Something might turn up today.’

There was no need to elaborate. They both knew that ‘something’ meant a Will.

When the matter was being discussed earlier, Ken and Heather had looked very higher-planeish and disapproving, being drawn in, they made clear, quite against their own selfless and delicate inclinations. But later, à deux, they had to admit that facts were facts no matter how the nut roast crumbled. And that uncertainty had entered their lives in a big way.

They were very contented at the Windhorse and had become deeply attached to the idea of sleeping beneath a solid roof, washing in hot water and staying fairly warm. Neither wished to rejoin the hipoisie of which their memories were keen. Both recalled sharply lurching about the country in leaky caravans and filthy buses. Hounded and moved on none too gently by the police, or hard-faced, granite-hearted landowners for whom the words ‘care and share’ might never have been invented. Wearily shifting from one smoke-filled bivouac to the next, crouching round a listless fire surrounded by snapping ribby dogs and whining children. Breaking ice on cattle troughs to make tea, shop-lifting - Ken had especially hated shop-lifting - and outbreaks of violence at dead of night if the local barbarians sussed their arrival. Heather had been woken once by the roar of motor cycles to find fiery rags burning on her pillow.

Neither of them had any idea of course, in those far-off Gandalfian days, that they harboured such a multiplicity of psychic gifts. Yet, now, here was Ken chosen to be a channel for one of the greatest minds the world has ever known, and Heather visiting Venus and being sent back with outstanding powers of healing.

It was mainly because of their work that they were anxious to retain the Windhorse base. They saw it as a haven where the ailing and spiritually bereft could come and be succoured. Should the house prove to have been deeded to some unsympathetic stranger or, worse, be enclosed by Government fisc, where would these poor souls go? Where, come to think of it, would Ken and Heather go? Property was theft, of course, but even if that were not the case they had no savings with which to buy. And no children to qualify for council housing - Ken, (on top of the leg), having a quite minuscule sperm count.

Even ordinary day-to-day expenses might prove to be a problem. The DSS, when first approached for Income Support a year ago, had been especially unimaginative. In vain had Heather explained the importance of their work: the ripple effect (a loving smile in Uxbridge warms a heart in Katmandu) and the thousands of pounds her ministrations saved the NHS. The department had been equally short-sighted over Ken’s claims for a disability allowance, rapping boringly on about the need for a conventional examination plus X-rays.

‘That’ll be the day,’ Ken had retorted defiantly, ‘when I trust my body to some chemical-dispensing allopath and his cancer-forming rays.’

Heather had proved loyal in support, crying, ‘Why not just send him to Chernobyl and be done with it?’

Good old Heth. Ken watched her now, languidly taking the mugs to the sink, rinsing them out. She was wearing a cheap white cotton boiler-suit through which the outline of her homely black-knickered bottom clearly showed. Having removed the crystal, her forehead rose naked, high and bumpy - giving a quite erroneous impression of towering intellect.

‘Far be it from me,’ said Ken, lowering his voice, ‘as you know. But I couldn’t help wondering if Suhami will still want to give her money to The Lodge now the Master’s gone.’

‘Oh, I do hope so!’ cried Heather. ‘Even if one manages to remain personally non-corrupt, unearned wealth is still the most enormous barrier when mutating to harmonal soul-rule.’

‘Right.’ Ken reached for the bread bin. ‘Is there any jam left?’

‘I’ve just put it away.’ She crossed to the cupboard. ‘And you sat there and let me.’

‘Sorry. Do you want a slice?’

‘I shouldn’t.’ Ken sawed off one more. ‘Funny, Trixie running away like that, don’t you think? After Guy Gamelin died. I wondered if ... well ... if they might have been in it together.’

‘They didn’t even know each other.’

‘She said that afterwards but May saw them driving off together the afternoon he arrived. Before he’d supposedly met any of us.’

‘Probably after a bit of rumpy-pumpy.’

‘Ken, honestly!’ Heather applied a slab of pear and rhubarb stick to her bread. ‘For a highly graded planetary light-worker you can sometimes be awfully coarse.’

‘Human nature, Heth. Who are we to judge?’

The telephone rang. There were three: one in the office, one in the kitchen and one on the hall table. Heather let it go saying: ‘It’ll be business of some sort. May’s in the office.’

But if May was, she did not respond and eventually Heather, sighing, ‘As if I didn’t have enough to do,’ picked it up.

Ken watched and listened, becoming more and more intrigued by his wife’s disjointed and seemingly harassed response.

‘... but she’s not here ... not at the moment ... I really couldn’t say ... Oh I wouldn’t have thought so ... No, no - it’s not at all that sort of place. We ... Well, I was present myself as a matter of fact ... Heather Beavers. Writer, Healer and Priestess ... priestess. MPFS ... I’m not trying to spell it - those are my qualifications ... Gosh I’m not sure about that. We live communally here you see. Talk everything over together ... Really? That’s not long ... will you? I could ask - hullo? Hullo?’

She rattled the receiver before hanging up and turning to Ken, her face stretched taut by the muscular effort needed to conceal the intensity of her reaction.

‘That was the Daily Pitch.’

‘Earth-bound profaners,’ said Ken automatically.

‘Oh yes - of course. They wanted to talk to Miss Gamelin - Suhami. I said she wasn’t here.’

‘Quite right too. Thank God someone caring took the call.’

‘We must protect her, Ken. That’s vital.’

‘Evoke the crystalline hordes.’

‘Trouble is ... après moi le déluge, ducky.’

‘Ay?’

‘That’s what this woman said. This reporter. We’re going to be absolutely besieged.’

‘Tory lackeys.’

‘Absolutely.’ Heather looked around the empty kitchen and spoke more quietly. ‘They’re so slick. After she’d kind of trapped me into admitting that I was there when the murder took place she began talking about an exclusive. Start counting your noughts my love - all that sort of thing.’

‘Christ.’ His voice had gone quite pale.

‘I know.’ Heather locked her fingers in a vain attempt to control a shudder.

‘What a load of shites. You’d never feel clean again ... Would you?’

‘I should say not,’ agreed Heather, painedly studying the interlacing digits. ‘On the other hand ... I got to thinking, Ken. Like - you know - what are we about here?’ She waved at the honest home-made loaf and sturdy jam. ‘What are we into?’ Her husband screwed up his eyes sternly and frowned. ‘Cooling the ego - right? Thinking of others, putting them first. Now here’s an opportunity to protect a bereaved sister - we could speak to them and draw the flak from her on to ourselves who are better able to bear it.’

‘Ohhh ...’ Ken groaned, mangling his crust in self-abnegation. ‘Sorry sorry sorry ... Of course you’re right. Poor Suze. Once again Heth you show the way.’

‘And it would mean more merits for our karma.’

Her husband laughed and shook his head. ‘Seems it’s impossible to get away from the ego entirely. Look - how would it be, just to reassure both of us, if I checked it out with Hilarion?’

‘She’ll be ringing back in a minute.’

‘A minute is all it takes.’ And Ken straightened his spine, crossed his eyes, concentrated on the tip of his nose and tuned in to the Intergalactic World Brain.

May had not answered the telephone because she was upstairs starting on what she had already recognised would be a lengthy and most formidable task. Nothing less than the reclamation of the soul of Felicity Gamelin. May had started simply at the most basic level, for physical strength must first be restored.

Now, stroking Felicity’s thin hand and holding her in the light, May poured all her energy, (hardly at its peak after the last two days), into the pale motionless figure. She was working quite alone for Felicity seemed to have no will at all. She simply lay, dull eyes staring at the ceiling, looking as if she were about to shrivel up and die.

May’s gentle consoling voice had been rippling on for half an hour when Felicity suddenly turned and looked at her. May saw cold, hard stones resting in ivory sockets.

‘I hated him.’

‘Ssshh.’

‘I hated him. So why aren’t I glad?’

‘Because it is not in your true nature.’

May had seen that straight away. The aura, though tattered, was surprisingly well balanced. Quite a lot of pink and green, even a little blue. Not at all like that young policeman with red flickers everywhere. What a way he had to go, poor boy. May laid her hand on Felicity’s brow, picturing divine love flowing down her arm, through her fingers, and entering Felicity’s body to heal and comfort.

‘Danton called him my mid-life Croesus.’

‘Is Danton a friend?’ asked May.

‘No.’ A ghostly thread of sound. ‘Not at all a friend. Just someone I used to know.’

These few words seemed to exhaust her but she murmured something else before rolling her head away again. It sounded like ‘chaos’.

‘Our Master used to say that there is an order within apparent disorder, and I’m sure that is true. Just be still my dear and quiet, and all the mud - all the unhappiness - will settle and things will become clear and bright. You have lost your way Felicity, but together we will find it again.’

Felicity lay back on the pillow, her hand resting in May’s. Gradually she felt stealing over her a most delicious lethargy. Her limbs felt so heavy they might have been melting through the mattress. May’s voice came and went: deep, rhythmical and soothing like the ocean’s tide. Felicity slept.

Arno was pulling radishes for a side salad, stopping sometimes to wave encouragingly to Christopher who was tying up runner beans at the far end of the garden. The radishes were poor forked things quite unlike the glowing crimson globes promised by the seed packet. One of them was covered in little scales and plainly destined for the bonfire. He tried to arrange the rest on a wooden plate brought out expressly for the purpose, but no matter how he turned them they always finished whiskery-side upmost and looking faintly rude.

He had been attempting, as a way of keeping his mind off sorrowful things, to compose another haiku but it was not to his satisfaction. Aware that nothing would ever be good enough this last one, (‘Tumultuous heart, requiescat in pace, on the breast of your slave’) seemed especially inept. It even omitted his adored one’s name.

He had hardly seen her today. He understood. Felicity’s need was great. Anyone could see that she had been very ill. But Arno’s heart was heavy, too. He had said his prayers before going to sleep and on rising, but not with any hope of comfort and certainly with no sense of homage. More out of habit really, because once he had promised his mother he always would. Never forget, she used to tell him, that Jesus loves you. Personally he’d never felt this and, even if it had been true, would have gained little consolation - for who wanted to be loved by someone who loved everybody? And then only because it was their job.

This attention-drift brought him back to the Master’s death from which his thoughts had briefly strayed. How utterly dreadful it had been. And how changed they now were. No one put this into words. No one looked squarely into another’s face and said: ‘You are quite changed’. But it was true. Arno could not describe precisely how. But people seemed somehow ... smaller. Their humanness a shade diffused, their benevolence slippier, their vitality diminished. Perhaps this was what that poem meant. ‘Any man’s death ...’

Arno pinched himself. His Zen awareness seemed to have quite vanished over the last forty-eight hours. He was living not in the moment but in the near and dreadful past, the image of his dying teacher frozen on the retina. The constant comings and goings of the police distracted and alarmed him. Yesterday they’d searched the house. Today they’d been again, taking away all sorts of tea towels. Arno was especially concerned on Tim’s behalf. When frightened, who knew what the boy would say? That chief inspector, surprisingly brief and restrained though the manner of his questioning had been, looked like the sort to try again.

Heather caught Arno’s eye, not for the first time. Over the last hour she had ballooned up and down the drive at least three times. Arno thought at first this was part of her daily work-out until he noticed that she stepped outside on to the pavement, scanning the High Street between each run. Perhaps something had happened since he left the house. A development in the case. If so, it was his duty to hurry back. How reluctant he was to do this. Somehow, out in the sunshine, things looked fractionally less appalling. Reasoning that he’d soon be called if needed, Arno turned back to his vegetables and so missed the cream car swinging through the Manor House gates.

Ken and Heather had got ready at some length for the Daily Pitch, aware that there might be photographers and that it was their duty as representatives of the Golden Windhorse to look their very best.

Thankfully Hilarion had given a positively radiated blessing on the project. Indeed the great chohan had been not only unequivocal in his support but also generous with his explanations. Zedekial must know that, on the other side, the word ‘money’ was solidly anchored in the pink, atomic cellular light of manifest neutrality. Put simply, the stuff could be used for good or ill. Naturally as Pan-earthed cosmics, he and Tethys could be entrusted to fulfil the latter part creatively.

Once this detail had been tidied away, the Beavers had discussed the situation at great length, mainly from the possible viewpoint of the other residents. Eventually, regretfully, they had come to the conclusion that their willingness to touch pitch, even on behalf of another, was fraught with the possibility of being misunderstood. This perception grasped, the next brief step (from virtue to pragmatism) was quickly taken. They decided that their sacrifice on behalf of Suhami should remain a secret. After all wasn’t it in the Bible - the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing? The upshot of all this prosing was that Ken and Heather decided it would be wiser to take their long spoons and sup with the devil elsewhere.

Which is how Heather came to be resting against the old rose brick of the crinkle-crankle wall now gilded by the afternoon sun to deep umber. She was frowing and peering right - the direction from which a London-leaving car might reasonably be expected to arrive. But the Citroën CV, PRESS disc on its windscreen, approached from the left and was through the open gates and half way up the drive before she noticed.

Semaphoring wildly, Heather started to run. Fast and graceless, flip-flops alternately slapping against the soles of her feet and the gravel, she cursed her misdirected attention.

The car was already parked and two people had got out. If they rang the bell ... One of them was standing in the porch, the other, fingers steepled against the light, was peering through a closed window. Calling on Artemis the swift-footed for assistance, Heather panted and lumbered on.

The female half of the duo watched this approach, lips compressed for it was an amusing sight. Mistakenly encouraged into lime green (Ken said it matched her eyes), Heather had piled up her hair to emphasise her neck, and she’d gilded her eyelids and brows to emphasise the hierophantic nature of her calling. She wore a nuclear receptor and the pyramid bounced on her vast bosom as she ran.

‘Terry ... hey ...’ The girl was wearing a mini-skirted denim suit, cream tights and spiky high-heeled shoes. She carried a black patent-leather bag almost as big as a brief case. ‘Get a load of this.’

‘Blimey,’ said Terry. (Short-sleeved check shirt, jeans and trainers.) ‘Weight-watchers’ disaster of the year.’ The Pentax flew into his hands and clicked as Heather crossed her hands back and forth over her head. They stood together, waiting.

‘Hi. You, Mrs Beavers?’ She stepped out, tipping forwards slightly on the towering heels. ‘Heather?’

Heather nodded, leaning on the porch frame, cheeks like sweating beetroots, hair collapsing. Terry took a couple more pictures. One of these, very cruelly angled indeed, made her look like a washed-up dugong.

He said, ‘Lovely bash, darlin. Yours is it?’ and went off without waiting for a reply, walking backwards, click clicking all the time.

‘I’m Ave Rokeby.’

She had a really nice voice, decided Heather. Soft and kind and interested. A little humorous. Not at all like that common aggressive photographer. She was holding out her hand. That wasn’t so nice. Long bony fingers with crimson nails like birds’ claws. Quite witchy in fact. About to shake it, Heather realised she was clutching a Walkers ‘Salt and Vinegar’ bag picked up from the pavement. They laughed as she transferred it to the other hand.

‘Bit of a problem ...’ said Heather getting her breath back, ‘vandalism.’

(Vandalism? A crisp packet?)

‘Compton Dando’s rather a spiritual desert. No one’s really soul-aware.’

(So what’s new?)

‘We link up with extra-terrestrials of course for interplanetary cleansing ...’

(You do what?)

‘But Hilarion says till our akashic records are given egoic clearance, earth will remain locked into the same lethal agenda.’

‘Hilarion? Your husband?’

‘Oh ... oh.’ Heather chuckled, slopping in all directions. ‘Hilarion’s been dead for hundreds of years.’

(Jesus.)

‘But you still talk to him?’

‘Ken does. He’s clair audient. A channel for the great ones to come through. He wrote all Shakespeare’s plays you know.’

(Did I leave a number at the office?)

Ave sat down in the porch and produced a tape recorder from her bag and a mike like a bulbous grey sponge. ‘I just want a bit of background. If you could tell me briefly how many people live here, what your general beliefs are. If you’re into UFOs - that kind of thing.’

But Heather had hardly drawn attention to the multi-stellar glories of the soon-to-be-expected Venusian reconnaissance before Ave was asking how Guy Gamelin came on the scene and what could Heather tell the Pitch’s readers about the habits of the murdered man.

‘Are there a lot of young girls here for instance?’ Heather looked bewildered. ‘Boys then?’ Even more so. The mike went back in the bag. ‘OK, I’ll fill in the details later.’ Ave rose and lifted the wooden latch on the front door. ‘This is the country all right. Leave your place unlocked for two minutes in London, somebody does you over. Terry ...’ Her voice raucoused up a notch. ‘We’re going in.’

‘Right.’

‘Could you please keep ... if you wouldn’t mind ... not shouting ...’

Heather’s heart, only just settling down after her tempestuous marathon, was once more beating fast. She wondered where Ken had got to and looked round anxiously. A vague belief in the law of averages left her certain that if a house held eight people, the time must surely be close when one of them should appear, or at least glance out of the window.

‘Ave ...’ she plucked at the denim arm. ‘Miss Rokeby ...’

‘Ave’s fine.’

Terry pushed past Heather and a moment later all three were in the hall. Ave said, ‘God - this smells like my old convent,’ and started to wander round, the metal tips on her heels savagely scoring the venerable boards.

‘’Ullo, ‘’ullo.’ Terry was standing by the round table which held the pamphlets and wooden bowls. Ignoring the ‘Guilty’ card, he picked up the one marked ‘Love Offering’. ‘This where you put your names when you want a bit is it?’ He sniggered and turned his attention to the reading matter. Hugs and Laughter Workshop. How to Nurture Your Spiritual Tool.

‘Who turns out this stuff?’ He waved Ken’s Romance of the Enema.

‘Different people.’ Heather went over, saying pridefully, ‘We’re all writers here. My husband’s responsible for that one. It’s done terribly well. The Health Shop in Causton sold out the first week.’

‘No shit?’ said Terry, throwing the leaflet down.

‘Could I ask you,’ Heather restacked neatly, ‘please to ...’ But he was off again, shooting the staircase and gallery.

‘Ave?’

‘Uh-huh?’ She was opening the elder of the chests, dragging out some curtains.

‘The thing is we decided ... Ken and myself ... that we’d rather talk to you outside. In the village perhaps. There’s a nice little pub -’

‘Forget it.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Away from the sunlight, Heather could see how sallow the other woman’s skin was, how dry her hair. Despite the mini skirt she wasn’t really young at all.

‘We talk here because this is where it happened, OK? And Terry’ll want some piccies of the actual room.’

‘You can’t do that!’ Horrified, Heather looked round and round again as if the very suggestion might materialise wrathful inmates. ‘The Solar is a holy place kept strictly for prayer and meditation.’

‘You could have fooled me,’ said Ave, and she and Terry guffawed.

‘Human interest, darlin’,’ said Terry. ‘A quick flash won’t do it any harm.’ He danced about as he spoke. On the move all the while, the camera nosing everywhere. Reversing images, pinning them down. Wheeze, click. Wheeze, click. Hammer beams, stone Buddha, the glorious lantern. Heather stared, both fascinated and repelled by the impersonality of the thing. It was horrible - like something in a science-fiction film. A black and silver one-eyed metal brain between two hairy paws, swinging, staring, recording. Threatening. A movement in the corridor made her jump.

But it was only Ken. He approached limping, left arm folded diagonally across his breast - the hand, open-palmed, resting against his shoulder. The right hand held a flower. He was draped in a mass of dingy cheesecloth with a green sash and he wore his headband with the blue tiger’s eye crystal. His moustache was newly trimmed.

Murmuring, ‘Blimey - a master of the universe,’ Terry clicked again.

‘Where have you been?’ Heather ran to her husband. ‘Leaving me on my own!’ Then, noting his look of displeasure, ‘it’s not my fault. They just pushed in.’

‘Not to worry.’ Ken put her calmly aside. ‘I’ll handle everything now.’ He approached Ave and bowed, the crystal swinging out and clunking back again. ‘We will only discuss matters relevant to the current issue off the premises. So ... if you please ...’ He walked to the door opened it and waited.

Ave returned to the chest and discovered some old copies of the Middle Way and a broken lamp shade. Terry knelt in front of the Buddha, screwing himself right round in an attempt to get a wide-nostrilled distortion of its calm and placid countenance. This action had hiked up his jeans, and nylon socks became clearly visible. They seemed to express his essential philosophy. One was covered with the word ‘get’ in many languages, its fellow said ‘stuffed’.

Ken cleared his throat and said, ‘Excuse me -’

‘I’ve tried all that,’ cried Heather. ‘Why don’t you listen?’

Tension combined with all the running had started a pain in her chest. Control of the situation had quite slipped away, if indeed it had ever been within her grasp. She sensed an unpleasant tightening in the atmosphere. A determined energy running back and forth between the two visitors. They hardly conferred, yet seemed to know each other’s ways like a crack team of whippers in.

‘Where’s this solar, then?’ When there was no reply, Terry said: ‘Come on, come on.’ A hard Cockney barrow-boy whine. Cam orn ... cam orn ... He bounced on the balls of his feet, perky and aggressive, a boxer looking for an opening. ‘Did you ask us down or didn’t you?’

‘Ask you down?’

The words boomed out above their heads and, briefly, Terry and Ave were disoriented. Then they saw at the top of the grand staircase a female figure magnificently clad in a flowing multicoloured robe, the bodice of which was adorned by a glittering crescent moon. A lofty mass of auburn hair added to this creature’s already splendid height.

Terry muttered, ‘Funky bisons,’ and took aim. Dimly in the light from all this reflected radiance, he perceived another person. A slender girl in a green and gold sari positioned, like a handmaid, one step behind. As the flash went off, she turned quickly away, covering her face with a fold of silk.

Now why do that, Ave thought?

‘Explain yourself.’ A further rich vibration. It was like listening to the opening chords of some grand oratorio.

‘It’s our glorious free press.’ Suhami spoke quietly into May’s ear. ‘Exercising their divine right to muckrake.’

‘This is private property.’ May began to descend, billowing in plenipotentiary splendour. Her feet, encased in damson velvet slippers thickly studded with brilliants, appeared and disappeared beneath the hem of her gown like gorgeous little boats. ‘Who are you?’

‘Who are you?’ replied Ave, like someone out of Alice. Raptorial fingers hovered near the starter button of her machine.

‘That’s of no importance.’ Clickety click, wheeze click. ‘Stop doing that!’

Briefly Terry held his fire. He was staring hard at the less exotic of the two women, and coming to the conclusion that she was no more a Chatterjee than he was despite the vermilion caste-mark. The brown skin was simply tanned white skin, plus the face was really familiar. Where had he seen her before? He closed, raising the Pentax. She took up a pewter plate from the second of the wooden chests and threw it, striking him sharply on the side of the head.

‘Do you frigging mind, lady?’ he shouted. ‘I’m trying to take some pictures here.’

‘Dear child ...’ May turned, showing a shocked and distressed countenance. ‘That is not the way. Not the way at all. What would He have said?’ Suhami burst into a storm of weeping.

‘Now look,’ said Ave, putting down her bag and microphone but in a manner that made it clear this was temporary. ‘I hate to pour cold water on all this virtuous indignation but we were invited here - right, Terry? So let’s stop carrying on as if it’s a break-in to rape and pillage the ancestral marbles.’

‘You must be mistaken,’ said May firmly.

‘Ask Mrs Beavers,’ replied Ave.

All heads turned to where Ken and Heather stood looking greatly discomposed. Apprehension, embarrassment and exasperation vied for supremacy on their features. They kept screwing up their eyes and exchanging ‘you say - no you’ grimaces. Eventually Heather spoke.

‘There’s been a misunderstanding. This person rang up and I completely got the wrong end of the stick. She gave me the impression that some sort of interview was already fixed and all she needed was directions on how to find the place.’

‘You’re wasted here, kiddo,’ said Ave. ‘You should be in Westminster.

‘Heather’s right,’ chimed in Ken. ‘I was standing by the phone at the time.’

‘I put the idea of an exclusive to them.’ Ave spoke directly to May. ‘They asked me to ring back in five minutes. When I did they said fine - come on down. Apparently they’d talked to some astral wanker called Hilarion and he’d okay’d the whole shoot.’

‘Is this true, Heather?’

There was a long pause then Ave said, ‘If things are going to start getting tacky, I think I should say that all my incoming calls are taped.’

‘Of course it’s true!’ burst out Suhami, staring at the Beavers with contemptuous disgust. ‘They’ve sold us. You’ve only got to look at them.’

‘Don’t talk to me like that!’ cried Heather. ‘It’s all very well for you. Rolling in money all your life. Maybe if I’d got half a million to chuck about -’

She broke off, clapping her hand across her mouth, horrified at such impious backsliding. Ken, looking sheepish and responsible, as though his wife was some large ill-tempered pet that he had failed to keep under control, started to pat her in a clumsy manner.

Terry, who had been listening with lip-curling relish to this tirade, now realised why the girl looked so familiar. He stepped back a little then sideways, trying to frame her head and shoulders while she was still distracted. What he really needed was a bit of elevation. Stairs no good - he’d just get the back view. He looked around, saw the perfect spot and climbed. Ave too had twigged the girl’s identity. She picked up the microphone.

‘What was your father doing down here, Sylvia? D’you think he was involved in the murder? Were you having an affair with the victim?’

‘Aahh ...’ Pain flared in the girl’s voice. ‘You’re vile ... Isn’t it enough to lose him? The dearest man ...’

‘He was your lover then?’

‘Go away ... for God’s sake go away!’

‘If I do, you’ll only have the others on your back. You won’t be able to step outside without being blinded by cameras and deafened by questions a whole lot nastier than the ones I’ve just put. But give the Pitch an exclusive and they’ll leave you alone.’

Terry, climbing on to the Buddha’s plinth, waited for this untruthful suggestion to work. It frequently did. Even intelligent people fell for it. Desperation mainly. Better the devil you’ve just been introduced to. Pity saris were so high-necked. She’d got lovely tits.

May was making a great effort to re-draw her karmic blueprint. Sensing that the visitors were in some way demonic, she had conjured her guardian angel and saw him now, beating his great wings, directly beneath the lantern. She pictured her bones and tissues being flooded by the pulse-beat of his celestial light. She would need all his support. How quickly and easily these people had appeared, no doubt through the great tear in the house’s protective shell made by the Master’s death. The woman was speaking again.

‘I said - if you give us an exclusive you’ll be left in peace.’

‘Such a collusion would be against all our principles.’

‘We’ll pay. Lots.’

‘That is precisely what I mean.’

‘The community uses money, surely, like everyone else?’

‘The community!’ Ken stared, stunned. ‘But I thought -’ Heather gave him such a violent nudge in the ribs he almost fell over.

‘We’ll make the cheque out to the Golden Windhorse then you can fight it out amongst yourselves.’

‘We are not like that.’ May spoke with simple dignity.

‘Everyone’s like that if there’s enough swag on the table.’

At this point Terry, having rammed an air-pumped Reebok into the discreet drapery of the statue’s crotch, was poised for a tasty full-length frame of the Gamelin profile. As he took it, she emitted a shriek of fury.

‘Look where he’s standing! That’s a rupa ...’ Terry winked and clicked, again getting an immaculate shot of her beautiful, frenzied face. ‘A sacred thing. Get off ... get off!’

An anguished and muddled hesitancy momentarily seized the group. The outrageous violation shocked them into immobility. Suhami stared around, silently imploring, her eyes glazed with misery.

The pause was brief. Suddenly an urgent stream of flying cheesecloth passed them by. Ken, having sussed an opportunity to make perhaps some tiny measure of amends, hurled himself with great force at the Buddha’s plinth - knocking over the floral tribute and getting cold water and lupins in his face. Gasping for breath, he scrabbled at the slippy stone, heaving and straining upwards, crumbs of grit beneath his suffering nails. Reaching Terry’s foot, he gripped the Reebok’s laces and tugged.

Locking both arms around the statue’s neck, thus turning away from Ken, Terry started to kick backwards savagely with his free foot. Ken received a couple of painful blows in the shoulder. There was no problem at this distance in reading Terry’s socks although their directive seemed, given the behaviour of the feet, to add an unnecessary gloss. At the third blow, Ken released the laces and went for Terry’s ankles.

Briefly, almost gracefully, he was swung out on the end of an even more violent kick only to go crashing face-first back into the plinth. Grappling more and more fiercely, he tugged at the denim calves, thighs and cheeks in a grotesquely literal representation of male bonding. The end came when he reached, and seized, Terry’s groin.

With a yelp the photographer wrenched his head and shoulders round and started spewing obscenities into Ken’s upturned face. This sudden violent movement shifted the statue. It made a slow grating sound like a large stone being dragged from a wall.

There was a concerted intake of breath as, open-mouthed and breathless, people watched the fixedly smiling figure shiver. Then it tilted forwards, but slowly, the main mass of it still balanced safely on its axis. Still able to rock safely back into position if only its dangling necklace of human flesh were removed.

Ave uttered a piercing cry. ‘Terry - let go!’

Terry was panting, face made grimly triumphant by the fact that he was still hanging on in there. Then he made the mistake of turning outwards to see how all this derring-do was being received. This unwise redistribution of body weight caused the statue to tip still further, this time past the point of no return.

It fell to the floor with a deafening crash. Terry, twisting in mid-descent, landed inches from its powerful skull. Ken was not so lucky.