Death in Disguise

Chapter 12

Troy came in bright-eyed, crisp as a nut, the baby having slept right through. He smelled of Players High Tar and Brusque, the plebeian’s two fingers at Chanel Pour l’Homme. He hung up his jacket, stared at Barnaby who was gazing out of the window and said: ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m studying for the priesthood, Sergeant. What does it look as if I’m doing?’

Oh dear. A sarky day. A sarky day spent looking at a face like a slapped arse. Not the day to bring out the new pictures of Talisa Leanne standing up all by herself apart from hanging onto the back of Maureen’s chair. To be fair to the chief, he was not looking at all smart.

‘You OK, sir?’

‘So so. I didn’t sleep too well.’

‘That a fact?’ Newly refreshed, Troy was not really sympathetic. He was one of those people who, offspring permitting, could sleep hanging by a toenail from a clothes-line. He went over to look, for the umpteenth time, at the blow-up and said, ‘I’ve been thinking.’

This was a process Troy used sparingly. Too much thinking, it seemed to him, just got you overheated. He observed, he listened, he made neat notes. He was scrupulously accurate and sometimes intuitive. What he did not go in for were long periods of rigorous introspection plus a precisely argued follow-through.

Barnaby said, ‘Uh huh,’ and waited.

‘This Tim, look where he’s sitting.’ The chief inspector had no need to look. He knew the positions by heart. ‘Actually kneeling at Craigie’s feet.’

‘So?’

‘Now see where the Gamelin girl is, on Craigie’s left. The three of them in fact make an upended triangle. All Tim has to do is jump up and turn and he’d be facing them both - right?’ Barnaby agreed. ‘I think that might be what he did. And in the semi-darkness, plus all the confusion with the old dingbat going it on the quilt, he stabbed the wrong person.’

‘You mean he was trying to kill Sylvia Gamelin? But why?’

‘By all accounts he worshipped old Obi. This man was his sun, moon, stars and the last bus home. But what has the lad got to offer in return? Total devotion, that’s it. Well, you can get that from a dog can’t you? Now here comes this girl, young, beautiful, all her marbles, plus she’s about to offer the community a whacking great hand-out. Might Riley not see this as a moment of threat? Believe she’s trying to buy her way into the Master’s affections and push him out?’

Barnaby frowned. Troy continued, ‘Probably seem an overreaction to you and me, but don’t forget he’s mental. He won’t reason logically.’

‘It’s slight but just about feasible. In a state of extreme jealousy he might panic and react in the manner you describe.’

Troy flushed and tugged at his shirt cuffs: a habit when he was pleased or embarrassed. ‘That might explain his wild reaction to the death, Chief. And why he said it was an accident.’

‘Mm. The whole matter of emotional relationships is one we haven’t even started to go into. These enclosed communities can be like pressure cookers, especially the spiritually orientated places where showing antagonism is frowned on.’ If Barnaby sounded irked it was because he resented people who purported to have annexed goodness to themselves. ‘And it’s not unusual for a leader with exceptional charismatic gifts to be adored in a physical as well as an emotional way.’

‘You mean he was knocking somebody off?’

Barnaby winced. ‘Not necessarily. I suppose what I’m trying to get at is that because we never met him when he was alive we can’t appreciate - no matter what his followers say - quite how dynamic his personality really was. Or how strong his influence might have been.’

‘True. Didn’t look much lying on his back with his toes turned up. I still don’t see though ...’ Troy abandoned the diagram and sat down facing the desk. ‘D’you mean he might have been influencing someone in the wrong way?’

‘Perhaps.’ The truth was that Barnaby did not know what he meant. He was simply cogitating aloud. Positing ideas, throwing them away, playing with others. Guessing at unseen connections, maybe guessing wrong. When he was younger this had been the stage in a murder inquiry that had alarmed him most. The dreadful malleability of the whole thing. Grasping at a conversation here, a suspected motive there, a physical clue (that could surely be proven and pinned down), only to find them all evaporating under closer scrutiny.

Each setback would further knot him into apprehension. He sensed, not always in his imagination, disappointment in his performance and increasing pressure to get his finger out, from his immediate superiors. He never forgot the first case that he brought to a successful conclusion. His feelings of exhilaration qualified immediately by a disturbing sense that there had been no ‘spare’ to fall back on. That he had made it mainly through luck and by the skin of his teeth. And that the success might never be repeated.

Now he was somewhat more at ease with ambiguity and had enough confidence not to panic, believing that sooner or later deliverance, in the shape of a newly discovered fact or freshly made connection or slip of a suspect tongue, was at hand. Occasionally they were not and failure was the result. Not the end of the world as he had once thought, but meaning simply that he was no different from other men.

At the present moment the case was barely two days old and he was waiting on many things. Firstly for the PM report and information from the lab on the fibres of a coarse apron and several towels removed from the Windhorse yesterday. He was niggled about this thread. Not knowing its origins or how it came to be there meant not knowing its importance. It might be of no moment; it might be crucial.

Then someone was trying to chase up the real Christopher Wainwright and George Bullard should be ringing back on the subject of Jim Carter’s medication. There were a couple more Arthur Craigie soundalikes on the way although Barnaby had little faith in this conviction of Troy’s, springing as it did merely from Gamelin’s hardly unbiased description and a false hairpiece. Attempts were being made to check on Andrew Carter’s story but so picaresque were his meanderings (if truthfully described), that it was going to be far from easy. Barnaby had also obtained a copy of the coroner’s report and inquest on the boy’s uncle and could see that re-opening the investigation might prove problematical. All members of the community were provably elsewhere at the time of Carter’s death but the letter and scrap of conversation could not be ignored. Trixie Channing was not on the computer so she had not, as Barnaby had previously suspected, skipped bail. This meant a composite had to be built up and circulated, all of which took time. Barnaby was by no means as convinced as Andrew Carter that ‘nothing sinister’ had occurred just because all the girl’s gear had disappeared when she did. Trixie had been scared of something at the time of her interview and Barnaby now regretted he had not pushed harder to find out what it was.

‘You still set against Gamelin, Chief?’

‘I suppose I am.’ In fact Barnaby was no longer even tempted. Quite why he could not say. Partly irritation at being so forcefully presented with a scapegoat. Partly Gamelin’s genuine rage that he should have been so used. Then there was the motive. Seemingly so straightforward, on closer examination it proved to be much less so. Barnaby believed, when it came to the push, Guy’s daughter would come before her ducats. He appeared consumed by a fierce despairing need to regain her affection. She had made her feelings about her teacher plain, so her father must have known that harming Craigie would scupper his chances of a reconciliation for good and all. Neither was the man’s removal any sort of guarantee that Sylvie would not hand the money over. It may well have made her even more determined. Finally, and to Barnaby’s mind most telling, there was the nature of the beast. Gamelin struck him as a perfect example of the take-what-you-want-and-pay-for-it-type. Certainly the chief inspector could see Guy committing murder but felt it would most likely be on a blood-boiling impulse rather than as the end result of skilful plotting. Then he’d have stood up and shouted - maybe even boasted - about the deed before throwing as much money as it took at the best defence lawyers in the business. No - Barnaby was sure it wasn’t Gamelin. What he didn’t understand, yet, was why the dead man had pointed him out.

Audrey Brierley brought in more information on the dead man’s possible alter egos. Troy grabbed the sheets and perused. Freddie Cranmer? Not only too young but also known to be covered in exotic (i.e. obscene) tattoos. The next one, though, seemed possible. Albert Cranleigh. Fifty-seven. Early form, mainly petty swindles and flogging stolen goods. More elaborate cons. Phoney mail-order ads. Insurance and mortgage rip-offs. Then he pulled a really big time share scam. Made a packet that was never found. Got picked up in Malta. Did four out of seven. Released 1989. Exemplary prisoner, but then fraudsters usually were.

‘This fits, sir.’

Barnaby listened as Troy read aloud. All the while the sergeant was nodding with enthusiasm, his vivid brush cut dipping and rising like the crest of some perky marsh bird.

‘All that fits,’ said the chief inspector at the conclusion, ‘is that they’re within a few years of each other’s age. Apart from Gamelin’s accusation, quite understandable under the circumstances, we’ve no reason whatsoever to regard Craigie as a con man.’

He watched the outline of Troy’s jaw tighten. Troy with an idea was like a cat at a mousehole. It was his strength and also his weakness, for he never knew when to give up and go home.

‘If you remember,’ said Barnaby, who only remembered himself because he had gone over the statements the previous evening, ‘Arno Gibbs mentioned the community’s bursary help and donations to charity - Christian Aid and suchlike. That hardly tallies with your theory.’

‘But they all did that, Chief - the big villains. Look at the Krays. Hand-outs, boys’ clubs, boxing trophies. They were always spreading it.’

‘Grass-roots support. The publicity encourages recruits. What we’ve got at the Windhorse is not tsarism but a pantisocracy.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Troy winked and clicked his tongue against his teeth.

‘An organisation where all members are equal.’ Barnaby read his subordinate’s mind. ‘Not one run by women.’

‘Fair enough.’ An understandable mistake, mused Troy, being as how most of them had minds like bags of frilly knickers. ‘I still think I might get some mug-shots.’ He looked mutinous.

‘Leave it. They’ve enough on their plates out there already.’ The buzzer went. It was Winterton, the communications relations officer for what was already and inevitably being called the Gamelin case. He had the press permanently on the end of his line and did Barnaby have any new morsels to throw at them.

‘Reword what you threw them yesterday.’

‘Thanks Tom. You’re a great help.’

‘Any time.’ Barnaby replaced the receiver. When he looked up the room was empty.

Arno was walking in the orchard. It was quite early. Still a few tendrils of blue mist about and, surprisingly, a glitter of frost on the apples. Over his head shone the bright dagger of the Morning Star. Through the night he’d hardly closed his eyes, but was not at all tired.

He was carrying a pottle lined with strawberry leaves and making his way to where ‘Stella’, their self-fertile cherry, was fruiting. The tree was awkwardly draped with an arrangement of net curtains garnered from various jumble sales and loosely sewn together. They were far from bird proof and several starlings flew out screeching derisively as Arno approached. He picked what cherries were left, balanced his basket on the flat of the cucumber frame, then neatly, with his pocket knife, cut away any nibbled or waspy bits. He piled the rest carefully into a little pyramid, the un-maltreated sides facing outwards. But the result was far from satisfactory and a long way from the plump black glossiness to be found in supermarkets.

Normally Arno accepted the unsprayed imperfection of his produce with resignation, but he wanted to tempt May. She had hardly eaten a thing at dinner the previous evening and no wonder, given the disastrous earlier imbroglio. Arno had fretted ever since, fearing (for truly love is blind) there’d be nothing of her soon.

Holding the basket upright very carefully, he recrossed the lawn and noticed now that the sun was up, that the grass had lost its earlier crunchiness and felt soft and dewy. As he neared the house and came to within sight of the main gates, he hesitated - walking till the last minute in the shadow of the yew hedge then peeping out to get the lie of the land.

Ave and Terry had not been wrong about the deluge. Arno had found an old lock and length of rusting chain and secured the main gates just in time. By early evening there was an unpleasantly noisy crowd out there. It was a bit like a scene from some old silent movie where revolting peasants storm the Bastille. Photographers had been standing on the crinkle-crankle wall and the ambulance had had quite a job getting through.

But at the moment things were quiet. The early birds were up and about but not, so far, the worms. However, Arno was not the only early riser. He was turning the corner of the house when a ground-floor window was flung open. It was May’s room. A moment later a sublime chord floated out into the pure air. Arno’s heart stopped briefly then, exhilarated, thundered on.

He stepped back in the shelter of the ivy and stood quite still, lifting and swivelling his head round, yearning towards the open casement as a flower to the sun. The golden sound flowed out into the fresh morning brightness, supremely melodious, twining round Arno’s heart strings, binding him ever tighter to her, the dearest of musicians. He leaned back and closed his eyes, dust falling unnoticed from the ivy into hair and beard. The world reduced to the flashing movement of a cellist’s bow.

She was playing an old Catalan folk song. An exile’s lament full of majestic melancholy. It always made Arno sad, yet so harmonious was the structure of the piece and so tender the rendering that when, in a final parabola of exultation, it finally came to an end, he experienced not sorrow but a sensation of pure gladness.

He looked down at his offering. The pyramid of cherries had collapsed and they were rolling about any old how. Even the strawberry leaves no longer looked pristine. The disparity of his gift, compared to the one which had just been so gracefully and splendidly offered, struck Arno with an humiliating sharpness. He tipped the cherries into the flower border and set off to return the basket to the potting shed.

The cellist laid down her bow and moved to the open window to perform her salute to the sun. She would need all the energy she could muster, especially today. Her healing gift - for that was how May hyperbolised a naturally kind heart - would be needed as never before. She raised her arms and watery-green silk fell away, revealing their glorious dimpled strength. Crying out, ‘The divine in me greets the divine in you,’ she bowed low seven times, knowing that each genuflection drove into the heart chakra love and a strength both cosmic and divine. After this she had a long soak in the bath, wrapped about with milky essence of the common fumitory, did a few Yoga stretches and some alternate nostril breathing and, feeling much more able to face the day, went down to start the breakfasts.

But May must have been longer about her ablutions than she realised for when she entered the kitchen it was already full of people. Only Tim and Felicity were absent.

Heather was at the sink doing the dyna/solar water. This involved wrapping sheets of variously coloured litmus-paper around filled plastic bottles, then securing the paper with string. They were then placed outside in the full sun whereupon the energy from its rays gave the water a powerful electromagnetic charge.

Heather was keeping a low Martha’ish profile, humbly going about tasks to which, a mere twenty-four hours ago, she had given not the slightest heed. She had plaited her hair, winding it severely around her head, and was wearing what could only be described as a thing of self-effacing grey. Aiming for the appearance of a diligent and compliant Hausfrau, she looked more like a wardress in a spectacularly punitive prison camp.

Ken sat silently by the range. He had accepted what had so far come his way (a glass of mate and some muesli) with many florid expressions of gratitude, but without any attempt to develop these thanks into a more personal exchange. He projected the air of a man knowing his place (a niche in the chimney corner), and glad of it. Indeed, even had he wished to move, Ken could not have done so for his right leg, broken in three places, was completely encased in plaster.

Ken was deliberately not playing on this. Heather had agreed, whilst trying to settle him half way comfortably in a small bedroom on the ground floor, that they could only hope the community would, unnudged, come to recognise the measure and quality of his sacrifice and set it with a sensitive and generous weighting allowance against the measure and quality of his betrayal.

Pulled from beneath the Buddha in agonising pain, Ken - as much to his own surprise as anyone else’s - had behaved with calmness and bravery. Struggling not to cry out, he had taken May’s rescue remedy and, when the pain then got worse rather than better, gritted his teeth and held back the tears. Loaded on to the stretcher, a faint smile upon his wax-like countenance, he even managed a small wave and an injunction that no one was to worry. Truly, nothing became Ken’s sojourn at the Windhorse like the manner of his leaving it.

Arno got up as May came in, asking if she would like something to eat and a cup of freshly made Luaka tea. May smiled and shook her head. ‘You’re in the middle of breakfast, my dear. I’ll get it.’ Arno’s cheeks bloomed at the endearment. She plugged in their long, rackety toaster. This was very old but most efficient, hurling zebra-striped squares of bread into the air the moment they were crisp. When the machine was full a dozen would fly up together, somersaulting gracefully in the air.

May thought how quiet it was. Usually during the meal times there was a steady run of chatter and laughter. Now hardly anyone spoke. Janet sat uncomfortably, her chair tilted on to its back legs, picking at the knees of her corduroy trousers. Christopher and Suhami, drinking real coffee, sat together yet not together. He looked at her frequently, once bringing his face round until it lay sideways just in front of her own, humorously trying to evoke a response. She shook her head and turned away. Even the sound of cutlery seemed muted thought May, watching Arno replace a knife by laying it with excessive caution on a side plate. She noticed his rather high colour and hoped he wasn’t sickening for something. Three people incapacitated was more than enough.

Heather, having finished insulating her bottles, whispered at the air, ‘I’ll just take these outside,’ and tiptoed from the room.

May’s toast sprang up and, simultaneously, the telephone rang. Picking up the receiver with one hand and catching her slice with the other, May exclaimed, ‘By Jupiter! That’s hot.’ Much to the caller’s consternation.

The rest of the room, disunited in their anxiety, listened intently. Was it news of Trixie? Of the Master’s murder? Was it a bank or solicitor with information about a Will? Attempts were made to flesh out the gaps between May’s disjointed speech.

‘... tombs? Certainly not. We’re making our own arrangements. And I must say I think it very crass - oh, your name is Tombs? Why didn’t you say so? ... ah - I see. Yes, that’s certainly a problem ... We shall indeed, let me think a moment ... No, I’m sure none of us would wish to do that. They’re not at all pleasant. Look - tell you what - in the wall of our vegetable garden there’s a wooden door. Earth well-trodden underneath so there’s a bit of a gap ... Oh, could that be done? How extremely kind. A quarter of an hour then? Many thanks.’

‘What was all that about?’

‘Miss Tombs, Christopher. From the village post office. The man can’t deliver, our gates being locked. She said did anyone want to go down -’

‘No!’ cried Suhami.

‘Quite. You heard what I suggested. She’s going to put the letters in a plastic carrier bag for us.’

‘I’d quite forgotten about the post,’ said Arno. ‘We will have to sift it carefully. People may wish to come here now for all the wrong reasons.’

‘I’ll go for the letters.’ Chris drained his cup. ‘Come with me, Suze?’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘We’ll go via the terrace. No one can see us from there. I’ve got something to tell you.’ When she still didn’t move, he added, ‘If you hide in here you’re letting them win.’

Suhami got up and followed him, not because of the goad in his final words but because it was easier than arguing. Her limbs felt heavy, her head stuffed with sorrow and guilt.

They walked through the herb garden towards the lawn, the gravel soft and warm beneath their feet. Weeds grew there and wallflowers: the tiny dark gold semi-wild variety that smelled of vanilla and pineapple. The path was edged with cockleshells bleached bone-pale by the sun and wind.

He took her arm and it lay, heavy and indifferent, against his own. Chris experienced a sudden uprush of alarm lest what she felt was not a temporary freezing of emotion due to the shock of the murder and yesterday’s intrusion, but a permanent change of heart towards himself. At the thought that he might lose her his throat tightened in panic. He should have explained the true situation much earlier. The longer he concealed it, the worse it would look. He had courted her under false pretences for reasons that seemed to him not only excusable but also essential. But would she see it like that? He recalled the bitter plaint that people always ended up lying to her.

He half stopped, irresolute, wondering how to frame the truth to underline the necessity for untruth. In the end he did nothing but walk on.

Just before lunch the PM report arrived. Barnaby had the sheets out of the folder before Audrey had left the room. He scanned them quickly. Troy said, ‘Any surprises?’ and received a glance that seemed to him slightly sympathetic.

‘Craigie didn’t smoke although he used to. Didn’t drink. Last ate about nine hours before he died. Cause of death a non-angled knife-thrust puncturing the right ventricle which does away with the idea of Gamelin striking from behind.’

Barnaby waited and Troy made shift to conceal his irritation. The old man was inclined to indulge in the theatrical pause whenever an especially meaty revelation was in the offing. It ran in the family. You had to make allowances. What bugged Troy was that when he tried to do it, he was told to get a bloody move on. Dutifully he produced the feed-line.

‘That it then, sir?’

‘Not quite.’ Barnaby laid down the report. ‘He was also suffering from bone cancer.’

‘Cancer!’ Whatever Troy had expected it was not this. Barnaby could not have wished for a more satisfactory response. Troy sat down in the visitor’s chair. ‘What - bad?’

‘Bad as it gets. They say he had a few months at the most. That explains the wig of course.’

‘Sorry?’

‘If he was having chemotherapy he’d probably lost his hair.’

‘But would he go in for that sort of thing? You know what they’re like up there. Wouldn’t he be exposing himself to some wonky universal ray or stuffing herbs up his nose?’

‘If you remember, he was at the Hillingdon on the day Riley was found. Gibbs said Craigie was a regular hospital visitor. It’s my guess that all of them were told this to account for his frequent attendance.’

‘You mean he didn’t want to upset them till he had to.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Saint Arthur after all then.’ Troy’s mouth turned down clownishly in disappointment. Even his bright quills of hair drooped.

‘We’ll check with the hospital of course, but I think it’d be wise to abandon your idea of the wig as part of an actor’s performance.’

Troy put on his shrewd look. He shrugged, pursed his mouth, nodded. Judicious, not convinced. ‘How do you see this affecting the murder, Chief?’

‘Don’t know. If Craigie really succeeded in concealing it, probably not at all.’

‘The murderer couldn’t have known. Who’s going to risk years in the slammer if all you’ve got to do to see your victim off is hang about for a few weeks.’

‘If time wasn’t a problem, no one.’

‘Right. On the other hand ... wo hay ... what about this? Knowing his days are numbered, wishing to spare all and sundry unnecessary aggro, our hero tops himself.’

‘Psychologically, I’d say that’s quite sound. But he would never have done it like this, causing the maximum pain and confusion. I see him as the sort to put his affairs in order and take an overdose, leaving a note on his bedroom door. You know the sort of thing - don’t come in. Call an ambulance.’

‘OK. Say ... um ... someone knows, yes? He’s had to tell them to get the future straightened out and he - or she - can’t hack it. Can’t bear the thought of poor old Obi’s increasing deterioration, so they do a spot of mercy killing. A quick thrust and it’s one halo less down here, one more on the pearly hatstand.’

‘Same argument. They wouldn’t choose that way.’ Barnaby tapped the report. ‘Unnecessarily dangerous and messy. They’d slip something into his muesli.’

‘’Spose so.’ Blocked at every turn, Troy gazed rather shirtily at the VDU. It would serve some people right if they were stuck with a teak head who got one idea a year, and that out of a cracker at the Christmas thrash.

‘Sorry, Gavin.’

‘What?’ Troy feigned bewilderment. ‘Oh - that’s OK. Just thinking aloud, you know - like you do. Right,’ he got up, ‘I think I’ll grab an early lunch. Usually fish, end of the week. I’d better try some. Supposed to be good for the brains.’

‘The ancient Chinese had got it taped. They gave their suspect a mouthful of rice. If he spat it out it meant his salivary glands hadn’t dried up. Ergo - he was telling the truth.’

‘What if he just didn’t like rice?’

‘Half an hour, maximum. And bring me back some sandwiches.’

When Chris and Suhami returned to the kitchen, they brought a fairly well-filled bright green bag and tipped the post on to the kitchen table. Two small parcels and around a dozen letters.

Janet’s quick eager fingers picked them over. There was nothing for her. Flinching from a glimmer of pitying concern in Heather’s eyes she got up and started to clear away the coffee cups.

‘Heavens,’ said Arno, tearing open an envelope, ‘there’s a booking here already for our hydro/massage weekend.’

Shake Hands With Aphrodite had been well publicised in Causton and Uxbridge and discreetly small-aded in one or two magazines. Several bubble-effect motors had been purchased to gussy up the community’s staid, claw-footed baths. Alternatively, if dry, the workshop would take place in the lake.

‘Here’s one for you,’ said Chris. ‘And May.’ He held out a long narrow envelope of heavy cream parchment, immaculately inscribed in heavy type and franked.

‘For both of us?’ Arno took the letter, pleased but puzzled. May, as bursar, got a great deal of mail but himself hardly any. He could not imagine, he said, why someone should be writing to them jointly.

‘Can’t you?’ said Chris, looking excited and exasperated at the same time. ‘It’s from a solicitor.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘Of course. They always look like that.’

‘I think Chris may be right,’ murmured Heather timidly.

‘We must find May at once.’

‘Open it,’ said Suhami. ‘It’s addressed to you as well.’

‘Nevertheless I prefer to wait till she is present.’

‘May was with Mrs Gamelin earlier,’ said Heather. ‘Shall I fetch her?’

‘I’ll go,’ said Suhami.

Felicity was lying back on her pillow, eyes closed, a little fringe of milk on her top lip. May was seated by the bed. Suhami came in quietly and closed the door.

She crossed to the bed and stood looking down. She had not seen her mother for years without what Felicity called her ‘war paint’ and realised that had they passed in the street, she wouldn’t have recognised her.

Felicity’s hair was tied smoothly back and she was lying on the pony tail, so there was nothing to soften the fastidious sharp lines of jaw and cheek. Even in deep repose she looked desperately unhappy. All of the Gamelins, thought Suhami. All of us ... With an unexpected movement of the heart, she noticed that her mother’s unpainted brows were flecked with grey.

‘Is she going to be all right, May?’

‘That rather depends on whether she wants to be. At the moment all we can offer is quiet and rest. I suspect that her mind and body have been greatly abused.’

‘Yes.’ Suhami turned away. After all there was nothing she could do. Too much time had passed. There was not even the memory of affection. ‘There’s a letter for you.’ She moved off, not looking back. ‘The general opinion seems to be that it’s from a solicitor.’

Having decamped to the office, Arno was now sitting behind the old Gestetner and, with Chris’s help, was sorting things into piles. As he had anticipated, most were inquiring about future events. One or two were bills, some sought healing appointments. He rose as May entered, holding out the parchment envelope. She tore it open at once.

‘It’s from a Mr Pousty of Pousty and Dingle. They want to see us.’

‘What about?’ asked Arno.

‘Doesn’t say.’ May crossed to the open window and held the letter out, facing the sun. After a few moments her arm began to tremble. She brought the paper back in and laid it against her cheek, breathing deeply. ‘Well, the news is certainly good. I should ring up, Arno, and make an appointment.’

Arno was not able to speak with Mr Pousty who was now on holiday in the Cairngorms, but was told that Hugo Clinch would be delighted to see them at two-thirty p.m. that very afternoon.

A man in his mid-thirties, Mr Clinch wore a beautifully cut electric-blue suit, a lighter blue silk tie and a dove-grey waistcoat. His shirt was pale canary yellow as were the crimped and crinkled high waves of his hair. He had an awful lot of large, very clean teeth.

The office was light and airy with a reproduction of Annigoni’s ‘Queen’ on one wall and long narrow photographs of various cricket elevens on the other three. There was a bag of golf clubs resting against the filing cabinet and a silver-framed photograph on the desk, showing Mr Clinch with a fencing guard under his arm and a rapier in his hand.

Arno, who would have felt happier with a few old-fashioned proficiency certificates, saw May settled then sat down himself. No sooner had he done so than the door opened and a lady wearing a hat like a varnished mushroom and looking old enough to be Mr Clinch’s grandma, staggered in with a tray of tea things. Arno sprang up and assisted her. She croaked gratefully at him and tottered off, leaving a niff of lavender in the air.

After refreshments had been dispensed - Lapsang Souchong and Lincoln biscuits - Mr Clinch commiserated with his visitors on the unfortunate occasion of their friend’s demise. This brief legal obsequy accomplished, he drew towards him a grey metal box with ‘Craigie’ stencilled in white letters on the side and smiled. All the teeth sprang to their stations. Arno marvelled at the pushy thrust of sparkling white enamel and wondered how on earth he ever managed to close his lips.

The Will was brief and simple. It concisely described the property known as the Manor House, Compton Dando, Buckinghamshire, then stated that this property was left jointly to Miss May Lavinia Cuttle and Mr Arno Roderick Gibbs. The solicitor waited a discreet moment, eyes tactfully on his green tooled blotter, then looked up expecting to see joyful rapacity wrestling with a more seemly expression of respectable mourning as was usual under such circumstances.

He saw Mr Gibbs pale as death, gripping the wooden arms of his chair obviously within the grip of some devastating emotion. In sharp contrast, Miss Cuttle’s countenance, already vivaciously embellished, blushed deeper by the minute. She cried out, and began to weep copiously.

Mr Clinch, momentarily shocked into a natural human response, fumbled in his desk cupboard and brought out a box of tissues. Eventually, when his wastebasket was half full of brilliantly coloured wet paper and a rose or two had returned to Arno’s cheeks, the solicitor offered some more tea. When this was refused, he passed an envelope over to Arno whom he regarded as being slightly less distraught than his companion. It was inscribed to them both in the Master’s writing. Arno rose saying, ‘Do we have to read it now?’

‘Of course not. Although there may be matters arising you might wish to discuss. It would possibly save making another appointment.’

‘Even so, I think we need time to absorb all this. Certainly Miss Cuttle ...’ He looked anxiously across at May who still appeared rather swimmy. Even the green cockade on her little red tricorne hat looked limp.

‘No Arno,’ she said. ‘Mr Clinch is right. More sensible to read it now.’

‘Then perhaps - if you wouldn’t mind?’ Arno passed the letter back, not trusting his voice to repeat the dead man’s words. The solicitor drew out a single sheet of paper and began.

‘My dear May and Arno, You will know by now the contents of my Will and the burden I have placed upon you. My greatest wish is that the work of the community, the healing, the offering of refuge and the sending out of the light continues and I believe that I can safely leave this matter in your hands. I regret I am unable to bequeath any monies to assist you in this enterprise. Should the difficulties of running and maintaining such a large and elderly property become insurmountable, then I would suggest that it is sold and a smaller one purchased. You might then consider investing the difference, thus assuring some sort of future income. I commend to you, also with feelings of complete confidence, the safety and welfare of Tim Riley. My love to you both. God bless you. We shall meet again. And it is signed,’ concluded Mr Clinch, ‘Arthur Craigie.’

There was a long silence. Both legatees knew the absolute impossibility of finding an adequate response. Mr Clinch, forewarned, whipped out a fresh box of Kleenex. He then stared tactfully out of the window as the silence continued and was miles away when Miss Cuttle sprang to her feet. A dramatic gesture of affirmation brought her cape into vigorous play. Blinded by whirling arcs of pleated amber silk, Mr Clinch grabbed at his inkstand and the framed picture of himself en garde.

‘We will keep the truth alight. Won’t we, Arno?’ she demanded, turning damp and shining eyes on her companion.

‘... oh ...’ Arno could hardly speak. At this linking ... this official linking from beyond of his name with May’s, he felt quite incoherent. Then, in case she doubted even for a moment his full and loving support, he managed to choke out, ‘Yes, yes.’

Mr Clinch promised the deeds of the house in due course, saw them through the outer office where the lady in the mushroom hat was feeding some goldfish and, with a final dazzling smile, waved goodbye.

Driving down Causton High Street, May said, ‘Do you think we should drop into the police station?’

‘Hum?’ Arno was still not really back to earth.

‘They said to let them know if there were any developments. I suppose finding the Will could be said to come under that heading.’

‘Well ...’ The truth was Arno wished to keep May to himself for as long as possible. Just the two of them snugly enclosed in her noisy little Beetle. May, declaiming behind the wheel, himself absorbing all like a happy sponge.

‘Next on the left, isn’t it?’

‘I’m not sure.’

It was. May parked neatly in a place marked ‘visitors only’ and climbed out. Arno said, ‘Will you leave your bag?’

‘Good heavens, no. We’re always being warned about that.’ May removed her embroidered hold-all and locked the door. ‘Some policeman is bound to see it and then I’d get ticked off.’

‘Perhaps he won’t be here - Barnaby,’ said Arno as they pushed the big glass door marked ‘Reception’. ‘He might be out on a case.’

‘Then we’ll leave a message,’ said May. There was a white button next to a card saying Please Buzz for Attention. May buzzed loudly and at length. ‘One thing I’m not up to is talking to that youth with the frazzled aura. One gets pulled down by people like that for days.’

A constable strode up, glaring crossly at May’s gloved digit. She released the button, stated their errand and they were taken over to the CID block and shown into Barnaby’s office. Troy, Arno was pleased to note, was absent. Declining any sort of refreshment, May told him their news. The chief inspector, once he had recovered from the shock of being faced with a walking traffic light, asked if either of them had anticipated such a bequest.

‘Indeed not.’ May appeared shocked, almost offended.

Arno said, ‘Such a thought never crossed our minds.’

Barnaby thought that was probably true. They really seemed the most artless pair. Quite without the usual insincere smiles and false declarations of concern wherewith the human race is wont to oil the wheels of daily commerce. May produced the letter and sat watching as he read it. When he had finished, Barnaby thanked her, noted the telephone number and handed it back. They waited on his comments. May, ingenuous and calm, her face momentarily smoothed of emotion. Arno, proud but slightly awkward beneath his unsought mantle of authority.

‘Do you think anyone else knew of Mr Craigie’s plans?’

‘I’m sure not,’ said May. ‘If he didn’t tell us and, after all, we are the recipients - who would he tell?’

‘A splendid windfall, then,’ Barnaby smiled.

‘It is,’ said May sternly, ‘a great responsibility.’

‘We do not see it as a personal gift,’ added Arno. ‘But more as something left in trust.’

Barnaby frowned. The sentence struck a chord of memory. Reverberated. What was it? He fretted for a moment then let it go. He got the impression that Arno wished to say something else and gave him an encouraging raise of the eyebrows.

Arno correctly interpreted the signal but remained silent. The fact was he would have liked to ask about progress in the case. If the police were any nearer to finding the murderer. But, remembering May’s conviction that their dear Master had been removed by supernatural means, he kept silent.

Barnaby cleared his throat and they looked at him expectantly. ‘I have some news for you. Something that showed up on the PM report.’ He explained the nature and advanced condition of the dead man’s terminal illness, feeling the news should be of comfort. If anything could blunt the dreadful savage edge of murder it must be the discovery that one short, brutal act had saved the victim from a much more painful fate.

Eventually May, her hand to her forehead, said, ‘How typical of him not to have told us. How very brave.’

‘Yes.’ Arno nodded. He then made the same connection Barnaby had. ‘That must be why he visited the hospital so often. And why he was tired when he came home.’

‘You do understand now, Inspector,’ said May, ‘how right I was. This explains it all.’

‘Right in what respect, Miss Cuttle?’

‘Why that he was magnetically transported. Divine intervention, you see. His reward for a just and loving life. The shining ones wished to protect him from further suffering.’

There seemed little more to be said. Barnaby thanked them for coming and came round from behind his desk to show them out. Miss Cuttle bent and picked up her bag. Barnaby, holding the door handle, stared. May faltered, then stopped.

‘What on earth is it, Inspector?’

Barnaby said, ‘Could I have a look at that, please?’ and held out his hand. He felt instinctively, even before she passed the bag across, that this was it. Returning to his desk, he laid it down, aware as he did so that his fingers trembled slightly. The bag was thickly embroidered: roses, lilies, smaller blue flowers all entwined with looping stems of emerald green. The background was filled in by ferns. It was gathered loosely into long handles of light polished wood. Barnaby was familiar with the shape. Joyce had a similar one in which she kept her knitting. ‘Would you mind if ...?’

He parted the handles and May, looking rather bewildered, said, ‘By all means.’

Outside, every square inch of the bag was covered. It was the interior he needed to see. It was beautifully neat, all ends of the vividly coloured wools darned in and clipped off. The seam had been trimmed quite close but enough fabric was left for him to be sure he recognised the thread. Receiving May’s even more bewildered permission, he snipped a bit off and returned the bag. By this time she and Arno were reseated.

‘On the evening of Mr Craigie’s death,’ asked the chief inspector, ‘do you remember the whereabouts of this bag?’

‘I had it with me.’

Barnaby’s stomach went down with a disbelieving thud. ‘All the while?’

‘Certainly from the time I began my regression. Let me explain - when I entered the Solar after having done my preliminary cleansing I placed my bag by the door then took my usual position. I’d just settled when I became aware of a slight shiver. Now, during regression one sinks very quickly to what we call alpha level. The temperature drops, the skin cools so if you’re cold to start with it can become quite uncomfortable. So I asked for my cape and Christopher went and got my bag.’

‘And brought it straight to you?’

‘Yes. He pulled the cape out and handed me the bag. I put it down on the floor, sort of by my side, tied on the cape and we were “in business” as they say.’

‘Didn’t anyone else handle the bag?’

‘No.’

‘They must have.’ Barnaby spoke half to himself.

‘I can assure you they did not.’

‘What about when you left it by the door?’

‘I was the last person to enter the room. No one went near it.’

‘Did you have it with you all day?’

‘Well ... on and off you know. As one does. Part of the morning it was in my room.’

In any case that was not the problem. The knife could have been put in at any time, although common sense surely dictated that such a move be made as near to the last minute as possible to avoid discovery. Anyone could have opened May’s bag. In fact someone did. Andrew Carter. Could it really be the case that in the dim light he had not sussed the contents?

‘Do you remember what else was in your bag, Miss Cuttle? Apart from the cape?’

‘My rescue remedy of course. One never travels without that. Crystals - some green aventurine, a little pyrite and snowflake obsidian. Zodiac calendar, ash twig for divining, pendulum - the usual stuff. All jumbled up a bit at the moment I’m afraid. I had to hit a reporter with it to get out of the gates.’

Barnaby’s elation was fading fast. He would send the snipping to the lab, and he was still sure that it would match the thread caught up on the knife hilt, but the discovery now seemed to obfuscate rather than clarify. He pictured the concerted rush down to the figure apparently in extremis on the quilt. The murderer seizing the bag, scrabbling round for the knife, running back to the dais, stabbing Craigie, rejoining the throng. The whole process could hardly be more ludicrous. He became aware that Arno was speaking.

‘I’m sorry Mr Gibbs?’

‘I said, there was another bag.’

‘Another bag?’

‘Of course,’ exclaimed May. ‘I’d quite forgotten. I made one for Suhami’s birthday. She so liked mine.’

‘Using the same sort of canvas?’

‘Not just the same sort. From the same piece. I had some left over you see.’

‘I don’t suppose,’ Barnaby paced his voice with some effort, ‘either of you noticed whether she brought it into the Solar with her?’

‘Indeed she did,’ said Arno. ‘Put it down by her feet.’

‘On the dais?’

‘Yes.’

‘Aaahhh.’

‘She wouldn’t be parted from it,’ said May. ‘Liked it so much. Is all this of any help, Inspector?’ Barnaby said he certainly thought it was. ‘You’ve got a frog in your throat,’ May observed kindly. The polished handles of the bag yawned. ‘May I suggest a piece of alehoof cough candy?’

It was four p.m. and Barnaby was waiting for Troy to return from the Manor House where he was interviewing Sylvia Gamelin. The inspector lingered in front of his blow-up, picturing her standing on the right of Craigie’s chair, bag by her feet, knife in her bag.

Did she know it was there or didn’t she? May had said Suhami wouldn’t be parted from her present but that sort of sweeping exaggerated speech was common enough. Phrases like ‘If I eat another mouthful I’ll explode’ or ‘We think the world of you’ were not meant to be taken literally. Suhami certainly had put her bag down or at least taken her eyes off it at one point during the day, if not several.

On the other hand if she did know it was there ... The girl was perfectly placed to deal the blow. A single step forward, turn and she’d be face to face with the victim. And if everyone else had fled leaving a single frail old man and a strong young woman? But what earthly motive would she have?

Barnaby wandered back to his desk, riffled through the papers and photographs and picked up her statement. He knew it almost by heart as he did most of the others. He remembered her anguished crying and her enraged accusations against her father. Barnaby was not a man to be easily taken in, and certainly not by tears, but he had believed the emotion to be genuine.

He read on. Like everyone else she had been quick to mention that Gamelin had been indicated by the dying man. She had also been quick to describe that her father had the perfect opportunity to take the knife and glove. But who had left him alone in the kitchen? And if he had taken the knife then and concealed it successfully about his person, why risk transferring it to her bag at a later time? He could not even have been sure that she would take it into the regression.

And if they were running two murders here - which he thought more than likely - what was the connection between the death of Craigie and that of Jim Carter? Suhami had certainly been there long enough to be involved in the earlier death and was physically quite capable of pushing someone downstairs but, even if she hadn’t got a cast-iron alibi, there was again no apparent motive.

Troy entered, full of conversation. ‘Got the clippings from her bag, Chief. Dropped them off at the lab. I said dead urgent. They said tomorrow morning.’

‘I’ve heard that before.’

Troy unbuttoned his jacket, put it carefully on a hanger and produced his notebook and a copy of Suhami’s earlier statement. Then he sat down, hitching up his immaculately creased trousers.

‘Confirms everything the other two said. Got the bag for her birthday. Certainly kept it with her to the extent that she didn’t take it upstairs to her room but it was in the kitchen for some of the day, in the dining room and one time she left it on the hall table.’

‘Did you ask if she put anything in it?’

‘Yes. She did. Wanted to feel ...’ Troy checked his notes, ‘she was using it straight away. Some make-up, a brush, packet of tissues, some combs for her hair. Thus helping out the murderer, because he’d hardly put the knife into an empty bag. Next time she picked it up she’d just open it to see what was inside.’

‘Unless they were in cahoots.’

‘Yeh. There’s that.’

‘Does she remember when she last checked it?’

Troy looked down again at his tightly written pages. ‘Didn’t open it after she put the stuff in at all. In the Solar, put it down at her feet. Didn’t see anyone touch it. The rest is a mystery. Would you think that narrows it down, Chief? I mean to the four who were closest to her?’

‘Tempting to think so. But the rest are no more than a sneeze away. I don’t think we can count any of them out at this stage.’

‘Not even poor old Felicity Smackhead?’

‘Not even her. Did you tell the Gamelin girl why you were asking about the bag?’

‘Didn’t have to. She’s sharp even if she is all tricked out like a Tandoori chicken.’

‘How did she take the idea?’

‘Dead upset. “That I should unwittingly supply the means ...” blah blah blah ...’ Troy raised his hands into the air, squawking in a shrill falsetto.

It was so bad Barnaby laughed. Troy, who thought his chief had laughed because it was so good, tugged at his shirt cuffs. Then Policewoman Brierley appeared holding some gritty-looking black and white prints.

‘Your shots, sir.’

‘What shots?’

‘You put a request in.’

Barnaby stared at his sergeant. ‘Sorry, Chief.’

‘What did I tell you?’

‘They’re the last ones.’ Troy took the photographs and asked what the chances were of rustling up some coffee.

‘I’m busy.’

‘Make that two would you, Audrey?’

‘Right away, sir.’

Right away, sir, muttered Troy inside his head. You wait till I’m a DCI. I’ll make you jump! I’ll make you all bloody jump. He glanced down at the pictures. Glanced down and was held.

Barnaby was reading over his sergeant’s notes when he sensed Troy approach and stand in front of him. After a moment, irritated by all this silent looming, he looked up. Troy, pale with triumph, laid the shots on the desk then slowly straightened up. The movement reminded Barnaby of a successful athlete bending to receive his medal. Barnaby didn’t look at the pictures. He didn’t have to. Troy’s face said it all.

‘You were right, then?’

That would be his lot Troy knew, but it was enough. Balm to the soul. And no one could take it from him. He had had a hunch, cold water had been thrown on it, he had persisted. And it had paid off. Who said nice guys finished last?

Barnaby finally took in the mug-shots of Albert Cranleigh. Prison-cropped hair, stubbled chin, lips pressed defiantly together. Eyes hardened into dark pebbles from the flash or perhaps by years of chicanery. A very long way from the pious smile and silvery flowing locks of the sage of the Golden Windhorse. Yet the two men were undoubtedly one and the same.

Janet had slept in Trixie’s room last night. Burrowing down in Trixie’s bed, inhaling traces of unsubtle perfume. Deceiving herself that an imprecise hollow in the pillow and creased outline on the bottom sheet were shadowy imprints of her departed favourite: her mignonne.

She woke into a cloud of unfocused dread. She had been walking along a narrow country lane when she came across an old churchyard. Drawn in, much against her will, she stumbled over a tiny mottled gravestone embedded in the grass. Bending down, she saw engraved the date of her birth and beneath this a second date partially obscured by moss. She started to scratch at the velvety green stuff when the stone changed its shape and texture, becoming red and slippy and rather soft. It started to move beneath her fingers, pulsing gently, and she backed away in horror.

Now, climbing stiffly out of bed and into the clothes she had thrown over the green flock velvet armchair the night before, Janet strove to shake off this grisly fantasy. Drawing on navy, strap-footed trousers, she caught sight of her lardy thighs dimpled with cellulite beneath seersuckered skin. Cover up quickly. Pulling the zip she remembered how Trixie had teased her about the trousers. Saying they were all the latest rage and poor old Janet was in fashion at last.

She buckled on a strap of watered silk threaded through a wafer-thin watch that had belonged to her great aunt. Then she went back to her own room, splashed her face with cold water and punished it dry with a huckaback towel. She dragged a brush through her tangled hair without looking again into the glass. She could not think of food (she had hardly eaten since Trixie disappeared), but her mouth was unpleasantly dry and she craved a cup of tea.

There was a smell of burnt toast in the kitchen. Heather sat at the table eating muesli, engrossed in The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies. She closed the book when company arrived and got up, an intensity of sympathetic understanding flaking her features.

‘Aloha Jan - go in peace.’

‘I’ve only just got here.’

‘Let me get you some tea.’

She spoke in what Janet always thought of as her ‘Little Sisters of the Syrup Pudding’ voice. The way people did when filling the God-slot on Radio Four.

‘I’m perfectly capable of getting my own tea.’

‘Of course.’ Unoffended, Heather backed away, showing her lack of umbrage by a loving smile. ‘Some toast perhaps?’

‘No thanks.’ The very notion filled Janet’s mouth with bile. She thought she might be sick.

‘You could have some butter - as a special treat.’

‘No thanks, Heather.’

‘Right.’ But Heather’s finely tuned antennae had picked up a shiver of despair. She rubbed the palms of her hands together, conjuring all her therapeutic powers, then drew them slowly apart, knowing that a powerful current of restorative energy now sprang between the two. She crept up behind Janet and started moving her hands about just above the other woman’s shoulders. Janet leapt round, cup in one hand, tea bag in the other, and shouted, ‘Don’t do that!’

Heather stepped back. ‘I was only trying to help.’

‘Help what for heaven’s sake?’

‘... well ...’

‘You don’t know do you?’ A dignified and compassionate silence. ‘Has it never occurred to you Heather that you have absolutely no diagnostic gifts whatsoever?’

Heather, red-faced, mumbled, ‘I can see that you’re unhappy.’

‘So I’m unhappy. Why shouldn’t I be? Or you - or anyone else come to that. It’s a condition of life. What makes you think it can be instantly erased? Or that we’d be any better for it if it were.’

‘That’s ridiculous. No one develops a radiant holistic soul by being miserable.’

‘How on earth would you know? You’ve got about as much chance of developing a radiant holistic soul as I have of becoming Miss World.’

‘I’m really glad you shared that with me.’

‘God -’ Janet flung the tea bag back into the box. ‘Talking to you is like wrestling with a vat of marshmallow.’

‘I can see you’re pretty stressed out right now, Jan.’

‘Shall I tell you what really stresses me out, Heather? Almost more than anything else in this depressing, loveless mouldy old universe. This vale of tears. Shall I share it with you?’

‘I wish you would dear.’ Heather’s face was cheesily transformed by pleasure.

‘It’s being called bloody Jan.’

‘Right. Fine. Now we have a scenario to talk through. Just remember, whatever comes out, that at the psychic edge I’m OK and you’re OK.’

‘Well actually, Heather, you have always struck me as being very much not OK. In fact I’d go as far as to describe you as fat for your age and a pain in the bottom.’

‘You’re missing Trixie -’

‘Oh shut up. Shut up!’

Janet ran away. Through the side door, across the smashed flagstone, down the terrace steps and across the lawn. She didn’t stop running till she reached the orchard where, amidst a drift of ox-eye daisies, she flung herself down. Early little green and red striped windfalls bumped under her back. The spirit of the place, the warm air, mocked her misery. The very words ‘love, light and peace’ were like stabbing swords.

She thought, I can’t stay here. I must move on. Not to another community, I’m obviously no good at living en masse. She had tried it many times (sometimes her life seemed nothing more than one long vagrancy), and it had never worked. Some places had been better than others. All, like the Windhorse, offered ‘love’ - demanding in return merely a posture of credulous submissiveness. Mostly they seemed to see the spiritual life as just constantly pretending to be nicer than you actually are. Janet felt there must be more to it than that.

She had exposed herself to all the orthodox religions in turn, hoping to catch faith rather as one caught a tropical disease, but had proved to be immune. Occasionally though, deeply moved by a poem or some music, or when meeting someone who seemed to have got it shiningly right, everything that she had read and thought or otherwise absorbed seemed to click into an immensely satisfactory whole. Briefly, the mysterious arid muddle in her head would be resolved, taking on a brilliantly clear and finished shape. But it didn’t last. By nightfall, like Penelope with her shroud, Janet had undone her certainties of the day and gone to rest as confused and lonely as before.

She had been made aware that such vacillation was far from healthy (Heather said negativity made warts on the mind), but did not really see what she could do about it. Whoever called religion the science of anxiety had known his stuff. It was apparently impossible to negotiate with God - whoever he, she, it or that was.

She was unhappily rambling thus when she noticed the carrier. Fawn and orange today, pushed under the little wooden door. The post! Janet scrambled to her feet and hurried to pick it up.

The bag was quite full. She tipped the letters out and straightaway saw the long blue envelope. She knew, even before turning it over, that it would be addressed to Trixie. Checking the rest - nothing for her - Janet bundled the letters away and hurried back to the house. She dumped the carrier on the hall table and ran up to her room.

In the kitchen Heather, having tilted Ken’s leg up on to the unlit range so that the blood could flow, was pouring tea all round. The company had stopped gathering in the dining room, even for dinner, once the formal highlight of the day.

The Windhorse routine, which used to be of such worshipful importance, seemed to have quite disintegrated. Members got up (or didn’t) when they liked and snacked on the hoof. The news letter hadn’t been sent out, neither was the roster of tasks attended to with anything like the usual diligence. It was either glanced at and forgotten, or ignored altogether. The laundry room was full of washing that awaited pegging out, and the frequent sad tonk of Calypso’s bell indicated that even the goat was at the end of her tether. The centre had not held and there was no doubt that things were rapidly falling apart.

Heather passed round the giant jar of honey from more than one country and continued her report of Janet’s unkindness, being careful to avoid the slightest hint of criticism.

‘I could see she was upset and all I did was try to trace the cause-initiating agent - you know? So I could offer a positive seed-thought. And she just turned on me.’ Heather’s gooseberry eyes moistened as she dissolved Ken’s honey and took the mug over. Ken nodded his thanks and gave his wife’s hand a comforting squeeze. This morning his nose, though still smashy, had lost its angry, blood-engorged appearance and was now a brownish yellow. The little cuts in the skin were healing up quite nicely.

‘I expect,’ May said, ‘she’s worried about Trixie.’

‘Of course,’ said Heather. ‘I do understand that. At least I try to. Trouble is I’ve always been so boringly normal.’ She sighed as at some capricious miscarriage of genetic justice. She and Ken exchanged normal and excessively boring smiles. ‘But when she said I wasn’t a healer -’

‘Not a healer?’ The leg nearly slipped from its iron support.

‘I know.’ Heather managed a light laugh. ‘I nearly threw that withered ovary from Putney in her face.’

‘I’m sure Janet didn’t mean to be unkind,’ said Arno. ‘We’re all under a great deal of strain at the moment. I personally am extremely worried about Tim.’

A terrible change had come over the boy. Only Arno was permitted in his room, the door was locked against all others. Tim refused to have the curtains opened but enough daylight filtered through for Arno to discern, and be dreadfully shocked by, his rapid deterioration. Sleep and weeping had puffed out his normally taut, unblemished skin. His cheeks, hummocks of scarlet flesh, were crisscrossed with tear tracks and enseamed where he had pressed his face in the mattress. Crusts of yellow glued up his eyelids.

When Arno had tried to change the pillowcase, which was stiff with sweat, he had to ease Tim’s fingers from the edge one at a time, gently coaxing the fabric free. Then the fingers, so bony and strong, had gripped his arm in terror. Arno had sat patiently, speaking words of consolation and reassurance.

‘It’s all right ... you’ll be all right. You’re safe, Tim. Do you understand me?’ He paused and Tim’s eyes rolled wildly as if searching every shadowy, reeking corner of the room. ‘There’s no one here. No one will hurt you. Can’t you tell me what you’re frightened of?’ This time he paused for much longer, stroking Tim’s burning forehead with his free hand. ‘He wouldn’t like to see you like this.’

At these words, gently spoken though they were, Tim gave forth a series of desolate strangled hiccups. Arno, full of concern for the boy and paralysed at his own inability to comfort, despaired. ‘You’re not worried about the future, are you? I tried to explain yesterday that May and I have the house now. We’ll always look after you. The Master left you in our care. He loved you Tim ...’

‘Do you not think, Arno,’ May’s voice recalled him to the present, ‘that we should perhaps talk to someone at the hospital?’

Ken and Heather looked at each other in open-mouthed consternation. Never did they expect to hear such a renegade phrase beneath the Windhorse roof. Every allopathic remedy from the mildest analgesic to major life-sustaining surgery was regarded with equal and grave suspicion. They had both been devastated yesterday when news of the Master’s terminal illness and the treatment he had been receiving was revealed. Even now they could hardly believe that he had deliberately turned his back on the embarrassment of restoratives available in his own home.

‘I feel if we do that, May,’ replied Arno, pained that for the first time ever he was about to disagree with his heart’s delight, ‘he will feel betrayed. And might never trust us again.’

‘I understand,’ said May. ‘And I hate to ask for professional help. But we can’t just leave him up there. Oh - if only the Master were here.’

‘He will earth again, May,’ called Ken from his home on the range.

But the words seemed to shrivel on the air and offer no comfort.

Meanwhile, directly above their heads, Janet was curled up on the padded window-seat. She had withdrawn the blue envelope from her pocket and turned it face upwards with trembling fingers. A second-class stamp. A Slough postmark. Masculine writing (of course it would be), yet not an especially strong hand. Why, then, was she so sure? Was she simply projecting her own jealousy and resentment?

Maybe she was wrong. Perhaps the letter (perhaps all the letters) came from Trixie’s mother or sister. Or a girlfriend. But whoever it was must be quite close otherwise why write so frequently? And given this closeness, there was surely a pretty good chance that they knew where she had gone. Janet began to pick at the flap then stopped.

What if - being such a regular correspondent - no need had been felt to include an address. In that case she would have violated Trixie’s privacy for nothing. Because of course that could be the only legitimate reason for opening the envelope. To contact Trixie and persuade her to return. She must know that, as witness to a murder, she’d be in trouble running away. For all Janet knew, the police had already sent out a description. Surely it was her duty as a friend to find Trixie and persuade her to return? Naturally she would not read the letter. She tore at the flap and pulled out a single sheet of paper.

Dearest Trix, You won’t believe this - I can hardly believe it myself - but Hedda’s gone. It’s true. Ring or just come. Love oh! love V.

Janet slammed the sheet of paper writing-side down upon her knee. She felt cold with shock. And a terrible concentrated desolation.

So that’s why Trixie had run away. To be with this man - this V - who had ill-treated her before and was no doubt at this very moment doing so again. Janet had read about women who kept returning to husbands who knocked them about. Such behaviour had always seemed to her totally incomprehensible. No one had ever hit Janet and she was sure if they did she would walk right away and never look back.

She recalled the day Trixie arrived. She’d had terrible bruises on the side of her jaw and, on her neck, fierce red nail-marks. Thinking of it, Janet gave a shudder, a single involuntary jerking of trunk and limbs, after which she sat quietly for a long time.

But eventually, with great reluctance, as if forcing her gaze upon some unpleasant scene of despoilment, she looked again at the sheet of paper. There was a brief address. Seventeen Waterhouse. Presumably in Slough to match the postmark. If it isn’t, thought Janet, I’m lost. And even if it is there’s not a lot to go on. No street, road, drive or crescent. No villa, avenue or close. The post office might be able to help.

Janet made herself read the note over and over again, working on the principle that any word or series of words if studied, or spoken aloud for long enough, loses all meaning. And thus the power to wound. She couldn’t honestly say this was entirely the case here. Sharp pinpoints of distress still penetrated and a single thrill of jealousy but, eventually, although her hand had not quite stopped quivering, she began to feel a little calmer. And, with the slow curling away of that first swamping pain, rationality returned.

For instance - why should she take it for granted that ‘V’ was male? True, Trixie (or, more vulgarly, Trix) was the writer’s ‘dearest’ but what did that signify? Strong affection was all. No reason to assume a romantic interest. Same with the concluding form. Who didn’t sign their letters ‘love’ these days. Even to mere acquaintances. Of course there was that rather fervid repetition, but that could simply mean the writer had an enthusiastic nature.

The more Janet thought about this, the more likely it seemed. As for the obviously foreign Hedda, she was probably an au pair living in the house - with whom Trixie had not got on. Now she had left, it was OK to go home.

It was not until that moment, after all her angst-ridden reasoning, that Janet saw how stupid she was being. For of course Trixie had gone before the letter arrived. The two things could not possibly be connected.

About to scrunch up the paper, she checked herself. Nothing had changed in one important respect. V, even if not actually sheltering Trixie, would probably know where she might be found. So the next step must be to ring Slough Post Office and seek out a more detailed address.

Janet got up. Doing something, she immediately felt better. To her surprise she also felt hungry. She took an orange from her fruit bowl and set out to find an unattended phone.

‘Where’s the Indy?’

‘I’m sitting on it.’

‘God, you’re mean!’

‘That’s right.’

In the corner of the Barnabys’ kitchen the washing machine clicked and swooshed and swirled. When Cully was home it was on, and usually full, every day. A smell of frying bacon and coffee mingled with the scent of summer jasmine, a great swag of which hung over the open window. It had been a close night and the air was oppressive and still.

‘It’s not as if you’re going to read it. You’re just thinking about the case. Isn’t he, Ma?’

‘Yes.’ Joyce turned the bacon with a fish slice.

‘So who is it?’

‘Who’s what?’

‘The man in the black hat.’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Pooh. Three whole days and don’t know.’

‘Watch it,’ said her mother. ‘He’s big but he’s fast.’

‘It sounds really weird, this Windhorse. Do they dance starkers under the moon? I bet they’re all having it off. They do in covens.’

‘It’s a commune not a coven.’

‘Same difference. What do they wear? Wampum beads and ethnickers?’

‘More or less.’

‘Don’t see how you can wear less,’ said Joyce.

The toaster popped and Cully got up, gathering the soft folds of her dressing gown (pale-grey marbled silk this morning). The robe was far too long but she had found it in a period second-hand clothes shop in Windsor and fallen in love, saying it made her feel like Anna Karenina. Joyce said she’d end up tripping over it and doing herself an injury. Cully jacked up the toast and glanced down at the frying pan.

‘Turn it off! Turn it off!’ She grabbed the fish slice, removed the bacon and reached for a plate.

‘I’m making it crisp.’

‘It’s already crisp.’ She tore two sheets from a paper towel roll and started to pat the rashers. ‘Any crisper and it’ll self-combust.’

‘Now what are you doing?’

‘Saving him from a heart attack.’ Cully put the plate and some fresh toast in front of Barnaby. The bacon was perfect. Then she went back to her seat and said, ‘Tell me some more about your suspects?’

‘What on earth for?’

‘Because I might have to play a hempen homespun one day.’

‘Ah.’ Of course, acting. Everything came back to that. ‘Well, there’s someone who channels spirits and whose wife visits Venus when she’s not organising fairies to help with the washing up -’

‘I wish she’d send some round here,’ said Joyce.

‘And a woman who reads auras - very worried about mine by the way, even if no one here is. Says I should harmonise my spleen.’

‘How can people believe such pottiness?’

‘Tunnel vision,’ said Cully. ‘Isn’t that right?’

‘It’s a mystery to me,’ said Barnaby who saw no rhyme or reason in regarding the world as other than it was, and could not have done his job if he had.

‘All cults are the same. You just have to blot out everyone and everything that doesn’t agree with your beliefs. As long as you can do this you’re OK. Bet they don’t have a radio or telly.’ Barnaby admitted that this was indeed a fact. ‘Dangerous though, being isolated. Once the real world breaks in you’re finished. Pace our late dominatrix.’

‘Oh, do stop showing off,’ said Joyce, still cross about the bacon ... She brought her coffee over to the table and sat down. ‘So one of those spiritual souls has committed a murder?’

‘Perhaps two.’

‘Oh?’ She put in too much sugar then didn’t stir. ‘You’re not talking about that man who fell downstairs?’

Barnaby stopped eating. ‘What do you know about it?’

‘Ann told me. We met for coffee just after it happened. The village was in a high old state. Everyone convinced he’d been vilely done to death. They were terribly disappointed with the verdict.’

‘Why on earth didn’t -’

‘And I told you that very same evening.’

‘I don’t recall -’

‘I always tell you about my day. You simply never listen.’ There was a far from pleasant silence. Then Cully grinned at her father and spoke. ‘This big white chief - the one who got spiked? Was he one of your charismatics?’

‘Oh, definitely.’ Barnaby took a deep breath and prepared to put his irritation aside. ‘Silver-haired and silver-tongued. Seems to have held everyone spell-bound.’

‘The Romans thought a good rhetorician must, in the nature of things, be a good man.’

‘Hah.’ He spluttered and put down his tea. ‘They’d have got it wrong with Craigie. He’s a con from way back.’ Briefly the Chief Inspector wondered, when the past of their beloved guru was laid bare, how his communicants would take it. Some no doubt, already blind with faith, would continue blind even in the face of irrefutable evidence. God knew there were enough historical precedents.

‘Got to go. I’m picking Gavin up. Maureen’s taking the baby to the clinic so she’s using the car. No doubt I shall hear every boring detail of Talisa Leanne’s progress before the day’s out.’

‘Talisa Leanne.’ Cully snorted.

‘You were just the same,’ Joyce smiled at her husband.

‘Me?’

‘Used to carry snapshots of Cully and press them on total strangers.’

‘Rubbish.’ He looked across at his daughter and winked. Cully immediately slipped into a parody of film-starish camera-hungry glamour. Lips parted, eyelashes batting madly, chin resting on the heel of one hand.

‘Tubby little thing she was.’ He moved towards the door. A piece of toast flew past his shoulder, striking the woodwork.

When in the hall putting on his jacket, she called, ‘Don’t forget tonight, Dad.’

Barnaby sensed behind the words a tugging need that had been absent from their exchanges for a very long time. It made him uneasy. They both knew the score. Over the years Cully had gradually, painfully come to accept that whereas the dads of her friends were invariably present at birthdays and school plays, sports days and holidays, her own quite frequently was not. Her tears, his guilt at the sight of them, then anger at being made to feel guilty, all left Joyce in the unenviable position of family buffer. This wore her out, leading to extremely voluble outbursts of resentment. (All the Barnabys would have won prizes for self-expression.) They loved each other but it had not been easy.

Now, as he groped for his car keys and called ‘Bye’ over his shoulder, Barnaby seemed to hear an echo of a hundred sorrowful childish wails: ‘But you promised ...’

‘What on earth’s got into you?’ Joyce sat down, facing her only child who had already disappeared behind the Independent. ‘Don’t read when I’m talking, Cully ...’ She reached out and pulled down the newspaper.

‘Do you mind?’ Cully shook the pages smooth again.

‘When has he ever promised?’ Joyce paused. ‘Come on.’ Cully stuck out her heavenly bottom lip and sulked. ‘Never, that’s when, “I’ll be there if I possibly can” is as near as he would ever come.’

The repetition of that long-time fail-safe rubric evoked a vivid rush of muddled recall which coalesced into one especially unhappy episode, Cully’s fourth birthday.

Seven little chums, Noah’s Ark cake with chocolate marzipan animals, lots of games, lovely presents and all the while the child’s face turning, turning to the door. Waiting. Missing her own party by a mile. Eventually, when the guests, balloons bobbing, were waving and calling goodbye from the windows of their parents’ disappearing cars, Tom arrived. But by then she was inconsolable. He was home for her fifth party and her sixth but, as is the way of children, it was the fourth that she remembered.

‘Don’t try and back him into a corner, love. He’ll feel badly enough if he can’t be here, without you throwing a moody.’

‘Not half as bad as I’ll feel.’

‘Oh be fair.’ Joyce felt anger rising and tried to calm herself. They’d the rest of the day to get through. ‘For the past three birthdays you haven’t been near us. Last year we tried to ring and you’d gone to Morocco.’

‘This is different I’d have thought. It’s my engagement as well.’ She dropped the paper on the floor. ‘You always stick up for him.’

‘Of course I do. No I don’t. Pick that up.’ Cully reached out for an apple and a paring knife. ‘Cully ... it’s difficult this case. I don’t think it’s going well. Don’t give him a hard time.’

Cully looked across at her mother then, with one of the mercurial swings of mood which so enchanted her admirers and drove others mad with irritation, gave a warm and brilliant smile.

‘I’m sorry ... sorry ...’ She leaned across and kissed her mother’s cheek, slipping an arm around her neck. Joyce tried to kiss her daughter in return but Cully, already free, was getting up.

‘Poor Ma.’ She shook her head in what looked to Joyce very much like mock sympathy. ‘Pig in the middle. Again.’ And turned away. ‘I’m going to have a bath.’

‘What are you doing this morning?’ Joyce, trying to prolong the moment of closeness, knowing it had already gone for good.

‘Going to see Deirdre’s baby.’ The slender brown pinktoenailed feet tripped upstairs. ‘Then I’m meeting Nico at Uxbridge tube. We’ll be back by four to give you a hand.’

Joyce imagined the hand. She shouted over the sound of running water: ‘You’d better bring some stuff from Sainsbury’s. All we’ve got so far is eight tarragon eggs and a few ground-up cardamom seeds.’

‘Kay.’

Wisps of carnation-scented steam floated down as Cully shook some Floris Malmaison into the water. Joyce picked up the newspaper and started to clear the table. As she broke up left-over toast for the birds, she played back Cully’s graceful flight across the tiled floor. Recalled the skilful gathering of the heavy robe, the sinuously twining arms around her neck, the elegant half-turn of the head, the melting affectionate kiss and smooth backward dance of her retreat. From start to finish it seemed to Joyce there had been no more than one single continuous flowing movement. She and Tom had gradually and painfully realised that they were never sure when their daughter was acting and when she just was. It could be very disconcerting. Joyce felt briefly sorry for Nicholas until she remembered that he was even worse.

Mid morning. Barnaby sat hunched over his desk, a large fan cooling one side of his face, the other trickling with sweat. The dailies were scattered all over, weighted down against the artificial breeze. Only the tabloids still featured the story on their front pages and only the Daily Pitch made it their main headline. DID YOGI’S KILLER COME FROM VENUS? Heather, memorably unkempt, had made the front page.

Barnaby’s door was wide open and showed a scene of orderly activity. Forms and more forms, photographs and reports. And dazzling green-lettered screens with yet more information. Plus of course the phones, which never seemed to stop.

Many callers offered ‘vital information’ about, or even solutions to, the crime at the Golden Windhorse. It took more than the fact that a murder was domestic and had taken place in a tightly enclosed environment to stop the great British public sticking its oar in. One anonymous caller had got through at five a.m. to describe a vision wherein the ghost of Arthur Craigie had appeared before him in chains, declaring that his spirit would never be at rest until all the coloureds in his beloved homeland had been returned to their natural habitat. The man had added, ‘That’s tropical climes to you and me, John,’ before hanging up.

But much of the information was official and a great clearer of the air: George Bullard rang to say that Jim Carter was probably prescribed Metranidozole and would indeed have been very unwise to imbibe alcohol whilst taking it; following permission from Arno Gibbs, Mr Clinch had agreed to reveal the contents of Arthur Craigie’s Will; the real Christopher Wainwright had been raised at White City Television Centre and had verified Andrew Carter’s description of their schooldays at Stowe, meeting for drinks in Jermyn Street and subsequent lunch at Simpson’s. The only point at which their stories diverged was that Wainwright seemed genuinely to have lost his wallet. He had said, ‘Andy paid for lunch,’ sounding quite chuffed.

Noleen, Andrew Carter’s bedsitting neighbour at Earl’s Court, had also confirmed that they were having breakfast for a good half of the morning on which his uncle died. Barnaby had not seriously thought the boy was involved, but it was not entirely unknown for a guilty person to put up an elaborate smokescreen of pretend-investigation to cover their tracks. Barnaby had been less successful so far concerning Andrew’s activities on Blackpool’s Golden Mile, but out there in the hive someone would be working on it.

Whether there was a link between the two cases was, at the moment, quite unclear although it was temptingly easy to start guessing. Sticking to facts, however, the only certainties were that Carter had made a discovery (‘Andy - something terrible has happened ...’) and had shortly afterwards fallen or been pushed down the stairs. And that two months later Craigie had been murdered. The Master may or may not have been involved in the first death - Miss Cuttle had been unsure to whom the emotion-choked voice fearing a post mortem belonged. Assuming it was not Craigie’s had he, in his turn, discovered the something terrible and likewise been despatched?

If so, that let out the Gamelin bequest, for Sylvie had told the chief inspector at her interview that she had not suggested it to the Master until the week before her birthday. And that neither of them had mentioned it to anyone else. Until Guy, of course, and that on the evening of the murder. Barnaby looked down at his pad. He often doodled as he thought, plants usually. Ferns, flowers, delicately detailed leaves. He had drawn the sharp spears and the curled-back veiny petals of the iris sibirica: the poor man’s orchid.

‘Trust’ was written several times in the margin. The word had been floating repeatedly to the surface of his mind as if asking to be paid attention to. It was a constant irritation, for Barnaby presumed he knew all there was to know about Sylvia’s trust fund. How much it was, her determination to offload it, her father’s determination that she should not, Craigie’s feigned (according to Gamelin) refusal to accept. The chief inspector drew a thick, cross line down the margin, tore off the sheet and threw it in the bin. The word floated up again. So ...

What about alternative meanings? Trust as in be certain of, or have faith or belief in. Trust as in lack of, falsely placed or betrayed. Certainly the last was the very essence of a con man’s art. Barnaby ferreted away at this notion. Had Craigie been murdered by an acolyte who had discovered his true nature and felt betrayed? Or by some enraged victim of a previously successful scam? One of the time share losers, perhaps waiting patiently till his predator should be released. Most of them could doubtless be traced. But surely Craigie would know whoever it was, and be on his guard?

Troy came in with the lab report. He was wearing his usual tight trousers, a beautifully ironed, crisp white shirt buttoned right up, despite the heat of the day, and a narrow discreetly patterned tie. Barnaby rarely met his sergeant off duty so had no idea how formal the rest of his wardrobe might be, but at the station he never rolled his sleeves up or wore a casual shirt. Audrey had been heard to say this was because he had no hair on his chest.

Barnaby thought the reason for this sartorial swaddling was rather more complex. It was all of a piece with the sergeant’s meticulous reports and scrupulously tidy working area. The second thing Troy would do when entering the office, after putting his jacket on a hanger and before calling for coffee, was to align the wire-meshed trays on his desk with the edge and twitch any disorderly bits of paper into a neat stack. Sometimes he would rub at a barely visible stain with his handkerchief.

It hardly needed a professional analyst to deduce that this was all about control. About the constant vigilance needed to keep disorder at bay. A bit glib, perhaps, to assume this behaviour to be the outward manifestation of a million inward seething resentments. A touch of the Windhorse pop psychology there. Heavens, thought Barnaby, I’ll be counselling him next. He held out his hand for the expected confirmation that the shreds of canvas from Suhami’s bag were identical to the filament caught up on the murder weapon.

Troy handed over the envelope and switched on the portable television to catch the eleven o’clock news. There was an interview with Miss Myrtle Tombs, village post-mistress at Compton Dando, who had been so cunningly placed before an excellent still of the Manor House that she appeared to be actually standing in the drive. She had nothing to say about the Gamelin case or the house’s inhabitants and was saying it with great conviction and at great length. Troy switched off just in time to hear a lengthy hiss of indrawn breath from the far side of the office.

Barnaby was staring at the paper in front of him, his mouth slightly open, his eyes disbelievingly blank. Troy crossed over, slid the report from his chief’s slackened grasp, sat down and read it.

‘This can’t be right.’ He shook his head. ‘They’ve cocked it up.’

‘The appliance of science. Highly unlikely.’

‘You’ll check back though?’

‘Oh yes.’

Where does this leave us if they’ve got it right?’

‘Up the bloody creek.’ Barnaby began savagely punching at the buttons as if in retaliation for some mortal insult. ‘Without a bloody paddle.’

Felicity was up and dressed and sitting by the open window of her room. She was wearing the contents of the pigskin case: a Caroline Charles cream silk two-piece splashed all over with poppies and wild flowers. There were some companion shoes, bright grass-green sueded by Manolo Blahnik. Peep-toes and heels like oil derricks. May put these firmly away in a drawer and offered a pair of comfortable slippers instead. Before putting them on, she had massaged Felicity’s feet with a little scented oil. The orangey-copper skin was like fine wrinkled paper; her ankles the size of May’s wrists.

‘We must feed you up,’ May had said, smiling. ‘Lots of fresh vegetables and home-made bread.’

‘Oh I can’t eat bread.’ Felicity immediately added an apology. ‘You’re very kind but I have to stay size ten.’

‘What on earth for?’

‘... well ...’ The fact was that all of Felicity’s acquaintances were size ten and the minute they weren’t they rushed off to a Health Hydro until they were again. Faced with twelve stones of blooming benevolent amplitude, this explanation seemed both feeble and insulting. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You have a very long journey, Felicity. You will need all the help we can give you but you must also help yourself. Now, at the moment you are very weak and can only do a little, but that little must be done. It is your contribution, do you see?’

‘Yes, May.’ Felicity was disturbed at the notion of a contribution - feeling that her spirit, brittle as ice, might well crack beneath the strain. At the clinic, where she had lived in a cosseted dream, her contribution had been purely financial. Perhaps that was what May meant. A nervous question revealed this not to be the case. Felicity gathered up the lees of a waifish courage and asked what she would have to do.

‘For now, just eat a little and rest. Then as you get stronger we shall see.’

Felicity stretched out her hand. As she did so her mind kicked up a vivid memory. Arriving home from her first drying-out, she had turned to Guy reaching out, precisely so. He had called her an emotional vampire and turned his back. But May took Felicity’s hand between her own still faintly scented palms, kissed it and laid it against her cheek. Felicity felt her veins unfreeze.

‘You haven’t any more of that dreadful stuff that goes up your nose?’

‘No, May.’

‘That’s right. The body is the temple that houses your immortal soul. Never forget that. And never abuse it. Now,’ she gently removed her hand, ‘I must go and help Janet with the lunch. There’ll be some nice soup and you must try and drink a little.’

In spite of having promised at breakfast to do the main course once more, there was no sign of Janet in the kitchen. May started on the soup, chopping up Jerusalem artichokes and leeks and sweating them in a little Nutter. She had a look on the seasoning shelf, wondering what flavour might best tempt Felicity’s appetite. The soup looked rather pale. May dwelt on the possibility of adding a pinch of saffron. Brother Athelstan’s Herbal assured her that it ‘makyth a man merry’ but added a cautionary postscript telling of the Norwegian mystic Nils Skatredt who, after a heavy night on the pistils in 1462, OD’d on the stuff and died laughing. May replaced the tiny box and took down a jar of bay leaves.

Once the soup was nicely bubbling she went in search of Janet, first going up to her room. Janet wasn’t there but a letter was, propped up against a copy of Pascal’s Pensées. May opened it then took herself off to the nearest telephone determined, after their telling off over Trixie’s departure, to get it right this time.

‘What she says, Chief Inspector, is that she’s a pretty good idea where Trixie is and if she isn’t back this evening - Janet I mean - she’ll ring and let us know what’s happening ... Not at all. It’s a pleasure. How are you? And that poor boy with - ’

But her contact had hung up so May went to seek out the others and put them in the picture.

Janet sat uncomfortably jammed up against the burning window of a double-decker by a stout woman with two bursting shopping bags. One of them was half lying across Janet’s knees but the woman made no attempt to rearrange it or apologise. When Janet got off, she saw that some squashed tomatoes had left juice and pips on her skirt.

She had changed the stretch trousers for a summer dress at the last minute. Overlong and full-skirted, patterned with harsh electric blue and tan splodges, it had a scooped neckline. This exposed the rather scrawny hollow at the base of her throat, so Janet had put on a loosely strung necklace of large transparent beads resembling old-fashioned cough lozenges. The dress had an outside pocket to which her fingers constantly and nervously strayed. Tucked in there were instructions on how to find Seventeen Waterhouse. (That really had been the complete address. A block of flats the post office said). There was also a bumpy homemade bag of lavender which Heather had thrust into her hand as she was coming downstairs, saying, ‘It’s only a teeny tiny, Jan, but it comes with all my love.’

At the terminus Janet dismounted, leaving the bus station, turning right as per her instructions, then right again. She had reached the traffic lights when her eye was caught by an exquisite little Georgian bay window - a jewel in its own right - fronting a jewellery boutique. She crossed over for a closer look.

The window was nearly empty, as is the way when the price is immaterial. Just a fold or two of ivory velour, some stunning earrings in thinly beaten bronze and a scarf. This lay as if casually abandoned, a glowing pool of lustrous, irridescent green and shining turquoise. There was a white ticket turned blank side up. Hardly aware that she was doing so, Janet went inside for a closer look.

The scarf was a thirty-six inch square of pure silk, marvellously fine and slippy. The sort of stuff people used to say could be drawn through a wedding ring. Janet imagined it thrown over Trixie’s fair curls, casting a verdant shadow on her creamy complexion. It cost a hundred and twenty pounds.

Janet bought it, trying to recall the final figure of her most recent bank statement whilst writing out the cheque. They wrapped it beautifully in a flat black-and-white striped box lined with scarlet tissue and tied with scarlet silk ribbon. The shop’s name, XERXES, was stamped across the top in gold.

Walking away, thrilled by her purchase, imagining Trixie’s face as she excitedly removed the ribbon ... the lid ... the tissue and, finally, the lovely scarf, Janet felt briefly, uncomplicatedly happy. Then doubts started to rise.

When had she ever seen Trixie wear such colours? Trixie liked pastels: cream, rose, pale blue. Come to think of it, thought Janet, when have I ever seen her in a scarf? She had some, crammed into her underwear drawer, but hardly ever brought out and worn. Oh - Janet stopped dead on the pavement, causing a man to bump into her and curse. How foolish a thing to do. Stupid, wasteful. Idiotic.

What Trixie would need, what she always needed, was money. There was never a time when she wasn’t short. She would look at the ravishing useless present and think: God - what I could have done with all that cash. For she would know the cost to within five pounds. Somehow she always did.

Janet stood hesitating as people surged about her and car horns blared and her lungs choked on exhaust fumes. Should she take the scarf back? Would the shop accept it? But that meant she’d turn up at Seventeen Waterhouse empty-handed and she did so want to take a present. What I should have done, Janet reflected with tardy sadness, is buy something that would be of real use. Some food. Or something to drink.

On the other side of the road there was a Marks and Spencer. With the same unheeding impetuosity with which she had entered Xerxes, Janet now dived after a group of pedestrians crossing and, a moment later, found herself in the food department.

It was a long time since she had shopped at Marks and Sparks and the shelves were a revelation. She bent over the freezer cabinet, loving the blast of cold air on her burning cheeks and picked up a box glittering with icy crystals: American Fudge Pie. She added a tub of Lemon Ice Cream. Then she turned to the made-up dishes, selecting crispy Peking Duck, Prawns Won Ton, Fillet Steak with Green Peppercorns and Salmon in pastry parcels. Into the trolley went real coffee, some double cream, a herby round cheese wrapped in vine leaves and wild strawberry conserve. A big box of Belgian chocolates. Bread of course (plaited Italian ciabatta), unsalted butter, asparagus. On the fruit counter she found two mangoes, a wonderfully scented Ogen melon and some Muscat grapes. Then she saw a cauliflower: snow-white curds tightly packed, leaves immaculately fresh. Recalling Arno’s poor weevily offerings, she simply had to have it. Just as she had to have the champagne.

It was while piling these things on to the rolling checkout belt that Janet realised it might have been wiser to use a basket. There seemed to be an awful lot of stuff, some of it rather heavy. It was possible to buy carriers larger and tougher than those freely offered so she picked up a couple, adding them to her bill (fifty-four pounds and seventeen pence.)

Stepping out of the air-conditioned store was a shock. Janet stood on the baking pavement and put her bags down, trying to ignore the honking traffic. She studied her map to regain her bearings then stopped a woman with a pushchair and showed her the address.

‘Straight down and turn at Caley Street.’ She eyed Janet’s shopping. ‘It’s quite a walk.’

‘Oh - is it?’

‘A good twenty minutes. I should get on a bus.’ She nodded at a longish queue nearby. ‘Fifty-seven.’

Janet had to stand on the fifty-seven but was able to put her shopping in the space behind the platform. She kept the black and white box, gripping it with one hand, hanging on to the rail above her head with the other. At the fourth stop, the bus half emptied and the conductor called, ‘Here you go,’ dragging her bags out.

Janet climbed down and stared around her in some bewilderment. She turned and called, ‘Are you sure this is right?’ but the bus was already moving off.

She was facing a large patch of scrubby ground littered with rubbish, around which reared six great cinder-coloured tower blocks. A boy clattered by on a skateboard and she caught his arm saying, ‘Waterhouse?’

He shouted ‘Carncha read?’ and jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

A wooden board with orange and white lettering, much of it peeling off, and dotted lines to indicate covered walkways, gave the layout of the estate. Waterhouse seemed to be the furthest block away. She picked up her bags and trudged off.

Within a couple of minutes the busy sounds of the street were muted and she became aware of a quite different atmosphere. Oppressive, enclosed and curiously empty: curious because she must be surrounded by hundreds of people - a few feet away on the ground or stacked high into the clouds. Janet tipped back her head and craned her eyes upwards. No sign of human life. In spite of the glorious weather, not a soul sat out on their balcony, perhaps because there was no room amongst all the washing. No one looked down from a window either. Janet recalled how quickly the other passengers had melted away. It was really quite uncanny.

She passed two metal bins, taller than she was, smelling most unpleasant and humming with flies, and entered a walkway. She moved along quietly, anxious not to attract attention. The enclosure was covered with spray-on graffiti. It was all pretty uninventive, confining itself mainly to indicating where the observer should next go and what he should do when he got there. Janet, sweaty and nervous, was glad when she came to the other end.

But then, stepping into the open once again, she got a shock. Facing her was a group of youths straddling motor cycles. The nearest machine, powerful shiny black with a towering windshield, was so huge and threatening that it looked more like a weapon of war than a means of transport. All the bikes had tall masts on the back with pennants attached.

Janet stopped dead and her heart leapt. The boys stared, hard-eyed. Then one of them gave a wolf whistle and the others gave raucous shouts of encouragement. Janet thought of asking where Waterhouse was out of sheer cravenness but then decided simply to walk on. It wasn’t as if they were blocking her way. She had only gone a few steps when a tremendous revving roar of sound ripped the air. Janet nearly jumped out of her skin, dropping the black and white box. The lads nearly fell off their saddles laughing.

Finally reaching her objective, she stepped beneath the concrete overhang and put down her bags. Around her were several shabby doors numbered one to four. So if there were four flats on each level, V’s would be on the fifth. Janet pressed the button marked FT and waited. She pressed it several more times and was starting to get impatient when there was a bumping and thumping to her right. A young girl appeared wearing skin-tight jeans and white winkle-pickers, dragging a baby in a pushchair down a flight of steps. A toddler followed scrambling backwards, tearful at the prospect of being left behind. The girl spoke to Janet.

‘You’ll stand there till Christmas.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Not working is it?’ She dragged at the little boy, wrenching his arm, hoisting him down the final two steps. ‘Come on ...’ She sounded as irritated as if they had just come back from a morning’s shopping instead of just starting out. ‘Shift yourself for Christ’s sake ...’

She was walking away. Janet called: ‘Do you know if the people in Seventeen are in?’ The little boy started crying in earnest. The girl did not reply.

Janet walked to the base of the steps and looked up. There were eight, then a square to turn, then eight doubling back. It shouldn’t be too difficult. Not as if she were in a hurry. Thank heavens she hadn’t walked here from the town. As it was she felt reasonably fresh. Janet started to climb.

At the first ‘platform’, she had to stop to rearrange her shopping. The champagne bottle kept cracking against the side of her knee. She turned the bag round, took several deep breaths and fought her way up another two flights. Half way the sole of her open sandal caught just under the edge of the step and she nearly fell. She was careful after that, lifting her feet higher than was strictly necessary, putting extra strain on the muscles of her calves.

Resting for the second time, panting, aware of a hard, gathered pain between her shoulder blades, Janet noticed a damp stain was spreading over the black-and-white gift-wrapping on her beautiful box. She snatched it out of the carrier bag where it had been lying on top of the ice cream. Unable to face rearranging the shopping yet again, Janet wedged the box under her arm before striving and struggling on.

Next time she stopped she had a pain in her side which was more than a match for the one in her back. Her shoulders were rigid and achingly tender, as if newly beaten and the backs of her legs trembled. Her upper arm throbbed with the effort of gripping the box close to her side, and sweat ran into her eyes.

She was about to rest her bags when she noticed a foul mess by her feet. Squashed chips, greasy paper, a chicken rib-cage crawling with flies, a pile of excrement. Somehow she dragged herself up eight more steps, sitting down on the final one, resting her aching head on her knees, struggling not to cry.

She sat there for a long time knowing that she could climb no further, at least if accompanied by the bags. Perhaps she could stash them in a corner somewhere and carry on alone. Then, after greeting each other, Janet would tell Trixie all about the delicious things she had brought and they would come down together and collect them. This idea led Janet to recognise how the certainty that Trixie would be present at Number Seventeen - with or without the mysterious ‘V’ - had been growing in her mind. Now she saw all three of them laughing and eating Prawns Won Ton, champagne foaming down the side of slender glasses. She looked around for a hiding place.

The front doors of the four flats to her left opened on to a single narrow frontage which some three-foot-high brickwork transformed into a balcony. Janet took the bags to the far end, putting her other parcel on the wall whilst she stowed them away in the corner. Suddenly, at the window only inches away, a German Shepherd dog appeared snarling and snapping furiously. Alarmed, Janet jumped sideways and knocked the box off the edge.

Crying out, grabbing at space, her fingers brushed the ribbon then the box was gone. It fell slowly and lightly, turning over in the air. Alerted by her exclamation, the boys she’d encountered earlier looked up. She watched them move, walking towards where the object might land. Foreshortened beneath their brightly coloured caps, squat bodies and spindly legs sidling across the ground, they resembled a swarm of preying insects.

Janet turned away and began once more to ascend, grateful that at last she was able to make use of the handrail. Before she reached level four all her carrier bags had vanished. By level five the boys had kick-started their machines and were zooming between the bollards, churning up the pathetic barren earth. Tied to their aerials, along with the mock-fur tails and pennants threatening megadeath and destruction, were fluttering strips of blue-green silk.

Trixie snuggled down into the narrow bed, pressing herself against the thin knobbly ridge of her sweetheart’s backbone. They had made love and slept, made love and slept. She exhilarated with pleasure, he thankful, happy but still nervous in case it was all a dream. In case his wife returned.

She had caught them once before six months ago. Had locked Victor in the bathroom and worked Trixie over. Then, after pushing her, bruised and bleeding, out of the front door, she’d retrieved Victor and made mincemeat out of him. She was a big girl was Hedda.

Trixie had fled overnight to her sister in Hornchurch then, seeing a poster in a book shop, to the Golden Windhorse. Her job in a separates boutique had been no great loss but Victor was something else. Ringing frequently, hanging up if Hedda answered, she eventually found him alone. She had told him her location and he had rented an accommodation address. They exchanged letters and sometimes anguished telephone calls. She never reproached him for lack of courage, recognising the same omission in her own character.

She kissed him now on his small neat ears and saw his irresolute mouth curve into a smile, as if remembering her presence in his sleep. The atmosphere in the room was stale and spicy. Several foil dishes from the Mumtaz Takeway were on the table and some empty Ruddles Bitter cans. Last night they had celebrated Hedda’s departure. She had gone to live with a professional wrestler at Stamford Hill. All her things had disappeared so it must be true. But V was still nervous.

Trixie was not. She had swaggered happily into the flat, kissing her lover, laughing in a new and quite boastful way. On her third beer she had said, ‘What would you think if I told you I’d killed someone?’ Victor had laughed, ‘You, pretty kitten?’ and taken her on his knee. Trixie let him tease her, thinking it’s a fact though and if Hedda comes back I shall tell her, and she’ll see by my face it’s true and leave us alone.

At the sound of footsteps along the balcony, Victor’s eyes opened, becoming quickly alarmed. Trixie - although her heart beat a little faster - said, ‘It’s all right ... keep quiet ...’

She put her arms around him and they lay huddled together beneath the duvet, absolutely still. It was not Hedda, the lightness of the step told them that. Perhaps it was someone from the council. A snooper trying to make trouble.

The letter box rattled. Trixie smothered a laugh, covering her mouth with the corner of the sheet. Victor whispered, ‘Sshh ...’ They rested motionless, hardly breathing. Victor whispered again. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘Nothing. Don’t worry. They’ll go away.’

And, after a long while and a lot more rapping, they did.

Chapter 13

The evening group-meditation on the terrace was a failure. Everyone sat on seats of thyme-fringed paving slabs, separately locked into fretful inner disturbances. When it was over there was a sad bit of discussion about the Master’s funeral. They all seemed to think the sooner it was over the better. Suhami said she couldn’t bear the thought of his physical shell lying in a metal drawer in the dark. He should be resting on a high catafalque she believed, on the seashore perhaps, under a benign sun. Everyone had voted for a cremation rather than a burial.

‘That would be his own wish,’ said May. ‘Spirit of air and light that he was. Blowing in the wind.’

Ken said, ‘That was a lovely album.’

He and Heather glanced with shy unease at the heirs regnant. Yesterday they had expressed their surprise and pleasure roundly, like everyone else, when May and Arno had told their exciting news - but the couple were still not sure if they would ever be well thought of or trusted again. Their smile now was the smile of people in tight shoes. From inside the house, the telephone rang and Heather cried, ‘I’ll go, I’ll go!’

The meeting broke up. May disappeared to prepare a herbal sleeping draught for Felicity. Suhami left to milk Calypso. Chris tried to follow, was gently rebuffed, tried again and finally went into the house - his face dark with anger and distress. Heather returned, explaining that the call had been a wrong number and asked if Arno could help her get Ken to his feet ready for his walk. Ken had been told that it was important to exercise his uninjured leg and every couple of hours would have a discreet little hobble about. Now Heather suggested that, as the main gates were now news-hound free, they might take a turn around the village.

Arno watched them go, Ken complaining loudly that it was much too far, then he set off for the kitchen to wash up the supper things. He knew he should be feeling indignant about how the Beavers had behaved but the fact was that he found himself in such an extraordinary state of mind that other people’s presence, let alone their transgressions, hardly registered.

It had all started yesterday. Shortly after the remarkable disquisition of the Master’s Will, Arno had felt stirring within his for-so-long-timorous breast a bracing current of embryonic confidence. He was chosen! Obviously not for any outstanding qualities of spiritual leadership (Arno had never been one for self-deception), nevertheless he had been thought capable. That night before climbing into bed to fall instantly into a calm and happy sleep, he’d extended his prayers to include a request for strength to shoulder courageously his new responsibilities.

He awoke equally calm and happy, only to be gripped at once by a new and terrible idea that frightened him half to death. He leapt out of bed as if speed of movement might trick the notion into staying behind to be smothered in the pillows, flung on some clothes and rushed about his business. Throughout the day he completed not only his own tasks, but also half the others on the list.

But physical activity, he found, was no answer. However busy his body, his mind remained like a pot on the boil - throwing again and again to the surface this single and deeply disquieting suggestion. The truth of the matter was that his passionate love for May had finally got the better of him and, by linking the two of them more or less officially together, the Master’s bequest had nudged Arno into such a state that he was on the point of declaring himself.

There had been many opportunities during the day but he thought none of them propitious. At one point, recalling May’s veneration of all things indigo, he went into the garden and picked every deep blue flower he could find. He returned with a huge armful of lupins, delphiniums, larkspur and Canterbury bells, only to find himself rigid with fear at the thought of even presenting them, let alone stumbling into amorous speech. They were now in a bucket under the sink.

One of the problems - well, the main problem actually - was that Arno was no longer able to deceive himself as to the pure, ennobling and spiritual nature of his affection. He now knew it would no longer be enough to share with her, in happy platonic servitude, the sweet prosaic things of everyday life. To venerate her from a respectful distance. He wanted more.

‘Oh,’ cried Arno aloud in the empty kitchen. ‘I am no higher than a beast.’

He had fought this onrush of licentiousness. His baths had got cooler, his flesh pink from loofah persecution. He had applied himself to the section in Father Athelstan’s Herbal that dealt with Discharge of Troublous Humours and been instructed to gather some hyssop flowers, bake them to drive off the moisture, mix the remaining purple crumbs with some almond oil, spread the resultant paste across his tummy and lie down for half an hour with his feet up on a hassock - all of which he duly did. He felt better for the rest but his skin went blue.

He had tried to reason with himself, which had proved difficult, and to think uplifting thoughts which had proved very easy. Attempting to approach what the Master had called his innate fountain of wisdom, he was always beaten to it by Priapus, muddying up the water. So, finally, Arno had been compelled to accept this irresistible summons of the blood, comforted only by the knowledge that at least he would do the decent thing and keep these feelings to himself. And so he had. Until today.

Today it had been borne upon him that until he spoke he would have no peace. Also that, if he failed, she would be lost to him for ever. For, in spite of the Master’s injunction, Arno felt he could not then further embarrass May by his continual presence. All day, like an anxious foot soldier before a fateful battle, he had been on the look out for favourable signs. After lunch one had been vouchsafed. Draining his mug of Acorna, the remaining sludge had formed itself into the shape of a perfect heart. This had cheered Arno considerably. The time it seemed was right. He only had to do it once and, after all, how long did it take to say three little words? No time. Of course there would have to be a few endearments.

At the thought of the endearments Arno’s skin crawled with apprehension. Perhaps he could just place his last and final haiku in amongst the flowers. He produced it from his pocket.

May, goddess, heart’s queen

Bitter the path without you

Joined be. With me.

He was cheating rather on the last line, which was a syllable short unless you said ‘joinèd’ like Shakespeare, but it had pith and moment. No doubt about that.

Washing and drying all this time, Arno now began to put the glasses back and that was when he came across the brandy. Tucked away, in a purely medicinal manner, on the back of the oats and beans and barley shelf. With nothing really definite in mind, Arno took it down. It was a pretty large bottle and it was pretty full. He poured out a small glass and drank it.

It burned his throat and made him cough but there was no doubt, once the discomfort had worn off, that he felt better. In fact he felt so much better he decided to have another. This went down much more smoothly, engendering nothing more disturbing than a nice warm glow across the chest. Arno could feel it doing what he had always understood strong drink was supposed to do. Loosening inhibitions, magicking up the assurance he needed to accomplish his brave, foolhardy sortie. He decided to have a third, then sat down in a single swoopy motion - feeling rather blobby in the head.

For no reason a memory arrived. Some indeterminate time ago he had seen a play at an amateur theatre. Set in Russia, the bit Arno remembered had two people who were thought by all the other characters to be in love. She was packing to go away, he was standing by the door. She thought he was going to propose and he thought he was going to propose, but he never did and she went off to be some sort of governess. Arno had been very moved by the waste and pathos of the situation. He saw this recollection now as both warning and encouragement.

Lest sorrow should unman him, he had another small glass and with some difficulty made his way towards the window. He opened it and the balmy air lay warm against his face. It was pleasant but he felt he could have done with something a bit more bracing. And then he heard the cello.

She was playing the chakras which, she had explained to him once, corresponded to the seven-note musical scale. How he knew she was not simply playing the scale, Arno could not have said. A special richness in the timbre perhaps; a deeper resonance in the pause. Could one in any case hear colours? He stood, supporting himself by gripping the edge of the sink, straining not to miss a single thread of the glorious sound.

He felt intoxicated with joy and immensely confident. As if all the strength he would need to sustain and support them, both now and in the years to come, had been given all at once in a lump. And far from weighing him down, he soared with it. He flew. He was suddenly totally convinced she would be his - he knew it! All the exuberant unfathomable extravagance of her. As the dulcified notes flowed, Arno - in a frenzy of nympholepsy, - recreated the beloved musician and saw her not seated in an English country house, but magnificently astride a gold-rimmed cloud and surging across the heavens in a shining helmet, with bright curved shining horns. This was it! His instant of momentous opportunity. His kairos.

Buoyed up by all this riotous bodily excess, Arno started to tug the flowers out of the bucket. He looked round for something to tie them up with. Nothing of the right length, width or texture presented itself, so he made do with a tea towel. The strategy was to offer them, rhapsodise a while on the beauty of her soul, the sweets of her conversation and her astounding physical loveliness, bow low in a proper boon-craving manner, then withdraw. Shouldn’t be too difficult. Anyone could pitch a little woo. He slipped the poem between the larkspur and the delphs and was just tottering towards the door when the music stopped in mid-scale (somewhere between the heart and the solar plexus).

Arno stood very still, all his attention straining into the silence - which continued. What could be the matter? Was she ill? He felt a shiver of fear until reason asserted itself. May was never ill. Those Rubenesque limbs, glowing eyes and that unquenchable bosom were surely not only healthy but also indestructible.

Perhaps she had simply taken a break to tighten a string. Or rest that strong right arm. But half way up the scale? As he hovered, disconcerted, clutching his bouquet, another much stranger sound came to Arno’s ears. A bitter-sweet and pure sound interspersed with brief moany gurgles. He thought at first that she was singing. Certainly the manner of delivery was strangely musical. Its clear plangent quality reminded him of medieval, high-French ballads often sung to a lute. But then a sudden extra-mournful cadence brought home the appalling truth. She was not singing, but crying.

Unhelmed by pity and terror, Arno flew along the corridor. May was sitting in the nursing chair, bending over her instrument, bow poised as if to play again. Her cheeks were wet and her profile stamped with sorrow. Arno halted at the threshold, heart breaking at the sight. He could not speak. Could not choke out a single comforting phrase, let alone deliver his chivalric eulogy.

At first, wrapt in unhappiness, she did not notice him. Then, still clutching his unbound bouquet, Arno hesitantly stepped forwards. She turned and said simply, ‘Oh Arno - I do miss him so.’

It was enough. Released, emboldened, Arno approached. Crying, ‘Dearest May,’ he embraced her and launched into a flood of adoring speech.

Then things got a little complicated. May rose to her feet, her expression one of confusion rather than alarm or dismay. Arno, clinging to voluptuous silk-clad shoulders, slid off. There was a brief tumultuous scrimmage, involving folds of slithery fabric, stout little legs, spires of deep blue flowers and gleaming rosewood, followed by a howl of elemental magnitude, though whether provoked by joy or anguish it was impossible to tell.

It was nearly seven. Barnaby sat, head in hands, brain stuffed to bursting with a kaleidoscope of detail, his thoughts overheated and stale. A labyrinth of faces, voices, diagrams, pictures. But which thread would lead him to the clear light of day? Perhaps that thread had not yet been discovered. If it was, he wondered how the hell he would find room for it.

That there was plenty of material that could be jettisoned he had no doubt, but at the moment he dared throw nothing away. His shoulders were stiff and he hunched them up and down then pressed them back to loosen up a bit. Troy was looking at his watch.

‘I expect they’re doing evening-chanting up at the Windhorse,’ he said ‘Dancing round. Or whatever daft rubbish it is they do.’

‘Don’t be like that, Troy. You might get born again yourself one day.’

‘Strikes me most of the people who are born again should never have been born in the first place.’

Barnaby laughed and Troy looked disconcerted. The chief would do that sometimes. Sit straight-faced through any amount of little witticisms then fall about when you were being serious. ‘It’s getting on, sir.’

‘Something might still come in.’

‘Thought you said it was Cully’s birthday.’ Barnaby disliked the naked lechery in his sergeant’s voice whenever Cully’s name came up. ‘Isn’t there going to be a party?’

‘A small one. She got engaged as well.’

‘Oh yeh? What’s he do?’

‘An actor.’

‘He’ll be on telly, then,’ said Troy with simple confidence.

Barnaby did not reply. He was staring down at the pile of statements. Gamelin’s was on top. Was there, buried in that printed page or on any of the others, a line of speech that could be reinterpreted? A fact looked at in a different light.

Troy observed his chief sympathetically. ‘My money’s on that Master Rakowkzy. Anybody gives free legal advice must be up to no good. Most solicitors charge fifty quid just to fart in your pocket.’ He chortled. ‘And talking of solicitors - you thought any more about Gibbs and May Cuttle? I mean - we’ve got a real motive there. Elizabethan manor house, acres of ground, not to mention that goat. I know they come over as innocent idealists -’

‘Idealists are never innocent.’ Barnaby did not look up. ‘They cause half the trouble that’s going. Check this.’ Troy took Guy Gamelin’s statement, read it through and looked blank. ‘It tells us something about the murder scene that none of the others do.’

Troy frowned. ‘No it doesn’t.’

‘Yes it does. Read it again.’

Troy read it again and then once more. ‘Ohhh ... ’ He shrugged. ‘What difference does that make?’

‘Perhaps,’ Barnaby took the statement back, ‘it indicates another way of looking at things. Never a bad idea, especially if you’re stuck.’

‘Right.’ Troy moved fast to nip any lecture on the open mind in the bud. ‘Don’t you want to get off now?’

‘Hmn.’ Barnaby half rose, still looking at the bit of paper. ‘I think we’ll have another talk with that mad boy tomorrow. Try and find out why he’s so convinced Craigie’s death was an accident. And why he’s so frightened. Gibbs was definitely trying to put us off seeing him. We’ll get someone else to sit in next time. Might have a bit more luck.’

‘What time’s it starting - the sworry?’

‘Half seven.’

‘Just do it nice then.’

Barnaby said ‘Hmn’ again, drummed his fingers on the desk, switched on his monitor. Troy couldn’t understand it. Catch him hanging round the office on his daughter’s twenty-first!

‘I’ll stay.’ A quick look of surprise. ‘I’ve missed the baby’s bath and bedtime so there’s no rush.’

‘That’s good of you, Gavin,’ said Barnaby, thinking poor old Maureen. ‘We’ve probably got all we’re getting for tonight. And, of course, they can always reach me at home. Still - I appreciate it.’

‘Till about nine say?’

‘Fine. I can probably be back by then.’

‘Course you can, Chief,’ said Troy, thinking poor old Cully.

When Barnaby had gone, he hung around obediently for half an hour, drifting in and out of the main office, talking to the duty staff, taking a few calls of no special interest. Then, bored, decided to get a bite of supper in the canteen. Leaving instructions that if his wife rang, he was out and if anything at all relating to the Windhorse case came in, it was to be put straight on his desk, he went off.

It wasn’t just that he was hungry. There was a new assistant on late shift. Nicely married and, by all the locker-room accounts, not entirely averse to putting it about a bit. Loading his tray with spaghetti and chips, and a mug of bright rust-coloured tea, Troy arrived at the till. He noted with pleasure the long false eyelashes, straining overall and hot pink lips. They were shiny, too, as if she licked them a lot. Perhaps in anticipation? His change came to fifty pence. Holding the coin out, the lashes did a bit of cheek-sweeping. She said, ‘You ought to give that to the blind dogs.’

‘Blind dogs?’ Troy saw the tin and dropped the coin in, regarding it as an investment. ‘Poor devils. It’s not as if you can explain it to them, is it?’ She looked blank. Ah well. He wasn’t after her sense of humour.

Later she came round to clear. Troy patted the space next to him and when she sat down, said he wouldn’t half like to be the leather on that chair. There was a fair bit more of this and a lot of sexy giggling. It was all very pleasant not to say promising, and Troy was quite sorry when a shout from the kitchen moved her on. He ordered a double mince-slice and custard and, when he’d finished that, another cup of tea - dallying both times at the till. Then he had a ciggie, spinning it out, watching the smoke curl away. All a bit time-consuming and of course he was very sorry afterwards. But how was he to know that it would cost a human life?

Barnaby arrived home on the stroke of half seven to find the double celebration had now become a triple - for Nicholas, in his final year at the Central School of Speech and Drama, had won the coveted Gielgud medal.

He had played Oedipus, stalking the stage righteous and white clad hunting out diseased corruption and then, marled in red, finding it within himself. It had been a performance of outstanding showiness. So stylised and flamboyant in its agony as to dangerously approach parody but it had remained truthful at the heart and he had (just) pulled it off. Now, wondrously delighted by his aquisition of an agent and the certainty of the essential, life-preserving Equity Card, plus an entrancing fiancée, Nicholas was understandably on top of the world.

He and Cully were capping each other’s remarks, laughing at everything and nothing. Every now and then, Cully would throw back her cloud of dark hair which was strewn with flowers. She was wearing a long scarlet cotton skirt banded with multicoloured ribbon and a white frilled Mexican blouse with sleeves so wide that several other blouses could have sprung fully formed from each one.

‘I can’t tell you,’ Nicholas was telling everyone, as the eggs tarragon were being relished, ‘how utterly appalling it was working with Phoebe Catchpole.’

‘She wasn’t too bad,’ said Cully graciously.

‘Actually,’ said Joyce, ‘I thought she was quite good.’

‘But the size of her, darling,’ continued Nicholas. ‘It was like squaring up to a rhino. On “Oh - lost and damned” - you know, her final exit - she leaned on me. I thought I was going straight through the boards. The only mature student in my year and they give her Jocasta. She was old enough to be my mother.’

Everyone cracked up and this time Nicholas tossed back his hair, which was long and chestnut gold. They fizzed and bloomed and radiated at each other across the table. All youth, beauty and mettlesome talent. No doubt seeing themselves, Joyce reflected tartly, as the Viv and Larry de nos jours. Ah well - life would soon knock the edges off. Life, the theatre, other people. Joyce felt sad, irritated and envious all at the same time. She started to collect the plates, saying. ‘I can never understand why psychiatrists call lusting after your mother an Oedipus complex. Surely the whole point of the play is that he didn’t know she was his mother.’

‘Didn’t you think Tiresias was moving?’ Cully scraped up a last morsel of jelly. ‘Specially in that last speech.’

‘Oh come on,’ returned Nicholas quickly. ‘He’s got a voice like a corncrake.’

But the greatest of these is charity. Joyce bore the dishes away thinking Nicholas was going to have to guard his tongue if he wanted to get on. She could still hear them in the kitchen, projecting like mad.

‘It’s great there was a female messenger,’ Cully was saying. ‘They’re always terrific parts what with all the gory stuff happening off stage.’

‘If they brought bad news,’ called out Joyce, ‘they were taken out and executed.’

‘Blimey,’ said Nicholas. ‘How d’you get stuck with a job like that?’

‘The usual way,’ said Cully. ‘Hanging round Groucho’s.’

More laughter: Cully’s artfully shaped, pure and poised perfectly in the throat. A chime of silver bells. Nicholas’, warm, brown, shaving ad., masculine.

Joyce dished up Sainsbury’s enchiladas and Basmati rice and tossed a large salad of escarole. There were two bottles already opened of some chewy Portuguese red. And Chocolate Butter Pecan ice cream to follow. She shouted, ‘I could do with a hand.’

‘I’m still not sure what option to take up,’ said Nicholas, harking back to his future. He had been offered play as cast at Stratford or parts at the Octogon. ‘I suppose parts is the best bet.’

‘Of course it is.’ Cully was incredulous. ‘What do you want to be? An actor - or some buskined groupie goggling at Ian McKellan’s tights.’

‘I thought he was at the National?’

‘And you might be in a production that doesn’t transfer.’

Nicholas was horrified. ‘Don’t they all transfer?’

Putting plates of steaming food on a tray, Joyce found Tom at her side and handed it over. ‘Do try and contribute, darling.’

‘What?’

‘Say something.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘No you’re not.’

‘They wouldn’t notice if we stayed in here and ate.’

‘Don’t tempt me,’ said Joyce, knowing he was mistaken. Actors always notice when an audience disappears. She took in the wine and Cully poured it out, telling Nicholas the while how lucky Bolton was to have him. Nicholas said, ‘Please, no idolatry.’

‘Right, you two.’ Barnaby’s voice was loud and firm. The rebuke went unnoticed by Nicholas. Cully pulled a penitent face and smiled. Glasses were raised. ‘To your future success. On and off the boards. Be happy, darling.’

They all drank. Then Cully came around the table, kissed the top of her mother’s head, her father’s cheek. Briefly the curtain of fragrant hair blotted out his view and he felt the loss of her, to which he had been long resigned, brutally raw and sweet.

‘Thanks, Dad. Ma.’ She was already back in her place.

Nicholas took her hand, curling the slender fingers within his own, raising it to his lips and saying, ‘I don’t want to be out of London too long.’

‘For heaven’s sake, Nicholas,’ Joyce sounded really irritated. ‘You’ve only left drama school five minutes. You need some experience.’

‘What I’d really like,’ said Nicholas, ‘what would really stretch me I think is to get right away from verbal theatre altogether for a bit. Get some experience in mime. Maybe in a circus. That’d be fantastic.’

‘You need to go to Spain for mime,’ said Cully. ‘Or France.’

‘One of my current suspects worked in a Spanish circus,’ said Barnaby. ‘As a lion tamer.’

‘Was he a roaring success?’ asked Nicholas.

‘We went to see a mime the night we got engaged,’ said Joyce. ‘Do you remember, Tom? At the Saville?’

‘Course I do.’ He welcomed the vivid recollection which banished all thought of work, if only for a moment. ‘Had dinner first at Mon Plaisir.’

‘Were they any good?’ asked Nicholas. ‘The company.’

‘It was just one man. Marcel Marceau.’

‘He’s supposed to be brilliant,’ said Cully.

‘He was,’ said Barnaby. ‘Filled the stage with people. Talking to them, dancing with them. You’d swear they were actually present. There was one bit when he walked against the wind and you could see it practically knocking him over.’

‘Coo,’ said Cully. She and Nicholas had stopped eating.

‘The best of all I thought,’ said Joyce, ‘was the one he finished with. The mask-maker. He had this pile of masks - imaginary of course - and he tried them on one at a time. His own face is very handsome and amazingly flexible, like rubber. All the masks were different. He held them up quickly and each time his expression was totally transformed. The last had a terrible tragic expression. And he couldn’t get it off. He tugged and pulled and finally tore at the edges, getting more and more frantic. It simply wouldn’t budge. But - and this is what was so incredible - although the mask didn’t move you could still see what lay behind it. See his terror when he realised he was going to look like that for the rest of his life.’

Absolute silence followed this dramatic narration. Cully and Nicholas sat entranced. Barnaby drew lines on the tablecloth with his fork. Finally Nicholas spoke. ‘God - I wish I’d seen that.’

‘He comes back here every so often. We talk about going again but never get round to it. Isn’t that right, Tom?’

There was a lengthy silence. Cully made several elegant eloquent passes before her father’s eyes. Nicholas giggled and she said, ‘Don’t do that. It’s a capital offence in this house, laughing at the police.’

‘Seriously, Tom,’ said Joyce, ‘are you OK?’ He looked so pale, so tightly folded in on himself, staring as if not knowing who she was. All three of them began to feel genuinely alarmed.

‘Yes.’ He took them in at last, noting their concern. ‘I’m ... sorry. Sorry. All right. Of course. Yes. I’m all right.’ He smiled at them all. ‘Sorry. I’m fine. Yes.’ ‘You’re not fine,’ said Joyce. ‘You’re burbling.’

‘We should go back to Mon Plaisir, darling. For our silver wedding. Let’s all go.’

‘I’ll get the ice cream.’ Joyce disappeared to the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, ‘It’ll calm you down.’

She was looking through the hatch when the phone went. One harsh vibration and his chair was empty.

As the car sped through the thick night, the two men talked, getting it straight. Getting it right. Barnaby had immediately seen the truth of the matter when Troy rang his home with the new item of information. The insight that had come upon the chief inspector at the dinner table merely served to reinforce his theory.

Now, Troy said, ‘Peculiar.’ He signalled and slowed down, or at least accelerated less fiercely.

The Manor gates stood wide open and, apart from a single light on the ground floor, the place was dark. The Morris van was missing. As the police car entered the drive, the halogen warning lamp transformed the house into a moonlit dark-socketed shell.

They got out of the car and Barnaby knocked loudly at the front door, also ringing the bell. Receiving no reply to either summons, he tried the knob and went inside. Troy, raising an eyebrow at this casual reworking of the police rule book, was close behind.

Barnaby called, ‘Hullo?’ and the word was swallowed up in the silence. The house appeared quite empty.

‘I don’t like this.’ He moved to the bottom of the staircase and called again. ‘There are eight people living here so where the hell are they?’

‘It’s like that ship, Chief. Found floating.’

‘They couldn’t have all got into the van. And the VW’s still here.’

‘Listen!’ Troy threw his head back, staring up into the lantern. Barnaby joined him.

‘What? I can’t hear anything.’

‘A sort of ... scuffling ...’

Yes, he could hear it now. Directly overhead. As if something heavy was being dragged along. Then there was a bump and a loud cry.

‘On the roof!’ Troy ran out, Barnaby following more slowly. The two men retreated until they could get a good view of the top of the house. It seemed empty.

‘He must be on the other side. Behind the chimneys. I’ll get round -’

‘No - wait.’ Barnaby seized the sergeant’s arm. ‘Look - there ... in the shadows.’

A pair of dark forms locked together, wrestling, struggling, dangerously near the edge. One broke away and scrambled up a nearby sloping section, the other pursued. Barnaby saw an elongated gleam of reflected light.

‘Christ - he’s got a bloody iron bar -’

‘How do we get up?’

‘There’s a skylight so probably steps. You try the gallery. I’ll take downstairs.’

‘What about a ladder?’ Both men were running now.

‘Take too long ... (Pant, pant.) Don’t even know ... where to look ...’ Barnaby hung on to the porch. ‘You ... go on ...’

‘Right.’

Troy was half way across the hall when there was a strange sound above him. A gritty crackling and cracking as if a huge ball of cellophane was being violently scrunched. He glanced up and Barnaby saw his face change. Pinch into a concentration of shock and disbelief.

The sergeant jumped back just in time. A cloud of opalescent dust and fragments of brilliant glass tumbled down and, in the heart of this glittering stream, twisting and turning and crying out, the slender golden-haired figure of a man.

Everyone was in the kitchen. Heather had made some powerful tea in the twenty-cup brown enamel pot. Not all were drinking. Troy, leaning back against the draining board, shook his head as did the chief inspector. May, too, refused. Having bathed Andrew’s face, both her hands were now occupied in smearing comfrey ointment on his grazed cheekbones and bleeding lips. He was sipping tea and, between winces, gazing hard at Suhami as if willing her to show some concern for his condition.

May, Suhami and Arno had arrived back within seconds of Tim’s fall. Seeing the Orion, Suhami had parked practically in the porch and hurried into the house.

‘Tim ...’ She had cried out, flying across the hall, kneeling by his side, hands to her face in horror.

‘There’s nothing you can do, Miss.’ Troy had tried to raise her up. ‘The chief inspector’s ringing for an ambulance. Don’t touch that,’ he added sharply, as she reached out to the crowbar.

‘But - how did it happen?’ She looked at the gaping hole in the lantern. ‘Did he fall? What was he doing up there?’

That was when Andrew appeared, dragging himself along by the gallery rail. He was bleeding and his shirt and jeans were torn. The rasp of his breath, expelled forcefully in the form of shudders, seemed to fill the hall. He was mumbling something, the words becoming clearer as he approached.

‘Kill me ... tried to kill me ...’

Half an hour later Barnaby was repeating the phrase in the form of a question. He asked three times before getting any response.

‘Why? Because he’d discovered who I really was.’ The words, issuing through swollen lips, were not quite clear. There was a murmur of puzzled curiosity.

May, wiping her hands on a muslin cloth, said, ‘What do you mean, Christopher?’

‘My name isn’t Christopher. It’s Andrew Carter. Jim Carter was my uncle.’ The curiosity became consternation. The others followed Barnaby’s example and started to ask questions, and it took a good few minutes to quieten them down. Ken was the last to hush after asking what the point was in pretending to be somebody else.

Andrew explained about the letter, his uncle’s tablets, his own presence at the inquest, the whole thing. ‘I knew someone was on to me,’ he concluded, speaking to Barnaby. ‘I just didn’t know who it was. The photograph - the one I showed you - was hidden under some shirts. I found it had been moved. Shortly after this I was attacked. A lump of iron was pushed off the roof as I was leaving the house. I lied to the others about where the stone fell. It was not on the slab where May was standing at all, but the one behind.’

‘You said nothing of this to me.’

‘But I did, Chief Inspector!’ cried May. ‘I told you when I was first interviewed.’

‘I don’t think -’

‘I remember it distinctly. My accident? When the meteor fell?’

‘Ahhh. Yes.’

‘You told me to stick to the matter in hand. I didn’t like to persist. Thought there might be some sort of etiquette in these matters. You brushed me aside in your office as well.’

There’s no answer to that is there, my old darling? Troy took secret pleasure in his chief’s discomposure, whilst glossing over the fact that he would have done just the same himself.

‘So why did you keep quiet?’ The chief inspector emphasised the ‘you’ as he turned once more to Andrew.

‘I felt that if I appeared ignorant of the real reason for the attack, they’d think I wasn’t on to them and my position would be safer.’

‘Sounds like dangerously muddled thinking to me. And that needn’t have stopped you telling us.’

‘You’d have come round asking questions and given it all away.’

‘What evidence do you have that the whole thing wasn’t an accident?’

‘I went up on the roof directly afterwards. There was no way the metal chunk could have rolled off. It was a couple of feet from the edge. Also, wedged in between the chimneys, I found a crowbar.’

‘The one that was used tonight?’

Andrew nodded. He looked weary, finished. ‘I took it away and hid it in Calypso’s stall. Yesterday it was still there. When I checked tonight it was gone. I realised that whoever took it was the one who attacked me. It turned out to be Tim.’

The others exchanged looks of deep distress. May said, ‘You should never have attempted to conceal this, Christopher. It was very wrong.’

‘We’ll have to remember now to call him “Andrew”,’ said Heather.

And Ken added, ‘Tomorrow I shall channel him a star name.’

‘It wasn’t even as if I was much of a threat. I’d been looking round, asking questions, checking Jim’s room for weeks and found nothing.’

‘Was that you then - in the middle of the night?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry if I alarmed you, May. I heard your window open as I was running off.’

‘I’m glad to have the mystery explained. And my other mystery, Chief Inspector ... the snatch of conversation I overheard - surely Andrew’s suspicion of his uncle’s death renders that even more significant?’

‘What conversation’s this?’ Andrew’s tiredness seemed to fall away. ‘Who was it? What did they say?’

‘Who it was remains unclear, Mr Carter,’ said Barnaby. ‘But they seemed concerned about a possible post mortem.’

‘I knew it -’

‘I can’t imagine why anyone would wish to hurt Jim,’ said Suhami. ‘He was so harmless.’

‘I told you,’ said Andrew. ‘He discovered whatever was going on here.’

‘Nothing’s going on,’ said Ken, ‘but love, light and peace.’

‘And healing,’ added Heather.

‘Rather than go in for vague speculation at this stage,’ said Barnaby, ‘I’d like to try and get straight what happened tonight. How did the fight start? What were you doing on the roof?’

‘I was in my room. Ken and Heather had gone into the village -’

‘Just briefly,’ Heather broke in defensively, ‘to exercise his leg.’

‘And Suze had driven May and Arno to the hospital. He’d had an accident.’

Good God, thought Troy. If this lot ever had a day without an accident, they’d think the world was coming to an end.

‘I’d taken a drink up and was reading on my bed. I hadn’t seen Tim. None of us had, except Arno. I’d been reading for half an hour, I suppose, and I heard someone cry out my name -’

‘Which name?’ asked the chief inspector.

‘My real name, Andrew. That’s what was so odd. Then I heard his door open and I went out on to the landing. It seems pretty stupid now but I wasn’t suspicious at all. It was just poor old Tim - you know? And he was coming towards me - his hair all tangled and his eyes staring - with this bar. He was ... wielding it. Whirling it round his head. It was bloody terrifying. I backed away - my room’s at the very end of the gallery and I found myself up against the door that led to the roof. So it was either up there or over the gallery rail ...’ Suhami gave a jerky little cry of fright.

‘Of course on the roof I was equally trapped. There’s no way down. I dodged about at first between the chimney stacks - he kept flailing away - great chunks of brick flying around when he hit something. And then I thought if only I could get rid of it, we’d at least be more equally matched. When the halogen lamp came on it distracted him and I had a try. Made a grab at the bar and hung on. He wouldn’t let go. Then he started kicking. He was quite a bit taller than me ... long legs ... it was very painful. So I went back to dodging about. I was crouching behind the chimney stack next to the lantern when he came by. He stood inches away, staring round, trying to suss me. I reached out and grabbed his ankles. I thought if I could bring him down ... But he fell backwards away from me ... and through the glass ...’

The last words were barely audible. His narrow handsome face had become pale with remembered fear and clouded with misery. Andrew turned his back on them all as if the confession had marked and isolated him. There was a long heavy silence which even Ken and Heather seemed hesitant to rupture. Finally Barnaby spoke.

‘So you’re convinced that Riley was the person who found the photograph and attacked you on Thursday?’ Andrew lowered his head. ‘And was responsible for your uncle’s death?’

‘I believe he had something to do with it, yes. Although I’d have thought the whisky business a bit beyond him.’

‘I can’t believe any of this,’ said May. ‘It’s just too terrible.’

The Beavers nodded in agreement and their eyes shone.

Barnaby turned his attention to Arno who so far had not spoken. He sat by the empty range, his left foot, encased in a snowball of white bandage, resting on a metal bridge to raise it from the ground. His body, still awash with the residue of alcohol, was also shot full of pain-killers and anti-tetanus vaccine. His mind, tortured by a certain ambiguity in May’s receipt of his advances, felt full of cotton wool. He was almost sure he had not actually been repulsed or rejected, although in all the kerfuffle it was hard to be certain.

Now he became aware of a certain pressure on his bubble of drugs and dreams and struggled to pay attention. The chief inspector was staring at him in what struck Arno as a grave and accusatory manner. He felt suddenly sick. It had come, then, as he had always known it would.

‘I’m sorry ...’ They were all looking at him like that now, even May. Oh God - even May. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t hear.’

Barnaby repeated himself. ‘Isn’t it time you told the truth, Mr Gibbs?’

‘Why do you say that to me?’ Arno’s face was the colour of his bandages.

‘I think you know the answer.’ Barnaby waited, then, when the other man still did not speak, continued, ‘I ask because of your obvious concern for the boy. Your attempts to stop me speaking to him and, when I did, your interruptions lest he give himself away.’ When the silence continued, he added, ‘Come along, Mr Gibbs. Nothing can hurt him now.’

‘No.’ Arno looked up sadly, ‘That’s true.’ He explained it all, then, addressing Andrew, as was only right.

‘Your uncle’s death I would have said was an accident, although I fear a court of law might disagree. On the day it happened the three of us were going into town, just as I described at the inquest. Tim and I were putting some fresh flowers in the Solar while we waited for the Master who had gone to collect Tim’s outdoor coat. Suddenly we heard loud voices. I ran out to see what the matter was. The Master was coming out of Tim’s room, followed by Jim. They were arguing. I was astonished. I’d never heard Jim even raise his voice before. At the head of the stairs they stopped - Jim blocking the Master’s way and shouting, “I shan’t let you do it. I’ll tell everyone what I know - everyone.”

‘Then he sort of grabbed at the Master’s shoulders as if he was going to shake him. Next - and it all happened so quickly there was nothing I could do - I heard a sort of ... well ... roar is the nearest I can get to it, and Tim raced along the gallery, seized Jim and pushed him away. He went hurtling backwards down the stairs and broke his neck.’ Gradually, during this speech, Arno’s gaze had dropped towards the floor. Now he forced himself to look once more at Andrew Carter. ‘He couldn’t have suffered. I know that’s small consolation.’

‘You’re right. It is.’

‘Once it was plain there was nothing we could do - and if there had been I swear it would have been done - both of us thought only of protecting Tim. We knew that the police would have to take some sort of action even though there had been no intention to cause serious harm. The Master thought Tim might be charged with manslaughter and found ... “unfit to plead” is it? In any case he might have gone to prison - shut in a cell perhaps with dreadful people, like the ones who hurt him before. Or be put away in an institution. Drugged to keep him quiet ... sitting around for months or years surrounded by mad people. He was only twenty-three!’ cried Arno passionately, ‘and he was so happy here. We thought if we were vigilant and watched him carefully, nothing like that would ever happen again. I realise now,’ he turned to Barnaby, ‘especially after tonight, that I did wrong.’

‘Very wrong, Mr Gibbs.’ Barnaby strove to keep his voice even. He was angry with Gibbs but even angrier with himself. Interviewing Tim, wishing to cause as little distress as possible, he had deliberately not introduced the Master’s name. Now, too late, it was plain that the accident the petrified boy had referred to was not Craigie’s murder but the earlier death. ‘You understand that perjury is a criminal offence.’

‘... Yes ...’ whispered Arno. He seemed on the verge of tears. His trembling fingers searched for a handkerchief.

Barnaby eyed the wretched figure coldly. Knowing even then that he would not prosecute, he saw no harm in letting Gibbs sweat it out for a day or two. Or even a week or two.

‘Go on. What happened next?’

‘We took Tim into the garden - he was terrified, crying - and tried to work out what to do. We decided the least complicated plan, and the most sensible, would be to just carry on into Causton and do our shopping as we planned, then come home and pretend to discover the body. The fact that May - Miss Cuttle - returned first is a matter that caused us both great distress.

‘The Master took Tim to the van and I was about to follow when I started to get terribly cold feet. And an overwhelming conviction that we wouldn’t be believed. It just seemed so unlikely that anyone would fall down a flight of stairs they’d used hundreds of times, for no reason. So then I thought - what if he’d been drinking? There was a miniature of whisky in our medicine box. I got it out and tried to pour some into his mouth - I had to close his lips and massage his throat to try and get it down.’ Arno shuddered. ‘It was horrible. Then I rucked up the runner on the landing to make it look as if he’d caught his foot in it.’

‘I told the Master when we were driving back. He got terribly upset. Kept saying I shouldn’t have done that. Then a couple of days later, seeing how unhappy I was, he explained why. Told me that the stuff Jim was taking for his infection meant he couldn’t take even the smallest drop of alcohol. He said if they did a post mortem -’

Here May gave a little cry of recognition and looked affirmingly across at Barnaby, who signalled her to be quiet.

‘- and it was discovered, they’d know something was wrong. When they did, and it wasn’t, I was so relieved. I took it as a sort of sign that perhaps I hadn’t done anything so terrible after all.’

‘Surely, Inspector,’ said May, ‘you can see that Arno’s motives were quite selfless. He did the wrong thing, yes, but for the rightest and purest of reasons. For the love of a fellow human being.’

This unexpected, generous and completely undeserved sponsorship affected Arno deeply. Such a tumultuous wave of gratitude broke about his heart that he felt almost unable to breathe.

Sensing a natural break, Heather made a move to refresh the giant pot whilst Ken readjusted his plaster cast on the wheelback chair to a more easeful and prominent position. He had come to regard Arno’s snowball as some sort of featherweight contender in the wounded-hero stakes and had no intention of giving any ground.

May put the ointment away and wondered about going to check on Felicity. The sleeping draught had been a mild one and she might well have been awakened and alarmed by the disturbance. Suhami collected the cups of those who wanted seconds. She touched Andrew gently on the shoulder and smiled when she brought his, but could not be coaxed into remaining by his side. He had hoped his appearance might so distress her that affection would be rekindled. That terrible business on the roof, the whole bloody mess in fact would be worth it if that happened.

This time round Troy accepted a drink but Barnaby still refused.

‘Jim’s death may have been unintentional,’ said Heather when everyone had been served, ‘but the attack on Chris - sorry Andrew, certainly wasn’t. I suppose Tim got a sort of taste for it. People are supposed to, aren’t they?’

‘What a spiteful thing to say!’ retorted Suhami angrily. ‘He’s just died for heaven’s sake. The least we can do is speak kindly of him.’

Heather flushed at this slur on her reputation as a non-stop fountain of compassionate concern. ‘I don’t think you’re in any position to attack me, Suhami. After all, if it weren’t for you the Master would be alive today.’

Suhami gasped and went pale. Andrew spoke up sharply. ‘She was against her father’s visit from the start. It was the Master who insisted.’

‘I think you know,’ said Barnaby, ‘that as far as the Craigie murder is concerned, Mr Gamelin’s visit was neither here nor there.’

Six faces stared at him, five with varying degrees of amazement. Only May, assuming the police had come round at last to her celestial way of thinking, nodded serenely. Suhami sat forward awkwardly, thin fingers locked together.

‘Do you mean ... do you have some idea that he might not have been responsible?’

‘There’s no doubt about it, Miss Gamelin. He was definitely not responsible. Just unfortunately in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘Was that Tim as well, then?’ asked Heather. ‘In a sort of mad fit.’

‘Quite impossible,’ said Arno. ‘He was utterly devoted to the Master. You saw how he grieved.’

‘They can turn though, people like that,’ said Ken. ‘Even on those they love. Like dogs.’

‘He was not a dog!’ cried May.

‘Perhaps it was Trixie?’ said Andrew. ‘Perhaps that’s why she ran away?’

‘What on earth motive could Trixie have?’ said Ken. Then, to Barnaby, ‘You should have told me you weren’t satisfied Gamelin was guilty. I could have channelled Hilarion for you.’

‘Are you saying, Inspector, that my trust fund might not have been the motive?’

‘Or that the whole thing was an accident?’

‘Oh no, Mrs Beavers - the murder of Arthur Craigie was quite deliberate, but it was also opportunistic. By that I mean prepared for up to a point and then, when things took a wrong turn, carried through in a most daring and impulsive manner.’

He got up, giving the impression without speaking that it was to stretch his legs, but really it was to pace up and down. Troy watched, not really lacking confidence but still extremely tense. It was thin ice the chief was striding out on. Suppositions, deductions, guesses, a certain amount of informational back-up, but no real proof. If the party in question brazened it out ...

‘One of the most crucial components,’ began the chief inspector, ‘of any murder case - random killings apart - is the character of the victim. What sort of man or woman were they? What makes them tick? The answer can only be found by asking people who knew. In this case they were pretty unanimous. Only Guy Gamelin demurred in painting a picture of an almost saintly man full of concern for his fellow humans. And even he admitted to being genuinely impressed during the course of their single conversation. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, the Master was universally loved.

‘But what was really interesting about Mr Craigie is that when I tried to look further into his background to discover more about him, I was unable to do so. As far as I could see he had sprung into being as a fully fledged seer a couple of years ago. Now that’s very odd. It’s not easy to remain unrecorded in these computerised times. If you’ve ever paid insurance or tax, owned a car, house or bank account you’re down there somewhere. But not Arthur Craigie.’

‘He had a bank account,’ said Ken defensively. ‘In Causton.’

‘The Windhorse had a bank account, Mr Beavers. Not quite the same thing. To cover your tracks so efficiently,’ continued Barnaby, ‘involves a lot of determination plus a fair amount of rather iffy know-how.’

‘I don’t like the turn this conversation’s taking, Chief Inspector.’

‘Blackening the name of a person who can’t defend himself is despicable,’ said Heather and looked round in surprise when Suhami laughed.

‘One of the reasons we found it so difficult to trace him was that Craigie was an alias. And the first of many, adopted when he came out of prison just over two years ago where he had served five years out of seven for fraud. In fact, Miss Gamelin, your father was not far out when he called Craigie a con man.’

‘That is utter hooey!’ May rose trembling, as near to rage as any there had ever seen her. Arno trembled, too, in sympathy and admiration. ‘His astral body was radiant. Suffused with blue. That’s something no one can fake.’

‘I’m sure that’s true, Inspector,’ said Suhami. She also seemed most moved and on the verge of tears. ‘You might have checked all sorts of things but there’s a mix-up somewhere. You’ve confused him with someone else.’

‘Mind you,’ said Ken, ‘I suppose anyone who’s going to be successful at a mucky business like fraud has to be totally convincing. The essence of the job.’

Heather nodded. Both of them seemed to have quite abandoned the ostentatious knowing of their place. Forgetting his alcohol/drug-infested bloodstream, Arno shook his head chidingly at this sign of breaking ranks then wished he hadn’t. The result was so sensational he thought for a moment it had rolled off entirely.

‘Do you mean that someone from his past broke in here,’ asked Heather, ‘and attacked him?’

‘That’s nonsense,’ said Andrew. ‘The only people in the room when he died were us.’

‘Indeed,’ agreed Barnaby. ‘Although I think Mrs Beavers is right in a way when she suggests someone from his past was there. And certainly the manner of that past contributed to his death. However, it’s my conviction that Craigie died not because he was a con man but because he was not.’

‘I knew it!’ May cried out in triumph. ‘The aura never lies.’

‘I don’t get that,’ said Andrew. ‘You just told us he was.’

‘Let me expand. When I discovered his background I naturally saw the acquisition of the Manor House - using I’m pretty sure money from a time share swindle - as a major ingredient in some grand scam. But, going into the affairs of the Windhorse, I found not only was everything in financially immaculate order but that quite an altruistic flavour hung over the place. Bursaries were given to the deserving and, occasionally perhaps, to the undeserving. People who came for healing or therapy were not charged a set fee but asked to pay what they felt they could afford. Every month a varying amount was sent to charity. And yet ... something was going on. We have Jim Carter’s letter to prove this. And tonight, via the evidence of Mr Gibbs, his spoken words: “I shan’t let you do it. I’ll tell everyone what I know.”

‘The letter, written so soon before Mr Carter’s death, struck me as deeply worrying. Now that we’re aware of how he died I feel it appears less so. The spoken threat however - and I do see it as a threat - remains. What did Jim Carter know and, equally important, what was Craigie about to do, that instigated such a violent response?

‘My conclusion about the first half of that question is predictable enough. Jim Carter knew about the past. The second part isn’t so easy. I thought if I could find out more about Carter this would help. My sergeant and I looked around his room and here, although his clothes and effects had been removed, I found two things that I thought were interesting.’

He paused and Troy, standing well back against the wall, barely nodded in an involuntary acknowledgement of the power of his chief’s personality and narrative skill. There wasn’t a movement anywhere. Not a blink. Nothing but total absorption.

‘One of them was an empty shoe box which had once contained some extremely expensive Italian loafers. An unexpected choice for a man who spends all day at his devotions. A tiny anomaly but, as I say, interesting.

‘And then there were the books. At first sight just the type that you’d expect. All second-hand - that’s fair enough, not everyone can afford new books. But all the prices were marked in decimal coinage. Now Jim’s nephew has told us that his uncle read devotional literature all his life, yet none of them could have been bought before 1971. In truth, as our department discovered, none of them was bought before 1990. They were part of a job lot from several second-hand bookshops in Slough and Uxbridge. Nearly six hundred altogether.’

‘My uncle’s collection was probably somewhere else,’ said Andrew. ‘Maybe downstairs in the library.’

‘But you told us you recognised the books in his room, Mr Carter. And how much seeing them distressed you.’

‘Do you mean they were bought just to create the right effect?’ asked Ken.

‘Precisely so,’ said Barnaby who had helped dress enough sets for his wife’s drama group to know whereof he spoke. ‘But what was so strange about these bulk buys is that they were collected, and in two cases paid for, not by Craigie but by Carter.’

‘Jim?’ May looked completely bewildered. ‘But why on earth would he do that?’

‘Perhaps his nephew can tell us?’

‘No idea.’ Andrew shrugged, opening his hands in helpless incomprehension. ‘Unless, completely taken in, he was persuaded to make a contribution.’

‘Oh, I don’t think your uncle was that easy to take in. I’d say, if anything, the boot was on the other foot.’

‘I don’t know what you mean, Chief Inspector, but I do know I don’t intend to sit here and listen to you malign him.’ He climbed down from the table and was half way to the door when Barnaby spoke again.

‘Why did you dye your hair, Mr Carter?’

‘We went into all that when I was in your office. I didn’t want anyone to connect me with my uncle.’

‘But the likeness was negligible. I could hardly see it at all.’

‘I thought it was there - all right? And decided to protect myself. Christ - I was nearly killed three days ago, I’m assaulted tonight by a madman with an iron bar. You’d think I’d get sympathy and understanding. Not a bloody third degree.’

‘So fair on the photograph, wasn’t it? Nearly white - very striking. Anyone who’d met you as a child say, as Craigie did, might easily have recognised you again.’

‘As a ...’ Andrew stared around, inviting everyone to share his incredulity.

‘How old were you? Eight, nine? When they worked together?’ Now Andrew shook his head in the way people do when presented with something strictly beyond belief. ‘I’d say this was the real reason you didn’t want the police called in after your uncle’s death. Not because people here might be put on the alert but because of what we might discover.’

‘All this is absolute nonsense.’

‘I believe Andrew’s right,’ said May. ‘The first gathering I went to, Jim was on the platform and spoke of how meeting the Master changed his life. That was why I joined. I was so moved by his testimony.’

‘You can see that old trick, Miss Cuttle, in any market place. A shyster selling rubbish and another in the crowd shouting as how the rubbish changed his life. Tell me - didn’t you find staying at the Windhorse a touch expensive when you first arrived?’

May appeared taken aback at this sudden swerve in the conversation. ‘I must admit I did. And was asked to charge rather more for my workshops than I personally would have liked. Arno ... you came shortly after me, I don’t know if you ...?’

‘Yes. I remember seeing a notice in a travel agent’s window just after I’d booked my first weekend and I could have had a week in Spain for the same money. Not that it wasn’t worth every penny.’ He looked sideways at May, blushed and turned in his toes - or at least the five that were still movable.

‘But wasn’t that just until the place got established?’ asked Heather. ‘Certainly when we joined a year later things were much more reasonable.’

‘We couldn’t have come otherwise,’ explained Ken.

‘I don’t think it was a question of getting the place established at all, Mr Beavers. I think the original premise was to separate as many people from as much of their cash as was humanly possible.’

‘So what went wrong?’ said Ken, amending hastily, ‘Or right, I should say.’

‘My own belief - and this is not unheard of although the longer the criminal’s in the game the rarer it gets - is that Craigie, perhaps because of his reading, his pretend prayers, his meditations, his constant exposure to people who were truthfully struggling to live some sort of spiritual life, underwent a genuine transformation. Not a grand Pauline conversion, something slower yet nonetheless quite genuine. In other words the mask became the man.’

‘I knew it,’ May spoke quietly. ‘He could not have taught the way he did -’

‘Or cared for us the way he did,’ interrupted Suhami.

‘And there’s Tim,’ said Arno. ‘He related to people emotionally. He understood what they were really like. He was like a child in that respect, and they’re not easily fooled.’

Barnaby let that pass. This was not the time to go into the matter of how tragically easily children can be fooled. He continued: ‘But then Craigie became ill. Finally, I’ve no doubt, becoming aware that he would not recover. And this led to what I suspect is the “something terrible” mentioned in Carter’s letter to his nephew. I’ve been aware of the word trust as a persistent irritating niggle and couldn’t think why. I knew all there was to know about Miss Gamelin’s inheritance and how - as I thought - it related to the case, so it didn’t seem to be that. And then I recalled your first interview, Mr Gibbs, and realised that not one, but two trusts are involved here.’

‘Really.’ Arno frowned. ‘I can’t think ... unless you mean the charity -’

‘Exactly,’ said the chief inspector. ‘Craigie wished to deed the house and organisation in such a manner that no single individual had overall control. This enraged Carter who, I’m pretty sure, in spite of what his nephew told me to the contrary - had put money from the sale of his house into the enterprise. Nearly two hundred thousand pounds. I doubt if the altercation Mr Gibbs overheard was the first by a long chalk.’

‘He didn’t do it though,’ said Arno. ‘Take charitable status I mean.’

‘There was no need,’ said the chief inspector, ‘after Carter’s accident.’

‘So it’s an accident now?’ Andrew had flushed dark red. ‘You’re as bad as those incompetents at the inquest.’

‘It’s not a good idea to take the law into your own hands, Mr Carter.’

‘Well, it’s not exactly shining in yours is it? How do you know what the argument was about? Even Arno who overheard them and lived here doesn’t. And I must say the fact that Riley killed my uncle and has made two murderous attempts on me seems to have been pretty lightly touched on. You seem to have forgotten it was almost my death being investigated here tonight. And no doubt, if you hadn’t turned up when you did, that would have been covered up as well.’

‘That’s unfair,’ said May. ‘Tim was only trying to prevent your uncle attacking the Master.’

‘We’ve only Arno’s word for that.’

‘His word,’ said May staunchly, ‘is good enough for me.’

‘The grey sheep. That’s what you rather disarmingly called yourself in my office, Mr Carter, if I remember correctly.’ An uninterested shrug. ‘Your ex-Stowe chum by the way not only genuinely lost his wallet but was five thousand in the red by the time he’d notified Visa and American Express. One item being an antelope jacket.’

‘Well it’s not this one. I got it from Aquascutum months ago.’

‘That shouldn’t be difficult to prove.’

‘If you’ve the time to waste.’

‘What did you mean, Inspector?’ Suhami was staring at Andrew Carter with sickened apprehension. ‘About taking the law into his own hands.’

‘I’m talking about murder, Miss Gamelin.’ Although his stress on the word was harsh, Barnaby’s glance was not without sympathy as it rested on the girl in the pale green sari.

‘Murder.’ Her face became drawn and, whispering, ‘It can’t be true,’ she started to shake. Heather immediately bustled forward and enfolded Suhami in her giant bosoms.

‘Of course it isn’t true,’ said Andrew scornfully. ‘I didn’t go near him. Just because you’ve given up on Gamelin you needn’t think you’re pinning this on me. For a start - what earthly motive would I have?’

‘A mixture, the most dominant I imagine being revenge. One of the few things you told the truth about in my office was that you had a deep and lasting affection for your uncle. I’ve no doubt, as you told me you kept in touch, that you knew about the set-up here and that things were going wrong. What made you so sure Craigie had killed your uncle? Did you think that thieves had fallen out?’

‘There were no thieves to fall out. At least as far as Jim was concerned. He told me in one of his letters that the man who was running things here had developed religious mania. Well, we all know how people like that can turn. Half the psychos going say God was telling them to get rid of prostitutes or rent boys or one-legged pensioners.’ He broke off here to light a cigarette. Heather started coughing and waving at the air.

‘You’re right about the argument though. Jim felt the man was a poseur. It was only due to my uncle’s constant efforts at persuasion that the prices started to come down.’

‘You can think on your feet, son,’ said Barnaby. ‘I’ll give you that.’

‘You said the most dominant motive.’ Ken was now also coughing preposterously. ‘What were the others then?’

‘Money - as it so often is. First in respect of the entailment of this place which I’ve no doubt Mr Carter, being his uncle’s heir, regards as no more than his due.’ He paused to encourage a response but in vain. ‘And then of course the famous trust fund. Miss Gamelin was about to offload it. Carter was in a difficult position. He’d been pursuing her almost from the first moment he arrived yet there was still no definite engagement, let alone the chime of wedding bells. Perhaps under Craigie’s influence she was still drawn to a more reclusive, maybe even celibate life. Another reason why his death may have forwarded your plans.’

‘There weren’t any “plans”. I fell in love.’ His angry glance swung from Barnaby to Troy and back again. ‘Can’t you see how you’re upsetting her? Telling all these bloody lies.’

Suhami was watching Andrew as he spoke. She saw no traces of remorse. But then, if it was all bloody lies, there wouldn’t be. Her own reaction to all these revelations was most curious. After the first shock of distress and disbelief she found she was experiencing nothing at all. A great yawning void seemed to have opened up around her. Whether Christopher had truly fallen in love with her seemed to be of no importance. She put a little gentle pressure on the memory of past emotions, recalled the moment in the byre when she had been so delirious with joy. The whole scene now seemed no more than faintly pleasurable. For the first time in her life things had gone wrong, more vilely and horribly than ever before, and she was not all over the floor in pieces. It was a mystery but a most consoling one.

‘Forgive me for saying so, Inspector,’ murmured Arno, ‘but what you suggest is quite impossible. As Andrew has already explained and we can all confirm - he never went near the dais. Are you saying he had an accomplice?’

‘An unwitting accomplice. Not to the act of murder, but of course he had to get the knife and the glove into the Solar. He was dressed - I’m sure deliberately to reinforce his “alibi” - in such a way as to make concealment about his person out of the question.’

‘But how could anyone bring a knife in without knowing it?’ said Ken.

‘In a bag,’ said Barnaby. ‘There was a thread caught up on the handle proving this. Where were you positioned on the dais, Mr Carter?’

Andrew did not reply. Suhami said, ‘He was next to me.’

‘Yet after fetching Miss Cuttle’s cape you did not return there?’

‘May often had distressing times during her regressions. I thought it might be of help if I stayed close.’

‘Ever done that before?’

‘No, but I should think just the fact that I chose to do it then is enough to knock your theory on the head. If you’re going to kill someone you get as close to your victim as possible, not as far away.’

‘Ah, but you had no choice. Because you put the knife in the wrong bag. It was only when opening it to take out the cape that you realised your mistake.’

‘In my bag!’ May’s voice surged to a peak of Bracknellian splendour.

‘He thought it was Miss Gamelin’s. They’re very similar.’ Suhami groaned at this and Heather’s bosoms leapt to their cradling once more.

‘He did this at the very last minute, perhaps even taking charge to make sure she didn’t open it.’

‘Yes that’s right,’ cried Ken. ‘He carried it in for her. I remember.’

‘You would,’ said Andrew.

‘He was banking on the sort of disturbance which did in fact take place, but of course he expected to be close to Craigie at the time. As I said previously, this was a partly planned, partly impulsive crime.’

‘I don’t see how he could possibly have slipped a knife in at the last moment Inspector,’ said Arno. ‘He couldn’t have been carrying it and it certainly wasn’t on the table.’

‘Yes, that fazed me for a bit. Then I remembered Guy Gamelin’s complaint that he wasn’t allowed to sit beside Sylvie because one of the community’s disciplines was keeping to the same seat. I’ve no doubt that there was a cushion on Mr Carter’s. The knife was placed beneath it earlier in the day. And the glove, too, of course.

‘Stupidly choosing a left-handed one,’ said Andrew scornfully, ‘although I use the right.’

‘Just an added pointer in the wrong direction. I think you simply turned it inside out then turned it back. You couldn’t have known of course that Gamelin would be left-handed. That must have seemed a real bonus. As it happened, he tried to offload it behind the curtain and was spotted. I’m sure, if this had not been the case, you would have somehow managed to draw the matter to our attention. Perhaps via Miss Gamelin who was already completely convinced of her father’s guilt.’

‘Supposition - all of it. You’re stuck, Inspector - you can’t solve the problem so you’ve dreamed up this fantasy. And if you’re going to say I killed him when I went to switch on the light you can think again. I didn’t go near him at any time. Nor, as you’ve obviously forgotten, was I part of the group that Craigie pointed at before he died.’

‘That’s of no matter,’ said Barnaby. ‘For Arthur Craigie was not pointing at a person at all.’

‘Yes he was. Gamelin. Ask anyone.’

‘Certainly it must have seemed that way but going over things earlier tonight, I was struck by one very interesting difference between Guy Gamelin and the rest of the group. He was the only person who was standing up.’

‘So?’

‘That put him in the way.’

‘In the way of what, Inspector?’ asked Arno.

‘I believe Craigie was indicating the direction from which the knife was thrown!’

There was a fair old hubbub at this. The word ‘thrown’ was repeated several times with varying degrees of incredulity. Heather left Suhami and ran excitedly back to Ken. Andrew burst out laughing.

‘Oh - that’s brilliant. In a dark room? Ten feet away?’

‘Not dark - duskish. And he was wearing a brilliant white robe.’

‘Impossible.’

‘Not to someone who’s thrown knives for a living.’ The hubbub melted into a stunned silence. ‘You didn’t tell us that did you, Mr Carter?’

‘There’s all sorts of things I didn’t tell you.’

‘That’s for sure,’ said Troy.

‘It was careless to mention your time at Blackpool, because we got in touch with your employers who revealed that, apart from your lion-taming skills for which they had little use, you also offered fire eating and a knife act.’

‘Carny people’ll say anything.’ Barnaby was silent for quite a time. Eventually Andrew Carter spoke again.

‘That’s it is it? Your evidence against me? Well, all I can say is that if by some miracle this ever gets as far as a courtroom, the jury’ll be falling off their bench in hysterics.’

Miracle is right, thought Troy. He had listened, engrossed, totally convinced, whilst the chief unravelled the case against Andrew Carter but now the mesmerising tale was done what did they have? What did they actually have? A thread from a bag caught up on a knife. Everything else was supposition. No prints on the murder weapon. One quick daring movement with everyone looking elsewhere. All Carter had to do was stick to his bewildered denials and a good lawyer would have him out on the streets before you could say no case to answer. He knew that - the cunning bugger. Look at him shrugging, shaking his head, smiling. He wouldn’t crack. Or make mistakes. Even if they managed to dig up some past form - so what? All that proved was he’s not Persil clean. And character defamation could only take you so far. Troy tried to look at his chief but Barnaby, his face blank, was gazing at the stone-flagged floor. Finally he looked up and spoke.

‘How did you get the boy to come out of his room?’

Stone the crows he’s really getting desperate. Clocked the problems, no making the first one stick so going all out on the second which is even more of a no no. Riley’d already attacked Carter once and nearly killed him. Self-defence is a foregone conclusion. They won’t even get him on manslaughter. Troy’s expression revealed none of these ponderings but his heart was heavy. What was it the chief had said yesterday - up the creek without a paddle? Too bloody right! Troy felt a momentary flash of fellow feeling for Barnaby. Almost of affection. This sort of empathetic insight was so alien to his usual way of thinking that he was relieved to see it disappear as quickly and mysteriously as it had arisen.

Now the tension in the room had snapped, mainly because of Andrew’s burst of apparently quite genuine laughter. May broke a long awkward silence by asking Arno how his foot was feeling. Suhami turned her back on them all. Heather collected the dirty cups and took them to the sink. Only Troy saw the door slowly open.

Barnaby repeated the question, ‘How did you get the boy to come out?’

‘He imitated Arno’s voice.’

Felicity was wearing her Caroline Charles two-piece and borrowed furry slippers. She looked very white but the words were strong and clear. The pressure in the room shot up again.

‘Come and sit down, Mrs Gamelin.’ Barnaby, his sluggish heart once more on the move, drew out a chair. She came further into the room, but hesitantly, looking frightened. Having set her down, Barnaby perched on the table’s edge, his burly form concealing Andrew Carter.

‘Tell me what happened.’

‘I woke up wanting the loo. I put a robe on and I’d just started to open the door when I saw ... him ...’

‘Andrew Carter?’

‘Christopher.’

‘Whereabouts??’

‘Kneeling by the keyhole of Tim’s room. His lips were very close. He said, “This is Arno. I’ve got your supper.” His voice was so different. It was uncanny. He didn’t have a tray or anything but he had this terrible iron bar that he propped up against the wall. And when Tim opened the door, Christopher made a grab, pulled him outside and ... and started to hit him with it. I should have gone for help ... I know I should. But I was so frightened. I just went inside again. I didn’t even ring the police. I’m sorry ... so sorry ...’

‘We were on our way in any case by then, Mrs Gamelin.’

‘Oh - is that true?’

‘Quite true.’

‘Then I don’t feel so ... I heard glass breaking. Is he all right? Tim?’

There was a deeply awkward pause. Heather went across to Felicity and said, ‘Why don’t I make you a nice cup of Acorna? With plenty of honey.’

Troy wondered if that was the boiled sludge offered to him the night of the murder. If so it was more likely to finish Felicity off than revive her. And that would never do because they’d need her for the trial. What a marvellous piece of luck! And she was telling the truth, it had shown on Carter’s face though he’d been quick to collect himself. A nice little caution now, a neat arrest and they’d be home and dry. The chief had got up, was about to say something, but before he could do so May spoke up again.

‘What you said earlier about the Master’s death makes me wonder if I should have been more explicit at my first interview.’

‘In what respect, Miss Cuttle?’

‘Well of course I did see everything, you know.’ The ground opened around Barnaby’s feet. I am not hearing this, he observed silently, and there’s an end to it.

‘It’s all in my statement.’ The only one he had hardly bothered to go over, recalling it as a load of supernatural claptrap, signifying nothing. ‘A silver dart? Flying overhead?’

Oh Jesus! Oh bloody hell. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Cry of course. What else? With another life gone. The chief inspector had a sudden searing sense of shame. He recalled Joyce’s fierce accusation that he never listened and his own earlier attempts to stop Troy exploring the con-man theory. It seemed no one could be right but himself. Fortunately the sergeant had gone ahead anyway but if he had not ...

My arteries are hardening, thought Barnaby. And I don’t like it. He realised May was addressing him.

‘I’m afraid I felt at the time,’ she said, ‘that you were simply not ready for more detailed esoteric knowledge. But perhaps I was mistaken.’

Yes, perhaps you were, you dozy old bat, thought Troy, noting his chief’s look of crumbling devastation. The sergeant’s reaction was not entirely sympathetic. He had been on the receiving end of the instruction always to keep an open mind too often not to feel a sting of satisfaction. There was also the undeniable fact that this discovery slightly eased Troy’s own guilt. His sole defence, should Barnaby notice the fifteen-minute discrepancy between the time logged for the Blackpool information and his sergeant’s phone call to Arbury Crescent, would have been of the truculent ‘How was I to know?’ nature. Which was of course no defence at all. Now there’d been a pre-emptive strike. For if the chief had been more attentive to May Cuttle’s statement not only the boy, but also a great deal of time and money would have been saved as well.

The caution was completed. Troy buttoned his jacket and moved forwards, prepared for trouble. But there was none and five minutes later all three men were in the car and on the way to the station.

Troy drove. Barnaby sat in the back, Andrew Carter sullenly at his side. He had vehemently denied Felicity’s story, saying that she’d probably been hallucinating. Anyone could see she was brain-damaged by years of booze and drugs.

‘We’ll test the bar for prints.’

‘Test away. I’ve already told you I made a grab at it when we were on the roof. Plus I carried it down to my room the time before.’

‘If that’s all you did, that’s all they’ll find.’

Barnaby watched Carter’s face as he spoke. All he saw was a smirk of bravado. The man leaned back, crossing one leg high at right angles across the other knee. As he tugged at his sneakered foot the soft hide of his jacket hitched up and Barnaby saw the glowing circle of light on his wrist.

‘Where d’you get that?’

‘Present. My nearly-but-not-quite fiancée.’

‘She’s had a lucky escape.’

‘Me, too. She was as neurotic as hell. Always rapping on about her inner life. Can I smoke?’

‘Not at the moment. Tell me - just as a matter of interest - did you know she was living at the Windhorse before you arrived?’

Carter paused as if mulling over the possible consequences of a truthful reply, then said: ‘Yes. My uncle wrote to me. He recognised her.’

‘From an engraving in the Buddhist scriptures no doubt?’

‘It’s no crime to look out for a rich wife. If it was, half the male population would be inside tomorrow.’

‘You ever been inside?’

‘Of course not.’

‘You said you were “working” the arcades. That’s thieves’ cant.’

‘A slip of the tongue.’

But in the weeks leading up to the trial more and more information on both the Carters came to light. Faced with facts that made his previous protestations frankly untenable, Andrew Carter, on the hottest legal advice the sale of his watch could buy, decided to plead guilty to the murder of Andrew Craigie.

Filling in the background, he admitted that his uncle, after watching a television programme from America showing an overweight guru with a fleet of Rollers supplied by adoring underlings, had visited his old sparring partner in Albany prison and sold him the idea that they should pool resources and set up just such an establishment in this country. This they had done and much was made at the trial of the deliberate annexation of Carter’s contribution after his death, leaving the accused, as lawful next of kin, virtually destitute.

Andrew Carter - thin, hollow in cheek and eye - touchingly, perjuringly, described how, on the night of the murder, he had finally been driven to reveal his true identity and begged for even a small amount of money to set against the share that was rightfully and morally his, but all to no avail. Craigie, he told the court, just laughed in his face.

Defence counsel, the brilliant Gerard Malloy-Malloy, in a dazzling closing speech, dwelt at length on the character of the deceased confidence trickster. He revealed such a string of heartless swindling farragos and deceits that the wonder in everyone’s mind was not that someone had killed Craigie, but why on earth it hadn’t been accomplished years ago.

Carter’s plea of ‘Not Guilty’ to the murder of Timothy Justin Riley was upheld. Felicity’s history of instability and drug-dependence, plus the fact that she had taken a sleeping draught a bare hour before supposedly seeing Carter lure Riley from his room, made her appear an unreliable witness. Counsel reduced her to tearful hesitancies in no time. All the smeary mass of prints proved was that both men had handled the bar.

Evidence was offered as to the dangerously aggressive and violent behaviour of Riley. He had caused the death of the accused’s uncle and had also made an attempt on the life of the accused which was only foiled by the quickest thinking. (Here the piece of metal was produced.)

No one but Andrew Carter ever knew the real reason why Tim had to die. Troy had hit on it whilst tossing ideas about, but the supposition had been one of many not to be pursued. The fact was that, caught up unwillingly in the rush down to May, Tim had indeed been distressed at being separated from his beloved Master and was making his way back when the knife had been thrown. He had seen the action, looked back, seen the murderer. And been seen in his turn.

Carter was sentenced to eight years in prison, of which he served six and a half. Having left the residue from the sale of his watch in the hands of a shrewd investment analyst, by the time he was paroled the amount had substantially increased. A few weeks later, wearing most of it round his waist in a money-belt, he skipped the country.

He travelled around Europe for some months - living high, spending and gambling until some serious unpleasantness in Marseilles involving a marked deck in a poker game caused him to move on. He flew to America then, choosing to land at San Diego, attracted by the idea of the sunshine state. He hired a car there and drove up the coast. Unfortunately, just outside Sausalito, he was waylaid, savagely beaten and robbed of all he possessed by a couple of mafiosi disguised as New Age shamans.