Faithful unto Death

Chapter Eleven

It was not long before the identity of the woman was revealed, even though she was unable to give her name or even talk at all with any degree of sensibility. Famous only for fifteen minutes and that a whole fortnight ago, several people at Hillingdon Hospital immediately recognised Simone.

And so it was that Barnaby and Troy found themselves hanging around reception. It was as depressing as such places always are. People sat about either with sluggish apathy or nervily on the edge of their seats, as if wired to receive dreadful news. Children ran about shouting with laughter. Others whined, begging money for the snacks machine. Old people, with little to gain and nothing to lose, glared about them, tutting severely at anything that moved.

The staff, having barely a second to draw breath, remained efficient and cheerful. Mrs. Hollingsworth was in G ward, third floor. The two policemen were told to go first to the staff nurse’s office.

“Turn right,” recalled Sgt. Troy in a subdued voice as they got out of the lift. He hated hospitals.

Shown into a corner cubbyhole, it was some time before Staff Nurse Carter arrived, though the wait was far from dull. Nurses were in and out, the phone rang nonstop and the lift doors hissed. Through the top half of the glass door the two policemen could see people passing endlessly back and forth along the corridor as if on a concealed conveyor belt.

“Sorry to keep you.” Jenny Carter hovered just inside the doorway, plainly on the wing.

“Mrs. Hollingsworth?” inquired Barnaby. “In for observation.”

“Ah, yes, our celebrity. Well, physically she’s not bad. Scratched and bruised—I understand this is due to being thrown out of a car on to the pavement.”

“Partly. Fortunately it wasn’t moving but, according to witnesses, there was still a certain amount of force employed.”

“But mentally,” Staff Nurse Carter shook her head. “That’s something else. She hardly seems to know who she is or what’s going on. The doctor seems to think the amnesia’s temporary. It happens sometimes after a severe blow to the head.”

“Has she had any visitors?”

“No. Not even a telephone inquiry.”

“What about the press? Has anyone here talked to them?”

“Certainly not. We’ve better things to do with our time.”

“Quite. Well, being aware of Mrs. Hollingsworth’s story, Nurse Carter, I’m sure you appreciate that we’d like to interview her as soon as possible.”

“I wish you luck. Perhaps,” she plucked a pen from the top pocket of her uniform and moved over to the desk, “you have the name of someone we could contact. She’s not ill enough to be kept here, you see, but we can’t discharge her in her present confused state except in someone’s care. And we desperately need the space.”

“I’m sure you do.” Like everyone else, Barnaby was familiar with stories of lengthy waiting lists, patients on trolleys in corridors waiting for beds and dramatic dashes from one hospital to another trying to find a unit available for someone in need of intensive care. He wondered how long it would be before hospital administrators, tapping their feet, sucking their teeth with impatience and checking their watches, would be positioned at the bedside of the dying, silently urging them to get a move on.

“She is married, I believe. Perhaps her husband—”

“Mrs. Hollingsworth is a widow.”

“Of course, I forgot. What about the name of her doctor?”

“Now there I can help you.”

“Excellent,” said Staff, writing it down then reaching for the telephone.

“Oh, one more thing. We shall need to examine everything she had on when she was brought in. Someone from Forensic will call and collect the stuff.”

“What on earth is she going to wear when she leaves?”

“Whoever collects her will no doubt bring something.”

As Barnaby and Troy left the office, Staff Nurse Carter was already punching buttons.

“Mrs. Hollingsworth’s right at the end,” explained a probation nurse brightly over her shoulder. Her soft shoes squeaked slightly on the shiny composition floor. The ward, which was flooded with sunlight, fell silent as the two men marched along behind her. Everyone capable of sitting upright stared with avid interest changing rapidly to disappointment as the nurse drew the brightly flowered curtains round the patient.

There was a single chair which Barnaby drew up to the bedside. Troy moved closer, looked down on the still, small figure in the bed. And fell instantly and wordlessly in love.

What is there to say? It happens. It’s a fact of life. One could say it was the fact of life. But it had never happened to Sergeant Troy before.

He had fallen into lust, oh yes. As easily and naturally (and almost as often) as he scored at snooker or washed the Cosworth. And, in his simplicity, he had thought that was it. The many-splendoured thing of which the poets sang. The stuff that was always just around the corner when I’m around you. How could he have been so blind?

“Mrs. Hollingsworth?” Barnaby spoke very softly.

“She’s asleep, sir.” Immediately defensive on behalf of the unconscious girl, Troy was not aware that his tone verged on the indignant. He gazed down in a passion of protective concern. How small she was. Her hands rested on the counterpane with the fingers, badly scratched, curling loosely inwards like a child’s. There was a dressing taped to her temple and the left cheek was badly bruised. Her white-gold hair, chopped and torn about, was dirty.

Rage directed against the bastard who had ill-treated her swept over Sergeant Troy like a tidal wave. The volume and intensity of the experience alarmed him, for he could not bear to be out of control. It was as if someone had attacked Talisa-Leanne. He stepped back a little and took several deep breaths, averting his eyes from the girl in the hospital bed who was now opening her eyes.

“Mrs. Hollingsworth?” said Barnaby again. And then, when she did not respond, “Simone?”

“What is it?” Her voice was so faint Barnaby had to bend over the bed to make the words out.

“I’m a policeman. From Causton CID.” He paused. When she did not respond he went on, “I realise that you’ve just been through a dreadful ordeal but the sooner you can bring yourself to talk about it, the sooner we’ll be able to get after the people responsible.” He paused again and with much the same result. “Do you understand what I’ve been saying, Mrs. Hollingsworth?”

“Yes but ... I ... I can’t remember anything.”

“Nothing at all? Even the smallest thing might help. Do you recall any names?”

“No.”

“Sarah for example?”

“Sarah.” Though Simone repeated the word tiredly and without any recognition, the colour ran suddenly under her pale skin and her lips trembled.

“Or the name of Sarah’s friend.” Sensing concealment, Barnaby began to push. “She calls him Tim. Did she call him something else when you were all together? Did she perhaps use his real name?”

“I ... I don’t know ...”

“You were planning to leave your husband and run away with this man.” He was leaning over her now. “Surely you remember something about him.”

It was terrible. Like watching somebody bullying a child. Troy stepped forward, positioning himself directly behind his boss’s shoulder where he could see Simone and she him. He said, “Not to worry, Mrs. Hollingsworth. It’ll all come back to you, in time.” He smiled, received the faintest sketch of a smile in return and a sour look for the interruption from his chief.

Then someone came up with a note from the staff nurse. She had explained the situation to Mrs. Hollingsworth’s doctor and his wife would be coming over to the hospital later that afternoon to collect Simone. They would be happy to look after her for the next few days or for longer should this turn out to be necessary.

Barnaby had got to his feet when the message arrived. Troy promptly whipped the chair some distance away, hoping this might dissuade his boss from sitting down again. But the Chief Inspector had already decided that pressing ahead under the present circumstances would probably be counterproductive. Now that Simone’s immediate whereabouts when she left the hospital had been securely established he was happy to postpone any further interrogation until later.

Once more outside in the busy corridor, Barnaby disappeared into the visitors’ toilet. Troy seized the opportunity to dash back to Simone’s bedside. He stood feeling awkward, uncertain what to say but determined to dispel any anxiety that the enforced interview had aroused.

In the end they spoke together. Simone saying, “Thank you for—” Sergeant Troy, “You mustn’t worry—”

“His bark’s worse than his bite.” Her eyes were lovely. Huge, grey-green, terribly sad. But seen now, without make-up, he would never have recognised her from the glamorous wedding portrait. Her pinched little face looked almost plain. Mysteriously, his feelings remained unaltered. “We understand what you’ve been through, Mrs. Hollingsworth. Obviously we’ll need to talk to you again but you mustn’t worry. Until you feel able to cope there won’t be any pressure.”

Tears started to trickle down Simone’s wan cheeks.

With the greatest difficulty Troy resisted taking the small hand in his. He said, “It’s not the victims we’re after.”

Troy caught up with Barnaby at the front entrance.

“You never give up, do you, Gavin?”

“What do you mean?”

“That woman’s in no state for what you’ve got in mind.”

“Actually, sir, I don’t have anything ‘in mind’ as you call it.” They strode off towards the car park. “And I can see for myself what sort of state she’s in, thanks very much. Anyone would suppose,” continued Sergeant Troy, angrily yanking open the door of the Rover and climbing in, “I was the sort of man who never thought of anything else.”

That afternoon, in response to a request from DCI Barnaby, the person who had reported seeing Simone Hollingsworth wearing a wig, shades and a pink jacket on the Aylesbury bus called in at the station.

She was a sensible body, not at all the sort to put herself forward for the sake of it and was pleased that her contribution had been of some help. They settled her down with a cup of tea and a biscuit and left her with a graphic artist describing, in as much detail as she could remember, the style of the wig and design of the sunglasses.

Within a couple of hours a detailed sketch of Simone wearing both had been circulated by the press office to the newspapers and to the television programme Crimewatch. In both instances the public was asked to communicate with the police if they had seen the woman in question at any time within the last two weeks.

Barnaby put a call in to Avis Jennings and asked that she keep in constant touch with the station once Simone was living at her house. He would be coming over himself to talk to Simone again within the next day or so. If her memory appeared to return or if she showed any signs of wishing to leave, even if it was only to return to Nightingales, he should be informed at once.

He read through the statements of people who had been present at the incident with the van. One woman said Simone had “sort of rolled out.” Another that she had been pushed by the man behind the wheel. A third witness thought that she had been thrown with some force. All agreed that there had been no struggle. The person who sat with her until the ambulance arrived had the impression that she was unconscious even before she hit the pavement.

So concentrated was the attention on Simone that hardly any attention had been paid to the driver. But a youth with quick wits and sharp eyesight, who described the van as dirty yellow and very rusty, had made a note of the number plates. On checking, these proved to have been stolen.

So far the investigative interviews in and around Flavell Street, now in their second day, had come up with only one really interesting result. But this certainly seemed, at least in part, to bear out Sarah Lawson’s story.

A couple, backing their Ford Fiesta out of one of the lockup garages behind the flat, had seen a man running up the iron staircase. He had entered number thirteen by way of the kitchen door, going straight in without even knocking. They said the man, wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, had dark, curly hair and was not very tall. As he had his back to them they were unable to describe his features. From the way he moved they believed he was youngish. Pressed, they suggested no more than the early thirties. This had occurred at around two thirty on Tuesday, 11 June.

Shown photographs of Sarah Lawson and Simone Hollingsworth, the couple recognised only Sarah. There were half a dozen other such confirmations, mainly from people in the launderette or Mr. Patel’s greengrocery. More than one person described her as wandering about like a lost soul.

The following morning Sarah Lawson was due to be arraigned before the magistrate. Bail, due to the seriousness of the offence, would probably be refused. Certainly it would be opposed by the police.

Once officially on remand, she would be transferred to a woman’s prison, probably Holloway. Barnaby took this last opportunity of interviewing her on his own patch. Though he had been told she was still not eating, he was shocked at the rapid change in her.

She was crouched, shivering in the corner of her cell on a foam mattress, knees drawn up under her chin, long skirt covering her legs. The bones of her cheeks and forehead were jutting forward as if they would break through the skin. She stared around wildly as the door was opened, shame and despair ravaging her face.

“Miss Lawson,” said Barnaby. He couldn’t bring himself to ask how she was. He sat down on the edge of the toilet. “What are you hoping to gain by all this?”

“I just want to get it over with.”

“What?”

“Everything. This long disease, my life.”

“You won’t be allowed to starve yourself to death, you know. You’ll be taken to hospital and fed, one way or the other.”

“So it’ll be later rather than sooner. What does it matter?”

“I wonder if you understand the process—”

“Far better than you, I suspect.”

“What I mean is that fasting can inflict serious and permanent internal damage. What if you decide, after all, that you want to survive?”

“I shan’t change my mind.” Though distracted and full of suffering, her profile was set as if in stone.

He couldn’t leave it there. In some muddled way he felt he had to try and talk her round. Yet all he seemed to be capable of was reducing the situation to banality. Trite phrases fell from his lips. Her betrayer was not worth it. The world was full of people. She would meet someone else. (Sergeant Troy would have been proud of him.) At least he avoided time heals all wounds.

“You’re wrong,” said Sarah, “about meeting someone else. I believe Plato got it right and that we partly exist until we find the single missing person who will make us whole. Only then shall we know true happiness.”

“Goodness. I wouldn’t like to calculate the odds on that. They must be worse than the Lottery.”

“And yet, by some wayward calculation of the stars, I found mine. So you see, Inspector, there’s no point in searching again. And, once you have known that completeness, being torn apart is simply unbearable.”

The calm finality behind the words made further discussion of the matter pointless. Barnaby got up and walked towards the door, turning back as he reached it. “You know Simone has been found?”

She cowered at the words. Flinched as if a bucket of icy water had been thrown in her face. “Yes. They told me. Is she ... all right?”

“Physically, yes. But she’s still confused. He threw her out of a van, did they tell you that? Your charming better half?”

“Out of ... ?” She stared at him as if he had suddenly broken into a foreign language.

“We’ve got a description of him. He was seen going into Flavell Street via the back entrance. Not too tall, thirtyish, dark hair. That accurate, would you say?”

“What ... what are you ...”

And then, as Barnaby received the stare and returned it with an equal force and intensity, Sarah Lawson began to batten down the hatches.

The Chief Inspector was reminded of a film he once saw, a costume drama where a distraught, unhappy heiress, discovering the man she loves is only after her money, runs around the great dark Victorian house in which she lives barring it against his next visit. He could still hear the shutters. Slam, slam, slam, slam. Slam.

And so it was now.

“Yes.” When Sarah eventually spoke she sounded very tired. “Yes, I think that’s a fairly accurate description.”

“Is there nothing you won’t say, Sarah? Nothing you won’t agree to to help out?” Pitiful though she was, Barnaby still experienced anger. “No lies you won’t tell?”

“No. None.”

Barnaby let down the flap then and shouted for the duty officer to unlock the door.

Next day, following the publication of the drawing of Simone in her dark glasses, some reports of sightings started trickling in. These were nowhere near as numerous or as full of exotic detail as happened at the beginning of the case. Either the public was by now fed up with the Hollingsworth extravaganza or Simone had been very securely hidden away after she was removed from Flavell Street. Of the few that were reported, nearly all in or around London, none proved to be worth the time and effort spent following them up. Crimewatch, which should flush out many more, was not due to go out for another three days.

Just after lunch Barnaby received notification from Rain-bird and Gillis, Causton’s most well-established undertakers, that the funeral of Alan Hollingsworth had now been arranged and would take place in two days’ time. The service would be held at St. Chad’s parish church, Fawcett Green, and the internment directly afterwards in the burial ground adjacent. No flowers by request.

Barnaby, wondering by whose request, scribbled a note on his pad. The last thirty-six hours had been so crammed with new incident and revelation that trying to absorb and assess it all had pushed the deaths of Hollingsworth and poor Brenda Brockley to the fringes of his mind. Now he turned his attention to both.

Brenda was the one that depressed him most, perhaps because he felt that it was the one he could do least about. They knew she had been killed by Hollingsworth’s car. Presumably, if not inevitably, he had been driving it. What chance now, though, to find out exactly what had happened?

At least, in the matter of Hollingsworth’s own death, they had a suspect. The faceless, false-hearted and falsely named Tim. Sarah, at her second interview, had seemed to imply it was he who was responsible.

Of course there was also Gray Patterson who fitted the bill to perfection. A powerful motive, no alibi and a friend of Sarah Lawson. However, set against this must be the fact that there was absolutely no forensic evidence to put him inside Nightingales the night of Hollingsworth’s death. Also, on the afternoon Simone absconded, he was sitting in the Causton Odeon watching Goldeneye. Thirdly, and surely most telling by far, Patterson could by no stretch of the imagination be described as a short man with dark curly hair.

And it was this man that they now had to lay their hands on.

The storm of two days ago had really broken the weather. The day of the funeral, though warm, was patchy. The sun was inconstant, clouds scudded about and the branches of the elms and yew trees in the churchyard bent and rustled in the slight breeze.

The Reverend Bream, a snowy surplice covering his shabby cassock, read the elegy. His voice was grave and rich and full of quite genuine-sounding sorrow. It was at such moments that he came into his own.

Barnaby and Troy did not go to the service. Neither did they join the tiny group at the graveside but stood some small distance away on a grassy knoll—outsiders with no part to play but that of spectres at the feast.

“For man born of woman has but a short time to live ...”

And who could argue with that? We give birth astride a grave, as the poet said. At least Barnaby thought it was a poet. Or maybe he remembered it from one of the plays that Joyce’s group put on. Whatever, the writer was spot on. Looked at in cosmic terms, it was as fast as that. Now you see the sun shine, now you don’t.

Although quite a large collection of people hovered at the lych gate, there were only eight mourners at the graveside. Avis Jennings was there next to Simone, her arm round the girl’s slender shoulders. Constable Perrot, his helmet in the crook of his elbow, stood more or less to attention. The accountant Ted Burbage, representing Penstemon, was next to Elfrida Molfrey. She and Cubby Dawlish held hands and gravely bowed their heads.

The other two mourners were strangers to Barnaby. He guessed at the dead man’s brother and his wife. She must be a wife for surely such an upright, stern-faced, joyless countenance could not belong to a man frivolous enough to bring along a mistress. He wore a black suit of dull, heavy cloth. She a limp dress the colour of dirty water with an uneven hemline and a black velvet band stitched round one sleeve. Her expression was even more sour than her husband’s. Barnaby was reminded of his mother’s phrase, “Fit to turn the milk.”

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust ...”

“If the booze don’t get you the tax man must.” Troy spoke almost absently, his gaze fixed on the window’s pale, distressed face. He trembled unaccountably and felt rather queasy.

“What on earth’s wrong with you?”

“Ay?”

“Shaking about.”

“It’s the heat, guv.”

The baked meats were laid out at the doctor’s house. Mrs. Jennings had been quite restrained. Flamboyantly showy cakes and delectable confections of cream and sugar were absent. The most elaborate item on the table was a many-layered millefeuille made with fresh raspberries. There was half a York ham on an old-fashioned white china stand and a herby salad freshly picked from the garden. Dr. Jennings began to carve but was interrupted by an urgent call, whereupon he disappeared and the vicar took over.

Conversation was subdued and remained so, perhaps because the only liquid offered was Indian or China tea. Simone, naturally the focus of everyone’s concern, appeared overwhelmed. She sat between her husband’s relatives on a velvet chaise longue looking, to Sergeant Troy’s way of thinking, like a soft and lovely rose between two cacti. The hospital dressing on her temple had been removed and, though she was carefully made-up, the bruise showed through.

Mrs. Jennings had made it plain to both himself and Barnaby that they would be welcome to partake of the refreshments but Troy still felt extremely uncomfortable. Being neither friends nor family their presence could only underline the dark provenance of the situation. How could he simply go up and offer his condolences to Simone, no strings attached? For the first time since he joined the force, Sergeant Troy wished he wasn’t a policeman.

Barnaby did not mingle. He was in the kitchen tucking into some home-baked Ciabatta with a piece of runny Brie and a bowl of salad. He was also talking to Avis Jennings who had discovered she was a cake fork short and was rummaging in the cutlery drawer.

“I understand from your husband that Simone is getting better.”

“She’s quite a bit better, yes. Her memory’s returning in fits and starts. Jim says it’s often like that. She knows us and Elfie and remembers all sorts of things about the village but not much about her ... ordeal. It’s not surprising, is it? I mean, that she wants to block things out for as long as possible. Ah, there you are!” Avis scolded the missing fork and started to polish it on her skirt. “I know I would.”

“Perfectly understandable.”

“I took her round to the house just to get some fresh clothes and stuff. But she didn’t want to stay.”

“How did you get in, Mrs. Jennings?”

“Jill Gamble let us have the key.” She looked at Barnaby somewhat anxiously. “I hope that’s all right. We were only there a few minutes.”

“And were you with Mrs. Hollingsworth all the time?”

“I was, actually.” Avis was deeply puzzled. “She just put a couple of dresses and some underwear in a bag. They are her own things, Inspector.”

Barnaby, his mouth full of delicious cheese, merely nodded.

“Well, I must to my muttons,” said Avis. “I wish the Scottish contingent would tuck in. It’s not as if they’re overwhelmed by grief. Simone said Alan hadn’t spoken to either of them for years.”

“Some people would think such behaviour perfectly proper for a funeral.”

“Hm.” Avis sniffed. “In my opinion a pinch of rectitude goes a very long way.”

Troy, in the odd moments that his eyes strayed from Simone, had noticed general eddying towards a door at the far end of the room which led directly to the kitchen. Although there was definitely not what you could call a queue, Sergeant Perrot was hovering near the opening and slipped in as Mrs. Jennings emerged. Mrs. Molfrey was also gently whirling in that direction followed by Cubby Dawlish, whirling counterclockwise while hanging on to a plate of ham and salad and a nice strong cup of Ridegway’s Breakfast Blend.

As things turned out, all three arrived together. Perrot remained standing but the other two sat down. Cubby drank his tea. Elfrida, delighted to be tête à tête once more with the top brass, turned her glowing face towards Barnaby.

“I’m not reproaching you of course, Chief Inspector. I know how incredibly busy you must be. But I was disappointed not to hear from you, after the news of my revelation.”

“I’m afraid I’m not with you, Mrs. Molfrey.”

“No chink, no chime. Didn’t—” Elfrida glanced over the Chief Inspector’s shoulder and, in the nick of time, saw Colin Perrot’s expression of horrified apprehension,”—you get my message? I spoke into your answering machine.”

“Sorry,” smiled Barnaby. “They’re not always reliable, I’m afraid. What was it about, Mrs. Molfrey?”

“As I think I previously told you on the day Simone disappeared, I walked up the lane with Sarah Lawson and she was carrying this large box. She said it was some Kilner jars that Simone had promised for her white elephant collection at the fête. But then, when we got to her gate, she sort of hefted it up in her arms, like this, oof oof—”

“Careful, dearest,” murmured Cubby.

“—and there was not a single sound. This from a box supposedly full of glass. Then I thought to myself, what on earth would Simone be doing with such things anyway? She could hardly cook, let alone bake bread or make jam. Certainly I can’t imagine her ever bottling fruit or vegetables. Also,” Elfrida gave Barnaby a look he immediately recognised. It was identical to the one worn by Kilmowski when he brought a particularly large and succulent corpse into the house and laid it proudly on the doormat. “You could tell by the way she was hanging on how heavy the box was. There was more in there, believe you me, Inspector, than a few empty jars.”

“That’s very interesting, Mrs. Molfrey.” And it was too. There had certainly been no such box either in Bay Tree Cottage itself or the garden shed when they were searched. “When is this fête?”

“Not until August Bank Holiday Monday.”

“And who would Sarah pass them on to?”

“No one if she was running her own stall. You could ask Mrs. Perrot—she is on the committee again this year, I believe, Colin?”

“That’s right, Mrs. Molfrey.” Perrot, still metaphorically wiping the sweat of relief from his brow, smiled warmly at his rescuer. “I’ll certainly ask, sir, if the stuff has been passed to someone else.”

“If you would, Constable.”

“I should tell you both perhaps, although you’ll no doubt hear it on the news tomorrow, that Miss Lawson has been charged with taking part in the kidnap and ransom of Mrs. Hollingsworth.”

“Oh! But that’s ...” Mrs. Molfrey could not continue. With trembling fingers she adjusted the anthracite chiffon veiling draped over her ringlets. It was trimmed with marcasite which sparkled as it caught the sunlight pouring through the kitchen window. “I can’t believe. No. No.”

“That’s right. No,” echoed Cubby firmly. His bright blue eyes shone with conviction. “She’s too ... what is the word I want, Elfie?”

“Proud.”

“That’s right. Proud.”

“You’ve got it wrong, Inspector,” said Elfrida. “I’m sorry, I know how presumptuous that must sound—”

“We don’t charge people without strong evidence, Mrs. Molfrey. Also, Sarah Lawson has confessed.”

“But she doesn’t care about money. You’ve seen how she lives.”

“She may not care about money. But the person she was working with cares very much indeed.”

This shocked them both. He watched new and terrible complexities crowding their minds. Neither spoke again. They sat on, bewildered, for a few moments then got up and went away, Cubby patting Elfrida’s hand in tender consolation.

“Perrot?”

“Sir.” Constable Perrot moved smartly up to the pine table and rested his helmet.

“I’m putting a twenty-four-hour watch on this place. To be transferred to Nightingales should Mrs. Hollingsworth decide to move back.”

“Do you think she’s still in some sort of danger then?”

“Perhaps. In any case we need a sharp eye kept. She’s a very important witness. I’ll leave it with you.” Barnaby pushed his chair back. “You’ll be relieved once the shifts get sorted.”

“No problem, sir.”

“Are you all right for tea?” Avis popped her head round the door.

“I could do with another cup,” said Barnaby. “But I’ll take it out there.”

The scene in the Jennings’ drawing room had changed slightly. Elfrida and Cubby were no longer present. Edward Hollingsworth had moved to the window seat where he was deep in conversation with Penstemon’s accountant. His wife was stacking used plates at the table and putting them on a large wooden tray. Troy was sitting next to Simone on the green velvet chaise longue.

Barnaby, unnoticed by either, watched them both. Simone was speaking, pausing to bite her lip and frown, hesitating, speaking again. Her hands fluttered constantly, at her white bruised forehead, over her heart, smoothing her shaggy silver gilt hair. She was wearing a simple cotton dress, pink and white stripes with a sprig of mignonette pinned to the collar. Beneath it the slender outline of her body was tense.

Troy, his whole attitude one of absorbed tenderness, listened. Every now and again he nodded his head. Occasionally he said something. Barnaby thought he lip-read the words, “I’m so sorry.”

He stepped sideways to the woman at the table and introduced himself.

“Oh, I know who you are.” Each word came out well-rounded, hard and individual, like polished pebbles. She had a strong Scottish accent. “It’s taking you long enough to find out who’s responsible for my brother-in-law’s death.”

“When did you arrive, Mrs. Hollingsworth?”

“Yesterday. We had a communication from Alan’s solicitor and have a meeting tomorrow morning. We shall be getting straight back then. My husband has to prepare his weekly sermon.” Then, just in case Barnaby had not fully understood the importance of her spouse’s position, “Edward is a minister of the church.”

Yes, thought the Chief Inspector, glancing at the bloodless profile and sanctimonious curling lower lip. I guessed he might be. “I understand your husband and his brother had been estranged for some years.”

“Not at all. They may not have communicated all that frequently but there was no estrangement. In fact over the past few months they have spoken on more than one occasion.”

“But I am right in thinking you didn’t approve of his second marriage?”

“As we do not acknowledge divorce there can be no such thing as a second marriage.” She picked up her tray and bared her yellow tombstone teeth at him. “Fornicating liaison, I think the Lord would call it.”

Blimey. Barnaby watched her ramrod back, long and thin and stiff as a poker, marching off to the kitchen. I wouldn’t fancy trying to warm my feet on that on a winter’s night.

He made his way over to the couple in the corner relishing, even before he reached it, the pleasant change in the scenery.

“And how are you feeling today, Mrs. Hollingsworth?”

“Ohh, Inspector.” They were like white doves, those hands. Her prettiness, her loveliness was returning. Cosmetics had been lightly applied but with such art as to appear artless. How long and silky her lashes were.

“Much better, I can see.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Sergeant, there’s going to be a police presence here until further notice. This needs to be explained to Mrs. Jennings. So if you’d do the honours?”

“What, now?”

“Yes. Now.”

There was no mistaking the emphasis on the second word. Troy reluctantly rose to his feet. He gave Simone a smile, a mixture of comfort and encouragement, and retreated. Unluckily for him, Mrs. Jennings chose that moment to disappear through the French windows into the garden. Still looking anxiously over his shoulder, Troy followed.

“Avis has been so kind,” explained Simone. “And her husband too.”

“Even so, I expect you’re looking forward to going home.”

“Home?”

“Nightingales.”

“I’m never going back there.” The palms of her hands pressed violently against her knees. “I hate it!”

“You remember being unhappy, then?”

“Yes.” She looked at him uncertainly. “Some things more than others.”

“I understand. I want to ask you a question, Simone. And,” her eyes had already widened in alarm, “it’s nothing to do with ... Well, perhaps very indirectly. Please don’t be alarmed.”

“You must think I’m very foolish.”

“Not at all.” Barnaby smiled. “Do you recall, just before you ... went away, leaving a box with some glass jars on your patio for Sarah Lawson to collect?”

“Jars? What sort of jars?”

“Apparently they were Kilner jars. For bottling fruit.”

“I can’t ... Wait a moment. Yes. They were for the f&e.”

“That’s right.” He barely stopped himself saying “good girl” for, having produced the right answer, she appeared as delighted as a child.

“Now, can you tell me where you got them?”

“Um, let’s mink.” She frowned and sighed and frowned again. “The church jumble. Everyone is always expected to buy at these dos. And then, as nearly everything’s usually pretty horrible, when the next fête or bring and buy comes round, it goes back in. There’s been a dreadful table lamp apparently doing the rounds for years.”

“Excellent,” said the Chief Inspector. “That’s tidied up, then.”

“Is that all?”

“At the moment.”

She relaxed; lifted her hands from her knees. But so fierce had been the pressure that their imprint remained in the fabric of her dress. “What did you mean when you said to Gavin there’d be a police presence here?”

“It’s for your own protection, Mrs. Hollingsworth.” Gavin, is it? We’ll see about that.

“But isn’t it all over?” Under the cosmetics her face paled. “I mean—”

“Passed the message on, sir.” Sergeant Troy was once more urgently present. Standing four square on the carpet and daring anyone to shift him.

“Right.” Barnaby got up. “Let’s away.”

When they reached the car, which they had left parked outside Bay Tree Cottage, Gray Patterson was leaning up against the bonnet. He moved towards them anxiously.

“I recognised the Rover, Inspector,” he said. “Didn’t like to intrude at the Jennings’ or come to the church. Especially with Alan’s brother there. I thought it might look rather two-faced.”

“I’ve no doubt it would,” replied Barnaby. “Given your past history.”

“I’m trying to find out what’s going on regarding Sarah. I heard she’d been arrested so I went down to the station. But they wouldn’t let me see her.”

“I shouldn’t fret about it, Mr. Patterson.”

“But she’ll need me. To help get this stupid mistake sorted out.”

“There’s no mistake, I’m afraid.” Barnaby repeated the information he had so recently given to Cubby and Mrs. Molfrey and with much the same result. Patterson was absolutely devastated.

“That can’t be right. Sarah?”

“Working with her lover,” said Sergeant Troy. Still peeved at seeing Simone bullied yet again, he was determined to take it out on someone. “I expect that’s why she suddenly got all chummy with you. To deflect attention, like.”

“Rubbish.”

“Not caught up with him yet, but we will.” Smiling, Troy delivered the coup de grâce. “A very passionate affair, by all accounts.”

Patterson turned from them then. Turned away and walked straight into the road, which was fortunately empty. After this, stumbling and wavering, he wandered off along the grass verges in the direction of his home.

We are all in the lap of the gods. When Barnaby listened to criminals whining during interrogations or later from the dock that they had never had any luck, he was not overly sympathetic.

Though he himself had had the luck—affectionate parents, a stable and happy marriage, an intelligent and healthy child—he was not a man to pour libations or even offer up a grateful prayer. Like most people in such a fortunate position, he took it all for granted.

But now, entering the final stage in what was to be called, in the first of many books dealing with the subject, Twist and Counter Twist: The Mysterious Lives of Alan and Simone Hollingsworth, the Chief Inspector became keenly aware of the part that the Fates had played in his investigation.

They always did, of course. And you soon knew if they were for you or against you. For instance if someone—and Barnaby didn’t believe for a minute that that someone was Sergeant Troy—had not had the idea of questioning the college accommodation bureau, the chances were the flat at Flavell Street would never have been discovered.

And if Eden Lo had been looking elsewhere during the few seconds that it took Alan Hollingsworth to put down his coffee cup and walk away, the Heathrow connection might never have been made.

And now the most vital link of all was winging its way along the ether. At first, it looked like nothing much. Just another sighting, in fact. A woman on the blower, a genuine Bow Bells Cockney, rang in the morning after the funeral. Barnaby picked up the extension and listened in.

At the time he could not have said why it was this call out of all others that spoke to his condition. It was only a couple of hours later, on the spot as it were, that he recognised the connection.

Her name was Queenie Lambert and she lived on the Isle of Dogs. The woman sketched in her copy of the Sun had been staying in a flat across the walkway. Although she hadn’t been out and about as such, Mrs. Lambert had glimpsed her a couple of times, once opening the door to the postman and later watering the window boxes on the balcony.

Mrs. Lambert sounded elderly and Barnaby imagined her life to be somewhat constrained. She probably spent much of it taking keen note of what the neighbours were up to. Probably regarded as a nosy nuisance around the buildings, such people could be an absolute godsend to the police.

Although, like everyone else, both detectives were aware that massive development had been taking place around the quays and docks of Canary Wharf, the scale and magnificence of the enterprise was pretty breathtaking. Great towers of glass and steel surrounded by piles of rubble glittered in the sunlight. Diggers roared and trundled about, raising huge clouds of dust. New apartments, soon to be sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds, rose up just a few yards from old thirties-style low-rise council estates, broken down and boarded up poverty fisted by brazen, upmarket cash.

Driving out of the Blackwall Tunnel, Troy gave an impressed whistle of appreciation and even Barnaby was much taken by the hugely confident operatic splendour that lay spread out before them.

As it was nearly twelve thirty they stopped at the George, Westferry Road, for a pint of Webster’s Yorkshire bitter and some excellent sandwiches. Sergeant Troy threw a few darts. Barnaby sat quietly thinking. The atmosphere between them seethed and simmered. Troy was still angry that his passionate concern for Simone’s wellbeing had been crudely interpreted as creating an opportunity to get his leg over. He was also smarting over a follow-up lecture against the advisability of getting involved, on any level, with someone so severely entangled in a case that was presently under investigation.

He knew what that meant, all right. It meant the chief did not trust him to keep his mouth shut. Thought that he, Troy, was so careless and dim that any bit of fluff could wind him round their little finger, ask any questions they fancied and get the right answers. Talk about a fucking insult.

“You fit then, Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir.” Troy hit a bull’s eye, drained his glass and put his black leather jacket back on.

Mrs. Lambert’s flat was on a small development of Peabody buildings, just behind Thermopylae Gardens, two storeys high with balconies running all round, some strung across with washing. Most of the windows on the ground floor were either barred or covered with wrought-iron grilles. One or two people had bought their homes and personalised them by painting the bricks blue and orange or replacing the original doors and windows. But mostly they remained uniformly drab, grubby looking and in need of repair.

“Don’t drive right in.” Barnaby recalled an occasion when his car had been parked outside a tower block for barely ten minutes while he had struggled to arrest someone on the eighth floor. When he came out every removable part of the vehicle had vanished, including the seats. “Over there’ll do.”

Troy parked neatly facing a little row of single-fronted shops and climbed out. The Chief Inspector picked up his mobile phone and followed. They walked across the open well of the courtyard and past smelly communal rubbish bins that were taller than they were. As they climbed the metal staircase, Barnaby wondered again at the strange compulsion that had brought him way out of his own manor to investigate something a local man could have checked out in no time.

He could see Mrs. Lambert agitating her curtain, watching them approach. The old lady snatched open her door before Troy could even ring the bell. Showed into a sparklingly clean sitting room so overstuffed with furniture they practically had to walk sideways, and having declined the offer of a cup of tea, Barnaby asked where Mrs. Lambert had seen the woman in dark glasses.

“I’ll show you.” She hobbled painfully towards the window. “Directly over the way, see? Where them boxes wiv the red geraniums are.”

“And could you tell me—I’m sorry,” the Chief Inspector interrupted himself, “perhaps you’d like to sit down.”

“I’m better upright, if it’s all the same to you.” She wore large men’s checked slippers bulging round the toes. “Uvverwise the blood rushes to me bunions.”

“When did you last see this woman?”

“Oohh, must be four or five days now.”

“Could you possibly be more precise, Mrs. Lambert?” Barnaby’s heart plummeted in his breast. Five days ago Simone Hollingsworth was lying in Hillingdon Hospital.

“Well, let’s see. It was the day before our Elaine came round to take me to the chiropodists. They won’t send transport if you can dig up somebody wiv a car. Mean buggers.”

“And that was?”

“Well, it’s Thursday afternoon, Health Centre, so it would have been the day before I spotted her.”

“Wednesday?” Eight days ago. Barnaby held his breath.

“That’s right.”

“And can you remember when you saw her first?”

Troy took no part in this. He told himself there was no point. That it was a complete waste of time. But in truth a nervous apprehension, the like of which he had never known, was gradually seeping into his bones.

“I can’t, in all honesty,” replied Queenie Lambert. “But I do know it was after June the twelfth because that’s when I come back from me holiday in Cromer.”

“Thank you,” said Barnaby feeling the phrase would prove to be shamefully inadequate but not knowing quite what to put in its place.

He and Troy had to go down to the courtyard again to get to the other side. Halfway across they passed some little girls skipping. One of them wore a T-shirt that caught the Chief Inspector’s eye. The bold letters read: Cuba Street Carnival.

He stopped walking then and stood, stock still, engrossed in thought. Troy carried on for a few steps, realised he was alone and also came to a halt. Deciding he had deliberately been made to look foolish, the sergeant refused to backtrack. Instead he wandered over to the little girls, smiled and said, “Hullo.”

They all ran away.

“Gavin?”

“Sir.”

“You got the London A to Z?”

“In my pocket.”

“Look up Cuba Street, would you?” As he waited, Barnaby couldn’t help wondering what he was waiting for, why the word Cuba rang in his ear like a cracked bell, and what earthly connection this seedy environment could prove to have with the beautifully maintained hamlet of Fawcett Green. Yet the longer he stood there, the surer he became that he was in the right place at the right time. And for the right reasons.

“There you go.” Coolly Troy handed over the book, open at page eighty. “Cuba Street. Square two C.”

Barnaby stared at the page. The River Thames, like a great white snake, twined through it, cutting off the Isle of Dogs from Rotherhithe and Deptford and Greenwich. He located Cuba Street at the West Indian Dock Pier. It meant nothing at all.

Sergeant Troy noted this and not without a certain amount of satisfaction. He hadn’t a clue as to what the chief was after but recognised a letdown when he saw it.

Barnaby continued studying the map. And then he did find something. Troy knew this because an expression of recognition followed quickly by one of astonishment possessed Barnaby’s solid features. Troy thought the boss looked like that daft bird in a story he sometimes read to his daughter. Left the safety of the farmyard to go walkabout and the sky fell on it. Say what you like about chickens, they may be stupid but they know where the action is.

“It’s not Cuba, Sergeant. It’s Cubitt.”

“Right, guv.”

“Cubitt Town.”

“Got that.”

“Mean anything?”

“Not offhand.” Here we go.

“Think about it.”

Yeah, think about it, Gavin. Give your mind a hernia, why don’t you?

They negotiated the second staircase and walked along the balcony. The flat with the window boxes was the last in the row. As they approached, Barnaby’s footsteps slowed. He was conscious of feeling extremely nauseous and slightly dazed. There was a lump the size of a ping pong ball stuck in his throat and his whole body felt as heavy as lead. Now, so close, his previous certainty wavered. Wasn’t it rather foolish to build up such hopes merely on a single geographical coincidence?

Then he noticed, stretched along the balcony wall, yawning and sunning itself, a beautifully marked tabby cat. He bent down, stretched out his hand and called, “Nelson?”

The cat jumped down and came straight to him.

“Nelson?” Sergeant Troy stared at the animal now weaving itself around and about Barnaby’s trouser legs and purring. “You mean that’s ... ?”

“Simone’s cat, yes.” Barnaby rapped hard on the door.

“What the hell is it doing out here?”

“I suppose they’ve been looking after it for her.”

“But how did it ... I mean, who’s they?”

Someone was moving inside. They could see through the small frosted panes of glass a dark formless shape approaching. A mortise was unlocked, a key turned, a chain rattled then fell, clattering against the frame. Slowly the door opened.

A middle-aged woman stood there. Thin, consumptive looking, heavily made-up. Sucking in smoke through a slim cigarette. Frizzy henna’d hair. She smelt of vinegar and chips and wore a denim mini skirt and a semi-transparent nylon blouse with rhinestone buttons.

“Whatever you’re selling I don’t wannit. And that includes religion. So piss off.”

“Mrs. Atherton?”

“Who wants to know?” This came from a man at the back of the hall. A man perhaps in his early thirties, not too tall with dark curly hair.

“DCI Barnaby, Causton CID,” replied the Chief Inspector. And got his foot in the door just in time.

One of the most infuriating things about the guv’nor was his refusal to talk until he was good and ready. Another, equally infuriating, was this habit of pointing out to his irritated bag carrier that the said carrier had all the information that he, the guv’nor, possessed and so should be quite capable of drawing his own conclusions.

That Sergeant Troy knew his chief well enough to appreciate that this attitude was neither spiteful nor motivated by any desire to show off only made matters worse. He was well aware that Barnaby was simply offering encouragement. Trying to persuade him to recall, reflect, deduce, connect.

But these were not Troy’s natural strengths. He was sharp-eyed, fast and aggressive. He was a good man to have on your side in a fight. But he was not patient. When they eventually got back to the ranch, there was no way he would be going over every statement and interview relative to the Hollingsworth case to find out where the words Cubitt Town had cropped up.

The two inhabitants of the council flat behind Thermopylae Gardens were being held at Rotherhithe police station pending a transfer to Causton CID for questioning. Queenie Lambert, already vaguely aware of playing some small part in what she suspected might prove to be a very large drama, had further consolidated her position by offering to look after the cat.

On leaving the East London nick, Barnaby had asked to be driven straight to Fawcett Green and now Sergeant Troy, his heart beating twenty to the dozen and his thoughts jumping like deranged fleas, was walking very quickly down St. Chad’s Lane to Nightingales, aware, as he almost ran along, of an urgency he could not put a name to, a compulsion that, at all costs, he must get there first.

Calling earlier at Dr. Jennings’ they had been told that Simone, accompanied by the attendant officer who had taken over from PC Perrot, had gone home to sort out a change of clothes and pick up any post that may have arrived. The place was otherwise unoccupied. Hollingsworth’s brother and his wife, having resolutely refused to spend a single night under the roof of “the devil’s house of sin,” were staying at the Vicarage.

As Barnaby walked up the weed-choked path to the front door for the last time, he thought how much longer it seemed than two weeks since he had walked up it for the first time.

The nicotiana in the Italian terracotta jars were dead and dried up and one of the pots had cracked open, spilling fine earth all over the doorstep. Thistles and nettles had got a stranglehold on the front garden and the windowpanes were thick with dust. All the downstairs curtains were drawn. The whole place had a somnolent air and although the interior had been cleaned, a faint smell of stale food still mingled with that of lemon-scented furniture polish.

“Afternoon, Chief Inspector,” said the constable positioned by the front door which was standing open.

“Mrs. Hollingsworth inside?”

“That’s right, sir.”

Barnaby entered first but he was hardly in the hall before his sergeant pushed past. Troy blundered into the living room and from there to the dining room and kitchen. He returned and stood in front of Barnaby, breathing deeply. He appeared to be in a state of extreme physical discomfort and his face was transfigured by a passionate determination. There was a footfall overhead.

Troy moved quickly forward but found his way blocked.

“Gavin. Listen to me.”

“Someone’s upstairs.”

“There’s only one way out of this.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’m truly sorry.”

“There’s always more than one way. You told me that a long while ago.”

“Not this time.”

“Oh Christ.”

“Do you want to stay down here?” The words, spoken as Barnaby moved towards the staircase, were barely audible. Troy shook his head. “Then keep quiet, OK?”

They ascended the stairs, Troy struggling to make his face blank and keep some sort of grip on his emotions. He felt as if he was being put through a wringer; the ventricles of his heart squeezed by a giant fist. He thought, if this is love, give me a vicious kicking any day of the week.

The door of the master bedroom was wide open and they could see clear across it when they reached the landing. Barnaby rested a warning hand on his sergeant’s arm—unnecessarily, for Troy could not have spoken for the world.

A woman, unrecognisable to both men though they each knew who she was, stood gazing into a full-length mirror. Lost in the happy contemplation of her reflection, she remained unaware of their proximity.

She wore a beautifully cut dress of rich black velvet, backless and a stitch away from frontless. On her feet were elegant sandals with dangerously high heels. She balanced easily on them, swaying slightly but in a poised and naturally graceful manner. She wore an ash-blonde shoulder-length wig, teazed and tousled into a cloud of soft, loose curls. At her throat, wrists, hands and ears a conflagration of light blazed.

Her face was both very beautiful and completely soulless. A dazzling example of cosmetic alchemy. Peach and ivory skin blushing coral over cleverly modelled cheekbones, huge, brilliant but very hard eyes enlarged and enhanced by layer upon delicate layer of shadows. False lashes dark, glossy and thickly curled.

But it was about the mouth where the most startling transformation had taken place. Her own rather thin lipline having been skilfully erased, a, new crimson mouth, greedy and voluptuous, bloomed in its place.

She turned sideways, pausing briefly to admire the compelling perfection of her image, adjusted the diamond necklace then picked up a magnificent full-length blue fox coat from the back of a chair and draped it round her shoulders.

And it was then that she saw them.

Simone did not turn round but she did become very still, regarding the intruders silently in the mirror. Barnaby observed the calculation process at its most naked. Explanations, excuses, evasions, exits. She ran them all by with alarmed rapidity. It was like watching a fruit machine lining up the total. Ching, ching, ching. And every one a lemon.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Hollingsworth.”

“Oh. Hullo.”

There was nothing she could do now, thought Barnaby with some small satisfaction and a great deal of anger. No way she could revert to the shy, sad, winsome little scrap that the world had treated so cruelly.

“I just came over for some clothes.”

“So I see.” He glanced at the bed which was strewn with money. There were dresses lying there too. And underwear and shoes. Several real leather suitcases stood nearby with their lids open. “I hope you’re not thinking of leaving us.”

Simone ignored this remark. Her pretty pink tongue flicked out, wetting her already glistening lips. She glanced at Sergeant Troy and attempted a seductive smile, lifting her scarlet top lip to reveal sharp white incisors. But extreme tension froze the movement, distorting it into a half sneer.

“Hi, Gavin.”

Troy turned and walked back to the landing. He leaned over the stair rail feeling sick with betrayal and unhappiness. He felt his longing, poisoned beyond redemption, curdle in his heart.

From the bedroom he could hear Barnaby start to speak but the words seemed to come from a great distance and echo strangely. Troy wondered if, for the first time in his life, he was about to faint.

“Simone Hollingsworth,” began the Chief Inspector, “you are under arrest on suspicion of the murder of your husband, Alan. You do not have to say anything ...”

He was taken at his word. Simone had now been in custody for just under two hours and had remained silent apart from making a single telephone call to Penstemon’s solicitor who was unable to get to the station until seven o’clock that evening.

Awaiting Jill Gamble’s arrival, Barnaby organised a debriefing at thirty minutes’ notice, inevitably garnering, in the incident room, only the immediate shift of men and women who had worked on the Hollingsworth case.

Audrey Brierley was present; Gavin Troy was not. He had cried off and Barnaby thought for once the term not inappropriate. Naturally, though perilously close to breaking down, Troy would have died rather than be seen weeping. He had turned the keen edge of his distress against himself and fallen on it like a defeated warrior upon his sword, mutilating his emotions, furiously attempting to kill what had been so newly born. Wounded and a fool for love, he was fit for nothing and Barnaby had sent him home.

People were scattered around the room, popping cans or queuing for the kettle to make coffee filters. Some peeled confectionery wrappers others tore open crisps. The lines were diverted to the separate office and a couple of civilian telephonists detailed to take the calls. There was a slight air about the place of getting dug in.

The Chief Inspector had so far just given them the bare bones of the matter. They all knew that Simone Hollingsworth had been arrested and why. It was the sordid details, what someone had once called the “shitty gritty,” that now closely engaged their attention.

Naturally, as the subject of Barnaby’s disquisition had yet to speak, his narrative would be in the nature of an imaginative re-creation rather than a straightforward listing of acknowledged facts. But he still looked forward to unravelling the tangled web in which they had all been ensnared. Like his daughter, he had been born to the sound of a drum roll. And now, ladies and gentlemen, before your eyes, before your very eyes ...

But—Barnaby shuffled his notes—where to begin? No crime takes place in a vacuum and he had the feeling that this one had been in the making for a long while. Certainly since the beginning of the marriage and maybe even earlier. Perhaps since the very first moment the black widow spider spotted such a big juicy fly.

“So what made you first think to put her in the frame, Chief Inspector?” Sergeant Beryl kicked off.

“There was never one specific thing. Rather an accumulation of signs, scraps of information, conversations that meant nothing at the time but, viewed in retrospect, became significant.”

Perhaps that would be a good starting point. The village itself, Fawcett Green. And its opinion of Alan Hollingsworth’s second wife.

“The first unusual thing I noticed about Simone was that everyone I spoke to described her in exactly the same way. Now, this is very odd. Usually, if you ask half a dozen people’s opinion of someone, you’ll get six varying replies. But the same adjectives turned up again and again in this case. Mrs. Hollingsworth was wistful, lonely, childlike and not too bright. Easily bored, she remained a docile and loving wife even in the face of her husband’s apparent cruelty.”

“Don’t know about apparent, sir.” Audrey sounded a bit bullish. “We’ve got the interview with her doctor to bear it out.”

“I’ll come to that. The point I’m making now is that unlike the rest of us, who adjust our behaviour according to the situation and who we’re with, Simone gave a rubberstamp performance. So, what does this tell us?”

“That she was playing a part?” suggested PC Belling hesitantly, tugging at his curly moustache.

“Just so. The boredom I’ve no doubt was genuine. But apart from that, she was playing a part. And biding her time. She married for the cash and, as a quick look around her bedroom will show, very quickly got through a great deal of it. But, though this case appears to be all about greed, it is also all about love.”

“Love?” Sergeant Beryl rolled his eyes in disbelief. “Seems to me she took him for all she could get then did him in.”

“Oh, she didn’t love Alan! No, we’re talking here about husband number one.” He flicked through his notes and found the lines relating to the man dragged up in Cubitt Town. “ ‘She was mad about him and he was mad about her and both were mad about money.’ But Atherton, or so the story goes, found a likely mark and disappeared.”

“So, you reckon she followed his example and found a mark of her own,” suggested Alan Lewis, a plainclothes inspector.

“And plotted her own kidnapping?” PC Belling sounded incredulous.

“With his help, yes. I don’t believe they ever really lost touch.”

“Hang on, sir,” said Audrey. “I’m not with you at all on this one.” There was a general murmur of agreement around the room. “Surely Sarah Lawson and this bloke we’re calling Tim were responsible.”

“That’s right.”

“Lawson confessed.”

“And there’s proof—she rented the flat where Simone was held.”

“We found the camera at her cottage.”

“You said she recognised the photographs.”

“Besides, Simone was infatuated with her boy friend. That’s how it all began.”

“Everything you say—the last remark aside—is true,” granted the Chief Inspector.

“Then I don’t see what you’re driving at, guv,” Audrey finished where she had begun. “Either Lawson and her boy friend set it up or Simone and her ex-husband set it up. All four of them couldn’t have been involved.”

“But they were,” said Barnaby. “Except it was all three.” He waited for a second baffled murmur to subside. “However, only two knew what was really going on. I spoke of love a moment ago. The love of Jimmy Atherton and his wife. But I suspect this will prove to be a poor thing in comparison to that of Sarah Lawson. Unfortunately I didn’t bring her in for questioning when I should have done and she was left with plenty of time to dream up an alternative scenario. A cover to protect the woman who so cruelly betrayed her. And I have not the slightest doubt she will stick to her story to the very end. For she has nothing to lose and, it seems now, nothing to live for.”

“Are you saying,” asked Inspector Lewis, “that this man ‘Tim’ doesn’t really exist?”

“That’s right.”

“When did you discover this?”

“The last time I spoke to Lawson. I told her he’d been seen going up the back steps at Flavell Street and into the flat. She was completely mystified. Just didn’t have a clue as to what I was talking about.” In his mind Barnaby ran the scene again. Saw Sarah finally understand the true extent of her betrayal and watched her efforts, even as the knife plunged home, to protect the woman she loved.

“So why was it necessary to make him up?”

“It wasn’t at first. Getting Hollingsworth to believe that someone had kidnapped his wife was a doddle. Locking her away, taking the photographs and posting them—no problem. But once the pictures had been dug up, things rapidly got much more complicated. And when the flat in Flavell Street was discovered, Sarah Lawson was really up against it.

“Not that she was worried on her own behalf. As we know, Sarah was at Fawcett Green the Friday evening following the kidnap and nearly all the following weekend so she couldn’t have been the person responsible.”

“So ... this was Atherton?” said Constable Belling.

“No, no.” Barnaby was starting to sound irritable. “Don’t you see? There was no one else. The pictures were faked.”

“Faked!”

“They were a bloody professional-looking job then, sir.”

“You’ve picked exactly the right word, Belling. When I interviewed Avis Jennings she talked about Simone’s early life. The various jobs she’d had.” He referred once more to his notes. “ ‘Spent some time in a florist’s, did a cosmetics course, demonstrated food mixers, was in television for a bit and a cashier in some sort of nightclub.’ I didn’t have the nous to spot a possible connection between make-up training and television. I presumed she’d worked in one of the offices.”

“None of us spotted it, sir,” said Audrey. She could be quite protective at times. “And we all read the interview.”

“Did that idea check out then, guv?”

“We’re still waiting for feedback from the TV companies.”

“I reckon you could be right, chief. I watched Casualty last week. God, some of those injuries. Bleeding off your screen.”

“I suppose that’s why she had to disappear for so long.”

“Precisely. She could hardly just wash it off and turn up. All the supposed cuts and bruises had to have time to heal.”

“Why risk coming back at all though, guv?” asked Constable Belling. “She’d got the necklace, the ring, the ransom money.”

“But as Hollingsworth’s widow she would expect to inherit all his worldy goods. Nightingales, Penstemon—that alone must be worth a fair shake.”

“So, is that why she killed him?”

“That’s my belief, though I’ve no doubt there’ll be a different version at the interview.”

“If she decides to cough it.”

“Yes.” Barnaby didn’t really want to consider the alternative. In the brief period that he had spent in the company of the real Mrs. Hollingsworth he had sensed a backbone of steel, a heart of stone and an iron will that might prove to be more than a match for his own.

“How she got him to drink the stuff we can only guess at at this stage but we do know how she obtained it. She visited her doctor twice, treating him to a pretty display of nervous distress plus a few bruises thrown in for good measure. Though it’s interesting to note that when Jennings tried to examine them more closely, Mrs. Hollingsworth, in his own words, ‘shrank away.’ There were two prescriptions given for haloperidol but Jennings became suspicious when she tried for three. He thought she might wish to harm herself.”

“That’s a good one,” mumbled a machine operator at the back of the room, through a mouthful of Twix.

“To anyone who hasn’t met her, all this easy manipulation of other people must sound a bit unbelievable,” said Barnaby. “All I can say is, in all the years I’ve been at it, she’s the best I’ve come across. I was deceived along with everyone else.”

Here Barnaby paused and glanced at the familiar face of his watch. Just on six thirty. Time to draw the briefing to a close. Time to have a wash, a cup of tea and a quiet reflective fifteen minutes in his office. Because for the next encounter he knew he would need to be very much on his toes. And that was putting it mildly.

Accompanied by Sergeant Beryl, DCI Barnaby entered the same interview room that was used when he had talked to Sarah Lawson. He had no particular course of action in mind. Nothing up his sleeve, no rehearsed rhetoric or cunning verbal games. Just prepared to play it as it lays.

Simone and Jill Gamble broke off talking as the detectives went in and Barnaby got the feeling that they had been in discussion for some time.

Simone was looking very composed. Obviously deciding to split the difference between the flamboyant splendour of her last public appearance and the milkmaid demureness of all previous ones, she wore a grey silk shirt dress, polished silver triangles in her ears and a carved coral bracelet. Discreet make-up lay on her skin like a natural bloom and her perfume was light and flowery. Barnaby was relieved to discover it was not Joy.

He shook hands with Jill Gamble whom he knew quite well. Sergeant Beryl set up the tape and the interrogation began. The solicitor spoke first.

“I should say straightaway Chief Inspector, that my client denies the charge that has been brought against her. She does not, however, deny that she was at Nightingales on the evening of her husband’s death and is willing to answer frankly any questions that you might wish to put to her regarding this whole case.”

“That’s very encouraging,” said the Chief Inspector. “So, Mrs. Hollingsworth—”

“Oh, Inspector Barnaby!” cried Simone. She leaned forward, clasping her hands. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that it’s all over. At last.”

“I’m sure we’re all—”

“You’ve no idea how unhappy I’ve been. I’d got to the stage where I was saving up the tablets I’d got from the doctor ...” She looked anxiously at her brief who nodded encouragingly. “I felt I’d rather be dead than go on living the way I was. I’d asked Alan for a separation, so I could go back to London and make a new life. But he said he’d never let me go. And if I ran away he’d find me wherever I was and ... kill me ...”

“So, you decided to get your retaliation in first?” The phrase reminded him sharply of Troy and his voice was harsher than it might otherwise have been.

“It wasn’t like that. If you’re going to make everything sound so calculated—”

“If pulling open thirty capsules, disposing of the casings, mixing the powder that was left with whisky and persuading someone to drink it isn’t calculating I don’t know what is.”

“You don’t understand.”

“So tell me.”

“It’s difficult.” Simone pulled a little silk square from her bag, dabbed at her eyes, slid the hanky through her bracelet and sighed. Then she said something so outrageous that Barnaby thought at first his ears were deceiving him. “The thing is, I don’t want to get Sarah into trouble.”

“Miss Lawson has already been arrested and charged, as you are well aware,” said the Chief Inspector when he’d got his breath back. “She has also made a full confession as to her part in the conspiracy. Now, tell me about your relationship.”

“Well ...” Simone settled herself comfortably, folding her hands in her lap. “It all started shortly after I moved to Fawcett Green. She started asking me round for coffee. And I did go sometimes, out of sheer loneliness. But it was ever so embarrassing. All talk about art and music and stuff, showing me books with paintings in and trying to get me interested. Then she started putting her arm round my shoulder, moving in close, that sort of thing. She wanted to sketch me and I gave it a go but it was so boring. Just sitting there, not able to move, staring into space.”

“What sort of drawings were these?” asked Sergeant Beryl.

“I didn’t take nothing—anything off, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“If you felt like this about Miss Lawson,” said Barnaby, “how on earth did you come to be doing her course?”

“She kept on and on about how art could change my life. Naturally I never believed that. But in the end I thought, why not give it a whirl? I’d get out of that poky hole and meet a few new faces. But the car journeys were that tense I couldn’t stick it. She never actually did anything but I got all this hassle about women’s friendships and how we were really sisters in heart, mind and soul. I thought, do me a favour. Then, after the third or fourth class, things really came to a head.”

Simone broke off here, took a sip of water and sat quietly for a moment before continuing. Barnaby understood the pause which he was sure would be the first of many, for although there had been plenty of time to work out both the plot and emotional subtext, the telling of the story was bound to be extremely complex.

“On the way home Sarah turned off into a little lane near Hellions Wychwood. I got quite twitchy—I was sure she was going to make a grab at me—but she was really calm. She just said she loved me more than anything in the world and wanted me to leave Alan and come and live with her. I was knocked sideways. She promised she would never make any demands on me. Well,” Simone gave a coarse chuckle, “we’ve all heard that one.

“She said she’d sell the cottage and buy a house wherever I liked. I said I liked the Smoke and she’d be lucky to get a one-bedroom flat in Walthamstow in exchange for that old Bay Tree dump. She told me she had a bit of money put by and some things of her parents she could sell. It was all a bit pathetic, to tell you the truth.”

That’ll be the day, thought Barnaby.

“So was that the last time you went to the class?” asked Sergeant Beryl.

Simone hesitated, frowning.

Barnaby said, “It must be difficult, Mrs. Hollingsworth.”

“What?”

“Trying to remember what comes next.”

“I don’t know why you’re being so sarcastic.” Her soft rosy bottom lip started to tremble.

“Perhaps I can jog your memory.”

“Please don’t put words in my client’s mouth.” Jill Gamble spoke with some annoyance. “Perhaps you have forgotten that she is doing her very best to cooperate with you in every way.”

Sergeant Beryl bridged the following chilly pause by repeating his question.

Eventually Simone said, “That’s right. Alan discovered I’d been going. He was very jealous and could be violent. So I had to give up.”

“And he was so grateful,” said Barnaby, “that he bought you a diamond necklace worth nearly a quarter of a million.”

“Alan loved giving presents. It was almost the first thing that attracted me to him.” She looked puzzled when both detectives laughed and murmured something to her solicitor.

Jill Gamble shook her head. “It’s all right. You’re doing fine.”

“You know what he did to raise the money?” Barnaby said.

“Vaguely. But, me and business ...” Simone lifted her slender shoulders and sighed. Her pretty brow wrinkled with incomprehension. Plainly she was as a child in these matters.

“Why do you think he took such desperate measures?”

“Heavens, I don’t know.”

“I suggest that, far from your husband being the forceful and domineering partner, all the power in that marriage lay in your hands, Mrs. Hollingsworth. And that you told Alan, not for the first time, that if he didn’t buy you exactly what you wanted you would leave.”

Simone shrank slightly at this and looked more waifish then ever. She remained silent but her response was written clearly in those ravishing eyes. Prove it.

And, of course, he couldn’t.

“It was after this painful episode that the plan for your escape was conceived?”

“That’s right. Sarah didn’t give up. She came round to Nightingales several times and got that worked up at Alan’s brutality she threatened to have a go at him.”

“Awkward,” commented Sergeant Beryl.

“Anyway, one day she turned up with the kidnap plan. She knew I’d worked in television; I’d told her all about making up actors as road accident victims and corpses and that. Her idea sounded really simple. I’d disappear, we’d mock up some piccies, collect the money and Bob’s your uncle.”

“And afterwards?” asked Barnaby.

“Pardon me?”

“Did you lead her to understand that you would then be on the brink of a glorious new future together?”

“I suggested we just took it a step at a time.”

“How wise.”

“And I told her I couldn’t possibly leave without my darling Nelson. So we arranged that I put him in a box on the patio and she would pick him up. I put one of the tranquillisers Dr. Jennings gave me into his breakfast so he’d stay nice and quiet. Poor sweetie.”

“You told me on Tuesday the box held Kilner jars.”

“But Inspector, on Tuesday I was still very confused.”

“So. On disappearance day you took the bus and Sarah took the cat.”

“She drove over with him at tea time to that absolutely foul flea pit she’d rented. She brought the stuff for my face—I’d given her a list earlier—food for me and Nelson, some magazines and a litter tray. Then she went back to Fawcett Green to make sure she was seen around the place. Sort of an alibi during the time I was banged up. She just came back here to collect the letters and take them to the post.”

“Your timing’s a bit cockeyed on that one, isn’t it, Mrs. Hollingsworth?” suggested Barnaby. Aware of having caught her out, he felt the first glimmer of satisfaction since the interview began. “We know from talking to Penstemon that you rang your husband at five fifteen the day you disappeared. How could you do that if you were already incarcerated at Flavell Street?”

She didn’t even hesitate. “Sarah bought me a sweet little mobile. We needed a phone, you see, to give instructions about the ransom though that first call to Alan was entirely my own idea. I thought it would get us off to a good start.”

Barnaby remembered the drunken anguish of Simone’s husband as described by Constable Perrot. “It certainly did that.”

“In fact the whole thing went like a house on fire. Sarah made all the other calls, disguising her voice, naturally, while I cried and kept shouting. ‘Don’t hurt me’ in the background.” She made it sound like a jolly jape. When no one responded in kind, let alone gave any sign of admiration for such resourcefulness, Simone frowned again, this time somewhat peevishly.

It occurred to Barnaby then that a way through that impregnable composure might be found by the application of flattery.

“I must say the whole plan seems to have been very cunningly worked out.”

“I thought so.” The shadow of guileless petulance lifted.

“Especially the set-up at Heathrow.”

“Oh, that was fabulous.” For a moment he thought she was going to clap her hands. “Sarah came over around four o’clock on Monday, bringing some shabby clothes she’d picked up in a jumble sale. I made her up to look like an old woman—quite brilliantly if I might say so—and around half past six, off she went.”

“We know all about what happened when she got there.”

“Do you really?” Simone looked both genuinely impressed and slightly alarmed.

“I presume she changed back into her own clothes before collecting your husband’s briefcase?”

“That’s right. She took them with her in a string bag plus a pot of removal cream.”

It was so obvious once you knew the trick. Barnaby felt he was being led around backstage by a magician. Shown the false fronts and distorting mirrors and concealed trap doors. And still to come was the grand finale.

“And what were you doing while all this was going on?”

“This is going to sound really awful,” began Simone.

“Come to a bad bit, have we, Mrs. Hollingsworth?” asked Sergeant Beryl.

Barnaby couldn’t help laughing again and Jill Gamble gave an irritated little cough.

“Sarah’s a very dominant personality,” continued Simone. “This was her plan, she was running everything and I was just a pawn in the game. I thought what if, once she’d got the money, she never came back? There wouldn’t be nothing I could do about it.”

“Surely her feelings for you would have brought her back,” suggested Barnaby. He was finding it more and more difficult to keep his temper at this heartless reversal of the truth.

“Oh, feelings! All they mean is somebody’s all over you till they get what they want then you don’t see ’em for dust.”

“So you decided to keep an eye on her?”

“Yes. There was a scarf of hers in the flat. I wrapped it round my face as well as I could—”

“What on earth for?” asked Sergeant Beryl.

“Because I was all bashed up, why do you think?”

“Why didn’t you clean it off?”

“There wasn’t time.”

“I would have thought,” suggested Barnaby, “that as the last photograph must have been despatched on Saturday and this was now Monday evening, you would have had ample time.”

Simone stared at him, her lovely face so blank she could have been dreaming. Her shimmering hazel eyes opened very wide, reflecting what they saw like pools of liquid light. Behind them he knew her mind was racing.

“A really complicated make-up such as I was wearing can take a long time to construct. Two or three hours at least. We had one last photograph to take and I didn’t want to start again from scratch.”

“You were going to ask for more money?”

“No, no.” Perish the thought. “But Sarah believed, and I’m sure she was right, that Alan would never give up looking for me while he thought I was still alive. After his first wife left he made her life such a misery she had to take a court order out against him. He didn’t give up till she remarried. So, I was to become a corpse. Throat cut, probably. I do a very realistic knife job.”

It had taken her all of five seconds to come up with a completely convincing answer soundly based on an accurate assessment of her husband’s character. Barnaby, who had been sure he knew the real reason for the non-removal of the make-up, felt his confidence slipping slightly. Not his belief in her guilt, never that. But in his ability to lay this guilt out, pin it down supported by scrupulous evidence, before a judge and jury. And prove it.

“So I rang for a cab and told him the airport. I’d no idea where Sarah might’ve parked but I knew exactly where Alan would be because he’d been given strict instructions. So I decided to check him out arriving with the money, wait till he came back and drove off, then go and find Sarah and give her a lovely surprise.” She chirruped with pleasure, sounding like an excited little bird. “But it all went horribly wrong.”

Barnaby interrupted her there. Partly because the interview had already lasted over an hour and he needed to change the tape. Partly because he sensed that control of it had somehow slipped from his hands and he was determined to get it back.

He ordered some drinks and sandwiches to be brought up from the canteen. Simone sipped half-heartedly at a cup of very weak lime tea and said she couldn’t possibly swallow a thing. The men dove in and all the edibles quickly disappeared.

Then the two women went to the loo and Sergeant Beryl stepped out of the building for a cigarette. Barnaby was left alone with his thoughts which were not comfortable. So far he hadn’t managed to make even the slightest dent in Simone, Hollingsworth’s slippery but totally convincing performance as a victim of bullying and gross injustice.

Feeling suddenly stiff and awkward in his chair, he got up and walked around. He flexed his shoulders and turned his head from side to side to loosen up the neck muscles. He felt the need of a sharp gust of fresh air to stir his sluggish mind but knew the atmosphere outside to be warm and humid. The complete silence in the room pressed upon him. There was not even the hiss of the tape for company. He should have gone outside with Beryl.

On her return, Simone picked up precisely where she had broken off. The taxi having put her down near the Short Stay Car Park, she made her way to the top level in the lift and walked to the far end. Barely minutes later the Audi convertible turned up. Simone ducked down behind a Lan-drover. Alan parked any old how, got out slamming the door and raced off without even bothering to lock it.

“And thank God he didn’t because who should drive in then but that weird girl from The Larches. She got out of her Mini, crouched down behind the other cars and started creeping along by the wall! I scrambled into the back of the Audi just in time. I pulled a travelling rug over me in case she looked through the window. I waited—oh, I don’t know, ten or fifteen minutes—and I was just wondering if it was safe to climb out when Alan came back!”

“Oh dear,” said Sergeant Beryl.

“There was shouting, quite near. Then, when Alan started the car up, the passenger door opened and someone tried to get in. I couldn’t see any of this you understand, but I could hear the voices. She kept saying, ‘You’re ill’ and “Let me help you.” He told her to get out and I think he pushed her. Then he drove off but I could still hear her calling to him to stop. I think perhaps she was hanging on to the door handle or maybe her dress was caught up. Then there was this terrific bump and she screamed and he stopped the car. “I heard him swearing. He got out and then there was another sound. More of a bang followed by a thud. Then he got back into the car and drove away.”

Here Simone paused, turned a fresh, untroubled profile to Jill Gamble and asked if she could possibly have a fresh glass of water as this one had got rather tepid in the heat. She listened gratefully to her solicitor’s murmured encouragement. Then she tugged her grey silk handkerchief free of the confining bracelet and dabbed at her dry eyes.

Barnaby watched her, his hands resting lightly on the edge of the metal table. He was pleased to see that, whatever else she could do, Simone Hollingsworth could not cry to order. As he waited he was aware of a certain melancholy satisfaction that he would now be able to inform the Brockleys that the loss of their daughter was due to a tragic accident. After all, there was little point in raising a charge of manslaughter against a man already dead.

He recognised the drink of water ploy for what it was, a device to provide a necessary break in the questioning and, sure enough, once the glass arrived, Simone ignored it.

Barnaby became aware of a deepening tension in the room and then became aware that the tension was not within the room but in himself. There was a tightness in his breast and his breathing was shallow. His concentration, which had not faltered since the interview began, now narrowed to a degree where he felt it must be almost visible, like a pinpoint of brilliant light at the end of a dark tunnel.

“So, Mrs. Hollingsworth. You now find yourself on your way home to Nightingales.”

“To my amazement and distress, Chief Inspector.”

“What happened when you arrived?”

“Alan drove straight into the garage. I stayed very still, holding my breath. I thought, once he’d gone into the house, I could maybe get out of the car and somehow work my way round into the back garden. Hide there till it was really dark. But then he leaned over the back seat to check the door, saw there was something underneath the blanket and that was that. He was overjoyed to see me, almost hysterical with relief but at the same time there was something black and despairing about him. He wrapped the rug round me and—”

“What happened to this rug?”

“Sorry?”

“It was not in the sitting room when the police broke in.”

“Oh, he took it upstairs, I think. Later.”

“Right. Carry on, Mrs. Hollingsworth.”

“We got in the house and he started rambling wildly on about how the whole business had nearly killed him. And that it would happen again or that I would leave or meet someone else and his life would be over. I tried to calm him down and it seemed to work because he suddenly went very quiet. Said he was sorry he’d frightened me and that I wasn’t to worry any more because from now on everything would be all right. I suppose I should have been suspicious at such a quick change but I was just so relieved he’d stopped raving. By this time—”

Barnaby interrupted her. He had a terrible premonition as to where all this was leading and a cold foreboding gripped his heart. He longed to stop the immaculate and callous recitation, if only for a minute.

“As you yourself have introduced the word suspicious I suggest it might be more likely to apply to your husband. Surely, once he had seen you really close to, he would know he’d been duped.”

“I only switched one lamp on.”

“Even so—”

“And he’d have had to touch my face which I’d already told him was extremely painful. That was when he went upstairs—to get me some Panadol, he said, though he came down without it. Told me we’d run out.”

“Then what happened?” asked Sergeant Beryl.

Barnaby drew in his breath sharply with irritation. He had wanted to explore that scene a little further. But before he could put a question of his own, she was off again, speaking now in an intense, gasping little voice as if short of breath.

“He talked and talked about how he’d missed me and asked a lot of questions but I said the whole experience was so awful I couldn’t bear to talk about it and he seemed to accept that. After he’d run down he went very quiet for some time. Then he got up and made us both a drink. Whisky. It’s not something I like but Alan said it would help me sleep. Then he went to get some water from the kitchen though there was already a siphon on the tray. He sat on the settee and started to knock it back. I just sipped mine but he kept urging me to drink up so I swallowed a bit more. He was terribly pale and sweating. I got quite alarmed. Then, when he leaned back and closed his eyes, I tipped the rest of the stuff away.”

“Where?”

“Into the ice bucket. The drinks table was next to my chair. When he looked at me again he smiled and seemed really content. He said, ‘Good girl.’ Then ‘Forgive me, my darling. We’ll always be together now.’ I didn’t understand what he meant.”

The hell you didn’t, you lying bitch. Barnaby saw the brilliance of her solution now. Understood the final twist, in all its cruel clarity. He saw poor Hollingsworth beside himself with happiness from the moment his wife decided to reveal herself. Touched perhaps almost to tears when, despite her injuries and all that she had gone through, it was he to whom she showed concern. Mixing him a drink with her own fair hands; settling him on the settee. Making sure he drank it all.

Prove it.

“And when did you discover, Mrs. Hollingsworth, that your husband had not simply fallen sleep?”

“But I didn’t! After I’d washed up my glass—”

“Why did you do that?”

“I’m a tidy person.”

“The mess that kitchen was in,” said Sergeant Beryl, “I wouldn’t have thought one glass would make a lot of difference.”

“Also the smell of whisky in the room was most unpleasant.”

“Mrs. Hollingsworth,” said Chief Inspector Barnaby, “there was no trace of spirits in the ice bucket.”

“I rinsed that out as well before I went.”

“Did you not simply, once your husband had finished his lethal potion, throw your own undoctored drink down the kitchen sink?”

“Undoctored?”

“And if you were about to leave anyway,” said Sergeant Beryl, “why worry about the smell?”

“Look, do you want to hear this story or don’t you? Because I am just about getting—”

“You are harassing my client, Chief Inspector.” Jill Gamble had placed a restraining hand on Simone’s arm. “And if you persist I shall be forced to advise her against assisting you so comprehensively.”

There was a brief silence during which Sergeant Beryl chewed his bottom lip, Simone once more ran round the eye area, this time with a pink tissue, and Barnaby tried to stifle the feeling that he was driving along the edge of a cliff in a car he couldn’t control.

“Shall I continue?”

“Please do, Mrs. Hollingsworth.”

“Not that there’s much more to say. I left the house—”

“Haven’t you forgotten something?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Before you left you went upstairs—”

“I never went upstairs!”

“And typed a message on your husband’s computer. What did you use to cover the keyboard? One of your many scarves perhaps? I noticed a couple of near transparent ones in your bedroom.”

Simone was utterly mystified. “What did the message say?”

“It was a farewell note.”

“There you are then!” She turned to her solicitor and seized her arm. Exultant, vindicated. “Ohh, isn’t that ... He left a note!”

This was unbearable. For a moment the Chief Inspector felt so enraged he could have thrown up. It was three or four minutes before he felt able to speak and move the interview on. Then he said, “Tell me what time you left the house, Mrs. Hollingsworth.”

“Around eleven, I suppose.” She still hadn’t simmered down. Everything about her sparkled.

“And which way did you go?”

“Through the front. There were a couple of false starts till I thought of switching the halogen off. Mr. and Mrs. B next door kept peering out of the bedroom window. And then, of course, I had to get back to High Wycombe.”

“But why?” asked Barnaby, in mock puzzlement. “With Bay Tree Cottage just two minutes away.”

“There was no one there. I knocked and knocked.”

“Wasn’t it more the case that you could not afford to let Sarah or anyone else know you were in Fawcett Green the night your husband died?”

“But I didn’t know he’d died then” sighed Simone with an ever patient, sweetly resigned expression.

If Barnaby was disappointed that the trap he had cunningly placed in his suspect’s path had been so neatly circumvented, he showed no sign of it.

“And anyway, I couldn’t risk running into anyone while I was still supposed to be kidnapped.”

“So how did you get back to High Wycombe, Mrs. Hollingsworth?”

“I decided to walk to Ferne Bassett and ring from there for a taxi. It’s only about a mile.”

“A bit risky,” suggested Sergeant Beryl, “walking along a country road at that time of night.”

“You’re not the only one to think so,” replied Simone. She started to laugh in a merry, uncomplicated way. “This old guy in a Morris Minor picked me up. He was actually going through High Wycombe and I thought, great! But when he saw my face he wouldn’t drive me home, insisted on taking me to a hospital. So we ended up in casualty.” She could hardly speak now for laughter.

The two policemen watched, their faces expressionless.

Jill Gamble said, “Calm down, Mrs. Hollingsworth,” and offered the glass of water.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” said Simone and her shoulders shook. “It’s all right, I’m OK. So I had to hop out the back way and grab a cab from the rank. And far as I know,” more peals of merriment, “he’s still there.”

“You’re lucky you were picked up by someone so considerate,” said Sergeant Beryl.

“I’m a lucky person.”

By the end of the third session, weaponless in the face of such calm, bland resolution, Barnaby knew himself defeated.

There had been more tea and this time Simone, no doubt more relaxed now that the trickiest corner of all had been successfully turned, really tucked in. She ate a cheese and tomato sandwich and two Jacobs Club biscuits (fruit and nut). Her pearly little teeth were speckled with chocolate. She licked her handkerchief and daintily wiped her lips.

“Right. Tell me about the Athertons, Mrs. Hollingsworth. Where do they fit into this elaborate fairy story?”

“I shouldn’t use the word fairy in front of Ronnie—”

“Will you answer the bloody question!”

“I’m sorry.” Simone shrank away, blinking in distress. “It was just a joke.”

Barnaby, furious that he had allowed her to provoke him, struggled to swallow his anger.

“I think my client has had more than enough bullying in her life already, don’t you, Chief Inspector?”

“We are trying to find the truth here, Mrs. Gamble, about the death of your client’s husband. She seems to regard this extremely serious matter as a bit of a giggle.”

“I don’t, I don’t!” cried Simone. “But different people react to nervous strain in different ways. And I get a bit hysterical. I always have.”

“If you say so. Are you ready now to answer the question?”

“Of course I am. I always was.” She patted her hair and briefly rested her fingers on her brow, smoothing it gently.

“Renee Atherton is my mother-in-law—ex, that is. We’ve always got on really well. Even after Jim and I split I kept in touch—went to see her and everything. Before I remarried, naturally. I used to ring her up from the box sometimes when stuffy old Fawcett Green got unbearable. Jimmy’s brother—well, he’s always fancied me but I only like him as a friend.”

“Someone you can turn to in time of trouble?”

“That’s right.” She beamed happily, delighted at how quickly he had got the hang of the situation. “So as soon as I got back to Flavell Street, I gave them a bell.”

“At that hour?”

“They’re late birds. I knew they wouldn’t mind. Explained I had to have somewhere to stay for a week or two, dead urgent.”

“So why the sudden need to move?”

“I dunno, premonition maybe. I just felt a bit panicky. Ronnie wanted to drive straight over.” She smiled, shaking her head in tender recollection. “Talk about keen.”

“But that wouldn’t have done at all, would it, Mrs. Hollingsworth?”

“Pardon me?”

“Not much point in leaving empty handed.”

“If he’s going to be spiteful,” said Simone to her brief, “he can whistle for the rest.”

Jill Gamble murmured something conciliatory; Sergeant Beryl favoured the polystyrene ceiling tiles with a hard stare; Barnaby ground his teeth.

Eventually Simone, with a much put-upon air, condescended to continue. “I told him best thing was to time it for around two o’clock the next day. Park in the multistorey and I’d give him a buzz on the mobile when the coast was clear.”

“I see. And where does your first husband come into all this?”

“Jimmy. He don’t come into nothing. He’s in Australia.”

“We’re aware of that. But, even so—”

“He’s hardly kept in touch with his family so he’s not likely to have kept in touch with me.”

“Right.” One more cherished theory gone to pot. “So Ronnie picked you up. And, presumably, put you down.”

“Don’t.” Simone gently touched the bruise on her forehead. “We wanted to make it look convincing but he pushed me a bit too hard.

“Sarah turned up about one. And, honestly, Inspector if I’d ever had any doubts about running away ...” Here Simone stopped speaking and trembled slightly. Her eyelids fluttered and one hand rested on her breast as if to ease her breathing. “That woman seemed to think because she’d brought the money she’d bought me. She tipped it out on the bed and started throwing it into the air and laughing. I thought she’d gone a bit mad, to tell you the truth.”

“I can imagine,” said Barnaby, able to picture Sarah, now that the whole traumatic law-breaking procedure was safely accomplished, dancing around the room in joy and relief.

“She said, ‘Here, here—have some,’ and started stuffing it down my dress, trying to undo the buttons. Well, I weren’t having none of that. I reminded her she’d promised we’d just be friends. I’d hardly got the words out when she started kissing me and pushing her hand up my skirt. It was bloody disgusting.”

Barnaby tried to imagine that also and failed. But he could see how powerfully such a scene would come across in a court of law. Especially when embellished by a few even more salaciously inventive details.

“She went out to get some things for lunch. Oh, what we weren’t going to have. Salmon, foie gras, lovely cakes, champagne. She said when I’d had a few glasses I’d change my mind about going to bed. The minute she’d gone I rang Ronnie.”

“And left.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Taking the money.”

“I took my share.”

“Which was?”

“Straight down the middle. I know it was all Sarah’s plan but without the photographs it wouldn’t have even got off the ground. So I reckon I’m entitled.”

“Our information is you took the lot.”

“Only Sarah knows what I took and she wouldn’t make up a lie like that.” She smiled at both policemen, her confidence impregnable. “Even if she is an old dyke.”

Barnaby thought of Sarah Lawson slowly fading from the light in her prison cell and Alan Hollingsworth in the cold ground. But he would not allow his anger to get the better of him a second time. Not when he was handling something as slippery as a basket full of cobras. Unkindness, well, that was something else.

“Quite a contrast between the pair of you, isn’t there, Mrs. Hollingsworth?” Simone stared at him. “Here’s you calling Sarah all the names under the sun. Yet she’d die rather than speak a word against you.”

“I should hope so too!” She blushed all the same. Just a shade.

“But you’ve known that all along, haven’t you? Known that she loved you so much you would always be safe?”

Simone turned to her solicitor and said, “All this is a mystery to me.”

She decided then, in the face of the ungrateful way all her efforts to help were being received, that she had nothing further to add. Shortly after this, the interview was terminated. Simone was taken downstairs. Barnaby sat on in the room with the pale blue walls and metal chairs and poster of the Colorado beetle. He sat with his head in his hands and his eyes closed. He was seeing, as vividly as if she was standing a few feet in front of him, Simone Hollingsworth in the dock.

Wearing flat shoes she would appear very small indeed inside the witness box. Slender though she was, he would not put it past her to lose weight before the trial began.

Her hair would have been allowed to revert to its true colour and she would be wearing the sort of make-up which, though remaining indiscernible, emphasised her fragility. Her clothes would be plain and inexpensive. Perhaps even a trifle shabby. There would be no jewellery apart from a wedding ring.

She would have an outstanding defence lawyer but would give her evidence throughout so shyly that the judge would frequently have to ask her to speak up.

The tale unrolled would be a tragic one. Abandoned after a brief marriage to a man she truly loved, she then fell under the spell of a cruel exploitative neurotic who watched her like a hawk. Though generous if she behaved exactly as he wished, this man responded with violence if she made even the slightest attempt to have any sort of interest outside the home. Mrs. Hollingsworth’s doctor would testify to this.

An offer of friendship from a local artist was seized on with gratitude by this lonely and, yes, we admit it, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, perhaps rather simple and naive woman. A friendship which was to prove fatal to Simone’s future wellbeing. For Sarah Lawson, an articulate, highly educated and extremely forceful personality, was also a lesbian. A woman who, having persuaded the now unprotected and deeply vulnerable Mrs. Hollingsworth to leave her home, attempted to rape her.

Fleeing from this new oppression Mrs. Hollingsworth found herself accidentally entrapped once more with her brute of a husband and this time was lucky to escape with her life.

And so on and convincingly on ...

You could forget all about a murder charge. What evidence would the Crown Prosecution Service have been able to offer? That the prisoner had washed up a glass and an ice bucket? They’d be laughed out of the Old Bailey, all the way down to Blackfriars and over the river to Southwark.

If the more-sinned-against-than-sinning defence came off she might get away with three to four years. And as anything under four was automatically halved all the red blooded males in the country could have a shot at the pleasure of her company in a mere eighteen months’ time. The lucky bastards.

“Sir?” It was the desk sergeant.

“Oh, sorry.” Barnaby looked up. “You waiting for the room?”

“We are Chief Inspector, actually.”

“I was miles away.”

“Going over the Hollingsworth case?”

“Well, at that precise moment sergeant I was thinking of Marlene Dietrich.”

“Really sir?”

“Saw one of her old movies last week on television.”

“Good was it?”

“Excellent,” replied DCI Barnaby. “Very true to life.”

But there was some justice to be had, after all. Just a little. A short while later the Chief Inspector was pleased to discover, via the good offices of Fanshawe and Clay, that Alan Hollingsworth’s will, carefully and very tightly drawn, left every single one of his assets and whatever monies accrued from these to his brother, Edward.

The bequest had one condition. Alan’s widow was to be housed, fed and cared for in every way necessary to her basic well being by Edward and Agnes Hollingsworth unless or until she remarried, upon which all financial provision would cease.

Barnaby would have given much to be present when Simone discovered that the day she walked out of Nightingales in her plain grey dress and simple earrings, leaving behind her entire wardrobe, her necklace and diamond solitaire and the ingeniously raised ransom money, the whole kit and caboodle already belonged to someone else.

Barnaby could not help but wonder, when he heard about all this, if Alan had not always had some inkling of the darker side of his wife’s personality.

A happier side effect of this surprising legal document was when Edward Hollingsworth, informed of Gray Patterson’s plight and discovering it to be the result of his own brother’s immoral behaviour, decided to reimburse him fully.

Sarah Lawson was brought from Holloway Prison to Wood Green Crown Court where she was charged under Section One of the Criminal Law Act, 1977, with conspiracy to obtain money by falsely claiming to have kidnapped Simone Hollingsworth. When requested to stand and face the court it became plain that Miss Lawson was unable to do so without assistance. She received the charge calmly and, when asked if she had anything to say, chose to remain silent.

Later that same week Renee and Ronald Atherton were charged on suspicion of obstructing a police inquiry. Neither had form, much to Barnaby’s surprise, and would probably end up with little more than a caution or a suspended sentence.

Sergeant Troy came back to work, not quite his old self. In his first lunch hour he went out to W. H. Smith and bought the Joan Collins book for Maureen’s birthday. He added a large box of Belgian chocolates from Marks and Spencer and a vast bouquet of flowers, which was really two put together. He chose a card with some care.

PC Perrot remained on the Chief Inspector’s mind. Barnaby remembered the inexperienced constable’s early lapse in reporting the interview with Alan Hollingsworth and compared it to his own crass error of judgement, after thirty years in the business, in relation to Sarah Lawson.

It seemed to Barnaby, after these reflections, that he had treated Perrot unreasonably. He then made the decision that it would be not only unkind but foolish to remove the policeman from a job that he was doing superbly well. He dictated a memo to this effect and received reams of thankful gratitude in response. Interleaved with the ten-page letter were details of all the coming events in every village on Perrot’s beat and a request, if it was not too much trouble, that they be put on the station’s notice-board.

Gradually, in the offices of Causton CID, the machinery of the case was wound down and the inquiry team absorbed into other ongoing investigations.

Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby licked his wounds in private. This was not his first failure and doubtless would not be his last but it was one that he found especially irksome. He imagined the station discussing the affair, not entirely sympathetically. Recalling the day a pretty blonde, with the face of an angel and the temperament of an assassin, ran rings round old Tom.

But one had to keep such things in proportion and, in the end, they did not really matter. What mattered was that in two days’ time it would be Joyce’s birthday.

Barnaby planned a tomato mousse to be served with slices of avocado and lettuce hearts. After this there would be grilled wild salmon with Hollandaise sauce and new broad beans from his garden. Cully and Nicholas were bringing an apricot tart from Patisserie Valerie and some Perrier—Jouet Belle Époque.

They would eat out in the garden and afterwards sit on together in the dusk under the diffused radiance of the stars. Barnaby and his daughter and her husband would sing “Happy birthday to you” and then Joyce would sing to them, as she always did. “Greensleeves” perhaps. Or “There’s No Place Like Home.”