Faithful unto Death

Chapter Three

PC Perrot, savagely plucked from his natural habitat, sat uneasily in the reception office at Causton police station. Mulling over what he had heard of DCI Tom Barnaby, Perrot was not a happy man.

Fair, they said, but with a sharp edge to his tongue. Stood square behind his team but had been known to fall on it from a great height should its attention be wandering. Never backward in coming forward to claim credit—pretty common—he was also known for never passing the buck. Could be amiability itself but catch him on an off day and—here Perrot’s confidant had grinned and drawn his thumbnail graphically across his throat.

Of course, Perrot was presently telling himself while shifting uneasily on a hard wooden chair, a lot of this was probably hearsay. You had to allow for the temptation to exaggerate any macho tendencies. The inclination to admire, even revere, hard men was strong.

In his mind Perrot went over his report on Alan Hollingsworth in as much detail as he could recall. It had seemed to him as brief and as scrupulous as accuracy would allow and waffle-free, which is what he had been led to understand was required. He wondered now if perhaps he had overstepped the mark when summing up by suggesting that further investigation of the subject under inquiry was probably advisable. If he’d realised it was going to end up on the desk of some bigwig in the CID ...

PC Perrot produced a snowy handkerchief, passed it over the droplets of moisture on his brow and tucked it away again. As he did so a fair-haired, very pretty police sergeant put her head round the door. One look and she gave him the sort of smile usually seen on the faces of dental receptionists approaching intensely nervous patients.

“Constable Perrot?”

He followed her along a lengthy corridor past a series of gun-metal doors, all showing neatly typed cards slotted into metal frames, down some uncarpeted stone stairs, along another seemingly endless corridor then two right turns in quick succession. He thought, I’ll never get out of this alive.

“Someone will take you back.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

Just as he started to feel they must have walked at least twice round the entire building, they turned into a much shorter corridor with a glassed-in door at the end. Sergeant Brierley rapped on this. As they waited, she smiled at him again.

“You’ll be all right. He’s a pussycat.”

Constable Perrot was not consoled. There were pussycats and pussycats in his opinion. Tigers were pussycats. And lions.

From inside the room came a raucous sound. More of a bark than a roar but still not very pleasant. Sergeant Brierley opened the door.

“Constable Perrot, sir.”

The big man behind the desk was scanning something that Perrot recognised as his Open Text report, riffling through the pages—there now seemed to be an awful lot of them—and frowning.

In the corner of the room, perched on a wide windowsill, was a thin, youngish bloke. Pale and ferrety-faced. Red hair. A mean mouth.

The air was like warm soup. A large fan swirled it round in sluggish circles. Perrot was not asked to sit down. Eventually the DCI said, without looking up, “Ever thought of writing a novel, Constable?”

“Sir?”

“With your eye for detail and feeling for suspense you should make a fortune.”

Unsure whether this was an insult, a compliment or a joke, Perrot remained silent. He kept his gaze forward and slightly cast down, avoiding the eye of the younger officer who he had already decided would give a coldly unsympathetic reception to anything he might say or do.

Next to a stack of trays full of assorted paper on the big bloke’s desk, Perrot noticed a photograph in a silver frame of an attractive woman with curly hair, holding on her lap a little girl of quite remarkable beauty. Like a Pears advert, she was. Perrot, slightly comforted by this sign of domestic normalcy, kept it in his line of vision until one or the other of his superiors saw fit to break the silence.

“Why wasn’t this report marked urgent?”

“Well ... I ...”

“We’ve got a man here whose wife has disappeared. He refuses to answer the door until you threaten to break it down. You find him drunk and in an extremely unbalanced mental state. He lies to you about why she’s left, contradicts himself, refuses to give the name of a single friend or relative who might confirm her whereabouts. He can’t produce any note or communication from her. After looking around upstairs—the only moment, incidentally, when you seem to have displayed a single shred of intelligence, let alone initiative—you find Mrs. Hollingsworth has gone without taking any of her clothing or personal effects.” Barnaby broke off here and threw the stack of paper into a wire tray. “Would you say that was an accurate summary of what I’ve just ploughed through?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Cellar floors have been torn apart for less.”

“Sir.”

“I can’t think of a single officer in my nick who wouldn’t have had something like this,” Barnaby swiped the basket vigorously with the flat of his hand, “on a senior man’s desk within half an hour of completing it. And a good proportion of them would have brought Hollingsworth in for further questioning.”

Scarlet-faced with shame and humiliation, Constable Perrot hung on to his helmet and dropped his eyes to the carpet. He yearned for it to split apart and reveal gaping floorboards through which he could crawl away and die. The dreadful pause continued.

“Well, what’s done is done, I suppose. Tell me what you’ve found out since.”

“Pardon, sir?”

“This is dated Sunday. I presume you’ve had time since to make inquiries in the village? Did Mrs. Hollingsworth talk to anyone about going away? What did people think of her marriage? Does anyone know who this Blakeley you overheard her husband speaking to might be? How were the couple regarded? The usual stuff.” Barnaby paused for Perrot to reply. He stared at the policeman who still did not look up. His colour had deepened to a roguish violet and the perspiration pouring down his face and neck increased. He adjusted his helmet, leaving sweat marks on the navy blue nap.

“This beggars belief,” said the Chief Inspector. “Have you done anything, Perrot, anything at all, since you talked to Hollingsworth?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s have it then.”

“And keep it short,” said the man on the windowsill. “Our annual leave starts next month.”

“I was concerned about Mr. Hollingsworth’s physical condition.” The policeman spoke in the manner of someone coerced into public address much against their will. “So I rang Dr. Jennings the local GP and suggested he call round. Which he did. But there was no reply.”

“Was Hollingsworth one of his patients?”

“Yes.” Here Perrot, feeling he was creating a sorry enough impression without cringing, braced himself, raised his head and looked directly into the fierce heat of the Chief Inspector’s regard. An unsmiling countenance. Fierce eyebrows like little black horsehair rugs. High colour. Eyes brown. Perrot had always thought brown eyes could never look anything but warm. Ah well, you live and learn. “Both Alan and his wife were registered but I think Dr. Jim had only actually met Simone.”

“Dr. Jim?” The red-haired man sniggered. “Jesus.”

“You’ve nothing else to add to this pathetic story?”

“No, sir.”

“You’ve been buried in the sticks too long, man. Right, I shall be at Fawcett Green within the next hour or so. Make sure you are as well.”

“Yes, sir.” Silently Perrot prayed that this would be the end of his ordeal. And vowed to make up for his foolish mishandling of matters so far. To be crisp, alert, observant. To show them that a country copper was not necessarily a dud copper.

“You certainly know how to play it by the book.” Barnaby nodded once more at the exuberantly detailed report and rose. Perrot gulped as he got the measure of the man. “But if you want to get anywhere in this business you’ll have to learn to play it by ear as well.”

Perrot, deeply contented where he was and with no ambition even to make sergeant, especially if it meant mixing with mean-lipped bastards with eyes like hailstones, mumbled, “Thank you very much, sir.”

“It was a reprimand, Perrot, not a compliment.”

The man on the windowsill burst out laughing then falsely pretended to disguise it as a cough.

“How long have you been in the force?”

“Thirteen years.”

“And your present posting?”

“Seven, sir.”

Yes, far too long, thought Barnaby. They got settled and over-comfortable staffing these rural outposts. A little sortie from time to time for a refresher course or an update on legal or ethnic matters then back under their security blanket. You couldn’t blame them. Their brief, after all, was to get really dug into the community. Frequently they got so well dug in that there was hell to pay when they were moved on. Especially if the locals had taken a shine. It was certainly about time they got this one shifted. Barnaby could imagine the style of policing employed by Perrot. Paternalistic, kind but firm. Caring—whatever that devalued word now meant. All well and good, but not if it left him incompetent to handle anything but the simplest of misdemeanours. The man appeared to be about as useful as a cat flap in a submarine.

Perrot read his senior officer’s mind and his heart turned over.

“Right, Perrot. You can go.”

“Sir.”

Somehow Perrot’s feet covered the carpet as far as the door. The knob slipped in his sweaty fingers as he tried to turn it. The tighter he gripped it the more it slipped. He used his handkerchief. A hundred years passed before he found himself once more outside in the corridor. He stood for a moment braced to hear derisive chuckles from the room he had just left but there was only silence.

Troy was still enjoyably reflecting on Perrot’s interview as he drove Barnaby’s Rover Four Hundred swiftly along the A4020 towards Chalfont St. Peter, the windows wide open against the warm, pressing air. Nothing entertained him more than another’s discomfiture. It had been good, the chief’s crack about writing a novel. Troy only thought of smart remarks and snappy put-downs hours, sometimes days, after their natural insertion point into the dialogue had passed.

“He’s a throwback, if you like,” he said. “I bet that bloke on telly years ago was like Perrot. Apparently he’d pat the villains on the head, give them a stern talking to and a lollipop to make it better. My nan’s for ever on about it.”

“Dixon of Dock Green.”

“That’s him. A right anachronism.”

Every now and again Troy, who was always coming across words he didn’t understand, took the trouble to look them up in his daughter’s dictionary. Once aware of the meaning, he would flaunt them till he got bored or until the next enigma turned up. Last month it had been cognisance. Before that, pachyderm.

Barnaby rolled an ice-cold can of Orange Fanta, snatched from the Automat just before leaving, against his cheeks, hoping to cool them down.

“I trust you know where you’re going.”

“Roughly. It’s not far from Compton Dando.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Course you have,” said Sergeant Troy. “That manor house full of New Age weirdoes. Where the old geezer in the long nightie got stabbed.”

“Oh. Yes.”

“I’d go mad living out here.” Troy looked out of the open window and down his nose. It was a pale, narrow nose. Jutting out only slightly, it descended in an elegant straight line, like the nosepiece on a Roman helmet. “I mean, look at that.”

“That” was a thatched cottage of such dreamlike perfection that it was almost impossible to believe it was occupied by credit-carded, telly-watching, bar-coded human beings. A gingerbread family might have been more appropriate. Or a painted weather man and his wife, trundling in and out at regular intervals, as immaculately inexpressive as their storybook setting.

“Who’d want to live in a house with a wig on?” Troy’s remark was laced with baffled resentment. He hated being presented with the spoils of people with immeasurably more money than himself, especially when they chose to chuck it about on such incomprehensible trifles.

The sergeant was urban spirit incarnate, weaned on exhaust fumes, addicted to multistory car parks and multiplex cinemas carpeted with popcorn, to ziggurating shopping malls studded with zooming glass lifts and throbbing to the beat of hard rock, to space-invaded pubs.

“Might as well be dead,” he added, never averse to ramming home a point already more than adequately made.

They were coming into Fawcett Green and Barnaby pointed out that St. Chad’s Lane was the narrow turning on the right. Troy forbore to ask what else could the turning be in a two-street, one-horse dump like this?

He was delightedly vindicated when, a moment later, the horse itself appeared, sedately clopping along. A small child, wearing a velvet riding hat and jodhpurs, bobbed on the vast leather saddle. Troy, father of one and daily exposed to the world’s wickedness, immediately wondered where its mother was.

Becoming aware of the car, the little girl skilfully eased her mount on to the grass verge and gestured with calm authority for them to pass. Troy, who would have much preferred flustered anxiety that he could have authoritatively soothed, muttered, “Kids today.”

“Over there,” the Chief Inspector pointed. “Where the bike is.”

Perrot’s Honda motorcycle was standing inside the gates of Nightingales, which were wide open. His yellow safety jerkin and white helmet marked POLICE rested on the seat. The constable himself was nowhere to be seen.

Troy drove in and the two men got out of the car. In spite of the heat, the sergeant then put on his immaculately pressed, silver-grey flecked cotton jacket after giving the collar a quick once over and removing a stray red hair.

Barnaby rapped sharply on the front door but no one answered. The house had a desolate air as if recently abandoned, though vases and ornaments could still be seen on the windowsills between the glass and half-drawn curtains.

“Tray posh,” said Sergeant Troy, peering through the glass.

A narrow shingle path ran down the side of the garage to the rear of the house. Barnaby and Troy crunched along it and entered a somewhat neglected garden. This was encroaching on to the patio, a pleasant if unimaginative arrangement of multicoloured slabs. It held parched begonias in smart Chinese pots, a barbecue, still full of ashes, and a large, blue and white daisy-patterned hammock.

Barnaby, a gardener to his fingertips, climbed down the steps and stared with irritation. There were some beautiful day lilies surrounded by couch grass, a newly planted but unwatered rhododendron, “George Reynolds” and a sad old hebe which also looked as if it could do with a drink. But there was one patch that caught his eye. Not far away was a small section of ground which looked slightly softer than the rest and had been freshly turned over. Perhaps Hollingsworth had decided to start tidying up but that was as far as he’d got. Given the man’s state of mind as described by Perrot, it seemed unlikely.

“Sir! Over here!”

Barnaby heard his sergeant rattle and shake the French windows. Before he could scramble back up, Troy had run over to the barbecue, seized the metal tongs and smashed the glass. He put his hand in and turned the key then broke two more panes to release the bolts. By the time Barnaby reached him the windows stood wide open.

A man was lying on a brightly patterned rug in front of an empty fireplace. Barnaby crossed quickly over and knelt beside him. Troy stood on the threshold, his fastidious nature affronted by the mixture of stale offensive odours about the place, not least of which came from the pool of urine beneath the recumbent figure. Troy noticed a tumbler lying on its side a short distance from the man’s right hand.

“Is he a gonner?”

“Yes. Get hold of the FME, would you?”

“Righty-oh.” Troy crossed over to a fussy gilt table holding a mock Edwardian telephone.

“Don’t touch that,” said the Chief Inspector sharply. “Use the car radio. Ask them to send a photographer. And a round-the-clock watch.”

“OK, OK.” Keep your hair on, a phrase that Troy would never have dared utter, provided the subtext. At the French windows he hesitated. “You don’t think he’s just ... conked out then—Hollingsworth?”

“We don’t know yet that it is Hollingsworth. Try and find out what’s happened to Sniffer of the Yard. If he’s good for nothing else, at least he can identify the body, pro tem.”

When his sergeant had disappeared, Barnaby straightened up and looked about him. He would have recognised the place anywhere, thanks to Constable Perrot’s eye for detail. What a loss to the airport bookstalls that man was. Not necessarily, however, a permanent one. Should he carry on with the staggering lack of acumen and foresight that he had shown so far, a career change might well be in the offing. And sooner rather than later.

Barnaby worked his way once round the room, keeping as near the edge as possible, protecting the scene as severely as if the man had been found with his head bashed in. Why precisely, he would have been hard put to say. Though this was clearly an unexplained death, there was nothing at this stage to suggest it was suspicious. Perhaps thirty years’ exposure to dirty work had given him a nose for it.

The Chief Inspector looked into cabinets of china, along shelves of books, at pictures and photographs. He carried his hands loosely at his sides. Years and years ago he would have held them away from his body, maybe be even slightly in the air to remind him not to reach out or handle anything.

As a young constable he had been seconded to a fire-eating DCI who had simply terrified him. Once, arriving at the scene of a murder and finding the body, a wretched half-naked young woman lying face down in a muddy ditch, Barnaby, unthinking, jumped into it and pulled her dress down. He had received a tongue-lashing that almost brought tears to his eyes. (What do you think she wants? Her arse covered or the shithead who did this put away?) For months afterwards he had been made to keep his hands in his pockets until the first stage of any investigation was completed. Jeeringly called “Tommy Billiards” by the rest of the team, the humiliation paid off, for he never did it again.

At the front of the house his own bag carrier, having made the necessary calls, was getting out of the car. Aware that the local talent was huffing and puffing down the lane, Troy waited until Perrot was a few yards away then turned and walked briskly off. The constable, scarlet-faced and perspiring heavily, caught up with him on the patio.

“Um, good morning, Sergeant.”

“Well, hullo, Polly.”

Perrot eyed the smashed windows with dismay. “What’s happened?”

Troy grinned, shrugged, and said, “We thought you’d taken the day off.”

“Call of nature, Sergeant,” said Perrot.

In truth, after standing sentry for over two hours and finding himself absolutely ravenous, he had popped up to Ostlers for a double Twix and a cold drink. The chocolate was now melting in his pocket, the aluminium can thrown into some bushes when he spotted the DCI’s car.

“What’d you think that’s for then?” Troy jerked his head towards the Hollingsworths’ charming little fish pond then said, “You’re in deep do-do, Poll. And not just for leaving this place unguarded.”

Unsure how to respond but already resigned to the prospect of endless parrot jokes, the policeman remained silent. Troy crossed to the French windows. As his black shadow fell across the creamy carpet, Barnaby looked up.

“He’s just drifted back, sir.” Standing aside, Sergeant Troy indicated to Perrot that he should enter the room.

PC Perrot stepped over the threshold and stopped dead. He stared at the body on the hearth rug. Barnaby watched the colour drain from his face and saw that there was no need to spell out the seriousness of the policeman’s position.

“Is this the man you know as Alan Hollingsworth, Perrot?”

The constable moved a few steps to the left and slightly forward so that the dead man’s profile was in his line of vision.

“Yes, sir.”

Perrot hadn’t fainted since he was twelve years old. A scorching day very much like this when he had had to have a tetanus jab after scraping his leg on a rusty fence. Standing waiting, dizzy in the heat, afraid of the needle, he had passed out cold. He must not do that now even though he felt a thousand times worse. Not with the sneering sergeant at his back and cold condemnation flowing across the carpet to his face.

How was he even to handle, let alone survive, this appalling situation? What sort of fool, the foolish Perrot now asked himself, would stand for hours in front of a building simply because his knock had been unanswered? Surely a quick check around the place would be the next step? Then the dead man would have been found. Or, unspeakably harder to bear, a man who might not have been quite dead. A dying man whose life could have been saved.

Scourging deeper, Perrot recalled the report that he had not marked urgent or put directly on some senior officer’s desk. Would doing so have made a difference? Immediately Perrot convinced himself that it would. After all, hadn’t the CID heavy mob come over to Fawcett Green almost straightaway?

His offence was indeed monstrous. Perrot tried to stiffen his face muscles lest they should quiver and hung his head. His ears hummed. The foetid air was rank with accusation.

Just as he felt he would not be able to remain upright another minute, the Chief Inspector said, “Outside, you. The less trampling about the better.”

“Sir.”

A car drew up at the main gates. Two doors slammed, two sets of footsteps crossed the gravel. Someone rapped the front door and Sergeant Troy shouted, “Round this way!”

Police Surgeon for years, now mysteriously restyled Force Medical Examiner, Dr. George Bullard, had noted wryly when so informed that, though the designation might change, the raw material showed a tendency to remain as unprepossessing as ever. He was accompanied by a young man in a Stone Roses T-shirt, jeans and filthy sneakers with a camera round his neck, one under his arm, assorted lenses and a light meter.

As the photographer worked taking shots from all angles, balancing on his toes at one point on the very edge of the fireplace, Perrot, as instructed, retreated to the patio and further persecution. Barnaby and George, old friends as well as old colleagues, stood to one side passing on the latest station gossip, putting the world to rights, talking about their families. Doc Bullard had just had his first grandchild. Barnaby and his wife longed to be in the same position but did not hold out much hope. Recently their daughter Cully had pointed out that Juliet Stevenson, an actor she greatly admired, had just had her first baby at thirty-eight. A mere thirteen years to go, her parents noted sadly when Cully and Nicholas, her husband, had left. We’ll be too old to pick it up, Joyce said. And she was only half joking.

“Just the stiffy, is it?” asked the photographer, indicating that he was through.

“For now,” said the Chief Inspector.

If he sounded confident, that was because he was confident. Perhaps because Nightingales already appeared to be at the centre of a mystery, Barnaby felt certain that Alan Hollingsworth had not succumbed to a stroke or heart attack. Or alcohol poisoning even though, according to Perrot, he’d been lowering gallons of the stuff for days.

Even so, Barnaby felt it would be prudent to wait until the postmortem before getting Scenes of Crime out. Cuts and more cuts were the order of the day and even a straight-forward investigation with a modest team cost money. Though a mere droplet in the ocean which formed the Thames Valley budget, he would nevertheless be, quite rightly, reprimanded should it be spent unnecessarily.

On the other hand if murder was eventually proven and evidence had been lost or damaged under the day-to-day business of cleaning and tidying up the house and Hollingsworth’s effects and sorting out his affairs then he would be in much deeper trouble. The worst, in fact, for such an error could well result in a killer getting clean away.

The Chief Inspector suddenly became aware he was being spoken to.

“Sorry, George.”

Dr. Bullard was kneeling on the hearth rug, having unpacked his bag, spread out the tools of his trade and pulled on thin latex gloves. Obligingly he repeated himself.

“I’d say, from the look of the pupils, he took a whacking great overdose.” He loosened the waistband and undid the flies of the dead man’s trousers. When he picked up the rectal thermometer Barnaby, out of respect, turned away.

He caught sight of his sergeant, swinging in the daisy hammock, smoking, his face turned to the sun. He knew that Troy would be bewildered by this attitude. Respect for the dead had always struck the sergeant as pointless. Barnaby wondered if this was a generation thing or a question of individual temperament and decided probably the latter.

He pondered on the division between people with imagination, those able to put themselves in another’s place, and people without. This had always struck him as perhaps the most unbridgeable gap of all. All other differences, given willing hearts and minds, could be reconciled. But how to bestow a gift that nature had unkindly (or, some might argue, kindly) withheld?

“I’d say he’s been dead a couple of days. Perhaps a bit less.”

The doctor was unfastening the dead man’s shirt. Suddenly bored with the dismal ritual, the Chief Inspector went outside. It occurred to him to pass this consoling piece of information on to PC Perrot but the man had, once again, disappeared. Sergeant Troy stopped swinging and attempted to look more alert while still plainly relishing the sunshine.

“This is the life, eh, guv?”

Barnaby marvelled at such detachment. Shortly after discovering a human being who would never again see the sunrise this was, apparently, the life. Very occasionally and for barely a heartbeat the Chief Inspector would envy his sergeant. This was not one of those occasions.

After ten minutes or so, George Bullard joined them. Although he did not actually say this is the life, there was tremendous relish in his inhalation and exhalation of the fragrant summer air. Barnaby began to feel rather out of things.

“The van should be along any minute, Tom.”

“Any chance of a PM fairly soon?”

“Every chance. I’m clear, actually, for the rest of the day.”

“That’s what we like to hear.” The Chief Inspector looked around. “Where’s our plod, Gavin?”

“I put him out front to move people along. Last time I checked he was admiring some little kid’s drawing.”

Barnaby gave a groaning laugh.

The doctor said, “He’s all right, Colin Perrot. I used to live on his patch. He always had time for you.”

“I’m sure he’s a warm and richly lovable human being,” said Barnaby. “But I’m starting to think he’s a bloody useless copper.”

The investigation into Alan Hollingsworth’s death being necessarily delayed until the PM report, it was Simone’s disappearance that now absorbed Barnaby’s attention.

Half an hour had passed since the mortuary van departed. A uniformed police presence was now stationed at the front and rear of the house.

The time was one thirty. What better place, suggested Barnaby, both to eat and glean information than the village pub? Walking there, they were overtaken by Constable Perrot. He halted briefly near the crossroad and was seen to reach into the hedge and pick up an aluminium can.

“Little Miss Tidy,” said Sergeant Troy.

The Goat and Whistle, awaiting its hundred and fiftieth birthday, had recently been transformed by the brewers. Its ceiling, kippered by years of tobacco fumes to a rich yellowy brown, had been stripped and repainted with dark, yellowy brown varnish. Its scarred counters, well-worn quarry-tiled floor and old fire grate had been ripped out and replaced by artificially distressed counters, creatively cracked stone flags scattered with fake sawdust and a chipboard Elizabethan ingle-nook. The ancient dartboard disappeared and an Astaroth v. the Dark Hellhounds of Erewhon space invader arrived.

This imaginative transformation, unasked for and unwanted by both mine host and his customers, had cost thirty thousand pounds. The landlord was assured that, once the word of such startling refurbishments got about, his takings would be going through the roof. So far there was no sign of this. He had replaced the dartboard out of his own pocket.

Half a dozen heads turned as Barnaby and Troy came in and conversation ceased. The Chief Inspector ordered a ham salad and some Guinness, Troy a corned beef and Branston pickle baguette and a half of bitter. He took them to a table near the space machine and started to play.

Waiting for his meal, Barnaby was soon engaged in conversation, the landlord, Daniel Carter, opening.

“Yours, is it? That Rover down the lane?”

Barnaby admitted that it was.

“Everything all right?” The question was put by an elderly woman who had come up to the counter for a refill of her gin and peppermint. Although no one else moved, Barnaby was aware of a general gathering of attention keenly focused on his reply.

“Actually we’re looking into the disappearance of Mrs. Simone Hollingsworth.”

“What did I tell you, Elsie?” said the gin and pep over her shoulder.

“Thanks, Bet. I’ll have a drain of White Satin.”

“Deaf as a beadle,” said Bet, swivelling back. “You’ve taken long enough about it.”

“Did you know the couple?” asked Barnaby. Addressing the old lady, he also glanced around the room. The floodgates opened.

By the time he had finished his tired undressed salad and near transparent shavings of ham he had discovered that Mr. H worked all the hours God made, Mrs. H was always done up like a dog’s dinner. He never mixed, she mixed but got bored with you after five minutes. They’d give at the door but not what you’d expect, taking the property into account. The last anyone had seen of poor Simone was on the Causton bus. And, rounded off Elsie, don’t tell me anyone leaves their old man with no more than a handbag and a thin jacket. Specially when he’s loaded.

So far, so familiar. Barnaby became resigned. But then Daniel Carter leaned forward. He looked left to right as if about to cross a busy road and seemed on the point of tapping the side of his shiny red nose.

“Now if it was Alan who had disappeared, you wouldn’t have to look far.”

“Really? Why is that?” countered the Chief Inspector.

“You should know,” said Elsie. “You’re the fuzz.”

“He was had up for it?”

“Gray Patterson.”

“GBH.”

“Common assault, weren’t it?”

“Same difference.”

“All over some theft or other,” said the landlord. “They worked together, see, him and Hollingsworth. Partners supposedly, in this computer business. Pen something.”

“Penstemon,” shouted deaf Elsie.

“That’s it. Then, according to the report at the magistrates’ hearing, Patterson designed some new programme or whatever they reckon to call it. Something really special that should have made him thousands. And Alan ripped him off.”

“Stole it like.” A fat man, having finished his steak and kidney pie, chipped in for the first time.

“I don’t know all the ins and outs,” continued Daniel Carter, “but there weren’t half a ruckus. Ended with Patterson blowing his top.”

“Is that right?” asked Barnaby.

“Beat the shit out of Mr. H,” said the old lady, daintily tipping back her glass.

“Now he’s stony-broke, Gray. Owes money on the house, can’t sell it, can’t move. In schtuck, as the saying goes.”

“I heard he was trying to let.”

Barnaby finished his drink. He would have thought it excellent had he never been exposed to the velvety soft bitter sweetness of the Irish version. A year ago he and Joyce had been in Sligo for the Music Festival and the Guinness had been a revelation. The difference, they told him, lay in the water.

Troy, having finished banging and thumping and cursing Astaroth and Co. was now leaning up against the machine chatting to a youth who was banging, thumping and cursing in his turn. Now, catching the boss’s eye, he murmured, “Cheers, mate,” and moved towards the door.

“Get anything?” said the Chief Inspector as they walked back down the lane.

“Only that Mrs. Hollingsworth was a great looker but seemingly kept it all for her husband. Bloke I was talking to’s the brother of the bird who cleans for that old woman.”

“Which old woman? This place is swarming with them.”

“That daft one who came in to see you.”

“Not so daft, as things are turning out.”

Since the event of Perrot’s Open Text report, Barnaby had thought more than once of the eccentrically dressed and supersonically bewigged Mrs. Molfrey. His memory of their recent meeting had become imbued with a charming piquancy which he feared had not been present at the time. He didn’t really want to talk to her again, suspecting she might well turn out simply to be a chaotic-minded and garrulous old bore.

“What about you, chief?” said Troy. “Any luck?”

“If it turns out we’re looking at murder, I’ve a nice juicy suspect. Someone who beat up Hollingsworth after the man had apparently swindled him out of a lot of money.”

Troy whistled. “No longer Mr. Nice Guy then, our Alan.”

“If he ever was.”

They had reached Nightingales. There were a handful of people outside but, as the gates were closed and the constable on the front doorstep was a silent and unforthcoming stranger, no one lingered.

“Got a message for you, sir,” said the constable. “Lady next door, to the left, wanted a word with a senior person.”

PC Ramsey had got this information from his colleague guarding the rear of the house. Apparently Kevin, hearing a rustle just beyond the fence, had gone to investigate and found a face peering at him through a tangle of green stuff. The whispered request having been delivered, the face vanished, as if its owner had been sharply pulled away.

Barnaby, wrongly assuming a prurient interest in the goings-on at the Hollingsworths, made his way to The Larches. Troy rapped on the fruit-gum panels. They moved inwards, as if by magic.

Barnaby called out, “Hullo?”

“Come in.”

The words, whispered from directly behind the door, were barely audible. The two detectives stepped inside.

Ten minutes later, though the tension in the room twanged like a harp, Barnaby had still not been told exactly why they were there. He sat on a sofa eating a sandwich so fine it dissolved on the tongue like a Communion wafer. It was thinly filled with bland, almost tasteless cheese and had a droopy fringe of cress. It was also ice-cold. Mrs. Brockley obviously kept her bread in the fridge. Barnaby’s teeth had started to ache and he drank some tea hoping to warm them up.

The Brockleys were looking at each other. Not the silent “You,” “No, you” matey joshing that couples sometimes go in for. Their glances did not quite meet. His seemed to say, don’t you dare. Hers was harder to read. She was plainly distressed and under a lot of strain but she was also angry. Her eyes glittered.

“You asked us to come round, Mrs. Brockley?” said the Chief Inspector, not for the first time.

“Yes.” She looked directly at him and he realised that her eyes were glittering not with anger but with tears. “Something very—”

“Iris!”

“We’ll have to talk to them sooner or later.”

“You needn’t have asked them here. The whole place will know.”

Barnaby, becoming impatient with all this prevarication, attempted reassurance. “Mr. Brockley, we are going to be carrying out a house-to-house inquiry shortly regarding Mrs. Hollingsworth’s—”

“What’s that? House to ... ?”

“It means everyone in the village will be visited. I’m sure, once this gets underway, people will simply think we happened to start here.”

“You see,” cried Iris.

Reg seemed unconvinced. Looking at them both, the word “corseted” entered Barnaby’s mind. Practically obsolete in these days of teddys and bodys, Lycra and Spandex, but a word surely made flesh by these two rigorously constrained people. Tightly-laced, pushed and pulled and whaleboned into a respectably shaped life that was beyond reproach. A life that surely could not properly breathe.

“Our daughter’s disappeared.”

It was Iris who had spoken. Reg covered his face with his hands as if suddenly exposed to public shame.

“Brenda went out on Monday evening in the car. Rather suddenly, actually. When she wasn’t back by ten—”

“She did ring up Inspector,” interrupted her husband.

“That was two days ago,” shouted Iris.

Sergeant Troy, sussing that he was about to partake in the most boring non-event in the history of mankind, polished off his fourth scone, scooped up a couple of chocolate biscuits and let his attention wander. He glanced at the clock yet again.

It was hard to miss this splendid timepiece. Wherever one looked in the room its movement caught the eye. Diamanté numerals on a black velvet face and golden hands. On the tip of the minute hand perched a large pink and yellow butterfly with sequined wings and long wobbly antennae. Every sixty seconds it jumped forward and Troy’s nerves were starting to jump with it.

“Is she usually back by ten, Mrs. Brockley?” asked Barnaby.

“No,” said Reg. “She doesn’t go out, you see.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Well, to work of course. And occasionally shopping.”

“But not at night.”

“How old is Brenda?”

“Twenty-nine.” Though Barnaby’s face remained expressionless, Iris must have sensed incredulity, for she added, “I realise she’s not a child but she’s never, ever done anything like this before.”

“In her entire life,” said Reg.

“So when did she telephone?”

“About nine o’clock. Said she was staying with a friend.”

“Not staying with,” Reg corrected his wife. “Just with. As in being with. Talking to.”

“We didn’t even know she had a friend,” said Iris with unconscious pathos.

Even if she had not been twenty-nine, Troy, having glanced at the elaborately framed studio portrait on the sideboard, would not have given her as much as the wax from his ears. Talk about a dog. Worst in show at Crufts and then you were insulting the canines. No point tuning up your whanger for that one.

“It’s all very well her saying not to worry,” said Iris. “But of course we did.”

“All night long.”

“And in the morning ...”

They had argued for nearly two hours about ringing Brenda’s office. Iris, black shadows round her eyes, was a thousand per cent for, Reg totally against at first then wavering in the face of his wife’s extreme agitation. They had faced each other over the unlaid kitchen table—breakfast would have choked them—torn between doing what was socially acceptable and correct and easing the sick uncertainty in their hearts.

“What on earth will they think?”

“Fiddle to what they think.”

“It’s not business etiquette, Iris.”

“I don’t care.”

“Personal calls are frowned on. Brenda’s always been very hot on that.”

“You don’t have to talk to—”

“We’ll get her into trouble.”

“Just ask if she’s there. Say it’s business. Pretend to be a customer.”

“She’ll be home at half past six.”

“I can’t wait nine hours,” screamed Iris.

So, to the accompaniment of his wife wailing and the poodle barking, Reg had rung the Coalport and National Building Society. He had been put on hold and exposed to a bagpipe and electric organ rendering of “Ye Banks and Braes,” a tune that, for the rest of his life, he could never listen to without a cold and nauseous upsurge of reminiscent dread.

Eventually he was transferred to Personnel to be told that Miss Brockley had not arrived for work that morning and that there was no message. After Reg put the phone down, he and Iris had sat very quietly for a long time. Even Shona crept back to her basket uninstructed.

The next twenty four hours crawled by. The Brockleys couldn’t eat. Cups of tea were made and stood around, uncoastered, on various pieces of furniture until they were stone cold.

It was Iris, by Wednesday morning nearly demented, who had seen the policeman in the Hollingsworths’ back garden and impulsively spoken to to him. Reg had hurried to stop her, a second too late.

“Do you think,” Barnaby was asking now, “that this was a boyfriend she was referring to?”

The Brockleys opposed this suggestion with what the Chief Inspector could not help thinking was a ridiculous degree of certainty. After all their daughter was nearly thirty and, even if her social life was somewhat limited, must have met plenty of men in the course of her work. Brenda’s photograph was on the edge of Barnaby’s sight-lines and registered only as part of the background.

“Nothing like that,” Reg was saying.

“Brenda’s a most particular girl.”

“We’ve brought her up to be very choosy.”

“Tell me again if you would,” said Barnaby, “about the phone call. Her actual words, if you remember them.”

If they remembered them! The eager, breathless sentences were engraved on both their hearts.

“Daddy, I might not be home for a little while. I’ve run into a friend. We’re going for something to eat. Don’t worry if I’m a bit late. See you soon. Bye.”

“The strange thing was—”

“Apart from getting such a message in the first place,” Iris interjected.

“—she seemed to be speaking from a railway station.”

“Oh yes?” said Barnaby.

Troy glanced covertly at his watch and yawned inwardly, stretching his lips without parting them and lifting the roof of his mouth. He glanced covetously at the rest of the chocolate wafers. Amazing, no matter what state people were in they always made some tea and prised open the biccy box.

“There was a lot of background noise,” explained Reg.

“Announcements.”

“Well, Mr. Brockley,” Barnaby got up, his large frame blocking half the light from the window, “I suggest the best thing to do, if you haven’t heard from Brenda by tomorrow, is to come into the station and register her as a missing person.”

“The police station?”

“That’s right.”

“Couldn’t you do that for us now, Mr. Barnaby?” said Iris.

“I’m afraid not. There are certain procedures to be followed. Forms to be completed.” Barnaby did not add, as many of his colleagues seemed so easily able to do, I’m sure everything will be all right. He had knocked on too many doors and had to tell too many distraught families that the situation regarding their children was very much not all right.

They were shown out through the kitchen. Troy stopped at the poodle’s basket, bent down and patted the dog. Fondled its dejected ears.

“She’ll be back soon,” he said cheerily. “Keep your tail up.”

The preliminary stages of the postmortem were completed by six o’clock. The full report would not be on the Chief Inspector’s desk until the following afternoon but George Bullard rang the results through straightaway.

Alan Hollingsworth had died from an overdose of the tranquilliser Haloperidol in a solution of whisky. There was no food in the stomach. The drug was available only by prescription under various brand names usually in 0.5 milligram capsules. As near as could be reasonably assessed, around six or seven milligrams had been taken. No capsule casings appeared to have been swallowed. There were no unexplained marks on the body. The heart, lungs and other internal organs were sound.

“Good for another forty years,” concluded Dr. Bullard.

“What about times?”

“Late Monday night, I’d say. Or early Tuesday. It’s hard to be more precise after forty-eight hours.”

“Oh, come on, George.” Silently he cursed Constable Perrot.

“Sorry.”

Barnaby sighed then said, “Would such a dosage be enough to kill someone?”

“Probably. Especially with all that booze. From the way he was lying I’d say he took the stuff sitting on the sofa then, when he became unconscious, just rolled off. The rug was very thick and, let’s face it, dying is about as physically relaxed as you can get. Which was why he wasn’t bruised.”

“And what’s this about ‘no casings?’ Are you saying he took the stuff in tablet form?”

“Couldn’t have. Only made up in capsules.”

“Hang on.” Barnaby paused and felt again that strange and unsubstantiated conviction which had visited him when he first saw Alan Hollingsworth’s body. “Isn’t it bitter? The stuff in these tranquillisers?”

“Sometimes. Not in this case. Haloperidol’s pretty tasteless.”

“Wouldn’t the casings have dissolved anyway?”

“Perhaps. But there’d still be traces of gelatin in the stomach.”

“Right. Thanks, George.”

So there it was. A straightforward enough story. A man’s wife has left him. He tries to drown his sorrow in drink. But drink wears off. More must be taken, which in its turn will also wear off. And so on and wretchedly on. Much better to end it once and for all.

So, having been driven to this miserable conclusion, what does Hollingsworth do? Chuck the tablets in his mouth, wash them down with hooch and get it over with? No, he sits on the settee, carefully pulls the sixteen or so gelatin capsules apart, tips the contents into his glass and stirs till dissolved. Then disposes neatly of the cases. It was possible, of course. Some people would behave with such neatness and precision even in extremis—the Brockleys for example. But that was not how the dead man had acted so far. He had shown nothing but shambolic desperation.

Though still wary of setting a full-scale investigation in motion, Barnaby now saw his next step as unavoidable. And so it was that early the next morning a Sherpa van turned into St. Chad’s Lane. Shortly afterwards, Scenes of Crime, to the intense excitement and satisfaction of the village, unloaded their stuff and set in motion the austere and impersonal machinery of investigation.